Doesn't anyone have a sense of humour nowadays? I guess the slashdot crowd is way too nerdy to understand what's meant to be funny. That's probably why we have some indication before the article to imply that it's a joke. It's so sad that what was meant to be joke became a flame-throwing political discussion just because Al Gore was jibed in the description. Maybe I'm a raving lunatic, but I actually find some of the photographs especially funny.
Also acquisitions are very tricky. I suggest you closely watch everything that has happened between Peoplesoft and Oracle. There are many tricks the smaller company can use to make your life a living nightmare.
Yes, that could well be the only reason they are #2 at something. This is also mentioned in the article. Apparently happened quite recently - Jan 2004.
What worries me is that acquisitions tend to have lots of problems. I myself was working in a.com that got acquired by a.bomb. It was a terrible experience. It would be a pity if SuSE went that way. We need to watch SuSE for the next year or so, and see what happens.
I would really hate it if Red Hat becomes the undisputed champion of open source. I do not hate Red Hat, but I dislike "undisputed champions".
The 1-2 hour wait is not true for all situations. Every place has a peak hour and non-peak hour. In one instance, I made a reservation and came out with a ticket in my hand in 1 minute flat. My average wait time has been about 20 minutes, and I have made many reservations.
I strongly believe that the computerisation of railway reservations is one of the best things that happened to India. People who believe otherwise probably had no idea of what the system was like earlier, and most probably don't live in India. Computerisation of the railways has undoubtedly improved the common man's life, in this respect.
There have been many articles about India and computers which I had considered to be more of a fad than any real use. However, since I am from Bangalore, Karnataka, I confidently feel that this is one of the best computerization efforts.
Karnataka had a lot (and still continues to have) land disputes, that should never have happened. Many are simple cases of forgery that become complicated by corrupt/incompetent officials, non-transparent machinery. I see computerization as a good tool to increase transparency, thereby reducing corruption. With computerization, it is actually possible to query the database and ensure that one deed does not overlap another deed.
Corruption can never be solved by technology. But, if technology is implemented well, it can empower common people (which, in this case, includes me, since I plan to own land in the near future) to fight back against corruption.
What I am most afraid of, is that power is effectively transferred from corrupt officials to the companies who write/manage the software. So, even if the software companies may be free from corruption, it may not hold good for too long, since "power corrupts". A good criteria would be how transparent is the database.
However, from what I know, this particular project is a very good initiative, and one of the few projects that can be showcased as an example of computerization that can help the rural poor. True, software cannot feed hungry people, but it can empower them to grow the own food.
True, but there are many advantages of joining a low paying educational institution, such as steady work hours (evenings are always free), stability (very unlikely to get laid off). Basically, as long as you are doing your work reasonably well, you don't need to be worried about your job for the rest of your life. All this and also access to some excellent facilities, coupled with the excitment of being at the centre of academia can make such a job very lucrative - depending on one's goals in life.
The article says outsourced to China and Korea - nothing about India.
Although you are likely to find artists who are willing to work for cheaper, the style is very different fromt the Japanese Anime. In India, the artists tend to be more romantic, rather than what is needed for Japanese Anime. They haven't figured out the exact Japanese style yet.
Also, the margins anyone will get out of outsourcing Anime to India is likely to be minimal. Normally, the programming work that gets outsourced to India needs to be cheaper by about 7x, to be profitable. So, if an anime artist is earning 50,000 yens per month (equivalent to about $500 or Rs. 20,000), you are already reaching the limits. You would be lucky may not find a decent graphic artist who can do anime for a third of that, in India - not a big margin for the outsourcing lobby.
I completely agree with your post. Infact, I was myself stumped when I was busy haggling with this cart vendor, and his cell phone rang. He picked up, apparently talked to a buyer who wanted him to keep the vegetables ready so that he can just drive up and pick up everything.
I agree. Consider the audit that Microsoft did in early 2002. I think all Microsoft programmers just reviewed code for 1 month, without doing anything else. Assuming, conservatively, that they are paid $50,000 per year, and that there were 10,000 programmers, the cost of their 2002 audit must have come up to atleast 41 million dollars.
So, it is cheaper to put in $5 million and catch the culprit than to do a minor audit of the code. The value of a million dollars is really not much today.
Even if they did test the password, it is not of much use. I, personally, would have given them the password of various mail accounts that I use purely for spam-type mail, in exchange for a chocolate.
Every once in a while, I actually take the pains to read the entire text of a license before pressing "I Agree". Sometimes, I'm quite shocked about what I read. There are (were ?) clauses in the Microsoft.NET CLR that prevent you from publishing profiling results of the CLR. I think this is stepping the line. BTW, I am not an MS basher - I'm sure there are many other companies doing the same thing. I was also bothered by the fact that we have to tear the shrink-wrap agreement (thus agreeing to a license) before being able to read the license agreement. I heard that some software also makes you agree to a non-disclosure clause on the terms of the license !
So, I was wondering, why not have a trade show where only software that have obvious terms in the licenses (not necessarily open source) are allowed. The license should be available to the public (maybe as a pamphlet or website), so that everyone (not necessarily customers) knows its details before making a purchase. I don't like anti reverse engineering clauses, but I can agree to them.
We could have different sections, depending on the various categories of licenses (open source, not open source, anti reverse engineering, cheat-'em-and-steal, etc.).
I don't know what you mean by "here". I also don't know where you got your information from.
What I do know is that Sri Lankan and Pakistani immigrants are almost surely not vegitarian. Also, over 60% of Indians are non-vegetarian. I have heard that South Asians are *genetically* pre-disposed to get diabetes II, but linking this vegetarianism is un-substantiated.
Infact, I am a South Asian. The people on my father's side are vegetarians - but no one has diabetes. The people on my mother's side are non-vegetarians, but a lot of them do have diabetes. The case for genetic predisposition seems stronger than that for "vegetarianism".
Also, South Asians do have similar vices (like fat and cholesterol content) in their diets. So the predisposition to diabetes could be related to the diet, but not due to vegetarianism.
Yes, this is an interesting irony, but a misleading statement. The Y2K projects might have helped some Bangalore based software companies put their foot in the door of some large companies, but the technical skills were already there.
Bangalore happened because of the national university and research organisations based here (IISc, ISRO, LRDE, NAL, HAL, etc.). This is basically the same as what happened around the world - SF bay area is based around UC Berkeley and Stanford (and many other organisations who's names I've forgotten).
True, the numbers seem huge, but they are quite meaningless. Quantity does not imply quality. I have seen projects with 100+ programmers being *completely* scrapped. I regularly interview candidates who can't write a simple program, in whatever language, but call themselves "Software Engineers". I have seen resumes of "MS Word Programmers".
Frankly, I think this is nothing great - I am surprised it happened so recently. Like many other articles, this is yet another sensational article from the Times of India Group. Can't understand why Slashdot keeps posting from this paper.
Very true. But in this case, they can actually verify that you will vote for them, by insisting of sitting beside you while you vote on the internet. In the current system, I would do exactly what you said, too.
The problem is, if you live in a community where a large majority are stupid enough agree to sell their votes to a corrupt candidate, then, it would be easier to find out exactly who do not vote for the corrupt candidate, and the corrupt candidate can make life difficult for them.
It would be very easy to buy or coerce votes. Imagine some candidate secretly running a deal that would enable them to monitor people's Internet votes (by sitting beside them while they vote), in exchange for money. In the current system, the voter can always lie to a candidate, and within the privacy of the voting room, do what he/she wishes.
This might sound like some bogus conspiracy theory. But I believe that anything that can happen will happen. The current voting system has been designed after many years of thought, to prevent various kinds of fraud. Changing seemingly minor details could have a devastating effect.
Could you please post the links or names of the books ? Better still, would be to post the format from the book, if possible. I would be happy to write the relevant python scripts.
The nice thing about open source is that "kernel developers" don't need to do that. Even you and I can participate in reviewing the kernel developers' code and do our 2p in implementing kernel safety.
The problem is not with the open source community, but it is with the closed source community, like Microsoft. Initially, Microsoft used to publish their formats. There was a time when the MS Word format was available from MSDN web site (you can still find old copies by searching for "Microsoft Word 97 Binary File Format"). Today, Microsoft keeps the format secret, and discloses it only if people sign a tight non-disclosure agreement that prevents anyone from writing open source software.
I
searched the web for "Microsoft DirectX File Format Specification" (which is what you are talking about, I presume). I found links only in third party developer sites to a document that is 6 years old - possibly out dated. No links in MSDN or any Microsoft site. Ofcourse, MSDN gives excellent details on how to create the file in C#, etc. But does not seem to reveal the file format (which is absolutely crucial, to write open source software).
There is such poor support for Microsoft formats because Microsoft does not want open source to be able to support its file formats.
I think this is another example of an inappropriate article for slashdot. I can't call myself a hacker (because the title should be conferred upon you by others), but I have dieted/excercised and lost weight.
What I found most helpful was simply being aware of what you eat. The most important point, IMHO, was to conciously eat all the vitamins, etc. the body needs, and to conciously rotate the food one eats to eat a variety of things. The next most important point was to excercise. I only needed to keep track of my calories - I did not cut down anything.
Infact, after starting a minimal excercise routine, my calorific intake went up dramatically. My weight went up slightly (and came down later), but my ponch went down, my waist size went down and I started to look better within a few weeks.
Personally, I think Atkins is over-hyped. I like to call my diet the do-what-you-feel diet. It actually helped me become a lot fitter - to really understand what it means to be fit.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't anyone have a sense of humour nowadays? I guess the slashdot crowd is way too nerdy to understand what's meant to be funny. That's probably why we have some indication before the article to imply that it's a joke. It's so sad that what was meant to be joke became a flame-throwing political discussion just because Al Gore was jibed in the description. Maybe I'm a raving lunatic, but I actually find some of the photographs especially funny.
Even simpler, they will probably sign a patent reciprocity agreement with Kodak, if they have not already done so.
In related news, Microsoft is preventing people from downloading it through BitTorrent using the DMCA.
Also acquisitions are very tricky. I suggest you closely watch everything that has happened between Peoplesoft and Oracle. There are many tricks the smaller company can use to make your life a living nightmare.
Yes, that could well be the only reason they are #2 at something. This is also mentioned in the article. Apparently happened quite recently - Jan 2004.
.com that got acquired by a .bomb. It was a terrible experience. It would be a pity if SuSE went that way. We need to watch SuSE for the next year or so, and see what happens.
What worries me is that acquisitions tend to have lots of problems. I myself was working in a
I would really hate it if Red Hat becomes the undisputed champion of open source. I do not hate Red Hat, but I dislike "undisputed champions".
The 1-2 hour wait is not true for all situations. Every place has a peak hour and non-peak hour. In one instance, I made a reservation and came out with a ticket in my hand in 1 minute flat. My average wait time has been about 20 minutes, and I have made many reservations.
I strongly believe that the computerisation of railway reservations is one of the best things that happened to India. People who believe otherwise probably had no idea of what the system was like earlier, and most probably don't live in India. Computerisation of the railways has undoubtedly improved the common man's life, in this respect.
There have been many articles about India and computers which I had considered to be more of a fad than any real use. However, since I am from Bangalore, Karnataka, I confidently feel that this is one of the best computerization efforts.
Karnataka had a lot (and still continues to have) land disputes, that should never have happened. Many are simple cases of forgery that become complicated by corrupt/incompetent officials, non-transparent machinery. I see computerization as a good tool to increase transparency, thereby reducing corruption. With computerization, it is actually possible to query the database and ensure that one deed does not overlap another deed.
Corruption can never be solved by technology. But, if technology is implemented well, it can empower common people (which, in this case, includes me, since I plan to own land in the near future) to fight back against corruption.
What I am most afraid of, is that power is effectively transferred from corrupt officials to the companies who write/manage the software. So, even if the software companies may be free from corruption, it may not hold good for too long, since "power corrupts". A good criteria would be how transparent is the database.
However, from what I know, this particular project is a very good initiative, and one of the few projects that can be showcased as an example of computerization that can help the rural poor. True, software cannot feed hungry people, but it can empower them to grow the own food.
True, but there are many advantages of joining a low paying educational institution, such as steady work hours (evenings are always free), stability (very unlikely to get laid off). Basically, as long as you are doing your work reasonably well, you don't need to be worried about your job for the rest of your life. All this and also access to some excellent facilities, coupled with the excitment of being at the centre of academia can make such a job very lucrative - depending on one's goals in life.
The article says outsourced to China and Korea - nothing about India.
Although you are likely to find artists who are willing to work for cheaper, the style is very different fromt the Japanese Anime. In India, the artists tend to be more romantic, rather than what is needed for Japanese Anime. They haven't figured out the exact Japanese style yet.
Also, the margins anyone will get out of outsourcing Anime to India is likely to be minimal. Normally, the programming work that gets outsourced to India needs to be cheaper by about 7x, to be profitable. So, if an anime artist is earning 50,000 yens per month (equivalent to about $500 or Rs. 20,000), you are already reaching the limits. You would be lucky may not find a decent graphic artist who can do anime for a third of that, in India - not a big margin for the outsourcing lobby.
I completely agree with your post. Infact, I was myself stumped when I was busy haggling with this cart vendor, and his cell phone rang. He picked up, apparently talked to a buyer who wanted him to keep the vegetables ready so that he can just drive up and pick up everything.
You have your own e-tailer here.
I agree. Consider the audit that Microsoft did in early 2002. I think all Microsoft programmers just reviewed code for 1 month, without doing anything else. Assuming, conservatively, that they are paid $50,000 per year, and that there were 10,000 programmers, the cost of their 2002 audit must have come up to atleast 41 million dollars.
So, it is cheaper to put in $5 million and catch the culprit than to do a minor audit of the code. The value of a million dollars is really not much today.
Even if they did test the password, it is not of much use. I, personally, would have given them the password of various mail accounts that I use purely for spam-type mail, in exchange for a chocolate.
Every once in a while, I actually take the pains to read the entire text of a license before pressing "I Agree". Sometimes, I'm quite shocked about what I read. There are (were ?) clauses in the Microsoft .NET CLR that prevent you from publishing profiling results of the CLR. I think this is stepping the line. BTW, I am not an MS basher - I'm sure there are many other companies doing the same thing. I was also bothered by the fact that we have to tear the shrink-wrap agreement (thus agreeing to a license) before being able to read the license agreement. I heard that some software also makes you agree to a non-disclosure clause on the terms of the license !
So, I was wondering, why not have a trade show where only software that have obvious terms in the licenses (not necessarily open source) are allowed. The license should be available to the public (maybe as a pamphlet or website), so that everyone (not necessarily customers) knows its details before making a purchase. I don't like anti reverse engineering clauses, but I can agree to them.
We could have different sections, depending on the various categories of licenses (open source, not open source, anti reverse engineering, cheat-'em-and-steal, etc.).
I wonder how much coal, water and other materials are required to create one clean 80W monitor ;).
I don't know what you mean by "here". I also don't know where you got your information from.
What I do know is that Sri Lankan and Pakistani immigrants are almost surely not vegitarian. Also, over 60% of Indians are non-vegetarian. I have heard that South Asians are *genetically* pre-disposed to get diabetes II, but linking this vegetarianism is un-substantiated.
Infact, I am a South Asian. The people on my father's side are vegetarians - but no one has diabetes. The people on my mother's side are non-vegetarians, but a lot of them do have diabetes. The case for genetic predisposition seems stronger than that for "vegetarianism".
Also, South Asians do have similar vices (like fat and cholesterol content) in their diets. So the predisposition to diabetes could be related to the diet, but not due to vegetarianism.
Yes, this is an interesting irony, but a misleading statement. The Y2K projects might have helped some Bangalore based software companies put their foot in the door of some large companies, but the technical skills were already there.
Bangalore happened because of the national university and research organisations based here (IISc, ISRO, LRDE, NAL, HAL, etc.). This is basically the same as what happened around the world - SF bay area is based around UC Berkeley and Stanford (and many other organisations who's names I've forgotten).
True, the numbers seem huge, but they are quite meaningless. Quantity does not imply quality. I have seen projects with 100+ programmers being *completely* scrapped. I regularly interview candidates who can't write a simple program, in whatever language, but call themselves "Software Engineers". I have seen resumes of "MS Word Programmers".
Frankly, I think this is nothing great - I am surprised it happened so recently. Like many other articles, this is yet another sensational article from the Times of India Group. Can't understand why Slashdot keeps posting from this paper.
It would be really bad if someone has filed a patent for it.
If there was a way to use the middle button or right button for the gestures, that would be cool.
Very true. But in this case, they can actually verify that you will vote for them, by insisting of sitting beside you while you vote on the internet. In the current system, I would do exactly what you said, too.
The problem is, if you live in a community where a large majority are stupid enough agree to sell their votes to a corrupt candidate, then, it would be easier to find out exactly who do not vote for the corrupt candidate, and the corrupt candidate can make life difficult for them.
It would be very easy to buy or coerce votes. Imagine some candidate secretly running a deal that would enable them to monitor people's Internet votes (by sitting beside them while they vote), in exchange for money. In the current system, the voter can always lie to a candidate, and within the privacy of the voting room, do what he/she wishes.
This might sound like some bogus conspiracy theory. But I believe that anything that can happen will happen. The current voting system has been designed after many years of thought, to prevent various kinds of fraud. Changing seemingly minor details could have a devastating effect.
Could you please post the links or names of the books ? Better still, would be to post the format from the book, if possible. I would be happy to write the relevant python scripts.
The nice thing about open source is that "kernel developers" don't need to do that. Even you and I can participate in reviewing the kernel developers' code and do our 2p in implementing kernel safety.
I searched the web for "Microsoft DirectX File Format Specification" (which is what you are talking about, I presume). I found links only in third party developer sites to a document that is 6 years old - possibly out dated. No links in MSDN or any Microsoft site. Ofcourse, MSDN gives excellent details on how to create the file in C#, etc. But does not seem to reveal the file format (which is absolutely crucial, to write open source software).
There is such poor support for Microsoft formats because Microsoft does not want open source to be able to support its file formats.
I think this is another example of an inappropriate article for slashdot. I can't call myself a hacker (because the title should be conferred upon you by others), but I have dieted/excercised and lost weight.
What I found most helpful was simply being aware of what you eat. The most important point, IMHO, was to conciously eat all the vitamins, etc. the body needs, and to conciously rotate the food one eats to eat a variety of things. The next most important point was to excercise. I only needed to keep track of my calories - I did not cut down anything.
Infact, after starting a minimal excercise routine, my calorific intake went up dramatically. My weight went up slightly (and came down later), but my ponch went down, my waist size went down and I started to look better within a few weeks.
Personally, I think Atkins is over-hyped. I like to call my diet the do-what-you-feel diet. It actually helped me become a lot fitter - to really understand what it means to be fit.