Something that's very dishearting is that industry groups are still claiming that there are tons of engineering
and IT jobs going available, despite what the rest of us might think. Last May, the Information Technology
Association of America (ITAA) released a study claiming
that 578,000 IT jobs would go unclaimed in 2002. Yeah right.
After getting quite a bit of well deserved criticism, including one guy who offered ITAA
a $1000 bounty to find his unemployed programmer buddy a job, they released an update scaling back their
optimistic outlook. They still spin the industry as an under-staffed career option among other rosy interpretations. The problem is, these
reports are relied on by all sorts of people who have a very real effect on my career opportunities:
executives trying to decide whether or not to save money by outsourcing workload overseas
Legislators looking to justify the continued availability of H-1B visas
College students trying to decide on a career path
My fiance and I just got back from Beijing, a few weeks ago. While there, I was offered DVD's of both the new Harry Potter and the Two Towers. In the name of, ummm, research, I bought both.
Both DVDs were actually just copies of the last movie in the series (the Philosopher's Stone and Fellowship of the Rings) with fake cover cards. The quality of Harry Potter was fine, although it didn't have the DVD menus or bonus material. Just the movie. Fellowship of the Rings was a straight dupe of the 2-disk widescreen addition (not the newer platinum edition).
I paid 15 RMB ($2 USD) for Harry Potter and 20 RMB ($2.5 USD) for the Fellowship.
Since the "Industry Exec" didn't bother to check the contents. There's really know way of knowing what was on those disks.
Slashdot Mirror
After getting quite a bit of well deserved criticism, including one guy who offered ITAA a $1000 bounty to find his unemployed programmer buddy a job, they released an update scaling back their optimistic outlook. They still spin the industry as an under-staffed career option among other rosy interpretations. The problem is, these reports are relied on by all sorts of people who have a very real effect on my career opportunities:
Heh, the Known Bugs page on the Online TOME website is, itself, bugged. http://t-o-m-e.net/bugs.php?tome_current=1 Think that one is known?
My fiance and I just got back from Beijing, a few weeks ago. While there, I was offered DVD's of both the new Harry Potter and the Two Towers. In the name of, ummm, research, I bought both.
Both DVDs were actually just copies of the last movie in the series (the Philosopher's Stone and Fellowship of the Rings) with fake cover cards. The quality of Harry Potter was fine, although it didn't have the DVD menus or bonus material. Just the movie. Fellowship of the Rings was a straight dupe of the 2-disk widescreen addition (not the newer platinum edition).
I paid 15 RMB ($2 USD) for Harry Potter and 20 RMB ($2.5 USD) for the Fellowship.
Since the "Industry Exec" didn't bother to check the contents. There's really know way of knowing what was on those disks.