I'd imagine that a CS degree teaches you algorithms, theoretical CS (e.g. complexity, graph theory etc.), graphics (once again, algorithms, physics, etc.) and assorted things. Even networking would be more about routing algorithms and packet handling etc.
All the "hands on" parts of CS usually fall under other categories -- for example, networking hands on is more ECE, systems engineering could fall under industrial/electrical/electronics & communication/computer engineering, but not necessarily computer science.
An ideal CS degree would be very close to a very applied math degree, because of the similarities between the two subjects. You can teach someone who's strong with fundamentals a programming language quite easily (even a monkey can program); however teaching someone critical thinking skills, good design skills and designing appropriate algorithms and the like is very, very hard.
IMHO, that is what a CS degree should do. A little programming is fine, but I'd be loath to respect any CS degree that focussed on programming. Anyone can be a programmer - hell, even physicists program. A computer scientist is not the same thing as a programmer, and that's the way it should be.
A lot of folks that I work with are econ majors - they do such things as market and channel distribution strategy, trending, demographic and geographic estimation for consumer sales, building economies of scale models for new markets, market penetration analysis and so on.
The opportunities are endless.
If you have an econ degree from a good school (Harvard, UChicago etc) and if you have a quantitative mind to boot, there are so many fun things you could do.
Economics is an awesome subject. In fact, there is a field called Computational Economics, that uses game theory and other computational fields to develop quantitative economic models (macro and micro).
I'd say that Project Management involves juggling three things - Schedule, Scope and Budget (think of it as a triangle).
Usually, any change in project direction, requirements, resources or funding affects one of the 3, and you need to juggle between the 3 to find an optimal state.
I have never understood the people who claim to multi-task, because I've often observed that when they do multi-task, do so rather poorly, and perform poorly at all the tasks that they have to do. Why would you simply not take the time to focus on each one, and get it out of the way?
If I'm doing something, my girlfriend often tries to interrupt me, but for the most part, I just tune everything else out and do the one thing that I want. She finds it hard to understand, but it's just the way I've been raised (and wired). Growing up, distractions were a strict no-no, and I'm quite thankful for that. If I'm at work, I turn IMs and emails off (the Blackberry remains turned on, though, just in case).
The end result is that I find that it takes me a lot less time to do something than the people who claim that they can only multi-task. I have friends who are so much more better and so much more focussed at doing things, and the one thing that I can tell you is that they are all a lot more efficient at getting things done than me.
Likewise, my ADD friends claim to be able to multi-task, but do a VERY poor job of actually doing it. Sure, you do ten things at the same time, but I could have done 20 things better, faster and more efficiently by focusing separately than you did ten without any focus or singular goal.
Not all of us care about democracy - I'd rather have a meritocracy than a democracy.
The fact that the vote of someone who dropped out of highschool and became a bum is equal to someone who has a PhD in Biology is laughable. Even worse is the fact that the votes of the former have equal say in government policies in biology.
Just how much does a plumber really know about biology, or economics, to be part of the decision making process? Just how much does religion matter in making environmental policies that are for the good of the planet's ecosystems?
Democracy as it exists today is a sham - it does nothing more than push forth mediocrity. Not everyone should be part of the decision making process, and even then, not everyone should be a part of *every* decision making process.
You don't solicit the opinions of plumbers and druggies when your child is sick, do you? Then why do you let the votes of these people matter when it comes to legislating medical policies?
The latest issue of Harvard Business Review has a case study on Toyota's success, and how it is the result of a culture of innovation and respect. It encourages competition, but in a constructive manner. And rather than praise success (say, a promotion), they have a culture of reminding you that your coworkers were just as good and just as close to making it. You are expected to question your superiors, and you are constantly reminded that the customer is your top priority.
There are several exceptions to your statement, and while Microsoft has done a lot of things wrong, they have also done a LOT of things right. Stereotypes and generalizations are the root of conflict.
I am just amazed at the amount of idiocy that is emanating in some of the posts. And then, you see that ONE post - the one, magnificent post that takes the cheese cake. Surreal, really.
I think money is *great*. It is one of the greatest economic inventions of man, and pardon the pun, but provides us with a common currency to trade our skills for our wants, whatever those may be. It is the new measure of your competitiveness.
When you give someone money, you give them the freedom to use it the way they see it. I do not want to be paid in something which imposes restrictions on how I use it as it conforms to my world view. That very action signifies a moral high ground and arrogance that you know what's best for the people, rather than letting people make their choices.
And what economic elite? You can become an economic elite if you want. Hell, this country is full of rags to riches stories. It's always amazing, but people make excuses. I tell you - you could become a millionaire today if you truly wanted to. At the end of the day, it breaks down to exactly what YOU want, and how far you are willing to go to achieve that. If you want something else more than the desire to make money, then you do not want money badly enough, and that is YOUR choice. Don't go around blaming the "economic elite" or some such vague term to signify a nebulous tyranny (that probably exists in your head).
That's why money is the root of all evil. It allows selfish and evil men to harness good men in ignorance.
Apart from your obvious logical fallacies that make no sense whatsoever, your last statement (like the rest of your comment) is a load of horse dung. To quote, "The race may not always be to the swift nor the victory to the strong, but that's how you bet." There's nothing wrong in trying to be the strongest and the fastest the way society sees it. It's unfortunate if it happens at the expense of others, but then, that's competition for you. If others are not willing to play to win, then they shouldn't be playing at all.
To me, money is a great motivator. It is an enabler, and gives me the means to do fantastic things. And quite honestly, it is not someone else's problem whether or not the way I spend MY money is in fitting with their morals or their world view. I work my ass off and make sacrifices to give ME the freedom to shape my world the way I like it - if someone else wants to one-up me, more power to them.
Money is also a fantastic equalizer. You can be rich, poor, black, white, short, disabled, lanky, religious or whatever else, and nobody will refuse to pay you if you are good enough, and nobody will refuse a trade for money.
Your post, and rant, is nothing but unfiltered nonsense.
"I would think that more countries would be moving away from fiat currency in that case. Oh wait, it's the other way around. I wonder why." Come on!? What kind of a argument is that? The whole world is polluting the environment, like there is no tomorrow. The whole world is sick from eating either way too much or way too little. The whole world is building weapons arsenals, enough to wipe us out many times over. The whole world is using Windows on their computers, for crying out loud! The whole world can be dead wrong and you know it.
Well, I agree that that wasn't the best point to make - but it is generally agreed upon that socio-economic systems commonly tend to settle on the most efficient, stable systems. A classic example of this is often cited to be communism, where repeatedly, it has failed due to any number of reasons. My whole take is that the same thing applies to economic, in that economic systems that are not robust, or hinder progress, are eventually replaced by more sophisticated ones.
"Economists far wiser than I have argued against it, with good reason." I'm not an economist, but I do try to be critical of what I read. There is an influential economics school, arguing for some form of gold standard, called "The Austrian School". I'm sure you know about it. Ron Paul is very much an adherent to their ideas. Me too.
As a matter of fact, I did mention the ASE in previous comment. I've reproduced it below for your benefit --
"There are good, mathematical arguments against it, which I am too lazy to produce here.
Of course, then again, ASE has always not cared much for rigor in its arguments and gone for the fluffy, qualitative stuff instead."
Do you know that the price of basic goods relative to gold is pretty much stable since ancient times? That fact was not in my (and probably yours) university textbooks. I wonder why? In ancient Sumeria, in Roman times, in Renaissance Europe, a loaf of bread was worth about as much gold as now. Vagaries of randomness indeed...
Well, that is besides the point - I simply see no reason to use gold to that end. It artificially inflates the value of the material beyond its intrinsic value, and creates further limitations on its availability for other purposes.
I'm sure that the price of a goat has also remained stable compared to a few loaves of bread, but that is hardly an excuse to go bartering for goats now, is it?:)
What if I replaced gold with a measure of manufacturing for a manufacturing economy, maybe? Rather than be dependent upon a material whose existence is random, the economy is upon the capacity to manufacture and sell.
Knowledge for a knowledge economy maybe? Manufacturing gets old because after a while, you're only making boilerplates. So, the people with the ideas have more economic power.
In each of those cases, you've not really changed anything - if anything, you've put the control of the system in people's hands.
Gold standard is one of those last chains/links to a very materials-centric perspective of economics, which will eventually go away.
You are artificially constraining to your economic growth purely based on the random availability of an arbitrarily chosen material.
It does not matter what material you choose; you are still pegging your growth to the availability to something whose production cannot be predicted.
Economists far wiser than I have argued against it, with good reason. If anything, the fall of the US Dollar has affected several other currencies that pegged themselves against the USD. Which, if anything, argues against pegging your currency with a currency or a commodity, seemingly predictable or otherwise.
"Artificially pinning your currency to a physical commodity"? What is artificial about it? It used to be the norm worldwide. And it worked.
It did? That's really news to me. I would think that more countries would be moving away from fiat currency in that case. Oh wait, it's the other way around. I wonder why.
It may have worked under simple economic circumstances, but the genie is out of the bottle, and it is too late to put it back. The currency economic ecologies are too complex (look up complex derivatives some time), and combined with commodities trading, it simply is not scalable for any commodity based currency to sustain long term. Having any commodity-based currency is not really a good option for building a complex economic system. It's like throwing the foundations of your economy to the vagaries of randomness. There are good, mathematical arguments against it, which I am too lazy to produce here.
Of course, then again, ASE has always not cared much for rigor in its arguments and gone for the fluffy, qualitative stuff instead.
Yes, a doll country with the population less than that of NYC has gold bullion backed currency.
I am not going to argue the merits or the lack thereof of bullion-backed currency over fiat currency, but suffice it to say that artificially pinning your currency to a physical commodity whose reserves have been depleting will only serve to restrict how much you can grow, and place an artificially high value on the said physical commodity.
Welcome to Slashdot to see people who do not have a basic grasp of finance or business to rant about it.
For one, the majority of shares in most public companies today are held by institutional investors. The next big share holders tend to be PE folks (like Icahn, KKR etc), followed by insurance companies, hedge funds etc.
Secondly, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. If you went public, you did it for the money - and you can't cry foul when you do something stupid and when people hold you accountable. If you wanted your freedom, you should have stayed private. Sad, but true.
Now, one of the biggest advantages of going public is that you raise capital - and when investors put in their money, they expect returns. Now, some people like Icahn are just vultures who are looking for an excuse to make a quick buck, but most other investors are not happy, either, with the way Yahoo handled the situation.
Like or dislike does not enter business. If it makes business and strategic sense, you do it. If it does not, you don't. If you are interested in discussing morals, ethics and "feelings", you should have kept the company private and done whatever the hell you wanted. I haven't seen anything that indicates that a merger between Yahoo and Microsoft will be a bad thing. It may throw in a little more competition; however I can see why Google is worried - they run the risk of being called a monopoly if Yahoo gets bought out. At the end of the day, once you have shareholders, you have a responsibility to them. You may not like it, but you should have thought of it before you went after the greenbacks.
A little of Cinnamon, cloves, chili powder, a couple of green chilies, a clove of garlic, a pinch of turmeric and a little bit of coriander powder and mint leaves if you can find them.
I'd recommend mixing the spices and adding some mustard seeds to the oil before frying the plantains.
Also, adding grated coconut after the spice is settled in adds a nice flavor. You could either cook it in oil, or add butter for a slightly different flavor.
Or, if you know of an Indian store nearby, you could buy a generic brand of curry powder or Sambar powder and that will save you the trouble of the first section altogether. Your choice of spice will quite obviously affect the taste, but I've found that varying the spices provides me with variety, and plantains seem to taste alright as long as you don't over-spice or over-cook them.
Growing up in India, I remember all the different varieties and flavors - they came in pink, red, yellow, green, violet/purple etc, and in all shapes and size (ridiculously small ones to *huge* ones). And they all tasted very distinctly different from one another and were quite delicious.
In the US, all fruits taste the same to me, and bananas are so flavorless that I've stopped eating them altogether.
Hell, you even had varieties of plantains that could be used in several spicy dishes, and you used the stem of the banana tree in some dishes, as well. Hard to find anything outside of the mainstream here. And even if you do, it tends to taste hopelessly "factory made".
I have seen PLENTY of my fellow citizens who are willing and capable, but not admitted.
You know, I remember sitting in a graduate class in physics, and there were all of 2 Americans in the class - the rest of the class was European (mostly East; a couple of Germans), Asian or Indian. In a class of 21 students, 19 were non-Americans.
Similarly, my roommate (he was Spanish) was doing his PhD (in CS with graphics specialization, no less). I could not help notice that there was ONE American doing a PhD, while everyone from the professors, to the research scientists, to the students, were predominantly non-Americans.
Please do not tell me that this is discrimination against Americans because it is harder for non-Americans than for Americans to make it. The percentage of people who are willing to stick it through graduate school, or who are willing to get a good education, seems rather low in the US. And it is not funding, either. There were plenty of research assistantships available; just not enough takers.
If anything, a lot of them were from the NSF and were for American nationals only, and yet, there were little to no takers.
So, please stop blaming it on lack of opportunity. There is plenty available, for those that truly want it, and are willing to do what it takes.
I'm from India, and what I see is the exact opposite - those that do go back do so because of reasons beyond their control (family pressure, layoffs, lack of visa etc).
I'm yet to meet someone who's in the US to work and go back and settle down in India.
If you're in IT or technology, your major options are a handful of cities (e.g. Bangalore or Madras), all of which are large metropolitan ones with extremely high costs of living. If you're in finance or marketing, your only option is Mumbai/Bombay, which is probably just as expensive as Manhattan, if not more. It's a lot easier to work in the US and settle down here (especially if you've lived here for a few years) than go back.
These days, people would rather come to the US, and stay in the US. The cost of living in the home countries (e.g. India) has risen with the times, and it is just as easy to settle down here than go back.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed.
I'd imagine that a CS degree teaches you algorithms, theoretical CS (e.g. complexity, graph theory etc.), graphics (once again, algorithms, physics, etc.) and assorted things. Even networking would be more about routing algorithms and packet handling etc.
All the "hands on" parts of CS usually fall under other categories -- for example, networking hands on is more ECE, systems engineering could fall under industrial/electrical/electronics & communication/computer engineering, but not necessarily computer science.
An ideal CS degree would be very close to a very applied math degree, because of the similarities between the two subjects. You can teach someone who's strong with fundamentals a programming language quite easily (even a monkey can program); however teaching someone critical thinking skills, good design skills and designing appropriate algorithms and the like is very, very hard.
IMHO, that is what a CS degree should do. A little programming is fine, but I'd be loath to respect any CS degree that focussed on programming. Anyone can be a programmer - hell, even physicists program. A computer scientist is not the same thing as a programmer, and that's the way it should be.
And strategy consulting.
A lot of folks that I work with are econ majors - they do such things as market and channel distribution strategy, trending, demographic and geographic estimation for consumer sales, building economies of scale models for new markets, market penetration analysis and so on.
The opportunities are endless.
If you have an econ degree from a good school (Harvard, UChicago etc) and if you have a quantitative mind to boot, there are so many fun things you could do.
I second that.
Economics is an awesome subject. In fact, there is a field called Computational Economics, that uses game theory and other computational fields to develop quantitative economic models (macro and micro).
Quite fun.
Quality, for all intents and purposes, falls under scope.
Increased quality implies increased diligence, increased QA and consequently, more to do.
This would need more money, more time etc.
Not really.
I'd say that Project Management involves juggling three things - Schedule, Scope and Budget (think of it as a triangle).
Usually, any change in project direction, requirements, resources or funding affects one of the 3, and you need to juggle between the 3 to find an optimal state.
Well said.
I have never understood the people who claim to multi-task, because I've often observed that when they do multi-task, do so rather poorly, and perform poorly at all the tasks that they have to do. Why would you simply not take the time to focus on each one, and get it out of the way?
If I'm doing something, my girlfriend often tries to interrupt me, but for the most part, I just tune everything else out and do the one thing that I want. She finds it hard to understand, but it's just the way I've been raised (and wired). Growing up, distractions were a strict no-no, and I'm quite thankful for that. If I'm at work, I turn IMs and emails off (the Blackberry remains turned on, though, just in case).
The end result is that I find that it takes me a lot less time to do something than the people who claim that they can only multi-task. I have friends who are so much more better and so much more focussed at doing things, and the one thing that I can tell you is that they are all a lot more efficient at getting things done than me.
Likewise, my ADD friends claim to be able to multi-task, but do a VERY poor job of actually doing it. Sure, you do ten things at the same time, but I could have done 20 things better, faster and more efficiently by focusing separately than you did ten without any focus or singular goal.
Just my two cents.
Not all of us care about democracy - I'd rather have a meritocracy than a democracy.
The fact that the vote of someone who dropped out of highschool and became a bum is equal to someone who has a PhD in Biology is laughable. Even worse is the fact that the votes of the former have equal say in government policies in biology.
Just how much does a plumber really know about biology, or economics, to be part of the decision making process? Just how much does religion matter in making environmental policies that are for the good of the planet's ecosystems?
Democracy as it exists today is a sham - it does nothing more than push forth mediocrity. Not everyone should be part of the decision making process, and even then, not everyone should be a part of *every* decision making process.
You don't solicit the opinions of plumbers and druggies when your child is sick, do you? Then why do you let the votes of these people matter when it comes to legislating medical policies?
Exactly!
I've seen ads (for the equivalent of govt bonds) with Stephen Hawking in them.
If that's not popularity, I do not know what is. =)
Not necessarily true.
The latest issue of Harvard Business Review has a case study on Toyota's success, and how it is the result of a culture of innovation and respect. It encourages competition, but in a constructive manner. And rather than praise success (say, a promotion), they have a culture of reminding you that your coworkers were just as good and just as close to making it. You are expected to question your superiors, and you are constantly reminded that the customer is your top priority.
There are several exceptions to your statement, and while Microsoft has done a lot of things wrong, they have also done a LOT of things right. Stereotypes and generalizations are the root of conflict.
Wow.
I am just amazed at the amount of idiocy that is emanating in some of the posts. And then, you see that ONE post - the one, magnificent post that takes the cheese cake. Surreal, really.
I think money is *great*. It is one of the greatest economic inventions of man, and pardon the pun, but provides us with a common currency to trade our skills for our wants, whatever those may be. It is the new measure of your competitiveness.
When you give someone money, you give them the freedom to use it the way they see it. I do not want to be paid in something which imposes restrictions on how I use it as it conforms to my world view. That very action signifies a moral high ground and arrogance that you know what's best for the people, rather than letting people make their choices.
And what economic elite? You can become an economic elite if you want. Hell, this country is full of rags to riches stories. It's always amazing, but people make excuses. I tell you - you could become a millionaire today if you truly wanted to. At the end of the day, it breaks down to exactly what YOU want, and how far you are willing to go to achieve that. If you want something else more than the desire to make money, then you do not want money badly enough, and that is YOUR choice. Don't go around blaming the "economic elite" or some such vague term to signify a nebulous tyranny (that probably exists in your head).
Apart from your obvious logical fallacies that make no sense whatsoever, your last statement (like the rest of your comment) is a load of horse dung. To quote, "The race may not always be to the swift nor the victory to the strong, but that's how you bet." There's nothing wrong in trying to be the strongest and the fastest the way society sees it. It's unfortunate if it happens at the expense of others, but then, that's competition for you. If others are not willing to play to win, then they shouldn't be playing at all.To me, money is a great motivator. It is an enabler, and gives me the means to do fantastic things. And quite honestly, it is not someone else's problem whether or not the way I spend MY money is in fitting with their morals or their world view. I work my ass off and make sacrifices to give ME the freedom to shape my world the way I like it - if someone else wants to one-up me, more power to them.
Money is also a fantastic equalizer. You can be rich, poor, black, white, short, disabled, lanky, religious or whatever else, and nobody will refuse to pay you if you are good enough, and nobody will refuse a trade for money.
Your post, and rant, is nothing but unfiltered nonsense.
Just *where* do you live?
I live in downtown Cincinnati, and pay about 1200/mo in rent.
I'm moving to Cambridge (Boston) and of course, 1200 seems almost too low.
Please.
There is no comparison. Ellison takes the cheese cake - he's beyond comparison.
"There are good, mathematical arguments against it, which I am too lazy to produce here.
Of course, then again, ASE has always not cared much for rigor in its arguments and gone for the fluffy, qualitative stuff instead." Well, that is besides the point - I simply see no reason to use gold to that end. It artificially inflates the value of the material beyond its intrinsic value, and creates further limitations on its availability for other purposes.
I'm sure that the price of a goat has also remained stable compared to a few loaves of bread, but that is hardly an excuse to go bartering for goats now, is it?
What if I replaced gold with a measure of manufacturing for a manufacturing economy, maybe? Rather than be dependent upon a material whose existence is random, the economy is upon the capacity to manufacture and sell.
Knowledge for a knowledge economy maybe? Manufacturing gets old because after a while, you're only making boilerplates. So, the people with the ideas have more economic power.
In each of those cases, you've not really changed anything - if anything, you've put the control of the system in people's hands.
Gold standard is one of those last chains/links to a very materials-centric perspective of economics, which will eventually go away.
You are artificially constraining to your economic growth purely based on the random availability of an arbitrarily chosen material.
It does not matter what material you choose; you are still pegging your growth to the availability to something whose production cannot be predicted.
Economists far wiser than I have argued against it, with good reason. If anything, the fall of the US Dollar has affected several other currencies that pegged themselves against the USD. Which, if anything, argues against pegging your currency with a currency or a commodity, seemingly predictable or otherwise. It did? That's really news to me. I would think that more countries would be moving away from fiat currency in that case. Oh wait, it's the other way around. I wonder why.
It may have worked under simple economic circumstances, but the genie is out of the bottle, and it is too late to put it back. The currency economic ecologies are too complex (look up complex derivatives some time), and combined with commodities trading, it simply is not scalable for any commodity based currency to sustain long term. Having any commodity-based currency is not really a good option for building a complex economic system. It's like throwing the foundations of your economy to the vagaries of randomness. There are good, mathematical arguments against it, which I am too lazy to produce here.
Of course, then again, ASE has always not cared much for rigor in its arguments and gone for the fluffy, qualitative stuff instead.
Yes, a doll country with the population less than that of NYC has gold bullion backed currency.
I am not going to argue the merits or the lack thereof of bullion-backed currency over fiat currency, but suffice it to say that artificially pinning your currency to a physical commodity whose reserves have been depleting will only serve to restrict how much you can grow, and place an artificially high value on the said physical commodity.
You forgot -
Paul: An idiot candidate who thought he understood economics, but did not even grasp the very basics of it.
If Paul's fiscal policies were implemented (e.g. going back to the gold standard), the US (and possibly, the world) economy would be shot to hell.
Welcome to Slashdot to see people who do not have a basic grasp of finance or business to rant about it.
For one, the majority of shares in most public companies today are held by institutional investors. The next big share holders tend to be PE folks (like Icahn, KKR etc), followed by insurance companies, hedge funds etc.
Secondly, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. If you went public, you did it for the money - and you can't cry foul when you do something stupid and when people hold you accountable. If you wanted your freedom, you should have stayed private. Sad, but true.
Now, one of the biggest advantages of going public is that you raise capital - and when investors put in their money, they expect returns. Now, some people like Icahn are just vultures who are looking for an excuse to make a quick buck, but most other investors are not happy, either, with the way Yahoo handled the situation.
Like or dislike does not enter business. If it makes business and strategic sense, you do it. If it does not, you don't. If you are interested in discussing morals, ethics and "feelings", you should have kept the company private and done whatever the hell you wanted. I haven't seen anything that indicates that a merger between Yahoo and Microsoft will be a bad thing. It may throw in a little more competition; however I can see why Google is worried - they run the risk of being called a monopoly if Yahoo gets bought out. At the end of the day, once you have shareholders, you have a responsibility to them. You may not like it, but you should have thought of it before you went after the greenbacks.
I did say it was South Indian - that narrows it down greatly, and the only difference is in a couple of ingredients and their ratios.
A little of Cinnamon, cloves, chili powder, a couple of green chilies, a clove of garlic, a pinch of turmeric and a little bit of coriander powder and mint leaves if you can find them.
I'd recommend mixing the spices and adding some mustard seeds to the oil before frying the plantains.
Also, adding grated coconut after the spice is settled in adds a nice flavor. You could either cook it in oil, or add butter for a slightly different flavor.
Or, if you know of an Indian store nearby, you could buy a generic brand of curry powder or Sambar powder and that will save you the trouble of the first section altogether. Your choice of spice will quite obviously affect the taste, but I've found that varying the spices provides me with variety, and plantains seem to taste alright as long as you don't over-spice or over-cook them.
Cheers.
Tell me about it.
Growing up in India, I remember all the different varieties and flavors - they came in pink, red, yellow, green, violet/purple etc, and in all shapes and size (ridiculously small ones to *huge* ones). And they all tasted very distinctly different from one another and were quite delicious.
In the US, all fruits taste the same to me, and bananas are so flavorless that I've stopped eating them altogether.
Hell, you even had varieties of plantains that could be used in several spicy dishes, and you used the stem of the banana tree in some dishes, as well. Hard to find anything outside of the mainstream here. And even if you do, it tends to taste hopelessly "factory made".
Slice off the skin of a plantain, cut it into slices and leave the slices in some curried, salt water for a few hours.
Take it out, add some ginger and spices and oil and fry the plantains with some cilantro and coriander.
Voila! You've one of the best south Indian delicacies - plantain curry - which is usually eaten with rice and some sauce/yogurt on the side.
Similarly, my roommate (he was Spanish) was doing his PhD (in CS with graphics specialization, no less). I could not help notice that there was ONE American doing a PhD, while everyone from the professors, to the research scientists, to the students, were predominantly non-Americans.
Please do not tell me that this is discrimination against Americans because it is harder for non-Americans than for Americans to make it. The percentage of people who are willing to stick it through graduate school, or who are willing to get a good education, seems rather low in the US. And it is not funding, either. There were plenty of research assistantships available; just not enough takers.
If anything, a lot of them were from the NSF and were for American nationals only, and yet, there were little to no takers.
So, please stop blaming it on lack of opportunity. There is plenty available, for those that truly want it, and are willing to do what it takes.
I'm from India, and what I see is the exact opposite - those that do go back do so because of reasons beyond their control (family pressure, layoffs, lack of visa etc).
I'm yet to meet someone who's in the US to work and go back and settle down in India.
If you're in IT or technology, your major options are a handful of cities (e.g. Bangalore or Madras), all of which are large metropolitan ones with extremely high costs of living. If you're in finance or marketing, your only option is Mumbai/Bombay, which is probably just as expensive as Manhattan, if not more. It's a lot easier to work in the US and settle down here (especially if you've lived here for a few years) than go back.
That was ages ago.
These days, people would rather come to the US, and stay in the US. The cost of living in the home countries (e.g. India) has risen with the times, and it is just as easy to settle down here than go back.
It's no use arguing with an idiot who doesn't know much, but I figured I'd at least provide a link.