This post coming out just 2 days after the launch of Microsoft's half-assed Open Source initiative. Word of the day is that proprietary software doesn't get it's due credit, and indeed coming from free software proponents. Microsoft is not making as much money as they'd want at this moment, and this just might be a desperate underhanded attempt at swaying public opinion in favor of their lock-in.
The difference between upgrading the network in the US vs in Japan, is the amount of distance one has to lay cables down on. Japan is nearly half the size of Texas, and the density is such that repeaters are seldom needed. In the US, there are great distances to be covered in laying down any lines because the country is so spread out.
Also, per capita adoption of such an upgrade will be higher in Japan as opposed to the US.
This doesn't mean the American ISPs aren't lazy/inefficient, but merely points to the fact that the US is literally a different playing field, and so you can't completely bridge that gap between $20 and $717.
The market being the way it is today, learning PHP well and doing some work in Drupal and another framework like CakePHP or Symfony will count for a lot. It will show knowledge in relational database modeling as well as programming in PHP, which is not as unsexy as hardcore programmers will tell you. Add some experience of Linux and Apache administration, and you've got yourself the silver-est bullet in the market. You'll be able to deploy networked database applications rapidly given nothing else but a computer and an internet connection.
Of course, learning something that compiles better like C#,C,C++ and Java is not a bad idea, either. The only problem is that you would end up spending more time learning at home, the same time that could've been spent working in a real shop solving real problems. In the end, a good carpenter is not the one who can use the best tool or a variety of tools, but one who can build you a strong and good looking table using as little materials and time, and asking as few questions as possible (I recommend reading A Message to Garcia). I think the carpenter rule applies to programming as well. Most people don't care what language you make software in, as long as it is stable, functional, usable and does its job effectively. PHP allows you to hit these targets relatively quickly, so, I recommend it.
If you'd like to learn a language that has high unmet demand for programmers and lands you in a relatively secure job doing cool stuff, I suggest you learn Lisp. If you 'master' Lisp, you can learn Scheme, Lua, Haskell, OCaml, or almost any other language with relative ease. But, note that the Lisp track is lengthier and will keep you at home jobless longer than Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
Another useful idea is to start your own Open Source project or work with an ongoing one. Employers look at it favorably, the chicks dig it, and you contribute directly to the sum total of human intelligence. You also get to keep your hair long, your armpits smelly, and can get away with keeping non-keyboard human interaction to a minimum.
Actually, you could combine user validation with IP address blocking to create a solution that works for remote (away from hope IP address range) users. In this case, it would translate to: Local users get in normally, remote users see a login/register page and they can register after passing a small quiz about the local area that the site is in(how far is Foo mountain from Bar town? what's the best district to eat a FooBurger in?).
Casual trolls won't pass the quiz or care to go through it and actual users will have incentive to create user accounts.
This is what I've been doing for The Confessionals ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confessionals ) and has worked very well so far.
You can allow the website to be usable only by certain IP addresses. One way to do this would be to find out IP address ranges for all ISPs in your area, and allow only those. Another would be to filter by Country/City information about each IP address that you can get using GeoIPLocation or something similar. Also, having a good CAPTCHA will help you avoid some of those unnecessary users.
I'm right in the epicenter of the whole radio revolution in India. My town just got FM radio that broadcasts the latest music for 'FREE!!'. Everyone's going crazy over FM radio sets because this is a cheap and excellent form of entertainment here. Hell, I don't touch iTunes when I have access to an FM player because they always play good music. Since there's a general lack of genres in Indian music, this works fine because good music is mostly good, and bad music and mostly bad. It's just like the iPod revolution in America - except people are carrying red, flourescent, yellow, green, white, and blue earphones because FM radios come in all colours.
To have visual data to go along with the audio will attract cellphone users in India where almost everyone carries a cellphone. Many would not mind paying a small fee for it, especially in this booming economy. Indians are buying Honda Accords for 36000 dollars and paying 4.50 dollars per gallon for gas, and the land rates are skyrocketing.
I've been using Mozilla Sunbird and iCal hosting (icalx.com) for a while - it does to-do's and calendars pretty well, synchronizing back and forth. After a lot of searching and trying things out, this seemed to work the best for me. Also, there's a new Outlook plugin called Remote Calendars (http://sourceforge.net/projects/remotecalendars/) which does the same thing as Sunbird on Outlook. The only downside here is the lack of SSH, but I figured being able to read and update my calendar from any PC, and read my calendar from just about anything, and having my calendar in a standard format for my iPod is totally worth the lack of security.
I'm an Indian and a very patriotic one. I think the parent has a good point and I agree with it. Even though the outsourcing industry doesn't affect our economy in a major way, it still cannot be counted as negligible. The parent does not imply that we're all snake-charmers or anything of that sort.
Economic disparity is still huge in India, and the gap doesn't seem to be narrowing at all.
Outsourcing is good but it is not exactly making us a richer country as a whole. It is giving money in the hands of the rich few, who then end up buying all the american/western stuff they can with it. It all just comes around.
It's a good move because the size of our population. I heard from a government employee who worked in the state elections that Ballot stuffing is common. One of the leading parties is actually paying election workers to 'press the button' for them on the machines. This was not so convenient before. This happened in the state elections for sure, and will probably happen in the nationals too. The market for illegally made 'homebrew' weapons (costing as less as $30) is flourishing as the election arrives. Efforts have been made for security of election booths, but it's doubtful how security will fare against bribes. The routine election-season killings have already started. On the whole, introducing e-voting in India is like throwing water in a puddle of mud - you can move faster in it, but it makes you much dirteir all the same.
Mr.Szulik, what do you plan to do about RHCE certification? Will the non-enterprise certifications still hold any significance? or are you coming up with certification for Fedora?
Slashdot Mirror
This post coming out just 2 days after the launch of Microsoft's half-assed Open Source initiative. Word of the day is that proprietary software doesn't get it's due credit, and indeed coming from free software proponents. Microsoft is not making as much money as they'd want at this moment, and this just might be a desperate underhanded attempt at swaying public opinion in favor of their lock-in.
The difference between upgrading the network in the US vs in Japan, is the amount of distance one has to lay cables down on. Japan is nearly half the size of Texas, and the density is such that repeaters are seldom needed. In the US, there are great distances to be covered in laying down any lines because the country is so spread out.
Also, per capita adoption of such an upgrade will be higher in Japan as opposed to the US.
This doesn't mean the American ISPs aren't lazy/inefficient, but merely points to the fact that the US is literally a different playing field, and so you can't completely bridge that gap between $20 and $717.
The market being the way it is today, learning PHP well and doing some work in Drupal and another framework like CakePHP or Symfony will count for a lot. It will show knowledge in relational database modeling as well as programming in PHP, which is not as unsexy as hardcore programmers will tell you. Add some experience of Linux and Apache administration, and you've got yourself the silver-est bullet in the market. You'll be able to deploy networked database applications rapidly given nothing else but a computer and an internet connection.
Of course, learning something that compiles better like C#,C,C++ and Java is not a bad idea, either. The only problem is that you would end up spending more time learning at home, the same time that could've been spent working in a real shop solving real problems. In the end, a good carpenter is not the one who can use the best tool or a variety of tools, but one who can build you a strong and good looking table using as little materials and time, and asking as few questions as possible (I recommend reading A Message to Garcia). I think the carpenter rule applies to programming as well. Most people don't care what language you make software in, as long as it is stable, functional, usable and does its job effectively. PHP allows you to hit these targets relatively quickly, so, I recommend it.
If you'd like to learn a language that has high unmet demand for programmers and lands you in a relatively secure job doing cool stuff, I suggest you learn Lisp. If you 'master' Lisp, you can learn Scheme, Lua, Haskell, OCaml, or almost any other language with relative ease. But, note that the Lisp track is lengthier and will keep you at home jobless longer than Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
Another useful idea is to start your own Open Source project or work with an ongoing one. Employers look at it favorably, the chicks dig it, and you contribute directly to the sum total of human intelligence. You also get to keep your hair long, your armpits smelly, and can get away with keeping non-keyboard human interaction to a minimum.
Actually, you could combine user validation with IP address blocking to create a solution that works for remote (away from hope IP address range) users. In this case, it would translate to: Local users get in normally, remote users see a login/register page and they can register after passing a small quiz about the local area that the site is in(how far is Foo mountain from Bar town? what's the best district to eat a FooBurger in?). Casual trolls won't pass the quiz or care to go through it and actual users will have incentive to create user accounts. This is what I've been doing for The Confessionals ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confessionals ) and has worked very well so far.
You can allow the website to be usable only by certain IP addresses. One way to do this would be to find out IP address ranges for all ISPs in your area, and allow only those. Another would be to filter by Country/City information about each IP address that you can get using GeoIPLocation or something similar. Also, having a good CAPTCHA will help you avoid some of those unnecessary users.
I'm right in the epicenter of the whole radio revolution in India. My town just got FM radio that broadcasts the latest music for 'FREE!!'. Everyone's going crazy over FM radio sets because this is a cheap and excellent form of entertainment here. Hell, I don't touch iTunes when I have access to an FM player because they always play good music. Since there's a general lack of genres in Indian music, this works fine because good music is mostly good, and bad music and mostly bad. It's just like the iPod revolution in America - except people are carrying red, flourescent, yellow, green, white, and blue earphones because FM radios come in all colours. To have visual data to go along with the audio will attract cellphone users in India where almost everyone carries a cellphone. Many would not mind paying a small fee for it, especially in this booming economy. Indians are buying Honda Accords for 36000 dollars and paying 4.50 dollars per gallon for gas, and the land rates are skyrocketing.
I've been using Mozilla Sunbird and iCal hosting (icalx.com) for a while - it does to-do's and calendars pretty well, synchronizing back and forth. After a lot of searching and trying things out, this seemed to work the best for me. Also, there's a new Outlook plugin called Remote Calendars (http://sourceforge.net/projects/remotecalendars/) which does the same thing as Sunbird on Outlook.
The only downside here is the lack of SSH, but I figured being able to read and update my calendar from any PC, and read my calendar from just about anything, and having my calendar in a standard format for my iPod is totally worth the lack of security.
first post!
I'm an Indian and a very patriotic one. I think the parent has a good point and I agree with it. Even though the outsourcing industry doesn't affect our economy in a major way, it still cannot be counted as negligible. The parent does not imply that we're all snake-charmers or anything of that sort. Economic disparity is still huge in India, and the gap doesn't seem to be narrowing at all. Outsourcing is good but it is not exactly making us a richer country as a whole. It is giving money in the hands of the rich few, who then end up buying all the american/western stuff they can with it. It all just comes around.
It's a good move because the size of our population. I heard from a government employee who worked in the state elections that Ballot stuffing is common. One of the leading parties is actually paying election workers to 'press the button' for them on the machines. This was not so convenient before. This happened in the state elections for sure, and will probably happen in the nationals too. The market for illegally made 'homebrew' weapons (costing as less as $30) is flourishing as the election arrives. Efforts have been made for security of election booths, but it's doubtful how security will fare against bribes. The routine election-season killings have already started. On the whole, introducing e-voting in India is like throwing water in a puddle of mud - you can move faster in it, but it makes you much dirteir all the same.
Mr.Szulik, what do you plan to do about RHCE certification? Will the non-enterprise certifications still hold any significance? or are you coming up with certification for Fedora?