On the other hand the government is constrained by various laws that restrict the information they can gather and use. For example in Europe...
Not applicable to America, at least not when the Republicans are running things.
It is just a simple - and now historical - fact that a Republican straight-from-Business-to-President can and will negate every law that exists and every right that an American has with an Executive Order.
...because I would think that any rational government would ponder how nibby Bush, Cheney, & PNAC, LLP turned out to be and give serious consideration to crypto technology that had a fair chance of not having a pipe to a certain black building in Maryland built-in.
I couldn't help but wonder who funded the study, or funds one or more of the study's authors' pet projects: Is it another case of money in, garbage out?
H1-B wages are not the problem. By law, an employer is required to pay H1-B at least as much or more than the US market average for the given position.
But this is America - the only people required to obey the law are American citizens who fall into the category of "employee" or "unemployed".
Because people are stupid and think economics is a zero-sum game. [...] If China is getting richer, it means they have more money to buy things from the US/EU and less competitive labour!
Perhaps a better question, then: How far away from zero does the sum have to get to make it profitable to move those factories that build the things we and the Chinese buy back to America?
Do we have to flip the earnings and cost of living ratio around to the point where America has 1/10th the cost of living and 1/10th the wage rates of China before we can start looking for improvement in America again?
And that runs afoul of the need for absolute control that afflicts many a "vp or cxo". They must know all and control all; they know the data is of critical importance to the corporation - and they also know no one is more competent than they are in any area. You resist, gently, with explanations of the technical complexity and inherent risks, but that serves only to irritate their pride, and they insist that you shall give them the passwords.
So you try to educate them enough to ensure that they are not excessively dangerous, and give them the passwords...at which point they figure out that they can't understand it, and that irritates their pride. Again. So they offshore the systems and your job, content in the knowledge that they do not have to see that irritating person who knew more than they did ever again.
So happy, in fact, that they don't even think about how they now have absolutely no control over how their data is used or modified...let alone over the passwords used to access it.
Judging by national headlines and hot items on the evening news, it isn't the streets of Chicago that need cameras that look for "suspicious activity" - they're needed in the backrooms and bars the elected officials of Chicago and Illinois in general hang out in.
No, it was socialism that got us into this mess. Not the free market. If anything, GWB is culpable for *not* bringing this issue to the public sooner while in office.
That last President had a vested interest in not bringing it to the public's attention - he and the Fed were continuing a policy of using easy credit to drive housing and housing-related jobs so as to conceal the ill-effects of "trickle-down" economics and inequitable free trade (expecting an American worker to compete with somebody whose cost of living is 1/10th or less of that American worker's is simply ludicrous).
The goal is, everybody who wants to own a home has got a shot at doing so. The problem is we have what we call a homeownership gap in America. Three-quarters of Anglos own their homes, and yet less than 50 percent of African Americans and Hispanics own homes. That ownership gap signals that something might be wrong in the land of plenty. And we need to do something about it.
We are here in Washington, D.C. to address problems. So I've set this goal for the country. We want 5.5 million more homeowners by 2010 -- million more minority homeowners by 2010. (Applause.) Five-and-a-half million families by 2010 will own a home. That is our goal. It is a realistic goal. But it's going to mean we're going to have to work hard to achieve the goal, all of us. And by all of us, I mean not only the federal government, but the private sector, as well.
And so I want to, one, encourage you to do everything you can to work in a realistic, smart way to get this done. I repeat, we're here for a reason. And part of the reason is to make this dream extend everywhere.
I'm going to do my part by setting the goal, by reminding people of the goal, by heralding the goal, and by calling people into action, both the federal level, state level, local level, and in the private sector. (Applause.)
And so what are the barriers that we can deal with here in Washington? Well, probably the single barrier to first-time homeownership is high down payments. People take a look at the down payment, they say that's too high, I'm not buying. They may have the desire to buy, but they don't have the wherewithal to handle the down payment. We can deal with that. And so I've asked Congress to fully fund an American Dream down payment fund which will help a low-income family to qualify to buy, to buy.(Applause.)
The President of the United States of America gets what he wants from any government organization - to include quasi-governmental organizations like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
I think part the problem is that in the UK we get no political education whatsoever, kids grow up without a clue as to what left wing and right wing are, what the different flavours of conservatism for example are, what liberalism and libertarian are and where our parties sit in these areas. We're never taught the importance of voting.
Do you mean to tell me that British children are not taught from birth about who they are supposed to despise?
Oh, the horror, the horror...at least we Americans don't make that mistake.
As a matter of fact it does. It even scales based on experience and loyalty to your employer. You start off at a 24:1 scale car, then move up to 18:1, and so on.
24:1 scale? Hmmmm...I obviously should have asked about a train. Telling the little lady that the boss gave me a HO sounds like more fun.
How about, while we're at it, we stop telling the little brats and their brats about how special they all are and instead start sending the message that it takes hard work and dedication to amount to anything in this world? [...] So unless you think a future where he spends his time shining my shoes is a good idea [...]
You left out "and the cooperation of your nation's leaders"; just ask all of the degree-holders who are in line down at the unemployment office.
In a time when people with - vastly - differing costs of living compete directly against each other, making an assumption of being rewarded appropriately for "hard work and dedication" is a mistake.
(By the way: Does your shoe-shining position come with a company car?;^)
And you know that American custom of when you drop a coin and, if it starts rolling across the floor, you stomp on it to stop it? Don't, in Thailand; there is a particular taboo about your feet ever being above the level of someone else's head, and Thai coins have the King's picture on them.
That one made it into State Department brochures back in the early '70s.
I have to add, though, that Thailand has far and away the friendliest people of any Asian country that I've lived in. OTOH, ditto on the prisons, and I, too, would tend to suspect that this action originates from Thailand's military.
Keep in mind those European nations could start getting their gas the same way we in parts of the US do: LNG tankers. It ain't that much more expensive than piping.
True, but building terminal facilities and the requisite connecting pipelines is not cheap, and doing it as a rush job in the middle of winter is obviously out of the question.
Likewise, given that world's LPG/LNG tanker fleet is already fully committed, some rather expensive new ships will have to be built, which does not happen overnight.
But why did you mention Europe? The parent post was talking about Russia and the economic situation there. You may as well have said, "Not quite as tough a spot as those starving Ethiopians!"
Maybe if you went somewhere with it, but you didn't... just left it at "Europe is worse off," which even if true isn't at all on topic.
I had assumed that the situation vis-à-vis Europe, Russia, the Ukraine, and natural gas was relatively common knowledge, even to Americans such as myself. Further information may be obtained by googling; a quick rundown can be found at http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-01-29-voa33.cfm/
Not quite as tough a spot as those European nations who are dependent upon Russia's natural gas, I don't think.
Okay, but what does that have to do with anything being discussed in this thread?
Thank you.
To be criticized for going off-thread when my comment was about and contained an embedded quote drawn from the thread itself is unique in my experience.
After all of these years on the web and the BBS systems before them, I find some value in uniqueness. Not a lot, but some.
As to your last complaint, competent, honest architecture followed by fixed-price development contracts eliminate scope creep.
Although I was making an observation drawn from personal experience and not a "complaint", I will not disagree with you.
Unfortunately for Western programmers, once that proposal has been carefully thought out and put together and submitted, said proposal can then be passed to an offshore development firm, which can knock 20% off the price, aim three times as many programmers at it to fullfill its terms, and still reap a 50% profit.
What's needed is a change in the business model that links payment to a finished, correct product. ISVs working on fixed-price contracts and firmware developers have very low error rates.
The last time I saw that argument made, the final argument ended up being for a cost model based on error-free LOC rather than hourly pay - that is, piecework - although it took a bit of time to get the guy to state it that plainly.
"Programmers" and "software engineers" as gumball machines, as it were.
0x1021 : nop
0x1022 : nop
0x1023 : nop
0x1024 : nop
0x1025 : nop
0x1026 : nop
0x1027 : nop
0x1028 : nop
0x1029 : nop
0x102A : nop
You owe me $10 (binary, if I'm offshore - which those who want to go to a piecework model inevitably prefer).
Of course, the catch 0x16 is that those who want piecework programming also inevitably want the right to to reject - but keep - the final output. When you take that final output around to enough programmers but reject - that is, don't pay for - their "piecework" contribution, you can end up with some mighty fine software. For free.
Strangely, those people who want to pay on "piecework" terms do not - almost without fail - want to pay for their unending contributions to scope creep and the shifting definition of the "final" product, leaving the software engineer doing in-flight missile design as well as new work.
the US Constitution doesn't authorize the Federal government to involve itself in Education, but requires it to provide national defense
I would venture the opinion that our public educational system is part of our defense system, particularly as our defense systems get ever more intricate and technical. Beyond that, our nation has always benefited from having soldiers who were trained to think and solve problems independently - skills which our educational system, no matter its hit-and-miss nature, provides them.
The Army needs a Few Good Educated Men; let the morons run for public office as they always have.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand the government is constrained by various laws that restrict the information they can gather and use. For example in Europe...
Not applicable to America, at least not when the Republicans are running things.
It is just a simple - and now historical - fact that a Republican straight-from-Business-to-President can and will negate every law that exists and every right that an American has with an Executive Order.
...because I would think that any rational government would ponder how nibby Bush, Cheney, & PNAC, LLP turned out to be and give serious consideration to crypto technology that had a fair chance of not having a pipe to a certain black building in Maryland built-in.
I couldn't help but wonder who funded the study, or funds one or more of the study's authors' pet projects: Is it another case of money in, garbage out?
What? You don't think of Joan Rivers when you think of something that is really, really old?
H1-B wages are not the problem. By law, an employer is required to pay H1-B at least as much or more than the US market average for the given position.
But this is America - the only people required to obey the law are American citizens who fall into the category of "employee" or "unemployed".
Obeying that particular law is...ummm...unpopular. See http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189401976/, as just one of many similar sources.
Our culture decided sometime in the 50's-60's that doing well in school was for losers.
I am thinking that Hollywood decided that for us.
But more to the point, R&D and reinvestment developed an inverse relationship to CEO pay and the ROI expectations of "private investor groups" et al.
In short, good old self-centered greed did us in.
Because people are stupid and think economics is a zero-sum game. [...] If China is getting richer, it means they have more money to buy things from the US/EU and less competitive labour!
Perhaps a better question, then: How far away from zero does the sum have to get to make it profitable to move those factories that build the things we and the Chinese buy back to America?
Do we have to flip the earnings and cost of living ratio around to the point where America has 1/10th the cost of living and 1/10th the wage rates of China before we can start looking for improvement in America again?
You are forced to work with them... deal with it.
And that runs afoul of the need for absolute control that afflicts many a "vp or cxo". They must know all and control all; they know the data is of critical importance to the corporation - and they also know no one is more competent than they are in any area. You resist, gently, with explanations of the technical complexity and inherent risks, but that serves only to irritate their pride, and they insist that you shall give them the passwords.
So you try to educate them enough to ensure that they are not excessively dangerous, and give them the passwords...at which point they figure out that they can't understand it, and that irritates their pride. Again. So they offshore the systems and your job, content in the knowledge that they do not have to see that irritating person who knew more than they did ever again.
So happy, in fact, that they don't even think about how they now have absolutely no control over how their data is used or modified...let alone over the passwords used to access it.
Judging by national headlines and hot items on the evening news, it isn't the streets of Chicago that need cameras that look for "suspicious activity" - they're needed in the backrooms and bars the elected officials of Chicago and Illinois in general hang out in.
The really cool thing about this is that the analysis is so sensitive to factors and assumptions that the results can be anything we want them to be.
I see what you mean. Already I am having to factor in the assumption that your analysis is correct.
No, it was socialism that got us into this mess. Not the free market. If anything, GWB is culpable for *not* bringing this issue to the public sooner while in office.
That last President had a vested interest in not bringing it to the public's attention - he and the Fed were continuing a policy of using easy credit to drive housing and housing-related jobs so as to conceal the ill-effects of "trickle-down" economics and inequitable free trade (expecting an American worker to compete with somebody whose cost of living is 1/10th or less of that American worker's is simply ludicrous).
Bush knew what he was doing. In George's own words on June 18th, 2002 (http://www.hud.gov/news/speeches/presremarks.cfm/
The goal is, everybody who wants to own a home has got a shot at doing so. The problem is we have what we call a homeownership gap in America. Three-quarters of Anglos own their homes, and yet less than 50 percent of African Americans and Hispanics own homes. That ownership gap signals that something might be wrong in the land of plenty. And we need to do something about it.
We are here in Washington, D.C. to address problems. So I've set this goal for the country. We want 5.5 million more homeowners by 2010 -- million more minority homeowners by 2010. (Applause.) Five-and-a-half million families by 2010 will own a home. That is our goal. It is a realistic goal. But it's going to mean we're going to have to work hard to achieve the goal, all of us. And by all of us, I mean not only the federal government, but the private sector, as well.
And so I want to, one, encourage you to do everything you can to work in a realistic, smart way to get this done. I repeat, we're here for a reason. And part of the reason is to make this dream extend everywhere.
I'm going to do my part by setting the goal, by reminding people of the goal, by heralding the goal, and by calling people into action, both the federal level, state level, local level, and in the private sector. (Applause.)
And so what are the barriers that we can deal with here in Washington? Well, probably the single barrier to first-time homeownership is high down payments. People take a look at the down payment, they say that's too high, I'm not buying. They may have the desire to buy, but they don't have the wherewithal to handle the down payment. We can deal with that. And so I've asked Congress to fully fund an American Dream down payment fund which will help a low-income family to qualify to buy, to buy.(Applause.)
The President of the United States of America gets what he wants from any government organization - to include quasi-governmental organizations like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
I think part the problem is that in the UK we get no political education whatsoever, kids grow up without a clue as to what left wing and right wing are, what the different flavours of conservatism for example are, what liberalism and libertarian are and where our parties sit in these areas. We're never taught the importance of voting.
Do you mean to tell me that British children are not taught from birth about who they are supposed to despise?
Oh, the horror, the horror...at least we Americans don't make that mistake.
As a matter of fact it does. It even scales based on experience and loyalty to your employer. You start off at a 24:1 scale car, then move up to 18:1, and so on.
24:1 scale? Hmmmm...I obviously should have asked about a train. Telling the little lady that the boss gave me a HO sounds like more fun.
How about, while we're at it, we stop telling the little brats and their brats about how special they all are and instead start sending the message that it takes hard work and dedication to amount to anything in this world? [...] So unless you think a future where he spends his time shining my shoes is a good idea [...]
You left out "and the cooperation of your nation's leaders"; just ask all of the degree-holders who are in line down at the unemployment office.
In a time when people with - vastly - differing costs of living compete directly against each other, making an assumption of being rewarded appropriately for "hard work and dedication" is a mistake.
(By the way: Does your shoe-shining position come with a company car? ;^)
And you know that American custom of when you drop a coin and, if it starts rolling across the floor, you stomp on it to stop it? Don't, in Thailand; there is a particular taboo about your feet ever being above the level of someone else's head, and Thai coins have the King's picture on them.
That one made it into State Department brochures back in the early '70s.
I have to add, though, that Thailand has far and away the friendliest people of any Asian country that I've lived in. OTOH, ditto on the prisons, and I, too, would tend to suspect that this action originates from Thailand's military.
Keep in mind those European nations could start getting their gas the same way we in parts of the US do: LNG tankers. It ain't that much more expensive than piping.
True, but building terminal facilities and the requisite connecting pipelines is not cheap, and doing it as a rush job in the middle of winter is obviously out of the question.
Likewise, given that world's LPG/LNG tanker fleet is already fully committed, some rather expensive new ships will have to be built, which does not happen overnight.
But why did you mention Europe? The parent post was talking about Russia and the economic situation there. You may as well have said, "Not quite as tough a spot as those starving Ethiopians!" Maybe if you went somewhere with it, but you didn't... just left it at "Europe is worse off," which even if true isn't at all on topic.
I had assumed that the situation vis-à-vis Europe, Russia, the Ukraine, and natural gas was relatively common knowledge, even to Americans such as myself. Further information may be obtained by googling; a quick rundown can be found at http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-01-29-voa33.cfm/
Not quite as tough a spot as those European nations who are dependent upon Russia's natural gas, I don't think.
Okay, but what does that have to do with anything being discussed in this thread?
Thank you.
To be criticized for going off-thread when my comment was about and contained an embedded quote drawn from the thread itself is unique in my experience.
After all of these years on the web and the BBS systems before them, I find some value in uniqueness. Not a lot, but some.
As to your last complaint, competent, honest architecture followed by fixed-price development contracts eliminate scope creep.
Although I was making an observation drawn from personal experience and not a "complaint", I will not disagree with you.
Unfortunately for Western programmers, once that proposal has been carefully thought out and put together and submitted, said proposal can then be passed to an offshore development firm, which can knock 20% off the price, aim three times as many programmers at it to fullfill its terms, and still reap a 50% profit.
With the collapse in oil prices and raw materials demand, Putin is in a tough spot.
Not quite as tough a spot as those European nations who are dependent upon Russia's natural gas, I don't think.
What's needed is a change in the business model that links payment to a finished, correct product. ISVs working on fixed-price contracts and firmware developers have very low error rates.
The last time I saw that argument made, the final argument ended up being for a cost model based on error-free LOC rather than hourly pay - that is, piecework - although it took a bit of time to get the guy to state it that plainly.
"Programmers" and "software engineers" as gumball machines, as it were.
You owe me $10 (binary, if I'm offshore - which those who want to go to a piecework model inevitably prefer).
Of course, the catch 0x16 is that those who want piecework programming also inevitably want the right to to reject - but keep - the final output. When you take that final output around to enough programmers but reject - that is, don't pay for - their "piecework" contribution, you can end up with some mighty fine software. For free.
Strangely, those people who want to pay on "piecework" terms do not - almost without fail - want to pay for their unending contributions to scope creep and the shifting definition of the "final" product, leaving the software engineer doing in-flight missile design as well as new work.
Go figure.
'Cuz I think your trip is going to be ruined when St. Peter won't punch your ticket.
What is the point of going to South Carolina for your honeymoon if you can't say, text, sign, and semaphore "fuck"?
the US Constitution doesn't authorize the Federal government to involve itself in Education, but requires it to provide national defense
I would venture the opinion that our public educational system is part of our defense system, particularly as our defense systems get ever more intricate and technical. Beyond that, our nation has always benefited from having soldiers who were trained to think and solve problems independently - skills which our educational system, no matter its hit-and-miss nature, provides them.
The Army needs a Few Good Educated Men; let the morons run for public office as they always have.
They're called "cards", and "ping pong", and "pool", and "Monopoly", and "Wet T-shirt Contests", and...