First, after 30 years of communism, Vietnam is quite an equalitarian country. And a very, very poor one. You can't begin to imagine how poor. Let us say the average American dog probably eat, sleeps and lives better than the average Vietnamese middle class person.
Now, in such a poor country, paying Microsoft for however many Windows licenses the country needs is too much regardless of the number of licenses we are talking about. It does not matter you are filthy rich and make US$ 5000,00 a year, buying foreign software contribute to the national debt and to make the country even poorer.
Here in Brazil I can buy any Windows version for less than $3, tops. And this is Brazil, Vietnan's territory can easily fit in the state I live (which is not one of the large states - in the large ones you could easily fit all of Western Europe) and our economy ten or twenty orders of magnitude larger than theirs. I would imagine in Nan the price for M$ products would be just a little above the blank CD price, something near $1.
All well and good, except no such a contract is going to be offered to Vietnan in the forseeable future. Vietnan is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Guess what, no high technology company is going to build a factory in a country without infra-structure, a somewhat educated population and good finnancial and banking facilities.
The only thing they lose is the pleasure of paying royalties to Microsoft and their ilk.
This is too K5 a subject and too K5 a post (with a too K5 title) but my analysis (not an uninformed one, mind you, being myself an educational software developer with a game development sickness that won't go away) is that these people are alienating their most profitable public, the builders and friends who make a RPG a nice place to live in. I played everything since the the original paper D&D so I speak from experience when I say the group dynamic is everything. If you can't create an enviroment where newbies (newspeak=n00bs) feel at ease you will only have the same old PK crowd around.
I remember when I once played a mud, I joined a guild and people there were really friendly and willing to waste their time helping the newbie who had wandered too far from home. As a result, well before I reached a level where money and HPs were irrelevant, I too was willing to help selflessly (and so were most of the guild members). So, it is almost always a matter of the culture the environment you create enable or fail to enable.
From my point of view, the main problem is that not only their tech but their target audience is 12 years old. I should know, my own 12 years old son started a Tibia(a nice german adventure MMORPG somewhat free - paying players have some advantages and logging privileges) frenzy in his school. I started playing to see how it felt like and now I am being understandably pressed to put my credicard where mouth is...
Anyway, you are right, I have yet to find a game as involving and fun as Infinity, an old mud I used to play by the time my son was born. But they have one major drawback for us foreigners: the best ones require an English fluency teenagers simply do not have. The graphical adventures greatly reduce this problem because you almost never have to understand the dragon is next door, you can see it.
Unfortunatelly there are lots of teenagers for whom killing rats for 20 hours is fun - and after the rats, wolfs and after the wolfs, orcs and so on.
Alternatively, try the plain truth
on
Software Exorcism
·
· Score: 1
In my experience, when I tell people I still want an email confirmation (at the end of the phone talk) to "have our decisions recorded" (or "your request" or "whatever" recorded), they usually comply meekly. And it makes clear I am willing to play fair (even insisting on it). When people know that you will not backsttab them and that you can counter any attempt of someone backsttabing you, they usually leave you out of their dark political plots.
a) Major non-trivial application: Check. (Educational software for text exploration composed of two pieces, an almost full-fledged editor and an "investigator", interface fully graphical, localized for five different languages)
b) Write once, run anywhere: Check (Covers the three major platforms - Windows, Linux and OSX. Ok, write once, compile and run anywhere - the sole major problem was with text format in OSX)
The inconsistencies you point are development process, not tool, problems. Testing does not go away because you use Java. Our software does have minor inconsistencies across platforms, and some (20 or so) lines of code that will execute only in a given operating systems - I would call this cross-platform. The performance is also a non-problem after some targeted tunning.
So, from personal experience, I can say Java is now a viable desktop developement platform.
ICANN shouldn't have to sue anyone over a technical aspect of the Internet. They should have the tools to simply tell Verisign to do it and have it done quickly. And they should also have the means to simply cut Verisign out of the loop if push comes to shove (and let Verisign sue if they are unhappy).
Supposing the release time at US is at 20:00 Eastern time, the Japanese will have to wake up at 4 am to get to the line, lots of Californians will sleep during the movie, some Germans will have to skip work to catch it. Pretty stupid marketing crap.
All our servers(3) run Linux. The development team (4 machines) uses dual Linux\Windows machines (a must, since we develop cross-platform software). Development also uses solely OpenOffice (and to date we had never seen a Word document, Excell spreadsheet or presentation we couldn't open nor have produced one of those the other people in the company couldn't open).
I am trying to convince one of my other (two) partners (Finnance/Project Management) to move to OpenOffice, but since she has been using MS Office (98 at the moment, she once installed 2000 but disliked it so much she quickly returned to 98) since the DOS days (and she is quite a power user), it will be a long process (OO has yet some edges to cut before it can be done).
We also favour open development tools (Netbeans, CVS, Tomcat, Zope, WxWindows, NYSE or InnoSetup installer systems) whenever possible. There are things like Flash, for instance, that must be bought, but it is now almost possible to run a serious development shop without any proprietary tool (even if you are developing desktop Windows software).
My bet is they have a legal DDOS already planned to sue every single one of IBM's customers.
Even if it is true, and I doubt it (I think it is too risky - judges can get annoyed and SCO may not have the kind of money needed to pull this up), unfortunatelly for SCO IBM custumers are not 12 year-old girls, college students or old grammas. As a matter of fact, IBM custumers are mostly the rulers of the global economy, Fortune 500 companies with legal arsenals at least same size of IBM's. Going down this path SCO may find itself fighting not one but ten or twenty 800lb gorillas. It would take a year's of the Florida swamps mosquito production to suck all those dry. And then some.
The real, real reason for wanting an invoice in to sell it as a relic on eBay sometime in the future. And that will make you far more money than a suing SCO for commercial fraud - by the time IBM is done with them all they will have left to give you will be two old floopies and some soap forgotten in the janitorial room. And their pants.
I clicked the link to this article expecting a discussion about a meteor defense system, how much would it cost, how long would it take to build it, and even if it is feasible, how do we get to build it in a divided world who can't even build a punny space station.
Instead I find all top comments are "+5, Funny". And that in a site inhabited by some of the most technically capable people in the world. No wonder our politics will never grasp the need for such a project. Maybe it is just a Sunday effect, but I can't help wondering if the species who will use us as fossil fuel will manage to use their time better.
It was about time Europe get itself a special effects industry capable of faking lunar missions. The USA perfected this technology in the late sixties and look how profitable the American movie industry is now.
And they are not racing anyone, they just want to get there.
Besides, it gives the joint Alien-American-Russian crew at Moon's dark side base enough time to cover up everything and go for well-deserved vacation in Phobos.
I think the last 20 years proved people canwrite good, free-as-in-beer software forever.
The fact is free software/open source has an endless pool of resources to draw from: kids just arriving at the field. Some of these kids are smart enough to write their own operating systems, their own word processors or their own browsers. Few of them will manage to build a whole career writing only free software. Most will go on to work on commercial projects and new kids will take their places in the projects they mantained (if those were demanded). Also, many older, experienced developers will turn to open source software at the end of their careers as a way to keep playing.
I use OpenOffice and have absolutely no need to switch. Never receive a document, spreadsheet or presentation I couldn't open. Of course I am a software developer, so my development tools are far more important than my office tools. But as it is, I would donate to the OpenOffice project (or the FSF) many thousand dollars before considering any commercial alternatives.
Why care about energy, mass and all this physics bullshit when you have bills to make it happen? That is why most legislators are lawyers, not engineers. Lawyers have the guts to make it happen while engineers keep forever complaining about risks, budgets and other useless crap...
You should really lose the idea that poorer means dumber.
Some countries and some kinds of workers are willing to cope with less regulation in order to attract the jobs being outsourced. For the time being, at least. Other countries, like Brazil, are not deregulating and lifting worker protection, considering the damage would be greater than the economic benefit (but the debate continues).
But rest assured the whole world has smart union leaders, economists, planners and politicians, all well aware of the benefits and liabilities of this trend.
I was answering the AC statement above, specially "If they want a job so bad, move here, become a citizen, and get a job. Don't take someone else's away.".
My main point is that it is not India's or Tailand's or Hong Kong's problem if your companies choose to send your jobs there. The Indian guy may or may not want to become an American citizen, but his wishes are completely irrelevant in this context, as the jobs are being offered in India. He has the same need to become an American citizen to take a job in India as an American has to become an Indian citizen to take a job in the United States. None.
And if you look at it from his point of view, he is not taking anyone's job. He probably thinks his American counterparts are all being given fancier jobs like the next version of Windows, the next Mars missions or the next smart bomb software and wish he could do that instead of VB COM components to print pretty payroll reports.
So, CIO may well be talking to American CIOs, but it is pretty useless talk while American companies need to compete among themselves for Wall Street praise in a quarter by quarter basis. And as the whole world knows, Wall Street couldn't care less about who has which job or even if anyone has any job, as long as those quarter results keep going up.
Do have the faintest idea of the difficult it is for any foreigner to get a green card? Nothing prevents the USA from imposing any barriers they want for foreign workers, and they do. If your Congress bought the "IT shortage" speech from the industry leaders, it is your problem, not the rest of the world's.
And by the way, Americans are not flooding elsewhere looking for work, so "no one will hire Americans" is something at least unclear...
As far as I know, American companies, led by American managers, controlled by American dhareholders, are relocatting your jobs to places where they can have the same service for less money. Go complain with them. Or with your Congress. The Indian workers do not need nor care to become a citizen of your country. The jobs are being offered in India...
Slashdot Mirror
First, after 30 years of communism, Vietnam is quite an equalitarian country. And a very, very poor one. You can't begin to imagine how poor. Let us say the average American dog probably eat, sleeps and lives better than the average Vietnamese middle class person.
Now, in such a poor country, paying Microsoft for however many Windows licenses the country needs is too much regardless of the number of licenses we are talking about. It does not matter you are filthy rich and make US$ 5000,00 a year, buying foreign software contribute to the national debt and to make the country even poorer.
Here in Brazil I can buy any Windows version for less than $3, tops. And this is Brazil, Vietnan's territory can easily fit in the state I live (which is not one of the large states - in the large ones you could easily fit all of Western Europe) and our economy ten or twenty orders of magnitude larger than theirs. I would imagine in Nan the price for M$ products would be just a little above the blank CD price, something near $1.
All well and good, except no such a contract is going to be offered to Vietnan in the forseeable future. Vietnan is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Guess what, no high technology company is going to build a factory in a country without infra-structure, a somewhat educated population and good finnancial and banking facilities.
The only thing they lose is the pleasure of paying royalties to Microsoft and their ilk.
This is too K5 a subject and too K5 a post (with a too K5 title) but my analysis (not an uninformed one, mind you, being myself an educational software developer with a game development sickness that won't go away) is that these people are alienating their most profitable public, the builders and friends who make a RPG a nice place to live in. I played everything since the the original paper D&D so I speak from experience when I say the group dynamic is everything. If you can't create an enviroment where newbies (newspeak=n00bs) feel at ease you will only have the same old PK crowd around.
I remember when I once played a mud, I joined a guild and people there were really friendly and willing to waste their time helping the newbie who had wandered too far from home. As a result, well before I reached a level where money and HPs were irrelevant, I too was willing to help selflessly (and so were most of the guild members). So, it is almost always a matter of the culture the environment you create enable or fail to enable.
From my point of view, the main problem is that not only their tech but their target audience is 12 years old. I should know, my own 12 years old son started a Tibia(a nice german adventure MMORPG somewhat free - paying players have some advantages and logging privileges) frenzy in his school. I started playing to see how it felt like and now I am being understandably pressed to put my credicard where mouth is...
Anyway, you are right, I have yet to find a game as involving and fun as Infinity, an old mud I used to play by the time my son was born. But they have one major drawback for us foreigners: the best ones require an English fluency teenagers simply do not have. The graphical adventures greatly reduce this problem because you almost never have to understand the dragon is next door, you can see it.
Unfortunatelly there are lots of teenagers for whom killing rats for 20 hours is fun - and after the rats, wolfs and after the wolfs, orcs and so on.
In my experience, when I tell people I still want an email confirmation (at the end of the phone talk) to "have our decisions recorded" (or "your request" or "whatever" recorded), they usually comply meekly. And it makes clear I am willing to play fair (even insisting on it). When people know that you will not backsttab them and that you can counter any attempt of someone backsttabing you, they usually leave you out of their dark political plots.
a) Major non-trivial application: Check. (Educational software for text exploration composed of two pieces, an almost full-fledged editor and an "investigator", interface fully graphical, localized for five different languages)
b) Write once, run anywhere: Check (Covers the three major platforms - Windows, Linux and OSX. Ok, write once, compile and run anywhere - the sole major problem was with text format in OSX)
The inconsistencies you point are development process, not tool, problems. Testing does not go away because you use Java. Our software does have minor inconsistencies across platforms, and some (20 or so) lines of code that will execute only in a given operating systems - I would call this cross-platform. The performance is also a non-problem after some targeted tunning.
So, from personal experience, I can say Java is now a viable desktop developement platform.
Yeah, I got German and California upside-down (or better, left-side right)...
ICANN shouldn't have to sue anyone over a technical aspect of the Internet. They should have the tools to simply tell Verisign to do it and have it done quickly. And they should also have the means to simply cut Verisign out of the loop if push comes to shove (and let Verisign sue if they are unhappy).
Supposing the release time at US is at 20:00 Eastern time, the Japanese will have to wake up at 4 am to get to the line, lots of Californians will sleep during the movie, some Germans will have to skip work to catch it. Pretty stupid marketing crap.
All our servers(3) run Linux. The development team (4 machines) uses dual Linux\Windows machines (a must, since we develop cross-platform software). Development also uses solely OpenOffice (and to date we had never seen a Word document, Excell spreadsheet or presentation we couldn't open nor have produced one of those the other people in the company couldn't open).
I am trying to convince one of my other (two) partners (Finnance/Project Management) to move to OpenOffice, but since she has been using MS Office (98 at the moment, she once installed 2000 but disliked it so much she quickly returned to 98) since the DOS days (and she is quite a power user), it will be a long process (OO has yet some edges to cut before it can be done).
We also favour open development tools (Netbeans, CVS, Tomcat, Zope, WxWindows, NYSE or InnoSetup installer systems) whenever possible. There are things like Flash, for instance, that must be bought, but it is now almost possible to run a serious development shop without any proprietary tool (even if you are developing desktop Windows software).
My bet is they have a legal DDOS already planned to sue every single one of IBM's customers.
Even if it is true, and I doubt it (I think it is too risky - judges can get annoyed and SCO may not have the kind of money needed to pull this up), unfortunatelly for SCO IBM custumers are not 12 year-old girls, college students or old grammas. As a matter of fact, IBM custumers are mostly the rulers of the global economy, Fortune 500 companies with legal arsenals at least same size of IBM's. Going down this path SCO may find itself fighting not one but ten or twenty 800lb gorillas. It would take a year's of the Florida swamps mosquito production to suck all those dry. And then some.
The real, real reason for wanting an invoice in to sell it as a relic on eBay sometime in the future. And that will make you far more money than a suing SCO for commercial fraud - by the time IBM is done with them all they will have left to give you will be two old floopies and some soap forgotten in the janitorial room. And their pants.
Unless, perhaps, if you are responsible for the information infra-structure of the most populous country in the world.
I clicked the link to this article expecting a discussion about a meteor defense system, how much would it cost, how long would it take to build it, and even if it is feasible, how do we get to build it in a divided world who can't even build a punny space station.
Instead I find all top comments are "+5, Funny". And that in a site inhabited by some of the most technically capable people in the world. No wonder our politics will never grasp the need for such a project. Maybe it is just a Sunday effect, but I can't help wondering if the species who will use us as fossil fuel will manage to use their time better.
The outside view is really poor, but the inside was rated the best space resort in the quadrant for three consecutive decades.
It was about time Europe get itself a special effects industry capable of faking lunar missions. The USA perfected this technology in the late sixties and look how profitable the American movie industry is now.
And they are not racing anyone, they just want to get there.
Besides, it gives the joint Alien-American-Russian crew at Moon's dark side base enough time to cover up everything and go for well-deserved vacation in Phobos.
Ain't all her recorded work proof enough?
I think the last 20 years proved people can write good, free-as-in-beer software forever.
The fact is free software/open source has an endless pool of resources to draw from: kids just arriving at the field. Some of these kids are smart enough to write their own operating systems, their own word processors or their own browsers. Few of them will manage to build a whole career writing only free software. Most will go on to work on commercial projects and new kids will take their places in the projects they mantained (if those were demanded). Also, many older, experienced developers will turn to open source software at the end of their careers as a way to keep playing.
I use OpenOffice and have absolutely no need to switch. Never receive a document, spreadsheet or presentation I couldn't open. Of course I am a software developer, so my development tools are far more important than my office tools. But as it is, I would donate to the OpenOffice project (or the FSF) many thousand dollars before considering any commercial alternatives.
Why care about energy, mass and all this physics bullshit when you have bills to make it happen? That is why most legislators are lawyers, not engineers. Lawyers have the guts to make it happen while engineers keep forever complaining about risks, budgets and other useless crap...
You should really lose the idea that poorer means dumber.
Some countries and some kinds of workers are willing to cope with less regulation in order to attract the jobs being outsourced. For the time being, at least. Other countries, like Brazil, are not deregulating and lifting worker protection, considering the damage would be greater than the economic benefit (but the debate continues).
But rest assured the whole world has smart union leaders, economists, planners and politicians, all well aware of the benefits and liabilities of this trend.
I was answering the AC statement above, specially "If they want a job so bad, move here, become a citizen, and get a job. Don't take someone else's away.".
My main point is that it is not India's or Tailand's or Hong Kong's problem if your companies choose to send your jobs there. The Indian guy may or may not want to become an American citizen, but his wishes are completely irrelevant in this context, as the jobs are being offered in India. He has the same need to become an American citizen to take a job in India as an American has to become an Indian citizen to take a job in the United States. None.
And if you look at it from his point of view, he is not taking anyone's job. He probably thinks his American counterparts are all being given fancier jobs like the next version of Windows, the next Mars missions or the next smart bomb software and wish he could do that instead of VB COM components to print pretty payroll reports.
So, CIO may well be talking to American CIOs, but it is pretty useless talk while American companies need to compete among themselves for Wall Street praise in a quarter by quarter basis. And as the whole world knows, Wall Street couldn't care less about who has which job or even if anyone has any job, as long as those quarter results keep going up.
Do have the faintest idea of the difficult it is for any foreigner to get a green card? Nothing prevents the USA from imposing any barriers they want for foreign workers, and they do. If your Congress bought the "IT shortage" speech from the industry leaders, it is your problem, not the rest of the world's.
And by the way, Americans are not flooding elsewhere looking for work, so "no one will hire Americans" is something at least unclear...
As far as I know, American companies, led by American managers, controlled by American dhareholders, are relocatting your jobs to places where they can have the same service for less money. Go complain with them. Or with your Congress. The Indian workers do not need nor care to become a citizen of your country. The jobs are being offered in India...