I'd disagree that science needs better, or any, media relations. After all, there wouldn't be a media without science. Or, for that matter, a civilisation.
Media relations = $. $ = more research. More research = more scientific results. More scientific results = improvements in people's quality of life. Improvements in QOL = better media relations.
What kind of science are you going to do without research funding?
I agree that facebook is well-designed, for what it is, and that it's having an impact, but I'm not convinced it's a positive impact. The dynamic is that because you approve some profile via email, you are "friends" with a person. I think this blog entry (not mine) states it much more clearly than I could, in the context of networking: http://www.ianybarra.com/blog/archives/2005/08/fac ebooking_is.htm
On top of that, there is the dark side of facebooking - it's public. Someday someone is going to see something you wrote that you don't want them to see. And you really can't censor yourself completely, and still *be* yourself...
Well the Bush administration has very strongly and publicly backed this bill. In the world of politics, anything you "sign on to" becomes part of your reputation. If you back it, and it loses, then you lost too.
Yes, these certification levels are more about documenting & following your own engineering processes (and taking into account good engineering practice & common sense as well). In my experience, they haven't really been about functional audits, per se.
Now all the US police departments (that have to use EAL-4 systems) can buy upgrades from Win2000 to XP. Perfect timing, with all that DHS money coming down the pipe right now...
With an area measured in sq. kilometers, and having to face the Sun (along the gravitational vector for any object being drawn by the Sun's gravity), I wonder if being struck by a "cosmic object" might be a serious concern for these solar panels they want to build.
They are having strong sales of the iTunes gift cards. Those are pre-paid downloads. I'll bet if you add those in, it makes up for the missing 0.44% and then some.
I'd say the number of engineers in any country isn't really an important metric. The important metric is what do the engineers in that country produce? How many innovations? What is the impact of those innovations? I'd love to see statistics on this, but it's so hard to measure - I think revenue is probably one good measure, but still obviously flawed as that also takes into account things like effectiveness of sales & marketing.
Also along these lines, how much more valuable are those engineers who first create a new innovation versus those who simply replicate those innovations elsewhere?
Nothing was meant as a diss - that talk about "world-class" is verbatim, right from the article.
I agree completely with what you say about being able to morph yourself into different disciplines, and any engineering major giving the basic analytical skillset. My degrees were in electrical engineering, but I've never worked in that field - have always been in the software industry in roles ranging from hardcore engineer, to management, to sales monkey.
In this context, the world of American software engineering.
First, we don't have that many resources to throw at engineering projects. How many huge engineering projects have we undertaken in the last 3 decades on the scale of the Three Gorges Dam in China, or the twin towers at Kuala Lumpur? We haven't done anything noteworthy for a long time.
This isn't really about doing giant "noteworthy" civil engineering projects. Those are showpieces, but they don't make up a significant portion of the nation's overall engineering output. The official numbers for the Three Gorges Dam are $25b over 15 years, or $1.6b per year. The iPod alone generates more revenue, and that 's just one consumer product. (Yes, I realize this isn't quite apples to apples, but I think it's close enough for illustration). And that's the point - consumer products, automated services - that's all part of engineering, too.
The biggest market? How so?
Markets are defined by $ not by number of people. Don't be fooled by all the buzz in the media about the rapid growth of China & India. They are growing rapidly, true. But the U.S. economy is still much bigger than both combined. And (debate for another thread, perhapse) that growth will slow, as they start to approach U.S.-levels of development - this economic growth is a non-linear curve.
Creative and solidly reliable? Who cares?
Any engineering manager should. I firmly believe that one superstar engineer can outperform a mediocrity by an order of magnitude.
Companies aren't paying them enough to stay in the field, and are happily hiring engineers in other countries instead. So apparently, you're in the minority with your belief that US engineers are somehow better.
Um, what field are they going into? Last I check, engineering is still a pretty lucrative field. Although I hear burger-flipping and retail sales are really growing fast. (j/k)
For my own selfish reasons, I hope I'm in the minority. That way I have a bigger pool of top engineers to hire from. But from the perspective of a US patriot, I really hope that I'm not in the minority.
Coming to the US for a competitive salary? Are you nuts? The tide is turning already, and Indian engineers are going back home.
The U.S. still has a large net import of imigrees/emigrees. QED
As for "our team", the foreign engineers that are here aren't here to stay. They're saving up their US Dollars while they're still worth more than Rupees (for the same reason that dot-com stocks were worth so much--it's a bubble), and they're going to take all that cash and move back to India when they have enough.
So what? For every $ they earned, an American company earned more. (If not, that company took a loss & isn't long for the world). And that money earned by the American company typically represents value created for that company's (usually American) customers.
There has to be a common infrastructure; in this case the different IM backbones need to be connected, addressing needs to be tackled (I have the same alias on AIM and Yahoo, e.g.). For this to happen, a lot of the leaders are going to have to cooperate and conform to an open standard & directory. This isn't going to happen as long as they still harbor ideas of become the IM standard.
And the issue of VOIP is similar. Often it's tied to the IM systems - this is about Yahoo Messenger - (which is why I brought those up), although I suppose it doesn't have to be. But the issue of needing common backbones and address routing remain constant.
What I find interesting is the idea of using VOIP as a bridge between different "standard" voice systems. For example, in US law enforcement and emergency response there's a big push happening to create interoperable radios between jurisdictions. The existing radios function on different frequencies, standards, etc. The dispatch centers could tie themselves together using VOIP as a common medium in order to connect their field users on whatever frequency they happen to operate.
Why is this inevitable? We have the best post-secondary eduction. The most resources to throw at engineering projects. The biggest market for those projects. IMHO, also the most creative and solidly reliable engineers.
Sure other countries (China, India) have *more* engineers. But I firmly believe that quality beats quantity. And as those engineers get better, well, they're going to come to the U.S. for a competitive salary. And then, guess what - they are on "our team."
Because they don't have the resources to operate all their departments & are cutting those they don't consider "world-class." Apparently engineering falls into that category. All in the article...
It would seem that you're not committed to Computer Science, since you're willing to switch majors. That said, if Tulane is cutting that program, it seems they don't consider it to be an area "where it has attained, or has the potential to achieve, world-class excellence." Assuming you don't have a strong preference as to your major, why not pick something that Tulane does consider world-class?
If you have an engineering bent, I would think that civil engineers are going to be in hot demand there for quite some time. Seriously.
*This probably won't happen, at least in cities like Boston, where the unions have a stranglehold on the public transport system. They are dead set against GPS tracking. They would no longer be able to cover up just how inefficient and horrible they really are. They last thing want is somebody to start compiling databases about their on-time percentages.
There was a big scandal in Boston not too long ago about just that happening with (sometimes private contracted) snow plow drivers - they started putting GPS on the plows & let's just say there was a lot of sleeping on the job going on & contracted routes just plain not getting plowed.
Maybe I'm missing something here... but I tried the examples given in the article and it just seemed to be giving the standard driving directions. Nothing about trains or bus lines. I don't know Portland, so I guess it's possible that it was describing bus lines - but in that case, wouldn't it be helpful to actually give route numbers?
i'm still thinking we "westerners" tend to be better than most at it...
there's just too much history to suggest otherwise...
Well I don't think Westerners are somehow born genetically greedier or better at exploitation. For an alternate explanation of why Westerners seem to come out on top, check out Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. His general premise is that those cultures that succeeded tend to have done so due to natural resource concerns.
I haven't seen the book you mentioned, but I'll check it out if I get a chance.
No, that's not his point. His point is that if they can't do something simple, then it's not surprising that they can't do something hard.
My point is to offer an explanation as to why the two are not necessarily correlated - and why they seem to be doing such a bad/slow job at finding prior art.
i suppose that in my pre-conceived view of the world, eastern cultures don't have quite as much rampant greed in open circulation, but then again, having only anecdotal evidence, i could be wrong....
I've heard anecdotes about SE Asian sweatshops and Chinese factories. (Not to mention houses of "work" of another type in Thailand). Point is, greed is everywhere - it's not part of Eastern or Western culture. It's part of *human* culture. All that's needed is the opportunity to express it.
Now, to take the Ayn Rand POV, maybe greed isn't a bad thing. But that's a flamewar for another time...
We value what we can measure. It's difficult to assign a score to quality (not for lack of essays trying...).
I know 6 sigma tries to do this, but that seems to be more a measure of being defect-free than one of product impact. Anyone think of a better example?
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I'd disagree that science needs better, or any, media relations. After all, there wouldn't be a media without science. Or, for that matter, a civilisation.
Media relations = $. $ = more research. More research = more scientific results. More scientific results = improvements in people's quality of life. Improvements in QOL = better media relations.
What kind of science are you going to do without research funding?
Actually, Firefox is a good choice for that... Pornzilla recommends it. :-)
I agree that facebook is well-designed, for what it is, and that it's having an impact, but I'm not convinced it's a positive impact. The dynamic is that because you approve some profile via email, you are "friends" with a person. I think this blog entry (not mine) states it much more clearly than I could, in the context of networking: http://www.ianybarra.com/blog/archives/2005/08/fac ebooking_is.htm
On top of that, there is the dark side of facebooking - it's public. Someday someone is going to see something you wrote that you don't want them to see. And you really can't censor yourself completely, and still *be* yourself...
Well the Bush administration has very strongly and publicly backed this bill. In the world of politics, anything you "sign on to" becomes part of your reputation. If you back it, and it loses, then you lost too.
Yes, these certification levels are more about documenting & following your own engineering processes (and taking into account good engineering practice & common sense as well). In my experience, they haven't really been about functional audits, per se.
Now all the US police departments (that have to use EAL-4 systems) can buy upgrades from Win2000 to XP. Perfect timing, with all that DHS money coming down the pipe right now...
With an area measured in sq. kilometers, and having to face the Sun (along the gravitational vector for any object being drawn by the Sun's gravity), I wonder if being struck by a "cosmic object" might be a serious concern for these solar panels they want to build.
Um, couldn't they just subvert an unguarded computer in the US and use that as their point of attack?
Actually, why didn't they? Seems odd that they'd allow it to be traced back to China if it was the Chinese gov't/military.
And how's it going to be protected? This is another ChoicePoint leak just waiting to happen.
They are having strong sales of the iTunes gift cards. Those are pre-paid downloads. I'll bet if you add those in, it makes up for the missing 0.44% and then some.
I'd say the number of engineers in any country isn't really an important metric. The important metric is what do the engineers in that country produce? How many innovations? What is the impact of those innovations? I'd love to see statistics on this, but it's so hard to measure - I think revenue is probably one good measure, but still obviously flawed as that also takes into account things like effectiveness of sales & marketing.
Also along these lines, how much more valuable are those engineers who first create a new innovation versus those who simply replicate those innovations elsewhere?
Nothing was meant as a diss - that talk about "world-class" is verbatim, right from the article.
I agree completely with what you say about being able to morph yourself into different disciplines, and any engineering major giving the basic analytical skillset. My degrees were in electrical engineering, but I've never worked in that field - have always been in the software industry in roles ranging from hardcore engineer, to management, to sales monkey.
What world are you living in?
In this context, the world of American software engineering.
First, we don't have that many resources to throw at engineering projects. How many huge engineering projects have we undertaken in the last 3 decades on the scale of the Three Gorges Dam in China, or the twin towers at Kuala Lumpur? We haven't done anything noteworthy for a long time.
This isn't really about doing giant "noteworthy" civil engineering projects. Those are showpieces, but they don't make up a significant portion of the nation's overall engineering output. The official numbers for the Three Gorges Dam are $25b over 15 years, or $1.6b per year. The iPod alone generates more revenue, and that 's just one consumer product. (Yes, I realize this isn't quite apples to apples, but I think it's close enough for illustration). And that's the point - consumer products, automated services - that's all part of engineering, too.
The biggest market? How so?
Markets are defined by $ not by number of people. Don't be fooled by all the buzz in the media about the rapid growth of China & India. They are growing rapidly, true. But the U.S. economy is still much bigger than both combined. And (debate for another thread, perhapse) that growth will slow, as they start to approach U.S.-levels of development - this economic growth is a non-linear curve.
Creative and solidly reliable? Who cares?
Any engineering manager should. I firmly believe that one superstar engineer can outperform a mediocrity by an order of magnitude.
Companies aren't paying them enough to stay in the field, and are happily hiring engineers in other countries instead. So apparently, you're in the minority with your belief that US engineers are somehow better.
Um, what field are they going into? Last I check, engineering is still a pretty lucrative field. Although I hear burger-flipping and retail sales are really growing fast. (j/k)
For my own selfish reasons, I hope I'm in the minority. That way I have a bigger pool of top engineers to hire from. But from the perspective of a US patriot, I really hope that I'm not in the minority.
Coming to the US for a competitive salary? Are you nuts? The tide is turning already, and Indian engineers are going back home.
The U.S. still has a large net import of imigrees/emigrees. QED
As for "our team", the foreign engineers that are here aren't here to stay. They're saving up their US Dollars while they're still worth more than Rupees (for the same reason that dot-com stocks were worth so much--it's a bubble), and they're going to take all that cash and move back to India when they have enough.
So what? For every $ they earned, an American company earned more. (If not, that company took a loss & isn't long for the world). And that money earned by the American company typically represents value created for that company's (usually American) customers.
There has to be a common infrastructure; in this case the different IM backbones need to be connected, addressing needs to be tackled (I have the same alias on AIM and Yahoo, e.g.). For this to happen, a lot of the leaders are going to have to cooperate and conform to an open standard & directory. This isn't going to happen as long as they still harbor ideas of become the IM standard.
And the issue of VOIP is similar. Often it's tied to the IM systems - this is about Yahoo Messenger - (which is why I brought those up), although I suppose it doesn't have to be. But the issue of needing common backbones and address routing remain constant.
What I find interesting is the idea of using VOIP as a bridge between different "standard" voice systems. For example, in US law enforcement and emergency response there's a big push happening to create interoperable radios between jurisdictions. The existing radios function on different frequencies, standards, etc. The dispatch centers could tie themselves together using VOIP as a common medium in order to connect their field users on whatever frequency they happen to operate.
My bad... looks like Civil Engineering was cut too.
Why is this inevitable? We have the best post-secondary eduction. The most resources to throw at engineering projects. The biggest market for those projects. IMHO, also the most creative and solidly reliable engineers.
Sure other countries (China, India) have *more* engineers. But I firmly believe that quality beats quantity. And as those engineers get better, well, they're going to come to the U.S. for a competitive salary. And then, guess what - they are on "our team."
Because they don't have the resources to operate all their departments & are cutting those they don't consider "world-class." Apparently engineering falls into that category. All in the article...
It would seem that you're not committed to Computer Science, since you're willing to switch majors. That said, if Tulane is cutting that program, it seems they don't consider it to be an area "where it has attained, or has the potential to achieve, world-class excellence." Assuming you don't have a strong preference as to your major, why not pick something that Tulane does consider world-class?
If you have an engineering bent, I would think that civil engineers are going to be in hot demand there for quite some time. Seriously.
*This probably won't happen, at least in cities like Boston, where the unions have a stranglehold on the public transport system. They are dead set against GPS tracking. They would no longer be able to cover up just how inefficient and horrible they really are. They last thing want is somebody to start compiling databases about their on-time percentages.
There was a big scandal in Boston not too long ago about just that happening with (sometimes private contracted) snow plow drivers - they started putting GPS on the plows & let's just say there was a lot of sleeping on the job going on & contracted routes just plain not getting plowed.
Maybe I'm missing something here... but I tried the examples given in the article and it just seemed to be giving the standard driving directions. Nothing about trains or bus lines. I don't know Portland, so I guess it's possible that it was describing bus lines - but in that case, wouldn't it be helpful to actually give route numbers?
i'm still thinking we "westerners" tend to be better than most at it...
there's just too much history to suggest otherwise...
Well I don't think Westerners are somehow born genetically greedier or better at exploitation. For an alternate explanation of why Westerners seem to come out on top, check out Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel . His general premise is that those cultures that succeeded tend to have done so due to natural resource concerns.
I haven't seen the book you mentioned, but I'll check it out if I get a chance.
No, that's not his point. His point is that if they can't do something simple, then it's not surprising that they can't do something hard.
My point is to offer an explanation as to why the two are not necessarily correlated - and why they seem to be doing such a bad/slow job at finding prior art.
i suppose that in my pre-conceived view of the world, eastern cultures don't have quite as much rampant greed in open circulation, but then again, having only anecdotal evidence, i could be wrong....
I've heard anecdotes about SE Asian sweatshops and Chinese factories. (Not to mention houses of "work" of another type in Thailand). Point is, greed is everywhere - it's not part of Eastern or Western culture. It's part of *human* culture. All that's needed is the opportunity to express it.
Now, to take the Ayn Rand POV, maybe greed isn't a bad thing. But that's a flamewar for another time...
Not that I'm defending them... but a name query can be completely automated. Prior art has to be matched by a human.
We value what we can measure. It's difficult to assign a score to quality (not for lack of essays trying...).
I know 6 sigma tries to do this, but that seems to be more a measure of being defect-free than one of product impact. Anyone think of a better example?