Point taken on app space, but just to comment on this "westerner" notion, cellphones in the Indian grey market are at least seven times cheaper than this.
Heard of 'Sinclair' ZX Spectrum +? Yes, it was sold in India too, used to cost about Rs 14,000, and yes, you needed to plug in to the TV. And oh, *all* apps in it were open-source, and if I'm not wrong, it actually had GUI even before IBM PC's did (this app called 'Artist II')
There are, of course, many reasons why it flopped, but here's one reason why it flopped in my household:- the Spectrum + had to fight for TV space along with daily soaps, news and cartoons, among other things. You know which ones won over.
I can play pop songs on a trombone and record it. It's still the same song and it's still infringement.
Actually, no. I don't quite know about American law, but what you've just described is permissible under Indian copyright law. (And lower-rung musicians have made millions doing just that for quite some time now.)
Fantastic points all along, except for one small clarification:-
I know that there are a lot of slashdotters who oppose Indians taking their jobs, but the point is that this is the only area where Indians were able to compete with US, in the face of such a huge disparity.
Since you've identified yourself as a geek, here's what I'd do, technologically-speaking:- I'll buy an old, used laptop on eBay, and hack it to show jpg's as a screenshow after you switch it on. There's an old/. article on how to do that; search for it using Google.:-)
b) Despite what everyone thinks, India has actually one of the largest ex-pat worker populations in the world, mostly thanks to a huge, unfenced border on our East with Bangladesh. In a sense then, we have the reverse situation in South Asia; movement of goods is vastly restricted, but the movement of people is, well, badly regulated.
c) There's no end in sight to this; post-911, restrictions on this freedom of movement of labour have increased. Tremendously.
All I can say is this:- I was once asked by my company to develop a solution in VB.net in two months flat. (I usually program in J2EE). In the end, I had to turn to existing code-snippets to tweak, add and enhance; no way I could have learnt, designed, developed AND deployed that project in two months, hadn't it been for that Open Source implementation I found.
Yes, there's Open Source stuff in VB too, and for people like me, it's a god-send.
I don't quite think the post was chauvinistic. It was a mere repost from the Wiki, of course, with the Indian bit in bold, but had no comments to add per se (and hence added no opinion, no Times of India-style chest thumping). The intention, presumably, is to highlight the fact that he was one of the founders is something; I'm okay with that, 'coz I don't if you've noticed this, but trade rags do tend to ignore Khosla's contributions to Sun's founding. Just like, for instance, how NY Times, Yahoo! Movies and other American websites conviniently forget to mention that Naseeruddin Shah also acted in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Racism in mainstream American media? I don't know, and frankly, never cared, but you begin to notice this after a while.
Now, whether Vinod-ji is Indian or not is a different matter; he has, of course, established the TiE and is considered one of those Great Indian Success Stories, but AFAIK, he holds an American passport. Not to hold it against him of course, many of my relatives are, among other nationalities, American, but all the same, important to remember that.
Second, I agree it's time to give this "IT superpower" concept a decent burial; yes, we've got some great press off-late, yes, every laid-off American techie thinks his job will be shipped to India (even by Gartner expectations, only 10% of jobs can be outsourced; gut feeling tells me that real application development will stay where it is), and for sure, it's led to some wealth creation in NOIDA, Bangalore and Hyderabad, but no, it's not an answer to massive wealth-creation. It is not going to give us those post-8% growth levels that everyone in Raisana Hill dreams about. It's not a big contributor to India's GDP. It alone won't lift us from our so-called Third World morass.
But what's really disappointing, as someone studying CS, is the state of complete technological solutions for India; net security, for one, seems to be a low priority even in the best of our tech institutions, and yes, the state of computing solutions in Indic languages, is shockingly incomplete.
I mean, I don't know if any other techie Indian here feels ashamed when (s)he sees, say, a Korean computer, but I do:- Koreans, like French, Germans, Thais, Chinese, Japanese and so on, can easily create content in their own languages right off the box. I find it stupid that, after 10 years of standards, after all this hype about India being an IT superpower, people still have to struggle so much to get a simple, Unicode-enabled, Google-searchable, Indic language website up and running. Shameful, truly shameful.
Sorry, it was a long winded rant, but had to get that off my chest.
A two-cent observation regarding most media "debates":- folks usually attack other people, not positions. It's usually very rare to find anyone who's changed his position based on new evidence or inference. Not impossible, just rare. (Which, in a way, is why not getting emotional about anything is always a good idea; that way, you can base your support on rational thought, not objects)
Personally, I'm glad Google has come this far. I started using Google first in early 1999, and quite frankly, it's great to see that the basic search hasn't quite changed all these years (although Google has, obviously, added features).
The slogan, folks, is not this Zen-like dialogue that Reuters has quoted; the real slogan "The Future is open" and is a great soundbite for OSS/Software Libre.
Indeed, it is, but one of the many other dialogues on teamwork, G chords, Spanish, aircraft, soccer, bla bla bla... the idea seems to be that folks somehow teach this 9 year old kid, Linux, everything, and that the kid absorbs everything. Which is a great statement to make; next time Joe Superbowlfan reads that, say, they're using Linux while making aircraft, he'll make the connection and hopefully say, "Yeah, it's that intellectual (ie, not just "geek") thing that IBM is advertising".
In effect, IBM seems to be trying to change the perception of Linux from a geek's plaything to being something that's intellectually all-encompassing in its reach. Haven't seen the earlier IBM Linux ads, but it's an interesting brand strategy; wonder how the other Linux companies will advertise now (if they do, that is; I don't quite watch television, but something tells me that IBM is a first-mover here).
None of this, of course, tarnishes your point; the distinction between data and functionality is well-taken.
I always wondered how the SUV's would look like in the "Nazis won WW2" alternative history.
Neat link about the Schwimmwagens thanks, never heard about them until now. Interesting that you think that Nazi loss has something to do with them drying out (pun intended), 'coz, obviously, Volkswagen went on to produce the world's most popular car even after the Nazis lost WW2.
We mostly travelled in and around the poles. Didn't get to see The Face though; it became dark by the time we reached there. Besides, there was a sandstorm that was heading our way, so we left immediately for The City. Here's a picture of the lagoon there; it's mighty beautiful! (The "lagoon" you see there is the old, historical Al Khaiyra lagoon that is supposedly secret, and was built about the same time as the City.)
If you're missing home, or you want to show off Earth to your Martian friends, do take time off to visit EarthLand (note the dark, grey sky, and the still reddish-brown rocks; a dead giveaway for the eagle-eyed!). Pretty amazing piece of terra-forming technology out there; it's very realistic! But if you're on a tight budget, don't bother visiting the place, unless you're dying to see some actual water; note that, as the parent said, water on Mars is expensive, so they charge the sky (pun intended) for entry.
Then again, you don't want to miss the classic Martian sunrise for the world; you know you've seen it on television, but it's quite breath-taking actually to be there!
Problem with Martian tourism is, because it's only recently been opened, there are a lot of touts around promising you Heaven. Don't get ripped off by falling for obviously Photoshopped images; yes, good ol' Martians have made some significant progress in Terra-forming, but no, water is still scarce. I'd say it's still a backpacker destination, and not quite somewhere you want to go with the family; I mean, you don't want to be caught in a situation where you'd have to use your family's water ration of the day just to clean Junior's diaper, for instance.
If I remember correctly, #develop is the "official" Mono IDE, although you're right;/. did report some time back (with choice quotes from Miguel) that Eclipse has been successfully ported to Mono (or vice versa).
Might seem trivial for you unilinguals, but the ability to type in mother tongue is a very important thing. For some reason, MS hasn't quite released a service pack of sorts for users to type in Telugu in pre-XP systems (There is a tweak, but that's known to work only on every Thursday that's a full moon).
Then again, this is a capability that's so well-hidden, that most users don't even know about it. All the same, this could be the only reason why I'm hanging onto XP and not downgrading back to 2000.
Alltheweb doesn't quite have a Google Groups or a News Google equivalent (only news search; no headline parser), but the regular search is pretty cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Point taken on app space, but just to comment on this "westerner" notion, cellphones in the Indian grey market are at least seven times cheaper than this.
There are, of course, many reasons why it flopped, but here's one reason why it flopped in my household:- the Spectrum + had to fight for TV space along with daily soaps, news and cartoons, among other things. You know which ones won over.
Incidentally, that seems to be TopCoder policy, not Google's per se.
No, it hasn't.
Best of luck!
That's okay babe, I wanna defrag YOU...
a) Here's a very interesting book on this 'ancient' globalisation bit:- the travels of a 12th century Baghdadi Jew and his Indian slave
b) Despite what everyone thinks, India has actually one of the largest ex-pat worker populations in the world, mostly thanks to a huge, unfenced border on our East with Bangladesh. In a sense then, we have the reverse situation in South Asia; movement of goods is vastly restricted, but the movement of people is, well, badly regulated.
c) There's no end in sight to this; post-911, restrictions on this freedom of movement of labour have increased. Tremendously.
Yes, there's Open Source stuff in VB too, and for people like me, it's a god-send.
I don't quite think the post was chauvinistic. It was a mere repost from the Wiki, of course, with the Indian bit in bold, but had no comments to add per se (and hence added no opinion, no Times of India-style chest thumping). The intention, presumably, is to highlight the fact that he was one of the founders is something; I'm okay with that, 'coz I don't if you've noticed this, but trade rags do tend to ignore Khosla's contributions to Sun's founding. Just like, for instance, how NY Times, Yahoo! Movies and other American websites conviniently forget to mention that Naseeruddin Shah also acted in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Racism in mainstream American media? I don't know, and frankly, never cared, but you begin to notice this after a while.
Now, whether Vinod-ji is Indian or not is a different matter; he has, of course, established the TiE and is considered one of those Great Indian Success Stories, but AFAIK, he holds an American passport. Not to hold it against him of course, many of my relatives are, among other nationalities, American, but all the same, important to remember that.
Second, I agree it's time to give this "IT superpower" concept a decent burial; yes, we've got some great press off-late, yes, every laid-off American techie thinks his job will be shipped to India (even by Gartner expectations, only 10% of jobs can be outsourced; gut feeling tells me that real application development will stay where it is), and for sure, it's led to some wealth creation in NOIDA, Bangalore and Hyderabad, but no, it's not an answer to massive wealth-creation. It is not going to give us those post-8% growth levels that everyone in Raisana Hill dreams about. It's not a big contributor to India's GDP. It alone won't lift us from our so-called Third World morass.
But what's really disappointing, as someone studying CS, is the state of complete technological solutions for India; net security, for one, seems to be a low priority even in the best of our tech institutions, and yes, the state of computing solutions in Indic languages, is shockingly incomplete.
I mean, I don't know if any other techie Indian here feels ashamed when (s)he sees, say, a Korean computer, but I do:- Koreans, like French, Germans, Thais, Chinese, Japanese and so on, can easily create content in their own languages right off the box. I find it stupid that, after 10 years of standards, after all this hype about India being an IT superpower, people still have to struggle so much to get a simple, Unicode-enabled, Google-searchable, Indic language website up and running. Shameful, truly shameful.
Sorry, it was a long winded rant, but had to get that off my chest.
A two-cent observation regarding most media "debates":- folks usually attack other people, not positions. It's usually very rare to find anyone who's changed his position based on new evidence or inference. Not impossible, just rare. (Which, in a way, is why not getting emotional about anything is always a good idea; that way, you can base your support on rational thought, not objects)
Personally, I'm glad Google has come this far. I started using Google first in early 1999, and quite frankly, it's great to see that the basic search hasn't quite changed all these years (although Google has, obviously, added features).
I, for one, welcome our new troll overlords!
Yup, realised it after I posted that. :-|
The slogan, folks, is not this Zen-like dialogue that Reuters has quoted; the real slogan "The Future is open" and is a great soundbite for OSS/Software Libre.
Indeed, it is, but one of the many other dialogues on teamwork, G chords, Spanish, aircraft, soccer, bla bla bla... the idea seems to be that folks somehow teach this 9 year old kid, Linux, everything, and that the kid absorbs everything. Which is a great statement to make; next time Joe Superbowlfan reads that, say, they're using Linux while making aircraft, he'll make the connection and hopefully say, "Yeah, it's that intellectual (ie, not just "geek") thing that IBM is advertising".
In effect, IBM seems to be trying to change the perception of Linux from a geek's plaything to being something that's intellectually all-encompassing in its reach. Haven't seen the earlier IBM Linux ads, but it's an interesting brand strategy; wonder how the other Linux companies will advertise now (if they do, that is; I don't quite watch television, but something tells me that IBM is a first-mover here).
None of this, of course, tarnishes your point; the distinction between data and functionality is well-taken.
If you're missing home, or you want to show off Earth to your Martian friends, do take time off to visit EarthLand (note the dark, grey sky, and the still reddish-brown rocks; a dead giveaway for the eagle-eyed!). Pretty amazing piece of terra-forming technology out there; it's very realistic! But if you're on a tight budget, don't bother visiting the place, unless you're dying to see some actual water; note that, as the parent said, water on Mars is expensive, so they charge the sky (pun intended) for entry.
Then again, you don't want to miss the classic Martian sunrise for the world; you know you've seen it on television, but it's quite breath-taking actually to be there!
Problem with Martian tourism is, because it's only recently been opened, there are a lot of touts around promising you Heaven. Don't get ripped off by falling for obviously Photoshopped images; yes, good ol' Martians have made some significant progress in Terra-forming, but no, water is still scarce. I'd say it's still a backpacker destination, and not quite somewhere you want to go with the family; I mean, you don't want to be caught in a situation where you'd have to use your family's water ration of the day just to clean Junior's diaper, for instance.
Gives a whole new meaning to the term, "Lonely Planet" doesnt it? :-D
As long as Sun won't eclipse it, I suppose.
If I remember correctly, #develop is the "official" Mono IDE, although you're right; /. did report some time back (with choice quotes from Miguel) that Eclipse has been successfully ported to Mono (or vice versa).
Might seem trivial for you unilinguals, but the ability to type in mother tongue is a very important thing. For some reason, MS hasn't quite released a service pack of sorts for users to type in Telugu in pre-XP systems (There is a tweak, but that's known to work only on every Thursday that's a full moon).
Then again, this is a capability that's so well-hidden, that most users don't even know about it. All the same, this could be the only reason why I'm hanging onto XP and not downgrading back to 2000.
Yes. I, for one, welcome our new goat overlords!
Alltheweb doesn't quite have a Google Groups or a News Google equivalent (only news search; no headline parser), but the regular search is pretty cool.