Gratned, learning to learn is the most important thing anyone can learn in college and many people do consider college a social event, but it used to be worse. It certainly isn't ideal by a long stretch, but it is better.
I agree with you about the name calling, but just because he calls people names doesn't mean he lacks credibility. To assume so would be inconsistent with your own objection.
The problem with our so-called deomcracry is that we don't get to pick the people for which we can vote. We have an electoral college and our candidates in the primary are chosen by delegates. A certain number of delegates are assigned to individuals in the democratic party. In other words there isn't even a pretense that the nomination is decided by popular vote as in the electoral college.
It's like telling someone you can drink Pepsi or Coke, but no other soft drink. You can hardly blame someone for choosing not to drink any soft drink when those are his options. No, the problem is not with the electorate. The problem is with the electoral system.
Your optimism is admirable, but I'm not sure that this situation is exactly the same as it was for the past 100 years. These jobs have educational requirements. To be honest, education is over-rated. Most people can be trained to do a job they were not educated to do, but usually a college degree is required regardless of its relevance. Maybe people should stop going to college? Maybe we should go back to the good old days when only the wealthy went to college and it was more a social event than an education?
Even if we do have new jobs created, we don't know when they will be created or in what field. In the meantime, people have mortgages to pay and mouths to feed. You admit yourself that we are not good at getting rid of jobs painlessly. Shouldn't we get better at it before we embrace the trend whole-heartedly?
This tendency to speak in generalities and based on long term projections is all well and good, but there are short term needs that need to be addresssed. I'd rather see this long term perspective focus on the problem rather be used to deny that there is a problem.
BTW, a soviet style implosion isn't out of the question. Russia may be the future of America, a country ruled by oligarchs and plutocrats. Unless things change, I'd say it could happen as early as 2025.
I would like to see some more specific numbers... Whenever people start talking about how outsourcing is better for America they immediately jump to the most general numbers they can find. For example, they cite increasing exports or job creation in general. I have a suspicion they look at the general to avoid the ugly, concrete truth, but I can't be sure till I see the numbers.
I would like to see the average period of unemployment for those displaced by outsourcing, the average % difference in income after the period of unemployment, and the average loss of income during the period of unemployment.
Yeah, I realize these averages are still somewhat generalities, but at least they are within context and meaningful. I imagine that the numbers are much worse for people whose job's are outsourced than those who are simply layed off due to a downturn in an industry. At least in a downturn the whole industry isn't being exported.
I think free trade is ultimately a good thing. It lowers our costs, it distributes wealth more evenly to other countries, and it makes the wealthy even wealthier. Of course the down side is that it evicerates the middle and working class. Like I said, I'm ultimately for free trade, but we need to know what kind of pain it causes and we need to have the institutions/programs/etc in place to help relieve some of that pain BEFORE we start embracing free trade.
I'm still on the fence about requiring countries that we want to have free trade agreements with to have a certain level of environmental and labor standards. Afterall, part of the reason the United States was able to get where it is now is because we didn't have to worry about those things early on.
It's only within the last thirty to forty years that the middle class became wealthy enough to care about those kind of things, especially the environment. Of course, if we keep outcourcing work carelessly we won't have a middle class any more. Then the wealthy can roll back the progressive gains of the last 100 years and we can go back to being serfs for those who own all of the capital.
Over the next five years, most people will realize the huge drawbacks to outsourcing: mismatch between expectation and result, longer development cycles, lack of innovative design. Unfortunately, the most efficient programmers (i.e the U.S.) will only have 25% of the market and the most innovative programmers (i.e. the U.S. again) will only have 5% of the market (but have the fattest margins). The cheapest and mediocre programmers (i.e. India) will have 70% of the market. Why? Because cheap matters more than anything else. It's not the only thing that matters, but it is the most important thing.
And you know what happens when all of your political parties suck? A military coup... the most common justification for military coup? Corruption. If you think it can't happen in the US, just think about which branch of government is the only one universally respected by your average American. Yeah, sure they don't know how to spend money, but that might actually be a good thing in the context (i.e. not corrupt).
Obviously, all humanities professors are not idiots. Some of it is valid (note I didn't say true, even less of it is true), but most isn't. Most of them know that most of it is horse shit.
So, why do they do it? Tenure. Publish or perish. Truly original, basic research in the humanities is so rare that they have decided that it isn't possible and make shit up instead. Not only that but the shit has to conform to the dominant style.
It all started with the rise of feminism in academia during the late sixties. Again some of the original feminist works are great and society is a better place because they were written. However instead of accepting that and moving on to other aspects of society the same paradigm of these original works was applied to every conceivable group of people in every conceivable area.
This approach has some validity and occurs in other fields as well (e.g. studying the movements due to gravity of every type of thing), but in the humanities it is usually the case that they are doing something comparable to using a theory of electro-magnetic force to explain the movement of the stars. It's either a clear misapplication of the theory or the explanatory value of the theory in that circumstance is miniscule.
The paradigm? Show how this group could have possibly been oppressed. If you are lucky, for maximum emotional effect, you'll be able to show how the opressed were actually superior to the oppressors.
For a truly wonderful example of this kind of scholarship, read anything by Judith Butler.
Disclaimer: I am not trying to say that there isn't some worthwhile stuff going on, but the demand that professors produce research creates the perfect evironment for pointless and fraudulent research. And that's true for all disciplines.
It all comes back to money. If the universities produce more research, they get more money (e.g. grants, fellowships, etc).
I'd like to be excited about this announcement, but I know it is going be wrapped up in the American flag and served with Apple Pie. I love my country, but nationalism is so Cold War. As usual, that idiot from Texas is going to use this announcement to appeal to all his cowboy friends. BTW, I have nothing against idiots. I just don't think they should be running our country.
The paper was presented to the American Physical Society (http://publish.aps.org/). Their journals only go up to 2000. So even though this news is very old, April 23 2002, you'll have to go to your local library to see the paper.
It is a creative hypothesis. I don't think it is true (look here for some criticism http://olympus.het.brown.edu/pipermail/spr/Week-of -Mon-20031103/015597.html). M Theory has an interesting hypothesis about black holes. They aren't infinitely dense as the theory of relativity would suggest. The core of a black hole cannot be any smaller than the planck scale. Loop quantum gravity would also set a lower limit to the size of the core of a black hole because under LQG space-time itself is quantized. These alternative hypothesis are necessary because the theory of relativity produces infinite results, so called singularities, when trying to do certain calculations. The same problem applies to early states of the universe (e.g. t=0). In fact the development of these new theories of gravity, M theory and LQG, are in part a response to the singularities produced by the theory of relativity.
Since I spend 5 hours a week in the gym, I would buy it. The iPod is durable, but I still don't feel comfortable running with a hard drive strapped to my arm.
I used to drink the equivalent of almost two pots of coffee a day. I now have two medium-large sized cups a day and I feel fine. If you want to quit, switch to tea and then have fewer cups over time. I happen to like coffee so I prefer moderation.
Re:In thermodynamics...
on
Systemantics
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· Score: 1
or... lots will happen but nothing perceptible will be accomplished...
this article clearly suffers from myopia. If the only thing that mattered to a business were coding then the author might have a point, but it's not. It's running a business. To run a business more is required than the production of code (e.g. security, reliability, relevance, etc). The trick to running a company is not producing code. It is getting everyone to go in the same direction, the direction of producing products that people will buy. Often it seems that some people that are clever at producing code think that their cleverness extends outside of their field. It doesn't, necessarily. Get over it.
Yes, administrators can cause a hit to productivity (good ones can actually help productivity), but there are other gains to be had. And any person responsible for planning software development should of course take that into account.
Yes, there are also a lot of administrators who don't know their ass from their elbow, but that is a function of the person not the position. Administrative overhead should be kept to a minimum, of course, but administration is a key component to developing a stable, scalable, mature company.
This article is little more than a libertarian fantasy that just demonstrates why coders need to have administrators (and supervision). It sounds like coders are looking for someone to blame for the whole offshore fiasco. The offshore fiasco is in part due to coders' over-aggrandized opinion of their ability and place in a company as well as the obscene greed of CxOs and shareholders. There are two sides of the issue.
The bottom line is that if coders want to produce code unconstrained by any external source, then they should do it from home on their own time for open source projects or their own projects, but if they want to have a job at a successful business, then they should grow up, increase the scope of their perspective, and learn to play well with others.
Please note, these observations only apply to coders that believe what was written in this article. I have had the privelege of working with many talented, mature, and highly productive coders. I hope they are the norm rather than exception.
he is a little unbalanced. It comes through in the writing and it's not just his smart-ass humor, which was only occassionally funny. Think about it. The whole paper is a work of self-justification in regards to his rejection. I am sure he is a fine guy but I can see why they didn't hire him.
to anyone else? Built in TCP/IP with manageability? Hell, most cable modem users don't have a firewall or know enough to turn off file sharing in windows. And now Phoenix expects them to make sure their BIOS is buttoned up? Obviously I can see the advantages of such a system, but it would be a tough sell trying to get me to believe the good outweighs the potential bad. Most of this stuff can be handled nicely at the OS level anyhow.
I wasn't defending the US, and the US's faults don't justify India's faults. Conversely, I'm tired of hearing that developping countries are blameless in regards to free trade.
I have helped friends who were defrauded find out who the person defrauding them was from info in whois. Sometimes, it is a dead-end, but it is a start. I think this info is very valuable in this case.
OMG, not that! I know this won't get much play here, but I don't care if it's free or not as long as it works. I use the Free software that I do because it is better than Fee software, not because it is free. Shame on me for not being an ideologue.
Slashdot Mirror
Gratned, learning to learn is the most important thing anyone can learn in college and many people do consider college a social event, but it used to be worse. It certainly isn't ideal by a long stretch, but it is better.
I agree with you about the name calling, but just because he calls people names doesn't mean he lacks credibility. To assume so would be inconsistent with your own objection.
The problem with our so-called deomcracry is that we don't get to pick the people for which we can vote. We have an electoral college and our candidates in the primary are chosen by delegates. A certain number of delegates are assigned to individuals in the democratic party. In other words there isn't even a pretense that the nomination is decided by popular vote as in the electoral college.
It's like telling someone you can drink Pepsi or Coke, but no other soft drink. You can hardly blame someone for choosing not to drink any soft drink when those are his options. No, the problem is not with the electorate. The problem is with the electoral system.
Your optimism is admirable, but I'm not sure that this situation is exactly the same as it was for the past 100 years. These jobs have educational requirements. To be honest, education is over-rated. Most people can be trained to do a job they were not educated to do, but usually a college degree is required regardless of its relevance. Maybe people should stop going to college? Maybe we should go back to the good old days when only the wealthy went to college and it was more a social event than an education?
Even if we do have new jobs created, we don't know when they will be created or in what field. In the meantime, people have mortgages to pay and mouths to feed. You admit yourself that we are not good at getting rid of jobs painlessly. Shouldn't we get better at it before we embrace the trend whole-heartedly?
This tendency to speak in generalities and based on long term projections is all well and good, but there are short term needs that need to be addresssed. I'd rather see this long term perspective focus on the problem rather be used to deny that there is a problem.
BTW, a soviet style implosion isn't out of the question. Russia may be the future of America, a country ruled by oligarchs and plutocrats. Unless things change, I'd say it could happen as early as 2025.
I would like to see some more specific numbers... Whenever people start talking about how outsourcing is better for America they immediately jump to the most general numbers they can find. For example, they cite increasing exports or job creation in general. I have a suspicion they look at the general to avoid the ugly, concrete truth, but I can't be sure till I see the numbers.
I would like to see the average period of unemployment for those displaced by outsourcing, the average % difference in income after the period of unemployment, and the average loss of income during the period of unemployment.
Yeah, I realize these averages are still somewhat generalities, but at least they are within context and meaningful. I imagine that the numbers are much worse for people whose job's are outsourced than those who are simply layed off due to a downturn in an industry. At least in a downturn the whole industry isn't being exported.
I think free trade is ultimately a good thing. It lowers our costs, it distributes wealth more evenly to other countries, and it makes the wealthy even wealthier. Of course the down side is that it evicerates the middle and working class. Like I said, I'm ultimately for free trade, but we need to know what kind of pain it causes and we need to have the institutions/programs/etc in place to help relieve some of that pain BEFORE we start embracing free trade.
I'm still on the fence about requiring countries that we want to have free trade agreements with to have a certain level of environmental and labor standards. Afterall, part of the reason the United States was able to get where it is now is because we didn't have to worry about those things early on.
It's only within the last thirty to forty years that the middle class became wealthy enough to care about those kind of things, especially the environment. Of course, if we keep outcourcing work carelessly we won't have a middle class any more. Then the wealthy can roll back the progressive gains of the last 100 years and we can go back to being serfs for those who own all of the capital.
I remember using debug to find copy protection and then using NOP commands to circumvent it...
Over the next five years, most people will realize the huge drawbacks to outsourcing: mismatch between expectation and result, longer development cycles, lack of innovative design. Unfortunately, the most efficient programmers (i.e the U.S.) will only have 25% of the market and the most innovative programmers (i.e. the U.S. again) will only have 5% of the market (but have the fattest margins). The cheapest and mediocre programmers (i.e. India) will have 70% of the market. Why? Because cheap matters more than anything else. It's not the only thing that matters, but it is the most important thing.
And you know what happens when all of your political parties suck? A military coup... the most common justification for military coup? Corruption. If you think it can't happen in the US, just think about which branch of government is the only one universally respected by your average American. Yeah, sure they don't know how to spend money, but that might actually be a good thing in the context (i.e. not corrupt).
61", that's great... but there are bigger... 63" from Samsung... So, what's the big deal?
Obviously, all humanities professors are not idiots. Some of it is valid (note I didn't say true, even less of it is true), but most isn't. Most of them know that most of it is horse shit.
So, why do they do it? Tenure. Publish or perish. Truly original, basic research in the humanities is so rare that they have decided that it isn't possible and make shit up instead. Not only that but the shit has to conform to the dominant style.
It all started with the rise of feminism in academia during the late sixties. Again some of the original feminist works are great and society is a better place because they were written. However instead of accepting that and moving on to other aspects of society the same paradigm of these original works was applied to every conceivable group of people in every conceivable area.
This approach has some validity and occurs in other fields as well (e.g. studying the movements due to gravity of every type of thing), but in the humanities it is usually the case that they are doing something comparable to using a theory of electro-magnetic force to explain the movement of the stars. It's either a clear misapplication of the theory or the explanatory value of the theory in that circumstance is miniscule.
The paradigm? Show how this group could have possibly been oppressed. If you are lucky, for maximum emotional effect, you'll be able to show how the opressed were actually superior to the oppressors.
For a truly wonderful example of this kind of scholarship, read anything by Judith Butler.
Disclaimer: I am not trying to say that there isn't some worthwhile stuff going on, but the demand that professors produce research creates the perfect evironment for pointless and fraudulent research. And that's true for all disciplines.
It all comes back to money. If the universities produce more research, they get more money (e.g. grants, fellowships, etc).
I'd like to be excited about this announcement, but I know it is going be wrapped up in the American flag and served with Apple Pie. I love my country, but nationalism is so Cold War. As usual, that idiot from Texas is going to use this announcement to appeal to all his cowboy friends. BTW, I have nothing against idiots. I just don't think they should be running our country.
I wish I could mod this parent up. It basically sums up everything wrong with Democrats from a democratic perspective. Howard Dean needs to read it.
The paper was presented to the American Physical Society (http://publish.aps.org/). Their journals only go up to 2000. So even though this news is very old, April 23 2002, you'll have to go to your local library to see the paper.
f -Mon-20031103/015597.html).
It is a creative hypothesis. I don't think it is true (look here for some criticism http://olympus.het.brown.edu/pipermail/spr/Week-o
M Theory has an interesting hypothesis about black holes. They aren't infinitely dense as the theory of relativity would suggest. The core of a black hole cannot be any smaller than the planck scale. Loop quantum gravity would also set a lower limit to the size of the core of a black hole because under LQG space-time itself is quantized. These alternative hypothesis are necessary because the theory of relativity produces infinite results, so called singularities, when trying to do certain calculations. The same problem applies to early states of the universe (e.g. t=0). In fact the development of these new theories of gravity, M theory and LQG, are in part a response to the singularities produced by the theory of relativity.
Since I spend 5 hours a week in the gym, I would buy it. The iPod is durable, but I still don't feel comfortable running with a hard drive strapped to my arm.
I used to drink the equivalent of almost two pots of coffee a day. I now have two medium-large sized cups a day and I feel fine. If you want to quit, switch to tea and then have fewer cups over time. I happen to like coffee so I prefer moderation.
or... lots will happen but nothing perceptible will be accomplished...
These points seem to agree pretty well with an article I just read from Fast Company.
h tm l
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.
Reason #6 not shop Wal-Mart? Censorship! E.g. Maxim, etc.
this article clearly suffers from myopia. If the only thing that mattered to a business were coding then the author might have a point, but it's not. It's running a business. To run a business more is required than the production of code (e.g. security, reliability, relevance, etc). The trick to running a company is not producing code. It is getting everyone to go in the same direction, the direction of producing products that people will buy. Often it seems that some people that are clever at producing code think that their cleverness extends outside of their field. It doesn't, necessarily. Get over it.
Yes, administrators can cause a hit to productivity (good ones can actually help productivity), but there are other gains to be had. And any person responsible for planning software development should of course take that into account.
Yes, there are also a lot of administrators who don't know their ass from their elbow, but that is a function of the person not the position. Administrative overhead should be kept to a minimum, of course, but administration is a key component to developing a stable, scalable, mature company.
This article is little more than a libertarian fantasy that just demonstrates why coders need to have administrators (and supervision). It sounds like coders are looking for someone to blame for the whole offshore fiasco. The offshore fiasco is in part due to coders' over-aggrandized opinion of their ability and place in a company as well as the obscene greed of CxOs and shareholders. There are two sides of the issue.
The bottom line is that if coders want to produce code unconstrained by any external source, then they should do it from home on their own time for open source projects or their own projects, but if they want to have a job at a successful business, then they should grow up, increase the scope of their perspective, and learn to play well with others.
Please note, these observations only apply to coders that believe what was written in this article. I have had the privelege of working with many talented, mature, and highly productive coders. I hope they are the norm rather than exception.
he is a little unbalanced. It comes through in the writing and it's not just his smart-ass humor, which was only occassionally funny. Think about it. The whole paper is a work of self-justification in regards to his rejection. I am sure he is a fine guy but I can see why they didn't hire him.
I prefer re-invention myself. You want the old series? Buy the boxed set.
to anyone else? Built in TCP/IP with manageability? Hell, most cable modem users don't have a firewall or know enough to turn off file sharing in windows. And now Phoenix expects them to make sure their BIOS is buttoned up? Obviously I can see the advantages of such a system, but it would be a tough sell trying to get me to believe the good outweighs the potential bad. Most of this stuff can be handled nicely at the OS level anyhow.
I wasn't defending the US, and the US's faults don't justify India's faults. Conversely, I'm tired of hearing that developping countries are blameless in regards to free trade.
I have helped friends who were defrauded find out who the person defrauding them was from info in whois. Sometimes, it is a dead-end, but it is a start. I think this info is very valuable in this case.
India always wants things both ways... see trade liberalization agreements.
m ?s tory_id=2049618
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cf
Thank goodness, I never claimed to be a pragmatist either, otherwise I'd be subject to this withering criticism.
OMG, not that! I know this won't get much play here, but I don't care if it's free or not as long as it works. I use the Free software that I do because it is better than Fee software, not because it is free. Shame on me for not being an ideologue.