No, I haven't RTFA, so I'm hoping someone knowledgeable can tell me how Eolas patented plug-in technology is vastly different from related technologies such as dynamically-loaded libraries or kernel loadable modules?
Is it just because it's hooked up to a Web browser front end or the action occurs because of an HTML tag rather than a directive compiled into a C program?
They can still use the same cash drawers if we'd just start rounding to the nearest US$0.05 instead of US$0.01. Just kick it up a notch from 1-5-10-25 to 5-10-25-100.
Unfortunately, "getting rid of pennies" and forking over "rounding pennies" to cashiers, dumping and grabbing pennies into common pots is a bigger part of my life than I'd like.
I think if we eliminated pennies, dollar coins would be more readily accepted.
I'm hoping to find some (necessarily nontech) ways of encouraging students to be a bit more honest
By this time of their lives, it's a bit late.
Morals and ethics are best instilled at an earlier age and society has relies fundamentally on parents to do this (even if parents don't do it, leave it to others, etc.) People can argue for eternity whether society ought to or is obligated to pick up or replace what incompetent parents leave as a legacy.
But this is an institution of higher learning. These people ought to have a clue and be able to put two and two together.
That is , a word to the wise suffices.
The prof should mention once in class that there have been cases where homeworks bore a striking similarity and that he hopes everyone will try to get the maximum learning benefit from doing their homework as independently as possible and that he and the T.A.'s have office hours if anyone is having particular problems. Competent students that simply let others crib without learning are not doing the cheater any favors, any more than buying an alcoholic a drink does that person any favors.
If someone wants to hang themselves and their career by cheating, they've already got enough rope to do it.
When I was an undergrad there was an honor system that included exams which were:
take-home,
finite-time,
closed-book.
and was a much more pleasant environment than the kind of proctored exams that are more common. I'm sure that some cheating occurred, but I still managed to graduate with a tolerable GPA without cheating.
By comparison, some early coursework in grad school was really ugly. I had to roll out of bed early to go take some stupid scheduled final exam with 40 other sweating, anxious students at the same time. Until you've experienced how good things can be you don't realize just how palpable the environment of no-trust and no-respect really is. It sucks, and it's not worth sacrificing to punish a few cheaters that will hurt themselves in the long run.
In a LAN environment, NFS is fantastic for keeping down support costs.
In particular, install some package in/usr/local on the server and instantly it's available to a couple hundred clients that import that filesystem.
Home directories that are up 24x7, so that everything looks exactly the same no matter which workstation I log into, doesn't matter if it's "mine" or if "mine" is off.
All NFS needs is a good network and a reliable file server.
It's worked for me for over 10 years now.
I am looking forward to the improved security model in NFSv4, though.
All the big portrait remakes of U.S. currency neglected the one dollar bill.
From what I understand, paper money costs more to maintain relative to coin over a period of years. Wear and tear means reprinting and replacement over a shorter life cycle for paper currency.
There's been 2 or 3 attempts to get US to use one dollar coins, and the vending machine manufacturers and the casinos would welcome the move, but people keep wanting to use those $1 bills over the Ike dollars, the Susan B. dollars and I'm not sure what else.
What's weird is that coins up to $20 denomination were used in the 19th century. And that was when $20 represented something like 2/3 of a month's wages for many people.
Naturally, because of the larger deployed base of Windows machines I would expect any vulnerability for Windows to be magnified in its importance just because of how many machines it affects, independent of whether Windows has more flaws, worse flaws, poor design, etc.
OS flavor is only weakly correlated as a function of importance as a security vulnerability. Vulnerabilities that affect root name servers and routers could be just as important in terms of impact as several thousands of home Windows PC's hooked up to AOL if you look at the economic impact.
For me, the ideal GUI has a linear learning curve.
That is, it should be manifestly easy to start doing the simple things using your intuition.
Then, as you become more proficient and your needs more complex, additional features become exposed as you need them and are easily digestable within the framework of what you've already learned.
This is especially true for applications which are only used once every 6 months. Each time you need to climb the learning curve, it needs to be fast. For example, if you have to "just know" that you need to click `n claw your way down through a cascade of non-descriptive generic named menus", the application won't qualify in my book. I have to say I've used some customized applications which really suck on this count.
Actually, emacs is designed pretty well. Once the user goes into the "C-h t" tutorial, they can get by nicely (C-f moves Forward, C-b moves backward, C-d deletes, etc.). Later, if you want to know that every single key event can be tied to a customizable lisp function that depends on major and minor modes, then you're welcome to get as deeply customized and accelerated as you feel comfortable doing.
Since I got my Tivo, I have no idea what commercials are.
Exactly. I know what they are.
Commercials are: the break in the stream that requires you to hit fast forward for a few seconds.
Commercials are: those pieces of programming that are having to become more entertaining and less obnoxious to have any chance of being seen.
Commercials are: those artifacts of the 20th century that remind you just how painful it is to be fed a linear stream of programming.
Commercials are: what have taught me how to watch the news on a TiVo - quickly hit pause and take a long potty break so I can FF through the commercials when I get back.
Commercials are: those pieces of noisy time that still squat in the middle of broadcast radio feeds that have become so annoying to my sensitivities that I frequently have to turn the damn thing off because the signal to noise ratio is just so abominable compared with my TiVo enabled life.
A basic slot strategy is to move from one machine to another, and play machines in certain areas of the casino floor to improve your odds.
Eh, excuse me, but I really doubt you can change odds on slots.
AFAICT, the best you can do in a casino is playing 21 with basic strategy, modified by counting cards. It requires enough concentration, though, that's it too much like real work.
Plus, if you're too good and obvious (low bets until near the end of the deck when your bets get really high) you'll get escorted out.
Team playing might defer the inevitable, but the casinos are wise to that, too.
If you have issues with the performance of your linux desktop you should be looking at the applications, desktop environments, and toolkits...
Indirectly, though, isnt' that what these guys are proposing to do? Redesigning the lowest layer so that the upper layers don't have to be the way that they are now?
Cheap graphics cards are so much more capable these days than what they were back when X was designed. OpenGL support (or DirectX, whatever you want to call your hardware acceleration) is more common and less expensive than in the mid 1980's. Getting graphics cards to handle more sophisticated 2D vector operations, if it's possible, should permit the lowest level of the API to be properly designed for it. Maybe then we wouldn't suffer all these layers of abstraction and interfaces that cause people to complain of sloth and bloat.
I've used X for a long time and really like its stability and that it's a standard.
The network client-server model is a nice idea, but could use a redesign to make it more useful for higher level operations (old X terminals didn't do OpenGL) and the idea of a secure, standardized kvm services over IP is still a great idea, especially if the underlying protocol makes better use of modern graphics hardware.
I applaud the JourneyOS folks for daring to rethink the low layers of graphics. At the same time, I'd be scared that sloppy design and programming of a more complicated lower leel graphics model (especially with kernel interfaces) could lead to greater instability than I see with X (look at what happens to other OS).
And I have doubts as to how the latency and bandwidth of WXML will scale.
Until it is known whether these fears are founded or not, I still have standard X.
There's room for improvement in X. Now if only Quartz were opened up...
Some folks at MyCorp use DOORS from Telelogic for this purpose.
If your workflow is fairly predictable, then perhaps the burden of learning how to use The System would be tolerable. I sat through a short training course for it once; as a programmer I could see how everything was essentially just an object in a big system, exchanging messages as deadlines pass and responsibilities shift from one person to another.
These kinds of tools can be either a great help or fodder for Dilbert. Again, it depends on how easily your workload can be mapped into the system and, of course, corporate culture, management support, etc.
you're carrying a thousand dollars worth of gear when you're walking around the city at night?
That's a very good point.
There are two technologies that are needed for the public to become aware of the ramifications of this technology:
inexpensive scanners, preferably handheld, so they can choose whether to buy products with embedded RFID
inexpensive scanner detectors, preferably portable, (like sunglasses with an LED to indicate you've been scanned)
This would remove the currently insidious part of RFID: that most people are completely oblivious of what it is. Instead, access to the technology and policies for its use are largely set by those wishing to profit by knowing information (be it a government intent on staying in power or be it a company trying everything to get you to push money their way.)
Things are hidden from people now because their natural senses have no way of detecting that part of the EM spectrum, that part that is enabling others to learn of their latest liquor and condom purchases.
This would put the balance back into the whole issue. The economics of RFID would then include how much people value their privacy: some buyers will avoid RFID products and going through places with scanners.
Passive tags, which is what the library range would mostly likely use, are simply an antenna that pics up a certain frequency which goes through the antenna and reports back its unique number to the reader.
Considering the small size of these little antennae, wouldn't it be possible to construct a sweater with lots of little metallic antennae that would provide too many responses too quickly for an RFID detector to assimilate?
I hope the detached orbit of their semiconductor business is not patterned after what happened to their satellite telephone business (Iridium). Another great idea before its time.
how long before TCPA chip will refuse to load Linux BIOS loading only "trusted" Windows BIOS
Any manufacturer of rack-mounted servers that wants a future chunk of the Linux market (already at what, about 30%?), would be shooting themselves in the foot by artificially hobbling their products this way.
As soon as one vendor breaks ranks with the Windows only BIOS in order to get the extra market, the rest will follow or suffer financially.
All the money in the world cannot make something so ubiquitous as Windows into something "cool". Microsoft was sort of cool for, maybe, a couple of years in the early 1980's. Like it not, they're solidly placed in the embrace of corporate stodginess.
If it's a cool, it's not everyday.
If Macs or Linux were to become more commonplace than they are currently, then their coolness would disappear, too.
One of the design principles behind Java is that I don't care much about how long it takes to slap together something that kind of works. The real measure is how long it takes to write something solid.
How I wish the world would pay for solid code.
Reality, though, is that expedience rules. Any code solidity that stows away on a released product is more the result of bootleg action by idealistic programmers than anything else.
It's ridiculous that SCO is still allowed to continue this nonsense considering the obvious insider trading going on, etc.
Anyone or any company that has a hand in this charade, propping up SCO's claims, etc., should be publicly exposed and dragged through the courts to examine their role, what they had to gain, etc. in excruciating detail.
If I were one of IBM's lawayers, I'd be requesting all kinds of documents from SCO these days. Phone logs, emails, records of meetings, etc. These things will be hard to come by 2 years from now when the company has been vaporized.
Money is the reason that Darl McBride has thrown his company's rotting corpse over the side of the Linux boat, hoping his actions as a drag anchor will win him friends and money now and later from those who stand to gain the most from his action.
If you get a live one on the line, you can offer to sell them my 386 computer. It's in good condition and you should be able to get at least $300 for it if you're persistent. Maybe start out at $799 and then let them think they're getting a good deal on a vintage computer that has been tested thoroughly and is guaranteed not to have any of the viruses that have been floating around lately.
These small and medium sized businesses can move more quickly and make changes that they see as being a better business decision. Costs and benefits of any decision are up-close and personal.
Hmmm... let's see... I have to retrain myself a little to understand the new application (which takes time), suffer a little loss of features, but it costs a lot less, especially over time.
Large companies take longer to do this. The costs and benefits appear different. Large companies like MyCorp have negotiated multi-year, site-wide contracts with companies like Microsoft for things like Office. Consequently, at the department level those products appear "free", we don't pay for them because it comes out of some company wide expenditure, just like electricity and phone service. (And, too, the standardization on One product helps to minimize support costs; so the old One product line is more firmly entrenched . The support techs are more familiar with the old devil than the new devil.)
OpenOffice still has a way to go to compete against that impression in large companies. CIO's are cautious about making a big move unless they feel real comfortable that they understand the costs involved.
While in a small business, the proprietor feels and benefits the costs directly, in the large business, the CIO assumes all of the costs of worrying about the transition. If they're wrong, it's not like they'll just go back the next day like the small business can. No, a bad IT decision in a large company is head-on-a-platter time.
Therefore, study the issue and defer a major transition decision until more evidence is available.
I imagine the guy standing there on the other end of the line with an English phrasebook open on the table. "Yes yes, I understand perfectly" he reads aloud, then turns to his coworkers with a blank look and shrugs. They laugh, and go back to playing Halo.
Shoot, that happens here, too! No need to go overseas to create a language barrier!
CEO comes in speaking buzzwords about "increasing our value proposition, delighting customers, paradigm shifts, enterprise, b2b ecommerce" and worker bees all smile politely and nod their heads.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I haven't RTFA, so I'm hoping someone knowledgeable can tell me how Eolas patented plug-in technology is vastly different from related technologies such as dynamically-loaded libraries or kernel loadable modules?
Is it just because it's hooked up to a Web browser front end or the action occurs because of an HTML tag rather than a directive compiled into a C program?
change their cash drawers.
They can still use the same cash drawers if we'd just start rounding to the nearest US$0.05 instead of US$0.01. Just kick it up a notch from 1-5-10-25 to 5-10-25-100.
Unfortunately, "getting rid of pennies" and forking over "rounding pennies" to cashiers, dumping and grabbing pennies into common pots is a bigger part of my life than I'd like.
I think if we eliminated pennies, dollar coins would be more readily accepted.
I'm hoping to find some (necessarily nontech) ways of encouraging students to be a bit more honest
By this time of their lives, it's a bit late.
Morals and ethics are best instilled at an earlier age and society has relies fundamentally on parents to do this (even if parents don't do it, leave it to others, etc.) People can argue for eternity whether society ought to or is obligated to pick up or replace what incompetent parents leave as a legacy.
But this is an institution of higher learning. These people ought to have a clue and be able to put two and two together.
That is , a word to the wise suffices.
The prof should mention once in class that there have been cases where homeworks bore a striking similarity and that he hopes everyone will try to get the maximum learning benefit from doing their homework as independently as possible and that he and the T.A.'s have office hours if anyone is having particular problems. Competent students that simply let others crib without learning are not doing the cheater any favors, any more than buying an alcoholic a drink does that person any favors.
If someone wants to hang themselves and their career by cheating, they've already got enough rope to do it.
When I was an undergrad there was an honor system that included exams which were:
- take-home,
- finite-time,
- closed-book.
and was a much more pleasant environment than the kind of proctored exams that are more common. I'm sure that some cheating occurred, but I still managed to graduate with a tolerable GPA without cheating.By comparison, some early coursework in grad school was really ugly. I had to roll out of bed early to go take some stupid scheduled final exam with 40 other sweating, anxious students at the same time. Until you've experienced how good things can be you don't realize just how palpable the environment of no-trust and no-respect really is. It sucks, and it's not worth sacrificing to punish a few cheaters that will hurt themselves in the long run.
In a LAN environment, NFS is fantastic for keeping down support costs.
In particular, install some package in /usr/local on the server and instantly it's available to a couple hundred clients that import that filesystem.
Home directories that are up 24x7, so that everything looks exactly the same no matter which workstation I log into, doesn't matter if it's "mine" or if "mine" is off.
All NFS needs is a good network and a reliable file server.
It's worked for me for over 10 years now.
I am looking forward to the improved security model in NFSv4, though.
In my opinion cheaters are the best people to work with. They look for the best/easiest solution to the problem.
Mmmm. Work with me! Be on my team!
You can do all the work and when you're not around I'll take the credit and dish you out the blame for mistakes to upper management.
[So, no, thanks, I'll avoid working with cheaters at every opportunity.]
All the big portrait remakes of U.S. currency neglected the one dollar bill.
From what I understand, paper money costs more to maintain relative to coin over a period of years. Wear and tear means reprinting and replacement over a shorter life cycle for paper currency.
There's been 2 or 3 attempts to get US to use one dollar coins, and the vending machine manufacturers and the casinos would welcome the move, but people keep wanting to use those $1 bills over the Ike dollars, the Susan B. dollars and I'm not sure what else.
What's weird is that coins up to $20 denomination were used in the 19th century. And that was when $20 represented something like 2/3 of a month's wages for many people.
Those of us behind proxies (Squid) aren't too concerned about ATT finding 500 sign ups coming from megacorp.com .
They've probably found out that many dozens of employees at att.com have been signing up to avoid voice spam.Naturally, because of the larger deployed base of Windows machines I would expect any vulnerability for Windows to be magnified in its importance just because of how many machines it affects, independent of whether Windows has more flaws, worse flaws, poor design, etc.
OS flavor is only weakly correlated as a function of importance as a security vulnerability. Vulnerabilities that affect root name servers and routers could be just as important in terms of impact as several thousands of home Windows PC's hooked up to AOL if you look at the economic impact.
how comfortable people feel while using it
For me, the ideal GUI has a linear learning curve.
That is, it should be manifestly easy to start doing the simple things using your intuition.
Then, as you become more proficient and your needs more complex, additional features become exposed as you need them and are easily digestable within the framework of what you've already learned.
This is especially true for applications which are only used once every 6 months. Each time you need to climb the learning curve, it needs to be fast. For example, if you have to "just know" that you need to click `n claw your way down through a cascade of non-descriptive generic named menus", the application won't qualify in my book. I have to say I've used some customized applications which really suck on this count.
Actually, emacs is designed pretty well. Once the user goes into the "C-h t" tutorial, they can get by nicely (C-f moves Forward, C-b moves backward, C-d deletes, etc.). Later, if you want to know that every single key event can be tied to a customizable lisp function that depends on major and minor modes, then you're welcome to get as deeply customized and accelerated as you feel comfortable doing.
Since I got my Tivo, I have no idea what commercials are.
Exactly. I know what they are.
Commercials are: the break in the stream that requires you to hit fast forward for a few seconds.
Commercials are: those pieces of programming that are having to become more entertaining and less obnoxious to have any chance of being seen.
Commercials are: those artifacts of the 20th century that remind you just how painful it is to be fed a linear stream of programming.
Commercials are: what have taught me how to watch the news on a TiVo - quickly hit pause and take a long potty break so I can FF through the commercials when I get back.
Commercials are: those pieces of noisy time that still squat in the middle of broadcast radio feeds that have become so annoying to my sensitivities that I frequently have to turn the damn thing off because the signal to noise ratio is just so abominable compared with my TiVo enabled life.
So what does the GIMP use to render SVG and how good is it?
In particular, is it different from the libart that Mozilla has been using?
The world really needs a high quality open source SVG renderer. Adobe's plugins don't exist for every platform and Batik, AFAIK, relies on Java 2D.
A basic slot strategy is to move from one machine to another, and play machines in certain areas of the casino floor to improve your odds.
Eh, excuse me, but I really doubt you can change odds on slots.
AFAICT, the best you can do in a casino is playing 21 with basic strategy, modified by counting cards. It requires enough concentration, though, that's it too much like real work.
Plus, if you're too good and obvious (low bets until near the end of the deck when your bets get really high) you'll get escorted out.
Team playing might defer the inevitable, but the casinos are wise to that, too.
If you have issues with the performance of your linux desktop you should be looking at the applications, desktop environments, and toolkits...
Indirectly, though, isnt' that what these guys are proposing to do? Redesigning the lowest layer so that the upper layers don't have to be the way that they are now?
Cheap graphics cards are so much more capable these days than what they were back when X was designed. OpenGL support (or DirectX, whatever you want to call your hardware acceleration) is more common and less expensive than in the mid 1980's. Getting graphics cards to handle more sophisticated 2D vector operations, if it's possible, should permit the lowest level of the API to be properly designed for it. Maybe then we wouldn't suffer all these layers of abstraction and interfaces that cause people to complain of sloth and bloat.
I've used X for a long time and really like its stability and that it's a standard.
The network client-server model is a nice idea, but could use a redesign to make it more useful for higher level operations (old X terminals didn't do OpenGL) and the idea of a secure, standardized kvm services over IP is still a great idea, especially if the underlying protocol makes better use of modern graphics hardware.
I applaud the JourneyOS folks for daring to rethink the low layers of graphics. At the same time, I'd be scared that sloppy design and programming of a more complicated lower leel graphics model (especially with kernel interfaces) could lead to greater instability than I see with X (look at what happens to other OS).
And I have doubts as to how the latency and bandwidth of WXML will scale.
Until it is known whether these fears are founded or not, I still have standard X.
There's room for improvement in X. Now if only Quartz were opened up...
Some folks at MyCorp use DOORS from Telelogic for this purpose.
If your workflow is fairly predictable, then perhaps the burden of learning how to use The System would be tolerable. I sat through a short training course for it once; as a programmer I could see how everything was essentially just an object in a big system, exchanging messages as deadlines pass and responsibilities shift from one person to another.
These kinds of tools can be either a great help or fodder for Dilbert. Again, it depends on how easily your workload can be mapped into the system and, of course, corporate culture, management support, etc.
you're carrying a thousand dollars worth of gear when you're walking around the city at night?
That's a very good point.
There are two technologies that are needed for the public to become aware of the ramifications of this technology:
This would remove the currently insidious part of RFID: that most people are completely oblivious of what it is. Instead, access to the technology and policies for its use are largely set by those wishing to profit by knowing information (be it a government intent on staying in power or be it a company trying everything to get you to push money their way.)
Things are hidden from people now because their natural senses have no way of detecting that part of the EM spectrum, that part that is enabling others to learn of their latest liquor and condom purchases.
This would put the balance back into the whole issue. The economics of RFID would then include how much people value their privacy: some buyers will avoid RFID products and going through places with scanners.
Passive tags, which is what the library range would mostly likely use, are simply an antenna that pics up a certain frequency which goes through the antenna and reports back its unique number to the reader.
Considering the small size of these little antennae, wouldn't it be possible to construct a sweater with lots of little metallic antennae that would provide too many responses too quickly for an RFID detector to assimilate?
Along those lines is their famous Six Sigma program.
I hope the detached orbit of their semiconductor business is not patterned after what happened to their satellite telephone business (Iridium). Another great idea before its time.
how long before TCPA chip will refuse to load Linux BIOS loading only "trusted" Windows BIOS
Any manufacturer of rack-mounted servers that wants a future chunk of the Linux market (already at what, about 30%?), would be shooting themselves in the foot by artificially hobbling their products this way.
As soon as one vendor breaks ranks with the Windows only BIOS in order to get the extra market, the rest will follow or suffer financially.
All the money in the world cannot make something so ubiquitous as Windows into something "cool". Microsoft was sort of cool for, maybe, a couple of years in the early 1980's. Like it not, they're solidly placed in the embrace of corporate stodginess.
If it's a cool, it's not everyday.
If Macs or Linux were to become more commonplace than they are currently, then their coolness would disappear, too.
One of the design principles behind Java is that I don't care much about how long it takes to slap together something that kind of works. The real measure is how long it takes to write something solid.
How I wish the world would pay for solid code.
Reality, though, is that expedience rules. Any code solidity that stows away on a released product is more the result of bootleg action by idealistic programmers than anything else.
It's ridiculous that SCO is still allowed to continue this nonsense considering the obvious insider trading going on, etc.
Anyone or any company that has a hand in this charade, propping up SCO's claims, etc., should be publicly exposed and dragged through the courts to examine their role, what they had to gain, etc. in excruciating detail.
If I were one of IBM's lawayers, I'd be requesting all kinds of documents from SCO these days. Phone logs, emails, records of meetings, etc. These things will be hard to come by 2 years from now when the company has been vaporized.
Money is the reason that Darl McBride has thrown his company's rotting corpse over the side of the Linux boat, hoping his actions as a drag anchor will win him friends and money now and later from those who stand to gain the most from his action.
because you aren't really selling something.
Well!
I can solve that problem right here and now!
If you get a live one on the line, you can offer to sell them my 386 computer. It's in good condition and you should be able to get at least $300 for it if you're persistent. Maybe start out at $799 and then let them think they're getting a good deal on a vintage computer that has been tested thoroughly and is guaranteed not to have any of the viruses that have been floating around lately.
Another great contribution to providing free public documentation by IBM. Kudoes to them.
Meanwhile, there's that oncoming train about states requiring VoIP providers to become fully bureaucratically functional telephone providers....
A good dose of well-meaning out-dated regulation ought to slow down the adoption rate of good new technology.
These small and medium sized businesses can move more quickly and make changes that they see as being a better business decision. Costs and benefits of any decision are up-close and personal.
Hmmm... let's see ... I have to retrain myself a little to understand the new application (which takes time), suffer a little loss of features, but it costs a lot less, especially over time.
Large companies take longer to do this. The costs and benefits appear different. Large companies like MyCorp have negotiated multi-year, site-wide contracts with companies like Microsoft for things like Office. Consequently, at the department level those products appear "free", we don't pay for them because it comes out of some company wide expenditure, just like electricity and phone service. (And, too, the standardization on One product helps to minimize support costs; so the old One product line is more firmly entrenched . The support techs are more familiar with the old devil than the new devil.)
OpenOffice still has a way to go to compete against that impression in large companies. CIO's are cautious about making a big move unless they feel real comfortable that they understand the costs involved.
While in a small business, the proprietor feels and benefits the costs directly, in the large business, the CIO assumes all of the costs of worrying about the transition. If they're wrong, it's not like they'll just go back the next day like the small business can. No, a bad IT decision in a large company is head-on-a-platter time.
Therefore, study the issue and defer a major transition decision until more evidence is available.
I imagine the guy standing there on the other end of the line with an English phrasebook open on the table. "Yes yes, I understand perfectly" he reads aloud, then turns to his coworkers with a blank look and shrugs. They laugh, and go back to playing Halo.
Shoot, that happens here, too! No need to go overseas to create a language barrier!
CEO comes in speaking buzzwords about "increasing our value proposition, delighting customers, paradigm shifts, enterprise, b2b ecommerce" and worker bees all smile politely and nod their heads.