How many of the researchers (not the lead researchers that have their name on the work, but the grad students and other assorted people who actually did the work) are American citizens vs. Indian, Chinese, Middle-eastern, Russian, etc.?
What makes you think that the knowledge learned in these projects will produce jobs for Americans here in the US?
What makes you think that the knowledge and approaches used for the research will not diffuse to other countries and the next big breakthroughs come from those locales?
The amount of research being done in this country by American citizens is shrinking, no matter how much anecdotal evidence of exciting new science you throw out there. This is a troubling trend and one not to be ignored. My opinion is that we tend to see a shrinkage in the number of Americans entering these fields because they're going to study for 19+ years only to be driven from post-doc position to post-doc position and end up being a plumber like their brother who only got an MA. In a capitalist system, people don't train for occupations where there are no jobs, unless it's a true labor of love (i.e., non-moentary reward). You tell me how to have a vibrant technical-based economy without any entry-level technical positions. Our corporations have used the US technical seed corn to grow new crops in foreign lands. Let's just hope we still all have enough to eat five years down the road...
make best use of our position as leader of the first world to innovate and bring new industries into existance (such as biotech, nanotech, advanced computer technologies [ AI, etc.. ], space tech, etc..)
Well, let's see...
Biotech - most of the drug companies are already moving R&D to India; it's a lot cheaper when you can dump your leftovers in the drain rather than having to dispose of them properly. Test subjects are cheaper, too. GE has moved their next-gen MRI stuff there, too. So much for medi-tech. as well.
Nanotech - Most MEMS fabrication is going to be done in China. Most economists say it doesn't pay to have your R&D for fabs far away from the fabs themselves. Most EDA outsourcing is already offshore (as is a lot of design). What makes you think MEMS work is going to be any different?
Advanced computer technology - Name one that an Indian or Chinese brain can't figure out as well as an American one. Most robotics AI work now is being done in Japan. US funding for same is in the dumper and it is highly unlikely that publically traded companies will see the short term payoff to invest in speculative technologies.
Space tech - Well, see what I said about "advanced computer technology" and double it for this. Plus the government is sloughing off research in this area as fast as they can.
Bottom line, we don't have a premier R&D system anymore. Corporations don't want to fund R labs to fuel the D. Regulated monopolies (which once provided them) are now simply quasi-protected entities that still have to answer to the corporate shareholders. Government R&D continues to be slashed and most of that money goes to universities to train foreigners because Americans know that once they work for X years studying science and technology their jobs will be gone.
High tech doesn't buy the future in a world of open and fast communication - the knowledge diffuses too rapidly. Unless you have some structural barrier to knowledge and/or job migration, it will happen.
My opinion - we saw the collapse of unfettered socialism about twenty years ago. It's about time for the collapse of unfettered capitalism. My best guess says about five years from now...
As a former employee of one of the big three in CAE (Mentor Graphics) and as someone who keeps in touch with people in the industry at companies such as Synopsys, Cadence, and (yes) OrCad, I can testify that building this type of tool requires a large amount of specialized knowledge, effort, and testing to bring to life. And, when the tool works, the job has just begun as you need models, both device and process, to feed them. It is a testament to the dedication of a few very motivated people that projects like Open Cores (which seems to have been down for the past few days), GHDL, and others are made available to the public.
Given the size of today's designs, the days of putting together a four-state logic simulator in a couple weeks of work is long over. Given the technical depth needed to do this work today, it's not a surprise that this is a niche market where open source isn't doing very well.
Their OS decision, therefore, will have little or nothing to do with how well a given product does with college students or kids. It will have more to do with how well the product works for them and how much it's going to cost them (overall, not just initially).
This is true, to a point. Remember that the PC crept into the business world, overtaking centralized IT departments that couldn't provide similar service. This "creeping in" was done by early adopters (like recent grads) who said "Why can't we do this?". And they went and deployed PC's. It took a few years, but eventually, the corporate types embraced the PC.
Similarly, overworked IT departments can no longer afford to put up and manage small internal web sites or databases - so users put up little Linux servers (it's the only thing they're licensed for) and "Voila!" another Linux foothold in the corporate world.
The final step is to get corporate types to dual boot or to start using tools like Open Office because their companies won't buy them licenses for their home machines or laptops to take home with them. Linux and other free tools gives them a low-cost interoperability with the tools they use from work. If this last thing starts to happen, then you start to see accelaration of adoption of non-Microsoft tools. And once this happens, people start to wonder why they're paying Microsoft so much for their OS, too
Of course, there are some things that could derail this dynamic. First, corporate types may think that a home Windows and/or Office license is worth paying for. Second, Windows could become more easily pirated. The first is unlikely (unless the corporate type wants to play games) and even then, he's unlikely to prefer Office over Open Office. As for the second, Microsoft wants to be able to trust your computer and we see where that leads.
The bottom line is that people want to be in charge of their own computing resources. The entire history of the computer is about decentralization of control. Once people figure out that Microsoft has too much control over their computers, they'll kick them out, just like they did with IBM.
And, remember that with this sort of thing, it does not occur "overnight". It's a 4-5 year process. However, to the corporate types who don't pay attention, this 4-5 year period comes awfully fast and accellerates as it progresses. Most of the "mainstream" won't see it coming until it's over.
I'm suggesting that outsourcing to Canada has the same problems.
I've worked in geographically dispersed projects before. They work best if the time zones are limited to +/- 1 hr., relatively frequent face-to-face access is available (say once every 6-8 weeks or so), language is not a barrier, and (most importantly) all parties involved are responsible and want the process to work.
The downside is that you need to have a more structured process to deal with the decreased communication, but that can be obviated to some extent by tools like PC Anywhere or Lotus Sametime, a good speaker phone, and enough capital to pay the LD charges.
For me, in Portland, there's not much difference between working with someone in LA, Denver, Phoenix, or Seattle. The travel time and cost (once you take into account time for getting to the airport) are all about the same (except for Seattle - I can drive there:-). I don't know why adding Calgary, Edmunton or Vancouver to the mix would be any different.
If I were president I'd never trust the CIA again.
And if I were the CIA (given the fact that there appears to have been quite a bit of pressure on them to get the desired information rather than accurate information, I don't think I'd trust the president again...
Since it's being invested, whatever company he invests in, and not necessiarly Microsoft mind you, would get a benefit and they would be creating the jobs.
Readers of this reasoning are left without a clue when this kind of clause might be legal. There are many possible situations where this kind of defense against software patent claims might be quite reasonable.
This is actually a good thing. Even though it opens the door to selective enforcement, a fuzzy legal region stops bad behavior much further from the boundary than a precise line located at the centroid of the legal region. It's a way to balance the conservative nature of legal council against their requirement to give advice that furthest advances their clients' interests. When the line is fuzzy, legal council tends to stay close to the legal side of the fuzz, not wanting to test the limit; if the line is sharp, they suck up against it like a leech.
I'm sorry, but I'm not smart enough to successfully plan ahead two centuries and neither are you.
That's not the point. What we should be smart enough to do is to:
Design a system that will be able to be maintained ten years into the future that doesn't require to be ripped up and redone ab initio every five years
Build technical support structures to allow this type of maintenance to be done
Build public and private systems for this support
You don't have to be that smart to do this - just willing to forego shiny things to keep the plumbing done up right and a little bit foresightful.
Jesus christ I'm tired of seeing speculation about this. In a thread talking about how Apple can't ship a G5 iMac, people are still talking about the mythical G5 PB. Let's all start speculating now about when the G6 desktop and dual-G5 PB will ship! Whee!
Actually, I'm much more interested in a tablet than another laptop. I'd hope Apple would be able to crack this market and do it right. They have enough experience with tablet-style input and UI issues from the Newton days and God knows the PC world could use some competition in this arena. Given that most of the PC tablets are also heavy as hell, I'd think that a low-power G4 implementation that was also lightweight would be the ticket here. Just think of it as Newton XL. That, I'd actually buy.
We now have the technology to allow a CCD camera to examine the screen for any significant sign of rain, bird droppings, etc., and simply turn on the washers/wipers for us. This is a feature I'd like in a car.
Would I like to pay for it? That's another thing...
But while I fully believe that Lisp syntax is great for programming, I think for data structures, it is a compromise.
In what way? All Common Lisp implementations have structures, arrays, hashtables, and CLOS objects as part of the standard. These are just as usuable in Lisp (perhaps more so, because of the common syntax) as in any other language. The days of Lisps using lists as their main data structures (in anything but the prototyping phases of coding) are long gone.
Compare him to Steve Jobs, who has had good sucess since he has returned to Apple (iPod, iTunes, iPod Mini, Airport Express/Extreme and iMac) Its probably just their philosophies.
Of course it is.
Jobs has always been about developing products for the individual user. Gates (at least for the last fifteen to twenty years) has been about developing products for the corporation. It's why Apple is easily morphing their product line into a more consumer-oriented one while Microsoft struggles on that front (e.g., I'd expect to see a good TIVO-alike w/CD play and music download w/game console w/internet access w/etc. from Apple before I'd see one from one of Microsoft's "convergence" ventures). It's also one reason why the relatively superior Apple user and support experience doesn't make great inroads at the corporate level.
Jobs talks to people about changing the world and insanely great user experience while Gates talks to people about business strategy and money. I know which of the two choices I find more interesting, but others are free to disagree.
They had no idea that process quality was completely separate from product quality.
Yes. My dog and I take a walk every morning. We have our processes down pat and have become very consistent and efficient at what we do. The product that my dog produces remains the same.
Lisp is the only one that I can't directly fault the language for anything
That's probably because you don't know the language well enough:-). Even as a Lisp afficianado, there are issues in the dark and dingy corners that still irk me greatly. You won't run into many of them doing everyday programming, though. There is no perfect language.
...you would be hard pressed to find anyone besides Mormons that considers Mormons to be "Christians".
Actually, not true. You might be hard pressed to find some fundamentalist Christians willing to call Mormons "Christian" (outside of self-serving "brotherhood" when needed by some Republican-hatched political agenda), but because their main tenets derive from the divinity of and salvation via Christ, most theologians and philosophers would put them squarely in the Christian camp. The breadth of "Christian" beliefs appears to be quite broad, as demostrated by such exemplars as Pat Robertson, Robert Schuler, Luis Palau, Benny Hinn, Mary Baker Eddie, the Pope, Jack Chick, the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, and (sadly) the perveyors of the Spanish Inquisition and David Koresh.
Slashdot Mirror
How many of the researchers (not the lead researchers that have their name on the work, but the grad students and other assorted people who actually did the work) are American citizens vs. Indian, Chinese, Middle-eastern, Russian, etc.?
What makes you think that the knowledge learned in these projects will produce jobs for Americans here in the US?
What makes you think that the knowledge and approaches used for the research will not diffuse to other countries and the next big breakthroughs come from those locales?
The amount of research being done in this country by American citizens is shrinking, no matter how much anecdotal evidence of exciting new science you throw out there. This is a troubling trend and one not to be ignored. My opinion is that we tend to see a shrinkage in the number of Americans entering these fields because they're going to study for 19+ years only to be driven from post-doc position to post-doc position and end up being a plumber like their brother who only got an MA. In a capitalist system, people don't train for occupations where there are no jobs, unless it's a true labor of love (i.e., non-moentary reward). You tell me how to have a vibrant technical-based economy without any entry-level technical positions. Our corporations have used the US technical seed corn to grow new crops in foreign lands. Let's just hope we still all have enough to eat five years down the road...
Well, let's see...
Biotech - most of the drug companies are already moving R&D to India; it's a lot cheaper when you can dump your leftovers in the drain rather than having to dispose of them properly. Test subjects are cheaper, too. GE has moved their next-gen MRI stuff there, too. So much for medi-tech. as well.
Nanotech - Most MEMS fabrication is going to be done in China. Most economists say it doesn't pay to have your R&D for fabs far away from the fabs themselves. Most EDA outsourcing is already offshore (as is a lot of design). What makes you think MEMS work is going to be any different?
Advanced computer technology - Name one that an Indian or Chinese brain can't figure out as well as an American one. Most robotics AI work now is being done in Japan. US funding for same is in the dumper and it is highly unlikely that publically traded companies will see the short term payoff to invest in speculative technologies.
Space tech - Well, see what I said about "advanced computer technology" and double it for this. Plus the government is sloughing off research in this area as fast as they can.
Bottom line, we don't have a premier R&D system anymore. Corporations don't want to fund R labs to fuel the D. Regulated monopolies (which once provided them) are now simply quasi-protected entities that still have to answer to the corporate shareholders. Government R&D continues to be slashed and most of that money goes to universities to train foreigners because Americans know that once they work for X years studying science and technology their jobs will be gone.
High tech doesn't buy the future in a world of open and fast communication - the knowledge diffuses too rapidly. Unless you have some structural barrier to knowledge and/or job migration, it will happen.
My opinion - we saw the collapse of unfettered socialism about twenty years ago. It's about time for the collapse of unfettered capitalism. My best guess says about five years from now...
Time to start a pool on how long until they're pink-sheeted.
As a former employee of one of the big three in CAE (Mentor Graphics) and as someone who keeps in touch with people in the industry at companies such as Synopsys, Cadence, and (yes) OrCad, I can testify that building this type of tool requires a large amount of specialized knowledge, effort, and testing to bring to life. And, when the tool works, the job has just begun as you need models, both device and process, to feed them. It is a testament to the dedication of a few very motivated people that projects like Open Cores (which seems to have been down for the past few days), GHDL, and others are made available to the public.
Given the size of today's designs, the days of putting together a four-state logic simulator in a couple weeks of work is long over. Given the technical depth needed to do this work today, it's not a surprise that this is a niche market where open source isn't doing very well.
This is true, to a point. Remember that the PC crept into the business world, overtaking centralized IT departments that couldn't provide similar service. This "creeping in" was done by early adopters (like recent grads) who said "Why can't we do this?". And they went and deployed PC's. It took a few years, but eventually, the corporate types embraced the PC.
Similarly, overworked IT departments can no longer afford to put up and manage small internal web sites or databases - so users put up little Linux servers (it's the only thing they're licensed for) and "Voila!" another Linux foothold in the corporate world.
The final step is to get corporate types to dual boot or to start using tools like Open Office because their companies won't buy them licenses for their home machines or laptops to take home with them. Linux and other free tools gives them a low-cost interoperability with the tools they use from work. If this last thing starts to happen, then you start to see accelaration of adoption of non-Microsoft tools. And once this happens, people start to wonder why they're paying Microsoft so much for their OS, too
Of course, there are some things that could derail this dynamic. First, corporate types may think that a home Windows and/or Office license is worth paying for. Second, Windows could become more easily pirated. The first is unlikely (unless the corporate type wants to play games) and even then, he's unlikely to prefer Office over Open Office. As for the second, Microsoft wants to be able to trust your computer and we see where that leads.
The bottom line is that people want to be in charge of their own computing resources. The entire history of the computer is about decentralization of control. Once people figure out that Microsoft has too much control over their computers, they'll kick them out, just like they did with IBM.
And, remember that with this sort of thing, it does not occur "overnight". It's a 4-5 year process. However, to the corporate types who don't pay attention, this 4-5 year period comes awfully fast and accellerates as it progresses. Most of the "mainstream" won't see it coming until it's over.
I've worked in geographically dispersed projects before. They work best if the time zones are limited to +/- 1 hr., relatively frequent face-to-face access is available (say once every 6-8 weeks or so), language is not a barrier, and (most importantly) all parties involved are responsible and want the process to work.
The downside is that you need to have a more structured process to deal with the decreased communication, but that can be obviated to some extent by tools like PC Anywhere or Lotus Sametime, a good speaker phone, and enough capital to pay the LD charges.
For me, in Portland, there's not much difference between working with someone in LA, Denver, Phoenix, or Seattle. The travel time and cost (once you take into account time for getting to the airport) are all about the same (except for Seattle - I can drive there :-). I don't know why adding Calgary, Edmunton or Vancouver to the mix would be any different.
And if I were the CIA (given the fact that there appears to have been quite a bit of pressure on them to get the desired information rather than accurate information, I don't think I'd trust the president again...
But where will these jobs be, Sahib?
This is actually a good thing. Even though it opens the door to selective enforcement, a fuzzy legal region stops bad behavior much further from the boundary than a precise line located at the centroid of the legal region. It's a way to balance the conservative nature of legal council against their requirement to give advice that furthest advances their clients' interests. When the line is fuzzy, legal council tends to stay close to the legal side of the fuzz, not wanting to test the limit; if the line is sharp, they suck up against it like a leech.
Yeah. Right.
If that's the best you can do for an imitation of an engineer, you better keep your day job.
BTW, C# is a better language than Java and .NET's VM is better than the JVM. The VM still isn't good enough, though.
Get back to me when you can actually run Common Lisp on it (and the guy trying to make Lisp.NET doesn't count - it's just a crapped up Scheme).
Make. Stuff. Up. **SNORT** Priceless.
That's not the point. What we should be smart enough to do is to:
- Design a system that will be able to be maintained ten years into the future that doesn't require to be ripped up and redone ab initio every five years
- Build technical support structures to allow this type of maintenance to be done
- Build public and private systems for this support
You don't have to be that smart to do this - just willing to forego shiny things to keep the plumbing done up right and a little bit foresightful.Actually, I'm much more interested in a tablet than another laptop. I'd hope Apple would be able to crack this market and do it right. They have enough experience with tablet-style input and UI issues from the Newton days and God knows the PC world could use some competition in this arena. Given that most of the PC tablets are also heavy as hell, I'd think that a low-power G4 implementation that was also lightweight would be the ticket here. Just think of it as Newton XL. That, I'd actually buy.
It's not in *any* continent. It's in the middle of the bleedin' ocean.
This was a trick question, right?
And that's why we use XML?
Have you ever written anything Mr. Sowell writes in the political vein? Intelligent is not the word I'd use...
Yes! This is a troll! But a self-identifying one.
Why do I have to turn on the wipers at all?
Seriously...
We now have the technology to allow a CCD camera to examine the screen for any significant sign of rain, bird droppings, etc., and simply turn on the washers/wipers for us. This is a feature I'd like in a car.
Would I like to pay for it? That's another thing...
In what way? All Common Lisp implementations have structures, arrays, hashtables, and CLOS objects as part of the standard. These are just as usuable in Lisp (perhaps more so, because of the common syntax) as in any other language. The days of Lisps using lists as their main data structures (in anything but the prototyping phases of coding) are long gone.
You may call this Adrian's Law of Backup because I've never seen all three at once (and two of them together is still pretty damn hard).
Sorry, no results were found containing "functional programming".
Of course it is.
Jobs has always been about developing products for the individual user. Gates (at least for the last fifteen to twenty years) has been about developing products for the corporation. It's why Apple is easily morphing their product line into a more consumer-oriented one while Microsoft struggles on that front (e.g., I'd expect to see a good TIVO-alike w/CD play and music download w/game console w/internet access w/etc. from Apple before I'd see one from one of Microsoft's "convergence" ventures). It's also one reason why the relatively superior Apple user and support experience doesn't make great inroads at the corporate level.
Jobs talks to people about changing the world and insanely great user experience while Gates talks to people about business strategy and money. I know which of the two choices I find more interesting, but others are free to disagree.
Yes. My dog and I take a walk every morning. We have our processes down pat and have become very consistent and efficient at what we do. The product that my dog produces remains the same.
They're ALL dead, Jim!
"Show me the bolt you want me to turn with it..."
That's probably because you don't know the language well enough :-). Even as a Lisp afficianado, there are issues in the dark and dingy corners that still irk me greatly. You won't run into many of them doing everyday programming, though. There is no perfect language.
C++ is a close second.
OK. Now I know you're kidding.
Actually, not true. You might be hard pressed to find some fundamentalist Christians willing to call Mormons "Christian" (outside of self-serving "brotherhood" when needed by some Republican-hatched political agenda), but because their main tenets derive from the divinity of and salvation via Christ, most theologians and philosophers would put them squarely in the Christian camp. The breadth of "Christian" beliefs appears to be quite broad, as demostrated by such exemplars as Pat Robertson, Robert Schuler, Luis Palau, Benny Hinn, Mary Baker Eddie, the Pope, Jack Chick, the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, and (sadly) the perveyors of the Spanish Inquisition and David Koresh.