Probably the most underrated ergonomic mouse in my opinion. Inexpensive, reasonably sturdy, large trackball, can be used with both hands. I have tried quite a few of the mice mentioned there, but nothing comes close to the comfort and accuracy of this. Also I find that my control is better when I manipulate the trackball with my index and middle finger rather than my thumb.
I don't think there is any value in deletionpedia or any similar repository. Just because you/anybody else/I have something to say does not make it relevant or useful. There is certainly an argument to be made regarding the meaningfulness of that statement when applied to a 'crowd-sourced' and moderated compendium of information. However I am far more comfortable with the idea of a for-the-most-part-ok yet flawed system rather than allow every idiot a soapbox. The latter seems to affect MSM in this country quite a bit and we all know how that is going.
Every time I see a discussion or article (there are too many to count nowadays) with the words, god, religion, hypothesis, testable conjecture, evidence, science and other sundry scientific and religious words, it wonder why it so hard for people to understand that they are comparing apples and oranges.
The way I see it, you cannot possibly use science to prove or disprove the existence of God or use god to explain away real, hard-earned scientific evidence. One is a matter of knowledge and the other is a matter of belief. A more formal treatment of the differences between belief and knowledge if you are so inclined (after all this is slashdot..)
Its not that hard a concept to grasp, but admittedly it's quite hard to stfu when somebody who does not see it that way goes off, especially a hardcore fanatic or for that matter dawkins (just a wee bit though..).
You do realize that every piece of plastic that you use is made from some form of refined crude oil. So EVER is a very big word when used in this context. You DO use gasoline (well it's parent - but the money goes into the same fat bastard pockets). So I suggest that you stop being so high and mighty about wants and needs and concentrate on simply educating people about options to what they 'feel' that they 'need'.
Ok you fuck up, let me explain this to you again. H1-B/green cards are not the problem, offshoring is. And guess what nationality are most of the guys who make the decisions regarding offshoring??.... Nope you got it wrong, again! its americans.
I have mentioned this previously and I will mention this again, H1-Bs and green card recipients CANNOT be paid less than an equivalent american worker. The very first thing you need to do for applying an H1-B is get a prevailing wage certificate (http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/wages.cfm) . As stated there currently any wages to an H1-B has to be AT LEAST 100% (used to be 95%) of the prevailing wages. So H1-Bs are NOT cheap, in most cases they are MORE expensive. Add to that legal fees, immigration fees, premium processing fees, relocation , etc. etc. and it comes out to be a pretty large overhead. One can certainly make the claim that the prevailing wages as calculated are lower than on the ground, but in most cases, you can only get the certificate from either the state EDD or erieri.com, both of whose stats are usually gathered by, guess who? americans.
The requirements for a green card _application_ are even more stringent. However once a person gets a green card he/she is considered to be on par with an american citizen as far as employment. Add to that the fact that all H1-Bs pay SSN and FICA taxes and a sizable ~20% of them do go home without getting any of the benefits - ever. In theory (last I read you had to pay SSN taxes for at least 10 years to qualify - but apparently that has changed) they should be able to, but I would be very surprised that most people who return even know or care.
MS moving things to canada does not make things cheaper for them. Canada has its own immigration mess to deal with (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/washington/27po ints.html?ex=1183867200&en=23a744b684b092c4&ei=507 0). Even though they don't have caps, from what I have heard and read (http://www.calgarysun.com/cgi-bin/publish.cgi?p=1 72853&x=articles&s=lifestyle) (http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/) (+ an NY Times article that I cannot seem to find) canada has large number of qualified people who cannot get/do jobs that they are qualified for due to the set of rules that are applicable there. At some time there was a comment doing that rounds that Canada had the largest number of taxi drivers with PhDs.
I realize that this is slashdot and knowledge or even a shred of information is not a pre-requisite for posting, however before spewing hateful tripe disguised as nationalist socialism, at least research as to who the real trouble-makers are. You should be far more afraid of the manager who thinks off-shoring is the panacea for the problem caused by his/her gross incompetence/lack of ability to compete, than of the lowly H1-B. You should also be worried about your own lack of knowledge regarding the decision makers who have the ability to change your life radically (Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer - Sun-tzu) You cannot even identify who to fight against, yet you seem to think that asinine comments like yours are contributing to the cause.
Honestly I am sick and tired of people ranting about '4 year degrees' from India and incompetent or unqualified programmers/workers from India. The very same people whose ideas about India are pretty much restricted to the Taj Mahal and Bangalore in spite of the fact that they could not point out both their locations on a map of India the size of the empire state building with both places marked in 2000pt arial black.
4 year degrees in India are _not_ like 2 year boot camps, they are quite focused, well designed and well executed programs, and I did not even go to an IIT or a tier 1 school in India! Education in India is quite difficult, simply because of the extreme competition every student faces from the 100 million other students, the fact that the coursework is tougher does play some part though. Parents are focused on education and education only, hence the complete insignificance of college/university level sports and/or other activities. The problem you guys face is that its too damn expensive here. My entire college expenses, including living away from home was approx. $1200. As a result almost anybody who can make the cut can afford it. So dont blame the Indian education system for the lack of a job inspite of your expensive education.
Regarding incompetent, inexperienced workers, well considering the large number of qualified workers produced, per the law of averages quite a few will be bad programmers, and stating that its an Indian issue, is not only unfair, its blatantly uninformed. The same statistics apply everywhere. The number of absolutely incompetent American/western programmers I have seen is quite unbelievable considering their '$100,000' education. At least Indian universities do not charge that much for a job screwed up (well some do, but they are usually reserved to educate Indians residing in the US).
Re: Only drudge work gets outsourced, of course on/. you only hear about programming/IT outsourcing, but if you actually watched some 'news' instead of relying on a bunch of bloggers alone, you might realize that its not just call centers and programming shops, a whole bunch of financial analytics work, medical diagnostic work, even Hollywood animation stuff gets outsourced to India. And oh btw re: the comment about paralegals and drudge work, find out how much a paralegal with your experience makes, and you will realize the futility of your chosen vocation to provide you with a reasonable income.
I agree that quite a few outsourcing projects failed miserably. However AFAIK in most cases they fail not because of incompetent Indian workers but simply because the it being applied to the wrong fucking problem. You cant just use a tool/process willy-nilly because its inexpensive and expect it succeed. On the other hand I know of quite a few that succeeded in spite of that. Go figure!
The comment regarding the infrastructure issues are correct, however that does not seem to have stopped organizations from delivering. BPO providers have usually figured out ways to deal with government incompetence, and will continue to do so until the Indian govt. gets off their lazy asses and does something about it. Fortunately or unfortunately we have a _real_ multi-party democracy which means things get done slowly but when they get done they get done right.
when the googlebar extension works great, appears to be more customizable (less features though, but who cares, I only use 5% of them anyways), frill free and prolly doesnt latch onto my gmail logon...
Everytime something like this comes up, I get tired of whiners on the WinBox side and the zealots on the LinBox side.
<rant> So here goes my rant at them:
To the whiners: 1. For almost every windows app that you use, there is a reasonably comparable OSS solution. Sure it may not be frilly, with clippy and all, but 'it just works'. A lot of people have gone to great lengths to get that to you so stop bitching that it doesnt have a cute button.
2. Installation is not that hard. Suse, Fedora and even Ubuntu have very straightforward installers, Ubuntu inspite of being text based is more easier than the XP Pro setup. The fact that you cannot get it pre-installed is due to your shopping preferences not because of lack of trying.
3. Stop complaining about./configure, make, Suse has Yast, Ubuntu has Synaptic and FC4 has yum. The first two are point and click apps. Between them they provide more apps than the number of hair follicles on you head. So if you find yourself in a position to use./configure, make, make install maybe you need to spend more time learning what the fuck you are doing instead of complaining that the app is not packaged for your pkg manager.
To the zealots: 1. Linux is definitely not ready for primetime. Although I am impressed with the leaps it has made in the past three years, it still has a long way to go. A uniform, consistent look and feel would go a long way. Open standards stop mattering when there are 200 fucking standards.
2. Development of a set of recommended apps across all distros based on the quality and stability of the app. At some point of time there gets to be too much choice. I dont want to spend 3 hours deciding which apps I want/or have 8 image viewers installed. I do that at the grocery store anyway. A set of recognized 'good' apps, which are installed by default would be great.
3. Write your own damn app is not an option. The community is great at providing tech support to newbies (despite constant references to RTFM by WinGizers), how about taking a request from a non-programmer newbie and starting a new project, hell the non-programmer could even manage the project and contribute in his/her capacity as they can. </rant>
At the end of the day, AFAIK it all comes down to whether or not you willing to change. I heard this great series on NPR during the election where the interviewer kept in touch and talked to a doc(R) in Cincinatti about who he was voting for and why. After weeks of conversation the doc realized that he hated Bush and that the Dem ideology was closer to his. However when asked who he would vote for he kind of went for the radio analogy of 'but.. but.. I have always voted Rep.' If you are like him and unwilling to change (Rep or Dem doesnt matter, all politicians hand out BS, its just a real example, thats all) it really wont matter if Linux changed overnight to be the most user friendly, hw compatible os. So before you come out here and bitch one way or another stop for sec and think, do you (or the person you are responding to) really want to switch to Linux.
" Sounds like he wants a bunch of foreign workers who wouldn't quibble over a $20,000-30,000 salary where a US coder would expect a bit more."
When was the last time you even got to know about how foreign workers on H1-Bs are employed and paid. I get tired of this typically ignorant bullshit everytime the foreign workers issue comes up. FYI, everytime a visa is granted, the applicant/employer has to get a prevailing wage certificate either from the state EDD or agencies like www.erieri.com, whoch cost about $350-$450 for a single page with three lines of typed text. These certificates state the prevailing wage for the position for which the employer wants to hire, which includes the min, median and max. The data for that is calculated every year or every other year, depending on the survey by polling employers for specific geographical areas. The applicant/employer then HAS to pay the foreign worker at least 5% more than the minimum in the certificate. Without this the application for a visa will not even get accepted. Get your fucking facts straight before you go off on the $20,000 salary.
Moreover the very same foreign worker has to pay social security, income and FICA taxes which he will probably never get to use. H1-B terms are a max of six years (extensible under very special circumstances) and AFAIK, to collect on social security foreign workers need to have paid taxes for at least 10 years in the US. At least they come in legally and contribute to the society that provides them the opportunity, inspite of the fact that the american (for that matter most western) immigration processes are quite demeaning to most third world applicants, not to mention stupid and farcical. It considers every application an application for immigration and then they have to walk in to the interview and convince the colsulate that they dont want to immigrate (wtf!!!).
People like you seem to like globalization only as long as it profits your fat asses at the expense of some third world or developing country. The moment it threatens you, you whine. Capitalism/free markets are a double edged sword, they can cut off your head just as easily as make a path for you to prosperity. Is it the foreign workers fault that half the country chose a self centered ass whose understanding of free markets and competition are limited to nepotism bordering on corruption? This administration is the reason why you dont have or did not have till recently a job, not the foreign worker. Its called competition, its here to stay and it can only grow more fierce. Learn to live and adapt with it.
I have a couple of friends who work for companies based in China. One makes textiles and the other plastic toys. The manufacturing is all done there, however the IT and business software is developed here. From what I hear, its quite trivial to bypass that firewall. All you need to know is the right person and the right price, and you can have all the unfettered access you want. Of course two examples doesnt prove the fact, but I am sure a lot of companies engage in such tactics. The end result is that the comman man is screwed , as always.
However I do wonder how multinationals operating in China, make sure that there data and IP (I know, I know.. but there is more to IP than just software, music, movies and books) developed in China is not pirated off by some admin being paid crap? I guess if you are Walmart you could bribe your way through it and not even notice it (also given the ethics of Walmart I wouldnt put it past them), but you would also present a target ten times the size of the proverbial barn.
Moreover no matter, how effective the firewall, there really is no way to prevent information from seeping through one way or another. One key to the seepage is right here: "China employs thousands officials and private citizens to build". All it takes is one disgruntled guy. And I bet there are hundreds of those in the IT army managing the firewall, no matter what the consequences. And information has always been the key. I believe that its this seepage of information that will be the key to a more free China. Maybe I am being optimistic but having seen the effects of availability of information in rural India, which is just as badly economically exploited in India as in China (human rights, thankfully not as badly though), I have some reason to be.
" Pacifism only works against an oppressor that has a conscience."
I am sorry but thats, quite frankly, bullshit. Pacifism (or non-violent protest - they are different, but you seem to see them as the same) works not because of the oppressor's conscience (which almost always is absent), but because of the conscience of his/her peers, which can lead to quite a bit of trouble, especially if you are a government. A great example are both India and South Africa. Do you really believe that after 200 years of oppression in India the British suddenly grew a conscience. No. There were serious economic reasons as well as the growing unpopularity of imperialism, especially after WWII (which ostensably was fought in the interest of freedom and justise) which made an imperialist attitude on part of the Brits untenable.
I hope you do realize the difference between non-violent protest and pacifism, something most republicans dont seem to understand. Pacifism is the idea that non-violence will work. It does not imply, or require the use of non-violent protest, its just an idea. Would non-violent protest have worked with the Nazis? I dont know, however that does not necessarily mean that it wouldnt have.
And why does violence have to be a bargaining tactic. Do you really think it matters to someone who is desperate and really determined? Didnt seem to faze Saddam and he at least seemed to be scared of death. No amount of violence on the US' part would have stopped the 20 men from flying into the towers. It was violence by proxy (US support of the house of saud) that created them in the first place. It sure as hell has nt worked with the Chechens in Russia. It can only breed violence. And its not a position or show of weakness. It takes far greater courage to make a stand and take a hit than to hit back.
During Gandhi's salt march, when protesters did reach the flats, they just walked up to the guards and were struck down again and again until the guards tired. The protesters were more numerous, it would have been a peice of cake to beat the crap out of the guards, but it would not have served the purpose of gaining the higher ethical ground, and highlighting the cruelty. Do you think you could have stood there, watching a line of people, go up before you, being struck down, bleeding and then walked up there to recieve the same fate?
Considering violence as an option, even as a last resort is easy, its convenient for people who would rather not tax their brains a bit to get to a longer lasting, non-violent solution. Its easy to hit back. Its easy to say - they left us no choice. Its easy to unleash a slew of weapons and watch it on TV, not experiencing the plight of the dead/injured or the soldiers who have to inflict the damage. Its easy to say - oh it wouldnt have worked. The reason why Gandhi, Mandela, King are considered to be great men because they took the hard road, they thought and had the courage and the resolve to see through a non-violent.
Thats 'set top box' for those not in the know. They paid me and my roommate 50 bucks for every six months we had it and handed us a remote. Everytime one of us turned on the TV, the person(s) were supposed to press a number on the remote. If there were any outsiders, they were to press yet another number. We kind of did it for about a week, after that we sort of _lost_ the remote. And its crap anyway. My roomie would leave CSPAN on all day and night on Saturday just to _quote_ fuck with the eggheads... with MBA's _quote_. Since then I have met a two more people who had the STBs and did pretty much the same, although their sentiments regarding that were expressed differently.
And I still havent figured out how they can extrapolate from the miniscule (relatively speaking) slice of society that they listen in on (a large %age of whom would most probably behave like us). I am no expert in polling, but even assuming that they have a statistically relevant set of subjects as in a scientific poll, it still seems flaky at best. And yes I know that estimating properties/behaviors on a collection is far easier and more accurate than estimating properties of an individual entities. Its just that humans are not atomic particles who have to obey the laws of physics, and AFAIK group pschycology still has some way to go.
I do not doubt the fundamental correctness of their assumptions, algorithms and techniques, but somehow I have a feeling that someone quite like Karl Rove figured out that they could fleece a shitload of money off of PHBs in tv land by using fancy math/science words, which they knew the PHBs wouldnt understand (and probably wouldnt care about), while promising them the marketing dept's holy grail, did it, and are still getting away with it.
How can any form of biometric software (os or otherwise) be 'good'?
The way I see and understand it, it will never be perfect, not because humans are not smart enough to come up with innovative uses of a techonology but simply because the human body which provides the biometric information in the first place is a living, breathing, evolving, ever-changing entity. Moreover I just happen to believe that we as humans, being so error prone, can never come up with a fool proof system, irrespective of what a whole bunch of govt agencies would like us to believe.
Given all of that what scares me is not the fact that these technologies will be error-prone forever but that there will be no humans around to arbitrate any conflicts/problems in most situations (as is wont to happen when ppl start to take a system for granted). I really wouldnt want to be in a position becase a machine/system/software suddenly decides I am a terrorist because my thumb prints are obscured, because I play too many games using a fucked up pad, and taking 'pre-emptive' action.
Just because the system will be FOSS and a few million eyes will be watching the arch/code does not mean it will be perfect. And at what point of time do we say - 'Oh crap! this is not going to work.'; when a person dies, two ppl die, two thousand non-first-world ppl die?? And assuming ppl do get tech savvy, and put up monitors (the human kind) we come back to the same old question of who monitors the monitors??
A simple illustration of the problem is the use of ppl (too many, some would claim) in airports in Israel, India, Malaysia and a bunch of other countries which have problems with violent extremism (I hate the word terrorist - but thats a whole another story) and cant spend 10 mill USD per machine for 10 machines per airport. Their record regarding security breaches is a whole lot better then some of the most advanced western airports with some of the most advanced gizmos. It works simply because of redundancy, training, experience and human judgement, three of which a machine can probably never replicate fully.
Give me ppl any damn time. -- I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information. -Bill Watterson
Go and get one here: http://www.pricewatch.com/h/mn.aspx?i=336&f =1
However I have always wondered as to how joe system builder down the street handles the whole non-oem windows thing?
Does he/she buy a separate copy and pass the cost to the buyer or get into one of those blood sucking never dying vampiry volume licensing agreements with M$?
I first heard about it close to 12:00M PST while surfing.
What was interesting was the news coverage the next morning (disclaimer: I woke up at @ 9:00). Wolf Blitzer was going off about the 10 top news-worthy things in 04 (of course 9 of them had to do with the US), Paula Zahn went off about some reverend making boatloads of money off of G and there wasnt even an obligatory mention (screen-bottom tickers don't count) of an event that resulted in (unofficial) a deathtoll close to 11,500 (last BBC estimate). The only place I got to see anything about it on TV was an obscure (to me at least) channel called News World Intl. (366 on DirectTV) where CBC and then something called the German Journal talked about this most of the time. Of course the BBC was kind enough to provide a lo-rez video feed, but I still dont understand the complete glossing over of such an incident. Is it that unless americans die, the american media wont cover it? Seems foolhardy... but then it is the US. Nothing's unexpected. And of course I still dont know why the BBC World service is not available in the US.
--
Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous? -- Calvin (Bill Watterson)
Seems to me that the whole thrust is going towards pre-emption of anything considered 'dangerous' by anybody. The problem I see is that the whole concept of pre-emption (incl. wars) is at cross-purposes with the notion of a free and fair society. IMHO by its very nature a free and fair society can only be a reactive society, or else we could very easily descend into a Minority Report situation (which I am sure a lot of muslims and arabs in the US are already experiencing). And the problem with prohibition of any sort (be it flash mobs, texting, etc.) is that historically its never worked. If only our politicians paid a little more attention to history... yea I know that wishful thinking but a bit of what if never hurt anybody...
Slashdot Mirror
brake pads: -200 $
tires: -200 $
gas: -1000 $
wipers: -20 $
oil: -400 $
filter: -40 $
wash/clean: -300 $
other: -400 $
20-40 min power nap that leaves me fresh and ready to play with my 2 yr old when I get home: PRICELESS
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers/trackballs/devices/156&cl=us,en
Probably the most underrated ergonomic mouse in my opinion. Inexpensive, reasonably sturdy, large trackball, can be used with both hands. I have tried quite a few of the mice mentioned there, but nothing comes close to the comfort and accuracy of this. Also I find that my control is better when I manipulate the trackball with my index and middle finger rather than my thumb.
I don't think there is any value in deletionpedia or any similar repository. Just because you/anybody else/I have something to say does not make it relevant or useful. There is certainly an argument to be made regarding the meaningfulness of that statement when applied to a 'crowd-sourced' and moderated compendium of information. However I am far more comfortable with the idea of a for-the-most-part-ok yet flawed system rather than allow every idiot a soapbox. The latter seems to affect MSM in this country quite a bit and we all know how that is going.
Every time I see a discussion or article (there are too many to count nowadays) with the words, god, religion, hypothesis, testable conjecture, evidence, science and other sundry scientific and religious words, it wonder why it so hard for people to understand that they are comparing apples and oranges.
The way I see it, you cannot possibly use science to prove or disprove the existence of God or use god to explain away real, hard-earned scientific evidence. One is a matter of knowledge and the other is a matter of belief. A more formal treatment of the differences between belief and knowledge if you are so inclined (after all this is slashdot..)
Its not that hard a concept to grasp, but admittedly it's quite hard to stfu when somebody who does not see it that way goes off, especially a hardcore fanatic or for that matter dawkins (just a wee bit though..).
You do realize that every piece of plastic that you use is made from some form of refined crude oil. So EVER is a very big word when used in this context. You DO use gasoline (well it's parent - but the money goes into the same fat bastard pockets). So I suggest that you stop being so high and mighty about wants and needs and concentrate on simply educating people about options to what they 'feel' that they 'need'.
Ok you fuck up, let me explain this to you again. H1-B/green cards are not the problem, offshoring is. And guess what nationality are most of the guys who make the decisions regarding offshoring??.... Nope you got it wrong, again! its americans.
) . As stated there currently any wages to an H1-B has to be AT LEAST 100% (used to be 95%) of the prevailing wages. So H1-Bs are NOT cheap, in most cases they are MORE expensive. Add to that legal fees, immigration fees, premium processing fees, relocation , etc. etc. and it comes out to be a pretty large overhead. One can certainly make the claim that the prevailing wages as calculated are lower than on the ground, but in most cases, you can only get the certificate from either the state EDD or erieri.com, both of whose stats are usually gathered by, guess who? americans.
o ints.html?ex=1183867200&en=23a744b684b092c4&ei=507 0). Even though they don't have caps, from what I have heard and read (http://www.calgarysun.com/cgi-bin/publish.cgi?p=1 72853&x=articles&s=lifestyle) (http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/) (+ an NY Times article that I cannot seem to find) canada has large number of qualified people who cannot get/do jobs that they are qualified for due to the set of rules that are applicable there. At some time there was a comment doing that rounds that Canada had the largest number of taxi drivers with PhDs.
I have mentioned this previously and I will mention this again, H1-Bs and green card recipients CANNOT be paid less than an equivalent american worker. The very first thing you need to do for applying an H1-B is get a prevailing wage certificate (http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/wages.cfm
The requirements for a green card _application_ are even more stringent. However once a person gets a green card he/she is considered to be on par with an american citizen as far as employment. Add to that the fact that all H1-Bs pay SSN and FICA taxes and a sizable ~20% of them do go home without getting any of the benefits - ever. In theory (last I read you had to pay SSN taxes for at least 10 years to qualify - but apparently that has changed) they should be able to, but I would be very surprised that most people who return even know or care.
MS moving things to canada does not make things cheaper for them. Canada has its own immigration mess to deal with (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/washington/27p
I realize that this is slashdot and knowledge or even a shred of information is not a pre-requisite for posting, however before spewing hateful tripe disguised as nationalist socialism, at least research as to who the real trouble-makers are. You should be far more afraid of the manager who thinks off-shoring is the panacea for the problem caused by his/her gross incompetence/lack of ability to compete, than of the lowly H1-B. You should also be worried about your own lack of knowledge regarding the decision makers who have the ability to change your life radically (Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer - Sun-tzu) You cannot even identify who to fight against, yet you seem to think that asinine comments like yours are contributing to the cause.
== bangs head against wall - repeatedly ==
AZ
Honestly I am sick and tired of people ranting about '4 year degrees' from India and incompetent or unqualified programmers/workers from India. The very same people whose ideas about India are pretty much restricted to the Taj Mahal and Bangalore in spite of the fact that they could not point out both their locations on a map of India the size of the empire state building with both places marked in 2000pt arial black.
/. you only hear about programming/IT outsourcing, but if you actually watched some 'news' instead of relying on a bunch of bloggers alone, you might realize that its not just call centers and programming shops, a whole bunch of financial analytics work, medical diagnostic work, even Hollywood animation stuff gets outsourced to India. And oh btw re: the comment about paralegals and drudge work, find out how much a paralegal with your experience makes, and you will realize the futility of your chosen vocation to provide you with a reasonable income.
n tern.php0 810india.htm0 .html
/.
4 year degrees in India are _not_ like 2 year boot camps, they are quite focused, well designed and well executed programs, and I did not even go to an IIT or a tier 1 school in India! Education in India is quite difficult, simply because of the extreme competition every student faces from the 100 million other students, the fact that the coursework is tougher does play some part though. Parents are focused on education and education only, hence the complete insignificance of college/university level sports and/or other activities. The problem you guys face is that its too damn expensive here. My entire college expenses, including living away from home was approx. $1200. As a result almost anybody who can make the cut can afford it. So dont blame the Indian education system for the lack of a job inspite of your expensive education.
Regarding incompetent, inexperienced workers, well considering the large number of qualified workers produced, per the law of averages quite a few will be bad programmers, and stating that its an Indian issue, is not only unfair, its blatantly uninformed. The same statistics apply everywhere. The number of absolutely incompetent American/western programmers I have seen is quite unbelievable considering their '$100,000' education. At least Indian universities do not charge that much for a job screwed up (well some do, but they are usually reserved to educate Indians residing in the US).
Re: Only drudge work gets outsourced, of course on
I agree that quite a few outsourcing projects failed miserably. However AFAIK in most cases they fail not because of incompetent Indian workers but simply because the it being applied to the wrong fucking problem. You cant just use a tool/process willy-nilly because its inexpensive and expect it succeed. On the other hand I know of quite a few that succeeded in spite of that. Go figure!
The comment regarding the infrastructure issues are correct, however that does not seem to have stopped organizations from delivering. BPO providers have usually figured out ways to deal with government incompetence, and will continue to do so until the Indian govt. gets off their lazy asses and does something about it. Fortunately or unfortunately we have a _real_ multi-party democracy which means things get done slowly but when they get done they get done right.
Finally you might be surprised to know that there are Americans interning in India:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/10/business/i
http://www.uh.edu/ednews/2005/nytimes/200508/2005
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,47435,0
So before you go off on India and Indians take step back and actually bother to find out wtf you are talking about, even if you are posting on
You do realize that most of the world spells it that way....
when the googlebar extension works great, appears to be more customizable (less features though, but who cares, I only use 5% of them anyways), frill free and prolly doesnt latch onto my gmail logon...
Ever heard of --prefix....
Everytime something like this comes up, I get tired of whiners on the WinBox side and the zealots on the LinBox side.
./configure, make, Suse has Yast, Ubuntu has Synaptic and FC4 has yum. The first two are point and click apps. Between them they provide more apps than the number of hair follicles on you head. So if you find yourself in a position to use ./configure, make, make install maybe you need to spend more time learning what the fuck you are doing instead of complaining that the app is not packaged for your pkg manager.
<rant>
So here goes my rant at them:
To the whiners:
1. For almost every windows app that you use, there is a reasonably comparable OSS solution. Sure it may not be frilly, with clippy and all, but 'it just works'. A lot of people have gone to great lengths to get that to you so stop bitching that it doesnt have a cute button.
2. Installation is not that hard. Suse, Fedora and even Ubuntu have very straightforward installers, Ubuntu inspite of being text based is more easier than the XP Pro setup. The fact that you cannot get it pre-installed is due to your shopping preferences not because of lack of trying.
3. Stop complaining about
To the zealots:
1. Linux is definitely not ready for primetime. Although I am impressed with the leaps it has made in the past three years, it still has a long way to go. A uniform, consistent look and feel would go a long way. Open standards stop mattering when there are 200 fucking standards.
2. Development of a set of recommended apps across all distros based on the quality and stability of the app. At some point of time there gets to be too much choice. I dont want to spend 3 hours deciding which apps I want/or have 8 image viewers installed. I do that at the grocery store anyway. A set of recognized 'good' apps, which are installed by default would be great.
3. Write your own damn app is not an option. The community is great at providing tech support to newbies (despite constant references to RTFM by WinGizers), how about taking a request from a non-programmer newbie and starting a new project, hell the non-programmer could even manage the project and contribute in his/her capacity as they can.
</rant>
At the end of the day, AFAIK it all comes down to whether or not you willing to change. I heard this great series on NPR during the election where the interviewer kept in touch and talked to a doc(R) in Cincinatti about who he was voting for and why. After weeks of conversation the doc realized that he hated Bush and that the Dem ideology was closer to his. However when asked who he would vote for he kind of went for the radio analogy of 'but.. but.. I have always voted Rep.' If you are like him and unwilling to change (Rep or Dem doesnt matter, all politicians hand out BS, its just a real example, thats all) it really wont matter if Linux changed overnight to be the most user friendly, hw compatible os. So before you come out here and bitch one way or another stop for sec and think, do you (or the person you are responding to) really want to switch to Linux.
Win-R (even gods have to suffer at the hands of fools sometimes)
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" Sounds like he wants a bunch of foreign workers who wouldn't quibble over a $20,000-30,000 salary where a US coder would expect a bit more."
When was the last time you even got to know about how foreign workers on H1-Bs are employed and paid. I get tired of this typically ignorant bullshit everytime the foreign workers issue comes up. FYI, everytime a visa is granted, the applicant/employer has to get a prevailing wage certificate either from the state EDD or agencies like www.erieri.com, whoch cost about $350-$450 for a single page with three lines of typed text. These certificates state the prevailing wage for the position for which the employer wants to hire, which includes the min, median and max. The data for that is calculated every year or every other year, depending on the survey by polling employers for specific geographical areas. The applicant/employer then HAS to pay the foreign worker at least 5% more than the minimum in the certificate. Without this the application for a visa will not even get accepted. Get your fucking facts straight before you go off on the $20,000 salary.
Moreover the very same foreign worker has to pay social security, income and FICA taxes which he will probably never get to use. H1-B terms are a max of six years (extensible under very special circumstances) and AFAIK, to collect on social security foreign workers need to have paid taxes for at least 10 years in the US. At least they come in legally and contribute to the society that provides them the opportunity, inspite of the fact that the american (for that matter most western) immigration processes are quite demeaning to most third world applicants, not to mention stupid and farcical. It considers every application an application for immigration and then they have to walk in to the interview and convince the colsulate that they dont want to immigrate (wtf!!!).
People like you seem to like globalization only as long as it profits your fat asses at the expense of some third world or developing country. The moment it threatens you, you whine. Capitalism/free markets are a double edged sword, they can cut off your head just as easily as make a path for you to prosperity. Is it the foreign workers fault that half the country chose a self centered ass whose understanding of free markets and competition are limited to nepotism bordering on corruption? This administration is the reason why you dont have or did not have till recently a job, not the foreign worker. Its called competition, its here to stay and it can only grow more fierce. Learn to live and adapt with it.
I have a couple of friends who work for companies based in China. One makes textiles and the other plastic toys. The manufacturing is all done there, however the IT and business software is developed here. From what I hear, its quite trivial to bypass that firewall. All you need to know is the right person and the right price, and you can have all the unfettered access you want. Of course two examples doesnt prove the fact, but I am sure a lot of companies engage in such tactics. The end result is that the comman man is screwed , as always.
However I do wonder how multinationals operating in China, make sure that there data and IP (I know, I know.. but there is more to IP than just software, music, movies and books) developed in China is not pirated off by some admin being paid crap? I guess if you are Walmart you could bribe your way through it and not even notice it (also given the ethics of Walmart I wouldnt put it past them), but you would also present a target ten times the size of the proverbial barn.
Moreover no matter, how effective the firewall, there really is no way to prevent information from seeping through one way or another. One key to the seepage is right here: "China employs thousands officials and private citizens to build". All it takes is one disgruntled guy. And I bet there are hundreds of those in the IT army managing the firewall, no matter what the consequences. And information has always been the key. I believe that its this seepage of information that will be the key to a more free China. Maybe I am being optimistic but having seen the effects of availability of information in rural India, which is just as badly economically exploited in India as in China (human rights, thankfully not as badly though), I have some reason to be.
Right here
" Pacifism only works against an oppressor that has a conscience."
I am sorry but thats, quite frankly, bullshit. Pacifism (or non-violent protest - they are different, but you seem to see them as the same) works not because of the oppressor's conscience (which almost always is absent), but because of the conscience of his/her peers, which can lead to quite a bit of trouble, especially if you are a government. A great example are both India and South Africa. Do you really believe that after 200 years of oppression in India the British suddenly grew a conscience. No. There were serious economic reasons as well as the growing unpopularity of imperialism, especially after WWII (which ostensably was fought in the interest of freedom and justise) which made an imperialist attitude on part of the Brits untenable.
I hope you do realize the difference between non-violent protest and pacifism, something most republicans dont seem to understand. Pacifism is the idea that non-violence will work. It does not imply, or require the use of non-violent protest, its just an idea. Would non-violent protest have worked with the Nazis? I dont know, however that does not necessarily mean that it wouldnt have.
And why does violence have to be a bargaining tactic. Do you really think it matters to someone who is desperate and really determined? Didnt seem to faze Saddam and he at least seemed to be scared of death. No amount of violence on the US' part would have stopped the 20 men from flying into the towers. It was violence by proxy (US support of the house of saud) that created them in the first place. It sure as hell has nt worked with the Chechens in Russia. It can only breed violence. And its not a position or show of weakness. It takes far greater courage to make a stand and take a hit than to hit back.
During Gandhi's salt march, when protesters did reach the flats, they just walked up to the guards and were struck down again and again until the guards tired. The protesters were more numerous, it would have been a peice of cake to beat the crap out of the guards, but it would not have served the purpose of gaining the higher ethical ground, and highlighting the cruelty. Do you think you could have stood there, watching a line of people, go up before you, being struck down, bleeding and then walked up there to recieve the same fate?
Considering violence as an option, even as a last resort is easy, its convenient for people who would rather not tax their brains a bit to get to a longer lasting, non-violent solution. Its easy to hit back. Its easy to say - they left us no choice. Its easy to unleash a slew of weapons and watch it on TV, not experiencing the plight of the dead/injured or the soldiers who have to inflict the damage. Its easy to say - oh it wouldnt have worked. The reason why Gandhi, Mandela, King are considered to be great men because they took the hard road, they thought and had the courage and the resolve to see through a non-violent.
Thats 'set top box' for those not in the know. They paid me and my roommate 50 bucks for every six months we had it and handed us a remote. Everytime one of us turned on the TV, the person(s) were supposed to press a number on the remote. If there were any outsiders, they were to press yet another number. We kind of did it for about a week, after that we sort of _lost_ the remote. And its crap anyway. My roomie would leave CSPAN on all day and night on Saturday just to _quote_ fuck with the eggheads ... with MBA's _quote_. Since then I have met a two more people who had the STBs and did pretty much the same, although their sentiments regarding that were expressed differently.
And I still havent figured out how they can extrapolate from the miniscule (relatively speaking) slice of society that they listen in on (a large %age of whom would most probably behave like us). I am no expert in polling, but even assuming that they have a statistically relevant set of subjects as in a scientific poll, it still seems flaky at best. And yes I know that estimating properties/behaviors on a collection is far easier and more accurate than estimating properties of an individual entities. Its just that humans are not atomic particles who have to obey the laws of physics, and AFAIK group pschycology still has some way to go.
I do not doubt the fundamental correctness of their assumptions, algorithms and techniques, but somehow I have a feeling that someone quite like Karl Rove figured out that they could fleece a shitload of money off of PHBs in tv land by using fancy math/science words, which they knew the PHBs wouldnt understand (and probably wouldnt care about), while promising them the marketing dept's holy grail, did it, and are still getting away with it.
How can any form of biometric software (os or otherwise) be 'good'?
The way I see and understand it, it will never be perfect, not because humans are not smart enough to come up with innovative uses of a techonology but simply because the human body which provides the biometric information in the first place is a living, breathing, evolving, ever-changing entity. Moreover I just happen to believe that we as humans, being so error prone, can never come up with a fool proof system, irrespective of what a whole bunch of govt agencies would like us to believe.
Given all of that what scares me is not the fact that these technologies will be error-prone forever but that there will be no humans around to arbitrate any conflicts/problems in most situations (as is wont to happen when ppl start to take a system for granted). I really wouldnt want to be in a position becase a machine/system/software suddenly decides I am a terrorist because my thumb prints are obscured, because I play too many games using a fucked up pad, and taking 'pre-emptive' action.
Just because the system will be FOSS and a few million eyes will be watching the arch/code does not mean it will be perfect. And at what point of time do we say - 'Oh crap! this is not going to work.'; when a person dies, two ppl die, two thousand non-first-world ppl die?? And assuming ppl do get tech savvy, and put up monitors (the human kind) we come back to the same old question of who monitors the monitors??
A simple illustration of the problem is the use of ppl (too many, some would claim) in airports in Israel, India, Malaysia and a bunch of other countries which have problems with violent extremism (I hate the word terrorist - but thats a whole another story) and cant spend 10 mill USD per machine for 10 machines per airport. Their record regarding security breaches is a whole lot better then some of the most advanced western airports with some of the most advanced gizmos. It works simply because of redundancy, training, experience and human judgement, three of which a machine can probably never replicate fully.
Give me ppl any damn time.
--
I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information. -Bill Watterson
Go and get one here:f =1
http://www.pricewatch.com/h/mn.aspx?i=336&
However I have always wondered as to how joe system builder down the street handles the whole non-oem windows thing?
Does he/she buy a separate copy and pass the cost to the buyer or get into one of those blood sucking never dying vampiry volume licensing agreements with M$?
Submitted in the morning and rejected, submitted after 6:00 and accepted. Sure would like some of what the moderators are drinking...
</rant>
the invasion starts...
<oblig>I for one welcome our new florine overlords..</oblig>
-- Reality continues to ruin my life. - Calvin (Bill Watterson)
dont need no stinking anti-spyware...
I first heard about it close to 12:00M PST while surfing.
What was interesting was the news coverage the next morning (disclaimer: I woke up at @ 9:00). Wolf Blitzer was going off about the 10 top news-worthy things in 04 (of course 9 of them had to do with the US), Paula Zahn went off about some reverend making boatloads of money off of G and there wasnt even an obligatory mention (screen-bottom tickers don't count) of an event that resulted in (unofficial) a deathtoll close to 11,500 (last BBC estimate). The only place I got to see anything about it on TV was an obscure (to me at least) channel called News World Intl. (366 on DirectTV) where CBC and then something called the German Journal talked about this most of the time. Of course the BBC was kind enough to provide a lo-rez video feed, but I still dont understand the complete glossing over of such an incident. Is it that unless americans die, the american media wont cover it? Seems foolhardy... but then it is the US. Nothing's unexpected. And of course I still dont know why the BBC World service is not available in the US.
--
Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous? -- Calvin (Bill Watterson)
"postmodern surrealist anti-humor"
Do you even know what the fuck that means.... !!!
Seems to me that the whole thrust is going towards pre-emption of anything considered 'dangerous' by anybody. The problem I see is that the whole concept of pre-emption (incl. wars) is at cross-purposes with the notion of a free and fair society. IMHO by its very nature a free and fair society can only be a reactive society, or else we could very easily descend into a Minority Report situation (which I am sure a lot of muslims and arabs in the US are already experiencing). And the problem with prohibition of any sort (be it flash mobs, texting, etc.) is that historically its never worked. If only our politicians paid a little more attention to history... yea I know that wishful thinking but a bit of what if never hurt anybody...