I suspect some people (myself included) would happily pay a monthly $5 or $10 to access a search engine that was completely free of adverts or bias. If the market were big enough...
Here in South Africa the very best DSL package available is 4Mbps with a 4GB/month cap. For US$130/month.
One ISP actually sells a wireless broadband package with a 10MB cap!
I cannot fathom what it must be like to have a 250GB cap. That oughta be enough for anybody!
We always test applicants, and we've never had anything but top quality hires because of it.
We're not forcing them, but if they aren't willing to put in the effort, it says a lot about their future work ethic. Or perhaps its because they secretly know they're not competent.
Proving you've worked at a company for X years doesn't mean you're any good. Useless incompetent "IT professionals" are "working" at corporations all over the world. How do I know you're not one of them without a test?
As a candidate, you should welcome a test because it tells you a lot about the company you'd be working for. Is the test lame and irrelevant, or are your future colleagues good thinkers? How well are the requirements explained?
Personally I'd rather be tested up front, than be fired after a few months because I don't think along the same lines as my colleagues.
Why has Windows always cost much more to buy in Africa than in the USA?
Those with less than $1/day probably have more important things to worry about, but there are certainly many poor people who could benefit from a subsidised OS in countries with weak currencies, at little or no cost from MS.
That huge storage cathedral cannot be cheap to maintain, insure, keep track of, etc. I dare say Lego could save a lot of cash if they learnt a thing or two from the Japanese, and moved to a Just-In-Time manufacturing process. Bricks would be manufactured just in time to ship to the stores, reducing the need for inventory.
So, if these math geniuses get a degree there, whats to keep them from just moving out of country?
Moving to a first world country on an African passport is easier said than done. Even a PhD needs an H1-B visa to get into America, and applying for that is literally entering a lottery. The UK is more lenient if you have British ancestry, but that doesn't help the black folk.
As a dev manager at a startup where we're trying our damndest to hire developers, I know all too well how the traditional job sites don't provide the goods. The people worth hiring are not the ones looking for jobs.
It must be said that hiring for a startup is even more challenging, because you don't have the time or resources to hire junior and train up; you can't pay the same salary as a large corporate; and you generally don't have that many developers through which to network. You have to sell the job with phrases like "fun startup environment", "new projects & technologies", and "stock options".
I throw out 9 out of every 10 resumes immediately. I could write a book on all the reasons. Spelling and grammar mistakes, or lousy formatting, are unforgiveable. If you're not going to put in an effort to get the job, what quality of work can we expect once you've got it? I can't believe how many people claim "expert knowledge" of things like arrays, cookies and querystrings. That's just clutching at straws. If you spend 7 pages explaining your skills to me like I'm an idiot, you're in the bin - a good developer knows how to keep things simple. The most important question I ask in an interview is "Which development journals and blogs do you read?" because above all else, a good developer is passionate about what they do.
The RIAA should realize that anyone who has resorted to downloading pirated music, is doing so because its too expensive / too much of a mission to buy it. So it cannot be a lost sale because that sale would never have happened even if it weren't possible to pirate the song. If anything piracy just allows a musicians works to be distributed amongst more people while still making the same money.
It's simples supply/demand really. CD's are more expensive than people are willing to pay for them. Bring down the price and more people will buy the CD.
...they'd be selling the iPhone internationally. It's not just China that sells them gray, it's almost everywhere, including here in South Africa.
If the iPhone had been launched here (and China) soon after the US launch, there'd be plenty of legit Apple customers by now. Since they didn't bother, what choice do we have if we want the latest gadget? Its the same story with movies and TV series, our air dates are always months/years after the US air date, so instead of waiting, many people choose to download illegal copies to keep up-to-date with the rest of the world, when these could've been legitimate sales if the series's had been marketed properly.
Its high time US companies started treating their global customers the same as their US customers, because we are not stupid - know what we're missing out on, and willing to pay for the items, and if we can't do so legally then we'll find another way. Instead of complaining about "lost sales" Apple should be complaining about lost opportunities.
"Everything else is just stuff to distract you from the fact that your phone network quality suddenly degraded to 3rd world levels."
3rd world levels obviously don't apply here in Africa - you'll have a difficult time finding anyone who has ever had a dropped call or had anything but crystal clear voice quality. Networks are GSM with Edge/3G/HSDPA in urban areas, and coverage is generally excellent even in rural areas.
As the vast majority of africans are poor, there is a big market here for pre-paid contracts. Buy a cheap phone one-off (new or second-hand, they're mostly network-unlocked) and get a sim card for your mobile number. You then load blocks of credit onto your sim card and pay $0.10-$0.20 per minute for calls. Contracts are never longer than 2 years and you get a free brand new phone of your choice every 20 months, free minutes and data rates of about $0.14/MB). And yes the networks are making massive profits.
I think part of the problem in the US is that they were one of the first countries with a cell network, and therefore they're now stuck with a huge infrastructure of old technology that is too expensive to upgrade to take advantage of newer phones. But that still doesn't explain why Americans are willing to pay to *receive* a text message, or how anyone can be happy with a network that doesn't support basic stuff like Wap Push requests.
The first was newsworthy, the second really wasn't
Depends where you live. In South Africa, the second tourist (Mark Shuttleworth) was the front page news headlines for many months. I dare say he's still more famous locally than our president.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect some people (myself included) would happily pay a monthly $5 or $10 to access a search engine that was completely free of adverts or bias. If the market were big enough ...
Here in South Africa the very best DSL package available is 4Mbps with a 4GB/month cap. For US$130/month. One ISP actually sells a wireless broadband package with a 10MB cap! I cannot fathom what it must be like to have a 250GB cap. That oughta be enough for anybody!
We always test applicants, and we've never had anything but top quality hires because of it. We're not forcing them, but if they aren't willing to put in the effort, it says a lot about their future work ethic. Or perhaps its because they secretly know they're not competent. Proving you've worked at a company for X years doesn't mean you're any good. Useless incompetent "IT professionals" are "working" at corporations all over the world. How do I know you're not one of them without a test? As a candidate, you should welcome a test because it tells you a lot about the company you'd be working for. Is the test lame and irrelevant, or are your future colleagues good thinkers? How well are the requirements explained? Personally I'd rather be tested up front, than be fired after a few months because I don't think along the same lines as my colleagues.
If they've "lost" the records, how do they know it was 8 million people?
Why has Windows always cost much more to buy in Africa than in the USA? Those with less than $1/day probably have more important things to worry about, but there are certainly many poor people who could benefit from a subsidised OS in countries with weak currencies, at little or no cost from MS.
That huge storage cathedral cannot be cheap to maintain, insure, keep track of, etc. I dare say Lego could save a lot of cash if they learnt a thing or two from the Japanese, and moved to a Just-In-Time manufacturing process. Bricks would be manufactured just in time to ship to the stores, reducing the need for inventory.
Moving to a first world country on an African passport is easier said than done. Even a PhD needs an H1-B visa to get into America, and applying for that is literally entering a lottery. The UK is more lenient if you have British ancestry, but that doesn't help the black folk.
As a dev manager at a startup where we're trying our damndest to hire developers, I know all too well how the traditional job sites don't provide the goods. The people worth hiring are not the ones looking for jobs.
It must be said that hiring for a startup is even more challenging, because you don't have the time or resources to hire junior and train up; you can't pay the same salary as a large corporate; and you generally don't have that many developers through which to network. You have to sell the job with phrases like "fun startup environment", "new projects & technologies", and "stock options".
I throw out 9 out of every 10 resumes immediately. I could write a book on all the reasons. Spelling and grammar mistakes, or lousy formatting, are unforgiveable. If you're not going to put in an effort to get the job, what quality of work can we expect once you've got it? I can't believe how many people claim "expert knowledge" of things like arrays, cookies and querystrings. That's just clutching at straws. If you spend 7 pages explaining your skills to me like I'm an idiot, you're in the bin - a good developer knows how to keep things simple. The most important question I ask in an interview is "Which development journals and blogs do you read?" because above all else, a good developer is passionate about what they do.
The RIAA should realize that anyone who has resorted to downloading pirated music, is doing so because its too expensive / too much of a mission to buy it. So it cannot be a lost sale because that sale would never have happened even if it weren't possible to pirate the song. If anything piracy just allows a musicians works to be distributed amongst more people while still making the same money. It's simples supply/demand really. CD's are more expensive than people are willing to pay for them. Bring down the price and more people will buy the CD.
...they'd be selling the iPhone internationally. It's not just China that sells them gray, it's almost everywhere, including here in South Africa. If the iPhone had been launched here (and China) soon after the US launch, there'd be plenty of legit Apple customers by now. Since they didn't bother, what choice do we have if we want the latest gadget? Its the same story with movies and TV series, our air dates are always months/years after the US air date, so instead of waiting, many people choose to download illegal copies to keep up-to-date with the rest of the world, when these could've been legitimate sales if the series's had been marketed properly. Its high time US companies started treating their global customers the same as their US customers, because we are not stupid - know what we're missing out on, and willing to pay for the items, and if we can't do so legally then we'll find another way. Instead of complaining about "lost sales" Apple should be complaining about lost opportunities.
And it works on any phone. Order online, via WAP, or via SMS and your phone is linked to your credit card. http://www.gomobo.com/
I exclusively use POP3 to download my Gmail and therefore bypass all the adverts, and have been doing so for 2 years.
I wonder how much revenue Google is losing to people who don't read their mail in a web browser?
"Everything else is just stuff to distract you from the fact that your phone network quality suddenly degraded to 3rd world levels." 3rd world levels obviously don't apply here in Africa - you'll have a difficult time finding anyone who has ever had a dropped call or had anything but crystal clear voice quality. Networks are GSM with Edge/3G/HSDPA in urban areas, and coverage is generally excellent even in rural areas. As the vast majority of africans are poor, there is a big market here for pre-paid contracts. Buy a cheap phone one-off (new or second-hand, they're mostly network-unlocked) and get a sim card for your mobile number. You then load blocks of credit onto your sim card and pay $0.10-$0.20 per minute for calls. Contracts are never longer than 2 years and you get a free brand new phone of your choice every 20 months, free minutes and data rates of about $0.14/MB). And yes the networks are making massive profits. I think part of the problem in the US is that they were one of the first countries with a cell network, and therefore they're now stuck with a huge infrastructure of old technology that is too expensive to upgrade to take advantage of newer phones. But that still doesn't explain why Americans are willing to pay to *receive* a text message, or how anyone can be happy with a network that doesn't support basic stuff like Wap Push requests.
The first was newsworthy, the second really wasn't Depends where you live. In South Africa, the second tourist (Mark Shuttleworth) was the front page news headlines for many months. I dare say he's still more famous locally than our president.