Microsoft to Launch Free Anti-Malware Beta To-Morro

[Matthew K]

I never understood why Windows never included free malware protection before. It seems like a "duh" idea. Matt Microsoft to Launch Free Anti-Malware Beta To-Morro by Paul Thurrott Microsoft will release a limited public beta version of its Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE)— formerly code-named Morro—tomorrow in the United States, Israel, and Brazil. The anti-malware add-on will work with Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP, and will be free when the final version is released worldwide by the end of 2009. "Microsoft Security Essentials is security you can trust," Microsoft anti-malware general manager Alan Packer told me in a briefing earlier this month. "It includes award-winning anti-malware technology with real-time protection. It's easy to get and use, and will be available at no cost directly from Microsoft to all genuine Windows users." MSE is based on the same anti-malware technology that the company builds into its other products, such as Forefront and Hotmail. And though it will effectively replace the discontinued Windows Live OneCare in the marketplace, it has been upgraded internally since that product to support a dynamic signature service that provides for near real-time signature updates so that users' PCs are always up to date. MSE is improved over OneCare in other ways, too. Although the software lacks any of the PC-management functionality that Microsoft added to OneCare, MSE is much smaller, lighter, and quicker. And unlike OneCare, it doesn't burden the user with constant, unnecessary notifications. After the initial MSE public beta release this week, Microsoft will begin rolling out the beta to other locales, beginning with China later next month. The final product will ship in the third quarter of 2009, about the same time as Windows 7. For more information about the MSE public beta, please refer to the SuperSite for Windows.

[Jacob Munson]

Kind of off topic, but it seems odd that they are releasing it to the
United States, Israel, and Brazil.  Seems like a strange combination
of countries.  I'm sure there's a reason for it...I'd be curious to
know the logic behind that.


Jake Munson
Kuna, ID, USA
http://www.techfeed.net/blog/
http://www.cfquickdocs.com/
http://cfformprotect.riaforge.org/

[Chris Brandsma]

If you get sewed for a billion dollars by the eu every time you release a new product, you might get a bit twitchy about releasing new products as well.  Especially free ones.

But why other than that?  Translation?  That does take a while.  But I don't have a clue after that.

--
--------------------------------
Christopher Brandsma
http://www.ChrisBrandsma.com
http://www.ElegantCode.com

[Jacob Munson]

> If you get sewed for a billion dollars by the eu every time you release a
> new product, you might get a bit twitchy about releasing new products as
> well. Especially free ones.

The big EU cases against Microsoft that I'm aware of are because MS
bundles free products with their market dominating OS. I'm not going
to argue for or against this practice, but I'm just clarifying that
Microsoft would not be sued so often if they offered free products on
their website (as I suspect it will work with this new malware tool).
But putting it in the OS...it makes it pretty hard for 3rd party tools
to compete. Yes...I know people are free to go download something
else (which is what I do)...the point is that Internet Explorer and
Windows Media player are used by most people because they come free on
their PC and there's no big motivation to go get something else.

You can see the same trends with Apple's free bundled software. Most
Mac OS users just use Safari, regardless of how much better Firefox is
(features wise). So why doesn't anybody sue Apple for bundling
Safari? Beats me. I suppose it could have something to do with
Apple's minuscule market share...but still, in the Apple world the
large majority of people use Safari, because it's already there and
there's no big motivation to change.

[Jim McKeeth]

US , Israel and Brazil seems like an eclectic selection of countries.  All different languages and even continents.  My guess is it is possibility a licensing thing.  If not that then maybe they don't want to melt down their update servers - kind of a staged roll-out.

-Jim McKeeth
j...@mckeeth.org
www.Delphi.org - The Podcast at Delphi.org
www.McKeeth.org - Personal home page

[Chris Brandsma]

Wait...how do I get to Microsoft's (or Opera's) web site if the os doesn't come with a web browser?

I know, I'll have someone email the web to me.

Scratch that, apparently the OS can't come with an email client either.  Cause the EU says so.

Fine, I'll drive to BestBuy and buy a disk with FireFox on it for $10 (assuming I can choose one from the 15 that are for sale there, as mandated by the EU, we have to give equal opportunity).   Well I would, if the EU hadn't mandated that cars can't come with engines so as to put 3rd party engine makers out of business. 

[David Evans]

The OS has come with a FTP client since the days of Windows NT 3.51.  Yes, it is primitive but fully functional.

 

 

As to how you retrieve the correct program?  A program can provide the user with a list of programs.  The list can be vendor specific. Given the users choice it then retrieves the selected program and installs it.  That simply requires a TCP/IP stack, not a full browser.  Heck this could be done even without a TCP/IP stack if necessary.  I have programmed in environments where even they do not exist.  :->

[Jacob Munson]

> Wait...how do I get to Microsoft's (or Opera's) web site if the os doesn't
> come with a web browser?

I think the preferred option would be for Microsoft to give you a
choice instead of just putting the word "Internet" on the desktop
taking people to their web browser (and their website, btw). I think
the EU would like a brand new PC to ask you which web browser you want
to use when you first boot up. If you followed the latest EU case
about IE in Windows, you'll know that Microsoft has decided to release
a version of Windows 7 without IE. This actually angered the EU more
because, (using their words), this gives the consumer even less choice
than they had before.

Again, I am not arguing for or against Microsoft's bundling decisions.
I'm just saying that to say Microsoft is being punished for releasing
free products is misrepresenting the issue.

[Tony Rasa]

Perhaps Microsoft could supply a more user-focused version of the Web
Platform Installer?
http://www.microsoft.com/Web/downloads/platform.aspx

[Chris Brandsma]

It is all fun and games on this side of the pond.  I have several relatives who are absolutely irate at the EU parliament right now over this.  So far they are for Microsoft's actions as apposed to the EU's (and they live there).

And Microsoft didn't release IE for free any more than the car dealer gives you free mud flaps.  It is all about bundling.

I see the move as completely wrong and bull headed by the EU. The end result is that the EU does not want Microsoft to own the product they developed.  If the EU wins this fight, then the EU will have full say in what can and cannot be included with software packages.  Next they will determine what can be released with Mac, the IPhone, Linux.  

Is this sensationalist? Maybe.  Probably just the libertarian in me coming out. 

[Jacob Munson]

> It is all fun and games on this side of the pond. I have several relatives
> who are absolutely irate at the EU parliament right now over this. So far
> they are for Microsoft's actions as apposed to the EU's (and they live
> there).

One thing I thought was very stupid about this case is that the EU
said that the money they would get from Microsoft would go to help pay
EU member country fees (or something like that). If the EU really
wanted to foster competition in the web browser space, why wouldn't
they give the money to Microsoft's competitors, or something else that
would help competition? Funding EU admin fees seems stupid. And it's
certainly not going to hurt Microsoft. $1 billion is not much for
Microsoft considering their $60 billion annual revenue ($49 billion in
profit, 2008 numbers) not to mention all of the money they have
stashed in the bank. So I doubt this action would have any affect on
the browser market anyway.

[Jim McKeeth]

Was anyone else on this list on the internet back before Microsoft bundled a browser with the OS?  That was why ISP's gave you a disk that you had to install if you wanted to get online.  Although if you knew what you were doing then you got a copy of Mosaic (or later Netscape) and Winsock.dll (or whatever the dll was that allowed TCP/IP over dialup. . . .) from a friend.  Then you spent a while trying to get all the DLL's to work together and find a dialup that worked.

I think when IE took over the browser market share it was less people switching from Netscape to IE, and more people who didn't know any better getting online with what came with their computer.  So during that time the number of users of Netscape, Mosaic, etc. probably increased, but not as fast as the users of Internet Explorer.

You may recall when Microsoft Network was released as an ISP and everyone feared it would shutdown Compuserv, AOL and Prodigy.  Before this time Microsoft bundled the software from the other Online Service Providers, and then after MSN came out they continued to provide the other service providers, but made MSN more prominent.  Well MSN didn't kill everyone else, and Microsoft stoped giving it such a prominate place with new installations. 

If you install IE 8 it asks you if you want to use Microsoft's search as the default search, or switch to a different one, including Google (which is what I switch to).  Oddly Firefox and Chrome just default to Google and don't prompt you to choose something else . . .

The ideal solution would be to do the same thing for browsers and media players.  Default to the Microsoft ones and ask you if you want something different.  I imagine most people wouldn't bother switching.  The real reason no-one switched to MSN was they already had an account with AOL and didn't want to change.  With a browser IE is "good enough" and they don't need to worry about canceling their Firefox monthly fee or telling everyone their new email address.  If they were to offer browsers that way it probably woudn't make a huge dent in their IE market share, and then it would make everyone happy.

(Actually everyone would not be happy since you cannot please everyone.  Someone would probably say they need to offer benchmarks to the user so they can see that Firefox and Chrome are faster than IE, or request that it not default to IE.  And someone else would get cranky that their favorite browser, like http://offbyone.com/offbyone/ is not included.  But it certainly would be a step in the right direction.)

[Matthew K]

I agree. I really dig Chrome with less crashing on the whole program and Incognito mode. Brilliant ideas. --- On Mon, 6/22/09, Jim McKeeth <j...@mckeeth.org> wrote:

From: Jim McKeeth <j...@mckeeth.org> Subject: [BSDG] Re: Microsoft to Launch Free Anti-Malware Beta To-Morro

[Chris Brandsma]

Also coming in FireFox 3.5. 

Actually tho, I have had Chrome crash on me.  Took out every tab.

[Matthew K]

I have had it take out every tab too, but in IE it takes out every window and every tab within each of those windows. I've never had Chrome crash more than one window. Which is really cool. Firefox is similar to IE in that, when it crashed on me I lost not only all the tabs on the window I had open, but also all of the other new windows I had open also. -- On Mon, 6/22/09, Chris Brandsma <chris.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Chris Brandsma]

Also, the ability to detach tabs on Google Chrome, while cool, rarely seems to happen when I least want it to.

I've also has a number of cases where the Chrome tab came up blank, and stayed that way.  I had to refresh the tab.

But I'm still using Chrome over Firefox for everyday tasks, simply because I don't get memory usage explosions from Chrome.

Bonus: the next version of Chrome is supposed to be theme-able (like Firefox and Opera).

[Brett Nelson]

Used the internet pre WWW, a telnet connection and tools like gopher,
used Compuserve quite a bit. When it became available to the general
public my first connection was with Slackware Netscape and a 2400 baud
modem. Also remember windows when all it could do was tile, CP/M
before DOS, teletype machines, RAM that you had to address in binary
with dip switches prior to install. I'd like to see the old HP 150MB
disk drives that were the size of a small dishwasher stacked up to
equal 16GB next to an iPhone for comparison, we've come along way.

Brett

> browser, likehttp://offbyone.com/offbyone/is not included.  But it

[Matthew K]

In some ways we have improved and some ways we haven't. I remember my old 8086 computer with 640K RAM. I could start it up, open a word processor, type a document, print a document, and turn it off in less than three minutes. Now, I have to wait for Windows to load on startup, then wait for all of my startup programs to load, (anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc.), then wait for the word processor to load with all of its help features and plug ins, etc. Then after I type the document, I have to wait for the printer to store the document in its memory. After that I exit the program and then have to wait forever for windows to shut down. It turns the process into at the very least 20 minutes. Ug, what happened to the quickness of technology? --- On Tue, 6/23/09, Brett Nelson <blizza...@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Brett Nelson <blizza...@gmail.com> Subject: [BSDG] Re: Microsoft to Launch Free Anti-Malware Beta To-Morro

[Chris Brandsma]

1. 16bit vs 32bit vs 64bit.  You don't upgrade bit counts because you want speed.  You upgrade in spite of speed.  More bit count, more memory accessible, but the longer you have to wait to load that memory, so loading applications take longer.  

2. People kept asking for more features.  On your 8086 you didn't have a windowing OS to load.  You had dos.  No internet, no network, no authentication, no security system, no self updating applications, etc.  And Windows is not alone with this one.  Mac and Linux also take longer to load.  In dos days you had TSRs.  Why do people keep upgrading with the new stuff?  It is prettier.  Pretty sells.  Ugly does not.

Bigger problem is how can you turn off features you don't need, and how do you know you don't need them.  As our systems have become more complex, it is harder to know.

[Jacob Munson]

> Ug, what happened to the quickness of technology?

You gave me the opportunity to say something that I've had on my mind
for a long time now. I think there are a lot of reasons why computers
are slower now than they used to be. But one reason I believe this
happens is because developers almost always have faster machines than
the general public (the people that use the software we make). To use
Windows as an example, I'd bet that the Windows developers have top of
the line machines from today's market. So when they build and test
Windows, it runs pretty fast. But when it gets to the rest of the
world, it's annoyingly slow. But the developers never see that
because they are using very fast, beefy machines.

The same thing happens in the Web. We web developers generally are
testing our sites with Ethernet speeds, or even locally on our PC. So
we build a site that runs very fast for us, but when people try to use
it over general Internet pipes...it's a lot slower. Of course, there
are tools available to simulate slower connections (I've used them
myself), but I don't think most developers take the time to test their
software on slower PCs/connections.

[Mike]

Easy, you answered it yourself: MS has money, Apple doesn't.
And it only took one lawsuit, combined with the fact that MS didn't
have a ton of Lobbyists in DC, Netscape did.

If you read Runaway Jury (or watch the movie, but the book is better),
though fictional, it points out the fact that the first lawsuit in
anything is the most important to win, because for the lawyers, once
there is that precident, all the other lawsuits against a company or
industry are easy money. Tobacco, McDonalds, Twinkies, etc get screwed
over once that first lawsuit wins for 10 billion dollars, and all the
lawyers go get there minions to sue over something. Forget personal
responsibility, we need the government to tell us how a company should
offer its product to us.

Just like Virus writers target Windows, lawyers target Windows. I
guess MS could do what Apple did, start building their own computers
and pull all the licensing for all the "competitors". Apple said
mmbuhbye to Power Computing, MS could say mmbuhbye to Dell, HP, etc,
then MS could bundle all the software they want, since it's their
hardware.




oh well. As long as MS has to pay those lawyers, the price of their
software sure won't get cheaper.



<snip />

[Brett Nelson]

The Xerox 820 CP/M machine had the capability of coming up in
typewriter mode. When connected to a Xerox 630 (Diablo) it became a
typewriter connecting the keyboard to the printer directly. No room
for error though as the 630 did not have the ability to erase. It did
run at 150cps which seemed pretty fast for typewriter quality text at
the time. Also since it could microspace and run the balen forward and
backward I saw programs running off of text only computers creating
pie charts and nice looking graphs using the period character only.
These were fun to watch while printing out. When using wordstar at 64K
Ram the first time you pressed CTRL-Y to delete a line it would swap
to floppy to get the overlayed code and perform the delete. That was
the same year I saw the Lisa at comdex in Vegas. Xerox's big thing
that same show (I had to sign a non-disclosure to see this) was
packing two computers in one box with a hotkey switch. Their idea of
multitasking :)

Brett

On Jun 23, 9:55 am, Matthew K <matt_...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> In some ways we have improved and some ways we haven't. I remember my old 8086 computer with 640K RAM. I could start it up, open a word processor, type a document, print a document, and turn it off in less than three minutes.
>
> Now, I have to wait for Windows to load on startup, then wait for all of my startup programs to load, (anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc.), then wait for the word processor to load with all of its help features and plug ins, etc. Then after I type the document, I have to wait for the printer to store the document in its memory. After that I exit the program and then have to wait forever for windows to shut down. It turns the process into at the very least 20 minutes. Ug, what happened to the quickness of technology?
>

> --- On Tue, 6/23/09, Brett Nelson <blizzardvi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > browser, likehttp://offbyone.com/offbyone/isnot included.  But it

[Jacob Munson]

I think we have to draw a fine line between regulation and free
markets. I, like you, think that businesses should not be hampered so
much that they can't afford to do their business. But on the other
hand, I also believe that unregulated businesses can go to far...like
before we had the labor laws that we have today, many corporations
would work men, women and children for 80+ hours a week, pay them
almost nothing, and then fire them if they didn't like it. Sure they
could try to find a job elsewhere, but most of the other businesses
had the same practices.

When the government stepped in and forced the businesses to treat
their employees fairly (I.E, not kill them), people began to enjoy
life again. Of course, labor laws can go too far as well...that's why
we have to find a balance between free markets and regulation.
Neither of the two are bad in and of themselves...unless taken too
far.

-Jake

[Edwin R. Paay]

I actually converted a 1930's teletype machine to act as a printer for use
by a TRS-80 computer in 1979. The thing was all mechanical no electronics
and was totally indestructible. It operated on a 5 bit baudot code and I
created a parallel interface which converted ASCII to Baudot and it printed
at 50 to 75 characters per second max. Since I was a student and could not
afford a printer quite a few Basic and Pascal listings were printed in this
manner. It matched the 300 Baud modem that clipped on to the phone handset.
Of course phone microphones were carbon mikes with carbon granules in them
so every so now and then you had to bash the hand set on the desk to loosen
the granules to keep it working since the 300 baud frequencies made the
granules settle and the mike would stop working.

Ah, the good old days.....

Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: bs...@googlegroups.com [mailto:bs...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of

[Jacob Munson]

Man...we have come so far.  :)

Speaking of coming far...yesterday at work I heard a true story about a modern "CMS" at it's best (this event just happened this week):
1. Client prints out their website pages.
2. Client makes manual edits on the papers with pen.
3. Client scans the "edited" pages into their PC.
4. Client emails the scans as a PDF to the web editor.
5. The web editor recreates the edits on the website referring to the PDF.

Don't you love that smell of brand new technology being put to good use?  ;)

Jake Munson
Kuna, ID, USA
http://www.techfeed.net/blog/
http://www.cfquickdocs.com/
http://cfformprotect.riaforge.org/

[Matthew K]

Hmmm, interesting, I guess if the website is an artsy website with mostly hand drawn pictures,(like a comic book website or something) it makes more sense than some of the other techniques I have seen.




--- On Wed, 6/24/09, Jacob Munson <yaco...@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Jacob Munson <yaco...@gmail.com>
Subject: [BSDG] Re: Microsoft to Launch Free Anti-Malware Beta To-Morro

[MICHAEL CLINE]

...The computer is taking over the programmers domain! We all knew it was coming, its just a matter of time. I remember when I started out working as an Authorware programmer (~15 years ago) building interactive educational programs - I thought that my skill set would keep me employed for a long while. Of course now that is laughable.
 
I can't laugh too much though, my current main program (FoxPro) is on a similar path! Not yet though... my boss was recently hiring people to do FoxPro, when everyone else was firing!
 
Whatever the case currently... it is only a matter of time until what we are currently using is out moded - like those modems Rich was talking about.
 
--Mike C.
 

---

From: yaco...@gmail.com
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:33:38 -0600

Subject: [BSDG] Re: Microsoft to Launch Free Anti-Malware Beta To-Morro

To: bs...@googlegroups.com

[Matthew K]

I think programmers (as we know them now) in America will eventually be obsolete. A lot of companies are moving to outsourcing their coding and testing to BRIC (Brazil, India, Russia, China).

I think we need to start focusing on the future, where our jobs will be more about innovation and less on crunching subroutines. Planning, Analysis, Design and Implementation rather than the finer details of coding. Maybe we should have some topics on UML models like Activity Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams, and Use Case Diagrams.

Just throwing the idea out for discussion. Comments?

Matt

--- On Wed, 6/24/09, MICHAEL CLINE <cli...@msn.com> wrote:

> From: MICHAEL CLINE <cli...@msn.com>
> Subject: [BSDG] Re: Microsoft to Launch Free Anti-Malware Beta To-Morro

> To: "Boise Software Developers Group" <bs...@googlegroups.com>
> Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 6:31 AM
>
>
>
> #yiv1650893521 .hmmessage P
> {
> margin:0px;padding:0px;}
> #yiv1650893521 {
> font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana;}

>
>
>
> ...The computer is taking over the programmers domain! We
> all knew it was coming, its just a matter of time.
> I remember when I started out working as an Authorware
> programmer (~15 years ago) building interactive
> educational programs - I thought that my skill set
> would keep me employed for a long while. Of course now
> that is laughable.
>
>  
>
> I can't laugh too much though, my current
> main program (FoxPro) is on a similar
> path! Not yet though... my boss was recently hiring
> people to do FoxPro, when everyone else was firing!
>
>  
>
> Whatever the case currently... it is only a matter of time
> until what we are currently using is out moded - like
> those modems Rich was talking about.
>
>  
>
> --Mike C.
>  
>
>

[Jacob Munson]

> Hmmm, interesting, I guess if the website is an artsy website with mostly hand
> drawn pictures,(like a comic book website or something) it makes more sense
> than some of the other techniques I have seen.

Nope, it's an informational business website, and the edits I'm
talking about are made in the content/copy.

[Jacob Munson]

> I think programmers (as we know them now) in America will eventually be obsolete.
> A lot of companies are moving to outsourcing their coding and testing to BRIC (Brazil,
> India, Russia, China).

There are a number of problems with outsourcing software development.
Timezone differences, language barriers, financial difficulties
(foreign tax code), import/export issues and expenses, foreign
government regulations, etc. I think the U.S. based programmer
position will never go away. Yes, some companies are so bottom line
focused that they ignore the inherent problems in outsourcing, but I
don't think this trend will ever reach 100%.

[William Adams]

At least the developer has job stability in that kind of "CMS" environment. :)

In these tough economic days it seems we have to code things in such a way that there is a necessity to keep a developer around.

Beau

--
******************
Next time....

On the WB.
******************

[William Adams]

Thinking of oursourcing, I wonder how much alone has negatively and positively (if possible) impacted our society (ignoring the fact our lenders give out money to people who may never be able to pay it all back and bloat up market values, etc).

Beau

[Aaron Backer]

Now wait one cotton pickin' minute...(or 10)

On *my* old 8086 (boosted to 10mhz no less) It took me a hell of a lot longer to load dos/launch the word processor than 3 minutes.  Of course, I didn't have one of those new-fangled hard drive thingies, we did everything with 5.25" 360k floppy disks.

It probably took 4-6 minutes to load DOS (with all it's himem/loadhigh trickery), swap disks, launch LEWP (Leading Edge Word Processor), and then create a new document and start typing.

Saving took a good 30 seconds to a minute too.  (groovin to that floppy grind)

*AND* I couldn't instantly switch to a browser and surf slashdot to indulge my ADD.  No, that had to wait until Win 3.11, with the aforementioned trumpet winsock connections and mosaic.  And switching *then* was painfully slow.  Multitasking was waiting on multiple windows to refresh at the same time.

My "old" 1.8ghz core2duo with a new 60 gig ssd boots in about 30 seconds from a cold start.  VS2008 brings up a new instance (cold) in about 30 seconds as well.  (that's loading ghostdoc and resharper too).  Browsers launch almost instantly.

Of course, the ssd's are at the front of the curve now.  Once they become commonplace, we'll have so much additional cruft that it'll be back to a 3-5 minute boot.  

(At which point I'll start lusting for that speed-of-light holodrive.)

cheers!

-aaron

On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Matthew K <matt...@rocketmail.com> wrote:

[Chris Brandsma]

Arron....you don't post enough.

[Jim McKeeth]

The company I work for outsources QA and some development to India and Russia, etc.  Our VP says that we pay roughly 1/3 the salary for an outsourced developer, and get about 1/3 of the results.  So if we wanted to have domestic equivalent output we would need to pay domestic equivalent pay.  When you add in the other overhead of timezone, face time, language and culture then it doesn't make sense to move everything overseas. 

We keep the core development in house, and then let all the busy work get done by outsourced developers.  Businesses that have tried to outsource their core have had it come back as a failure.  The main advantage to outsourcing is that it is on demand.  We say "we need X new developers to work on this project for Y months and they have them for us."

So as domestic developers we will increase our value by gaining domain knowledge for whatever industry we are working for.  There may come a point when you will see developers moving within certain industries (financial, manufacturing, etc.) because of their domain knowledge, but I don't see all US development jobs going overseas.

[Chris Brandsma]

I would agree with Jim on that one.  I'm not knocking foreign developers here, but there are many complicating factors any time you move software development out of house -- double that when you go oversees.  Communication, culture, timezones.  Development is hard enough when you can talk to the customer face to face (or when flights are reasonable).  

Some code is easy to ship overseas.  But the expectations have to be easy to express, and the specs can be easily defined.  I don't know about you guys, but that rarely happens in my world.

[Jim McKeeth]

The fact that we have a globalized economy means that you have to get what you pay for.  As the developers (or whatever role) in a country get more experience and better skills their cost goes up.  That is why people are moving from India to China.  Outsourcing is its own worst enemy.  They more we outsource because of cheap labor the more experience that labor gets and the more expensive that labor becomes.  It just takes a while for equilibrium to be reached. 

Frankly saying "Keep jobs in the US" is refusing to delegate.  It is like saying "Keep jobs in Idaho" or "Keep jobs in our company" and "Only hire family members" and ultimately "I want to do all the work myself so I can get all he money!"  It doesn't scale.  The issue is an US vs. THEM mentality.  A few hundred years ago THEM was everyone outside your immediate family.  Now it is everyone who works for a different company or in a different country. 

The Amish refuse to outsource.  If it cannot be provided by their community, then they won't do it (yes, it varies from order to order).  They have 0 imports.  Personally I kind of prefer my lifestyle. 

[Chris Brandsma]

But the refrigerator is a really cool device.  Plus it keeps my beer cold.

[William Adams]

Aye Aye Beer!

I think I just suddenly realized what has been missing in my life lately. Been a while since i've had one of my beers. :)

Beau

[Aaron Backer]

> Frankly saying "Keep jobs in the US" is refusing to delegate.  It is like
> saying "Keep jobs in Idaho" or "Keep jobs in our company" and "Only hire
> family members" and ultimately "I want to do all the work myself so I can
> get all he money!"  It doesn't scale.  The issue is an US vs. THEM
> mentality.  A few hundred years ago THEM was everyone outside your immediate
> family.  Now it is everyone who works for a different company or in a
> different country.

Here here! (or, "there there!" as the case may be)

Heard a wonderful quote on NPR today. They were interviewing a guy
who wrote a book on the beauty and mystery of work. (ok, it sounds
corny but the intervew was pretty good.)

Anyway, one of his comments was (my poor memory transcription: )
"Americans *create* things. It's ingrained in the national
character." We love to build. To create. To learn and grow. Our
national character encourages it.

And *that*...the drive to learn and improve, not some xenophobic "buy
american" campaign, is why America is still the the risk taking,
prototyping, in-your-face-proving-that-it-can-be-done capital of the
world.

(Frankly, if I'm still writing Visual Basic 5 and hoping to get a
decent job I deserve what I get.)

In the words of the immortal Neal Stephenson:

"There really are only four things we do better than anyone else.
Music. Movies. Microcode.
And high speed pizza delivery."

[/soap box]

[Jacob Munson]

> Anyway, one of his comments was (my poor memory transcription: )
> "Americans *create* things. It's ingrained in the national
> character." We love to build. To create. To learn and grow. Our
> national character encourages it.

It's my personal belief that all humans want to create. We strive to
be known for doing something big, or making something big. It's human
nature. I think there are a lot of things that make Americans stand
out, but one big one is our government. We were fostering this
creative spirit 200 years ago, back when every other country was
demoralizing it's citizens (to different degrees) with monarchies,
communism, and dictatorships. All the power was focused on 1 or a few
men at the top. Our country gave the power to the people, and thus we
relatively quickly became the most powerful country in the world. Of
course, lots and lots of countries are following our lead now, so it's
debatable if we are still the most powerful country in the world. But
that's a different story. :)

[Edwin R. Paay]

I also agree with Chris and Jim.  It is domain knowledge and also the skill to extract the real requirements from stakeholders that makes one successful in software development and consulting.  For instance I work for a bank now and they are driven by marketing people that get ideas on how to make money of a particular investment scheme or whatever.  They don’t know about technology so you go in and knowing what is in place you find out what they want then match it to what is possible with the current infrastructure.  There is no way that this kind of work is easily outsourced due to distance, language and cultural barriers.  If however, you want a few utilities written with easily defined input and output, go ahead and let the Indians do it.  That kind of work is usually boring anyway.

 

 

 

From: bs...@googlegroups.com [mailto:bs...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Brandsma
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 12:56 PM
To: bs...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [BSDG] Re: Microsoft to Launch Free Anti-Malware Beta To-Morro

 

I would agree with Jim on that one.  I'm not knocking foreign developers here, but there are many complicating factors any time you move software development out of house -- double that when you go oversees.  Communication, culture, timezones.  Development is hard enough when you can talk to the customer face to face (or when flights are reasonable).  

[Edwin R. Paay]

Thought it was Hear! Hear! As in you like what you hear?

-----Original Message-----
From: bs...@googlegroups.com [mailto:bs...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of

Aaron Backer
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 3:52 PM
To: BSDG
Subject: [BSDG] Re: Microsoft to Launch Free Anti-Malware Beta To-Morro

[Edwin R. Paay]

Yes but before there was a United States (not so long ago) it occurs to me
that certain areas and cultures were creative and inventive and improved
their way of life while others just were happy to subsist. For instance in
the 16th century Germany was a hub of craftsmanship and guilds that created
many useful things and technologies. Meanwhile in Africa people were content
to live in huts and sit in the dust (as many still do today). What makes
one culture stay stagnant and another improve its way of life and invent and
create things? Is it just the ruling classes, the climate or what?

-----Original Message-----
From: bs...@googlegroups.com [mailto:bs...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of

Jacob Munson
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 7:32 PM
To: bs...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [BSDG] Re: Microsoft to Launch Free Anti-Malware Beta To-Morro

[Chris Brandsma]

Necessity is the mother of invention.  Northern climates had more 'needs' to survive the winter -- plus they had more resources to work with.

But, I've seen some pretty crafty stuff out of the African tribes living in the Sahara.

[Brett Nelson]

One thing Amish people do import is milking machines. Too much work
to milk cows by hand.

Brett

[Chris Brandsma]

You should try it sometime.  It would be good for you.

[Brett Nelson]

The Italians gave us Leonardo Da Vinci but each barrel container they
made was slightly different in shape and size which required calculus
to figure out what the volume was. Germans figured it was easier to
just build the containers all the same shape and keep a chart to cross
reference volumes with all the math done by someone else before hand.

Brett

[Brett Nelson]

Never had too, always had a machine there handy.

Brett

On Jun 25, 11:29 am, Chris Brandsma <chris.brand...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You should try it sometime.  It would be good for you.
>

> > Delphi.orgwww.McKeeth.org-Personal home page

[Aaron Backer]

They've also been known to use cell phones. ( http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/amish.html )

To hard to do all the surface mount soldering themselves. (and the chip fabs are expensive too).

:)

-a

[Jim McKeeth]

Brett: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-milk-a-goat/

[Matthew K]

Off topic, I just heard Michael Jackson died... Farrah Faucet too. Man bad week for the eighties.


--- On Thu, 6/25/09, Jim McKeeth <j...@mckeeth.org> wrote:

> From: Jim McKeeth <j...@mckeeth.org>
> Subject: [BSDG] Re: Microsoft to Launch Free Anti-Malware Beta To-Morro

[Chris Brandsma]

Don't forget Ed McMahon.

Celebrities die in threes.  Celebrity deathwatch is complete.

[Jacob Munson]

> Celebrities die in threes.  Celebrity deathwatch is complete.

Ok, I guess I'm safe then. For now.

[Aaron Backer]

What about David Carradine,  back on June 3rd?

Watch your back, man.