They took extremely important issues which cost a lot of lives (some 300 US soldiers, thousands of Iraqi soldiers and nearly 10,000 Iraqi civilians).
Other issues you mention are not cut-n-dry. For eg. what exactly do you want to ask about "the treatment of captured Afghanis and suspected terrorists" ?
shuts down domestic sites posting politically
incorrect fare
You mean like the DeCSS stuff... ?
On a serious note, what should we expect anyway. After all politically it is a communist dictatorship. Why should be expect them to treat internet publishing different than normal print publishing ?
Vajpayee is a career politician. He has been in politics for the last 47 years. He is (was ?) a great orator, a very moderate leader in a right wing party and a part-time poet.
Let me guess. You are a BJP / RSS supporter who hates Congress Party. Or you have not updated your politics after 1991.
Narayana Murthy is like Bill Gates (an opportunist who took the opportunity and the risks to make it big.)
Definitely not. Murthy had excellent education (from IIT Kanpur)... he was not a drop out. He struggled to get to where he is today... and it didn't happen because a big company somehow chose a program he was marketing.
Vajpayee is like Reagan/Bush (or some such Republican) who has made it his important Agenda to peel off/rip out the huge amounts of red-tape that drags the Indian economy
Just like Reagan / Bush, BJP has no idea how to be conservative when it comes to economy. They have not cut red tape. They just let their business friends profiteer under crony capitalism. If ever there was anyone who tried to cut red tape it was Dr Manmohan Singh.
BJP's top priority is to establish a "Hindu" nation. Their preference to stirring up communal issues at the expense of economic issues is well known. Their brand of hate that supported slaughter of innocent people in Gujarat can't possibly be good for the economy.
His Finanace and Industrial ministers are incredibly astute people who have been busy reducing the size and hence the corruption of the Central Govt.
Only a very partisan BJP follower could use such words. Esp. considering that the industrial minister Maran has been bedridden for the last few months and the govt which is supposed to be industry friendly does not even appoint a different miniter (may be they know, it is best when their is no commerce miniter). BTW, India still ranks 83rd on the list of transparent (i.e. non-corrupt) countries.
For any Business person in India this is a well known fact that BJP has made very good strides in turning to a Capitalistic rather than pseudo-socialistic infrastructure.
Just compare the number of restrictions lifted by Manmohan Singh and what this govt has done. Platitutes are no alternative to bold policy changes. Under this govt. liberalization has all but stalled.
Hoping that the Congress Party (when it comes to power) will not roll back these changes in the name of Nationalism or some such excuse.
It is the BJP which cries nationalism or "level playing field" and raises tariffs to protect its industrial friends like Rahul Bajaj.
The list has India's prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at 8th.
India's boom - largely engineered by Vajpayee - means some analysts are predicting the country could face its own IT skills crisis over the next five years.
Nothing can be further from truth. Personally Vajpayee has had no effect on IT in India. He has no ideas or plans for the future, as far as IT is concerned. I think Narayana Murthy would have been a better choice.
The GDP figures are in Purchaseing Power parity. That is the reason China is 2nd and India 4th in the list. Obvioulsy, not a measure of industrial development.
Korea is a member of OECD since 12 December 1996... and is considered an industrially developed country.
BTW, "third world" is a derogatory term. The politically correct term is developing country or if you like poor country. Don't use the term if when you talk with someone from these countries or visit one.
This is bad news for MPAA. Unlike CDs, DVDs are easily available for rent and within 3 years they can be copied like the CDs can now be
copied, by Joe Public.
So why is it good for HDTV ? Because, now the only way for MPAA members to make money is to start offering HDTV discs, which they are trying to put off as much as possible.
That is, assuming blue ray writable players won't be on the desktop by then
The lawsuite will be quitely withdrawn and none of us will ever hear about it.... that way both the senator and the RIAA will avoid some negative PR...
Among other things, HTPC. Esp. with realtime software HDTV decoding. Remember those old days when we needed hardware DVD decoders ?
Also, video producers always need more power, to convert all those home videos to DVDs.
That reminds me - didn't someone predict long time back just four computers would be needed in the world. We also "need" more, because, once we get that more, it makes possible applications we would have never thought of earlier... like HTPC.
All we have to do is wait ! Then, we will all get rich because of trickle down effect. I'm sure I'll be rich by the time I'm confined to the wheel chair.
Go Bush. Go Halliburton. (well, whats the difference?)
First, an American company will not get into an expensive legal battle in India and win.
It is much cheaper to litigate in India. And American companies frequently do.
Second, just proving that there was a disclosure is likely to be impossible if you don't speak Hindi well.
This is an absurd statement. English is an official language of India. That is the language of the courts and official version of all law. Lot of Indians (esp. software people, who are mostly from south India) do not know Hindi... which is a North Indian language. Centers like Bangalore, Hyderabad are in south India and majority of s/w people in those places don't know Hindi (and frequently are antagonistic to it). You can be assured that if you file a case in Bangalore, my home town, the judge will not know Hindi.
Well, let us assume they all know Hindi. Even then, why should that matter ? Just hire loads of Indian lawyers who know Hindi.
As an aside, English is closer to Hindi than are south Indian languages, which do not belong to Indo-European language family.
What you don't know is that the world's best selling wholesale banking software comes from India - Flex-Cube. I used to work for this company (it is part owned by citigroup). BTW, it is not the largest selling banking s/w in India....
Let me assure you - knowing how banks work (even in and out) does not help you build a bank. Moreover, some Indian banks are as old as CitiBank and know banking very well, they don't need to first build a banking s/w to learn that. Anyway the knowledge alone does not help them become a global bank, simply because even the biggest Indian bank is very small in global terms. Afterall, you can't build another Microsoft if you know how to build an OS.
My first project was writing an application for treasury - forex, money markets. No, that didn't help me become a Forex dealer, because judging the next move of the market has nothing to do with the knowledge of how to process the deal, once it is made.
There is a lot more to building successful businesses than just learning enough to write software for them. Competing against entrenched businesses is very even tougher. It is naive to think otherwise.
Understanding business is not enough to become successful in that business. It is also naive to assume that Indians don't already know the (whatever) business.
That is partly because of marketing. That is one thing you can't send offshore.
When I was working in India, our company always used to have some Americans working in the company. Just as in the US, you need a work permit ( see this advice ). We also had quite a few non-citizens of Indian origin working in our company, who also needed work permits. Unlike H1B, your company doesn't need to prove that a person with your skills can't be hired locally.
The problem really is one of money. Why would anyone want to work in India for fraction of the money you can get anywhere else ?
Considering how easy movement of professions helps Indian S/W industries, I'm sure the govt. will be willing to introduce temporary work permits too if need be. Infact, they had mooted GATS guidelines on visas, work permits. I don't know the status now.
For those who don't know, India has a huge illigal immigrants problem. The immigrants are mostly from Bangladesh. In the 80's and 90's there was a very militant movement against illegal immigrants in the state of Assam. See this article.
Opposition to H1B in the US now is understandable. Infact, if INS is even now giving out H1B visas in this economy, it is absurd.
.
We all know that making a copy of of the movie for time-shifting is Fair Use (Betamax case). This does not come under the Statute you are linking to. So, obviously that statute is not the full extent of the Fair Use possibilities. That seems to only talk about Fair Use in academic areas.
The whole idea that you can copy music from your CD to the PC or MP3 player is based on time-place shifting that is allowed under Fair Use.
Hmmm. There is no difference between you making a copy or downloading a copy of the song. The end result is the same. You won't find a jury that will convict a person on that.
In most countries outside the Western hemisphere, there are still few immigrants from non-neighboring countries (unless of course they come from the colonizing countries).
Not correct, unless you think India is a neighboring country of Africa or the Caribbean. Ofcourse, that is because the British brought Indians where ever they went - mainly as book keepers and railway or plantation workers. As you may know Gandhi lived in South Africa for over 20 years before coming back to India and leading the independance movement.
And in the middle east... there are so many immigrants from South Asia and South East Asia that in some smaller countries (UAE for eg.) the immigrants (almost ?) form the majority.
In what sense do Arabs, Indians / Pakistanis they belong to the same ethnic group ? What do they have in common ?
Arabs are bound by the language they speak, rather than their "looks" or race. So, when you talk about physical appearence of Arabs, which arabs are you talking about ? North Africans or people from the middle east ? Palestinian arabs look no different from Israeli jews. But they look quite different from "typical" Indians or Pakistanis.
Interestingly, Arab Americans were apparently told to chose "white" as their race in US census (http://www.allied-media.com/Arab-American/census. html).
Arabic is a semitic language like Hebrew. North Indian languages are closer to German than Arabic, since they belong to Indo-European family of languages. They don't practice the same religion. Culturally too they are very different... just listen to the music or see their traditional dresses.
If you say Pakistanese and Indians belong to the same ethnic group, there would be a some truth to that.
The main reason, I think, big labels don't market to adults is that they don't have the music to do that. It is difficult to make great hits that sell millions of copies.... because adults are such a diverse group, though there have been some big hits in the elevator music genre (Yanni, Kenny G)
But, there is a lot of new music for 30+... just not in rock & roll, I suppose. There are a lot of independent labels who cater to that group... many of them happen to be audiophile labels dabbling in "world" music, New Age etc.
Lets face it. P2P sharing of RIAA copyrighted songs are illegal. I suggest anyone sharing such songs to quit doing it. But, don't buy their CDs. As someone suggested either buy used CDs or get cheap (legal) cassettes and convert to MP3 or whatever format you need. Just ask your friends who go to India to get the 2$ or 3$ cassettes (100 to 150 Rs) that are sold by RIAA labels or their subsidiaries / distributors.
Just as we keep telling them, their business model is outdated.... we need to understand that P2P download model is outdated. First the napster went, now P2P is gone. Just wait for the next generation of technology.
Indus valley and Vedic people lived in these areas from... take this... 3,500 B.C. Yes, a full 4000 years before Islam. And yes, the Vedas clearly state that these areas are the "mother land (mathru bhoomi)".
And hey, why are people talking about Mugabe throwing out a few white farmers ? Haven't native people been there for atleast 50,000 years?
You know what.... the muslims didn't drop out of the sky. The jews in Isreal, Hindus in India converted to Islam. So it is their land too, as much as it is jews/Hindus.
I don't think the laws of the occupying country apply (completely, atleast) in the occupied territories.
For eg., Isreali army won't be able to kill anyone it likes in Isreal i.e. it can't indulge in extra judicial killings. But it can do so in Palestine. More importantly, people of the occupied territories don't have the same rights enjoyed by citizens of occupier. I've read news stories about the problem of judiciery in Iraq. They are not sure which old laws of Iraq apply... there was no mention of US laws applying there.
Before 1947, in India, the British enacted separate laws just for India, many of them continue even today.
Slashdot Mirror
They took extremely important issues which cost a lot of lives (some 300 US soldiers, thousands of Iraqi soldiers and nearly 10,000 Iraqi civilians).
Other issues you mention are not cut-n-dry. For eg. what exactly do you want to ask about "the treatment of captured Afghanis and suspected terrorists" ?
shuts down domestic sites posting politically incorrect fare
You mean like the DeCSS stuff ... ?
On a serious note, what should we expect anyway. After all politically it is a communist dictatorship. Why should be expect them to treat internet publishing different than normal print publishing ?
Vajpayee is a career politician. He has been in politics for the last 47 years. He is (was ?) a great orator, a very moderate leader in a right wing party and a part-time poet.
Let me guess. You are a BJP / RSS supporter who hates Congress Party. Or you have not updated your politics after 1991.
Narayana Murthy is like Bill Gates (an opportunist who took the opportunity and the risks to make it big.)
Definitely not. Murthy had excellent education (from IIT Kanpur) ... he was not a drop out. He struggled to get to where he is today ... and it didn't happen because a big company somehow chose a program he was marketing.
Vajpayee is like Reagan/Bush (or some such Republican) who has made it his important Agenda to peel off/rip out the huge amounts of red-tape that drags the Indian economy
Just like Reagan / Bush, BJP has no idea how to be conservative when it comes to economy. They have not cut red tape. They just let their business friends profiteer under crony capitalism. If ever there was anyone who tried to cut red tape it was Dr Manmohan Singh.
BJP's top priority is to establish a "Hindu" nation. Their preference to stirring up communal issues at the expense of economic issues is well known. Their brand of hate that supported slaughter of innocent people in Gujarat can't possibly be good for the economy.
His Finanace and Industrial ministers are incredibly astute people who have been busy reducing the size and hence the corruption of the Central Govt.
Only a very partisan BJP follower could use such words. Esp. considering that the industrial minister Maran has been bedridden for the last few months and the govt which is supposed to be industry friendly does not even appoint a different miniter (may be they know, it is best when their is no commerce miniter). BTW, India still ranks 83rd on the list of transparent (i.e. non-corrupt) countries.
For any Business person in India this is a well known fact that BJP has made very good strides in turning to a Capitalistic rather than pseudo-socialistic infrastructure.
Just compare the number of restrictions lifted by Manmohan Singh and what this govt has done. Platitutes are no alternative to bold policy changes. Under this govt. liberalization has all but stalled.
Hoping that the Congress Party (when it comes to power) will not roll back these changes in the name of Nationalism or some such excuse.
It is the BJP which cries nationalism or "level playing field" and raises tariffs to protect its industrial friends like Rahul Bajaj.
The list has India's prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at 8th.
India's boom - largely engineered by Vajpayee - means some analysts are predicting the country could face its own IT skills crisis over the next five years.
Nothing can be further from truth. Personally Vajpayee has had no effect on IT in India. He has no ideas or plans for the future, as far as IT is concerned. I think Narayana Murthy would have been a better choice.
I doubt the list is a well researched list.
The GDP figures are in Purchaseing Power parity. That is the reason China is 2nd and India 4th in the list. Obvioulsy, not a measure of industrial development.
Korea is a member of OECD since 12 December 1996 ... and is considered an industrially developed country.
BTW, "third world" is a derogatory term. The politically correct term is developing country or if you like poor country. Don't use the term if when you talk with someone from these countries or visit one.
This is bad news for MPAA. Unlike CDs, DVDs are easily available for rent and within 3 years they can be copied like the CDs can now be copied, by Joe Public.
So why is it good for HDTV ? Because, now the only way for MPAA members to make money is to start offering HDTV discs, which they are trying to put off as much as possible.
That is, assuming blue ray writable players won't be on the desktop by then
The lawsuite will be quitely withdrawn and none of us will ever hear about it
Among other things, HTPC. Esp. with realtime software HDTV decoding. Remember those old days when we needed hardware DVD decoders ?
Also, video producers always need more power, to convert all those home videos to DVDs.
That reminds me - didn't someone predict long time back just four computers would be needed in the world. We also "need" more, because, once we get that more, it makes possible applications we would have never thought of earlier ... like HTPC.
All we have to do is wait ! Then, we will all get rich because of trickle down effect. I'm sure I'll be rich by the time I'm confined to the wheel chair.
Go Bush. Go Halliburton. (well, whats the difference?)
First, an American company will not get into an expensive legal battle in India and win.
It is much cheaper to litigate in India. And American companies frequently do.
Second, just proving that there was a disclosure is likely to be impossible if you don't speak Hindi well.
This is an absurd statement. English is an official language of India. That is the language of the courts and official version of all law. Lot of Indians (esp. software people, who are mostly from south India) do not know Hindi ... which is a North Indian language. Centers like Bangalore, Hyderabad are in south India and majority of s/w people in those places don't know Hindi (and frequently are antagonistic to it). You can be assured that if you file a case in Bangalore, my home town, the judge will not know Hindi.
Well, let us assume they all know Hindi. Even then, why should that matter ? Just hire loads of Indian lawyers who know Hindi.
As an aside, English is closer to Hindi than are south Indian languages, which do not belong to Indo-European language family.
What you don't know is that the world's best selling wholesale banking software comes from India - Flex-Cube. I used to work for this company (it is part owned by citigroup). BTW, it is not the largest selling banking s/w in India
Let me assure you - knowing how banks work (even in and out) does not help you build a bank. Moreover, some Indian banks are as old as CitiBank and know banking very well, they don't need to first build a banking s/w to learn that. Anyway the knowledge alone does not help them become a global bank, simply because even the biggest Indian bank is very small in global terms. Afterall, you can't build another Microsoft if you know how to build an OS.
My first project was writing an application for treasury - forex, money markets. No, that didn't help me become a Forex dealer, because judging the next move of the market has nothing to do with the knowledge of how to process the deal, once it is made.
There is a lot more to building successful businesses than just learning enough to write software for them. Competing against entrenched businesses is very even tougher. It is naive to think otherwise.
That is partly because of marketing. That is one thing you can't send offshore.
When I was working in India, our company always used to have some Americans working in the company. Just as in the US, you need a work permit ( see this advice ). We also had quite a few non-citizens of Indian origin working in our company, who also needed work permits. Unlike H1B, your company doesn't need to prove that a person with your skills can't be hired locally.
The problem really is one of money. Why would anyone want to work in India for fraction of the money you can get anywhere else ?
Considering how easy movement of professions helps Indian S/W industries, I'm sure the govt. will be willing to introduce temporary work permits too if need be. Infact, they had mooted GATS guidelines on visas, work permits. I don't know the status now.
For those who don't know, India has a huge illigal immigrants problem. The immigrants are mostly from Bangladesh. In the 80's and 90's there was a very militant movement against illegal immigrants in the state of Assam. See this article.
Opposition to H1B in the US now is understandable. Infact, if INS is even now giving out H1B visas in this economy, it is absurd.
.
The whole idea that you can copy music from your CD to the PC or MP3 player is based on time-place shifting that is allowed under Fair Use.
Infact, further reading of the decision proves my point. They list four factors upon which the "fair use" depends.
Regarding the first factor -- "the purpose and character of the use" -- defendant does not dispute that its purpose is commercial, ...
Obviously, this does not apply here for the downloader. He has no commercial purpose, since he has already paid for the CD.
Yes, downloading mp3 of a song you have already bought, is "Fair Use".
Hmmm. There is no difference between you making a copy or downloading a copy of the song. The end result is the same. You won't find a jury that will convict a person on that.
Looks like he recently moved to US. He used to work in University of Calcutta.
Not correct, unless you think India is a neighboring country of Africa or the Caribbean. Ofcourse, that is because the British brought Indians where ever they went - mainly as book keepers and railway or plantation workers. As you may know Gandhi lived in South Africa for over 20 years before coming back to India and leading the independance movement.
And in the middle east ... there are so many immigrants from South Asia and South East Asia that in some smaller countries (UAE for eg.) the immigrants (almost ?) form the majority.
Arabs are bound by the language they speak, rather than their "looks" or race. So, when you talk about physical appearence of Arabs, which arabs are you talking about ? North Africans or people from the middle east ? Palestinian arabs look no different from Israeli jews. But they look quite different from "typical" Indians or Pakistanis.
Interestingly, Arab Americans were apparently told to chose "white" as their race in US census (http://www.allied-media.com/Arab-American/census. html).
Arabic is a semitic language like Hebrew. North Indian languages are closer to German than Arabic, since they belong to Indo-European family of languages. They don't practice the same religion. Culturally too they are very different ... just listen to the music or see their traditional dresses.
If you say Pakistanese and Indians belong to the same ethnic group, there would be a some truth to that.
But, there is a lot of new music for 30+ ... just not in rock & roll, I suppose. There are a lot of independent labels who cater to that group ... many of them happen to be audiophile labels dabbling in "world" music, New Age etc.
Sharing effectively is not different from having MP3 files available for download from your website.
We will know what the courts think if and when any of these cases go to court.
Just as we keep telling them, their business model is outdated .... we need to understand that P2P download model is outdated. First the napster went, now P2P is gone. Just wait for the next generation of technology.
Indus valley and Vedic people lived in these areas from ... take this ... 3,500 B.C. Yes, a full 4000 years before Islam. And yes, the Vedas clearly state that these areas are the "mother land (mathru bhoomi)".
And hey, why are people talking about Mugabe throwing out a few white farmers ? Haven't native people been there for atleast 50,000 years?
You know what .... the muslims didn't drop out of the sky. The jews in Isreal, Hindus in India converted to Islam. So it is their land too, as much as it is jews/Hindus.
I don't think the laws of the occupying country apply (completely, atleast) in the occupied territories.
For eg., Isreali army won't be able to kill anyone it likes in Isreal i.e. it can't indulge in extra judicial killings. But it can do so in Palestine. More importantly, people of the occupied territories don't have the same rights enjoyed by citizens of occupier. I've read news stories about the problem of judiciery in Iraq. They are not sure which old laws of Iraq apply ... there was no mention of US laws applying there.
Before 1947, in India, the British enacted separate laws just for India, many of them continue even today.