Although I understand your point, how is my broadcast from my router any different than a CBS, NBC, or FOX broadcast into my house? By this I mean do you feel as though television stations and radio stations are trespassing by sending signals into houses the same way my wifi may bleed into my neighbor's house? In which case I would say they are subject to the reliability or non-reliability of the service if they choose to use it. I mean this in the same sense that I don't go after Fox if they send re-runs of the Simpsons when I wanted to watch the latest episode, etc.
I'm not saying I'd do the same thing, and I agree, it is a funny way to deal with it.
I know there is a tendancy here to deify Linus, and he deserves so much credit, but Linux overall owes a lot to MINIX. I worked with MINIX back around 1989 and Hendricks should be given a lot of credit for helping to get the whole open source movement rolling.
That's not really what's in question with these series of accusations. Linus does not hide the fact that he does have a lot to be thankful about for MINIX in the creation of Linux, which can be seen in Linus' book.
The real question here is if Linus stole AT's code from MINIX, which both the creator of MINIX and an independant auditor both say he didn't.
I once had high hopes for Linux. I felt sure it could make a real contribution to the success of humanity, now more and more I have my doubts. I have a real and growing fear that if the Mr. Smith's of Linux have their way,
I'm having trouble finding any respect for this guy. What he is doing is self-fulfilling the statement that I have quoted above.
Its really just another way of saying, "Well things are going the way I want them to, so I'm gonna quit."
Don't give up, fight for what you believe in until you can't fight anymore because someone else stops you.
I understand that there is a human side of this, I know that there are probably a large number of people that know this guy and are going to say what a nice person he is. I have never met him, and I won't argue that, however I still feel as though his reasons for resigning are all the wrong ones and probably shouldn't make national news.
The whole point behind the licensing used for Linux is that anyone can take and make use of the same tools. Its the same concept that inspired PGP. You have to release something into the open so that everyone can use it. That means that the people that you don't want to use it have the same access to it as the people you do want to use it. The philosophy here is that at least the people that you do want to use it can.
* Company X provides their product domestically at lower prices to stay competitive, thanks to labor savings.
I can find no way to believe this statement. Most of the companies that have talked about outsourcing talk about it for a bottom line improvement. In otherwords they want to lower their cost of doing business so that they realize more profits on the same products that they are already selling. This doesn't mean that they are going to lower the price, this just means that they are going to make more money from the same price that that they are already charging for a service.
The only time a business will lower a price is if the product will not sell for the price that they are selling it for, or if they want to sell it faster than it is currently selling (year end inventory reductions, for example). It simply does not make economic sense to lower a product's price for other reasons and companies do not do it.
Currently companies can more or less continue to keep their prices high on products because the outsourcing trend has not hit the people that spend the most money past the point in which they can spend money (cash + credit).
Next point:
Moral of the story: Outsourcing is a correction of an imbalance in wage prices. It is difficult for those people who are no longer competitive (a difficulty not easily dismissed) but the price advantages lead to better and less expensive products for everyone.
What is going to be the adjustment for the change in the cost of living?
In other words, if I am an engineer, just like my father was, and I start at a higher salary than my father did because as you have pointed out, there is an imbalance in price wages, so the salary gets reduced to what my father was making, then what is the explaination for the fact that my house costs 15 times what my father's house cost in the same neighborhood who's demographics have not changed for the positive? Why is it that the price of my car costs 50 times more than my father's car of the same period in his life.
If I am an engineer and my salary gets adjusted as you claim is necessary, then both my wife and I would have to work to support a life that is not even as good as my father's life was without my mother working.
Even if there is a housing cost "adjustment" immediately, my mortgage payment does not automatically go down, and if the housing market does get "adjusted" downward, as a matter of fact, I cannot even get out of the house that I am in without forclosure because I am very far upside down on the mortgage and would not be able to sell the house to make up for the difference in price.
I thought SCO was pissed off because they said some of their code was in Linux. Why did this turn into an argument about how the open source community is a bunch of communist hippies conflicting with America's founding fathers? What the hell is SCO blathering about?? What happened to their intellectual property argument?
Well what you stated is what SCO would like you to believe. Now it seems like they're trying to cover their rear (il)legally while trying to hawk a software licence that is blatently breaking the GPL. If they can get the courts to believe that the GPL is constitutional, for some reason they think that they are going to just be able to distribute other people's code that they've stolen (like the whole of the linux kernel).
Occationally in the US there is a court case where the family of someone who's been murdered tries to sue the gun company. They never win. The major problem with this concept that the Canadian music industry is trying to pull a fast one is that if the enabling technology is legal then there is no justification to sue them for doing their job.
So, for example, in the US it is legal to make and sell guns. The gun manufacturing companies, although are creating a dangerous tool, are not breaking any laws. If someone buys that gun and shoots someone else, they are violating the law, but there is no reason why the gun manufacturer should be held liable.
If there is any logic in the Canadian supreme court, they will see that the ISP is just the enabling technology. The ISP is doing nothing illegal. They should not be held accountable. Yeah I know that this cannot be used as a precident in a Canadian court, but I think its more of a logical argument, not a setting of a precident.
I also wonder how they think that they're going to collect from foreign ISPs.
My main point is that it is not India's or Tailand's or Hong Kong's problem if your companies choose to send your jobs there. The Indian guy may or may not want to become an American citizen, but his wishes are completely irrelevant in this context, as the jobs are being offered in India. He has the same need to become an American citizen to take a job in India as an American has to become an Indian citizen to take a job in the United States. None.
You have a good point in this reguard.
And if you look at it from his point of view, he is not taking anyone's job. He probably thinks his American counterparts are all being given fancier jobs like the next version of Windows, the next Mars missions or the next smart bomb software and wish he could do that instead of VB COM components to print pretty payroll reports.
I do disagree with you here though. In the few dealings I've had with these outsourcing companies, they know exactly what they are doing. (disclaimer: this could obviously be the exception) I would be suspicous that any one of them that says the things you are saying is just trying to give a policially correct answer to the problem. In other words if they look like total jerks they figure they will not get the job.
In some cases they have been far from tactful here as well. I have seen a case where a company thought about outsourcing certain areas of their business, they dropped back on a few of them becaues they did not want to cut so many employees and the outsourcing company got irate about it -- even before the contract was signed. So in my experience (which I'm definitely not saying is every case) some of the outsourcing companies not only know exactly what they are doing, but are vocally unhappy towards the potential customer when the companies that are giving them business do not cut their tech employees.
IANAL, and did not need one when helping my wife get a green card. I couldn't even begin to imagine why one would need a lawyer for the relatively simple and inexpensive process of obtaining a green card. The process is pretty trivial (if the immigrant has a spouse or relative who is a US citizen, i.e., me in this case -- I assume it's much harder if not).
Good point, now that I think about it, the reason why that person needed a lawyer was due to a situation where they were here on a research visa and would stand the chance of getting deported if they got married while on the visa. This is why they got a lawyer, but another group of my friends initially went to a lawyer and the lawyer told them it would be a waste of their money to hire him (or any lawyer) because of how simple the process was for what they had to do.
All of the H1-B's I knew had lawyers though. For some reason it seemed trickier.
Do have the faintest idea of the difficult it is for any foreigner to get a green card?
Yes. I have 8 very close friends who have all gotten their green card since I've known them. The summary of how they did it was this:
1 of the following:
a sponsor
a spouse who is a citizen
and the following mandatory requirment:
a good lawyer.
There were some points of the process where the US could process their papers at their own will and there was a chance that the papers wouldn't be processed before the visa ran out, but on the average case, a green card was recieved within 3 years (H1-B's run out in 5). In one case the green card was recieved in under a year (spouse). By the way, the percentage of people that I knew with visa vs. the amount of them that got green cards is 100% (8 out of 8).
Nothing prevents the USA from imposing any barriers they want for foreign workers, and they do. If your Congress bought the "IT shortage" speech from the industry leaders, it is your problem, not the rest of the world's.
Read the part about a good lawyer and get back to me. Although you are fundamentally correct, the US law is all beside itself with political correctness. If you have a good lawyer there are usually loop holes that can be found in it. True, you still can be kicked out of the country, but things like that can happen. Sorry if it happened to you.
And by the way, Americans are not flooding elsewhere looking for work, so "no one will hire Americans" is something at least unclear...
Ironic that you say this. I included a bunch of European countries in my last job search. The job descriptions all matched the job description of the job that I have now (which I was hired on during that last job search). I did not get one response to 15+ applications. I may not be in the majority, but I have found it very difficult to find a job over seas, or for that matter, even in Canada. I'm not complaining about it, I just think that you may want think about what you write and make sure that it is not perspective biased.
As far as I know, American companies, led by American managers, controlled by American dhareholders, are relocatting your jobs to places where they can have the same service for less money. Go complain with them. Or with your Congress. The Indian workers do not need nor care to become a citizen of your country. The jobs are being offered in India...
Good point, lets look at this another way though -- these are two articles written in a language commonly spoken in the United States published by a magazine in the United States talking about the state of how the job market is in the United States.
That would imply that the target audience is the United States. One of them in peticular, CIO, which seems to be the focus of this discussion, is an acronym for Cheif Information Officer, a term coined to describe the person in charge of the IT area of a company. I believe that this is one of the groups that you explicitly mention as the correct group to be complaining to.
So by basis of the exact same anaylsis that you did, it seems quite obvious that the target audience for the articles is the parties in the United States who you were referring to -- not the Indians.
If anything it could be seen as a way to disgust the US companies that are outsourcing into not outsourcing because they will see that it helps them in no way beyond their bottom line (yeah like that may happen), or perhaps the target was to scare the legislators into action.
You may also be enlightened by the about CIO.com statement on their site. Incase you don't feel like following the link, here is what it says:
Our primary audience is made up of CIOs in the United States, although we have readers from around the world. Different versions of CIO are now published in nine other countries/geographic areas (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and Japan) with more planned in the coming months.
Funny, the way I read the OpenLetter from SCO, Darl seems to be in favor of OpenSource. Now that he's dumping all of his SCO stock maybe he doesn't care anymore. Or maybe he's realized that there is not case...
Here is quotes from the letter that support my statement:
"This ""Open Source software is healthy and beneficial. It offers long-term benefits to the industry by addressing a new business model in advance of wide-scale adoption by customers."
"My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we ""fought ""to ""cast...""a shadow over the ""Open Source movement ""by ""alleging ""that UNIX System V code"" in fact"" proprietary software code""."
"Linux ""is a ""authorized ""work ""not ""derivative ""of ""the ""UNIX System V code""."
"No one can tolerate ""SCO's ""business model that is ""built only on ""a lawsuit against IBM"". ""Finally, it is clear that the ""SCO Group is ""increasingly alienated from anyone associated ""with ""software ""and ""community."
"I will continue to ""sue... ""everyone ""...as... ""CEO""."
Check the letter, every quoted word is in there in some context or another. I see this as just as valid of an interpretation of his letter as he does Bruce Peren's letter and ESR's statements.
Yes, but the whole set of events could be planned around this as well. It just happened to work in their favor that they predicted the market properly to favor their stock at the times when these press statements would be made.
In regard to open source products, depending upon the facts, open source developers may seek to enforce their legal rights civilly, or, in cases where there has been willful infringement and certain criminal thresholds have been met, criminal prosecution may also be warranted. At this time, we are unaware of any referrals to law enforcement for open source license violations.
Guess he hasn't been keeping up with SCO's new licensing options...
How many of those have voted for these politicians in the past and will be pissed off enough to vote for someone else?
That's the problem with the representative democracy that we have in the US. The US is a large country, it takes a lot to get your name known to the average joe blow who doesn't read anymore than the stuff shoved in his face. Therefore you have to be rich to run for office, or be able to get very good funding. Most of these people get very good funding because even if they are rich they don't want to part with that money just for something like becoming a politician.
Therefore most politicians are funded by rich organizations and will seek to make them happy first instead of the voters because they know that whoever has the most funding will be the best known name and unless something absolutely horrible to the public eye (not the slashdot audience) is known, the average joe blow american is not going to take the time to figure out what this person has or has not done.
It also breaks down to the fact that even if you vote these idiots out, they are just going to be replaced by some other idiot who was probably funded by the same people (seems like a conflict of interest, doesn't it?). I think that there is a serious need of reform as to how people get into public office. I think its sick that we cannot get real leaders in this country because most real leaders that I have met are either not rich or do not have the desire to be involved in politics (for precisely this reason).
I agree with most of what you say, but I don't think that you've gone far enough with it:
There will always be a local demand for Systems Integrators, project managers, etc. as a cultural interface. Besides that, you need to have local presence to properly manage these types of projects
I don't necessarily feel as though this is correct. At the company I'm currently at, the outsourcers are bidding on everything from the project managers down. They're even offering to design the software that needs to be written. In other words, this company, just like Nike, becomes a big marketing firm.
System integrators won't always be necessary because the systems that this software will run on has already been outsourced to another company in another part of the world and the systems that house the software will be integrated by system integrators that are on site for the outsourcer that is controlling the systems.
Granted it will take a long time before any of this happens completely (they are only doing certain parts of the systems for certain aspects of the business), but really what's happening is that the data is becoming a commodity, not just the writing of the programs that process the data.
In my worst case scenario these outsourcing companies will control all of the data that the large corporations (the go with outsourcing) see. The next logical outsourcing will be business/market research. Therefore companies will no longer make their own target nor be able to figure out where to sell it on their own. They will end up being a marketing/holding company that controls all of the money of the process. Sounds like a dangerous place to be to me.
Keep in mind that I think of globalization and outsourcing as two separate things in my mind. Your team is very obviously globalized. I do not have a problem with that, it is necessary to keep doing business. The problem that I have is with the general term of outsourcing -- finding the cheapest bidder and going with them reguardless of quality.
I understand the argument of a cheaper standard of living, etc. But the truth of the matter is that the more that these companies see their own demand, one of two things is going to happen, either they are going to increase the price (thus not making them worth the money anymore, but they will figure that they are so well ingrained in the business model that they can't be removed) or they will keep the price the same and start doing massive highering. Since the SEI CMM only really has to do with maturity of process and documentation, all of a sudden the code that these places is writing will go downhill even further.
From my understanding of people with experience, the code that gets produced by these outsourcing companies is by no means stellar code. In some instances the programmers that were supposed to be "transitioned out" could not be let go of because they needed to fix the code.
If their only argument to them producing good code is that they are CMM level 5, we need to keep in mind that CMM level 5 does not dictate good code. It is just more of a project management and documentation standard. Just like the ISO 9002 standard does mean that you are a good business, it just means that you have a repeatable process.
Even the need for local cultural interfaces will drift though as companies become more comfortable with distance collaberation. The team I work on literally doesn't have any members in the same time zone - it's definitely something that requires adjustment. Anyway, my point is that the only constant is change. Those who adapt survive. Those who can't adapt may find themselves laid off. It's harsh, but it's in our nature to some degree.
I agree with this in all aspects of life, not just in the computing/business industry.
they will have to be $100 POS's for anyone to buy one.
Or even worse for the companies -- since the new target market would be used to living without these things, they just wouldn't buy it if it were $100 and a POS.
Then the companies would be forced to sell quality products at a cheap price. This means that the companies would have to pay more for actual material which means that they could pay less for the service of putting it together. Who takes the brunt of this? The same people who we all know are already will to work for less will end up working for even less. I am a human rights activist, but I am also one who believes that you reap what you sow. In other words, if you are willing to take someone's job from over seas because you will work for less, you better really be willing to work for less because there may come a day where you have to work for even less than you are comfortable working for.
No I dont think everyone should have a nice car and expensive houses. Health insurance yes, education yes.
I agree with this completely on a personal sense, no one needs any of the things that are in the lavish lifestyle that most 1st world country citizens have today.
However when I think about it on a business sense, businesses want you to be able to afford a nice car and a big house and all that. If you can't afford all of that you aren't going to be buying their products. When this globalization effort happens, they are cutting out a large population of high-wage earning employees. This means people that were going to be spending money on lavish products will no longer be spending that money because they can't afford to.
Therefore the company that just thought that they were saving money in the long run will end up losing it because they will have to lower their prices even more to sell their product to their target audience because they are not making as much money any more. Why are they not making as much money anymore? Because these same big companies moved their jobs out of the country.
It is the sad reality that companies are willing to trade any sense of locality for the quick buck.
I'm hoping that these companies will have a hard awakening one day when they realize that by saving this quick buck they are also losing the opportunity to charge as much for their products because they are cutting out all of the people who would pay the higher rates.
In my opinion this is a stupid balance that will wreck an equilibrium. People make all kinds of comparisons to the textile/manufacturing industry and this movement. The problem here is that these companies are cutting white collar jobs, the jobs with buying power and the want to use it. Sure the blue collar jobs may have had the will to use their buying power, but they did not have the buying power that the white collar market has. In effect these large companies are making a smaller group of people that will be willing to pay higher prices for the product. What we get is that although Dell may have sold a PC for $700 now they are going to be pressured to sell it for $350 because no one can afford to or is willing to pay the $700. In other words, companies in a consumer market that are doing this are shooting themselves in the foot.
If you are using windows its probably a path problems. I've noticed that some large name Java aplications (such as eclipse) completely ignore your JAVA_HOME variable and just look for the first JRE it can find in your path.
Be very careful though because 1.4.1 installs a java wraper (javaw.exe) in your windows system directory. So in order for it to find the correct JRE you need to make sure that you put it first in your path infront of the windows system directory. If find this both obnoxious and dangerous.
A better replacement is good old PostScript: the only downside of PS is that it takes up about 2.5 as much space as the equivalent PDF.
Better than PS, why not use dvi? Definitely no royalties or patents here, and by the mere specification of it, device independent format, it is device, os, whatever independent and will look the same on anything that it is viewed on. Sure at this point it is implemented by TeX, but there is no one stopping it from being implemented elsewhere.
I'm personally very skeptical about it, because it seems to me a typical "rootless disorder", a collection of symptoms that have been classified so that certain drugs can be prescribed to alleviate the symptoms.
I'm hoping by this last statement you are referring to pseudo-ADD. If not you are way off basis with this.
Most people that I've known with ADD, that actually have ADD will only succome to medicine when it is the thing that actually helps. Yes it is true if you feel as though any kid that misbehaves in school gets labelled as ADD, however that is what I feel is the only controversial part about ADD. Given a proper analysis from a clinical psychatrist I feel as though at least 40 -80% (depending upon what part of the country it is, etc) of these cases would prove that it was more just a discipline problem than a problem of kids with ADD. Talk to anyone who is a teacher and see if they are allowed to tell a parent that their child is misbehaving. I know a good number of teachers and the ones that have tried this have been treatened by the priciple of the school, to the point where when the parents come back and complain the principle will leave the teacher in the dust and support the parents. Schools aren't interested in discipline anymore, therefore teacher combat that anyway they can. The real losers here are the kids that really have ADD and would be better served by either coaching or being on some medication. These kids typically want to do better in school, they just can't. For them the trouble that they cause is just a side effect of the chronic boredome that the suffer due to the medical inability to pay attention in class. Give these kids a way to pay attention and they will be near the top of the class without causing any more problems then the average child. Give up on them because ADD is a fad or controversial or whatever and these kids may end up being the criminals of their generation.
Given the behavior of Ritalin, schools are therefore taking people without ADD and giving them a stimulant that makes them so that they cannot concentrate. This makes them, in the long run, more lethargic and less likely to cause problems in school. All this and the teacher doesn't even have to lose his/her job because she/he doesn't have to tell the parents that they're not fit to be parents.
The same cannot be said about this "pseudo-ADD". If there is no statistical evidence to prove this exists AND it's not normal, no research, no battery of tests to even define the "disorder", nothing but speculation, then there is no sense in talking about "disorders" in any sense.
Read the article again. None of the professional psychologists or psychiatrists say that pseudo-ADD is a real syndrome. Dr. Hallowell specifically has been writing a lot on ADD and does not accept pseudo-ADD as a disorder. I have the feeling that all of the real professionals that would have a valuable opinion on this subject matter in that article are so badly taken out of context that what they say should not even be associated with pseudo-ADD.
You are correct in saying that there is no battery of tests for pseudo-ADD, there is a battery of tests for ADD. If you fail those and continue to display patters of ADD like qualities, then you most likely have pseudo-ADD which is a product of the ways of modern US society (and like societies). You'll notice that the person (Mr. Lax) in the article is actually proud of his problem. Most people that actually have ADD are anything but proud about the disorder that they have and see it as a serious problem.
The ones that are proud of it are typically in environments where it makes them successful (stock brokers, people in the movie business, people like Mr. Lax) that would probably fall under a label like pseudo-ADD if they did not actually have ADD anyway.
Anyone who takes Ritalin is going to be able to concentrate better then they were before, just like anyone who takes melatonix will have darker skin then otherwise and everyone who takes steroids will have bigger muscles then they were before.
That is a completely false statement. It has been well proven that someone without ADD will not be able to concentrate at all when they take Ritalin. Ritalin is a stimulant. Cocaine is a stimulant. They share a lot of similar properties. Some people see it is a pleasure to not be able to concentrate, that is why they take cocaine. Have you been around a high school in the last 10 years where drug use is a problem? Dealers will steal a kid's Ritalin and sell it as an upper.
The anomoly here is that someone with ADD taking a stimulant will be able to concentrate unbelievably well. Which is why Ritalin and other stimulants (and anti-depressants) are used to treat ADD. There are a lot of other drugs that are used to treat ADD, Ritalin is just the poster-drug. Some poeple who self medicate (because it is a pleasure for someone who can't concentrate to be able to concentrate) will take cocaine. It is not an excuse for drug use, it is just what happens with some drug users. For someone who is truly concerned and really has ADD, submitting to using a drug is typically the last thing they want to do.
Arbitrarily classifying people into "ADD" and "non-add" is stupid.
I completely agree with this. Only, however, on the arbitrary classification. Meaning that if the person was not tested for ADD then don't label them period. However I feel that way about anything (I would not think very highly of my doctor if I walked in and she said oh its good to see one of my "non-cancer" types). If the person is tested for ADD it is very important to label them this way because there was a reason for testing them for ADD. For example some kid may have a behavior problem in school. Teacher thinks kid has ADD. Kid gets tested and labelled as non-ADD. Therefore we know what the problem is not ADD and the kid should be checked for other things such as a lack of discipline at home (I would have probable checked first to see if the kid was disciplined at home, but I know that's not something your allowed to do now if you are a teacher and want to keep your job).
It's not called ADD. It's called being bored. And if you're constantly being bored by what you do, it usually is because whatever you're doing is boring to you. Just because you don't find your current task enthralling doesn't mean you cannot pay attention at all.
I realize that you probably don't have a lot of access to information about ADD for two reasons:
You do not think that it is a real problem
You nor anyone you love has been diagnosed with this disorder and therefore you have no reason to know about it.
The point of your ignorance lies in the statement that I have quoted above. I'm not blaming you for this ignorance, I'm just saying that it exists. I don't expect every person in the world to be complteley aware of every obscure condition (yes ADD should be obscure, it is just overdiagnosed when teachers don't feel like putting up with undisciplined kids).
Without writing a few paragraphs on it, the fact of the matter is that its not that people with ADD get bored because they don't like the current task, its that people with ADD can get bored even if they find the task at hand one of the more interesting things that they've done this week. People with ADD are, without some sort of help, are either incabable of maintaining a complete attention span. When these people are given help (either psychological counciling -- most common for people genuinely concerned with it, ranging to ridalin, a common medication) the person with ADD will respond and be able to function as a normal or above normal person in society. The testing usually involves looking at what the person (child or adult) is interested in and measuring their intelligence against the tasks that they like, but cannot perform at.
Go do something else. Switch careers. Get a hobby.
Ironically most people with ADD have done that. Some have done that hundreds of times in one year. Some have been forced to because they cannot pay attention long enough to hold one job. Its not that their not mentally capable of holding the job intelligence wise, its just that they cannot pay attention long enough given certain environments to do the job correctly.
If you saw the basement or storage area of a person with ADD you would see that they definitely have had a hobby. They probably would have had about 300 or so hobbies. They also would probably never be completely successful at one of them because their complete inability to pay attention will never let them get to involved in one of them. Keep in mind, it is not that a person with ADD does not want to pay attention, it is that they are incapable of it. Do not say that a person with ADD will just give up without trying (thus having so many hobbies and being unsuccessful with them) because studies have proven (can't link to them, they're on hardcopy) that the person with ADD is so stubborn that they will not let themself give up on something. It is usually when they have reached a point where they are completely frustrated due to the attention problems that they will give up (as a warning, people with ADD may be some of the most stubborn people you know, but stubborness in and of itself is not a telltale sign of ADD).
If they come up with a battery of tests proving these people are completely unable to pay attention more than X seconds/minutes to anything, including human-to-human threads of conversation, I'll start believing there is meat to this. But there is no such thing.
Like I said, I don't expect everyone to know in detail about ever obscure condition or disorder, but open your mind and read before you stick your foot in your mouth like this again. There is a very sophisticated batter of test that can prove ADD. Granted it is not foolproof, it is not an absolute answer because it can provide false positives. But then again, such is the way with diagnosis for Multiple Sclerosis and Lupis. Do you feel as though those diseases which kill people every day
Just for argument's sake, lets look at these last three points, because they are what directly relate to what the focus of this article is:
4. DARPA awards OpenBSD grant.
5. OpenBSD lead person mouths off about DAPRA/Pentagon.
6. DARPA cuts funding for project.
Lets do this as an analogy. Say your doorbell rings, you open the door and its someone selling candy bars to benefit some organization that they belong to. They ask you if you want to buy a candy bar, you say, "Sure, I'll take two. I'd love to support that organization." After you pull out your wallet, they start telling you how stupid you are and that you should stop doing everything that you are doing. Are you still going to buy those candy bars?
I'm not saying that DARPA was right for dropping the funding, I'm just looking at your list of events and how it kind of spells out why they would have had an interest in cutting funding.
Slashdot Mirror
Although I understand your point, how is my broadcast from my router any different than a CBS, NBC, or FOX broadcast into my house? By this I mean do you feel as though television stations and radio stations are trespassing by sending signals into houses the same way my wifi may bleed into my neighbor's house? In which case I would say they are subject to the reliability or non-reliability of the service if they choose to use it. I mean this in the same sense that I don't go after Fox if they send re-runs of the Simpsons when I wanted to watch the latest episode, etc.
I'm not saying I'd do the same thing, and I agree, it is a funny way to deal with it.
The real question here is if Linus stole AT's code from MINIX, which both the creator of MINIX and an independant auditor both say he didn't.
Its really just another way of saying, "Well things are going the way I want them to, so I'm gonna quit."
Don't give up, fight for what you believe in until you can't fight anymore because someone else stops you.
I understand that there is a human side of this, I know that there are probably a large number of people that know this guy and are going to say what a nice person he is. I have never met him, and I won't argue that, however I still feel as though his reasons for resigning are all the wrong ones and probably shouldn't make national news.
The whole point behind the licensing used for Linux is that anyone can take and make use of the same tools. Its the same concept that inspired PGP. You have to release something into the open so that everyone can use it. That means that the people that you don't want to use it have the same access to it as the people you do want to use it. The philosophy here is that at least the people that you do want to use it can.
The only time a business will lower a price is if the product will not sell for the price that they are selling it for, or if they want to sell it faster than it is currently selling (year end inventory reductions, for example). It simply does not make economic sense to lower a product's price for other reasons and companies do not do it.
Currently companies can more or less continue to keep their prices high on products because the outsourcing trend has not hit the people that spend the most money past the point in which they can spend money (cash + credit).
Next point: What is going to be the adjustment for the change in the cost of living?
In other words, if I am an engineer, just like my father was, and I start at a higher salary than my father did because as you have pointed out, there is an imbalance in price wages, so the salary gets reduced to what my father was making, then what is the explaination for the fact that my house costs 15 times what my father's house cost in the same neighborhood who's demographics have not changed for the positive? Why is it that the price of my car costs 50 times more than my father's car of the same period in his life.
If I am an engineer and my salary gets adjusted as you claim is necessary, then both my wife and I would have to work to support a life that is not even as good as my father's life was without my mother working.
Even if there is a housing cost "adjustment" immediately, my mortgage payment does not automatically go down, and if the housing market does get "adjusted" downward, as a matter of fact, I cannot even get out of the house that I am in without forclosure because I am very far upside down on the mortgage and would not be able to sell the house to make up for the difference in price.
Occationally in the US there is a court case where the family of someone who's been murdered tries to sue the gun company. They never win. The major problem with this concept that the Canadian music industry is trying to pull a fast one is that if the enabling technology is legal then there is no justification to sue them for doing their job.
So, for example, in the US it is legal to make and sell guns. The gun manufacturing companies, although are creating a dangerous tool, are not breaking any laws. If someone buys that gun and shoots someone else, they are violating the law, but there is no reason why the gun manufacturer should be held liable.
If there is any logic in the Canadian supreme court, they will see that the ISP is just the enabling technology. The ISP is doing nothing illegal. They should not be held accountable. Yeah I know that this cannot be used as a precident in a Canadian court, but I think its more of a logical argument, not a setting of a precident.
I also wonder how they think that they're going to collect from foreign ISPs.
My main point is that it is not India's or Tailand's or Hong Kong's problem if your companies choose to send your jobs there. The Indian guy may or may not want to become an American citizen, but his wishes are completely irrelevant in this context, as the jobs are being offered in India. He has the same need to become an American citizen to take a job in India as an American has to become an Indian citizen to take a job in the United States. None.
You have a good point in this reguard.
And if you look at it from his point of view, he is not taking anyone's job. He probably thinks his American counterparts are all being given fancier jobs like the next version of Windows, the next Mars missions or the next smart bomb software and wish he could do that instead of VB COM components to print pretty payroll reports.
I do disagree with you here though. In the few dealings I've had with these outsourcing companies, they know exactly what they are doing. (disclaimer: this could obviously be the exception) I would be suspicous that any one of them that says the things you are saying is just trying to give a policially correct answer to the problem. In other words if they look like total jerks they figure they will not get the job.
In some cases they have been far from tactful here as well. I have seen a case where a company thought about outsourcing certain areas of their business, they dropped back on a few of them becaues they did not want to cut so many employees and the outsourcing company got irate about it -- even before the contract was signed. So in my experience (which I'm definitely not saying is every case) some of the outsourcing companies not only know exactly what they are doing, but are vocally unhappy towards the potential customer when the companies that are giving them business do not cut their tech employees.
IANAL, and did not need one when helping my wife get a green card. I couldn't even begin to imagine why one would need a lawyer for the relatively simple and inexpensive process of obtaining a green card. The process is pretty trivial (if the immigrant has a spouse or relative who is a US citizen, i.e., me in this case -- I assume it's much harder if not).
Good point, now that I think about it, the reason why that person needed a lawyer was due to a situation where they were here on a research visa and would stand the chance of getting deported if they got married while on the visa. This is why they got a lawyer, but another group of my friends initially went to a lawyer and the lawyer told them it would be a waste of their money to hire him (or any lawyer) because of how simple the process was for what they had to do.
All of the H1-B's I knew had lawyers though. For some reason it seemed trickier.
1 of the following:
- a sponsor
- a spouse who is a citizen
and the following mandatory requirment:- a good lawyer.
There were some points of the process where the US could process their papers at their own will and there was a chance that the papers wouldn't be processed before the visa ran out, but on the average case, a green card was recieved within 3 years (H1-B's run out in 5). In one case the green card was recieved in under a year (spouse). By the way, the percentage of people that I knew with visa vs. the amount of them that got green cards is 100% (8 out of 8).Nothing prevents the USA from imposing any barriers they want for foreign workers, and they do. If your Congress bought the "IT shortage" speech from the industry leaders, it is your problem, not the rest of the world's.
Read the part about a good lawyer and get back to me. Although you are fundamentally correct, the US law is all beside itself with political correctness. If you have a good lawyer there are usually loop holes that can be found in it. True, you still can be kicked out of the country, but things like that can happen. Sorry if it happened to you.
And by the way, Americans are not flooding elsewhere looking for work, so "no one will hire Americans" is something at least unclear...
Ironic that you say this. I included a bunch of European countries in my last job search. The job descriptions all matched the job description of the job that I have now (which I was hired on during that last job search). I did not get one response to 15+ applications. I may not be in the majority, but I have found it very difficult to find a job over seas, or for that matter, even in Canada. I'm not complaining about it, I just think that you may want think about what you write and make sure that it is not perspective biased.
As far as I know, American companies, led by American managers, controlled by American dhareholders, are relocatting your jobs to places where they can have the same service for less money. Go complain with them. Or with your Congress. The Indian workers do not need nor care to become a citizen of your country. The jobs are being offered in India...
Good point, lets look at this another way though -- these are two articles written in a language commonly spoken in the United States published by a magazine in the United States talking about the state of how the job market is in the United States.
That would imply that the target audience is the United States. One of them in peticular, CIO, which seems to be the focus of this discussion, is an acronym for Cheif Information Officer, a term coined to describe the person in charge of the IT area of a company. I believe that this is one of the groups that you explicitly mention as the correct group to be complaining to.
So by basis of the exact same anaylsis that you did, it seems quite obvious that the target audience for the articles is the parties in the United States who you were referring to -- not the Indians.
If anything it could be seen as a way to disgust the US companies that are outsourcing into not outsourcing because they will see that it helps them in no way beyond their bottom line (yeah like that may happen), or perhaps the target was to scare the legislators into action.
You may also be enlightened by the about CIO.com statement on their site. Incase you don't feel like following the link, here is what it says:
Our primary audience is made up of CIOs in the United States, although we have readers from around the world. Different versions of CIO are now published in nine other countries/geographic areas (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and Japan) with more planned in the coming months.
Funny, the way I read the OpenLetter from SCO, Darl seems to be in favor of OpenSource. Now that he's dumping all of his SCO stock maybe he doesn't care anymore. Or maybe he's realized that there is not case...
Here is quotes from the letter that support my statement:
"This ""Open Source software is healthy and beneficial. It offers long-term benefits to the industry by addressing a new business model in advance of wide-scale adoption by customers."
"My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we ""fought ""to ""cast...""a shadow over the ""Open Source movement ""by ""alleging ""that UNIX System V code"" in fact"" proprietary software code""."
"Linux ""is a ""authorized ""work ""not ""derivative ""of ""the ""UNIX System V code""."
"No one can tolerate ""SCO's ""business model that is ""built only on ""a lawsuit against IBM"". ""Finally, it is clear that the ""SCO Group is ""increasingly alienated from anyone associated ""with ""software ""and ""community."
"I will continue to ""sue... ""everyone ""...as... ""CEO""."
Check the letter, every quoted word is in there in some context or another. I see this as just as valid of an interpretation of his letter as he does Bruce Peren's letter and ESR's statements.
$600,000 is peanuts
Agreed, but the profit margins were insane.
most of the sales were planned sales.
Yes, but the whole set of events could be planned around this as well. It just happened to work in their favor that they predicted the market properly to favor their stock at the times when these press statements would be made.
I think the original poster was thinking the other way round. The DOJ should be investigating SCO's criminal extortion posing as a "licensing" scheme
You are correct. SCO's new license agreement for Linux violates the GPL...
In regard to open source products, depending upon the facts, open source developers may seek to enforce their legal rights civilly, or, in cases where there has been willful infringement and certain criminal thresholds have been met, criminal prosecution may also be warranted. At this time, we are unaware of any referrals to law enforcement for open source license violations.
Guess he hasn't been keeping up with SCO's new licensing options...
How many of those have voted for these politicians in the past and will be pissed off enough to vote for someone else?
That's the problem with the representative democracy that we have in the US. The US is a large country, it takes a lot to get your name known to the average joe blow who doesn't read anymore than the stuff shoved in his face. Therefore you have to be rich to run for office, or be able to get very good funding. Most of these people get very good funding because even if they are rich they don't want to part with that money just for something like becoming a politician.
Therefore most politicians are funded by rich organizations and will seek to make them happy first instead of the voters because they know that whoever has the most funding will be the best known name and unless something absolutely horrible to the public eye (not the slashdot audience) is known, the average joe blow american is not going to take the time to figure out what this person has or has not done.
It also breaks down to the fact that even if you vote these idiots out, they are just going to be replaced by some other idiot who was probably funded by the same people (seems like a conflict of interest, doesn't it?). I think that there is a serious need of reform as to how people get into public office. I think its sick that we cannot get real leaders in this country because most real leaders that I have met are either not rich or do not have the desire to be involved in politics (for precisely this reason).
I agree with most of what you say, but I don't think that you've gone far enough with it:
There will always be a local demand for Systems Integrators, project managers, etc. as a cultural interface. Besides that, you need to have local presence to properly manage these types of projects
I don't necessarily feel as though this is correct. At the company I'm currently at, the outsourcers are bidding on everything from the project managers down. They're even offering to design the software that needs to be written. In other words, this company, just like Nike, becomes a big marketing firm.
System integrators won't always be necessary because the systems that this software will run on has already been outsourced to another company in another part of the world and the systems that house the software will be integrated by system integrators that are on site for the outsourcer that is controlling the systems.
Granted it will take a long time before any of this happens completely (they are only doing certain parts of the systems for certain aspects of the business), but really what's happening is that the data is becoming a commodity, not just the writing of the programs that process the data.
In my worst case scenario these outsourcing companies will control all of the data that the large corporations (the go with outsourcing) see. The next logical outsourcing will be business/market research. Therefore companies will no longer make their own target nor be able to figure out where to sell it on their own. They will end up being a marketing/holding company that controls all of the money of the process. Sounds like a dangerous place to be to me.
Keep in mind that I think of globalization and outsourcing as two separate things in my mind. Your team is very obviously globalized. I do not have a problem with that, it is necessary to keep doing business. The problem that I have is with the general term of outsourcing -- finding the cheapest bidder and going with them reguardless of quality.
I understand the argument of a cheaper standard of living, etc. But the truth of the matter is that the more that these companies see their own demand, one of two things is going to happen, either they are going to increase the price (thus not making them worth the money anymore, but they will figure that they are so well ingrained in the business model that they can't be removed) or they will keep the price the same and start doing massive highering. Since the SEI CMM only really has to do with maturity of process and documentation, all of a sudden the code that these places is writing will go downhill even further.
From my understanding of people with experience, the code that gets produced by these outsourcing companies is by no means stellar code. In some instances the programmers that were supposed to be "transitioned out" could not be let go of because they needed to fix the code.
If their only argument to them producing good code is that they are CMM level 5, we need to keep in mind that CMM level 5 does not dictate good code. It is just more of a project management and documentation standard. Just like the ISO 9002 standard does mean that you are a good business, it just means that you have a repeatable process.
Even the need for local cultural interfaces will drift though as companies become more comfortable with distance collaberation. The team I work on literally doesn't have any members in the same time zone - it's definitely something that requires adjustment. Anyway, my point is that the only constant is change. Those who adapt survive. Those who can't adapt may find themselves laid off. It's harsh, but it's in our nature to some degree.
I agree with this in all aspects of life, not just in the computing/business industry.
they will have to be $100 POS's for anyone to buy one.
Or even worse for the companies -- since the new target market would be used to living without these things, they just wouldn't buy it if it were $100 and a POS.
Then the companies would be forced to sell quality products at a cheap price. This means that the companies would have to pay more for actual material which means that they could pay less for the service of putting it together. Who takes the brunt of this? The same people who we all know are already will to work for less will end up working for even less. I am a human rights activist, but I am also one who believes that you reap what you sow. In other words, if you are willing to take someone's job from over seas because you will work for less, you better really be willing to work for less because there may come a day where you have to work for even less than you are comfortable working for.
No I dont think everyone should have a nice car and expensive houses. Health insurance yes, education yes.
I agree with this completely on a personal sense, no one needs any of the things that are in the lavish lifestyle that most 1st world country citizens have today.
However when I think about it on a business sense, businesses want you to be able to afford a nice car and a big house and all that. If you can't afford all of that you aren't going to be buying their products. When this globalization effort happens, they are cutting out a large population of high-wage earning employees. This means people that were going to be spending money on lavish products will no longer be spending that money because they can't afford to.
Therefore the company that just thought that they were saving money in the long run will end up losing it because they will have to lower their prices even more to sell their product to their target audience because they are not making as much money any more. Why are they not making as much money anymore? Because these same big companies moved their jobs out of the country.
It is the sad reality that companies are willing to trade any sense of locality for the quick buck.
I'm hoping that these companies will have a hard awakening one day when they realize that by saving this quick buck they are also losing the opportunity to charge as much for their products because they are cutting out all of the people who would pay the higher rates.
In my opinion this is a stupid balance that will wreck an equilibrium. People make all kinds of comparisons to the textile/manufacturing industry and this movement. The problem here is that these companies are cutting white collar jobs, the jobs with buying power and the want to use it. Sure the blue collar jobs may have had the will to use their buying power, but they did not have the buying power that the white collar market has. In effect these large companies are making a smaller group of people that will be willing to pay higher prices for the product. What we get is that although Dell may have sold a PC for $700 now they are going to be pressured to sell it for $350 because no one can afford to or is willing to pay the $700. In other words, companies in a consumer market that are doing this are shooting themselves in the foot.
If you are using windows its probably a path problems. I've noticed that some large name Java aplications (such as eclipse) completely ignore your JAVA_HOME variable and just look for the first JRE it can find in your path.
Be very careful though because 1.4.1 installs a java wraper (javaw.exe) in your windows system directory. So in order for it to find the correct JRE you need to make sure that you put it first in your path infront of the windows system directory. If find this both obnoxious and dangerous.
A better replacement is good old PostScript: the only downside of PS is that it takes up about 2.5 as much space as the equivalent PDF.
Better than PS, why not use dvi? Definitely no royalties or patents here, and by the mere specification of it, device independent format, it is device, os, whatever independent and will look the same on anything that it is viewed on. Sure at this point it is implemented by TeX, but there is no one stopping it from being implemented elsewhere.
I'm personally very skeptical about it, because it seems to me a typical "rootless disorder", a collection of symptoms that have been classified so that certain drugs can be prescribed to alleviate the symptoms.
I'm hoping by this last statement you are referring to pseudo-ADD. If not you are way off basis with this.
Most people that I've known with ADD, that actually have ADD will only succome to medicine when it is the thing that actually helps. Yes it is true if you feel as though any kid that misbehaves in school gets labelled as ADD, however that is what I feel is the only controversial part about ADD. Given a proper analysis from a clinical psychatrist I feel as though at least 40 -80% (depending upon what part of the country it is, etc) of these cases would prove that it was more just a discipline problem than a problem of kids with ADD. Talk to anyone who is a teacher and see if they are allowed to tell a parent that their child is misbehaving. I know a good number of teachers and the ones that have tried this have been treatened by the priciple of the school, to the point where when the parents come back and complain the principle will leave the teacher in the dust and support the parents. Schools aren't interested in discipline anymore, therefore teacher combat that anyway they can. The real losers here are the kids that really have ADD and would be better served by either coaching or being on some medication. These kids typically want to do better in school, they just can't. For them the trouble that they cause is just a side effect of the chronic boredome that the suffer due to the medical inability to pay attention in class. Give these kids a way to pay attention and they will be near the top of the class without causing any more problems then the average child. Give up on them because ADD is a fad or controversial or whatever and these kids may end up being the criminals of their generation.
Given the behavior of Ritalin, schools are therefore taking people without ADD and giving them a stimulant that makes them so that they cannot concentrate. This makes them, in the long run, more lethargic and less likely to cause problems in school. All this and the teacher doesn't even have to lose his/her job because she/he doesn't have to tell the parents that they're not fit to be parents.
The same cannot be said about this "pseudo-ADD". If there is no statistical evidence to prove this exists AND it's not normal, no research, no battery of tests to even define the "disorder", nothing but speculation, then there is no sense in talking about "disorders" in any sense.
Read the article again. None of the professional psychologists or psychiatrists say that pseudo-ADD is a real syndrome. Dr. Hallowell specifically has been writing a lot on ADD and does not accept pseudo-ADD as a disorder. I have the feeling that all of the real professionals that would have a valuable opinion on this subject matter in that article are so badly taken out of context that what they say should not even be associated with pseudo-ADD.
You are correct in saying that there is no battery of tests for pseudo-ADD, there is a battery of tests for ADD. If you fail those and continue to display patters of ADD like qualities, then you most likely have pseudo-ADD which is a product of the ways of modern US society (and like societies). You'll notice that the person (Mr. Lax) in the article is actually proud of his problem. Most people that actually have ADD are anything but proud about the disorder that they have and see it as a serious problem.
The ones that are proud of it are typically in environments where it makes them successful (stock brokers, people in the movie business, people like Mr. Lax) that would probably fall under a label like pseudo-ADD if they did not actually have ADD anyway.
Anyone who takes Ritalin is going to be able to concentrate better then they were before, just like anyone who takes melatonix will have darker skin then otherwise and everyone who takes steroids will have bigger muscles then they were before.
That is a completely false statement. It has been well proven that someone without ADD will not be able to concentrate at all when they take Ritalin. Ritalin is a stimulant. Cocaine is a stimulant. They share a lot of similar properties. Some people see it is a pleasure to not be able to concentrate, that is why they take cocaine. Have you been around a high school in the last 10 years where drug use is a problem? Dealers will steal a kid's Ritalin and sell it as an upper.
The anomoly here is that someone with ADD taking a stimulant will be able to concentrate unbelievably well. Which is why Ritalin and other stimulants (and anti-depressants) are used to treat ADD. There are a lot of other drugs that are used to treat ADD, Ritalin is just the poster-drug. Some poeple who self medicate (because it is a pleasure for someone who can't concentrate to be able to concentrate) will take cocaine. It is not an excuse for drug use, it is just what happens with some drug users. For someone who is truly concerned and really has ADD, submitting to using a drug is typically the last thing they want to do.
Arbitrarily classifying people into "ADD" and "non-add" is stupid.
I completely agree with this. Only, however, on the arbitrary classification. Meaning that if the person was not tested for ADD then don't label them period. However I feel that way about anything (I would not think very highly of my doctor if I walked in and she said oh its good to see one of my "non-cancer" types). If the person is tested for ADD it is very important to label them this way because there was a reason for testing them for ADD. For example some kid may have a behavior problem in school. Teacher thinks kid has ADD. Kid gets tested and labelled as non-ADD. Therefore we know what the problem is not ADD and the kid should be checked for other things such as a lack of discipline at home (I would have probable checked first to see if the kid was disciplined at home, but I know that's not something your allowed to do now if you are a teacher and want to keep your job).
I realize that you probably don't have a lot of access to information about ADD for two reasons:
The point of your ignorance lies in the statement that I have quoted above. I'm not blaming you for this ignorance, I'm just saying that it exists. I don't expect every person in the world to be complteley aware of every obscure condition (yes ADD should be obscure, it is just overdiagnosed when teachers don't feel like putting up with undisciplined kids).
Without writing a few paragraphs on it, the fact of the matter is that its not that people with ADD get bored because they don't like the current task, its that people with ADD can get bored even if they find the task at hand one of the more interesting things that they've done this week. People with ADD are, without some sort of help, are either incabable of maintaining a complete attention span. When these people are given help (either psychological counciling -- most common for people genuinely concerned with it, ranging to ridalin, a common medication) the person with ADD will respond and be able to function as a normal or above normal person in society. The testing usually involves looking at what the person (child or adult) is interested in and measuring their intelligence against the tasks that they like, but cannot perform at.
Go do something else. Switch careers. Get a hobby.
Ironically most people with ADD have done that. Some have done that hundreds of times in one year. Some have been forced to because they cannot pay attention long enough to hold one job. Its not that their not mentally capable of holding the job intelligence wise, its just that they cannot pay attention long enough given certain environments to do the job correctly.
If you saw the basement or storage area of a person with ADD you would see that they definitely have had a hobby. They probably would have had about 300 or so hobbies. They also would probably never be completely successful at one of them because their complete inability to pay attention will never let them get to involved in one of them. Keep in mind, it is not that a person with ADD does not want to pay attention, it is that they are incapable of it. Do not say that a person with ADD will just give up without trying (thus having so many hobbies and being unsuccessful with them) because studies have proven (can't link to them, they're on hardcopy) that the person with ADD is so stubborn that they will not let themself give up on something. It is usually when they have reached a point where they are completely frustrated due to the attention problems that they will give up (as a warning, people with ADD may be some of the most stubborn people you know, but stubborness in and of itself is not a telltale sign of ADD).
If they come up with a battery of tests proving these people are completely unable to pay attention more than X seconds/minutes to anything, including human-to-human threads of conversation, I'll start believing there is meat to this. But there is no such thing.
Like I said, I don't expect everyone to know in detail about ever obscure condition or disorder, but open your mind and read before you stick your foot in your mouth like this again. There is a very sophisticated batter of test that can prove ADD. Granted it is not foolproof, it is not an absolute answer because it can provide false positives. But then again, such is the way with diagnosis for Multiple Sclerosis and Lupis. Do you feel as though those diseases which kill people every day
Just for argument's sake, lets look at these last three points, because they are what directly relate to what the focus of this article is:
4. DARPA awards OpenBSD grant.
5. OpenBSD lead person mouths off about DAPRA/Pentagon.
6. DARPA cuts funding for project.
Lets do this as an analogy. Say your doorbell rings, you open the door and its someone selling candy bars to benefit some organization that they belong to. They ask you if you want to buy a candy bar, you say, "Sure, I'll take two. I'd love to support that organization." After you pull out your wallet, they start telling you how stupid you are and that you should stop doing everything that you are doing. Are you still going to buy those candy bars?
I'm not saying that DARPA was right for dropping the funding, I'm just looking at your list of events and how it kind of spells out why they would have had an interest in cutting funding.