Pick the H1B candidates according to salary. The people with the highest salaries get H1Bs first. The market will ensure that H1B's go to the candidates most in demand. Spread the cap over every month, with a backlog. This way, companies know the minimum that has to be paid as salary to get a H1B employee.
Also IMO, a lot of this demand is drive by the Indian IT companies - TCS, Infy, Wipro, etc. They have HR teams who apply for as many of their employees as might be required to go onsite in the next year. And since a normal company can't usually afford to apply for, and hire, a person 5 months ahead of his possible entry into the US, the Indian IT companies are making hay.
There are also students who are on their OPT who can apply for a H1B and work on their OPT until they get their H1Bs. These two'd probably be the biggest sets of applicants.
This leaves a lot of companies in the US which might like to bring someone in on a H1 in an impossible situation.
I'm an Indian, in India, and not going for a H1 any time soon. But I've seen a lot of my friends having problems because of H1. And the visa situation and general atmosphere after 9/11 was partially what made me come back after my MS.
Re:Any advantages over having only one connector?
on
eSATA Connectors
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· Score: 1
The shielding is not only to prevent interference *into* the cable, it's also to prevent the cable from generating interference for other devices. See CE certification and EMI certification etc.
At 3GHz, it'll make a very nice antenna out of any wire - the shielding is a necessity for certification.
Why do people use IE? Mostly because of Intranet sites which server up IE only content and work badly or not-at-all with other browsers. How 'bout an IE plugin which opens only Intranet/trusted sites in IE and opens all else in an external safe browser? Or is this unlikely to be useful?
Could you point me out to the translation of the Quran that you are quoting from? I've been wanting to read the Quran or some kind of annotated version for a while now, and if I can find the version you're referring to it'd be great.
We could all do with a bit of (correct) knowledge about other cultures.
I'm thinking with the reasonable power of current machines plus half a gig or more of RAM, a base VM of Windows+all applications, with daily or weekly revert to the stored copy. Data can be stored on a separate drive. New applications will be wiped out automatically, clean registry, etc.
This might be easier and cheaper (in time and money) than any other solution, especially given that VMWare has a free version. Given one of the newer Intel processors with hardware virtualization support, Xen + a windows VM might also be a good idea.
Just make it clear that no data should be stored on C:/.. or make it small enough that no data can be stored on C. Any new applications will need to be on a clean VM + install and 'snapshotting' of the new state.
This could make a good Linux distro - just pop in a windows CD ala BootStrap, create your indelible Windows VM and enjoy more security and peace of mind. User gets Windows, you can administer remotely via Linux and VMware/Xen.
unique:
1. Being the only one of its kind: the unique existing example of Donne's handwriting.
2. Without an equal or equivalent; unparalleled.
3. a) Characteristic of a particular category, condition, or locality: a problem unique to coastal areas.
b) Informal. Unusual; extraordinary: spoke with a unique accent.
ubiquitous: Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent: "plodded through the shadows fruitlessly like an ubiquitous spook" (Joseph Heller).
Care to show some evidence that "degrees of uniqueness" is a generally accepted formulation? As someone else has pointed out, you seem to be confusing 'rare' with unique.
And the argument that since ubiquitous is the opposite and "degrees of ubiquity" exist, therefore "degrees of uniqueness" exist is incorrect.
On your scale, Rs 17 is a meal at a shack. I've eaten meals for Rs.10 this year at decent places.
Your scale seems to be tilted to the upper-middle class. If you go out to a semi-rural area the costs fall even further. Breakfast (4idlis+tea) at Rs. 6. An entire house for Rs. 1500 a month.
There are people who live on salaries an order of magnitude less than yours. And they're not on the streets. This is not to say that the costs you project are incorrect. Merely to say that they are just on a higher scale than the lowest scale here.
Do you think that the breadth of what the colonists did was plunder? They destroyed the entire support structure that had developed over centuries. Their ideas of land ownership destroyed the previously self-supporting villages. King Leopold of Belgium practically destroyed the Congo. They destroyed industry and banned capital goods production in the colonies. The early industries in Europe were doing roaring business importing raw materials and exporting finished goods. Do you think that no Indians could create factories in India? There were laws and English guns which prevented Indians from starting factories.
Why do you think Indian laws still make it difficult to start capital-intensive, manufacturing industries? Because they are based on 200 years of British (mis)rule when any form of local mechanised industry was severely frustrated. Apart from this, even handloom and other handicrafts were systematically destroyed. In one instance, the British cut off the thumbs of all the master weavers of a particular area because the hand-woven cloth they produced was better than the machine woven imports.
The colonists set back the human development of the colonised nations by at least a century. I am blaming the dead and gone colonialists for having put us through all that misery. I am not sitting here doing just that though. We are working to get ourselves out of the mess that we were left in.
You may have read a version of history written by the victors, where the colonists were bringing civilization to 'tribals' who had no culture and no society.
That could not be further from the truth.
I completely agree that our population and management are the problems now and no return of wealth (without interest at least) is going to solve our problems. But it helps to understand that our problems were not all self-inflicted. And the wealth of the Western nations is not all clean.
I think you'll have to read and realize just how much wealth was moved from India to the UK. Much of the 'old wealth' was created on the backs of fortunes made from the East India trading company for instance.
The destruction of the old-economy of the colonial countries lead to some of the worst human rights and human life destruction ever. From having no famine before British rule, to famines every decade. From having self-sustaining villages to desolate wasteland.
On the other hand, we did learn some of the values of science and freedom. Exposure to western modes of thought have taught us to appreciate and value the millenia old philosophies we have. We have had a lesson taught to us that we will remember - we will not be imperialist for a very long time.
I wouldn't like a return to the 'good old days' though. We have learnt a lot, and we need to go forward with a good blend of Western rationalism and pragmatism, and Eastern philosophy and attitude to life.
The facts that the author of the article presents are absolutely true. There can be no question that life in India is miserable for a vast number of people, in cities, towns, and villages. Communal and caste-based tensions do exist in many places.
There is also no easy way out. Every $ or Rs. that is spent in India helps. Every cent of Investment or export by India helps. Much of it trickles down to the poorest in the cities and villages.
What's needed is an increase in literacy and increase in jobs. Neither of these are short-term, easily achievable goals.
Manufacturing must increase - providing opportunities to semi-skilled workers. Efficiency must increase, allowing for cheaper goods and trickling down to more profits for the millions of small businesses. Farm efficiencies must increase - through better processes or crops. Farmers must get a bigger share of the final price.
While all these are very important issues, the sheer size of India prevents easy action on any of them. We will get out of this mess, it will take time and money.
The author seems to know a lot of Indians who have settled abroad. I know a lot of Indians who've come back or are planning to do so very soon. They're bringing investment with them, they're bringing the contacts and business knowledge that will help them serve customers in the US or Europe. And they will each bring jobs for a few more people.
If the only way we can earn the money is through taking the high-tech jobs of Western countries we're not going to say no. If we can earn money by designing and launching satellites for small developing countries, we're going to do that too. If we can earn money by taking every service job in the US or Europe that's up for grabs, well, we're going to do that too.
India may become the back-office for the rest of the world, we'll still have people left to do other things. India may end up doing most of the unwanted service jobs for the rest of the world. India may do very high-technology services for other countries. That's fine too, because a billion people need a billion different things to do.
The West has drained an incredible amount of wealth from India/China/Africa/America and used it to kick-start their own economies. Two hundred years of plundering cannot be undone in a few dozen years. We're on our way back up, and we'll get there.
All of us have not fallen to the myth of Western superiority in economics due to any inherent advantages. We know what the Western economies owe the rest of world. We don't have the option of plundering other countries' natural resources or enslaving millions of Africans, Indians or Chinese people. We have to get out of this hole with only our own resources. And if it's going to take a century, then we're going to take a century. You can either help us, or hinder us.
It's not a lot. 40*30 = Rs. 1200 a month in wages. Living in a slum, single-room thatched hut rent Rs. 150p.m. The cheapest rice(non-PDS) is about Rs. 5 a kg. Family of four would need about 20kg = Rs. 100 minimum. Other groceries and provisions are also expensive. Depending on the rent, the family may get its nutrition-needs fulfilled. If the parent drinks, then most of this would go for that, meaning almost certain malnutrition.
Kerosene is heavily subsidised and is the usual cooking fuel.
Life would be possible on a $ a day in India. But with not much to look forward to. Education for the next generation would be possible, but low quality with not much possibility of escape without outside help.
At no point of time in recent Indian history has there been a fiscal position in the central government where Indian health/education/shelter issues could be wiped out simply by the government allocating the resources correctly. I think you may be underestimating the level of poverty in India.
You must understand that the resources available to the government are quite small in comparison to the number of things to do. One choice was to lead in education - hoping that technological advances would help alleviate poverty and bring the standard of living up. That's happening - but it'll take generations.
Building out of our own resources - now that's quite funny. What do you think America and the West built their fortunes out of in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries? Colonialism and trade. Buying Indian raw materials, processing them and selling them back at huge profits, while using the army and laws to prevent factories in India. While the USA was not a participant in India, it did take over the lands of the native population - colonialism of a different kind.
We did try for a very long time, ~40 years, to bootstrap ourselves without outside resources. Didn't work. We realised it when we were very close to being bankrupt. We had to change and we did. We followed what the West said - 'Free trade, remove barriers,...' Now, when we are finally reaping some of those benefits, and we actually have the intellectual and financial capital to take on your work, individuals are being affected in the US, and you who have a voice, make a noise.
Thing is you seem to be looking for dichotomies -.NET programmers don't bring health or education or shelter, so there's no need for them. You refuse to see the ripple effects of this wealth and education. My grandmother stitched clothes for a living. My grandfather couldn't finish school, joined the railways, and worked his way up. Today, I personally know of an engineer who is the first educated member of his family - he probably supports an extended family of 10 - he'll make sure his family gets educated.
Are inequities increasing? Sure, it's not all good. Is there a better way of increasing the standard of living for more people? Answer that, and you'll be God for a billion people.
And we are using this advanced tech to build better things for ourselves - when our local market really takes off, it's in the infant stages so far - YOUR companies will be fighting for access to our markets. I hope that you'll be able to make money off of that.
We will depend on the American and other first-world markets to bootstrap. Once we do, we will have enough of a local market that we will be able to scale more rapidly. See telecom in Japan or South Korea for an example.
Sure Tom. Of *course* India is a third-world country. India is *also* a first-world country in some areas. And India NEEDS to have first-world technology.
You seem to believe that we chose to forgo health, education, housing, and infrastructure *just* so that we could compete better with the first-world countries. I wish that were true. Then we'd just shoot those idiots and chose health, education, housing, and infrastructure and be ready for our first-world experience.
Get a grip. The only way that India is going to get out of the mess that the British left behind (we didn't help much by closing out economy for 40 years, but that's a tale for another day, and hind-sight is 20/20), is with education for the masses, and jobs for those who are capable.
How do we bootstrap this? We can either get investments from outside (we're not getting as much as China though), or we can 'steal your jobs' and make money out of that. How can some of us 'steal your jobs' if we don't have sufficient education? For that matter, a country of a billion people needs a lot of high-tech equipment, just to run the place. You think 1000MW power plants get created on their own? Or perhaps you suggest we just import those? With what money?
There's a Govt. owned telecom manufacturer called CDoT. Before they started making telecom switches, the private MNC's were charging an arm and a leg - India could not afford that cost. Once CDoT started making the switches here - prices dropped dramatically, overnight.
High-tech is needed for things to be more efficient, for us to be able to afford it. Think about governance and the problem of distributing information to all the people. E-governance web services and high-tech networking infrastructure, will hopefully make this cheaper, easier, and better. Who's going to set this up for us? Perhaps we need to get IBM to do it for us with American workers?
You seem to believe that we have made a conscious choice to stay poor and keep our labor costs low. We *will* improve the quality of life of all our 1 billion people - it's not something that can happen overnight. It's not something that'll happen in a decade.
Tom, you can stay with your opinion that we're in a hell-hole we dug out of choice. Nothing I say can lead you out of that. All I can say is that's absolutely not the truth, and about as far from the truth as one can imagine.
But we will get out. And if getting out requires a few jobs lost, a reduction in the standard of living, higher prices for oil/energy, for some first-world countries with a few tenths of our population - then we're not going to cry over it.
Yeah! Why would we want to buy Coca-Cola, Nike, or Mattel? Oh hey, perhaps we shouldn't use any IBM or Sun products because they're made by an American company. And Boeing, Ford, GM and Chrysler can go to hell too!
An Indian. *****
Grow the hell up. Web-services can be anywhere and cater to anyone (speed of light/latency permitting). And who's to say none of the 'founding executives' are Indian? And you think only the blessed United States is in need of web-services?
And when you're starting your own company, you may find you can provide services at a lower cost if you base yourself out of India (or China, or...), and that's what you need to get into the market. And an Indian can write just as good LAMP or.NET code as anyone else.
And when you do realize this, I hope you remember to get some equity and a piece of the *rich cronies'* pie! And yeah, life's pretty good even in our part of the world.
So provide nuclear power plants with advanced designs to India and China, and all other countries. These should not create anywhere as much pollution. And should be able to provide just as much power.
That's exactly what India and China are trying to do BTW. Pebble-bed reactors (China), AHWR, Breeder reactors (India), are all being done because the West does not share technology and India and China need the power badly.
There are solutions, they may affect preconceived notions on the unsuitability of nuclear power.
For making sure the vmware.tgz doesn't screw with the package management use checkinstall - at the very least you'll have the record of what files are installed and you can do a clean uninstall.
I don't actually use this phone. But right now, this is probably the most popular phone in India - it's dirt cheap, has a very simple UI, does nothing more than you ask (except for a LED flash-light), has good battery life, is nearly indestructible and is quite slim and small. It's also reasonably water-proof.
I think the problem in the US is the plethora of standards. If you're going with Verizon or Nextel for instance, you're severely limited in your choice of handsets. Whereas in the rest of the world, with GSM, you have a very very large number of choices.
Panasonic makes the GD55, which is one of the tiniest phones I've ever seen. For a look at what's available go to any European cellphone website, or univercell.in which is an Indian reseller of mobile phones.
Another advantage is the very large second-hand market, which means that you can get previous generation phones with a lower feature-set, dirt-cheap.
As an Indian, trying to work out some remote management stuff, I'd say you're mostly right on the IPSec part - which is why we're using OpenVPN site-to-site tunnels. Much easier to setup and ensure security.
And even though we're in India, we've heard of ssh, and OpenSSH. We've even heard of OpenBSD, cue *shock*, *horror*.
Managing things over the VPN --> no DMZ accessible login services (other than ssh, openVPN).
RRD and SNMP would be stored locally on-site. The only time it would get to us would be when we actually need to check something. So no, the bandwidth usage is not going to be that high.
And we don't send passwords via plain-text email, we either call the passwords in through the phone or since we're in through the VPN anyway, setup local secure communication and use that.
Seriously, we're not idiots, we read/., we know what technologies are available, and we're not afraid of using those technologies.
Next step is Xen and virtualisation for some of what we do. Oh, I'm in an Indian startup, and we're trying to mainly target the Indian market. Any spill-over into the American/European market will be additional revenue. Also, given the cost structures we are targetting here, there will be no company in the US which can compete with us - on cost. And whatever is done technologically, it will take us but 6 months to catch up. Assuming of course we haven't done it already.
Slashdot Mirror
Pick the H1B candidates according to salary. The people with the highest salaries get H1Bs first. The market will ensure that H1B's go to the candidates most in demand. Spread the cap over every month, with a backlog. This way, companies know the minimum that has to be paid as salary to get a H1B employee.
Also IMO, a lot of this demand is drive by the Indian IT companies - TCS, Infy, Wipro, etc. They have HR teams who apply for as many of their employees as might be required to go onsite in the next year. And since a normal company can't usually afford to apply for, and hire, a person 5 months ahead of his possible entry into the US, the Indian IT companies are making hay.
There are also students who are on their OPT who can apply for a H1B and work on their OPT until they get their H1Bs. These two'd probably be the biggest sets of applicants.
This leaves a lot of companies in the US which might like to bring someone in on a H1 in an impossible situation.
I'm an Indian, in India, and not going for a H1 any time soon. But I've seen a lot of my friends having problems because of H1. And the visa situation and general atmosphere after 9/11 was partially what made me come back after my MS.
The shielding is not only to prevent interference *into* the cable, it's also to prevent the cable from generating interference for other devices. See CE certification and EMI certification etc.
At 3GHz, it'll make a very nice antenna out of any wire - the shielding is a necessity for certification.
Citation please? Thanks.
Or whatever they are called.
Why do people use IE? Mostly because of Intranet sites which server up IE only content and work badly or not-at-all with other browsers. How 'bout an IE plugin which opens only Intranet/trusted sites in IE and opens all else in an external safe browser? Or is this unlikely to be useful?
DTrace will be in OS X.5 among other BSD's. Apparently there's a nice front-end too.
Could you point me out to the translation of the Quran that you are quoting from? I've been wanting to read the Quran or some kind of annotated version for a while now, and if I can find the version you're referring to it'd be great.
We could all do with a bit of (correct) knowledge about other cultures.
Thanks.
As I read somewhere,
"The problem with walking on water is that people expect you to go across the river to get milk the next morning."
If anyone can find the exact quote/attribution it'd be great.
I'm thinking with the reasonable power of current machines plus half a gig or more of RAM, a base VM of Windows+all applications, with daily or weekly revert to the stored copy. Data can be stored on a separate drive. New applications will be wiped out automatically, clean registry, etc.
This might be easier and cheaper (in time and money) than any other solution, especially given that VMWare has a free version. Given one of the newer Intel processors with hardware virtualization support, Xen + a windows VM might also be a good idea.
Just make it clear that no data should be stored on C:/.. or make it small enough that no data can be stored on C. Any new applications will need to be on a clean VM + install and 'snapshotting' of the new state.
This could make a good Linux distro - just pop in a windows CD ala BootStrap, create your indelible Windows VM and enjoy more security and peace of mind. User gets Windows, you can administer remotely via Linux and VMware/Xen.
unique:
1. Being the only one of its kind: the unique existing example of Donne's handwriting.
2. Without an equal or equivalent; unparalleled.
3. a) Characteristic of a particular category, condition, or locality: a problem unique to coastal areas.
b) Informal. Unusual; extraordinary: spoke with a unique accent.
ubiquitous:
Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent: "plodded through the shadows fruitlessly like an ubiquitous spook" (Joseph Heller).
Care to show some evidence that "degrees of uniqueness" is a generally accepted formulation? As someone else has pointed out, you seem to be confusing 'rare' with unique.
And the argument that since ubiquitous is the opposite and "degrees of ubiquity" exist, therefore "degrees of uniqueness" exist is incorrect.
Very interesting. Please post some link or reference please.
I believe it was not once in the bottom 10% and you're out. People did get a couple of tries, and circumstances were taken into account.
There is India and there are India's.
On your scale, Rs 17 is a meal at a shack. I've eaten meals for Rs.10 this year at decent places.
Your scale seems to be tilted to the upper-middle class. If you go out to a semi-rural area the costs fall even further. Breakfast (4idlis+tea) at Rs. 6. An entire house for Rs. 1500 a month.
There are people who live on salaries an order of magnitude less than yours. And they're not on the streets. This is not to say that the costs you project are incorrect. Merely to say that they are just on a higher scale than the lowest scale here.
Do you think that the breadth of what the colonists did was plunder? They destroyed the entire support structure that had developed over centuries. Their ideas of land ownership destroyed the previously self-supporting villages. King Leopold of Belgium practically destroyed the Congo. They destroyed industry and banned capital goods production in the colonies. The early industries in Europe were doing roaring business importing raw materials and exporting finished goods. Do you think that no Indians could create factories in India? There were laws and English guns which prevented Indians from starting factories.
Why do you think Indian laws still make it difficult to start capital-intensive, manufacturing industries? Because they are based on 200 years of British (mis)rule when any form of local mechanised industry was severely frustrated. Apart from this, even handloom and other handicrafts were systematically destroyed. In one instance, the British cut off the thumbs of all the master weavers of a particular area because the hand-woven cloth they produced was better than the machine woven imports.
The colonists set back the human development of the colonised nations by at least a century. I am blaming the dead and gone colonialists for having put us through all that misery. I am not sitting here doing just that though. We are working to get ourselves out of the mess that we were left in.
You may have read a version of history written by the victors, where the colonists were bringing civilization to 'tribals' who had no culture and no society.
That could not be further from the truth.
I completely agree that our population and management are the problems now and no return of wealth (without interest at least) is going to solve our problems. But it helps to understand that our problems were not all self-inflicted. And the wealth of the Western nations is not all clean.
You're right, it's the H2 visa specifically referred to as temporary work permit. I was alluding to the general abuse of H1 like visas.
I think you'll have to read and realize just how much wealth was moved from India to the UK. Much of the 'old wealth' was created on the backs of fortunes made from the East India trading company for instance.
The destruction of the old-economy of the colonial countries lead to some of the worst human rights and human life destruction ever. From having no famine before British rule, to famines every decade. From having self-sustaining villages to desolate wasteland.
On the other hand, we did learn some of the values of science and freedom. Exposure to western modes of thought have taught us to appreciate and value the millenia old philosophies we have. We have had a lesson taught to us that we will remember - we will not be imperialist for a very long time.
I wouldn't like a return to the 'good old days' though. We have learnt a lot, and we need to go forward with a good blend of Western rationalism and pragmatism, and Eastern philosophy and attitude to life.
http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/04/stories/2006070407 171000.htm
Now you know the H1 program is really screwed-up.
The facts that the author of the article presents are absolutely true. There can be no question that life in India is miserable for a vast number of people, in cities, towns, and villages. Communal and caste-based tensions do exist in many places.
There is also no easy way out. Every $ or Rs. that is spent in India helps. Every cent of Investment or export by India helps. Much of it trickles down to the poorest in the cities and villages.
What's needed is an increase in literacy and increase in jobs. Neither of these are short-term, easily achievable goals.
Manufacturing must increase - providing opportunities to semi-skilled workers. Efficiency must increase, allowing for cheaper goods and trickling down to more profits for the millions of small businesses. Farm efficiencies must increase - through better processes or crops. Farmers must get a bigger share of the final price.
While all these are very important issues, the sheer size of India prevents easy action on any of them. We will get out of this mess, it will take time and money.
The author seems to know a lot of Indians who have settled abroad. I know a lot of Indians who've come back or are planning to do so very soon. They're bringing investment with them, they're bringing the contacts and business knowledge that will help them serve customers in the US or Europe. And they will each bring jobs for a few more people.
If the only way we can earn the money is through taking the high-tech jobs of Western countries we're not going to say no. If we can earn money by designing and launching satellites for small developing countries, we're going to do that too. If we can earn money by taking every service job in the US or Europe that's up for grabs, well, we're going to do that too.
India may become the back-office for the rest of the world, we'll still have people left to do other things. India may end up doing most of the unwanted service jobs for the rest of the world. India may do very high-technology services for other countries. That's fine too, because a billion people need a billion different things to do.
The West has drained an incredible amount of wealth from India/China/Africa/America and used it to kick-start their own economies. Two hundred years of plundering cannot be undone in a few dozen years. We're on our way back up, and we'll get there.
All of us have not fallen to the myth of Western superiority in economics due to any inherent advantages. We know what the Western economies owe the rest of world. We don't have the option of plundering other countries' natural resources or enslaving millions of Africans, Indians or Chinese people. We have to get out of this hole with only our own resources. And if it's going to take a century, then we're going to take a century. You can either help us, or hinder us.
It's not a lot. 40*30 = Rs. 1200 a month in wages. Living in a slum, single-room thatched hut rent Rs. 150p.m. The cheapest rice(non-PDS) is about Rs. 5 a kg. Family of four would need about 20kg = Rs. 100 minimum. Other groceries and provisions are also expensive. Depending on the rent, the family may get its nutrition-needs fulfilled. If the parent drinks, then most of this would go for that, meaning almost certain malnutrition.
Kerosene is heavily subsidised and is the usual cooking fuel.
Life would be possible on a $ a day in India. But with not much to look forward to. Education for the next generation would be possible, but low quality with not much possibility of escape without outside help.
Sorry Tim, before my morning tea.
...' Now, when we are finally reaping some of those benefits, and we actually have the intellectual and financial capital to take on your work, individuals are being affected in the US, and you who have a voice, make a noise.
.NET programmers don't bring health or education or shelter, so there's no need for them. You refuse to see the ripple effects of this wealth and education. My grandmother stitched clothes for a living. My grandfather couldn't finish school, joined the railways, and worked his way up. Today, I personally know of an engineer who is the first educated member of his family - he probably supports an extended family of 10 - he'll make sure his family gets educated.
At no point of time in recent Indian history has there been a fiscal position in the central government where Indian health/education/shelter issues could be wiped out simply by the government allocating the resources correctly. I think you may be underestimating the level of poverty in India.
You must understand that the resources available to the government are quite small in comparison to the number of things to do. One choice was to lead in education - hoping that technological advances would help alleviate poverty and bring the standard of living up. That's happening - but it'll take generations.
Building out of our own resources - now that's quite funny. What do you think America and the West built their fortunes out of in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries? Colonialism and trade. Buying Indian raw materials, processing them and selling them back at huge profits, while using the army and laws to prevent factories in India. While the USA was not a participant in India, it did take over the lands of the native population - colonialism of a different kind.
We did try for a very long time, ~40 years, to bootstrap ourselves without outside resources. Didn't work. We realised it when we were very close to being bankrupt. We had to change and we did. We followed what the West said - 'Free trade, remove barriers,
Thing is you seem to be looking for dichotomies -
Are inequities increasing? Sure, it's not all good. Is there a better way of increasing the standard of living for more people? Answer that, and you'll be God for a billion people.
And we are using this advanced tech to build better things for ourselves - when our local market really takes off, it's in the infant stages so far - YOUR companies will be fighting for access to our markets. I hope that you'll be able to make money off of that.
We will depend on the American and other first-world markets to bootstrap. Once we do, we will have enough of a local market that we will be able to scale more rapidly. See telecom in Japan or South Korea for an example.
Have fun!
Sure Tom. Of *course* India is a third-world country. India is *also* a first-world country in some areas. And India NEEDS to have first-world technology.
You seem to believe that we chose to forgo health, education, housing, and infrastructure *just* so that we could compete better with the first-world countries. I wish that were true. Then we'd just shoot those idiots and chose health, education, housing, and infrastructure and be ready for our first-world experience.
Get a grip. The only way that India is going to get out of the mess that the British left behind (we didn't help much by closing out economy for 40 years, but that's a tale for another day, and hind-sight is 20/20), is with education for the masses, and jobs for those who are capable.
How do we bootstrap this? We can either get investments from outside (we're not getting as much as China though), or we can 'steal your jobs' and make money out of that. How can some of us 'steal your jobs' if we don't have sufficient education? For that matter, a country of a billion people needs a lot of high-tech equipment, just to run the place. You think 1000MW power plants get created on their own? Or perhaps you suggest we just import those? With what money?
There's a Govt. owned telecom manufacturer called CDoT. Before they started making telecom switches, the private MNC's were charging an arm and a leg - India could not afford that cost. Once CDoT started making the switches here - prices dropped dramatically, overnight.
High-tech is needed for things to be more efficient, for us to be able to afford it. Think about governance and the problem of distributing information to all the people. E-governance web services and high-tech networking infrastructure, will hopefully make this cheaper, easier, and better. Who's going to set this up for us? Perhaps we need to get IBM to do it for us with American workers?
You seem to believe that we have made a conscious choice to stay poor and keep our labor costs low. We *will* improve the quality of life of all our 1 billion people - it's not something that can happen overnight. It's not something that'll happen in a decade.
Tom, you can stay with your opinion that we're in a hell-hole we dug out of choice. Nothing I say can lead you out of that. All I can say is that's absolutely not the truth, and about as far from the truth as one can imagine.
But we will get out. And if getting out requires a few jobs lost, a reduction in the standard of living, higher prices for oil/energy, for some first-world countries with a few tenths of our population - then we're not going to cry over it.
Yeah! Why would we want to buy Coca-Cola, Nike, or Mattel? Oh hey, perhaps we shouldn't use any IBM or Sun products because they're made by an American company. And Boeing, Ford, GM and Chrysler can go to hell too!
...), and that's what you need to get into the market. And an Indian can write just as good LAMP or .NET code as anyone else.
An Indian.
*****
Grow the hell up. Web-services can be anywhere and cater to anyone (speed of light/latency permitting). And who's to say none of the 'founding executives' are Indian? And you think only the blessed United States is in need of web-services?
And when you're starting your own company, you may find you can provide services at a lower cost if you base yourself out of India (or China, or
And when you do realize this, I hope you remember to get some equity and a piece of the *rich cronies'* pie! And yeah, life's pretty good even in our part of the world.
Have fun!
So provide nuclear power plants with advanced designs to India and China, and all other countries. These should not create anywhere as much pollution. And should be able to provide just as much power.
That's exactly what India and China are trying to do BTW. Pebble-bed reactors (China), AHWR, Breeder reactors (India), are all being done because the West does not share technology and India and China need the power badly.
There are solutions, they may affect preconceived notions on the unsuitability of nuclear power.
For making sure the vmware .tgz doesn't screw with the package management use checkinstall - at the very least you'll have the record of what files are installed and you can do a clean uninstall.
sudo apt-get install checkinstall
cd vmware
checkinstall install
I don't actually use this phone. But right now, this is probably the most popular phone in India - it's dirt cheap, has a very simple UI, does nothing more than you ask (except for a LED flash-light), has good battery life, is nearly indestructible and is quite slim and small. It's also reasonably water-proof.
I think the problem in the US is the plethora of standards. If you're going with Verizon or Nextel for instance, you're severely limited in your choice of handsets. Whereas in the rest of the world, with GSM, you have a very very large number of choices.
Panasonic makes the GD55, which is one of the tiniest phones I've ever seen. For a look at what's available go to any European cellphone website, or univercell.in which is an Indian reseller of mobile phones.
Another advantage is the very large second-hand market, which means that you can get previous generation phones with a lower feature-set, dirt-cheap.
As an Indian, trying to work out some remote management stuff, I'd say you're mostly right on the IPSec part - which is why we're using OpenVPN site-to-site tunnels. Much easier to setup and ensure security.
/., we know what technologies are available, and we're not afraid of using those technologies.
And even though we're in India, we've heard of ssh, and OpenSSH. We've even heard of OpenBSD, cue *shock*, *horror*.
Managing things over the VPN --> no DMZ accessible login services (other than ssh, openVPN).
RRD and SNMP would be stored locally on-site. The only time it would get to us would be when we actually need to check something. So no, the bandwidth usage is not going to be that high.
And we don't send passwords via plain-text email, we either call the passwords in through the phone or since we're in through the VPN anyway, setup local secure communication and use that.
Seriously, we're not idiots, we read
Next step is Xen and virtualisation for some of what we do. Oh, I'm in an Indian startup, and we're trying to mainly target the Indian market. Any spill-over into the American/European market will be additional revenue. Also, given the cost structures we are targetting here, there will be no company in the US which can compete with us - on cost. And whatever is done technologically, it will take us but 6 months to catch up. Assuming of course we haven't done it already.
Have fun!