As an Indian I can attest that there is nothing going on in India to protect "Intellectual property". I am neglecting the facts that KPO is a branded commodity for US, and the Bollywood industry has been doing its own part of playing RIAA in India. 1) India is big, poor, and in short, 3rd world country. It has problems involving supply of water (clean or not), clean air etc. It surprises many people in India when they learn that other countries don't have regular power failures. I don't think there is absolutely anything anyone can do to stop piracy. If they could, they would stop theft of electricity first. And I am not even sure "Intellectual property" is widely accepted as property. 2) Bollywood et. al. will never add the DRM. Dirt cheap electronics from China and Taiwan are driving the market, and anyone having a TV is buying a DVD player. And unlike most other countries, movies in Bollywood are made for the lowest section of society. No one can take the risk of screwing this market. Just some days ago I bought a DVD and was able to just copy-paste-play it. Region lock is not known to most people.
Those are what I consider the good parts. The bad part is, though, that open source is a far off concept - a competition between free Windows and free Linux. I don't even remember a place where I can buy Windows legally. If you ask the dealer, he will just burn a CD for you, for free or for 15 rs. (.25 ). Unless Linux becomes as big as Windows, good luck having it a "Desktop OS".
Reminds me of a comedy series I saw many years ago. One character was a animal right activist, and he had dialog: "I will only stop after I give human rights to all the animals!"
It was probably the funniest dialog in the whole series, and the only one I still remember. I actually had a dream that night as to what my response will be when such a debate occurs. Never did I imagine, though, that I will see such debate in real life. I think life does have a sense of humor.
Does anyone NOT wonder when such outrageous stories come up? I for one do not!
This is exactly what RIAA wants, to instil a belief that they are evil and they will sue anyone, and they will win, because they are right. That they didn't care when it was granny or a child. PR does the later part of the job.
There is only one way to fight this: in court we win.
Or "democracy" but somehow I have lost faith in it.
If you don't like the rules, move out of the dorm or change to another university.
Only none of which is feasible. 1. I am an alumni of IIT-Kanpur (as my handle suggests), and the rule is that if you are a student, you HAVE to live in dorms. I know that same rule applies in IT-BHU. 2. Change university? Are you kidding me? And in NOT-AT-ALL individualistic society, you get to leave one of the only best institutes, when all these institutes share exactly one admission procedure (JEE)? Next thing you will be telling is to have sex in public in India.
In India, music has been more than a service to God for as long as I can remember. The oldest of text describe people who used to sing songs (describing glorious wars, heros etc.) and get paid. In the traditional part (which means all of the India barring some newly 'Americanized' cities), it is customary to sing songs on different occasions, like marriages, death of elderly etc. Such traditional songs are learned from generation to generation and generally cannot be found in written form. Many people get paid to visit such occasions and sing songs.
Music for pleasure didn't become decently commonplace until the Baroque era in the West
While it is not true that Music/Dance/Performance as pleasure was not common among common people, atleast in India. (Think of "bhaand"s and "nautanki"/"nukkad". Actually, these professions were not very respected among masses, more respect being in a farmer, doing a "man's job", to get a field done.
I am pretty sure the same was in ancient times in Europe too. When you refer to 'what Edison did', you are partially true. What he did was not to bring music to masses, but to bring the 'quality' of music to masses. Pretty big difference, if one would think.
Bullshit! It has been a year since Gentoo binary installs. And what's that about running quicker? I am pretty sure it is quicker to install latest software on Gentoo (through compiling source) than finding googling for RPMs for a specific version of your system.
It is easy to create and maintain ebuilds than RPMs (or.deb packages). (Yes the later means compiling, former does not.) It is easy to install/uninstall from bleeding edge (CVS/svn/darcs) repositories than... i don't know how you do this in other distros. It is easy to get help. (Gentoo forums are the best out there. The community is the best. May be Ubuntu comes close to it. Not anything else.) I have been running Gentoo since 3 years and my desktop is the envy for my "Windowsy" friends, with e17, psi (with jingle) and what not installed. In Suse/Mandriva/Ubuntu it took more time to install these things and keep them up to date than Gentoo.
Before you say "but people don't want to run latest", know that it does is a difference of opinions. Gentoo is for some people and other system is for other people. Your argument is pure and baseless BS. (It is funny that you were modded insightful. I also have mod points but I hope more people do some research about the topic before blurting out.)
I didn't know that, since I am just a foreigner working here in Germany. But I doubt Germans will lie to save money, given how methodical and rule-following they are compared to, say, French or Croatian. Also, in comparison to USA, Germany specially south Germany is very well off.
And for those who told me that they have no religion, I can assure you they were not telling to me to save taxes:)
I couldn't agree more to you. Here in germany, one third of the population does not believe in God. Where I work (Stuttgart), every one has "no-religion".
So should we say Americans are different race than Germans?:P
You see they know they are from a culture that respects women's sovereignty to the point that arranged marriages are out of the question -- unlike the hoards you idiots are importing.
I was with you (almost) until that point. I was under the impression that it is insightful, then it all turned into -1 ramble.
Are you so narcissistic that you cannot appreciate a different culture? Sorry, strike that. Are you so narcissistic that you have not tried to know your competitors?
I know, people have lost job, and frankly speaking, America should have been better if H1B visas were special cases. But you sir, have directed your frustration from a process (H1B visa) towards the outcome (hoards of so called idiots). You sir, are lucky to be in America.
Be capitalist or not be capitalist. Accept competition or do not.
Just three weeks ago I was talking to my professor. He is a Croatian working in Germany for 30 years. He was concerned that US is now going to bomb Iran out.
Since I don't read much, I didn't know exactly the situation he was talking about. He told me that US has always benefited from war. They have all the incentives to go on a new war: 1) The economy is down 2) Old weapons need to be dumped 3) Current government has already been to 2 wars (Afganistan and Iraq) with no positive result. They can successfully bet on a third war now 4) Popularity of US is going down
I argued that since their (US's) economy is down, they will not prefer to go on yet-another-war.
That was 3 weeks ago. Is it surprising that suddenly there is jump in 'How Iran is a threat/What Iran is doing' news?
Wow! My father has a computer he bought back in 1995 (or was it 6? I don't remember). Here is the config: 8 MB RAM 1.18 GB Hard disk 150 MHz Pentium processor
It used to run Windows 95, along with MS Office 95. It was fine! I remember playing games on it, though most of the games had a minimum requirement of 166 MHz, so no 3D:)
He upgraded it to 16 MB RAM, and added a 1.20 GB hard disk later some time. Now it runs Windows 98 and MS Office 97. It still very usable.
Disclaimer: I am no fan of MS or Windows, and for that matter of Apple etc.
But! Let there be reason, people! "An IBM consultant talks about Microsoft product and speculates unreasonable requirements for Vista." Am I the only one focussing on IBM-Microsoft rivalry and not on Vista?
Are you even using Vista? I haven't even seen one installed anywhere near me.
They are not using Gentoo, but gentoo based distro. I bet they are implementing how to use binary installs of packages, which is right now not the official policy of Gentoo right now.
That basically means, that a full re-install takes about what? a week?
Gentoo since 2006.0 LiveCD, uses a binary install, and a fresh install takes no more than half an hour.
I was talking about the chance that neither India nor Pakistan will be around in 10 years.
People don't invest money where there is chance of wars. I bet outsourcing to way too poor countries in Africa will be even cheaper, but no one does that because they are all unstable. When people say India is a big market place, they *know* that the country is going to be there for more than 10 years.
About all the nuclear wars trash, it is created because everything 'nuclear' is bad and should be bashed. No war has happened in long time. And democracy has its way, none would happen ever.
America is one of the most productive nations in the world.
I never said that is not true. On a side note, the reality is also that people working in America or not all native, nor all of them descendant of British forefathers. America consist of best of the best from all over the world and no one denies it.
... 50 million... killed...
That is a huge number. It is calculated after assuming that global sex ratio is the normal 'human' default, and all the missing girl babies are killed because they are girl. That is a huge leap of reasoning. I don't buy it. Don't worry, I am pretty sure you had a good chance finding yourself a wife.
Open source is about sharing code and is about freedom.
If on the other hand you are talking about cathedral and bazaar model, hell no! It costs money, but it is distributed over a large number of people. It is not reliable for completing within deadlines. You still have to pay for Internet.
In short, open source in 3rd world country is about nothing. Past experience tell that 'normal' people do not care about philosophies. Slashdot knows this better.
For the rest of the post I can see that you are against globalism. So much for American capitalism. I won't say anything else.
Be afraid when you find yourself competing against someone who is just like you. Only free. That day will come. Today you call this post a rant, and you're probably right. Tomorrow you'll wish you'd listened. I promise.
You are grossly misinformed. Competition in India is not cheese cake. Not every one is getting jobs. There are too many people and not to many local jobs that is why India or China has embraced globalisation. They haven't started it!
That day has come, and that day will never come. That day has already come in USA, where all the brightest of people work _from all over the world_, compete each other. And guess what, the world will never run out of people who are incapable of doing something. (If it could, USSR would have been the ideal today). And money makes people lazy.
Slashdot Mirror
As an Indian I can attest that there is nothing going on in India to protect "Intellectual property". I am neglecting the facts that KPO is a branded commodity for US, and the Bollywood industry has been doing its own part of playing RIAA in India.
1) India is big, poor, and in short, 3rd world country. It has problems involving supply of water (clean or not), clean air etc. It surprises many people in India when they learn that other countries don't have regular power failures. I don't think there is absolutely anything anyone can do to stop piracy. If they could, they would stop theft of electricity first. And I am not even sure "Intellectual property" is widely accepted as property.
2) Bollywood et. al. will never add the DRM. Dirt cheap electronics from China and Taiwan are driving the market, and anyone having a TV is buying a DVD player. And unlike most other countries, movies in Bollywood are made for the lowest section of society. No one can take the risk of screwing this market. Just some days ago I bought a DVD and was able to just copy-paste-play it. Region lock is not known to most people.
Those are what I consider the good parts. The bad part is, though, that open source is a far off concept - a competition between free Windows and free Linux. I don't even remember a place where I can buy Windows legally. If you ask the dealer, he will just burn a CD for you, for free or for 15 rs. (.25 ). Unless Linux becomes as big as Windows, good luck having it a "Desktop OS".
Reminds me of a comedy series I saw many years ago. One character was a animal right activist, and he had dialog: "I will only stop after I give human rights to all the animals!"
It was probably the funniest dialog in the whole series, and the only one I still remember. I actually had a dream that night as to what my response will be when such a debate occurs. Never did I imagine, though, that I will see such debate in real life. I think life does have a sense of humor.
Never mind, I found it. The problem was that my open office version was in German and I don't know German.
Can you tell me where is the this "protection" thing? I am unable to find it :(
Hey! Where is the GNU GFDL accompanying the text?
:-)
Eh? Eh?
Just kidding... you know slashdot I love you
I am pretty sure that the aforementioned woman can sue HP back and get a LOT more than just a new notebook. Any lawyers among us?
Does anyone NOT wonder when such outrageous stories come up? I for one do not!
This is exactly what RIAA wants, to instil a belief that they are evil and they will sue anyone, and they will win, because they are right. That they didn't care when it was granny or a child. PR does the later part of the job.
There is only one way to fight this: in court we win.
Or "democracy" but somehow I have lost faith in it.
Only none of which is feasible.
1. I am an alumni of IIT-Kanpur (as my handle suggests), and the rule is that if you are a student, you HAVE to live in dorms. I know that same rule applies in IT-BHU.
2. Change university? Are you kidding me? And in NOT-AT-ALL individualistic society, you get to leave one of the only best institutes, when all these institutes share exactly one admission procedure (JEE)? Next thing you will be telling is to have sex in public in India.
While it is not true that Music/Dance/Performance as pleasure was not common among common people, atleast in India. (Think of "bhaand"s and "nautanki"/"nukkad". Actually, these professions were not very respected among masses, more respect being in a farmer, doing a "man's job", to get a field done.
I am pretty sure the same was in ancient times in Europe too. When you refer to 'what Edison did', you are partially true. What he did was not to bring music to masses, but to bring the 'quality' of music to masses. Pretty big difference, if one would think.
Bullshit! It has been a year since Gentoo binary installs. And what's that about running quicker? I am pretty sure it is quicker to install latest software on Gentoo (through compiling source) than finding googling for RPMs for a specific version of your system.
.deb packages). (Yes the later means compiling, former does not.) ... i don't know how you do this in other distros.
It is easy to create and maintain ebuilds than RPMs (or
It is easy to install/uninstall from bleeding edge (CVS/svn/darcs) repositories than
It is easy to get help. (Gentoo forums are the best out there. The community is the best. May be Ubuntu comes close to it. Not anything else.)
I have been running Gentoo since 3 years and my desktop is the envy for my "Windowsy" friends, with e17, psi (with jingle) and what not installed. In Suse/Mandriva/Ubuntu it took more time to install these things and keep them up to date than Gentoo.
Before you say "but people don't want to run latest", know that it does is a difference of opinions. Gentoo is for some people and other system is for other people. Your argument is pure and baseless BS. (It is funny that you were modded insightful. I also have mod points but I hope more people do some research about the topic before blurting out.)
I didn't know that, since I am just a foreigner working here in Germany. But I doubt Germans will lie to save money, given how methodical and rule-following they are compared to, say, French or Croatian. Also, in comparison to USA, Germany specially south Germany is very well off.
:)
And for those who told me that they have no religion, I can assure you they were not telling to me to save taxes
28.5% of people are non-religious, according to this article: http://www.remid.de/remid_info_zahlen.htm
See wikipedia entry for more information.
I couldn't agree more to you. Here in germany, one third of the population does not believe in God. Where I work (Stuttgart), every one has "no-religion".
:P
So should we say Americans are different race than Germans?
I couldn't test it because as soon as I press "/", quick find dialog box opens up.
I am using Firefox 3.0 cvs
I was with you (almost) until that point. I was under the impression that it is insightful, then it all turned into -1 ramble.
Are you so narcissistic that you cannot appreciate a different culture? Sorry, strike that. Are you so narcissistic that you have not tried to know your competitors?
I know, people have lost job, and frankly speaking, America should have been better if H1B visas were special cases. But you sir, have directed your frustration from a process (H1B visa) towards the outcome (hoards of so called idiots). You sir, are lucky to be in America.
Be capitalist or not be capitalist. Accept competition or do not.
Just three weeks ago I was talking to my professor. He is a Croatian working in Germany for 30 years. He was concerned that US is now going to bomb Iran out.
Since I don't read much, I didn't know exactly the situation he was talking about. He told me that US has always benefited from war. They have all the incentives to go on a new war:
1) The economy is down
2) Old weapons need to be dumped
3) Current government has already been to 2 wars (Afganistan and Iraq) with no positive result. They can successfully bet on a third war now
4) Popularity of US is going down
I argued that since their (US's) economy is down, they will not prefer to go on yet-another-war.
That was 3 weeks ago. Is it surprising that suddenly there is jump in 'How Iran is a threat/What Iran is doing' news?
God save people from anything evil.
The guy has replaced the page with a link to Radix sort on wikipedia.
Wow! My father has a computer he bought back in 1995 (or was it 6? I don't remember). Here is the config:
:)
8 MB RAM
1.18 GB Hard disk
150 MHz Pentium processor
It used to run Windows 95, along with MS Office 95. It was fine! I remember playing games on it, though most of the games had a minimum requirement of 166 MHz, so no 3D
He upgraded it to 16 MB RAM, and added a 1.20 GB hard disk later some time. Now it runs Windows 98 and MS Office 97. It still very usable.
Hey! That's slashdot!
Sir Richard Dalton, how come launching a rocket destabilise the region?
Is it like, placing military everywhere on every part of the planet?
You know that you can always not use these addons?
Disclaimer: I am no fan of MS or Windows, and for that matter of Apple etc.
But! Let there be reason, people! "An IBM consultant talks about Microsoft product and speculates unreasonable requirements for Vista." Am I the only one focussing on IBM-Microsoft rivalry and not on Vista?
Are you even using Vista? I haven't even seen one installed anywhere near me.
Gentoo since 2006.0 LiveCD, uses a binary install, and a fresh install takes no more than half an hour.
From next time I will use preview buttons :(
People don't invest money where there is chance of wars. I bet outsourcing to way too poor countries in Africa will be even cheaper, but no one does that because they are all unstable. When people say India is a big market place, they *know* that the country is going to be there for more than 10 years.
About all the nuclear wars trash, it is created because everything 'nuclear' is bad and should be bashed. No war has happened in long time. And democracy has its way, none would happen ever.
I never said that is not true.
On a side note, the reality is also that people working in America or not all native, nor all of them descendant of British forefathers. America consist of best of the best from all over the world and no one denies it.
That is a huge number. It is calculated after assuming that global sex ratio is the normal 'human' default, and all the missing girl babies are killed because they are girl.
That is a huge leap of reasoning. I don't buy it.
Don't worry, I am pretty sure you had a good chance finding yourself a wife.
No I know I will have none. Problems, that is.
What makes you think open source is free? Visit this: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Open source is about sharing code and is about freedom.
If on the other hand you are talking about cathedral and bazaar model, hell no! It costs money, but it is distributed over a large number of people. It is not reliable for completing within deadlines. You still have to pay for Internet.
In short, open source in 3rd world country is about nothing. Past experience tell that 'normal' people do not care about philosophies. Slashdot knows this better.
For the rest of the post I can see that you are against globalism. So much for American capitalism. I won't say anything else.