Oh, great! Now you've just set off a panic as people start looking for radioactive spiders that are out to get them!
I know I'm safe, the tin foil chestguard repels them.
"Wake me when it can detect an opening in the opponent's defense and strike at it."
Do you say this to your beginning students? The fact that this robot has the ability to track its opponent's sword, and using its programming, place its own sword in the "best" (in the minds of the programmers, who are clearly not swordsmen, as you and I are) position for anticipatory defense is a milestone. Give it time; it will be a relatively short step to add heuristic algorithms to this, and then the machine will simply learn what works and what doesn't. After, of course, a decent programmer works with a decent swordsman to give the robot access to the techniques of I.33, Talhoffer, Durer, Agrippa, and personally, I'd hope Donald McBane.
Amen to this. I got hired on by a company on Madison, WI in January of 1999 and was told on my first day that "this Y2K thing" was my first priority, since my predecessor had put in maybe 3 hours of work on the project. Oh, and I had to do it while getting our network up to date.
Frankly, it was a cinch, once they'd approved the budget. *That* took until June, too, so I really did the entire project in 6 months.
As someone who's working with this stuff right now, I can say if it's slowing you down, you're not taking advantage of the available tools. They're out there. Keep looking.
Moreover, "data entry" is one way of looking at it. A different way to call it is "documenting what they're doing with sufficient detail". That was the entire point of these kinds of standardized coding systems: to (as best as we can) remove the fuzzy documentation in the systems before, and to remove the idiosyncrasies from medical records. With the proper coding systems in place, a patient in Allentown who moves to Duluth can have his PHI moved to the new caregiver and be (for the most part) confident that the Iowans will be able to understand what the Pennsylvanians did for him before.
Yeah, there's going to be transitional pain. There always is. But as has been pointed out in other posts, it's not like ICD-10 ambushed anybody. Frankly, if you haven't been moving toward ICD-10-capable systems for at least 2 years, you've been slacking. There's a penalty for that at crunch time.
He is absolutely correct; a half-million units shipped to just 12 to 15 destinations *IS* simple by comparison. Just look at the complexities of UPS' operations in moving 80000 packages within the boundaries of the US, and that becomes apparent.
In Freemasonry, the 24-inch gauge (or ruler) is used as an emblem of the 24 hours in the day. We are taught that we are to divide this time in three parts, with 8 being for refreshment and sleep, 8 being for the service of God and our fellow man, and 8 "for our usual vocations" -- that is, our regular job. While we understand the realities of modern life, the model of "8 for sleep, 8 for work, 8 for service" is a good one that keeps proper balance in our lives. The move to more and more work eats away at that balance, and imbalance is the source of most of our ills.
BTW, if you're wondering where "family" is in that model, we tend to our families in the 8 we reserve for service. Service to our families is the source of our strength.
While this certainly is concerning, it isn't exactly new, as a passport is already required for circumstances covered under the proposal.
Having a passport is required, but having permissionis not, and that difference is critical. We do not, and should not require permission from our government to travel. Period.
On the 7th, I'll be voting. And I'll be voting to attempt to wrest my government back from the extremist assholes that my fellow countrymen... the ones with less foresight... saddled us with for the last 6 years.
They also *gasp* make personal phone calls sometime. Sometimes to the babysitter or their spouse! We must implement a whitelist for the phone immediatly.
What's really amusing to me in all the responses to this article are the people who talk like the telephone is unrestricted at the office. It is not always so. I have worked for several companies over the years that had a strict no-personal-calls policy, and it was enforced with disciplinary action. In one case, it was enforced by not allowing employees to make outbound calls unless they were working in departments with the need to do so; this was enforced by properly configuring the PBX. This isn't some kind of office fascism, either. This was simply a company not wanting to pay people to make personal calls. There was a phone in the break room for such calls, when you were on break.
Seriously, work is a compromise. You want humans to work for you, then be prepared to meet them halfway on their social needs.
You're obviously not a business owner. The purpose of a business is to make a profit. Period. Anything else is extra. There is no room on the bottom line for "social needs" of the employees.
A wise company would offer its employees things like job security, decent wages, properly designed offices that provide sufficient light and clean air, and a work schedule that doesn't demand 60-hour weeks. A wise employee would offer his best work in exchange for that, work his required shift and go home, where he could surf the net to his heart's content. Sadly, such companies are rare, almost non-existant. Who can blame the employee for not being happy with the deal offered? Still, with the concerns like sub-standard wages, healthcare, job security and the like, not having full-on Internet access is pretty trivial.
Lastly, if security is such a concern, I believe very few, if any, popular windows exploits work when the user doesnt have admin access. A simple security change like this, which is something that hsould have been done long ago, makes the web very safe.
You haven't been keeping up with the news. There are plenty of exploits capable of compromising a machine without the user's security level. Some can be delivered through the web browser.
If you saw a man with a wife, children, friends and a job, and he was dying of some disease, as the rest of his family looks on helplessly, would you leave him to die if you had the option of saving him?
We do it all the time.
In this country (USA), where we have huge amounts of wealth, resources and expertise, we continue to place people in power who support the idea that first rate medical care is something only the rich can afford. The rest of the people get whatever can be cobbled together by so-called "cost-reducing" insurance conglomerates which are businesses, first and foremost. They exist to turn a profit for their investors; that is the only purpose of a for-profit corporation. There is no humanitarian aspect to consider.
That is why there are millions in this country who are sick, but cannot get medical care. I know of two personally who have insurance, even, but cannot get the care because in the one case, the insurance covers a pittance of the cost, and in the other, the family has maxxed out the lifetime limit of $1 million. The care for their child is still needed, but they are responsible for the continuing costs. In the end, this will impoverish the family.
In the meantime, the citizens of this country will continue to vote for people who claim that all these problems can be solved without changing anything of the system that is causing the problems. And those same people are the ones who will cry "Immoral!" about cloning.
The bigger question for me is not whether the cloning of embryos to harvest stem cells is moral or not, but what use will the military-industrial segment of our society have for the technology used and developed for the process?
We've seen that tech is being more and more commoditized. Pretty soon, tech jobs will be no more than plugging in parts. We will become plumbers.
Some of us, yes. But some of us will be designing the parts, testing the parts, refining the parts. Making the next generation of parts. And supporting people who have to install, service and use the parts.
And some of us will give up IT altogether, and go raise goats. Or something.
Determined by whom? I'd be interested to see where that data comes from.
However, that's rarely the major issue here. The "salary" paid for a particular position can mean much or little, given that the salary of an employee represents a fraction of the amount of money paid for the employee. Things like 401K, health insurance, various taxes and so forth, have to be paid by the employer for each employee... assuming that those benefits are offered to the employees. I have no idea what the requirements are with repect to an H1B, but I wouldn't be surprised if the costs were less to pay for the relocation.
The US is about immigration and building a better life for everyone
Uh, no. No it isn't. I didn't immigrate anywhere, and I have never held that the US has a mission to make life better for everyone. Besides, if you go with that logic... and forgive me, but that logic is specious in the extreme... then how does one square the idea of "building a better life for everyone" with the effects of job loss and displacement of an American-born worker who loses a 12+ year career to downsizing, only to have his former emplyer clamor for an H1B to replace him? What about the student in college who works to bring in a Bachelor's degree, only to find that she can't find any job that pays enough to justify the hours she's going to have to pull to "compete" with H1Bs who will pull 80-hour weeks?
Incidentally, your comment about the locals not being "up to the snuff"... I wonder if your regions' IT employers ever worked with the region's education sector to encourage the improvement of the local prospective IT workers' skillsets. I find that people will lift themselves up, if they are given an inentive to do so. If all they see are people losing their jobs, having their salaries cut, being forced by the threat of both to work huge overtime period with little or no overtime pay, well.. can you blame them for not wanting to get into that game?
Last thing: Having an H1B in the country does not automatically "enrich everyone", and thinking so is too simplistic. Having a foreign IT worker in town will do nothing for the former IT professional that the H1B replaced, for example.
Simple - to switch jobs in those industries requires almost zero personal investment.
Assuming that your time is worthless, yes. Mine isn't, but I see your point.
Suppose you lose your job at age 35-40. Now what do you do?
And here is where the system really fails. Even if the money is there, and the training programs are there, how is this person, who was well into their career, ever going to survive while getting the training? Who's paying for the house, the car, the kids' education (and please, "free" public education isn't. Have you seen the fees lately?) or the health care needs?
Suppose somebody is born retarded. In a pure capitalist society, they should be allowed to starve - they serve no useful purpose.
Which proves we don't live in a pure capitalist society, doesn't it? Retarded people don't starve here.
So, to sum up, you don't have any ideas about what people should do, right? get up, off of your ass, and make plans. Then COMMIT. Then execute. DO IT. is not an idea, it's management speak with a dash of Mr. Motivator thrown in. You do get that, right?
And right after the spot where you cut off, I said "Go out, get the training." I assumed that folks who were sufficiently far along in their careers wouldn't have to ask "What training is that?", so I focused instead on the rest. The important stuff, actually. That is, don't get paralyzed by the fear that it's all coming apart at the seams, and that nothing will save it now.
See, the suggestions being offered in response to the article's question were very much like the Bush Administration's plan for the war in Iraq: very strong response, but no idea how to follow through. I was focusing on what to do *after*. And since there are multitude of options (not the least of which is your solution: get out of IT, and that's not a bad option for some), it doesn't behoove me to suggest anything specific, other than don't sit there, waiting for the next swipe of the ax.
Oh, yes... and about the management speak? Every language has its uses. I'm not too proud to use what's useful. If it doesn't work for you, fine. Maybe it will work for someone else.
Hey, you. Yes, you, reading Slashdot instead of working. C'mere.
I can understand why you're feeling the way you do. I understand why you come to an office you hate, perform meaningless little chores instead of getting your real work done, and ignore... or try to... that little pressure you're feeling in your chest. The one that spikes when you read another email from management that includes the words "sacrifice", "competition", and "tough decisions".
I know that you'd rather not think about it all. You'd rather just get back to doing what you were doing before the axes started dropping, and your division, your department, your team started getting thinned out, and their jobs transferred to the ones who were left. I know that you know what that feeling is, the one you don't think about too often... except in the middle of the night, after you've just had another "what if" discussion with your spouse about finances, trying not to think about the kids asleep down the hall.
I know you're on Monster.com, CareerBuilder, Dice... all of 'em. And I know you haven't had an interview in at least six months.
You have to get up, off of your ass, and make plans. Then COMMIT. Then execute. DO IT. Go out, get the training. If the money's not there to get it, join a LUG, or whatever. Actually make friends (!), network your skills. Learn from each other. Reconcile yourself to the fact that this is going to get worse before it gets better.
But it will get better. For some of us. The ones who planned, committed, executed. The rest are going to be sorry they waited. And don't crab about the Indians too much. Their time in the spotlight is going to be so damnably short, we're all going to be shocked... most of all, them.
And when it's all over, and it will be, in about 3 years, when the economy comes roaring back and suddenly we realize that we're on the verge of losing all the Boomers who made up the majority of the workforce, then they're going to be scrambling for skilled labor. Only there won't be any.
Or not much, that is. There will be the ones who planned...
The scenario that comes most easily to mind is that of the car breaking down on the highway. What are you going to do, without a cellphone, without being able to access the hood?
What are you going to do anyway? The overwhelming majority of people I know do not carry a full set of tools in their car, and even if they do, they carry little to no spare parts. So you break down. You can perform Manly Car Manuever #1: open the hood and stare at the engine. Even if you can diagnose the problem, what are you going to do without replacement parts?
What if the temp outside is subzero and you're 5 miles from the nearest inhabitant?
And the ability to open the hood here means you can not only perform MCM #1 (detailed above), but you can do #'s 2 and 3: Freeze your ass off while doing it, and cuss at it.
Crits aside though, the car is pretty nice, and it is also good to see that we are able to make cars easier for the dumba^H^H^H^H^Hnormal people who drive cars and don't want to be concerned with how their car works.
Oh, you're one of those zealots. Now I understand the basis for your objection. Religious issues...
There's nothing that says a person can't know how the car works, and still not want to... or be able to, even!... perform their own maintenance on that car. The concepts here are, frankly, brilliant in that they take into account the existing desires of the target market. A lot has been written here about "reinforcing stereotypes", but the fact remains that most people (men and women) do not perform their own maintenance. Ergo, make the car so they don't have to.
A better article on this project, which is called "Your Concept Car" or YCC, can be found at http://www.thecarconnection.com/index.asp?article= 6907 and explains some of the features in more detail, including the big one: the first maintenance stop is at 35,000 miles.
And that stands regardless of whether I end up keeping my job, goofing around on my Playstation-6 in the mansion I bought with the returns from my investments in transnational corporations, or on a park bench with a sign saying "Will Code For Food".
Ah. I take it you don't have a wife and children. You'd hardly be so blaise' about it if you were going to be joined on that park bench by them. In Wisconsin. In the winter.
And investments? You *have* any? I did, once. All gone, now, and I don't begrudge that so much; playing the market is like gambling anyway.
Next question (asked by Indians I spoke to): "Where is the government going to get the money?"
I was asked to pose this one to Slashdot readers. Consider it posed. Plenty of Indians would like to know the answer.
And they're asking us... why?
Honestly, why do they want to know what our answer is going to be? If they're asking for advice, I hope that it's realized that for many of us in the US, the last thing we feel like being is charitable with financial advice for a country that is currently one of the beneficiaries of our lost jobs. I could just as easily answer their question with the same comments that appeared in a Wired magazine article a few weeks back, and which I responded to in an open letter in my blog: "Do what you're supposed to do. And don't worry about the fruits. They'll come on their own." Not very satisfying advice, is it?
Having said all that, I'll surrender up an observation for the Indian IT force; take it for what it's worth, which might be much or little. One of the major reasons why America got to be where it is today has to do with the spirit of its founding, in that those who came here and spread west did so in the pursuit of that which they couldn't have achieved back in England, or in the more established of the colonies, and then the States. They were willing to throw off virtually everything in an effort to reach for the brass ring, overturning centuries of "that's the way it's done" in favor of "this is what works".
So long as you have your caste structure, so long as you still use your rivers as open sewage culverts, so long as you still engage in the outdated, outmoded cultural imperatives that have made corner ultrasound machines available to women who want to check the sex of their foetus so they can abort girls and give birth to boys... well, let's just say you're going to have a very, very rough time finding the real strength of a nation determined to better itself. Innovation... Trying something new...
When India's people are ready to do that, and stop worrying about what class someone was born in, they'll be ready to "do what it takes". Until then, no amount of money will work.
I'm sure I just ruffled some feathers. Don't worry; they'll smooth back down as soon as you've convinced yourself that I'm just a bitter American watching his livelihood evaporate, who's finally getting what all Americans deserve, after all the years that our government has mucked around with the rest of the world.
Like I said, this is a long run thing. The VAST majority of people will benefit in the short and longterm, whereas the a miniority will have a short term loss.
Standard of living has much less to do with how much you make, compared to how much you can purchase. When jobs go overseas, those products become cheaper and the majority of people benefit.
I don't agree with your assertions, because they are based on the idea that people will have money to spend. Exactly how cheap is my mortgage going to get when the products are made more cheaply overseas? What incentive does Visa have to lower my credit card interest?
On top of all that, where is the incentive for anyone to lower their prices at all? They will only do that if there is competition; when you've got people locked in to something they cannot do without, you can keep the prices artificially inflated and pocket the returns. That's why prices for gasoline skyrocket 20 to 25 cents per gallon, then creep down a few cents and sit. What are you going to do, not buy gasoline?
Frankly, your viewpoint of how this economy in the US is going to react wouldn't stand up to a casual analysis by a decent high school economics class. If you think that offshoring = cheaper production, you're right. But when you go with cheaper production = cheaper prices paid, you're wrong. Here's another place your little model fails: even if the prices fell on the backs of cheaper overseas labor, you think the average American is going to benefit? How, when the per capita income in real dollars has fallen in the last 20 years by over 10%? And in any case, how much "more purchasing power" does someone have who has been forced to take two jobs that pay on 70% of what they were making at one job before? It ain't just McDonald's that's paying so poorly.
And exactly how much "excess cash" does a programmer, out of work for 15 months now and counting, with no prospects for any job paying more than $5.50/hr, have?
Your naivete is amazing if you think that this viscious cycle of corporate greed will result in anything good. Follow the logic: in order to get the cheaper products, the products are bought from overseas manufacturers. This in turn puts an American worker in that same industry out of work, as the company that makes that product offshores the job. That out-of-work worker now must accept any job he can get, probably in low-pating service, or in the actual sales of the products he used to manufacture (think Walmart stock boy). With his reduced income, he must purchase cheaper goods in order to maintain a level of lifestyle (or at least check its reduction). This means he's buying from a company that offshores its manufacturing as well, putting other American workers out of work, and into direct competition with him for that low-paying job. And so on, and so on.
Where does it end, given that the wealthy stockholders and executives of the corporations driving this machine can continue to rake in huge profits?
How about 2? 5? 10? 15? I've driven through Chicago, for example, and in one of the southwestern 'burbs is an automall that covers acres. There are at least 20 dealerships there. How about if they all install this system? Remember, one system can be heard five miles away, and upon activation it starts firing every 5.5 seconds.
"Can't happen," you say? "There's no need to plant 20 of these in one spot," you point out? I reply with one word: insurance. If the insurance companies covering these dealerships get the idea that the system reduces damage, they might start offering incentives to install one, in an effort to reduce their costs of covering a dealership. Then you will see multiple units installed in a given area.
If one unit can be heard 5 miles away, how loud will 10 be?
(but at no point in my post did I say the pilot should not be able to fly his plane)
No you didn't, in those words. But yes, you did, by supporting the idea put forward in the main article. Any system that purposely puts active control of the aircraft into the "hands" of someone who is not in the cockpit of a manned aircraft (I am not talking about RPVs here) is interfering with the pilot's ability to fly his plane. Period. No amount of argumentation you will put forward about safety factors, commercial vs. non-commercial aviation (like that matters a bit; an aircraft flies, whether it's commercial or not, according to the laws of physics) will change that fact. If a system is in place that takes control of the aircraft from the pilot, then that system is making it so that the pilot cannot fly the plane.
I will give you the point that the computer may not make the right descion and there should be a way to take control away from the computer.
So let me get this straight: you agree that computers may not make the right decision, and that the pilot should be able to fly the plane, but that this proposal to place a computer-controlled overide of the pilot is a good thing. So long as the pilot can overide the computer overiding him.
And you think this is somehow superior to things as they are?
It's no different than a mandatory product registration. Actually, it's better because you can ignore the thing if you really want to.
Wrong. A mandatory product registration is required by the company in question for support, or to keep their customer database up to date, for whatever reason. When you purchase a product, you expect to have to register it. You do not expect to have your data request hijacked at random so that you can view an advertisement instead of the data you requested.
Further, Belkin did not advise its customers that this is what was happening. Again, you expect a registration requirement, whether it's enforced or not. Belkin only commented on the subject after the firestorm of protest forced them to take action.
You appear to be in a decided minority in your acceptance of this as a non-issue. I would suggest that there's a reason for that, although you're certainly entitled to your opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, great! Now you've just set off a panic as people start looking for radioactive spiders that are out to get them! I know I'm safe, the tin foil chestguard repels them.
"Wake me when it can detect an opening in the opponent's defense and strike at it." Do you say this to your beginning students? The fact that this robot has the ability to track its opponent's sword, and using its programming, place its own sword in the "best" (in the minds of the programmers, who are clearly not swordsmen, as you and I are) position for anticipatory defense is a milestone. Give it time; it will be a relatively short step to add heuristic algorithms to this, and then the machine will simply learn what works and what doesn't. After, of course, a decent programmer works with a decent swordsman to give the robot access to the techniques of I.33, Talhoffer, Durer, Agrippa, and personally, I'd hope Donald McBane.
Amen to this. I got hired on by a company on Madison, WI in January of 1999 and was told on my first day that "this Y2K thing" was my first priority, since my predecessor had put in maybe 3 hours of work on the project. Oh, and I had to do it while getting our network up to date. Frankly, it was a cinch, once they'd approved the budget. *That* took until June, too, so I really did the entire project in 6 months.
As someone who's working with this stuff right now, I can say if it's slowing you down, you're not taking advantage of the available tools. They're out there. Keep looking. Moreover, "data entry" is one way of looking at it. A different way to call it is "documenting what they're doing with sufficient detail". That was the entire point of these kinds of standardized coding systems: to (as best as we can) remove the fuzzy documentation in the systems before, and to remove the idiosyncrasies from medical records. With the proper coding systems in place, a patient in Allentown who moves to Duluth can have his PHI moved to the new caregiver and be (for the most part) confident that the Iowans will be able to understand what the Pennsylvanians did for him before. Yeah, there's going to be transitional pain. There always is. But as has been pointed out in other posts, it's not like ICD-10 ambushed anybody. Frankly, if you haven't been moving toward ICD-10-capable systems for at least 2 years, you've been slacking. There's a penalty for that at crunch time.
He is absolutely correct; a half-million units shipped to just 12 to 15 destinations *IS* simple by comparison. Just look at the complexities of UPS' operations in moving 80000 packages within the boundaries of the US, and that becomes apparent.
In Freemasonry, the 24-inch gauge (or ruler) is used as an emblem of the 24 hours in the day. We are taught that we are to divide this time in three parts, with 8 being for refreshment and sleep, 8 being for the service of God and our fellow man, and 8 "for our usual vocations" -- that is, our regular job. While we understand the realities of modern life, the model of "8 for sleep, 8 for work, 8 for service" is a good one that keeps proper balance in our lives. The move to more and more work eats away at that balance, and imbalance is the source of most of our ills.
BTW, if you're wondering where "family" is in that model, we tend to our families in the 8 we reserve for service. Service to our families is the source of our strength.
On the 7th, I'll be voting. And I'll be voting to attempt to wrest my government back from the extremist assholes that my fellow countrymen... the ones with less foresight... saddled us with for the last 6 years.
- They also *gasp* make personal phone calls sometime. Sometimes to the babysitter or their spouse! We must implement a whitelist for the phone immediatly.
What's really amusing to me in all the responses to this article are the people who talk like the telephone is unrestricted at the office. It is not always so. I have worked for several companies over the years that had a strict no-personal-calls policy, and it was enforced with disciplinary action. In one case, it was enforced by not allowing employees to make outbound calls unless they were working in departments with the need to do so; this was enforced by properly configuring the PBX. This isn't some kind of office fascism, either. This was simply a company not wanting to pay people to make personal calls. There was a phone in the break room for such calls, when you were on break.- Seriously, work is a compromise. You want humans to work for you, then be prepared to meet them halfway on their social needs.
You're obviously not a business owner. The purpose of a business is to make a profit. Period. Anything else is extra. There is no room on the bottom line for "social needs" of the employees.A wise company would offer its employees things like job security, decent wages, properly designed offices that provide sufficient light and clean air, and a work schedule that doesn't demand 60-hour weeks. A wise employee would offer his best work in exchange for that, work his required shift and go home, where he could surf the net to his heart's content. Sadly, such companies are rare, almost non-existant. Who can blame the employee for not being happy with the deal offered? Still, with the concerns like sub-standard wages, healthcare, job security and the like, not having full-on Internet access is pretty trivial.
- Lastly, if security is such a concern, I believe very few, if any, popular windows exploits work when the user doesnt have admin access. A simple security change like this, which is something that hsould have been done long ago, makes the web very safe.
You haven't been keeping up with the news. There are plenty of exploits capable of compromising a machine without the user's security level. Some can be delivered through the web browser.We do it all the time.
In this country (USA), where we have huge amounts of wealth, resources and expertise, we continue to place people in power who support the idea that first rate medical care is something only the rich can afford. The rest of the people get whatever can be cobbled together by so-called "cost-reducing" insurance conglomerates which are businesses, first and foremost. They exist to turn a profit for their investors; that is the only purpose of a for-profit corporation. There is no humanitarian aspect to consider.
That is why there are millions in this country who are sick, but cannot get medical care. I know of two personally who have insurance, even, but cannot get the care because in the one case, the insurance covers a pittance of the cost, and in the other, the family has maxxed out the lifetime limit of $1 million. The care for their child is still needed, but they are responsible for the continuing costs. In the end, this will impoverish the family.
In the meantime, the citizens of this country will continue to vote for people who claim that all these problems can be solved without changing anything of the system that is causing the problems. And those same people are the ones who will cry "Immoral!" about cloning.
The bigger question for me is not whether the cloning of embryos to harvest stem cells is moral or not, but what use will the military-industrial segment of our society have for the technology used and developed for the process?
Some of us, yes. But some of us will be designing the parts, testing the parts, refining the parts. Making the next generation of parts. And supporting people who have to install, service and use the parts.
And some of us will give up IT altogether, and go raise goats. Or something.
Determined by whom? I'd be interested to see where that data comes from.
However, that's rarely the major issue here. The "salary" paid for a particular position can mean much or little, given that the salary of an employee represents a fraction of the amount of money paid for the employee. Things like 401K, health insurance, various taxes and so forth, have to be paid by the employer for each employee... assuming that those benefits are offered to the employees. I have no idea what the requirements are with repect to an H1B, but I wouldn't be surprised if the costs were less to pay for the relocation.
Uh, no. No it isn't. I didn't immigrate anywhere, and I have never held that the US has a mission to make life better for everyone. Besides, if you go with that logic... and forgive me, but that logic is specious in the extreme... then how does one square the idea of "building a better life for everyone" with the effects of job loss and displacement of an American-born worker who loses a 12+ year career to downsizing, only to have his former emplyer clamor for an H1B to replace him? What about the student in college who works to bring in a Bachelor's degree, only to find that she can't find any job that pays enough to justify the hours she's going to have to pull to "compete" with H1Bs who will pull 80-hour weeks?
Incidentally, your comment about the locals not being "up to the snuff"... I wonder if your regions' IT employers ever worked with the region's education sector to encourage the improvement of the local prospective IT workers' skillsets. I find that people will lift themselves up, if they are given an inentive to do so. If all they see are people losing their jobs, having their salaries cut, being forced by the threat of both to work huge overtime period with little or no overtime pay, well.. can you blame them for not wanting to get into that game?
Last thing: Having an H1B in the country does not automatically "enrich everyone", and thinking so is too simplistic. Having a foreign IT worker in town will do nothing for the former IT professional that the H1B replaced, for example.
No, it's not my blog.
- Simple - to switch jobs in those industries requires almost zero personal investment.
Assuming that your time is worthless, yes. Mine isn't, but I see your point.- Suppose you lose your job at age 35-40. Now what do you do?
And here is where the system really fails. Even if the money is there, and the training programs are there, how is this person, who was well into their career, ever going to survive while getting the training? Who's paying for the house, the car, the kids' education (and please, "free" public education isn't. Have you seen the fees lately?) or the health care needs?- Suppose somebody is born retarded. In a pure capitalist society, they should be allowed to starve - they serve no useful purpose.
Which proves we don't live in a pure capitalist society, doesn't it? Retarded people don't starve here.- So, to sum up, you don't have any ideas about what people should do, right? get up, off of your ass, and make plans. Then COMMIT. Then execute. DO IT. is not an idea, it's management speak with a dash of Mr. Motivator thrown in. You do get that, right?
And right after the spot where you cut off, I said "Go out, get the training." I assumed that folks who were sufficiently far along in their careers wouldn't have to ask "What training is that?", so I focused instead on the rest. The important stuff, actually. That is, don't get paralyzed by the fear that it's all coming apart at the seams, and that nothing will save it now.See, the suggestions being offered in response to the article's question were very much like the Bush Administration's plan for the war in Iraq: very strong response, but no idea how to follow through. I was focusing on what to do *after*. And since there are multitude of options (not the least of which is your solution: get out of IT, and that's not a bad option for some), it doesn't behoove me to suggest anything specific, other than don't sit there, waiting for the next swipe of the ax.
Oh, yes... and about the management speak? Every language has its uses. I'm not too proud to use what's useful. If it doesn't work for you, fine. Maybe it will work for someone else.
I can understand why you're feeling the way you do. I understand why you come to an office you hate, perform meaningless little chores instead of getting your real work done, and ignore... or try to... that little pressure you're feeling in your chest. The one that spikes when you read another email from management that includes the words "sacrifice", "competition", and "tough decisions".
I know that you'd rather not think about it all. You'd rather just get back to doing what you were doing before the axes started dropping, and your division, your department, your team started getting thinned out, and their jobs transferred to the ones who were left. I know that you know what that feeling is, the one you don't think about too often... except in the middle of the night, after you've just had another "what if" discussion with your spouse about finances, trying not to think about the kids asleep down the hall.
I know you're on Monster.com, CareerBuilder, Dice... all of 'em. And I know you haven't had an interview in at least six months.
You have to get up, off of your ass, and make plans. Then COMMIT. Then execute. DO IT. Go out, get the training. If the money's not there to get it, join a LUG, or whatever. Actually make friends (!), network your skills. Learn from each other. Reconcile yourself to the fact that this is going to get worse before it gets better.
But it will get better. For some of us. The ones who planned, committed, executed. The rest are going to be sorry they waited. And don't crab about the Indians too much. Their time in the spotlight is going to be so damnably short, we're all going to be shocked... most of all, them.
And when it's all over, and it will be, in about 3 years, when the economy comes roaring back and suddenly we realize that we're on the verge of losing all the Boomers who made up the majority of the workforce, then they're going to be scrambling for skilled labor. Only there won't be any.
Or not much, that is. There will be the ones who planned...
WashTech.
We're not too good. It's just too early. It took industrial workers decades to organize. It'll happen.
What are you going to do anyway? The overwhelming majority of people I know do not carry a full set of tools in their car, and even if they do, they carry little to no spare parts. So you break down. You can perform Manly Car Manuever #1: open the hood and stare at the engine. Even if you can diagnose the problem, what are you going to do without replacement parts?
And the ability to open the hood here means you can not only perform MCM #1 (detailed above), but you can do #'s 2 and 3: Freeze your ass off while doing it, and cuss at it.
Oh, you're one of those zealots. Now I understand the basis for your objection. Religious issues...
There's nothing that says a person can't know how the car works, and still not want to... or be able to, even!... perform their own maintenance on that car. The concepts here are, frankly, brilliant in that they take into account the existing desires of the target market. A lot has been written here about "reinforcing stereotypes", but the fact remains that most people (men and women) do not perform their own maintenance. Ergo, make the car so they don't have to.
A better article on this project, which is called "Your Concept Car" or YCC, can be found at http://www.thecarconnection.com/index.asp?article= 6907 and explains some of the features in more detail, including the big one: the first maintenance stop is at 35,000 miles.
A woman I used to work with said it best:
Don't call me an "expert". "Ex" means a "has been", and a "spurt" is a drip under pressure.
Ah. I take it you don't have a wife and children. You'd hardly be so blaise' about it if you were going to be joined on that park bench by them. In Wisconsin. In the winter.
And investments? You *have* any? I did, once. All gone, now, and I don't begrudge that so much; playing the market is like gambling anyway.
I was asked to pose this one to Slashdot readers. Consider it posed. Plenty of Indians would like to know the answer.
And they're asking us... why?
Honestly, why do they want to know what our answer is going to be? If they're asking for advice, I hope that it's realized that for many of us in the US, the last thing we feel like being is charitable with financial advice for a country that is currently one of the beneficiaries of our lost jobs. I could just as easily answer their question with the same comments that appeared in a Wired magazine article a few weeks back, and which I responded to in an open letter in my blog: "Do what you're supposed to do. And don't worry about the fruits. They'll come on their own." Not very satisfying advice, is it?
Having said all that, I'll surrender up an observation for the Indian IT force; take it for what it's worth, which might be much or little. One of the major reasons why America got to be where it is today has to do with the spirit of its founding, in that those who came here and spread west did so in the pursuit of that which they couldn't have achieved back in England, or in the more established of the colonies, and then the States. They were willing to throw off virtually everything in an effort to reach for the brass ring, overturning centuries of "that's the way it's done" in favor of "this is what works".
So long as you have your caste structure, so long as you still use your rivers as open sewage culverts, so long as you still engage in the outdated, outmoded cultural imperatives that have made corner ultrasound machines available to women who want to check the sex of their foetus so they can abort girls and give birth to boys... well, let's just say you're going to have a very, very rough time finding the real strength of a nation determined to better itself. Innovation... Trying something new...
When India's people are ready to do that, and stop worrying about what class someone was born in, they'll be ready to "do what it takes". Until then, no amount of money will work.
I'm sure I just ruffled some feathers. Don't worry; they'll smooth back down as soon as you've convinced yourself that I'm just a bitter American watching his livelihood evaporate, who's finally getting what all Americans deserve, after all the years that our government has mucked around with the rest of the world.
Standard of living has much less to do with how much you make, compared to how much you can purchase. When jobs go overseas, those products become cheaper and the majority of people benefit.
I don't agree with your assertions, because they are based on the idea that people will have money to spend. Exactly how cheap is my mortgage going to get when the products are made more cheaply overseas? What incentive does Visa have to lower my credit card interest?
On top of all that, where is the incentive for anyone to lower their prices at all? They will only do that if there is competition; when you've got people locked in to something they cannot do without, you can keep the prices artificially inflated and pocket the returns. That's why prices for gasoline skyrocket 20 to 25 cents per gallon, then creep down a few cents and sit. What are you going to do, not buy gasoline?
Frankly, your viewpoint of how this economy in the US is going to react wouldn't stand up to a casual analysis by a decent high school economics class. If you think that offshoring = cheaper production, you're right. But when you go with cheaper production = cheaper prices paid, you're wrong. Here's another place your little model fails: even if the prices fell on the backs of cheaper overseas labor, you think the average American is going to benefit? How, when the per capita income in real dollars has fallen in the last 20 years by over 10%? And in any case, how much "more purchasing power" does someone have who has been forced to take two jobs that pay on 70% of what they were making at one job before? It ain't just McDonald's that's paying so poorly.
And exactly how much "excess cash" does a programmer, out of work for 15 months now and counting, with no prospects for any job paying more than $5.50/hr, have?
Your naivete is amazing if you think that this viscious cycle of corporate greed will result in anything good. Follow the logic: in order to get the cheaper products, the products are bought from overseas manufacturers. This in turn puts an American worker in that same industry out of work, as the company that makes that product offshores the job. That out-of-work worker now must accept any job he can get, probably in low-pating service, or in the actual sales of the products he used to manufacture (think Walmart stock boy). With his reduced income, he must purchase cheaper goods in order to maintain a level of lifestyle (or at least check its reduction). This means he's buying from a company that offshores its manufacturing as well, putting other American workers out of work, and into direct competition with him for that low-paying job. And so on, and so on.
Where does it end, given that the wealthy stockholders and executives of the corporations driving this machine can continue to rake in huge profits?
"One little cannon". You're funny.
How about 2? 5? 10? 15? I've driven through Chicago, for example, and in one of the southwestern 'burbs is an automall that covers acres. There are at least 20 dealerships there. How about if they all install this system? Remember, one system can be heard five miles away, and upon activation it starts firing every 5.5 seconds.
"Can't happen," you say? "There's no need to plant 20 of these in one spot," you point out? I reply with one word: insurance. If the insurance companies covering these dealerships get the idea that the system reduces damage, they might start offering incentives to install one, in an effort to reduce their costs of covering a dealership. Then you will see multiple units installed in a given area.
If one unit can be heard 5 miles away, how loud will 10 be?
No you didn't, in those words. But yes, you did, by supporting the idea put forward in the main article. Any system that purposely puts active control of the aircraft into the "hands" of someone who is not in the cockpit of a manned aircraft (I am not talking about RPVs here) is interfering with the pilot's ability to fly his plane. Period. No amount of argumentation you will put forward about safety factors, commercial vs. non-commercial aviation (like that matters a bit; an aircraft flies, whether it's commercial or not, according to the laws of physics) will change that fact. If a system is in place that takes control of the aircraft from the pilot, then that system is making it so that the pilot cannot fly the plane.
So let me get this straight: you agree that computers may not make the right decision, and that the pilot should be able to fly the plane, but that this proposal to place a computer-controlled overide of the pilot is a good thing. So long as the pilot can overide the computer overiding him.
And you think this is somehow superior to things as they are?
Wrong. A mandatory product registration is required by the company in question for support, or to keep their customer database up to date, for whatever reason. When you purchase a product, you expect to have to register it. You do not expect to have your data request hijacked at random so that you can view an advertisement instead of the data you requested.
Further, Belkin did not advise its customers that this is what was happening. Again, you expect a registration requirement, whether it's enforced or not. Belkin only commented on the subject after the firestorm of protest forced them to take action.
You appear to be in a decided minority in your acceptance of this as a non-issue. I would suggest that there's a reason for that, although you're certainly entitled to your opinion.