If you really want to compile from scratch, do it on Linux first with native Linux programs. When you get the hang of that, move to Windows. I'm all for sink-or-swim type trials, but, in this case, I think you'll sink. Very quickly.
Second that. Most software builds are much more extensively tested and used (and made easier and more reliable to build) under Linux. Linux distros come with a good set-up-in-a-standard-manner development toolset.
A lot of Windows port work isn't kept up-to-date.
Putting together your own cygwin or mingw toolchain (not that that's a bad idea in general) already is a severe pain in the ass. It can be real black magic to figure out what people last did to get primarily-used-on-UNIX-software building. When you couple that with the fact that there are all *sorts* of interesting problems that come up on Windows (case sensitivity suddenly existing, line feeds mattering, etc) things can get much more interesting.
I can't help but notice that the chimpanzee is reading a copy of Darwin's Origin of The Species, whereas Dubya is reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Summary: I have a question. I want to have a headless Windows box on a network with access to my files and want to have remote control over the box. This can be done with VNC and NFS/other network file system. Are there any projects to do this?
Not to flame, but why don't you just *do* what you just suggested?
If I want to delete a file called "foo", I don't submit a story to Slashdot saying "I want to delete a file called 'foo' on my computer. I know that I can do by by running the command rm foo. Has anyone done the same thing before?" I just run the command.
I actually kind of think you are in the wrong WRT embed bits being a protection mechanism under the DMCA.
I honestly think that the real problem is the over-broad DMCA.
I kind of wish that the EFF had been able to take this one to court...the ridiculousness of the argument would have been a good argument against the DMCA.
Now *that* is a reasonable and sensible idea, and one that I wish people would follow.
If.co.us could *only* be used by companies with registered trademarks in the US, and everyone moved over there, and standard trademark resolution rules applied to that space, no problems come up.
1. To claim unrealistic rights under trademark law. Those Microsoft people really hardradio like mad when it comes to Lindows, or I'll bet SCO's pissed that they only claimed patents and copyright infringement, and can't try to hardradio Linus for using the suffix "-nix".
Yeah, but then they have to drag up an example of a customers that was confused.
The other problem is that it's entirely legitimate to say "better than HardRadio" on his page, since then he clearly isn't claiming that his product is HardRadio (it's using the term in a descriptive sense), but it does drive the same traffic to you (and drives the HardRadio people bananas, which I'm sensing is an underlying goal).
"So for four hours a day for one year, Mr. Smith, we need you to fling feces at things that annoy you. Oh, and if any of the monkeys try to get at your food, bite them or pee on them."
You know, I've probably registered about eighty-six times at any place that requires me to register to download software just to get updates. I wonder how much "multiple registration inflation" is involved there?
I feel sorry for those who "Switched" from Linux to OSX. You have made a big mistake.
Well, I think that they're spending too much on mostly aesthetics when it comes to hardware...but how much does it really hurt? Both Linux and OS X run on laptops, and you can use whatever.
I don't like OS X much compared to Linux (and I think that a lot of OS X hype is just that -- hype from really vocal people) but it's not as if this is Windows/Mac OS we're talking about, where switching to the Mac or to Windows entails changing platforms. You can happily use OS X and if you feel like switching to Linux, do so, and if back to OS X...go for it. Remember that Apple paid a good chunk of their engineers to work on PowerPC Linux. A lot of bug fixes are done by people using software that runs on all platforms -- look at, say, Aleph One coded to SDL and OpenGL, or some guy using grep. It's kinda like FreeBSD and Linux. Sure, we'd like to bring our less enlightened brethren into the Linux fold;-) but really, it doesn't matter all that much.
Plus, Apple puts out those oddball PowerPC machines, and having people using machines with different integer sizes and byte ordering is a good way to find common software portability bugs. Think of it as having a bigger pool of beta testers.
I *do* think it is a little sad that OS X has a proprietary set of GUI APIs, so a lot of OS X GUI software can't be used (and developed on!) by Linux folks, but such is life.
On the other hand, Microsoft tries to prevent people from releasing completely free (as in freedom) applications, because the only way to develop Windows applications is to use Microsoft's proprietary libraries, and you're not allowed to distribute them at all, let alone distribute the source code.
(a) Everyone on Windows already *has* msvcrt and comctl32 and almost all the standard DLLs.
(b) There are a couple of libraries that not everyone has (especially the Visual Basic runtime libraries of various versions) and Microsoft *does* let you redistribute the binaries with your application. If nothing else, Microsoft has a healthy deal of respect for letting third-party developers not fuck about with licenses.
Didn't say it was. The leeches are the ones who want something for nothing--they want to take from Linux, but they don't want to give back in source code or money. Qt's licensing doesn't let them use Qt if they're gonna do so. Well, boo hoo.
And *I'm* saying that if you expect people to write to an API, you should not expect them to *also* to conform to a particular license in doing so. I can't just "swap in GTK" and build an application that works seamlessly on distros that are KDE-oriented.
And as a Porsche-driving commercial game developer, he could afford to pay TrollTech a couple of thousand dollars for their work. He didn't mind paying NeXT for their OS to develop on; hell, he probably spent more than that on soft drinks during development.
Perhaps he does -- many people do *not*. I just can't understand why you think people are going to find this remotely acceptable. *I* like using the GPL a pretty fair bit, and *I*'m very much bothered by it, and the hordes of existing developers are *not* interested in paying a tax or being forced to use the GPL when considering Linux. Seriously, one of the *biggest* pieces of FUD that people have worked *so* hard to dispell is that "people have to use the GPL if they release software for Linux", and just as we manage to get people uneasily considering transitions again, up pops TrollTech trying to make that *exactly* the case. That's a hell of a good way to scare off developers.
Pity it turned out to be a dead end. I see more excitement around AmigaOS than around CORBA these days...
Actually, I was referring to the choice of base language - C and the choice of C++ + STL when designing the C++ API.
If you think that, I assume you'll agree with me that Mono is a complete waste of time, and that the GNOME team must be smoking crack if they think it's sensible to build future GNOME apps on.NET...
What, you think the GNOME team is planning to build future apps on.NET? You've been reading too much horror stuff on kde.net. *Miguel* happens to like the idea of writing *his* software in C#. *He* might do up some of his future software in C#, and he happens to also be one of the core developers. The vast bulk of the software, as the GNOME team has pointed out many times, is in C and is going to stay that way. There are KDE adherents that like Ruby, but you hardly see the GNOME crowd running around claiming that KDE is "going to be built in Ruby".
But really, this isn't about GNOME/KDE. I don't have a problem with KDE -- nice set of software. I have a problem with Qt's licensing situation.
The problem with licenses like the BSD license is that they set up an extremely slanted playing field, where commercial software can take what it likes from the free software world, but the reverse is not true. That's not fair competition at all, that's leeching.
I didn't say the BSD license (though I *still* think trying to force people not to use the BSD license in *their* software by leveraging the strategic position *you* managed to get your software to occupy is irritating and not a good justification). Use any license that isn't GPL-compatible -- it doesn't have to allow commercial use of the code, even. Use pine's, if you like.
The Qt licensing doesn't stop anyone from being able to write non-open-source software. It just means that if they want to use TrollTech's work to do so, they have to pay money in return. Seems reasonable to me--why the hell should TrollTech subsidize the development costs for a purely commercial piece of software that they won't be able to use, learn from, or distribute?
Personally, I *don't* think it's a great idea to have people making the primary widget set on Linux, the standard C library, or the X11 libraries commercial, but they *can* make money doing so, even if it requires them to do by selling good (but optional) dev tools for Qt.
Look, at that point, TrollTech becomes a big impediment to the use of Linux. *Microsoft* doesn't try to charge every person that wants to release a closed-source Windows application a tax on doing so. TrollTech is trying to do *exactly* that.
Take all that closed-source work. (Or, now that I think of it, probably stuff for internal use only but that you want to disallow other people in your company from distributing to other people, both within and without the company -- it's a good bet that restrictions on redistribution would be a violation of the GPL.) All of a sudden, TrollTech gets money from everyone writing Linux GUI software software that uses some random license. That's not cool, and it's not healthy for Linux.
When have TrollTech ever threatened the open source community?
A big *sword* over my head isn't a vocal threat, it's just something that sooner or later is going to negatively impact me. A change in market dynamics to where anyone not using the GPL is paying a fee *hurts Linux* as a viable platform. TrollTech very clearly has a business based off of leveraging this.
It's the commercial leech community they threaten.
All closed-source software is not "leech"ing from the open source community. Is Quake, Quake 2, and Carmack's other work "leeching" from the FLOSS community, in the years before he GPLed it and did Linux releases? I certainly don't think so. But if he wanted to include GUI config support using the *standard widget set* that everything else on the platform is using, he is forced to pay the "TrollTech tax". You can't tell me that it's not a negative thing for Linux to be so profoundly influenced by a company with that degree of control.
The GNOME project could have done what so many other GNU projects have done--made an open-source clone of a "proprietary" library.
People have -- GNOME didn't like some of the technical decisions made in the production of Qt, and went with a newer approach, so GNOME chose not to do so. There was a group that did a Qt implementation called Harmony, but it isn't feasible for them to keep up with Qt, which is a large API, just as it isn't feasible for the WINE people to keep up with Windows (and the same argument "well, if you don't like it, just reimplement it" is equally invalid -- the position they occupy, just as the position Microsoft occupies, is a severe barrier to others.
The US has a tradition of the longest work weeks in the world. Mexico has a tradition (if semi-gone, at least in the city) of taking a nap in the middle of the day.
That reminds me of everyone's favorite game's dreams. Spoilers, but if you don't know already, you probably weren't going to do so:
Well, there was this knife, more aptly described as a broadsword, and I see, well, I was swinging down the street on my way to a movie and this guy, yeah. He was about six foot eight and huge. He was holding this knife, only to me, I would describe it as a broadsword, something from the Knights of the Round. Before he can even open his mouth, he collapses. Meanwhile, I can barely lift a finger to put the toupee back on his glossy head because I'm shaking so much.
He was vomiting and I knew that he was alive because he kept saying something like 'durability' between convulsions. What happened next was really bizarre. Both ends of the street flood with black-suited men, just like in a movie.
These men look tough and pissed off, the eyes behind their sunglasses are probably cold as my hands are getting. I feel like my heart has stopped, I'm so damn scared. As they start to inundate the street in black, they move with one will.
I figure that I'm dead anyway, so I reach down for the blade. The blade is being covered by his vomit, but the hilt is clean. I can hear the men getting excited, but I can't stop. My fingers slide around the leather hilt which is oddly cold...
terminal end
I'm in the same street, and as I reach into my pocket for my keys, my eyes follow the blackened streaks of gum that pock-mark the sidewalk. The man is gone, and someone in sanitation cleaned up the aparitions and vomit in a real hurry. I hurry down the stairs heading for the subway, but my keys aren't in my pocket anymore. I'll have to get in through the side window.
The subway station is very bright and shining from the sanitation team that has been sweeping a swath in front of me. The concrete floor is losing years of tarnish, keeping only the protective layer of the gum streaks which make up constellations in an otherwise vacant sky.
The train arrives right on time, and just ahead of a mass of dark suited men who have been following me for what seems like years now. Between the sanitation and the suits, I must be going colorblind, but the train is here now, and those men, no, they won't catch me...
terminal end
and
Seven hundred and sixty one armless and legless corpses float inconspicuously around the inside of hangar ninety six. I say that they are inconspicuous because it is their arms and legs which demand my attention. I did this, or I could have stopped it. Which is it? It doesn't matter now. I did this and could have stopped it, but nothing in nature ever follows a gaussian curve. Sure, they'll tell you that it does. They say that every five minutes someone dies in a car accident, but how often are there seven hundred and sixty one armless and legless corpses in one hangar?
The Sun guy just walks straight out the door without even washing.
"At Sun, we don't piss on our hands."
The Sun exec continues:
"Actually, I peed all over a crowd of my customers before ever walking in the door, and didn't even need to use the facilities. We just like copying IBM and Apple."
Will someone please explain to me why, if we're running a trade deficit and have been for next to forever, the dollar is still so strong compared to other currencies?
Also, businesses despite what I see in your post are not just about making money, if that were true I wouldn't have Christmas parties and bbqs and an owner I can go out for beers with.
Well...they aren't perfect systems, but employee loyalty/happiness can be measured in productivity and damages, and is just another number in the big equation.
The problem that I see is not outsourcing, but outsourcing so rapidly that the market doesn't have time to adjust. People frequently move around in a company and wind up doing things quite different from what they started doing when they were a new hire. However, if the outsourcing is too rapid and widespread, there's no way to juggle things around, and that's when people start to hurt -- when the changes are too rapid. If the current outsourcing rush was spread out over fifteen years instead of five years, natural retirement would take care of most of the problem (and people would tend not to enter the field, knowing that they were facing a shrinking job market).
We have yet to see what the actual IBM customers will think of all of this but it doesn't yet look like it's going to make for better products.
It's all par for the course. Every time some new business buzz-concept comes along, every business writer drizzles saliva all over it and writes about how amazingly wonderful it is, and about getting "left behind". Every MBA reads the series of articles, and somewhere over the year of getting this stuff hammering at them, decides that they need to take advantage of the latest and greatest. Inevitably everyone moves at once, which happens too far and too fast, and as a result most of the people moving with the herd come out bloodied and worse off than they started.
Let me start in the late eighties going into the nineties. IT spending was a big thing. Huge amounts of money were directed into IT, lots of people (an unsustainable number, which now screws over all the people having to deal with an oversaturated job market) were hired, incredible amounts of money were blown on completely unnecessary products. Oracle installations and high-end hardware cost *stupid* amounts of money, but people paid it. "Computers" was a buzzword, and to "computers" MBAs flocked. Microsoft got really, really rich.
Then, in the late nineties, "Internet" hit the radar. The government was pushing it as a big commercial deal, economists were enthralled, everyone was convinced that *now* was the time to get in on the ground floor. Business rags raved about the "Internet". Sure enough, stupid amounts of money (unsustainable amounts) were committed. The dot-com boom happened...and then crashed.
Now, in the naughties, "outsourcing" has become insanely popular. If an MBA hasn't considered "outsourcing", he should have a good reason why. So we're going to shove a whole lot of people to various countries, go overboard in doing so, and burn ourselves again.
Whenever the business press catches on to something and starts to get excited, it's a really good time to run in the opposite direction.
Slashdot Mirror
If you really want to compile from scratch, do it on Linux first with native Linux programs. When you get the hang of that, move to Windows. I'm all for sink-or-swim type trials, but, in this case, I think you'll sink. Very quickly.
Second that. Most software builds are much more extensively tested and used (and made easier and more reliable to build) under Linux. Linux distros come with a good set-up-in-a-standard-manner development toolset.
A lot of Windows port work isn't kept up-to-date.
Putting together your own cygwin or mingw toolchain (not that that's a bad idea in general) already is a severe pain in the ass. It can be real black magic to figure out what people last did to get primarily-used-on-UNIX-software building. When you couple that with the fact that there are all *sorts* of interesting problems that come up on Windows (case sensitivity suddenly existing, line feeds mattering, etc) things can get much more interesting.
Yeah...darn, the US's hierarchy is pretty broken compared to most countries.
That's really amazing. I don't suppose anyone has a video copy of the "Living Proof" documentary online anywhere we could get at it?
No... but it seems to be our standard way of settling international disputes.
"Hey, you have a towel on your head. Eat lead."
Chimps rarely kill each other out of the blue, and don't conduct wars.
I can't help but notice that the chimpanzee is reading a copy of Darwin's Origin of The Species, whereas Dubya is reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Summary: I have a question. I want to have a headless Windows box on a network with access to my files and want to have remote control over the box. This can be done with VNC and NFS/other network file system. Are there any projects to do this?
Not to flame, but why don't you just *do* what you just suggested?
If I want to delete a file called "foo", I don't submit a story to Slashdot saying "I want to delete a file called 'foo' on my computer. I know that I can do by by running the command rm foo. Has anyone done the same thing before?" I just run the command.
Hmm.
I actually kind of think you are in the wrong WRT embed bits being a protection mechanism under the DMCA.
I honestly think that the real problem is the over-broad DMCA.
I kind of wish that the EFF had been able to take this one to court...the ridiculousness of the argument would have been a good argument against the DMCA.
Now *that* is a reasonable and sensible idea, and one that I wish people would follow.
.co.us could *only* be used by companies with registered trademarks in the US, and everyone moved over there, and standard trademark resolution rules applied to that space, no problems come up.
If
Of course, it wouldn't solve this problem...
To hardradio, v. colloq.
1. To claim unrealistic rights under trademark law. Those Microsoft people really hardradio like mad when it comes to Lindows, or I'll bet SCO's pissed that they only claimed patents and copyright infringement, and can't try to hardradio Linus for using the suffix "-nix".
Yeah, but then they have to drag up an example of a customers that was confused.
The other problem is that it's entirely legitimate to say "better than HardRadio" on his page, since then he clearly isn't claiming that his product is HardRadio (it's using the term in a descriptive sense), but it does drive the same traffic to you (and drives the HardRadio people bananas, which I'm sensing is an underlying goal).
"So for four hours a day for one year, Mr. Smith, we need you to fling feces at things that annoy you. Oh, and if any of the monkeys try to get at your food, bite them or pee on them."
You know, I've probably registered about eighty-six times at any place that requires me to register to download software just to get updates. I wonder how much "multiple registration inflation" is involved there?
...has raised hopes that the worst is behind the beleaguered industry"...
Since when is a 7.6% drop (especially after a major boom) a sign of a "beleagured industry", especially for a luxury item?
I feel sorry for those who "Switched" from Linux to OSX. You have made a big mistake.
;-) but really, it doesn't matter all that much.
Well, I think that they're spending too much on mostly aesthetics when it comes to hardware...but how much does it really hurt? Both Linux and OS X run on laptops, and you can use whatever.
I don't like OS X much compared to Linux (and I think that a lot of OS X hype is just that -- hype from really vocal people) but it's not as if this is Windows/Mac OS we're talking about, where switching to the Mac or to Windows entails changing platforms. You can happily use OS X and if you feel like switching to Linux, do so, and if back to OS X...go for it. Remember that Apple paid a good chunk of their engineers to work on PowerPC Linux. A lot of bug fixes are done by people using software that runs on all platforms -- look at, say, Aleph One coded to SDL and OpenGL, or some guy using grep. It's kinda like FreeBSD and Linux. Sure, we'd like to bring our less enlightened brethren into the Linux fold
Plus, Apple puts out those oddball PowerPC machines, and having people using machines with different integer sizes and byte ordering is a good way to find common software portability bugs. Think of it as having a bigger pool of beta testers.
I *do* think it is a little sad that OS X has a proprietary set of GUI APIs, so a lot of OS X GUI software can't be used (and developed on!) by Linux folks, but such is life.
Sadly you're probably in the wrong.
I think that the courts have ruled incorrectly on metatagging, but there's not a lot we can do about stupid judges.
On the other hand, Microsoft tries to prevent people from releasing completely free (as in freedom) applications, because the only way to develop Windows applications is to use Microsoft's proprietary libraries, and you're not allowed to distribute them at all, let alone distribute the source code.
.NET...
.NET? You've been reading too much horror stuff on kde.net. *Miguel* happens to like the idea of writing *his* software in C#. *He* might do up some of his future software in C#, and he happens to also be one of the core developers. The vast bulk of the software, as the GNOME team has pointed out many times, is in C and is going to stay that way. There are KDE adherents that like Ruby, but you hardly see the GNOME crowd running around claiming that KDE is "going to be built in Ruby".
(a) Everyone on Windows already *has* msvcrt and comctl32 and almost all the standard DLLs.
(b) There are a couple of libraries that not everyone has (especially the Visual Basic runtime libraries of various versions) and Microsoft *does* let you redistribute the binaries with your application. If nothing else, Microsoft has a healthy deal of respect for letting third-party developers not fuck about with licenses.
Didn't say it was. The leeches are the ones who want something for nothing--they want to take from Linux, but they don't want to give back in source code or money. Qt's licensing doesn't let them use Qt if they're gonna do so. Well, boo hoo.
And *I'm* saying that if you expect people to write to an API, you should not expect them to *also* to conform to a particular license in doing so. I can't just "swap in GTK" and build an application that works seamlessly on distros that are KDE-oriented.
And as a Porsche-driving commercial game developer, he could afford to pay TrollTech a couple of thousand dollars for their work. He didn't mind paying NeXT for their OS to develop on; hell, he probably spent more than that on soft drinks during development.
Perhaps he does -- many people do *not*. I just can't understand why you think people are going to find this remotely acceptable. *I* like using the GPL a pretty fair bit, and *I*'m very much bothered by it, and the hordes of existing developers are *not* interested in paying a tax or being forced to use the GPL when considering Linux. Seriously, one of the *biggest* pieces of FUD that people have worked *so* hard to dispell is that "people have to use the GPL if they release software for Linux", and just as we manage to get people uneasily considering transitions again, up pops TrollTech trying to make that *exactly* the case. That's a hell of a good way to scare off developers.
Pity it turned out to be a dead end. I see more excitement around AmigaOS than around CORBA these days...
Actually, I was referring to the choice of base language - C and the choice of C++ + STL when designing the C++ API.
If you think that, I assume you'll agree with me that Mono is a complete waste of time, and that the GNOME team must be smoking crack if they think it's sensible to build future GNOME apps on
What, you think the GNOME team is planning to build future apps on
But really, this isn't about GNOME/KDE. I don't have a problem with KDE -- nice set of software. I have a problem with Qt's licensing situation.
The problem with licenses like the BSD license is that they set up an extremely slanted playing field, where commercial software can take what it likes from the free software world, but the reverse is not true. That's not fair competition at all, that's leeching.
I didn't say the BSD license (though I *still* think trying to force people not to use the BSD license in *their* software by leveraging the strategic position *you* managed to get your software to occupy is irritating and not a good justification). Use any license that isn't GPL-compatible -- it doesn't have to allow commercial use of the code, even. Use pine's, if you like.
The Qt licensing doesn't stop anyone from being able to write non-open-source software. It just means that if they want to use TrollTech's work to do so, they have to pay money in return. Seems reasonable to me--why the hell should TrollTech subsidize the development costs for a purely commercial piece of software that they won't be able to use, learn from, or distribute?
Personally, I *don't* think it's a great idea to have people making the primary widget set on Linux, the standard C library, or the X11 libraries commercial, but they *can* make money doing so, even if it requires them to do by selling good (but optional) dev tools for Qt.
Look, at that point, TrollTech becomes a big impediment to the use of Linux. *Microsoft* doesn't try to charge every person that wants to release a closed-source Windows application a tax on doing so. TrollTech is trying to do *exactly* that.
Take all that closed-source work. (Or, now that I think of it, probably stuff for internal use only but that you want to disallow other people in your company from distributing to other people, both within and without the company -- it's a good bet that restrictions on redistribution would be a violation of the GPL.) All of a sudden, TrollTech gets money from everyone writing Linux GUI software software that uses some random license. That's not cool, and it's not healthy for Linux.
When have TrollTech ever threatened the open source community?
A big *sword* over my head isn't a vocal threat, it's just something that sooner or later is going to negatively impact me. A change in market dynamics to where anyone not using the GPL is paying a fee *hurts Linux* as a viable platform. TrollTech very clearly has a business based off of leveraging this.
It's the commercial leech community they threaten.
All closed-source software is not "leech"ing from the open source community. Is Quake, Quake 2, and Carmack's other work "leeching" from the FLOSS community, in the years before he GPLed it and did Linux releases? I certainly don't think so. But if he wanted to include GUI config support using the *standard widget set* that everything else on the platform is using, he is forced to pay the "TrollTech tax". You can't tell me that it's not a negative thing for Linux to be so profoundly influenced by a company with that degree of control.
The GNOME project could have done what so many other GNU projects have done--made an open-source clone of a "proprietary" library.
People have -- GNOME didn't like some of the technical decisions made in the production of Qt, and went with a newer approach, so GNOME chose not to do so. There was a group that did a Qt implementation called Harmony, but it isn't feasible for them to keep up with Qt, which is a large API, just as it isn't feasible for the WINE people to keep up with Windows (and the same argument "well, if you don't like it, just reimplement it" is equally invalid -- the position they occupy, just as the position Microsoft occupies, is a severe barrier to others.
That's kind of funny.
The US has a tradition of the longest work weeks in the world. Mexico has a tradition (if semi-gone, at least in the city) of taking a nap in the middle of the day.
That reminds me of everyone's favorite game's dreams. Spoilers, but if you don't know already, you probably weren't going to do so:
Well, there was this knife, more aptly described as a broadsword, and I see, well, I was swinging down the street on my way to a movie and this guy, yeah. He was about six foot eight and huge. He was holding this knife, only to me, I would describe it as a broadsword, something from the Knights of the Round. Before he can even open his mouth, he collapses. Meanwhile, I can barely lift a finger to put the toupee back on his glossy head because I'm shaking so much.
He was vomiting and I knew that he was alive because he kept saying something like 'durability' between convulsions. What happened next was really bizarre. Both ends of the street flood with black-suited men, just like in a movie.
These men look tough and pissed off, the eyes behind their sunglasses are probably cold as my hands are getting. I feel like my heart has stopped, I'm so damn scared. As they start to inundate the street in black, they move with one will.
I figure that I'm dead anyway, so I reach down for the blade. The blade is being covered by his vomit, but the hilt is clean. I can hear the men getting excited, but I can't stop. My fingers slide around the leather hilt which is oddly cold...
terminal end
I'm in the same street, and as I reach into my pocket for my keys, my eyes follow the blackened streaks of gum that pock-mark the sidewalk. The man is gone, and someone in sanitation cleaned up the aparitions and vomit in a real hurry. I hurry down the stairs heading for the subway, but my keys aren't in my pocket anymore. I'll have to get in through the side window.
The subway station is very bright and shining from the sanitation team that has been sweeping a swath in front of me. The concrete floor is losing years of tarnish, keeping only the protective layer of the gum streaks which make up constellations in an otherwise vacant sky.
The train arrives right on time, and just ahead of a mass of dark suited men who have been following me for what seems like years now. Between the sanitation and the suits, I must be going colorblind, but the train is here now, and those men, no, they won't catch me...
terminal end
and
Seven hundred and sixty one armless and legless corpses float inconspicuously around the inside of hangar ninety six. I say that they are inconspicuous because it is their arms and legs which demand my attention. I did this, or I could have stopped it. Which is it? It doesn't matter now. I did this and could have stopped it, but nothing in nature ever follows a gaussian curve. Sure, they'll tell you that it does. They say that every five minutes someone dies in a car accident, but how often are there seven hundred and sixty one armless and legless corpses in one hangar?
The other big place for Indian firms to outsource to is Indonesia.
The Sun guy just walks straight out the door without even washing.
"At Sun, we don't piss on our hands."
The Sun exec continues:
"Actually, I peed all over a crowd of my customers before ever walking in the door, and didn't even need to use the facilities. We just like copying IBM and Apple."
Will someone please explain to me why, if we're running a trade deficit and have been for next to forever, the dollar is still so strong compared to other currencies?
As compared to, say, the euro!
Actually, a *lot* of people don't have A/C in India.
Also, businesses despite what I see in your post are not just about making money, if that were true I wouldn't have Christmas parties and bbqs and an owner I can go out for beers with.
Well...they aren't perfect systems, but employee loyalty/happiness can be measured in productivity and damages, and is just another number in the big equation.
The problem that I see is not outsourcing, but outsourcing so rapidly that the market doesn't have time to adjust. People frequently move around in a company and wind up doing things quite different from what they started doing when they were a new hire. However, if the outsourcing is too rapid and widespread, there's no way to juggle things around, and that's when people start to hurt -- when the changes are too rapid. If the current outsourcing rush was spread out over fifteen years instead of five years, natural retirement would take care of most of the problem (and people would tend not to enter the field, knowing that they were facing a shrinking job market).
We have yet to see what the actual IBM customers will think of all of this but it doesn't yet look like it's going to make for better products.
It's all par for the course. Every time some new business buzz-concept comes along, every business writer drizzles saliva all over it and writes about how amazingly wonderful it is, and about getting "left behind". Every MBA reads the series of articles, and somewhere over the year of getting this stuff hammering at them, decides that they need to take advantage of the latest and greatest. Inevitably everyone moves at once, which happens too far and too fast, and as a result most of the people moving with the herd come out bloodied and worse off than they started.
Let me start in the late eighties going into the nineties. IT spending was a big thing. Huge amounts of money were directed into IT, lots of people (an unsustainable number, which now screws over all the people having to deal with an oversaturated job market) were hired, incredible amounts of money were blown on completely unnecessary products. Oracle installations and high-end hardware cost *stupid* amounts of money, but people paid it. "Computers" was a buzzword, and to "computers" MBAs flocked. Microsoft got really, really rich.
Then, in the late nineties, "Internet" hit the radar. The government was pushing it as a big commercial deal, economists were enthralled, everyone was convinced that *now* was the time to get in on the ground floor. Business rags raved about the "Internet". Sure enough, stupid amounts of money (unsustainable amounts) were committed. The dot-com boom happened...and then crashed.
Now, in the naughties, "outsourcing" has become insanely popular. If an MBA hasn't considered "outsourcing", he should have a good reason why. So we're going to shove a whole lot of people to various countries, go overboard in doing so, and burn ourselves again.
Whenever the business press catches on to something and starts to get excited, it's a really good time to run in the opposite direction.