Perhaps the Indians don't realize the type of company they are working for?
I think you are making at least two wild assumptions: (1) that anyone has been ignorant enough to have applied, and (2) that those jobs are real and not just window-dressing for yet another stock-price scam (e.g., "the transition into mobile/PDA markets"). I don't think they're even meant to be filled.
call it Vic the Vista internet client (or Voom sounds better)
Let's not go into the naming sector of things. Not that Dilbert couldn't manage to pull through the dreaded Product Naming Project, but because Vista already means 'chicken' in Latvian -- and who knows what Vista Vic and Vista Voom might end up referring to in some more obscure foreign languages?!
The question back then was, "How can we outdo the rest of the world?"
What makes things even more interesting is that in a nuclear-war-starts-in-5-minutes situation back then, I might have expected the panicked short-sighted "we need a quick-fix"-attitude of the present day. Yet, somehow the folks at the time were able to cool their minds and go for the long-term advancements.
I think there is a clear reason for that: the former Soviet bloc acted as a threat of real competition. At that time, there was no place to hide the loot had the Soviets won. But now there is no counterbalance and it's gone into just individuals looting as much pay-off from organizations as they can carry, since there is no threat of it being taken away. Even taxation has been reduced.
I just threw away a R300 series card (ATi 9800 XT) for an nVidia SLI.
I hope you are only joking about the "throwing away" part (or traded it up for the new one or something similar). Last time I was browsing free/open source projects concerning ATI drivers, I recall vividly that the developers seemed to have a shortage for two things: specification information was the first and foremost, but ATI hardware to test bang their code against was second up on the list. Your "old" R300-card might've helped as well. If Linux-snobs get free hardware (or are rich enough to pay for it;), the *BSD projects would've liked the stuff (this from a Linux-snob;). Oh, think of the baby-Theos!
This looks like an astroturfing and/or puff-piece for the Sage. They just had to have some real eye-catchers for the first issue, I guess, so they took everyone's favourites and linked them up with bad things. Nothing to see here (or probably in Sage either), move along.
If you imagine for a second Microsoft will afford to make a critical mistake in putting this together and having it as reliable as one would expect, you're probably making the worst assumption of your life.
It really doesn't matter what MS is doing with this. The equipment in F1 races is by default rather unreliable -- even the stuff which is identical and provided to all teams. How often do we see extra excitement at the pit stop due to a non-functional fuelling rig? Yes, nearly every race, so failure rate is with 2 rigs per team, 11 teams, assuming a single failure per race (haven't counted, there could be more), ermh, roughly 5%. Microsoft software will just fall into place nicely between unreliable state-of-the-art electronics and engines (McLaren-Mercedes, anyone?) and driver errors.
Getting "slightly" off-topic, but even at the risk of getting close to Godwining the thread I need to protest:;)
Well actually im not with you on accepting german technology was inferior at 39-41. This is because it wasnt. Me109 was a much effective weapon, and bf109 versions had 30 mm gun even, the pzkw series light and medium tanks were superior to every other model allies had, especially the bulky french tanks.
1939-41 was exactly when the Germans were technically not superior with individual available and deployed weapons systems -- it was the superior tactics of combined arms, blitzkrieg and surprise attacks that enabled their early successes. The surviving units got upgraded weapons systems later on.
Poland, France, even Barbarossa were largely "spearheaded" by PzIs and PzIIs -- I doubt you'd call them a worthy adversory for Char B1s, T-34s and KV-1s? PzI was a training tank (not really intended for actual combat use), PzII a light scout tank (a light, panicked reaction to the on-coming war) and early versions of PzIII and PzIV were pretty outgunned, too, and available only in small numbers early on. Actually, the German tanks available in the early WW2 were so few and bad, they had to use the 35(t)s and 38(t)s from the annexed Czechoslovakia instead of their own in their panzer formations.
AFAIK also the German infantry (many boasting to be "motorized") divisions rarely received enough transports (let alone fuel and spare parts) to actually operate as truly motorized. The German infantry fought primarily with rifles until maybe '42 or '43 (many ersatz troops barely had rifles still in '45 -- I like Beevor's "Berlin 1945" for a light reading on some of the later-war stuff), while especially the Russians took heed from their experiences in the Winter War and started equipping much of their infantry with sub-machine guns.
Me109/BF109 was good and useful in acquiring local air-superiority (e.g., for the JU87s to fly in and attack), but it was only a fighter type -- and due to its short range it was quite useless against, e.g., Britain and other longer-distance operations in Russia. JU87 (StuKa) on the other hand was slow and unprotected without a fighter escort -- low chances of survival over England.
No, I really don't see Germany's fielded WW2 forces as generally technically superior, but they had excellent command and operations (and the advantage of surprise and near-continuous initiative until Christmas 1941) -- and later on many of them were regrouped and/or provided some of the later-war inventions and adaptations. The German superiority often stayed on the drawing board -- and Hitler's and other leaders' whims created such great technological "advancements" (disasters and wastes of resources) as the Arado Blitz jet-bomber, V-series bombs, Panzer VIII and rail-mounted superguns -- certainly "superior technology" when compared to the mass-produced Allied equipment, but terrible resource-hogs with miserable performance and extremely heavy overall maintenance requirements.
This is because their concept is 'durable, fast, many'.
Not 'durable', but 'rugged'. I read their tank quality wasn't spectacular, but they could be serviced pretty much anywhere while the German tanks often had to be taken to special repair shops in the rear. And that 'fast' part is beyond my understanding -- many Soviet designs were butt-ugly and slow pigs. Manoevrability was hardly their forté, mass, numbers and expendability was.
Finland bought some of their 'Jeep' equivalents in the late 20th century -- and they had to be custom-fitted with fuel tanks with refilling-corks. The Soviet doctrine was to drive as far as the jeep would go on a single filling and the dump it once it ran out of fuel.
An analogy from history : germans had excellent technology, experience and perfect training to go with it, they favored extreme quality against quantity.
You're overemphasizing the quality -- Axis (even German) weaponry was often lacking when compared with their immediate opponents, but their operational ingenuity (e.g., blitzkrieg, joint weapons and Auftrakstaktik) and keeping the initiative allowed them to compensate and dominate the early war. During the war, their weapons could be improved accordingly.
What the NSA is doing is fighting the last war over and over again: they're dumbfounded with the asymmetric warfare of the 'terrorists' (a lot of people get lumped under that label). The 'terrorists', on the other hand, have read their Sun Zsu and von Clausewitz: don't necessarily attack directly the mass of enemy forces, attack his/her strategy. That's why US still has very little chance of 'winning' -- the three-letter-agencies and armed forces are going for the non-existent mass army, non-existent WMDs and such.
It's like those people who call it OS/X or OS-X. Where are they getting these magic hyphens and slashes from?
From my iBook keyboard? It is so messed up compared to the standard issue Win/Linux/105-key keyboards I've used to use that I'm happy to get any separator character like dash, slash, backslash, ^C or null-byte to go between the characters. From my point of view the Apple laptops are disasters (I do java development), but for our pointy-haired business-people they are just right, and are only missing a decent cup-holder for their "I'm the boss" giant coffee mugs.
Frankly though I'm surprised MS would be stupid enough to disable XP BEFORE VISTA ships though
I think they want your $200 (or whatever) for XP right now in addition to the Vista licence, which you will buy with your next computer once Vista ships. Dunno if they're suddenly starting to run low on cash, but that's the only thing I can think of it.
On top of this, ALL businesses pay a certain percentage of church-tax. It doesn't matter if none of the employees are members of the church, hell even Muslim-owned businesses pay taxes to the Lutheran church.
If your turban feels tight, you'd better return that brand new Nokia of yours... and on the other hand, a Nokia phone is just what your Bible should have next to it for the "secular" connecting of people.;) Yes, they don't really advertise being Finnish (they prefer being thought of as a Japanese corp), but part of their revenues end up paid out for these churches too.
But it's not that the church is scared of losing money so much -- it has more investments (and yearly corporate tax income) that it can comfortably stash away. (Hell, they're probably the largest Finnish entity doing ethical investing.) The church's problem is the same as Microsoft's: once it gets below 90% "market share", it's former dominance and assiciated glitter is gone no matter how much it has in the bank.
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Perhaps the Indians don't realize the type of company they are working for?
I think you are making at least two wild assumptions: (1) that anyone has been ignorant enough to have applied, and (2) that those jobs are real and not just window-dressing for yet another stock-price scam (e.g., "the transition into mobile/PDA markets"). I don't think they're even meant to be filled.
call it Vic the Vista internet client (or Voom sounds better)
Let's not go into the naming sector of things. Not that Dilbert couldn't manage to pull through the dreaded Product Naming Project, but because Vista already means 'chicken' in Latvian -- and who knows what Vista Vic and Vista Voom might end up referring to in some more obscure foreign languages?!
The question back then was, "How can we outdo the rest of the world?"
What makes things even more interesting is that in a nuclear-war-starts-in-5-minutes situation back then, I might have expected the panicked short-sighted "we need a quick-fix"-attitude of the present day. Yet, somehow the folks at the time were able to cool their minds and go for the long-term advancements.
I think there is a clear reason for that: the former Soviet bloc acted as a threat of real competition. At that time, there was no place to hide the loot had the Soviets won. But now there is no counterbalance and it's gone into just individuals looting as much pay-off from organizations as they can carry, since there is no threat of it being taken away. Even taxation has been reduced.
I just threw away a R300 series card (ATi 9800 XT) for an nVidia SLI.
I hope you are only joking about the "throwing away" part (or traded it up for the new one or something similar). Last time I was browsing free/open source projects concerning ATI drivers, I recall vividly that the developers seemed to have a shortage for two things: specification information was the first and foremost, but ATI hardware to test bang their code against was second up on the list. Your "old" R300-card might've helped as well. If Linux-snobs get free hardware (or are rich enough to pay for it ;), the *BSD projects would've liked the stuff (this from a Linux-snob ;). Oh, think of the baby-Theos!
This looks like an astroturfing and/or puff-piece for the Sage. They just had to have some real eye-catchers for the first issue, I guess, so they took everyone's favourites and linked them up with bad things. Nothing to see here (or probably in Sage either), move along.
If you imagine for a second Microsoft will afford to make a critical mistake in putting this together and having it as reliable as one would expect, you're probably making the worst assumption of your life.
It really doesn't matter what MS is doing with this. The equipment in F1 races is by default rather unreliable -- even the stuff which is identical and provided to all teams. How often do we see extra excitement at the pit stop due to a non-functional fuelling rig? Yes, nearly every race, so failure rate is with 2 rigs per team, 11 teams, assuming a single failure per race (haven't counted, there could be more), ermh, roughly 5%. Microsoft software will just fall into place nicely between unreliable state-of-the-art electronics and engines (McLaren-Mercedes, anyone?) and driver errors.
Well actually im not with you on accepting german technology was inferior at 39-41. This is because it wasnt. Me109 was a much effective weapon, and bf109 versions had 30 mm gun even, the pzkw series light and medium tanks were superior to every other model allies had, especially the bulky french tanks.
1939-41 was exactly when the Germans were technically not superior with individual available and deployed weapons systems -- it was the superior tactics of combined arms, blitzkrieg and surprise attacks that enabled their early successes. The surviving units got upgraded weapons systems later on.
Poland, France, even Barbarossa were largely "spearheaded" by PzIs and PzIIs -- I doubt you'd call them a worthy adversory for Char B1s, T-34s and KV-1s? PzI was a training tank (not really intended for actual combat use), PzII a light scout tank (a light, panicked reaction to the on-coming war) and early versions of PzIII and PzIV were pretty outgunned, too, and available only in small numbers early on. Actually, the German tanks available in the early WW2 were so few and bad, they had to use the 35(t)s and 38(t)s from the annexed Czechoslovakia instead of their own in their panzer formations.
AFAIK also the German infantry (many boasting to be "motorized") divisions rarely received enough transports (let alone fuel and spare parts) to actually operate as truly motorized. The German infantry fought primarily with rifles until maybe '42 or '43 (many ersatz troops barely had rifles still in '45 -- I like Beevor's "Berlin 1945" for a light reading on some of the later-war stuff), while especially the Russians took heed from their experiences in the Winter War and started equipping much of their infantry with sub-machine guns.
Me109/BF109 was good and useful in acquiring local air-superiority (e.g., for the JU87s to fly in and attack), but it was only a fighter type -- and due to its short range it was quite useless against, e.g., Britain and other longer-distance operations in Russia. JU87 (StuKa) on the other hand was slow and unprotected without a fighter escort -- low chances of survival over England.
No, I really don't see Germany's fielded WW2 forces as generally technically superior, but they had excellent command and operations (and the advantage of surprise and near-continuous initiative until Christmas 1941) -- and later on many of them were regrouped and/or provided some of the later-war inventions and adaptations. The German superiority often stayed on the drawing board -- and Hitler's and other leaders' whims created such great technological "advancements" (disasters and wastes of resources) as the Arado Blitz jet-bomber, V-series bombs, Panzer VIII and rail-mounted superguns -- certainly "superior technology" when compared to the mass-produced Allied equipment, but terrible resource-hogs with miserable performance and extremely heavy overall maintenance requirements.
This is because their concept is 'durable, fast, many'.
Not 'durable', but 'rugged'. I read their tank quality wasn't spectacular, but they could be serviced pretty much anywhere while the German tanks often had to be taken to special repair shops in the rear. And that 'fast' part is beyond my understanding -- many Soviet designs were butt-ugly and slow pigs. Manoevrability was hardly their forté, mass, numbers and expendability was.
Finland bought some of their 'Jeep' equivalents in the late 20th century -- and they had to be custom-fitted with fuel tanks with refilling-corks. The Soviet doctrine was to drive as far as the jeep would go on a single filling and the dump it once it ran out of fuel.
An analogy from history : germans had excellent technology, experience and perfect training to go with it, they favored extreme quality against quantity.
You're overemphasizing the quality -- Axis (even German) weaponry was often lacking when compared with their immediate opponents, but their operational ingenuity (e.g., blitzkrieg, joint weapons and Auftrakstaktik) and keeping the initiative allowed them to compensate and dominate the early war. During the war, their weapons could be improved accordingly.
What the NSA is doing is fighting the last war over and over again: they're dumbfounded with the asymmetric warfare of the 'terrorists' (a lot of people get lumped under that label). The 'terrorists', on the other hand, have read their Sun Zsu and von Clausewitz: don't necessarily attack directly the mass of enemy forces, attack his/her strategy. That's why US still has very little chance of 'winning' -- the three-letter-agencies and armed forces are going for the non-existent mass army, non-existent WMDs and such.
It's like those people who call it OS/X or OS-X. Where are they getting these magic hyphens and slashes from?
From my iBook keyboard? It is so messed up compared to the standard issue Win/Linux/105-key keyboards I've used to use that I'm happy to get any separator character like dash, slash, backslash, ^C or null-byte to go between the characters. From my point of view the Apple laptops are disasters (I do java development), but for our pointy-haired business-people they are just right, and are only missing a decent cup-holder for their "I'm the boss" giant coffee mugs.
Frankly though I'm surprised MS would be stupid enough to disable XP BEFORE VISTA ships though
I think they want your $200 (or whatever) for XP right now in addition to the Vista licence, which you will buy with your next computer once Vista ships. Dunno if they're suddenly starting to run low on cash, but that's the only thing I can think of it.
On top of this, ALL businesses pay a certain percentage of church-tax. It doesn't matter if none of the employees are members of the church, hell even Muslim-owned businesses pay taxes to the Lutheran church.
If your turban feels tight, you'd better return that brand new Nokia of yours ... and on the other hand, a Nokia phone is just what your Bible should have next to it for the "secular" connecting of people. ;) Yes, they don't really advertise being Finnish (they prefer being thought of as a Japanese corp), but part of their revenues end up paid out for these churches too.
But it's not that the church is scared of losing money so much -- it has more investments (and yearly corporate tax income) that it can comfortably stash away. (Hell, they're probably the largest Finnish entity doing ethical investing.) The church's problem is the same as Microsoft's: once it gets below 90% "market share", it's former dominance and assiciated glitter is gone no matter how much it has in the bank.
Wasn't the new testament based on the teachings of a Jewish Communist?/
Using post-9/11 terms I believe he was more like a terrorist from the Roman Imperial point of view ...