I finished a PhD in astrophysics in 1999. Wanna know why I went into IT? Better starting pay and no moving around.
If you want to do anything in this country in the hard sciences (especially physics), you have to take a series of 1-2 year post-doctoral assignments. You take them where you can get them, and it's rare that there are more than 1-2 institutes in a metropolis that even have such a program.
When I got out, AIP published a report indicating that there were, on average, 125 applicants for every tenure-track faculty position in astronomy/astrophysics in the US.
Constant moving, few openings, low pay... not too attractive.
This has nothing to do with free speach. It has to do with limits on jurisdiction. You cannot drag someone from Texas to California to put them on trial for violating California state law. The web server in question is, IIRC, one of the Purdue U servers in IN, and the person had legal residence in TX. CA state law should not apply, and that is what O'Connor ruled.
The problem is that, it the company can hire 2 foreigners who produce at, say, 75% of your ability for the same amount of money they pay you, which scenario is more likely to happen? You get the $X000 job, and produce 100% of your output, or the two foreigners get the $(X/2)000 jobs, and the company gets 150% of your production?
Remember, many of these people come from very poor countries, and are more than willing to pound out C++ code for $30k/yr, working 16 hours a day, simply because that is a small fortune to their families. Would you take that job? More to the point, would you want to be in a position where you HAD to take that job?
I have nothing against people from other countries coming here with hopes for a better life. That's what America is all about. What bothers me is that, by being willing to work for far less money, companies will prefer them over me, even if I am better qualified for the job.
A corporation's only responsibility is to make money for their owners/shareholders. If they can do that by hiring more people for less money, that's what they will do.
Define economically sound. I left my last company in part because they were starting to ship a large portion of the development tasks to India. That left fewer positions in the US, and those positions were turned into "analysts" and "customer interaction specialists", in other words, requirements gatherers and writers of tedious documents.
I saw some of the work that came back from India, and frankly, it sucked. GUI design was non-existent, as were coding standards. There was a distinct lack of understanding of any non-M$ developement tool/language. Many of "sys-admins" had no idea what a port was, much less how it could get hijacked, broken into, etc. One of our US admins did a port scan on one of their main servers and found an unknown program listening on port 31337. Uh huh... good job guys.
Furthermore, we had significant communication issues with the Indian offices due to the 14 hour time differential. The requirements people in the US could interact with our customers on a given day, it would take until the next day for the overseas "developers" to get the requirements. Issues, misunderstandings, etc. took one or more days further to resolve, etc. Time wasted is money wasted.
My point is that, although Indian labor may be cheaper on an hourly basis, how many more man-hours does it take to get the job done? By the time I left, the amount of money saved through overseas development was little to none. All that had been accomplished was a 50% staff attrition through layoffs or people, like myself, who saw the impending doom and jumped ship before the axe fell.
Following up my post with a second follow up... what is the world coming to?
Anyway, the article seems to have several more paragraphs tacked on to the end than the first time I read it. There's some more insight into the ramifications of this verdict.
Also, I forgot that this is a criminal case, not a civil case. As such, there will be no appeals. Once acquitted of a crime, you are free.
Hey, if it comes out of the judge's mouth that way, then it's fair game. Besides, this is real life, not Seinfeld. Most jurors (most, not all) are lemmings that do what the judge tells them to do. Reading the article, it almost seems as though the judge told them something like "You go in that jury room over there and come back out when you've reached a not-guilty verdict."
But that's just my interpretation of the article... feel free to form your own.
Nowhere. The judge actually had some sense and instructed the jury that, to find Elcomsoft guilty, they needed to decide that the company knowingly commited an illegal act, and intended to do so.
Secondly, there is NO proof of pirated eBooks out there, even after 2 independant groups were paid to troll the web looking for them. No proof of copyright violation, no DMCA-offense.
It really came down to whether or not there was a reasonable legal use for the tool or not. The jury found that there was, ie, fair use applications. Not guilty, case closed, proceed with appeals.
Oops... and how quickly I forget the year in parenthesis is the discovery year, not the "show-off" year. Anyway, the point remains, we had 2 spectacular cometary encounters in a span of 2 years (1996-7). It's not THAT rare...
Strange... my RedHat discs didn't have a EULA. Of course, I know how to download isos and burn them to disc (with my iBook, no less). There wasn't any EULA on the redhat ftp mirror I used.
At my previous place of employ, half of R&D got laid off at the end of Q2-2001. By the end of Q3 (the one with WTC attacks...) the CEO and COO had nice, cushy $20k/yr raises. Oh, and they're a married couple, so $40k/yr family raise. At the same time, they instituted a salary freeze that, to my knowledge, still hasn't been lifted.
At least at my new job, I knew ahead of time there would be no bonuses of any kind this year. That's why I held out for a better starting salary.
Went to website... bought self 120 GB FW HD... happy with gift. Still would like something. No bonus, no raise, no holiday party, yet profits are up. Still, at least I'm finally getting paid somewhat close to market average.
Why don't you explain the three-fold increase in the average family tax burden between 1955 and 1998? In the 1955, the average family (one income) had a 17% tax burden. In 1998, the number was approaching 40%. If you take the taxes paid by the median American 1-income family and inflation-adjust the total dollars, you have the 1955 family paying just under 4000 1998-dollars (and about $5500 for the rare 2-income family). In 1998, the number was up to nearly $14000 for a 1-income family, and over $26000 for 2-income families. (http://www.taxfoundation.org/prmedianfamily.html)
In the 1950s, a single income family was feasible due to the lower tax burden on the middle classes, and they still had armed forces, police, firefighting, public education, etc. What they had a lot less of was bureaucracy... and a 90% tax rate on the insanely rich. I don't find that high rate fair, but which is more fair: an insanely high tax rate on people who will still have a lot of money left after taxes, or a flat tax rate that will place an unreasonable burden on those at the low end of the income spectrum? As you say, you've got a lot of necessary gov't employees to pay. You have to choose an option... which is it?
And by the way, leave out doctors and nurses. In the US, we don't have socialized health care. It's a capitalist health care world here. Doctors charge patients who can fork over their money to the medical professionals, or pay health insurance companies to do it for them.
It doesn't matter how you come to a fact, but once you do it is, well, just a fact.
How do you know it is a fact, and not a belief? Pre-reniassance Eurpoean scientists taught as fact that the Earth is the center of the solar system. Pre-Columbus sailors knew for a 'fact' that the Earth is flat. 19th century physicists knew for a fact that the Earth moved through the solar system in some sort of invisible ether.
Catch my drift? The more we explore, the more we disprove pre-existing facts.
Why should I believe that your ~2000 year old book (new testament) is fact, over, say, a ~1400 year old book (the koran), or a ~150 year old book (The Origin of Species). Human history tends to show that older writings are less technologically correct than more current writings. (Imagine that, our knowledge of the world around us is...*gasp*... evolving!)
Go read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Arthur Miller. Then you'll have an idea how writings from 'ancient times' can be completely misconstrued as holy.
Arguments based solely on faith, as opposed to actual, provable facts will be summarily ignored.
No... not W95, WinNT 4x. Also, I'm not an admin, but an applications programmer. I am friends with admins on both sides, and even the NT admins admit the *nix guys have it easier, even though the hard core DB apps, web server, bugzilla, etc. all run on *nix. The NT guys deal with desktops, Exchange server, etc. and spend much more time on those, even based on a per machine basis.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry... I found this amazingly funny! Yet another twist in the grand SlashDot Social Engineering project...
Maybe it's just the first time I've seen someone do it, though.
Three words: perlgolf.sourceforge.net
I finished a PhD in astrophysics in 1999. Wanna know why I went into IT? Better starting pay and no moving around.
If you want to do anything in this country in the hard sciences (especially physics), you have to take a series of 1-2 year post-doctoral assignments. You take them where you can get them, and it's rare that there are more than 1-2 institutes in a metropolis that even have such a program.
When I got out, AIP published a report indicating that there were, on average, 125 applicants for every tenure-track faculty position in astronomy/astrophysics in the US.
Constant moving, few openings, low pay... not too attractive.
Aren't the new Airport extremes out yet? Steve announced them, what... 48 hrs ago? :)
Anyway, those are $200 (down from $300) and have a USB port for wireless printing. Not as cheap, but rather snazzy looking!
Writing off? Hell, they want my logs for that long, then they can damn well PAY for the disks to store them on!
Well, hurry up, would you? The rest of us are waiting!
This has nothing to do with free speach. It has to do with limits on jurisdiction. You cannot drag someone from Texas to California to put them on trial for violating California state law. The web server in question is, IIRC, one of the Purdue U servers in IN, and the person had legal residence in TX. CA state law should not apply, and that is what O'Connor ruled.
The problem is that, it the company can hire 2 foreigners who produce at, say, 75% of your ability for the same amount of money they pay you, which scenario is more likely to happen? You get the $X000 job, and produce 100% of your output, or the two foreigners get the $(X/2)000 jobs, and the company gets 150% of your production?
Remember, many of these people come from very poor countries, and are more than willing to pound out C++ code for $30k/yr, working 16 hours a day, simply because that is a small fortune to their families. Would you take that job? More to the point, would you want to be in a position where you HAD to take that job?
I have nothing against people from other countries coming here with hopes for a better life. That's what America is all about. What bothers me is that, by being willing to work for far less money, companies will prefer them over me, even if I am better qualified for the job.
A corporation's only responsibility is to make money for their owners/shareholders. If they can do that by hiring more people for less money, that's what they will do.
Define economically sound. I left my last company in part because they were starting to ship a large portion of the development tasks to India. That left fewer positions in the US, and those positions were turned into "analysts" and "customer interaction specialists", in other words, requirements gatherers and writers of tedious documents.
I saw some of the work that came back from India, and frankly, it sucked. GUI design was non-existent, as were coding standards. There was a distinct lack of understanding of any non-M$ developement tool/language. Many of "sys-admins" had no idea what a port was, much less how it could get hijacked, broken into, etc. One of our US admins did a port scan on one of their main servers and found an unknown program listening on port 31337. Uh huh... good job guys.
Furthermore, we had significant communication issues with the Indian offices due to the 14 hour time differential. The requirements people in the US could interact with our customers on a given day, it would take until the next day for the overseas "developers" to get the requirements. Issues, misunderstandings, etc. took one or more days further to resolve, etc. Time wasted is money wasted.
My point is that, although Indian labor may be cheaper on an hourly basis, how many more man-hours does it take to get the job done? By the time I left, the amount of money saved through overseas development was little to none. All that had been accomplished was a 50% staff attrition through layoffs or people, like myself, who saw the impending doom and jumped ship before the axe fell.
Probably cause they run a 30 year old system, and can't find anyone younger who knows the system, or cares that it exists.
Following up my post with a second follow up... what is the world coming to?
Anyway, the article seems to have several more paragraphs tacked on to the end than the first time I read it. There's some more insight into the ramifications of this verdict.
Also, I forgot that this is a criminal case, not a civil case. As such, there will be no appeals. Once acquitted of a crime, you are free.
Hey, if it comes out of the judge's mouth that way, then it's fair game. Besides, this is real life, not Seinfeld. Most jurors (most, not all) are lemmings that do what the judge tells them to do. Reading the article, it almost seems as though the judge told them something like "You go in that jury room over there and come back out when you've reached a not-guilty verdict."
But that's just my interpretation of the article... feel free to form your own.
Nowhere. The judge actually had some sense and instructed the jury that, to find Elcomsoft guilty, they needed to decide that the company knowingly commited an illegal act, and intended to do so.
Secondly, there is NO proof of pirated eBooks out there, even after 2 independant groups were paid to troll the web looking for them. No proof of copyright violation, no DMCA-offense.
It really came down to whether or not there was a reasonable legal use for the tool or not. The jury found that there was, ie, fair use applications. Not guilty, case closed, proceed with appeals.
Oops... and how quickly I forget the year in parenthesis is the discovery year, not the "show-off" year. Anyway, the point remains, we had 2 spectacular cometary encounters in a span of 2 years (1996-7). It's not THAT rare...
Lisa: Where'd you get five bucks? I want five bucks!
Bart: I sold my soul to Milhouse.
</simpsons>
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Strange... my RedHat discs didn't have a EULA. Of course, I know how to download isos and burn them to disc (with my iBook, no less). There wasn't any EULA on the redhat ftp mirror I used.
At my previous place of employ, half of R&D got laid off at the end of Q2-2001. By the end of Q3 (the one with WTC attacks...) the CEO and COO had nice, cushy $20k/yr raises. Oh, and they're a married couple, so $40k/yr family raise. At the same time, they instituted a salary freeze that, to my knowledge, still hasn't been lifted.
At least at my new job, I knew ahead of time there would be no bonuses of any kind this year. That's why I held out for a better starting salary.
Went to website... bought self 120 GB FW HD... happy with gift. Still would like something. No bonus, no raise, no holiday party, yet profits are up. Still, at least I'm finally getting paid somewhat close to market average.
Why don't you explain the three-fold increase in the average family tax burden between 1955 and 1998? In the 1955, the average family (one income) had a 17% tax burden. In 1998, the number was approaching 40%. If you take the taxes paid by the median American 1-income family and inflation-adjust the total dollars, you have the 1955 family paying just under 4000 1998-dollars (and about $5500 for the rare 2-income family). In 1998, the number was up to nearly $14000 for a 1-income family, and over $26000 for 2-income families. (http://www.taxfoundation.org/prmedianfamily.html)
In the 1950s, a single income family was feasible due to the lower tax burden on the middle classes, and they still had armed forces, police, firefighting, public education, etc. What they had a lot less of was bureaucracy... and a 90% tax rate on the insanely rich. I don't find that high rate fair, but which is more fair: an insanely high tax rate on people who will still have a lot of money left after taxes, or a flat tax rate that will place an unreasonable burden on those at the low end of the income spectrum? As you say, you've got a lot of necessary gov't employees to pay. You have to choose an option... which is it?
And by the way, leave out doctors and nurses. In the US, we don't have socialized health care. It's a capitalist health care world here. Doctors charge patients who can fork over their money to the medical professionals, or pay health insurance companies to do it for them.
Something to think about, no?
How do you know it is a fact, and not a belief? Pre-reniassance Eurpoean scientists taught as fact that the Earth is the center of the solar system. Pre-Columbus sailors knew for a 'fact' that the Earth is flat. 19th century physicists knew for a fact that the Earth moved through the solar system in some sort of invisible ether.
Catch my drift? The more we explore, the more we disprove pre-existing facts.
Why should I believe that your ~2000 year old book (new testament) is fact, over, say, a ~1400 year old book (the koran), or a ~150 year old book (The Origin of Species). Human history tends to show that older writings are less technologically correct than more current writings. (Imagine that, our knowledge of the world around us is ...*gasp*... evolving!)
Go read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Arthur Miller. Then you'll have an idea how writings from 'ancient times' can be completely misconstrued as holy.
Arguments based solely on faith, as opposed to actual, provable facts will be summarily ignored.
I was wondering what happened to the Posted by CmdrTaco
stories, with all the requisite misspellings, this week.
You mean like Sam's Club, BJs, etc? They're just like Wal-Mart... on steroids.
How many politicians are there on the various Jovian moons? ;-)
No... not W95, WinNT 4x. Also, I'm not an admin, but an applications programmer. I am friends with admins on both sides, and even the NT admins admit the *nix guys have it easier, even though the hard core DB apps, web server, bugzilla, etc. all run on *nix. The NT guys deal with desktops, Exchange server, etc. and spend much more time on those, even based on a per machine basis.