About a year ago, when I was making plans to rent a vps for my personal sites and projects, Slicehost and Linode were the only real contenders. Slicehost had backups at the time, Linode didn't, but Linode had a slightly better offer overall. In addition to that, a review from uggedal.com favored Linode. Later, they doubled the memory, introduced backups, so in my mind, I made the right choice.
I must say, Slicehost articles are great though. They are exceptionally well written. Not that Linode's articles are bad, but Slicehost articles are really good guides.
Did anyone read cost-effective manpower as cheap? :(
I'm from Serbia, and still living here. The local market is small and extremely undeveloped. Telecommunication infrastructure is sub-standard, no non-ISP/corporate data centers and no multiple backbone links. While the cloud/grid hosting solves that particular problem, there are others.
Running a company here costs you around 300€/month, whether you have profit or not. That doesn't include office space or bills, taxes only. Note that it is the average net monthly salary, but you can't live of it really.
Corruption. Shitty infrastructure. No Paypal and no widely available (and inexpensive) card-processing options. I'm not sure about getting a proper, signed SSL certificate either.
All of the above can be circumvented, yes. The problem is that when you are so far behind everyone else society wise, ideas and visions that are popping in your head are being sold as a commodity in the rest of the world, and even if you have a nice, modern, innovative idea, unless you are wealthy, you wont be able to implement it because of so many bureaucratic obstacles.
So, what do we have here? A bunch of IT service and programming sweatshops, outsourced of course. Because of relatively cheap labor.
It is my opinion that having an inspiring and motivating, if not competing environment helps innovation.
I feel your pain. I live in south-eastern Europe, and it is pretty much the same system here as in Italy, with an exception of that is isn't working as advertised :).
I'm from Europe too. There are some specifics, but you can look at Wikipedia and find calculators online that explain what is deducted from gross income.
You have social security, medicare, state and federal income tax.
You should take into account that some parts of the US are more expensive than others, and that state income tax is not the same for every state. Also, 401k (pension plans) and some other types of savings, investments are deductible from the taxes.
It all depends on who you live with, do you have children, etc.
I don't have much real world experience with card processing, but the last time I looked, RBS worldpay offered a nice subscription models. I was planing to delve into that, but the project I was involved in fell apart, and there was no need for me to pursue more info.
I believe that since they would handle everything transaction wise, you don't have to worry about being PCIDSS compliant.
While not being a programmer, I did work as a sysadmin for a hosting company. Since I quit around 2 years ago, I was asked by my ex-colleagues on several occasions would I consider returning there. Now, these questions were raised by my coworkers and not my boss, but nevertheless, my answer was the same. Yeah, sure, if they double my salary from 2 years ago, assign me to a higher tier support level so I don't have to deal with customers in any way.
Simple reason for this was that knowing my peers salary, both those of lower, equal and higher position, I knew how much I was worth to them, and how much others were slacking.
So, with public salaries, you get that. With them being private, I would probably ask for a small raise based on economic situation. I'm not saying I wouldn't work for the same money as before, It's just that I'd feel like a jerk toward my self in that case.
hehe, same here. I actually managed to answer a phone call from a colleague trying to wake me up, tell him that i'm on a bus heading there and go back to sleep. Fast forward a couple of hours, I woke up not remembering that at all.
He was mad, as he pulled a double shift because of that, but hey...beauty sleep :D
uhm, it doesn't matter how pragmatic I try to be in regard to my decisions regarding tech. equipment I use, I tend to avoid those kinds of compromises.
he he, this is how my dislike for all things apple began ;)
I had to write to their support in order to get an iTunes account for my iPod Touch. I got it working in the end, after several emails, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth. When the controversies around iPhone app store approvals and developer accounts started, I swore to my self I would get rid of all Apple products, and I did.
Frankly, a company that displays such arrogance doesn't get to get me as a customer. Their software is limited, hardware overpriced, policies ridiculous, and in my opinion, only thing they got going for them is the design.
Computers are devices, not fragrances, they should be feature-full and powerful, not beautiful in a chick magazine sort of way.
heh, I do actually, maybe I should have phrased it better ;).
My point was, Sun was trying to be a hip and modern company, open sourcing a lot of their work, and then Oracle bought them and in the best impersonation of Eric Cartman, just said "you damn hippies" :), and fucked all that effort up.
I did expect it to happen, but I'm still sad it did happen.
It is in my opinion, far too complicated for a book in fiction genre. I remember I enjoyed the references, and information I got out of it, but to be honest, it felt like a task, and not something I enjoyed the reading it self.
Some people I've talked to about it, actually took notes, to be able to understand the relationships between the characters, stories and events.
This felt like work, or...better yet a study on something, and frankly, a study of a fiction world is a feat of futility.
When I started in IT field (support/sysadmin), I was advised that I should hold my positions for 2-5 years, and avoid job-hopping, cause it looks bad on the resume.
Fast forward 6 years, I quit my job, why? I started in tech support. I've worked night shifts, weekends, crazy schedules when someone was a on a leave or vacation. No compensation for it, crappy salary, little or no bonuses, night time work and weekend work was not paid according to the law in my country (no-one to complain about it, unfortunately). I kept working there because there was no better offer available, the team I worked in was made of great people, there was some promotion plans for me, and I had a loan to pay off.
I got promoted. OK, so now I'm a sysadmin, better salary, but still no compensation for working over-time, doing half-month rotation on-call standby if something brakes (and it did), etc. Please mind that the better salary was not a good one, just better.
Anyways, one of my fellow sysadmins gets called into active service (obligatory in my country), and I get stuck with constant on-call duty, same salary and again, little or no bonuses. This is where I start looking for options, and I after getting accepted at few other places, I decide to stay where I am, why? Better tech, more complicated work, challenging, etc.
A year later I discover that no social service, pension plans and med-care payments were made by my company for me or other people for the last 5 or 6 years ( in my country, the company pays for it, and it isn't quite easy for you to check that on a monthly bases), and I get net income, so I actually don't care about my gross income. I raise hell, and after a few clashes with local and upper management I decide to get the hell out of there.
So, in the end, my two cents are: Loyalty, to the company, friends, team at work, family, girlfriends, etc. has to be something that is deserved on their part, not expected from day one. Dedication and commitment should not be confused with it.
Anyways, I'm now freelancing, and working towards my degree in soft. engineering.
Huh. I guess that after recent changes (Solaris downloads, etc.), most people will find alternative vendors in both hardware and software arena.
It's not like there's no competition anyways. It is funny though, that a company like Sun, after acquisition by Oracle is deploying procedures we more commonly associate with IBM, HP, and other behemoths of the IT world.