Expense in the open source world can be measured in the time spent dealing with the software. If you aren't rewarded for your time, then the software has no value.
The problem is open source applications are becoming exponentially more complex, even more than the operating systems they run on.
For instance, it takes a couple of hours to rebuild an entire FreeBSD operating system on a AMD 750 with 256 megs of ram. But with Gentoo Linux on a Celeron 2.6Ghz with a half a gig of faster memory, it takes at least 18 hours to build KDE.
The tools and developer knowledge we have these days is still geared to building operating systems, not applications.
Banks do it, Pharmacists do it, the CIA does it.
You do it when you lock your door at night.
Any determined person could get into your house, whether or your door is locked or not. But that doesn't stop you from throwing the deadbolt, does it?
It's about time we knew a little about who is entering the country through legitimate avenues, let alone people who cross the border illegally.
Information gathered about you is no less than what every American citizen has on file, so stop your screaming, bitching and wailing, and stick yer finger in that scanner. It won't bite!
There are lots of good reasons why US companies should keep (most) jobs in the U.S.
(Better access to employees, no language, cultural or political barriers; top-notch infrastructure, well-trained people, etc.)
What I want to know is what are U.S. businesses and consumers getting out of all of this? Are software products all that much *better* because they are outsourced?
The cost savings (if any) is not passed to the consumer. The fact is demand has gone down for software and technical services, because American consumers and corporations simply have run out of cash and ideas. The same boobs that got us into this mess are still making all the descisions with what they have left in the bank.
I find it interesting that if a corporation wants to make hundreds of millions of dollars off an application, outsourcing all the work to India will not really improve profit or quality.
If they got American programmers, say they would spent 20 million on development of this application, compared to a 10 million outlay for Indian programmers. But if the anticipated revenues are hundreds of millions of dollars, why would a company take risks?
For a savings of a mere 10 million, we would give up control by handing over the the means of production, invite competition by giving up the design and source code, and invite political backlash from government. Then there are all the unforseen consequences (which have yet to manifest themselves.)
It just doesn't make sense. What makes even less sense is why large U.S. corporations outsource to India and beyond, when India hardly buys any of our products. Europe would make more sense, because they start imposing trade sanctions when they're hard up for employment.
In any case, India needs more relevant social infrastructure before it can attempt self-sufficiency at high technology.
All the pushing the Indian government is doing to become the next silicon valley just makes the leadership look desperate and superficial, because it can't address the more basic questions of people's quality of life there.
As a result, it helps to be aware of American society and fit into it, and our quick
8-step guide should have you on the path to burger-munching enlightenment.
And I suppose eating snails, frogs, rotting cheeses and 1000 year old turds buried by woodland
creatures is a better alternative. (Let's not forget the sulfites in the wine, too).
1 - Buy yourself a gun
To become a fully-fledged Yank, you'll need to get a weapon.
Americans think that having more killing machines magically makes their country safer, and it
helps them to walk around saying "I'll put a cap in your ass". Even though the concept of
"no guns = no gun-related crimes" is alien to the average Yank, it'll give you a false sense
of security in this country with the highest crime rates in the developed world.
"American == Gun Owner" is a common European misconception. In this country only ghetto
troubelmakers, Elmer Fudd types, Cops, homeowners, and French-inspired Libertarians own guns.
The first and last categories are regrettable, but it's only becuase we respect our constitution
and don't change it like dirty underwear as the French do.
On the other hand, we don't have criminally-ispired Islamic ghettos where young women are
gang-raped by do-nothings hanging around the hallways of tenements, while the government
turns its head. But then again, we are not France.
2 - Put on at least 25 stone
Skinny? Medium? Chubby? That won't cut it in the good ol' US of A. Because America has the
highest obesty levels on the planet, you'll need to get those rolls of flab built up. Eating
18 waffles with Maple syrup for breakfast (and visiting Burger King five times in a day) is
all natural when much of the world is suffering massive poverty. Get fat and fit in.
That's a lofty complaint from a national of a country where the average family spends 75
percent of its income on food, most of it is drenched in animal fat. It leads one to conclude
that the reason there are not many Fat Frenchmen, is due to the fact they all die at an early age
from congenital heart disease.
Heart attack on a plate, nicotine and spit-drenched stogies hanging from the lower lip,
and booze are what kills Frenchmen. Inability to protect yourselves from invaders, and lack of air conditioning will probably kill-off whoever's left.
3 - Learn the lingo
We've talked about issues affecting society, but on a personal level you'll need more
knowledge (or ignorance as it may be) to fit in. First, forget proper English. Confuse
"your" with "you're". Say "must of" instead of "must have". Whenever anything interesting
occurs, say "shucks" repeatedly. Instead of clever spontaneity or witty insults, call
people "asswipes". It's funny!
You apparently think language is only suitable as a vehicle for insults and vulgarities.
If you want to beat the Russians at this game, your culture is already halfway there.
It's never the language that is ugly. It's the the people who use it. They just have no class.
4 - Throw away all maps, history books etc.
To really feel a part of American society, you must lose all knowledge of the world.
Forget where Poland is. Scrap your knowledge of the lengthy Chinese history.
Make cretinous remarks like "India? Is that in Africa?". Because ALL that matters is
America, and it doesn't matter how pathetic you look to educated people the world over.
And that unfounded French egotism will make you all that more attractive to the world.
Your "intimate" knowledge (and subsequent ignorant abuse) of other
cultures will not buy you influence and respect you think you deserve.
I love it when the French complain about English being the defacto standard language
of world trade and international diplomacy. They are so bitter about losing the cultural
influence they once had. Acknowlege your has-been country is no longer what it once was to
international diplomacy and world trade. Contribute to the furtherance of Western Culture and put something on the line.
If you ju
I, Dastard will officially take over Linux kernel development from Linus, who has gracefully bowed-out of this fruitless activity for the betterment of the open-cource community.
We all appreciate the work that Linus has done, and in accepting this torch that has been passed to me, I promise to work faithfully to improve upon the code-mangle by adding in thousands of new compiler warnings atop the many hundreds that exist already.
In keeping with this promise, I also plan to add the following features to the kernel in the next few weeks:
Artificial intelligence
Breasts
More filesystem support
behave(3) system call
Nerf gun device driver modules
Built-in Emacs
And that is just the beginning...
Unfortunately, I will not be able to sustain sufficient development momentum if the sources are kept open, so I hereby revoke the GNU license. Sorry.
Copies of Dastix can be downloaded from
here as soon as I can slop together a distro.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is open source applications are becoming exponentially more complex, even more than the operating systems they run on.
For instance, it takes a couple of hours to rebuild an entire FreeBSD operating system on a AMD 750 with 256 megs of ram. But with Gentoo Linux on a Celeron 2.6Ghz with a half a gig of faster memory, it takes at least 18 hours to build KDE.
The tools and developer knowledge we have these days is still geared to building operating systems, not applications.
I make it a matter of policy to stay away from any softare release that ends in a .10.
They used to call the "Errata Branch" -STABLE.
Any determined person could get into your house, whether or your door is locked or not. But that doesn't stop you from throwing the deadbolt, does it?
It's about time we knew a little about who is entering the country through legitimate avenues, let alone people who cross the border illegally.
Information gathered about you is no less than what every American citizen has on file, so stop your screaming, bitching and wailing, and stick yer finger in that scanner. It won't bite!
(Better access to employees, no language, cultural or political barriers; top-notch infrastructure, well-trained people, etc.)
What I want to know is what are U.S. businesses and consumers getting out of all of this? Are software products all that much *better* because they are outsourced?
The cost savings (if any) is not passed to the consumer. The fact is demand has gone down for software and technical services, because American consumers and corporations simply have run out of cash and ideas. The same boobs that got us into this mess are still making all the descisions with what they have left in the bank.
I find it interesting that if a corporation wants to make hundreds of millions of dollars off an application, outsourcing all the work to India will not really improve profit or quality.
If they got American programmers, say they would spent 20 million on development of this application, compared to a 10 million outlay for Indian programmers. But if the anticipated revenues are hundreds of millions of dollars, why would a company take risks?
For a savings of a mere 10 million, we would give up control by handing over the the means of production, invite competition by giving up the design and source code, and invite political backlash from government. Then there are all the unforseen consequences (which have yet to manifest themselves.)
It just doesn't make sense. What makes even less sense is why large U.S. corporations outsource to India and beyond, when India hardly buys any of our products. Europe would make more sense, because they start imposing trade sanctions when they're hard up for employment.
In any case, India needs more relevant social infrastructure before it can attempt self-sufficiency at high technology.
All the pushing the Indian government is doing to become the next silicon valley just makes the leadership look desperate and superficial, because it can't address the more basic questions of people's quality of life there.
And I suppose eating snails, frogs, rotting cheeses and 1000 year old turds buried by woodland creatures is a better alternative. (Let's not forget the sulfites in the wine, too).
1 - Buy yourself a gun To become a fully-fledged Yank, you'll need to get a weapon. Americans think that having more killing machines magically makes their country safer, and it helps them to walk around saying "I'll put a cap in your ass". Even though the concept of "no guns = no gun-related crimes" is alien to the average Yank, it'll give you a false sense of security in this country with the highest crime rates in the developed world.
"American == Gun Owner" is a common European misconception. In this country only ghetto troubelmakers, Elmer Fudd types, Cops, homeowners, and French-inspired Libertarians own guns. The first and last categories are regrettable, but it's only becuase we respect our constitution and don't change it like dirty underwear as the French do.
On the other hand, we don't have criminally-ispired Islamic ghettos where young women are gang-raped by do-nothings hanging around the hallways of tenements, while the government turns its head. But then again, we are not France.
2 - Put on at least 25 stone Skinny? Medium? Chubby? That won't cut it in the good ol' US of A. Because America has the highest obesty levels on the planet, you'll need to get those rolls of flab built up. Eating 18 waffles with Maple syrup for breakfast (and visiting Burger King five times in a day) is all natural when much of the world is suffering massive poverty. Get fat and fit in.
That's a lofty complaint from a national of a country where the average family spends 75 percent of its income on food, most of it is drenched in animal fat. It leads one to conclude that the reason there are not many Fat Frenchmen, is due to the fact they all die at an early age from congenital heart disease.
Heart attack on a plate, nicotine and spit-drenched stogies hanging from the lower lip, and booze are what kills Frenchmen. Inability to protect yourselves from invaders, and lack of air conditioning will probably kill-off whoever's left.
3 - Learn the lingo We've talked about issues affecting society, but on a personal level you'll need more knowledge (or ignorance as it may be) to fit in. First, forget proper English. Confuse "your" with "you're". Say "must of" instead of "must have". Whenever anything interesting occurs, say "shucks" repeatedly. Instead of clever spontaneity or witty insults, call people "asswipes". It's funny!
You apparently think language is only suitable as a vehicle for insults and vulgarities. If you want to beat the Russians at this game, your culture is already halfway there. It's never the language that is ugly. It's the the people who use it. They just have no class.
4 - Throw away all maps, history books etc. To really feel a part of American society, you must lose all knowledge of the world. Forget where Poland is. Scrap your knowledge of the lengthy Chinese history. Make cretinous remarks like "India? Is that in Africa?". Because ALL that matters is America, and it doesn't matter how pathetic you look to educated people the world over.
And that unfounded French egotism will make you all that more attractive to the world. Your "intimate" knowledge (and subsequent ignorant abuse) of other cultures will not buy you influence and respect you think you deserve.
I love it when the French complain about English being the defacto standard language of world trade and international diplomacy. They are so bitter about losing the cultural influence they once had. Acknowlege your has-been country is no longer what it once was to international diplomacy and world trade. Contribute to the furtherance of Western Culture and put something on the line. If you ju
We all appreciate the work that Linus has done, and in accepting this torch that has been passed to me, I promise to work faithfully to improve upon the code-mangle by adding in thousands of new compiler warnings atop the many hundreds that exist already.
In keeping with this promise, I also plan to add the following features to the kernel in the next few weeks:
And that is just the beginning...
Unfortunately, I will not be able to sustain sufficient development momentum if the sources are kept open, so I hereby revoke the GNU license. Sorry.
Copies of Dastix can be downloaded from here as soon as I can slop together a distro.
Thank you for your support.
300M - $350 1.2G - $180 4.0G - $160 40G - $140