How Does a Poor Economy Affect Tech Innovation? 302
sshuber writes "It's no secret that the US and other parts of the world are currently having some economic problems. How is this affecting new technologies under development? With the large numbers of layoffs, are we seeing projects, such as things under R&D, that are being axed? Are companies playing it safe and sticking with what they know sells in lieu of pushing the envelope? Finally, how is this affecting the open source community, either positively or negatively?" A lot of open source work happens with the backing or at least the sufferance of corporations. Do laid-off tech workers contribute fewer cycles to open source projects, or more?
Is It Really A Poor Economy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet, at least.
Nonetheless, everyone keeps talking like the world is in the depths of a worldwide recession.
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no one really knows [cnn.com], I guess, is the answer, but "recession" is such a blanket statement it can't (and doesn't) apply everywhere. For example, Alabama home prices have gone up year-over year aprox. 5%, and the woods and fields around my home are still being torn town and built into subdivisions, even in this so-called "recession". So there are still people out there building
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Yes, **average** home prices are down, but that is being skewed by home prices in Florida and California which were massively overvalued, and now are massively down. In more moderate places like the midwest (where I grew up and still have many ties) and Alabama (where I now live) there is little to no change. Again, this is just my experiance.
The market seems to have leveled off. Unemployment rates have leveled off the la
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If you have a neighbor, that means you're still living indoors.
Things can get worse.
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This whole submission is based on the premise that "the US and other parts of the world are currently having some economic problems."
While I won't disagree that there are "some" economic problems, I think the amount and severity of economic problems are minimal. If you think the current economy is in bad shape, then you are listening to the political candidates too much.
I doubt that there has been a time in the history of mankind has the world been so prosperous. Sure, pocket
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For some of us, our area is struggling. Others, are doing just fine.
Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from tremors, China is doing fantastic. India is much the same. Europe is doing pretty much the same. Russia is recovering nicely from their economic doldrums.
I would guess that there are far fewer people worldwide living in poverty today than there were 10, or even 5, years ago, despite some speculative food price run-ups.
However, disparity of wealth distribution isn't even the point in contention (no one disputes that it is a real problem). This submission is quite clearly playing upon the current "the economy is in the gutter" meme, but it just isn't supported by the numbers. Things aren't great, and there's some bouncing atop a potential recession, but it's actually remarkably robust given some of the inputs over the past couple of years, which many expected to yield much worse conditions.
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1. Stop all this "organic" and "natural" treehuggery. Because that's all it is. Well, that and money grubbing on the part of the people selling you that overpriced stuff.
2. If you can't find enough food to eat, stop making more people. There were starving children twenty years ago. If there are starving children today in the same area, that mean somebody made more kids who should not have. Which is especially odd when you consider the fact that a woman with less than 10% body fat stops
Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Stop all this "organic" and "natural" treehuggery. Because that's all it is. Well, that and money grubbing on the part of the people selling you that overpriced stuff.
"Organic" means almost nothing in the USA thanks to the influence of the USDA, and "Natural" means less than nothing.
However, you are sadly mistaken about the basic realities of farming...
"Organic" and "natural" crops cannot even remotely compete in terms of volume of perfectly safe, edible food with the genetically modified, pest free varieties.
The following things are true:
Enough facts, I don't want to confuse anyone with them. Let's get back to the battle. Again, a hundred years ago it was all "organic" farming. Therefore "organic" itself doesn't mean a whole lot. If you're fertilizing only with poop and the like you can still be horribly harmful to the environment by simply allowing topsoil to wash into rivers. Or, for that matter, by tilling it and leaving it uncovered, which allows it not just to wash away, but even to blow away. This results in harm to air quality and thus to our ability to breathe - living in agricultural areas is no fun. I am living in Lake Country now; I was living in Marysville last. Here it's vineyards, and you can find them south (Napa) or west (Hopland) where various items are sprayed on the plants - and into the air, where we get to breathe them. That shit sets off my asthma every time, so I really don't want to hear about how "safe" your inorganic farming is.
Now, let us discuss the issue of sustainability in more depth. "organic farming is mining the soil of its vital minerals, particularly phosphorus and potassium. ... Conventional farming, on the other hand, restores mineral balances through fertilization." This is amazingly empty-headed cheerleading bullshit. In fact, organic farming restores mineral balances through fertilization, but in conventional farming techniques (those of the so-called "Green Revolution") instead of correctly amending the soil with those things which it requires, and allowing natural forces to fix those nutrients and make them available to your crops (these "natural forces" are also called "other plants" or, by the ignorant, "weeds") we spray ready sources of the food into the soil and feed the plants. Feeding the soil is a basic tenet of true (i.e. nothing to do with the USDA) organic gardening, but I understand that there is always a temptation to simply ignore facts in the pursuit of a good argument.
It just so happens that in my yard there is an organic garden which produces food crops at an extremely economical rate. It is based on compost, poop (steer, llama, seabird, bat, and chicken shit) and the usual range of organic soil amendments including alfalfa meal, blood meal, bone meal, feather meal, seaweed meal and so on. Those with an eye for detail will note that much of this is actually recycled refuse from animal processing and the like - I'm no space cadet from Vega. The soil is better this year than it was the year before - it's been obvious for months because the cover crop (mustard) was about four times taller this year in spite of similar (if anything, less ideal) conditions otherwise.
Now, let me address the issue of
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History shows that only a small number of people ever truly benefit from runaway growth and industrialization. Are there more Chinese driving Mercedes Benz? Sure. For all the miracle that is high-tech India, you still see things
Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy? (Score:5, Informative)
Why would that be a problem? I'm from India. There is greater gap between the rich and poor now than there was in the 1980s. But, everyone is richer than we were in the 1980s.
In the 80s in India, the situation was comparable to a rich guy having $10 and a poor guy having $9 and now, it is as if the rich guy has $1000 and the poor guy has $90. Clearly, in the second scenario, the "gap between rich and poor" is higher, but is it the worse scenario among the two I've presented?
Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy? (Score:4, Insightful)
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And btw, can you name the one entity that causes inflation? In the US or India or the Roman empire 2000 years ago. Or for that matter, can you define inflation?
You've hit on a very important problem (Score:3, Insightful)
If the population believes the economy is poor, and they behave as though the economy is poor, then the economy, regardless of its actual state, will, by the actions of the brainwashed masses, begin to behave as though it were poor.
That appears to be exactly what is happening here.
Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy? (Score:5, Informative)
I agree that the economy is pretty poor right now, but it's not the farmers who are currently suffering
Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy? (Score:4, Interesting)
The truth is that the small farmer has a hard time getting a large enough piece of the subsidies to make a difference in the hard times, the price fixing that the government engages in (due to lobbying from the various "boards" like the dairy council etc) prohibits them from charging a fair price for goods, and the major factory farming operations consume the lion's share of the subsidies (even getting larger percentages than the small farmer in many cases.)
When you couple that with the typical underhanded land-grab tactics that have pervaded human history, it's practically impossible to make it as a traditional small-time farmer. Farmers are overwhelmingly going out of business and their properties going up for sale to people who want to live there, or selling out to a megacorp for a paltry sum before that happens, or finally switching to selling a value-added product rather than simple produce.
I suppose you have some anecdotes to back that up, or something else equally worthless?
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120303832040070169.html?mod=googlenews_wsj [wsj.com]
From the article:
"Farmers have a lot of money to spend," says Jerry Carder, a 49-year-old Albion corn and soybean farmer who recently bought a $40,000 2008 Mercedes-Benz ML350.
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I bought my new vehicle outright, but leasing or financing at 0% were strong incentives to buy the newest 2008 model instead of the appallingly old 2007 model. (Which was new, and has 400 km on it as of today.)
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All but one of those are really just symptoms of one number: the money supply. Look at the price of oil in terms of ounces of gold [agiweb.org]. Note that the bottom line of this graph is virtually dead flat.
Of those numbers, the only one that isn't an effect of money supp
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It is pretty much flat, but it's worth noting that the graph uses inverted units for comparison: dollars per barrel for currency, and barrels per oz for gold. For consistency, they should have used something besides oz (milligrams, maybe) so that they could use barrels as the fraction denominator. As presented, it looks like gold has a response opposite to that of the dollar for short-term fluctuations.
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Nonsense. All your graph shows is that the price of both gold and oil have increased by roughly the same amounts. It says nothing about the relative strength or weakness of the dollar.
For a much better look at the impact of money supply on the price of oil, compare the charts of oil denominated in dollars, euros, yen, yuan, and rupees. You'll see a steady upward curve on all those graphs, showing that the price of oil is indeed increasing on a real basis, and that not all of the growth in said price can
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So I don't give a shit what you, the press or anyone else says to try to make things look bad to bring down whatever politician (Bush or a Democrat congress) you are aiming at because numbers don't lie!
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If we are talking about recession, one, the GDP. A recession is a shrinking of the GDP for two consecutive quarters. So far, we've have 0, as in ZERO consecutive quarters of economic shrinkage.
So I don't give a shit what you, the press or anyone else says to try to make things look bad to bring down whatever politician (Bush or a Democrat congress) you are aiming at because numbers don't lie!
Sure they do... look at the shadowstats.com site.
Every percentage point of inflation equals a zillion more dollars of government expenses. Thats why reported inflation is only 2% annual.
In a similar manner, unemployment stats are all doctored up until practically no one counts.
Half the population could be in a soup line at the homeless shelter, but all you'll see on the news is low unemployment, low interest, and high growth.
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The press lives off of bad news, so if you really think that they look to play down poor economic news, you are dreaming.
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Ok, let's call it stagflation [wikipedia.org].
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So far, we've have 0, as in ZERO consecutive quarters of economic shrinkage.
Well, you don't know that. Economic statistics are often subject to revisions, and the initial versions that get all the headlines are often quite some distance away from the "official" final reports. Especially in periods of weak growth, like the past two quarters of .6% growth, the initial reports might have been overestimates of the actual growth, which may very well have been negative.
In short, while its not possible to determine if we are in a recession right now, that doesn't mean that we aren't
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In a technical sense you're correct, of course.. but housing prices are down, "prime" mortgages are failing at unforseen rates, consumer confidence is in the hole and the dollar is weak, so putting your fingers in your ears and saying everything is fine and it's all just propaganda because we don't meet the technical definition for a recession isn't particularly helpful.
So? Farmers, pharmaceuticals, oil companies and financial software firms are all doing well. Does that mean I'm supposed to think that the economy is experiencing explosive growth?
I never said that all sectors of the economy are booming. Hell, ALL sectors are NEVER up at the same time. Regardless of all the problems you mentioned, the GDP is still up. That is the ONLY economic indicator that matters when answering the question, "Are we in a recession?"
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I wonder where you lived during the nineties (silicon valley?), cause
When I was looking for a job... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nice flame, but what does it have to do with my comment? Shouldn't that have been at the top level?
I suspect, BTW, that you're reading "poor" as "in poverty", while other people are reading it as "not as good". English is like that.
The effects are obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The first thing you want to do when you're belt tightening is cut jobs; employees are huge overhead. But how do you cut jobs when the work still has to be done?
Answer? Automation. If you can't automate, you'll outsource, and outsourcing itself often requires new technology.
When the bubble popped, a lot of tech people took it in the shorts, and since that's the last big economic wobble, it's the one everyone is thinking about. But in reality there is no guarantee that a downturn will be bad for tech, or tech industries...It depends on what sectors experience the lowest growth. (Sadly, I do economics too.)
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It's surprising to me that an economist would say this, because as an engineering student I always believed it until I took economics. Automation involves a huge setup overhead and a few more expensive employees for maintenance. In the factories I've worked in they will throw a bunch of "temporary" employees in places where there were previously full-time employees making 2-3x the "temp" wag
Depends... (Score:5, Interesting)
OSS should also benefit from a slower economy. Why pay MS 100k for MSSQL licensing when I can get postgres?
Innovation won't stop and will continue to happen. It just might be in different areas.
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When gas was 99c/gallon, people weren't all that interested in new fuel technology. Now with oil going up and up, I expect we'll finally start seeing some real break throughs in alternative energy research.
Well....consumers weren't thinking about alternative fuel sources, but businesses sure as hell were. Businesses exist for one reason: money. Oil was the cheapest, most cost-effective way to get from Point A to Point B for a long, long time. It isn't as though energy-from-dandie-lions has existed for all this time, and the "big evil corporations" have been ignoring because they like pissing their money into the pockets of oil tycoons.
The rise is gas prices has caused consumers to start wanting hydrogen c
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Look at the paid search space. It was most likely an inevitability that the market would grav
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IIRC, the activation features of XP were supposed to usher in the year of the Linux desktop.
Re:Depends... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look around you, Linux adoption is higher then ever. Ubuntu has made Linux easy, Dell has Linux installed on normal PCs (along with some other computer makers), the gPC is many times sold out at Wal-Mart, the eeePC with Linux is quite popular, and the use of Linux-based tablets such as the N800 is on the increase. Never before could you get Linux so easily, it still isn't as common to walk into a large retailer and find computers pre-installed with Linux but if you spend 5 minutes hunting around, Linux is easy to find.
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Re:Depends... (Score:4, Insightful)
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At this point, I don't think we'll ever see the year of the Linux desktop, just like we never saw the year of the Firefox web browser. Linux adoption on the desktop is increasing, and, while Microsoft remains firmly entrenched in its dominant position, the increasing presence of Linux is having benefits, especially with regards to drivers and open hardware specifications.
Depends on how long the downturn lasts (Score:5, Interesting)
We're cutting back on extravagances. I'll probably wait one more year for the new computer I was supposed to get last month.
An economic downturn will kill an already unhealthy company, but a good employer with a stable balance sheet knows how to weather the storm.
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I hope that doesn't include toilet paper.
(I kid but in 2001 the company I used to work for stopped providing hand soap in the bathrooms after the stock tanked...)
I worked for a company in 1998 that had a rocker on the toilet paper dispenser that allowed for one square to be dispensed at a time.
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You were lucky! My company had the one square dispenser and toilet paper sheets with "please use both sides" printed on them.
Acamedic enrollment (Score:5, Interesting)
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My employer (Score:3, Interesting)
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If the loss of revenue is less than the cost of replacing those machines, then your PHB is a genius. I'm not a gambling man, though.
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workers (Score:4, Insightful)
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Either that or they'll make posting to Slashdot their full-time job and just collect unemployment checks, but unemployment benefits won't ca
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Ramen noodles have taste?
Large numbers of layoffs? (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole question reeks of someone wanting the Slashdot community to do their research for them, starting with some pretty questionable assumptions. Maybe the answer to this question is better served by looking at how past recessions hit the tech industry and their innovation output.
Re:Large numbers of layoffs? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, if this [wikipedia.org] is any indicator, it should take about 250 years for the tech sector to pick up.
Playing Dodge Question (Score:2)
Is tech innovation about sitting down one day and saying "I'm going to invent tech." Or is it really a convergence where a solution in one field is applied to problems for another. I suspect the latter, and it takes young, bright minds to want to make those connections. Let me be clear, talented people do exceptional work through their middle and senior years, but revolutions are the domain of the young.
Well, cool, I dodged the question mainly because I don't know. We've had a downcycle every 7-8 years sin
necessity the mother of invention (Score:5, Interesting)
"oh woe is me, the housing market is collapsing!" no its not. Now's a great time to buy. In fact this is really the sort of situation that benefits people in their mid-late 20s. Real Estate values were inflated before. Now those people can more easily afford to buy houses.
now, back on topic... if there is any sort of actual shift taking place, it is not likely to be the big corps that want to try and ring every last drop out of "business as usual" who will benefit.
If people perceive times to be tough and getting worse, with regards to the environment, energy "crisis," etc - then the people who can move in and offer solutions to those problems are going to win. They're going to attract the money from the people that have it to get the stuff to market.
I'd like to think that in the next 5-10 years we're going to see a lot more people interested in home power generation -- solar and/or wind, appliances that use less power, etc.
We're also going to see people and companies wanting solutions which provide maximum advantage for minimum cost. That means we'll see a lot more open, standards-based solutions to problems. We're likely to see more foss solutions to software problems, open hardware solutions to hardware problems, etc.
Likewise, if programmers are now no longer employed by megacorp a, they'll likely have a few more hours a day to contribute to foss projects -- or start smaller ventures based on foss solutions to some of the more pressing problems of our day, and into the future.
or maybe i'm just high
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But you are correct--is it not human nature to take advantage of good times to plan for the bad. Where was the interest in alternatives to the gasoline-powered auto when oil was $30 a barrel?
Yes, some forward thinkers were working on hybrids or alternative sources of hydrocarbons such as biodiesel and ethanol, but those efforts were certainly not the front page news they are today.
Even those technologies with no apparent practical utilization will see their features
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actually it's usually people with an overactive social life that contribute to open sores.
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Great plan! Now lets go find a bank who want's to give me, a late 20something, a mortgage.
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yay for "early 20s" -- like being a teenager, only with my own car insurance.
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I just got a mortgage 3 years ago at 22, but admittedly it would have been during the whole "era", although I got a traditional mortgage through a traditional bank. It's not hard to have good credit in your early 20's.
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There is a real issue; people losing money on the stock market, people dealing with fuel and food costs, people losing money on real estate...All those things mean that there is less money running around in the economy, and less money means economic issues.
Now generally recessions are a problem of herd mentality. Plenty of people who haven't lost any money are deferring purchases because they're worried that they may lose money, and that restricts the flow of money f
Re:necessity the mother of invention (Score:5, Interesting)
One they started getting fallout from being retards, more investors jumped ship. A lot of those people dumped money into oil and other comodities, running the price up -- creating another bubble to burst. Of course, even at ~4.00 a gallon, it's still cheaper than 1 venti green tea frap at starbucks, which even with a b&n discount card at the one in the store costs 4.37. Gas is 3.97 here, so if I buy 8 fraps to get the same volume, it costs me $3.20 more, which is a lot closer to a second gallon of gas than it is to another stupid frap. Gas is over 80% cheaper by volume than Starbucks is.
The Federal Reserve then kept lowering interest rates to "encourage growth" (because for some reason anything less than "growth" (and even then, the growth has to be at least thiiiiiiiiis big to count....) counts as "recession" these days), but that just created inflation and discouraged foreign capital investment, lowering the dollar's value.
If I were Congress or the President, I'd make trading petrol futures a capital offense. Margin trading would be earn you public floggings. Frankly, what I might do to the federal reserve board would probably have gotten me kicked out of the SS for inhumane treatment, I hate them so much for crimes of stupidity.
Re:necessity the mother of invention (Score:5, Interesting)
Lowering rates is weird; there is the risk of inflation, but frankly, the real lowering of the value of the dollar is our national debt, and the fed is really for trying to manage our economy by controlling lending rates.
Gas is relatively cheap; we're paying now effectively what europe has been paying for decades. In the long run, it's still enough to drive the adoption of alternatives, and that's beneficial for our economy.
We're the best placed in the world to come up with a good, marketable fuel solution, simply because most other countries have artificially screwed with their fuel demand. China and India are subsidising cheap gas to fire their economies; this prohibits the adoption of a solution, because economics don't favor one. On the other side, Europe's historically high fuel taxes have already pushed them to adopt fuel efficient cars and public transit...They're not going to feel the pinch like we will.
Interesting times.
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Europe's historically high fuel taxes have already pushed them to adopt fuel efficient cars and public transit...They're not going to feel the pinch like we will
Wanna bet? Diesel is > $10 a gallon in most of the UK right now and 25 years of right wing governments have pared public transport outside london down to an unusable skeleton. I can assure you that people are feeling the pinch: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7420792.stm [bbc.co.uk].
High taxes to try to discourage consumption are all well and good when the underlying price is low but now it's gone through the roof there's a very real danger that the economy is going to be seriously harmed. Many companies, particula
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I can't wait to get out of this place... counting down the days.
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Or maybe it's caused people to reexamine their priorities.
I pay about as much for gas as I did last year at this time because I drive a lot less now than I did when gas was less costly. I'm lucky in that I live in an
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Sorry, all of the froth isn't off the market yet. Stay out until this Autumn when the folks who have sat on the property through the prime Summer selling months get desperate. Then take your time and place an offer next Winter or so. Lending should be loosening up a little by then, too. Also, pick properties close to where you are likely to work - the price of gas isn't going down - or close to where other people are likely to work to reduce the potential price downside on you
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That is also why many economists think this will be a time of very slow growth/recession, because mostly investors will only invest in knowns, safe investments that have guaranteed rates of return.
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One of the problems we're facing regarding the housing market is of our own making and the banks being able to create all k
How about both? (Score:2)
An email server may not needed to be upgraded, but a new wireless VOIP solution that allows for reduced cost of maintenance and usage most likely would be pushed to the front. Any innovations that can reduce cost and either maintain or increase productivity would be a sure thing in a recession.
Can't speak for everyone, but here is my 4 cents.. (Score:2)
Good topic (Score:2)
Some money will still be spent on new development but projects will be chosen carefully.
I would hope that more companies will turn to open source software. As a consultant, I sometimes find it frustrating when customers are so concerned about protecting their IP instead of their profitability.
A bit obvious, but it is difficult to make money from commonly available data and services.
After the dot-com-bust, I found myself getting
Holy fucking Cthulu, Batman! (Score:5, Informative)
What large numbers of layoffs?
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Personally that is me , I gave up looking for work since every one wants to take advantage of the folks that are looking for work.
Tightening my belt and my wife working a little over time when she can and we are getting along while I am trying to get some training for other then IT.
Theoretically, it should help open source (Score:2)
Depending on the business, it adds more weight to the money-saving aspects of open source alternatives, but it's not a "slam dunk" reason to switch wholesale. I work with a lot of small businesses, and I'm set to push harder
open source ?= tech innovation (Score:2)
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Joking aside, I think you're not quite answering the question (or maybe I looked at more constraints than you in answering
IT, OTOH, has become cheaper and cheaper, and despite the desperate attempts to keep us away from all that computing power (Vista is a good example), coders are finding way to use the powe
I disagree with the implication of the summary (Score:2)
Also, most of the old-time, tech-hating PHB types have retired, and big, corporate-network apps are starting to take over. "Email servers" have been replaced by "collaboration software". Telecommuting is becoming more and more com
Weak Market (Score:2)
Better (Score:2)
What kind of innovation are we talking about? (Score:2)
2 guys in a garage style innovation, is another thing entirely.
I'd bet that second kind - the kind that then to revolutionize, rather than incrementally improve - will be the kind to suffer more (especially in the U.S.) when there simply isn't enough financial stability amongst the working class, which produces kids who become the creative class, to create the kind of free time and optimism that's needed for those peopl
Project shifts (Score:2, Interesting)
I've noticed a shift in our clients' thinking. New projects have to save the company money overall and more requests to include OSS libraries and products.
Personally for me, I like the fact we're including more OSS products (MySQL, Postgres, Linux, *BSD, etc...). When I first started, I was a little out of place due to the fact I had spent so much time working with open source. Now that experience is useful to my company.
But overall new softwa
I would bet more (Score:2)
OSS can help you make contacts too.
I think not just Open Source. . . (Score:2)
It's good for open source companies (Score:2, Interesting)
positively, I would say (Score:3, Insightful)
A bad economy is when innovation happens.
Re:Food? (Score:5, Interesting)
Partly it's because you can put, "Programmer for (insert OSS project here)" as your current occupation, rather than "sitting on the couch, watching the phone" and partly because the best way to put food on the table is to do some work, and the easiest sort of work to get is freelance work.
When you're freelance, you can't afford the licensing for the nice proprietary stuff. You can't afford to scratch build huge webapps. You absolutely have to jump on the OSS bandwagon, just because it's what you can afford.
And when the OSS app you're deploying turns out to lack some feature that's critical to your sale...You code it. Or you jump on the lists, and beg someone else to code it. Or you incorporate some other OSS project to provide that functionality, etc.
I made more when I was out of work than I do now, but I didn't get to post on Slashdot as much. It's all about how you decide to spend that time.
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