It will probably look pretty good. The universities in Estonia and other former Warsaw pact countries are very good, and turn out a lot of competent IT developers that would be very happy with $15/hour.
And to be clear: their universities are not *that* far behind MIT, in terms of competence. How many overpaid US developers have never had any formal CS training? Quite a few, I bet. A decent CS grad student in Eastern Europe is competent, and overjoyed at being paid $15/hour. I wouldn't mind outsourcing my development to them at all.
My advice for anyone who thinks they will remain coding all of their lives: coding is going out the door everywhere. Low-code development platforms will make specification ever more important, and coding ever less so.
But information analysis, domain knowledge, requirements analysis and business process modeling/data modeling, these are for ever. Architecture too, although changing faster than the other areas.
I've met some quite good Indian managers. I don't see why this wouldn't be possible in theory. In practice, however, management positions go to "people like me".
15$ an hour is pretty good. There are places in Europe (Greece, Spain, the former Warsaw pact states) where this is a pretty decent wage. The average wage for high skilled employees in Greece is 1500 euro per month, so 15$ an hour doesn't sound bad at all. And in fact, Dutch companies outsource to Greece and Spain already because of this.
But even more important, for younger people it's extremely hard to get a job due to ossified labour laws, in Italy, Spain and Greece. But by working for this outfit they are avoiding the whole social structure, make more money than their parents in all likelyhood, and gain experience that will help them get a local job on better terms later on.
There is a shortage in the US and the EU of programmers. This company isn't replacing anyone, they're additional labor. Employers can put up with lower quality and communication hassles because otherwise they would have NO developers. The wage difference isn't all that important, but availability of developers, that's the major thing for any business.
They might replace the people I sometimes meet, though: the people that only develop because of the money, never read any literature, aren't interested in development practices and are not only unproductive but actively stifle any new idea. Getting rid of that deadwood would be a good thing.
No, the incident is not measured by number of victims.
GDPR definition: "Personal data breach means a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure of, or access to, personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed.”
It is the breach that matters, not how many people are affected, although you can bet that that will affect the size of the fines. If say, a hospital, has a breach and all patients files are freely shared on the internet, including pictures, and then another breach on a separate server where they also get access to emails, that would be two breaches. Losing a USB stick would be a third breach, and theoretically you could then get fined for up to 12% of your total annual worldwide revenue. Or 60 million euro, whatever is the highest number.
They can fine a percentage of the global income of the company. I'm going to go out on a limb here, but my guess is that that would hurt even Microsoft. Another guess is that this was introduced specifically for companies like Microsoft.
"What is the maximum administrative fine under the GDPR? There are two tiers of administrative fines that can be levied as penalties for non-compliance: Up to €10 million, or 2% annual global turnover – whichever is higher. Up to €20 million, or 4% annual global turnover – whichever is higher."
So if they were willfully breaking the GDPR and actually using it to spy on people, they would be liable for 4% of their annual global turnover. That's a bit more than 4 billion dollar. While that won't bankrupt them, it would certainly not be a fine they could just shrug off. Especially not if you get fined repeatedly. Deutsche Bank hasn't been able to make a profit for years because everyone is fining them. At some point these fines also attract other regulators who smell blood in the water and start digging. But the fine itself isn't even the biggest cost, the loss of reputation is.
It will be used against the largest companies with the most impact first. And Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Amazon rank pretty high on the lists. The US wouldn't be in this pickle if it didn't have the interesting but toxic cocktail of zero respect for user privacy, the US patriot act making it official that foreigners don't have any rights on their data when it resides in the USA, and a history of abusing information gotten through intelligence work to give US companies a leg up. Combine that with a US president who states outright that the interest of companies IS the national interest, and you can probably guess why the GDPR is in place.
Not that the EU doesn't have its own share of bad companies, but in general they're smaller. And they'll get their turn on the wheel, don't worry. The finance industry had better beware, they're on everyone's shitlist right now so I guess they will be the next targets.
But all this is just circumstance. The main problem with Microsoft is that it is not appreciated that civil servants, including intelligence operatives and high ranking Brexit negotiators, find their e-mail subjects and misspelled lines posted to the US. "For diagnostics". Which can legally be obtained by the US intelligence community without Microsoft even being able to indicate they have to hand over the data.
If the US keeps making laws that just outright discriminate against foreigners so blatantly, then don't look surprised when the world retaliates in kind. Be happy the GDPR is merely defensive. The EU could have banned companies from putting ANY data in the hands of ANY non-EU controlled company. Exit WeChat. And if the US and China continue on their chosen paths of trying to alienate everyone, eventually something like that will happen.
Could also be a vitamine B2 issue, depening on certain genetic anomalies. If your weight is down and you still have it, and the meds don't work, try the vitamine.
Well, since we math types just learned yesterday that physicists now have to contend with a contradiction in their most cherished thought experiment (new version of Schrodingers cat), I think we will just leave you to ponder that while we calculate how the universe works:)
In the paper he claims the result of (1/alpha) is "137.035999..." - Wikipedia says 137.035999139 (2014 CODATA recommended value). So is there a new value? Or did his formula give a different outcome?
An electrolyte is a substance that conducts electricity when dissolved in water. Lead batteries use sulfuric acid dissolved in (distilled) water for this. Your body needs several electrolytes for its internal functions.
While I agree with your reasoning, the argument is not hypothetical. It's precisely the argument that is used in places like Uganda, Malaysia and Russia to impose draconian measures against gays and lesbians. Hence the rather vocal opposition to it. Uganda imported this hobby horse from extreme right-wing US preachers. So there is a reason for speaking out against presenting this as some sort of choice that people are free to make or not make.
And indeed, a subject of economic studies. Pretty brilliant work in that respect. Whether it's successful as an enjoyable game is something else entirely.
They're not even in Alpha. They call it that, but what it actually is, is "perpetual development hell". It doesn't have a version number but if it had, it would be 666.
It was bad in the beta and never actually recovered from some pretty bad development choices. Have they discovered parallel processing yet? And version management? Okay, I guess the last one was a bit mean. They must have discovered Git by now.
But seriously, the game is an unstructured mess. Played it for a while, flew a Machariel and did incursions, level 4 missions etc. but after a while it got boring. May pick it up again though.
If sexual orientation is a choice, so what? So is religion and that is a protected class that cannot be discriminated against. What's the big deal if it's a choice or not and are we certain if it is?
I'll assume you're not trolling and really want to know.
If sexual orientation is a choice, then there may be a point in governments banning gays and lesbians from this choice. After all, they're not going to live unhappy lives - they can just choose less objectionable sex partners. Caning (as very recently in Malaysia) is then an obvious attempt to rectify an incorrect choice that will lead to your damnation/loss of soul. Even killing you may be for your own good and the protection of society, as it will turn others away from this choice and make them heterosexual.
If you are gay, however, or lesbian, it's about as easy to switch as if you're heterosexual. While there is a spectrum where you may be more or less into the opposite or equal sex, I find it just as objectionable to be forced into a homosexual relationship as a gay or lesbian would find it to be forced into a heterosexual relationship. This used to be the norm, and lead to a lot of unhappy people with all kinds of double lives. It is now seen mostly as unwarranted interference of the government in the deepest and most private parts of someones private life.
Now, if there was a standard practice that if you were religious you would be banned from marriage and your kids would be taken away, it would be just as bad. But in general, it's not the case (leaving aside cases where the dominant religion forcibly suppresses another religion, like ISIS in Iraq did, or like the Birmese did with the Rohinya minority that weren't Buddhist).
Everyone can tell that this isn't about competition. It's a warning against banning people Trump likes to read. It's like how the Russians will find you guilty of tax evasion after robbing your company, or the Chinese police will lock you up for a while if you are a troublemaker, i.e. if you complain about corruption too loudly.
I can only shake my head at the immense downhill slide the USA is taking. And now this damage is done, it can't be undone.
Personally, I think mr. Nadella is probably the best CEO in the lineup. Ballmer was way too aggressive and the company suffered from it. If you wonder why they were a bunch of backstabbing, arrogant assholes, look no further. Nadella really needed to provide some tranquilizer there. Which he did. He also put his cards on the cloud infrastructure. And currently, Microsoft's position is extremely good as a result: - Microsoft Azure is pretty much unbeatable if you look at ease of use, consistency across platforms, ease of deployment, etc. I'm not sure about pricing, but it's competitive. Oracle's cloud is a bad joke. Even if it were brilliant I'd have to be forced into doing business with that bunch of piranhas. Amazon... outside the USA not trusted at all where it comes to keeping data somewhat safe from prying eyes, or even abusing data from competitors. Microsoft makes an effort to reduce corporate angst there. - SQL Server beats the crap out of Oracle at its own game. - XBox is finally making money - Windows 10 is pretty much the standard platform (and I haven't installed it, no, but many people do). It's inescapable. - MS Office... too expensive IMO in the long run, but not so much people revolt. - Microsoft Surface is actually getting reasonable reviews and some sales, raking in billions in profit. (https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/26/17286900/microsoft-q3-2018-earnings-cloud-surface-linkedin-revenue) - They bought LinkedIn, which is another very strategic purchase that will give them even more insights in what companies are doing, what skillsets they have or need, et cetera.
All in all Nadella has put the company on a good footing internally, and strategically they're probably in the best place they ever have been so far. Unless they try their hand at something ridiculously expensive like launching rockets or self-driving cars. But Microsoft has a huge amount of cash. So... no real threats, and lots of interesting options ahead.
All of which means I think they'll shoot themselves in the head next year. They're good at doing that.
Slashdot Mirror
It will probably look pretty good. The universities in Estonia and other former Warsaw pact countries are very good, and turn out a lot of competent IT developers that would be very happy with $15/hour.
And to be clear: their universities are not *that* far behind MIT, in terms of competence. How many overpaid US developers have never had any formal CS training? Quite a few, I bet. A decent CS grad student in Eastern Europe is competent, and overjoyed at being paid $15/hour. I wouldn't mind outsourcing my development to them at all.
My advice for anyone who thinks they will remain coding all of their lives: coding is going out the door everywhere. Low-code development platforms will make specification ever more important, and coding ever less so.
But information analysis, domain knowledge, requirements analysis and business process modeling/data modeling, these are for ever. Architecture too, although changing faster than the other areas.
I've met some quite good Indian managers. I don't see why this wouldn't be possible in theory. In practice, however, management positions go to "people like me".
15$ an hour is pretty good. There are places in Europe (Greece, Spain, the former Warsaw pact states) where this is a pretty decent wage. The average wage for high skilled employees in Greece is 1500 euro per month, so 15$ an hour doesn't sound bad at all. And in fact, Dutch companies outsource to Greece and Spain already because of this.
But even more important, for younger people it's extremely hard to get a job due to ossified labour laws, in Italy, Spain and Greece. But by working for this outfit they are avoiding the whole social structure, make more money than their parents in all likelyhood, and gain experience that will help them get a local job on better terms later on.
There is a shortage in the US and the EU of programmers. This company isn't replacing anyone, they're additional labor. Employers can put up with lower quality and communication hassles because otherwise they would have NO developers. The wage difference isn't all that important, but availability of developers, that's the major thing for any business.
They might replace the people I sometimes meet, though: the people that only develop because of the money, never read any literature, aren't interested in development practices and are not only unproductive but actively stifle any new idea. Getting rid of that deadwood would be a good thing.
I think he meant China.
Arrrrr!!! Let them walk the plank!
No, the incident is not measured by number of victims.
GDPR definition: "Personal data breach means a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure of, or access to, personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed.”
It is the breach that matters, not how many people are affected, although you can bet that that will affect the size of the fines. If say, a hospital, has a breach and all patients files are freely shared on the internet, including pictures, and then another breach on a separate server where they also get access to emails, that would be two breaches. Losing a USB stick would be a third breach, and theoretically you could then get fined for up to 12% of your total annual worldwide revenue. Or 60 million euro, whatever is the highest number.
They can fine a percentage of the global income of the company. I'm going to go out on a limb here, but my guess is that that would hurt even Microsoft. Another guess is that this was introduced specifically for companies like Microsoft.
"What is the maximum administrative fine under the GDPR? There are two tiers of administrative fines that can be levied as penalties for non-compliance: Up to €10 million, or 2% annual global turnover – whichever is higher. Up to €20 million, or 4% annual global turnover – whichever is higher."
So if they were willfully breaking the GDPR and actually using it to spy on people, they would be liable for 4% of their annual global turnover. That's a bit more than 4 billion dollar. While that won't bankrupt them, it would certainly not be a fine they could just shrug off. Especially not if you get fined repeatedly. Deutsche Bank hasn't been able to make a profit for years because everyone is fining them. At some point these fines also attract other regulators who smell blood in the water and start digging. But the fine itself isn't even the biggest cost, the loss of reputation is.
It will be used against the largest companies with the most impact first. And Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Amazon rank pretty high on the lists. The US wouldn't be in this pickle if it didn't have the interesting but toxic cocktail of zero respect for user privacy, the US patriot act making it official that foreigners don't have any rights on their data when it resides in the USA, and a history of abusing information gotten through intelligence work to give US companies a leg up. Combine that with a US president who states outright that the interest of companies IS the national interest, and you can probably guess why the GDPR is in place.
Not that the EU doesn't have its own share of bad companies, but in general they're smaller. And they'll get their turn on the wheel, don't worry. The finance industry had better beware, they're on everyone's shitlist right now so I guess they will be the next targets.
But all this is just circumstance. The main problem with Microsoft is that it is not appreciated that civil servants, including intelligence operatives and high ranking Brexit negotiators, find their e-mail subjects and misspelled lines posted to the US. "For diagnostics". Which can legally be obtained by the US intelligence community without Microsoft even being able to indicate they have to hand over the data.
If the US keeps making laws that just outright discriminate against foreigners so blatantly, then don't look surprised when the world retaliates in kind. Be happy the GDPR is merely defensive. The EU could have banned companies from putting ANY data in the hands of ANY non-EU controlled company. Exit WeChat. And if the US and China continue on their chosen paths of trying to alienate everyone, eventually something like that will happen.
Could also be a vitamine B2 issue, depening on certain genetic anomalies. If your weight is down and you still have it, and the meds don't work, try the vitamine.
Weird, but wonderful. I could totally get into the Letkiss as long as there were two pretty Finnish girls surrounding me in the line :)
Oh ouch. Okay, I'll take a look again. But if that's it, the paper's dead. As suspected. Too bad. Would have been nice :)
Well, since we math types just learned yesterday that physicists now have to contend with a contradiction in their most cherished thought experiment (new version of Schrodingers cat), I think we will just leave you to ponder that while we calculate how the universe works :)
In the paper he claims the result of (1/alpha) is "137.035999..." - Wikipedia says 137.035999139 (2014 CODATA recommended value). So is there a new value? Or did his formula give a different outcome?
An electrolyte is a substance that conducts electricity when dissolved in water. Lead batteries use sulfuric acid dissolved in (distilled) water for this. Your body needs several electrolytes for its internal functions.
Hmm yeah good point :) I guess I was a bit tired when I replied.
While I agree with your reasoning, the argument is not hypothetical. It's precisely the argument that is used in places like Uganda, Malaysia and Russia to impose draconian measures against gays and lesbians. Hence the rather vocal opposition to it. Uganda imported this hobby horse from extreme right-wing US preachers. So there is a reason for speaking out against presenting this as some sort of choice that people are free to make or not make.
And indeed, a subject of economic studies. Pretty brilliant work in that respect. Whether it's successful as an enjoyable game is something else entirely.
They're not even in Alpha. They call it that, but what it actually is, is "perpetual development hell". It doesn't have a version number but if it had, it would be 666.
It was bad in the beta and never actually recovered from some pretty bad development choices. Have they discovered parallel processing yet? And version management? Okay, I guess the last one was a bit mean. They must have discovered Git by now.
But seriously, the game is an unstructured mess. Played it for a while, flew a Machariel and did incursions, level 4 missions etc. but after a while it got boring. May pick it up again though.
That dude *is* nuts. No ifs and buts about it. He probably thinks he no longer needs his pills now he has seen the True Light or something.
If sexual orientation is a choice, so what? So is religion and that is a protected class that cannot be discriminated against. What's the big deal if it's a choice or not and are we certain if it is?
I'll assume you're not trolling and really want to know.
If sexual orientation is a choice, then there may be a point in governments banning gays and lesbians from this choice. After all, they're not going to live unhappy lives - they can just choose less objectionable sex partners. Caning (as very recently in Malaysia) is then an obvious attempt to rectify an incorrect choice that will lead to your damnation/loss of soul. Even killing you may be for your own good and the protection of society, as it will turn others away from this choice and make them heterosexual.
If you are gay, however, or lesbian, it's about as easy to switch as if you're heterosexual. While there is a spectrum where you may be more or less into the opposite or equal sex, I find it just as objectionable to be forced into a homosexual relationship as a gay or lesbian would find it to be forced into a heterosexual relationship. This used to be the norm, and lead to a lot of unhappy people with all kinds of double lives. It is now seen mostly as unwarranted interference of the government in the deepest and most private parts of someones private life.
Now, if there was a standard practice that if you were religious you would be banned from marriage and your kids would be taken away, it would be just as bad. But in general, it's not the case (leaving aside cases where the dominant religion forcibly suppresses another religion, like ISIS in Iraq did, or like the Birmese did with the Rohinya minority that weren't Buddhist).
Yes, I liked usenet too. But it was an elegant weapon for a more civilized age. It no longer functions in this age of massed information attacks.
Everyone can tell that this isn't about competition. It's a warning against banning people Trump likes to read. It's like how the Russians will find you guilty of tax evasion after robbing your company, or the Chinese police will lock you up for a while if you are a troublemaker, i.e. if you complain about corruption too loudly.
I can only shake my head at the immense downhill slide the USA is taking. And now this damage is done, it can't be undone.
Personally, I think mr. Nadella is probably the best CEO in the lineup. Ballmer was way too aggressive and the company suffered from it. If you wonder why they were a bunch of backstabbing, arrogant assholes, look no further. Nadella really needed to provide some tranquilizer there. Which he did. He also put his cards on the cloud infrastructure. And currently, Microsoft's position is extremely good as a result:
- Microsoft Azure is pretty much unbeatable if you look at ease of use, consistency across platforms, ease of deployment, etc. I'm not sure about pricing, but it's competitive. Oracle's cloud is a bad joke. Even if it were brilliant I'd have to be forced into doing business with that bunch of piranhas. Amazon... outside the USA not trusted at all where it comes to keeping data somewhat safe from prying eyes, or even abusing data from competitors. Microsoft makes an effort to reduce corporate angst there.
- SQL Server beats the crap out of Oracle at its own game.
- XBox is finally making money
- Windows 10 is pretty much the standard platform (and I haven't installed it, no, but many people do). It's inescapable.
- MS Office... too expensive IMO in the long run, but not so much people revolt.
- Microsoft Surface is actually getting reasonable reviews and some sales, raking in billions in profit.
(https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/26/17286900/microsoft-q3-2018-earnings-cloud-surface-linkedin-revenue)
- They bought LinkedIn, which is another very strategic purchase that will give them even more insights in what companies are doing, what skillsets they have or need, et cetera.
All in all Nadella has put the company on a good footing internally, and strategically they're probably in the best place they ever have been so far. Unless they try their hand at something ridiculously expensive like launching rockets or self-driving cars. But Microsoft has a huge amount of cash. So... no real threats, and lots of interesting options ahead.
All of which means I think they'll shoot themselves in the head next year. They're good at doing that.