Slashdot Mirror
The Post 9/11 Tech Boom
"The battlefield will not be physical so much as it will be digital," Rob Owens, a tech industry analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Ore., told the San Francisco Chronicle recently. "There will definitely be people who prosper in this new environment."
Owens and other analysts point to these factors:
- A need for more secure technologies for Net traffic, business communications, computer networks, travel and building architecture, along with the predictably more sophisticated components for new weaponry.
- A huge increase in "homeland security" spending not only by governments, but among biotech firms as the country expects and prepares for attacks potentially more lethal than those on New York and Washington.
- A boon for telecom and video conferencing companies and systems. Not only will many corporations choose to do business without sending executives on the road, but such systems are seen as increasingly vital communications backups in the event of widespread attacks on an existing communications infrastructure. By the same token, it would make sense that in stressful times people will spend more time shopping, talking, amusing themselves and doing business on the Net, as they did in the days after 9/11.
- Continuing increases in sales across the tech spectrum as individuals, businesses and governments make sure their hardware and software systems can deal with the challenges and problems of a post 9/11 world.
The media are feeding these trends. Not only are the images of 9/11 horrific and continual, but the war in Afghanistan has -- correctly or not -- enhanced the idea that technologies are our only feasible response to the profoundly changed geopolitical reality that Osama Bin-Laden created last fall. The fact that we have undermined a terrorist network and overturned a repressive government in weeks, with only a handful of American casualties, has transformed the way even Americans think of technology. This isn't a time for a tech slump, but another boom, perhaps of even greater proportions than the last one.
Yes, you too can be a part of turning our country into a Big Brother state. No longer the home of the brave and land of the free, America is now home of the sheeple and land of scared shitless.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
All a programmer needs to know these days to polish his resume is to continue to name the correct protocols and standards to get their resume through the HR text filter, and keep boning up on idiot languages like VB and Java.
He's a wise old geezer. I love the guy. This 2145 word blather is best summed up with one of his favorite phrases: lip music.
My god, this reads like a fucking dry and tired corporate report. All gloss, 150lpi printing, svelte color, clad in delicate paper, but sorely lacking in substance. Katz, what the fuck is your deal? You have the chance to say something meaningful, and all you do is regrugitate the IHT, a 3Com year end statement, and a little of MSNBC. This is such horseshit.
Post-Columbine, now Post-9/11. What other horrors can turn into tech articles?
The fact that there is a tech boom ahead is perfectly logical if you look back at history.
turning any time of threat to the country much money has been invested into tech advance... look at the computer during WWII and it's aftermath. or firearms during the civil war.
Seany
"Where ever you go, there you are"
The fact that we have undermined a terrorist network and overturned a repressive government in weeks...
Have we really? Last time I checked neither bin Laden nor Mohommad Omar had been captured, nor seen, and few if any high-ranking officials in Al-Qaeda had been captured.
I think the US was very efficient in how they handled the situation, but let's be serious: it's not even close to resolved.
We've been hearing things like this since 9/11. "It'll turn things around...", "We're ready for a boom...". I'll believe it when I see it. Until then, all I see is a bunch of unemployed ex-dotcommers looking into other industries. I find it highly doubtful that there will be another hiring boom of the scale and unfettered nature as 1999's.
Hopefully, this will also lead to the decentralization of business. There's a danger of increased "sprawl", but the dispersal of urban centers means less large critical targets, a good thing in my view.
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
But, geeks can still prosper in this age. the CIA has a huge problem finding people willing to infiltrate Islamic terrorist organizations, what Ivy League Foggy bottomer wants to leave his blonde sorority girl wife for years of living in a dirty, cold cave, eating putrid lamb, wiping his ass his with right hand and forgoing sex, I know I wouldn't.
Fortunately, this website has a huge amount of geeky sorts who eat poorly, live in a dank, computer infested hovels and haven't gotten near pussy since they were expelled from one 20 years ago. Coupled with a decent facility for languages (just substitute Parsi or Arabic of PERL) and you can too can help the world's best country by being an incountry spy in a third world country like Pakistan, Egypt or France, please contact your local CIA recruiter.
Unfortunately, war has often sparked the economy, not just in technology, but across the board. The 1930's were the Depression era, but as soon as oue war effort got into swing, the economy improved.
Because of the type of threat, technology will be the big "winner" of the business, from detection devices, to warplanes.
If I weren't nailed to the penis, I'd be pushing up the daisies!
The fact that we have undermined a terrorist network and overturned a repressive government in weeks, with only a handful of American casualties...
We tend to believe that our actions have had long lasting effect on this troubled region, but my take on it is quite different. US tends to wage its war and then pack its bags and go home leaving a war ravaged country and its warlords to fight the rest of the war between themselves and their common enemies.
We might benefit overall from these effects, but the moment the US Soldiers leave, every warlord in Afghanistan is gonna be on everyone else's throats. Afghanistan had some notable politicians but Taliban made a point by wiping them all out.
We cant wage a two month war and then leave all of a sudden telling ourselves that our work here is done and now this nation would pull itself together towards a road to peace. This country is far from being over from the civil war.
Rapid Nirvana
The fact that we have undermined a terrorist network and overturned a repressive government in weeks, with only a handful of American casualties, has transformed the way even Americans think of technology.
I think this is called 'having aeroplanes whilst the other side have camels' - not really much to do about high technology - the Wright brothers would have kicked their ass.
I got nothing to do but, sleep, play video games and work with some computer vision algorithms.
www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~sager/ai
Freaking would be nice to have a job. Being tied down by $50,000 in tuition debt is borderline retarded.
God spoke to me
SGI stock, post 9/11 Enuff said.
And it's hard to get one of those without being a US citizen, let alone a permanent resident.
A lot of my fellow coworkers are H1-B holders and are thus shut out from government jobs due to a lack of security clearance or the unwillingness to hire anything but US citizens. The funny thing, however, is that there are fewer and fewer US college graduates with CS and engineering degrees, the very disciplines that will continue to serve the post-9/11 security needs. US high-school students don't want CS or Engineering degrees--they're geeky and 'hard'. Instead, they graduate with Communications or Marketing degrees and end up fighting for the same job at IHOP. Meanwhile, the tech jobs needed to build the systems that shore up federal and state security go unfilled.
When will the government grant security clearance to foreigners so we can get much-needed talent on these critically important homeland security tasks?
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Will America start fighting itself then?
Yes the evenings of 11/9 were horrible and shouldn't have happened but there are influencers behind that event. Shortly after the attack a poll was commisioned which asked a simple question: "Do you think American Foreign Policy had any influence on the attacks?". Not a single American replied yes, the rest of the world was approximately 50% yes.
Did you know that America is the only country in the world that has been, under international law, found guilty of State Terrorism?
I think the boom was coming anyway, the attacks, to some extent have just helped people swallow some of the square edges and push for the recovery to be accelerrated.
Why are you always trying to justify the internet and tech-sector in general? I don't need your drawn out analizations of the obvious.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I haven't programmed since VB 4.0, but I've looked a little bit at Java, and it seems similar to C.
Honest question -> Are you lumping VB & Java together? From my ignorant perspective, I can see how you would categorize VB as an idiot language, but I wouldn't include Java in that category.
Steve
but the war in Afghanistan has -- correctly or not -- enhanced the idea that technologies are our only feasible response to the profoundly changed geopolitical reality that Osama Bin-Laden created last fall.
not, I should say.
Sure there's things that can be done with technology to help improve security in "The Post 911 World", but there's no substitute for really good, on the ground, human intelligence.
The U.S. is notorious for relying on tech toys, eyes in the sky, etc. while neglecting to send actual people to find out what is really going on in the world.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Is anyone else concerned with the lack of hard facts in any of these "tech boom" articles? They sound like futile attempts to spur growth using the argument "If you read it in the paper, it's got to be true!" .
So, let's see it, where are the growth numbers that point to a new "tech boom"?
H
I'm not really sure why, but when everybody reffers to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 simply as 9/11 or even worse 911, it really bugs me. It seems like it has become just another buzzword in a culture that thrives on sound bites to keep them informed. Is this just me? Am I the only one who thinks that it trivializes what happened when we treat as just another element of pop culture?
- American flag manufacturers
- Bumper stickers with "These Colors Don't Run" on it
- American flag decal producers
- Record companies who make "Tribute Albums"
- Those damn flag-on-plastic-so-you-can-fly-one-out-your-car-w
i ndow things
Just a few that I've become annoyed with... er, taken notice of.Day by day, it's becoming clear that one region's tragedy -- the 9/11 terroist attacks -- is another man's opportunity. Despite much hype to the contrary, JonKatz creativity is quite alive and well, as is our increasingly JonKatz-driven, Linux-biased website. As Slashdot trolls and otherwise valid posters have recently pointed out, JonKatz has weeded out a lot of junk and spawned some real innovation. Keep those JonKatz flames up to date. Slashdot analysts have been buzzing for months now about the new JonKatz about to be unleased as trolls, bigots, and heretics turn to JonKatz to fight terrorism, improve nerdiness, shore up our intellect, and protect Slashdot from a wide-ranging series of horrors from "real news" to bio-germisim. The masterbation is going digital.
but, how did this go from being one ( countries, nations, worlds )tragedy to one "regions" tragedy.
.......... something.
That strikes me as stupid and callous.
Kind of like the other days CNN/Money article about the Empire State building being sold and the headline mentioning that it was NY's tallest building.
Factually correct, but could we not say it a little kinder.
Call me a whiner, just seems a little
Stu
Continuing increases in sales across the tech spectrum as individuals, businesses and governments make sure their hardware and software systems can deal with the challenges and problems of a post 9/11 world. Yep, gotta make sure that my boxes can withstand the searing heat of a building on fire...that way my britney spears pr0n collection will be safe!
I disagree.
I work a large telecommunications company which
has been crushed by the past year. The dotcom
implosion was predicted and it's a very different
world for a technologist post-that. I don't see
9-11 having an impact on my job or the IT market
as a whole. In fact, the increased international tension
has further damaged economies already shaky from the dotcom bust.
There is no new boom. There can't be and there
won't be. There will be a very slow and steady
growth; the assets which need to shift first to
revive the industry are telecommunications based.
They're expensive. $10s of millions expensive.
Committing to such projects takes time. Consumers
cannot drive the demand for new net services,
not in the same way the can for other commodity
goods. There must be framework. It's like wanting
new trains. You simply don't get startup railroads,
who can afford the track?
What many IT folks miss is that much of the
industry we're in is invisible. Consumers don't
know what I do, or why my job is needed. All they
know is that the internet is still slow, TV is
still TV and that most of those new fangled
interactive services are too expensive and trivial
to bother with. IT cannot sustain growth with the
consumer need, and, with my consumer hat on,
I'm not prepared to pay through the nose for
broadband, don't like interactive TV and haven't
got a PDA/laptop etc. Without this low level demand
and we're in a minor global depression remember,
there will be no significant IT recovery for a
few years. No months, years. 5-10. No boom,
just steady industrial scale growth, like everyone
else.
Any tech boom that comes along in the US will come to a screeching halt if Senators Hollings and Stevens can get the CBDTPA passed, and anything that includes a "digital interactive device" becomes both unuseable and prohibitively expensive (someone will have to pay the R&D costs - and it will be you). The entire tech industry will move overseas.
But hey! CBDTPA will create it's own tech booms in Europe and places like India so it's not all bad. (Don't know about Mexico & Canada - they're too close to our Senators from Disney.)
Yeah, I know - off topic.
null sig
Any idea where the input came from?
[o]_O
Why are you always reading Jon Katz? He doesn't need your one-line criticisms.
I don't get why people who obviously don't like his content and style read every article he writes just to bitch about him.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Currently it seems like investing in law firms was a good way to make money instead of tech firms :D (after all, they do seem to sue each other a bit tooo often recently :D)
So, obvious areas are security products. Are there any tracking funds for this area? If not, im sure they will be created.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Have you EVEN tried looking at the job market?
The market is flooded with H1Bs offering to work at $15 a hour. This is LESS than warehouse wages. As pathetic as it is, MOST of my friends have taken signaficant pay cuts, and they DO not work in IT field.
Katz, again, you prove to me that you live in a cloud, not the real world.
Bang on the money. Sounds like another CIA ploy went according to plan...
Another JonKatz Post-something article! Just what I needed in the morning!
Someday we really should have a Post-JonKatz Slashdot perspective.
And thanks to this I now tend to get only 250 bits per second (out of my broadband)..
Doesn't it sound like evolution where the changes occurs in a relatively short period of time followed by a long period with relatively no changes?
We got the bubble that ballooned and eventualy died. It's use was to 'weed out' the junk as said and now we are back in the period where the remaining ones (cie, individuals, orgs.) start again to fill the gaps. Could that be an economic model I am not aware of?
Until I can find a job - or even get an interview - THERE IS NO TECH BOOM !
There have also been directives to fund bioterrorism defense grants as a direct result of 9/11 and the anthrax attack.
Sorry for the language, but it's what I (any most European anti-terrorist experts, which is to say, those who have some experience and understanding of what they're dealing with) think.
The only way you'll stop it happening again -- IMHO -- is to stop funding Israel and get the fsck out of the economies and political systems of supposedly "independent" states that don't want you there (the people, that is, not the rulers), and to stop backing dictatorships like Saudi Arabia just because they're "on your side". In Ireland they used to say: "You cannot have a military solution to a political problem." Guess what? They were right.
*sigh* now I'm going to get flamed to fuck. Well hopefully someone might be prompted to think... I just hope you don't wait until you're up to your waist with dead Americans and "collateral damage" (I know, they're barely human but they still count... )
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Something people seem to have decided after 11/9 ;-) is that it's important to keep communication - aka the internet - going if a country has a national disaster.
:-) making it really easy to forge them.
;P
The thing is, when the internet was _designed_ it was designed to be small, closed and trusting, more or less the opposite of what it is now. So the underlying protocols trust everyone.
We have learned a lot. If the internet was designed today, we wouldn't make the same mistakes. An example is that the protocols (or routers) should not allow DoS attacks using packets with fake headers. They do because DoS was not considered when the protocols were first implemented, and now we can't change them.
All packets should be tunnelled. E-mails are the worst - the headers (From: in particular) are completely unreliable, thus "signing" using an assymetric key. But people often don't sign their emails
So. Let's roll out The Internet ][
Wow, FINALLY we get to hear some good news about the tech market. When everyday you hear of more and more techies losing jobs, techs not being able to FIND jobs, kinda makes you lose hope in your profession. Its refreshing to hear people finally predicting a turnaround in the tech market. anyways, thats my little rant/2cent/whatever.
--L-Wave
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
Excuse me? How about "Get those business plans up to date."? Why wait the few months it's going to take before the hiring actually starts. Why not get a jump and start your own business? You know how much you hate the boss? Well, hate yourself and be your own boss. Now you can tell yourself to go home at 5 PM, and even respond back to the boss with a "No!" The really great part is if the company does go under, you'll be the last to be fired. Or maybe someone will come buy out your business.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Ah yes, first internet/tech got hyped beyond belief making the hype reality and the hype pendulum swung to the stratosphere fed by media. Then ppl started to realize it was hype and so it crashed fast, the media forcasting a self fulfilling prophecy of business/economy doom and gloom. The gloom hype became reality. With a little 9/11 nudge we have another swing coming, the hype is starting to swing again - the new buzzword - SECURITY. 9/11 was not the author of the new hype, merely a catalyst. Kinda like pouring gas on fire.
Will SECURITY hype become reality? Should it? Or will it be just hype and a false sense of security.
It should be a fun ride.
You are pigeon-holeing yourself into what effect an event has on *... and then you change the event after the next big event happens and start all over again. PLEASE STOP! Really, people 40 years into the future with brilliant analytical minds, degrees in philosophy psychology and divinity will come together and give us an answer. I really think you are biting off more then you can chew with this kind of stuff. I appreciate your effort but I really think that this kind of stuff is way to complex to be scratched with a measly 1000 word essay. Please try to stick to something easier like affect of the Slashdot user base on incoming techies (read new readers) with its very interesting and eccentric viewpoints. Something that you would have a much better understanding of and would be more of an authority of! Hell some people might stop filtering your stories.
A huge increase in "homeland security" spending not only by governments, but among biotech firms as the country expects and prepares for attacks potentially more lethal than those on New York and Washington.
;-)
Ahem... If you are referring to the anthrax attacks, then yes, New York and Washington belong in the sentance, especially when speaking of biotech. However, the anthrax attacks were not all that lethal, with just a handful of casualties. Besides, you left out Florida, another forgotten land in the attack discussions.
If, however, you are referring to the incredibly lethal aircraft attacks, those occurred in New York, NY and ARLINGTON VIRGINIA!!! Yes, folks, the Pentagon is in Arlington Virginia.
The DC 2600 meetings are in Arlington, VA also (right across the highway from the Pentagon), but we do that just to trick "the man"
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Then I looked down a bit to where it says "Posted by", then I thought to myself, "Ahh. That explains it. It's a Katz article."
Sad thing is, I'm one of his biggest fans, and even I can't help but think that he's a bit silly at times.
Tech boom?
First thing I'd do to investigate this "tech boom" is look inward. Yeah, the company that you are employed by.
If they anticipate a tech boom, then why bring in the "giant ads" or this??
Can I get links next time? Cause I know you are just quoting stock brokers (that trade tech stocks). They need you to start buying tech again....
Rob Owens, a tech industry analyst at Pacific Crest Securities
Owens and other analysts point to these factors
Yeah, these analysts need your income. They can come up with stats till there blue in the face, but tech companies aren't employing. You will need employees for a boom, right? Well, as soon as I see these tech companies hiring like wildfire, I'll still be worried if I have a job tomorrow...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Continuing increases in sales across the tech spectrum as individuals, businesses and governments make sure their hardware and software systems can deal with the challenges and problems of a post 9/11 world.
Well of course there is going to be a boom, because we'll all need new hardware once the CBDTPA becomes law, hence fueling the "Post 9-11" tech boom.
Because in the post 9/11 world, we're all potential terrorists and thieves, and the gov't has to protect it's corporate cash cows.
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
won't be.
The preceding poster's comments have been, far and away, the most insightful on this thread so far.
Case in point: My adopted home of Raleigh, North Carolina. Not to bitch and moan (having done that already in previous posts), but this area depends on telecom and Big Pharma for its high-tech positions. The former hardly exists at this point, with Cisco, Nortel, Ericsson, and their customers refusing to burn any cash whatsoever.
And if there is a "boom", you won't notice it here, except as a slowly, steadily lowering unemployment rate. The big dogs will NOT recover immediately, and the smaller dogs will do their best to stay on the porch until then.
Oh well. My current job will run out in late June, I think. Note to perusing potential employers & providers of cheap labor: If you have Raleigh, who needs Bangalore? (Hint, hint.)
".sig,
Right now:
Encryption
Security
Data Recovery
Backup/Disaster Recovery
Colocation
Biometrics is booming, disaster-recovery services are booming, and even the people that hate the incursion of things like biometrics and face rec technology are drawing more attention to the companies that make it.
There is always a remarkable trickle-down effect within private enterprise that occurs when massive, targeted government spending pours forth. And it's no surprise that, given the trauma of 9/11, the government is bringing its massive resources to bear to develop technological solutions to many domestic security issues (many of which are structurally almost insoluble, by the application of technology or otherwise). Interestingly, the Dep't of Defense is even resorting to open-ended solicitation of "new ideas relevant to homeland defense and security" from technology companies with which it has dealings.
All you have to do is glance at the tailfins on a 60s Cadillac to understand the unshakeable faith Americans have had in new technology over the past century. Technological progress as panacea is still a fundamental, if often unspoken, tenet of our shared culture.
However, when it comes to "homeland security", the search for technological solutions (e.g. systems to put air passengers and air cargo under x-ray and gas-cromatographic microscope) largely misses the point. Massive essentially indefensible borders, enormous reliance on a vulnerable modern communications infrastructure, the lack of internal security paranoia characteristic of a wealthy, free democratic society... these characteristics militate against easy high-tech band-aid solutions to "homeland defense."
So what's the solution? We can protect the United States from attack by consistent and forceful _projection_ of power, by eradicating from the earth those who bring violence inside our domestic boundaries, those who threaten to do so and those who aid and support such people. By doing so we relentlessly disincentivise those who might consider attacking us. Structurally, the United States will always be vulnerable to attack within its borders. A massive and massively expensive build-out of new security technology will not alter this fundamental truth.
Deployment of massive amounts of high-tech infrastructure that will do little more than inconvenience honest US citizens will not secure our nation. Judicious application of our Rooseveltian "big stick" will.
The problem is on the digital battlefield there is no rules or consequences. Our network was taken down last week due to an DoS attack. All of the packets were spoofed, it's very hard to find out who took our internet connection out. Countries and people have no fear of what will happen when they take down a website. Untill this happens expect the "digital war" to esclate. For all our power and might we got taken down by 6 guys with plastic knives.
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
On the other hand, last fall's events could also suggest a shift *away* from technology is our only feasible response. It all depends what particular trends you want to find in a given situation.
For example, my apartment is within a stone's throw of the old WTC site. On the morning of the attack, almost *everything* went offline; it was next to impossible to get a cell or landline out, transportation was shut down, broadcast antennas were gone, etc. (Heck, you couldn't even see more than a few blocks because of all the dust and smoke.)
As a result, many of us were reintroduced to the actual communities in which we live, as opposed to the virtual ones we'd created for ourselves. No longer able to rely upon the technology to which we'd grown so acustomed, we were forced to go out and interact with one another in more traditional ways. I spent a good part of that morning up on my roof, meeting neighbors I'd had no reason to talk to before, watching events unfold. Word of mouth was pretty much the only way to learn what was happening.
And now, more than half a year later, I'm finding that some -- not all, but some -- people are a lot less willing to put their entire faith in technology anymore. Not the way they used to. The friend who used to run her entire life via Palm has now gone back to the old-fashioned day planner. Old pals who once relied upon email as an easy way of keeping in touch have begun returning to phone calls and mailed letters again. The local community -- we're talking on a block-by-block level here -- has begun to reassert itself.
Am I suggesting this is a national trend? Or even noteworthy? Of course not. It's a local and probably fleeting phenomenon. The point is, you can take a series of events and make them mean almost anything you want. Katz wants to see it as a technological boom waiting to happen? Well, bully for him. Doesn't make it so, any more than what I just wrote suggests things are heading for a technological bust.
It isn't just technology-based products which are pushing the boundries, as this toiletry product exhibits.
Dick Cheney is probably one of the most dangerous people alive today. a) He is corrupt. b) He is arrogant, as was obvious during a recent press conference where he discussed the Afghan war. c) He has no morals or ethics. d) He's (this is fairly obvious) the puppetmaster behind Bush. e) So far to the right, he will sacrifice a huge amount of good to achieve the goals of his corporate masters, including damaging the environment, refusing to testify in the Enron matter and most importantly, refusing to allow an investigation into the events of Sept 11. As an intelligent thinker who cares for America and the world, this poster urges you all to ensure this man is 'got rid of'. Don't say you were not warned. He is very very dangerous.
Tech boom - right! That must be why I got laid-off last week, along with about 500 other folks in my company.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Well, good thing we have people like you to worry about the important things. Things that really matter.
Good news for all the people about to be laid off from the recent HP-Compaq merger.
Yeah, I hear there are lots of new openings now.
Seriously. Who's footing the bill for all this?
At what point will basic economics conquer this latest "boom". Everything inevitably will have to bolster the bottom line, otherwise costs are going to be passed on to the customer, or paycuts to the staff. My guess will be both, and all this new spending will, in the long run, just further injure the economy.
Oh, yeah, and exactly where is the proof that we've gotten rid of Osama and company anyway?
Let's put all of this in perspective. 9/11 was a tragic event, but lets not turn Dr. Strangelove loose. There have always been threats, both here and abroad, but rampant spending and uncheck paranoia do not serve us.
/. readers could engineer away around any security scheme that the flying public is willing to accept. Second, the 9/11 attackers did not use awesome technology. They used every day items. The real reason for their success was social engineering. They understood that flight crews, and by extension the public, were trained to be passive to takeovers. It took only a few minutes for the passengers on the forth jet to grock the picture and try to take the plane back. While it is clearly a good idea to keeps knives out of the hands of drunk passengers in the throws of air-rage, what is really to be gained by keeping nail clippers out of the cabin? The prevention of ingrown tow nail?
To put this in hard perspective the 3K+ lives lost is equal to 3 days smoking deaths in the US. I don't see the US calling out the National Guard to protect our children from the tobacco companies. Sure, all of us who fly have always know that airport security was a joke and still is. There are two important points to remember about airport security. The first is that given a few weeks most
We can spread our selves too thin. There are places where we strong security. Nuclear plants and other sources of high toxicity, any site that has a high potential energy such as petroleum storage or hydro dams etc. On the other hand, Having every deputy sheriff staying up late reading Tom Clancy Novels and adding Tempest grade shielding to their accounting computer is just keeping them from doing their job (as an aside, try asking for your local security plans, you local yokels are likely to say the only security is through obscurity. Does that sound like self delusion or what?). We have far fewer critical systems then these system's managers might suppose. Terrorist are able to do far more damage going after "minor" targets than hardened ones. How much did hitting the Pentagon really effect the functioning of the US military? Far less than one might have supposed before 9/11. On the other hand imagine where our economy might have be today if half a dozen car bombs had gone off outside of shopping mall during the X-mass rush (say at a cost to the terrorist of $300/ junker * 6 + buss fair + $50 radio shack parts).
We currently have an administration that before 9/11 tended to paranoid secrecy, just look at how it formulated it's properly public energy policy in secret. Now we have this hybrid Dr. Strangelove/Joseph McCarthy loose. We have a public running scared due to lack of leadership and seem happy to forfeit their right and freedoms to a nebulous notion of safety. We are going to have the mother of all pork-barrel projects, Starwars/Missile Defense pushed through as if a terrorist is going to both to develop a launch vehicle when FedEx will deliver a tactical nuc overnight when is "absolutely, positively has to be there over night." Heck, with FedEx can even track the location of your Nuc on the web. Even if Starwars could work why would a terrorist or small nation use missile technology to deliver an attack against the US when conventional shipping services are so much more reliable than any ballistic missile? Sure, you shipping container may get hung-up in customs, but blowing up a port or two will also do significant damage to a county.
It's time to put our fear aside and take a sober look at security what is really needed and what is being done in the name of security for agendas that have nothing to do with our welfare.
So us Ivy League geeks without blonde sorority wives would be a perfect fit with the CIA, eh? Maybe I should go sign up.
I'm blonde myself though. Think they'd notice my hair roots after holding me in prison for a month?
As for pussy, I wouldn't know. After getting scratched fiercely as a kid by two of my neighbor's cats, I never want to see any pussies ever again. That's why I never click on those email links I'm constantly getting inviting me to look at some. 'No cats' is good.
What's that CIA recruiter's number again?
--Ivy League geek
So I don't see much of a boom yet, except for fancy Apple toys like the new iMac and iPod. The fundamentals have to get better - IT spending needs to recover from big cyclical budget cuts, and there does need to be a new Next Big Thing that people will actually pay for.
Of course if CBDTPA passes (which I think is unlikely, but send those faxes) you can kiss the industry goodbye.
sulli
RTFJ.
Upon realizing the Jon Katz drivel is almost deterministic and could be pieced together with the most simplistic of algorithms, scientists devised a way to code Katz's job out with a 50 line perl script.
Sorry Katz. I just don't see any new jobs opening up, or any new businesses offering new opportunities. In fact if you listien to quarterly reports, most of the established businesses arn't doing that well either. Consumers don't have that much money and they arn't going to spend it as they are afraid that they are going to lose their jobs too.
As an asside note, I lost my job as a software engineer for Iomega back in July. I couldn't find anything at all so like a moron I joined the Army like an idiot but at least my student loans will be paid off and I have won't have to worry about being laid off.
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
There are techies all over, not just Silicon Valley... Things for techies seem very down here in the Chicago area. I have been out of work for over a month now, and I know people who have been out of work for over 6 months. With so many people looking for jobs recruiters are requiring more and more specific skills.
.NET EXPERIENCE
MUST HAVE 3+ YEARS
MUST HAVE 10+ YEARS JAVA DEVELOPMENT EXPERIENCE
Do this people even know what they are talking about??? Well, just my chance to vent.
[FromTheMorning]
Agreed, there is too much labor chasing
too little demand. Wages are down, working
conditions have deteriorated. Katz needs
to look at the want-ads: still depressed
from the dot-com meltdown, telecomm collapse,
and Osama's kamikazis. There is no turn
around, just hypothetical buzz.
The US government should let the markets work:
some people will leave tech for more stable
jobs in other fields. The H1-B program should
be scaled back to the levels of 1990 if not
eliminated entirely: non-immigrant "guest worker"
programs are inherently odious. Why not let
a select few become citizens without getting
shaken down by corporate America and lawyers?
This program is sinister. Furthermore, why
target tech workers for special forgeign
competition? We could use more and better lawyers,
doctors, teachers, firemen, policemen, etc.
Don't single out programmers for special
competition. Jeez! Unfair!
I am glad that George W. Bush chose to take on Mr. Cheney as his running mate. Cheney gave additional credibility and a sense of solidity to Bush's platform. He is a solid consistent man experienced in the real world of Business as well as politics and foreign policy.
Your ranting, sputtering nonsense is just the flip side of the 'Bill Clinton is the anti-Christ' nonsense.
I agree. Right now is the perfect time to start a business, if you have the guts. If you don't have a job, then there's nothing to lose; if you do, why be at the mercy of your employer under corporate shelter?
Mr. Katz has it all wrong. IT is not going to be the area of tech that will boom post 9/11 as we go into a much different type of war, a war of cloak and dagger and targeted, precise military actions. The fields of tech that will undergo booms in funding will not be IT, or computers, it will be Chemistry, Physics, Aerospace engineering, and Biotech.
Biotech will get the most - designed to come up with biowarfare countermeasures (better Anti-biotics for Anthrax, better vaccienes (sp?))
Physics will get the next most for new weapons, counter measures, and the ever famous missle defense shield. Think applied physics in the areas of superconductors and photonics for ground and air-based chemical lasers.
Aerospace engineering will get quite a bit from the govt. to develop better unmanned drones, superior targeting equipment, and replacing all the bombs getting dropped in Afghanistan and maybe Iraq later.
Chemistry will get the last batch of major funding, for new explosives (Thermobaric bombs were a combination of applied physics and new explosive chemistry), chemical detection equipment (analytical chemistry, micro-sensors for detecting micromoles of chem warfare/neurotoxin agents), and chemical support for the applied phyics field listed above. Probably even new polymeric materials for aerospace applications.
There will indeed be another tech boom, but its not going to be in IT. Given the enemies of the US in this war on terrorists, IT is useful in getting intelligence on the enemy, but its going to be the ground forces and new weapons that take them out, not an improved IT solution or technology. Unless that IT allows one to fly an unmanned drone better, its not going to get much more funding than it already gets.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
So much for optimism.
Until you start hearing from people that live here in Silicon Valley, that things are 'turning around', cease your retarded articles. Until then don't move here. Stay away. You are not going to get a job doing anything unless you have 10 years experience - MAYBE. Yes you can FIND housing now but the rents haven't come down that much. They are still $1,500/mo. Landlords would rather write off empty space as a loss than do you a favor by giving you a place to live.
Sigh, Jon, Jon, Jon. I'm sure you think it's witty writing, but you're getting suckered.
Look, if you'd been through a few business cycles and been paying attention - or even looked back in any decent magazines and books that covered previous tech cycles (say to the 1800's), you would know that the following "true" things you said are hype and misleading:
"A need for more secure technologies and new weaponry."
But no money for them. Look at the budgets of the firms and the government - then forecast.
"A huge increase in "homeland security" spending by governments and biotech."
Again, no. They're shuffling money amongst accounts. I've got some money in a few biotechs and have owned weapons and biodefense stocks before - this is mostly hype - wait for the inevitable crash when investors realize the money ain't there. They won't even go after the real anthrax "bomber" - who is an extremist insider we trained. Even though they know who it must be.
"A boon for telecom and video conferencing companies and systems."
This sector will crash - the expectations are way too high for the stock prices. Then you'll tell us that ubergeeks caused the crash. No - investors believed unbelievable projections. The market will grow - but not that much.
"Continuing increases in sales across the tech spectrum for post 9/11 world."
Sales will drop. Period. Look for the telecom and tech sectors to fall even further. People like me make money on suckers who invest now - we sell to you. Others short the stocks. Can't say that I blame them.
Again, another hyped article about something you know little about. If you had a few quotes that weren't pulled from the usual suspect sources pushing the stocks on MSNBC or CNBC or CNN - then one might want to read an article about how telecom stocks are so hyped they have no choice but to fall. 1650 percent returns per annum. While tech stocks are almost as bad. 150 percent returns per annum. And these are the quality stocks I'm talking about - the firms likely to survive the continuing fallout.
[yes, I have a day job, but I've been investing since I was a kid]
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Katz sounds so much like one of those mid-1999 Silicon Valley recruiters offering stock options that its downright cute.
Seastead this.
Yeah, right. Ecconomy booming. Maybe in comparition to what it could be, but you didn't attempt make that point. (and I'm not sure I'd belive it.
I know many laid off tech workers. Not .com either, some have been in comptuers longer than I've been born. No jobs out there. Every company I know of is in the mode of "We are not hiring, we are trying to keep the people we do have."
Jon, you're full of shit.
If the Valley was quite alive and well, then why did my former company go from almost 1700 people to less than a hundred in 18 months (and then I got laid off in January). IPIX wasnt one of the cruft. I helped design and implemented most of the Enhanced Picture Services (as seen on eBay.com) system, hell I ran it all singlehandedly for a few weeks at a time, and usually with a tiny ops team. If it was such a technology boom, I should've been able to hire people to help me. We also ran the Full360 real estate virtual tours system.
Now I see why everyone's tired of your same old bullshit, Jon.
"To err is human, to forgive is simply not my policy." --root
Shades of Vietnam! From the Washington Post: "[S]oldiers involved in the battle said the live video links gave them little useful information and were sometimes a distraction, encouraging higher-level military staffs to try to micromanage the fighting." Look here for the full article.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
Part of the reason the CIA didn't uncover Bin Ladin sooner is that it's too fixated with electronic surveilance and has gotten away from actually sending in operatives to infiltrate small but radical organizations.
Remember the Unibomber? People who don't adhere to the normal regieme of society and technology fall into a blind spot, as far as US intelligence is concerned.
When some guys with box cutters hijacked some airplanes, our government responded with renewed calls for a missle defense grid.
Huh?
Technology alone isn't the solution to terrorism. But 'the best solution money can buy' tends to be a tech solution.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Silicon Valley is alive and well, just like everywhere else in America. There was never any problems with things being dead. However, it still is hard to get a job and a lot of people are unemployed. I moved out of the bay area last year after being laid off to avoid a constant game of leaping from job to job just to get laid off when the company went under.
I feel bad for my friends who stayed down there, who are competing with about 250 other candidates for any programming job that opens up, because most of the jobs gets picked by favoritism of people who have an in at the company. Some of my friends just moved to the bay area for a job, and don't know many people yet to get that luxory. Before reporting booms, lets try to look at some realities, ok?
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Silicon Valley is alive and well? Then how come so many tech geeks I know are unemployed or working at Starbucks, bookstores, etc.?
It's true that there is a whimper of a pickup, but it's just a whimper. Many people are running out of unemployment $ and I expect that there will be a rise in foreclosures on houses as Santa Clara county continues to have one of the higher unemployement rates of urban areas in the country.
Heck, even VA-whatever just had another, quiet round of layoffs. Most people can't even remember how many rounds their companies have had -- it's *that* bad.
And, while there are still recruiters in business, not a single contact I have from last year works for the recruiting firm they did when I received their address. It's not that they've moved -- they're laid off.
I'd give it another six months at least before declaring it even alive. It's got too much brain activity to be clinically dead, but it's not out of the ICU yet.
There has been a massive boom in the amount spent on computer security. Now let me ask you a question - who are they protecting themselves from? Do you really think Al Qaeda or some other organization has the know-how to launch a wide-scale attack on the Internet or the like? I mean, that explanation may play out in the press, but we who know how to configure a firewall and so forth should have a few more question marks after that. I mean, the tech-savvy of Al Qaeda is to bring box-cutters onto airplanes - not exactly rocket science. Could this have to do with the fact that a large percentage of Silicon Valley is unemployed, and being replaced by cheaper, younger workers from India? There are going to be a lot of unemployed and underemployed and pissed off guys in the next few *years* (yes years, if you think things are going back to before the market crash soon you're dreaming) who know how to create a race condition and make a stack overflow. Just something to mull over. Not without merit, just look at the rise in spending on security, business continuity and so forth before 9/11.
"The battlefield will not be physical so much as it will be digital," Rob Owens, a tech industry analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Ore., told the San Francisco Chronicle recently.
"OK, Agent Smith. I want you to start by taking down Al Queda's Internet access."
"Uh...sir? There is no Internet access in Afghanistan."
"Perfect! Then disrupt their cellular telephone communications."
"Right...er...they don't have cellphones."
"Well done, Smith! Now, I want to disrupt their landline network."
"Sir, they don't have -- strictly speaking -- what you would call a 'telephone network.'"
"I do say, Agent Smith, I'm very impressed! Then let's hit their power grid. I want 98% of Afghanistan to be dark within 72 hours."
"Well, sir...uh...that's pretty much taken care of, too."
"Wonderful, wonderful, Smith. This new digital warfare is really working out! Now we'll just wait a few weeks and they'll feel like they're living in caves. Join me for golf?"
-Waldo Jaquithi
do you /really/ think more computers and software will help protect you from more low-tech terrorism? [That]'s what I (any most European anti-terrorist experts, which is to say, those who have some experience and understanding of what they're dealing with) think. The only way you'll stop it happening again -- IMHO -- is to stop funding Israel and get the fsck out of the economies and political systems of supposedly "independent" states that don't want you there (the people, that is, not the rulers), and to stop backing dictatorships like Saudi Arabia just because they're "on your side". In Ireland they used to say: "You cannot have a military solution to a political problem." Guess what? They were right.
Sadly, you are correct. The amusing thing about all of this is that we actually know what we have to do to crush the enemy who will attack us again.
We have to diversify our energy supply for the US into American-produced energy systems, diverse ones more resistant to attack. None of these are oil (or its derivative gasoline).
If we really want to stop the attacks, we should be pushing for more American-made, American-operated, and American-maintained energy supplies like clean coal, wind energy, fuel cells (for storage and distribution, plus vehicle power), and solar energy (in remote non-wired areas). Not tomorrow - today. Right now wind energy is half as expensive as oil and takes a max of 18 months to build a new plant - and the system (the grid) can take up to about 20 percent variable power supplies. If you throw fuel cells in you can store the energy where produced and use it for vehicles (like farm vehicles, trucks, SUVs).
But at the moment every dollar we spend on oil results in 50 cents going to the terrorists and those who aid, educate, supply, and train them. And the countries behind this are known: some are our supposed "allies" like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia, the Phillipines, and Signapore. That's where the enemy lies.
Propping up dictatorships with tech won't forestall the attacks. It will just encourage more. And propping up oil-dependent energy will do the same thing. It's their supply line - more than 90 percent of their funding (indirect and direct) - comes from oil money, while less than 2 percent comes from drug money (used mostly for field operations income).
In fact, when in the field in Europe and the US, the terrorists fund themselves from the low-tech hacker techniques, like stealing credit cards, bank fraud, offshore tax havens, free email.
Tech is not our friend in this war. Sound national policy is. Most of the useful tech is the cheaper faster better stuff like cheap bombs that have GPS, not fancy doodads that cost millions per missile.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Hello, are you even paying attention? We are in the worst tech slump in years. Now the dot-coms are dead, and because of 9/11, most companies are in a hiring freeze or are laying people off.
I was laid off on 9/20/01, busted my ass every day and it took me a good month to find a job. My 2 other friends that were laid off are still unemployed. Well, one is unemployed, one is slinging lumber at frickin' HOME DEPOT. These are skilled programmers that couldn't find a job to save their lives.
Maybe in the gov't sector jobs are booming, but everywhere else it sucks.
Mark
Unless you consider Hemos to be Malda's "wife"
Yes, I agree with you on shorthand references as an easy way to remember momentus events. I could throw in a few more from history, like "Remember the Alamo" or "Remember the Maine". The problem is when we ONLY remember the stock phrase, and not the events behind them.
:-) About 1500 Americans were killed at Pearl Harbor, not 3000.
For example, one of the really bad events of the US Civil War, and a forshadowing of things to come, could be summed up as "Andersonville Georgia." Could I have a showing of hands who knows what this means?
BTW, I assume you were just writing in haste, but it was the Jews and others killed in gas chambers, not the Nazis.
Well, we've heard JonKatz rave about mainstream corporate movies, now he's repeating the corporate media's perception of the tech economy, which is: "Wow, the tech economy crashed but we still need technology!"
No shit. In the past five years, and unprecedented amount of money was spent on hardware and software. What came of it? Microsoft got stronger, Windows became slower and more insecure, and the Web became full of pop-up ads.
A few people got broadband access, and Cisco sold some routers. That's about it. The rest of the investment capital was spent on dot-com pizza parties.
If you want to say that this country continues to have an underdeveloped tech infrastructure, then say it. But it's insulting to hear media buzzwords like "trends" and "new spending."
Trend means, "Hire marketers now." New spending means, "Get ready for more pizza parties." Neither of these things have anything to do with the long-term planning of a fast and reliable tech infrastructure.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...but about 3000 people were killed in the WTC, while about 20000 worked there. That means that a lot of PC's, routers, and other high-tech gadgets need to be replaced.
In addition, all those 'smart' weapons are loaded with semiconductors, and they can only be used once.
Now it is clear that the .com bomb was a balloon full of hot air.
... boom will be even bigger.
Now, the same media that hyped the whole affair wants us to believe, that the new balloo.... I mean
Lets obviate the fact that building weapons of mass destruction is a pretty shortsighted way of make a living, and I will ignore also how hyocratical that is.
What is really idiotic is the same group of talented technologists falling over immediately for exactly the same hype: oh yess, the boom is coming, oh yesss, now it is arms, cryptography, surveillance not websites and e-commerce.
Technology rulez.
Great, way to go.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yer fulla shit. The politicians who are bought by tech lobby money should be tried for treason for bringing in the H1bs. And once they are found guilty, they should hanged, like any traitor....
sorry.
Some of the actual things that we can individually do - not the government, trapped in the Big Oil is Good world - are:
(choose one - but do at least one)
1. buy a compact flourescent lightbulb at the local hardware store or Home Depot - $4 to $6, use 1/8 the energy (this is Good Tech).
2. get a furnace controller (turns heat down when you're at work, or asleep, but heats it up in time for waking or coming home) (Good Tech)
3. get a tuneup for your car (better mpg)
4. next car you buy, new or used, get one that gets 5 mpg better than your last one (off the shelf we can get 40+ mpg for cars, SUVs and trucks - but consumers need to buy it).
5. change your furnace filter (improves energy efficiency and cleaner air).
6. next time you buy an appliance - washer, dryer, dishwasher, toaster, microwave, oven, etc - get either the best or second best energy efficient one.
7. buy 50 cent rubber seals to go behind your wall outlets (you're a techie, can't you do minor electrical stuff?) - up to 10 percent of heat loss is external-facing wall sockets in most houses. At Home Depot or hardware store.
8. buy a $2 foam insulator for your hot water heater hot water pipe (going out) - keeps it warmer and less cold showers when you turn on the hot water.
9. if your old hot water heater or furnace needs to be replaced, get the most energy efficient one you can.
10. if wiring for motion detectors, consider wiring your furnace/air conditioner controller to adjust temp based on occupants - and lights too. this is good tech.
All of these save you money - and cut the supply line of the enemy who wishes us dead.
If the hundreds of millions of Americans all did this - just one thing for each person - we would change the entire energy dynamic and painlessly switch energy supplies without any government intervention, while delivering a body blow to the enemy and their supporters. Then we could stop propping up anti-democratic regimes for energy supply reasons.
But inaction is what the al-Qaeda depend upon.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
"Cheney gave additional credibility..."?
Do you live under a rock or what?
Here in Research Triangle Park, NC we are in the midst of the worst recession and the worst unemployment since the invention of the vacuum tube.
Obviously, you haven't seen Rambo III. How could the russians compete with Rambo? He was totally kicking their asses even when that Hind helicopter came out and was blowing shit away, Rambo was just like, "Suck on this you Commie-Pinkos!", and then BOOM!
Also, how do you expect a country that can't even feed and clothe it's own people to take over another country? Yeah, that's right, the country plain fell apart remember? I run into John Rambo at the coffee shop every now and then and he told me that he hasn't received one "Thank You" card for all that work. Ingrates!
Yes, and in the meantime, real people are being killed by other real people with real guns that shoot real bullets in a real place called Palestine.
Nothing will ever replace good old fashioned war, terrorism, and mass murder. Praise the Lord and pass the Zyklon B.
I graduated college just after Sept. 11th and got laid off Sept 19th. I was out of work for three months and finally got a terrible position cleaning up HTML in a marketing shop. Now that job seems to be in jeopardy. If there's a post-9/11 boom, then I have yet to see it.
--
I don't think technology has anything to do with the fact that there was only a handful of casualties. For the past few years America has been sending in specially trained platoons of rangers/green berrets/marines/(i forget what the airforce one was called) to fight. This way less man force is wasted on our side and more are killed on thiers. all technology has to do with any of this is in the form of comm devices. a recent movie can help proove this, "Black Hawk Down". How undermining a terrorist network or overturning a opressive government or loosing a handful of americans has any influence on how we think of technology is beyond me, the only things that have to do with these are military and politics. In my opinion, that sentence was pulled out of someone's ass.
This message was brought to you by the death of 30 brain cells.
... I'd mod you up!
I bought a Toyota Prius for world peace.
42 mpg this winter, should be better come summer.
--Charlie
If AIDS was to get to the same levels in Europe or North America, you can bet a little more money would be spent...
Um... of course!
It's our own fucking people! You take care of your own first! I will be happy to help my fellow Americans get out of an AIDS epidemic but as far as people that far away, too frickin bad... We gotta worry about ourselves.
So here we go, flame on... That's just how I feel.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Fortunately, this website has a huge amount of geeky sorts who eat poorly, live in a dank, computer infested hovels and haven't gotten near pussy since they were expelled from one 20 years ago. Coupled with a decent facility for languages (just substitute Parsi or Arabic of PERL) and you can too can help the world's best country by being an incountry spy in a third world country like Pakistan, Egypt or France, please contact your local CIA recruiter.
Do any of these caves have a T1 or digital cable?
I didn't think so...
He's not joking about the raping virgins thing. In centeral/south eastern africa, it's widely believed that having sex with a virgin cures AIDS. Many women have become infected this way. In addition, many of the schools that get set up by humanitarian groups (after they bolt and go back to america) are breeding grounds for HIV. This is because the teachers accept sex as payment for education. It's sick and seems abhorrent to us, but that's the way that things are done around there.
The HIV problem is further compounded in two ways:
Catholic missionaries say that using a condom is evil.
The HIV antiviral "cocktail" of medications that slows the HIV virus requires a healthy diet (by western standards) and must include milk. It's a little-known fact that a very large majority of Africans are lactose intolerant. As a matter of fact, it was not uncommon for newly-aquired American slaves to die from eating the cheese and drinking the milk their masters fed them.
Yes, the US got its pipeline and military bases, which negotiations with the Taliban failed to get. According to non-US news sources, however, there are still plenty of Afghani fighters out there that aren't friendly to US occupation. Heed the Soviet's warning: the US is in for a long struggle.
But, of course, John Katz believes the hype and cheerleads the development of technological aids to destroy American democracy and expand the US empire.
...But are all of these better on net balance?
I know most are, but speaking about the light bulbs, does it take 8 times the energy to produce a compact flourescent bulb than a normal carbon filament or whatever they are? If so, your energy savings could be negated...
If you sell your car and buy a new one, isn't the balance of energy consumption MORE than it was before you bought the car, no matter how efficient the new car is, because someone else is driving the old one around?
I agree with your ideas and actually like them, but after reading the "Recycling is Garbage" article, I like to double-check these ideas.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Greetings to you, Holy One, and may your struggles against Satan be fruitful.
We have only a short time before the battle here, over which I am granted authority by you, shall be won.
There is a problem I must bring to your attention before the completion of this chapter in our relationship:
Many of the young men who assist me are without wives. As you know, the women of Satan are so numerous here that one can hardly look on a woman without knowing she is either Satanic or fast falling under Satan's spell. All I ask of you is this: That upon victory, my men be granted wives of their choosing from among a number of young, fertile, women who are without children of their own, to worship in accordance with their husbands' traditions. There must be many young women of whom you would like to rid yourself as they are nearly in Satan's grasp already. To us, in the Land of the Great Satan, however, they would appear to us as pure as the driven snow. If you have enough such tarnished women that some of the more heroic captains among my men, on the occasion of their victory, could take more than one wife, it will, I am sure, make the subsequent chapters of this book we are together writing all the more fruitful!
Allahu Akbar!
Seastead this.
Look on the bright side: we've already won the war on them watching pirated DVDs on their C64s. U.S. copyright policy reigns supreme in Afghanistan - Michael Eisner must be so happy right now :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Things will eventually go up, thing eventually will go down again. The true questions is, how long will it stay down, and how long will it stay up. I am in Atlanta, I had a friend laid off last week, but for the most part everyone has jobs, though making alot less money. The job descriptions have still not improved and people ask for 5 years exerience in somethng that hasn't existed that long. It's just they way it is, the only thing you can do is play the game, hope for the best and take every oppertunity you can get. People can guess at what will happen, it will go up or down, but both are inevitable.
mediadiva
What strikes me about all this is how far behind the state is in survelieance technologies. My credit card company, heck Amazon, knows more about me than the government does. Private databases contain more information than any intrusive state could ever hope to collect. The trouble lies in using that information.
Twenty years ago when the Puzzle Palace was published, the NSA, with all its black budgets, computers and piles of cash, couldn't look at more than a tiny fraction of the data it collected. Think that problem has gone away?
Information collection is ubiquitious, but the use of that information by the state is limited. Limited by the capactity of state facilities, the staggering incompetence of the intelligence forces, etc.
Even without the state, we have moved into an era of relative transparency in our public acts. If someone really wants to know if you walked down a certain street, there is probably a camera that caught your image. The trick is to find out which camera it is. Our public acts are stored in an enormous record, just like a library without a catalog filled with of books without indices, the trick is going to be finding that what one is looking for.
All I can say is, now I don't feel quite so bad about missing out on all those .COM opportunities as I toiled away at my boring 'ole programming job at one of the largest defense contractors in the world... :-)
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
I dont know if this is rampant optimism or what, but as a senior graduating this semester with 2 engineering degrees in 4 years, a prestigious internship under my belt, and a significant list of marketable skills, I'm finding my job search on the east coast wraught with "we're in a hiring freeze" and "cash crunch -- I'm sorry, but we cant afford to hire anyone right now."
There is always a remarkable trickle-down effect within private enterprise that occurs when massive, targeted government spending pours forth.
Wow!!! I had no idea that Ronald Reagan reads and posts to Slashdot!
Absolutely! You're not a whiner: Katz is a callous fool in minimizing this world tragedy.
Those in other regions may not have lost their landmarks or as many loved ones, but they've lost their innocence, AND ARE LOSING THEIR CIVIL LIBERTIES, as quickly as we are in the East.
Katz was right about one thing: the war's over....Freedom lost.
Do you really want to know why they say "The Events of Sept 11th"?
Whenever they use the phrase "The Attacks on the WTC" to mean more than just the attacks on the WTC, the phone rings off the hook - Remember, on Sept 11th, there was also the attack on the Pentagon, and the Hijack/crash of Flight 93 in PA
So, "The Events of Sept 11th" is a LOT faster than saying
"The Attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the hijacking of Fight 93"
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
And, yes, we do not intend to stay there. We already have naval bases in the Hindi Ocean. (This was the reason behind the Soviet's push to the south)
You mean Indian Ocean. FYI, there are only four oceans, Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic and Indian.
...But are all of these better on net balance?
No. I'm trying to get us out of our "someone else must fix this" mindset. Where we fail to realize that we can actually do something.
I know most are, but speaking about the light bulbs, does it take 8 times the energy to produce a compact flourescent bulb than a normal carbon filament or whatever they are? If so, your energy savings could be negated...
This is a prime argument against solar. The fab costs create a lot of bad chemicals and use a lot of energy. If you have a choice between a gasoline or diesel generator and a solar cell array with batteries - it depends on the use. However, given the 5 to 10 year lifespan (more years costs more money), compact flourescents are a net energy saver. My best advice is buy a few at Home Depot (cheap $4 to $6) and only use them for the lights you leave on a lot (in my house that's the kitchen and living room (giant room actually) where my computers are.
If you sell your car and buy a new one, isn't the balance of energy consumption MORE than it was before you bought the car, no matter how efficient the new car is, because someone else is driving the old one around?
I didn't say to go out and sell your car. I said the next time you are buying a car. You should really be using a car for 10 years, but I'm not trying to change your buying behaviour, just what you buy when you do buy. If you buy used cars, buy a better mpg more fuel efficient used car next time - one that is 5 mpg better than the last one. Don't accelerate your purchase schedule - don't start buying used if you buy new or vice versa. Just - when you buy - get a slightly better car, SUV, or truck in terms of mpg. Or kpl (km/l) if you don't live in the US.
I agree with your ideas and actually like them, but after reading the "Recycling is Garbage" [williams.edu] article, I like to double-check these ideas.
Good point. In Germany they make computers and cars so they can recycle the whole thing, since the manufacturer pays for disposal. This would be better than our current system. But I don't advocate forcing change on people - I am advocating taking positive proactive action today and not waiting for the "future" when they finally release fuel cell cars in the US, even though they have released them already in Japan.
Practical experience is use the tech you have now to get real change now. Not be idealistic to the point of blindness. If I had put off buying two dual-processor Linux high-grade servers for 12 months, I could have used the money to buy two blade computers with 10 times the power and easier to use. But if I need the servers today, that was a good choice.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
If you want to affect al-Qaeda, realize that more than 90 percent of their money supply comes from people with oil dollars. And less than 2 percent from drugs.
Attack the supply line and let the military apply the appropriate tech. One of the reasons we're doing so well is we use cheaper faster better tech like JDAM/JATO bombs that cost a couple of thousand instead of millions for drones and missiles, but throw in a couple of drones and forward observers to increase the accuracy.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Go back to your cave you rotten burger eater.
The unpopular expansion of the H1-B program has caused massive dislocation in the tech industry with little popular debate.
Over 80% of the American public opposed expansion of the H1-B program. Still, the program was expanded last year, in the middle of a tech recession. White House sources available to this correspondent indicate that there is starting to be considerable dissent among personnel in the Bush administration on whether the expansion of the H1-B program should be continued. Bush has been a strong supporter of the H1-B program(McCain and Gore also supported the H1-B program- Leiberman was unusual in that he was one of four senators that abstained from or opposed the major Senate vote around H1-B expansion).
Seastead this.
Tech boom, huh? Tell that to the unemployment office. Better yet, don't.. :P
["Marge, I agree with you - in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory." - Homer]
The source of the H-1B text given was here.
Seastead this.
I'm a senior graduating from college trying to get into grad school or find a job. At my school's job fair their were *two* tech companies that took my resume and they both said "We have a freeze for the rest of the year, but when its over we'll check out your resume."
:)
If their is a tech boom, it would have to relate to the fact they companies spent the last 6 months *not* hiring.
Speaking of which if anyone is looking for a bright, talented musician/programmer e-mail me
Rob
RobPiano@hotmail.com
Because in the post 9/11 world, we're all potential terrorists and thieves, and the gov't has to protect it's corporate cash cows.
:)
Shouldn't "cash" equal "sacred"
Why do people put 9/11? That only makes sense
with a year prepended 2001-09-11 otherwise it's
assumed to be 9th of 11 (November)
I'll tell you who has hit it big from 9/11:
The Flag Lady. Who is she you ask? Well, here in a small town in Ohio there is a woman who has run a small flag shop in the small downtown area. The first day she got nearly 11,000 orders for flags.
No kidding. She had to hire 150 employees, and she ended up renting a warehouse. There was a picture of her in the newspaper, and whereas before she had a little flag shop with a small dollar store cash register, she now had a giant warehouse complete with inventory control systems, production lines, etc.
She was standing next to a few servers, they looked like S/390's, explaining to the newspaper how she managed customer orders.
I assume she has scaled back now. However, before she used to be a very small, yet respected business owner in the community. Now she owns a huge house on the hill and has bought several franchises in town, and is running for a seat on City Council.
The moral of this story? Go into the flag business!
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Shouldn't "cash" equal "sacred" :)
:)
Aye, the corporations are the ones lined up waiting to be culled
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
Aye, the corporations are the ones lined up waiting to be culled :)
:) Bloody tuesdays...
I meant aren't the ones... sheesh
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
Bwahahahaha!! Damn, Katz, you've always been full of shit (particularly in your movie reviews) but this has got to be one of the most idiotic comments I've ever seen. I guess maybe it's "alive and well" in that there are still people living here, but that's about all you can say about it.
This place is "alive and well" only if you're looking at the healthcare industry here (hint: looking at healthcare won't tell you a thing, because the demand for healthcare services is largely independent of the economy).
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I think we may see a revival of the tech industry pretty soon anyway.
There are three reasons for this:
First, the Internet is in desperate need of updating. Our current IPv4-based networks can only be described as the equivalent of chewing gum and bailing wire on an old biplane--the use of routers and other techniques to extend the use of IPv4 can only take us so far.
Once the switch to IPv6 begins in earnest, there is going to be a massive need for IPv6 compatible networking equipment.
Secondly, our cellular telephone systems will soon begin the transition to 3G phones later this decade. Again, there will be a major need for cellular system upgrades to take advantage of 3G cellular technology.
Finally, the FCC mandate for digital TV means we will have to start improving both cable TV and DBS systems later this decade.
In short, hardware manufacturers are going to enjoy a major revival by 2005 as the changes I mention start getting implemented.
Folks,
I read with interest Jon Katz's comments.
Contrary to what a lot of people think, there will be another boom coming to Silicon Valley fairly soon.
This new boom will not be the excesses of the dot-com era of the late 1990's, but based on real needs and government mandates.
First, the Internet will need to fairly soon advance beyond our current IPv4 address system. Sure, modern routers has extended the usefulness of IPv4, but the new IPv6 addressing system can easily accommodate way more devices operating over the Internet. As the switch to IPv6 begins in ernest over the next few years, there will be considerable need to either upgrade current installed network hardware and/or install new network hardware that supports IPv6. It also means we have to upgrade our software to support IPv6 easily for all Windows, Macintosh, Linux, BSD, and commercial Unix users.
Second, all the major cellular companies (AT&T, Cingular, Verizon, Sprint PCS) are preparing to make the technological jump to 3G cellular phones that support far faster data tranmission speeds than today's systems, meaning we can have things like high-quality streaming media over cellphones. Because 3G cellular systems require new hardware, there will be big demand for new telecommunications equipment that support 3G.
Finally, the FCC's mandate of digital TV will mean the need to upgrade our current cable TV, broadcast TV and satellite systems. That means lots of demand for new telecommunications equipment to support digital TV, especially 1080i 16:9 aspect ratio HDTV.
FALKLAND ISLANDS
One could also make the case that the current third party candidates are simply so whacky that they keep themselves down. I don't think the Democrats or Republicans have to do anything when you have a party like the Libertarians promoting their agenda the way it is. Not very many people in their right minds would vote for Libertarians considering what they want to do to the country, but then again I guess its simpler to blame others than to look inward and ask "Why doesn't anyone vote for us or support us"?
All one has to do is go here: http://www.lp.org/issues/ to see their various opinions on various issues.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
yeah, "Today I killed 200 innocent civilians, when I refilled my tank." or "I shot an American combat soldier in the back today when I decided to buy a lower mpg car."
That's what it means.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
No big problem; just tell the buddies at the CIA to look the other way for a while, and surely the ragheads themselves will come up with a good reason why we should punch them hard...
This is exactly true. damn it, I have pasted nearly 100 resumes in the dallas area, and had one bite, and nothing more. This is so frustrating.
Boom? WTF? Someone tell me where it is, and I am there. Certainly not here in TX or AZ, for that matter (I know many in AZ looking for work as well).
You must be referring to the 1000 new marketing employees microsoft has hired to market their new improved more "secure" software.
The only way you'll stop it happening again -- IMHO -- is to stop funding Israel
The surrounding Arab countries will start another Holocaust the instant America withdraws support for Israel. Every bit of rhetoric coming out of the Arab world is calling for the annihilation of the Israel and the Jews.
Don't think they're serious? Most of us didn't take Islamic terrorists seriously in America, either, before September 11.
Best,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
I think Japan's being a successful capitalist nation has less to do with post-WWII American support than it does with Japanese culture. While the American occupation did help greatly to subsidize Japan's efforts to get back on its feet after the war, Japan's modernization began well before the 1950s. Do some reading on Japanese economics from the Tokugawa era on and you will see that Japan has a strong tradition of capitalism. Furthermore, though its rapid modernization after WWII was more extreme than that of the period following the Meiji Restoration, Japan was no stranger to the international economy and industrialization.
While American economic support post-WWII did do a lot for Japan in terms of helping it rebuild, the concepts of a modernized, capitalist Japan had been there for a while and, in my opinion, had nothing to do with the American occupation. When you make statements like "Why do you think they are far and away the most capitalistic [sic] of the Eastern countries?" I think you should back it up with a little more of an argument. Maybe a definition of "Eastern countries" would make your point more clear as well, because it seems like an ill-informed generalization to me.
Then why can't I get a friggin job?? I've been unemployed since November... I have four years Unix Admin experience, and the recruiters still won't return my calls.
I agree with the ideas that a tech boom will return. Even without the need for increased security, it's just the way our society is currently moving.
But thinking that there's no problem with the unemployment rate being over 7.5 (average) for the Bay Area is ridiculous!!
Who cares if the sector is picking up? This won't *largely* change things in Silicon Valley.
Any upswing due to new security-driven initiatives will be shared by other tech regions.
The projections indicating that the recession is over are way optimistic. Just today the Chron pointed out that the recession 'had' (as if it's past tense) been deeper in California than elsewhere...no kidding!
In fact, as we continmue to go through tech booms-and-busts, the share of the pie that Silicon Valley labor sees as a result will steadily decrease. The region is already in decline, with two exceptions:
1) High end tech skills
2)Investment capital
And these are steadily eroding advantages.
If it isn't, then us geeks will be saved -- saved from jobs we don't like, and handed those we do: those with titles containing the words 'software', 'computing', or 'system' in them.
Let's just hope...
This is called "takin' care of BUSINESS".
Seriously folks, let's realize that capital is now on the wire. There is simply no reason for high-level politicos to consider what effects their decisions have on the long-term well-being of the population that have been entrusted to represent.
btw, this isn't to paint all politicians and business people with a broad brush; however, it's clear that the trend is doing whatever it takes to make one's chums - the one's with the most money and influence - comfortable.
What's new?
Well for one thing the US has been a Big Brother
state for a long time whether we want to accept
it or not, and it is getting worse. Man, it is
almost scary (as a well-abiding citizen) to do
anything these days.
As for the Silicon Valley triving... well,
whoever said that is kidding him/herself. There
is lots of unemployment, I for one have been out
of the market for nearly 3 months, had to leave
my apartment and seek asylum with friends. Yes,
there are lots of positions advertised, most
-it seems, considering my 12 years of experience
in the field- are for "the future".
For one thing I am already considering
working on contract abroad. This already took
most of my savings and the government is
not doing anything to help it (except make
war).
I know that that the /. commmunity is wide (?), but WAKE THE FSCK UP. How many of you can ACTUALLY make your company move to BSD,GPL, ? I CAN, my company has been lurching around for longer that BillyG & his henchmen. Incorperated 1979 ! The point is that we've had to compete with BillyG's latest OS's because 'Joe Six-Pack', also known as the CUSTOMER ! has seens some half-witted BS PR presentation from M$ that say's that all is well, BillyG is the one True God, & 'yea those who worship the false Linux idol shall be as chaff in the wind'. .NET did appear & it had NOT support & ther where NO real-world apps that you could aim for & it was a complete head-fsck for the 100,000+ VB programmers who'd learn't ADO, & JET & those other COMPLETELY FSCKING REDUNDANT technologies. /. you have a brain. If your reading /. & your upset, congratulations ! you give a sh*t. If you find this article & it rasises NO feedback, you are a PHB, please invert your notebook NOW & shake it. .NET, their is NO reason why they will NOT change their API's.
In short BS, I joined my company & they hadn't done ANY major development to the product in 10 YEARS ! . So, we fixed in 12 months all of the BAD things our customers have complained about. BUT ! Lo and
Pop quiz. If your reading
Back on topic, M$ tries to change the rules, with
If they DO & your Mr. Win32 API, meat Mr. Extended Middle Finger. Current VB guys & MFC guys who can't keep up 'are toast' M$ Sales Dept UK 2002. I An't here, you an't seen me !
In further news it was revealed that the US Border Patrol would be, in future, awarded to an outside private contracter. Quoted 'If somebody tries to introduce a nuclear device in the the U.S. we will find them'. Except for planes, boats, cars, whatever. At the white flash, kiss your ass goodbye !!
Land of the guilible, home of FSCKING stupid. So long & thanx for all the fish !
...
What's new?
When they have their boys like Katz preach at us, it is now less one-way than it was when everything was mass media. Yeah, they bought Slashdot and could install Katz to lord it over us. That's new. Furthermore at him and think about the kind of folks who rely on someone like Katz. I think they're getting more desperate.
Seastead this.
Please stop spreading the media lies that Bin-Laden is responsible for 9/11.
It was George W. Bush that set us up the bomb.
He did it for power and profit.
Power- he is making more laws to control YOU
Profit- him and his Oil buddies will get to use Afganistan as there new pipeline.
It's wierd to see how gullible American's are. You trust your leaders so blindly, it's like your president is your GOD...
is not against "terrorism". The real battle is against continued expansion of State power over all of us. Terrorism cannot be stopped short of having each and every person observed and controlled 24x7 OR by working on the roots of terror. Hint, blowing the shit out of people's homes because you can make some weak association between them and some terrorist or another does not address terrorism, it only creates more of it. Cutting back on our freedoms for our "protection" is no protection at all of what is important. I would rather take my chances with terrorists than with a growing abrogation of freedom and rights such as is developing in the US. Replacing high tech advances in a broad range of fields making all of our lives arguably richer with high tech geared to warfare and surveillance is NOT at all a happy story. Especially when many of those tools will be used by the government against its own citizens. Those who work at these things because the same government has wreaked the economy long before 9/11 and they have nothing much else to chose from, are literally selling their rights and freedom for a bit of porridge today. Also, turning Cyberia into a battlefield is the best way for the government and attendant Military Industrial Complex to utterly own and control the very tools and spaces so many of us have dreamed of making a place of great freedom and benefit to all. This is perhaps the saddest part of the story. We need to get our heads out of this endless war mode and get back on track to making a viable future for everyone. And we need to do it NOW.
You would if you knew more about languages.
If you knew a bit more about languages and had worked in a few more then you would understand how it could be considered an idiot language. It has been stated by its inventor that the language was designed to make average programmers reasonably productive and their efforts relatively safe. It succeeds admirably at that but it frankly bores above average and expert designers and programmers to death! Garbage collection and embedded thread support are fine features but the former has been present in other language for more than a few decades and the latter is not enough by itself to justify the limitations and lack of power of the language. Automatic loading and distribution of packages and classes? Not new although arguably more uniformly done than in many other places.
Don't get me wrong, I wholly agree with your entire post; Americans need to be more conscious about conservation, and not just energy. The availible free clean water supply of the world is waning rapidly. We burn and bury trash, yet everyday a new product is released which uses more packaging for "convenience". And supposedly this waste is forcing America to depend on foreign sources of materials?
I beg to differ. I think what is really happening is that someone (Big Oil) thinks we need to use up all of the resources of the other countries, specifically the middle east. If you remove all the oil from the middle east, it ceases to be a problem. If we leave it there, some other country (like China) will get involved. Sure, it's a hotbed of religious fighting, but without billions of $ in oil money, where will they get money for weapons? We are funding their wars, we fund these terrorists. A good parallel example is South America and drugs. Without drug money, Columbia is just another 3rd world jungle. With, it is a giant civil war. We, the drug users of America (and the Drug War, which keeps supplies low, and therefore prices high) fund those terrorists.
So the problem isn't really oil, or drugs, in these cases. It's money, greed, and the need to protect that money with weapons. Guess what, Bush just signed the largest defense spending budget EVER. Greed is a problem in America, as well.
Basically, I think the goal is to get all the money and stuff away from polically (religiously) unstable regions and move it into America/UK/(eu?)other stable regions, and then kill everyone else, or let them go on their merry way killing each other. Sickening, but going from a divided to global economy (then currency, then finally, government [~2020-2030]) is going to require some sacrifices, in the form of human lives.
We are over populated, and the best way to get rid of excess people is to kill them in a war. This is the truth of the matter, and most people cannot accept it. But I say, better them than me.
Cheers.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Stop to think: Maybe Arabs hate us because we pretty much stole a bunch of land from Arabs and gave it to a bunch of rich white people, and now give these white people millions of dollars a year and weapons and a shooting license to kill at will.
Maybe they hate us because they see the arrogant Israelis as the embodiment of America, packaged up into a little fort placed in a Holy Land. They are serious about their religion.
Maybe they hate us because the average Israeli makes $20k+/year whereas the average Gaza Arab has an annual income of more like $600!
Add to this a lot of oil money from other Arabs, and you have a problem. But the problem is not the Arabs, the terrorists. They would not exist without Israel being there; they would not hate us if we hadn't stolen their land and given it to a bunch of rich white people. Israel is the problem. I would be pissed too.
You represent the majority of America; believing the media (which supports Israel, maybe because a lot of media execs/power elite are Jewish? I don't want to get into that, but it's possible [and no I am not anti-Semetic, just anti-Israel]) that these poor Israelis live in fear and this is SOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo unjust. But everyone forgets the other side of the story. These terrorists are not all whackos. They are just tired of being fucking poor.
So, then one of them gets smart enough to realize that America is the cause of Israel, so maybe they should attack the cause of the problem. So they do. And we take offense.
Now before you freak out, I am looking at this from a sociological perspective. Sometimes it is necessary to see the truth. The truth: This is all our fucking fault, and we are finally getting punished for our past mistakes we've gotten away with for so long. But America has a hard time admitting it was wrong (ie: the Drug War), so we just cover it up with more bombs.
Don't go spouting off about military this and that when you don't know the history of the matter, and the economics of the problem. You have every right to your opinion that all Arabs are scum, etc., and we should bomb the hell out of them but understand that we brought this upon ourselves, and while it's no excuse, I hardly think the way to solve this problem is more bombs. Perhaps it is too late, and you are right, more killing is the only solution, killing every last Arab will solve the problem of terrorism, and while we're at it, let's kill some Iraqis and Iranis and, hey, why not, all the Phillipinos too. This will help solve the problem of terrorism. And let's forget the REAL reasons, the TRUTH, because that would mean, shit, CHANGING *OUR* LIVES, AND WE AMERICANS CHANGE FOR *NO ONE* AND *NO THING*. Bah, white trash ethics.
BTW, I bet in 10-20 years, Israel will invade the persian gulf and we will support them. Just a silly prediction.
Cheers
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Have you applied for every job you can find, or just ones that seem "interesting" to you? Shit, we are in a recession, you aren't going to work your "dream job". Sorry folks, sometimes you don't always get what you pay for. Life is a gamble.
You could be doing shit work for a "demeaning" $12/hour instead of watching TV and complaining. It's better than nothing and it's what 90% of America does.
Cry me a fucking river.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
The reason shitty tech firms NEED H1-B's is that all the good AMERCIAN CS/Eng are already working in posh, government contractor jobs with good wages, congjugual visits, and good pensions.
And now that Bush is increasing military spending thru 2040, it's a better place than ever to be. Too bad you'll never get the chance.
In fact, one might call the Personal Computer tech boom of the 90's a result of Bush I and Clinton's military downsizing: Lots of smart AMERICAN CS/Eng get laid off from government contractors, need jobs. As they are among the smartest and most resourceful in the world, they create a new industry based on "personal computers" and the internet, milk it for all it's worth, become management and then hire a bunch of cheap foreign help. Then Bush II starts a war just in time for the bumper crop of green AMERICAN CS/eng grads who got into the biz to capitalize on the Internet boom. Too late, but there's jobs. Go talk to Lockheed or Boeing.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Agreeing with many posters here on the 'importance' of tech in the 'war on terrorism', here are a couple of mirrors of a story that first appeared in The Weekly Standard.
maxwell.af.mil
Geocities
a canned Google search
And while we're at it, have a look at Osama bin Virus.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
Since when is a problem just political? If the Jews in Israel didn't have technology and military capabilities, they'd have been massacred decades ago. In a part of the world where Muslims want to govern themselves under Sharia, it is nothing other than pure racism and xenophobia that speaks of throwing the Jews into the sea instead of letting them govern themselves, on land they have held most sacred for millenia, according to their own democratic and free society.
Without the proper military response to savagery, a lot more innocents will die. Israel appears to recognize more than its neighbors do that land, property, and undignified treatment can be returned or compensated for, but no person can atone for an innocent life that has been taken willfully. And technology is key, whether in avoiding collateral damage, foiling planned attacks, rescuing victims of bombs and earthquakes, or documenting human rights abuses.
In post-WWII Europe, the US and Israel, technology has been used to save lives, and when it has been used militarily, it has been with restraint. It baffles me that to some, Iraq's use of weapons of mass destruction against its own population and invasion of sovereign nations is less relevant today than Israel's targeting combatants who have been slaughtering Jewish civilians for generations, long before the West Bank and Gaza came under Israeli control
Even if I think some of what Israel does is misguided, I can't help but be amazed at how restrained it is being in the face of such existential threats. Here is an Arab population that has never stopped feeding its generations on the same racist propaganda as the Nazis who wiped out over a third of the Jews in the world. And with all their military and technological advantages Jews still have peace demonstrations and political debates rather than bombing them into oblivion? There is hope yet for the human race!
One critical thing missing from any technology is the wisdom to use it.
Fast change is inefficient.
and unsustainable.
and unrealistic.
etc...
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Well, I wasn't kidding.
The Prius gets more mpg per unit payload, because the Insight is a sporty little two-seater and the Prius is a five-seater family sedan.
Fuel cells are a great idea to power the home, and I intend to install one eventually, but they are (using current technology) impractical for my driving needs. Membrane contamination is the major issue, and a lack of infrastructure to deal with failures on the road. Toyota has addressed repair problems nicely with a combination of highly reliable systems, broad distribution of repair facilities, and use of standard parts for the non-hybrid portions of the vehicle.
I saw an Insight the other day with a bumper sticker reading "Driving a Gas Guzzler is Unpatriotic".
--Charlie
firearms. Hmm. That is a truely important invention, but to stay with the toppic:
- light weight materials (aluminium)
- all kinds of glues
These things were invented for lighter airplanes but found theur way in buildings (Jean Prouve, a frensh architect) and the car industrie.
Privacy is terrorism.