For $50 million, Viterbi of Qualcomm got a whole engineering school in his name . I am sure $20 million for a building isn't that bad. But, I'd have preferred it to be named after Turing. Even Raj Reddy , Turing Award Winner wouldn't have been a bad choice. He's alive and still active in research, but then, so is Bill Gates.
I went to Carnegie Mellon. It's a level-3 athletic school - meaning no athletic scholarships/admissions - everyone plays 'cos they want to. It is geek heaven, in case you didn't know - the CS and EE/CE programs are ranked at the top all the time, and we define robotics.
But the athletic facilities weren't all that great. I like using the gym to stay fit, and I sure wished then that I was down the street at Pitt where they at least respect athletics more. There, you can get on a machine without waiting in line for it, and use free weights without worrying about cutting yourself because they haven't been changed in the past n years.
So, I'd like to assert that good athletics may be a perk, but it brings better facilities to school, facilities that schools wouldn't otherwise spend on.
From TFA:
"Last week's meeting was attended by representatives from IBM, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, the Business Software Alliance, the RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America."
How come no one very interested in free speech is attending these meetings? I'd expect maybe the Creative Commons people, or someone similar to attend.
According to this (pages 35 and 36), around 74 bits for symmetric and 1024 bits for asymmetric key cryptosystems works right now. An old paper, but still the benchmark for sufficient key lengths in cryptosystems.
Moral of the story: You may need to upgrade to 2048-bit PGP keys in the long run.
I agree whole-heartedly. After I got three credit-cards, (a Visa,an MC, and an Amex), I simply called the credit bureaus and got my names off their lists. No more junk mail that I have to worry about recycling, and no more temptation ("oh, I get a cent back for every dollar I spend on this one...")
It's not just about ringtones.
If I want to use my GSM phone with a different SIM card (I wanted to use mine with a pre-paid card when I was in India), you need to "unlock" your phone. Apparently, T-Mobile (my service provider) allows you to do it, while AT&T doesn't. I mean, you're bound for a year-long contract, they'll charge you for breaking it, but you can't use your cellphone on any other network (which essentially means, you can't use it without their permission).
If not for the free nights and weekends , I'd have shifted to a pre-paid long back.
how about... using these instead of lighters at rock concerts? I can see 80,000 people doing this at a Metallica concert. Would make one hell of a sight.
Who do you know who's ever bought a copy of Windows off the shelf?
That is very true. One of the reasons piracy is so rampant in the East is that many people buy PCs from the grey market - small entrepreneurs who put these together using off-the-shelf components. This means that they don't have to pay for any software 'bundled' with the system. All of it's pirated. Just see how many people pay for software if it didn't come with the system in the US too.
I think Justin Frankel, more than anyone else has earned the right to say this.
I've been using WinAmp for what, almost 6 years now, and the UI rocks. It is simple, uncluttered, and instinctive. I don't think iTunes or any others out there are half as good when it comes to organizing and playing music (my opinion, of course). The thing that iTunes is really good at is, you guessed it, when you want to buy stuff from their music store.
Now, if I (who couldn't do a UI for nuts)were to say that...it'd be a different matter.
The argument you are putting forth reeks of the OSS advocates, who say "if you don't like it, write it yourself!". Well,some people have different things to do. If everyone who used software were to write their own, the world would have a hard time. After all, you can't eat your own code.
The reason we still manage to call each other, and communicate is because there are STANDARDS in place for that. There is a standard for tone dialing, which determines what frequency is sent when you dial 1,2 # etc, and there is a standard for the way voice signals flow between switches. The last mile access may be different.
Standards are important.Their control however should not be in the hands of a corporation... the IETF and ISO are good examples. With reps from all over the world, better standard compliance could be ensured.
There is an important difference between the way the market operates in India and in the US. In India, pre-paid cards are the norm, and air-time rates are quite cheap (ranging from less than a cent per minute upto 7-8 per minute, depending on where you are and where you are calling, with long-distance between mobile/POTS operators and 'circles' being charged differently).
Another important thing is the thriving market in used cellphones. Rs. 1500 (approx. $33) is probably the average. Even cheaper used handsets can be got - only voice and SMS, no fancy color screens or cameras. These help people get started, and people use it only as much as they need. Many people use it only to receive calls (which is cheaper) and use cheaper ubiquitous payphones for outgoing calls.
Look at it as value and not as cost. With even vendors seeing obvious value in it, the cost can be amortised over the value gained from it.
With India's land-line infrastructure in many rural areas not measuring up (or being too unresponsive, unlike quicker private cellular operators), a cellphone may be possibly someone's first and only phone.
Interestingly, in Africa, many countries have bypassed the land-line phone industry totally, as the first phones almost the whole of the country has seen are cellphones. Makes sense as last-mile connectivity costs are a killer.
In this cynical world, where everyone claims success comes only by bending the rules, or being 'wordly-wise", this is a company that has become successful by sheer ability, and the quality of its products and services. If, today, they say that it can be done their way, they've earned the right to say it.
*A dreamy-eyed idealist, who still believes in old-fashioned things like principles and ethics, and that you don't need to bend the rules to succeed*
I agree with the sentiment. I use Winamp for earlier stuff I have (legal/illegal). But I'd have to import all those files into iTunes, so that I can listen to my randomized playlists. Now, I love Winamp,and iTunes isn't that great (my opinion) if you don't have an iPod.So, this makes it better for me to use my dowloaded tunes with Winamp. I disobey the letter of the law, but like I care...
I have no problems with free music. I do listen to some artistes who put out their own mp3s for downloads, and are not out to gyp the listener. But honestly, stop this free music spiel. What if some guys I like work with RIAA- affiliated labels? (think 60s-70s classics) I will do the obvious - a) P2P illegal downloads b) sell my soul to the devil and buy it on iTMS, or on ebay, or on my trips to India, where you can buy them for cheaper ($4-$7).
Personally I think iTMS has the big drawback that you don't get CD inlays. I love the artwork, and lyrics, credits etc. that come with purchased CDs.
The best part is that many of these websites now offer RSS feeds. So, instead of going to the website itself, you can just subscribe to the feeds, and scroll through to only look in detail at deals that interest you.
Stopping the H-1 B program does not make a lot of sense. There are jobs out there for which the only qualified people are not people imported from India or any other country, but bright graduate students from these countries, studying in the US.
I have really intelligent friends from India / Taiwan who have offers from high-end product companies in hardware/software. These are students who have extremely specialized skills that perfectly suit the company's requirements, and it would be difficult to find people of these skills elsewhere in the US, leave alone through outsourcing.
Isn't the Great American Dream about doing well, irrespective of where you are from? Or will you (like so many other bigoted countries), hold a person's nationality against him/her?
There is one thing people really don't realize, esp. here on Slashdot. Microsoft is full of some VERY smart people. You should see the rolls of the guys they've poached off the top companies and universities in the past few years, notably at the higher levels (Software Architects, Researchers) . I've had a couple of guys come to lecture in my school. They're good, their viewpoints make sense, and it's obvious, that M$ takes its vision thing seriously.
If they were doing anything they claim as revolutionary, I would look at it very seriously, and not dismiss it outright. Admitted, they've made their share of big goof-ups in the past, but hell, they've bounced back much better than any other companies who made those kind of mistakes.
At least XP's service pack didn't break my existing sound-card setup which it had detected and installed. Can't say the same about Fedora Core 1's up2date.
At least in the Indian context, the multi-party system seems to be working albeit with flaws. It implements a system of checks and balances ( within the government itself) which keeps some of the more excitable extreme right Hindu fundamentalist elements in the leading colaition party (the BJP) in check. It does fail occasionally though.
Of course, it is important that the parties agree on a minimum set of values, which is done by having a minimum point agenda, that everyone agrees on before entering the coalition. Otherwise,it is likely that there will be differences even on petty matters, as parties try to score political brownie points over each other.
This here talks about CMU's wireless initiative, one of the oldest in the country (started even before 802.11 was out).
Security sucks though. No encryption, only MAC authentication for registered cards. Of course, all campus email, grade servers are encrypted (even our library requests are!). But you could just snoop anyone's yahoo mail off the air for example.
Maybe they should have criteria like how secure the network is, in the criteria for judging as well.
One of the more important points that has been raised here, which I find relevant is the problems of viruses and worms. A worm has a payload of a few KB at most, while the patches that are required are a few MB( if ever M$ puts them out).
In Africa and poorer parts of Asia, phone lines still charge by the minute. Dial-up is still slower than 56 Kbps (I've worked on connections of 7-8 Kbps too, due to less bndwidth/more customers at the ISP, who is milking everyone for all his worth). Connections break and have to be re-established. What is the chance of a non-profit taking the effort to actually download and install the patches? Conversely, there is a high chance of it being infected. (I speak from experience in a small town in India, where I've sat up half the night to get my Windows 98 box upto speed on all patches). Of course, it would be too much to expect M$ to give away CDs of patches as well.
Wait...it is normally perfectly acceptable business practice to do something like this - cross-subsidization i.e. Is it because it is M$ that you object? Hell, they have the money. It was earned legally, and they have every right to use it to cross-subsidize products. They are in this for their shareholders and for ease-of-use for their customers (how else could your mom plug her computer in and start playing DVDs or CDs immediately?) , and not for charity for their competitors.
If the competition cannot measure up, they'll have to bow out. Or come up with a more compelling reason for people to stick with them or switch to them - think iTunes.
While I won't call this article the most well-informed or well-written ones, let's see, isn't this a good executive summary?
The suits upstairs say
" You tell me SCO won't win? But what do we do if it does?"
With Tux wearing a suit, these are the kind of questions that have to be answered. Risk assessments and "what-if" scenarios need to be thought out. SCO will lose, but companies may need to make plans to present to boards (though they may never get around to doing anything about it).
btw, I am not a conspiracy theorist, but this is an impressive F.U.D. program. I could almost swear Redmond was behind this.
The basic limitation that I've seen is that most of us Indians are a bit more inward-looking, which means that a lot of open-source work in India looks to solve local problems.
Slashdot Mirror
For $50 million, Viterbi of Qualcomm got a whole engineering school in his name . I am sure $20 million for a building isn't that bad. But, I'd have preferred it to be named after Turing. Even Raj Reddy , Turing Award Winner wouldn't have been a bad choice. He's alive and still active in research, but then, so is Bill Gates.
I went to Carnegie Mellon. It's a level-3 athletic school - meaning no athletic scholarships/admissions - everyone plays 'cos they want to. It is geek heaven, in case you didn't know - the CS and EE/CE programs are ranked at the top all the time, and we define robotics.
But the athletic facilities weren't all that great. I like using the gym to stay fit, and I sure wished then that I was down the street at Pitt where they at least respect athletics more. There, you can get on a machine without waiting in line for it, and use free weights without worrying about cutting yourself because they haven't been changed in the past n years.
So, I'd like to assert that good athletics may be a perk, but it brings better facilities to school, facilities that schools wouldn't otherwise spend on.
From TFA: "Last week's meeting was attended by representatives from IBM, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, the Business Software Alliance, the RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America." How come no one very interested in free speech is attending these meetings? I'd expect maybe the Creative Commons people, or someone similar to attend.
According to this (pages 35 and 36), around 74 bits for symmetric and 1024 bits for asymmetric key cryptosystems works right now. An old paper, but still the benchmark for sufficient key lengths in cryptosystems.
Moral of the story: You may need to upgrade to 2048-bit PGP keys in the long run.
I agree whole-heartedly. After I got three credit-cards, (a Visa,an MC, and an Amex), I simply called the credit bureaus and got my names off their lists. No more junk mail that I have to worry about recycling, and no more temptation ("oh, I get a cent back for every dollar I spend on this one...")
It's not just about ringtones. If I want to use my GSM phone with a different SIM card (I wanted to use mine with a pre-paid card when I was in India), you need to "unlock" your phone. Apparently, T-Mobile (my service provider) allows you to do it, while AT&T doesn't. I mean, you're bound for a year-long contract, they'll charge you for breaking it, but you can't use your cellphone on any other network (which essentially means, you can't use it without their permission). If not for the free nights and weekends , I'd have shifted to a pre-paid long back.
how about... using these instead of lighters at rock concerts? I can see 80,000 people doing this at a Metallica concert. Would make one hell of a sight.
Who do you know who's ever bought a copy of Windows off the shelf?
That is very true. One of the reasons piracy is so rampant in the East is that many people buy PCs from the grey market - small entrepreneurs who put these together using off-the-shelf components. This means that they don't have to pay for any software 'bundled' with the system. All of it's pirated.
Just see how many people pay for software if it didn't come with the system in the US too.
I think Justin Frankel, more than anyone else has earned the right to say this.
,some people have different things to do. If everyone who used software were to write their own, the world would have a hard time. After all, you can't eat your own code.
I've been using WinAmp for what, almost 6 years now, and the UI rocks. It is simple, uncluttered, and instinctive. I don't think iTunes or any others out there are half as good when it comes to organizing and playing music (my opinion, of course). The thing that iTunes is really good at is, you guessed it, when you want to buy stuff from their music store.
Now, if I (who couldn't do a UI for nuts)were to say that...it'd be a different matter.
The argument you are putting forth reeks of the OSS advocates, who say "if you don't like it, write it yourself!". Well
The reason we still manage to call each other, and communicate is because there are STANDARDS in place for that. There is a standard for tone dialing, which determines what frequency is sent when you dial 1,2 # etc, and there is a standard for the way voice signals flow between switches. The last mile access may be different.
Standards are important.Their control however should not be in the hands of a corporation... the IETF and ISO are good examples. With reps from all over the world, better standard compliance could be ensured.
There is an important difference between the way the market operates in India and in the US. In India, pre-paid cards are the norm, and air-time rates are quite cheap (ranging from less than a cent per minute upto 7-8 per minute, depending on where you are and where you are calling, with long-distance between mobile/POTS operators and 'circles' being charged differently).
Another important thing is the thriving market in used cellphones. Rs. 1500 (approx. $33) is probably the average. Even cheaper used handsets can be got - only voice and SMS, no fancy color screens or cameras. These help people get started, and people use it only as much as they need. Many people use it only to receive calls (which is cheaper) and use cheaper ubiquitous payphones for outgoing calls.
Look at it as value and not as cost. With even vendors seeing obvious value in it, the cost can be amortised over the value gained from it.
With India's land-line infrastructure in many rural areas not measuring up (or being too unresponsive, unlike quicker private cellular operators), a cellphone may be possibly someone's first and only phone.
Interestingly, in Africa, many countries have bypassed the land-line phone industry totally, as the first phones almost the whole of the country has seen are cellphones. Makes sense as last-mile connectivity costs are a killer.
In this cynical world, where everyone claims success comes only by bending the rules, or being 'wordly-wise", this is a company that has become successful by sheer ability, and the quality of its products and services. If, today, they say that it can be done their way, they've earned the right to say it.
*A dreamy-eyed idealist, who still believes in old-fashioned things like principles and ethics, and that you don't need to bend the rules to succeed*
I agree with the sentiment. I use Winamp for earlier stuff I have (legal/illegal). But I'd have to import all those files into iTunes, so that I can listen to my randomized playlists. Now, I love Winamp,and iTunes isn't that great (my opinion) if you don't have an iPod.So, this makes it better for me to use my dowloaded tunes with Winamp. I disobey the letter of the law, but like I care...
I have no problems with free music. I do listen to some artistes who put out their own mp3s for downloads, and are not out to gyp the listener.
But honestly, stop this free music spiel. What if some guys I like work with RIAA- affiliated labels? (think 60s-70s classics)
I will do the obvious -
a) P2P illegal downloads
b) sell my soul to the devil and buy it on iTMS, or on ebay, or on my trips to India, where you can buy them for cheaper ($4-$7).
Personally I think iTMS has the big drawback that you don't get CD inlays. I love the artwork, and lyrics, credits etc. that come with purchased CDs.
The best part is that many of these websites now offer RSS feeds. So, instead of going to the website itself, you can just subscribe to the feeds, and scroll through to only look in detail at deals that interest you.
Stopping the H-1 B program does not make a lot of sense. There are jobs out there for which the only qualified people are not people imported from India or any other country, but bright graduate students from these countries, studying in the US.
I have really intelligent friends from India / Taiwan who have offers from high-end product companies in hardware/software. These are students who have extremely specialized skills that perfectly suit the company's requirements, and it would be difficult to find people of these skills elsewhere in the US, leave alone through outsourcing.
Isn't the Great American Dream about doing well, irrespective of where you are from? Or will you (like so many other bigoted countries), hold a person's nationality against him/her?
There is one thing people really don't realize, esp. here on Slashdot. Microsoft is full of some VERY smart people. You should see the rolls of the guys they've poached off the top companies and universities in the past few years, notably at the higher levels (Software Architects, Researchers) . I've had a couple of guys come to lecture in my school. They're good, their viewpoints make sense, and it's obvious, that M$ takes its vision thing seriously.
If they were doing anything they claim as revolutionary, I would look at it very seriously, and not dismiss it outright. Admitted, they've made their share of big goof-ups in the past, but hell, they've bounced back much better than any other companies who made those kind of mistakes.
At least XP's service pack didn't break my existing sound-card setup which it had detected and installed. Can't say the same about Fedora Core 1's up2date.
At least in the Indian context, the multi-party system seems to be working albeit with flaws. It implements a system of checks and balances ( within the government itself) which keeps some of the more excitable extreme right Hindu fundamentalist elements in the leading colaition party (the BJP) in check. It does fail occasionally though.
Of course, it is important that the parties agree on a minimum set of values, which is done by having a minimum point agenda, that everyone agrees on before entering the coalition. Otherwise,it is likely that there will be differences even on petty matters, as parties try to score political brownie points over each other.
This here talks about CMU's wireless initiative, one of the oldest in the country (started even before 802.11 was out).
Security sucks though. No encryption, only MAC authentication for registered cards. Of course, all campus email, grade servers are encrypted (even our library requests are!). But you could just snoop anyone's yahoo mail off the air for example. Maybe they should have criteria like how secure the network is, in the criteria for judging as well.
One of the more important points that has been raised here, which I find relevant is the problems of viruses and worms. A worm has a payload of a few KB at most, while the patches that are required are a few MB( if ever M$ puts them out).
In Africa and poorer parts of Asia, phone lines still charge by the minute. Dial-up is still slower than 56 Kbps (I've worked on connections of 7-8 Kbps too, due to less bndwidth/more customers at the ISP, who is milking everyone for all his worth). Connections break and have to be re-established. What is the chance of a non-profit taking the effort to actually download and install the patches? Conversely, there is a high chance of it being infected. (I speak from experience in a small town in India, where I've sat up half the night to get my Windows 98 box upto speed on all patches). Of course, it would be too much to expect M$ to give away CDs of patches as well.
Didn't the Matrix have it even for their Superbowl trailer? They are not the first for sure.
no, not Bangalore. But a place called Chennai (formerly Madras). One of India's foremost composers is doing the music
Wait...it is normally perfectly acceptable business practice to do something like this - cross-subsidization i.e. Is it because it is M$ that you object?
Hell, they have the money. It was earned legally, and they have every right to use it to cross-subsidize products. They are in this for their shareholders and for ease-of-use for their customers (how else could your mom plug her computer in and start playing DVDs or CDs immediately?) , and not for charity for their competitors.
If the competition cannot measure up, they'll have to bow out. Or come up with a more compelling reason for people to stick with them or switch to them - think iTunes.
While I won't call this article the most well-informed or well-written ones, let's see, isn't this a good executive summary?
The suits upstairs say
" You tell me SCO won't win? But what do we do if it does?"
With Tux wearing a suit, these are the kind of questions that have to be answered. Risk assessments and "what-if" scenarios need to be thought out. SCO will lose, but companies may need to make plans to present to boards (though they may never get around to doing anything about it).
btw, I am not a conspiracy theorist, but this is an impressive F.U.D. program. I could almost swear Redmond was behind this.
India has over 20 languages in widespread use, and just localizing Linux to these is a mammoth task.
A couple of projects which are worth mentioning:
Indlinux
and the Simputer
The basic limitation that I've seen is that most of us Indians are a bit more inward-looking, which means that a lot of open-source work in India looks to solve local problems.