"A Massive increase in internet efficiency is possible with persistent bandwidth sharing. BitTorrent started the ball rolling; now White Water takes the next step with proxy/server and mirroring facilities."
Persistent bandwidth sharing is the key. Consider:
- When you download a file with ftp or http, you connect to and download the WHOLE file from the publishing server.
- When you download a file with bitTorrent, you get CHUNKS of the file from loads of other people who are downloading the file AT THE SAME TIME AS YOU. If you are the only downloader, you'll get the WHOLE file from the publishing - When you download with White Water, you get CHUNKS of the file from any WW proxy which has ever downloaded the file and still has it in it's cache.
White Waters' proxy mode provides this _persistent_ or _ongoing_ file sharing. Even if you are the only person currently downloading the file, you will receive chunks from every WW proxy which still has the file (or chunks of it) in its cache. If there are a hundred proxies with the file, and your local bandwith is wide enough, you could receive the file 99 times faster than would be possible from the original publishing server alone, which might be on a simple home broadband connection.
"Imagine that 10 of your hard working employees download the latest Harry Potter movie trailer. Thats 10 identical huge files saturating your internet connection. If instead the trailer was published using WW, you could run a WW proxy on your gateway server and only 1 copy would be downloaded, even if a hundred employees decided to fetch it. Better yet, they would all be sharing the data amongst themselves, massively reducing the load on your gateway server."
This is only possible with the proxy/server mode WW provides.
"Now imagine that your ISP provided a WW proxy. Thousands of downloads are reduced to one, freeing up Gigabytes of the ISPs upstream bandwidth!"
As you can see, the implications are quite profound.
"Best of all, JK could publish the trailer on her home broadband connection, and even a mention on Slashdot couldn't kill it!"
White Water allows people with limited or metered bandwidth to publish files for download by thousands of people without saturating their bandwidth. Downloaders participate by distributing chunks of the file amongst themselves but gain by downloading several parts of the file simultaneously. The download speed will generally be limited only by the downloaders own bandwidth, not that of the publisher.
White water can also be used in server or proxy mode, publishing and downloading files for entire networks whilst providing more permanent sharing of cached files.
It's touted as being more featurefull than Bit-Torrent. Anyone using WhiteWater?
Apparently they used Psycho to get the Python numbers. This is why the Python numbers look so good. However, Psycho is not the standard distribution of Python and it doesn't allow the full flexibility of standard Python. This should be noted in the results. They should create a set of results using the 'standard' Python distro as well....otherwise, why not just let us use Inline::C in Perl (or in Ruby) - basically this would allow you to put C code into your Perl/Ruby script (which wouldn't be fair).
Having just finished a class in Quantum computing I have these observations:
1) Right now most of these quantum 'circuits' are implemented on NMR machines. They can realize a handfull of qubits. Not very cost effective. Unless you want your computer to double as an MRI machine (hey, you could rent it out every night!) it's not going to cost effective any time soon.
2) Quantum Cellular Automata (QCA) - not strictly quantum computing, but a very interesting and potentially realizable (as in they might actually be able to fabricate these in the next 10 years or so) computing paradigm. The big advantages over current logic families (like CMOS): there is no current flow hence the power dissipation could be miniscule. They switch at Terahertz rates. QCA circuits are very small ( a majority gate in less space than a current CMOS transistor).
3) Put the word 'Quantum' in front of something and it suddenly has a certain cachet.
For the time being, most of this stuff is fantasy. At most we can build actual quantum circuits (not simulated) which have maybe 10 gates or so which isn't too useful and the implementation technology is extremely expensive (not to mention large and power hungry). QCAs may actually lead to something real - but they're not really quantum gates.
It'll be years before actual quantum computers exist. Right now they implement them using NMR machines and they're only able to realize a handfull of qbits. So unless you want your desktop machine to double as an MRI machine quantum computing just isn't going to be cost effective for decades (if ever).
No, it's more than just another Linux distro. It's more of a way of creating Linux distros. But if you take it a step further, there's no reason why it couldn't also be used to build *BSD systems as well by specifying a *BSD kernel instead. If that can be done, then Rubyx is something much more than just another Linux distro. It would be a sort of a cafeteria-style system builder: I'll take this Darwin kernel and this GnuStep WM and this MPlayer and... There are lots of possibilities. Is Linux too vulnerable to attacks this week? Ask Rubyx to build you a system with an OpenBSD kernel instead.
The name Ruby x conveys a little too much "Ruby fanboy" vibe.
Perhaps. I suppose I'm a 'Ruby fanboy', but I did wince a bit when I saw the headline for this story which said something like "Rubyx - it shows the power of Ruby". I think there are lots of other things that show the power of Ruby better.
However, that said, there are zillions of Linux distros out there and they did need a name and since the rather novel init system is written in Ruby (a feature I really like about Rubyx, btw) it sort of makes sense to call it Rubyx, doesn't it?
It's a Linux distribution, yet the name doesn't mention it and the website gives only cursory mention of this fact, which borders on the deceptive.
Instead of seeing it as deceptive, I see it as a way to keep their options open. How's that? Well, why couldn't the Rubyx script also be used to build a FreeBSD or Darwin system? It's just a different kernel after all, so why should you be limited to the Linux kernel? Now _that_ would be flexible. I hope they take it to that level, then it will be truely unique and not just another Linux distro.
Why devote so much energy into implementing a mediocre system using ruby, of all languages, when you could spend time improving an existing system?
How do you know it's mediocre? Have you tried it? Do you even understand what it does?
Total waste of time...99.99% of the code out there is written in C -based languages (java, php, C++) for a reason...
You could be the one that's totally wasting your time. One should choose the right language for the job at hand.
I recently inherited a project which took six months to develop in C++. It weighed in at ~4800 lines of C++ code. Since we needed to significantly expand the scope of the project and also add a GUI _and_ since execution speed wasn't an issue, but development time _was_ an issue I decided to rewrite the code in Ruby. It took a week and came to ~1200 lines of Ruby. The resulting Ruby code is much more flexible and easier to modify and add to than the previous C++ codebase (good riddance to it). I'll gain back that week invested to do the conversion several times over as the project progresses and as the requirements (inevitably) change... and I'll keep my sanity.
Choose the right tool for the job. If speed of execution is an issue then by all means use C/C++ (I do). However, if you need to develop code quickly then use an agile (aka scripting) language - I prefer Ruby for that role.
Can someone explain clearly why someone who works a lot with python, why one might find it worth while to invest into learning about Ruby?
If Python is doing everything you need it to do and you're happy with it and you're not curious, then maybe there isn't any reason for you to learn Ruby.
However, if you have at least a little bit of intellectual curiosity, you might find it rewarding to spend an hour learning some Ruby and trying it out. I emphasize the tryinging it out part: sure the two languages have very similar capabilities, however it feels much different programming in Ruby than it does in Python. It's difficult to explain, you have to try it. I tend to think it has something to do with the fact that Ruby's built-in libs made use of iterators from the start (and it also has something to do with Ruby's blocks).
Also, if you prefer not having syntactically significant pieces of your code be invisible then you'll probably prefer Ruby. Yes, it's that indentation-as-syntax thing in Python that kept me from going with the snake a few years back before I found Ruby. Yes, I've heard all the arguments from the Pythonistas about how your editor will just take care of things for you and how life will be so wonderful. However, I was bit by this twice within the first hour that I tried Python. One person might have his editor set to expand tabs and another might not. I haven't got time to spend several minutes trying to figure out why some code (which looks perfectly fine) doesn't work only to find that it's a tab expansion problem, "gee, the code looks identical to the code in the book?! WTF?!" - Life's too short.
Burning DVDs with Mandrake 9.2 means right clicking on a file and selecting k3b. Playing Quicktime movies (and any other media file) on Mandrake 9.2 involves nothing more than clicking on the file. All the necessary software is preinstalled.
That's great if everything is just perfect. Problem is that with Mandrake 9.2 my CD player/burner quit working and in fact whenever I tried to access it my whole system would freeze up (and I'm not talking about just X freezing, I couldn't even ping the machine). Finally, I went back to the old kernel from 9.0 and the CD could be accessed again without freezing the system.
Oh, and I've never gotten my USB ports for this particular machine to work with Mandrake - some kind of irq/port conflict, I suspect. That made it kind of hard to get pictures out of my digital camera. Oh, and I've also never been able to connect a printer to the parallel port on that machine either - when I have tried it (using cups) it kind of prints right,but then every once in a while strange characters get printed in the middle of the page. Had to put the printer on a different machine because of this. Again, I suspect an irq/port conflict is causing this, but I got tired of chasing it down (and yes I did spend a lot of time on it).
The Mac probably still has an advantage in some areas, but the gap has closed considerably in others.
To a large degree you're right, but I still have the kinds of problems I've outlined above and frankly I was just tired of dealing with that crap. I wanted to actually get some work done.
Wait... what does the menubar's placement have to do with an OS ability to multi-task or not? Nothing.
True, and that's not what I meant to say. Surely OSX is great at preempitve mulititasking. But the whole paradigm of only having one menubar available at any given time seems to harken back to the days prior to OSX before MacOS had preemptive multitasking. It's sort of a visual way of saying "OK, now this app has full control of the system". Since that is'nt the case anymore with OSX, it would be nice if this were something that was configurable in Aqua.
BTW: Anyone know how to get 'focus-follows-mouse' in Aqua? Is it even possible?
I've been using Linux since '96. I've tried most of the major distros out there. I really like Linux.
However, yesterday I got my first G4 PowerBook. I wanted to actually do some multi-media type things with my computer without having to spend hours (days) trying to get things to work. I wanted to do things like burn DVDs, edit video, play Quicktime movies. Sure, you can do these things with Linux, but I've got other things to do than spend hours/days/months trying to get everything sort-of-kind-of-working.
So, I got a Mac. Seems like the best of both worlds.
Am I going to dump Linux now? No way. Linux is great for lots of other things. I have to say that I actually prefer KDE or GNOME to the Mac's Aqua. The Mac doesn't have virtual desktops, it doesn't have enough mouse buttons and what's with the toolbar having to be at the top of the screen instead of on the actual application window?! (seems to harken back to the pre-OSX days when MacOS wasn't a true multitasking OS). On the otherhand, I can stick a DVD-RW in the Mac and copy a movie to it that will play on my DVD player, no muss, no fuss. I can hook up a digital camera to my Mac via the usb, download the images from it and edit the pics without having to spend hours trying to get it to work - I really like that. Now I can get on with getting some work done instead of being a sys-admin.
Silicon Valley will ad 17,000 jobs this year and 33,000 next year.
"Make it so" by putting it on a website.
Hey, maybe we should announce some other things on websites for a better tomorrow: * The US Unemployment rate will be under 1% by 2006 * The US budget deficit will be 0 in 2005 * Martians will teach us how to harness zero point energy thus ending all reliance on foreign oil by 2010 * Nobody will die of malnutrition next year! * All techies will get dates for Valentines day!
So outsourcing is supposed to give us a net gain of 20Million jobs by 2010, eh?
Sounds like Bush Administration propaganda to me. ("The economy is stronger than it has been in 20 years!", "The economy is expanding at a rapid clip")
Of course, they don't say what kinds of jobs those will be. Wall-Mart, Starbucks, Career Counselors, Retraining Experts.
A lot of the highly qualified talent has traditionally been mobile and attracted to centers of excellence globally.
Are they perhaps beginning to think a bit too highly of themselves?
It might be more accurate to say that people are attracted to food/money/shelter and if they can't find these in the place where they're living now, eventually they'll have to move someplace where they can.
I can't imagine going from something like medicine where you've got 8-10 years of college invested PLUS residency, into IT.
Have you looked at what is happening to malpractice insurance rates the last few years? They're going through the roof (we're talking up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year just for malpractice insurance in some cases) and in some cases companies are refusing to insure doctors in certain specialites. We think we programmers have it bad with our jobs going to India, but doctors are also under a lot of economic pressures right now.
I think that if you're serious you should look at the programming/CS degree while you're practicing medicine and then apply both specialties by developing applications for the medical field.
This is about the best advice I've seen here. For most of us IT/Programming/Engineering is starting to fizzle due to outsourcing, but someone who has deep knowledge in another field like medicine and then learns programming or hardware design is really ahead of the game. And it's much more difficult for those of us on this side of the fence to learn medicine than it would be for this doctor to learn CS/Programming/Engineering.
The basic Itanium architecture has been around for something like 5 years now, hasn't it? And still nobody has managed to write a decent compiler for it. Sure, on paper it might be a very fast architecture, but if no one is able to actually take advantage of it's potential benefits, what good is it?
I just did an internship for a very large company and as a sophmore i received $30/hour.
I find this difficult to believe since they could find experienced people willing to work for very close to that. What kind of company and what kind of degree are you working on?
I would expect that to increase as my education progresses.
A year ago it was $40/hr for similar work. The year before that it was about $60/hr. Maybe their numbers are just out of date....still $35/hr programming beats $8/hr pouring lattes at Starbucks.
That's what I'm seeing here too... $35/hr for C++ contract work. No benefits. Who would've believed it 3 or 4 years ago?
Patent laws in the United States are the way they are to create a fair and balanced capitalistic society.
Yeah, raise your hand if you still believe that one...
The idea of the patent is enshrined in our consititution and it was intended to promote innovation, but that's not all. The patent was also intended to allow the sharing of ideas so that all of society could benefit. However, a lot of patent law has been changed in the last decade-or-so in order to tilt the balance in the direction of the large corporations. Used to be you couldn't patent software or algorithms, for example.
No, the way the patent system is setup now is sort of like the fox guarding the henhouse. The patent office relies on the submitter to determine prior art and the patent office tends to lean in the direction of granting patents and letting the lawyers sort it out later. It's a full employment program for lawyers and the little guy doesn't have the cash to survive a court battle, only the corporations can afford that.
Slashdot Mirror
An explanation of WhiteWater from it's creator:
"A Massive increase in internet efficiency is possible with persistent
bandwidth sharing. BitTorrent started the ball rolling; now White Water takes
the next step with proxy/server and mirroring facilities."
Persistent bandwidth sharing is the key. Consider:
- When you download a file with ftp or http, you connect to and download the
WHOLE file from the publishing server.
- When you download a file with bitTorrent, you get CHUNKS of the file from
loads of other people who are downloading the file AT THE SAME TIME AS YOU.
If you are the only downloader, you'll get the WHOLE file from the publishing - When you download with White Water, you get CHUNKS of the file from any WW
proxy which has ever downloaded the file and still has it in it's cache.
White Waters' proxy mode provides this _persistent_ or _ongoing_ file sharing.
Even if you are the only person currently downloading the file, you will
receive chunks from every WW proxy which still has the file (or chunks of it)
in its cache. If there are a hundred proxies with the file, and your local
bandwith is wide enough, you could receive the file 99 times faster than
would be possible from the original publishing server alone, which might be
on a simple home broadband connection.
"Imagine that 10 of your hard working employees download the latest Harry
Potter movie trailer. Thats 10 identical huge files saturating your internet
connection. If instead the trailer was published using WW, you could run a WW
proxy on your gateway server and only 1 copy would be downloaded, even if a
hundred employees decided to fetch it. Better yet, they would all be sharing
the data amongst themselves, massively reducing the load on your gateway
server."
This is only possible with the proxy/server mode WW provides.
"Now imagine that your ISP provided a WW proxy. Thousands of downloads are
reduced to one, freeing up Gigabytes of the ISPs upstream bandwidth!"
As you can see, the implications are quite profound.
"Best of all, JK could publish the trailer on her home broadband connection,
and even a mention on Slashdot couldn't kill it!"
I think I'll go back to pouring salt in my eyes,
;-)
Yep. Programming in PHP is kind of like that...
...if you really want to do 'advanced' PHP programming, move to Ruby, Perl or Python. ;-)
http://ww.walrond.org/
Anybody heard of this:
White Water allows people with limited or metered bandwidth to publish files for download by thousands of people without saturating their bandwidth. Downloaders participate by distributing chunks of the file amongst themselves but gain by downloading several parts of the file simultaneously. The download speed will generally be limited only by the downloaders own bandwidth, not that of the publisher.
White water can also be used in server or proxy mode, publishing and downloading files for entire networks whilst providing more permanent sharing of cached files.
It's touted as being more featurefull than Bit-Torrent. Anyone using WhiteWater?
Dear Intel,
You've got a lot more employees in Oregon than in New Mexico, when can we expect to see something like this in Hillsboro/Aloha/Beaverton?
Pretty soon please...
Apparently they used Psycho to get the Python numbers. This is why the Python numbers look so good. However, Psycho is not the standard distribution of Python and it doesn't allow the full flexibility of standard Python. This should be noted in the results. They should create a set of results using the 'standard' Python distro as well. ...otherwise, why not just let us use Inline::C in Perl (or in Ruby) - basically this would allow you to put C code into your Perl/Ruby script (which wouldn't be fair).
Having just finished a class in Quantum computing I have these observations:
1) Right now most of these quantum 'circuits' are implemented on NMR machines. They can realize a handfull of qubits. Not very cost effective. Unless you want your computer to double as an MRI machine (hey, you could rent it out every night!) it's not going to cost effective any time soon.
2) Quantum Cellular Automata (QCA) - not strictly quantum computing, but a very interesting and potentially realizable (as in they might actually be able to fabricate these in the next 10 years or so) computing paradigm. The big advantages over current logic families (like CMOS): there is no current flow hence the power dissipation could be miniscule. They switch at Terahertz rates. QCA circuits are very small ( a majority gate in less space than a current CMOS transistor).
3) Put the word 'Quantum' in front of something and it suddenly has a certain cachet.
For the time being, most of this stuff is fantasy. At most we can build actual quantum circuits (not simulated) which have maybe 10 gates or so which isn't too useful and the implementation technology is extremely expensive (not to mention large and power hungry). QCAs may actually lead to something real - but they're not really quantum gates.
It'll be years before actual quantum computers exist. Right now they implement them using NMR machines and they're only able to realize a handfull of qbits. So unless you want your desktop machine to double as an MRI machine quantum computing just isn't going to be cost effective for decades (if ever).
No, it's more than just another Linux distro. It's more of a way of creating Linux distros. But if you take it a step further, there's no reason why it couldn't also be used to build *BSD systems as well by specifying a *BSD kernel instead. If that can be done, then Rubyx is something much more than just another Linux distro. It would be a sort of a cafeteria-style system builder: I'll take this Darwin kernel and this GnuStep WM and this MPlayer and... There are lots of possibilities. Is Linux too vulnerable to attacks this week? Ask Rubyx to build you a system with an OpenBSD kernel instead.
The name Ruby x conveys a little too much "Ruby fanboy" vibe.
Perhaps. I suppose I'm a 'Ruby fanboy', but I did wince a bit when I saw the headline for this story which said something like "Rubyx - it shows the power of Ruby". I think there are lots of other things that show the power of Ruby better.
However, that said, there are zillions of Linux distros out there and they did need a name and since the rather novel init system is written in Ruby (a feature I really like about Rubyx, btw) it sort of makes sense to call it Rubyx, doesn't it?
It's a Linux distribution, yet the name doesn't mention it and the website gives only cursory mention of this fact, which borders on the deceptive.
Instead of seeing it as deceptive, I see it as a way to keep their options open. How's that? Well, why couldn't the Rubyx script also be used to build a FreeBSD or Darwin system? It's just a different kernel after all, so why should you be limited to the Linux kernel? Now _that_ would be flexible. I hope they take it to that level, then it will be truely unique and not just another Linux distro.
Why devote so much energy into implementing a mediocre system using ruby, of all languages, when you could spend time improving an existing system?
How do you know it's mediocre? Have you tried it?
Do you even understand what it does?
Total waste of time...99.99% of the code out there is written in C -based languages (java, php, C++) for a reason...
You could be the one that's totally wasting your time. One should choose the right language for the job at hand.
I recently inherited a project which took six months to develop in C++. It weighed in at ~4800 lines of C++ code. Since we needed to significantly expand the scope of the project and also add a GUI _and_ since execution speed wasn't an issue, but development time _was_ an issue I decided to rewrite the code in Ruby. It took a week and came to ~1200 lines of Ruby. The resulting Ruby code is much more flexible and easier to modify and add to than the previous C++ codebase (good riddance to it). I'll gain back that week invested to do the conversion several times over as the project progresses and as the requirements (inevitably) change... and I'll keep my sanity.
Choose the right tool for the job. If speed of execution is an issue then by all means use C/C++ (I do). However, if you need to develop code quickly then use an agile (aka scripting) language - I prefer Ruby for that role.
Can someone explain clearly why someone who works a lot with python, why one might find it worth while to invest into learning about Ruby?
If Python is doing everything you need it to do and you're happy with it and you're not curious, then maybe there isn't any reason for you to learn Ruby.
However, if you have at least a little bit of intellectual curiosity, you might find it rewarding to spend an hour learning some Ruby and trying it out. I emphasize the tryinging it out part: sure the two languages have very similar capabilities, however it feels much different programming in Ruby than it does in Python. It's difficult to explain, you have to try it. I tend to think it has something to do with the fact that Ruby's built-in libs made use of iterators from the start (and it also has something to do with Ruby's blocks).
Also, if you prefer not having syntactically significant pieces of your code be invisible then you'll probably prefer Ruby. Yes, it's that indentation-as-syntax thing in Python that kept me from going with the snake a few years back before I found Ruby. Yes, I've heard all the arguments from the Pythonistas about how your editor will just take care of things for you and how life will be so wonderful. However, I was bit by this twice within the first hour that I tried Python. One person might have his editor set to expand tabs and another might not. I haven't got time to spend several minutes trying to figure out why some code (which looks perfectly fine) doesn't work only to find that it's a tab expansion problem, "gee, the code looks identical to the code in the book?! WTF?!" - Life's too short.
Burning DVDs with Mandrake 9.2 means right clicking on a file and selecting k3b. Playing Quicktime movies (and any other media file) on Mandrake 9.2 involves nothing more than clicking on the file. All the necessary software is preinstalled.
That's great if everything is just perfect. Problem is that with Mandrake 9.2 my CD player/burner quit working and in fact whenever I tried to access it my whole system would freeze up (and I'm not talking about just X freezing, I couldn't even ping the machine). Finally, I went back to the old kernel from 9.0 and the CD could be accessed again without freezing the system.
Oh, and I've never gotten my USB ports for this particular machine to work with Mandrake - some kind of irq/port conflict, I suspect. That made it kind of hard to get pictures out of my digital camera. Oh, and I've also never been able to connect a printer to the parallel port on that machine either - when I have tried it (using cups) it kind of prints right,but then every once in a while strange characters get printed in the middle of the page. Had to put the printer on a different machine because of this. Again, I suspect an irq/port conflict is causing this, but I got tired of chasing it down (and yes I did spend a lot of time on it).
The Mac probably still has an advantage in some areas, but the gap has closed considerably in others.
To a large degree you're right, but I still have the kinds of problems I've outlined above and frankly I was just tired of dealing with that crap. I wanted to actually get some work done.
Wait... what does the menubar's placement have to do with an OS ability to multi-task or not? Nothing.
True, and that's not what I meant to say. Surely OSX is great at preempitve mulititasking. But the whole paradigm of only having one menubar available at any given time seems to harken back to the days prior to OSX before MacOS had preemptive multitasking. It's sort of a visual way of saying "OK, now this app has full control of the system". Since that is'nt the case anymore with OSX, it would be nice if this were something that was configurable in Aqua.
BTW: Anyone know how to get 'focus-follows-mouse' in Aqua? Is it even possible?
I've been using Linux since '96. I've tried most of the major distros out there. I really like Linux.
However, yesterday I got my first G4 PowerBook. I wanted to actually do some multi-media type things with my computer without having to spend hours (days) trying to get things to work. I wanted to do things like burn DVDs, edit video, play Quicktime movies. Sure, you can do these things with Linux, but I've got other things to do than spend hours/days/months trying to get everything sort-of-kind-of-working.
So, I got a Mac. Seems like the best of both worlds.
Am I going to dump Linux now? No way. Linux is great for lots of other things. I have to say that I actually prefer KDE or GNOME to the Mac's Aqua. The Mac doesn't have virtual desktops, it doesn't have enough mouse buttons and what's with the toolbar having to be at the top of the screen instead of on the actual application window?! (seems to harken back to the pre-OSX days when MacOS wasn't a true multitasking OS). On the otherhand, I can stick a DVD-RW in the Mac and copy a movie to it that will play on my DVD player, no muss, no fuss. I can hook up a digital camera to my Mac via the usb, download the images from it and edit the pics without having to spend hours trying to get it to work - I really like that. Now I can get on with getting some work done instead of being a sys-admin.
Silicon Valley will ad 17,000 jobs this year and 33,000 next year.
"Make it so" by putting it on a website.
Hey, maybe we should announce some other things on websites for a better tomorrow:
* The US Unemployment rate will be under 1% by 2006
* The US budget deficit will be 0 in 2005
* Martians will teach us how to harness zero point energy thus ending all reliance on foreign oil by 2010
* Nobody will die of malnutrition next year!
* All techies will get dates for Valentines day!
Great quote from the article:
They are not economists and therefore, they don't necessarily see the whole picture.
Yes, economists have such a great track record when it comes to figuring out what's going to happen next, don't they?
So outsourcing is supposed to give us a net gain of 20Million jobs by 2010, eh?
Sounds like Bush Administration propaganda to me. ("The economy is stronger than it has been in 20 years!", "The economy is expanding at a rapid clip")
Of course, they don't say what kinds of jobs those will be. Wall-Mart, Starbucks, Career Counselors, Retraining Experts.
A lot of the highly qualified talent has traditionally been mobile and attracted to centers of excellence globally.
Are they perhaps beginning to think a bit too highly of themselves?
It might be more accurate to say that people are attracted to food/money/shelter and if they can't find these in the place where they're living now, eventually they'll have to move someplace where they can.
hey, who moved my paneer?
I can't imagine going from something like medicine where you've got 8-10 years of college invested PLUS residency, into IT.
Have you looked at what is happening to malpractice insurance rates the last few years? They're going through the roof (we're talking up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year just for malpractice insurance in some cases) and in some cases companies are refusing to insure doctors in certain specialites. We think we programmers have it bad with our jobs going to India, but doctors are also under a lot of economic pressures right now.
I think that if you're serious you should look at the programming/CS degree while you're practicing medicine and then apply both specialties by developing applications for the medical field.
This is about the best advice I've seen here. For most of us IT/Programming/Engineering is starting to fizzle due to outsourcing, but someone who has deep knowledge in another field like medicine and then learns programming or hardware design is really ahead of the game. And it's much more difficult for those of us on this side of the fence to learn medicine than it would be for this doctor to learn CS/Programming/Engineering.
hey, who moved my paneer?
The basic Itanium architecture has been around for something like 5 years now, hasn't it? And still nobody has managed to write a decent compiler for it. Sure, on paper it might be a very fast architecture, but if no one is able to actually take advantage of it's potential benefits, what good is it?
hey, who moved my paneer?
I just did an internship for a very large company and as a sophmore i received $30/hour.
I find this difficult to believe since they could find experienced people willing to work for very close to that. What kind of company and what kind of degree are you working on?
I would expect that to increase as my education progresses.
Don't borrow money based on that assumption.
A year ago it was $40/hr for similar work. The year before that it was about $60/hr. Maybe their numbers are just out of date. ...still $35/hr programming beats $8/hr pouring lattes at Starbucks.
That's what I'm seeing here too... $35/hr for C++ contract work. No benefits. Who would've believed it 3 or 4 years ago?
Hey, who moved my paneer?
Patent laws in the United States are the way they are to create a fair and balanced capitalistic society.
Yeah, raise your hand if you still believe that one...
The idea of the patent is enshrined in our consititution and it was intended to promote innovation, but that's not all. The patent was also intended to allow the sharing of ideas so that all of society could benefit. However, a lot of patent law has been changed in the last decade-or-so in order to tilt the balance in the direction of the large corporations.
Used to be you couldn't patent software or algorithms, for example.
No, the way the patent system is setup now is sort of like the fox guarding the henhouse. The patent office relies on the submitter to determine prior art and the patent office tends to lean in the direction of granting patents and letting the lawyers sort it out later. It's a full employment program for lawyers and the little guy doesn't have the cash to survive a court battle, only the corporations can afford that.