I find it difficult to go to my church - mainly due to my lifestyle and not actually being awake when a church service is on, and also lack of motivation
...I can't believe I am actually going on record as saying this -- but if you dig around a little, you'll be surprised at the number of different church services that are out there to cater to your schedule. For instance, I've recently started going to an independent church that is affiliated with a larger one that has its services on Sunday night at 5:30PM... no matter when I'm working or what I've been doing the night before, it is hard for me to miss 5:30 PM...
...now, as for the lack of motivation...well, that is a much deeper question, isn't it? (i.e. I know people who have spent weeks/hundreds of dollars tracking down rare CDs/DVDs/video game imports. I'm not questioning your committment... I'm just saying that if you really want to do something, you can usually find a way...)
Silly slashdotters... here you all, all underemployed and wondering what the next big thing will be and here this article comes along and you all post pithy comments getting the cheap +5 mod but letting something sneak right past you.
Not me. I understand that most geeks actually agree with the parent poster who thinks that somehow a 200 page manual is the answer. Ha. Have you ever read your car manual? Or your cordless phone manual? Or even the insert that comes with your medicine, something you take internally for heaven's sake! If you answered yes, understand that you are in the substantial minority and there is wonderful money to be made -- and a service to be provided to your fellow neighbrs who were too busy playing baseball and drinking to be bothered with the excitement that came from Mountain Dew fueled nights getting the C-1541 increase its data transfer rate.
A few of you reading this are nodding at me. I'll see you at the top.
Heheh... I've been going back to that thread a couple of times already today. Heck, isn't that the whole point of Slashdot? I can go to (CNN/BCC/NYTimes/Salon/FoxNews/GoogleNews/ScienceD aily/etc) and get my stories... but Slashdot is the place to come to read what people think about these stories. And through the magic of the moderation system and hundreds of thousands of vistors a day, you are assured of reading the strongest arguments pro/con about any of these issues. You start to build CONTEXT and begin to see the BIGGER PICTURE. You learn to think about things you otherwise wouldn't...
also that in the 1950s it was possible and normal for the man to bring home the bacon, and the woman to stay home with the kids
Agreed. But any time you use "the 1950s" as a yardstick of ANYTHING you have to take into account the fact that the 1950s were a time of unprecedented prosperity for the United States -- we were rebuilding a world that had been destroyed by a decade of war while we went (almost completely) untouched at home. Immigration had been down for about two decades. Two decades before, unemployment was approaching 20+%. Child labor was big in the 1890s. Pick your time period and "the norm" in the US shifts rather radically. I don't mean to fan the flames but what you wrote was true in the 1950s for many urban/suburban whites. BUT...there were still large pockets of poverty in rural areas and among people of color...
Energy prices of all types are significantly up much more than inflation over the last decade
Of course this trend doesn't show any signs of letting up. Again -- the 1950s were a blip. Unless we can come up with less expensive sources of energy (if it is even possible) things are GOING to get tighter. But the fact remains that in spite of all of this, people can still choose where they live. They can choose how they live. There are still areas of the country when you can live relatively cheaply. There are also areas of the country where making minimum wage will lock you in a rent so high and having to own a car, that two parents will need to work to maintain these things. It all depends on choices and priorities. I won't pretend to be naive about this. But my grandparent post had more to do with thinking about what is possible and encouraging people to think more before locking themselves into a worldview that strips us of choice. You don't have to buy into that culture of consumption...
...parents just don't have time to sit around and cook. In our current economic climate, both parents working is the norm...
Forgive me for being pedantic and going off for a minute on your otherwise insightful post... BUT...
It isn't that our current economic climate leads both parents to work. It is rather that the current social climate leads both parents to feel as though they need to make enough to have a certain amount of stuff (Keeping up with the Jonses) which from a standpoint of either survival or happiness contributes nothing. One parent working would lead to the family "struggling" -- but "struggling" doesn't mean having to walk for five miles to get jars of clean water. It doesn't mean sending the children to bed hungry twice a week to make ends meet. It means cutting their hair yourself. Or not being able to pay the dues for the soccer club. The time to cook is there. It has always been there. And we live in one of the richest nations in the history of the world. Even being "lower middle class" in the US means having enough stuff. It's all about choices.
Again -- I'm not saying that parents who don't make these choices are bad. I'm trying to point out that it is certainly possible to have that time back but it isn't the economy that leads people away from having one parent raise the child. It is the society at large.
I, too, loved Citadels. Something about the no nonesense approach, just text messages will all those lovely, lovely ROOMS to explore. You can, of course, still find them around today. Whether they have the same feel/flavor is an entirely different subject, of course. Check out the Uncensored! BBS at uncensored.citadel.org. It is running Citadel/UX on a Linux system so you can still feel proud to check it out, even if you're too young to have experienced BBSing the first time around.
Then you really aren't thinking about the problem outside the box...
Consider if they integrate a Slashdot-like moderation system to add a human touch to their spam filters... 50 million users (a very low number, by the way) of whom 100,000 get an identical email. Google automatically flags it as "spam" -- moderators who got points that day (let's say 5% or 5000 of those 100,000) could then click on "This is not spam" if it turns out that that message, for whatever reason, really wasn't spam. You randomly assign the mod points to ensure that the spammers can't stack the deck and mod-up spam... people with mod points happily do their civic duty because they realize that, working together as a community, they are doing away with spam... and then Google has a real-time white list/blacklist that they can sell to ISPs who want to block spammers.
(1) Google gets great PR -- having the best web mail client in town.
(2) Google effectively kills the spam problem by hosting the most massive volume of any e-mail service
(3) Google makes a tidy profit
Frankly, I've often wondered why a distributed moderation system combined with heuristic algorithms haven't been used to combat spam before and my guess is that Google might be attempting to do just that...
I'd be surprised if the total amount he's given away is more that $1B.
For someone with such a low user ID, you're pretty misinformed...
You should check out the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website sometime. I'm posting a link to their annual report. With almost $25B in assets, it has paid over a billion dollars in grants each year.
Grants for things like erradicating polio, improving nutrition for children, developing a vaccine for malaria, giving tens of millions in college scholarships and more.
I'm sorry if this doesn't seem to be enough for you -- but Bill Gates has made a committment to give away a substantial share of his wealth and he isn't waiting until he is dead to do it. I'd wager he is giving away a larger chunk of his net worth than almost anyone who is posting in this article.
I think it is fair to say that we are, for the most part, in agreement. Where we might differ is on the scope/scale of just how drastically the current wave of outsourcing (now affecting IT jobs -- though some would argue that it is an extension of the exodus of manufacturing jobs that took place in the 80s) might affect the economy. Others have said, better than I could, that what we are seeing is the redistribution of certain classes of jobs to other nations. Eventually, massive disparities of wealth between nations will be lessened. Do a little googling and you'll see that the number of air-conditioners and refrigerators in China have exploded in the past twenty years. Much as we saw in Taiwan. Or Japan. (Or South Korea -- and if you really want to see the difference that economic development makes, check out the nighttime light map from NASA and look at the Korean peninsula... economic development has some profound effects that can even be seen from space!)
I'm getting a little off track here but I guess my point is that good intentions are great but economic development is the only way that we know of to lead to things like lights at night and air conditioning and Internet access. The vehicle for this development is the "exporting" of jobs to these countries. I'm optimistic enough to believe that growth isn't a zero-sum game -- a rising tide lifts all boats. As Korea and China and South Korea and India's economies have grown, so has that of the United States. But this takes place over decades. I'm not naive about this. There are unpleasant consequences in the short run. Workers affected by this have to retool, retrain and find new things to do... but up until this point we have managed to do just that. It isn't pleasant to be graduating from college with a degree in an industry which is undergoing this shift and it doesn't make you any less tired as you work a night job waiting tables as you go back to school because your job happens to be one that has been outsourced to a place where someone can do the job for 1/6th as much money as you would require to meet a certain standard of living in the U.S. But, seriously, what is the remedy? Is clean water only for people in the West? Is Internet access something that is good for us but a luxury for the rest of the world? How, exactly, would these economies grow into 21st century economies WITHOUT providing goods and/or services that there is a demand for in the rest of the world? (To say nothing of the fact that this type of growth appears to go hand in hand with a move towards more participatory forms of governments in the nations affected.)
To bring my comment back on topic -- there may or may not be less demand for the trades I mentioned earlier. Unless you are talking about a wholescale economic collapse/worldwide depression, there will always be a strong demand for waiters, bartenders, doctors, nurses, mechanics, construction workers and others. There will also be a demand for the "next big thing" -- but since I don't have a crystal ball, I can't tell you what that is. But that will be out there too. (It might have something to do with alternative methods of producing energy... it sure looks like that will be big in the next 25 to 100 years... but, again, I'm just speculating here.) If there is a global worldwide economic collapse, well, then everything we know about economics for the last 150 years is just WRONG and there are some pretty nasty things to worry about besides just particular types of jobs being outsourced...
Again, I think we are in agreement... I just thought I'd take this thread to the next level since it isn't a black-and-white issue and your responses seem thoughtful enough that I would WELCOME your thoughts on any of the above.
...But there will still be vehicles on the road transporting things and those WILL need to be repaired
- they won't be spending money on their pets
Maybe not pets, but no matter how grim things get, there will still be animals that are sick and need someone to care for them. Don't think "pets" think "cows"
they won't be building their new dream house
That was trollish of you. I said construction, not "dream house" -- buildings will still need to be built, which means the need for people to physically construct them...
they won't be going out to eat a lot
Ahhh... you will always have bars/places where people get together and eat/drink...and with the influx of rich foreign tourists coming to visit America, that might only go up...
they won't have health insurance to pay all those medical bills
You will still have people getting sick and needing health care which means doctors and nurses. It was beyond the scope of this post to say how we will pay for this or how universal the coverage is... but when I break my arm, you can't exactly outsource who I see to someplace 5000 miles away...
I wasn't claiming things will remain exactly as we know them now... I was trying to start a thread about the sorts of jobs that would always remain "local"...
With today's travel technology and communication infrastructure, what ISN'T an outsourceable skill set?
Doctor
Nurse
Veterinarian
Auto Repair
Bartender
Server
Construction
Sorry if those aren't your cup of tea but no matter how grim things get, there are some jobs that will always be around. If you really think that the writing is on the wall, start reading...
I get your anger at... but I think you are missing the forest for the trees when you say things like "Slashdotters don't care much about the truth as long as they can whine... If they're not complaining...when did anyone on Slashdot..." Come on. Slashdot isn't some monolithic discussion board. That's what makes it great. That's why YOU come here and that's why YOU post. It's because Slashdot is the home the great unwashed masses -- the strongest from every side here come to passionately defend their case. You never see one "side" persuaded... you don't ever get to see one side win...
...but I don't know. I come here, not to have my point of view reinforced but rather to read intelligent people discussing an issue. I don't spend all my time discussing issues. I go out with friends to bars. I watch movies. But sometimes I like to think about issues. And this is a great place to come to find ideas. Sometimes I even find myself being surprised by a different point of view...
I just think the parent post dripped with a little too much bravado. And just to stay on topic... wouldn't you say that the VAST MAJORITY of us are just keeping quiet on this because there isn't that much insightful to say? I mean, really, releasing patches of known vulnerabilities is a good thing. Duh.
If someone charges $88 for their email program, it's not going to get reviewed as often as someone who gives away free copies. Simple as that.
Actually, I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that in one year's time, the total number of reviews for Outlook 2003 will far outnumber the combined number of reviews for KDE, Ximian, Mozilla and whatever other poorly named e-mail toys the open source crowd is playing with. Face it -- when it comes to market share, MS is the player on the block and to simply ignore it shows an intellectual laziness that calls into question his whole review...
Unless we A) find a natural source of significant quantities of antimatter somewhere, or B) figure out a vastly more efficient way to make it, antimatter is useless as a power source.
Not to be pedantic, but you forgot the most important point C) find a way to STORE and TRANSPORT the antimatter safely. I mean, let's be honest here, if you're carrying around a coffee cup full of this stuff and you trip and fall it's good-bye solar system...
You, sir, are a hypocrite. That's right: A hypocrite. I won't say much about your comment (except it was insightful and I think the online music business is going to eat this stuff up!) but I do have something to say about your signature.
That's right, your signature. You know, the one that reads: End acronym abuse today! The one that linked to your rant against the overuse of acronyms. The signature at the END of a very short post that still somehow managed to be riddled with words like "DRM" "MP3s" "WMA" and "AAC". Just struck me as ironic, I guess...
But hey, companies doing whatever the hell they want is all ok with you.
I think that companies doing whatever they want is foolish and we put limits on companies all the time. Environmental, ethical, social... You can only emit this much waste. You aren't allowed to sexually harass your employees. You have to hire people regardless of the color of their skin. We collectively choose to put limits on companies all the time. I just pointed out that we have -- and accept -- price differences all the time as a natural and basic consequence of a free market. So basic, in fact, to the workings of capitalism that we often ignore it. It shows up in cola prices and downtown zone bus fares. In fact, this same force is what drives powerful engines called "commodoties markets". In these black boxes, wealth can be invested, accumulate and magically GROW -- from nothing! It is pretty amazing stuff, really, when you start to understand it. But I digress. What I am trying to say is that that basic principle beind it all is this: You have something that you can make and someone else wants to buy -- you let the buyer and seller set their own price. You don't have a third party interfere.
You're worried that YOU will somehow get screwed? Don't get too worried about this. The market is very intelligent. Consumers in a higher priced market don't let themselves get "screwed over" for long. Soon people learn how to re-import those overpriced textbooks from the UK. They find a way around the barrier and lower their price in their market too. The overall price eventually finds an equilibrium. (Which it never actually does because other goods are always trying to dislodge it from its position in the market.)
if companies were forced to either pick a global market or a local market, and were forced to stick to it
What an arbitrary rule! Why? The market will always find a way around RULES if the market wants to. More to the point, though, you should really start to admit to yourself that there are a lot of people out there who mean it when they say that this is a global economy and they believe that this will continue to happen. Industry by industry, economy by economy, until the whole world catches up. Small electronic goods in Japan in the 60s and 70s. Semiconductors in South Korea in the 80s and 90s. Programming in India today. Huge American industries get outsourced to other countries, American workers -- eventually -- find other things to do. And the country that rides the boom is able to modernize in a very short span of time. Everyone benefits in the end. But of course if you happen to be in those sectors that get hit when they are getting it... it is painful to you. But let's not be intellectually dishonest and paint the globalization crowd as pure evil. Let's be honest enough to admit that they have a pretty strong case on their hands. It happens to suck for us because we are in IT and most of our jobs are going to end up overseas. But they aren't doing it to be evil. They are doing it because they want to see the whole world lifted up, just like you, and it just so happens that theirs is the only proven method to modernize the world...
But hey, your rant sounded really heart-felt and I bet it helps you get the ladies over beers on a Friday night. Keep it up, man!
Bravo, ZwithaPGGB. You are a world class troll. I've just spent the last 15 minutes reading through your previous 24 posts. You lob bombs over the wall that just tear something down and don't add substance to the debate. Your great-grandfather post, just more of the same recycled bashing, is sitting at +5 Insightful. Again, Bravo!
But when you said:
I note from your post that you are going straight from school to teaching. I think you make my point that "those who can, do, those who can't teach". You would do your future students better service by getting experience outside the ivory tower before purporting to tell them what they need to know to succeed there.
...I think you make a pretty huge leap in logic there. What "magical force" do you attribute to someone who has been "in the field"? How is this not merely star worship? I'm sure having Al Gore as a guest lecturer for a semester is neat and I bet you'd end up getting some interesting personal inside "dish" about how things "really" worked. But it wouldn't be any SUBSTANTIALLY different than what you could get from one of many books written by his contemporaries about the same period of time. If he had any BOMBSHELLS to drop, anything NEW to say, he'd be telling Larry King or writing another book. Not telling the 11:15-12:05 class. The stuff they give you in the classroom is equivalent to Access Hollywood. The same would be true for Linus, if he were to teach a class... Open Source 8001 or something... what could you REALLY get, extra, from having him teach it that you couldn't get from another very good lecturer who understands the subject? You don't need to have been "out there" to understand it. Extend the metaphor to almost every field that doesn't require apprenticeship...
Which brings me back to my point: I agree with you -- that there really is an enormous amount of untapped potential out there. Knowledge, just waiting to find human hosts to infect... All you need to do is pick up a book and learn about it. Sure, being in the real world will give you SOMETHING even more, but that wasn't your point at all. Your point was that we need to reform the education system (I agree). Don't start contradicting yourself and blowing your whole point just to take a cheap trollish shot at someone...
60k IT jobs aren't necessary.. 40k is still very nice.. 25k is good..
Amen! Preach on brother!
A world where we're all struggling a little to make ends meet won't be as dark and dismal as the doomsayers like to have us believe... or have you forgotten how your college years eating ramen and taking the bus to see a show were some of the best years of your life?
Well, for what it's worth, I'm more-or-less a writer. I'm the creative idea kind of guy. Except I have this really weird talent in my back pocket: I dig the word-for-word reviewing that goes into creating SLAs and Statements of Work and mission statements.
That's just two of us. You know there are thousands who are reading just this off topic thread right now. I'm not all that big on traditional "networking" with people. I mean, I recognize its value, I just don't always do it. But I do come to slashdot every day. And I do post. And I do recognize smart people when I read them. Why not go with my strengths? If I have an idea, why not come here and make it happen?
I just keep thinking more and more about how brilliant this is. Not only because it will work, but because it will snowball. Think about the interviews and extra press you'll get because you'll be the first to do something in a NEW WAY...
Slashdot Mirror
I find it difficult to go to my church - mainly due to my lifestyle and not actually being awake when a church service is on, and also lack of motivation
...I can't believe I am actually going on record as saying this -- but if you dig around a little, you'll be surprised at the number of different church services that are out there to cater to your schedule. For instance, I've recently started going to an independent church that is affiliated with a larger one that has its services on Sunday night at 5:30PM... no matter when I'm working or what I've been doing the night before, it is hard for me to miss 5:30 PM...
...now, as for the lack of motivation...well, that is a much deeper question, isn't it? (i.e. I know people who have spent weeks/hundreds of dollars tracking down rare CDs/DVDs/video game imports. I'm not questioning your committment... I'm just saying that if you really want to do something, you can usually find a way...)
fiendish laugh
Silly slashdotters... here you all, all underemployed and wondering what the next big thing will be and here this article comes along and you all post pithy comments getting the cheap +5 mod but letting something sneak right past you.
Not me. I understand that most geeks actually agree with the parent poster who thinks that somehow a 200 page manual is the answer. Ha. Have you ever read your car manual? Or your cordless phone manual? Or even the insert that comes with your medicine, something you take internally for heaven's sake! If you answered yes, understand that you are in the substantial minority and there is wonderful money to be made -- and a service to be provided to your fellow neighbrs who were too busy playing baseball and drinking to be bothered with the excitement that came from Mountain Dew fueled nights getting the C-1541 increase its data transfer rate.
A few of you reading this are nodding at me. I'll see you at the top.
Heheh ... I've been going back to that thread a couple of times already today. Heck, isn't that the whole point of Slashdot? I can go to (CNN/BCC/NYTimes/Salon/FoxNews/GoogleNews/ScienceD aily/etc) and get my stories... but Slashdot is the place to come to read what people think about these stories. And through the magic of the moderation system and hundreds of thousands of vistors a day, you are assured of reading the strongest arguments pro/con about any of these issues. You start to build CONTEXT and begin to see the BIGGER PICTURE. You learn to think about things you otherwise wouldn't...
At least that's how I justify my addiction.
also that in the 1950s it was possible and normal for the man to bring home the bacon, and the woman to stay home with the kids
Agreed. But any time you use "the 1950s" as a yardstick of ANYTHING you have to take into account the fact that the 1950s were a time of unprecedented prosperity for the United States -- we were rebuilding a world that had been destroyed by a decade of war while we went (almost completely) untouched at home. Immigration had been down for about two decades. Two decades before, unemployment was approaching 20+%. Child labor was big in the 1890s. Pick your time period and "the norm" in the US shifts rather radically. I don't mean to fan the flames but what you wrote was true in the 1950s for many urban/suburban whites. BUT...there were still large pockets of poverty in rural areas and among people of color...
Energy prices of all types are significantly up much more than inflation over the last decade
Of course this trend doesn't show any signs of letting up. Again -- the 1950s were a blip. Unless we can come up with less expensive sources of energy (if it is even possible) things are GOING to get tighter. But the fact remains that in spite of all of this, people can still choose where they live. They can choose how they live. There are still areas of the country when you can live relatively cheaply. There are also areas of the country where making minimum wage will lock you in a rent so high and having to own a car, that two parents will need to work to maintain these things. It all depends on choices and priorities. I won't pretend to be naive about this. But my grandparent post had more to do with thinking about what is possible and encouraging people to think more before locking themselves into a worldview that strips us of choice. You don't have to buy into that culture of consumption...
...parents just don't have time to sit around and cook. In our current economic climate, both parents working is the norm...
Forgive me for being pedantic and going off for a minute on your otherwise insightful post... BUT...
It isn't that our current economic climate leads both parents to work. It is rather that the current social climate leads both parents to feel as though they need to make enough to have a certain amount of stuff (Keeping up with the Jonses) which from a standpoint of either survival or happiness contributes nothing. One parent working would lead to the family "struggling" -- but "struggling" doesn't mean having to walk for five miles to get jars of clean water. It doesn't mean sending the children to bed hungry twice a week to make ends meet. It means cutting their hair yourself. Or not being able to pay the dues for the soccer club. The time to cook is there. It has always been there. And we live in one of the richest nations in the history of the world. Even being "lower middle class" in the US means having enough stuff. It's all about choices.
Again -- I'm not saying that parents who don't make these choices are bad. I'm trying to point out that it is certainly possible to have that time back but it isn't the economy that leads people away from having one parent raise the child. It is the society at large.
I, too, loved Citadels. Something about the no nonesense approach, just text messages will all those lovely, lovely ROOMS to explore. You can, of course, still find them around today. Whether they have the same feel/flavor is an entirely different subject, of course. Check out the Uncensored! BBS at uncensored.citadel.org. It is running Citadel/UX on a Linux system so you can still feel proud to check it out, even if you're too young to have experienced BBSing the first time around.
Then you really aren't thinking about the problem outside the box...
Consider if they integrate a Slashdot-like moderation system to add a human touch to their spam filters... 50 million users (a very low number, by the way) of whom 100,000 get an identical email. Google automatically flags it as "spam" -- moderators who got points that day (let's say 5% or 5000 of those 100,000) could then click on "This is not spam" if it turns out that that message, for whatever reason, really wasn't spam. You randomly assign the mod points to ensure that the spammers can't stack the deck and mod-up spam... people with mod points happily do their civic duty because they realize that, working together as a community, they are doing away with spam... and then Google has a real-time white list/blacklist that they can sell to ISPs who want to block spammers.
(1) Google gets great PR -- having the best web mail client in town.
(2) Google effectively kills the spam problem by hosting the most massive volume of any e-mail service
(3) Google makes a tidy profit
Frankly, I've often wondered why a distributed moderation system combined with heuristic algorithms haven't been used to combat spam before and my guess is that Google might be attempting to do just that...
I'd be surprised if the total amount he's given away is more that $1B.
For someone with such a low user ID, you're pretty misinformed...
You should check out the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website sometime. I'm posting a link to their annual report. With almost $25B in assets, it has paid over a billion dollars in grants each year.
Grants for things like erradicating polio, improving nutrition for children, developing a vaccine for malaria, giving tens of millions in college scholarships and more.
I'm sorry if this doesn't seem to be enough for you -- but Bill Gates has made a committment to give away a substantial share of his wealth and he isn't waiting until he is dead to do it. I'd wager he is giving away a larger chunk of his net worth than almost anyone who is posting in this article.
I think it is fair to say that we are, for the most part, in agreement. Where we might differ is on the scope/scale of just how drastically the current wave of outsourcing (now affecting IT jobs -- though some would argue that it is an extension of the exodus of manufacturing jobs that took place in the 80s) might affect the economy. Others have said, better than I could, that what we are seeing is the redistribution of certain classes of jobs to other nations. Eventually, massive disparities of wealth between nations will be lessened. Do a little googling and you'll see that the number of air-conditioners and refrigerators in China have exploded in the past twenty years. Much as we saw in Taiwan. Or Japan. (Or South Korea -- and if you really want to see the difference that economic development makes, check out the nighttime light map from NASA and look at the Korean peninsula... economic development has some profound effects that can even be seen from space!)
I'm getting a little off track here but I guess my point is that good intentions are great but economic development is the only way that we know of to lead to things like lights at night and air conditioning and Internet access. The vehicle for this development is the "exporting" of jobs to these countries. I'm optimistic enough to believe that growth isn't a zero-sum game -- a rising tide lifts all boats. As Korea and China and South Korea and India's economies have grown, so has that of the United States. But this takes place over decades. I'm not naive about this. There are unpleasant consequences in the short run. Workers affected by this have to retool, retrain and find new things to do... but up until this point we have managed to do just that. It isn't pleasant to be graduating from college with a degree in an industry which is undergoing this shift and it doesn't make you any less tired as you work a night job waiting tables as you go back to school because your job happens to be one that has been outsourced to a place where someone can do the job for 1/6th as much money as you would require to meet a certain standard of living in the U.S. But, seriously, what is the remedy? Is clean water only for people in the West? Is Internet access something that is good for us but a luxury for the rest of the world? How, exactly, would these economies grow into 21st century economies WITHOUT providing goods and/or services that there is a demand for in the rest of the world? (To say nothing of the fact that this type of growth appears to go hand in hand with a move towards more participatory forms of governments in the nations affected.)
To bring my comment back on topic -- there may or may not be less demand for the trades I mentioned earlier. Unless you are talking about a wholescale economic collapse/worldwide depression, there will always be a strong demand for waiters, bartenders, doctors, nurses, mechanics, construction workers and others. There will also be a demand for the "next big thing" -- but since I don't have a crystal ball, I can't tell you what that is. But that will be out there too. (It might have something to do with alternative methods of producing energy... it sure looks like that will be big in the next 25 to 100 years... but, again, I'm just speculating here.) If there is a global worldwide economic collapse, well, then everything we know about economics for the last 150 years is just WRONG and there are some pretty nasty things to worry about besides just particular types of jobs being outsourced...
Again, I think we are in agreement... I just thought I'd take this thread to the next level since it isn't a black-and-white issue and your responses seem thoughtful enough that I would WELCOME your thoughts on any of the above.
- they won't be buying very many cars
...But there will still be vehicles on the road transporting things and those WILL need to be repaired
- they won't be spending money on their pets
Maybe not pets, but no matter how grim things get, there will still be animals that are sick and need someone to care for them. Don't think "pets" think "cows"
they won't be building their new dream house
That was trollish of you. I said construction, not "dream house" -- buildings will still need to be built, which means the need for people to physically construct them...
they won't be going out to eat a lot
Ahhh... you will always have bars/places where people get together and eat/drink...and with the influx of rich foreign tourists coming to visit America, that might only go up...
they won't have health insurance to pay all those medical bills
You will still have people getting sick and needing health care which means doctors and nurses. It was beyond the scope of this post to say how we will pay for this or how universal the coverage is... but when I break my arm, you can't exactly outsource who I see to someplace 5000 miles away...
I wasn't claiming things will remain exactly as we know them now... I was trying to start a thread about the sorts of jobs that would always remain "local"...
Doctor
Nurse
Veterinarian
Auto Repair
Bartender
Server
Construction
Sorry if those aren't your cup of tea but no matter how grim things get, there are some jobs that will always be around. If you really think that the writing is on the wall, start reading...
I get your anger at... but I think you are missing the forest for the trees when you say things like "Slashdotters don't care much about the truth as long as they can whine... If they're not complaining...when did anyone on Slashdot..." Come on. Slashdot isn't some monolithic discussion board. That's what makes it great. That's why YOU come here and that's why YOU post. It's because Slashdot is the home the great unwashed masses -- the strongest from every side here come to passionately defend their case. You never see one "side" persuaded... you don't ever get to see one side win...
...but I don't know. I come here, not to have my point of view reinforced but rather to read intelligent people discussing an issue. I don't spend all my time discussing issues. I go out with friends to bars. I watch movies. But sometimes I like to think about issues. And this is a great place to come to find ideas. Sometimes I even find myself being surprised by a different point of view...
... wouldn't you say that the VAST MAJORITY of us are just keeping quiet on this because there isn't that much insightful to say? I mean, really, releasing patches of known vulnerabilities is a good thing. Duh.
I just think the parent post dripped with a little too much bravado. And just to stay on topic
If someone charges $88 for their email program, it's not going to get reviewed as often as someone who gives away free copies. Simple as that.
Actually, I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that in one year's time, the total number of reviews for Outlook 2003 will far outnumber the combined number of reviews for KDE, Ximian, Mozilla and whatever other poorly named e-mail toys the open source crowd is playing with. Face it -- when it comes to market share, MS is the player on the block and to simply ignore it shows an intellectual laziness that calls into question his whole review...
Unless we A) find a natural source of significant quantities of antimatter somewhere, or B) figure out a vastly more efficient way to make it, antimatter is useless as a power source.
Not to be pedantic, but you forgot the most important point C) find a way to STORE and TRANSPORT the antimatter safely. I mean, let's be honest here, if you're carrying around a coffee cup full of this stuff and you trip and fall it's good-bye solar system...
You, sir, are a hypocrite. That's right: A hypocrite. I won't say much about your comment (except it was insightful and I think the online music business is going to eat this stuff up!) but I do have something to say about your signature.
That's right, your signature. You know, the one that reads: End acronym abuse today! The one that linked to your rant against the overuse of acronyms. The signature at the END of a very short post that still somehow managed to be riddled with words like "DRM" "MP3s" "WMA" and "AAC". Just struck me as ironic, I guess...
It's like Ctrl-Alt-Delete for the general public! ;)
...or voting...?
Since we're talking about Clippy, I might as well post the following link to get an instant +5 Funny post.
(PS: +5 funny posts are almost inevitably posted by Karma Whores. Discuss.)
They REALLY REALLY need to do a series about Faith...
Tru dat!
You wrote:
But hey, companies doing whatever the hell they want is all ok with you.
I think that companies doing whatever they want is foolish and we put limits on companies all the time. Environmental, ethical, social... You can only emit this much waste. You aren't allowed to sexually harass your employees. You have to hire people regardless of the color of their skin. We collectively choose to put limits on companies all the time. I just pointed out that we have -- and accept -- price differences all the time as a natural and basic consequence of a free market. So basic, in fact, to the workings of capitalism that we often ignore it. It shows up in cola prices and downtown zone bus fares. In fact, this same force is what drives powerful engines called "commodoties markets". In these black boxes, wealth can be invested, accumulate and magically GROW -- from nothing! It is pretty amazing stuff, really, when you start to understand it. But I digress. What I am trying to say is that that basic principle beind it all is this: You have something that you can make and someone else wants to buy -- you let the buyer and seller set their own price. You don't have a third party interfere.
You're worried that YOU will somehow get screwed? Don't get too worried about this. The market is very intelligent. Consumers in a higher priced market don't let themselves get "screwed over" for long. Soon people learn how to re-import those overpriced textbooks from the UK. They find a way around the barrier and lower their price in their market too. The overall price eventually finds an equilibrium. (Which it never actually does because other goods are always trying to dislodge it from its position in the market.)
if companies were forced to either pick a global market or a local market, and were forced to stick to it
What an arbitrary rule! Why? The market will always find a way around RULES if the market wants to. More to the point, though, you should really start to admit to yourself that there are a lot of people out there who mean it when they say that this is a global economy and they believe that this will continue to happen. Industry by industry, economy by economy, until the whole world catches up. Small electronic goods in Japan in the 60s and 70s. Semiconductors in South Korea in the 80s and 90s. Programming in India today. Huge American industries get outsourced to other countries, American workers -- eventually -- find other things to do. And the country that rides the boom is able to modernize in a very short span of time. Everyone benefits in the end. But of course if you happen to be in those sectors that get hit when they are getting it... it is painful to you. But let's not be intellectually dishonest and paint the globalization crowd as pure evil. Let's be honest enough to admit that they have a pretty strong case on their hands. It happens to suck for us because we are in IT and most of our jobs are going to end up overseas. But they aren't doing it to be evil. They are doing it because they want to see the whole world lifted up, just like you, and it just so happens that theirs is the only proven method to modernize the world...
But hey, your rant sounded really heart-felt and I bet it helps you get the ladies over beers on a Friday night. Keep it up, man!
Reminds me of US pharmaceutical companies charging some countries more than others for some drugs. Like HIV drugs, for example.
...or gas stations charging 10 cents more/gallon at the only downtown pump versus one of many in the suburbs.
...or books on the New York Times bestseller list being discounted by 15% at some bookstores but not others...
...or taxis and buses charging an additional "downtown zone" or "rush hour zone" rate for the same ride...
...or the vending machine at the movie theater charging you $2 for a 16 oz. coke when you could buy a 12 pack for less that double that...
...or the hip bar downtown charging $6 for a Heineken but the college bar where my brother lives sells beer for 75 cents on tap...
...or the cell phone company letting you make free calls on weekends but charging you 25 cents/minute for weekdays...
Yeah. Gosh. supply. Demand. Different markets. Variable pricing strategies. Absolutely shocking. We simply must create laws so that the government can set fair prices for everyone.
Bravo, ZwithaPGGB. You are a world class troll. I've just spent the last 15 minutes reading through your previous 24 posts. You lob bombs over the wall that just tear something down and don't add substance to the debate. Your great-grandfather post, just more of the same recycled bashing, is sitting at +5 Insightful. Again, Bravo!
...I think you make a pretty huge leap in logic there. What "magical force" do you attribute to someone who has been "in the field"? How is this not merely star worship? I'm sure having Al Gore as a guest lecturer for a semester is neat and I bet you'd end up getting some interesting personal inside "dish" about how things "really" worked. But it wouldn't be any SUBSTANTIALLY different than what you could get from one of many books written by his contemporaries about the same period of time. If he had any BOMBSHELLS to drop, anything NEW to say, he'd be telling Larry King or writing another book. Not telling the 11:15-12:05 class. The stuff they give you in the classroom is equivalent to Access Hollywood. The same would be true for Linus, if he were to teach a class... Open Source 8001 or something... what could you REALLY get, extra, from having him teach it that you couldn't get from another very good lecturer who understands the subject? You don't need to have been "out there" to understand it. Extend the metaphor to almost every field that doesn't require apprenticeship...
But when you said:
I note from your post that you are going straight from school to teaching. I think you make my point that "those who can, do, those who can't teach". You would do your future students better service by getting experience outside the ivory tower before purporting to tell them what they need to know to succeed there.
Which brings me back to my point: I agree with you -- that there really is an enormous amount of untapped potential out there. Knowledge, just waiting to find human hosts to infect... All you need to do is pick up a book and learn about it. Sure, being in the real world will give you SOMETHING even more, but that wasn't your point at all. Your point was that we need to reform the education system (I agree). Don't start contradicting yourself and blowing your whole point just to take a cheap trollish shot at someone...
Yes, it's a book. I'll give you a teaser: Time Travel done right. Oh, and it says more than a little about privacy rights, too.
60k IT jobs aren't necessary.. 40k is still very nice.. 25k is good..
Amen! Preach on brother!
A world where we're all struggling a little to make ends meet won't be as dark and dismal as the doomsayers like to have us believe... or have you forgotten how your college years eating ramen and taking the bus to see a show were some of the best years of your life?
I'd rather someone would come out with a new science fiction franchise to take the reins from Star Wars- something fresh
Settle down... I'm working on it. But I'm still about 6 months away from finishing. It'll be good though, I promise.
-A
Well, for what it's worth, I'm more-or-less a writer. I'm the creative idea kind of guy. Except I have this really weird talent in my back pocket: I dig the word-for-word reviewing that goes into creating SLAs and Statements of Work and mission statements.
That's just two of us. You know there are thousands who are reading just this off topic thread right now. I'm not all that big on traditional "networking" with people. I mean, I recognize its value, I just don't always do it. But I do come to slashdot every day. And I do post. And I do recognize smart people when I read them. Why not go with my strengths? If I have an idea, why not come here and make it happen?
I just keep thinking more and more about how brilliant this is. Not only because it will work, but because it will snowball. Think about the interviews and extra press you'll get because you'll be the first to do something in a NEW WAY...
(seed planted... moving on...)