I work in the R&D division of a baby-Bell. There are about a dozen of us, and it's a small group.
It's a big company with tens of thousands of employees, but our group is small and we focus on the R of R&D. We have an eclectic mix of some very smart people - physicists, electrical & electronics engineers, CS folks, linguists and so on. It's a great fun environment (one where we have the interns and the full-timers battle with RC choppers and robot toys), people love what they do and it is a great place to be at.
Now, I cannot say that the company is necessarily driven by passion - like all large corporations, they exist to "enhance shareholder value". On the other hand, we in our group have a lot of fun and enjoy what we do. So, you need not necessarily be in a small company to have a good time or to enjoy what you do.
You know, you should probably look up what percentage of those Indians and Chinese are actually in the US and how much they contribute to the economy, before you start blindly thrashing about and screaming at your bugaboo.
But here are some facts for you, just in case you resort to more stereotypes.
Presently, Indian Americans constitute 0.8% of the total U.S population. Chinese Americans, on the other hand, are slightly higher and constitute 1.2% of the US population. Both these communities contribute to significantly more than 2% of the GDP.
You should perhaps read up on the socioeconomic makeup of Indians and Chinese - most of them tend to be very well educated, stay back and create more jobs in the economy.
Aside from that, don't forget that giving free college education to foreigners is great, considering that you get to choose how long you keep them, and where you let them work.
Actually, I disagree. If we keep them, they take a job from an American. If we send them home, they compete with us from abroad, and make money for India/China instead of for the US. In either case, Americans lose.
Gee. Talk of shortsightedness. You know, several of those immigrants contributed to key technologies that created more jobs. And oh, some of them even worked on projects that helped the US win WW-2. But don't get those facts get in the way of your prejudice.
Since the fundamental education is a sunk cost, why should we shoot ourselves in the foot by stopping there and giving the education to someone who is going to hurt us in either case (see above); instead of giving it to an American, who will also perform the same work, for what is likely a longer period of time?
Umm, maybe because they too will become "Americans" eventually? Or maybe because the immigration system is flawed and should work on keeping the talented ones here rather than trying to drive them out, especially when they are particularly skilled and well qualified?
An Indian or Chinese will often fulfill their obligation, while sending money back to their home country. When completed, they will usually leave on their own, as their US Salary is a King's Fortune there.
That is true, but it is slowly changing - with the dollar falling and the demand for technical people rising in those countries, the cost of living is also going up.
An American, likely will not be emigrating to India to enjoy the money they've made here. Since you're rather pedantic, let me point out that I said "usually" and "likely" meaning "The number of Indians/Chinese who take their money and run greatly exceeds the number of US students who get free educations here and move to India or China." and not "It will never happen, ever, so a single instance or a small minority percentage is a valid counter-argument."
Actually, most of those people would also love to stay back - unfortunately, the immigration policies of the US do not enable that to happen easily. So, you have people who have their PhDs from top schools in the country but who end up going back because they cannot legally stay back in the country.
Finally, let me just say this - bringing in more talented people is never a bad thing. If you look at history, it has time and again proven that this only enriches an existing culture and creates more opportunities in the long run. Immigrants to the US have pumped in billions of dollars into the economy and have created tens of thousands of jobs in the process.
Economics is not a zero-sum game. The immigrants who come here create more jobs and they themselves become new consumers. This prevents the economy from becoming stagnant and creates other opportunities. Almost every country that has closed its doors on immigrants eventually stagnates.
And unless you are a full-blooded Native American, you are an immigrant yourself. What's your point?
Or worse yet, they may monitor those who receive the spam and pick them out for "preferential treatment" - and the next time one of them uses the proxy, their family maybe sent a bullet and a bill.
Are you ready to take the responsibility for that?
No, the reason I am uncertain is because of who I am, not because of the system. The system educated me well enough to pick up the skills necessary to tackle varying interests.
For instance, my technical education has given me enough skills to pursue further education in any area that I like - ECE, CS, Physics, Geology or Glaciology. The fact that my fundamental knowledge and skills are sound makes it easier for me to pick up new subjects fairly easily, even when I lack the basic esoteric knowledge unique to that area.
And yes, including my graduate school and my research experience, I have worked (and published) in at least 5 different areas. If my basics were not strong enough, I doubt if I would have accomplished that. Just a thought.
Maybe you should go back to school so someone else can tell you what you're supposed to think. They obviously didn't do the job sufficiently the first time.
You should probably go back to school and work on your communication skills. Quite obviously, they didn't do a good enough job of wiping away that smirk and rudeness that seems to ooze out of your pores.
As someone who did his highschool and undergraduate education in India, I notice the exact same thing.
By the time you are in your tenth grade, you'd better have chosen your basic major - science with cs/engineering as your focus, science with biology as your focus, commerce, accounting etc. You focus and study for your college entrance examinations and your higher secondary school for those subjects that you chose. There is no going back.
And if you took commerce or accounting or some such thing, you simply cannot even apply to an engineering college for admission. Now, I guess that with a billion people, it helps to have competition and eliminate people at every stage, but I still saw that it worked out for a lot of people.
When I went into engineering college, my choice of major was a function of my 12th grade marks as well as your entrance examination results (and yes, several top schools have their own system). Your performance there determines your major -- if you did really well, you pretty much have more of a choice, and if you did really badly, your choices become limited.
Majors are ranked based on demand - industry and student. Right now, I imagine that engineering, it goes something like this - ECE, CS, EEE, Aeronautical, Mechanical, Civil etc.
In some colleges, if you do not perform well in the first year, your spot in that major maybe given to someone else from a lower-ranked major - i.e. a badly performing EEE student may be asked to get out and be replaced by a Mechanical engineering student who wanted to do EEE, but did not have the grades/scores for it.
Now, agreed that at the age of 25, I still do not know what I want to do in life - but having made those choices early on, I learnt the skills necessary to help me better prepared in life. I would say that that definitely beats the wishy-washy thing that people seem to have going on here in highschool and college.
You shouldn't automatically equate criticism of the global warming with a denial that the earth is actually getting hotter.
Well, when you criticize the existence of global warming, you are being stupid.
On the other hand, I agree with you - the causes are still uncertain and we may or may not be responsible for it. And I, like you, think that we know very little to say anything conclusively.
But at the end of the day, here is the problem - the earth is getting warmer. And immaterial of what is causing it, this is likely to be a fairly big problem in the near future. If you look at studies on how fast glaciers are disappearing and how countries like Greenland are contending with problems they thought were decades away, you will realize that it is probably something we should be taking a little more seriously.
Now the other side of the camp is full of nutsos - the green nuts who have nothing better to do than be alarmist and cry wolf every damn time. And the opposite end are the other extreme folks who think global warming is a vast left wing conspiracy. Both sides are filled with idiots.
The thing is, it does not matter who is right because the earth is warming up and if we humans are to live in our comfort zone, it is probably a good idea to start now. Cutting down on the greenhouse gases, not chopping down our forests at the rate we are and stopping the destruction of vast ecologies is probably a good idea.
If humans are not responsible, fine. We would still be doing something good to this earth. If we are indeed responsible, we would have potentially stopped it from going out of hand. Personally (and please note that it is indeed my very personal opinion), I feel that the causes and reasons are not as important as preserving earth the way we know it. Then again, for all we know, this rock can take care of itself quite well enough and nothing we do would matter much. In that case, I would be more than happy to stand corrected.
Some of us are planning an expedition to go from Barrow, Alaska to the Arctic polar ice-cap (in late winter).
We were looking at some older data on how people may have done this. We discovered that back then, just before the end of winter the Arctic ocean (Chukchi sea) would be frozen and you could sled across just a wee bit to reach the ice-shelf.
And we had a look at the satellite imagery today. The polar ice-cap has shrunk so much that we have a much longer distance to cover.
Not only that, but until recently, the ice extending out to the land-mass were mostly Sea Ice. Today, they are mostly Grease or Pancake ice. And it's become much harder and much more dangerous to cross the ocean today than it was just a few years ago.
I mean, global warming was a distant thing sometime back. But when you are about to do something like this, and you realize that the effects of it are affecting you personally, you think back to all the times you dismissed it like it was pointless.
And every time I read an idiot saying something against it, I am just tempted to send them up north. Maybe the fact that the polar bears' hibernating cycles are being affected would mean a lot more when they are out there hunting you and not hibernating away in some shelter.
I've already had hell with the ridiculous interface of iTunes and trying to sync my music across more than one machine (work + home + notebook).
Now, on top of everything, it's going to refuse to charge unless I show that I am the owner on all three? Or maybe, I can only charge it on one?
Either way, this is only making a bad problem worse.
Bad enough that iTunes has more than once destroyed my music backup because I tried added music from another machine. Now it's also going to not let me use my iPod?
Nice. And here I thought Apple was about usability.
I mean, at the end of the day, a large chunk of OSS developers also have regular day jobs coding proprietary software for money. The money in OSS is in support, not in the end product itself.
Secondly, OSS only works for products, and we all know how the product-service life-cycle goes. So, if Microsoft can't make money out of a product, they can make money out of a service.
And so, even MS can now say that they are doing that "Open Source thing" when a potential customer's (tech-ignorant) management asks them.
This is probably a first step to that end. News at 11.
Quite obviously, you read the website, didn't you?
Q: Do you have other products or can I add more memory to this laptop?
A: Yes, we have other models coming up next month and if you want to expand with more memory on your laptop you can go to our 'Accessories' page and buy extra memory.
Oh sure, and YouTube is beating Digg, but that doesn't mean that we'll all move over to YouTube.
No, like another poster said, it is quality over quantity.
If you think some of the arguments on Slashdot are asinine, wait until you read the ridiculous ones on Digg. And give everyone the power to moderate and you have people burying others' comments because they disagree with them.
Add bad grammar, spellings and l33t speak and you have a ridiculous combination of utter rubbish that only a bunch of emo sixteen year-olds can spew forth. Give me Slashdot any day.
I agree - fear has some definite benefits, but on the other hand, some people suffer from some irrational fears and this could be useful in curing those.
There was this guy I used to go climbing with who slipped once while doing some trad climbing and has been afraid of heights ever since. Mind you, he did not fall down or even get injured. All he did was take a look down at the ravine below him and freaked out. Ever since, he's stopped climbing and is deathly scared of heights.
People are scared of some pretty ridiculous things - heights, water, closed spaces, dark, spiders etc. are for the most part irrational fears with little to no basis whatsoever, often the result of a traumatic incident.
If my friend could forget his fear and go climbing again, he'd be the happiest person of earth. I am sure there are several people like him.
While not all fears are unhelpful, a few definitely are and these get into the way of doing things we could otherwise appreciate and enjoy.
I used to be a night-owl until my girlfriend moved in with me (who is ex. military) and now, I just wake up quite early and rather enjoy it, too.
Funnily enough, my boss is there earlier than I am (~6:30-7 AM).
I find that getting to work early has its own benefits - nobody to bug you the first thing in the morning, time enough to get myself organized in the morning before the crowd starts flowing in, I can get back home early, more free time in the evenings to do other things I like (rock-climbing & swimming) etc.
Then again, I work in telecom R&D, so the regular rules of "IT" may not necessarily apply.
No offense, but if you were interviewing for me and gave an answer like that, you wouldn't get a callback. The key is to make your answer not sound like BS.
Why do you say that?
I write the list of things to do for the week on my white-board and keep tabs on what I do when. And I have post-it notes where I write specific tasks to be done for the day first thing in the morning and first thing in the afternoon. In fact, I tend to have two sets (yellow and purple) - the former is for work and the latter is for personal stuff.
There are several advantages to this -
- I find that I am extremely productive and get a lot more accomplished (mostly because, like the OP says, it keeps me from forgetting something). - It helps me stay focussed on the things I really need to get done, as opposed to the other problems that can crop up and drive you away from your *real* work. - When it is time to give an update to my boss or his boss (or someone else), all I need to do is look at the list of post-its. - It also helps that I can assign time to certain tasks and try to complete them within the designated time. Later on, I can see how long I really took in comparison to my estimates. When my boss asks me later on for an estimate on something, I find it a lot easier to give him an accurate estimate because I really *do* know how long a particular task takes (for me as well as for my team). - There is a certain satisfaction in shredding up all those post-its at the end of the month.:-)
So, yeah. If you think that a good suggestion like that is bullshit, you probably aren't worth working for, anyway.
If you are working with manufacturing types, sure, that makes sense.
On the other hand, I do R&D at a baby-Bell and we often work with folks who are interested in taking our technologies forward (customers and clients, exec. management, analysts, investors, vendors etc).
So, in my job, business casuals are what I usually consider appropriate - if I were dressed in anything more casual, it would definitely not look good. I also work in a typical east-coast environment, so that's another factor.
To me, wearing business casuals is slightly more preferable to a job where I have to dress up like a college student.:)
(I hate wearing formals for fun just as much as I hate complete casuals at work - wearing dress clothes is a clear line between work and fun).
Slashdot Mirror
Or join a small group in a big company.
:)
I work in the R&D division of a baby-Bell. There are about a dozen of us, and it's a small group.
It's a big company with tens of thousands of employees, but our group is small and we focus on the R of R&D. We have an eclectic mix of some very smart people - physicists, electrical & electronics engineers, CS folks, linguists and so on. It's a great fun environment (one where we have the interns and the full-timers battle with RC choppers and robot toys), people love what they do and it is a great place to be at.
Now, I cannot say that the company is necessarily driven by passion - like all large corporations, they exist to "enhance shareholder value". On the other hand, we in our group have a lot of fun and enjoy what we do. So, you need not necessarily be in a small company to have a good time or to enjoy what you do.
You know how generalizations go!
But here are some facts for you, just in case you resort to more stereotypes.
Presently, Indian Americans constitute 0.8% of the total U.S population. Chinese Americans, on the other hand, are slightly higher and constitute 1.2% of the US population. Both these communities contribute to significantly more than 2% of the GDP.
You should perhaps read up on the socioeconomic makeup of Indians and Chinese - most of them tend to be very well educated, stay back and create more jobs in the economy. Gee. Talk of shortsightedness. You know, several of those immigrants contributed to key technologies that created more jobs. And oh, some of them even worked on projects that helped the US win WW-2. But don't get those facts get in the way of your prejudice. Umm, maybe because they too will become "Americans" eventually? Or maybe because the immigration system is flawed and should work on keeping the talented ones here rather than trying to drive them out, especially when they are particularly skilled and well qualified? That is true, but it is slowly changing - with the dollar falling and the demand for technical people rising in those countries, the cost of living is also going up. Actually, most of those people would also love to stay back - unfortunately, the immigration policies of the US do not enable that to happen easily. So, you have people who have their PhDs from top schools in the country but who end up going back because they cannot legally stay back in the country.
Finally, let me just say this - bringing in more talented people is never a bad thing. If you look at history, it has time and again proven that this only enriches an existing culture and creates more opportunities in the long run. Immigrants to the US have pumped in billions of dollars into the economy and have created tens of thousands of jobs in the process.
Economics is not a zero-sum game. The immigrants who come here create more jobs and they themselves become new consumers. This prevents the economy from becoming stagnant and creates other opportunities. Almost every country that has closed its doors on immigrants eventually stagnates.
And unless you are a full-blooded Native American, you are an immigrant yourself. What's your point?
Considering how massive the average Slashdotter is likely to be, I'd say General. :)
Or worse yet, they may monitor those who receive the spam and pick them out for "preferential treatment" - and the next time one of them uses the proxy, their family maybe sent a bullet and a bill.
Are you ready to take the responsibility for that?
No, the reason I am uncertain is because of who I am, not because of the system. The system educated me well enough to pick up the skills necessary to tackle varying interests.
For instance, my technical education has given me enough skills to pursue further education in any area that I like - ECE, CS, Physics, Geology or Glaciology. The fact that my fundamental knowledge and skills are sound makes it easier for me to pick up new subjects fairly easily, even when I lack the basic esoteric knowledge unique to that area.
And yes, including my graduate school and my research experience, I have worked (and published) in at least 5 different areas. If my basics were not strong enough, I doubt if I would have accomplished that. Just a thought. You should probably go back to school and work on your communication skills. Quite obviously, they didn't do a good enough job of wiping away that smirk and rudeness that seems to ooze out of your pores.
I agree with you 100%.
As someone who did his highschool and undergraduate education in India, I notice the exact same thing.
By the time you are in your tenth grade, you'd better have chosen your basic major - science with cs/engineering as your focus, science with biology as your focus, commerce, accounting etc. You focus and study for your college entrance examinations and your higher secondary school for those subjects that you chose. There is no going back.
And if you took commerce or accounting or some such thing, you simply cannot even apply to an engineering college for admission. Now, I guess that with a billion people, it helps to have competition and eliminate people at every stage, but I still saw that it worked out for a lot of people.
When I went into engineering college, my choice of major was a function of my 12th grade marks as well as your entrance examination results (and yes, several top schools have their own system). Your performance there determines your major -- if you did really well, you pretty much have more of a choice, and if you did really badly, your choices become limited.
Majors are ranked based on demand - industry and student. Right now, I imagine that engineering, it goes something like this - ECE, CS, EEE, Aeronautical, Mechanical, Civil etc.
In some colleges, if you do not perform well in the first year, your spot in that major maybe given to someone else from a lower-ranked major - i.e. a badly performing EEE student may be asked to get out and be replaced by a Mechanical engineering student who wanted to do EEE, but did not have the grades/scores for it.
Now, agreed that at the age of 25, I still do not know what I want to do in life - but having made those choices early on, I learnt the skills necessary to help me better prepared in life. I would say that that definitely beats the wishy-washy thing that people seem to have going on here in highschool and college.
Some of us are planning an expedition to go from Barrow, Alaska to the Arctic polar ice-cap (in late winter).
We were looking at some older data on how people may have done this. We discovered that back then, just before the end of winter the Arctic ocean (Chukchi sea) would be frozen and you could sled across just a wee bit to reach the ice-shelf.
And we had a look at the satellite imagery today. The polar ice-cap has shrunk so much that we have a much longer distance to cover.
Not only that, but until recently, the ice extending out to the land-mass were mostly Sea Ice. Today, they are mostly Grease or Pancake ice. And it's become much harder and much more dangerous to cross the ocean today than it was just a few years ago.
I mean, global warming was a distant thing sometime back. But when you are about to do something like this, and you realize that the effects of it are affecting you personally, you think back to all the times you dismissed it like it was pointless.
And every time I read an idiot saying something against it, I am just tempted to send them up north. Maybe the fact that the polar bears' hibernating cycles are being affected would mean a lot more when they are out there hunting you and not hibernating away in some shelter.
Politicians are chosen by the people and the people are represented through the politicians.
So, if we have corrupt politicians, it is nothing but a reflection of our society.
And here I thought that the kind of people that wanted an iPod were the kind that listened to *exactly* that kind of music! ;-)
I've already had hell with the ridiculous interface of iTunes and trying to sync my music across more than one machine (work + home + notebook).
Now, on top of everything, it's going to refuse to charge unless I show that I am the owner on all three? Or maybe, I can only charge it on one?
Either way, this is only making a bad problem worse.
Bad enough that iTunes has more than once destroyed my music backup because I tried added music from another machine. Now it's also going to not let me use my iPod?
Nice. And here I thought Apple was about usability.
If you can't beat 'em, join' em?
I mean, at the end of the day, a large chunk of OSS developers also have regular day jobs coding proprietary software for money. The money in OSS is in support, not in the end product itself.
Secondly, OSS only works for products, and we all know how the product-service life-cycle goes. So, if Microsoft can't make money out of a product, they can make money out of a service.
And so, even MS can now say that they are doing that "Open Source thing" when a potential customer's (tech-ignorant) management asks them.
This is probably a first step to that end. News at 11.
Quite obviously, you read the website, didn't you?
Q: Do you have other products or can I add more memory to this laptop?
A: Yes, we have other models coming up next month and if you want to expand with more memory on your laptop you can go to our 'Accessories' page and buy extra memory.
Yes.
Only old people (in Korea, no less) need a $150 laptop.
And can this laptop show me Natalie Portman and hot grits? Naked?
I'm sure I've missed a few. =)
Ouch.
That probably hit a raw nerve somewhere.
Oh sure, and YouTube is beating Digg, but that doesn't mean that we'll all move over to YouTube.
;-)
No, like another poster said, it is quality over quantity.
If you think some of the arguments on Slashdot are asinine, wait until you read the ridiculous ones on Digg. And give everyone the power to moderate and you have people burying others' comments because they disagree with them.
Add bad grammar, spellings and l33t speak and you have a ridiculous combination of utter rubbish that only a bunch of emo sixteen year-olds can spew forth. Give me Slashdot any day.
At least some you trolls have character.
I agree - fear has some definite benefits, but on the other hand, some people suffer from some irrational fears and this could be useful in curing those.
There was this guy I used to go climbing with who slipped once while doing some trad climbing and has been afraid of heights ever since. Mind you, he did not fall down or even get injured. All he did was take a look down at the ravine below him and freaked out. Ever since, he's stopped climbing and is deathly scared of heights.
People are scared of some pretty ridiculous things - heights, water, closed spaces, dark, spiders etc. are for the most part irrational fears with little to no basis whatsoever, often the result of a traumatic incident.
If my friend could forget his fear and go climbing again, he'd be the happiest person of earth. I am sure there are several people like him.
While not all fears are unhelpful, a few definitely are and these get into the way of doing things we could otherwise appreciate and enjoy.
You forgot:
PS: Attached is a check for a $LARGE amount of money and some wine for our buddies at the NSA.
Hahaha! :)
I used to be a night-owl until my girlfriend moved in with me (who is ex. military) and now, I just wake up quite early and rather enjoy it, too.
Funnily enough, my boss is there earlier than I am (~6:30-7 AM).
I find that getting to work early has its own benefits - nobody to bug you the first thing in the morning, time enough to get myself organized in the morning before the crowd starts flowing in, I can get back home early, more free time in the evenings to do other things I like (rock-climbing & swimming) etc.
Then again, I work in telecom R&D, so the regular rules of "IT" may not necessarily apply.
I write the list of things to do for the week on my white-board and keep tabs on what I do when. And I have post-it notes where I write specific tasks to be done for the day first thing in the morning and first thing in the afternoon. In fact, I tend to have two sets (yellow and purple) - the former is for work and the latter is for personal stuff.
There are several advantages to this -
- I find that I am extremely productive and get a lot more accomplished (mostly because, like the OP says, it keeps me from forgetting something).
- It helps me stay focussed on the things I really need to get done, as opposed to the other problems that can crop up and drive you away from your *real* work.
- When it is time to give an update to my boss or his boss (or someone else), all I need to do is look at the list of post-its.
- It also helps that I can assign time to certain tasks and try to complete them within the designated time. Later on, I can see how long I really took in comparison to my estimates. When my boss asks me later on for an estimate on something, I find it a lot easier to give him an accurate estimate because I really *do* know how long a particular task takes (for me as well as for my team).
- There is a certain satisfaction in shredding up all those post-its at the end of the month.
So, yeah. If you think that a good suggestion like that is bullshit, you probably aren't worth working for, anyway.
If you are working with manufacturing types, sure, that makes sense.
:)
On the other hand, I do R&D at a baby-Bell and we often work with folks who are interested in taking our technologies forward (customers and clients, exec. management, analysts, investors, vendors etc).
So, in my job, business casuals are what I usually consider appropriate - if I were dressed in anything more casual, it would definitely not look good. I also work in a typical east-coast environment, so that's another factor.
To me, wearing business casuals is slightly more preferable to a job where I have to dress up like a college student.
(I hate wearing formals for fun just as much as I hate complete casuals at work - wearing dress clothes is a clear line between work and fun).