Can you cite some examples of the "abusive contracts with brokers" and "slave wages" and give us some data on how prevalent you believe these are?
Here's survey data on H-1Bs: http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/H-1B/h1b-fy-12-characteristics.pdf
and here's prevailing wage data for a random area (Denver, Colorado): http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1132&area=19740&year=15&source=1 prevailing wage for Level 1 is $64,230 for an application developer.
Most H-1B workers tend to be young in their mid-20s. In comparison, here's what graduating seniors from an Ivy League engineering school make in possibly the highest cost location in the country (NYC) http://www.careereducation.columbia.edu/sites/cce/files/2013_gss--cc__seas-ug.pdf The median is mid-50s.
It seems to me you have your panties in a bunch over imagined abuses. May I suggest a direction in which your indignation could be more constructively directed?
Here's what Colorado pays the school-teachers who are tasked with educating the next generation. http://www.cde.state.co.us/sites/default/files/documents/cdereval/download/pdf/avgteachersal/2011avgteachersalary.pdf
Salaries in most districts are in the 30s and 40s. In the Denver area, they creep into the 50s in some districts. This is an average, it includes teachers with decades of experience. And these are people who are spending hours and hours before and after classes end grading homework, preparing lesson plans etc. That's the real problem we have in this country when it comes to training and preparing skilled workers so they can move up the income curve.
If you're in NY, CA, TX, IL (which is likely where most slashdotters are, you can safely vote for a third party candidate. There is an extremely low probability your vote will impact the actual electoral college count. Make your statement, the future is safe.
I don't think it's going to be another iphone, the market for tablets is not as big as that for smart-phones. But, I don't think it will be an apple-tv either.
It effectively kills the "electronic photo-book" market. People are paying 70-150 for those things, that is now gone. I like the leather-ish case which turns it into a keyboard type stand and into a photo-frame/tv stand, that seems like it will win some minds.
One wild-card in all of this is that it is the PERFECT computer to give your mom since it's got very simple icon entry into apps, and not too many complicated menus you have to sift through. That might just lift it into another category of sales. For people who use computer apps for different and varied tasks (say photoshop, or full-fledged spreadsheet use) this is never going to be enough. But for mom or grandma to keep photos rolling on her mantle so her friends can see them, to e-mail the kids, watch a few movies, maybe play some games, this may well be ideal.
My take is that this is not really designed for slashdot readers, it's yet another device to expand the market for apple computers to another type of user by offering a simple interface and the most frequently used features. I suspect they'll succeed, especially since the entry-price is reasonable.
Mexico happens to have universal health care coverage. It might not be perfect, but then neither is the pharma-medial-legal complex that impoverishes anyone who happens to enter a US hospital without comprehensive insurance. See:
Most immigrants are not here to take advantage of the US health care "system" such as it is (any sensible person would much prefer taking advantage of Cuba's). Most immigrant are here because the US economic system affords opportunities at all levels of skill that are far superior to those available in other countries.
I have yet to meet a US immigrant who considers health care a factor in their decision to move. Any thinking person to whom that mattered would move to Canada.
The current VOIP conversation at the FCC and in state commissions is
as if government responded to Henry Ford's new invention of the
automobile by discouraging the construction of roads, and instead
taxing cars in order to subsidize canals and railroads. As a former
government official I can only say: We can do better.
Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, he perfected an assembly line and invented a type of transmission. If the US governments had taxed cars and subsidized public transport, we'd probably be better off, environmentally (no 2 ton SUVs ferrying a single person to work) and socially (people would interact with each other in public spaces, rather than spending hours every day as captive consumers for big radio).
Can you give some info and pointers about the CS/IT/telecom education in India, especially at unversity level? I'm interested in how qualified the tech sector workers are in India.
Qualifications and ability would be all over the map, like they are in every other field. The best are typically as good as the best anywhere else in the world.
How many people graduate from a (technical) university on an average? (As a fraction of all people born a certain year, for example.)
Very, very few. 35% of the population is illiterate (as per the 2001 census). India's Ministry of Education has some stats on primary/secondary education and on higher education (in Indian terminology a graduate degree is a Bachelors and a post-graduate degree is a Masters/Phd)
What you're looking for is the percentage of children graduating from high-school who enroll at a college. Using the census numbers, there were 157 million children under 6 years of age. That's 25 million approximately in any given year. Assuming they all survive to turn 18, you're looking at 75 million children between 18-21. There were 5.13 million people pursuing a Bachelors degree in 1998. The population between 18 and 21 is likely around 60 million because India's population has been growing. That would suggest 10% of college-age kids end up pursing a Bachelors degree, 25% of whom are studying the Sciences. I think the US figure for college enrollment out of high-school is 40%, American Universities graduate 1.2 million students every year, US population is 30% of India's.
Does the government subsidize university-level education in any way, or is a degree only possible to attain only if you are rich enough?
It's subsidized. That said, the public primary/secondary education system in India is a mess. You've typically got to be middle-class before you will even get to school. Most of the rural poor don't have access to an education in English (which is essential at the best colleges). You'll find that most of the people who end up at engineering schools are from the middle-class (about 30% of the population, still a healthy 300 million).
What does a M.Sc. or B.Sc. degree cost you?
Depends on where you go and what sort of scholarship you can get. The most prestigious Universities are the most liberal with their aid. Costs are a fraction of what they would be in the US. You can expect to pay anywhere from USD 100 to USD 1500 a year depending on the location of the college.
What are the most prominent higher-level education universities in the technology sector? Homepage URLs?
The seven IIT campuses are generally considered to be a cut above the rest. The entrance exam to IIT is offered country-wide and people often spend a substantial part of their final high-school year cramming for it. You can start at the Madras campus or Delhi or Bombay . The IIT is run by the Indian government. The entire program would cost $1500 plus room/board. IIT is a general sciences college, not all students study CS.
Looking through the web-pages, I see that Indian colleges aren't doing a particularly good job marketing themselves.
Do they specialize in any particular fields of technology? What's the teaching like, compared to curriculums in Europe or the US? Are certain subjects and fields emphasized more or less? Are there any major differences in teaching methods? (lectures, homework, group projects, tuition by teaching assistants, etc.)
There is a lot of focus on examinations and remembering/reproducing conce
MS: The enemies of progress and IP are getting more desperate as our products get better. Our users should purchase add on security packages because no code is perfect.
Bush: The enemies of freedom are getting increasingly desperate as we restore order and open schools. We need to iraqify the security forces.
Joking aside, some of what Gates says is true though. There will always be some exploits of complex systems, even with a focus on security. Software developers also need to make the update/patching process simpler. Windows updates, debian APT same idea. He's also right when he says users need to be aware of security risks. Securing your machine and data are like locking your car, you're responsible for using the lock but the manufacturer provides a simple interface to it. Microsoft (and other software developers) need to ensure their products are secure, and users have a simple interface to them. Most people wouldn't know what ports and sockets are, but they do know what a door is and how to operate a key. I think some of the bundled security features in OS/X Panther need to be widely available (auto-encrypt folders, multiple overwrites of file blocks).
If Gates thinks E-mail scanners and firewalls are absolutely essential for operating Windows, MS should be bundling a really good firewall and a great virus scanner in its O/S. Linux distros do.
Mike Gancarz covered some of this ground in his "The Unix Philosophy" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1555 581234/qid=1066681099/ It's a little dated now, since it was published in 1995, but still quite interesting.
Anyone notice how Dooku and Anakin say almost exactly the same thing? "I am the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy". I guess it's expected, but I didn't think it would be so blatant, and Palpatine tells Anakin, "You're the most talented Jedi I've ever met".
I though the romantic scenes were a little sappy (but I always do, seen too many Hindi movies). But, they are much better the second time around, and you catch a few more nuances (they're there). I wanted to see whether they would be as embarassing the next time around, and they really weren't.
I could hear Lucas in the director's chair saying:
- Natalie, you're still thinking, is this the little 10 year old from Tatooine. - Natalie, you're tocuhed by his declaration, but wiggle your shoulders a little more, and edge away from him on the sofa. - Hayden, you're willing to tell her *anything* to her, you're 20 years old and you've been a monk for the past 10. - Hayden, keep staring at her, you know she likes it.
None of the actors have the presence of Alec Guinness, Harrison Ford, or James Earl Jones' voice. Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine) and Christopher Lee (Dooku) probably come closest.
There's a paragraph in the book where Obi-Wan says the time Luke will spend alone with Padme is one of his trials, before he graduates to become a Jedi, and he hopes Luke realizes this.
The explosive topic of war crimes perpetrated by people we regard as heroes, and the complexity of our response if we know them well was rather deflty handled in the book.
The book has lots of filler, but that's what one expects from a sci-fi book. It's a quick read though, large type and skimmable. I thought the love-story between Luke and Padme was actually developed rather well in the novel. There's nothing surprising about it, but practically every love-story is hackneyed because the genre is so popular with readers and writers.
I'd read the novelisation of episode I before seeing the movie, since I knew there'd be a large cast of characters and I wanted to have some background. The same argument doesn't hold for episode II as much.
What I would say is that the book, and the plot make clear what we can expect in episode III. The clone army gets hijacked, there's a lot of heartache as the twins are placed on different planets and Luke is kept ignorant of them. It's clear what causes Luke to turn to the dark side as well. His mother's torture, his guilt for abandoning her, the massacre he perpetrates, and possibly his rejection by the jedi order once he marries Padme. This also gives a lot more complexity to the prophecy "the one who will bring balance to the force".
A couple of things that the book made me think about were political:
The relationship between technologically advanced societies and aboriginal ones (Gungans, Tuskens).
The real logistics problems that would prevent the republic from surviving in the form it had (centralized, bureaucratic, non-equal representation). The similarities between the Senate in Star Wars and the US senate are striking.
Lucas's distaste for or wariness of large commercial entities and politicians.
How someone can take advantage of a poltical system that is breaking apart to consolidate power.
Child development, i.e. safe environments to promote absence of fear vs. the school of hard knocks.
The punishment of war criminals.
How technology validates information and can be manipulated.
The ethics of cloning (I think the saga was very presccient here) and what might lead us to justify it.
Elite religious/intellectual orders, how they operate within society, and how they handle celibacy.
I think the book gives much more context to these views. I'm sort of interested now in what Lucas' motivation for the moral tales in the series was. What sort of response did he have to Vietnam, LBJ, Kennedy, Korea? Certainly, there are clear parallels between Luke's destruction of the Tusken village and incidents in Vietnam.
I actually think the issue of social responsibility versus individual desires is illuminated by the book. Perhaps it's because I'm visiting Singapore, but the Naboo and the Jedi don't seem all that different. It is a relevant topic, even if we only look at how people in demanding jobs manage work/life conflictss.
But we can't take all of this too seriously. It is a space opera after all, its meant to be melodramatic, have great fight scenes, plot twists, surprises, and all the other good stuff that makes for an engaging tale.
There are some interesting twists that I can see within the first 3 episodes. The Star Wars universe doesn't seem as black and white as it did in 4-6.
I don't think the book is a bad read. I wasn't expecting any surprises in the movie, we know the outline of the plot already. I do think I'll enjoy seeing the movie more than I would have otherwise.
Actually, most foundations, universities, and other non-profits with substantial endowments are the biggest investors around. Their endowments are _very_ liquid, and they do provide capital for growth. Not just secondary markets, but primary markets as well (including venture and startup capital). Large endowments are among the most astute investors around.
You also have to consider that non-profits make infrastructure investments that for-profits sometimes aren't interested in, especially if payoffs are uncertain or very far into the future. Basic research (in every field including finance, technology, and science). Non-profits are also more amenable to making public research findings, for profits would much rather protect their trade secrets.
Clearly this is a more complicated issue than flatpack thinks it is, even within economics. Intergenerational wealth-transfers have been a debating point within economics for centuries.
Either a relevant bachelors degree or three or more years of relevant experience
An employer willing to file for an H-1B on your behalf
Clearance from your state's labor department along with a survey of average salaries for the position
The employer has to maintain various documents on-site (which can be inspected at any time by other employees, including documentation on how much you make. Sounds kinda like working for a police state doesn't it?)
For the past couple of years, the INS has levied a $500 charge on every H1-B application that goes towards retraining programs for US workers.
The regs are complex (which is how immigration lawyers charge firms 8-10K to process H-1B visas), but you can find them at http://www.ins.gov/
The process takes anywhere from 6 to 20 weeks depending on the state you apply in, and the number of visas that have been issued that year. It is not a simple process, and *many* employers refuse point-blank to go through such an arduous procedure.
That said, the process has been abused by a small group of employeers, called body-shoppers. The usual recruitment strategy by a body-shopper works like follows. Recruit someone in India (or another country, but India is the most common source), process an H1-B for them, and when they arrive in the US, contract their services out to another firm for substantially more than they are being paid. Another common set of abuse are Universities (actually particular labs within certain Universities) that hire post-docs at pittance wages. But the lot of all post-docs is terrible, the ones on H1-Bs just a little more so.
H1-B workers who do not work for a body-shoppers or Universities make about the same (often more) than our US counterparts.
A brief note on qualifications. Having worked in Universities in the US, and having studied in both under-graduate and graduate programs, I must say that obtainaing a PhD is neither great shakes (even at the best schools) and most definitely does not signify you will attain any success outside of academia. In fact, the skills requried to survive many graduate programs may well make you unemployable, since they include both subservience (to professor-gods) and lack of imagination (it's amazing just how mundane and boring most research is).
By the way, did you know H1-B workers are taxed without representation?
The question of re-training older workers has been adequately addressed by other posts. What I would point out is that requests for paternalism , especially when made to the state, are self-destructive. If a person who happened to be born in another country has been able to acquire skills that you don't have despite the larger set of opportunities available in the US, what right do you have to require other taxpayers to correct your inability to take an initiative?
That's quite a mouthful of facts and observations. But what do I think/believe?
First off, I believe in the open and free movement of individuals across this Earth. I believe everyone should be able to work, live, and play wherever they want without impediment from governments, as long as they have the means to sustain themselves via consensual transactions with other individuals.
I find immigration procedures demeaning, bureaucratic, racist, I could go on but why bother. Have you ever wondered what immigration officials make people who look even vaguely middle-eastern, or South American go through?
The free movement of all economic resources (including human labor) is the only way for humanity to achieve its full potential. Saying that certain opportunities should be available to individuals who happen to have been born in a particular geographic region is the same as claiming that people of a particular color, race or sex have certain rights that others don't.
And Puh-lease, the US is the last place on Earth that can lay a justly claim a right to refuse entry to anyone. After all, the theft of the North American continent from the indigenous people occured not more than 9 generations ago. Americans of course, are not the only people who have a monopoly on moral blinders, but we're talking about H1-Bs.
BTW, I work for a European bank that has operations in the US and 70 other countries. We move a lot of people around the world as project, client and market needs change. Obtaining authorization to work in European and Asian countries is often mmuch ore difficult than in the US. Which is probably what explains the great success of the US (try to look into the personal histories of senior executives/founders at Sun Microsystems, I2, Computer Associates, Hotmail, Exodus, Junglee, Cirrus Logic, Cascade Communications, I could go on but why bother, look at http://www.tie.org/ yourself). Global organizations require global work-forces, and it's better to wake up to that fact now.
The NY Times has an article which contains a snippet from Clinton's interview yesterday on Fox:
And in the midst of his sober recounting of the Camp David talks, Mr. Clinton offered a defense on a subject that Mr. Gore had been ridiculed for: his suggestion that he deserved credit for inventing the Internet. "And by the way, Mr. Gore did sponsor the legislation" that led to creating the Internet, Mr. Clinton said. "Part of my job, since I'm not running is to correct the record here."
I'm actually glad that the Gore camp has finally been able to get over the embarrasment caused by the media circus that took over Gore's comment. Check out this old Telecom Digest post for an interesting synopsis of how Gore's comments were mis-interpreted, and he was mis-quoted.
This does underscore what for me is a big issue in this campaign, the marked difference between what the two cadidates have done with their lives. I think when we compare the two of them, it's clear that Gore comes out looking very good.
Bush hasn't really been very successful at anything. He ran a so-so oil company, which was built primarily on his father's contacts, and with money from people who knew his father. He joined the Texas national guard during the Vietnam-US war, arguably the defining event of his generation. He managed to get elected to the post of governor of Texas, one of the weakest in the country .
In contrast, Gore served in Vietnam, despite the doubts both he and his father had about the war. He spent 9 years in Congress, 7 in the Senate, and 8 as vice-president. In all of those posts, he was an active participant (like most of the Congressional class of '76). Gore was one of the first to introduce into the political mainstream, and champion, issues that are so important to us today. The environment, the net, campaign finance reform (the Buddhist temple fiasco was uncharacteristic, btw, no one asks what contributions church visits result in).
I don't think the differences on fiscal issues between the two candidates are great. In fact, Gore, with his stated commitment to a balanced budget, seems to me more of a fiscally sound bet. Bush's tax cut is of course a great buy for wealthy individuals, you get over 1 trillion in tax breaks for only 200 million in up-front cost. Great pay-off. Both cadidates are pro-business, except Bush is pro-oil and tobacco business more than Gore is. The manner in which some big-businesses buy politiicans, who then turn around and say they are encouraging entrepreneurship is extremely distasteful to me.
The social issues space is quite murky as well. Gore does want more tools for parents to control and understand what their kids are doing/watching. A lot of busy parents feel the same way, and I personally think this is understandable (and yeah, I agree with peacfire as well). Gore's been beaten on the head over his switch from moderate pro-lifer to pro-choice. Some of this can be ascribed to personal growth, perhaps as he's seen his daughters grow up, but it also correlate well with his easing into national politics, so it may be dis-ingenuous.
What turns me off completely about Bush though, is the manner in which he has defended the Texas legal system as it runs rough-shod over the rights of defendants in capital cases. The attidue seems to be that if a Texas jury finds a defendant guilty, then nothing should stand in the way of his/her execution. Given the numerous problems with the public defender system in Texas, and the sheer number of people on death-row, and who have been executed, I'm certain Texas has executed someone who is innocent. People within the US do not realize this, but Texas' record on capital cases is considered a major problem by Human Rights agencies, the UN, and people in other countries.
In sum, I don't think Bush deserves to be president, he hasn't done anything significant, and this country doesn't give credence the principle of succession.
Courtney Love a creation of the recording industry
on
The Virtual Tip Jar
·
· Score: 5
What struck me about Coutrney Love's interview was that so much of her concept of an artist is derived from the manner in which hollywood and the recording industry treat artists.
When she uses terms like "creative person", or talks about how good recording execs are at masssaging the egos of their "talent", she's revealing how much she has bought into the whole system of maintaining stables of "talent". I mean really, who says artists have to be treated like gods, or treated by fans, distributors, managers in the manner the recording industry treats them? What Courtney Love is really saying, is that she likes the way the recording industry execs treats her, and wants internet content companies to massage her ego in the same way. Whether this is how all artists want to be treated is a different matter altogether.
The nonsense about the sound quality of MP3s preventing someone from enjoying the performance is another strawman. The problem generally is that someone used a bad encoder, or a damaged recording to make the MP3. If one does it appropriately, MP3s have very good sound quality. If you're listening to something interesting, even an LP makes for an interesting listen. If you're listening to bad music, using a better format won't change anything.
This attitude towards technology is not surprising at all. It feeds in perfectly with the strategy of the recording industries, where increasingly bad content (and yeah, I'll call it content if I want to Courtney, little of the mass entertainment produced by the music industry counts as art in my book) is released using increasingly sophisticated technology. Witness the quality of films produced by Hollywood, it has been steadily declining, as the quality of special effects and distribution media becomes better. Something most people have seen occur on the web, flashy sites, dumb content, high co-ordination with the point when LA become home to web-development companies.
In sum, I think Courtney makes some great points in the essay. The distribution system used by the music industry is broken, and serves only their own purposes. It would be great to see an independent distribution mechanism arise which is efficient, and capable of rewarding the people who are most important to a music recording (or a book for that matter). Some of them may well require managers, or editors, to guide them (clearly Courtney excepts to have someone like this), but this fucntion should not be foisted on the distribution company. Why should artists who are mature enough to handle themselves, have to see some of their earnings diverted towards paying psychologist-managers to look after enfant terribles? Why should consumers have to pay more either? If the artist requires therapy, they should foot their own bill.
The problem is, pop artists rely more on a cult of personality than their art. The recording industry loves it because they control the media that creates personalities (Hansen, Britney Spears, Jenifer Lopez, Leonardo DiCaprio). I'm more interested in the substance. So I'm not particularly interested in what Courtney Love does, but rather what she produces.
Tim Berners-Lee as noted above, developed the WWW as a test project on a NeXT machine (which was specifically acquired for the purpose). I actually have a running copy of the world's first web-browse (called www) on my NeXT. It was a proof of concept app written by TBL. I think CERN still has it on their ftp site.
One of NeXT's biggest customers was the NSA. Apparently they had built some sort of cluster of NeXT machines and were running some crypto on it. I remember when they dumped all their hardware (must have been around '97) and the market for used NeXT's tanked.
The Dimension board was very cool, 32 bit color and 16MB of video RAM back in the early 90's and you could watch TV with it on your 20" Hitachi.
One of the other large NeXT customers was the bank I work for. In fact we are still one of the largest OpenStep shops in the world.
If I remember my quotes from Randall Stross's Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing correctly, Gates told Jobs he would never port Word to a machine that had sold less than a million units. BTW, the link above is to Amazon, and it has a review of the book I wrote a while ago, on re-reading the review, I must say it's quite good. Stross' book is a great read for people who're interested in NeXT.
Slashdot Mirror
The colonization of North/South America and Africa was justified and defined in explicitly religious terms. It resulted in the deaths of millions.
Can you cite some examples of the "abusive contracts with brokers" and "slave wages" and give us some data on how prevalent you believe these are?
Here's survey data on H-1Bs: http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/H-1B/h1b-fy-12-characteristics.pdf
and here's prevailing wage data for a random area (Denver, Colorado): http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1132&area=19740&year=15&source=1 prevailing wage for Level 1 is $64,230 for an application developer.
Most H-1B workers tend to be young in their mid-20s. In comparison, here's what graduating seniors from an Ivy League engineering school make in possibly the highest cost location in the country (NYC) http://www.careereducation.columbia.edu/sites/cce/files/2013_gss--cc__seas-ug.pdf The median is mid-50s.
It seems to me you have your panties in a bunch over imagined abuses. May I suggest a direction in which your indignation could be more constructively directed?
Here's what Colorado pays the school-teachers who are tasked with educating the next generation. http://www.cde.state.co.us/sites/default/files/documents/cdereval/download/pdf/avgteachersal/2011avgteachersalary.pdf
Salaries in most districts are in the 30s and 40s. In the Denver area, they creep into the 50s in some districts. This is an average, it includes teachers with decades of experience. And these are people who are spending hours and hours before and after classes end grading homework, preparing lesson plans etc. That's the real problem we have in this country when it comes to training and preparing skilled workers so they can move up the income curve.
If you're in NY, CA, TX, IL (which is likely where most slashdotters are, you can safely vote for a third party candidate. There is an extremely low probability your vote will impact the actual electoral college count. Make your statement, the future is safe.
I don't think it's going to be another iphone, the market for tablets is not as big as that for smart-phones. But, I don't think it will be an apple-tv either.
It effectively kills the "electronic photo-book" market. People are paying 70-150 for those things, that is now gone. I like the leather-ish case which turns it into a keyboard type stand and into a photo-frame/tv stand, that seems like it will win some minds.
One wild-card in all of this is that it is the PERFECT computer to give your mom since it's got very simple icon entry into apps, and not too many complicated menus you have to sift through. That might just lift it into another category of sales. For people who use computer apps for different and varied tasks (say photoshop, or full-fledged spreadsheet use) this is never going to be enough. But for mom or grandma to keep photos rolling on her mantle so her friends can see them, to e-mail the kids, watch a few movies, maybe play some games, this may well be ideal.
My take is that this is not really designed for slashdot readers, it's yet another device to expand the market for apple computers to another type of user by offering a simple interface and the most frequently used features. I suspect they'll succeed, especially since the entry-price is reasonable.
Mexico happens to have universal health care coverage. It might not be perfect, but then neither is the pharma-medial-legal complex that impoverishes anyone who happens to enter a US hospital without comprehensive insurance. See:
- 4.asp
http://www.cfpc.ca/cfp/2005/Jan/vol51-jan-letters
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-9421-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
Most immigrants are not here to take advantage of the US health care "system" such as it is (any sensible person would much prefer taking advantage of Cuba's). Most immigrant are here because the US economic system affords opportunities at all levels of skill that are far superior to those available in other countries.
I have yet to meet a US immigrant who considers health care a factor in their decision to move. Any thinking person to whom that mattered would move to Canada.
The current VOIP conversation at the FCC and in state commissions is as if government responded to Henry Ford's new invention of the automobile by discouraging the construction of roads, and instead taxing cars in order to subsidize canals and railroads. As a former government official I can only say: We can do better.
Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, he perfected an assembly line and invented a type of transmission. If the US governments had taxed cars and subsidized public transport, we'd probably be better off, environmentally (no 2 ton SUVs ferrying a single person to work) and socially (people would interact with each other in public spaces, rather than spending hours every day as captive consumers for big radio).
That said, where's the Cowboy Neal audition?
Qualifications and ability would be all over the map, like they are in every other field. The best are typically as good as the best anywhere else in the world.
How many people graduate from a (technical) university on an average? (As a fraction of all people born a certain year, for example.)
Very, very few. 35% of the population is illiterate (as per the 2001 census). India's Ministry of Education has some stats on primary/secondary education and on higher education (in Indian terminology a graduate degree is a Bachelors and a post-graduate degree is a Masters/Phd)
What you're looking for is the percentage of children graduating from high-school who enroll at a college. Using the census numbers, there were 157 million children under 6 years of age. That's 25 million approximately in any given year. Assuming they all survive to turn 18, you're looking at 75 million children between 18-21. There were 5.13 million people pursuing a Bachelors degree in 1998. The population between 18 and 21 is likely around 60 million because India's population has been growing. That would suggest 10% of college-age kids end up pursing a Bachelors degree, 25% of whom are studying the Sciences. I think the US figure for college enrollment out of high-school is 40%, American Universities graduate 1.2 million students every year, US population is 30% of India's.
Does the government subsidize university-level education in any way, or is a degree only possible to attain only if you are rich enough?
It's subsidized. That said, the public primary/secondary education system in India is a mess. You've typically got to be middle-class before you will even get to school. Most of the rural poor don't have access to an education in English (which is essential at the best colleges). You'll find that most of the people who end up at engineering schools are from the middle-class (about 30% of the population, still a healthy 300 million).
What does a M.Sc. or B.Sc. degree cost you?
Depends on where you go and what sort of scholarship you can get. The most prestigious Universities are the most liberal with their aid. Costs are a fraction of what they would be in the US. You can expect to pay anywhere from USD 100 to USD 1500 a year depending on the location of the college.
What are the most prominent higher-level education universities in the technology sector? Homepage URLs?
The seven IIT campuses are generally considered to be a cut above the rest. The entrance exam to IIT is offered country-wide and people often spend a substantial part of their final high-school year cramming for it. You can start at the Madras campus or Delhi or Bombay . The IIT is run by the Indian government. The entire program would cost $1500 plus room/board. IIT is a general sciences college, not all students study CS.
A comprehensive list of Universities is maintained by the Ministry of Education.
Looking through the web-pages, I see that Indian colleges aren't doing a particularly good job marketing themselves. Do they specialize in any particular fields of technology? What's the teaching like, compared to curriculums in Europe or the US? Are certain subjects and fields emphasized more or less? Are there any major differences in teaching methods? (lectures, homework, group projects, tuition by teaching assistants, etc.)
There is a lot of focus on examinations and remembering/reproducing conce
MS: The enemies of progress and IP are getting more desperate as our products get better. Our users should purchase add on security packages because no code is perfect.
Bush: The enemies of freedom are getting increasingly desperate as we restore order and open schools. We need to iraqify the security forces.
Joking aside, some of what Gates says is true though. There will always be some exploits of complex systems, even with a focus on security. Software developers also need to make the update/patching process simpler. Windows updates, debian APT same idea. He's also right when he says users need to be aware of security risks. Securing your machine and data are like locking your car, you're responsible for using the lock but the manufacturer provides a simple interface to it. Microsoft (and other software developers) need to ensure their products are secure, and users have a simple interface to them. Most people wouldn't know what ports and sockets are, but they do know what a door is and how to operate a key. I think some of the bundled security features in OS/X Panther need to be widely available (auto-encrypt folders, multiple overwrites of file blocks).
If Gates thinks E-mail scanners and firewalls are absolutely essential for operating Windows, MS should be bundling a really good firewall and a great virus scanner in its O/S. Linux distros do.
Mike Gancarz covered some of this ground in his "The Unix Philosophy" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1555 581234/qid=1066681099/ It's a little dated now, since it was published in 1995, but still quite interesting.
Anyone notice how Dooku and Anakin say almost exactly the same thing? "I am the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy". I guess it's expected, but I didn't think it would be so blatant, and Palpatine tells Anakin, "You're the most talented Jedi I've ever met".
I though the romantic scenes were a little sappy (but I always do, seen too many Hindi movies). But, they are much better the second time around, and you catch a few more nuances (they're there). I wanted to see whether they would be as embarassing the next time around, and they really weren't.
I could hear Lucas in the director's chair saying:
- Natalie, you're still thinking, is this the little 10 year old from Tatooine.
- Natalie, you're tocuhed by his declaration, but wiggle your shoulders a little more, and edge away from him on the sofa.
- Hayden, you're willing to tell her *anything* to her, you're 20 years old and you've been a monk for the past 10.
- Hayden, keep staring at her, you know she likes it.
None of the actors have the presence of Alec Guinness, Harrison Ford, or James Earl Jones' voice. Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine) and Christopher Lee (Dooku) probably come closest.
There's a paragraph in the book where Obi-Wan says the time Luke will spend alone with Padme is one of his trials, before he graduates to become a Jedi, and he hopes Luke realizes this.
The explosive topic of war crimes perpetrated by people we regard as heroes, and the complexity of our response if we know them well was rather deflty handled in the book.
The book has lots of filler, but that's what one expects from a sci-fi book. It's a quick read though, large type and skimmable. I thought the love-story between Luke and Padme was actually developed rather well in the novel. There's nothing surprising about it, but practically every love-story is hackneyed because the genre is so popular with readers and writers.
I'd read the novelisation of episode I before seeing the movie, since I knew there'd be a large cast of characters and I wanted to have some background. The same argument doesn't hold for episode II as much.
What I would say is that the book, and the plot make clear what we can expect in episode III. The clone army gets hijacked, there's a lot of heartache as the twins are placed on different planets and Luke is kept ignorant of them. It's clear what causes Luke to turn to the dark side as well. His mother's torture, his guilt for abandoning her, the massacre he perpetrates, and possibly his rejection by the jedi order once he marries Padme. This also gives a lot more complexity to the prophecy "the one who will bring balance to the force".
A couple of things that the book made me think about were political:
I think the book gives much more context to these views. I'm sort of interested now in what Lucas' motivation for the moral tales in the series was. What sort of response did he have to Vietnam, LBJ, Kennedy, Korea? Certainly, there are clear parallels between Luke's destruction of the Tusken village and incidents in Vietnam.
I actually think the issue of social responsibility versus individual desires is illuminated by the book. Perhaps it's because I'm visiting Singapore, but the Naboo and the Jedi don't seem all that different. It is a relevant topic, even if we only look at how people in demanding jobs manage work/life conflictss.
But we can't take all of this too seriously. It is a space opera after all, its meant to be melodramatic, have great fight scenes, plot twists, surprises, and all the other good stuff that makes for an engaging tale.
There are some interesting twists that I can see within the first 3 episodes. The Star Wars universe doesn't seem as black and white as it did in 4-6.
I don't think the book is a bad read. I wasn't expecting any surprises in the movie, we know the outline of the plot already. I do think I'll enjoy seeing the movie more than I would have otherwise.
at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/technology/25STA T.html (free registration req).
You also have to consider that non-profits make infrastructure investments that for-profits sometimes aren't interested in, especially if payoffs are uncertain or very far into the future. Basic research (in every field including finance, technology, and science). Non-profits are also more amenable to making public research findings, for profits would much rather protect their trade secrets.
Clearly this is a more complicated issue than flatpack thinks it is, even within economics. Intergenerational wealth-transfers have been a debating point within economics for centuries.
So, what does it take to get an H-1B?
The regs are complex (which is how immigration lawyers charge firms 8-10K to process H-1B visas), but you can find them at http://www.ins.gov/
The process takes anywhere from 6 to 20 weeks depending on the state you apply in, and the number of visas that have been issued that year. It is not a simple process, and *many* employers refuse point-blank to go through such an arduous procedure.
That said, the process has been abused by a small group of employeers, called body-shoppers. The usual recruitment strategy by a body-shopper works like follows. Recruit someone in India (or another country, but India is the most common source), process an H1-B for them, and when they arrive in the US, contract their services out to another firm for substantially more than they are being paid. Another common set of abuse are Universities (actually particular labs within certain Universities) that hire post-docs at pittance wages. But the lot of all post-docs is terrible, the ones on H1-Bs just a little more so.
H1-B workers who do not work for a body-shoppers or Universities make about the same (often more) than our US counterparts.
A brief note on qualifications. Having worked in Universities in the US, and having studied in both under-graduate and graduate programs, I must say that obtainaing a PhD is neither great shakes (even at the best schools) and most definitely does not signify you will attain any success outside of academia. In fact, the skills requried to survive many graduate programs may well make you unemployable, since they include both subservience (to professor-gods) and lack of imagination (it's amazing just how mundane and boring most research is).
By the way, did you know H1-B workers are taxed without representation?
The question of re-training older workers has been adequately addressed by other posts. What I would point out is that requests for paternalism , especially when made to the state, are self-destructive. If a person who happened to be born in another country has been able to acquire skills that you don't have despite the larger set of opportunities available in the US, what right do you have to require other taxpayers to correct your inability to take an initiative?
That's quite a mouthful of facts and observations. But what do I think/believe?
First off, I believe in the open and free movement of individuals across this Earth. I believe everyone should be able to work, live, and play wherever they want without impediment from governments, as long as they have the means to sustain themselves via consensual transactions with other individuals.
I find immigration procedures demeaning, bureaucratic, racist, I could go on but why bother. Have you ever wondered what immigration officials make people who look even vaguely middle-eastern, or South American go through?
The free movement of all economic resources (including human labor) is the only way for humanity to achieve its full potential. Saying that certain opportunities should be available to individuals who happen to have been born in a particular geographic region is the same as claiming that people of a particular color, race or sex have certain rights that others don't.
And Puh-lease, the US is the last place on Earth that can lay a justly claim a right to refuse entry to anyone. After all, the theft of the North American continent from the indigenous people occured not more than 9 generations ago. Americans of course, are not the only people who have a monopoly on moral blinders, but we're talking about H1-Bs.
BTW, I work for a European bank that has operations in the US and 70 other countries. We move a lot of people around the world as project, client and market needs change. Obtaining authorization to work in European and Asian countries is often mmuch ore difficult than in the US. Which is probably what explains the great success of the US (try to look into the personal histories of senior executives/founders at Sun Microsystems, I2, Computer Associates, Hotmail, Exodus, Junglee, Cirrus Logic, Cascade Communications, I could go on but why bother, look at http://www.tie.org/ yourself). Global organizations require global work-forces, and it's better to wake up to that fact now.
The NY Times has an article which contains a snippet from Clinton's interview yesterday on Fox:
I'm actually glad that the Gore camp has finally been able to get over the embarrasment caused by the media circus that took over Gore's comment. Check out this old Telecom Digest post for an interesting synopsis of how Gore's comments were mis-interpreted, and he was mis-quoted.
This does underscore what for me is a big issue in this campaign, the marked difference between what the two cadidates have done with their lives. I think when we compare the two of them, it's clear that Gore comes out looking very good.
Bush hasn't really been very successful at anything. He ran a so-so oil company, which was built primarily on his father's contacts, and with money from people who knew his father. He joined the Texas national guard during the Vietnam-US war, arguably the defining event of his generation. He managed to get elected to the post of governor of Texas, one of the weakest in the country .
In contrast, Gore served in Vietnam, despite the doubts both he and his father had about the war. He spent 9 years in Congress, 7 in the Senate, and 8 as vice-president. In all of those posts, he was an active participant (like most of the Congressional class of '76). Gore was one of the first to introduce into the political mainstream, and champion, issues that are so important to us today. The environment, the net, campaign finance reform (the Buddhist temple fiasco was uncharacteristic, btw, no one asks what contributions church visits result in).
I don't think the differences on fiscal issues between the two candidates are great. In fact, Gore, with his stated commitment to a balanced budget, seems to me more of a fiscally sound bet. Bush's tax cut is of course a great buy for wealthy individuals, you get over 1 trillion in tax breaks for only 200 million in up-front cost. Great pay-off. Both cadidates are pro-business, except Bush is pro-oil and tobacco business more than Gore is. The manner in which some big-businesses buy politiicans, who then turn around and say they are encouraging entrepreneurship is extremely distasteful to me.
The social issues space is quite murky as well. Gore does want more tools for parents to control and understand what their kids are doing/watching. A lot of busy parents feel the same way, and I personally think this is understandable (and yeah, I agree with peacfire as well). Gore's been beaten on the head over his switch from moderate pro-lifer to pro-choice. Some of this can be ascribed to personal growth, perhaps as he's seen his daughters grow up, but it also correlate well with his easing into national politics, so it may be dis-ingenuous.
What turns me off completely about Bush though, is the manner in which he has defended the Texas legal system as it runs rough-shod over the rights of defendants in capital cases. The attidue seems to be that if a Texas jury finds a defendant guilty, then nothing should stand in the way of his/her execution. Given the numerous problems with the public defender system in Texas, and the sheer number of people on death-row, and who have been executed, I'm certain Texas has executed someone who is innocent. People within the US do not realize this, but Texas' record on capital cases is considered a major problem by Human Rights agencies, the UN, and people in other countries.
In sum, I don't think Bush deserves to be president, he hasn't done anything significant, and this country doesn't give credence the principle of succession.
What struck me about Coutrney Love's interview was that so much of her concept of an artist is derived from the manner in which hollywood and the recording industry treat artists.
When she uses terms like "creative person", or talks about how good recording execs are at masssaging the egos of their "talent", she's revealing how much she has bought into the whole system of maintaining stables of "talent". I mean really, who says artists have to be treated like gods, or treated by fans, distributors, managers in the manner the recording industry treats them? What Courtney Love is really saying, is that she likes the way the recording industry execs treats her, and wants internet content companies to massage her ego in the same way. Whether this is how all artists want to be treated is a different matter altogether.
The nonsense about the sound quality of MP3s preventing someone from enjoying the performance is another strawman. The problem generally is that someone used a bad encoder, or a damaged recording to make the MP3. If one does it appropriately, MP3s have very good sound quality. If you're listening to something interesting, even an LP makes for an interesting listen. If you're listening to bad music, using a better format won't change anything.
This attitude towards technology is not surprising at all. It feeds in perfectly with the strategy of the recording industries, where increasingly bad content (and yeah, I'll call it content if I want to Courtney, little of the mass entertainment produced by the music industry counts as art in my book) is released using increasingly sophisticated technology. Witness the quality of films produced by Hollywood, it has been steadily declining, as the quality of special effects and distribution media becomes better. Something most people have seen occur on the web, flashy sites, dumb content, high co-ordination with the point when LA become home to web-development companies.
In sum, I think Courtney makes some great points in the essay. The distribution system used by the music industry is broken, and serves only their own purposes. It would be great to see an independent distribution mechanism arise which is efficient, and capable of rewarding the people who are most important to a music recording (or a book for that matter). Some of them may well require managers, or editors, to guide them (clearly Courtney excepts to have someone like this), but this fucntion should not be foisted on the distribution company. Why should artists who are mature enough to handle themselves, have to see some of their earnings diverted towards paying psychologist-managers to look after enfant terribles? Why should consumers have to pay more either? If the artist requires therapy, they should foot their own bill.
The problem is, pop artists rely more on a cult of personality than their art. The recording industry loves it because they control the media that creates personalities (Hansen, Britney Spears, Jenifer Lopez, Leonardo DiCaprio). I'm more interested in the substance. So I'm not particularly interested in what Courtney Love does, but rather what she produces.
Tim Berners-Lee as noted above, developed the WWW as a test project on a NeXT machine (which was specifically acquired for the purpose). I actually have a running copy of the world's first web-browse (called www) on my NeXT. It was a proof of concept app written by TBL. I think CERN still has it on their ftp site.
One of NeXT's biggest customers was the NSA. Apparently they had built some sort of cluster of NeXT machines and were running some crypto on it. I remember when they dumped all their hardware (must have been around '97) and the market for used NeXT's tanked.
The Dimension board was very cool, 32 bit color and 16MB of video RAM back in the early 90's and you could watch TV with it on your 20" Hitachi.
One of the other large NeXT customers was the bank I work for. In fact we are still one of the largest OpenStep shops in the world.
If I remember my quotes from Randall Stross's Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing correctly, Gates told Jobs he would never port Word to a machine that had sold less than a million units. BTW, the link above is to Amazon, and it has a review of the book I wrote a while ago, on re-reading the review, I must say it's quite good. Stross' book is a great read for people who're interested in NeXT.