Our legacy "computer industry" was a lend/lease styled business model industry. Our legacy "computer companies" were financing companies. Not "computing" companies. That lends/lease financing business model justified the sales forces operating on commissions. All that is over now.
Everything has changed now. Computer automation (CPU, RAM, Storage, I/O) is now priced in the mere 100's of dollars. That signifies "stuff" you can buy at Best Buy or even 7/11. Stuff you can "buy" signifies "stuff" that cannot be sold on commission. There is no more role for financing (lend/lease). There are no roles for sales forces operating on commissions.
What? We are talking about a major IC designer/manufacturer not gateway desktop computers from 1999.
Theres still tons of money to be made in chips - the whole world runs on them. but the cost is in the multi-multi-billion dollar r&d to build a fab that actually makes functional chips. And then having the work force that can produce successful yield after successful yield 24/7 that keeps the economics of the whole thing on par with Taiwan and other major supply chain countries in the indo-pacific where wages are lower.
Great article. Read all of it twice. Don't fixate on one or two sentences.
I once worked in Fed Govt IT system. Remember the 2015 OPM (Office of Personnel Management) data breach? If not, read up on that (use a search engine). Over 22 million government personnel records were released into the wild. The Wikipedia article "blames China," but some folks told me that multiple agency personnel and multiple agency contractors had simply put everyday Fed Govt OPM spreadsheets on everyday Web sites to make them easy to share.
"Experts" rarely grasp the everyday 1. incompetence, 2. indifference, 3. recklessness and 4. even corruption pervasive across and thriving in all our "elite institutions."
We need to take Robert Salow's Productivity Paradox (look it up) very seriously. All the incentives line up for "experts" to sell more things and sell newer things. But we are often (always?) selling bandaids for the previous bandaids, while users (customers) are swallowing birds to catch the spiders to catch the flies. Solved problems cease being problems. That's sadly bad for the IT business.
I enjoy making photographs on black and white films. Different films are something like different musical instruments. A C# played on a guitar and a C# played on an oboe sound different. The lens, the exposure, the developer and the processing ritual also all make a difference.
Years ago, I threw away my coffee maker, espresso maker, microwave, toaster oven and most other kitchen "appliances." I did keep a few electric grinders/mixers. But I also have some manual grinders.
I make coffee in a glass jar (gravity filter) or with a moka pot and concentrate on the ingredients now and brew coffee with cardamom and ceylon cinnamon.
The last thing I want in my kitchen are devices with blinking lights and clocks. My cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel and glass gear have no moving parts. They are magically "compatible" with serial, parallel and USB cables. I'm the moving parts.
Sorry to ask, but where do you get your "facts" ????
China developed, organized and promotes Kylin (Linux based) with a high degree of desktop penetration with the express purpose of replacing Windows and Apple desktops (laptops, etc.).
Russia funds, promotes and standardized Astra Linux. Same express purpose.
India promotes BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions) with the same intentions. BOSS also has a standardized server configuration.
You can read more about national Linux/OSS endeavors all over the Web.
My apologies I only bothered to update myself and see those things you mentioned after posting. My only vague recollections were of news articles about massive install bases of outdated pirated MS Windows and occasional well publicized but ultimately minor efforts like the Munich thing.
The 2014 events for Russia and the new cold war stuff for China seem to have pushed those countries into doing something. Thanks for the update.
Garbage collecting interpreters are (mostly) for wimpy scripting kiddies. The obvious historically documented exceptions are the "Symbolic AI Researchers."
In 1990, SQL (and dBASE and Excel) was a "computer language" for secretaries. Now in 2023, we suffer uneducated halfwits manically typing in endless repugnant "ad tech" and "SEO" with our "Bioinformatics Researcher" hacks inflicting delusions based on Excel #Err cells (look it up) upon an unwitting populace.
Somewhere, we went wrong. We have GREAT and WISE Software Engineering (Prescriptive and Historical) guidance available in the public domain now. Our mercenary "job hoppers) don't seem to be interested in accessing that.
Going forward, some combination of ASM and Forth in Open Source incarnations and with type-checking hints will wring the most computation out of energy resources (CPU cycles).
This article makes sense and explains a great deal. Learning and training trigger dopamine release. Both "learning how" and "learning that." The photography example they use (tool mastery) is a great example. Amateur photographers will regularly change their tools and subject matter to maintain the "sense of wonder." Meanwhile, wedding photographers will be bored with their professions.
We can see this with software engineers routinely trying out new languages and tools and hobby projects.
Does anyone follow British domestic politics? They can't stand Polish (et al) immigrants amongst their numbers, much less browner skinned Indians and muslims. Brits are an increasingly irrelevant, racist, and post-Imperial bitter and reckless island nation (the size of Morocco) that can't feed itself. As an American citizen, I advocate a 2nd 1776, whereupon we set their miserable Brit "ship of state" adrift forever. Our future is better secured by a fully reciprocal "nationalism" that does not sanction racist jingoism. Consult John Mearsheimer for broader exposition of a fruitful and respectful reciprocal nationalism without pretenses to "universalism."
There are too many generalisations here to take any of your points seriously.
Racism exists in all countries, not just Britain. It may be worse or better in Britain than elsewhere but it's certainly not alone.
If your point is that the potential influx of HKers will create social tensions and feed into racism then I would agree, but that's not specific to the UK. Having 3M people suddenly popping up on your doorstep can be a challenge.
However, while I hope that many HKers take on the opportunity to get a real British passport, I know most will do this as a backup plan. They will funnel their families and finances out of HK (to the benefit of the UK) but still live in HK for the most part.
Most HKer know they can't just show-up in the UK and be successful there as they are in HK. Some will enjoy some opportunities and will manage to build or rebuild their success but most have their lives strongly anchored in the economic fabric of HK, and that's not easy to transpose elsewhere.
These bills are self-defeating. I suffer no affections for narcotics dealers and human traffickers seeking anonymity, but I also suffer no affections for "Western" bankers fixing LIBOR and NSA tapping phones of our NATO "allies." As is, our USA "cloud" is already a Trojan Horse. At this point, Open Source and strong encryption are already prerequisites of any imaginable national sovereignty. If we can't "export" strong encryption, we'll just "export" strong encryption engineers.
I doubt it. Mastering an instrument and music reading/writing trains linguistic, focus and cooperation skills. Acting in plays trains memory and cooperation skills and performance skills. Field sports trains spatial reasoning and competition skills. Camping and hiking trains preparation, map reading and cooking skills. And so on. We know what we know and live our lived out metaphors.
Everything has changed now. Computer automation (CPU, RAM, Storage, I/O) is now priced in the mere 100's of dollars. That signifies "stuff" you can buy at Best Buy or even 7/11. Stuff you can "buy" signifies "stuff" that cannot be sold on commission. There is no more role for financing (lend/lease). There are no roles for sales forces operating on commissions.
I love bits and bytes. So what? Follow the money.