Interesting that the article quotes the figure of half the cost. Five years ago, people were saying Indian companies could do the work for one-tenth the cost. If Indian salaries and other costs increase 20% a year for a few more years, the advantages of outsourcing will have largely disappeared. In the long run, good for India and good for U.S. I.T. workers.
And there's nothing the MP/RI Ass. of America would like better than a comprehensive DRM system required by law.
Actually, I kind of hope this passes too because it would force the U.S. public to recognise the fundamental absurdity of the MPAA/RIAA's agenda for the U.S. Copyright as a concept would become so unpopular among ordinary Americans that a lot of the current ridiculous IP laws would probably soon get repealed along with the new law. Of course there would be alot of suffering in the meanwhile, but at least the U.S. would more quickly get back on the right track again. The way things are going right now, things might not change for decades. Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better.
I've never used facebook, but on the face of it (so to speak) it seems to me that facebook does not have a natural monopoly like ebay does and microsoft does. That's because facebook is restricted to college students, a population that renews in big chunks every September. Suppose that the incoming class of freshmen all used "xyz.com" in high school and want to stay connected with their old friends (some of whom might not have gone on to college, or gone to different schools). While facebook might have a natural monopoly in the sophmore class, facebook has to create a new critical mass of freshmen members at every school, every year. I suppose that freshmen who want to be on the same site as their elder classmates might show some loyalty to the site, but they also might want to rebel by affiliating with a separate freshman site. That would make it easy for a competitor to jump in and snatch the critcal mass of incoming students to create a new monopoly. I think even $750 million is a crazy offer for what could turn out to be a four-year monopoly.
I moved from San Francisco to Miami, and then two years later from Miami to Los Angeles, and I used ABF-U-Pack. Each move cost me less than $1500 including gas and took about a week! The cool thing is they are sort of self-service but you don't have to drive their truck.
I did it like this: rented a U-Haul truck. Loaded up the U-Haul truck with my stuff. Drove the U-Haul truck to the ABF terminal (about half an hour drive in all three cities I moved from/to). Backed up the U-Haul truck to the ABF container. Moved everything from the U-Haul truck into the ABF container. Returned the U-Haul truck. Drove my own car cross country (no need to pay for car shipping). A few days later, rented another U-Haul truck at my destination, drove to the local ABF terminal, transferred everything from the ABF container to the U-Haul truck, drove the U-Haul truck home and unpacked.
If I had to move cross country again, I'd use them again. Incredibly cheap and I'm the only person who handles my stuff, so I can be as careful as I want. They also have a good rating with the Better Business Bureau. I highly recommend checking with the BBB before selecting a moving company!
Recruiter: "I have this totally awesome client who's looking for someone with at least five years of really solid experience in Windows 2000 programming. I've been calling everybody. Do you know anyone who has that level of experience?"
Me: repressing a rising anger "...It's 2001 right now - and Windows 2000 came out in...?"
Recruiter: long pause "...Hmm... I think I see what you're getting at. I'll have to give the client a call to get some clarification on that."
Sometimes I wonder if employers get so tired being pestered by recruiters, that they send recruiters on wild-goose-chases just to get rid of them. They probably do.
Looking at my last two posts, I'm seeing that my attitude has been a bit harsh toward recruiters, but I just don't see how anyone who doesn't understand technology could convince a hiring manager that I do understand technology. I don't see how the recruiter could do anything except read buzzwords off my resume to the hiring manager - something that the hiring manager could just as well do for him/her self. Maybe recruiters are just screening for personality - screening out the hard-core geeks with no personal skills. Maybe that's why I've never been able to find a job through a recruiter;-) I think maybe I'll have to change my strategy. Heh heh... I'm glad I posted these two posts. I think they're helping me to get some perspective.
I had the following conversation with a recruiter a few years ago:
Recruiter: "I was just looking at your resume and I noticed that you did some printer drivers, fax drivers, a multitasking kernel and some control-panel applets and I was wondering, have you ever done any systems programming?"
Me: momentarily speechless "... Uhh... Yes I have."
Recruiter: "Oh cool. What was that?"
Me: "Umm, that was the printer drivers, fax drivers, multitasking kernel and control-panel applets."
Recruiter: "Oh, heh heh, I knew that, I was just testing you!"
Mod parent up! The torrent link for all Mercury Theatre performances, including the War of The Worlds, is at the bottom of the page. I'm getting about 150 KB/s.
TV networks charge advertisers about $15,000 to show a 30-second ad one time while one million viewers watch. (actually alot of the viewers are probably changing the channel or off in the kitchen getting a snack.)
A typical hour of TV has 17 minutes of ads or about 34 30-second ad spots.
So a one-million-viewer TV-hour brings in about $500,000 in advertising revenue.
Thus TV ads bring in about $0.50 per viewer per hour for broadcasters. (I'm amazed they are paying so much. If I channel surf for four hours without watching any ads, I've kindof ripped off the advertisers $2!)
Since a typical movie lasts two hours, advertisers in total are paying about one dollar per viewer.
Network overhead eats alot of that dollar, so it seems sensible to me that movie downloads should cost less than a dollar.
Yeah, well I sure beat the Italians wish they spent more money on their army after WWII. Its a shame they had to rebuild their entire freaking country. History, doesn't teach us anything.
Are all Republicans idiots? Mussolini's Italy entered WWII as an ally of Hitler's Germany! From Wikipedia:
"Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini... led Italy from 1922 to 1943. He created a fascist state through the use of state terror and propaganda. Using his charisma, total control of the media and intimidation of political rivals, he disassembled the existing democratic government system. His entry into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany made Italy a target for Allied attacks and ultimately led to his downfall and death."
And who the hell is going to destroy the U.S. anyway? Mexico? Face it: the more countries the U.S. unnecessarily attacks and bullies, the more anti-american fear and hatred grows in the rest of the world.
As I mentioned in my post, yes I sent email to two Sun contact people. One of those people informed me that no information was available. The other person informed me that information was available with a support contract, and then they furnished partial information in the email (not the specific information I was looking for). It took about twelve hours to get those responses, and by that time the auction had only a few hours remaining.
I doubt Sun offers support contracts for people who have not yet bought anything from Sun. At any rate, I'm not going to pay $99 per year just to have access to information I'd need to bid on used Sun monitors. Also, I'm concerned with resale value, and unless all the other potential bidders out there also pay $99 per year to Sun, they won't know how much to bid if I try to sell the monitor. I did about an hour of Google searching and found a wide range of conflicting and incomplete specifications listed for the monitor model from a half-dozen vendors. The only way to discern the truth was from Sun, and they're not telling.
A few months ago, I wanted to bid on a used Sun monitor on Ebay, but decided not to after giving up in frustration trying to learn the monitor's specifications from the Sun website, and then also from email correspondence with Sun tech support representatives. Basically, Sun doesn't provide any information about their old products except to people who are paying expensive support contracts.
I wound up buying a Dell P1110 monitor instead and no one bid on the (probably superior, but I'm not sure) Sun monitor. I think that Sun's lack of support for their old products gives Sun's products poor resale value, so I'm avoiding buying any new products from Sun.
[pedant] Actually, 128 bits can only address the number of atoms in about a billion (american) metric tons of hydrogen, about the weight of a cubic kilometer of water. (6.023 x 10^26 atoms per kilogram x 10^12 kilograms = 6.023 x 10^38 ~= 2^128). 256 bits could probably address every atom in the universe though. (2^256 ~= 10^77). [/pedant]
Interestingly, (to me, anyway), 64 bits can address almost the number of silicon atoms in a typical silicon chip.
In the original Doom game, I enjoyed the complex level design and automap feature, combined with lots of secret areas and lots of monsters to battle at once. I just don't much enjoy battling one or two monsters at a time, and I'm bored by the linear architecture of modern fps games.
For single player gaming, I like the complex architecture, automapping, and multiple monster battles in modern 3rd-party remakes of the original Doom game (jdoom) .
While some modern fps games have realistic graphics of gritty inner-city environments, I don't care. If I wanted to spend my time in a realistic gritty inner-city environment, I'd go to a gritty inner-city environment in real life! Not interested./end rant
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Interesting that the article quotes the figure of half the cost. Five years ago, people were saying Indian companies could do the work for one-tenth the cost. If Indian salaries and other costs increase 20% a year for a few more years, the advantages of outsourcing will have largely disappeared. In the long run, good for India and good for U.S. I.T. workers.
And there's nothing the MP/RI Ass. of America would like better than a comprehensive DRM system required by law.
Actually, I kind of hope this passes too because it would force the U.S. public to recognise the fundamental absurdity of the MPAA/RIAA's agenda for the U.S. Copyright as a concept would become so unpopular among ordinary Americans that a lot of the current ridiculous IP laws would probably soon get repealed along with the new law. Of course there would be alot of suffering in the meanwhile, but at least the U.S. would more quickly get back on the right track again. The way things are going right now, things might not change for decades. Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better.
The great thing about using write-only memory is that they can have an infinite amount of it. Heh heh.
I've never used facebook, but on the face of it (so to speak) it seems to me that facebook does not have a natural monopoly like ebay does and microsoft does. That's because facebook is restricted to college students, a population that renews in big chunks every September. Suppose that the incoming class of freshmen all used "xyz.com" in high school and want to stay connected with their old friends (some of whom might not have gone on to college, or gone to different schools). While facebook might have a natural monopoly in the sophmore class, facebook has to create a new critical mass of freshmen members at every school, every year. I suppose that freshmen who want to be on the same site as their elder classmates might show some loyalty to the site, but they also might want to rebel by affiliating with a separate freshman site. That would make it easy for a competitor to jump in and snatch the critcal mass of incoming students to create a new monopoly. I think even $750 million is a crazy offer for what could turn out to be a four-year monopoly.
I moved from San Francisco to Miami, and then two years later from Miami to Los Angeles, and I used ABF-U-Pack. Each move cost me less than $1500 including gas and took about a week! The cool thing is they are sort of self-service but you don't have to drive their truck.
I did it like this: rented a U-Haul truck. Loaded up the U-Haul truck with my stuff. Drove the U-Haul truck to the ABF terminal (about half an hour drive in all three cities I moved from/to). Backed up the U-Haul truck to the ABF container. Moved everything from the U-Haul truck into the ABF container. Returned the U-Haul truck. Drove my own car cross country (no need to pay for car shipping). A few days later, rented another U-Haul truck at my destination, drove to the local ABF terminal, transferred everything from the ABF container to the U-Haul truck, drove the U-Haul truck home and unpacked.
If I had to move cross country again, I'd use them again. Incredibly cheap and I'm the only person who handles my stuff, so I can be as careful as I want. They also have a good rating with the Better Business Bureau. I highly recommend checking with the BBB before selecting a moving company!
Or how about this conversation I had in 2001:
;-) I think maybe I'll have to change my strategy. Heh heh... I'm glad I posted these two posts. I think they're helping me to get some perspective.
Recruiter: "I have this totally awesome client who's looking for someone with at least five years of really solid experience in Windows 2000 programming. I've been calling everybody. Do you know anyone who has that level of experience?"
Me: repressing a rising anger "...It's 2001 right now - and Windows 2000 came out in...?"
Recruiter: long pause "...Hmm... I think I see what you're getting at. I'll have to give the client a call to get some clarification on that."
Sometimes I wonder if employers get so tired being pestered by recruiters, that they send recruiters on wild-goose-chases just to get rid of them. They probably do.
Looking at my last two posts, I'm seeing that my attitude has been a bit harsh toward recruiters, but I just don't see how anyone who doesn't understand technology could convince a hiring manager that I do understand technology. I don't see how the recruiter could do anything except read buzzwords off my resume to the hiring manager - something that the hiring manager could just as well do for him/her self. Maybe recruiters are just screening for personality - screening out the hard-core geeks with no personal skills. Maybe that's why I've never been able to find a job through a recruiter
I had the following conversation with a recruiter a few years ago:
Recruiter: "I was just looking at your resume and I noticed that you did some printer drivers, fax drivers, a multitasking kernel and some control-panel applets and I was wondering, have you ever done any systems programming?"
Me: momentarily speechless "... Uhh... Yes I have."
Recruiter: "Oh cool. What was that?"
Me: "Umm, that was the printer drivers, fax drivers, multitasking kernel and control-panel applets."
Recruiter: "Oh, heh heh, I knew that, I was just testing you!"
Me: *Click*
Please, your so filled with bitterness about this guy.
Suspicion, not bitterness.
Mod parent up! The torrent link for all Mercury Theatre performances, including the War of The Worlds, is at the bottom of the page. I'm getting about 150 KB/s.
TV networks charge advertisers about $15,000 to show a 30-second ad one time while one million viewers watch. (actually alot of the viewers are probably changing the channel or off in the kitchen getting a snack.)
A typical hour of TV has 17 minutes of ads or about 34 30-second ad spots.
So a one-million-viewer TV-hour brings in about $500,000 in advertising revenue.
Thus TV ads bring in about $0.50 per viewer per hour for broadcasters. (I'm amazed they are paying so much. If I channel surf for four hours without watching any ads, I've kindof ripped off the advertisers $2!)
Since a typical movie lasts two hours, advertisers in total are paying about one dollar per viewer.
Network overhead eats alot of that dollar, so it seems sensible to me that movie downloads should cost less than a dollar.
Yeah, well I sure beat the Italians wish they spent more money on their army after WWII. Its a shame they had to rebuild their entire freaking country. History, doesn't teach us anything.
... led Italy from 1922 to 1943. He created a fascist state through the use of state terror and propaganda. Using his charisma, total control of the media and intimidation of political rivals, he disassembled the existing democratic government system. His entry into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany made Italy a target for Allied attacks and ultimately led to his downfall and death."
Are all Republicans idiots? Mussolini's Italy entered WWII as an ally of Hitler's Germany! From Wikipedia:
"Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini
And who the hell is going to destroy the U.S. anyway? Mexico? Face it: the more countries the U.S. unnecessarily attacks and bullies, the more anti-american fear and hatred grows in the rest of the world.
As I mentioned in my post, yes I sent email to two Sun contact people. One of those people informed me that no information was available. The other person informed me that information was available with a support contract, and then they furnished partial information in the email (not the specific information I was looking for). It took about twelve hours to get those responses, and by that time the auction had only a few hours remaining.
I doubt Sun offers support contracts for people who have not yet bought anything from Sun. At any rate, I'm not going to pay $99 per year just to have access to information I'd need to bid on used Sun monitors. Also, I'm concerned with resale value, and unless all the other potential bidders out there also pay $99 per year to Sun, they won't know how much to bid if I try to sell the monitor. I did about an hour of Google searching and found a wide range of conflicting and incomplete specifications listed for the monitor model from a half-dozen vendors. The only way to discern the truth was from Sun, and they're not telling.
A few months ago, I wanted to bid on a used Sun monitor on Ebay, but decided not to after giving up in frustration trying to learn the monitor's specifications from the Sun website, and then also from email correspondence with Sun tech support representatives. Basically, Sun doesn't provide any information about their old products except to people who are paying expensive support contracts.
I wound up buying a Dell P1110 monitor instead and no one bid on the (probably superior, but I'm not sure) Sun monitor. I think that Sun's lack of support for their old products gives Sun's products poor resale value, so I'm avoiding buying any new products from Sun.
Actually, he's an incompetent, incoherent, religous fundamentalist fool even with a war.
[pedant] Actually, 128 bits can only address the number of atoms in about a billion (american) metric tons of hydrogen, about the weight of a cubic kilometer of water. (6.023 x 10^26 atoms per kilogram x 10^12 kilograms = 6.023 x 10^38 ~= 2^128). 256 bits could probably address every atom in the universe though. (2^256 ~= 10^77). [/pedant]
Interestingly, (to me, anyway), 64 bits can address almost the number of silicon atoms in a typical silicon chip.
Please, don't give W any more ideas for starting wars.
In the original Doom game, I enjoyed the complex level design and automap feature, combined with lots of secret areas and lots of monsters to battle at once. I just don't much enjoy battling one or two monsters at a time, and I'm bored by the linear architecture of modern fps games.
/end rant
For single player gaming, I like the complex architecture, automapping, and multiple monster battles in modern 3rd-party remakes of the original Doom game (jdoom) .
While some modern fps games have realistic graphics of gritty inner-city environments, I don't care. If I wanted to spend my time in a realistic gritty inner-city environment, I'd go to a gritty inner-city environment in real life! Not interested.
Yeah, and a neuron is made up of individual atoms, each of which has a quantum level of excitation, ionization, etc.