Now wait a minute. 27 people/day took advantage of they system and it cost $1800/month. I did the math and that works out to $66/month/person. That's not an outrageous amount. It's about what I pay for my cable connection at home. If they still have capacity in the system as more users start using it cost per user will continue to go down.
None of these measures stop spammers sending out their millions of messages.
In theory, if the spam can be stopped it will no longer be profitable. If it's no longer profitable no one will send it out, thus solving the bandwidth and resource problem.
Maybe, but I doubt they are going to try to compete with your bank either. PayPal is in a very lucrative market and need some competition to keep them honest. I think Google's just testing the waters - not declaring all out war yet. If they can get a foothold, they would love to get PayPal's revenue streams.
If you're anything like me you've gone through a couple ISPs over the last 10 years. You also are probably aware what a PITA it is to change e-mail addresses.
Yep, that's why I registered my own domain. For $7.95/year (thanks godaddy) I will have my email address for all eternity - even after hotmail is gone, if I so choose.
Call center employees in the US and Europe don't pull what you'd call high salaries either.
That's true, but offshore call centers make less - they have to, companies wouldn't be outsourcing to them. One of the big problems is, due to exchange rates and costs (the same reason work is outsourced there), it's much cheaper to purchase this type of information from a employee in India.
Think about it, if I read the article right, this guy sold 1000 names for about $8000. That might be his whole annual wage. If someone came to me, as a IT professional in the US and offered me $8000 to sell private corporate information, I would laugh at him. Now if someone came and offered my whole annual salary, I could be tempted. Thing is, private information on 1000 people probably wouldn't be worth my annual salary, or even the annual salary of a call center worker.
Bottom line is you can always find someone that will steal information for you for a price. Outsourcing to India, China or Russia just lowers the price of the information you want.
With this sort of penetration any impact will be neglible for quite a while.
Maybe, but perception on the Net is everything. As soon as people start bailing they will do so in droves. It would be in eBay's best interest to keep people happy and not encourage them to look elsewhere. I wonder how long it will be before Google comes up with a full fledged auction site that competes seriously with eBay.
So maximizing profit isn't news, but abandoning eBay sure is.
Yes and no. It's news because eBay dominates the market, but it's not news if you look at it objectively. eBay has been on top for a while, but it's not a perfect system. New buyers are frustrated with snipers and crazy shipping prices that sneak up on them, sellers are irritated by Paypal issues and eBay constantly raising prices. Other sites are managing to catch up with eBay's technology so users are looking for some new places to do business. Perfectly natural.
Exactly. I admit, I get a little smug when I see big virus outbreaks,(with some work I've managed to avoid the vast majority of virus problems on our network) but I'm not happy that there are viruses. Definitely would rather see that day when the net was safe and we didn't have spam or viruses.
As far as browsers go, I all I want is standards compliant software that will run on Linux, Mac and Windows. The only thing more irritating than creating a page and having to check it on 3 platforms and 6 browsers is having someone you know tell you they don't care if their site is completely unusable because it renders correctly in IE.
In my experience folks that claim developers are hard to get along with, are frequently hard to get along with themselves. If you really want to work with top talent, you need to learn some managerial skills too.
Two things,
I wasn't management over these people. The managers that didn't get along with them had issues as well and could have used better managerial skills.
I have met many developers, some that are easy to get a long with and fit in, some that don't. Top talent or not, if they person's an ass you don't want him on your team.
Great points, you even brought up something I forgot - men and women working together.
In 1955 the pill hadn't hit the market yet. Women mostly stayed home and had babies - they just didn't have a choice. The idea of reliable contraception that allows women to control their own destinies didn't even exist.
We are so far removed from what like was like in the 50s most of us don't even realize how different things are. The world changes around us, we change with it and don't even notice.
Re:At least Jim Anchower is still there
on
The Onion in 2056
·
· Score: 1
Sure, since 50 years ago (1955), it was pretty much like it is today...well, except for the Internet, the Cold War and Globalization.
Not sure your examples are the greatest, except the Internet, but let's look at some comparisons.
1955 - Most people didn't have a TV, if they did it was Black & White and tiny.
Today - Most people have at LEAST a 27" color TV, many people have something bigger. I'm sure a huge flat screen would blow somebody's mind from 1955 - not to mention the 150+ channels.
1955 - Many people didn't have a phone, many of those that did had party lines. Most(if not all) calls were connected by an operator.
Today - Not only does EVERYONE have a phone, most people have cell phones. Not only can we communicate, we can talk to anyone - anytime - anywhere.
1955 - There was no such thing as an Interstate Highway (the Interstate Highway Act was passed in 1956). People didn't drive much, definitely didn't commute 50-100 miles every day.
Today - Now millions of people clog four lane or six lane highways every day. Not exactly hovercars, but our 1955 residents would have not concept.
These changes are all relatively small, but you add them up and they are significant. I could name many others, construction (go visit a house built in the 50s and compare with a new house for size, features, design), finance (credit cards didn't even exist in the 50s), government, military technology, entertainment, photography. A lot has changed in 50 years.
The most amazing thing to me is how writers from 50 years ago were so way off. I love the old pulp scifi novels, but no one (that I've read) from that era anticipated computers. All of the stories have some kind of faster than light propulsion, but it takes some kind of genius with a slide rule to plot the course, or the computers they have use punch cards, or something along those lines. It's like they could see mechanical improvments much easier than changes in electronics. Personally I wonder what will happen in the next 50 years that we have NO idea of right now.
I think that extra content that Yahoo seems to be providing, without anyone important realising they're doing it, is what google needs to, and is, catching up on.
As Yahoo started adding all that extra content they lost focus on their search engine - which helped Google to get a foothold in the market. As Google offers more and more online content they will become more and more like Yahoo. They will eventually lose the search engine dominance they now enjoy and some other bright young grad students will come up with a new idea.
It's a typical business cycle. Companies that focus on one particular offering generally make the best offering of that type, but when the market takes a nose dive they suffer. Companies the diversify don't generally create the best individual product, but they do better overall because they aren't subject to the market's whims.
Amazing, I thought Linux was the communist Operating System that was supposed to undermine capitalism. Now Microsoft is the one making deals with Communist countries.
If Linux is so anti-capitalist why isn't Vietnam looking for Linux solutions?
That depends. If you live in a small house in a shitty area in the Midwest, you can get by on 40K. If you live in California, a cardboard box on the street costs 40K! And aren't the rents there about 2K/month? Or am I behind the times?
It's all a matter of perspective. What's your idea of a "shitty area in the Midwest"? A nice, small Nebraska town with no crime? Sure, if you want to live in LA or San Diego it's going to cost you more money than if you live in Missouri or Wisconsin. That's pretty much a given. OTOH, developer positions that pay better are much easier to find in big cities. The whole point of my post is that comparing a $40k-$50k job to 'third world wages' is not even realistic. I'm sure, even for $40k/year a person could live better anywhere in the US than most people in the Third World Countries. Most Americans just don't have any concept of what life in other countries is like.
Your economics are obviously better than mine, but just an additional thought or two.
I don't think reducing prices is as much about increasing the "free time" of consumers as it is about allowing these consumers to consume more. The more disposable income a consumer has the more they can purchase from other producers thereby increasing overall wealth. In recent years this effect has been increased due to the Fed lowering the interest rates. If consumers and businesses can borrow more money they will spend more money, boosting the economy. Unfortunately, it appears this policy is catching up with us.
Wal-Mart is a poor example of lower prices due to the fact that many of their items are also of lower quality. Recently Levi Strauss decided to put Levis Jeans in Wal-Mart stores. The only way they were able to do this and keep their profit margins was to produce a lower quality pair of jeans. Sure, many name brand items are cheaper at Wal-Mart and are exactly the same as what you would buy in other stores. I've read some of the horror stories about Wal-Mart and their relationship with their vendors and I would agree, their lower price policy does hurt some people.
Getting back to the original discussion, technology has increased the standard of living in this country since the Industrial Revolution began. Things like indoor plumbing, electricity and telephone service have become standard at least partly due to increases in technology and decreases in costs. The Romans had running water in homes, so why didn't 19th century America? The manufacturing processes were much to expensive to make it practical. There is little doubt that the overall ease of life (I won't say quality) for the average American has increased dramatically over the last 100-150 years.
Don't think for a second that if all immigration was cut off that the farms wouldn't be worked by US citizens. They would just be worked by US citizens that earn more per hour than what the immigrent workers make now.
No, the farms would no longer be a viable business entity and would be shut down. This would result in less product taken to market, driving food costs up. Eventually the market would reach equilibrium and the remaining farmers would be able to pay the prices for US Citizens to work the fields.
Anyone will work in a field if you raise the price enough. The problem is that expensive labor is making goods cost more than the market will pay. As a result labor from a weaker economy comes in and does the work. There are tons of people on welfare in the US that could be doing this migrant work. Why don't they? Because the farms can't afford to pay them more than Welfare is paying them. If we automated all of this work we wouldn't have any more unemployed people than we have now, we would just have fewer migrant workers from Mexico.
Sorry, I'm incredibly negative towards the IT industry right now. I was even advised by an older timer (I've been in IT for over ten years) to get out.
And go into what exactly? To me that's the most interesting question regarding this whole discussion. If I'm going to jump out of IT where should I go? Which industry is going to be the next hot one? Is everyone going to abandon technology? Absolutely not, IT is a sector that is going to experience growth. Technology is not going away, actually it's just starting to get a really good grasp at the consumer level. There is going to be more and more demand for Internet services, high bandwidth connections, extra storage, DRM, CRM, whatever. As that demand increases, someone is going to need to write software or create infrastructure for it. Tech is an industry that is not going away.
it is when the housing market is growing at 30% annually.
Personally I don't think the housing market can sustain this growth rate long term. Besides you can always rent. Third World pay would denote living in a cardboard shack or on the street.
The days of $40k programmers will be a thing of the past inside of years.
Not sure what you mean by that, but yes I would agree. Wages generally tend to increase, every year $40k is less and less money. My point was, right NOW a person can live on $40k/year. It's not great money, but survivable and a FAR cry from 'third world wages'.
I hope this example shows that it is not clear at all how technology really affects the economy - it really depends on the individuals in that economy.
You forgot one principal in your example - competition. In reality Person A will either start selling his machine to Person Q, F and G, Person Q, F and G will create their own machines, or Person V will copy it and sell it to Person Q, F and G. Then Person Q will say, "Hmmmm... if I knock 10% off the price of this house I can sell more houses the Person A". Eventually the market will balance out and in the end the market price of the houses should go down.
We see this exact thing happening right now. House prices have raised, but so has the overall size and features of the houses. Sure, a new house is 3 or 4 times what a house was 20 years ago, but new houses also have 3 car garages, huge walk-in closets, huge master baths and all sorts of other cool stuff. Right now the 'average' family is living in a much nicer, larger home than they were in the 50s or 60s, mostly due to technological progress.
Odd then, that there is an ever increasing number of migrant farm workers in the US.
Why is that odd? That just proves the parent's theory. There are more migrant farm workers in the US because US citizens can't/won't/don't want to do the migrant farm work. If robots could take over this work we would use them rather than migrant workers.
Anyone complaining that "experienced" developers are hard to find either 1. hasn't looked, or 2. is being too picky.
Obviously there are many factors, but let me relate the experience our company had in the last few years.
We decided to bite the bullet and hire some good/experienced developers and pay them what they were worth. We looked for quite some time and ended up hiring four people. Out of the four, two were what I would call GOOD, experienced C++ developers. The other two had some skills, but were nearly impossible to get along with. Since hiring these developers three have left. One because she didn't like the location, one because he was unproductive and one because he couldn't get along with anyone.
I'm sure there are many factors that go into our experiences, our location, the economy at the time of our hiring, etc... OTOH, in my experience, it can be difficult to find top quality individuals in any industry. The grandparent is right, the best software developers already have jobs and are paid well, if you want to hire the best you have to be willing to find these people and pay them what they are worth. If you aren't willing to do that you need to lower your standards.
$40k - $50k is third world pay? Wow, get a grip. Sure, $50,000/year isn't great money anymore, but I know many people that live on much less. I don't think you can really call $25/hour 'third world pay'.
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Now wait a minute. 27 people/day took advantage of they system and it cost $1800/month. I did the math and that works out to $66/month/person. That's not an outrageous amount. It's about what I pay for my cable connection at home. If they still have capacity in the system as more users start using it cost per user will continue to go down.
None of these measures stop spammers sending out their millions of messages.
In theory, if the spam can be stopped it will no longer be profitable. If it's no longer profitable no one will send it out, thus solving the bandwidth and resource problem.
Maybe, but I doubt they are going to try to compete with your bank either. PayPal is in a very lucrative market and need some competition to keep them honest. I think Google's just testing the waters - not declaring all out war yet. If they can get a foothold, they would love to get PayPal's revenue streams.
If you're anything like me you've gone through a couple ISPs over the last 10 years. You also are probably aware what a PITA it is to change e-mail addresses.
Yep, that's why I registered my own domain. For $7.95/year (thanks godaddy) I will have my email address for all eternity - even after hotmail is gone, if I so choose.
Call center employees in the US and Europe don't pull what you'd call high salaries either.
That's true, but offshore call centers make less - they have to, companies wouldn't be outsourcing to them. One of the big problems is, due to exchange rates and costs (the same reason work is outsourced there), it's much cheaper to purchase this type of information from a employee in India.
Think about it, if I read the article right, this guy sold 1000 names for about $8000. That might be his whole annual wage. If someone came to me, as a IT professional in the US and offered me $8000 to sell private corporate information, I would laugh at him. Now if someone came and offered my whole annual salary, I could be tempted. Thing is, private information on 1000 people probably wouldn't be worth my annual salary, or even the annual salary of a call center worker.
Bottom line is you can always find someone that will steal information for you for a price. Outsourcing to India, China or Russia just lowers the price of the information you want.
With this sort of penetration any impact will be neglible for quite a while.
Maybe, but perception on the Net is everything. As soon as people start bailing they will do so in droves. It would be in eBay's best interest to keep people happy and not encourage them to look elsewhere. I wonder how long it will be before Google comes up with a full fledged auction site that competes seriously with eBay.
So maximizing profit isn't news, but abandoning eBay sure is.
Yes and no. It's news because eBay dominates the market, but it's not news if you look at it objectively. eBay has been on top for a while, but it's not a perfect system. New buyers are frustrated with snipers and crazy shipping prices that sneak up on them, sellers are irritated by Paypal issues and eBay constantly raising prices. Other sites are managing to catch up with eBay's technology so users are looking for some new places to do business. Perfectly natural.
Exactly. I admit, I get a little smug when I see big virus outbreaks,(with some work I've managed to avoid the vast majority of virus problems on our network) but I'm not happy that there are viruses. Definitely would rather see that day when the net was safe and we didn't have spam or viruses.
As far as browsers go, I all I want is standards compliant software that will run on Linux, Mac and Windows. The only thing more irritating than creating a page and having to check it on 3 platforms and 6 browsers is having someone you know tell you they don't care if their site is completely unusable because it renders correctly in IE.
Two things,
Great points, you even brought up something I forgot - men and women working together.
In 1955 the pill hadn't hit the market yet. Women mostly stayed home and had babies - they just didn't have a choice. The idea of reliable contraception that allows women to control their own destinies didn't even exist.
We are so far removed from what like was like in the 50s most of us don't even realize how different things are. The world changes around us, we change with it and don't even notice.
Sure, since 50 years ago (1955), it was pretty much like it is today...well, except for the Internet, the Cold War and Globalization.
Not sure your examples are the greatest, except the Internet, but let's look at some comparisons.
1955 - Most people didn't have a TV, if they did it was Black & White and tiny.
Today - Most people have at LEAST a 27" color TV, many people have something bigger. I'm sure a huge flat screen would blow somebody's mind from 1955 - not to mention the 150+ channels.
1955 - Many people didn't have a phone, many of those that did had party lines. Most(if not all) calls were connected by an operator.
Today - Not only does EVERYONE have a phone, most people have cell phones. Not only can we communicate, we can talk to anyone - anytime - anywhere.
1955 - There was no such thing as an Interstate Highway (the Interstate Highway Act was passed in 1956). People didn't drive much, definitely didn't commute 50-100 miles every day.
Today - Now millions of people clog four lane or six lane highways every day. Not exactly hovercars, but our 1955 residents would have not concept.
These changes are all relatively small, but you add them up and they are significant. I could name many others, construction (go visit a house built in the 50s and compare with a new house for size, features, design), finance (credit cards didn't even exist in the 50s), government, military technology, entertainment, photography. A lot has changed in 50 years.
The most amazing thing to me is how writers from 50 years ago were so way off. I love the old pulp scifi novels, but no one (that I've read) from that era anticipated computers. All of the stories have some kind of faster than light propulsion, but it takes some kind of genius with a slide rule to plot the course, or the computers they have use punch cards, or something along those lines. It's like they could see mechanical improvments much easier than changes in electronics. Personally I wonder what will happen in the next 50 years that we have NO idea of right now.
I think that extra content that Yahoo seems to be providing, without anyone important realising they're doing it, is what google needs to, and is, catching up on.
As Yahoo started adding all that extra content they lost focus on their search engine - which helped Google to get a foothold in the market. As Google offers more and more online content they will become more and more like Yahoo. They will eventually lose the search engine dominance they now enjoy and some other bright young grad students will come up with a new idea.
It's a typical business cycle. Companies that focus on one particular offering generally make the best offering of that type, but when the market takes a nose dive they suffer. Companies the diversify don't generally create the best individual product, but they do better overall because they aren't subject to the market's whims.
Amazing, I thought Linux was the communist Operating System that was supposed to undermine capitalism. Now Microsoft is the one making deals with Communist countries.
If Linux is so anti-capitalist why isn't Vietnam looking for Linux solutions?
That depends. If you live in a small house in a shitty area in the Midwest, you can get by on 40K. If you live in California, a cardboard box on the street costs 40K! And aren't the rents there about 2K/month? Or am I behind the times?
It's all a matter of perspective. What's your idea of a "shitty area in the Midwest"? A nice, small Nebraska town with no crime? Sure, if you want to live in LA or San Diego it's going to cost you more money than if you live in Missouri or Wisconsin. That's pretty much a given. OTOH, developer positions that pay better are much easier to find in big cities. The whole point of my post is that comparing a $40k-$50k job to 'third world wages' is not even realistic. I'm sure, even for $40k/year a person could live better anywhere in the US than most people in the Third World Countries. Most Americans just don't have any concept of what life in other countries is like.
Your economics are obviously better than mine, but just an additional thought or two.
I don't think reducing prices is as much about increasing the "free time" of consumers as it is about allowing these consumers to consume more. The more disposable income a consumer has the more they can purchase from other producers thereby increasing overall wealth. In recent years this effect has been increased due to the Fed lowering the interest rates. If consumers and businesses can borrow more money they will spend more money, boosting the economy. Unfortunately, it appears this policy is catching up with us.
Wal-Mart is a poor example of lower prices due to the fact that many of their items are also of lower quality. Recently Levi Strauss decided to put Levis Jeans in Wal-Mart stores. The only way they were able to do this and keep their profit margins was to produce a lower quality pair of jeans. Sure, many name brand items are cheaper at Wal-Mart and are exactly the same as what you would buy in other stores. I've read some of the horror stories about Wal-Mart and their relationship with their vendors and I would agree, their lower price policy does hurt some people.
Getting back to the original discussion, technology has increased the standard of living in this country since the Industrial Revolution began. Things like indoor plumbing, electricity and telephone service have become standard at least partly due to increases in technology and decreases in costs. The Romans had running water in homes, so why didn't 19th century America? The manufacturing processes were much to expensive to make it practical. There is little doubt that the overall ease of life (I won't say quality) for the average American has increased dramatically over the last 100-150 years.
Don't think for a second that if all immigration was cut off that the farms wouldn't be worked by US citizens. They would just be worked by US citizens that earn more per hour than what the immigrent workers make now.
No, the farms would no longer be a viable business entity and would be shut down. This would result in less product taken to market, driving food costs up. Eventually the market would reach equilibrium and the remaining farmers would be able to pay the prices for US Citizens to work the fields.
Anyone will work in a field if you raise the price enough. The problem is that expensive labor is making goods cost more than the market will pay. As a result labor from a weaker economy comes in and does the work. There are tons of people on welfare in the US that could be doing this migrant work. Why don't they? Because the farms can't afford to pay them more than Welfare is paying them. If we automated all of this work we wouldn't have any more unemployed people than we have now, we would just have fewer migrant workers from Mexico.
What they lack in fur, they make with in blubber.
Which also explains why I'm so cuddly.
Sorry, I'm incredibly negative towards the IT industry right now. I was even advised by an older timer (I've been in IT for over ten years) to get out.
And go into what exactly? To me that's the most interesting question regarding this whole discussion. If I'm going to jump out of IT where should I go? Which industry is going to be the next hot one? Is everyone going to abandon technology? Absolutely not, IT is a sector that is going to experience growth. Technology is not going away, actually it's just starting to get a really good grasp at the consumer level. There is going to be more and more demand for Internet services, high bandwidth connections, extra storage, DRM, CRM, whatever. As that demand increases, someone is going to need to write software or create infrastructure for it. Tech is an industry that is not going away.
Cheers!
Didn't you mean Cheerio?
it is when the housing market is growing at 30% annually.
Personally I don't think the housing market can sustain this growth rate long term. Besides you can always rent. Third World pay would denote living in a cardboard shack or on the street.
The days of $40k programmers will be a thing of the past inside of years.
Not sure what you mean by that, but yes I would agree. Wages generally tend to increase, every year $40k is less and less money. My point was, right NOW a person can live on $40k/year. It's not great money, but survivable and a FAR cry from 'third world wages'.
I hope this example shows that it is not clear at all how technology really affects the economy - it really depends on the individuals in that economy.
You forgot one principal in your example - competition. In reality Person A will either start selling his machine to Person Q, F and G, Person Q, F and G will create their own machines, or Person V will copy it and sell it to Person Q, F and G. Then Person Q will say, "Hmmmm... if I knock 10% off the price of this house I can sell more houses the Person A". Eventually the market will balance out and in the end the market price of the houses should go down.
We see this exact thing happening right now. House prices have raised, but so has the overall size and features of the houses. Sure, a new house is 3 or 4 times what a house was 20 years ago, but new houses also have 3 car garages, huge walk-in closets, huge master baths and all sorts of other cool stuff. Right now the 'average' family is living in a much nicer, larger home than they were in the 50s or 60s, mostly due to technological progress.
Odd then, that there is an ever increasing number of migrant farm workers in the US.
Why is that odd? That just proves the parent's theory. There are more migrant farm workers in the US because US citizens can't/won't/don't want to do the migrant farm work. If robots could take over this work we would use them rather than migrant workers.
they're not as cute and cuddly as whales.
I know! Whales are soooo cuddly.
Anyone complaining that "experienced" developers are hard to find either 1. hasn't looked, or 2. is being too picky.
Obviously there are many factors, but let me relate the experience our company had in the last few years.
We decided to bite the bullet and hire some good/experienced developers and pay them what they were worth. We looked for quite some time and ended up hiring four people. Out of the four, two were what I would call GOOD, experienced C++ developers. The other two had some skills, but were nearly impossible to get along with. Since hiring these developers three have left. One because she didn't like the location, one because he was unproductive and one because he couldn't get along with anyone.
I'm sure there are many factors that go into our experiences, our location, the economy at the time of our hiring, etc... OTOH, in my experience, it can be difficult to find top quality individuals in any industry. The grandparent is right, the best software developers already have jobs and are paid well, if you want to hire the best you have to be willing to find these people and pay them what they are worth. If you aren't willing to do that you need to lower your standards.
$40k - $50k is third world pay? Wow, get a grip. Sure, $50,000/year isn't great money anymore, but I know many people that live on much less. I don't think you can really call $25/hour 'third world pay'.