And as US citizen who has worked and lived in India, let me be the first to Congratulate the Indians!
You guys have a lot of problems to work out, but so does every nation, including the US.
As a tech guy who has seen both sides of the offshoring/H1B,L1 Visa issues, I'll admit that I have very mixed feelings about all of it.
I'm human, looking out for #1, as is everyone else, and I'm a little bitter and fearful for my industry. Sending rockets to the moon
just makes me more afraid since I know it will be harder and harder to make the argument that the Indian tech sector may be cheap, but
it is inferior to our own.
Denying the fact that the US and other industrialized powers lose more of their importance, status, and global hegemony at the expense of other nations'
rises is silly. But I'm personally hoping that India, the world's largest democracy, can take the lead from other rising powers (i.e. China).
Which is all just proof that the DRM that the other game shipped with clearly isn't strong enough.
Or at least, this is how I'm predicting most industry execs would interpret this.
Unfortunately for many on Slashdot, the 'execs' are at least partially correct here. I know that it's heretical to even mention something like this on Slashdot, but the more difficult and bothersome the DRM is, the more likely it is that at least some of us will actually buy the game. The execs know, as do we, that no software will ever be 100% hack-proof, but the execs are smart enough to know that the issue is not black-or-white.
I'll be the first to admit I'm getting older; a few years ago while in college I had so much free time, spending a complete day to find a working version of Call of Duty on the torrents, getting the crack to work, making sure it was virii free, etc. was no big deal. Unfortunately, I do not have so much free time anymore, but instead a lot more disposable income. Sometimes I just want to play the damn game without spending my entire weekend (my only free-time now) reading forums looking for that tidbit of info to get the game working. $50 for a game that I get hours of enjoyment out of is no big deal, considering the cost of so many other things in the 'real world.'
Note to Microsoft/RIAA - this doesn't mean I'll ever buy a legit copy of MS Office or pay $15 for a CD. Openoffice is fine, and the shitty tactics and music of the RIAA have turned me off to your products for life.
going to be the savior some would have you believe; however, from what it looks like, he will actually assign competent people to positions in his cabinet. This, btw, is the complete opposite to
that which George heck of a job, Brownie has done, and probably what McCain would have done.
The president can obviously not be 100% knowledgeable on each and every issue that is to be dealt with. Choosing the right people for the jobs, instead of a crony you owe favors to, is what
makes or breaks a good administration. This is one of the reasons I'm so hopeful after 8 years of morons heading up our highest offices...
Just out of curiosity, what would stop someone from buying legit Chinese (or any other cheaper country) copies of Windows/Office, then reselling them in Europe or the US? I imagine MS has some sort of 'clause' that prohibits it, but how could a court uphold it?
Seems like US and European consumers get shafted time and again with 'global' markets. Our corporate masters have us racing towards the bottom, competing with cheap foreign labor both exported and imported (think H1b visas), yet we little guys don't seem to get many of the benefits of open borders, especially when it comes to IP heavy products like software, movies/music, pharmaceuticals, etc.
though now, I'm willing to bet that bright Americans may be looking to do the same and flee the US for better opportunites in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Anyone with a feel for numbers need only look at the debt being hoisted onto young Americans via Social Security, Medicare, etc. The system is nothing more than a huge pyramid, and the sucker on the bottom (Gen x, y, millenials) will be the ones left to pay. Add on a few trillion more to bail out Wall Street, foreign wars and other adventures, defecits, etc. and the average young worker in the US starts their career out already in the hole for half a million dollars.
One needs only look to other countries (e.g. Chile, Argentina, Russia) that have had this same problem recently, and the conclusion is that those that are bright will see the writing on the wall and look for greener pastures abroad.
The ironic thing is that the typical American loves to spout the mantra about how immigrants left their facist and corrupt homelands in 'Old Europe' in exchange for the freedom and liberty of America. Work hard and you'll do better here was how the story was sold. Of course, when young Americans realize they've been sold out and decide to do the same thing, they'll be labeled terrorists and traitors by the Boomers who need them to support their retirements...
From my experience (having graduated not too long ago from a large state research uni), an undergraduate student's main purpose at a US university is not getting an education, but instead generating revenue for the school, the graduate level researchers, and even the community.
For example, the tuition was raised significantly every year - huge fees were tagged onto each undergrad's bill each year to pay for new construction of buildings that would not be even be used by the undergrads when completed (for example, new admin offices, a law school building, etc). The meal plans and dorm rates were so expensive, that I could not imagine the school *not* making a decent profit on them.
Walking near the hub of campus, one would be inundated with offers for credit cards from financial firms paying for the chance to be on campus. The main quad area would have weekly 'festivals' where multiple companies would set up big ads for whatever it was they were selling. Like the banks, these companies payed big bucks to the administrators for this opportunity.
On Saturdays, I'd sometimes have to go into the Engineering labs to finish up projects, and my walk went directly by the football stadium and all the tailgaters; during the football season, it quickly became apparent just how much money the student athletes brought in for the school. Traffic backed up for miles with alums coming to the campus with credit cards ready to pay big bucks for tickets, overpriced food, parking, t-shirts, and lots of booze. The students were, of course, offered cheap tickets to the game, though I sometimes think the only reason was to get thousands of cute 19 year old college girls into the area for the previously mentioned alums to gawk at. Not just the university, but the whole college town depended on game days for huge percentages of their revenue.
And don't even get me started on some of the other ways undergrads were screwed - the well known text-book scam, required academic 'projects' where students are essentially used as free labor for industry, outrageous interest rates hoisted on naive students. I remember the computer science department started offering graduate level courses online for professionals trying to get their masters/phds through distance learning. If, by the near-start of the semester, one of these online courses did not have enough distance learners signed up, some of these 'graduate level' courses would suddenly be included in the required elective courses for undergrads. Of course, even though I graduated with more than enough credits for an undergrad, I was denied the grad level credits after taking a few of these exact same courses that non-undergrads took and received credit towards their master's degree.
The worst part about it is that the majority of students will finish up after 4-5 years with a worthless liberal arts degree, and $50,000+ dollars of debt that they'll be paying off for the next 20 years. The majority of my friends who are in their late twenties are still working off their school debts...
If what I'm reading is true regarding her stance on Abortion, creationism, etc then I definitely will not be supporting her. OTOH, since when is *not* having 'political experience' such a bad thing?
Do we really need more career politicians who've been in Washington their whole adult lives? Sometimes I think the best possible thing for America to do would be to remove every single member of congress, and fill it with intelligent and educated non-career politicians who'd serve no more than one or two terms total.
I know a few years ago Infosys was actively recruiting recent grads for their 6 month training program near Bangalore in S. India. While the salary was nowhere near 2/3 of what you'd make in the US (even as a fresh grad), it was a very interesting experience, and I actually came out of it with some very good practical Java experience. The most important thing, though, was the few lines on my resume listing my experience in India - considering that many businesses are either heavily staffed with Indian nationals working here in the US and/or managed by PHBs who are more than likely to be interested in workers with 'offshoring' experience, the money lost will be made up in job opportunities when you get back.
BTW, according to a few polls I've seen in magazines lately, Indians, in contrast to the Europeans, still hold Americans in pretty high regard. I've never met more friendly people than in S. India.
Cause the fact of the matter is that whether you specifically keep your job or not is not really the point. Instead, potential IT workers need to realize that wages will be pushed down across the board.
If you love the job, then you've got a choice - do what you like even in a job market that does not compensate you fairly (relative to other industries where your brain will get you far), or get out now and start concentrating on an industry that will not be marganilized as much - think law, finance, etc.
If, on the other hand, you can tolerate programming, but are not necessarily passionate about it, and are more concerned about making good money, having a more prestigious job, less risk - probably less brain intensive than software developing - get the hell out of the industry now! You will be miserable competing with third world wages while doing a pretty tough job.
A few years out of college and I'm learning myself - I worked my ass off in engineering school for five years. The guys that had Fridays off (business school) and did about 5 hours of homework a week are making the same as me. Their most complex assignments use Excel, while mine require far more intelligence, experience, and energy. I'm very confident in the belief that, even though far less people could do what I do compared to the amount that could do what they do, our salaries do not differ due to the offshoring/H1B visa probs.
In the end, you'll just get pissed off doing more work than everyone else, while getting paid the same (or less), having a position that is constantly being threatened by management to be 'outsourced,' and absolutely earning no respect.
There is something about 'tech workers' that does not point to a favorable outcome w/ regard to unionization. For example, could you imagine a bunch of a auto workers not only allowing, but being friendly and welcoming to a bunch of h1-B visa workers from India/China coming into the plant one day. After all, there just aren't enough 'highly skilled' auto workers coming out of the US school system...
Not that I'm any better, as I always try to be the 'friendly American' to the Indian guys I work with daily. I can't blame them personally as they're just trying to get ahead, same as all of us. But collectively, we in the tech field have screwed ourselves...
Last time I remember being in France, they weren't forced to work six-seven days a week when profits were off, the cost of living wasn't 1/5 of what it is here in the US, and the French are far more likely to fight for their employment rights.
In India (or any other over-populated third world country), the powers in charge will just turn off the electricity, stop the food imports, and send out the police if the workers start wondering why they are working in such shit conditions for so little.
I'm an american software developer who actually worked in India (Infy - Bangalore):
1. We can't take our anger out on our fellow Indian programmers. I've travelled pretty extensively, and
I've never met a people more friendly than the Indians I worked with. Every few months some shitty
magazine puts out a list of which countries hate/love America the most - India always comes out high on the love
side! Most of the big offshorers (Infy, Wipro, Tata, etc) have huge majorites owned by our favorite pigmen at the Wall Street
investment banks here in the US.
2. An 'average' software developer in India is not nearly as good as his/her US counterpart. This has nothing to do with
race or intelligence - basically IT is *the* field to choose if you are a bright student in India - thus many smart Indians
go into the field to make good money; in contrast, you won't find too many non-computer geeks with a passion in a decent CS
dep't in the US (at least since the tech boom busted). Most of the 'freshers' in India get decent jobs at the big firms having passed
logic/IQ tests - most have never programmed anything before, and will not even be computer savvy for several years if they make it at all. They
all are very bright and hard working though.
3. Globalization is bullshit, and Americans are on the short edge of the stick. 20 cents for a text message, $200 for my 50 year old allergy drugs, $250K for a 800 square foot apartment within 10 miles of where I work. My cell phone bill was like $7/month versus the $70 here, my allergy drugs in India were about $4 w/o needing a prescription every six months, and I could live pretty damn nicely for 1/5 of what I pay here on the same salary.
When you live in an economy like India, which is very poor, you quickly realize which products you are getting severely screwed on back in the US. Americans will never be able to compete with an Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. worker due to higher cost of living. It is sad to say this, but as a young American I can only hope that the federal gov't continues to devalue the US dollar such that we are finally on an even playing field with regards to foreigners with much lower costs of living.
4.Unfortunately, for various reasons, my choosen field (IT) will be pushed downward much faster than other trades that have much stronger
support groups - e.g. could you image the American Bar Association allowing H1-B visa 'attorneys' from 'Mumbai College of US Law' practice
in any state in the US? While there is absolutely no technical reason for disallowing it, the attorneys protect each other. IT workers are generally spineless when it comes to these sort of things - thus IT has been the easiest field for corporations in the US to offshore (and also bring in foreign workers on visas).
My advice to a young person considering an IT/CS career: Don't unless you are already wealthy. It will be a constant race to the bottom in this industry. Find a different field where there is a much greater barrier to entry for imported visa workers and offshoring - legal, medical, banking and finance, real estate, even more blue collar work like plubming, maintenance. If you are truly smart enough to engineer software, you will be pissed your whole career that some lawyer or doctor has a much less 'brain-intensive' job and makes twice as much as you (while also being socially acceptable, in constrast to you - an easily offshored and replacable cog one mistake away from training your foreign speaking job replacement). Personally, I'm giving the CS career one more year, and if I don't see an improvment (especially now that our Congress can't deny a recession and reason to up the H1-B quota) I'm taking my parent's offer of a loan and heading to law school...
At this stage in the game, I can run Windows and Linux in virtual machines on a Mac. Of course MS could create a virtual layer that provided a win32 API for legacy apps.
However, once that VM on Windows 7 was working well enough for the majority of business users, you can bet it wouldn't be long before something similar was working on *nix (including Macs). They, why even bother upgrading to Windows 7, when you can buy a nice shiny Mac or download for free the latest Ubuntu, knowing that 99% of your apps will work fine?
imagine if both campaigns were spending massive amounts of time and energy to control the other side's Google results
All morals aside, this would be great thing for people like me in the tech business. As someone with a lot of time and money invested in learning high-tech skills, I won't complain when the big-budget political gravy train flows towards the techies - at the expense of other non-tech domains like traditional media (print, tv, etc), phone spammers, big law firms, partisan think-tanks and consultants, etc.
No one was going to be beaten, families raped, or killed for not following orders of the government.
Not beaten, raped, etc. but convicted of Insider Trading.
Nobody else but these insiders know the true story of what went on, but I wouldn't put it past today's current crop of politicians/law enforcers to play extremely dirty in order to get their way.
Re:A big "duh" to the auto industry
on
The SUV Is Dethroned
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· Score: 2, Interesting
They made a ton of profits, built generally good products (my GM truck was about the most reliable thing I've ever owned, considering the rough service life it saw) and ignored R&D for the inevitable price spike in fuel. They're getting exactly what they deserve - years of profit-taking with little investment in innovation, and the market is now crushing them. Market forces at work, folks.
The problem of course is that they are not getting what they deserve. Anyone with a brain could see this coming, but if you are in the executive's position, why would you give a shit? Like you said, for a few years you take huge profits that get almost completely distributed to the upper board members. When the shtf and the company is completely broke because they ignore R&D and their core product, and instead became a financial services company that also sells crappy trucks at huge profits, just fire the workers and default on promised pensions. Standard operating procedure for a US corp the last 30 years.
Completely off topic, but it is just another example of pseudo globalization - basically where the corporation gets to use the rest of the world to suit its motives, while not allowing the consumer the same opportunities. You can be damn sure that Valve has used cheap developers, manufacturing, and other benefits of the third world - all at the expense of Western workers. But when it comes time for the consumer to take advantage of the cheaper products in those same third world countries - forget it, our license forbids that...
What's strange is that there are not far more examples of industries that have been replaced by free or 'open source' versions of a particular solution to a problem. The whole point of progress is to benefit of off innovations of previous generations, such that new generations are able to enjoy the same living conditions as the previous generation while working far far less, or else working the same as the previous generation but with improved living conditions.
Instead, it seems like open source software is the exception instead of the rule. In every other industry, the privileged rulers take what was created by society, then resell it to the new generation - the rulers then enjoy increasing standards of living while everyone else treads water at best, or sinks further down at worst.
At least in the US for the last three decades, the distribution of wealth and amount of work hours an average citizen works would support this idea.
Since when do tobacco smokers cost more (in the long run) regarding health costs?
As a member of Gen Y, who actually understands the incredible amount of liabilities the baby boomers (Gen Debt or Gen ME) has left my generation, I'm not so quick to point the blame to smokers for all life's problems.
In other words, that smoker who has already been taxed extra probably several hundred thousand dollars in their lifetime through BS cigarette taxes (spent to save the children, of course!) will almost certainly die much younger than the same non-smoker. And while paying for those lung cancer costs won't be cheap, it will absolutely be far cheaper than paying everything single one of the health costs for that same person who retires at 63 and uses benefits 'till they die of something else in their early 100's.
A lot of people outside of Taiwan don't really grasp what the whole OEM/ODM industrial ecosystem is about....What it really means is that there are these vast manufacturing plants...actually make the products in massive swaths of like a minimum of ten thousand units
I'm confused. Where are these manufacturing plants that you speak of? I'm looking out the window and only see a couple Starbucks, a few PayDay Loan stores, four banks, and a Walmart.
As much as I loathe Health Insurance Companies in general, I'm certainly not optimistic about the US gov't, the huge spending machine that it has become, managing health care.
In the least though, it's time for the medical and pharma industries to enter the free market. Why does a drug I take cost $5 in Spain, $2 in Europe, and $175 in the United States?
Why can I not see prices for medical visits and lab procedures before paying? What other industry does not list their prices, put out advertisements, and generally have to compete amongst other similar businesses?
I don't care if the US gets Socialized Medicine, but I want to start knowing what the 'true' cost of services are. The AMA needs to be reduced in power, and non-MD's need to be allowed to prescribe the majority of drugs (perhaps everything but scheduled drugs). The pharma patent game needs to end - no more never-ending patents on drugs that are fundamentally exact copies of other drugs, no more mirror imaging the same drug and calling it a novel treatment.
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This is reflected in the rising correlation between the parents income and the child's income.
Or in other words, an aristocracy, or that which the US was founded in opposition to...
And as US citizen who has worked and lived in India, let me be the first to Congratulate the Indians!
You guys have a lot of problems to work out, but so does every nation, including the US.
As a tech guy who has seen both sides of the offshoring/H1B,L1 Visa issues, I'll admit that I have very mixed feelings about all of it. I'm human, looking out for #1, as is everyone else, and I'm a little bitter and fearful for my industry. Sending rockets to the moon just makes me more afraid since I know it will be harder and harder to make the argument that the Indian tech sector may be cheap, but it is inferior to our own.
Denying the fact that the US and other industrialized powers lose more of their importance, status, and global hegemony at the expense of other nations' rises is silly. But I'm personally hoping that India, the world's largest democracy, can take the lead from other rising powers (i.e. China).
Unfortunately for many on Slashdot, the 'execs' are at least partially correct here. I know that it's heretical to even mention something like this on Slashdot, but the more difficult and bothersome the DRM is, the more likely it is that at least some of us will actually buy the game. The execs know, as do we, that no software will ever be 100% hack-proof, but the execs are smart enough to know that the issue is not black-or-white.
I'll be the first to admit I'm getting older; a few years ago while in college I had so much free time, spending a complete day to find a working version of Call of Duty on the torrents, getting the crack to work, making sure it was virii free, etc. was no big deal. Unfortunately, I do not have so much free time anymore, but instead a lot more disposable income. Sometimes I just want to play the damn game without spending my entire weekend (my only free-time now) reading forums looking for that tidbit of info to get the game working. $50 for a game that I get hours of enjoyment out of is no big deal, considering the cost of so many other things in the 'real world.'
Note to Microsoft/RIAA - this doesn't mean I'll ever buy a legit copy of MS Office or pay $15 for a CD. Openoffice is fine, and the shitty tactics and music of the RIAA have turned me off to your products for life.
The president can obviously not be 100% knowledgeable on each and every issue that is to be dealt with. Choosing the right people for the jobs, instead of a crony you owe favors to, is what makes or breaks a good administration. This is one of the reasons I'm so hopeful after 8 years of morons heading up our highest offices...
I haven't used this yet myself, but all of their (SysInternals - not MS) other stuff is great:
Desktops 1.0
Just out of curiosity, what would stop someone from buying legit Chinese (or any other cheaper country) copies of Windows/Office, then reselling them in Europe or the US? I imagine MS has some sort of 'clause' that prohibits it, but how could a court uphold it?
Seems like US and European consumers get shafted time and again with 'global' markets. Our corporate masters have us racing towards the bottom, competing with cheap foreign labor both exported and imported (think H1b visas), yet we little guys don't seem to get many of the benefits of open borders, especially when it comes to IP heavy products like software, movies/music, pharmaceuticals, etc.
though now, I'm willing to bet that bright Americans may be looking to do the same and flee the US for better opportunites in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Anyone with a feel for numbers need only look at the debt being hoisted onto young Americans via Social Security, Medicare, etc. The system is nothing more than a huge pyramid, and the sucker on the bottom (Gen x, y, millenials) will be the ones left to pay. Add on a few trillion more to bail out Wall Street, foreign wars and other adventures, defecits, etc. and the average young worker in the US starts their career out already in the hole for half a million dollars.
One needs only look to other countries (e.g. Chile, Argentina, Russia) that have had this same problem recently, and the conclusion is that those that are bright will see the writing on the wall and look for greener pastures abroad.
The ironic thing is that the typical American loves to spout the mantra about how immigrants left their facist and corrupt homelands in 'Old Europe' in exchange for the freedom and liberty of America. Work hard and you'll do better here was how the story was sold. Of course, when young Americans realize they've been sold out and decide to do the same thing, they'll be labeled terrorists and traitors by the Boomers who need them to support their retirements...
From my experience (having graduated not too long ago from a large state research uni), an undergraduate student's main purpose at a US university is not getting an education, but instead generating revenue for the school, the graduate level researchers, and even the community.
For example, the tuition was raised significantly every year - huge fees were tagged onto each undergrad's bill each year to pay for new construction of buildings that would not be even be used by the undergrads when completed (for example, new admin offices, a law school building, etc). The meal plans and dorm rates were so expensive, that I could not imagine the school *not* making a decent profit on them.
Walking near the hub of campus, one would be inundated with offers for credit cards from financial firms paying for the chance to be on campus. The main quad area would have weekly 'festivals' where multiple companies would set up big ads for whatever it was they were selling. Like the banks, these companies payed big bucks to the administrators for this opportunity.
On Saturdays, I'd sometimes have to go into the Engineering labs to finish up projects, and my walk went directly by the football stadium and all the tailgaters; during the football season, it quickly became apparent just how much money the student athletes brought in for the school. Traffic backed up for miles with alums coming to the campus with credit cards ready to pay big bucks for tickets, overpriced food, parking, t-shirts, and lots of booze. The students were, of course, offered cheap tickets to the game, though I sometimes think the only reason was to get thousands of cute 19 year old college girls into the area for the previously mentioned alums to gawk at. Not just the university, but the whole college town depended on game days for huge percentages of their revenue.
And don't even get me started on some of the other ways undergrads were screwed - the well known text-book scam, required academic 'projects' where students are essentially used as free labor for industry, outrageous interest rates hoisted on naive students. I remember the computer science department started offering graduate level courses online for professionals trying to get their masters/phds through distance learning. If, by the near-start of the semester, one of these online courses did not have enough distance learners signed up, some of these 'graduate level' courses would suddenly be included in the required elective courses for undergrads. Of course, even though I graduated with more than enough credits for an undergrad, I was denied the grad level credits after taking a few of these exact same courses that non-undergrads took and received credit towards their master's degree.
The worst part about it is that the majority of students will finish up after 4-5 years with a worthless liberal arts degree, and $50,000+ dollars of debt that they'll be paying off for the next 20 years. The majority of my friends who are in their late twenties are still working off their school debts...
Do we really need more career politicians who've been in Washington their whole adult lives? Sometimes I think the best possible thing for America to do would be to remove every single member of congress, and fill it with intelligent and educated non-career politicians who'd serve no more than one or two terms total.
BTW, according to a few polls I've seen in magazines lately, Indians, in contrast to the Europeans, still hold Americans in pretty high regard. I've never met more friendly people than in S. India.
Cause the fact of the matter is that whether you specifically keep your job or not is not really the point. Instead, potential IT workers need to realize that wages will be pushed down across the board.
If you love the job, then you've got a choice - do what you like even in a job market that does not compensate you fairly (relative to other industries where your brain will get you far), or get out now and start concentrating on an industry that will not be marganilized as much - think law, finance, etc.
If, on the other hand, you can tolerate programming, but are not necessarily passionate about it, and are more concerned about making good money, having a more prestigious job, less risk - probably less brain intensive than software developing - get the hell out of the industry now! You will be miserable competing with third world wages while doing a pretty tough job.
A few years out of college and I'm learning myself - I worked my ass off in engineering school for five years. The guys that had Fridays off (business school) and did about 5 hours of homework a week are making the same as me. Their most complex assignments use Excel, while mine require far more intelligence, experience, and energy. I'm very confident in the belief that, even though far less people could do what I do compared to the amount that could do what they do, our salaries do not differ due to the offshoring/H1B visa probs.
In the end, you'll just get pissed off doing more work than everyone else, while getting paid the same (or less), having a position that is constantly being threatened by management to be 'outsourced,' and absolutely earning no respect.
Just my .02
Besides, it appears that the government really isn't interested in hiring brighter police offers.
Not that I'm any better, as I always try to be the 'friendly American' to the Indian guys I work with daily. I can't blame them personally as they're just trying to get ahead, same as all of us. But collectively, we in the tech field have screwed ourselves...
Last time I remember being in France, they weren't forced to work six-seven days a week when profits were off, the cost of living wasn't 1/5 of what it is here in the US, and the French are far more likely to fight for their employment rights.
In India (or any other over-populated third world country), the powers in charge will just turn off the electricity, stop the food imports, and send out the police if the workers start wondering why they are working in such shit conditions for so little.
I'm an american software developer who actually worked in India (Infy - Bangalore): 1. We can't take our anger out on our fellow Indian programmers. I've travelled pretty extensively, and I've never met a people more friendly than the Indians I worked with. Every few months some shitty magazine puts out a list of which countries hate/love America the most - India always comes out high on the love side! Most of the big offshorers (Infy, Wipro, Tata, etc) have huge majorites owned by our favorite pigmen at the Wall Street investment banks here in the US. 2. An 'average' software developer in India is not nearly as good as his/her US counterpart. This has nothing to do with race or intelligence - basically IT is *the* field to choose if you are a bright student in India - thus many smart Indians go into the field to make good money; in contrast, you won't find too many non-computer geeks with a passion in a decent CS dep't in the US (at least since the tech boom busted). Most of the 'freshers' in India get decent jobs at the big firms having passed logic/IQ tests - most have never programmed anything before, and will not even be computer savvy for several years if they make it at all. They all are very bright and hard working though. 3. Globalization is bullshit, and Americans are on the short edge of the stick. 20 cents for a text message, $200 for my 50 year old allergy drugs, $250K for a 800 square foot apartment within 10 miles of where I work. My cell phone bill was like $7/month versus the $70 here, my allergy drugs in India were about $4 w/o needing a prescription every six months, and I could live pretty damn nicely for 1/5 of what I pay here on the same salary. When you live in an economy like India, which is very poor, you quickly realize which products you are getting severely screwed on back in the US. Americans will never be able to compete with an Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. worker due to higher cost of living. It is sad to say this, but as a young American I can only hope that the federal gov't continues to devalue the US dollar such that we are finally on an even playing field with regards to foreigners with much lower costs of living. 4.Unfortunately, for various reasons, my choosen field (IT) will be pushed downward much faster than other trades that have much stronger support groups - e.g. could you image the American Bar Association allowing H1-B visa 'attorneys' from 'Mumbai College of US Law' practice in any state in the US? While there is absolutely no technical reason for disallowing it, the attorneys protect each other. IT workers are generally spineless when it comes to these sort of things - thus IT has been the easiest field for corporations in the US to offshore (and also bring in foreign workers on visas). My advice to a young person considering an IT/CS career: Don't unless you are already wealthy. It will be a constant race to the bottom in this industry. Find a different field where there is a much greater barrier to entry for imported visa workers and offshoring - legal, medical, banking and finance, real estate, even more blue collar work like plubming, maintenance. If you are truly smart enough to engineer software, you will be pissed your whole career that some lawyer or doctor has a much less 'brain-intensive' job and makes twice as much as you (while also being socially acceptable, in constrast to you - an easily offshored and replacable cog one mistake away from training your foreign speaking job replacement). Personally, I'm giving the CS career one more year, and if I don't see an improvment (especially now that our Congress can't deny a recession and reason to up the H1-B quota) I'm taking my parent's offer of a loan and heading to law school...
At this stage in the game, I can run Windows and Linux in virtual machines on a Mac. Of course MS could create a virtual layer that provided a win32 API for legacy apps. However, once that VM on Windows 7 was working well enough for the majority of business users, you can bet it wouldn't be long before something similar was working on *nix (including Macs). They, why even bother upgrading to Windows 7, when you can buy a nice shiny Mac or download for free the latest Ubuntu, knowing that 99% of your apps will work fine?
All morals aside, this would be great thing for people like me in the tech business. As someone with a lot of time and money invested in learning high-tech skills, I won't complain when the big-budget political gravy train flows towards the techies - at the expense of other non-tech domains like traditional media (print, tv, etc), phone spammers, big law firms, partisan think-tanks and consultants, etc.
Not beaten, raped, etc. but convicted of Insider Trading. Nobody else but these insiders know the true story of what went on, but I wouldn't put it past today's current crop of politicians/law enforcers to play extremely dirty in order to get their way.
The problem of course is that they are not getting what they deserve. Anyone with a brain could see this coming, but if you are in the executive's position, why would you give a shit? Like you said, for a few years you take huge profits that get almost completely distributed to the upper board members. When the shtf and the company is completely broke because they ignore R&D and their core product, and instead became a financial services company that also sells crappy trucks at huge profits, just fire the workers and default on promised pensions. Standard operating procedure for a US corp the last 30 years.
Completely off topic, but it is just another example of pseudo globalization - basically where the corporation gets to use the rest of the world to suit its motives, while not allowing the consumer the same opportunities. You can be damn sure that Valve has used cheap developers, manufacturing, and other benefits of the third world - all at the expense of Western workers. But when it comes time for the consumer to take advantage of the cheaper products in those same third world countries - forget it, our license forbids that...
Instead, it seems like open source software is the exception instead of the rule. In every other industry, the privileged rulers take what was created by society, then resell it to the new generation - the rulers then enjoy increasing standards of living while everyone else treads water at best, or sinks further down at worst.
At least in the US for the last three decades, the distribution of wealth and amount of work hours an average citizen works would support this idea.
As a member of Gen Y, who actually understands the incredible amount of liabilities the baby boomers (Gen Debt or Gen ME) has left my generation, I'm not so quick to point the blame to smokers for all life's problems.
In other words, that smoker who has already been taxed extra probably several hundred thousand dollars in their lifetime through BS cigarette taxes (spent to save the children, of course!) will almost certainly die much younger than the same non-smoker. And while paying for those lung cancer costs won't be cheap, it will absolutely be far cheaper than paying everything single one of the health costs for that same person who retires at 63 and uses benefits 'till they die of something else in their early 100's.
I'm sure you understand, though.
Sincerely, Joe Six Pack
I'm confused. Where are these manufacturing plants that you speak of? I'm looking out the window and only see a couple Starbucks, a few PayDay Loan stores, four banks, and a Walmart.
Bill from the US
As much as I loathe Health Insurance Companies in general, I'm certainly not optimistic about the US gov't, the huge spending machine that it has become, managing health care. In the least though, it's time for the medical and pharma industries to enter the free market. Why does a drug I take cost $5 in Spain, $2 in Europe, and $175 in the United States? Why can I not see prices for medical visits and lab procedures before paying? What other industry does not list their prices, put out advertisements, and generally have to compete amongst other similar businesses? I don't care if the US gets Socialized Medicine, but I want to start knowing what the 'true' cost of services are. The AMA needs to be reduced in power, and non-MD's need to be allowed to prescribe the majority of drugs (perhaps everything but scheduled drugs). The pharma patent game needs to end - no more never-ending patents on drugs that are fundamentally exact copies of other drugs, no more mirror imaging the same drug and calling it a novel treatment.