Daksh is an early mover in a sector that is thriving by tapping India's English-speaking workers to provide services such as accounting and insurance claims processing to foreign customers looking for low-cost outsourcing.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be an investment rather than a direct acquisition.
In other words, these 6,000 employees wouldn't be taking tech jobs from the U.S.
once upon a time, only advanced mathematicians knew calculus, but now we learn it in high school. Just wait until warp theory is an entry level college engineering course
Once upon a time, the majority of adult males knew how to trap a rabbit (or similar creature), gut it, skin it, start up a fire, cook it, and eat it.
I don't.
Heck, I couldn't even look up at the sky at night and tell you which way was north.
Once upon a time, most people could.
All I'm saying is that the amount of knowledge and skills the average human being can possess will not increase expontentially over time (barring artificial manipulation). We gain new skills as a population and lose old ones.
Most of the people I know who do this stuff have specific contacts - i.e. they are maybe 2-3 hops away from the initial distributor.
Additionally, even if they are a few more hops away, they know and trust who they download from. Its not like they go and do a filesearch...most people know who they download from. And so when these l33t people get a trojan, they let their "clients" know.
3 out of 4 people will not be able to tell you what bandwidth is.
I'm wondering about this "easy to use" business. It's true that it will get us more users in the short run...but if the system was such that you would be forced to acquire at least some understanding of what you were doing, eventually you would get similar number of users, only they would be a little bit more aware of what is going on.
It astonishes me that people don't care to learn about something they use every day, for perhaps hours on end.
Right, but what was their n value? Where did they conduct the survey? Did they include a variable mix of people? Were their surveys limited to a particular geographic region or cultural group?
I can't seem to find the survey on MailShell...anybody having better luck? I did a domain search through Google but no luck.
Not challenging the accuracy of the survey outright, but it would certainly help to have a link.
I'd like to bring up what I think is an interesting point here.
How does this type of announcement (and others like it) affect our role in this struggle?
What can we do to make their efforts more fruitful?
I know people who in the past took it upon themselves to trace certain spammers and send an email with relevant data to the host mail provider (lets say, Yahoo for instance) in an effort to perhaps provoke some response.
My question is: does this work? Is it effective? Or will the spammer just as easily switch addresses? If so, was it worth it to give them that kind of trouble or are we simply wasting our time?
If, after this discussion, we determine that it is a worthy method of helping, how would you go about doing it? What type of advice would you give to people who would like to take action once in a while?
Obviously I can't take action against every piece of spam that hits my mailbox. However, there are certain, shall we say...habitual offenders. Looking at my hotmail account over these past few years (I use my optonline account for serious mail) its fairly easy to figure out that a large bulk of those emails are coming from a common source.
Anyway, I'd really appreciate some input - including technical details.
Apologies, I re-read the parent post and realized that what he was referring to was not my classification of anti-social behavior.
Someone anti-social is anti-social on a consistent basis.
Sometimes we simply need some time to ourselves, to call us anti-social in that situation is to simply misunderstand the meaning of the termanti-social.
Is it a bad thing that Henry David Thoreau (walden) worked best when he removed himself from society?
No, its certainly not a bad thing to take time off from the bustle of the world and engage in private work.
However, how could Thoreau have been a humanist if he never took the time to interact and engage with humanity?
Life experience is something that happens to you - you can't go looking for it.
Social behavior is a defining characteristic of our species. It's true that different people have different appetites for social interaction, but you can never be truly human if you decide to block out everything.
I'd never think of asking a question or making small talk.
Well, I agree that you are entitled to your own privacy and to not be disturbed at times, but you see people carrying these mp3 players everywhere. Whenever I go on the subway, every fourth person on the train is listening to music on their headphones.
It comes to the point where people put on headphones wherever they go (as you said).
Quoth the article, "listening to music acts as a shield, aura or cocoon."
Let me make an analogy of an analogy. Perhaps, as technologically oriented individuals, we can consider this as being a firewall, or perhaps a blanket spam filter. The problem is, it filters everything out. It's like making a habit of putting a DND sign at your office or dorm entrance - it prevents you from interacting, having wonderful experiences.
As I said in another post, life is worth living because it is dynamic and unpredictable. You will never know what you are missing if you choose to block out the world on a consistent basis. Maybe I am sitting on that subway train next to you, maybe we have some common interests. Maybe I have some interest tidbit of news, or a perspective on life or some other issue. But know what? That's too bad, because you'll never get to hear it, since I won't think to disturb you from listening to your music.
Here's some advice: you're entitled to listen to your music, but once in a while get a little adventurous and take them off.
I agree. Reading some things in the article, I got a very peculiar image.
They let listeners become witnesses without the risk of getting too involved. The earphones absolve them of some responsibility.
Is the author implying that we dampen reality through the use of mp3 players?
Life is dynamic, exciting, uncertain. That's what makes it worth living.
To me, this article is saying that we should use these mp3 players to exert a sort of control over our everyday experiences, altering them to conform to our desires. But that's not what life is about. Life isn't a solo venture.
There are two factors that I don't believe you are keeping in mind.
The first is total population size. The bubonic plague killed approximately 25 million people of the 75 million people living in Europe at the
time.
The population of Europe right now, according to
these people is nearly 10 times that. Its true that the more recent consensus may count some countries not counted in the 75 million count, but still it will suffice for our purposes.
Another factor is population density, which is much greater in this day and age. Its true that we now have sanitation, but keep in mind that we have more people living in cities as well.
We have found proof at last that the United States military is merely a front for the diabolical operations of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, which manifest themselves in our reality in the form of seemingly innocent mice.
I suggest we sabotage this operation by crash landing Darl, Bill, and Dubya on this "Earth" thereby insuring that the indigenous human population will commit hari-kari.
I think that even if we did come up with some sort of solution, the range of possible sideffects would be endless.
To quote the article, "What this seems to be asking for is fantastic in every sense of the word," said Marion Nestle, the former chair of NYU's department of nutrition, food studies and public health in an e-mail message. "Calories are calories, laws of thermodynamics still operate, and humans are still human.
Simply put, they are trying to push the body beyond its natural limitations for days on end. Even from an evolutionary point of view (the God factor thus put aside), these biochemical processes have evolved over millions of years to their current state. Now, its true that evolution is a mindless force and that we cannot argue that its end products are most efficient - but we should take into consideration why the efficiency of these processes is as it is.
"Mitochondria supplies energy to the cells; the agency would like to see if the powerhouses could be temporarily increased."
Again, the mitochondrion is a very sophisticated structure. I think it likely that even if we were to "overclock" the mitochondria, eventually the practice would catch up to us in a horrible way. The human body is programmed to run at a very narrow functional range. Taking it out of that range and pushing it beyond its extreme limitations is reckless considering how little knowledge we have about it.
The main problem I see are future side effects. Military scientists aren't of the patient breed - they aren't going to wait 15 or 20 years to see the effects of their little "stimpacks." Once they have what they want (with reasonable success rate) they aren't interested in any further research in the area. Only through civilian research can we safely approach such an issue - and the product has no civilian application.
You know, the most common argument people have made against X-Box in the past is
"Microsoft is new to the video console world, and as such there are no good game developers making games for Microsoft."
It just strikes me as odd that they would have this sort of debate. Is Microsoft now in a significantly better position to entice video game offers from companies, or do they still need time to develop a presence in the console video game market?
One could even joke that since Microsoft doesn't expect any game developers to make games for them, they should make XBox Next backwards compatible:)
But on a general note, I don't see why video game consoles need to be backwards compatible. With new Operating systems/hardware and computer software the issue is that people like to preserve existing data, and you can never be sure if everyone who wants to use your product is sufficiently upgraded.
In this case, I agree that Microsoft shouldn't bother with an extroadinary effort for backwards compatibility. Emulators are the way to go for nostalgics.
I actually didn't finish the single player campaign in Homeworld (I had borrowed the game and had to give it back) but I can say I was dazzled by the 3-D dimension. I mean, the did it perfectly. Once used to the system, you could send small sories on intercept routes varying at angles, and catch the enemy from three different directions, all the while maintaining an escape route.
The one thing that bothered me was the lack of sufficient variety in units. More units, different spaceships, maybe a history to the units...that would have made it much cooler when you actually saw them in action.
Its really unfortunate that none of the big names in RTS picked up on this idea, because I think it has amazing potential.
Imagine rendering hundreds of ships in a raging 3-D battle in an asteroid field just outside a binary system. Wow.
The poor coordination in the beta program left me with a feeling of loss. The first version they shipped out to us was horribly, horribly bugged - in terms of artwork and game playability, as well as video card driver support (I had to downgrade my drivers until I figured out how to edit the game files to make it work with higher level drivers...I don't know if the game developers fixed the problem till much later).
Still, when I finally got to playing the game I enjoyed it immensely. It looked to me like a cross between my beloved Age of Empires and Civilization - and the Conquer the World mode was pure Risk.
The variety in terms of battle was lovely, as well as the graphics. I am a great fan of building, and I got plenty of it in Rise of Nations.
Deciding whether to use Nukes or ICBMs in the interest of the environment (there was a limit to how many nukes could be fired during the game, crossing it meant defeat for all players). Using a huge fleet of bombers to decimate cities (worked much better than IRL). Waiting for the right time to capture a city and fortify it. Definitely variety.
The only regret was the oversimplification of the science and technology system. I mean, it seemed to me that I was just clicking buttons - in no way did I feel that my civilization was moving forward (until the architecture of my buildings changed). I felt that they could have made it a little more engaging than having the basic descriptions.
Also, another game not mentioned was 7 Kingdoms or its sequel.
I bought and played Seven Kingdoms II several years ago.
Overall, I wasn't terribly impressed. It had some novel ideas (the spy and mercenary system) but overall it failed to hold the attention of gamers.
The single player campaign (although randomized) was not terribly interesting - human civilizations fighting a war against demons (the Frythans) sounded pretty cliche to me. Plus, when they went for the randomized campaigns they had to ditch something called a storyline.
Outside of the campaign, the gameplay was interesting at first, since you had the opportunity to build and conquer cities and resources (reminded me of Civilization II, much better graphics). The different civilizations had their own unique units but other than that and the city art you could hardly tell you were playing one race or another.
Control of units in battle was annoying as anything, often times pathfinding was poor and terribly slow. Still, large battles gave you a chance to sit back and enjoy listening to the grunts and sounds of battle.
Nevertheless, Seven Kingdoms II must be credited with two things in particular: heros and espionage. The two were fairly well done and added a new perspective as opposed to games of its time.
Slashdot Mirror
Daksh is an early mover in a sector that is thriving by tapping India's English-speaking workers to provide services such as accounting and insurance claims processing to foreign customers looking for low-cost outsourcing.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be an investment rather than a direct acquisition.
In other words, these 6,000 employees wouldn't be taking tech jobs from the U.S.
once upon a time, only advanced mathematicians knew calculus, but now we learn it in high school. Just wait until warp theory is an entry level college engineering course
Once upon a time, the majority of adult males knew how to trap a rabbit (or similar creature), gut it, skin it, start up a fire, cook it, and eat it.
I don't.
Heck, I couldn't even look up at the sky at night and tell you which way was north.
Once upon a time, most people could.
All I'm saying is that the amount of knowledge and skills the average human being can possess will not increase expontentially over time (barring artificial manipulation). We gain new skills as a population and lose old ones.
Most of the people I know who do this stuff have specific contacts - i.e. they are maybe 2-3 hops away from the initial distributor.
Additionally, even if they are a few more hops away, they know and trust who they download from. Its not like they go and do a filesearch...most people know who they download from. And so when these l33t people get a trojan, they let their "clients" know.
If you search past Slashdot archives, you will see discussions where
Here's an interesting report (Adobe Reader required).
3 out of 4 people will not be able to tell you what bandwidth is.
I'm wondering about this "easy to use" business. It's true that it will get us more users in the short run...but if the system was such that you would be forced to acquire at least some understanding of what you were doing, eventually you would get similar number of users, only they would be a little bit more aware of what is going on.
It astonishes me that people don't care to learn about something they use every day, for perhaps hours on end.
Right, but what was their n value? Where did they conduct the survey? Did they include a variable mix of people? Were their surveys limited to a particular geographic region or cultural group?
I can't seem to find the survey on MailShell...anybody having better luck? I did a domain search through Google but no luck.
Not challenging the accuracy of the survey outright, but it would certainly help to have a link.
I'd like to bring up what I think is an interesting point here.
How does this type of announcement (and others like it) affect our role in this struggle? What can we do to make their efforts more fruitful?
I know people who in the past took it upon themselves to trace certain spammers and send an email with relevant data to the host mail provider (lets say, Yahoo for instance) in an effort to perhaps provoke some response.
My question is: does this work? Is it effective? Or will the spammer just as easily switch addresses? If so, was it worth it to give them that kind of trouble or are we simply wasting our time?
If, after this discussion, we determine that it is a worthy method of helping, how would you go about doing it? What type of advice would you give to people who would like to take action once in a while?
Obviously I can't take action against every piece of spam that hits my mailbox. However, there are certain, shall we say...habitual offenders. Looking at my hotmail account over these past few years (I use my optonline account for serious mail) its fairly easy to figure out that a large bulk of those emails are coming from a common source.
Anyway, I'd really appreciate some input - including technical details.
Apologies, I re-read the parent post and realized that what he was referring to was not my classification of anti-social behavior.
Someone anti-social is anti-social on a consistent basis.
Sometimes we simply need some time to ourselves, to call us anti-social in that situation is to simply misunderstand the meaning of the term anti-social.
Is it a bad thing that Henry David Thoreau (walden) worked best when he removed himself from society?
No, its certainly not a bad thing to take time off from the bustle of the world and engage in private work.
However, how could Thoreau have been a humanist if he never took the time to interact and engage with humanity?
Life experience is something that happens to you - you can't go looking for it.
Social behavior is a defining characteristic of our species. It's true that different people have different appetites for social interaction, but you can never be truly human if you decide to block out everything.
I'd never think of asking a question or making small talk.
Well, I agree that you are entitled to your own privacy and to not be disturbed at times, but you see people carrying these mp3 players everywhere. Whenever I go on the subway, every fourth person on the train is listening to music on their headphones.
It comes to the point where people put on headphones wherever they go (as you said).
Quoth the article, "listening to music acts as a shield, aura or cocoon."
Let me make an analogy of an analogy. Perhaps, as technologically oriented individuals, we can consider this as being a firewall, or perhaps a blanket spam filter. The problem is, it filters everything out. It's like making a habit of putting a DND sign at your office or dorm entrance - it prevents you from interacting, having wonderful experiences.
As I said in another post, life is worth living because it is dynamic and unpredictable. You will never know what you are missing if you choose to block out the world on a consistent basis. Maybe I am sitting on that subway train next to you, maybe we have some common interests. Maybe I have some interest tidbit of news, or a perspective on life or some other issue. But know what? That's too bad, because you'll never get to hear it, since I won't think to disturb you from listening to your music.
Here's some advice: you're entitled to listen to your music, but once in a while get a little adventurous and take them off.
I agree. Reading some things in the article, I got a very peculiar image.
They let listeners become witnesses without the risk of getting too involved. The earphones absolve them of some responsibility.
Is the author implying that we dampen reality through the use of mp3 players?
Life is dynamic, exciting, uncertain. That's what makes it worth living.
To me, this article is saying that we should use these mp3 players to exert a sort of control over our everyday experiences, altering them to conform to our desires. But that's not what life is about. Life isn't a solo venture.
There are two factors that I don't believe you are keeping in mind.
The first is total population size. The bubonic plague killed approximately 25 million people of the 75 million people living in Europe at the time.
The population of Europe right now, according to these people is nearly 10 times that. Its true that the more recent consensus may count some countries not counted in the 75 million count, but still it will suffice for our purposes.
Another factor is population density, which is much greater in this day and age. Its true that we now have sanitation, but keep in mind that we have more people living in cities as well.
So you need to keep a few things in mind.
Natural evolution is a mindless force.
Trained scientists working on a "superflu" have a focus, a goal in mind.
I remember watching the short video clips of the "Shock and Awe" operation in Iraq. I can't seem to find it at the moment on Google.
Sure looked like a video game to me. Point, click, and BOOM.
Office buildings? Homes? Hospitals? No, those are merely designated targets, blips on a map.
We have found proof at last that the United States military is merely a front for the diabolical operations of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, which manifest themselves in our reality in the form of seemingly innocent mice.
I suggest we sabotage this operation by crash landing Darl, Bill, and Dubya on this "Earth" thereby insuring that the indigenous human population will commit hari-kari.
I think that even if we did come up with some sort of solution, the range of possible sideffects would be endless.
To quote the article, "What this seems to be asking for is fantastic in every sense of the word," said Marion Nestle, the former chair of NYU's department of nutrition, food studies and public health in an e-mail message. "Calories are calories, laws of thermodynamics still operate, and humans are still human.
Simply put, they are trying to push the body beyond its natural limitations for days on end. Even from an evolutionary point of view (the God factor thus put aside), these biochemical processes have evolved over millions of years to their current state. Now, its true that evolution is a mindless force and that we cannot argue that its end products are most efficient - but we should take into consideration why the efficiency of these processes is as it is.
"Mitochondria supplies energy to the cells; the agency would like to see if the powerhouses could be temporarily increased."
Again, the mitochondrion is a very sophisticated structure. I think it likely that even if we were to "overclock" the mitochondria, eventually the practice would catch up to us in a horrible way. The human body is programmed to run at a very narrow functional range. Taking it out of that range and pushing it beyond its extreme limitations is reckless considering how little knowledge we have about it.
The main problem I see are future side effects. Military scientists aren't of the patient breed - they aren't going to wait 15 or 20 years to see the effects of their little "stimpacks." Once they have what they want (with reasonable success rate) they aren't interested in any further research in the area. Only through civilian research can we safely approach such an issue - and the product has no civilian application.
I just don't think this is worth the risks.
Funny I was just looking that up for a friend.
This is not MyDoom.
This link may help.
Check that out, may help.
Its a tricorder!
Take a cue from Bean in Ender's Shadow.
Let's all become nudists !!
You know, the most common argument people have made against X-Box in the past is "Microsoft is new to the video console world, and as such there are no good game developers making games for Microsoft."
:)
It just strikes me as odd that they would have this sort of debate. Is Microsoft now in a significantly better position to entice video game offers from companies, or do they still need time to develop a presence in the console video game market?
One could even joke that since Microsoft doesn't expect any game developers to make games for them, they should make XBox Next backwards compatible
But on a general note, I don't see why video game consoles need to be backwards compatible. With new Operating systems/hardware and computer software the issue is that people like to preserve existing data, and you can never be sure if everyone who wants to use your product is sufficiently upgraded.
In this case, I agree that Microsoft shouldn't bother with an extroadinary effort for backwards compatibility. Emulators are the way to go for nostalgics.
I think Blizzard's AI was absolutely amazing.
Arguably the best AI I've ever played against.
I actually didn't finish the single player campaign in Homeworld (I had borrowed the game and had to give it back) but I can say I was dazzled by the 3-D dimension. I mean, the did it perfectly. Once used to the system, you could send small sories on intercept routes varying at angles, and catch the enemy from three different directions, all the while maintaining an escape route.
The one thing that bothered me was the lack of sufficient variety in units. More units, different spaceships, maybe a history to the units...that would have made it much cooler when you actually saw them in action.
Its really unfortunate that none of the big names in RTS picked up on this idea, because I think it has amazing potential.
Imagine rendering hundreds of ships in a raging 3-D battle in an asteroid field just outside a binary system. Wow.
I was a beta-tester for Rise of Nations.
The poor coordination in the beta program left me with a feeling of loss. The first version they shipped out to us was horribly, horribly bugged - in terms of artwork and game playability, as well as video card driver support (I had to downgrade my drivers until I figured out how to edit the game files to make it work with higher level drivers...I don't know if the game developers fixed the problem till much later).
Still, when I finally got to playing the game I enjoyed it immensely. It looked to me like a cross between my beloved Age of Empires and Civilization - and the Conquer the World mode was pure Risk.
The variety in terms of battle was lovely, as well as the graphics. I am a great fan of building, and I got plenty of it in Rise of Nations.
Deciding whether to use Nukes or ICBMs in the interest of the environment (there was a limit to how many nukes could be fired during the game, crossing it meant defeat for all players). Using a huge fleet of bombers to decimate cities (worked much better than IRL). Waiting for the right time to capture a city and fortify it. Definitely variety.
The only regret was the oversimplification of the science and technology system. I mean, it seemed to me that I was just clicking buttons - in no way did I feel that my civilization was moving forward (until the architecture of my buildings changed). I felt that they could have made it a little more engaging than having the basic descriptions.
Overall, I wasn't terribly impressed. It had some novel ideas (the spy and mercenary system) but overall it failed to hold the attention of gamers.
The single player campaign (although randomized) was not terribly interesting - human civilizations fighting a war against demons (the Frythans) sounded pretty cliche to me. Plus, when they went for the randomized campaigns they had to ditch something called a storyline .
Outside of the campaign, the gameplay was interesting at first, since you had the opportunity to build and conquer cities and resources (reminded me of Civilization II, much better graphics). The different civilizations had their own unique units but other than that and the city art you could hardly tell you were playing one race or another.
Control of units in battle was annoying as anything, often times pathfinding was poor and terribly slow. Still, large battles gave you a chance to sit back and enjoy listening to the grunts and sounds of battle.
Nevertheless, Seven Kingdoms II must be credited with two things in particular: heros and espionage. The two were fairly well done and added a new perspective as opposed to games of its time.
Game: Your character has been killed.
You: Ohmigod you n00b! WHY CAN'T YOU FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS?
Her: Is that all I am to you? Someone to boss around?
You: Hey, you're the one that lost us the game!
Her: Is that all I am to you? A game?
You: No...
Her: I hate you! It's over between us!