I have been a train traveler for more than three decades. I have used extensively four networks - (one of the biggest) Indian Railway, Amtrak, Japan Rail and China Railway.
I feel the marginal improvement of 40 minutes via a new maglev line for 280KM costing $100 billion is sort of a boondoggle project...and may be a vanity project. The Shinkansen aka Bullet trains are already a costly mode of transportation, tickets frequently costing as much as a regular flight ticket. For the 40 minutes of saving in travel time what will be the hike in ticket price for a project costing $100 billion?
The other end of the equation is Indian Railway - frequently derided as slow, archaic, unsafe etc. by armchair analysts who has never set foot in a train.
A few weeks back I traveled 1800 KM, point to point on a second class ticket which took 22 hours and cost Rs 800 ~ $12 on an Indian train. The ticket was booked online, I produced only a confirmation text message (the website of Indian Railway has improved a lot and is better than AMTRAK.) The summer heat made for a roasting day, but it was safe - probably the cheapest and safest option point to point anywhere in the world. (Indian Railways are super safe compared to driving in an Indian road.)
The same travel will take may be six hours on a high speed line, but will cost $120 or more - which is what a flight ticket will cost in that sector. A majority of Indians who travel by trains will not be able to afford an extra zero in their ticket. (This is what the current proponents of high speed train travel in India ignore or do not understand.)
A version of the above exists for developing countries too...a few months back I was traveling between Washington and Philadelphia on AMTRAK. Only the wealthy - or a professional who gets reimbursed via his office - can afford an ACELA...the tickets were close to $100. Luckily there were enough "Northeast Regionals" for $40 - comfortable and faster than a Greyhound and only $10 more.
What a country like America requires is (arguably) a much more denser railway network (not as slow as the Indian network) but not necessarily a super high speed network where a majority of the population - the lower class, the lower middle class and even the middle class - is priced out. We always forget Japan Railway and China Railway has enough regular trains which are slightly slower but cheaper.
May be I am wrong...automobiles are the preferred mode of commute and the drop in oil prices means flight tickets - and driving - will stay cheaper. So the age of trains in US may be over, purely for economic reasons.
The situation has changed in most urban centers of India as far as auto-rickshaws are concerned. Most have electronic meters which are resistant to tampering.
About policemen owning auto-rickshaws - you may find some outlier cases in certain areas of India, but the way you generalize a whole country is illogical and untrue.
There are enough problems in India...but there is no need to exaggerate or generalize such a vast country in broad strokes.
Feinstein, the late senator Ted Stevens (Internet is through tubes) are senior citizens who are behind the times when it comes to technology. They may not be able to comprehend "internet" not because they are stupid, but because its a truly radical idea which is impossible to fathom for the many who did not grow up with it. This is one of the reasons you still have senators or congress members - mostly old - who does not use even email.
Recently Indian government tried to ban the documentary "India's daughter." The Indian home minister is a seventy plus Rajnath Singh. His first reaction is to "ban" the documentary. He knows "ban" worked in the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies.
The explanation is that there is no 'plausible explanation'.
Bihar is THE poorest state in India by many metrics. The way out of poverty and squalor for a majority is getting a good score in the Secondary School leaving exams - or minimum pass the damn exam - where you qualify for state / central recruitment, military, admissions to college and so on.
Just like BRICS, India got BIMARU states - Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh to signify 'sick' states - BIMARU in Hindi means 'unhealthy condition'. Think of a BIMARU state as Appalachia or Louisana, but more downtrodden and poor.
Here is an anecdote from my uncle - who did his MSc in Physics way back in the late 1980's from Kanpur, a big city in Bihar's neighboring state Uttar Pradesh - another basket case. The college he studied is DAV College, Kanpur, next to the big cricket stadium Green Park.
During the exams students were three types of service by the local strongmen - mostly wannabe politicians, with support from the caste based political parties...the cheapest tier will allow you to copy from your notes during the exams. The middle tier will allow you to write the exam from your hostel room. The topmost tier they will find someone else who is an expert in the subject to write the exam for you.
These wannabe politicians later represent the state and its constituents in the local and central governments. And now you can understand where are how the criminality of the typical North Indian caste based politician comes from....its inbred. Only the toughest and the most criminal will survive.
I am from Kerala - an entirely different world from the BIMARU States. Think of upstate New York or Pennsylvania - but more tropical. The world described above is alien to us...just like its alien to you.
Outside of power users like gamers, developers, CAD, Video editing, and other high end users a Pentium is more than good enough.
You are incorrect. At least on Windows 7, try to open a few tabs on a Netbook running an Atom processor, or a laptop/desktop running a Celeron or even a Core 2 processor and you will realize its going to behave like a fully loaded Geo Metro. Forget about running any HD content. May be they will work slightly better running XP or a variant of Linux.
The most important part of any business is "cash-flow". You get that right and your business will be a success in conventional terms.
Your questions on different tools/languages do not really make sense unless you are clear about the product you are pursuing. The same about senior/junior programmers.
Though you don't want a take on Agile/Waterfall, from my experience any project which involves serious "design" works better in a waterfall approach because most of the phases of "design" may not be flexible to be accommodated in a two week sprint cycle.
Interesting. I had the opposite experience...the Americans I meet now days - at least the educated ones - seem to be apologetic about America, its foreign policy, lifestyle choices, oil addiction, consumerism and all that.
At my workplace - financial services firm in East Coast - I can see about 30% of IT workforce being women - coders, testers, managers and so on.
All are from India except for one from China.
What exactly is this "questionable ability"?
Most of enterprise software development is working on some code base which is a huge hairball and you do not need any "advanced degrees" to do the job. If you are an excellent / above average programmer you are probably wasting your life in such environment.
You should not equate the skills needed to do the above with ability to write "elegant code".
The last person you want running an organization that might draw negative attention from powerful entities is a guy who grew up (for a period, at least) in a white supremicist cult and then was pursued by them for years after he and his mother fled.
Assange might be paranoid and an ass, but the White Supremacist Cult which you describe is anything but that. Its a relatively harmless hippie type commune. Please do not to resort to falsehoods to bolster your case.
2880 is so far away we have nothing to fear. If humanity survives in some form to the 29th century it will be sufficiently advanced to make a meal out of the said asteroid. It may not even make prime time TV.
If its 2080...yes we may have something to think about.
US has a serious problem with militarization of police. Its ironical that the "munitions" - what an inventive word by the way - are now targeted against your own citizens. The images coming from Ferguson remind you of Ukraine and/or other war torn nations.
All those police snipers/SWAT teams pointing laser weapons at protestors...one mistake by an adrenaline junkie will happen and you will get FPS action against your own citizens broadcast live around the world.
The superheroes, the best and brightest who planned putting military gear into the hands of police should be sent to GITMO.
The govt in this case doesn't care about that, they want their licensing money back.
You are right. But then without tax and revenue from licensing how will the government function?
We can always argue whether a specific regulation is needed or not, but are you are using the usual "small government", "starve the beast" idea?
Look at this way...a connected fridge is utterly pointless, but I can see how it will create new jobs.
There will be people employed to create software and hardware interfaces, test the interfaces, and finally when it breaks down or exploited, to fix them.
At least its going to be some extra buttons or a panel on a fridge...there is not going to be a significant hit to the environment. So lets not use the argument "what is the need".
'What I am' does not matter. You will be employed if your skills are in demand, whether than involves frameworks, bit chasing...it does not matter.
Good to know you are employed. Now please stop being condescending.
Sweet explanation on the 'recent grad'.
I am guessing you (and your C++ wife) were programming equivalents of sliced bread when you started your career compared to the "unschooled" Java programmer.
Why is Java popular...its good enough for most of the tasks and reasonably competent people can write non-scary code.
Not every programmer needs to understand "bit bashing" and a mental model of computers at the assembly level. Its an overkill.
Outsourcing is bad, but as an Indian who renewed his passport recently, I have to say the process was smooth.
The document verification/IT/software/hardware part of the Indian passport application/renewal operation is now handled by TCS. You make an appointment online - for both fast track and slow track - and arrive at the local passport center with your documents. The TCS grunts allot a token, make sure documents are in order - if they are not you are sent back to get them corrected, take your fingerprints, photo and for final verification you meet an Indian government employee. He/she either says YES, or says YES with police verification.
In my case it was the latter as my passport had some damage - usual wear and tear, but visible.
A few days later a policewoman came home after fixing an appointment over phone, verified my documents/address and in two weeks I got a fresh passport.
I was impressed by the whole process. AFAIK Indian government and TCS is doing everything right as far as passport renewal goes...it was better than getting my experience in getting a drivers license/immigration papers in Toronto/Chicago/San Francisco.
May be US government should indeed outsource the operation to TCS...if they can do a good show in an anarchic chaotic mess like India, I am sure they can do the same in US.
Publishers have a similar role to record companies. Somebody else creates the product, they edit the product, but mostly they are just the marketing firm. Why should they be getting a bulk of the profits?
Publishers ARE evil, but they do more than being middlemen.
Even good writers need good editors. Look at the complaints on Slashdot summaries...the issue is poor editing, and that's a skill different from being a good writer. Editing is more than correcting spelling mistakes/grammar. On many occasions a book becomes much more enjoyable when a good editor spends time and energy on the manuscript.
Fringe benefits like an advance on an upcoming book. Even if they take the rights perpetually, and the advance is too low, an advance is important.
The books they reject may not be worth much even they got published. Look at the all the books in Amazon...a majority of books are worthless, they were made/published only because they could be published. For every example of a good book being rejected by publishers there are hundreds of examples of a bad book being rightly rejected.
A writers job is to write. In the world of Amazon he/she will have to wear different hats...the marketing person, the editor (or find the editor), do the cheer leading to make his/her work standout etc. I have no idea how a real talent can emerge out of this madness.
But the world will adapt and evolve and my fears are misplaced. For every publisher who closes shop, there will be people announcing their skills for a fee. In the end a new publishing order will appear, which is probably going to be the old itself, but working on smaller margins.
What most of us - including the politicos - forget is the fact that the "idea of being the POTUS" is attractive, not actually "being the POTUS."
BO was sure he is going to create history. And he did create history being the first black prez and all that. But then the actual job sucks. I have no idea how sane people willingly fight for this!
Still its better the illusion remains. Else the top decision makers will be much more worse than what we have now.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been a train traveler for more than three decades. I have used extensively four networks - (one of the biggest) Indian Railway, Amtrak, Japan Rail and China Railway.
I feel the marginal improvement of 40 minutes via a new maglev line for 280KM costing $100 billion is sort of a boondoggle project...and may be a vanity project. The Shinkansen aka Bullet trains are already a costly mode of transportation, tickets frequently costing as much as a regular flight ticket. For the 40 minutes of saving in travel time what will be the hike in ticket price for a project costing $100 billion?
The other end of the equation is Indian Railway - frequently derided as slow, archaic, unsafe etc. by armchair analysts who has never set foot in a train.
A few weeks back I traveled 1800 KM, point to point on a second class ticket which took 22 hours and cost Rs 800 ~ $12 on an Indian train. The ticket was booked online, I produced only a confirmation text message (the website of Indian Railway has improved a lot and is better than AMTRAK.) The summer heat made for a roasting day, but it was safe - probably the cheapest and safest option point to point anywhere in the world. (Indian Railways are super safe compared to driving in an Indian road.)
The same travel will take may be six hours on a high speed line, but will cost $120 or more - which is what a flight ticket will cost in that sector. A majority of Indians who travel by trains will not be able to afford an extra zero in their ticket. (This is what the current proponents of high speed train travel in India ignore or do not understand.)
A version of the above exists for developing countries too...a few months back I was traveling between Washington and Philadelphia on AMTRAK. Only the wealthy - or a professional who gets reimbursed via his office - can afford an ACELA...the tickets were close to $100. Luckily there were enough "Northeast Regionals" for $40 - comfortable and faster than a Greyhound and only $10 more.
What a country like America requires is (arguably) a much more denser railway network (not as slow as the Indian network) but not necessarily a super high speed network where a majority of the population - the lower class, the lower middle class and even the middle class - is priced out. We always forget Japan Railway and China Railway has enough regular trains which are slightly slower but cheaper.
May be I am wrong...automobiles are the preferred mode of commute and the drop in oil prices means flight tickets - and driving - will stay cheaper. So the age of trains in US may be over, purely for economic reasons.
The situation has changed in most urban centers of India as far as auto-rickshaws are concerned. Most have electronic meters which are resistant to tampering.
About policemen owning auto-rickshaws - you may find some outlier cases in certain areas of India, but the way you generalize a whole country is illogical and untrue.
There are enough problems in India...but there is no need to exaggerate or generalize such a vast country in broad strokes.
Feinstein, the late senator Ted Stevens (Internet is through tubes) are senior citizens who are behind the times when it comes to technology. They may not be able to comprehend "internet" not because they are stupid, but because its a truly radical idea which is impossible to fathom for the many who did not grow up with it. This is one of the reasons you still have senators or congress members - mostly old - who does not use even email.
Recently Indian government tried to ban the documentary "India's daughter." The Indian home minister is a seventy plus Rajnath Singh. His first reaction is to "ban" the documentary. He knows "ban" worked in the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies.
Agent Smith.
The explanation is that there is no 'plausible explanation'.
Bihar is THE poorest state in India by many metrics. The way out of poverty and squalor for a majority is getting a good score in the Secondary School leaving exams - or minimum pass the damn exam - where you qualify for state / central recruitment, military, admissions to college and so on.
Just like BRICS, India got BIMARU states - Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh to signify 'sick' states - BIMARU in Hindi means 'unhealthy condition'. Think of a BIMARU state as Appalachia or Louisana, but more downtrodden and poor.
Here is an anecdote from my uncle - who did his MSc in Physics way back in the late 1980's from Kanpur, a big city in Bihar's neighboring state Uttar Pradesh - another basket case. The college he studied is DAV College, Kanpur, next to the big cricket stadium Green Park.
During the exams students were three types of service by the local strongmen - mostly wannabe politicians, with support from the caste based political parties...the cheapest tier will allow you to copy from your notes during the exams. The middle tier will allow you to write the exam from your hostel room. The topmost tier they will find someone else who is an expert in the subject to write the exam for you.
These wannabe politicians later represent the state and its constituents in the local and central governments. And now you can understand where are how the criminality of the typical North Indian caste based politician comes from....its inbred. Only the toughest and the most criminal will survive.
I am from Kerala - an entirely different world from the BIMARU States. Think of upstate New York or Pennsylvania - but more tropical. The world described above is alien to us...just like its alien to you.
I never had an issue with Windows 7 on a core 2.
My old Thinkpad X61 was replaced a few months back with a used Thinkpad X1 for precisely this reason.
Outside of power users like gamers, developers, CAD, Video editing, and other high end users a Pentium is more than good enough.
You are incorrect. At least on Windows 7, try to open a few tabs on a Netbook running an Atom processor, or a laptop/desktop running a Celeron or even a Core 2 processor and you will realize its going to behave like a fully loaded Geo Metro. Forget about running any HD content. May be they will work slightly better running XP or a variant of Linux.
The most important part of any business is "cash-flow". You get that right and your business will be a success in conventional terms.
Your questions on different tools/languages do not really make sense unless you are clear about the product you are pursuing. The same about senior/junior programmers.
Though you don't want a take on Agile/Waterfall, from my experience any project which involves serious "design" works better in a waterfall approach because most of the phases of "design" may not be flexible to be accommodated in a two week sprint cycle.
Interesting. I had the opposite experience...the Americans I meet now days - at least the educated ones - seem to be apologetic about America, its foreign policy, lifestyle choices, oil addiction, consumerism and all that.
Will be to offer surrogate mothers - if you offshore childbearing its "win win" in the latest MBA text books.
At my workplace - financial services firm in East Coast - I can see about 30% of IT workforce being women - coders, testers, managers and so on.
All are from India except for one from China.
The best photo is not of Mars...but the women workers of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) handling the Mars mission celebrating.
BBC has a good report and the photo...http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-29357472
As a tweeter asks..when was the last time we saw women scientists celebrating a space mission?
What exactly is this "questionable ability"?
Most of enterprise software development is working on some code base which is a huge hairball and you do not need any "advanced degrees" to do the job. If you are an excellent / above average programmer you are probably wasting your life in such environment.
You should not equate the skills needed to do the above with ability to write "elegant code".
The last person you want running an organization that might draw negative attention from powerful entities is a guy who grew up (for a period, at least) in a white supremicist cult and then was pursued by them for years after he and his mother fled.
Assange might be paranoid and an ass, but the White Supremacist Cult which you describe is anything but that. Its a relatively harmless hippie type commune. Please do not to resort to falsehoods to bolster your case.
2880 is so far away we have nothing to fear. If humanity survives in some form to the 29th century it will be sufficiently advanced to make a meal out of the said asteroid. It may not even make prime time TV.
If its 2080...yes we may have something to think about.
US has a serious problem with militarization of police. Its ironical that the "munitions" - what an inventive word by the way - are now targeted against your own citizens. The images coming from Ferguson remind you of Ukraine and/or other war torn nations.
All those police snipers/SWAT teams pointing laser weapons at protestors...one mistake by an adrenaline junkie will happen and you will get FPS action against your own citizens broadcast live around the world.
The superheroes, the best and brightest who planned putting military gear into the hands of police should be sent to GITMO.
The govt in this case doesn't care about that, they want their licensing money back.
You are right. But then without tax and revenue from licensing how will the government function?
We can always argue whether a specific regulation is needed or not, but are you are using the usual "small government", "starve the beast" idea?
Look at this way...a connected fridge is utterly pointless, but I can see how it will create new jobs.
There will be people employed to create software and hardware interfaces, test the interfaces, and finally when it breaks down or exploited, to fix them.
At least its going to be some extra buttons or a panel on a fridge...there is not going to be a significant hit to the environment. So lets not use the argument "what is the need".
What an interesting state...cave, Dick Cheney, sink holes, fossils.
Go Wyoming go...
'What I am' does not matter. You will be employed if your skills are in demand, whether than involves frameworks, bit chasing...it does not matter.
Good to know you are employed. Now please stop being condescending.
Sweet explanation on the 'recent grad'.
I am guessing you (and your C++ wife) were programming equivalents of sliced bread when you started your career compared to the "unschooled" Java programmer.
Why is Java popular...its good enough for most of the tasks and reasonably competent people can write non-scary code.
Not every programmer needs to understand "bit bashing" and a mental model of computers at the assembly level. Its an overkill.
Outsourcing is bad, but as an Indian who renewed his passport recently, I have to say the process was smooth.
The document verification/IT/software/hardware part of the Indian passport application/renewal operation is now handled by TCS. You make an appointment online - for both fast track and slow track - and arrive at the local passport center with your documents. The TCS grunts allot a token, make sure documents are in order - if they are not you are sent back to get them corrected, take your fingerprints, photo and for final verification you meet an Indian government employee. He/she either says YES, or says YES with police verification.
In my case it was the latter as my passport had some damage - usual wear and tear, but visible.
A few days later a policewoman came home after fixing an appointment over phone, verified my documents/address and in two weeks I got a fresh passport.
I was impressed by the whole process. AFAIK Indian government and TCS is doing everything right as far as passport renewal goes...it was better than getting my experience in getting a drivers license/immigration papers in Toronto/Chicago/San Francisco.
May be US government should indeed outsource the operation to TCS...if they can do a good show in an anarchic chaotic mess like India, I am sure they can do the same in US.
Publishers have a similar role to record companies. Somebody else creates the product, they edit the product, but mostly they are just the marketing firm. Why should they be getting a bulk of the profits?
Publishers ARE evil, but they do more than being middlemen.
Even good writers need good editors. Look at the complaints on Slashdot summaries...the issue is poor editing, and that's a skill different from being a good writer. Editing is more than correcting spelling mistakes/grammar. On many occasions a book becomes much more enjoyable when a good editor spends time and energy on the manuscript.
Fringe benefits like an advance on an upcoming book. Even if they take the rights perpetually, and the advance is too low, an advance is important.
The books they reject may not be worth much even they got published. Look at the all the books in Amazon...a majority of books are worthless, they were made/published only because they could be published. For every example of a good book being rejected by publishers there are hundreds of examples of a bad book being rightly rejected.
A writers job is to write. In the world of Amazon he/she will have to wear different hats...the marketing person, the editor (or find the editor), do the cheer leading to make his/her work standout etc. I have no idea how a real talent can emerge out of this madness.
But the world will adapt and evolve and my fears are misplaced. For every publisher who closes shop, there will be people announcing their skills for a fee. In the end a new publishing order will appear, which is probably going to be the old itself, but working on smaller margins.
Saudi Arabia is ISIS, the only difference...Americans think "they are bastards, but they are our bastards".
What most of us - including the politicos - forget is the fact that the "idea of being the POTUS" is attractive, not actually "being the POTUS."
BO was sure he is going to create history. And he did create history being the first black prez and all that. But then the actual job sucks. I have no idea how sane people willingly fight for this!
Still its better the illusion remains. Else the top decision makers will be much more worse than what we have now.