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How America Can Get Its Tech Mojo Back
jfruhlinger writes "The American tech industry is hobbled by a poor education system, misguided spending priorities, and a byzantine patent system. But America can still come out on top, not least because of its longstanding tradition of individuality and private R&D investment. 'Open, distributed projects have the potential to outperform the traditional closed, controlled research model by reducing costs and duplication of effort, making it easy to collect and analyze masses of data from diverse sources, and allowing the best brains to participate no matter where they live.'"
...That's all fine and dandy, but I'm pretty sure open distributed projects won't help America's poor education system. It's a start, and it might give way to some progress, but collaborative researching doesn't help Billy Bob Joel learn how to advance technology if they don't know shit about it.
Sad, but America is doomed due to lack of concerns nationally about education to have the workforce and ability in industry to produce wonderful things and ideas. Its a lost generation, and only in its own wallow and downfall can it have any chance to come back with the next generation. The generation here today, nearly and close to worthless.
Take it back from the guy who steals action figures^W^Wdisplay statuettes from other people's cubicles. I had my X-Men all arranged with a battle against Mojo, Magneto, and Apocolypse, and Mojo is clearly missing. He doesn't seem to belong with Neo, Emperor Palpatine, and Winnie the Pooh. %*&$ing Clepto, stealing bees' honey.
The education system has been bad for tech for a long time. China is the other side MASS Cheating.
The theory over loaded parts need to go and we need to cut down on filler classes.
Get our tech mojo back? Errmm, what? Last I checked, tech giants like Apple, IBM, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Google, and Facebook --to name a few-- are all American companies staffed mostly with American citizens.
It is thinking such as that exhibited here -- at least judging by how it is
expressed -- which is more the problem than the solution.
Open and Distributed just opened up the project to the whole world. That helps America specifically how?
then people won't be afraid to invent again.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
There is so much that can't be learned in a class room yet for stuff like help desk level 1 they want 4 years or more.
One of the biggest reason - the US is paying price for blind obsession with capitalism.
Money does not count for everything. Some of the cool technologies were group effort, incubated in universities around the country and not by corporates. By branding all altruistic efforts with Communism/socialism, the country has alienated a lot of creative types.
Start by counting Steve Jobs a salesman and not an innovator and that would be a good start.
'Open, distributed projects have the potential to outperform the traditional closed, controlled research model by reducing costs and duplication of effort, making it easy to collect and analyze masses of data from diverse sources, and allowing the best brains to participate no matter where they live.'"
Open and distributed also means 'share this research with everybody outside of the USA'.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The only advantage the US has is liquid capital. Unfortunately it doesn't like spending it in the US, so I say add that to the list of things to fix.
But America can still come out on top, not least because of its longstanding tradition of individuality and private R&D investment
I was kind of hoping that the over the top "Team America" proselytizing would all get done on the Fourth....
FUCK YEAH!
Three Squirrels
"Theory" is very important. The reason why the majority of software developers are crap is that modern degree courses are too vocational, and this leaves students without a sound theoretical basis.
The fact that the US high-school system churns out functional illiterates doesn't help, either.
How does the tradition of individuality and private R&D investment" = open access and sharing? America was built on people being shameless opportunists who found a niche and quickly exploited it. Everyone for themselves, the defining characteristic of "individualist".
1. Stop being xenophobic gits and get back to the melting-pot culture that made this the best fucking country on Earth in the first place.
2. ???
3. Tech!
And why do they want the economy to crash and burn?
Because they're shorting it and stand to make a bundle.
Except the last 20 years say otherwise....Ooops, damned those pesky facts and history, always getting in the way of GOP dreams.
Name ONE serious tech co that has moved it's operations offshore? Call centers don't count.
Three Squirrels
For all the failings of the secondary education system, isn't American higher education still the envy of the world? For example, American schools still dominate Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities and my own anecdotal experience confirms that more foreigners seek affiliation with American schools than vice versa.
I'm sure I'm not the only one tired of the reflexive nationalism. The benefits of science and open-source technology can be shared by everyone, everywhere, and the more wide these things are shared, the more they grow.
Sure, I'd like to see better technical education in the US, and an environment more friendly to innovation, but I'd like to see that everywhere.
Absolutely. I always thought, that both of them are actually GOP agents.
We need the OPTION of "pure technology" programs with no filler and no other goals than giving the student customer as much information and training in the field of their choice.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Both sides suck, and are paid off by the same corporate interests, maybe with slightly different flavorings on each end. Partisan support is the most stupid, destructive, and completely asinine mindset you can possibly have at this point in time.
Please, give us some links to your "facts." I'd love to see them. Seems to me that right now the GOP is trying to cut back spending, while the Dems want to double our debt.
For one, if results can't be duplicated, they're questionable.
Then there's the "accidental discoveries" when people are pursuing the same goal, using mostly the same methods ...
Having one official project is so "Soviet Russia". Like having one OS, one browser, one type of car, one political party, one employer ...
I only built a background picture of this from whichever US universities uploaded video lectures to Youtube. You guys have {lectures, tutorials, labs, recitations, exam preps, exams}. It'd seem that they are aware you're paying for a product and they give you an in-depth package. Over here in the UK, it's {lectures, tutorials, labs, exams}. Very often tutorials and labs are badly run and rushed. There's no accountability for the teaching staff. Even if you pay top fees, you feel that they are happy to teach sloppy sub-standard material and don't care much about important follow-ups like tutorials. For me, I felt it was a waste of money to learn computer science or electronic engineering in the UK. When asked about pure virtual functions, downsides of inheritance or static vs class initialisation in my first Interview, I felt really lost almost like I lied that I knew C++. I didn't even bother with engineering jobs because I felt I didn't learn anything. Overwhelming feeling of being a fraud.
If it's bad in the US, then it's worse in the UK. Welcome to the land of farmers, middle-men & salesmen. There's no development here, just de-skilled consumers.
It's a great plan, when you want any economy holding too many US$ to crash and burn.
Historically the US got oil, sold a lot of weapons systems and traded in raw materials cheaply via the impressive US $.
Many parts of the world are now left holding near empty oil wells, export quality tanks/jets, a few very expensive dams/roads/mines and a pile of US paper to show for all their unique export wealth.
What have the US elite got to lose? They can buy up a crashed world for cents in the new $US.
Want an island, new mine, new dam, the big telco, a country?
The US Government will win, just not in a nice way for your savings account as the old US$ your holding fails.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
and they all have massive portions of their corporate bodies lying outside the jurisdiction of the united states.
Easy. Abolish patent law and copyright law. (PDF here)
Historically, those two concepts have probably been the biggest impediments to the advancement of human civilization.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I wont argue with you on that point aside to say that to some extent they have slightly different corporate masters. They need to make it so that financial support for a candidate is limited to a certain amount, and that only people can contribute. They also need to make it an act of treason to accept any type of kickback.
The "article" is just a rant that goes off on spending priorities.
Software and computers are now low tech - it's not really cutting edge. Computing is a low margin commodity. Sure there will be breakthroughs (optical) but nothing like the 90s.
"Green" tech isn't really tech - it just rehashing stuff from the 70s. Real energy tech is happening with transportable energy; replacements for gasoline and diesel such as fuel cells. Cheap solar cells. Not necessarily high output, but cheap enough to spit them out and put'em on everything.
Biotech is another area. Bacteria that synthesizes chemicals and drugs and hormones and whatever.
When you look at the "fringier" technological research and things that could make huge sums of money, you see plenty of innovation.
tl;dr - If it's being done in China, it's not really high tech. It's low margin commodity tech.
Let's wait until Sarah Pailin becomes president.
http://factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
Have a nice day you AC puss.
...who wants it to?
The article is not part of the solution, it rather illustrates the Problem. And no, the US cannot come out of this if foreign talent stops coming. Not enough US citizens have what it takes.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Ah Kos. The bastion of fringe leftwing non-journalism. Go into debt, then try to spend your way out of it, using other people's money. Let me know how that works okie? Even loan sharks eventually break your bones for failure to pay.
Om, nomnomnom...
I was asking this question just the other day. I mean how can we drag ourselves out of the middle ages get them fancy roads, bridges and toilet paper like China or India?
Buy hey! we aint the only ones suffering why fer instance when I drive past my local university and all those poor Chinese and Indian students who obviously could not afford to go to the awesome schools with all the smart people in China or India... why, it enough to get me all misty thinkin that them poor basterds have to come here to the U.S of A to study engineering and medicin an stuff with us stupidfucks.
But hey! like I told my sister last week... thanks for the sex!
It doesn't seem like we want to get it back. I hear people want things like:
- More pay for less work. Less work is going to lead to progress?
- Green tech. Because regular tech never got anyone anywhere.
- Coding for a cause. Feel good about going through the motions. Produce nothing of any particular value.
- Hacking. I made this cool bot that does XYZ-super-geeky thing. For hacker cred. What does "productivity" mean?
- Envy. I want that thing the other guy has, but I don't want to earn it. Can't we just take it from him?
- Lazyness. "I was going to go to school to design games. But it was hard, so I decided to be a games journalist instead."
It takes people of a certain character to do great work in any field. America increasingly lacks those people -- at least among the native-born American population.
We also have problems with misguided elitism based on credentials, too much risk aversion, a culture that doesn't value achievement, too many licensed "professions", too many lawsuits, too much government regulation, an entitlement mentality, and too many opportunities to exploit societal systems for unearned gains.
Or make representation a lottery system, like jury duty. It'd get true random sampling of the citizenship.
I mean, sure, maybe in the OLD days of Slashdot. But the comments are a lot different now than they were then. We've grown. Evolved! I thought we now all agreed that individuality was a bad thing, and that top-down central planning was the way of the future.
- aj
Until we do something about the unchecked greed and letting our country be run by big business, america will continue it's long slide as an empire on the decline.
But it seems that those with the power to do anything, have no interest in fixing things. So we might be screwed...
captcha: comrade
One party proposes cuts to the other parties programs with absolutely no concessions is hardly admirable, meaningful or politically honest. The dems need to introduce a bill that cuts even more but all on the right side of the aisle. Already the republicans won't even discuss closing the loopholes that allowed a certain company to pay 0 taxes on 12 billion dollars. It's such a sham now.
OR, make the representative size so large as to make it financially too costly to try to bribe them all. Limit terms, increase the size of senate 20 fold, increase the size of the house of representative 100 fold.
and got an Indonesian in it for president!
1.) Pay American workers as much as the Chinese
2.) Arrest anyone who protests
3.) Price fix
4.) Think Differently!
We need the OPTION of "pure technology" programs with no filler and no other goals than giving the student customer as much information and training in the field of their choice.
We have that, see trade schools, even community colleges to a degree. Expand these areas, but do not lower the bar on the university system. The point of the university is to produce a more well rounded person who also has those technical skills(*). Believe it or not, some geeks will need to be able to effectively communicate with people in business, the humanities, medicine, science, etc in order to fulfill the computer needs of these groups. They might even need to lead a group of people with diverse backgrounds representing those various fields.
(*) Whether universities are accomplishing this goal is a different conversation.
Oh right...because if the GOP had been in control and cut corporate taxes during that 8 year span, everything would have been just as hunky dory. Is that what you trying to say?
The US through the mouthpiece of Hilary Clinton has declared that Al-Qaeda is past its peak. This may be true but I've also learned that when someone attacks someone else they're usually talking about themselves in some way.
The new dot com bubble is just the same old wheeze of trying to talk up the US economy on the back of stupid foreigners money. Like an unreformed drunk the US hasn't learned.
Bullying by US corporations and wars abroad, and trying to ram own laws and social attitudes down everyone's neck didn't put the US in my good books and the latest talk of invading Europeans data privacy is the last straw.
I'm not going to bomb or threaten the US in any way but I can call for the rest of the world to grow its own alternatives and ignore the US. I wish things were different but you did it to yourself. Boo hoo.
'Open, distributed projects have the potential to outperform the traditional closed, controlled research model by reducing costs and duplication of effort, making it easy to collect and analyze masses of data from diverse sources, and allowing the best brains to participate no matter where they live" .... I guess I'm a little unclear on how you're supposed to make boatloads of money through that approach ...
I may disagree with what you say, sir, but I will fight to the death for my right to punch you in the face for saying it.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
With their more subtle attempts at economic sabotage failing, Democrats have moved on to more direct methods like sending the US Government into default.
This will raise interests rates for all sorts of loans, and should drag the economy into a very deep recession, completing the Dem's plan to destroy the economy.
It's a great plan, if you want the American economy to crash and burn.
There, fuck this fuck you.
There, FTFY.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
I may disagree with what you say and really, I'd rather shoot in the face for saying it.
I always liked what Bill Maher said: "The only difference between the Republicans and Democrats is that the Democrats are bought and paid for by as slightly less frightening group of corporate interests.
Full disclosure: I'm a wild-eyed anarchist-communist. You know, the kind that throw bombs and shoot the president. If you believe the last hundred years of US propaganda. And if you do, I'm not interested in what you think.
Because you'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes ;-)
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
Repeat after me...Congress has the power of the purse.
Also repeat this...Republicans gained control in 1994.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
America's golden age was from 1945 to 1972. The manhattan project was successful mostly due to former German scientists fleeing WW2. The space race and subsequent Cold War was won using German rocket (Von Braun) & computer (Von Neumann) technology and subsequent spinoff & followons. Americans are masters of marketing who convince bright foreigners to come to the US to try to make it here. After about 20 years, most end up in the scrapeheap with their American classmates working as a Walmart greeter! Meanwhile, the ad men, marketeers, and lawyers live off the revenue stream for years to come.
I don't buy that that's the problem when you have some corps paying ZERO taxes, and many even receiving money from the government despite pulling in record profits.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
That is, you want interchangeable cogs as employees, hire them for their knowledge of current skills then fire them when the project is over since they know nothing else because their education sucks.
Why do you think so many foreigners come to university in the US? Because you get a great education here. I don't see any of them spending the time and money to come here only to go to DeVry or ITT tech though. And those tech-only schools are what you imply you want.
America is the greatest country in the history of the world. And even though we could be better, ( yes, our education system could be better for the money we spend, our copy write law has been taken over by the radios, then the movies, and the US patent system is somewhat stymied.. ) even as flawed as we are, we are still the best. There are very few countries in the world who's citizens wouldn't like to come here. And even though we wished we were doing better leading the tech industry, we ARE leading the tech industry. This is the best there is. We should position our self improvement pep-talk from the point of view of how we can be even better, and not how much we suck.
- I think I'll go with "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" that most influential sentence written back in 1776 by TJ.
We need to make real things. Imaginary and intangible items don't cut it.
Repeat after me:
The executive branch submits the budget to Congress. This is the Constitutional requirement.
While Congress has the "power of the purse" the ship of state is steered by the President in this case.
--
BMO
It has worked for every other recession.
The only true path to debt reduction is a long term democratic president with republican's in charge of at least one house.
Under that method CLinton was forced to cut spending, but pushed for not lowering income(taxes). The first thing Bush does in Office is Hey the governments got a surplus let's give it away instead of paying off our credit cards. Which did absolutely nothing for us in long term economics'(I was predicting the housing market crash in 2005/6, I was early by 2-3 years. For the 2000's the only thing keeping the country afloat and out of a deep recession was the construction housing market. Everything else was mediocre at best.
Once that stopped it collapsed. It came down harder than i thought it would too. We should have let those banks collapse. Sued the CEO's for mismanagement with the SEC, and we would have been out of it faster. Instead we made a couple of loan payments for them so they could dig out of debt, while burying ourselves even farther.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
QFT:
Laziness
The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer. Also hence, this book. See also impatience and hubris.
Impatience
The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and hubris.
Hubris
Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and impatience.
If the ratio of Representatives to represented is returned to George Washington's 1:40000 ideal, we'd need about 7000 reps.
It'd be tough to continue to bribe half of 7000 people. Returning to state appointment of Senators would probably do more to reduce the hyper-partisianship though. When you don't have to spend half of your time on the job running for election, you can focus on actually doing what your state needs rather than what some party boss thinks the party needs, and there's a whole lot less advertising to pay for.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
..end troll headline.. I propose that IP (ideally both patent and copyright) be taxed. Now as a good republican, this feels revolting, but I think it might help. Owners of IP would state the value of their IP. In order to keep the size of government from swelling like a festering bug bite from all the audits, people should be able to purchase the IP at face value into the public domain. This will keep the owners honest while giving potential non-owner innovators a known cost forward. (wheeda turns on lawyer shield. Shields at maximum!) The original owner will be fully compensated for their contribution to society, or even make a hefty profit depending on their stated value, while the rest of the community is able to further leverage the idea. I believe this approach will make being a patent troll very expensive, while busting up the tie that bind innovation. Further more, in this climate, passing a new tax should be relatively simple. Not simple, just relatively simple.
for cancelling TechTV
When the high tech companies realize that if they keep shipping jobs overseas, or rather "we'll hire three Indian engineers for every one US based engineer", kids entering college will nolonger choose CompSci/Engineering. We saw this after the dotcom bubble, millions of students went into computer related fields (web dev even...) because the jobs were there.
Now that the jobs are being sent somewhere else, the competition is too great. Eventually it'll be too late.
If I tell my management I don't want to hire overseas personnel, I have to come up with a 10page dissertation and financial analysis... mainly to explain to them how I don't want to comply with the CEO's messaging around "globalization".
Globalization my ass, we're keeping some kid from Ohio from getting a job.
As I recall, it wasn't a Republican who granted "most favored trading partner" status to China. Republicans have no monopoly on destroying the American economy. They may be more efficient than the Democrats, but that hasn't been proven yet. After all, the most liberal state in this nation was the first to go bankrupt, as a result of liberal policies.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
What absolute bullshit. Clinton's budget was DOA. Republicans drove the budgeting process every year.
Those were Republican budgets that lead to the surplus...mostly by not spending every fucking last dime and more.
It the republicans fault, it's the democrats fault.
It's every Americans fault! Including me!
Fine we made mistakes, now what? Polarizing each party so they are debating purely on philosophy won't help. It will make the liberals more liberal and the conservatives more conservative.
The US culture has a trait "rugged individualism" which both helps us and hinders us. Socialism will not work in the US because of it. And because of it we need government control to stop us from going to short sighted.
We need to get away from politics and blaming "the Man" for all the problems and go out and make yourself better. Take a risk start that company you wanted to start, look harder for the job that pays better. Stop worrying about those nutjobs that the news is covering. Focus on your life and then when election time come vote for who you want. After it is over get back to your life.
All this political bickering distracts us from our real lives.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
In the ancient past, whether one was "Anglican" or "Catholic" meant one whole hellova lot... But, MY kids are dual nationalities, bi-lingual, and I bet my grand-kids will have more loyalty to their dot-com address than their passport. The beautiful thing is that we used to worry about Chinese starving and feeling guilty about not finishing food on our plates... and NOW we discuss whether Foxconn or Apple made the Star Trek transmitter device! Melting Pot 2.0 = beachfront property! American mojo is greek mojo on Romans? cOOLio DuDes
Gently reply
1st: It is obvious that you know nothing about corporate taxation outside of the evening news.
2nd: Taxation has nothing to do with technological innovation, education does
3rd: As long as Corporations are considered "persons", they must pay taxes just like every other "person"
But I have to ask: If two inept Presidents like Obama and Clinton favor something that the Republicans pray for on a daily basis, how good of an idea can it possibly be? So there is that...
Nice troll, though.
I say lower the rate and end the subsidies, bailouts, tax loopholes and shelters that make most large-cap business pay practically nothing in effective taxes. See GE a company that includes a lot of 'tech' under its large umbrella, paid no taxes on $12 billion and received a $140 billion bailout. I don't know how any sane person could claim to be a member of either party as both are equally responsible for allowing a system of taxes that favors large business at the expense of small business and individuals.
How about those large banks that took bailout money and instead of loaning it out to lubricate the economy, they bought the very treasury bonds sold to generate the money for the bailout. Effectively collecting interest on a loan made to them.
Large corporations pour money into making you believe that regulations/taxes are bad and hurt them. In reality they know complex regulation favors them. Straight forward regulation does not. So we wind up with regulations that are ineffectual, complicated, only a burden on small business and does nothing to serve the general public. Again see GE. All that complex tax code benefits them greatly. Not really the same for the smaller competitor.
And seriously, how does GE a company with a market cap of $200 billion, need $140 billion to keep the cash flow positive? So no, I strongly disagree that large-cap companies are being chased away from the U.S. They're being coddled. The system has been moving towards protecting large corporations for decades/century. Often under the guise of some kind of liberty or god given rights a corporation should have. God given rights to an entity whose sole purpose is money. Kind of funny. Our congress is full of puppets who often enjoy taking high paying jobs from companies they used to be regulating. How many incumbents should ever be voted for? 1 or 2 in the country maybe.
Let the big companies go. We can fill their void. America created them. America can create their successor. They need to follow the same rules as everybody else or they can go somewhere else. I just don't understand how anyone can think large business are burdened in this country. How is the level of corporate income tax going to affect whether a job is sourced in the U.S. or overseas? There's a case to be made it could affect the capital a company can use to employ people, but no case can be made that those jobs will go to America.
Corporations currently have more cash on hand than any other time. At the same time they (collectively) posted record profits. Where are the jobs that are supposed to flow when a company has more capital? Oh that's right, they're worried about what might happen in the future. When was the future ever set in stone? That's a ridiculous argument.
In conclusion, the idea that the U.S. is chasing away large cap corporations is not just falsified by the benefits they have here, but is absurd when looking at the list of large-cap companies that dot the U.S. economy like no other.
Healthcare sucks, too. Don't forget the prison system and the drug war. Without a good education system, what do you have? Other countries are rapidly catching up. I'm sure no one from Switzerland or Amsterdam wants to come to America.
Yeah, clearly it's entirely the fault of the education system, and not at all that of the parents who do nothing to encourage their children to go beyond the bare minimum for a high school diploma. Yep, it's all the fault of the education system.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This won't be popular, but pervasively myopic project management has destroyed the industry.
In my experience, project managers are interested in the timeline and budget of a project, not the quality and relevance of the product. I can't tell you how many times I've seen important features taken out of a release because they jeopardize "the project," or a project being run through a development cycle, not because it's important, but because nobody has the authority any more to say "no, that's a stupid idea."
I'm not quite sure what "tech mojo" is, but I find myself awake at 3am wondering about a related question...
I'm American born and raised with a PhD in biochemistry and a specialization in bioinformatics. A couple yeasr ago I moved to Asia to find work - and work here is good: the cost of living is low enough that supporting a family isn't the desperate struggle that it was in the USA. But all good things come to and end - and the prospect of trying to find work as a scientist back in the USA that pays enough to support a family leaves me feeling scared and hopeless.
You might say, "Well, there's only room in science for the Einsteins and if you're not an Einstein you should get out of science." And I'm certainly not a superstar but there's no major scandals in my past either (i.e. no criminal record).
But I actually see a lot of routine science work that just needs doing. For, example, the cost of sequencing an entire human genome is around $20K ($15K in China) and falling - so, with even a short hospital stay in the USA costing $10K+, the need for bioinformatics analysis seems real. And I'd even be happy teaching science (e.g. general biology) - if I could find a stable job that paid enough to support a family. Life is what it is - if I can't find a science job in the USA, there's really not much I can do to change that.
So, anyway, the question of whether something will/could be done to increase the number of science and technology jobs in the USA weighs heavily on me - and I don't have an easy answer (unlike many others here on Slashdot, it seems :).
The patent troll issue needs to be addressed immediately, and that can be dealt with quickly unlike education. The stench coming from that court in Texas where the patent trolls play is affecting the entire nation. Surely most of us here on Slashdot are capable of some brilliant tech that could easily be taken away by some obscure and broad patent filed a decade ago, and don't those stories play in the back of our minds when we write code? Start to revive our mojo by starting with real patent reform that works to move the industry forward.
And yet corporate profits are up, corporations have record amounts of cash on hand, economic demand is down, and capcity is idle, inflation is nonexistent, and with interest rates near zero, credit is cheap.
If there wasn't enough money in the economy, then the corporations wouldn't have cash, there would be no excess production capacity, and inflation would be high. None of these are true. Taxes ain't the problem kid. They haven't been for 40(!) years. What is moving production overseas? Labor arbitrage -- the race to the bottom. And no, we don't have to accept this as a nation, and no unions, nor regulations are the cause. Case in point: The world's second largest exporter: Germany.
Sacramento's answer to the tech slump is to apply sales tax to anyone who has an office or invests in a California company.
Next will be screen doors for submarines and solar powered flashlights.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
... and no future!
Oh, really? Here's an interesting chart that shows spending over the years. No matter who is in power, spending goes up. Except maybe for Truman.
Spending by president
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
The Republicans don't want to force a default. What they want is to force the Dems to cut spending to entitlement programs. If they don't raise the debt ceiling, there will be no default. What will happen is that the interest on the debt will be paid first and that will leave less money for entitlements and military spending. No congressional Democrat has the balls to cut military spending. It will be entitlements.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Really? Where's Barack Obama's proposed budget? Is it that one that was defeated 100-0 in the Senate?
Yeah, Facebook might not require any theory, aside from it's ad placement toolkit, but they aren't a good example. Google requires theory, cryptography requires theory, chip design requires theory, all those nice advancements in materials, batteries, etc. require MAJOR theory, etc.
We need more schools that provide the European education model, i.e. most people get in, school costs almost nothing, but they slam your ass with theory until half fail out or quit. You'll have all the time in the world for learning the practical tools once your on the job, but, except for a very few remarkable & lucky people, the glass ceiling above your career is your theoretical knowledge.
Example 1. Any comp. sci. student should've written multiple homework assignments in Haskell, C, C++, Python, and yes Java, but not only Java like so many moronic programs today.
Example 2. Any comp. sci. masters student should've once worked out & proven the correctness of an approximation algorithm for some NP-complete problem and some randomized algorithm.
There aren't too many "filler" classes at the good schools like, MIT, CalTech, Berkeley, VaTech, GaTech, etc. either. And you shouldn't be attending most liberal arts collages for technical degrees.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Keep in mind that when state legislators chose senators, it was usually the dominate party who selected them in state-wide conventions like a state party convention. Once that was selected, the state legislature usually rubber stamped the decision, split according to party lines of course. A third party could have messed that up a bit, but if you know American politics you should realize how seldom that happens.
I could see, however, having state legislators expecting results from "their senator" with even a liaison office for both senators (or separate offices) in the capitol building the their respective states if that happened, being fully staffed when the legislature was in session. Right now senators pretty much don't care or even know what is happening at their state legislature except for what they read from their hometown newspapers.
Huey Long had such an office in the Louisiana capitol building even after he became senator, but then again he also had strong enough control over the state legislature that he even had "veto" power over legislation even after becoming Senator. That is sort of an odd duck in politics though.
Repeat after me...Congress has the power of the purse.
Also repeat this...Republicans gained control in 1994.
I didn't know that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was a Republican? I thought the voters in San Francisco knew better!
What the hell is wrong with you? Are you a caveman or something? This is America for God's sake....the gun shop is on the corner! Using your fists...why do you hate America?
Support American workers...for all your violence needs American firearms! American firearms...fucking their shit up since 1776!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Re: "No matter where they live"
Including India
Table-ized A.I.
Unfortunately the AC posting here may actually be right - the USA has declined the last decades.
But one factor that is mostly ignored when it comes to staying on top in high tech is that you do need to have manufacturing of it too, not just the research. This since a lot of info is fed back from experience, and that a few people stepping up the ladder of competence actually starts at the factory floor and have a lot of experience when it comes to what is feasible or not.
Education systems only go so far, experience is also needed in order to continue the progress. It is possible to simulate some things but not everything. In a simulation you see a lot of stuff, but you may never realize that to do what the simulation show is possible you need an extra elbow or eyes on your fingers.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
So it's America, even if all the participants happen to live in, say, India?
Well rounded individual my ass. I have a job that needs requires a,b, and c and it has nothing to do with your btree algorithms class. I need servers admined and large scale Cobal done. If your computer science material doesnt cover this than perhaps an Indian whose educatiom includes cobol, C++, and mcse coursework will. Tradeschools is not what HR will allow me to hire as they are viewed as inferior. The theoretical crap I could cate less when developing a website or answering phones. I just eant it done and will gladly leave cs grads out in the cold until they have experience because most dont know shit. Do accounting majors learn their field? They dont learn statistics and algorthms only and actually work on real world stuff. What about english? Computer science is very outdated and too theoretical andnot practical? India jad you beat
http://saveie6.com/
A lot of private companies are founded by people who incubated their ideas at a university (the first startup I cofounded began at a University). Corporate innovation and development is *gasp* a group effort; you're rarely going to find single-man corporations doing anything serious in the tech world. Everyday I wake up, I go to work, where I personally consider it my *job* to make this world a better place (I'm an engineer), I pay my taxes, I love my country, and I support my community. The problem isn't with capitalism. The problem isn't even with socialism. The problem is that people are more focused on doing things at a national level instead of at a local level where they can make the biggest difference. People are fanatical about using the federal government to solve all the problems of the world. It's like using a fucking sledge hammer during open heart surgery.
Who gives a shit if we aren't the world's largest economy, or that we might be losing our "tech mojo", or that our standard of living isn't as high as the socialist paradises of Europe, or that every single child doesn't get a free college education. Let people know that this is still the freest country in the world: that people who come here get to keep what they earn, use it as they see fit, and find their own happiness. That's the only thing America needs to be #1 in. Everything else will follow.
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the US has lawyers
now they try via IP law to sue the whole world instead of preferring straight talking scientific and technical guys over blabla lawyers and politicians.
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read recently deceased Robert Peas column "Peas' porridge" and you will realize this.
( He was more or less THE analog chip designer )
Hint 1: You are the one in control. Hint 2: You are the epitome of the problem. Instead of complaining about the problem and ignoring it by avoiding it why don't you try to help solve it?
Telekon says: "Because you'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes ;-)"
No, no, no! That would be the marketing division of Apple/M$oft/Google/...sorry, I mean the Sirius Cybernetics corp.!
What a crock of shit. Dropping psychology/history/bs requirements does not a tradeschool make. And community colleges, for an AS degree, largely follow the requirements of the first 2 years of most 4 years schools.
Big business and political internationalists wanted to bring down the barriers between countries and that is what they have done. The inevitable consequence of this is that skills, knowledge, work, pay, and profits are flooding out of the countries where these things were in abundance into the countries where they were in short supply. In the not too distant future the flow will subside and you will find that either those things are equally distributed around the world or, less likely, while there is still time to stop it, some countries might rebuild the barriers in order to retain the little advantage they have left.
America is on the slippery slope and there is no turning back
STFU, Joe, you're hardly the one to talk about education: You're practically illiterate.
We are freeee....fallin'.Corruption,incompetence, these are the real problems
All the money is in rent seeking. America is now a nation of rent seekers where the parasites are the ones making the money, not the producers.
That is, attempting to make money off of the work of others. Patents, lawyers, bankers, stock traders etc.
Why would anyone become a productive scientist or engineer when they can become a rent seeking banker or lawyer? Your society is corrupt.
Deleted
- I think I'll go with "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" that most influential sentence written back in 1776 by TJ.
"Pursuit of happiness" is the most dangerous, destructive idea in the history of mankind.
Happiness is a rare feeling that is produced as a response to extraordinary positive experiences. It is not an everyday, normal occurrence. It is definitely not supposed to be "pursued". A person who believes that he can somehow capture "happiness" and be permanently happy as a result of it, will lead miserable life, and will cause trouble, destruction and death to others whom he will see as an obstacle on his path to the permanently ecstatic existence that he believes to be a norm. Or, alternatively, he will achieve his dumbass goal by constantly increasing dosage of drugs -- what would be less damaging to himself and others than actual "pursuit".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The biggest problem with the US Public Education System is that it is run by the National Education Association.
And that is the reason why throwing even more money at it, as the educators continually caterwaul for, will not fix it.
Do you really believe that Chinese top government officials are "straight talking scientific and technical guys"?
Gosh, you're stupid.
Perhaps we could take you more seriously if you could spell. . .
Strategic plans can never respond to Tactical operation. You can take a horse to water, but you can't make the horse drink. However it is said, there are planners/managers and doers/worker. However it is said, managers without hands-on germane experience are typical failures, and workers without hands-on experience and practical plan will fail. IOW: Only Generals are battle/war losers, Warriors will never lose the battle/war. When battles/wars are won the Generals get the credit, and Warriors get to go home (this is a fair deal).
Any endeavor must have mutual respect, at all levels, for real hands-on experience/skills to assure success.
Advances in technology require robotics in manufacturing and business processes automation in offices. How many jobs and benefits are created/lost is planned. The present robber-baron economic model is one-step beyond the dark-age feudal economic model. The robber-baron republic economic model does provide far greater distribution and creation of wealth not possible in a feudal system. Now is the time to step forward again with greater distribution and creation of wealth that is far more egalitarian. A meritocracy democracy enfranchising all people with equal power and protection, can only be assured by good governance. A meritocracy democracy would require a public education system that is the best in the world, private-fund institutions could be equal, but never better.
Any politician that advances a new meritocracy anti-entitled economic model has my vote. I suspect, very few or no politicians (globally) would support a meritocracy with separate-but-equal everything works perfectly for the entitled few.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
His spelling and grammar are terrible, but his point (I think what his point is, anyway) is correct, imo and right in line with what I frequently whine about. I can really only speak for the CS/programming and networking/IT stuff, but in those cases, what employers really need and what the four year colleges and universities provide and employers think they need is different.
Four year schools provide a "well rounded" individual who was forced to take a bunch of filler classes that have little to no impact on their ability to write code. Employers want someone with that four year (or more) degree, but they want to treat it like trade school or an applied associate of the arts/science degree from a two year school - something that trains you to write code and that nearly anyone should have the time and money to get.
And honestly, my personal experience suggests that 90% of the people who come out of either two or four year programs able to design an application or write code that works and isn't completely retarded or configure servers or plan a network were going to be able to based on self study and possibly some mentoring from a more senior developer or admin where they work.
Additionally, most dev teams for your average business software seem to need one or two guys that can design an overall sane architecture, one or two guys who really understand what is going on and can troubleshoot the code well and optimize problem areas, and a few guys who can write average, useable, readable, not-terrible but not necessarily super amazing code based on basic design docs/interfaces they were given.
While, of course, there are some fine and innovative open source projects (not sure which ones) there are many lists describing the "most successful" FOSS projects which appear to feature open source projects that are not really all that innovative nor are they avoiding the duplication of efforts. Indeed, they appear to be open source clones, in some cases blatantly reverse engineered or at least highly inspired by existing software, e.g., Photoshop -> Gimp or MS Office -> Open Office
How is this ANY different from say people producing knockoff Ferraris. Typically Ferrari will try to sue companies attempting this kind of flattery.
How come that in the car, and in fact most industries, this is considered a crime and not innovation?
Actually it hasn't worked in every other recession. Rather because most of the western world uses Keynesian economics for it's foundation, one of it's main requirements is to throw money to the wind to try 'spending itself out'. Rather than working on the fundamental understanding that boom and busts are cyclical action based on how it all works.
Correlation != Causation. Even less so in this case. Feel free to take a look at oh any number of plotted graphs of the current or previous downturns. Oddly the only time where it has worked, or seemed to was during Regan's tenure, and that was because Carter had dug a hole so deep, the only place to go was up. Which is what it will be like in 2012/13.
Om, nomnomnom...
Yep. In other news - spoons make people fat :)
No amount of education will help if nothing gets done because we are drowning in paper.
No money = No mojo. Simple.
What a crock of shit. Dropping psychology/history/bs requirements does not a tradeschool make. And community colleges, for an AS degree, largely follow the requirements of the first 2 years of most 4 years schools.
I can't speak for your state but in California community colleges do not merely offer 2 year degrees. They also offer many vocationally oriented tracks. While the 2 year degree and transfer to a 4 year tracks include general ed, the vocational tracks do not. For example my local community college offers:
Aviation Maintenance
Emergency Medical
and other non-computer vocational tracks, and on the computer side:
Digital Media Arts and Design
Computer and Technology
Computer Information Systems
Computer Science
Perhaps the web development and server administration needs of the GP would be better served in one of the other three non Computer Science tacks.
Oddly enough, people from Switzerland and the Netherlands (Amsterdam is not a nation, you know) DO relocate to the US in order to find the tech jobs that aren't available home. You don't like to spend 6 years at EPFL or ETHZ to sell TV sets at the mall.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
"Pursuit of happiness" is the most dangerous, destructive idea in the history of mankind.
You do understand that "pursuit of happiness" is the 18th century equivalent of "personal empowerment and self-realization", don't you? No, of course you don't, because you're stupid and ignorant and a fecal-masturbatory pedophile loserboy.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
Werer von Braun humbly disagrees.
Who SCREWED Tesla on Wireless Power (Morgan, his backer, couldn't bill it for wireless power transmission - which we are only NOW just BEGINNING to understand, mind you):
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NIKOLA TESLA - Man of the Century:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtVWLRZuoFs
---
So - Let's say that You decide to let your "good stuff' out?
* Well, you had best be an attorney as well as an inventor... see that video documentary above as "proof thereof" of what I speak of here in fact...
(That's what that told me, LONG ago, KEEP YOUR BEST TO YOURSELF & YOURS ONLY (& before that as I read on Nikola Tesla decades ago. He's hidden from the histories largely, & was only posthumously awarded the patent on radio over Marconi - he truly was, the "once in a 100 yrs. mind")).
(Because IF you're not? The precedent for THAT was set a 100 yrs. ago (approximately) on THAT account I noted!)
I mean, the man invented:
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1.) Bladeless Tesla Turbines (which I saw in action during my tenure with former Fortune 500 Goulds Pumps - these things get MORE EFFICIENT the heavier & more mass you push thru them)
2.) Wireless power (Wardenclyffe iirc)
3.) RF Controlled machinery (little remote controlled robot boats he demonstrated)
4.) Radio
5.) Tesla Coils (without which we wouldn't be here speaking/writing, or watching T.V. & FAR MORE)
6.) Alternating Current
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& far more...
And yet, his major enemy/antithesis etc. Thomas Edison spent FORTUNES trying to stomp Alternating Current, had him WIPED FROM THE HISTORIES!
("War of the Currents" where Edison's direct current that needed many repeater stations to jack up the current due to attenuation losses failed vs. the SUPERIOR alternating current system (of which I am drawing on now, in fact, from Niagara Falls N.Y.)).
APK
P.S.=> They wonder WHY U.S. Citizenry with good ideas keep their best to themselves? Again - SEE THAT VIDEO... the reason was shown to us all a century ago or so!
... apk
... his point (I think what his point is, anyway) is correct, imo and right in line with what I frequently whine about. I can really only speak for the CS/programming and networking/IT stuff, but in those cases, what employers really need and what the four year colleges and universities provide and employers think they need is different ...
I think we are all in agreement on that. However the core problem is his HR department, not the universities. If he needs website developers, server administrators and cobol developers then computer science is the ***wrong*** field to be recruiting from. He does not care about algorithms but I do. In various projects I've worked on (desktop productivity apps and games for example) algorithms have sometimes been where things have gone seriously wrong. Consider a modern AAA game, say a MMORG, the folks coding the game require the knowledge(*) of a traditional computer science program, both the practical and the math/theory in topics such a algorithms, networking, databases, etc. They folks doing the website require a very different skill set. The folks building and maintaining the server infrastructure yet another very different skill set. The folks creating the 3D models and arts still another skill set. Each group needs to be recruited from different areas. If a HR department is ignorant enough to think that computer science covers everything related to computers or using computers then the company is screwed, and it is not the university's fault.
(*) On rare occasions a person can be self taught. That said most who believe they are such individuals are mistaken, people often cherry pick the topics that seem of interest or of use and end up with holes in their knowledge and miss connections. Sometimes solutions come from unexpected and unrelated areas.
Four year schools provide a "well rounded" individual who was forced to take a bunch of filler classes that have little to no impact on their ability to write code.
Being able to only code is limiting, possibly even counterproductive. I've coded chemistry applications where I had to communicate effectively with world class research chemists to determine their needs and wants, to make sure our development was heading in the direction they needed. My two quarters of freshman chemistry turned out to be of value with respect to the modeling and visualization aspects. Some advanced math classes turned out to be of value with respect to optimizing the geometry of a molecule (minimizing energy state). And of course the previously maligned math and theory of algorithms turned out to be quite important as well.
And honestly, my personal experience suggests that 90% of the people who come out of either two or four year programs able to design an application or write code that works and isn't completely retarded or configure servers or plan a network were going to be able to based on self study and possibly some mentoring from a more senior developer or admin where they work.
To be honest self study is a given in this field. Especially with respect to things that are transient, that will change or be replaced over time. I find that asking about self study and personal projects is key to the hiring process. A person who has done nothing coding-wise for their own amusement or curiosity is a red flag, possibly a person who got into computers science because someone said it was a good career path, not because the student had an inherent interest in the topic. Perhaps I'm biased but I think the inherent interest is important.
You're confusing profligacy and investment.
The only reason the current stimuli aren't having much effect is that they're buffered by the massive pile of money we're incinerating in the military.
As for the 70s and 80s, Carter inherited that recession in spades (remember Ford's "WIN" buttons?) and all Reagan did was throw money at it (see deficit/gdp graphs). Unfortunately, many of the things he steered that money at have become exactly the things that are wasting it now.
Throwing money at / education: A red herring... “Best and Brightest” BIG Lie
Don't talk throwing money at education, when we disregard the intellect that we do have, and the big lie that we cannot manage OUR OWN COUNTRY anymore, is spread without rebuttal, by the enemies within, and their useful idiot apparatchik, in academia, the media, moribund governmental ‘oversight’, and their master, corrupt and/or myopic BIG Corporate [bottom-line] interests, MASQUERADING as U.S. sovereign entities.
We need to IMMEDIATELY suspend work visas, (and student visas, and lotteries, and...) like H-1b, (B-1, B-2, L-1, etc., etc., etc., etc.) and revoke a large number of green-card.
Nationalism, within reason, is NOT a bad thing! Just another lie meant to intimidate anyone from espousing reason, for fear of being marginalized, demonized, as non-enlightened, non-empty-suit, group-think, certified!
How can anyone have any CREDIBILITY, when discussing returning American jobs, to Americans, while remaining mute, as the over two (2) DECADES long importation of hundreds of thousands per year, foreign nationals to U.S. Offices and worksites, CONTINUES? Not to mention massive outsourcing...
Answer: They cannot.
H-1bs', etc., and all the lies and treasonous lobby that surround the mass importation of workers to the U.S., and the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, is NOT free-market, laissez-fair economics, but rather, a short-sighted, suicidal policy of betrayal.
Then do something about the southern border, and return low to middle-range paying jobs.
--sane in an asylum
The company I work for outsources production to Singapore: * Not due to a lack of technical expertise in Silicon Valley. * Not due to differences in wages and other operating costs. * Not due to a lack of capital equipment (though equipment is exported from California to Singapore for production). The reason is export taxes. Singapore doesn't have them. And since a large fraction of customers are outside of the US, it only makes since to do production outside of the US. Even if Singapore has comparatively less experience and capital -- it won't for long.
In 18th century it meant "...and lamentations of their women".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
like FoxConn, and the other Chinese laptop manufacturers.
alot of these 'american companies' are just brands. and if anything can be transferred easily to any headquarters, anywhere, it is a brand.
for example, hummer. now owned by China.
I wrote that on a cell phone with a crappy screen in a dark room and I am embarrased by the grammar. Normally I put more emphasis on grammar when I can see what I am writting with a responsive screen/phone. Slashdot is very slow to edit on it and preview can screw it up where I can't see what I typed ....
Anyway, I wanted to clear that before I got another user name due to sheer embarasement. My point was that 4 year computer science programs are very traditional compared to other majors that become modern. I understand that less coding was important when a single overloaded mainframe was the only computer students needed and that editing and debugging the program on paper with mathmatics had to be done first. That is still important today, but now the field demands the things I mentioned and not just be used to statisticians and scientists. The coursework is geared to finding ultimate mathmatical purity in data sorting and no one does this outside of Google, IBM, or the IRS.
All other majors change over time, such as accounting becoming its own speciality complete with financial forecasting in Excel.
Employers need things done right away and computer science programs in India teach these very skills in addition to theory. If students can write software as good and administor servers as these top graduates in Russia or India then maybe HR wouldn't be so quick to look overseas.
http://saveie6.com/
You can exploit Indians via caste system.
You can exploit Chinese by abusing human rights.
US Visa system/Outsourcing should have been aligned to Caste system in India and Human Rights in China
I find the USA puts more importance on public infrastructure than it does on education. And the public prefers MacDonalds to family together eating home cooked meals More family time is spent together would make parents aware of education and it's needs.
OK so, education needs a beefing up. But that is not all. There must be a gradual drop in standard of living. You do this by just maintaining the status quo. By so doing, salaries will be frozen, while the salaries offshore continue to rise. At some point, salaries in the USA will become competitive. Not everyone needs two or 3 IPADs around the house, or the 57 inch Wall mounted TV.
No country has exclusivity on creativity or intelligence. Get rid of all the war mongering (Iraq, Afganistan) and move some of that money into education. Reward ideas, fix up the patent laws, which are abusive and ever so costly to American small business. If I was Obama, I would bring the troops home as quickly as possible. Leave them here to fight the drug warlords from Latin America.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
California is pretty far away from have an absence of taxes. Why does everything have to be black and white with some people? Can we just have some taxes as a solution?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire