If the job can be done "overseas" (to use your term) more efficiently, than that increased efficiency in the economy benefits everyone overall, even if it causes someone who used to do that particular job to find a different job that they can do more efficiently than someone "overseas" can.
To follow your analysis, we'd be better off banning tractor makers, because then we could employ millions of people in agriculture again. Wouldn't that be wonderful!
No, that loss of agricultural jobs to a more economically efficient method was a good thing for us all, enabling us to do other things, not a bad event at all, even though it temporarily threw millions of farm workers out of a job.
Either giving up control to Apple to set everything for you and hoping they didn't screw something up or leave out anything you wanted, or about being willing to live with worse original choices in your hardware(assuming you aren't designing all your new systems from parts, like some of us do), but having the control to make sure the parts that are important to you personally can be done just the way you want because of the options available.
What this leads to over time is people in these third-world countries, as well as the people who are hiring them from around the world, gradually having a better life than they did before.
As one country develops to the point where it's workers are efficient enough to be able to charge more for labor-intensive work like a call center, they move on to higher-paid work and the call center work gets moved to yet another country.
You don't pay a backhoe operator to dig ditches by hand when you have a backhoe handy and it's not because you want to keep from paying the backhoe operator too much.
There is a reason for this, it's called comparative efficiency and it's why trade between individuals exists in the first place.
What you are missing is that in order to "outsource" work to any country, a company must pay the people who work there more than they were being paid already, otherwise they wouldn't work for them, would they?
The article implies that's how they got the passwords. Besides sniffing, I'm not sure how else they were "watching instant messenger conversations", etc...
The proposed solution they came up with was to segment the network (stick it on a switch). Which of course, isn't a solution since the feat can still be repeated, just minorly more difficult. The proper solution is encryption, generally SSL at the software level.
Am I the only one who is disturbed by the idea that a programmer should move North so that they can get paid %40 less?
By that reasoning, U.S. programmers should all be flying to India so that they can get paid 80% less instead!
There is a good reason that we have so many Canadians in the U.S. Check the nationalities of many broadcasters/actors/musicians in the U.S. They didn't head south to get a job so that they could take a 40% paycut, either!
They probably didn't even bother to turn on the security features of what they had. It's not likely a hardware problem.
I mean, passwords being sent in the clear. That sounds like a software issue to me and there aren't very many pieces of current software that you can turn on SSL at least for something like that.
Basically the budget excuse is being used to cover-up for some admins who didn't know (or care) what they were doing when they set the stuff up.
I'm saying that in the specific case we are talking about (Wireless networks), lack of obscurity at the lower network levels can contribute quite a bit to allowing real-world vulnerability.
That's not to say that you shouldn't lock things down, but it does also help to hide them too. The lower network level stuff is very useful to an attacker and thus should be hidden from them if possible.
Very little non-commercial stuff going on in the software industry?
You've heard of the various free/open source software movements, right? Seems to be a lot more non-commercial software out there than say, non-commercial steel production. It's the nature of the industry.
If people want "enabling creativity" software projects, then they'll pay for it and someone doesn't have to "convince" people to make it. The problem is that guys like this seem to think that what "they" think should be produced should be substituted for what people individually actually want produced.
People vote with their time and cash and this guy doesn't seem to have produced an idea worth much of either from most people.
In most situations (where the admins and programmers aren't perfect), if you know what applications on what OSs are communicating to each other (in other words, you can just see the server and port information, along with a little more header info), then you can go find a vulnerability that affects one of those OS/application combinations that they haven't fixed/patched yet and crack into the system.
So broadcasting that info in the clear over the airwaves isn't the best idea for security.
"Commercialisation" is a short-cut for: people have made their personal preferences known and been willing to pay something valuable for what they want.
What's wrong with that? Do all games (to take one example of a common computer use) have to suck to play because they're more "creative" than a more "commercial" game?
Let's face it, what this "visionary" wants is to substitute his judgement for the judgements of millions of individuals as to what kind of software is "best" for them, since they've apparently decided that his stuff isn't good enough to be purchased in mass quantities and that fact pisses him off.
One mail domain in particular that I administer, due to issues too complicated to go into here, I have to leave a catchall that forwards me all the mail that is addressed to any username that doesn't actually exist.
It's a three-letter.org domain and there are several other large international organizations that have the same three letters, but tack on a country extension.
Based on the miss-sent email, I've managed to figure out that at least one of them is a religious organization in Australia (all the emails seem to include pastor this and pastor that) and at least one other hires a LOT of translators, because I'm constantly getting the resumes of translators from all over the world asking about the job they were solicited for.
I usually save my "reply-to-all" messages for the funnier ones, although it has slightly cut down on the number of missent mail I've gotten.
To answer the question, "Is Dell just testing the market?"
Yes.
Just as you mention, it's not the first time someone has tested the market and it's not going to be the last time. That's what companies do. Make something they think might sell and try it out to see what happens.
Linux will be a mainstream desktop OS when one of the tests succeed. At that point, everyone else in the industry will copy whoever tested the latest Linux desktop successfully.
Yeah, the rest of us have always wondered how the baby roos stay in the pouches when Australia is on the upside-down part of the globe. Are there tail-holds or something?
The main problem is that, as anyone who's worked with them realizes, most of the "large" software companies, especially the ones who make their cash from custom and consulting projects, are really screwed up internally.
Their management spends too much money on the wrong things, their project managers mismanage everything to screw the customers out of more T&M and the programmers are usually a few hundred Indians and brand new college grads who are learning on the job lead by a couple of people who know what they are doing but are overworked and underappreciated.
It's just a matter of time before a "correction" takes many of the most screwed-up companies out. They can only find more customers to fool for so long before they start losing cash and business. If nothing else, their customers will tend to go out of business.
[begin rant] What I'd really like to see is a divorce of phone provider and cell phone seller. It's a pain to have to get a new phone when you switch networks.
Haven't these guys ever heard of standardization? It'd be nice if you could go pick your phone as the best for your needs, then tack on a provider, instead of having to choose from their models-de-jur! [end rant]
Yeah, part of the problem is that people don't seem to realize that maybe two books that come out every year are as worth reading as a few hundred books that came out years ago and are sitting around on the local library shelves.
A book being more than a month old isn't exactly a negative indicator of quality.
I think it may depend on how "young" you get the transplant done and if the person has had sight in the past. My understanding is that the brain essentially figures out the connections initially anyway, so there is a large margin for error in the wiring as long as the brain hasn't already wired it one way.
There are some decent medical eye books available if you're really interested in the details.
My biggest pet peeve is opening up multiple windows so that they can load something in the background, then while I'm reading (instead of typing) in one window, the others finish loading and steal the focus.
So how do we effectively disable any focus stealing at all?
Slashdot Mirror
Try also the list of books (with reviews) at Books Under Review/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Unix/
I especially like "Absolute BSD", but then I'm more partial to FreeBSD.
If the job can be done "overseas" (to use your term) more efficiently, than that increased efficiency in the economy benefits everyone overall, even if it causes someone who used to do that particular job to find a different job that they can do more efficiently than someone "overseas" can.
To follow your analysis, we'd be better off banning tractor makers, because then we could employ millions of people in agriculture again. Wouldn't that be wonderful!
No, that loss of agricultural jobs to a more economically efficient method was a good thing for us all, enabling us to do other things, not a bad event at all, even though it temporarily threw millions of farm workers out of a job.
Ummm.... unemployment = being paid 0. New job = more than already being paid (>0).
Not sure where unemployment rates being high negates the point.
It's generally about control.
Either giving up control to Apple to set everything for you and hoping they didn't screw something up or leave out anything you wanted, or about being willing to live with worse original choices in your hardware(assuming you aren't designing all your new systems from parts, like some of us do), but having the control to make sure the parts that are important to you personally can be done just the way you want because of the options available.
Like anything else, it's a trade-off.
What this leads to over time is people in these third-world countries, as well as the people who are hiring them from around the world, gradually having a better life than they did before.
As one country develops to the point where it's workers are efficient enough to be able to charge more for labor-intensive work like a call center, they move on to higher-paid work and the call center work gets moved to yet another country.
You don't pay a backhoe operator to dig ditches by hand when you have a backhoe handy and it's not because you want to keep from paying the backhoe operator too much.
There is a reason for this, it's called comparative efficiency and it's why trade between individuals exists in the first place.
What you are missing is that in order to "outsource" work to any country, a company must pay the people who work there more than they were being paid already, otherwise they wouldn't work for them, would they?
The article implies that's how they got the passwords. Besides sniffing, I'm not sure how else they were "watching instant messenger conversations", etc...
The proposed solution they came up with was to segment the network (stick it on a switch). Which of course, isn't a solution since the feat can still be repeated, just minorly more difficult. The proper solution is encryption, generally SSL at the software level.
Am I the only one who is disturbed by the idea that a programmer should move North so that they can get paid %40 less?
By that reasoning, U.S. programmers should all be flying to India so that they can get paid 80% less instead!
There is a good reason that we have so many Canadians in the U.S. Check the nationalities of many broadcasters/actors/musicians in the U.S. They didn't head south to get a job so that they could take a 40% paycut, either!
I don't buy the "cheaper computer set-up" excuse.
They probably didn't even bother to turn on the security features of what they had. It's not likely a hardware problem.
I mean, passwords being sent in the clear. That sounds like a software issue to me and there aren't very many pieces of current software that you can turn on SSL at least for something like that.
Basically the budget excuse is being used to cover-up for some admins who didn't know (or care) what they were doing when they set the stuff up.
I'm saying that in the specific case we are talking about (Wireless networks), lack of obscurity at the lower network levels can contribute quite a bit to allowing real-world vulnerability.
That's not to say that you shouldn't lock things down, but it does also help to hide them too. The lower network level stuff is very useful to an attacker and thus should be hidden from them if possible.
Very little non-commercial stuff going on in the software industry?
You've heard of the various free/open source software movements, right? Seems to be a lot more non-commercial software out there than say, non-commercial steel production. It's the nature of the industry.
If people want "enabling creativity" software projects, then they'll pay for it and someone doesn't have to "convince" people to make it. The problem is that guys like this seem to think that what "they" think should be produced should be substituted for what people individually actually want produced.
People vote with their time and cash and this guy doesn't seem to have produced an idea worth much of either from most people.
In most situations (where the admins and programmers aren't perfect), if you know what applications on what OSs are communicating to each other (in other words, you can just see the server and port information, along with a little more header info), then you can go find a vulnerability that affects one of those OS/application combinations that they haven't fixed/patched yet and crack into the system.
So broadcasting that info in the clear over the airwaves isn't the best idea for security.
"Commercialisation" is a short-cut for: people have made their personal preferences known and been willing to pay something valuable for what they want.
What's wrong with that? Do all games (to take one example of a common computer use) have to suck to play because they're more "creative" than a more "commercial" game?
Let's face it, what this "visionary" wants is to substitute his judgement for the judgements of millions of individuals as to what kind of software is "best" for them, since they've apparently decided that his stuff isn't good enough to be purchased in mass quantities and that fact pisses him off.
One mail domain in particular that I administer, due to issues too complicated to go into here, I have to leave a catchall that forwards me all the mail that is addressed to any username that doesn't actually exist.
.org domain and there are several other large international organizations that have the same three letters, but tack on a country extension.
It's a three-letter
Based on the miss-sent email, I've managed to figure out that at least one of them is a religious organization in Australia (all the emails seem to include pastor this and pastor that) and at least one other hires a LOT of translators, because I'm constantly getting the resumes of translators from all over the world asking about the job they were solicited for.
I usually save my "reply-to-all" messages for the funnier ones, although it has slightly cut down on the number of missent mail I've gotten.
To answer the question, "Is Dell just testing the market?"
Yes.
Just as you mention, it's not the first time someone has tested the market and it's not going to be the last time. That's what companies do. Make something they think might sell and try it out to see what happens.
Linux will be a mainstream desktop OS when one of the tests succeed. At that point, everyone else in the industry will copy whoever tested the latest Linux desktop successfully.
Yeah, the rest of us have always wondered how the baby roos stay in the pouches when Australia is on the upside-down part of the globe. Are there tail-holds or something?
Maybe someday they'll mount more than one dish on a ship... perhaps a whole kitchen cabinet full.
Then there are the guys who advertise a fool-proof cockroach killer for sale, just send $25, will work every time.
Of course, what you get is two wooden blocks and instructions that say, place cockroach on first block, smash with second block, repeat as needed.
The main problem is that, as anyone who's worked with them realizes, most of the "large" software companies, especially the ones who make their cash from custom and consulting projects, are really screwed up internally.
Their management spends too much money on the wrong things, their project managers mismanage everything to screw the customers out of more T&M and the programmers are usually a few hundred Indians and brand new college grads who are learning on the job lead by a couple of people who know what they are doing but are overworked and underappreciated.
It's just a matter of time before a "correction" takes many of the most screwed-up companies out. They can only find more customers to fool for so long before they start losing cash and business. If nothing else, their customers will tend to go out of business.
Good idea. I'll have my contacts in Taiwan setup up a lunch with this guy...
[begin rant]
What I'd really like to see is a divorce of phone provider and cell phone seller. It's a pain to have to get a new phone when you switch networks.
Haven't these guys ever heard of standardization? It'd be nice if you could go pick your phone as the best for your needs, then tack on a provider, instead of having to choose from their models-de-jur!
[end rant]
And now with Amazon raising their affiliate commission on used books this quarter, you'll see more of them sold online, too!
Shameless plug for websites with books and reviews, since it's on-topic:
Books Under Review
Author Reviews
Travel and vacation book reviews
Books on Probability and Casino Games
Car Repair Manual
Health Issue Books
Book Thoughts
Financial Books
Yeah, part of the problem is that people don't seem to realize that maybe two books that come out every year are as worth reading as a few hundred books that came out years ago and are sitting around on the local library shelves.
A book being more than a month old isn't exactly a negative indicator of quality.
So just the text part, then? Apparently, we're missing 1/2 the internet....
I think it may depend on how "young" you get the transplant done and if the person has had sight in the past. My understanding is that the brain essentially figures out the connections initially anyway, so there is a large margin for error in the wiring as long as the brain hasn't already wired it one way.
There are some decent medical eye books available if you're really interested in the details.
Any idea what the largest value possible is?
My biggest pet peeve is opening up multiple windows so that they can load something in the background, then while I'm reading (instead of typing) in one window, the others finish loading and steal the focus.
So how do we effectively disable any focus stealing at all?