Mate you need to get out a bit. Macs are becoming more popular as the import duties are now nearing zero. Big enough for Apple to actually run an online store for India.
http://www.asia.apple.com/store/
Computer Subculture
The first computer I started playing with was in the mid 80s, commodore-64 and Sinclair Spectrums. Those days, there were high import duties for computers and most of the pieces were smuggled in via Dubai. If you were in the market for such a computer you would go in to the roadside stalls in south Bombay and bargain.
I ran a successful TV Cable TV ad company, using the commodore-64. We used to use an "HTML" like markup language to crate titles and animations. It was good fun. Even before the IT industry boom in the early 90s , there existed pretty active group of people working with computers like Amiga, Atari, BBC micro and Spectrums. There were several BBSs and computer clubs though mainly they were concentrated in Bombay, Bangalore or Delhi. Our school (a regular government funded) had a couple of Apple IIs and one Macintosh.
Apple Computers in India
Later, in 1995, I went to work for a company in Bangalore that had 80 Macs and 4 PCs. Even the receptionist has a Mac. Another unique thing about this company was that probably for the first time in India, it was a products company. The CEO was appalled at the way India was looked at as a "cheap labour" place. His idea was to build multimedia titles on Asia/Africa culture and sell them worldwide. It was also a cool place to work for and people still remember this company for kick starting the wild party scene in Bangalore. While the general visibility is low, I would bet that there are more Apple users in India than China. A lot of media industry (which is very large in India) do use Apple. The regular IT guys would not be aware of this.
I wanted to talk about the "party scene" as no one mentioned it here. I left India in 1997 and since then I have traveling and working in South East Asia and China. The amount of fun you can have in Bangalore is amazing, with wildest weekend happening in Asia at the moment. You have to see it to believe it. My brother talks about some of the foreigners he has taken to these weekends and immediately want to move to Bangalore. Bangalore also has flights to Bangkok, so anytime you feel bored you can head up there for a weekend.
I like your "Personal Observation no 2". As a person ocassionally called out to do some "technology camps" in schools, I wonder at times if I could just take the kids to nearby museum.
I am very much influenced by Richard Feynman's writings about his early life, where he mentions his father taking him for walks and showing him the wonderful things around him.
I wish all parents could do that.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/article show?msid=229586
This is the link to the article. I must point out that this is not an official editorial. It is something like Slashdot where people come and debate.
While there will always be people who will be jealous and try to undermine the chinese achievment, let me assure you that most of us are actually happy at the launch. It will positively influence the space industry in India. Hopefully there will be more funding and more seriousness.
For a lot of us who are Arthur C Clark fan, there was never a doubt that China would be the third.
All these Indian companies are buying American hardware and software. We watch American movies and are increasing consuming American pop culture. You can even see young Americans working in India and China. They realize where the next growth area and they are eager to explore this situation.
South Korea is right next to China. The programmers in Korea get paid at least twice the amount a Chinese programmer gets. Still Korea manages to exports software to China (mainly games and mobile content).
So, find a niche area, do something different, It will be a long time before companies in India and China will produce something like Apple. That is the greatness in America. Your strength is your ability to innovate. Keep doing that and we will still buy your stuff.
And all this talk about getting your government to close your economy will lead to nothing. Like Friedman said "I did not start globalization, nor did you". Globalization is inevitable. When our economies were closed, the west lectured us to open it. We have lived under a closed economy and we have seen how boring it was.
And companies will continue to be greedy. That is whole point. And they will do anything to increase your margin. So no point in teaching morals to them.
There are always some very negative comments when stories like these appear. China and India are both very large countries and after a sort of sleep of almost a century they are stirring up. These kind of space programs are inevitable, there will come from the sheer momentum of what is happening in these countries today. I grew up in India and now I spend a lot of time in China. So I would like to say some thing from this perspective,
Some years ago, I used to teach some classes at CDAC (center for development of advanced computing) at Bangalore, India. At that time they were working on building a supercomputer. There were a lot of critics who said that the money could be spent on the upliftment of the poor. Today CDAC exports this computer. And think of the knowledge and expertise and the project management skills that came of this project.
Similarly, the moon project is a "killer demo app" for the Indian space and allied industry. The knowledge and the expertise would raise other high tech industry and help them in selling their services.
Also, unknown to many India has a good space science research program. Outside Pune there is the Giant Meter wave Radio Telescope (http://www.ncra.tifr.res.in/) and in Ladhak they have the Himalayan Chandra Telescope, the highest observatory in the world. There are institutions that are active in fundamental particle research (TIFR http://www.tifr.res.in/). So there is more to India's space program then just brag.
The politicians need the "brag" but ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) has been always very humble and always pre-announces all its launches and gives detailed information on failed launches too . Compare this to the Chinese agency which only announces the launch after it has been successful.
In India there is a deep interest in space sciences in general. I remember as a school kid, us being taken to planetariums. Translated Russian space books were very popular- I remember one book - The sun's wind written by Alexei Leonov (the first man to space walk). Our HSC (A level) English text had some science fiction too.
There were and still are active astronomy clubs and societies. In the 80s, when we had only one TV channel, Carl Sagan's Cosmos was one of the few foreign programs that was aired along with regular re-runs of the original Star Trek and Fireball XL-5 (anyone remembers this.. it was a puppet animation).
So what I am saying is - yes there is poverty and lot of other things that need fixing, but these things just don't get fixed by putting money. What the current Indian leaders are hoping to do is to create programs that inspire people (or as the current Indian president likes to say "Ignite Minds". The president APJ Abdul Kalam is a Space Scientist BTW). These kinds of ventures encourage a farm worker to put his kids in school because he sees where the country is heading and where his kids have a better future.
One example that I rant a lot is the mobile games exports of Korea. China has equally good Java programmers, but they end up buying a lot of content from Korea as the users find Korean games more fun.
I just think that the nature of developer will change in the US. There will still be requirements that need on-site programmers.
Do not worry, something new will come. It is inevitable. This is a cycle.
Having spent some time in Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, China and India, I believe the model for young artists to follow in these countries is the Grateful Dead model. More and more kids are going online in Asia. China already has a good broadband infrastructure. Give away your music. Join with other artists to set up local gigs. I have seen some of the campus gigs in these countries. They are so much full of life. This region has such a large population (and geographically large). I am sure the artists can sustain themselves. All we need is some entrepreneurs to come up with localised event management companies.
Slashdot Mirror
Mate you need to get out a bit. Macs are becoming more popular as the import duties are now nearing zero. Big enough for Apple to actually run an online store for India. http://www.asia.apple.com/store/
Computer Subculture The first computer I started playing with was in the mid 80s, commodore-64 and Sinclair Spectrums. Those days, there were high import duties for computers and most of the pieces were smuggled in via Dubai. If you were in the market for such a computer you would go in to the roadside stalls in south Bombay and bargain. I ran a successful TV Cable TV ad company, using the commodore-64. We used to use an "HTML" like markup language to crate titles and animations. It was good fun. Even before the IT industry boom in the early 90s , there existed pretty active group of people working with computers like Amiga, Atari, BBC micro and Spectrums. There were several BBSs and computer clubs though mainly they were concentrated in Bombay, Bangalore or Delhi. Our school (a regular government funded) had a couple of Apple IIs and one Macintosh. Apple Computers in India Later, in 1995, I went to work for a company in Bangalore that had 80 Macs and 4 PCs. Even the receptionist has a Mac. Another unique thing about this company was that probably for the first time in India, it was a products company. The CEO was appalled at the way India was looked at as a "cheap labour" place. His idea was to build multimedia titles on Asia/Africa culture and sell them worldwide. It was also a cool place to work for and people still remember this company for kick starting the wild party scene in Bangalore. While the general visibility is low, I would bet that there are more Apple users in India than China. A lot of media industry (which is very large in India) do use Apple. The regular IT guys would not be aware of this. I wanted to talk about the "party scene" as no one mentioned it here. I left India in 1997 and since then I have traveling and working in South East Asia and China. The amount of fun you can have in Bangalore is amazing, with wildest weekend happening in Asia at the moment. You have to see it to believe it. My brother talks about some of the foreigners he has taken to these weekends and immediately want to move to Bangalore. Bangalore also has flights to Bangkok, so anytime you feel bored you can head up there for a weekend.
yes, it does. I myself listen to a lot of Korean music. It is nice to see hangul and chinese characters on the ipod.
I like your "Personal Observation no 2". As a person ocassionally called out to do some "technology camps" in schools, I wonder at times if I could just take the kids to nearby museum. I am very much influenced by Richard Feynman's writings about his early life, where he mentions his father taking him for walks and showing him the wonderful things around him. I wish all parents could do that.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/article show?msid=229586
This is the link to the article. I must point out that this is not an official editorial. It is something like Slashdot where people come and debate.
While there will always be people who will be jealous and try to undermine the chinese achievment, let me assure you that most of us are actually happy at the launch. It will positively influence the space industry in India. Hopefully there will be more funding and more seriousness.
For a lot of us who are Arthur C Clark fan, there was never a doubt that China would be the third.
All these Indian companies are buying American hardware and software. We watch American movies and are increasing consuming American pop culture. You can even see young Americans working in India and China. They realize where the next growth area and they are eager to explore this situation. South Korea is right next to China. The programmers in Korea get paid at least twice the amount a Chinese programmer gets. Still Korea manages to exports software to China (mainly games and mobile content). So, find a niche area, do something different, It will be a long time before companies in India and China will produce something like Apple. That is the greatness in America. Your strength is your ability to innovate. Keep doing that and we will still buy your stuff. And all this talk about getting your government to close your economy will lead to nothing. Like Friedman said "I did not start globalization, nor did you". Globalization is inevitable. When our economies were closed, the west lectured us to open it. We have lived under a closed economy and we have seen how boring it was. And companies will continue to be greedy. That is whole point. And they will do anything to increase your margin. So no point in teaching morals to them.
There are always some very negative comments when stories like these appear. China and India are both very large countries and after a sort of sleep of almost a century they are stirring up. These kind of space programs are inevitable, there will come from the sheer momentum of what is happening in these countries today. I grew up in India and now I spend a lot of time in China. So I would like to say some thing from this perspective, Some years ago, I used to teach some classes at CDAC (center for development of advanced computing) at Bangalore, India. At that time they were working on building a supercomputer. There were a lot of critics who said that the money could be spent on the upliftment of the poor. Today CDAC exports this computer. And think of the knowledge and expertise and the project management skills that came of this project. Similarly, the moon project is a "killer demo app" for the Indian space and allied industry. The knowledge and the expertise would raise other high tech industry and help them in selling their services. Also, unknown to many India has a good space science research program. Outside Pune there is the Giant Meter wave Radio Telescope (http://www.ncra.tifr.res.in/) and in Ladhak they have the Himalayan Chandra Telescope, the highest observatory in the world. There are institutions that are active in fundamental particle research (TIFR http://www.tifr.res.in/). So there is more to India's space program then just brag. The politicians need the "brag" but ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) has been always very humble and always pre-announces all its launches and gives detailed information on failed launches too . Compare this to the Chinese agency which only announces the launch after it has been successful. In India there is a deep interest in space sciences in general. I remember as a school kid, us being taken to planetariums. Translated Russian space books were very popular- I remember one book - The sun's wind written by Alexei Leonov (the first man to space walk). Our HSC (A level) English text had some science fiction too. There were and still are active astronomy clubs and societies. In the 80s, when we had only one TV channel, Carl Sagan's Cosmos was one of the few foreign programs that was aired along with regular re-runs of the original Star Trek and Fireball XL-5 (anyone remembers this.. it was a puppet animation). So what I am saying is - yes there is poverty and lot of other things that need fixing, but these things just don't get fixed by putting money. What the current Indian leaders are hoping to do is to create programs that inspire people (or as the current Indian president likes to say "Ignite Minds". The president APJ Abdul Kalam is a Space Scientist BTW). These kinds of ventures encourage a farm worker to put his kids in school because he sees where the country is heading and where his kids have a better future.
One example that I rant a lot is the mobile games exports of Korea. China has equally good Java programmers, but they end up buying a lot of content from Korea as the users find Korean games more fun.
I just think that the nature of developer will change in the US. There will still be requirements that need on-site programmers.
Do not worry, something new will come. It is inevitable. This is a cycle.
Having spent some time in Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, China and India, I believe the model for young artists to follow in these countries is the Grateful Dead model. More and more kids are going online in Asia. China already has a good broadband infrastructure. Give away your music. Join with other artists to set up local gigs. I have seen some of the campus gigs in these countries. They are so much full of life. This region has such a large population (and geographically large). I am sure the artists can sustain themselves. All we need is some entrepreneurs to come up with localised event management companies.