An anonymous poster claiming that he's been developing 25 years on Windows commercially is suddenly going to throw away his career to start anew on Linux, because an update installed a plugin. And this post is on Slashdot, and it's modded interesting. Yeah, that's SO interesting. I thought it was just drivel, predictable, and/or noise. Little did I know!
Well, it's contractual obligations. Everyone can say "but it was DRMed, someone cracked it." Do you think Microsoft really WANT DRM? Or Apple? No, they do it so they can license the distribution of other people's content, people that wouldn't license it unless it is "protected." The whole thing is a giant waste of time, but it looks good on paper.
No no. We need to import everyone else's oil now, and set up environmental blockades to use our own. No drilling in Alaska, no drilling offshore. Then when the rest of the world is out of oil, we rule.
But there are 13,000 sugar farmers. Sure, more jobs than that were destroyed in other industries, as you give an example, but these are farmers. Farmers good. Imports bad.
Correct. American sugar is subsidized in multiple ways. Those subsidies have also created environmental problems in the Everglades. Easy solution: we could just end subsidies which encourage sugar production there. Save some cash in the process, and just import sugar from central America. Super easy, right?
No, we just spent another $200 million to buy some of the sugar cane fields from farmers. And "farmers" in this case means large corporate entities soaking up most of that cash.
India... Oh right, India! How has India's GDP fared since liberalizing their markets? Oh goodie, I can use Wolfram Alpha. First, when did India start getting so gosh darned capitalist?
Maybe, just maybe, the reason companies like Microsoft patent the shit out of everything, no matter how inane, is to try to avoid being sued by other companies for "custom XML tags." Also, Microsoft was trying to be all "standards based" and "open" in their office XML format, look where that got them.
They're not in cereal boxes. From the linked page above:
Requirements
To receive your Kellogg's(tm) Flash Drive Wristband, send:
Completed Official Order Form
Either 8 STAR TREK Tokens or $7.99 plus 1 STAR TREK Token (includes shipping and handling) from specially marked packages of Kellogg's cereals (see product list below).
$7.99 check or money order (if necessary) for each item ordered, made payable to Kellogg's(tm) Flash Drive Wristband Offer.
oh, don't EVEN get me started on Intuit. I had quicken 2004, I used it to pay bills and download information, about 6 months ago they started saying "we are phasing out the online support for 2004" so you have to upgrade to a newer version. it's $49.99 but they'll give you a "deal" for $39.99.
so AFTER you pay the extortion money, you download and install the software, it litters the desktop with "special offers" and then guess what? the online stuff doesn't work. three calls to intuit later, we get it working. wow, THANKS.
At the core level the program is practically identical. It has some prettier charts or something.
If you think you're guaranteed a right to your job so you can not work very hard and spew opinion all over/. all day, then you're wrong. Some other guy will come along who's a little hungrier and wants it a little worse. You forget this thing called citizenship, and it actually meaning something.
If you think you're allowed to walk all over the citizenship of the United States of America as a business, you are wrong. The citizens are qualified, there are plenty of places within this country to start first. Huh? How am I saying that? You seem to be forgetting a little thing called "melting pot" which is kinda what we do here. There's still plenty of room for immigrants (and practically everyone here is descendant from immigrants) but I guess you think we should just shut the door cos slashslob webjerker thinks he deserves to keep his cushy job? Or maybe just let the illegals in because they're only threatening tradesmen?
That's kinda my point. Why do you posit that management is inept? Are you a programmer? You may have a bias. I know I did before I started doing more than programming and managing programmers. A lot of programmers assume that "shifting requirements" and/or "not completely defined specs" always equals "management incompetence." It doesn't, not always.
But let's ignore all that and talk about your other point. What ratio of managers to programmers is a good ratio? And what is the ratio of managers to programmers admitted under the H1-B program?
I'm not sure what you're asking. I am a programmer who now fronts an off-shore team. That makes me technical management and co-founder. My partner is less technical and better with sales and client interface. Again, not sure what you mean.
If the temporary 12-29 month job thing works out, why not give them a clear, direct path to citizenship, asap. How's that bad for the nation, again? It would be nice to balance out the influx of low-skilled illegal immigration with a sane policy of brining in talent.
Maybe their expectations are out of whack from that bubble-era when people who had liberal arts degrees and could cut and paste javascript and do tables in HTML were making $60k a year, and so other programmers with real skills saw rates go up insanely.
Personally, in that bubble period, my salary more than quadrupled over 5 years while moving jobs 6 times. That's CRAZY. And my salary has indeed gone down since it peaked in 2002, and I do more now, but hey I'm not OWED that ridiculous salary any more than I DESERVED those raises. They were a product of the labor market, which at that point was fairly volatile and probably could be characterized as unhealthy.
It goes pretty deep, too. I mean we had a SURPLUS of federal tax dollars (lockbox, anyone?) that happened to dry up right as that bubble burst.
Anyway, back to my point, a lot of people's expectations haven't adjusted with the general market. I've interviewed people where it's painfully clear they're living some fantasy where they think they're OWED a fat salary to throw code around. They're still floating on their capital gains from the bubble, were possibly floating on their housing bubbles too, and they don't really need to work very hard right now, so they stay underemployed.
Not saying this is you and your friends in Chicago, but I've certainly seen this around the NYC area.
THANK YOU. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. Seriously. No one ever brings this up, but it's totally true. If you think you're guaranteed a right to your job so you can not work very hard and spew opinion all over/. all day, then you're wrong. Some other guy will come along who's a little hungrier and wants it a little worse.
Maybe Gates et al are tired of interviewing and hiring from a large pool of entitled people who come in and are more concerned with benefits than actually working, and spending 20 hours a week browsing and setting up their weekend and vacation itineraries, and occasionally doing the minimum?
We're a two-person company (used to be more) and it's almost impossible to be competitive in any sense with local talent. So for the last 3 years we've set up a team in a country in eastern Europe. At this point all we really do is manage programmers overseas because it's really hard to get people here that are willing to work for their money. My only real problem with this setup is exchange rate (they're pegged to the Euro), but I mean, ultimately that's a hedge-able non-issue.
But that's okay, we should unionize everyone, cap the H-1B lower, and then these companies will set up even larger facilities in India, China, etc. We can just watch CNN all day and bitch how the whole place is going down the tubes.
I'm sorry, if you extend the time from 12 to 29 months, they're REQUIRED to stay here? Or I guess they could go back, right? And if so, they are staying here of their own volition, right? And if we extend the timeframe from 12 to 29 months, then what? They can CHOOSE to stay longer if they want, right?
Help me out with the second-grade and exploiting, I'm not seeing it.
Oh right, American Dads in the 50s and 60s. They also lived with a lot less. They didn't have a $90/month cable bill, they weren't all carrying cell phones, they didn't have broadband OR computers that needed constant updating. Etc.
But hey, let's talk about the real problem. Taxes in the 50s and 60s were completely different, 90 percent of people paid either 0 or 20%. Social security was 3% of your check, or 6% if you add the employer part. Now it's what, 15.3% if you add the employer part? The average tax rate for families is much higher than it was in the 60s.
Or, you could just blame it on immigrants and allowing them in rather than the host of other policy decisions (resulting in the totally retarded federal budget we have now) and economic factors that have gotten us where we are.
Slashdot Mirror
An anonymous poster claiming that he's been developing 25 years on Windows commercially is suddenly going to throw away his career to start anew on Linux, because an update installed a plugin. And this post is on Slashdot, and it's modded interesting. Yeah, that's SO interesting. I thought it was just drivel, predictable, and/or noise. Little did I know!
Well, it's contractual obligations. Everyone can say "but it was DRMed, someone cracked it." Do you think Microsoft really WANT DRM? Or Apple? No, they do it so they can license the distribution of other people's content, people that wouldn't license it unless it is "protected." The whole thing is a giant waste of time, but it looks good on paper.
also, I was being sarcastic above. i feel like i have to write the followup in case anyone ever finds that in a search engine on its own. shudder.
No no. We need to import everyone else's oil now, and set up environmental blockades to use our own. No drilling in Alaska, no drilling offshore. Then when the rest of the world is out of oil, we rule.
But there are 13,000 sugar farmers. Sure, more jobs than that were destroyed in other industries, as you give an example, but these are farmers. Farmers good. Imports bad.
No, we just spent another $200 million to buy some of the sugar cane fields from farmers. And "farmers" in this case means large corporate entities soaking up most of that cash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_reforms_in_India#Reforms
Also, feel free to read the "Impact" section. So fire up the super ego:
India GDP
Crazy! Correlation is there, it's impossible to prove causation, of course, but HUH.
Maybe, just maybe, the reason companies like Microsoft patent the shit out of everything, no matter how inane, is to try to avoid being sued by other companies for "custom XML tags." Also, Microsoft was trying to be all "standards based" and "open" in their office XML format, look where that got them.
Requirements
To receive your Kellogg's(tm) Flash Drive Wristband, send:
oh, don't EVEN get me started on Intuit. I had quicken 2004, I used it to pay bills and download information, about 6 months ago they started saying "we are phasing out the online support for 2004" so you have to upgrade to a newer version. it's $49.99 but they'll give you a "deal" for $39.99.
so AFTER you pay the extortion money, you download and install the software, it litters the desktop with "special offers" and then guess what? the online stuff doesn't work. three calls to intuit later, we get it working. wow, THANKS.
At the core level the program is practically identical. It has some prettier charts or something.
Pretty much all software is a work in progress.
Yeah like cos it doesn't work if I'm white and from South Africa, and then I come to the US.
That's kinda my point. Why do you posit that management is inept? Are you a programmer? You may have a bias. I know I did before I started doing more than programming and managing programmers. A lot of programmers assume that "shifting requirements" and/or "not completely defined specs" always equals "management incompetence." It doesn't, not always.
But let's ignore all that and talk about your other point. What ratio of managers to programmers is a good ratio? And what is the ratio of managers to programmers admitted under the H1-B program?
Sure, why not? Or, in the true OSS spirit of DIY, start your own firm.
I'm not sure what you're asking. I am a programmer who now fronts an off-shore team. That makes me technical management and co-founder. My partner is less technical and better with sales and client interface. Again, not sure what you mean.
Please please please no one tell Al Gore or we'll all have to sit through another Keynote presentation, and all the hype that surrounds it.
If the temporary 12-29 month job thing works out, why not give them a clear, direct path to citizenship, asap. How's that bad for the nation, again? It would be nice to balance out the influx of low-skilled illegal immigration with a sane policy of brining in talent.
Maybe their expectations are out of whack from that bubble-era when people who had liberal arts degrees and could cut and paste javascript and do tables in HTML were making $60k a year, and so other programmers with real skills saw rates go up insanely.
Personally, in that bubble period, my salary more than quadrupled over 5 years while moving jobs 6 times. That's CRAZY. And my salary has indeed gone down since it peaked in 2002, and I do more now, but hey I'm not OWED that ridiculous salary any more than I DESERVED those raises. They were a product of the labor market, which at that point was fairly volatile and probably could be characterized as unhealthy.
It goes pretty deep, too. I mean we had a SURPLUS of federal tax dollars (lockbox, anyone?) that happened to dry up right as that bubble burst.
Anyway, back to my point, a lot of people's expectations haven't adjusted with the general market. I've interviewed people where it's painfully clear they're living some fantasy where they think they're OWED a fat salary to throw code around. They're still floating on their capital gains from the bubble, were possibly floating on their housing bubbles too, and they don't really need to work very hard right now, so they stay underemployed.
Not saying this is you and your friends in Chicago, but I've certainly seen this around the NYC area.
THANK YOU. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. Seriously. No one ever brings this up, but it's totally true. If you think you're guaranteed a right to your job so you can not work very hard and spew opinion all over /. all day, then you're wrong. Some other guy will come along who's a little hungrier and wants it a little worse.
Maybe Gates et al are tired of interviewing and hiring from a large pool of entitled people who come in and are more concerned with benefits than actually working, and spending 20 hours a week browsing and setting up their weekend and vacation itineraries, and occasionally doing the minimum?
We're a two-person company (used to be more) and it's almost impossible to be competitive in any sense with local talent. So for the last 3 years we've set up a team in a country in eastern Europe. At this point all we really do is manage programmers overseas because it's really hard to get people here that are willing to work for their money. My only real problem with this setup is exchange rate (they're pegged to the Euro), but I mean, ultimately that's a hedge-able non-issue.
But that's okay, we should unionize everyone, cap the H-1B lower, and then these companies will set up even larger facilities in India, China, etc. We can just watch CNN all day and bitch how the whole place is going down the tubes.
I'm sorry, if you extend the time from 12 to 29 months, they're REQUIRED to stay here? Or I guess they could go back, right? And if so, they are staying here of their own volition, right? And if we extend the timeframe from 12 to 29 months, then what? They can CHOOSE to stay longer if they want, right?
Help me out with the second-grade and exploiting, I'm not seeing it.
Yeah then we can teach our kids Russian and Chinese so they can go there for the good jobs in 15 years.
Oh right, American Dads in the 50s and 60s. They also lived with a lot less. They didn't have a $90/month cable bill, they weren't all carrying cell phones, they didn't have broadband OR computers that needed constant updating. Etc.
But hey, let's talk about the real problem. Taxes in the 50s and 60s were completely different, 90 percent of people paid either 0 or 20%. Social security was 3% of your check, or 6% if you add the employer part. Now it's what, 15.3% if you add the employer part? The average tax rate for families is much higher than it was in the 60s.
Or, you could just blame it on immigrants and allowing them in rather than the host of other policy decisions (resulting in the totally retarded federal budget we have now) and economic factors that have gotten us where we are.
Also, it's a "community." Perhaps we should "raise awareness" that it's not going away.
But, can you drag a sack of SHUT UP into your ASS?
OS WAR!