Take a look at this very recent article. This article points out that American IT management is way over-priced compared to Indian management, and hence management will be the next thing to go off shore. As it says in the article, this is American IT self destructing.
Indeed A lot of what you say is very true. However, it very much depends on what the grad (PhD) student was doing. If the code was only for a paper then it may be hacked together, but that code itself would never see the light of day, as it wasn't the deliverable.
Code that was intended for the light of day tends to be very well crafted, very clean, and very robust. Much of the early BSD Unix code coming out of university labs was written by people who really cared about what they were doing, and that also meant they cared about the code, and as most of these guys were clever guys, it meant the code was good.
In my experiecne, a look of the code coming from industry is hacked, flabby and messy. What matters is it compiles and runs, not how good it looks, because by definition. most of industry written code is closed source, and so nobody gets to see how much of a mess it is. This is why open source code is a real benefit.
Was the original code written in a state of the art UNIX lab or just a university lab by university students?
I certainly don't agree with this. 'Just a university lab by university students' tends to be the state of the art. Especially if the students are PhD students. I have never done anything in industry even remotely as state of the art as I did as a PhD student.
Call me naive, but is there really a purpose in having a multi-tasking, Unix-like kernel... in a PDA?
This argument was won many years ago, as far as GUI based systems are concerned. Multi-threaded GUIs are much more responsive than old cooperative multi-tasking systems. Try going back to an old cooperative multitasking system, and you'll notice an immediate difference.
Open source PDA operating system, OK I can see that. But why Linux?
The same reason Linux is being used for more and more interactive embedded devices - like PVRs, set-top-boxes etc. Linux is a fully functional os which can be embedded and is free. All embedded devices have very very slim profit margins, and the royalty costs associated with other commercial oses, typically can make a major difference to the cost, or the device's features. A couple of dollars saved on the royalty gives a bigger flash memory or a cheaper price.
In today's share holder value obsessed economy they indeed don't add value. Nobody wants forward thinkers when the horizon is 6 months away.
Too many of today's problems are caused by too little forward thinking, or too little forward planning - i.e. power backouts:-) It's society that's sick, not PhDs who hoped to make the world a better place.
After my PhD and research, when I first went into industry, I started, salarywise, as a recent college grad. It was, however, my research experience that got me the job. In otherwords, the company had their cake and ate it.
I was told the pay would increase pretty fast - that was rendered academic (;-) ) because they went bankrupt little more than a year afterwards.
I have a UK Comp Sci PhD (and unfortunately still work there), and I generally agree with all the comments here. I have, however, most definately been hit with the too over qualified argument.
When times were good, being deemed too over qualified for a job was not too much of a problem - because the recruiter (to be fair) was generally right, and it was simply an indication the job was not going to be that interesting.
In the slow down, however, such an attitude has been very difficult to cope with. In this case, you apply for a job because it's one of the only 'reasonably good' jobs in the area, which you know is not at your level, but you need a job, and you're happy with what's on offer. The recruiters, dispite assurances on your behalf, almost always turn you down. I've been told bluntly many times I'm too over qualified, but typically, the answer is a more subtle 'not a good team fit' or you'd want too much money. Very irritating.
In general, from a UK perspective, I believe there is absolutely no career enhancing reason to do a PhD, a PhD has to be done for yourself, in the knowledge it may pigeon hole you to jobs that may be pretty scarce.
I have made a "successful" transistion to UK industry, that transistion, and my employability is fully based on my industrial implementation experience, and certainly not from my PhD. It is, to be honest, difficult to hide the bitterness I do feel towards the UK regarding their attitude towards PhDs.
Technically this is a miss, but will that matter?
on
I Want My MTV... PC?
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· Score: 1
My first reaction to seeing this is the marketeers have got it the wrong-way round. Most companies are now building Home Entertainment Centres which are PCs, but the PC is kept well hidden.
The digital rights security issues to do otherwise are horrendous. I'm involved in building a system which will have all the mentioned entertainment stuff but with digital TV/PVR capability, in such a system hacking is obviously seen a a major issue. All solutions end up hiding the underlying OS as much as possible. To expose the OS as a general purpose PC is madness.
However, the MTV PC is offering nothing new. The 'cable-ready' TV tuner is presumably an analogue tuner, and so the signal (without hardware) cannot be streamed to disk at sufficient quality to be a problem. It will probably be receiving 'free-to-view' programmes anyway. There doesn't seem to be any additional digital rights issues here than with an ordinary PC.
The marketing as a PC is essential at the $1800 price, otherwise it will be perceived to be a consumer device with a value of no more than a few hundred dollars. In doing so, they've avoided the tough memory/CPU power constraints imposed on a consumer device. There will probably be a lot of consumer devices offering all the above without the PC in the future.
So technically a miss, but with the brand conscious sector they're aiming it at, it may not matter.
There are 10 Moscows in the US, as well as 5 Londons, 6 Bostons (and another in the UK), 11 Atlantas, 12 Genevas, 10 Berlins, 9 Romes, 3 Madrids, 10 Viennas, 12 Parises, 9 Warsaws, 2 Pragues, etc, etc, etc.
I believe that's not what the poster was complaining about. The existance of so many towns/cities in the USA with European names is well known.
The complaint was about the implication that any town mentioned is in the states unless explicitly stated otherwise, as if this was necessary for many Americans.
Such mentality is not shown in other countries. If I read "person x came from Boston" I'd immediately assume the person came from Boston, Mass. USA, not Boston, Lincolnshire, England, even though I live in the UK, because Boston, Mass., is much more well-known.
Bizarro Earth: Where a talented engineer who has been imprisoned by a repressive USA government longs to return to Russia so he can be free. Could any of us imagined this scenario 15 years ago?
No, but could you have imagined a situation 15 years ago, where the US was simultaneously going against international opinion on at least two issues: Son of Star Wars, and the Kyoto agreement.
Seems to me as if the USA, being the only superpower left, no longer cares what other countries think of it. History shows countries without any viable opposition turn into bullies.
Sounds like more of a socialist manifesto than a charter of Rights.
And what is wrong with that then? I happen to believe socialism is the only equitable and fair way forward.
The problem with you Yanks is anything not total rampant capitalism, survival of the fittest, does look like socialism. Try looking outside the US for once, and you will find that there are other, perhaps better, ways of doing things.
In reality, this whole affair is all about a narrow isolationist USA which cannot stomach the fact that other countries do things differently.
Slashdot Mirror
Gentoo have a Gnome/KDE liveCD for PowerPC.
Take a look at this very recent article. This article points out that American IT management is way over-priced compared to Indian management, and hence management will be the next thing to go off shore. As it says in the article, this is American IT self destructing.
Code that was intended for the light of day tends to be very well crafted, very clean, and very robust. Much of the early BSD Unix code coming out of university labs was written by people who really cared about what they were doing, and that also meant they cared about the code, and as most of these guys were clever guys, it meant the code was good.
In my experiecne, a look of the code coming from industry is hacked, flabby and messy. What matters is it compiles and runs, not how good it looks, because by definition. most of industry written code is closed source, and so nobody gets to see how much of a mess it is. This is why open source code is a real benefit.
I certainly don't agree with this. 'Just a university lab by university students' tends to be the state of the art. Especially if the students are PhD students. I have never done anything in industry even remotely as state of the art as I did as a PhD student.
The soft mutation is the same reason Lloegr (England) is written as 'Croeso i Loegr' on signs going into England.
Pob Lwc i Alan! (Good luck to Alan).
This argument was won many years ago, as far as GUI based systems are concerned. Multi-threaded GUIs are much more responsive than old cooperative multi-tasking systems. Try going back to an old cooperative multitasking system, and you'll notice an immediate difference.
Open source PDA operating system, OK I can see that. But why Linux?
The same reason Linux is being used for more and more interactive embedded devices - like PVRs, set-top-boxes etc. Linux is a fully functional os which can be embedded and is free. All embedded devices have very very slim profit margins, and the royalty costs associated with other commercial oses, typically can make a major difference to the cost, or the device's features. A couple of dollars saved on the royalty gives a bigger flash memory or a cheaper price.
In today's share holder value obsessed economy they indeed don't add value. Nobody wants forward thinkers when the horizon is 6 months away.
:-) It's society that's sick, not PhDs who hoped to make the world a better place.
Too many of today's problems are caused by too little forward thinking, or too little forward planning - i.e. power backouts
After my PhD and research, when I first went into industry, I started, salarywise, as a recent college grad. It was, however, my research experience that got me the job. In otherwords, the company had their cake and ate it.
;-) ) because they went bankrupt little more than a year afterwards.
I was told the pay would increase pretty fast - that was rendered academic (
I have a UK Comp Sci PhD (and unfortunately still work there), and I generally agree with all the comments here. I have, however, most definately been hit with the too over qualified argument.
When times were good, being deemed too over qualified for a job was not too much of a problem - because the recruiter (to be fair) was generally right, and it was simply an indication the job was not going to be that interesting.
In the slow down, however, such an attitude has been very difficult to cope with. In this case, you apply for a job because it's one of the only 'reasonably good' jobs in the area, which you know is not at your level, but you need a job, and you're happy with what's on offer. The recruiters, dispite assurances on your behalf, almost always turn you down. I've been told bluntly many times I'm too over qualified, but typically, the answer is a more subtle 'not a good team fit' or you'd want too much money. Very irritating.
In general, from a UK perspective, I believe there is absolutely no career enhancing reason to do a PhD, a PhD has to be done for yourself, in the knowledge it may pigeon hole you to jobs that may be pretty scarce.
I have made a "successful" transistion to UK industry, that transistion, and my employability is fully based on my industrial implementation experience, and certainly not from my PhD. It is, to be honest, difficult to hide the bitterness I do feel towards the UK regarding their attitude towards PhDs.
My first reaction to seeing this is the marketeers have got it the wrong-way round. Most companies are now building Home Entertainment Centres which are PCs, but the PC is kept well hidden.
The digital rights security issues to do otherwise are horrendous. I'm involved in building a system which will have all the mentioned entertainment stuff but with digital TV/PVR capability, in such a system hacking is obviously seen a a major issue. All solutions end up hiding the underlying OS as much as possible. To expose the OS as a general purpose PC is madness.
However, the MTV PC is offering nothing new. The 'cable-ready' TV tuner is presumably an analogue tuner, and so the signal (without hardware) cannot be streamed to disk at sufficient quality to be a problem. It will probably be receiving 'free-to-view' programmes anyway. There doesn't seem to be any additional digital rights issues here than with an ordinary PC.
The marketing as a PC is essential at the $1800 price, otherwise it will be perceived to be a consumer device with a value of no more than a few hundred dollars. In doing so, they've avoided the tough memory/CPU power constraints imposed on a consumer device. There will probably be a lot of consumer devices offering all the above without the PC in the future.
So technically a miss, but with the brand conscious sector they're aiming it at, it may not matter.
There are 10 Moscows in the US, as well as 5 Londons, 6 Bostons (and another in the UK), 11 Atlantas, 12 Genevas, 10 Berlins, 9 Romes, 3 Madrids, 10 Viennas, 12 Parises, 9 Warsaws, 2 Pragues, etc, etc, etc.
I believe that's not what the poster was complaining about. The existance of so many towns/cities in the USA with European names is well known.
The complaint was about the implication that any town mentioned is in the states unless explicitly stated otherwise, as if this was necessary for many Americans.
Such mentality is not shown in other countries. If I read "person x came from Boston" I'd immediately assume the person came from Boston, Mass. USA, not Boston, Lincolnshire, England, even though I live in the UK, because Boston, Mass., is much more well-known.
I have seen no British media coverage, television or papers.
No, but could you have imagined a situation 15 years ago, where the US was simultaneously going against international opinion on at least two issues: Son of Star Wars, and the Kyoto agreement.
Seems to me as if the USA, being the only superpower left, no longer cares what other countries think of it. History shows countries without any viable opposition turn into bullies.
Various articles on basic human rights snipped
Sounds like more of a socialist manifesto than a charter of Rights.
And what is wrong with that then? I happen to believe socialism is the only equitable and fair way forward.
The problem with you Yanks is anything not total rampant capitalism, survival of the fittest, does look like socialism. Try looking outside the US for once, and you will find that there are other, perhaps better, ways of doing things.
In reality, this whole affair is all about a narrow isolationist USA which cannot stomach the fact that other countries do things differently.