How about recycling? A water, being heated, can become as a steam. It's energy can be used to produce a rotation to for fan propeller. Just kidding.
Seriously, the steam can condensate in pipes outside of PC and come back as a liquid. Just add a compressor and we've got a refrigerator. Can I keep my soda cool inside my PC?
Apple would have stiffled it, like Palm has. They wouldn't have stolen much from it, and wouldn't have developed it, probably.
I don't care about that someone will re-use ripped off good parts. I care that the good code would not dye like it is dying now in Palm.
And I am not a stock holder. I just care that BeOS had some good ideas that time, but as a whole OS it was obvious (even then) that it won't survive (it was a mix of good and bad ideas withut any marketing and any support).
That time I didn't see upcoming in 3 (?) years MacOSX and I was unhappy to use that crap, called MacOS. MkLinux also looked like a very extreme experiment that time (especially comparing to Linux/x86). So, I had a hope that Apple will move to BeOS and bring a whole bunch of commercial software vendors with itself.
It didn't happen. Apple moved to MacOSX with all commercial vendrs. BeOS now is really dead (and who cares now?). MacOSX will buy 2 or 3 years to Apple to forget about OS problems. Until Linux/PPC will finally knock the Apple's door after successfully booming on x86 PCs.
it's great that Windows apps are running better and better on linux, but they run even better on Windows
The problem is that Windows applications are not running better and better on Windows. They crash the same as 5 years ago. And they are still catching viruses and worms.
At some point the critical mass of commercial software vendors, who realized that fact, will achive some critical point and then we'll have more and more Linux applications working on Linux better and better.
At this time I run (sometimes, on some computers) Cygwin myself. But less and less often as I have less and less needs to reboot to Win2k:)
One of next big things for Gentoo must be Joe-oriented installer. Unfortunately, there is no agreement yet about what it should look like and how to develop it. But I can predict that will happen this year.
In general, three accounts is all that you need to never have to read spam again.
One account and whitelist-based filter is enough. Even MS Outlook can handle that.
Specifically for the parliment, I dont see why they dont just whitelist all other parliment members.
It must be mandatory for candidate to pass some "IT certified user" exam with tests on how to use email (whitelist filter tuning, never don't open any executable/sriptable email attachment) in addition to other IT (and IQ?) tests. That should help to have less (by both amount and level) idiots representing the country internationally and publicly.
They've droped some prices. They will do it again. But the profit is important. So, it will force them to make more money on support rather than on licensing (like IBM does). Finally, they will give up own licensed OS (at least for home and low-end users). I think then we will see Microsoft Linux - one more distro, now from Redmond. Then we may see again the partnership of Microsoft with IBM.
All leading retinal scanner vendors I knwo guarantee that "dead" eye will be recognized by absent of specific and almost hidden movement all alive eyes do.
Speaking about biometrics, I see a bigger danger. If govt certified bio-scanner at airport scans me - they guearantee that they take only a part of my bio-info (like my private key or password) and they compare it to another part stored in their database (like my public key) and the risk of compromizing my private data is minimized (they don't store my private key).
What is guarantee that Average Joe's son is not a member of some bad cracker club? It's not a big deal to modify their own house equipment and let all private keys stored for being compromized in future. If I am a post office worker or some other service man or just a guest, I don't want my data to be scanned by some private scanners.
they've helped refine GCC and other important issues
I am not sure about "other important issues", but GCC is not Linux and vice versa. GCC works on many other x86 OS's. Did Intel helpto improve only Linux-related code of GCC?
linux is taking over proprietary UNIX boxes by Sun, HP, and SGI.
You mean Linux is getting more and more often installed on those boxes instead of proprietary Unix? I know it for sure regarding IBM. There is some movement on Sun and Alpha (now HP). I am not sure about SGI.
Linux/SPARC, Linux/PPC etc are always a step behind the Intel version.
I thought IBM has a plan to make sure that Linux/PPC (especially for RS6K) will not be behind. With upcoming Linux dominance it's a chance for IBM workstations to catch low-end market. Otherwise IBM has to stick to Intel/AMD on that sector and thus share its profit with someone else. Besides, IBM is much stronger competitor on PPC market (competing mostly only with Apple) than on x96 (competing basically with everyone else).
In the other news: all ISPs complain that no customers want to subscribe to Internet access accounts with speed limit 2400 bps. In fact, all their customers are very old people who doesn't use Internet mostly.
Our anonimous source from one ISP company told us that his company now doesn't know what to do with many of those old modems. Perhaps they are going to lay off all modem support operators. We've asked why not switch to higher speed and the answer was: "we cannot do it, we don't know if it will be too fast for us and we afraid of anything new anyway".
Think further. Did you seee any OS crashed while it resided on CD on the shelf?
No system crash until it's installed and run. So, the new generation of very stable systems should not be installed and should not run. The most stable computer is the one with its power off.
Russian alphabyte (cyrillic) can be presented in one of ~20 charsets, 5 of them are still in active use:
"MSDOS" cp866;
"Windows" 1251;
"Unix" KOI8
"Mac" (???)
ISO 8859-5
The Russian goverment offially approves only ISO 8859-5, but most of people just ignore that charset and noone (besides the govt) use it.
All charsets are different one from each other, mainly (and in most cases) by different positioning the same russian letter in different places of the "code page". That requires to have separate font modification for each charset you want to use (yes, it's true, I have 5 areals, 5 couriers etc); alternatively it requires to decode the document on the fly from the doc's charset to the charset of currently chosen font (some programs can do it, others cannot).
Now, when I see a domain name with some non-ascii letters, and I assume it is in Russian language, which charset should I choose in order to display it properly and to be able to read it? The domain name itslef doesn't keep such information. Does DNS keep it? I don't think so.
Is one russian charset has been chosen over others? If so, who dare to decide it and to be critisized by users of other 4 charsets?
Personally I think that due to such problems in some languages (Chineese also? India as well?) all non-ascii strings should be used in internet only along with some identifiers of the charset. For example, web pages and email messages use such (often - in inconsistent way). Also, XML can assign a charset per sub-tree. But how about domain names? I think non-ascii usage should be limited to documents, while all system identifiers (including domain names) must be ASCII. Period.
Some how you don't know the life. At the time of Internet buble most of H1Bers successfully received their Green Cards.
I have worked with several H1B's over the years, and typically they were not as good as myself
I can imagine:)
What I knw was based on my own experience of working on US recruitment market as well as on studying many analytical reports about the subject. Average H1B software programmer is faster and smarted, more educated and better skilled than an average American (citizen or Green Card) programmer.
That time one of reasons I found in the fact that the govt doesn't hire H1Bers. So, good (i.e. AI) contracts for NASA and similar entities are done by locals. Perhaps, that's why there was a lack of smart locals on "not-so-closed" commercial projects. Another reason is education. One more reason - lack of motivation, many Americans preferd to play on stock market than debug their own code.
But analysts believe the drop in subscribers, however minuscule, could foreshadow a gloomier future for an AOL that has been unable to make the transition to high-speed broadband from its domination of the slow-speed dial-up access market.
...
Amazing. What's the choice a home user has when coming to near-by computer store for byuing new home PC! 1 Ghz PC is a history. Typical HDD is not less than 36GB. 1GB of RAM is no surprise anymore... And "the number one American ISP" is still selling you dial-up access at speed I had in Russia 7 years ago. Amazing.
And pay attention on what they advertise: email, search, surfing - all features are not unique for AOL but belong to Internet as a whole.
I don't see AOL doing any investments to improve structuraly their product/service offers. I thing that their strategy is just to take as much money as they can from dial-up and then to invest money to some business that would be (or already is) absolutely unrelated to ISP market.
Another explanation I see that AOL is still in business is in well known fact that an average American is ignoring everything new as long as possible (compare to Europe or South-East Asia). I won't be wonder if at some day US govt will make a law shutting down dial-up for home users - just to help them with broadband (and to help broadband companies).
AOL is "the looser number one" on American ISP market.
I just read in Russian news, that they agree to keep ISS lifts on their own if NASA will pay for it. Moreover, they suggested to increase the amount of Souyuz capluses and amount of Russina lifts. And they called with that to NASA repeatedly for awhile, even since Chellenger. But NASA has been answering each time: "not interesting".
And because I am reading it again and again in russian news repeatedly, I believe that NASA doesn't want to cooperate with Russians. They are competitors.
the vast majority of H1B tech workers are here because they're willing to work cheaper
You are certainly misinformed. Or you see only a a part of the picture.
At the time of Internet boom, most of H1B people I knew have been making around $100K/Y, many - more than $150K/Y. I agree that most of them have been keeping lead positions (architects, lead devs, etc).
I cannot find URL with statistics, but I remember that average salaries of H1Bers was higher than an average on in industry. Most of H1Bers have been working in Silicon Valey, NYC, New Jersey, Boston and around Washington DC. And the industry had the highest salaries exactly in those regions.
The company doesn't actually care - they just want cheap labor.
It's not correct - by the end they've paid more, counting their expenses for H1B and Green Card. Companies usually cared and tried to get what they wanted - highly skilled people who can do the high quality job as fast as possible.
Many have now applied Chapter 11, but those, who are still afloat, are seeking for the same: rapid programming with high quality. But today they have a problem to find it domestically. That's why they have opened many shops in Europe, India and Russia.
My friend in Ireland has told me that they now have the "outsourcing" boom - corps cut jobs in USA and open offices around Dublin. At the same time many irish programmers returned from Bay Area to work home. Same news from Germany, Moscow and Banglor.
I've heard on radio a report of KPMG - they close some offices in USA and open around Toronto. They conclude like Canada has better resources for better price.
So, wat you know is somehow different that what I know. Perhaps we see different parts of the same picture. But the question was: who win? I don't think that american programmers are winers here. At least - not now.
immigration vs offshore outsourcing?
on
Giant Sucking Noise
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The next round of globalization is sending upscale jobs offshore.
I think that this is a reaction of smart corps on a stupid INS strategy. INS doesn't approve many of H1B application (no need to mention profGC applications) based on the logic: "it's a tough job market for americans and we should protect them".
But it doesn't count the fact that many H1B applcations are for positions which most of americans cannot fit due to limited education and skills. On the other side, smart corps doesn't care about americans - they have a job and they need it done.
So, no wonder they outsource the job offshore, where, by the way, the price for job is even lower. But now a big chunk of taxes is also gone from american budget.
Now I want to aks, who are those people that INS is trying to protect?
Gentoo Linux users do not spend days on it. They just type "emerge gnome" and all needed (and only if needed!) will be automatically chosen (according to dependencies), downloaded, patched, compiled and installed.
The process may take days (of CPU time, not yours! as all done without your interaction) if you prefer to compile from source code, or just minutes if you prefer to use GRP, Gentoo Reference Platform (basically - binary distro).
By the way, Solaris users cannot even dream about such package management system as Portage. You may try Gentoo on your Sparc some day:)
Slashdot Mirror
Seems like the job for freon.
Seriously, the steam can condensate in pipes outside of PC and come back as a liquid. Just add a compressor and we've got a refrigerator. Can I keep my soda cool inside my PC?
I know, it's already done by Gentoo, Debian, some others. But not by Sun.
Perhaps, it's time for Sun to rise and shine :)
I don't care about that someone will re-use ripped off good parts. I care that the good code would not dye like it is dying now in Palm.
And I am not a stock holder. I just care that BeOS had some good ideas that time, but as a whole OS it was obvious (even then) that it won't survive (it was a mix of good and bad ideas withut any marketing and any support).
That time I didn't see upcoming in 3 (?) years MacOSX and I was unhappy to use that crap, called MacOS. MkLinux also looked like a very extreme experiment that time (especially comparing to Linux/x86). So, I had a hope that Apple will move to BeOS and bring a whole bunch of commercial software vendors with itself.
It didn't happen. Apple moved to MacOSX with all commercial vendrs. BeOS now is really dead (and who cares now?). MacOSX will buy 2 or 3 years to Apple to forget about OS problems. Until Linux/PPC will finally knock the Apple's door after successfully booming on x86 PCs.
I was disapponted ~5 years ago when Be's team has rejected $18M acquisition deal from Apple.
The problem is that Windows applications are not running better and better on Windows. They crash the same as 5 years ago. And they are still catching viruses and worms.
At some point the critical mass of commercial software vendors, who realized that fact, will achive some critical point and then we'll have more and more Linux applications working on Linux better and better.
At this time I run (sometimes, on some computers) Cygwin myself. But less and less often as I have less and less needs to reboot to Win2k :)
One of next big things for Gentoo must be Joe-oriented installer. Unfortunately, there is no agreement yet about what it should look like and how to develop it. But I can predict that will happen this year.
One account and whitelist-based filter is enough. Even MS Outlook can handle that.
Specifically for the parliment, I dont see why they dont just whitelist all other parliment members.
It must be mandatory for candidate to pass some "IT certified user" exam with tests on how to use email (whitelist filter tuning, never don't open any executable/sriptable email attachment) in addition to other IT (and IQ?) tests. That should help to have less (by both amount and level) idiots representing the country internationally and publicly.
Or the form os slashdot spam?
They've droped some prices. They will do it again. But the profit is important. So, it will force them to make more money on support rather than on licensing (like IBM does). Finally, they will give up own licensed OS (at least for home and low-end users). I think then we will see Microsoft Linux - one more distro, now from Redmond. Then we may see again the partnership of Microsoft with IBM.
You have certainly forgotten Microsoft Mouse and Microsoft Keybord - two other profitable products of the giant.
By the way, Microsoft doesn't have to drop prices on those two as OSS doesn't make hardware :)
All leading retinal scanner vendors I knwo guarantee that "dead" eye will be recognized by absent of specific and almost hidden movement all alive eyes do.
Speaking about biometrics, I see a bigger danger. If govt certified bio-scanner at airport scans me - they guearantee that they take only a part of my bio-info (like my private key or password) and they compare it to another part stored in their database (like my public key) and the risk of compromizing my private data is minimized (they don't store my private key).
What is guarantee that Average Joe's son is not a member of some bad cracker club? It's not a big deal to modify their own house equipment and let all private keys stored for being compromized in future. If I am a post office worker or some other service man or just a guest, I don't want my data to be scanned by some private scanners.
FreeBSD + CoolBSD = FreezeBSD
Key features of the Network Audio System include:
- Device-independent audio over the network
- Lots of audio file and data formats
- Can store sounds in server for rapid replay
- Extensive mixing, separating, and manipulation of audio data
- Simultaneous use of audio devices by multiple applications
- Use by a growing number of ISVs
- Small size
- Free! No obnoxious licensing terms
Applications that support NAS natively:- Festival - The Festival Speech Synthesis System.
- mpg123 - a command line MP3 player
- GAIM - a free AOL IM client
- OpenOffice (StarOffice) - the (now opensourced) StarOffice Suite has built-in NAS support for the Solaris and Linux Platforms.
- The Qt Library - from Trolltech supports NAS natively. You will need to pass the '-system-nas-sound' to './configure' before building.
- libSDL - SDL, the Simple DirectMedia Layer library, now has native NAS support thanks to Erik Inge Bols\x{00F8}
- XAnim - the X Animation viewer
- XBoing - a blockout type X game
- XPilot - a multiplayer client/server space warfare game
- Xemacs - the best cross-plaform, cross-language IDE
- Alsaplayer - A NAS Output plugin written by Erik Inge Bols\x{00F8} is now supplied with the Alsaplayer distribution.
- X MultiMedia System (XMMS). A NAS Output plugin written by Willem Monsuwe is available at ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/users/willem/
- Wine. A NAS plugin written by Nicolas Escuder is now available with the WINE distrubution.
Not a trollWith Java actual CPU speed is very important. Especially with EJB. However, I am not sure how 64 bit can save slow Java class loaders.
I am not sure about "other important issues", but GCC is not Linux and vice versa. GCC works on many other x86 OS's. Did Intel helpto improve only Linux-related code of GCC?
linux is taking over proprietary UNIX boxes by Sun, HP, and SGI.
You mean Linux is getting more and more often installed on those boxes instead of proprietary Unix? I know it for sure regarding IBM. There is some movement on Sun and Alpha (now HP). I am not sure about SGI.
Linux/SPARC, Linux/PPC etc are always a step behind the Intel version.
I thought IBM has a plan to make sure that Linux/PPC (especially for RS6K) will not be behind. With upcoming Linux dominance it's a chance for IBM workstations to catch low-end market. Otherwise IBM has to stick to Intel/AMD on that sector and thus share its profit with someone else. Besides, IBM is much stronger competitor on PPC market (competing mostly only with Apple) than on x96 (competing basically with everyone else).
Our anonimous source from one ISP company told us that his company now doesn't know what to do with many of those old modems. Perhaps they are going to lay off all modem support operators. We've asked why not switch to higher speed and the answer was: "we cannot do it, we don't know if it will be too fast for us and we afraid of anything new anyway".
No system crash until it's installed and run. So, the new generation of very stable systems should not be installed and should not run. The most stable computer is the one with its power off.
- "MSDOS" cp866;
- "Windows" 1251;
- "Unix" KOI8
- "Mac" (???)
- ISO 8859-5
The Russian goverment offially approves only ISO 8859-5, but most of people just ignore that charset and noone (besides the govt) use it.All charsets are different one from each other, mainly (and in most cases) by different positioning the same russian letter in different places of the "code page". That requires to have separate font modification for each charset you want to use (yes, it's true, I have 5 areals, 5 couriers etc); alternatively it requires to decode the document on the fly from the doc's charset to the charset of currently chosen font (some programs can do it, others cannot).
Now, when I see a domain name with some non-ascii letters, and I assume it is in Russian language, which charset should I choose in order to display it properly and to be able to read it? The domain name itslef doesn't keep such information. Does DNS keep it? I don't think so.
Is one russian charset has been chosen over others? If so, who dare to decide it and to be critisized by users of other 4 charsets?
Personally I think that due to such problems in some languages (Chineese also? India as well?) all non-ascii strings should be used in internet only along with some identifiers of the charset. For example, web pages and email messages use such (often - in inconsistent way). Also, XML can assign a charset per sub-tree. But how about domain names? I think non-ascii usage should be limited to documents, while all system identifiers (including domain names) must be ASCII. Period.
Some how you don't know the life. At the time of Internet buble most of H1Bers successfully received their Green Cards.
I have worked with several H1B's over the years, and typically they were not as good as myself
I can imagine :)
What I knw was based on my own experience of working on US recruitment market as well as on studying many analytical reports about the subject. Average H1B software programmer is faster and smarted, more educated and better skilled than an average American (citizen or Green Card) programmer.
That time one of reasons I found in the fact that the govt doesn't hire H1Bers. So, good (i.e. AI) contracts for NASA and similar entities are done by locals. Perhaps, that's why there was a lack of smart locals on "not-so-closed" commercial projects. Another reason is education. One more reason - lack of motivation, many Americans preferd to play on stock market than debug their own code.
Amazing. What's the choice a home user has when coming to near-by computer store for byuing new home PC! 1 Ghz PC is a history. Typical HDD is not less than 36GB. 1GB of RAM is no surprise anymore... And "the number one American ISP" is still selling you dial-up access at speed I had in Russia 7 years ago. Amazing.
And pay attention on what they advertise: email, search, surfing - all features are not unique for AOL but belong to Internet as a whole.
I don't see AOL doing any investments to improve structuraly their product/service offers. I thing that their strategy is just to take as much money as they can from dial-up and then to invest money to some business that would be (or already is) absolutely unrelated to ISP market.
Another explanation I see that AOL is still in business is in well known fact that an average American is ignoring everything new as long as possible (compare to Europe or South-East Asia). I won't be wonder if at some day US govt will make a law shutting down dial-up for home users - just to help them with broadband (and to help broadband companies).
AOL is "the looser number one" on American ISP market.
And because I am reading it again and again in russian news repeatedly, I believe that NASA doesn't want to cooperate with Russians. They are competitors.
You are certainly misinformed. Or you see only a a part of the picture.
At the time of Internet boom, most of H1B people I knew have been making around $100K/Y, many - more than $150K/Y. I agree that most of them have been keeping lead positions (architects, lead devs, etc).
I cannot find URL with statistics, but I remember that average salaries of H1Bers was higher than an average on in industry. Most of H1Bers have been working in Silicon Valey, NYC, New Jersey, Boston and around Washington DC. And the industry had the highest salaries exactly in those regions.
The company doesn't actually care - they just want cheap labor.
It's not correct - by the end they've paid more, counting their expenses for H1B and Green Card. Companies usually cared and tried to get what they wanted - highly skilled people who can do the high quality job as fast as possible.
Many have now applied Chapter 11, but those, who are still afloat, are seeking for the same: rapid programming with high quality. But today they have a problem to find it domestically. That's why they have opened many shops in Europe, India and Russia.
My friend in Ireland has told me that they now have the "outsourcing" boom - corps cut jobs in USA and open offices around Dublin. At the same time many irish programmers returned from Bay Area to work home. Same news from Germany, Moscow and Banglor.
I've heard on radio a report of KPMG - they close some offices in USA and open around Toronto. They conclude like Canada has better resources for better price.
So, wat you know is somehow different that what I know. Perhaps we see different parts of the same picture. But the question was: who win? I don't think that american programmers are winers here. At least - not now.
I think that this is a reaction of smart corps on a stupid INS strategy. INS doesn't approve many of H1B application (no need to mention profGC applications) based on the logic: "it's a tough job market for americans and we should protect them".
But it doesn't count the fact that many H1B applcations are for positions which most of americans cannot fit due to limited education and skills. On the other side, smart corps doesn't care about americans - they have a job and they need it done.
So, no wonder they outsource the job offshore, where, by the way, the price for job is even lower. But now a big chunk of taxes is also gone from american budget.
Now I want to aks, who are those people that INS is trying to protect?
The process may take days (of CPU time, not yours! as all done without your interaction) if you prefer to compile from source code, or just minutes if you prefer to use GRP, Gentoo Reference Platform (basically - binary distro).
By the way, Solaris users cannot even dream about such package management system as Portage. You may try Gentoo on your Sparc some day :)