The problem with the Blackberry phones is that they cost $30+/month for the same features you can get on other phones.
That's precisly why I took the Sony Ericsson P990i. I can't stand the blackberry extra monthly cost.
It was cheap (almost outdated 3 months ago...Around $230) but it has a "relatively" nice qwerty Keyboard and a lot of apps available (SSH client included) through handango.com.
So I bought it.I would say that it's interface is a bit complex... But in the end, it does its job, the network is pretty well polished, the Opera browser is Ok (just few problems while handling web session) and I'm happy.
You simply aren't going to be able to compete with a $4.00/month multi-gigabyte hosting plan of which there are several. So don't try. Might as well try to open an independant drug store next to walmart.
Go the other way, find a niche that's NOT served by those guys and go for that.
Go after the people who need something unique and specialize in it. So true
Being a web developer, I pay more just to have the privilege to get a phone number.Most of these big hosting companies provide very poor technical support.
If you label yourself as a hosting company, with personalized contact (name, phone number, email address, etc.) I'm your client.
Something else:
Some "trendy" languages like Rail and to some extend Python lack aren't particularly well supported by most hosting companies.
Focus on CMS like Drupal, Joomla, typo3 and all these stuffs and try to find the extra valuable little service (preinstallation or I don't know).
Provide presintalled Framework like CakePHP
And so on...
Basically you should select a target group. Like web developers, then ask them what they need.Most would accept to pay more than $4 (a lot more), especially professional. I would certainly pay more just to get your phone number and being able to call you once a problem occured.
But the biggest weakness would be to look like an amateur...If you can't proove me that you've got backup, raids, redundant hardware, redudant internet connection, etc. We won't do business. Otherwise I could do exactly the same in my office with cheap hardware.
Yes I am for real, I would expect any Australian (or American for that matter - but I hate them just as much as any other race) to fight to the last drop of blood for their country.
Ok leave Hollywood version of war for a second...here is how it works in real life:
Would it include that you would happily sacrifice women, new born babies, children, eldery people? Look at your girlfriend, your mother, and your children and imagine them dead...Not a nice quick death mind you...Imagine them almost wounded by sharpnels and agonizing for hours, or burn to death for the sake of your nation honnor.
Because that's what happen when the fight actually happens in your country, street fights, bombing cities and all.
Look at the Rotterdam bombing. The Dutch dared to resist and their main city was litteraly flatenned (citizens included). Or Belgians franc tireur dared to act as snipers and then Nazis shot randomly 20 citizens for each killed soldier. War isn't about being a hero or anything, war is hell. So please before taking such a pompeous position think twice (and I guess you have never experienced war...Let alone facing Nazis SS divisions).
I'm European, i live in a busy european capital (Brussels). I've got a car, I love it and I rarely take public transport.
There are plenty of people around the planet thinking the same way. I will keep it as long as I can and vote for people who will protect this right. But if they provide a car using green energy and if I can afford it, I will certainly take it.
Public transport are usually overcrowded and difficult to get along with once you have meetings outside the office all the day.
And I won't even talk about strikes...Public transport gives you the immense pleasure to be totally dependant of Unions good will (they are used to take you as hostages to get pay rises and they see nothing wrong doing this)
Sometimes (like High speed trains) public transport are better...But for daily use, I'm far from being convinced.
My company uses mono c# for a relatively big in house project too.
Here how the selection has been made.
"I like c#." stated the boss.
"Why not java?" A Microsoft language on a Linux server?"
"I don't care that you hate Microsoft. Lets focus on the language's merit. These elegant get and set will save us hundreds of redundant methods. See how simple delegate and Event handling are. Environment? I don't like Eclispe. I like MonoDevelop...Ok it is a bit buggy (not anymore), but this IDE took all the best features of visual studio. It is free too and It won't require me to order new RAM or new PCs."
The only problem we had until now was some messy classes dealing with multipart email encodings. Solution? A simple perl script to handle it until the mono team fixes the issue (I didn't check this yet...The hack works anyway).
So we use c# for one year. The project is almost done, it works like a charm.
I'm Belgian;-)
Concerning a good beer around christmas...What about a Maredsous, the cheese of the same name and a baguette?
Or if the winter is too harsch a good Rochefort 10 and a onions soups with melting cheese.
Oh God...I feel a bit of nostalgia...Miss my native ardennes.
Well it all depends of the beer we are talking about. If you meant pils you are right.
I'm personnally a fan of trappist beers (orval, chimay) or abbey beer such as Leffe.
All are quite heavy (6% to 9% I think).
Sure it costs slightly more but I don't drink much (one per week) anyway.
When the Germans march over you don't even fight like the Brits, but just lie down and start shovelling Jews into the gas chambers. The only reason you're free is that we liberated your shitty little country and gave it back to you.
Hello Sir. the WWII is over for 60 years. Look this is your grand daughter she came especially from the states to see you. You have nothing to fear, don't hide in the bunker anymore. See? Ohama beach is quite peaceful now. Please give us your weapons, you could hurt one of those poor european kids playing together.
GPL can create a mega-corporation the same way as USSR created a mega-corporation out of itself (although it was supposed to be people's property).
Ahhh...Following the book : History for geeks
You couldn't fork communism in USSR. They didn't have any upgrade after the 1.917 version...The cosmetic changes of the 1.922 aren't worth to remember and they didn't last anyway. The massive refactoring of Stalin didn't help either. Khrushchev tried extreme programming with the cuba crisis and some clever UI interface codename sputnik...The marketing department (called politburo) ruined all his efforts few years after. In the end Gorbatchev had to sold out the assets.
As you see this is totally different from GPL. You can fork application since the beginning of GPL. See Emacs vs Xmacs.
(I love Slashdot probably the only place on earth where GPL can be seriously compared with communism.)
Bullshit. This is an AI hard problem; if you've got real, honest-to-god accurate real-time translation of a natural language, you've got an AI. What we have now is sometimes-acceptable real-time translation using corpora whose product is easily distinguishable by any native speaker as a machine translation.
I can't wait to see tourists with those machine in Paris...But hacked:-).
"Missa wants to be yussa friend. Wherssa Effeil towa?".
"Desole, je ne comprends pas ce que vous dites".
(hacked translation)Your wife is so hot, what is her name?(/hacked translation)
"Fuck youssa, you dumby frenchy! Wessa save your arsy in biggy trouble II!"
Imagine a bus full of Jar Jar Binks...Priceless.:-)
I bought the book Pro Javascript Design patterns
ISBN-13: 978-1-59059-908-2
It is mainly about Object oriented technique with Javascript.
Nice but it is still mainly hacks. They doesn't provide enough security (way too simple to override a singleton or setting strong typed variables in an interface is cumbersome).
Otherwise there are really cool features, especially concerning classes (cloning, instance, and so on).
Most of the above posts make fun of India. Well I must say that this record is quite impessive considering all the fuss the ESA made over their launch of two satellites in a row few years ago.
Few things I have noticed the last years:
they bought Jaguar from Ford few weeks ago.
They established serious businesses competing in our fields (computer).
Math has been an indian skills for centuries.
The indian state is democratic.
Sure they still have a long road ahead (poverty, bureaucracy, nationalism, protectionism,akward traditions, etc.) but they are definitely on the right path.
And if that becomes too mainstream, there's always the HURD.
HURD is already too mainstream. I would rather use "VOCALIS" . A new OS allowing you to order OS instructions by voice (you just need a colleague to make real parallel programming).
Well as Arcade player too (favorite games: elevator!) I experienced a rise in the price from 10BEF (roughly 0.25 Euro,) to 20BEF (0.50 Euro) late eighties. 10BEF was two coins, 20BEF was one coin...
I thought it was too expensive and I played less regularly (my last favorite game was mortal kombat) Kids can do math. I had to choose between a drink with friends and a video game. Friends were more funny and less expensive.
As far as I know Germany invaded Belgium and broke its neutrality status in WWI. Albert I (king at that time) kept the British expeditionnary force and the French army out of the Belgian territory until the very last moment (even if the French wanted to settle their defence on Belgian soil). They were allowed to enter into Belgian after the Kaizer invaded it.
After the Antwerp fiasco, A big share of the Belgian army had to take refuge in the Netherlands (neutral in WWI) and they were forced to stay in prisonners camps until the armistice afaik.
The remaining Belgian army took position on the French/British line and they were cut from their family for 4 years.
I saw reports dating from that period were Belgian cities were forced to deliver food stocks to the occupying army, steels and countless of other goods. It dramatically destabilised the economy of the occupying country. Somes regions were on the verge of a serious famine during the first year of occupation.
It looks to me that the joy of the liberation would have been quite similar. The Kaizer's army was far more civilised than the Hitler one, nevertheless they acted like invaders and the country suffered greatly. War is always a misery and those who bring it are cursed by the local population.
I really don't know about your confederate states but as a Belgian I would like to point out that we are truly grateful, especially those of the previous generation who still remind those brave brits/commonwealth soldiers and GI's who distributed chocolates to kids on their way to the front. My mother (4 years old in 1944) still reminded it.
I was takling about eastern (Russian speaking) Ukraine which is hardly Polish. Concerning the western part...I know the historical background and closed links between Polan and Ukraine, but they have an identity by their own AFAIK...Kiev looks hardly like Varsovie to me:-).
Techically:
I agree that Aero has difficulties on 1GB RAM (my laptop configuration) but the only thing not working properly is their 3D windows slides (And frankly it looks more like a gdaget wasting of time than anything).
The thing I prefer over XP are:
wifi configuration
built-in ftp support in the Explorer (like KDE you simply have to type: ftp://...
Security
multimedia
Webdav support (better than windows XP)
and countless of little improvments
Stable (I have never experienced a blue screen of death, not freezing for 3 months...And my computer is a cheap Packard Bell)
Technically things I don't like: shutting down the computer (I never know which one to use, this is ridiculous)
On the marketing side. This is a disaster. Mainly the number of versions. There is strictly no reason to explain the number of versions (basic, home, business, pro or whatever).
So for me Technically vista is a nice OS, the marketing side is a disaster.
disclaimer:
I don't play video games so I don't know. I have never installed vista, I buy a new low cost laptop each two years instead of an expensive one each 4 years.
Sure the rule of law isn't perfect nor democracy. Bribes exist too (I met a pharmaceutical firm sales rep who had to pay bribes in hospitals for her products). But the situation isn't that far from Bulgaria who just joined the EU.
They are hard workers, I witnessed it...And also pretty good at engineering challenges (I witnessed it too). I didn't notice the fatalist trait that you describe, at least not in the business (software) I work for.
For Ukraine at least, I have got great expectations. They have the will, the knowledge and everything else to make a prosperous country.
I truly wish them the best.
PayPal does make sense in the ebay business model. Skype does not.
They can match all the needs of a new e-commerce. They provide a simple and efficient way to find your clients, a simple e-paiement method.
However PayPal should get more attention, there are no new noticeable services for years. compared the services of PayPal 2003 to PayPal 2008 and you will hardly find any differences.
Well I hardly consider this as a threat to the GPL nature of MySQL.
There are already commercial (closed source) products available for this. Nobody has ever complained IMHO.
Thx for pointing it out.
Anyway most of the time, MySQL is used as a dumb DB. I mean you simply stores values with an ID, you may tweak indexes, you may carefully design data schemes and all...But seriously most web projects I have work for would hardly use 10% of the MySQL potential (especially concerning the queries)and they can be easily use another DB even lighter.
I think this is far more simple than that (or it could be summarized by):
You fear what you don't know.
Most people don't know what open source means. So this is a potential source of fear.
Most people don't know open source, but they have heard of it (especially the targeted audience:Young male). Hollywood movie plays with it.
he Russians couldn't even afford to foot their end of the bill for their ISS commitments.
And the USA couldn't provide the shuttles flights necessary for its maintenance either. Without Russians ISS would be dead by now. Without US funds ISS would have never seen the light.
That's why I like space exploration so much...Suddently all these microscopic narrowminded national interests become meaningless. You need your neighboor to get the jobs done.
Slashdot Mirror
That's precisly why I took the Sony Ericsson P990i. I can't stand the blackberry extra monthly cost.
It was cheap (almost outdated 3 months ago...Around $230) but it has a "relatively" nice qwerty Keyboard and a lot of apps available (SSH client included) through handango.com .
So I bought it.I would say that it's interface is a bit complex... But in the end, it does its job, the network is pretty well polished, the Opera browser is Ok (just few problems while handling web session) and I'm happy.
Being a web developer, I pay more just to have the privilege to get a phone number.Most of these big hosting companies provide very poor technical support. If you label yourself as a hosting company, with personalized contact (name, phone number, email address, etc.) I'm your client.
Something else:- Some "trendy" languages like Rail and to some extend Python lack aren't particularly well supported by most hosting companies.
- Focus on CMS like Drupal, Joomla, typo3 and all these stuffs and try to find the extra valuable little service (preinstallation or I don't know).
- Provide presintalled Framework like CakePHP
- And so on...
Basically you should select a target group. Like web developers, then ask them what they need.Most would accept to pay more than $4 (a lot more), especially professional. I would certainly pay more just to get your phone number and being able to call you once a problem occured. But the biggest weakness would be to look like an amateur...If you can't proove me that you've got backup, raids, redundant hardware, redudant internet connection, etc. We won't do business. Otherwise I could do exactly the same in my office with cheap hardware.Yes I am for real, I would expect any Australian (or American for that matter - but I hate them just as much as any other race) to fight to the last drop of blood for their country.
Ok leave Hollywood version of war for a second...here is how it works in real life: Would it include that you would happily sacrifice women, new born babies, children, eldery people? Look at your girlfriend, your mother, and your children and imagine them dead...Not a nice quick death mind you...Imagine them almost wounded by sharpnels and agonizing for hours, or burn to death for the sake of your nation honnor.
Because that's what happen when the fight actually happens in your country, street fights, bombing cities and all. Look at the Rotterdam bombing. The Dutch dared to resist and their main city was litteraly flatenned (citizens included). Or Belgians franc tireur dared to act as snipers and then Nazis shot randomly 20 citizens for each killed soldier. War isn't about being a hero or anything, war is hell. So please before taking such a pompeous position think twice (and I guess you have never experienced war...Let alone facing Nazis SS divisions).
I could probably overcome this challenge with sufficient technology, if they'd only let me. But it wouldn't be an inspirational story.
First step show them how determined your are: cut both of your legs off.
Not sure,
I'm European, i live in a busy european capital (Brussels). I've got a car, I love it and I rarely take public transport.
There are plenty of people around the planet thinking the same way. I will keep it as long as I can and vote for people who will protect this right. But if they provide a car using green energy and if I can afford it, I will certainly take it.
Public transport are usually overcrowded and difficult to get along with once you have meetings outside the office all the day.
And I won't even talk about strikes...Public transport gives you the immense pleasure to be totally dependant of Unions good will (they are used to take you as hostages to get pay rises and they see nothing wrong doing this)
Sometimes (like High speed trains) public transport are better...But for daily use, I'm far from being convinced.
My company uses mono c# for a relatively big in house project too.
Here how the selection has been made.
"I like c#." stated the boss.
"Why not java?" A Microsoft language on a Linux server?"
"I don't care that you hate Microsoft. Lets focus on the language's merit. These elegant get and set will save us hundreds of redundant methods. See how simple delegate and Event handling are. Environment? I don't like Eclispe. I like MonoDevelop...Ok it is a bit buggy (not anymore), but this IDE took all the best features of visual studio. It is free too and It won't require me to order new RAM or new PCs."
The only problem we had until now was some messy classes dealing with multipart email encodings. Solution? A simple perl script to handle it until the mono team fixes the issue (I didn't check this yet...The hack works anyway).
So we use c# for one year. The project is almost done, it works like a charm.
ps: I'm the boss.I'm Belgian ;-)
Concerning a good beer around christmas...What about a Maredsous, the cheese of the same name and a baguette?
Or if the winter is too harsch a good Rochefort 10 and a onions soups with melting cheese.
Oh God...I feel a bit of nostalgia...Miss my native ardennes.
Well it all depends of the beer we are talking about. If you meant pils you are right. I'm personnally a fan of trappist beers (orval, chimay) or abbey beer such as Leffe. All are quite heavy (6% to 9% I think). Sure it costs slightly more but I don't drink much (one per week) anyway.
When the Germans march over you don't even fight like the Brits, but just lie down and start shovelling Jews into the gas chambers. The only reason you're free is that we liberated your shitty little country and gave it back to you.
Hello Sir. the WWII is over for 60 years. Look this is your grand daughter she came especially from the states to see you. You have nothing to fear, don't hide in the bunker anymore. See? Ohama beach is quite peaceful now. Please give us your weapons, you could hurt one of those poor european kids playing together.
Ahhh...Following the book : History for geeks
You couldn't fork communism in USSR. They didn't have any upgrade after the 1.917 version...The cosmetic changes of the 1.922 aren't worth to remember and they didn't last anyway. The massive refactoring of Stalin didn't help either. Khrushchev tried extreme programming with the cuba crisis and some clever UI interface codename sputnik...The marketing department (called politburo) ruined all his efforts few years after. In the end Gorbatchev had to sold out the assets.
As you see this is totally different from GPL. You can fork application since the beginning of GPL. See Emacs vs Xmacs.
(I love Slashdot probably the only place on earth where GPL can be seriously compared with communism.)
I can't wait to see tourists with those machine in Paris...But hacked :-). :-)
"Missa wants to be yussa friend. Wherssa Effeil towa?".
"Desole, je ne comprends pas ce que vous dites". (hacked translation)Your wife is so hot, what is her name?(/hacked translation)
"Fuck youssa, you dumby frenchy! Wessa save your arsy in biggy trouble II!"
Imagine a bus full of Jar Jar Binks...Priceless.
I bought the book Pro Javascript Design patterns ISBN-13: 978-1-59059-908-2
It is mainly about Object oriented technique with Javascript.
Nice but it is still mainly hacks. They doesn't provide enough security (way too simple to override a singleton or setting strong typed variables in an interface is cumbersome).
Otherwise there are really cool features, especially concerning classes (cloning, instance, and so on).
I could hardly call this: http://www.geocities.com/kathipadmarao/DURBAN.html a modern way of organising a society.
Most of the above posts make fun of India. Well I must say that this record is quite impessive considering all the fuss the ESA made over their launch of two satellites in a row few years ago.
Few things I have noticed the last years:
Sure they still have a long road ahead (poverty, bureaucracy, nationalism, protectionism,akward traditions, etc.) but they are definitely on the right path.
And if that becomes too mainstream, there's always the HURD.
HURD is already too mainstream. I would rather use "VOCALIS" . A new OS allowing you to order OS instructions by voice (you just need a colleague to make real parallel programming).
Well as Arcade player too (favorite games: elevator!) I experienced a rise in the price from 10BEF (roughly 0.25 Euro,) to 20BEF (0.50 Euro) late eighties. 10BEF was two coins, 20BEF was one coin... I thought it was too expensive and I played less regularly (my last favorite game was mortal kombat) Kids can do math. I had to choose between a drink with friends and a video game. Friends were more funny and less expensive.
As far as I know Germany invaded Belgium and broke its neutrality status in WWI. Albert I (king at that time) kept the British expeditionnary force and the French army out of the Belgian territory until the very last moment (even if the French wanted to settle their defence on Belgian soil). They were allowed to enter into Belgian after the Kaizer invaded it.
After the Antwerp fiasco, A big share of the Belgian army had to take refuge in the Netherlands (neutral in WWI) and they were forced to stay in prisonners camps until the armistice afaik. The remaining Belgian army took position on the French/British line and they were cut from their family for 4 years.
I saw reports dating from that period were Belgian cities were forced to deliver food stocks to the occupying army, steels and countless of other goods. It dramatically destabilised the economy of the occupying country. Somes regions were on the verge of a serious famine during the first year of occupation.
It looks to me that the joy of the liberation would have been quite similar. The Kaizer's army was far more civilised than the Hitler one, nevertheless they acted like invaders and the country suffered greatly. War is always a misery and those who bring it are cursed by the local population.
I really don't know about your confederate states but as a Belgian I would like to point out that we are truly grateful, especially those of the previous generation who still remind those brave brits/commonwealth soldiers and GI's who distributed chocolates to kids on their way to the front. My mother (4 years old in 1944) still reminded it.
I was takling about eastern (Russian speaking) Ukraine which is hardly Polish. Concerning the western part...I know the historical background and closed links between Polan and Ukraine, but they have an identity by their own AFAIK...Kiev looks hardly like Varsovie to me :-).
I use Vista for three months. I like it.
Techically:
I agree that Aero has difficulties on 1GB RAM (my laptop configuration) but the only thing not working properly is their 3D windows slides (And frankly it looks more like a gdaget wasting of time than anything).
The thing I prefer over XP are:
Technically things I don't like: shutting down the computer (I never know which one to use, this is ridiculous)
On the marketing side. This is a disaster. Mainly the number of versions. There is strictly no reason to explain the number of versions (basic, home, business, pro or whatever).
So for me Technically vista is a nice OS, the marketing side is a disaster.
disclaimer:
I don't play video games so I don't know. I have never installed vista, I buy a new low cost laptop each two years instead of an expensive one each 4 years.
I had to work with Russians...Well Russian Speaking Ukrainians to be precise.
The only thing I noticed that may work with your clichés is their subtile saccarstic humour.
Sure the rule of law isn't perfect nor democracy. Bribes exist too (I met a pharmaceutical firm sales rep who had to pay bribes in hospitals for her products). But the situation isn't that far from Bulgaria who just joined the EU.
They are hard workers, I witnessed it...And also pretty good at engineering challenges (I witnessed it too). I didn't notice the fatalist trait that you describe, at least not in the business (software) I work for.
For Ukraine at least, I have got great expectations. They have the will, the knowledge and everything else to make a prosperous country. I truly wish them the best.
PayPal does make sense in the ebay business model. Skype does not. They can match all the needs of a new e-commerce. They provide a simple and efficient way to find your clients, a simple e-paiement method. However PayPal should get more attention, there are no new noticeable services for years. compared the services of PayPal 2003 to PayPal 2008 and you will hardly find any differences.
Well I hardly consider this as a threat to the GPL nature of MySQL.
There are already commercial (closed source) products available for this. Nobody has ever complained IMHO.
Thx for pointing it out.
Anyway most of the time, MySQL is used as a dumb DB. I mean you simply stores values with an ID, you may tweak indexes, you may carefully design data schemes and all...But seriously most web projects I have work for would hardly use 10% of the MySQL potential (especially concerning the queries)and they can be easily use another DB even lighter.
I think this is far more simple than that (or it could be summarized by): You fear what you don't know. Most people don't know what open source means. So this is a potential source of fear. Most people don't know open source, but they have heard of it (especially the targeted audience:Young male). Hollywood movie plays with it.
And the USA couldn't provide the shuttles flights necessary for its maintenance either. Without Russians ISS would be dead by now. Without US funds ISS would have never seen the light.
That's why I like space exploration so much...Suddently all these microscopic narrowminded national interests become meaningless. You need your neighboor to get the jobs done.