sixtofour

Manupedia.

"If you need custom software development, and your business is going to depend on the result, outsourcing that effort to another country, especially across cultural and maybe language barriers, can be a disaster."

For now. Yes, today it often is a disaster. It won't always be so. We didn't used to have an Indian software industry at all, for example. Now there is one. And one day it will be a no brainer to send most CRUD work there. In fact it won't be "sent" there, that function will exist there. And not only because India and other countries catch up on an industrial scale, but because businesses will demand it. Supply and demand has two sides, and demand will be filled, however slowly.

"yet companies don't outsource most of them. Are they crazy, or are there good reasons for that?"

They haven't got good at it yet, but they're trying and learning, and suppliers are getting better.

Large corporations only make one thing, money. Each one happens to do it by selling something different, but what they sell is incidental, what they're good at is making money. Part of making money is not spending money. If you're a bank, your software systems may be crucial to your business, but they're two steps away from the primary business of making money: 1) Make money, by 2) selling bank services, enabled by 3) software and other systems.

If you can get the same or better quality outside your building you'll do it if it's cheaper and good enough. If you have a communication problem between the software department and the investment department, one solution is to send both departments outside the building, and let them communicate with each other in a cheaper venue. If it's possible, it will be done.

I'm not saying don't go into software development. I'm saying that the world changes, and my 13 year old son's career is going to be much different than yours, inevitably. And your career is going to be much different in twenty years than it is today, not only because you'll have changed and grown, but because the world will have changed out from under you. And it gets faster every day.

Here's hoping that we're all rolling in dollars in twenty years. Or rupees.

Not to disagree with you, but ...

It astounds me that there are still jobs for developers. I'm not talking about SV stars, I mean the hundreds of thousands of programmers writing CRUD apps around the country. That is eminently moveable, and if the stereotypical code quality of the stereotypical foreign outsourcing shop is sub par, it's not because they don't have the same brains as we do, it's merely because a) they haven't caught up with us yet (they will), and b) they haven't captured that work as primary developers yet, they're still learning to take that work by being (at the moment) sub contractors.

Japan after World War II, for example, broke into the market by making "cheap plastic crap" and motorcycles. Then better plastic crap and small cars (remember the Honda 600?). Then really good plastic crap and really good cars, and now that pie is divided among many more people around the world, including "our" pie.

Why will software be any different? It takes no resources except a brain, a computer and a connection. The whole world has the same quality of brains and computers as we, and their connection quality is often much better and cheaper than ours.

Ah. I'm going to get my son up early tomorrow, talk him out of college and in to Android development. Or basketball star, I'm not sure which.

There's a link to EFF's "contact your rep" page relating to this bill, where you can send a message to your rep.

I sent that message.

You should too.

I've wanted that for years from the post office: one address, your stuff follows you wherever, you never change your "address" you just update your location with the post office. I explained the idea to my first wife in the late seventies, and she thought I was solving a non-problem.

I'm sorry, I've dried out to a hard, cynical husk in my old age. Yes, he did say those things, but I still say he didn't care jack about internet freedom, these were convenient rocks to throw at China. Any rock would have sufficed.

And if the administration's actions now don't reflect what was said before, it's just coincidence.

Did he actually take action at any time to defend internet freedom, or did he merely speak?

The administration today, and congress, are opposing internet freedom by their actions. An example for the administration is their defense of the law that says any email on an internet server older than six months is considered abandoned, and they therefore have a right to look at it without a warrant.

The only thing that counts for me is action, and that only lasts until the next hostile act.

He wasn't defending the internet, he was fighting a hearts and minds campaign against China.

Interesting take on advertising and presence, especially if you follow through to his Counterparties http://counterparties.com/, and thence to Percolate http://www.percolate.com/.

The oil change people do that when they put the little see through sticky on the top of your windshield.

I'm fine with it, but only if they reveal the information to the rest of us. We should be able to trade on the same information. Very roughly based on the idea that government information is public domain. <harumph />

Some people make money from friction.

I believe the graphic you link comes from here:

http://www.eudebtwriteoff.com/

That is a site put up by one of the authors of a report exploring the idea that the PIIGS should write off their mutual net balance debt: if I owe you $10, and you owe me $2, then we strike the $2, and I owe you $8 while you owe me $0, reducing loss by friction. That report (pdf) is linked from the site.

I found that site by searching for the filename of the image (EURBEF.png), and looking for a post or article that uses it and cites its source. This is one such post:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/european-sovereign-debt-cant-w...

You're exactly right. But it could be a gentler introduction to Debian for some.

"In Linux Mint 12 and upcoming releases we’re hoping to provide users with the following commercial search engines: Ask.com, Google, Amazon, eBay, and the non-commercial Wikipedia."

And I was all set to install Mint tonight.

I don't begrudge them the right to manage their distro how they want, but I really hate a distro messing with my browser and search like that.

So no, I guess.

Damn.

Mint has a version that uses LXDE rather than Gnome.

And yet, Mint has a version that's directly downstream from Debian, not based on Ubuntu at all.

"being immediately productive is how the desktop UI/UX enters the background and becomes a facilitator rather than something that the user struggles with."

Yes, exactly. I want my interaction with the desktop to be like that with a prostitute: minimal, direct, clear, and without my having to know much at all about the other party. I don't want to have to beg and plead for the ability to alter the panel once a year on special occasions.

Their power comes from money.

"That didn't really say anything."

Actually it did. He mentioned that "leveling up" is part of the culture, which I read as a passive/aggressive way for him to both mention and justify the clawbacks. "Those people just weren't able to level up."

Maybe they forgot step 0 in Perry's case: have an actual plan that you're actually working on, rather than speaking from memorized bullet points.

If there were, wouldn't you be liable for the capital gains post-IPO?

When typing "united ...", the United States shows up in the list.

When typing "america ..." the United States does not show up in the list.

Yet "United States of America" is the, or one of the official/common names of the United States, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

I like the interface, but it has a few quirks as pointed out in the other comments, and the database behind it could probably use some additions.

So, this is "not a tax," according to the administration.

OK, fine. But taxes are being used to operate the program.

And, as the article points out, what business does the government have in promoting the fresh tree industry over the artificial tree industry?

If there's legitimate suspicion of criminal activity, a police force should have no trouble obtaining a warrant. We have warrants so that the police do not operate without over-site and legitimacy.

If requiring warrants lets some criminals slip away, that's too bad. You can only approach 100% police success in a police state.

Compqrap laptop, linux browser, terminal/shell/ssh. Work and browse on desktop 1, minimal monitoring on desktop 2.

Exactly what I thought. They'll sue because government, through its public employee teachers, are competing with business.

A patent is a kind of monopoly.

ATT had a monopoly, and they were partitioned to break that monopoly.

If ATT had kept their monopoly they would not have had much pressure to compete through price or innovation. What might we not have today in the consumer telecom space if ATT had kept their monopoly. For example, would our phones still be wired to the wall and owned by ATT? Would new colors on princess phones be the extent of innovation?

"Indeed, the idea of patents on software alarmed Bill Gates, who wrote in 1991 (when Microsoft was already older than Google is now) that "the industry would be at a complete standstill" if software had been eligible for patent protection in the early days of the industry."

So now we have software patents. Is the industry now at a complete standstill? Or from the other direction, what would the industry look like now, if there software patents hadn't been allowed.

Or to ask in yet another slightly different way: what are we missing now, what's been taken away from us, because of software patents?

When my kid was three or four, I called the sheriff's business number, asked to talk to the 911 office, and asked them if I could have my son dial 911 and talk to them, for training (his). They checked if they were busy, then said OK.

It puffed up his chest a bit, but we talked about emergencies, how to get help, why we don't call 911 unless it's an emergency, etc.

I suppose if everyone did it they wouldn't be agreeable, but no one does, so you should too. :)