I have had this problem a couple of times. It's mostly the accent, and also I've had problems with things like telephone etiquette being different to what it is in the UK. However, it's not really an issue.
Mostly, I really hate call centres, whether staffed by Ghanains, Brummies or Germans. In business, time is money. Waiting 60 minutes to go through menus to speak to a drongo about something being broken costs me a lot more than spending $5 more on the product in the first place. And then getting decent support where a trained and helpful technician answers.
But corpoartions are exporting their expenses to cheeper locations and then turning around and charging us the same prices we would pay for stuff made here.
Well, don't buy it then, or buy from someone else. That's the free market. There's no artificially raised prices except in cartels and monopolies (which exist).
Just because people earn little compared to what you earn, doesn't mean they are poor. IT workers actually do very well compared to standards of living in poor countries.
All too often I hear journalists trying to stir things up by telling people that some guy in a sweatshop earns 50c/hour without describe the relative housing and food costs.
I'm not saying people in these countries are super-rich, but earnings have to be put into context.
The funniest thing I see in the UK is people striking because their department is under threat of relocation to India. Like that's really going to score the option of keeping you well.
The internet does 1 thing for business - allows information (and lots of it) to move cheaper, faster and to a larger direct audience than before.
Amazon worked because of the massive product range which could never be done in a catalogue. Ebay worked because of the speed. Smaller sites like cybercandy can do better because they can reach a national or global audience for quite a small operation.
I suppose that the crossover into someone paying for it is what hasn't happened yet. Maybe it never will.
Maybe we'll more to a point where people will do what a lot of my friends do - make and play music for pleasure and are glad to just make some beer money from CD sales, and that the conventional market for music will shrink.
Really, if you can pass me some relevant hyperlinks to this, I'd like some very stern words with my MP. How about we only allow Fords and Rovers on the roads?
Really, the government should be pushing people if anywhere towards Open Office, not away from it. Ideally, they'd opt for HTML, but hey ho.
As for your school, how about starting something like an after school activity involving Linux there? It seems to me that students would get much more from it than Windows in terms of teaching the fundamentals (from one who attended clubs involving BBC micros where you had to write everything).
The issue now isn't production and distribution, it's promotion.
Whether you want to make money or not, if you want to get your work seen, people have to know about it. Maybe word of mouth is the answer, but I've yet to see a song or a movie by a total independent get somewhere by internet word of mouth.
Try Naxos. They sell some great classical CDs and also have a streaming service that they seem to make little money out of.
They're independent, about the quality of the music, not hyping some classical "star" by getting them to do hideous pop and rock crossovers (love pop and rock, detest classical crossover!).
It's like when you work in a company with internally built middleware to do something. You write an app that talks to said middleware and it fails. You check your code and it looks fine. So, you then check the middleware code and debug it through and voila! there's the bug.
I recently had a problem with a program interfacing with SQL Server. Checked everything over, all looked fine. In the end had to go through an MS checklist. Fortunately, I could resolve it (although the error was unhelpful in guiding me to the problem).
With OSS, you can debug it down, so if you are running and get a fault, you can do one of three things. Nothing, report it or analyse and report it with a resolution. If lots of people around the world are doing this, the quality will just keep going up.
In the MS world, you report a fault, and generally just get a workaround in if you can't really resolve it, or find another approach. Yeah, you can report it to them, but if they don't want to fix it, what are you to do?
My point was that you tried to use measurable methods to ask why Britney is so derided which are not measures that can be used for determining quality.
It's hard to objectify quality in any way, except to use the test of time. The Beatles are still listened to by people outside their time. People aren't listening to it purely out of nostalgia for when they were growing up, and there's not the whole thing of some music sold as it's part of a movement or reflected attitudes at the time.
It says "under a million". The point is not about it costing a million, but less than a million.
I'd say that a statement like that is targetted more at the financial guys to say "hey, it's a screw up, but don't get wound up, it's not even a $1 million screw up".
Actually, the IWF are pretty good. They were setup IIRC by someone at Demon, and it's a bit like the ELSPA is for games.
The idea is that if you create a good self-regulating industry body, you prevent govt. interference.
Knowing British censorship laws, and the attitude of UK governments to consenting porn in the past, if the IWF hadn't been set up, they'd have passed laws to get ISPs to block ALL porn including consenting and non-consenting.
The thing is, there's no "thin end of the wedge" issue here.
This isn't about consenting, sane adults involved in extreme acts that most people would find a bit icky or downright weird. This is about abuse and is wrong.
Using a word like "smut" is just not right in this context. This isn't an extension of regular porn, it's not the line where it ends up (a link which is often insinuated by the the anti-porn brigade). It's abuse.
It's also why having legalised porn for consenting adults is good for protecting children in the same way that legalising and licensing prostitution is. Because it creates a very strong line between consent and non-consent. It also means that for people like the police that anyone operating outside the system is involved in some sick behaviour and not just making some smut movies.
Open source code allows for more scrutiny. Not just in the exact details of the code, but in terms of overall approach.
It's not a monoculture. If an approach by one app or service seems to give security issues, maybe people will approach it from another route. Also, because it's not a monoculture, people can come up with alternative solutions, and let the market evolve to choose the best one.
"Binding" does not occur, so applications work as applications, not as part of the operating systems. This should provide more checks and balances.
Because things are not added to be "flavour of the month"/forced upgrades/more revenue channels, there is more chance of long-term stability. People will add the things they need to do their job.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe something about not fighting wars all over the world? I think about all these rich countries without military might like Japan too.
Meanwhile, here in the UK we wade in and spend a ton of cash on wars, and I can't see what further benefit we get over the Canadians or Japanese.
Mostly, I really hate call centres, whether staffed by Ghanains, Brummies or Germans. In business, time is money. Waiting 60 minutes to go through menus to speak to a drongo about something being broken costs me a lot more than spending $5 more on the product in the first place. And then getting decent support where a trained and helpful technician answers.
Well, don't buy it then, or buy from someone else. That's the free market. There's no artificially raised prices except in cartels and monopolies (which exist).
All too often I hear journalists trying to stir things up by telling people that some guy in a sweatshop earns 50c/hour without describe the relative housing and food costs.
I'm not saying people in these countries are super-rich, but earnings have to be put into context.
The funniest thing I see in the UK is people striking because their department is under threat of relocation to India. Like that's really going to score the option of keeping you well.
Most people are happy to sit back with a beer and watch the game.
I write to my Member of Parliament (UK equivalent of congressman I guess) about 3 or 4 times a year I think. Most people don't bother.
A million people in the UK protested in London against the war in Iraq, even though at the time something like 30 million were against it.
It's not about the internet, it's about switching off the TV and writing letters and marching.
Amazon worked because of the massive product range which could never be done in a catalogue. Ebay worked because of the speed. Smaller sites like cybercandy can do better because they can reach a national or global audience for quite a small operation.
Dot coms of sandwich businesses didn't fare well.
Reason: I can get straight to more specialised news columnists, read a ton of stuff and decide what to believe.
I suppose that the crossover into someone paying for it is what hasn't happened yet. Maybe it never will.
Maybe we'll more to a point where people will do what a lot of my friends do - make and play music for pleasure and are glad to just make some beer money from CD sales, and that the conventional market for music will shrink.
Really, if you can pass me some relevant hyperlinks to this, I'd like some very stern words with my MP. How about we only allow Fords and Rovers on the roads?
Really, the government should be pushing people if anywhere towards Open Office, not away from it. Ideally, they'd opt for HTML, but hey ho.
As for your school, how about starting something like an after school activity involving Linux there? It seems to me that students would get much more from it than Windows in terms of teaching the fundamentals (from one who attended clubs involving BBC micros where you had to write everything).
Whether you want to make money or not, if you want to get your work seen, people have to know about it. Maybe word of mouth is the answer, but I've yet to see a song or a movie by a total independent get somewhere by internet word of mouth.
They're independent, about the quality of the music, not hyping some classical "star" by getting them to do hideous pop and rock crossovers (love pop and rock, detest classical crossover!).
Maybe the /. community should start finding these companies and giving them some help?
It's like when you work in a company with internally built middleware to do something. You write an app that talks to said middleware and it fails. You check your code and it looks fine. So, you then check the middleware code and debug it through and voila! there's the bug.
I recently had a problem with a program interfacing with SQL Server. Checked everything over, all looked fine. In the end had to go through an MS checklist. Fortunately, I could resolve it (although the error was unhelpful in guiding me to the problem).
With OSS, you can debug it down, so if you are running and get a fault, you can do one of three things. Nothing, report it or analyse and report it with a resolution. If lots of people around the world are doing this, the quality will just keep going up.
In the MS world, you report a fault, and generally just get a workaround in if you can't really resolve it, or find another approach. Yeah, you can report it to them, but if they don't want to fix it, what are you to do?
It's hard to objectify quality in any way, except to use the test of time. The Beatles are still listened to by people outside their time. People aren't listening to it purely out of nostalgia for when they were growing up, and there's not the whole thing of some music sold as it's part of a movement or reflected attitudes at the time.
Obsure band, but a lot of programming people seem to like them.
The real measure of critical success is the test of time.
However, Toxic is a top tune.
Tend to agree, although things like The Orb and Mozart are fine.
It says "under a million". The point is not about it costing a million, but less than a million.
I'd say that a statement like that is targetted more at the financial guys to say "hey, it's a screw up, but don't get wound up, it's not even a $1 million screw up".
I'd write it again, but this post says a little about the IWF: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115078&cid =9746866
The idea is that if you create a good self-regulating industry body, you prevent govt. interference.
Knowing British censorship laws, and the attitude of UK governments to consenting porn in the past, if the IWF hadn't been set up, they'd have passed laws to get ISPs to block ALL porn including consenting and non-consenting.
This isn't about consenting, sane adults involved in extreme acts that most people would find a bit icky or downright weird. This is about abuse and is wrong.
Using a word like "smut" is just not right in this context. This isn't an extension of regular porn, it's not the line where it ends up (a link which is often insinuated by the the anti-porn brigade). It's abuse.
It's also why having legalised porn for consenting adults is good for protecting children in the same way that legalising and licensing prostitution is. Because it creates a very strong line between consent and non-consent. It also means that for people like the police that anyone operating outside the system is involved in some sick behaviour and not just making some smut movies.
Open source code allows for more scrutiny. Not just in the exact details of the code, but in terms of overall approach.
It's not a monoculture. If an approach by one app or service seems to give security issues, maybe people will approach it from another route. Also, because it's not a monoculture, people can come up with alternative solutions, and let the market evolve to choose the best one.
"Binding" does not occur, so applications work as applications, not as part of the operating systems. This should provide more checks and balances.
Because things are not added to be "flavour of the month"/forced upgrades/more revenue channels, there is more chance of long-term stability. People will add the things they need to do their job.
If there's enough big companies, particularly in the mobile area, there's a chance of big advertising.
I have lots of different sign ons, and would like a single sign-on, if only just for information sites rather than credit card sites.
Small site builders could also benefit from having no need to have their own security databases.
- You have to pay to use it for your site.
- Lots of people don't trust Microsoft's security.
- Some people are concerned about single platform/single corporation.
I'd love to have a single ID.