While apologizing for all the other knee-jerk (jerk being the operative word) reactions of fellow Indians ranting about Musharraf and the like, I'd like to formally say :
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! ROTFLMAO on the best pun on a country's name I've seen in ages!
sniff... sniff.... [wipes eyes].... HAHAHAHAHA !
Reminds me of an essay I wrote for a local paper about setting up effective conference calls. It's from an Indian perspective, but the points are valid for most such meetings. The link is to my blog, where the essay is mirrored.
Boy, this is uninformed on so many levels I dont know where to start.
The very point about this is if it would deliver any benifit to the people. Using email, etc is fancy stuff for the villagers, but its neither powerful(yet) nor communicating because no relative of theirs have an online identity. Ooo, now all they require is Chatting, and they're destroyed, as has happened in semi-urban regions in India.
Lets start with this : What benefit can email communication bring to a villager? I sincerely doubt they'll be using it to exchange greetings with relatives. Instead, this sets up a framework for exchanging market prices (seeds, crop, and fertilizer, as you've mentioned), getting news of bank schemes, setting up forums with agricultural colleges, details of college courses for the kids... as mentioned in another story on slashdot, normal people tend to find the best uses for the product, not the researchers who built it.
you first require extensive theoritical in computers. Need to know how the information bounces all over the world, how 0&1 come together....
This is like saying that we all read the newspapers, so we can only use the info to become reporters. Being able to read news sites, and having access to communication via the net helps understanding the opportunities available in the cities. And all the colleges, and most firms put up course details/job vacancies on the net. You've given thousands of people ideas of what is possible. All it takes is for one kid to read that they're offering scholarships in a college, for the news to spread.
In 1996, nannobacteria came to the attention of the world's media when scientists announced they had found fossils in a Martian meteorite of what appeared to be nano-sized bacteria.
No idea if the lil critters originally went from here to Mars on board the rovers, or came here riding meteors...but if people are now debating whether or not they're alive, doesnt it also become a debate on whether whatever exists on Mars is life ?
This reminds me of a friend (geek sort) who presented a paper at a management conference. He'd developed a formal method for successful work groups. The theory being, one person's 'good' work is another's 'dirty' work.
So a successful work needs to be one in which there's always someone who finds your 'dirty' work is his 'good' work - and everyone's 'dirty' work is liked by someone else. Concept sounds plausible. See my sig for the URL.:)
A little off-topic, I know, but this sort of discussion always reminds me of a project a friend worked on a little while ago.
He had an idea for a product. Pitched it to the company he worked for, they didnt like it. What he'd have done in the older days was to start a company with one or two friends, and spend a year or two writing it himself. Instead, he contacted a company in India, and got into a partnership with them. This resulted in the company allotting a team of 7 programmers to work on his product, which cost him about what two people's salaries and office space would have cost him here. The product was ready in 3 months, and he spent most of that time marketing it, getting feedback from potential customers, and finetuning the product with his team in India.
What stops any out of work programmer, or anyone not happy with his job, from doing this? Getting jobs done cheaply works for him too, not just for his boss...
It's rather interesting to see how much this industry, like the Record industry, actually depends on slow communication to make it's profits. These guys actually depend on people paying money to see a movie/buy an album they could not otherwise see or know anything about. Conversely, there are also many instance of movies and albums becoming hits solely by word-of-mouth: This trend too is becoming more prominent as communication becomes faster.
Now that SMS/filesharing/IM/online movie reviews are speeding up information flow, I think we're going to see many more stories of this kind : Obviously industries that cant stand this kind of speed are going to die out. Publishing, Recording, Movie Distribution, all are going to change or die. And wait till those "plastic-and-electronics" printers become affordable:)
This smells like some large corporation's attempt to set a precedent so they can use it in more..er... lucrative markets. I wouldnt imagine Mexico has too much of a software industry (correct me if i'm wrong), nor a very large entertainment industry, so why would they themselves take up this issue now? Most people know it only as the US's poor neighbour...
(BTW, the sig is a management concept, not what it sounds like:) )
The process of creating Open Source
on
Swarm Intelligence
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Hey...
Isn't this the way open source software is (ideally) built? Thousands of people, each with their own special abilities, each optimizing the solution little by little ? "Pheromones" marking the stable, useful modifications to the original "path" ?
This raises an interesting hypothetical situation. Suppose the makers of, say, Everquest, The Sims, and this one work out a protocol for virtual characters to move between these games?
MMORPGs would then be more and more like cyberpunk novels. I can imagine exchange rates for skills/artifacts/money being set up...People making virtual characters who "live" in The Sims and "go to work" at Everquest...because you could sell the artifacts you make in Everquest on The Sims at a better rate...
Slashdot Mirror
While apologizing for all the other knee-jerk (jerk being the operative word) reactions of fellow Indians ranting about Musharraf and the like, I'd like to formally say :
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! ROTFLMAO on the best pun on a country's name I've seen in ages! sniff... sniff.... [wipes eyes].... HAHAHAHAHA !
Reminds me of an essay I wrote for a local paper about setting up effective conference calls. It's from an Indian perspective, but the points are valid for most such meetings. The link is to my blog, where the essay is mirrored.
Boy, this is uninformed on so many levels I dont know where to start.
The very point about this is if it would deliver any benifit to the people. Using email, etc is fancy stuff for the villagers, but its neither powerful(yet) nor communicating because no relative of theirs have an online identity. Ooo, now all they require is Chatting, and they're destroyed, as has happened in semi-urban regions in India.
Lets start with this : What benefit can email communication bring to a villager? I sincerely doubt they'll be using it to exchange greetings with relatives. Instead, this sets up a framework for exchanging market prices (seeds, crop, and fertilizer, as you've mentioned), getting news of bank schemes, setting up forums with agricultural colleges, details of college courses for the kids... as mentioned in another story on slashdot, normal people tend to find the best uses for the product, not the researchers who built it.
you first require extensive theoritical in computers. Need to know how the information bounces all over the world, how 0&1 come together....
This is like saying that we all read the newspapers, so we can only use the info to become reporters. Being able to read news sites, and having access to communication via the net helps understanding the opportunities available in the cities. And all the colleges, and most firms put up course details/job vacancies on the net. You've given thousands of people ideas of what is possible. All it takes is for one kid to read that they're offering scholarships in a college, for the news to spread.
In 1996, nannobacteria came to the attention of the world's media when scientists announced they had found fossils in a Martian meteorite of what appeared to be nano-sized bacteria.
No idea if the lil critters originally went from here to Mars on board the rovers, or came here riding meteors...but if people are now debating whether or not they're alive, doesnt it also become a debate on whether whatever exists on Mars is life ?
Seriously, if your bosses can do it, why cant you? I know laid-off engineers who've started businesses cheap this way...
'Daksh' means 'capable' or 'efficient' in Hindi. We need to ask their customers if the name is well deserved. :)
So a successful work needs to be one in which there's always someone who finds your 'dirty' work is his 'good' work - and everyone's 'dirty' work is liked by someone else. Concept sounds plausible. See my sig for the URL. :)
He had an idea for a product. Pitched it to the company he worked for, they didnt like it. What he'd have done in the older days was to start a company with one or two friends, and spend a year or two writing it himself. Instead, he contacted a company in India, and got into a partnership with them. This resulted in the company allotting a team of 7 programmers to work on his product, which cost him about what two people's salaries and office space would have cost him here. The product was ready in 3 months, and he spent most of that time marketing it, getting feedback from potential customers, and finetuning the product with his team in India.
What stops any out of work programmer, or anyone not happy with his job, from doing this? Getting jobs done cheaply works for him too, not just for his boss...
Hey! I'm an insensistive clod, you RobotCop!
phew....that stinks even by my standards...:)
"Sorry, sir, you can't come into the store. Come again when your account has enough credit..."
Now that SMS/filesharing/IM/online movie reviews are speeding up information flow, I think we're going to see many more stories of this kind : Obviously industries that cant stand this kind of speed are going to die out. Publishing, Recording, Movie Distribution, all are going to change or die. And wait till those "plastic-and-electronics" printers become affordable :)
1. Record/buy copyrights to a song which would otherwise sell a couple of thousand copies at most.
2. leak it out somehow, wait for those few thousand people to download it.
3. Sue these guys and recover $15,000 from them each.
4. Profit???
Much better than actually selling good songs, isnt it? Maybe this is why Britney & gang were promoted endlessly...:)
Shanna : If we study hard now, we'll be able to get better jobs later.
ROTFLMAO!!!
So if you use this, you'll know the sub-groups in your friends' list? You mean...otherwise you wouldnt have?
That book description leads to some Indian philosophy book. What the heck...is it even fiction ?
(BTW, the sig is a management concept, not what it sounds like :) )
Isn't this the way open source software is (ideally) built? Thousands of people, each with their own special abilities, each optimizing the solution little by little ? "Pheromones" marking the stable, useful modifications to the original "path" ?
MMORPGs would then be more and more like cyberpunk novels. I can imagine exchange rates for skills/artifacts/money being set up...People making virtual characters who "live" in The Sims and "go to work" at Everquest...because you could sell the artifacts you make in Everquest on The Sims at a better rate...
Hmm...