I think you are way off here. Maybe my college is different than yours, but in all the classes I have taken at Ga Tech I have yet to have a course where the professor chose a book that they wrote.
I'm, guessing then that Georgia Tech is an exception to the rule. I worked at a college bookstore. I know for a fact that profs recived kickbacks (in the form of "better percentages on their course packs") by cooperating and picking more expensive, higher margin, and especially books that were in their last year of publication for that edition (low buyback, high sell, and no buyback after that).
Maybe it's only Arkansas Book Services that uses this tactic (they were in many colleges under many names at the time) but it's scumbag tactics.
Fact remains it should be opt-in only. Some students are voting to stealth tax EVERYONE who doesn't get clued in and opt out.
Political activism should not be funded through the public education system. You want a club. Form one and pay for it yourselves.
I'm so glad that this hadn't taken root yet when I was still in college.
Fucking "entitlements"
The only thing you're entitled to is what you've earned, not what you've managed to add as a line item on an already bloated tuition bill, with no CLEAR explaination as to what the charge is and why the student can opt out.
If your cause(s) is/are so great, than surely opt-in would be fine.
Yep. I worked at a college book store about 13-14 years ago right around when most of the "course pack" concept was gettins started. The hired salesweasel and chronic sufferer of food poisoning from chicken (Hi, Dave, you prick. Hope Park and Shep left you with as little as you contributed to your co-workers) used to spend most of his time schmoozing profs and convincing them what a great idea letting us sell their class notes to their students (and make them a manditory course purchase) as an exclusive was.
Profs are just as likely to become morals-free leeches as anyone else, especially when you provide them with a way to ensure guaranteed income at the expense of a bunch of pell grants and scholarships.
But then college has become the young adult's introduction to corruption, old-boy-networks, and the like in the last 15 or so years anyhow, huh?
(here's where the old timers point out that it's been going on a lot longer than that...heh)
That's simply not a lifestyle that anyone who struggled YEARS to leave behind will accept.
It can't REASONABLY be done, and it certainly can't be done at a standard of living that anyone who has one of these jobs that is being outsourced can accept.
They've already made decisions based on their income. House purchases, marriages, children. These choices were all reasonable, in as much as they had careers that they thought, and every aspect of their upbringing and education led them to believe were stable.
No sane person will willingly go THAT far down the standard-of-living scale.
Don't own a car? in most parts of the country, outside mega-cities, you will be severely limited in your choices of employment. In short, you will likely NEVER make a reasonable wage, if you're starting from abject poverty (which is what $11k is in the us). If you're making 6 figures and live in walking distance of your office, sure you can get by without a car. (Note, public transport is NOT a reasonable option for at least 85% of the country_
Pile into apartments? Yea the human psyche deals real well with no privacy, theiving roommates, and generally increased crime and fire risk associated with extremely dense living conditions.
Add to that many of us in the Tech industry have social issues (I have Asperger's Syndrome, for instance) that make crowded circumstances completely intolerable.
Just because a struggling immigrant, with no measurable skill, and possibly no legal right to be here in the first place is willing to live like that doesn't mean that someone who worked years to not only escape those conditions but build a rewarding career and a moderately decent lifestyle should just accept being reduced to hand-to-mouth subsistance with a smile.
Oh I'm not saying I'd WANT to work there, but living on a Pizza Hut salary here in the States isn't an option for me anymore.
Not to mention the fact that there are only so many "Pizza Hut" jobs to go around...
I have some ideas about business that I could go into if I was laid off, unfortunately, all of those ideas rely on having an economy where there are still consumers who can afford to buy anything...
"Several" is hardly indicative of accepting immigrant workers as readily as India accepts outsourced jobs. It's POSSIBLE, just not very likely.
IF an American could get the job at that rate, it would be a good deal agreed. Since it's highly unlikely, said worker loses his means of support.
Doesn't sound much like a good deal to me.
I'm not blaming Indian workers for this. I work happily with workers from all over the world, and my company seems to be at least marginally clueful in balancing the advantages of having workers in India, and keeping a core development force in the US.
I'm blaming people like Carly Fiorino (or however the bitch's name is spelt) for wholesale, indiscriminate outsourcing. Of course I also blame her for destroying much of the Tech projects that made HP (and Compaq) great. Thank %DIETY% I don't work for that woman.
Despite what some rather ignorant individuals are trying to say here, it is NOT possible for an American worker to subsist on $11K a year and have anything close to an acceptable lifestyle in the states. Live where I wake up at every sound because it might be my crack smoking neighbor breaking in to rob me? no fucking thank you, I did that in College. Never again.
Lose my car, my house, pretty much everything I worked for since escaping the student slums? Again, I'll fight before I'll go back to poverty.
It would be roughly equivilant of an Indian worker attempting to live at the equivalent of $2500/year. It might be possible, but I seriously doubt it's a life many would aspire to.
That might explain a bit about why some American workers are a little less than willing to accept this.
IF you could actually GET one of these outsourced jobs by moving to India, your standard of living would be one HELL of a lot better than working at Pizza Hut. The income would be about the same, but it is so much cheaper to live there than here. Cultural adjustments aside, you'd be very close to the standard that American programmers currently enjoy.
I wouldn't want to live smack on a nuclear target either, but I'd like living hand-to-mouth like I was still in college and doing a job I HATED a lot less.
On the positive side (if you can call it that), if things continue the way they are, I expect the job market in the "Body Guard to Software CEO" category to pick up quite a bit. At least until the economy collapses entirely and people can afford to live on $11k a year in the US again.
Dell still sells Linux on certain models as far as I can tell. THe key here is that we're talking about a sub-$400 commodity PC, and Dell can inprove their position on the slim margin on these machines by cutting out Microsoft.
An agreement not to sell systems with Linux would constitute a level of Anti-Trust that I doubt even Microsoft could defend, when prosecuted.
Hey, once you've gone through all the cleaning fluid you can find at the office, toner does look a bit like liquid (this would be shortly before everything goes black).
Personally, I think that people who are stupid enough to snort toner or iron clothes they are wearing should get exactly what's coming to them, and the judge in any case that is brought by Gross Idiocy should throw out the case and perhaps remand the dimwitted plaintif to the custody of the nice men in white coats.
Stop keeping stupidity from HURTING folks. It's supposed to. That pain helps the learning process. People who can't learn that doing stupid things hurts shouldn't be sheilded.
Here's hoping for a future where fewer peoples' last words are "Hey Y'all, Watch THIS!!!"
I have a ReplayTV actually, but the time that they usually rebroadcast at conflicts with another show I watch, Andromeda.
And yea I'm in the Brighthouse market, but I don't really care to pay them an additional fee. I'll get around to getting MythTV set up on my network one of these weekends to handle conflicts.
I'd really just like the Magic to go away like Rich DeVos keeps threatening to do if we don't build them another arena;)
I think syndication would be a better choice than UPN any day. I quite enjoy Enterprise. My biggest problem with it is that the local UPN affiliate keeps pre-empting the show for Orlando Magic games. I'd rather watch BAD Star Trek (Voyager) than ANY basketball game...
This is apparently a major problem for UPN, whose affiliates are largely made up of not-very-committed-to-the-network stations (Like WRBW) or even shared with WB network.
If Enterprise gets canned, quite frankly I hope the entire UPN network folds, as has been rumored. We don't need another network filled with generic ethnic sitcoms and Reality Shows.
I wouldn't want Sci-Fi to pick it up. They'd completely ruin it and then bury it at some odd time, or turn it into "Tremors: in Space".
Its fairly simple, once you get the knack. Think of a "cue" something that can't actually happen. Eventually you'll be able to identify the "cue" in your dream and realize you're dreaming. KNOWING this, you can take complete control. For a short time, anyhow. Concentrate too hard and you wake up.
I can understand considering the content unfit for recording. Myself, I don't watch more than a smattering "network" tv anymore. Reality TV? No thanks, I see how shitty people are to each other every day, I don't need to watch people get paid to act that way.
I do like some content though. I prefer to watch it when I want. That's why I use a PVR. One of the odd things that I use my ReplayTV for is to snag every fishing show that runs (that doesn't conflict with Enterprise or some other show that I watch) and spool it up in case I want to see it. I recently took up fishing again, and that's useful to me.
Gotta differ on one thing, though...
2) How many times are you really gonna watch something? Online services will archive their offerings - Pay for Play.
I'm not interested in Pay for Play, particularly when it is going to involve DRM that won't be compatible with my OS of choice. I'd rather archive the content that I want myself, and watch it when I want. If it becomes available on DVD (at a reasonable price, never mind this $25 for a 1 hour History Channel show) then I'll buy it and clear some space in the spool. even if I only watch it one more time, it's more efficient for me to spool it myself than pay the cable company even MORE money to access it later.
Yea some people will say that's contrary to "fair use". As long as I'm not selling it, I don't really care. Offer it to me at a reasonable price, for a ONE TIME PURCHASE, where I can watch it whenever I want from then on, and I'll buy.
Main reason I won't "Kill my tv" though is that I need it for a display for my game consoles:).
THe only people who I think are nuts are the self-important fools who spout that "kill your TV" crap. (although I think you were being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, based on the Projector/DVD comment at the end)
Big screen movies stopped being "powerful" when the Multiplex took over.
I always wait for movies to come out on DVD. It takes less than a year for most, and I'd far rather sit in my recliner and enjoy a beer with the film than sit in a seat so small airliners will soon use them, next to overweight people who take up half of MY seat, and listen to screaming children of irresponsible parents who should have hired a sitter.
For the price of two movie tickets, I can BUY most popular titles on DVD and watch them whenever I want. Why would I wait in line at a multiplex?
BTW, they don't go off the air at all any more, that's why you don't get the Star Spangled Banner at sign off...
I'm about as anti organized religion as a man can be, and I happen to agree with the Moon/Mars program announced by the president.
I think a great opportunity exists for new industry and privitization of space as a part of this initiative. I don't think that part was covered more than passingly in the initial speech, simply because most voters are too stupid to grasp the concept.
I'm actually starting to expect and be amused by the constant droning whine of "waaaaah, the President is for it therefore I'm against it" that I read from the more liberal slashdotters.
Up until now, I was against killing the shuttle program, as many had proposed before (some of which are the same folk that are crying and screaming over this now, simply because the President is for it) because there was no clear successor to the program. The CEV looks to be that successor. Hubble will still be useful for a while, even without the maintenance mission. Even if we don't get a lunar base operational in the relatively short term, as long as the remaining Shuttle fleet is able to facilitate completion of the ISS, that gives us a platform for a far more servicable successor to Hubble.
And there's still the James Webb telescope project. No pretty pictures for the media from that, but better hard science.
Not I, but apparently I'm not as amused as you and the mod that gave you a Funny that there is no "r" or "l" sound in Japanese, only a sound that is roughly in between.
Yes I know the joke is done all the time, but it's just not as drop-to-the-floor-and-roll-around-laughing funny as some of you seem to think it is.
Work with a smoking hot chick from Osaka for a few years and it won't be funny to you, either;)
Slashdot Mirror
Fact remains it should be opt-in only. Some students are voting to stealth tax EVERYONE who doesn't get clued in and opt out.
Political activism should not be funded through the public education system. You want a club. Form one and pay for it yourselves.
I'm so glad that this hadn't taken root yet when I was still in college.
Fucking "entitlements"
The only thing you're entitled to is what you've earned, not what you've managed to add as a line item on an already bloated tuition bill, with no CLEAR explaination as to what the charge is and why the student can opt out.
If your cause(s) is/are so great, than surely opt-in would be fine.
You're no better than the spammers.
A PDP-11 with troff? Sheer Luxury.
In my day we used PUNCH CARDS. and we had to read them by hand, because printers hadn't been INVENTED yet.
Yep. I worked at a college book store about 13-14 years ago right around when most of the "course pack" concept was gettins started. The hired salesweasel and chronic sufferer of food poisoning from chicken (Hi, Dave, you prick. Hope Park and Shep left you with as little as you contributed to your co-workers) used to spend most of his time schmoozing profs and convincing them what a great idea letting us sell their class notes to their students (and make them a manditory course purchase) as an exclusive was.
Profs are just as likely to become morals-free leeches as anyone else, especially when you provide them with a way to ensure guaranteed income at the expense of a bunch of pell grants and scholarships.
But then college has become the young adult's introduction to corruption, old-boy-networks, and the like in the last 15 or so years anyhow, huh?
(here's where the old timers point out that it's been going on a lot longer than that...heh)
That's simply not a lifestyle that anyone who struggled YEARS to leave behind will accept.
It can't REASONABLY be done, and it certainly can't be done at a standard of living that anyone who has one of these jobs that is being outsourced can accept.
They've already made decisions based on their income. House purchases, marriages, children. These choices were all reasonable, in as much as they had careers that they thought, and every aspect of their upbringing and education led them to believe were stable.
No sane person will willingly go THAT far down the standard-of-living scale.
Don't own a car? in most parts of the country, outside mega-cities, you will be severely limited in your choices of employment. In short, you will likely NEVER make a reasonable wage, if you're starting from abject poverty (which is what $11k is in the us). If you're making 6 figures and live in walking distance of your office, sure you can get by without a car. (Note, public transport is NOT a reasonable option for at least 85% of the country_
Pile into apartments? Yea the human psyche deals real well with no privacy, theiving roommates, and generally increased crime and fire risk associated with extremely dense living conditions.
Add to that many of us in the Tech industry have social issues (I have Asperger's Syndrome, for instance) that make crowded circumstances completely intolerable.
Just because a struggling immigrant, with no measurable skill, and possibly no legal right to be here in the first place is willing to live like that doesn't mean that someone who worked years to not only escape those conditions but build a rewarding career and a moderately decent lifestyle should just accept being reduced to hand-to-mouth subsistance with a smile.
Oh I'm not saying I'd WANT to work there, but living on a Pizza Hut salary here in the States isn't an option for me anymore.
Not to mention the fact that there are only so many "Pizza Hut" jobs to go around...
I have some ideas about business that I could go into if I was laid off, unfortunately, all of those ideas rely on having an economy where there are still consumers who can afford to buy anything...
"Several" is hardly indicative of accepting immigrant workers as readily as India accepts outsourced jobs. It's POSSIBLE, just not very likely.
IF an American could get the job at that rate, it would be a good deal agreed. Since it's highly unlikely, said worker loses his means of support.
Doesn't sound much like a good deal to me.
I'm not blaming Indian workers for this. I work happily with workers from all over the world, and my company seems to be at least marginally clueful in balancing the advantages of having workers in India, and keeping a core development force in the US.
I'm blaming people like Carly Fiorino (or however the bitch's name is spelt) for wholesale, indiscriminate outsourcing. Of course I also blame her for destroying much of the Tech projects that made HP (and Compaq) great. Thank %DIETY% I don't work for that woman.
Despite what some rather ignorant individuals are trying to say here, it is NOT possible for an American worker to subsist on $11K a year and have anything close to an acceptable lifestyle in the states. Live where I wake up at every sound because it might be my crack smoking neighbor breaking in to rob me? no fucking thank you, I did that in College. Never again.
Lose my car, my house, pretty much everything I worked for since escaping the student slums? Again, I'll fight before I'll go back to poverty.
It would be roughly equivilant of an Indian worker attempting to live at the equivalent of $2500/year. It might be possible, but I seriously doubt it's a life many would aspire to.
That might explain a bit about why some American workers are a little less than willing to accept this.
IF you could actually GET one of these outsourced jobs by moving to India, your standard of living would be one HELL of a lot better than working at Pizza Hut. The income would be about the same, but it is so much cheaper to live there than here. Cultural adjustments aside, you'd be very close to the standard that American programmers currently enjoy.
I wouldn't want to live smack on a nuclear target either, but I'd like living hand-to-mouth like I was still in college and doing a job I HATED a lot less.
On the positive side (if you can call it that), if things continue the way they are, I expect the job market in the "Body Guard to Software CEO" category to pick up quite a bit. At least until the economy collapses entirely and people can afford to live on $11k a year in the US again.
Thanks, I suppose ;). Can't for the life of me remember why I would have put you on the "foe" list.
Probably some 3 AM knee-jerk reaction. fixed.
Dell still sells Linux on certain models as far as I can tell. THe key here is that we're talking about a sub-$400 commodity PC, and Dell can inprove their position on the slim margin on these machines by cutting out Microsoft.
An agreement not to sell systems with Linux would constitute a level of Anti-Trust that I doubt even Microsoft could defend, when prosecuted.
Sectors? you had Sectors? On a Disk?
Sheer luxury. When I was a pup, we had blocks on a tape. They went from one giant reel to another, and we were damned glad for it.
Hey, once you've gone through all the cleaning fluid you can find at the office, toner does look a bit like liquid (this would be shortly before everything goes black).
Personally, I think that people who are stupid enough to snort toner or iron clothes they are wearing should get exactly what's coming to them, and the judge in any case that is brought by Gross Idiocy should throw out the case and perhaps remand the dimwitted plaintif to the custody of the nice men in white coats.
Stop keeping stupidity from HURTING folks. It's supposed to. That pain helps the learning process. People who can't learn that doing stupid things hurts shouldn't be sheilded.
Here's hoping for a future where fewer peoples' last words are "Hey Y'all, Watch THIS!!!"
And here I thought it was the same guy.
A Hack candidate who claims to talk to dead Senators from North Carolina.
Go figure.
They do not, however, have more money than IBM, Sun, HP, Redhat, Novell...
Better. Have Wesley be the sillhouetted manipulator behind the Temporal Cold War.
I have a ReplayTV actually, but the time that they usually rebroadcast at conflicts with another show I watch, Andromeda.
;)
And yea I'm in the Brighthouse market, but I don't really care to pay them an additional fee. I'll get around to getting MythTV set up on my network one of these weekends to handle conflicts.
I'd really just like the Magic to go away like Rich DeVos keeps threatening to do if we don't build them another arena
Thanks for the suggestion, anyhow.
I think syndication would be a better choice than UPN any day. I quite enjoy Enterprise. My biggest problem with it is that the local UPN affiliate keeps pre-empting the show for Orlando Magic games. I'd rather watch BAD Star Trek (Voyager) than ANY basketball game...
This is apparently a major problem for UPN, whose affiliates are largely made up of not-very-committed-to-the-network stations (Like WRBW) or even shared with WB network.
If Enterprise gets canned, quite frankly I hope the entire UPN network folds, as has been rumored. We don't need another network filled with generic ethnic sitcoms and Reality Shows.
I wouldn't want Sci-Fi to pick it up. They'd completely ruin it and then bury it at some odd time, or turn it into "Tremors: in Space".
I was unaware that Michael Stipe was an afficianado of hot grits.
Its fairly simple, once you get the knack. Think of a "cue" something that can't actually happen. Eventually you'll be able to identify the "cue" in your dream and realize you're dreaming. KNOWING this, you can take complete control. For a short time, anyhow. Concentrate too hard and you wake up.
It's a rather interesting exercise.
I do like some content though. I prefer to watch it when I want. That's why I use a PVR. One of the odd things that I use my ReplayTV for is to snag every fishing show that runs (that doesn't conflict with Enterprise or some other show that I watch) and spool it up in case I want to see it. I recently took up fishing again, and that's useful to me.
Gotta differ on one thing, though...
I'm not interested in Pay for Play, particularly when it is going to involve DRM that won't be compatible with my OS of choice. I'd rather archive the content that I want myself, and watch it when I want. If it becomes available on DVD (at a reasonable price, never mind this $25 for a 1 hour History Channel show) then I'll buy it and clear some space in the spool. even if I only watch it one more time, it's more efficient for me to spool it myself than pay the cable company even MORE money to access it later.
Yea some people will say that's contrary to "fair use". As long as I'm not selling it, I don't really care. Offer it to me at a reasonable price, for a ONE TIME PURCHASE, where I can watch it whenever I want from then on, and I'll buy.
Main reason I won't "Kill my tv" though is that I need it for a display for my game consoles
THe only people who I think are nuts are the self-important fools who spout that "kill your TV" crap. (although I think you were being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, based on the Projector/DVD comment at the end)
Big screen movies stopped being "powerful" when the Multiplex took over.
I always wait for movies to come out on DVD. It takes less than a year for most, and I'd far rather sit in my recliner and enjoy a beer with the film than sit in a seat so small airliners will soon use them, next to overweight people who take up half of MY seat, and listen to screaming children of irresponsible parents who should have hired a sitter.
For the price of two movie tickets, I can BUY most popular titles on DVD and watch them whenever I want. Why would I wait in line at a multiplex?
BTW, they don't go off the air at all any more, that's why you don't get the Star Spangled Banner at sign off...
Only if they hit him with the tree branch ;)
I'm about as anti organized religion as a man can be, and I happen to agree with the Moon/Mars program announced by the president.
I think a great opportunity exists for new industry and privitization of space as a part of this initiative. I don't think that part was covered more than passingly in the initial speech, simply because most voters are too stupid to grasp the concept.
I'm actually starting to expect and be amused by the constant droning whine of "waaaaah, the President is for it therefore I'm against it" that I read from the more liberal slashdotters.
Up until now, I was against killing the shuttle program, as many had proposed before (some of which are the same folk that are crying and screaming over this now, simply because the President is for it) because there was no clear successor to the program. The CEV looks to be that successor. Hubble will still be useful for a while, even without the maintenance mission. Even if we don't get a lunar base operational in the relatively short term, as long as the remaining Shuttle fleet is able to facilitate completion of the ISS, that gives us a platform for a far more servicable successor to Hubble.
And there's still the James Webb telescope project. No pretty pictures for the media from that, but better hard science.
Just a guess, but I'm thinking your gimmick sig might have sounded a "troll" alarm for some mod or other.
I was thinking "WTF, did I get logged out? why is that post minimized?" heh.
Not I, but apparently I'm not as amused as you and the mod that gave you a Funny that there is no "r" or "l" sound in Japanese, only a sound that is roughly in between.
;)
Yes I know the joke is done all the time, but it's just not as drop-to-the-floor-and-roll-around-laughing funny as some of you seem to think it is.
Work with a smoking hot chick from Osaka for a few years and it won't be funny to you, either