I am from India. I have worked both in India and US on Software Projects for major/minor/start up's and what not. As a group Indian software developers are as competent or incompetent as anyone else. Any generalization is only lazy stereotyping.
The antagonism US developers/engineers show towards Indians should STOP. Period. At some level we are all brothers. The Indian H1Bs who got Green Cards and settled in US - thinking that will be better future - will be seriously unhappy when they know after they hit their forties the best career progression for a majority of them will be flipping burgers. So some of them move back to India.
The suits - in US and India - are extremely happy to see this division between the Americans and Indians. We Indians have seen this strategy before - 'Divide and rule' was perfected by the British.
So, relax, and try to look into how some of the pain of the inevitable developments can be reduced, and work arm in arm. Else, we are all doomed.
As far as a I am concerned...I have skill sets other than software programming which should keep me busy till my sixties.
Here is the problem with your assumption.
You assume Pirate Bay or some other torrent sites, or even Darknet will be "easily" available in future.
It will be there, but it will behind its own walled gardens and trust lists, "anonymizers" and so on, the 99% will find it easy to buy DRM'd content from studios.
DRMd HTML extensions and an all out global attack on torrent/file sharing sites will tilt the balance in favour of media companies.
Now, the price of the content will go down due to competition and may be some type of extended financial crisis where the 99% gets more squeezed. There is no need to pay $5 or more for any content - book/TV show/Movie tickets and so on.
Indian weapons are a joke. I am more worried about one of our missiles targeted for Karachi landing in Karnataka. 'No one knows anything' is applicable to Indian films and Indian weapons.
The robot soldier idea is a non-starter vanity project, like the $10 tablet, auto-mobiles powered by water and air and so on. No need to worry. But like Russel Peter's would say, playing with these robots 'someone is going to get hurt real bad'.
...the fun begins.
On one side Snowden, who knows the repercussions of what he did, but chose this path. Bravo. He did not go the Wikileaks route, very impressive.
On the other side whoever who were "appalled" US government is snooping indiscriminately - the list starts with Ron Paul. Lets see if Ron Paul will take a stand and publicly defend Snowden.
Then we have POTUS - who probably would have personally supported Snowden if he were not the POTUS. The more POTUS and his administration squeaks about "grave danger to US" and other nonsense and proceeds to harm Snowden, the more out of touch, elitist and a tool he will look.
Excellent drama. I sincerely hope Snowden can go home to a heroes reception.
Reading the comments so far, two issues are repeatedly reinforced...or two incorrect assumptions so stupid I don't know why they are moderated to 'insightful' or 'important'.
First one - if it looks like a snake it will scare people further. This is nonsense...a robotic snake will behave like a snake - but not look like a snake (or at least it can be made to look not like a snake - with some flashing LED lights on the body.) The mouth will have some camera, rather than fangs. Plus these are small robots. A Cobra whose bite can kill you in two hours is big - more than 2 meters.
Second issue - how can a country which cannot build a building to appropriate standards buy such costly equipment? This is so idiotic an argument I do not know where to start refuting. Let me use a car analogy - imagine buying a cheap car alarm or a steering wheel lock for your cheap clunker.
Schmidt might have co-written Lex. But if you read TFA, you realize he does not even know TOR and the idea behind TOR - probably the most important invention in internet and communication methodologies. This is stupid.
I guess Schmidt should turn in his geek card, and as a champion supporter you should also join.
I am an early convert to E Readers starting from the clunky Sony PRS series. I have questions about the long term viability of e-ink technology.
The issue is not any weakness in e-ink technology - right now the superior technology to recreate pure reading experience. But sooner or later backlit LCD/LED/OLED screens will have some type of control / settings which will approximate an e-ink experience. When that happens there will not be any pressing reason to buy a pure book reader, but go for a tablet which is also a book reader.
This is similar to the shrinking marketplace for point and shoot digital cameras (smartphone cameras are adequate) , desktops/laptops (sales are cannibalized by tablets) and so on.
Completed the first half of TFA. It is indeed fascinating.
Fascinating to know Julian Assange...his technical know how and philosophical underpinnings make him one of the foremost thinkers of our world. The way Assange connects geo-political issues, the ideas behind publishing, instant publishing to the basic design of Wikileaks is brilliant. (We have to put aside his issues in Sweden.)
Erich Schmidt comes across as a better version of Steve Ballmer. It would have been interesting if Larry Page / Sergey Brin had a conversation with Assange...they would be more interesting and the conversation would not be completely one sided.
What this bill intends to do is to import even more tech-grunts under the H1-B visas, and to open up the gate for MILLIONS of undocumented aliens, most of them unskilled/low-skilled, lacking in enthusiasm to compete, and they will end up burdening the already over-burdened social welfare system that we have in our country
What nonsense? Agreed H1 B employees are evil - but how are they 'undocumented aliens' and burden your social welfare system?
Yahoo went dead the moment they appointed a clueless Hollywood hack Terry Semel as CEO. He should not be hired to run even a grocery store. Then they acquired broadcast.com (I still don't know what the hell that website/service performed) which made a few insiders insanely rich. The new acquisition of the news reading app by Marissa Mayer shows the old culture is still intact. Jerry Yang and David Filo are overrated...they are not Sergey Brin or Larry Page.
(Generally people are aware of public sector corruption, but private sector all over the world is equally corrupt.)
Marissa Mayer made a huge miscalculation by taking the Yahoo CEO position. This is like Sarah Palin running against Obama. Palin is clever. Marissa Mayer is not.
Generic drugs made by third parties are sorely needed by non G8 nations across the world. Indian companies are the leaders in making generics....like Chinese companies in making electronics / hardware. The argument of multinationals pharma companies like NOVARTIS claims the high cost of R & D for inventing new drugs for keeping up the high price. This has been debunked by the report on TIME (and many other sources) which proved the same drug or treatments costs vary highly depending on who pays. And such costs are amortized from G8 nations itself. Also none of these companies are making any losses in their balance sheet whatsoever...what they demand is permanent 'rent seeking'.
Today's TIME has an OPED by their Delhi correspondent with grave warnings on future of Indian pharma - the type of warnings issued by World Bank / IMF / West on Developing countries - basically on the lines on "do as I say, not as I do". I guess NOVARTIS marketing droids called TIME headquarters and asked them to run a sympathetic piece. We are talking about a company with $54 billion sales and $9 billion plus profit in 2012! Imagine their power. And now imagine the 'purported losses' on a few drugs going out of patent in developing countries - it will be negligible at best.
There is no way any Indian - except for the 2-3% of the elite - can afford a $2600 ~ Rs 130000 / - cost for a month long treatment. This is a country with no health social safety net other than public medical colleges and affordable primary health care facilities and medicines. (Private Health Insurance is a new phenomenon, slowly catching on, the advantages and disadvantages we know...we have to look at USA.)
The only argument which can be made against Indian generics - "if you can't afford the drug, why don't you suffer the consequences". I guess even the most hard nosed penny pinching corporate drone is not THAT heartless.
Instead of fighting the generic manufacturers, NOVARTIS should create their own special generic versions and beat them on a price point. But the suits running the show looked at some powerpoint and decided, lets first fight, if we lose start making generics.
They were murdered by an ex Hollywood hack they hired as the CEO - Terry Semel - who probably knew how to massage egos of Hollywood actors but had no idea on science, internet, technology and so on. Remember Yahoo buying broadcast.com - I still don't know what was broadcast.com - other than the fact it was a nice URL. Mark Cuban and a lot of people who brokered the deal got rich by sales commission from Cuban - that's all.
Jerry Yang and David Filo are no Sergey Brin and Larry Page. They are not even a Zuckerberg.
No one can turn around Yahoo. It is like trying to rejuvenate Blockbuster in the Netflix age. Marissa Mayer made a serious error in judgement by signing on to be the CEO of a dead duck. If she does not think of an exit strategy she will be the next version of Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina - seriously boneheaded chief executives whose only qualities are they are excellent in PR and networking (not 'computer networking', they won't know a CAT5 from Pussy Cat.)
Both Nokia and HTC are under serious threat from their competitors. They can survive if they merge. The resulting hybrid can put out the Windoze phones - which no one buys right now - and Androids which can be a credible alternative to Samsung.
Plus they should stop patent cases...the issue with the patent trolling / litigation is not the cost of lawyers, it is the shift of focus of upper / senior management / C Level from innovation and better products to courtrooms. We all have - including the evil and socio-path chief executives - only 24 hours a day.
The recent troubles of Apple (to an extent) can be attributed to Steve Jobs shift of focus from 'better rounded corners' to 'lawyers defending rounded corners'. Its a pity Jobs died before he could experience his idiocy first hand...all we have is the great beautiful multimillion dollar Philip Starck yatch and lawyers defending rounded corners. Tim Cook is an unlucky bugger...he is sloshing in the poop Jobs left behind as his legacy.
Big Bang is only a theory. As far as I know it is the theory with the most number of followers so it is assumed to be truer than others.
I have a feeling the Deterministic school of thought which governs science is failing to answer the big questions. I am not saying the alternates available - religion and other other super natural stuff - is better, but we need a third model.
And until a new model is found, lets collectively gasp at da big bang!!!
This is nonsense. I live in a country with all the issues of sanitation you can imagine - India.
It is not practically possible to dig a hole and bury your waste in urban environments anywhere in the world. Even in rural environments there are severe limitations.
There are good lessons and moral / ethical fables in Bible and other religious texts, but it is hopelessly outdated.
Ballmer, Whitman, Fiorina, Elop for obvious reasons and every single oil company CEO and Director Board for pursuing some of the most short sighted and disastrous policies and ideas which will really hurt this planet in the long run.
The guy who ran BP should be handed over to Taliban. The same with the guy who runs Foxconn and Walmart if they don't change their offshoring, outsourcing and labor policies.
The Zynga / Facebook crowd does not deserve a mention, they made mistakes, they are yet to create a disaster.
I am a convert to E Books from 2005 onwards - starting with a primitive Sony E Reader (by the way Sony still makes good E Readers - the software was coded by Monkeys though.)
I use a Nook and an iPAD. The former for books - classics, non fiction, fiction and all that, the latter for magazines - mostly The New Yorker, comics etc.
This is an incredible age...I have on my fingertips, anywhere in the world any book or any magazine as long as I have an internet connection. No printed dead tree book idea / shelves / stores can come close. The only paper book I bought in the recent past was a paperback edition of Roberto Bolano's 2666 (arguably the first classic in 21st century) for a lovely friend who is dead against any E Reader.
Yes, people will buy printed books...but they will go the way of DVDs. Someone somewhere will come with a solution for a "digital shelf" in the living room...where all the books and magazines are displayed and anyone can borrow / read through their device (or borrow a device itself.) For this to happen, a lot of interoperability and standardization needs to happen and a few of the "walled gardens" should go the way of Berlin Wall.
There are two issues - 'value of college' and 'cost of college'.
As many other posters have eloquently put, the value of college for most of us is priceless. Very few of us have the entrepreneurial spirit. For every successful entrepreneur or 'self made millionaire', there are thousands who did not make the cut. In a winner takes all society, we forget the majority and we focus on the minority and aspire to be a part of that rarefied circle. This is at best wishful thinking, and at worst will have disastrous consequences to ones morale, prospects, motivation and energy. This is what the guy who says "in Silicon Valley, being a drop out is a badge of honour" fails to notice.
The actual issue is 'cost of college'. There is no reason - absolutely no reason - for a four year degree to cost more than $20 or $30K without scholarship or stipends. The classic American aphorism "follow the money" should be applied to find out "why college costs a bomb"? You will end up in the door steps of American government, lending agencies, universities becoming a profit centre and other vested interests.
Americans should fight "cost of college education", not "value of college education".
Only about 20% of the Indian population is of anywhere near middle class status.
The situation varies from state to state - in my state Kerala you can conclude 70% is middle class and Kerala population is on a long term decline (like Japan), health and development indexes are comparable to European nations etc.
The situation is the opposite in rural Bihar and other big northern states.
But the 20% officially middle class is a huge number - little less than the population of United States. Still if marketers and consultants conclude they are going to buy plastic crap from China in huge numbers they will be disappointed.
Western corporations regularly make an entry to India. The first mistake they make - overprice their products and Indian competition kills them on a price point. The second mistake they make is in overestimating the consumption patterns and excess inventory gets piled up - example: original Reebok and NIke shoes end up sold on the footpath.
But I have a fascination for the management and MBAs running these organizations. They are so clueless the errors they make are laughably stupid. Compared to them George Bush was a genius.
The filthy POS bastards aka marketers were such a nuisance. The DND (Do Not Dial registry) never worked well...so "ban" is the way to go.
About the exodus...it is a minor event, in a country of 100 billion there is an exodus or pockets of violence almost every day. Indian Railway (South Western Railway to be precise) will beat the market...quarterly revenue will be excellent. Few nameless Railway babu's will get better bonuses. Their wives are going to buy costly and gaudy sarees.
Whoever else who made money spread the rumors which started the shebang.
Yes, but the moral of the story is "mistakes destroy you, whether Assange or United States of America."
Generally we wonder "how can such an evil (corporation | government | politician | dictator) survive". They survive and do well only until they make a mistake. Being evil and survival has no connection. Luckily the evil are prone to make mistakes...so the world more or less works.
Assange made a mistake...he should have controlled his emotions. If he is innocent he might have fallen for a honey trap - a classic n00b mistake. If he is not innocent he made a bloody epic mistake.
This takes away the only major competitive advantage they had, which was that using RIM meant you knew no one in the indian government was going to steal your work and sell it to someone else (which is a serious concern in india).
Either you don't live in India or you have no idea about India.
Indian government needs the keys for its own stupid "war against terror". I am yet to hear Indian government or government agencies stealing corporate secrets / reverse engineering / trade secrets.
India is not China if thats what you imply. And the Chinese is doing what the Western civilization did 50 or 100 years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
I am from India. I have worked both in India and US on Software Projects for major/minor/start up's and what not. As a group Indian software developers are as competent or incompetent as anyone else. Any generalization is only lazy stereotyping.
The antagonism US developers/engineers show towards Indians should STOP. Period. At some level we are all brothers. The Indian H1Bs who got Green Cards and settled in US - thinking that will be better future - will be seriously unhappy when they know after they hit their forties the best career progression for a majority of them will be flipping burgers. So some of them move back to India.
The suits - in US and India - are extremely happy to see this division between the Americans and Indians. We Indians have seen this strategy before - 'Divide and rule' was perfected by the British.
So, relax, and try to look into how some of the pain of the inevitable developments can be reduced, and work arm in arm. Else, we are all doomed.
As far as a I am concerned...I have skill sets other than software programming which should keep me busy till my sixties.
Here is the problem with your assumption. You assume Pirate Bay or some other torrent sites, or even Darknet will be "easily" available in future. It will be there, but it will behind its own walled gardens and trust lists, "anonymizers" and so on, the 99% will find it easy to buy DRM'd content from studios. DRMd HTML extensions and an all out global attack on torrent /file sharing sites will tilt the balance in favour of media companies.
Now, the price of the content will go down due to competition and may be some type of extended financial crisis where the 99% gets more squeezed. There is no need to pay $5 or more for any content - book/TV show/Movie tickets and so on.
Indian weapons are a joke. I am more worried about one of our missiles targeted for Karachi landing in Karnataka. 'No one knows anything' is applicable to Indian films and Indian weapons.
The robot soldier idea is a non-starter vanity project, like the $10 tablet, auto-mobiles powered by water and air and so on. No need to worry. But like Russel Peter's would say, playing with these robots 'someone is going to get hurt real bad'.
...the fun begins.
On one side Snowden, who knows the repercussions of what he did, but chose this path. Bravo. He did not go the Wikileaks route, very impressive.
On the other side whoever who were "appalled" US government is snooping indiscriminately - the list starts with Ron Paul. Lets see if Ron Paul will take a stand and publicly defend Snowden.
Then we have POTUS - who probably would have personally supported Snowden if he were not the POTUS. The more POTUS and his administration squeaks about "grave danger to US" and other nonsense and proceeds to harm Snowden, the more out of touch, elitist and a tool he will look.
Excellent drama. I sincerely hope Snowden can go home to a heroes reception.
Reading the comments so far, two issues are repeatedly reinforced...or two incorrect assumptions so stupid I don't know why they are moderated to 'insightful' or 'important'.
First one - if it looks like a snake it will scare people further. This is nonsense...a robotic snake will behave like a snake - but not look like a snake (or at least it can be made to look not like a snake - with some flashing LED lights on the body.) The mouth will have some camera, rather than fangs. Plus these are small robots. A Cobra whose bite can kill you in two hours is big - more than 2 meters.
Second issue - how can a country which cannot build a building to appropriate standards buy such costly equipment? This is so idiotic an argument I do not know where to start refuting. Let me use a car analogy - imagine buying a cheap car alarm or a steering wheel lock for your cheap clunker.
Schmidt might have co-written Lex. But if you read TFA, you realize he does not even know TOR and the idea behind TOR - probably the most important invention in internet and communication methodologies. This is stupid.
I guess Schmidt should turn in his geek card, and as a champion supporter you should also join.
I am an early convert to E Readers starting from the clunky Sony PRS series. I have questions about the long term viability of e-ink technology.
The issue is not any weakness in e-ink technology - right now the superior technology to recreate pure reading experience. But sooner or later backlit LCD/LED/OLED screens will have some type of control / settings which will approximate an e-ink experience. When that happens there will not be any pressing reason to buy a pure book reader, but go for a tablet which is also a book reader.
This is similar to the shrinking marketplace for point and shoot digital cameras (smartphone cameras are adequate) , desktops/laptops (sales are cannibalized by tablets) and so on.
Completed the first half of TFA. It is indeed fascinating.
Fascinating to know Julian Assange...his technical know how and philosophical underpinnings make him one of the foremost thinkers of our world. The way Assange connects geo-political issues, the ideas behind publishing, instant publishing to the basic design of Wikileaks is brilliant. (We have to put aside his issues in Sweden.)
Erich Schmidt comes across as a better version of Steve Ballmer. It would have been interesting if Larry Page / Sergey Brin had a conversation with Assange...they would be more interesting and the conversation would not be completely one sided.
What this bill intends to do is to import even more tech-grunts under the H1-B visas, and to open up the gate for MILLIONS of undocumented aliens, most of them unskilled/low-skilled, lacking in enthusiasm to compete, and they will end up burdening the already over-burdened social welfare system that we have in our country
What nonsense? Agreed H1 B employees are evil - but how are they 'undocumented aliens' and burden your social welfare system?
Yahoo went dead the moment they appointed a clueless Hollywood hack Terry Semel as CEO. He should not be hired to run even a grocery store. Then they acquired broadcast.com (I still don't know what the hell that website/service performed) which made a few insiders insanely rich. The new acquisition of the news reading app by Marissa Mayer shows the old culture is still intact. Jerry Yang and David Filo are overrated...they are not Sergey Brin or Larry Page.
(Generally people are aware of public sector corruption, but private sector all over the world is equally corrupt.)
Marissa Mayer made a huge miscalculation by taking the Yahoo CEO position. This is like Sarah Palin running against Obama. Palin is clever. Marissa Mayer is not.
The oft repeated and misleading number for development of a new drug is $1 billion.
This is a fabrication by industry shills to support the existing patent structure.
Now, NOVARTIS will start making generics.
Generic drugs made by third parties are sorely needed by non G8 nations across the world. Indian companies are the leaders in making generics....like Chinese companies in making electronics / hardware. The argument of multinationals pharma companies like NOVARTIS claims the high cost of R & D for inventing new drugs for keeping up the high price. This has been debunked by the report on TIME (and many other sources) which proved the same drug or treatments costs vary highly depending on who pays. And such costs are amortized from G8 nations itself. Also none of these companies are making any losses in their balance sheet whatsoever...what they demand is permanent 'rent seeking'.
Today's TIME has an OPED by their Delhi correspondent with grave warnings on future of Indian pharma - the type of warnings issued by World Bank / IMF / West on Developing countries - basically on the lines on "do as I say, not as I do". I guess NOVARTIS marketing droids called TIME headquarters and asked them to run a sympathetic piece. We are talking about a company with $54 billion sales and $9 billion plus profit in 2012! Imagine their power. And now imagine the 'purported losses' on a few drugs going out of patent in developing countries - it will be negligible at best.
There is no way any Indian - except for the 2-3% of the elite - can afford a $2600 ~ Rs 130000 / - cost for a month long treatment. This is a country with no health social safety net other than public medical colleges and affordable primary health care facilities and medicines. (Private Health Insurance is a new phenomenon, slowly catching on, the advantages and disadvantages we know...we have to look at USA.)
The only argument which can be made against Indian generics - "if you can't afford the drug, why don't you suffer the consequences". I guess even the most hard nosed penny pinching corporate drone is not THAT heartless.
Instead of fighting the generic manufacturers, NOVARTIS should create their own special generic versions and beat them on a price point. But the suits running the show looked at some powerpoint and decided, lets first fight, if we lose start making generics.
Yahoo is seriously dead.
They were murdered by an ex Hollywood hack they hired as the CEO - Terry Semel - who probably knew how to massage egos of Hollywood actors but had no idea on science, internet, technology and so on. Remember Yahoo buying broadcast.com - I still don't know what was broadcast.com - other than the fact it was a nice URL. Mark Cuban and a lot of people who brokered the deal got rich by sales commission from Cuban - that's all.
Jerry Yang and David Filo are no Sergey Brin and Larry Page. They are not even a Zuckerberg.
No one can turn around Yahoo. It is like trying to rejuvenate Blockbuster in the Netflix age. Marissa Mayer made a serious error in judgement by signing on to be the CEO of a dead duck. If she does not think of an exit strategy she will be the next version of Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina - seriously boneheaded chief executives whose only qualities are they are excellent in PR and networking (not 'computer networking', they won't know a CAT5 from Pussy Cat.)
Both Nokia and HTC are under serious threat from their competitors. They can survive if they merge. The resulting hybrid can put out the Windoze phones - which no one buys right now - and Androids which can be a credible alternative to Samsung.
Plus they should stop patent cases...the issue with the patent trolling / litigation is not the cost of lawyers, it is the shift of focus of upper / senior management / C Level from innovation and better products to courtrooms. We all have - including the evil and socio-path chief executives - only 24 hours a day.
The recent troubles of Apple (to an extent) can be attributed to Steve Jobs shift of focus from 'better rounded corners' to 'lawyers defending rounded corners'. Its a pity Jobs died before he could experience his idiocy first hand...all we have is the great beautiful multimillion dollar Philip Starck yatch and lawyers defending rounded corners. Tim Cook is an unlucky bugger...he is sloshing in the poop Jobs left behind as his legacy.
Big Bang is only a theory. As far as I know it is the theory with the most number of followers so it is assumed to be truer than others.
I have a feeling the Deterministic school of thought which governs science is failing to answer the big questions. I am not saying the alternates available - religion and other other super natural stuff - is better, but we need a third model.
And until a new model is found, lets collectively gasp at da big bang!!!
This is nonsense. I live in a country with all the issues of sanitation you can imagine - India.
It is not practically possible to dig a hole and bury your waste in urban environments anywhere in the world. Even in rural environments there are severe limitations.
There are good lessons and moral / ethical fables in Bible and other religious texts, but it is hopelessly outdated.
Ballmer, Whitman, Fiorina, Elop for obvious reasons and every single oil company CEO and Director Board for pursuing some of the most short sighted and disastrous policies and ideas which will really hurt this planet in the long run.
The guy who ran BP should be handed over to Taliban. The same with the guy who runs Foxconn and Walmart if they don't change their offshoring, outsourcing and labor policies.
The Zynga / Facebook crowd does not deserve a mention, they made mistakes, they are yet to create a disaster.
I am a convert to E Books from 2005 onwards - starting with a primitive Sony E Reader (by the way Sony still makes good E Readers - the software was coded by Monkeys though.)
I use a Nook and an iPAD. The former for books - classics, non fiction, fiction and all that, the latter for magazines - mostly The New Yorker, comics etc.
This is an incredible age...I have on my fingertips, anywhere in the world any book or any magazine as long as I have an internet connection. No printed dead tree book idea / shelves / stores can come close. The only paper book I bought in the recent past was a paperback edition of Roberto Bolano's 2666 (arguably the first classic in 21st century) for a lovely friend who is dead against any E Reader.
Yes, people will buy printed books...but they will go the way of DVDs. Someone somewhere will come with a solution for a "digital shelf" in the living room...where all the books and magazines are displayed and anyone can borrow / read through their device (or borrow a device itself.) For this to happen, a lot of interoperability and standardization needs to happen and a few of the "walled gardens" should go the way of Berlin Wall.
There are two issues - 'value of college' and 'cost of college'.
As many other posters have eloquently put, the value of college for most of us is priceless. Very few of us have the entrepreneurial spirit. For every successful entrepreneur or 'self made millionaire', there are thousands who did not make the cut. In a winner takes all society, we forget the majority and we focus on the minority and aspire to be a part of that rarefied circle. This is at best wishful thinking, and at worst will have disastrous consequences to ones morale, prospects, motivation and energy. This is what the guy who says "in Silicon Valley, being a drop out is a badge of honour" fails to notice.
The actual issue is 'cost of college'. There is no reason - absolutely no reason - for a four year degree to cost more than $20 or $30K without scholarship or stipends. The classic American aphorism "follow the money" should be applied to find out "why college costs a bomb"? You will end up in the door steps of American government, lending agencies, universities becoming a profit centre and other vested interests.
Americans should fight "cost of college education", not "value of college education".
How do you think religions - especially Christianity - will interpret extra terrestrial life when we find it?
Indeed. What absolute nonsense from this Ray Kurzweil. "The Cloud" is becoming the "Turbo" of the 2010s.
What we need is a cloud on a turbo. That's what I am waiting for.
Only about 20% of the Indian population is of anywhere near middle class status.
The situation varies from state to state - in my state Kerala you can conclude 70% is middle class and Kerala population is on a long term decline (like Japan), health and development indexes are comparable to European nations etc.
The situation is the opposite in rural Bihar and other big northern states.
But the 20% officially middle class is a huge number - little less than the population of United States. Still if marketers and consultants conclude they are going to buy plastic crap from China in huge numbers they will be disappointed.
Western corporations regularly make an entry to India. The first mistake they make - overprice their products and Indian competition kills them on a price point. The second mistake they make is in overestimating the consumption patterns and excess inventory gets piled up - example: original Reebok and NIke shoes end up sold on the footpath.
But I have a fascination for the management and MBAs running these organizations. They are so clueless the errors they make are laughably stupid. Compared to them George Bush was a genius.
I hope the "ban" stays.
The filthy POS bastards aka marketers were such a nuisance. The DND (Do Not Dial registry) never worked well...so "ban" is the way to go.
About the exodus...it is a minor event, in a country of 100 billion there is an exodus or pockets of violence almost every day. Indian Railway (South Western Railway to be precise) will beat the market...quarterly revenue will be excellent. Few nameless Railway babu's will get better bonuses. Their wives are going to buy costly and gaudy sarees.
Whoever else who made money spread the rumors which started the shebang.
Having sex in Sweden can get complicated
Yes, but the moral of the story is "mistakes destroy you, whether Assange or United States of America."
Generally we wonder "how can such an evil (corporation | government | politician | dictator) survive". They survive and do well only until they make a mistake. Being evil and survival has no connection. Luckily the evil are prone to make mistakes...so the world more or less works.
Assange made a mistake...he should have controlled his emotions. If he is innocent he might have fallen for a honey trap - a classic n00b mistake. If he is not innocent he made a bloody epic mistake.
This takes away the only major competitive advantage they had, which was that using RIM meant you knew no one in the indian government was going to steal your work and sell it to someone else (which is a serious concern in india).
Either you don't live in India or you have no idea about India.
Indian government needs the keys for its own stupid "war against terror". I am yet to hear Indian government or government agencies stealing corporate secrets / reverse engineering / trade secrets.
India is not China if thats what you imply. And the Chinese is doing what the Western civilization did 50 or 100 years ago.