1) I was an intern, and I was 21 at the time. Sitting all day with bad posture in a crappy chair will give anyone a back ache -- or so it seems to me. Perhaps I have an inferior constitution or bad genes because I am not fortunate enough to be one of the Master Race of Anonymous Cowards.
2) I was there for an entire summer; I took a couple months off to begin the fall quarter at school, and then came back at an urgent request from the technical management to complete a high-priority prototype so our founder and CTO could take it to a trade show. It was during this period (Winter 2000) that I worked dawn to dusk (while simultaneously doing my schoolwork) and began developing troubles. I saw a chiropractor *after* four weeks of these troubles, and continued seeing him for another month or so.
3) It was a freaking STARTUP with fewer than 50 employees. My "boss" during that period was a former professor of mine (who had hand-recruited most of the technical staff); he was the CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER of the company, and he was spending about half his time on the road talking to potential investors or customers and demoing our technology. When I came upon my troubles, it was only natural to talk to our "HR department" which consisted of two women, both of whom I was acquainted with.
Why the skepticism, Mr. Grumpy? Just because you've never had back trouble, or done real work, or been with an organization where the entire staff can fit in a single conference room, doesn't mean that nobody else has.
When I first went to intern with the company I'm working for now, they accidentally gave me an $800 Steelcase chair reserved for full-time senior engineers. They felt bad about the mistake, so they let me have it for the entire summer.
That very winter, I came back to to a project for them, only to find a cheap POS "executive office chair" at my desk. Yes, it was leather; yes, it was very flashy looking and fit well with my pressboard laminate desk -- but it wasn't very comfortable to sit in.
After four weeks of working 12-16 hours a day sitting in that damned chair (what, I didn't mention this was a tech job?) my spine was twisted in knots, my neck ached constantly, and my elbows hurt persistently. My productivity dropped essentially to 0, I had to see a chiropractor on a weekly basis and I chose to work from a noisy dorm room most of the time rather than deal with that chair.
Eventually, I took up the issue with the HR department who instantly caved and gave me back my fancy Steelcase chair. To them, $800 is a huge bargain when you consider the cost of disability payments, surgery to alleviate carpal tunnel synrome, etc.
I've had that chair for four years running now; I don't work quite as hard now as I did that first winter, but I haven't had a single back complaint, I'm free of carpal tunnel syndrome despite being a constant keyboard user, and I'm rarely the worse for wear despite spending all day in this chair, five days a week.
As a software developer, your chair, desk, keyboard and mouse are the physical tools of your trade. A carpenter doesn't skimp on his hammer; an assassin doesn't carry around a water gun. Why should *you* suffer with inferior tools?
Don't forget, kids, that Mars has virtual no atmosphere and is significantly smaller and less massive than Terra. Has anyone checked the Mars satellite's orbital radius? I'd be willing to bet that the "theoretical maximum" of 10cm resolution assumes an Earth satellite in low Earth orbit.
Second Life makes a great learning environment!
on
Why Johnny Can't Code
·
· Score: 1
For nearly two decades now, "computer" has been synonymous in most peoples' minds with "window-based GUI featuring graphically-intensive, networked applications." This presents a huge problem when it comes to teaching kids how to program.
As a 12 year old, I taught myself BASIC on my family's aging Commodore 64. At the time, DOS was in its heyday and I remember thinking to myself "if I get good enough at this thing, maybe I'll be able to write an application like Word Star or Telemate!"
In other words: in 1988, I was motivated to learn BASIC because of tantalizing opportunity to write actual, relevant software. After your first "hello world" or "What is your name" or "20 goto 10" program the fun of coding for coding's sake quickly goes away, replaced by a desire to create meaninful, useful software.
Now then: how likely is it that a kid will be able to write something he identifies as software using only a BASIC interpreter and simple, terminal-oriented I/O? Not bloody likely! If you sit a kid down to teach him BASIC, he'll quickly get bored out his mind, just as surely as *I* would have been bored out of my mind if I'd tried to learn Z80 assembly as a 12 year old. I thrived in the early days of my programming career because I was able to make small programs that were relevant and useful to me, my friends and family
So: don't teach your kids BASIC. Teach them Logo or HyperCard or Macromedia Flash -- focus on languages that have a solid IDE, a gentle learning curve, and most importantly, produce relevant (graphical, interactive) output.
Personally, I've had tremendous success by going one step further, and teaching ptogramming in the context of a virtual environment. I've been using Second Life as a teaching tool. Its C-like scripting language (LSL) is easy to learn. Because scripts are attached to objects in the 3D world and are capable of influencing position, velocity and appearance of the objects, it's possible to very quickly produce sophisticated behaviors with just a little scripting.
In addition to the basics (variables, input and output, arithmetic expressions), LSL introduces kids to many relevant high-level concepts: message passing and event handling, Cartesian coordinate systems, vector math, and basic physics, to name a few. Since it's all online, there is an additional social element to the experience. Your kids can show off their inventions to others and get programming advice or feedback in real time.
If you want your kids to catch the programming bug, and they already show interest in 3D games or multiplayer virtual worlds, Second Life wouldn't be a bad place to start.
Of course, we all know that Cheney/Rove are incapable of subtlety, so they couldn't *possibly* have deliberately leaked the information to Armitage with the full knowledge that Armitage would then leak it to the press.
No, that can't possibly be what happened. I credit our leaders with far too much intelligence.
Unfortunately, you can't correlate the requester's IP with their geo address, because it is almost certain that the captchas are being harvested by robots and fed to the workers out-of-band (probably via a password-protected website). The robots could be anywhere, but are likely to be close to their targets (e.g. in the US).
Alas, "uncolicit" would be something illegal between two parties. Because if the "-ate" suffix (which tends to turn an adjective into a verb, see "violate" -- to be reminiscent of a viola) I venture that the word "uncolicitated" refers to something that has not yet been made legal between two parties.
If you leave a spermatozoid alone in its environment (the testes) , it will not grow into a human. Similarly, neither will an unfertilized ovule. In both cases, some preconditions for have not been met, and so the cycle of mitosis and cell differentiation cannot commence.
But -- combine that sperm with an ovule in the right place (the uterus), allow it to implant itself in the wall of the uterus, and *then* you've got a potential human. The host environment provides nutrients, and the embryo grows on its own.
You can introduce a sperm to an egg in another environment (say, a petri dish) and if the conditions are right, the meeting will result in an embryo. But -- you must quickly transplant the embryo into a suitable host (a uterus or something similar) or it will quickly die. So, a fertilized embryo in a petri dish does not meet all the preconditions for a potential human.
It occurs to me that the embryo alone is not a future human. In fact, the mother-embryo *system* has the potential of a future human -- but if the does not mother continue to provide nutrients and act as a host, the fetus will die. Therefore, we can justify the mother's ability to choose abortion -- she is part of the system, after all.
I'm sure our magnanimous and fearless leader eats eggs for breakfast every morning. "Alive" is an adjective that only applies to people (and only to some people).
Chicken, cattle, and their ilk are lesser beings by virtue of lacking a soul, and hence cannot be "alive" by the President's definition. Given the behavior of the current administration, I'm pretty sure that qualification extends to convicts, poor people and Arabs as well.
See? Doesn't it all make sense?
(NOTE TO MODS: If you are the observant sort, you will note the presence of a certain amount of sarcasm in this post. Before hitting that "moderate" button, take a deep breath and, on the exhale, chant "I... have... a... sense... of... humor.")
A sapling does not bear fruit, provide shade, or blossom in the springtime. But a sapling, left to its own devices in the environment it is most suited for, will eventually grow into a mature tree that carries out all the functions of a mature tree.
A sapling represents the *potential* for a future tree. Similarly, an embryo is a *potential* future human. If you destroy an embryo, it is provable that the embryo does not feel pain. It is debatable that the embryo has a soul (or indeed that *anybody* has a soul. However, it is unquestionably true that by destroying the embryo, we reduce to zero the probability of its ever developing into a living, breathing, productive human.
I should note that I myself am pro-choice but anti-abortion. I think an abortions at *any* stage of pregnancy are a terrible thing, and should not be used as a substitute for responsibility or forethought (contraceptives, anyone?!?) However, I freely acknowledge that:
a) there are cases where abortion becomes a medical or ethical necessity, and
b) since the mother is carrying the fetus, it is her right to choose the baby's destiny and I have no say in the matter.
Ahh, but what if "dropping" is being used in the transitive sends? Perhaps Amazon has dropped some profits by the side of the road, and the act of dropping the profits sends them in odd directions.
It's an electromagnetic (sensor) field that detects incoming projectiles. When it sees one, it projects a kinetic counter-force by firing a projectile back.
Any radar = "sensor field"
Any projectile weapon = "force projector"
Combine the two, and you've got a reasonable simulacrum of a force field -- but it's still not technically a force field. It's just a fancy point-defense system. Aircraft carriers have done this for more than a decade.
You may not have heard from them again, but others did. They were eventually proven to be a huge fraud -- all of their demonstrations were hoaxed (including one famous case where they had to run coax across a river bed to rig a supposed "long distance" demo).
I wish I could remember names or give links, but the details escape me. I read an article on the web about 2 years ago.
I've always hated exercise-for-exercise's-sake (think treadmills, stationary bikes and StairMasters here) and because of my hectic work schedule and a number of non-physical hobbies, it's rare occasion that I have the time to engage in recreational exercise.
In the past two years I've been putting on weight, and I'm NOT happy about it. So I've come up with the following workaround:
1) Buy an iPod
2) Load it up with good music, audio books, learn-a-language casettes, and other engaging activities
3) Go to gym; hop on cardio machine of choice; turn iPod up
4) Zone out as you exercise. Let the audio distract you; try to forget completely about the discomfort of working out, while still concentrating on the physical side of things (are we running fast enough, is our posture correct, etc).
It works surprisingly well. It's unbelievable how quickly 45 minutes can pass while I'm learning Arabic or reading Joe Haldeman in my head. And the best thing is, I've gotten to the point where I don't strictly *need* the iPod distraction in order to enjoy a workout. I've trained myself to tolerate the mild physical discomfort (sweat, tired muscles, et al) -- though I still enjoy the iPod.
Yes, I'm a big wimp. But at least I've got mental hacks to compensate for it!
Exactly. Maybe if Eolas were a benevolent corp that contributed tons of money to open source or third world nations or curing cancer, I'd feel differently. As it is, I never heard of them before the patent lawsuit (and probably never will again -- I'll be surprised if they don't liquidate and close up shop once they've got half a billion in their coffers).
Hmm, good point. But, in the interest of trying to salvage my sweeping generalization, let's see if I can't modify my original statement.
If the thief evenly distributes what he stole to people in need, then his act *may* be more permissible, depending on the context (was the tyrant stealing from others?) and also on your point of view (are you the tyrant who loses money, the thief who neither loses nor gains money, or one of the peasants who benefits?)
One thing's universally true though: if a thief steals from someone, and distributes it among the populace, and that thief is a government agency, then we call the thief by a special name: taxation authority.;)
(1) Continue to infringe on Eolas' patent. Eventually Eolas will sue again, causing MSFT to pay more damages.
(2) Buy a license from Eolas.
(3) Change IE so it no longer infringes. Pay Eolas nothing.
You see, #1 and #2 would make Eolas money. #3 makes Eolas no money. In this light, could we expect Eolas' executives to say anything else about Microsoft's decision? Apparently, they're not happy with $520 million -- and their attitude to Microsoft's decision to work around the patent tells us all we need to know about Eolas' motivations.
This is a shakedown for money, pure and simple. It's yet another abuse of the patent system. They'll take MSFT for as much as they can, and anything MSFT does to stop loss, Eolas will regard as "unfortunate."
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft -- but if a thief steals from an tyrant, that doesn't make the thief's transgression any less severe or more permissible.
Yup! Help is on the way -- but in the end, US will end up with fewer jobs than before, because even when we've reached equilibrium, some jobs will still be done best in India (or China or Iraq or Malaysia or take your pick).
Like most things in life, globalization is a two-edged sword.
On the one hand, emerging markets abroad provide excellent opportunities for US business to buy labor and capital -- and increasing wages abroad will eventually lead to new markets for US-produced goods (entertainment and other intellectual property, gadgets, cars, coal).
On the other hand, we are only increasing the standard of living in other countries at the cost of our own standard of living. The more money we invest in other countries, the less money we have for ourselves. As citizens of the post-globalization US, in the short term we will no longer enjoy the artificially high buying power that our parents and grandparents had.
The question is, will we see a return on our investment in the global economy before the USA goes bankrupt, or suffers a military coup, or turns into a theocracy, or splits apart into warring red/blue factions, or succumbs to a bird flu pandemic, or drowns because of global warming, or freezes because of global cooling?
Personally, I think things will keep getting worse for awhile -- probably 6-8 years like you say. Then they'll get better for a decade as we pull out of the current slump. Finally, around 2020, things will take a permanent downturn as the global oil supply tails off, our enormous national debt catches up to us, the social security problem begins to get really vicious (baby boomers retiring in droves) and the last of the well-educated US engineers leave the marketplace. Inside of 50 years, the US will be just another dried-up husk with a crappy education system and a bankrupt government.
I have a feeling that we might see Indian inflation rise even faster in the next few years. Indian companies are actually outsourcing some of their work to China, and a lot of Indian IT workers who moved abroad in the last decade are choosing to return home with (comparatively) huge nest-eggs.
All in all, the Indian economy is quite healthy right now, and corruption in the public and private sector (formerly a huge problem) are slowly dwindling. Growth rates are rising; with growth comes wealth; with wealth comes inflation.
However, I'd still say your conclusion is about right -- don't go into IT for the next ten years, unless you're a hot shot who can make himself irreplacable to an organization.
Beg pardon, but I believe we *do* have a wide disparity of resources between US and India, which is the underlying cause for the favorable exchange rate. AFAIK the rupee-dollar exchange rate is not fixed; it's set by whatever people in the currency exchange market are willing to pay (and who knows how *those* people make their valuations -- but the theory of efficient markets would have us believe that their valuations are more-or-less correct).
If you were making the same claim about China, then I'd whole-heartedly agree. In addition to having less wealth than us, China mandates the USD-RMB exchange rate, one of the effects of which is to make Chinese currency unnaturally low in value compared to the US dollar. This drives US buyers to import ever more cheap Chinese goods.
Hmm. Well, ya learn something new every day. However, even if the law only covers fiduciary duty. I could still argue that a CEO who refuses to outsource a job when it would save even 50% of the job's cost and have no foreseeable negative consequences, isn't doing HIS job very well.
At what point do I come off as a socialist? At no point did I suggest that our capitalist system is bad, or that there's a better alternative -- I'm just trying to keep things in perspective. If you want to live with the benefits of capitalism, you must live with the drawbacks as well. Every now and then the market will do something that hurts a bunch of people in the name of efficiency, which will later turn out to be less efficient than whatever it was doing before.
Not to pick nits, but a lakh just means 100,000 of something. So the girl in the article, being paid "Rs 4.8 lakh," was being paid 480,000 rupees per annum.
At about 40 rupees to the dollar, you can see that her pay in dollars -- $12,000 -- is quite low. Even though salaries in India are rising dramatically, they've still got a long way to go before they close the gap with US salaries (especially in fields like tech, which are on the rise even in the US).
And now for my spot of commentary:
In the long run, those jobs that can be outsourced effectively, *will* be. The corporations that form the basis of our free-market economy are compelled BY LAW to reduce costs as much as possible, in order to increase margins and enhance shareholder value.
As one would expect, not every job can be outsourced efficiently. At the moment the pendulum is swinging TOWARD outsourcing, as greedy CEOs experiment with new ways to lower the bottom line. However, there have been (and will continue to be) numerous incidents where jobs are inappropriately outsourced. Given a few decades, the economies of "insourcing" countries will rise as money floods in, corporate types will learn which jobs need to stay in country, and the system will reach equilibrium.
Those who don't like what the future has to hold can choose to move to a country with a controlled economy, or find a protected niche such as health care, palm reading or burger flipping -- none of which are amenable to outsourcing.
Slashdot Mirror
1) I was an intern, and I was 21 at the time. Sitting all day with bad posture in a crappy chair will give anyone a back ache -- or so it seems to me. Perhaps I have an inferior constitution or bad genes because I am not fortunate enough to be one of the Master Race of Anonymous Cowards.
2) I was there for an entire summer; I took a couple months off to begin the fall quarter at school, and then came back at an urgent request from the technical management to complete a high-priority prototype so our founder and CTO could take it to a trade show. It was during this period (Winter 2000) that I worked dawn to dusk (while simultaneously doing my schoolwork) and began developing troubles. I saw a chiropractor *after* four weeks of these troubles, and continued seeing him for another month or so.
3) It was a freaking STARTUP with fewer than 50 employees. My "boss" during that period was a former professor of mine (who had hand-recruited most of the technical staff); he was the CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER of the company, and he was spending about half his time on the road talking to potential investors or customers and demoing our technology. When I came upon my troubles, it was only natural to talk to our "HR department" which consisted of two women, both of whom I was acquainted with.
Why the skepticism, Mr. Grumpy? Just because you've never had back trouble, or done real work, or been with an organization where the entire staff can fit in a single conference room, doesn't mean that nobody else has.
When I first went to intern with the company I'm working for now, they accidentally gave me an $800 Steelcase chair reserved for full-time senior engineers. They felt bad about the mistake, so they let me have it for the entire summer.
That very winter, I came back to to a project for them, only to find a cheap POS "executive office chair" at my desk. Yes, it was leather; yes, it was very flashy looking and fit well with my pressboard laminate desk -- but it wasn't very comfortable to sit in.
After four weeks of working 12-16 hours a day sitting in that damned chair (what, I didn't mention this was a tech job?) my spine was twisted in knots, my neck ached constantly, and my elbows hurt persistently. My productivity dropped essentially to 0, I had to see a chiropractor on a weekly basis and I chose to work from a noisy dorm room most of the time rather than deal with that chair.
Eventually, I took up the issue with the HR department who instantly caved and gave me back my fancy Steelcase chair. To them, $800 is a huge bargain when you consider the cost of disability payments, surgery to alleviate carpal tunnel synrome, etc.
I've had that chair for four years running now; I don't work quite as hard now as I did that first winter, but I haven't had a single back complaint, I'm free of carpal tunnel syndrome despite being a constant keyboard user, and I'm rarely the worse for wear despite spending all day in this chair, five days a week.
As a software developer, your chair, desk, keyboard and mouse are the physical tools of your trade. A carpenter doesn't skimp on his hammer; an assassin doesn't carry around a water gun. Why should *you* suffer with inferior tools?
Don't forget, kids, that Mars has virtual no atmosphere and is significantly smaller and less massive than Terra. Has anyone checked the Mars satellite's orbital radius? I'd be willing to bet that the "theoretical maximum" of 10cm resolution assumes an Earth satellite in low Earth orbit.
For nearly two decades now, "computer" has been synonymous in most peoples' minds with "window-based GUI featuring graphically-intensive, networked applications." This presents a huge problem when it comes to teaching kids how to program.
As a 12 year old, I taught myself BASIC on my family's aging Commodore 64. At the time, DOS was in its heyday and I remember thinking to myself "if I get good enough at this thing, maybe I'll be able to write an application like Word Star or Telemate!"
In other words: in 1988, I was motivated to learn BASIC because of tantalizing opportunity to write actual, relevant software. After your first "hello world" or "What is your name" or "20 goto 10" program the fun of coding for coding's sake quickly goes away, replaced by a desire to create meaninful, useful software.
Now then: how likely is it that a kid will be able to write something he identifies as software using only a BASIC interpreter and simple, terminal-oriented I/O? Not bloody likely! If you sit a kid down to teach him BASIC, he'll quickly get bored out his mind, just as surely as *I* would have been bored out of my mind if I'd tried to learn Z80 assembly as a 12 year old. I thrived in the early days of my programming career because I was able to make small programs that were relevant and useful to me, my friends and family
So: don't teach your kids BASIC. Teach them Logo or HyperCard or Macromedia Flash -- focus on languages that have a solid IDE, a gentle learning curve, and most importantly, produce relevant (graphical, interactive) output.
Personally, I've had tremendous success by going one step further, and teaching ptogramming in the context of a virtual environment. I've been using Second Life as a teaching tool. Its C-like scripting language (LSL) is easy to learn. Because scripts are attached to objects in the 3D world and are capable of influencing position, velocity and appearance of the objects, it's possible to very quickly produce sophisticated behaviors with just a little scripting.
In addition to the basics (variables, input and output, arithmetic expressions), LSL introduces kids to many relevant high-level concepts: message passing and event handling, Cartesian coordinate systems, vector math, and basic physics, to name a few. Since it's all online, there is an additional social element to the experience. Your kids can show off their inventions to others and get programming advice or feedback in real time.
If you want your kids to catch the programming bug, and they already show interest in 3D games or multiplayer virtual worlds, Second Life wouldn't be a bad place to start.
Well, *I* thought it was funny...
Pie and chips are awesome; therefore, John Titor must be real. All hail the Geico gecko!
Quite a well thought out solution! That would cut down the proportion of cheaters quite a bit, though there are still ways around it.
Of course, we all know that Cheney/Rove are incapable of subtlety, so they couldn't *possibly* have deliberately leaked the information to Armitage with the full knowledge that Armitage would then leak it to the press.
No, that can't possibly be what happened. I credit our leaders with far too much intelligence.
Unfortunately, you can't correlate the requester's IP with their geo address, because it is almost certain that the captchas are being harvested by robots and fed to the workers out-of-band (probably via a password-protected website). The robots could be anywhere, but are likely to be close to their targets (e.g. in the US).
Alas, "uncolicit" would be something illegal between two parties. Because if the "-ate" suffix (which tends to turn an adjective into a verb, see "violate" -- to be reminiscent of a viola) I venture that the word "uncolicitated" refers to something that has not yet been made legal between two parties.
If you leave a spermatozoid alone in its environment (the testes) , it will not grow into a human. Similarly, neither will an unfertilized ovule. In both cases, some preconditions for have not been met, and so the cycle of mitosis and cell differentiation cannot commence.
But -- combine that sperm with an ovule in the right place (the uterus), allow it to implant itself in the wall of the uterus, and *then* you've got a potential human. The host environment provides nutrients, and the embryo grows on its own.
You can introduce a sperm to an egg in another environment (say, a petri dish) and if the conditions are right, the meeting will result in an embryo. But -- you must quickly transplant the embryo into a suitable host (a uterus or something similar) or it will quickly die. So, a fertilized embryo in a petri dish does not meet all the preconditions for a potential human.
It occurs to me that the embryo alone is not a future human. In fact, the mother-embryo *system* has the potential of a future human -- but if the does not mother continue to provide nutrients and act as a host, the fetus will die. Therefore, we can justify the mother's ability to choose abortion -- she is part of the system, after all.
I'm sure our magnanimous and fearless leader eats eggs for breakfast every morning. "Alive" is an adjective that only applies to people (and only to some people).
... have ... a ... sense ... of ... humor.")
Chicken, cattle, and their ilk are lesser beings by virtue of lacking a soul, and hence cannot be "alive" by the President's definition. Given the behavior of the current administration, I'm pretty sure that qualification extends to convicts, poor people and Arabs as well.
See? Doesn't it all make sense?
(NOTE TO MODS: If you are the observant sort, you will note the presence of a certain amount of sarcasm in this post. Before hitting that "moderate" button, take a deep breath and, on the exhale, chant "I
A sapling does not bear fruit, provide shade, or blossom in the springtime. But a sapling, left to its own devices in the environment it is most suited for, will eventually grow into a mature tree that carries out all the functions of a mature tree.
A sapling represents the *potential* for a future tree. Similarly, an embryo is a *potential* future human. If you destroy an embryo, it is provable that the embryo does not feel pain. It is debatable that the embryo has a soul (or indeed that *anybody* has a soul. However, it is unquestionably true that by destroying the embryo, we reduce to zero the probability of its ever developing into a living, breathing, productive human.
I should note that I myself am pro-choice but anti-abortion. I think an abortions at *any* stage of pregnancy are a terrible thing, and should not be used as a substitute for responsibility or forethought (contraceptives, anyone?!?) However, I freely acknowledge that:
a) there are cases where abortion becomes a medical or ethical necessity, and
b) since the mother is carrying the fetus, it is her right to choose the baby's destiny and I have no say in the matter.
For both of these reasons, I am pro-choice.
Ahh, but what if "dropping" is being used in the transitive sends? Perhaps Amazon has dropped some profits by the side of the road, and the act of dropping the profits sends them in odd directions.
The problem is, it isn't strictly a force field.
It's an electromagnetic (sensor) field that detects incoming projectiles. When it sees one, it projects a kinetic counter-force by firing a projectile back.
Any radar = "sensor field"
Any projectile weapon = "force projector"
Combine the two, and you've got a reasonable simulacrum of a force field -- but it's still not technically a force field. It's just a fancy point-defense system. Aircraft carriers have done this for more than a decade.
You may not have heard from them again, but others did. They were eventually proven to be a huge fraud -- all of their demonstrations were hoaxed (including one famous case where they had to run coax across a river bed to rig a supposed "long distance" demo).
I wish I could remember names or give links, but the details escape me. I read an article on the web about 2 years ago.
I've always hated exercise-for-exercise's-sake (think treadmills, stationary bikes and StairMasters here) and because of my hectic work schedule and a number of non-physical hobbies, it's rare occasion that I have the time to engage in recreational exercise.
In the past two years I've been putting on weight, and I'm NOT happy about it. So I've come up with the following workaround:
1) Buy an iPod
2) Load it up with good music, audio books, learn-a-language casettes, and other engaging activities
3) Go to gym; hop on cardio machine of choice; turn iPod up
4) Zone out as you exercise. Let the audio distract you; try to forget completely about the discomfort of working out, while still concentrating on the physical side of things (are we running fast enough, is our posture correct, etc).
It works surprisingly well. It's unbelievable how quickly 45 minutes can pass while I'm learning Arabic or reading Joe Haldeman in my head. And the best thing is, I've gotten to the point where I don't strictly *need* the iPod distraction in order to enjoy a workout. I've trained myself to tolerate the mild physical discomfort (sweat, tired muscles, et al) -- though I still enjoy the iPod.
Yes, I'm a big wimp. But at least I've got mental hacks to compensate for it!
Exactly. Maybe if Eolas were a benevolent corp that contributed tons of money to open source or third world nations or curing cancer, I'd feel differently. As it is, I never heard of them before the patent lawsuit (and probably never will again -- I'll be surprised if they don't liquidate and close up shop once they've got half a billion in their coffers).
Hmm, good point. But, in the interest of trying to salvage my sweeping generalization, let's see if I can't modify my original statement.
;)
If the thief evenly distributes what he stole to people in need, then his act *may* be more permissible, depending on the context (was the tyrant stealing from others?) and also on your point of view (are you the tyrant who loses money, the thief who neither loses nor gains money, or one of the peasants who benefits?)
One thing's universally true though: if a thief steals from someone, and distributes it among the populace, and that thief is a government agency, then we call the thief by a special name: taxation authority.
Consider Microsoft's alternatives:
(1) Continue to infringe on Eolas' patent. Eventually Eolas will sue again, causing MSFT to pay more damages.
(2) Buy a license from Eolas.
(3) Change IE so it no longer infringes. Pay Eolas nothing.
You see, #1 and #2 would make Eolas money. #3 makes Eolas no money. In this light, could we expect Eolas' executives to say anything else about Microsoft's decision? Apparently, they're not happy with $520 million -- and their attitude to Microsoft's decision to work around the patent tells us all we need to know about Eolas' motivations.
This is a shakedown for money, pure and simple. It's yet another abuse of the patent system. They'll take MSFT for as much as they can, and anything MSFT does to stop loss, Eolas will regard as "unfortunate."
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft -- but if a thief steals from an tyrant, that doesn't make the thief's transgression any less severe or more permissible.
Yup! Help is on the way -- but in the end, US will end up with fewer jobs than before, because even when we've reached equilibrium, some jobs will still be done best in India (or China or Iraq or Malaysia or take your pick).
Like most things in life, globalization is a two-edged sword.
On the one hand, emerging markets abroad provide excellent opportunities for US business to buy labor and capital -- and increasing wages abroad will eventually lead to new markets for US-produced goods (entertainment and other intellectual property, gadgets, cars, coal).
On the other hand, we are only increasing the standard of living in other countries at the cost of our own standard of living. The more money we invest in other countries, the less money we have for ourselves. As citizens of the post-globalization US, in the short term we will no longer enjoy the artificially high buying power that our parents and grandparents had.
The question is, will we see a return on our investment in the global economy before the USA goes bankrupt, or suffers a military coup, or turns into a theocracy, or splits apart into warring red/blue factions, or succumbs to a bird flu pandemic, or drowns because of global warming, or freezes because of global cooling?
Personally, I think things will keep getting worse for awhile -- probably 6-8 years like you say. Then they'll get better for a decade as we pull out of the current slump. Finally, around 2020, things will take a permanent downturn as the global oil supply tails off, our enormous national debt catches up to us, the social security problem begins to get really vicious (baby boomers retiring in droves) and the last of the well-educated US engineers leave the marketplace. Inside of 50 years, the US will be just another dried-up husk with a crappy education system and a bankrupt government.
Then again, I tend to be a bit of a pessimist.
I have a feeling that we might see Indian inflation rise even faster in the next few years. Indian companies are actually outsourcing some of their work to China, and a lot of Indian IT workers who moved abroad in the last decade are choosing to return home with (comparatively) huge nest-eggs.
All in all, the Indian economy is quite healthy right now, and corruption in the public and private sector (formerly a huge problem) are slowly dwindling. Growth rates are rising; with growth comes wealth; with wealth comes inflation.
However, I'd still say your conclusion is about right -- don't go into IT for the next ten years, unless you're a hot shot who can make himself irreplacable to an organization.
Beg pardon, but I believe we *do* have a wide disparity of resources between US and India, which is the underlying cause for the favorable exchange rate. AFAIK the rupee-dollar exchange rate is not fixed; it's set by whatever people in the currency exchange market are willing to pay (and who knows how *those* people make their valuations -- but the theory of efficient markets would have us believe that their valuations are more-or-less correct).
If you were making the same claim about China, then I'd whole-heartedly agree. In addition to having less wealth than us, China mandates the USD-RMB exchange rate, one of the effects of which is to make Chinese currency unnaturally low in value compared to the US dollar. This drives US buyers to import ever more cheap Chinese goods.
India, OTOH, simply has less wealth than we do.
Hmm. Well, ya learn something new every day. However, even if the law only covers fiduciary duty. I could still argue that a CEO who refuses to outsource a job when it would save even 50% of the job's cost and have no foreseeable negative consequences, isn't doing HIS job very well.
At what point do I come off as a socialist? At no point did I suggest that our capitalist system is bad, or that there's a better alternative -- I'm just trying to keep things in perspective. If you want to live with the benefits of capitalism, you must live with the drawbacks as well. Every now and then the market will do something that hurts a bunch of people in the name of efficiency, which will later turn out to be less efficient than whatever it was doing before.
Not to pick nits, but a lakh just means 100,000 of something. So the girl in the article, being paid "Rs 4.8 lakh," was being paid 480,000 rupees per annum.
At about 40 rupees to the dollar, you can see that her pay in dollars -- $12,000 -- is quite low. Even though salaries in India are rising dramatically, they've still got a long way to go before they close the gap with US salaries (especially in fields like tech, which are on the rise even in the US).
And now for my spot of commentary:
In the long run, those jobs that can be outsourced effectively, *will* be. The corporations that form the basis of our free-market economy are compelled BY LAW to reduce costs as much as possible, in order to increase margins and enhance shareholder value.
As one would expect, not every job can be outsourced efficiently. At the moment the pendulum is swinging TOWARD outsourcing, as greedy CEOs experiment with new ways to lower the bottom line. However, there have been (and will continue to be) numerous incidents where jobs are inappropriately outsourced. Given a few decades, the economies of "insourcing" countries will rise as money floods in, corporate types will learn which jobs need to stay in country, and the system will reach equilibrium.
Those who don't like what the future has to hold can choose to move to a country with a controlled economy, or find a protected niche such as health care, palm reading or burger flipping -- none of which are amenable to outsourcing.