You know, there is nothing mutually exclusive about Communism and Democracy. One is an economic distribution system, the other is political power system. Most Communisms thus far were totalitarian regimes, I grant you. Then again, most Capitalisms are really Industrial Oligopolies.
K&S. They moved all of manufacturing to the Phillipines, and then a few years later, all of engineering to someplace in the far east. I have been laid off by then.
Of course I never speak about current employeers. a) They are fun people to work for. b) I'm paranoid and you never know who is reading along.
Well, Microsoft is only ruthless to its competitors. From the sounds of it, Ellison is ruthless to the people who work for him. Microsoft is strategy, Ellison is just plain psycho. Think of the villian in the movies who cuts down his own henchmen with a machine gun to make a point.
Granted all companies generally regard customers as an annoyance. The feeling is mutual.
I can tell you this: as a 28 year old I've been "overqualified" for network admin jobs. Being to "senior" for a position is flattering. Once.
When my present job finally gets around to laying me off, I'm going to end up working for myself as well. To tell you the truth, I'm looking forward to the day.
They are better on paper, but useless in practice. Sure they have a low defect rate. But perfectly coded crap is still crap!
I have heard many horror stories of outsourcing code. Sure they will follow a specification to the letter. But not a character more. I should add that americans write VERY CRAPPY specifications. It's a match made in hell.
That job will probably be playing sax at the local transit station thought. We are in a race to the bottom for wages. Employeers would hire a green fresh from grad school kid over someone who has actually worked in the field in a heartbeat.
I'm 29 and I'm already overqualified for most of network admin jobs I apply for.
My question: the whole offshoring concept is break-even at best when you crank the numbers. Was the motivation less about saving money, and more about depressing domestic wages? Think about what proceeded it: industry picketing government to hand out H1b visas like LSD tabs at a dead concert. Simultaneously: a shift away from experience as a measure of quality to certifications. Simultaneosly: a rapid push for standardization on a single (albeit poorly designed) platform.
All of these took geniune effort and great expense while flying in the face of common sense. Well, unless you look at it through the prism of the paranoid in which it was a concerted effort to commoditize the IT industry.
Of course by then they will all have moved to Bermuda so they won't be our problem anyway.
I say good riddence. They crapped out our streams and rivers. They leveled our forests. They corrupted our political system. Let some third world country take them.
America will always have a ton of programmers with a lot of time on their hands. That makes us very relevant to IT. Especially with Open Source winding it's way into more projects.
You can't extrapolate todays numbers out 10 years. These figures do not take into effect deflation on wages that would occur if these numbers were true. More people chasing fewer jobs drops wages in the US. At the same time wages increase in offshore destinations as the standard of living increases. The labor advantage of offshoring is reduced, if not eliminated.
It also doesn't take into effect the inevitable backlash against companies that practice offshoring. It's not bad now, but once it's known that what would have been our economic recovery is being diverted to some third world country, and you will see protectionist politicians elected in 2 seconds flat.
Another wild card is the tax situation for these companies. At present they are playing a shell game with the present tax system. If the US were to adopt a VAT tax, then these overly long and complicated supply routes with rediculous markups would cease. If we were to tax profits for business performed in the US as opposed to profits for business within the US, the advantages of offshoring diminish. No more companies closing it's US headquarters and opening a new one in Bermuda, and being completely exempt from US taxes.
Of course I'm bitter. I saw none of that cold hard cash. Instead I hit the job market after college after the dotcom bust, to a housing market where $80k is a starting bid on tenement housing, and I clutch my unstable underpaid job to keep food on the table and medical coverage.
Let me tell you, communism doesn't sound like such a bad thing. I don't own my house, the bank does. The bank owned my car until earlier this year. I'm 3 paychecks from being broke. And my brain is still mortgaged to the student loan people.
A better approach would be to simply press the content on DVD and distribute it ala netflicks or local libraries. You could even go the Science journal route and sell subscriptions for home delivery.
One good thing about covering science is that the players are already being paid to do what they do. The sets are all built. All you need is a decent camera man and a good editor. Many projects already HAVE the videos of their experiments. If you want extravigance, hire a voice actor for the narration.
I've noticed a great effort to turn every cable channel into the SAME cable channel. I remeber when MTV was music videos. Now watch it. I haven't in years, but at the time it was Game shows, docudramas, and talk shows. Everything BUT music.
I did used to enjoy the History channel. At least until I started hanging out with historians who showed me that the programs don't differentiate between the crackpots and the respected historians. They go by who looks better on camera. I also started finding I could get better information from my local library or (gasp) the Internet.
Science just isn't sexy, glamorous, or even exciting to the folks who watch TV on a regular basis. TV, and especially cable, are our modern day colleseum. It's the opiate of the masses. If it doesn't bleed, tintilate, or humiliate, it doesn't stay on the air long.
A better forum may be to set up a netflicks like service where you can have DVD's of newsreels and documentaries delivered. An electronic science journal, of sorts. DVD's are cheap to press, they ship well, and you can drop them in the back cover of magazines. Libraries could keep copies. It could preserve information in an easily digested form for posterity.
Except the science is a cooperative effort on the part of humanity to understand the world we live it. It is hard to create a gripping story where transparency and objectivity are the ideal.
Cable's answer: make drama up or find the outlying cases. Example: the Newton/Liebnitz vendetta. That case was not drama, it was a tragic misuse of Newton's office. Where mathmatics and science could have benefitted from the collaboration of 2 geniouses, all we ended up with was duplicated effort and conflicting notational systems.
For the record, the calculis you learned uses Liebnitz's notation.
My wife and I haven't owned a standalone TV set for years. We do have a tuner card in our Gentoo box, but it's for the playstation.
We tried digital cable out at our last apartment. We gave that up fast, it was regular cable with 20 HBO's. We fell back on regular cable. Until I realized there were 3 shows I watched on a regular basis. Everything else was something to keep us busy. I was sick of paying to watch commercials. And it was getting worse every day.
Whenever I do go over someone's house I'm a stickler for muting commercials. Some people find it obnoxious. Screw em'. I'll sit there and count the technical effects in them. Again some people find it obnoxious. I view it as exposing the gratioutous grabbing of your attention. It makes your brain feel busy.
That is a much better way of expressing it. Thank you!
Re:Not necessarily a benefit...
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 1
Remeber, sunlight that is absorbed by the atmosphere is every bit as dim as sunlight that is reflected by it.
Reflected sunlight, no problem. Absorbed sunlight heats up the atmosphere. We may be seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. We may be seeing the beginning of a steep slide into the abyss. It all depends on why exactly the sunlight is not reaching the ground.
The Jury is still out on cryogenic fuels. For all the performance improvement of Liquid hydrogen and oxygen, you make up for it in insulation to prevent icing.
A lot of expendible vehicles are going back Kerosene and Liquid Oxygen, at least for the first stage. In space, well that's another story.
So how is that different from Orville and Wilber Wright then? Sure the technology is different, but playing with small internal combustion engines in 1903 WAS rocket science.
Slashdot Mirror
2 Words: Network Computer.
You know, it just occurred to me, the eventually all the customers may move to India, too. Leaving just the Indians to compete with the Indians.
You know, there is nothing mutually exclusive about Communism and Democracy. One is an economic distribution system, the other is political power system. Most Communisms thus far were totalitarian regimes, I grant you. Then again, most Capitalisms are really Industrial Oligopolies.
Of course I never speak about current employeers. a) They are fun people to work for. b) I'm paranoid and you never know who is reading along.
Granted all companies generally regard customers as an annoyance. The feeling is mutual.
Ack, I have finally found one that is more of an axe murderer than the other's I've worked for. Yippie and pass the pink slips.
When my present job finally gets around to laying me off, I'm going to end up working for myself as well. To tell you the truth, I'm looking forward to the day.
I have heard many horror stories of outsourcing code. Sure they will follow a specification to the letter. But not a character more. I should add that americans write VERY CRAPPY specifications. It's a match made in hell.
I'm 29 and I'm already overqualified for most of network admin jobs I apply for.
All of these took geniune effort and great expense while flying in the face of common sense. Well, unless you look at it through the prism of the paranoid in which it was a concerted effort to commoditize the IT industry.
Of course by then they will all have moved to Bermuda so they won't be our problem anyway.
I say good riddence. They crapped out our streams and rivers. They leveled our forests. They corrupted our political system. Let some third world country take them.
America will always have a ton of programmers with a lot of time on their hands. That makes us very relevant to IT. Especially with Open Source winding it's way into more projects.
You can't extrapolate todays numbers out 10 years. These figures do not take into effect deflation on wages that would occur if these numbers were true. More people chasing fewer jobs drops wages in the US. At the same time wages increase in offshore destinations as the standard of living increases. The labor advantage of offshoring is reduced, if not eliminated.
It also doesn't take into effect the inevitable backlash against companies that practice offshoring. It's not bad now, but once it's known that what would have been our economic recovery is being diverted to some third world country, and you will see protectionist politicians elected in 2 seconds flat.
Another wild card is the tax situation for these companies. At present they are playing a shell game with the present tax system. If the US were to adopt a VAT tax, then these overly long and complicated supply routes with rediculous markups would cease. If we were to tax profits for business performed in the US as opposed to profits for business within the US, the advantages of offshoring diminish. No more companies closing it's US headquarters and opening a new one in Bermuda, and being completely exempt from US taxes.
Let me tell you, communism doesn't sound like such a bad thing. I don't own my house, the bank does. The bank owned my car until earlier this year. I'm 3 paychecks from being broke. And my brain is still mortgaged to the student loan people.
Frankly what would I be giving up?
A better approach would be to simply press the content on DVD and distribute it ala netflicks or local libraries. You could even go the Science journal route and sell subscriptions for home delivery.
One good thing about covering science is that the players are already being paid to do what they do. The sets are all built. All you need is a decent camera man and a good editor. Many projects already HAVE the videos of their experiments. If you want extravigance, hire a voice actor for the narration.
I did used to enjoy the History channel. At least until I started hanging out with historians who showed me that the programs don't differentiate between the crackpots and the respected historians. They go by who looks better on camera. I also started finding I could get better information from my local library or (gasp) the Internet.
Science just isn't sexy, glamorous, or even exciting to the folks who watch TV on a regular basis. TV, and especially cable, are our modern day colleseum. It's the opiate of the masses. If it doesn't bleed, tintilate, or humiliate, it doesn't stay on the air long.
A better forum may be to set up a netflicks like service where you can have DVD's of newsreels and documentaries delivered. An electronic science journal, of sorts. DVD's are cheap to press, they ship well, and you can drop them in the back cover of magazines. Libraries could keep copies. It could preserve information in an easily digested form for posterity.
Cable's answer: make drama up or find the outlying cases. Example: the Newton/Liebnitz vendetta. That case was not drama, it was a tragic misuse of Newton's office. Where mathmatics and science could have benefitted from the collaboration of 2 geniouses, all we ended up with was duplicated effort and conflicting notational systems.
For the record, the calculis you learned uses Liebnitz's notation.
And yet we still need Electric Monks to believe stuff for us.
My wife and I haven't owned a standalone TV set for years. We do have a tuner card in our Gentoo box, but it's for the playstation.
We tried digital cable out at our last apartment. We gave that up fast, it was regular cable with 20 HBO's. We fell back on regular cable. Until I realized there were 3 shows I watched on a regular basis. Everything else was something to keep us busy. I was sick of paying to watch commercials. And it was getting worse every day.
Whenever I do go over someone's house I'm a stickler for muting commercials. Some people find it obnoxious. Screw em'. I'll sit there and count the technical effects in them. Again some people find it obnoxious. I view it as exposing the gratioutous grabbing of your attention. It makes your brain feel busy.
I hate that feeling.
That is a much better way of expressing it. Thank you!
Reflected sunlight, no problem. Absorbed sunlight heats up the atmosphere. We may be seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. We may be seeing the beginning of a steep slide into the abyss. It all depends on why exactly the sunlight is not reaching the ground.
But my X-Prize entry works in the game engine!
A lot of expendible vehicles are going back Kerosene and Liquid Oxygen, at least for the first stage. In space, well that's another story.
Escape velocity has nothing to do with orbital mechanics. That is the point at which you peel away from the Earth and out into space.
So how is that different from Orville and Wilber Wright then? Sure the technology is different, but playing with small internal combustion engines in 1903 WAS rocket science.
kill -9 raven