All I'm asking is that before you take Michael's "unbiased" commentary for fact, do some research of your own into these 20 scientists and I'll bet that you could draw pretty strong links from their findings to their funding.
Exactly. I couldn't agree anymore.
What if the report is to protect their reputation? It's feasible that 20 like biased scientists could group together to produce such a report that bolsters their previous findings as well as denounces the policies that were built on research by competing scientists.
This is very true. However your talk borders upon a "conspiracy theory", imho. Why? Common sense. 1) My guess is that Nobel Laureates, in general, don't have trouble getting funding for anythign they want to do (because of their reputation). 2) I know that funding for science is pretty stable even in these hard fiscal times. 3) I also assume that most Nobel Laureates have and feel this responsbility to report on science in an unbiased, scientific-method type of manner (yes, yes, i know they are all not like that but I'm going with probability here).
The truth is that in these kind of situation, as in many, you can always say "What if...". At some point you have to choose what you want to believe, who you want to trust and what you will accept as "fact" (or more truth than lies). No one has the time to verify everything that they read. If I did that, I'd never get through the day's paper. But you establish a sort of mental "% of reliability" according to your experience with that newspaper, periodical, reporter, scientist, think tank, etc. And in this case I'd trust a paper signed by 20 difference Nobel Laureates knowing how difficult it is to obtain one and how respected the award is (and the fact that the award is awarded by other scientists, not arbitrary people).
I've seemed to notice that many/.-ers have this opinion of "nothing new". Yes, this is nothing new (especially if you're a skeptic of the Bush administration) but to me this means something big.
The reason is is that much of our bias, one way or another, has come from the media. Yes, much of it can be based on facts, but I think we'd all be lying to ourselves considering the amount of biased media out there. While scientists could have their own political agenda, the fact that this report was signed off by 20 Nobel Laureates gives it real legitimacy.
Nobel Laureates don't come a dime a dozen and they can't be bought out or created like special think tank groups out there. So, therefore, this sort of report gives our concerns about the Bush administration, in my opinion, real legitimacy. No longer can people say that our skepticism is the result of "liberal media".
Of course scientists could have some sort of political bias. But if they put out a report that has scientific facts, not just opinions, that support it and is signed by 20 Nobel laureates, who put their reputation on the line, I think it's safe to say it's more truth than political.
The term "paddywagon"? (In case you didn't know it was because police used big vans (wagons) to arrest a bunch of drunk, belligerent "patties" (or Irish.. think St. Patrick)).
"India has invested a lot of money in training its people on IT skills". This is actually not quite accurate. The government hugely subsidizes education, but the truth of the matter is that there is a MASSIVE private education industry.
Good to know. But if it's India's private industries, and not the govt, doesn't that still qualify as "India investing in IT"?
The reason why the costs of living are so high in those area were precisely BECAUSE of those high paying jobs. You got it backwards.
Basically the cost of living used to be normal but everyone started seeing that the tech jobs paid much. So then everyone and their mom wanted to move to SV. The pushed demand way up, with supply not able to catch up as quick. Then the average salary was raised and therefore the competition for renting/housing went up even more. That's why the housing and rent went up so high.
And that's also why if you try renting, you'll see that rents have fallen a lot. Basically the supply is now greater than the demand and they have to cut prices to compete with the people who are left living in those areas. Housing prices, though , have sustained and who knows where that's going to go.
On NPR this past weekend I heard that San Jose is the worst (yes, worst) city to do business in (as of now). The reason being that the industries are not diversified there and all the money is in, surprise, tech.
Anyway, I'm sure that's obvious but I wanted to say that your comment made me think that India is like the macro version of San Jose. Like you implied, if they don't diversity their industriesi then when The Next Big Thing (tm) in outsourcing comes then they, and all these nouveau rich kids, will be screwed just like us Silicon Valley kids.
I think voters have a lot to do with this. Politicians are very malleable when it comes to votes and if all the voters are losing their jobs you can bet it will find its place in politics.
With that said, I think there is a second thing to consider. While votes do matter, we should look at the historical precedent. We lost agricultural jobs, manufacturing jobs, textile jobs, etc. And yet the "voter factor" didn't play into it as much. Why? Because people got jobs in other fields and weren't left disgruntled. I imagine the same could happen with this.
Me? Here's an experiment for you. Go to the south and ask them why they all like shotguns, drink beer, and have furniture on their lawns. Then go to the poor parts of Asia and ask them why they are so good at math. Then, go to Ethiopia or Uganda and ask them why they are so good at sports.
Perhaps I'm nitpicking here but when one asks the question "why is ____ race so good at ____" it really gets me. Maybe if you worded it differently like "If India has such strong technical expertise how come they haven't produced more open source projects?" then it would, to me, imply that it's moe about acquired skill than some sort of racial advantage.
(So maybe that's what you implied and, if so, I apologize.) But, like I said, it smelled of racism but I never called it outright racism.
Who usually has (access to) computers first?? Oh wait, its the geeks! Then answer me why there isnt at least 1 high profile project that's ran by an Indian develope
1) Open your eyes. Have you tried looking for open source project there?
2) My guess would be that they haven't found open source to be a viable (financial) solution. Their expertise is still burgeoning while ours maintains some maturity to it. Most people there are just tryign to make a living instead of innovating. Look at the quality of life there compared to here and it'll answer your questions on why they arent' contributing time to projects that always have questionable business success at best.
"It isn't racism if it's the truth. I'd hate to break that to you, but statistics don't lie. Asian males are better at math than any other race. How do I know this? I know someone who works for the SAT's as a statistician. Asian males score way higher than any other ethnic group on the math sections.
It may not tickle your liberal feathers, but people are different. "
First of all, I don't see how this issue is a liberal or conservative one. On that note, I'll just consider you trolling.
Secondly, the problem with this sort of statement is that it reeks of racial stereotyping. While statistically asians may perform better on the SAT math portion, one has to ask what this really means? Does it mean "asian are better at math" or "asian-americans have catered their studying to fit the SAT math style"?
For instance, let's look at the famous mathemeticians in the past several hundred years. They're all European. How many were asian? Let's look back into further history. Many ground-breaking mathemetical concepts were discovered/created by arabs and middle-eastern people. Yes, asians did play some history but I think I illustrated the point that, no, asians do not have some sort of "genetic disposition" that the comment "asians are better at math" seems to imply.
I could get into it further but really it's a question of nature vs nurture (which you seemed to imply).
On the line of the other persons response about learning economics, another large factor is training.
Questions one should ask oneself: Why didn't this happen before? Why are we able to export jobs? Why don't we export jobs to other countries instead?
We didn't do this before for various reasons. I'm no expert but the simple answer is trade barriers but also supply/demand. India seems to have invested large amounts of money into training their people to do IT and call-center work.
This was their largest barrier to entry. With the advent of the internet and networking, we're able to move jobs in a more agile manner. We don't export our IT jobs to other countries because of their lack of IT expertise (although many countries seem to be catching up).
I imagine that the US would NOT find itself in a similar situation. While it is entirely possible you have to look at the history and facts (as well as recognize cause vs effect). India is trying to grow into a modernized country but the fact that their population is so big makes that a very difficult task. OTOH, Americans, on the average, enjoy a decent living so you could say we have a good head start. Now we could probably export our jobs until we start cutting down into bone, but I suspect that voters will do something before that happens.
"Let's note, from the start, that Prudential does not "outsource" to India. They own their own call center (or centre, depending on your spelling heritage) there. When you speak to someone in their New Delhi office, she -- and it is usually "she" -- is just as much a Prudential employee as someone working in one of their U.S. offices."
With all due respect, who cares? Who cares what word you use to describe the loss of jobs to a foreign country? "Employed" or "Outsourced". Either way the final result is the loss of an American job to a foreign counterpart.
First of all this question reeks of racism. "They're" so good at computers? Much like asians are good at math, black people are good at sports and all Irish people like fighting?
Anyway, if asked seriously, in China the idea of "free knowledge exchange" is not exactly a popular one as it is regularly looked down-upon by the government (and is even used as a reason to prosecute people).
In India, I imagine it isn't as popular as you would think it to be because the average person does not own a computer. If you looked at the number of computers per person in America versus India, I bet it would portray a picture where India is very behind, on a broad level, in terms of technical advancement. What's the point of free knowledge exchange if you don't even have a computer (let alone an internet connection)?
Japan. Who knows? They have a history of consumer electronics and seem to be continually working to fill that niche. More recently, they seem to be filling in the mobile technology area.
Civil engineering is superior for 2 reasons. 1) Time of QA and 2) Dependability of materials.
In short, look at the time it takes to QA a bridge that is built. Not only is there QA done from design to finish, but real load testing is done. Although software does have serious QA, the time spent QAing civil engineering products is far more as a ratio to time spent actually building.
Dependability. The thing with building things is that you can always take it for granted that the nuts, bolts and wires you use have a certain amount of pressure and force they can handle. Why? Because of the distinct same-ness behind every nut, bolt and wire ever built. One nut is the same as the other nut. All nuts are the same.
In software, not all "nuts" are the same. One persons implementation of a string search can widely vary. Yes, we do have libraries that handle this issue, but there is a higher chance of error in software construction because of the ratio of libraries (third-party) used that are not as robust.
Lastly, one reason why software hasn't been addressed with the same urgency is because of the consequences (or lack of). When a bridge is poorly built, people die. Laws go into affect, companies go out of business, and many people pay the price. When software starts failing, a patch is applied until the next piece of it starts failing when another patch is applied. In the end the software becomes a big piece of patched-up piece of crap.
One advantage, though, of software is that a new version can be released with all the patches in mind and redesigned.:) This certainly has been proved by products like Mozilla that were probably crap when first released but definitely has matured into a solid product (imho).
I wasn't addressing the issue of whether a fertilized embryo qualified as a "living human being". That obviously is the great point of contention and controversy so I chose to stay away from that.
With that said, I portrayed the real benefits of stem-cell research. So you can't question the ends of such research (as you did). You were also questioning the means, and that's is open-ended in my opinion. But there is no doubt that the there is really-good research that can be done with embryonic stem cells.
With that said, yes the ends don't always justify the means. But if you use the hot-spike analogy you only serve to dilute your point because the hot-spike analogy is clearly a poor one. Why? Because clearly using hot-spikes on people does not serve humans in anyway, AND it is clearly an inhumane way to treat people. Fertilized embryos are NOT clearly defined as living human beings. At this point this is your personal opinion. Also there are clear and real benefits to embryonic stem cell research.
An interesting thing came to mind when you mentioned generics in C# vs Java.
One good thing that people haven't mentioned in having a language and platform similar to Java, is that increased innovation that comes from the increased competition. If C# didn't have generics, who knows if Java would've pushed for it. I'm sure Java has really got-on-the-ball with development after seeing all the features.Net plans to have.
Aren't what they are doing is creating "their own.Net"?
And if not, what does it mean to create your "own.Net"? What if the steps taken by Mono are the logical next step?
Think of it this way. When C# was released, everyone said that it (and.Net) were a just a copy of Java (the JRE, the intermediate language, everything). But maybe Microsoft didnt' jsut copy. Maybe they conceded the fact that the idea of having a a platform and intermediate language was the next logical step in software development.
Perhaps Mono sees the same thing with the unique features that.Net offers (easy and more powerful web development).
You are very right but perhaps it is a matter of time.
I think the thing is that in software we need to really solidify the stuff we put out there and they need to be tested many times over so that they can be deemed reliable.
I think about the comparison you civil engineering (as you started). When inspectors check a bridge they don't test every strand of wire nor do they check every single nut and bolt in the system. What they do test is general stresses in the system, the overall architecture and other aggregate indicators that may indicate failure. Let's take this analogy to software.
To some degree this holds true. Threads and processes run reliably. When my program fails I usually don't start checking the OS for problem because I take that for granted (assuming I'm doing application programming). But let's say I'm using.Net libraries. Those have definitely not been around long enough to be truly deemed "reliable" imo. Yet that, and the project I'm programming will be put out in X months. How truly test is it?
Yes, software is incredibly complex so I dont' know if the day will come when software "engineering" is as reliable as civil. But the projects for civil engineering use exponentially more overhead in order to test their objects of creation so it shoudl be no surprise.
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All I'm asking is that before you take Michael's "unbiased" commentary for fact, do some research of your own into these 20 scientists and I'll bet that you could draw pretty strong links from their findings to their funding.
Exactly. I couldn't agree anymore.
What if the report is to protect their reputation? It's feasible that 20 like biased scientists could group together to produce such a report that bolsters their previous findings as well as denounces the policies that were built on research by competing scientists.
This is very true. However your talk borders upon a "conspiracy theory", imho. Why? Common sense. 1) My guess is that Nobel Laureates, in general, don't have trouble getting funding for anythign they want to do (because of their reputation). 2) I know that funding for science is pretty stable even in these hard fiscal times. 3) I also assume that most Nobel Laureates have and feel this responsbility to report on science in an unbiased, scientific-method type of manner (yes, yes, i know they are all not like that but I'm going with probability here).
The truth is that in these kind of situation, as in many, you can always say "What if...". At some point you have to choose what you want to believe, who you want to trust and what you will accept as "fact" (or more truth than lies). No one has the time to verify everything that they read. If I did that, I'd never get through the day's paper. But you establish a sort of mental "% of reliability" according to your experience with that newspaper, periodical, reporter, scientist, think tank, etc. And in this case I'd trust a paper signed by 20 difference Nobel Laureates knowing how difficult it is to obtain one and how respected the award is (and the fact that the award is awarded by other scientists, not arbitrary people).
Yeah, and at one point during the boom times internet hype was taken for granted and the process became:
1) Profit!!!! (via stock shares)
I've seemed to notice that many /.-ers have this opinion of "nothing new". Yes, this is nothing new (especially if you're a skeptic of the Bush administration) but to me this means something big.
The reason is is that much of our bias, one way or another, has come from the media. Yes, much of it can be based on facts, but I think we'd all be lying to ourselves considering the amount of biased media out there. While scientists could have their own political agenda, the fact that this report was signed off by 20 Nobel Laureates gives it real legitimacy.
Nobel Laureates don't come a dime a dozen and they can't be bought out or created like special think tank groups out there. So, therefore, this sort of report gives our concerns about the Bush administration, in my opinion, real legitimacy. No longer can people say that our skepticism is the result of "liberal media".
Of course scientists could have some sort of political bias. But if they put out a report that has scientific facts, not just opinions, that support it and is signed by 20 Nobel laureates, who put their reputation on the line, I think it's safe to say it's more truth than political.
Notre Dame's Fighting Irish
The term "paddywagon"? (In case you didn't know it was because police used big vans (wagons) to arrest a bunch of drunk, belligerent "patties" (or Irish.. think St. Patrick)).
Umm.. its' enough that Notre Dame's mascot woudl be the Fighting Irish.
"India has invested a lot of money in training its people on IT skills". This is actually not quite accurate. The government hugely subsidizes education, but the truth of the matter is that there is a MASSIVE private education industry.
Good to know. But if it's India's private industries, and not the govt, doesn't that still qualify as "India investing in IT"?
Cause and effect.
The reason why the costs of living are so high in those area were precisely BECAUSE of those high paying jobs. You got it backwards.
Basically the cost of living used to be normal but everyone started seeing that the tech jobs paid much. So then everyone and their mom wanted to move to SV. The pushed demand way up, with supply not able to catch up as quick. Then the average salary was raised and therefore the competition for renting/housing went up even more. That's why the housing and rent went up so high.
And that's also why if you try renting, you'll see that rents have fallen a lot. Basically the supply is now greater than the demand and they have to cut prices to compete with the people who are left living in those areas. Housing prices, though , have sustained and who knows where that's going to go.
On NPR this past weekend I heard that San Jose is the worst (yes, worst) city to do business in (as of now). The reason being that the industries are not diversified there and all the money is in, surprise, tech.
Anyway, I'm sure that's obvious but I wanted to say that your comment made me think that India is like the macro version of San Jose. Like you implied, if they don't diversity their industriesi then when The Next Big Thing (tm) in outsourcing comes then they, and all these nouveau rich kids, will be screwed just like us Silicon Valley kids.
Agreed.
I guess I would've been more comfortable with the statement had it been made in a bit more politically correct manner.
I think voters have a lot to do with this. Politicians are very malleable when it comes to votes and if all the voters are losing their jobs you can bet it will find its place in politics.
With that said, I think there is a second thing to consider. While votes do matter, we should look at the historical precedent. We lost agricultural jobs, manufacturing jobs, textile jobs, etc. And yet the "voter factor" didn't play into it as much. Why? Because people got jobs in other fields and weren't left disgruntled. I imagine the same could happen with this.
I'll accept that. And, if that's the case, I apologize. I guess there's been too much precedent of racial stereotyping that made me react.
Repeat after me:
Ignorance is Strength.
:) Let me guess: You attend Notre Dame (Our Lady)??
Talk about a jackass.
Me? Here's an experiment for you. Go to the south and ask them why they all like shotguns, drink beer, and have furniture on their lawns. Then go to the poor parts of Asia and ask them why they are so good at math. Then, go to Ethiopia or Uganda and ask them why they are so good at sports.
Perhaps I'm nitpicking here but when one asks the question "why is ____ race so good at ____" it really gets me. Maybe if you worded it differently like "If India has such strong technical expertise how come they haven't produced more open source projects?" then it would, to me, imply that it's moe about acquired skill than some sort of racial advantage.
(So maybe that's what you implied and, if so, I apologize.) But, like I said, it smelled of racism but I never called it outright racism.
Who usually has (access to) computers first?? Oh wait, its the geeks! Then answer me why there isnt at least 1 high profile project that's ran by an Indian develope
1) Open your eyes. Have you tried looking for open source project there?
2) My guess would be that they haven't found open source to be a viable (financial) solution. Their expertise is still burgeoning while ours maintains some maturity to it. Most people there are just tryign to make a living instead of innovating. Look at the quality of life there compared to here and it'll answer your questions on why they arent' contributing time to projects that always have questionable business success at best.
"It isn't racism if it's the truth. I'd hate to break that to you, but statistics don't lie. Asian males are better at math than any other race. How do I know this? I know someone who works for the SAT's as a statistician. Asian males score way higher than any other ethnic group on the math sections.
It may not tickle your liberal feathers, but people are different. "
First of all, I don't see how this issue is a liberal or conservative one. On that note, I'll just consider you trolling.
Secondly, the problem with this sort of statement is that it reeks of racial stereotyping. While statistically asians may perform better on the SAT math portion, one has to ask what this really means? Does it mean "asian are better at math" or "asian-americans have catered their studying to fit the SAT math style"?
For instance, let's look at the famous mathemeticians in the past several hundred years. They're all European. How many were asian? Let's look back into further history. Many ground-breaking mathemetical concepts were discovered/created by arabs and middle-eastern people. Yes, asians did play some history but I think I illustrated the point that, no, asians do not have some sort of "genetic disposition" that the comment "asians are better at math" seems to imply.
I could get into it further but really it's a question of nature vs nurture (which you seemed to imply).
On the line of the other persons response about learning economics, another large factor is training.
Questions one should ask oneself: Why didn't this happen before? Why are we able to export jobs? Why don't we export jobs to other countries instead?
We didn't do this before for various reasons. I'm no expert but the simple answer is trade barriers but also supply/demand. India seems to have invested large amounts of money into training their people to do IT and call-center work.
This was their largest barrier to entry. With the advent of the internet and networking, we're able to move jobs in a more agile manner. We don't export our IT jobs to other countries because of their lack of IT expertise (although many countries seem to be catching up).
I imagine that the US would NOT find itself in a similar situation. While it is entirely possible you have to look at the history and facts (as well as recognize cause vs effect). India is trying to grow into a modernized country but the fact that their population is so big makes that a very difficult task. OTOH, Americans, on the average, enjoy a decent living so you could say we have a good head start. Now we could probably export our jobs until we start cutting down into bone, but I suspect that voters will do something before that happens.
"Let's note, from the start, that Prudential does not "outsource" to India. They own their own call center (or centre, depending on your spelling heritage) there. When you speak to someone in their New Delhi office, she -- and it is usually "she" -- is just as much a Prudential employee as someone working in one of their U.S. offices."
With all due respect, who cares? Who cares what word you use to describe the loss of jobs to a foreign country? "Employed" or "Outsourced". Either way the final result is the loss of an American job to a foreign counterpart.
First of all this question reeks of racism. "They're" so good at computers? Much like asians are good at math, black people are good at sports and all Irish people like fighting?
Anyway, if asked seriously, in China the idea of "free knowledge exchange" is not exactly a popular one as it is regularly looked down-upon by the government (and is even used as a reason to prosecute people).
In India, I imagine it isn't as popular as you would think it to be because the average person does not own a computer. If you looked at the number of computers per person in America versus India, I bet it would portray a picture where India is very behind, on a broad level, in terms of technical advancement. What's the point of free knowledge exchange if you don't even have a computer (let alone an internet connection)?
Japan. Who knows? They have a history of consumer electronics and seem to be continually working to fill that niche. More recently, they seem to be filling in the mobile technology area.
I like to compare it to civil engineering.
:) This certainly has been proved by products like Mozilla that were probably crap when first released but definitely has matured into a solid product (imho).
Civil engineering is superior for 2 reasons. 1) Time of QA and 2) Dependability of materials.
In short, look at the time it takes to QA a bridge that is built. Not only is there QA done from design to finish, but real load testing is done. Although software does have serious QA, the time spent QAing civil engineering products is far more as a ratio to time spent actually building.
Dependability. The thing with building things is that you can always take it for granted that the nuts, bolts and wires you use have a certain amount of pressure and force they can handle. Why? Because of the distinct same-ness behind every nut, bolt and wire ever built. One nut is the same as the other nut. All nuts are the same.
In software, not all "nuts" are the same. One persons implementation of a string search can widely vary. Yes, we do have libraries that handle this issue, but there is a higher chance of error in software construction because of the ratio of libraries (third-party) used that are not as robust.
Lastly, one reason why software hasn't been addressed with the same urgency is because of the consequences (or lack of). When a bridge is poorly built, people die. Laws go into affect, companies go out of business, and many people pay the price. When software starts failing, a patch is applied until the next piece of it starts failing when another patch is applied. In the end the software becomes a big piece of patched-up piece of crap.
One advantage, though, of software is that a new version can be released with all the patches in mind and redesigned.
I wasn't addressing the issue of whether a fertilized embryo qualified as a "living human being". That obviously is the great point of contention and controversy so I chose to stay away from that.
With that said, I portrayed the real benefits of stem-cell research. So you can't question the ends of such research (as you did). You were also questioning the means, and that's is open-ended in my opinion. But there is no doubt that the there is really-good research that can be done with embryonic stem cells.
With that said, yes the ends don't always justify the means. But if you use the hot-spike analogy you only serve to dilute your point because the hot-spike analogy is clearly a poor one. Why? Because clearly using hot-spikes on people does not serve humans in anyway, AND it is clearly an inhumane way to treat people. Fertilized embryos are NOT clearly defined as living human beings. At this point this is your personal opinion. Also there are clear and real benefits to embryonic stem cell research.
An interesting thing came to mind when you mentioned generics in C# vs Java.
.Net plans to have.
One good thing that people haven't mentioned in having a language and platform similar to Java, is that increased innovation that comes from the increased competition. If C# didn't have generics, who knows if Java would've pushed for it. I'm sure Java has really got-on-the-ball with development after seeing all the features
Aren't what they are doing is creating "their own .Net"?
.Net"? What if the steps taken by Mono are the logical next step?
.Net) were a just a copy of Java (the JRE, the intermediate language, everything). But maybe Microsoft didnt' jsut copy. Maybe they conceded the fact that the idea of having a a platform and intermediate language was the next logical step in software development.
.Net offers (easy and more powerful web development).
And if not, what does it mean to create your "own
Think of it this way. When C# was released, everyone said that it (and
Perhaps Mono sees the same thing with the unique features that
You are very right but perhaps it is a matter of time.
.Net libraries. Those have definitely not been around long enough to be truly deemed "reliable" imo. Yet that, and the project I'm programming will be put out in X months. How truly test is it?
I think the thing is that in software we need to really solidify the stuff we put out there and they need to be tested many times over so that they can be deemed reliable.
I think about the comparison you civil engineering (as you started). When inspectors check a bridge they don't test every strand of wire nor do they check every single nut and bolt in the system. What they do test is general stresses in the system, the overall architecture and other aggregate indicators that may indicate failure. Let's take this analogy to software.
To some degree this holds true. Threads and processes run reliably. When my program fails I usually don't start checking the OS for problem because I take that for granted (assuming I'm doing application programming). But let's say I'm using
Yes, software is incredibly complex so I dont' know if the day will come when software "engineering" is as reliable as civil. But the projects for civil engineering use exponentially more overhead in order to test their objects of creation so it shoudl be no surprise.
Chalk one up for software again! First the Mars lander Spirit and now this! w007! 1337 programming!
Software: 2
Hardware: 0