When I was in local retail shop I noticed software from x-oom.com http://www-x-oom.com/. They have product called X-OOM Movies on PSP.
Thought I really don't see no reason to watch movies regulary on PSP, especially when you have to convert them to it... Watching regular shows and news would be a different beast. If PSP could download video podcast to it, then.. wou. I would buy it.
They had the best product, Windows 95, when the desktop wars came to end. Before that they didn't have the dominance that they are now known. By introducing Windows 95 and Windows NT 4 they captured huge parts of markets and then by bundling different products to Microsoft Office they literally captured the desktop markets. That is what I'm talking about. That was the crucial moment.
Well authorities also compete in this world. Countries and goverments as organizations are competing with each other, in otherwords goverments are just actors in global markets of creating operating environments for both people and companies.
In this situation the rules that authorities set that provide the biggest reward to goverment are the right rules. Experience in this front has shown that to maximize common good, return to goverment, markets should function as free as possible, as long as market actors are not trying to take over market functions by making trusts/cartels to set the level of price.
So basicly what authorities should allow and shouldn't allow, works out from the evolution of countries and their governing organizations.
Capitalism is about evolution of markets, rises and falls of actors in it. It's not about gentlemans competing who is best, it's more about tribes plotting genocides, and that's why the whole system works.
If the markets are free in an essence that there are no barriers for one company to take over an whole market or industry, it's definately profitable to kill all competitors because in the end you are rewarded by having an natural monopoly in markets and thus can gain the money lost in taking the market over by increasing your margins. This is basicly what happaned in operating system and office application procucts, Microsoft killed the competitors and gained it self practically a monopoly.
You may wonder is it healthy that one company can form a monopoly in markets, basicly is not, but Microsoft has boundaries on how much it can cash from it's monopoly, if the price to customers comes too high, that will open up a window to competitors come and take markets. This is what is happening with RedHat and Novell attacking Windows in both workstations and servers. Of course Microsoft could kill both of these companies by just decreasing it's pricing of Windows, but that wouldn't be profitable for them both in short and long run, because 1) it would probably lead to goverment stepping in and 2) lowering profits that Microsoft will ever be getting from Windows.
Now okey, I may sound little illogical cause I claim that it's 1) profitable for a company to kill it's competitors and 2) it's not profitable for company after getting practical monopoly in markets to kill new competitors. In here the key is that markets change, in the beggining of 90's PC operating systems where growing market and dominating that market would result in overall domination of desktops and workgroup servers. Now after technology has evolved, markets have changed compleatly, in another words old operating system markets are mature and will decline in future. The new horizon is in the Internet, it's in making network application, it's searching and indexing information, it's connecting networks together, it's all about else than having a desktop and your personal computer. If Microsoft wants to stay as a ruler of the industry, it has to take over this new category of products, and the competitors like Google have to try to kill old desktop based world. That's what is happening. Industry is just evolving and everybody is trying to kill others.
Of course there are boundries on what companies can do in the markets. Microsoft did lot of wrong things by making sure their competitors products would crash or not function probably and they allmost blackmailed their large OEM customers. Still Microsoft would have won desktop to itself, they just had better products then than the others. But in a essence, markets are about anarchy, markets are about killing competitors, in a way that's allowed by authorities, and it's all good and dandy.
When a country plays power politics it has too agendas to take care, the needs of today and the needs of tommorrow. Yes, today Indonesia is poor developing country of 240 million inhibitants and Australia is rich developed country with 20 million inhibitans. That is todays situation, but situations change over time. Indonesia and other developing countries are rapidly gaining developed countries, they won't catch them, but the gap between Indonesia and Australia will shorten.
Now the question is, is Indonesia threat with power purchasing capital of 3400$? with 7000$? with 14000$?..Australia has now power purchasing capital of over 30000$. Now there is no problem, but ask yourself what about the future when Indonesian have gained maybe to 10000$? Are they a threat then? That is why a nation must make it's decision today on how the future will look on it.
For your information I'm finnish and writing this from the view of periferian observer. In my view US will continue to be superpower and be leader of transatlantic block unless European Union will transform to a working federal govement.
When I say they are too big to form network I really mean it. A network is combination of different size powers which none of them is bigger than the combination of the rest. When you have a one big player and many smaller ones, the smaller ones become the outposts of the biggest. This in mind, do you ever think that you will form more than an economic area with China? Do you think that you will have political union with them? Common currency? Military alliance? Freedom of goods, services and people to travel freely between network? Of course this in only happening in Europe, but that too eventually will lead to leveling more borders with Europe and North-America.
I think that in the view of Australian, you desire to network with anybody that can bring boost to economy and increase your safety. In other words make sure that Indonesian don't just run you over. They are biggest muslim country in the world and a rising economic powerhouse in south-east asia. That is what you are afraid, and that's what is linkin countries like Australia to become outposts to world superpowers.
In your logic gun manufacturers should be held responsible for any damage the usage of guns makes. Actually if you extend your logic, it's obvious that the makers and sellers of fertilizers should also be held responsible for selling weapons of mass desctruction, just remember Oklahoma.
The thing here is that software is just software, you can't hack to Pentagon without knowing what you are doing. Same thing when you are putting a competing drug dealer to permanent vacation, and you can't make bombs out fertilizers if you don't know what the hell you are making. Of course one should also remember that a nuclear bomb has only one purpose, to explode. A software can be used in many ways, nuclears bomb only in one way, exploding.
And the better question is what next? Maybe we should outlaw reading and writing, they can also be used for criminal purposes: no weapons of mass desctruction with out ability to read bio-, chemistry- and physics books.
US power has allways relied on networking with other countries, and their current state as an hegemony relies hevily to that. That is what has to be counted for when comparing countries with each other.
In example: China and India both have over 1 billion inhibitans, when US only has about 300 million. Now count in Mexico and Canada to that, which are geographically close and their economies are tightly linked to US, you get a powerhouse of over 450 million. Okey, that's not so much, but then count in Europe. Europe and North-America are basicly tied to each other economically, politically and militarily. Now you will get a networked power of over 1 billion people, the transatlantic civilization. When one notices that US is just a small part of transatlantic civilization, it's easy to understand that US power relies on leading the network. European Union could be a superpower, they have the people, developed economies, technology and military strength, what they lack is the desire to lead. The US has desire to lead, and most in importantly, their culture is most suitable for leading the network.
The suitability of US to lead a network which ties heavily Europe and Latin America to a one economic powerhouse is their firstly their commitment to capitalism being a truly multicultural and -ethnic society. Capitalism is very lucrative to all countries because it's based on anything being in sale, meaning bigger countries don't have any desire to use their power on smaller ones, as long as everything can be bought, that means vice versa that the smaller countries can use the same resources that the bigger ones, as long as they got the cash. And because US is multiracial and -cultural it doesn't have the burden of carrying a message that one race is better than others, which easily forms when other country has an overpower over another.
Thougth US won't be the only superpower in the world in 50 years, it doesn't mean that it still woudln't be leading the transatlantic civilization and it's powers. Yes, India and China will be lot stronger, but then again, they aren't networked power, they are too big to form networks. I would suspect that the tensions between superpowers will be more in Asia between India and China, an between group of smaller nations that for surely will group together to make a counterforce against China and India, namely Indonesia, Malesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Burma.
Thought then again, if the global capitalism continues to rise, in 50 years, it mighty be just the same what is the leading superpower. It just doesn't matter how much power you have when everything is for sale.
It's not about RAID, it's about selling processors
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Intel and Laptop RAID?
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· Score: 1
Centrino is just a brand Intel uses to get customers choose a laptop that includes their processor, and manufacturers to stick with Intel. They first started by bundeling wlan with their processors branding it Centrino. That made sure that everyone that was thinking to use their laptop with wireless networks bought a laptop that had Centrino. It also made sure that laptop manufacturers couldn't just use processor from Amd: the average Joe would just say in store "gee. that thing got no centrino. i want a wlan with my compu".
Of course Centrino brand isn't just about wlan, it's also about power savings and not having a oven in your lap, but those things are quite much harder to market. Now Intel is going to bundle RAID with Centrinos, which I would say is more about manufacturers need to specialise their offerings: "hey joe, don't buy that chepo laptop, this baby has two harddisks, it's 2xreliable that piece of crap. you wouldn't want to loose all your documents. would you!?". And by giving manufacturers one more feature to market, they make sure that laptop makers wont be moving to Amd or another competing platform.
And let's not forget Intels plans for world domination. They are a chip manufacturer and they want to rule their dominion. By including RAID chips to every single Centrino laptop they gain massive economies of scale in manufacturing which to leverage against other manufactuers of RAID chips. Now they will offer RAID 0 and 1 with Centrino, but the next step will be to offer RAID with higher levels to customers.
It's so easy to remember: "My mail adress is something at gaymail dot com"
The bonus thing is that you can get lot of attention when announcing that very loudly at parties or in a presentation. Of course the minus point is that you can get lot's wrong kind of attention... like "Hi ya! Billy Bob and me just thought if you would like to go make sandwiches"... Yikes!
But maybe that is the ultimate goal of Google. You know they are from California... they use big G-extensively... maybe they just wait for the right moment and change their brand identity...
Gay Search Gay Mail Gay Talk
And then start selling everything branded with big G. They would rule the gay world!
God, I think I have kind of some compulsion going on! Yikes!
When you are studying batchelors or masters degree, I would argue that there are only handfull of books that you really need to study and learn. Some of them teach basics, leveling the ground on where you can build your knowledge. In my opinion, it would be better if those books where covered in tuition, so they would make the basic foundation of everyones library. The rest of material, articles and publications would be accessed from the web. In this way students would have the necessary groundworks and ways to depthen their knowledge with the newest information.
The current system where every course has atleast two or three books, which usually are mediocre, isn't very efficient. Students just read and read, either becoming totally mindless preparing only for the exam, or coming very frustrated to reading bad books (books with false logic, wrong facts). It would be better just read the classics and then search for additional information either from research databases, or the Internet, or by buing yourself books. Buying books by yourself actually is one of the best ways to learn, because 1) you have to make a decission on what book to buy 2) check who is recommending and 3) estimate the value of the book. And one should remember that buying books is not that hard or expensive, by buying used books from Amazon one can save big pennies, and using Amazon and Google Print, one can know pretty good what he/her is getting.
In this context, I would welcome more moving a way from the library context in university cycles. Atleast in my own university, our library is just a pretty building which just wastes resources that could have been used better otherwis.
I just wish that we would have all the great things here in Finland that you have there. I would just love to shop at Costco, Wal-Mart, BestBuy etc.. oh and go to eat to Wendy's, McDonalds, DairyQueen etc... and get the extra duper duper large meals! and only 4.99 or something like that.
The point is, when you have consumerism, when you have means to consume like there is now tomorrow, you can allways choose not to consume. The sad thing is that the same kind of "buy! buy! it's only 9.99e!" hasn't really kicked of here in Europe. Atleast not in the same volume as it works in America.
Plus, if battling to get a 50$ iBook is the thing one wants todo, is there anything wrong in that? I for one would have liked one, just for the experience on getting one in an allmost riot;-)
In Finland allmost all the operators have dropped their prices very much. Currently I have sim only contract from Saunalahti, paying 17,90e month for 500 minutes to any phonenumber at any time. 1000 minutes costs 35,80e, perfect for small businesses.
And for the poster before, the phones are comming more and more cheaper. Like in example I recently bought Siemens A65 with 79e. The price of connectivity is going down with fast pace, the only thing is that one has to make choices, ie. not getting that new Nokia/Samsung phone or getting the service from a virtual provider.
My choice is Java for developing a large scale web-application.
I have to confess that I haven't yet done/compleated any large scale web-application. Actually I'm developing now one, a data analyzing tool for enteprises, with my friends (a start-up building up). The application communicates with many systems and involves some complex calculations to archieve it's goals. Thought it's not as complex or large as Google, in my mind and experience it's definately larger than your average web-project.
The reasons why I use and would recommend using Java to develop web-applications are that
you can easily build different applications from your source library (web, desktop, mobile)
you have plenty of ready technologies and libraries to use (JDBC, EJB etc..)
there are lot's of competing Java tools and applications from IDEs to application containers (competition = good)
you can be asured that if your Java application works with JVM 1.X it will work with later versions
you can aquire new information about Java easily (quite many Java books out there)
when you need helping hand, there are plenty of Java developers out there (allmost every university teaches Java)
everybody knows Java, it's easier to sell a Java based product to enterprises (even PHBs have heard of J2EE)
there are large commercial entities taking care of Java (with IBM and Sun, Java won't be disapering)
These are just some of the reasons why I use and would recommend Java for developing web and enterprise applications. Personally I like Java as a language because it gives enough freedom to express fairly complex datastructures with ease and has a very readable syntax. Of course sometimes Java can be very brain dead, but that is the price you have to pay. There isn't any perfect language, and Java isn't even close, but it's enough to get the job done, and in the end of the day that is what counts.
First of all, I want to say that you are right about many things, especially hiring former engineers to managers in engineering company.
The thing that needs to be discussed here is, if HP is or is not an engineering company. They do work with technology, but I would argue that their fields of technology are mature and don't involve as much engineering and innovation than they did before. That's why I categorize them more as marketing and assembly company. If you look at their products: Workstations, Laptops, Servers, Printers, Scanners & Cameras,
one can argue that they are all commodized. The technology needed is allmost the same from manufacturer to manufacturer. Only way to add value to these offerings is to use branding and design to create added value in customers mind, the other way is to offer services.
I think that the problem with HP is that they were first engineering company and were on the edge of the technology cycle. As the times went by, they loosed technology battles and had to retreat from many fields. They had create success with imaging products, but what they did forget todo was to invent new things. As the result of innovating hard, and inventing lazy, they became marketing and assembly company. In away one can say that HP and Compaq merger was the last knot that transformed HP from engineering to marketing.
The problem with HP now is that thought they have transformed, they have still lot's engineering. Bigger problem is that all places in the market have been taken by others. Dell is the king of assembly companies and they really can't beat them. Same goes with IBM in the entreprise arena. Most of the real engineering is done by other companies ie. Intel, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, Redhat, Oracle etc.. So the big question is what is HP going to do? I hope that their answer isn't just to trim down, that wouldn't in the long run give them reason to be alive.
It's a good question how HP could have avoided all this and what went wrong. A good place to put blame is Carly and other MBA's, but that is insufficient. In my view HP just got too big, they lost their concentration times ago. They should have spinned imaging and customer sides of HP away, or transfered the enterprise and engineering sides to a new company. It's very hard to be a company with many faces, and there isn't so many companies in the end product field that have done this with success.
Maybe all this and other fallen angels of technology industry could have been avoided by better education. As a soon to be graduating economics student (from computer science, don't ask) I have to say that the blame lies in business education. Many people start business studies with idea of doing something cool with customer products (think of likes L'oreal, Coca-cola, Tivo etc..) and they end up in some industrial company with no idea what is going on. The worst thing is that many people that do work industrial area treat these industries as the same as your regular consumer industries. When you have people saying "it's just technology" or "I don't have to know the details" or "just say which one is better" then you know there is much wrong in the picture.
...But then again, why should I care that other people ruin many companies. Just more opportunies for those who do know what they are doing;-)
There are no predator group. There are no secret eleet controlling US nor world. The world, as we know it is much more complex and bigger than can be understood if you use 19th-century logic in it. The fact is, even the welthiest persons in this planet can't dictate markets. Our global markets are the sum of everybodys money. People save money in banks, people invest in stocks, people get insurances and people get pension funds. These tiny money flows make up the market. It's the money of you and me that is running up the globe, going from place to place in search for better return, not the money of eleet.
Sometimes one can question why the money you and me have earned is used to send jobs to China or build factories in other developing countries, the short answer is that it's best for most of us. Yes, some of us may get hit with unemployment or have to take a lower-level job, but that's is the overall price you have to pay for all the development. And what is development? Development is building up our globe. We have now build pretty good infrastructure in Europe and North-America, and now the same build up is happening in Asia. You may ask what do you get from all this build up? Well, in short you have more production in all aspects from physical products to intellectual property,that means more fruits for everybody. Everybody will have more than previusly, some of course will have little less, but not so much less.
You could allways say that "who cares about chinease or indians, i want a new mp3-player etc...", but remember that would be an injustice to deny other working people the fruits they have deserved. And when looking to history, injustice has allways created more harm to all of us. Thanks to global free trade, there hasn't been any clashes between super powers. That's a definitive plus! Or would you want to risk your shiny mp3-player in a possible nuclear war?
The fact is that we can't go back. We have to take the situation as it is and embrace it. If you don't have job as a programmer, consider chainging your profession or starting your own business. If you are a truly good professional, you can allways start your own business, if you feel that you aren't that good, maybe a profession change is in order. In all and all, what that means that you have to be competetive in something to get the prize. If being competetive wouldn't be a prerequisit, then everybody would be millionaires! Fortunately this isn't the case.
I took the action and wrote to Finnish Europarlament members and encouraged them to say NO for software patents.
You can find the contact information of our MEPs through this page. The page has links to contact pages of all political parties and their europarlament members. I wrote to them with my own words and described my view as an information technology student and starting entepneur on why software patents are bad. I hope that all other Finnish here on Slashdot will do the same. If we can make an large impact on them, they will for sure vote againts the directive but also encourage MEPs from other countries to vote againts the directive.
As a side note, I have to say that now is the time to fight. If the patent directive goes thrue, the future will be grim. On my own part, having the directive passed, would mean that I would have to publish the software I'm developing before it's fully ready, just to make sure that I have atleast little bit of my ass covered, before the legislation starts to effect. It's a shame that people and big companies in EU don't understand that competition is good and having hard competition here in Europe is the only way to make us competetive against the rest of the world.
I think it's definately a good thing that Linux companies are joining forces. Until now, the only major Linux companies have been RedHat, Novell (Suse) and lately Sun. If one puts one of these companies distribution to a solution offering, the customers atleast have heard about these, and with good luck they have good image about them.
In my mind Mandriva hasn't had that image. Few years ago they allmost went to bankruptcy. After that, I have to confess, I haven't been able to trust them. But now when they are merging with other Linux companies, it seems that they have got new blood in their veins. I have been looking their Enterprise Server offering with interest, and if they keep expanding and making their brand more known, their offer will become lucrative. Until then, I will continue using RedHat as the primary OS for production use.
And to those that think that it's bad that there will be less players, I have to remind you that you can allways fork if something goes into a bad direction. To me a future where there would be 3-4 well known and stabile Linux companies with dozens of noncommercial distros would be a perfect situation: innovation and competition together with option to have a stabile offerings.
Cheers to Mandriva!
Does it have Java and Flash?
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Zeta Goes Gold
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· Score: 1
To me the main question is: does Zeta have support for Java and Flash. If one wants to use the OS to browse the Internet, these two are absolutely essential. Usually most popular pages have some Flash content and some have Java-applets. I know that one doesn't need these two so often, but to have pleasent and seamless Internet experience without some pages not working or pagefunctions missing, these two are needed.
If Zeta OS doesn't have Java and Flash, I believe that they wont succeed on making impact on consumer markets. Same goes to business markets, they don't have the required applications. Atleast with Linux you have an option to get the popular applications to work if you want to (MS Office, Dreamweaver, Photoshop etc...).
If Zeta doesn't concentrate on some niche markets like Internet kiosks, I believe that they will be out of business. For me, there is no incentive to switch from Linux to Zeta, and to Windows users switch to Linux is much better choice than Zeta. In Linux world you have lot's of choices and overall stability, ie. you don't have to wonder if Linux will be around in 2015, it will.
They did gave a large handout to Mozilla. And they do use, and will be using Opera as a browser in their phones.
The reason why they are spreading their money and resources is to increase competition. By having three camps developing browsers for phones you get more competition, more innovation and more choices. In other words Opera can't rest or it will soon find itself phased off.
The other reason I think is that they want to speed the development of phone browsers in case MS would come up with better phone browser. And we all know that they won't be selling their browser with out their OS.
And finally, we are talking about Nokia research here. They are wonderfull in spending and investing money in start-ups and new technologies. It really is pennies to them. Actually they get much more back, because of publicity and maybe more positive view in the minds of developers.
Just my 10 cents.
Needs change when times go by. A worker needed today, can be worker unwanted tommorrow. If you say that a company must know will they need a certain person forever to hire him/her then you are asking for impossible. In my opinion European laws that regulate and in many times don't permit firing workers, hurt more employees. If you can't fire a worker easily, why take a risk on hiring one? That works againt firms and workers.
And I really can't understand why companies should have more responsibilities than laws dictate? If law permits you to fire your workers, what is there to complain? You can always vote in next election the guy who wants to bring the good old days of protectionism and state run mixed socialism-marketeconomy back. You just have to look to France and Germany to understand why that just doesn't work.
I myself am Finnish and lutherian so I quess I can comment on this one. In Finland lutherians are quite moderate, sometimes very liberal.
The church teaches about creation and it's supposed to be taken as symbolical event of man turning to bad. They don't say there wasn't big bang or evolution, they just say that god made this. The point is that evolution nor big bang conflict with bible. In school evolution is teached, but it's not preaced. Again they just say that science says that this happened, and there are this and that evidence of it. In religion classes creation is thought. No conflict.
As a generalisation, in Finland it's up to each one to decide what he/she believes in, or if one choce to not to believe. Same thing in scandinavian countries.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was in local retail shop I noticed software from x-oom.com http://www-x-oom.com/. They have product called X-OOM Movies on PSP.
Thought I really don't see no reason to watch movies regulary on PSP, especially when you have to convert them to it... Watching regular shows and news would be a different beast. If PSP could download video podcast to it, then.. wou. I would buy it.
They had the best product, Windows 95, when the desktop wars came to end. Before that they didn't have the dominance that they are now known. By introducing Windows 95 and Windows NT 4 they captured huge parts of markets and then by bundling different products to Microsoft Office they literally captured the desktop markets. That is what I'm talking about. That was the crucial moment.
Well authorities also compete in this world. Countries and goverments as organizations are competing with each other, in otherwords goverments are just actors in global markets of creating operating environments for both people and companies.
In this situation the rules that authorities set that provide the biggest reward to goverment are the right rules. Experience in this front has shown that to maximize common good, return to goverment, markets should function as free as possible, as long as market actors are not trying to take over market functions by making trusts/cartels to set the level of price.
So basicly what authorities should allow and shouldn't allow, works out from the evolution of countries and their governing organizations.
Capitalism is about evolution of markets, rises and falls of actors in it. It's not about gentlemans competing who is best, it's more about tribes plotting genocides, and that's why the whole system works.
If the markets are free in an essence that there are no barriers for one company to take over an whole market or industry, it's definately profitable to kill all competitors because in the end you are rewarded by having an natural monopoly in markets and thus can gain the money lost in taking the market over by increasing your margins. This is basicly what happaned in operating system and office application procucts, Microsoft killed the competitors and gained it self practically a monopoly.
You may wonder is it healthy that one company can form a monopoly in markets, basicly is not, but Microsoft has boundaries on how much it can cash from it's monopoly, if the price to customers comes too high, that will open up a window to competitors come and take markets. This is what is happening with RedHat and Novell attacking Windows in both workstations and servers. Of course Microsoft could kill both of these companies by just decreasing it's pricing of Windows, but that wouldn't be profitable for them both in short and long run, because 1) it would probably lead to goverment stepping in and 2) lowering profits that Microsoft will ever be getting from Windows.
Now okey, I may sound little illogical cause I claim that it's 1) profitable for a company to kill it's competitors and 2) it's not profitable for company after getting practical monopoly in markets to kill new competitors. In here the key is that markets change, in the beggining of 90's PC operating systems where growing market and dominating that market would result in overall domination of desktops and workgroup servers. Now after technology has evolved, markets have changed compleatly, in another words old operating system markets are mature and will decline in future. The new horizon is in the Internet, it's in making network application, it's searching and indexing information, it's connecting networks together, it's all about else than having a desktop and your personal computer. If Microsoft wants to stay as a ruler of the industry, it has to take over this new category of products, and the competitors like Google have to try to kill old desktop based world. That's what is happening. Industry is just evolving and everybody is trying to kill others. Of course there are boundries on what companies can do in the markets. Microsoft did lot of wrong things by making sure their competitors products would crash or not function probably and they allmost blackmailed their large OEM customers. Still Microsoft would have won desktop to itself, they just had better products then than the others. But in a essence, markets are about anarchy, markets are about killing competitors, in a way that's allowed by authorities, and it's all good and dandy.
When a country plays power politics it has too agendas to take care, the needs of today and the needs of tommorrow. Yes, today Indonesia is poor developing country of 240 million inhibitants and Australia is rich developed country with 20 million inhibitans. That is todays situation, but situations change over time. Indonesia and other developing countries are rapidly gaining developed countries, they won't catch them, but the gap between Indonesia and Australia will shorten.
..Australia has now power purchasing capital of over 30000$. Now there is no problem, but ask yourself what about the future when Indonesian have gained maybe to 10000$? Are they a threat then? That is why a nation must make it's decision today on how the future will look on it.
Now the question is, is Indonesia threat with power purchasing capital of 3400$? with 7000$? with 14000$?
For your information I'm finnish and writing this from the view of periferian observer. In my view US will continue to be superpower and be leader of transatlantic block unless European Union will transform to a working federal govement.
When I say they are too big to form network I really mean it. A network is combination of different size powers which none of them is bigger than the combination of the rest. When you have a one big player and many smaller ones, the smaller ones become the outposts of the biggest. This in mind, do you ever think that you will form more than an economic area with China? Do you think that you will have political union with them? Common currency? Military alliance? Freedom of goods, services and people to travel freely between network? Of course this in only happening in Europe, but that too eventually will lead to leveling more borders with Europe and North-America.
I think that in the view of Australian, you desire to network with anybody that can bring boost to economy and increase your safety. In other words make sure that Indonesian don't just run you over. They are biggest muslim country in the world and a rising economic powerhouse in south-east asia. That is what you are afraid, and that's what is linkin countries like Australia to become outposts to world superpowers.
In your logic gun manufacturers should be held responsible for any damage the usage of guns makes. Actually if you extend your logic, it's obvious that the makers and sellers of fertilizers should also be held responsible for selling weapons of mass desctruction, just remember Oklahoma.
The thing here is that software is just software, you can't hack to Pentagon without knowing what you are doing. Same thing when you are putting a competing drug dealer to permanent vacation, and you can't make bombs out fertilizers if you don't know what the hell you are making. Of course one should also remember that a nuclear bomb has only one purpose, to explode. A software can be used in many ways, nuclears bomb only in one way, exploding.
And the better question is what next? Maybe we should outlaw reading and writing, they can also be used for criminal purposes: no weapons of mass desctruction with out ability to read bio-, chemistry- and physics books.
US power has allways relied on networking with other countries, and their current state as an hegemony relies hevily to that. That is what has to be counted for when comparing countries with each other.
In example: China and India both have over 1 billion inhibitans, when US only has about 300 million. Now count in Mexico and Canada to that, which are geographically close and their economies are tightly linked to US, you get a powerhouse of over 450 million. Okey, that's not so much, but then count in Europe. Europe and North-America are basicly tied to each other economically, politically and militarily. Now you will get a networked power of over 1 billion people, the transatlantic civilization. When one notices that US is just a small part of transatlantic civilization, it's easy to understand that US power relies on leading the network. European Union could be a superpower, they have the people, developed economies, technology and military strength, what they lack is the desire to lead. The US has desire to lead, and most in importantly, their culture is most suitable for leading the network.
The suitability of US to lead a network which ties heavily Europe and Latin America to a one economic powerhouse is their firstly their commitment to capitalism being a truly multicultural and -ethnic society. Capitalism is very lucrative to all countries because it's based on anything being in sale, meaning bigger countries don't have any desire to use their power on smaller ones, as long as everything can be bought, that means vice versa that the smaller countries can use the same resources that the bigger ones, as long as they got the cash. And because US is multiracial and -cultural it doesn't have the burden of carrying a message that one race is better than others, which easily forms when other country has an overpower over another.
Thougth US won't be the only superpower in the world in 50 years, it doesn't mean that it still woudln't be leading the transatlantic civilization and it's powers. Yes, India and China will be lot stronger, but then again, they aren't networked power, they are too big to form networks. I would suspect that the tensions between superpowers will be more in Asia between India and China, an between group of smaller nations that for surely will group together to make a counterforce against China and India, namely Indonesia, Malesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Burma.
Thought then again, if the global capitalism continues to rise, in 50 years, it mighty be just the same what is the leading superpower. It just doesn't matter how much power you have when everything is for sale.
Centrino is just a brand Intel uses to get customers choose a laptop that includes their processor, and manufacturers to stick with Intel. They first started by bundeling wlan with their processors branding it Centrino. That made sure that everyone that was thinking to use their laptop with wireless networks bought a laptop that had Centrino. It also made sure that laptop manufacturers couldn't just use processor from Amd: the average Joe would just say in store "gee. that thing got no centrino. i want a wlan with my compu".
Of course Centrino brand isn't just about wlan, it's also about power savings and not having a oven in your lap, but those things are quite much harder to market. Now Intel is going to bundle RAID with Centrinos, which I would say is more about manufacturers need to specialise their offerings: "hey joe, don't buy that chepo laptop, this baby has two harddisks, it's 2xreliable that piece of crap. you wouldn't want to loose all your documents. would you!?". And by giving manufacturers one more feature to market, they make sure that laptop makers wont be moving to Amd or another competing platform.
And let's not forget Intels plans for world domination. They are a chip manufacturer and they want to rule their dominion. By including RAID chips to every single Centrino laptop they gain massive economies of scale in manufacturing which to leverage against other manufactuers of RAID chips. Now they will offer RAID 0 and 1 with Centrino, but the next step will be to offer RAID with higher levels to customers.
Gaymail
It's so easy to remember: "My mail adress is something at gaymail dot com"
The bonus thing is that you can get lot of attention when announcing that very loudly at parties or in a presentation. Of course the minus point is that you can get lot's wrong kind of attention... like "Hi ya! Billy Bob and me just thought if you would like to go make sandwiches"... Yikes!
But maybe that is the ultimate goal of Google. You know they are from California... they use big G-extensively... maybe they just wait for the right moment and change their brand identity...
Gay Search
Gay Mail
Gay Talk
And then start selling everything branded with big G. They would rule the gay world!
God, I think I have kind of some compulsion going on! Yikes!
When you are studying batchelors or masters degree, I would argue that there are only handfull of books that you really need to study and learn. Some of them teach basics, leveling the ground on where you can build your knowledge. In my opinion, it would be better if those books where covered in tuition, so they would make the basic foundation of everyones library. The rest of material, articles and publications would be accessed from the web. In this way students would have the necessary groundworks and ways to depthen their knowledge with the newest information.
The current system where every course has atleast two or three books, which usually are mediocre, isn't very efficient. Students just read and read, either becoming totally mindless preparing only for the exam, or coming very frustrated to reading bad books (books with false logic, wrong facts). It would be better just read the classics and then search for additional information either from research databases, or the Internet, or by buing yourself books. Buying books by yourself actually is one of the best ways to learn, because 1) you have to make a decission on what book to buy 2) check who is recommending and 3) estimate the value of the book. And one should remember that buying books is not that hard or expensive, by buying used books from Amazon one can save big pennies, and using Amazon and Google Print, one can know pretty good what he/her is getting.
In this context, I would welcome more moving a way from the library context in university cycles. Atleast in my own university, our library is just a pretty building which just wastes resources that could have been used better otherwis.
Dude! That is the great thing in America!
;-)
I just wish that we would have all the great things here in Finland that you have there. I would just love to shop at Costco, Wal-Mart, BestBuy etc.. oh and go to eat to Wendy's, McDonalds, DairyQueen etc... and get the extra duper duper large meals! and only 4.99 or something like that.
The point is, when you have consumerism, when you have means to consume like there is now tomorrow, you can allways choose not to consume. The sad thing is that the same kind of "buy! buy! it's only 9.99e!" hasn't really kicked of here in Europe. Atleast not in the same volume as it works in America.
Plus, if battling to get a 50$ iBook is the thing one wants todo, is there anything wrong in that? I for one would have liked one, just for the experience on getting one in an allmost riot
Cheers!
In Finland allmost all the operators have dropped their prices very much. Currently I have sim only contract from Saunalahti, paying 17,90e month for 500 minutes to any phonenumber at any time. 1000 minutes costs 35,80e, perfect for small businesses.
And for the poster before, the phones are comming more and more cheaper. Like in example I recently bought Siemens A65 with 79e. The price of connectivity is going down with fast pace, the only thing is that one has to make choices, ie. not getting that new Nokia/Samsung phone or getting the service from a virtual provider.
I have to confess that I haven't yet done/compleated any large scale web-application. Actually I'm developing now one, a data analyzing tool for enteprises, with my friends (a start-up building up). The application communicates with many systems and involves some complex calculations to archieve it's goals. Thought it's not as complex or large as Google, in my mind and experience it's definately larger than your average web-project.
The reasons why I use and would recommend using Java to develop web-applications are that
- there are large commercial entities taking care of Java (with IBM and Sun, Java won't be disapering)
These are just some of the reasons why I use and would recommend Java for developing web and enterprise applications. Personally I like Java as a language because it gives enough freedom to express fairly complex datastructures with ease and has a very readable syntax. Of course sometimes Java can be very brain dead, but that is the price you have to pay. There isn't any perfect language, and Java isn't even close, but it's enough to get the job done, and in the end of the day that is what counts.First of all, I want to say that you are right about many things, especially hiring former engineers to managers in engineering company.
...But then again, why should I care that other people ruin many companies. Just more opportunies for those who do know what they are doing ;-)
The thing that needs to be discussed here is, if HP is or is not an engineering company. They do work with technology, but I would argue that their fields of technology are mature and don't involve as much engineering and innovation than they did before. That's why I categorize them more as marketing and assembly company. If you look at their products: Workstations, Laptops, Servers, Printers, Scanners & Cameras, one can argue that they are all commodized. The technology needed is allmost the same from manufacturer to manufacturer. Only way to add value to these offerings is to use branding and design to create added value in customers mind, the other way is to offer services.
I think that the problem with HP is that they were first engineering company and were on the edge of the technology cycle. As the times went by, they loosed technology battles and had to retreat from many fields. They had create success with imaging products, but what they did forget todo was to invent new things. As the result of innovating hard, and inventing lazy, they became marketing and assembly company. In away one can say that HP and Compaq merger was the last knot that transformed HP from engineering to marketing. The problem with HP now is that thought they have transformed, they have still lot's engineering. Bigger problem is that all places in the market have been taken by others. Dell is the king of assembly companies and they really can't beat them. Same goes with IBM in the entreprise arena. Most of the real engineering is done by other companies ie. Intel, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, Redhat, Oracle etc.. So the big question is what is HP going to do? I hope that their answer isn't just to trim down, that wouldn't in the long run give them reason to be alive.
It's a good question how HP could have avoided all this and what went wrong. A good place to put blame is Carly and other MBA's, but that is insufficient. In my view HP just got too big, they lost their concentration times ago. They should have spinned imaging and customer sides of HP away, or transfered the enterprise and engineering sides to a new company. It's very hard to be a company with many faces, and there isn't so many companies in the end product field that have done this with success.
Maybe all this and other fallen angels of technology industry could have been avoided by better education. As a soon to be graduating economics student (from computer science, don't ask) I have to say that the blame lies in business education. Many people start business studies with idea of doing something cool with customer products (think of likes L'oreal, Coca-cola, Tivo etc..) and they end up in some industrial company with no idea what is going on. The worst thing is that many people that do work industrial area treat these industries as the same as your regular consumer industries. When you have people saying "it's just technology" or "I don't have to know the details" or "just say which one is better" then you know there is much wrong in the picture.
There are no predator group. There are no secret eleet controlling US nor world. The world, as we know it is much more complex and bigger than can be understood if you use 19th-century logic in it. The fact is, even the welthiest persons in this planet can't dictate markets. Our global markets are the sum of everybodys money. People save money in banks, people invest in stocks, people get insurances and people get pension funds. These tiny money flows make up the market. It's the money of you and me that is running up the globe, going from place to place in search for better return, not the money of eleet.
Sometimes one can question why the money you and me have earned is used to send jobs to China or build factories in other developing countries, the short answer is that it's best for most of us. Yes, some of us may get hit with unemployment or have to take a lower-level job, but that's is the overall price you have to pay for all the development. And what is development? Development is building up our globe. We have now build pretty good infrastructure in Europe and North-America, and now the same build up is happening in Asia. You may ask what do you get from all this build up? Well, in short you have more production in all aspects from physical products to intellectual property,that means more fruits for everybody. Everybody will have more than previusly, some of course will have little less, but not so much less.
You could allways say that "who cares about chinease or indians, i want a new mp3-player etc...", but remember that would be an injustice to deny other working people the fruits they have deserved. And when looking to history, injustice has allways created more harm to all of us. Thanks to global free trade, there hasn't been any clashes between super powers. That's a definitive plus! Or would you want to risk your shiny mp3-player in a possible nuclear war?
The fact is that we can't go back. We have to take the situation as it is and embrace it. If you don't have job as a programmer, consider chainging your profession or starting your own business. If you are a truly good professional, you can allways start your own business, if you feel that you aren't that good, maybe a profession change is in order. In all and all, what that means that you have to be competetive in something to get the prize. If being competetive wouldn't be a prerequisit, then everybody would be millionaires! Fortunately this isn't the case.
I took the action and wrote to Finnish Europarlament members and encouraged them to say NO for software patents.
You can find the contact information of our MEPs through this page. The page has links to contact pages of all political parties and their europarlament members. I wrote to them with my own words and described my view as an information technology student and starting entepneur on why software patents are bad. I hope that all other Finnish here on Slashdot will do the same. If we can make an large impact on them, they will for sure vote againts the directive but also encourage MEPs from other countries to vote againts the directive.
As a side note, I have to say that now is the time to fight. If the patent directive goes thrue, the future will be grim. On my own part, having the directive passed, would mean that I would have to publish the software I'm developing before it's fully ready, just to make sure that I have atleast little bit of my ass covered, before the legislation starts to effect. It's a shame that people and big companies in EU don't understand that competition is good and having hard competition here in Europe is the only way to make us competetive against the rest of the world.
I think it's definately a good thing that Linux companies are joining forces. Until now, the only major Linux companies have been RedHat, Novell (Suse) and lately Sun. If one puts one of these companies distribution to a solution offering, the customers atleast have heard about these, and with good luck they have good image about them.
In my mind Mandriva hasn't had that image. Few years ago they allmost went to bankruptcy. After that, I have to confess, I haven't been able to trust them. But now when they are merging with other Linux companies, it seems that they have got new blood in their veins. I have been looking their Enterprise Server offering with interest, and if they keep expanding and making their brand more known, their offer will become lucrative. Until then, I will continue using RedHat as the primary OS for production use.
And to those that think that it's bad that there will be less players, I have to remind you that you can allways fork if something goes into a bad direction. To me a future where there would be 3-4 well known and stabile Linux companies with dozens of noncommercial distros would be a perfect situation: innovation and competition together with option to have a stabile offerings.
Cheers to Mandriva!
To me the main question is: does Zeta have support for Java and Flash. If one wants to use the OS to browse the Internet, these two are absolutely essential. Usually most popular pages have some Flash content and some have Java-applets. I know that one doesn't need these two so often, but to have pleasent and seamless Internet experience without some pages not working or pagefunctions missing, these two are needed.
If Zeta OS doesn't have Java and Flash, I believe that they wont succeed on making impact on consumer markets. Same goes to business markets, they don't have the required applications. Atleast with Linux you have an option to get the popular applications to work if you want to (MS Office, Dreamweaver, Photoshop etc...).
If Zeta doesn't concentrate on some niche markets like Internet kiosks, I believe that they will be out of business. For me, there is no incentive to switch from Linux to Zeta, and to Windows users switch to Linux is much better choice than Zeta. In Linux world you have lot's of choices and overall stability, ie. you don't have to wonder if Linux will be around in 2015, it will.
They did gave a large handout to Mozilla. And they do use, and will be using Opera as a browser in their phones. The reason why they are spreading their money and resources is to increase competition. By having three camps developing browsers for phones you get more competition, more innovation and more choices. In other words Opera can't rest or it will soon find itself phased off. The other reason I think is that they want to speed the development of phone browsers in case MS would come up with better phone browser. And we all know that they won't be selling their browser with out their OS. And finally, we are talking about Nokia research here. They are wonderfull in spending and investing money in start-ups and new technologies. It really is pennies to them. Actually they get much more back, because of publicity and maybe more positive view in the minds of developers. Just my 10 cents.
Needs change when times go by. A worker needed today, can be worker unwanted tommorrow. If you say that a company must know will they need a certain person forever to hire him/her then you are asking for impossible. In my opinion European laws that regulate and in many times don't permit firing workers, hurt more employees. If you can't fire a worker easily, why take a risk on hiring one? That works againt firms and workers.
And I really can't understand why companies should have more responsibilities than laws dictate? If law permits you to fire your workers, what is there to complain? You can always vote in next election the guy who wants to bring the good old days of protectionism and state run mixed socialism-marketeconomy back. You just have to look to France and Germany to understand why that just doesn't work.
I myself am Finnish and lutherian so I quess I can comment on this one. In Finland lutherians are quite moderate, sometimes very liberal.
The church teaches about creation and it's supposed to be taken as symbolical event of man turning to bad. They don't say there wasn't big bang or evolution, they just say that god made this. The point is that evolution nor big bang conflict with bible. In school evolution is teached, but it's not preaced. Again they just say that science says that this happened, and there are this and that evidence of it. In religion classes creation is thought. No conflict.
As a generalisation, in Finland it's up to each one to decide what he/she believes in, or if one choce to not to believe. Same thing in scandinavian countries.