I disagree. Call me a skeptic but when he starts out his review with:
"A new book was just released which is based on a new concept.."
He feigns disassociation with the book. He could've easily said "My new book was just release..".
And what makes his story different from every other person who is in his exact same situation but have to actually play by the rules? Does this guy (I'm guessing you're him since you're posting AC) deserve some sort of entitlement over every other author out there who doesn't resort to such unfair means to sell their own book.
Look, buddy. Don't whine to me about trying to make a living or trying to pay the bills. I've been unemployed for over 12 months within the past 2 years. Just because you've got it tough doens't mean you can break the rules. Plus it's all a question of respect. If this person wants to resort to those means, go right ahead. Just dont' expect people to shut up and not say something about it. Like I said, it's nothing personal. Had anyone else done it I would've said the exact same thing.
When they offer biased reviews like he did and don't disclaim that they have an association with a product then, yes, they are "scam artists" in my book.
I mean what's the difference between these guys and the companies in the previous story who try to trick Google into pointing to their site?
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Had he admitted that it was his own book, I might've actually read about the book, read the summary and saw if I was interested (as I'm a developer and have a degree in CS).
But when he doesn't admit that and writes obviously biased remarks regarding knowing assembly to be a good programmer, I can't help but view it skeptically. In fact when I saw the response that it was his book I didn't even bother reading it anymore. All the words he posted lose credibility.
And considering I got Score: 5 quite quick I have a feeling other people would agree with me. People don't like being "tricked" into buying stuff. It's the same reason why people don't like vendor-lock in and hate Microshaft.
If you tell people its' your book and you give an open and honest review/opinion regarding it people will actually respect that and read about the book. Hey, it's just my guess, but I think I'm right.
Furthermore Slashdot should make it a policy for people who submit their own books/publications to reveal that they are the author so that there is no conflict of interest (sort of like how News channels who report news on their parent company or subsidiary always say so explicitly). I think that's only fair to the readers of Slashdot and it won't make us feel like we're being scammed into buying someone's book.
Ugh. Johnnyb should've wrote a disclaimer that he was promoting his own book. This type of action turns me away from wanting to support such an individual. Sorry, nothing personal.
Interesting. So I guess that would fall somewhere in between. It reminds me of those "articles" in magazines that are labeled "Special Advertising Section".
An interesting point being brought up by responses on this thread is the informational Google versus the business/products Google. We have 2 scenarios:
- Searching for "Apple" while looking for information about the company, who is on the board, company history.
- Searching for "Apple" while looking for an iPod.
This is an extremely bad example, but the point is I think the problem that Google is running into is that the line between information or selling products is becoming too fuzzy. But I would say that both searches are "legitimate". In the least, the blurring of this line only serves to dilute the search results.
Maybe a solution would be to move all product/purchase type searches to Froogle and have Google return ONLY informational sites instead of sites that sell products (which seems inline with their original intent).
Yes, they are very important questions. (btw I believe it's called "deflation" not "deinflation").
IANAE either but I did take my share of macro and micro. I don't think we'd have deflation because our country is built upon consumption and we won't have stagflation because prices can only fall from the exporting that we're doing. Maybe I'm wrong.
One thing that I've seen in the news that scares me is debt. Not just our national debt but the total personal debt. Supposedly the amount of debt people have personally is the largest it has ever been. Maybe this is good because we have record house purchases, but on the national scale someone has to finance our debt. I guess you could say this could make or break us. If people left and right start defaulting on their debts we're going to be in trouble (which would be caused by further job loss).
It will take some time, but I believe a decent balance will be achieved. Let's look at the exporting of car manufacturing to Japan. At first that was extremely profitable but now it's too costly to build cars in Japan. So then we had NAFTA and ran into some quality control issues with our neighbors. Now, many of those jobs are in China but even China is exporting those jobs to Southeast Asian countries. In the end, there are actually car companies that have moved factories back here to build certain pieces (I think it was Honda who just built some factories in Texas but I'm too lazy to Google it).
I don't know if we have "structural" unemployment (I'm not sure what that is). I think the thing that scares me is huge conglomerates. The reason this scares me is because by exporting jobs the people who benefit the most are those that can take advantage of it who are the huge conglomerates. They will save money in production and be able to use the extra profit to do more research, buy out other small companies, and, in general, make their companies more strong.
The reason why I think this is bad is because the power of America, traditionally, has been the creativity and invention spurred by competition which are characteristics of small business. America is great because of the high percentage of success (relatively) of entrepeneurship. But if big companies run everything, then competition will decrease and, furthermore, so will the quality of our products and competitiveness. Perhaps this is just FUD but it's the basic principles on why we look down upon monopolies. Take a look at the industry today; we have huge conglomerates that run industries both vertically and horizontally.
Anyway, those are a couple of my fears. Somehow I think we'll all pull through. It'll be hard but it's always been hard.
1) Religion. Well, without getting too much into details, religion is only half the story. While India is the more religiously diverse country in the world it still has many incidents of religion-influenced violence (between Muslims, Hindus and Christians). Even in the past recent years this has involved burning hundreds of people alive in train cars and very violent acts such as that.
But, to keep this post short, I wouldn't totally blame religion. People use religion to distinguisht themselves from others and they use that as an excuse to hate each other. So it's the fact that their different, not the religion itself, as to why they hate each other. Regarding Pakistan and India, I think the conflict is more a part of their culture and history than it is religion (but I'm no pundit).
2) Yes, I have the same fears. But I bet you that during when America was primarily an agriculture company people living then thought that it woudl be impossible for America to live as an industrial nation. And then the industrial revolution occured. The same was probably said when we started shipping textiles and all manufacturing overseas but then white-collar jobs exploded. I'm willing to admit that maybe I lack the foresight to see what's coming next.
3) All I can say is that we elect our leaders. If we don't like what they are doing we need to start electing people that we do.
Google should have some sort of penalizing system. Like they should lower the rankings (or perhaps remove links altogether) of companies tha try to abuse their system. I think that would be fair; punish those that try to beat the system.
I think the thing that people (especially business owners) should keep in mind is that Google is in no obligation to anybody. They are simply a search engine.
I know it's just an idiom but I think it's fair to say a Google can help a business "make" it but it doesn't "break" it. The article is all about how fortunate you can be if you have top rank in Google but Google in no way is obligated to help anyone nor does it actually break anybody.
There is a difference between manufacturing and software development, and to compare the two will lead to some pretty specious arguments.
Quite true. It can be broken down into a further abstract argument to be better understood. The thing this is all about is "training".
Perhaps that's not the best word, but it's true. Americans have a higher standard of living and can do complex jobs because we go to school. Those who go to college can get jobs where the workers are in less supply (knowledge work as compared to flipping burgers).
The reason why India is so popular for IT is because their people have been TRAINED to do IT. Look at their schools.
But, like you said, the problem fails with quality and then cost. While they have been trained, it seems that many are not as well trained as they have been here. There IS a difference in education (or what one could call "better training").
With that said, it's only a matter of time until Indian educational institutions start churning out more workers and/or the crappy outsourcers die off while the good ones thrive. It also tends to tell me that graduate school will be come the new college in America and a undergraduate degree will become the new GED. This means that jsut with a BS you will soon have a very difficult finding a job and can only be guaranteed a job with a MS (whereas a BS would've sufficed before).
For the future of America that sounds great because we'll have insanely smart and trained people. But for us who have been working for a while it sucks unless you have the option of going back to school.
Does anyone recall the story about the Indian (or was it Pakistani? Is there a difference?)
To start off this gives me the impression taht you're quite ignorant. Asking if there's a difference between India and Pakistan is like asking if there's a difference between Scotland and Ireland. Or maybe the difference between US and Mexico. If you knew ANYTHING about world politics you'd know that India and Pakistan nearly went to war within the past 2 years (and this isn't mentioning their long history and dispute over Kashmir). Yes, they are different (and, no, I'm not middle-eastern).
Let's forget for a moment that the dollars spent in other countries is all but permanantly not returning to this country and that the dollars which would otherwise be spent in the US stimulating the economy will be lost forever.
If you RTFA-ed, you'd see that the same could've been said about the loss of farming jobs, and then the following loss of industrial jobs. The point was that jobs are always created. The thing you have to remember is that a dollar saved is a dollar earned. This means that all the software that companies are buying out there from firms like IBM Global Services can now get that software for cheaper. They can then use that saved money to invest in other sorts of research which is a job created and money put back into OUR economy. So you're not entirely right. But this is the point of wealth creation.
Even if that incident never repeats itself, we are dealing with nations that do not necessarily have our fullest national trust..
This is true, and is addressed by our leaders. This is why when India was on the brink of war they got pressure from politicians and business owners sayign that they could not handle this instability and if it continued they would not export their jobs to their country. This is a HUGE reason why Pakistan and India are now making attempts at peace; because there's money behind it. Furthermore, this can be used to influence foreign country's to create laws and regulations that are up to our standards. Trust me. If you threaten to take the job away, India/Pakistan/China will reform. It's up to our politicians to get the message across though.
Maybe these rich corporate bastards think the declining middle-class and soon to be lower-class will just silently die off? Maybe we'll wither away and stop voting? Perhaps we'll join gangs and kill each other off because we have nothing better to do and there'll be a mere 10,000 or so people left with all the money?
I feel for you and there's actually an intellectual point to be made. The truth is that high unemployment DOES lead to higher crime. (Look at the Arab world). And, yes, there is an increasing gap between the have and have-nots. It's sad.
I think the thing I should mention that was said in the article was about how the farming era and industrial era at least died off over a long period of time. IT and knowledge worker is crumbling at an exponential rate and so you have a SHITLOAD of people who are not new graduates AND are nowhere near retirement. How do you retrain someone who is 30 or 35 when they've done IT/knowledge work their whole life? That's sad and I dont' knwo what's going to happen. I am admittedly scared.
Well, true. But there is much overlap between white-collar jobs and service jobs. The service job wave came and already went. That's why all the consulting jobs (which I meant by white-collar jobs by maybe deserve a distinction) are gone. Back in 1998-2000 I remember ANYONE could go into consulting because they needed people so badly. Consulting firms dont' hire like that anymore and many laid off all their employees.
But, I finally got to the end of the article, and I do see some good compromise. The part I liked was how they said that software and systems coudl be "imagined" and created by American workers while the costly process of maintaining and bug fixes could be relegated to indians.
That's not to say that Indians can't innovate or the all Americans are innovators, but I think, as of today, our one advantage is that there are more American engineers who are innovative than indian engineers (merely because of the prevalence of the IT, software, systems technology in America over India).
I'm a fan of trade and I work in IT but I think you got things wrong (as far as people's outlook).
We don't want all products to be made in the USA. But we also don't want all products to be made overseas.
By manufacturing our products here, we're not necessarily depriving foreign workers. Well, we dont' see it that way. And the reason why is because American probably consumes a very large percentage of these items. It would make sense if people felt some "entitlement" the job created by the item demand was in America.
Also many jobs, at least in teh past, could only be done in America. It's the reason why IT went to India and NOT South Africa. India has schools and training for IT. YOu could say that THAT was their killer app.
We don't have a God given right to any of it but you don't you think there will be some irony if we break our own economy because a few companies wanted to get the cheapest labor? I guess I'd be more optimistic if I felt people coudl actually be "retrained" or if I saw some other fields where people could move to. And I don't see that. Don't get mad at me for feeling a little desperate here.
That's the big obvious question. It was "ok" that we got rid of blue collar jobs because they were replaced with white collar jobs. But when you replace the white collar jobs then what?
Yeah, but they aren't trying to rip you off. They're still providing you (hopefully) with an awesome game. If anything, they don't have to make any game and you don't have to play it. They have no obligation to you (nor do you have an obligation to them) despite all the teasers. Yeah, it sucks to wait for something good, but, hey, all good things are worth waiting for.
I'm not a game freak so maybe I'm out of place but really, what is the big deal if they delay? Yes, so it kinda sucks that they keep on delaying a game and building anticipation (and need the time, anyway, to finish a game). But when it comes out and it's awesome then it's going to be worth it. Either way this is entertainment and so I don't really see the point of bitching about it being delayed. Gamers act like Valve OWE them something, like there's some sort of entitlement that comes with being game-obsessed. Come on people.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree. Call me a skeptic but when he starts out his review with:
.."
He feigns disassociation with the book. He could've easily said "My new book was just release..".
"A new book was just released which is based on a new concept
And what makes his story different from every other person who is in his exact same situation but have to actually play by the rules? Does this guy (I'm guessing you're him since you're posting AC) deserve some sort of entitlement over every other author out there who doesn't resort to such unfair means to sell their own book.
Look, buddy. Don't whine to me about trying to make a living or trying to pay the bills. I've been unemployed for over 12 months within the past 2 years. Just because you've got it tough doens't mean you can break the rules. Plus it's all a question of respect. If this person wants to resort to those means, go right ahead. Just dont' expect people to shut up and not say something about it. Like I said, it's nothing personal. Had anyone else done it I would've said the exact same thing.
When they offer biased reviews like he did and don't disclaim that they have an association with a product then, yes, they are "scam artists" in my book.
I mean what's the difference between these guys and the companies in the previous story who try to trick Google into pointing to their site?
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Cool. Good to know. :]
Oh, most definitely.
Had he admitted that it was his own book, I might've actually read about the book, read the summary and saw if I was interested (as I'm a developer and have a degree in CS).
But when he doesn't admit that and writes obviously biased remarks regarding knowing assembly to be a good programmer, I can't help but view it skeptically. In fact when I saw the response that it was his book I didn't even bother reading it anymore. All the words he posted lose credibility.
And considering I got Score: 5 quite quick I have a feeling other people would agree with me. People don't like being "tricked" into buying stuff. It's the same reason why people don't like vendor-lock in and hate Microshaft.
If you tell people its' your book and you give an open and honest review/opinion regarding it people will actually respect that and read about the book. Hey, it's just my guess, but I think I'm right.
Furthermore Slashdot should make it a policy for people who submit their own books/publications to reveal that they are the author so that there is no conflict of interest (sort of like how News channels who report news on their parent company or subsidiary always say so explicitly). I think that's only fair to the readers of Slashdot and it won't make us feel like we're being scammed into buying someone's book.
Ugh. Johnnyb should've wrote a disclaimer that he was promoting his own book. This type of action turns me away from wanting to support such an individual. Sorry, nothing personal.
Interesting. So I guess that would fall somewhere in between. It reminds me of those "articles" in magazines that are labeled "Special Advertising Section".
An interesting point being brought up by responses on this thread is the informational Google versus the business/products Google. We have 2 scenarios:
- Searching for "Apple" while looking for information about the company, who is on the board, company history.
- Searching for "Apple" while looking for an iPod.
This is an extremely bad example, but the point is I think the problem that Google is running into is that the line between information or selling products is becoming too fuzzy. But I would say that both searches are "legitimate". In the least, the blurring of this line only serves to dilute the search results.
Maybe a solution would be to move all product/purchase type searches to Froogle and have Google return ONLY informational sites instead of sites that sell products (which seems inline with their original intent).
Way to go to stick up for the IT guy and get into a fight with your wife. That's some true balls man (or just asking for pain). ;)
Yes, they are very important questions. (btw I believe it's called "deflation" not "deinflation").
IANAE either but I did take my share of macro and micro. I don't think we'd have deflation because our country is built upon consumption and we won't have stagflation because prices can only fall from the exporting that we're doing. Maybe I'm wrong.
One thing that I've seen in the news that scares me is debt. Not just our national debt but the total personal debt. Supposedly the amount of debt people have personally is the largest it has ever been. Maybe this is good because we have record house purchases, but on the national scale someone has to finance our debt. I guess you could say this could make or break us. If people left and right start defaulting on their debts we're going to be in trouble (which would be caused by further job loss).
It will take some time, but I believe a decent balance will be achieved. Let's look at the exporting of car manufacturing to Japan. At first that was extremely profitable but now it's too costly to build cars in Japan. So then we had NAFTA and ran into some quality control issues with our neighbors. Now, many of those jobs are in China but even China is exporting those jobs to Southeast Asian countries. In the end, there are actually car companies that have moved factories back here to build certain pieces (I think it was Honda who just built some factories in Texas but I'm too lazy to Google it).
I don't know if we have "structural" unemployment (I'm not sure what that is). I think the thing that scares me is huge conglomerates. The reason this scares me is because by exporting jobs the people who benefit the most are those that can take advantage of it who are the huge conglomerates. They will save money in production and be able to use the extra profit to do more research, buy out other small companies, and, in general, make their companies more strong.
The reason why I think this is bad is because the power of America, traditionally, has been the creativity and invention spurred by competition which are characteristics of small business. America is great because of the high percentage of success (relatively) of entrepeneurship. But if big companies run everything, then competition will decrease and, furthermore, so will the quality of our products and competitiveness. Perhaps this is just FUD but it's the basic principles on why we look down upon monopolies. Take a look at the industry today; we have huge conglomerates that run industries both vertically and horizontally.
Anyway, those are a couple of my fears. Somehow I think we'll all pull through. It'll be hard but it's always been hard.
1) Religion. Well, without getting too much into details, religion is only half the story. While India is the more religiously diverse country in the world it still has many incidents of religion-influenced violence (between Muslims, Hindus and Christians). Even in the past recent years this has involved burning hundreds of people alive in train cars and very violent acts such as that.
But, to keep this post short, I wouldn't totally blame religion. People use religion to distinguisht themselves from others and they use that as an excuse to hate each other. So it's the fact that their different, not the religion itself, as to why they hate each other. Regarding Pakistan and India, I think the conflict is more a part of their culture and history than it is religion (but I'm no pundit).
2) Yes, I have the same fears. But I bet you that during when America was primarily an agriculture company people living then thought that it woudl be impossible for America to live as an industrial nation. And then the industrial revolution occured. The same was probably said when we started shipping textiles and all manufacturing overseas but then white-collar jobs exploded. I'm willing to admit that maybe I lack the foresight to see what's coming next.
3) All I can say is that we elect our leaders. If we don't like what they are doing we need to start electing people that we do.
Google should have some sort of penalizing system. Like they should lower the rankings (or perhaps remove links altogether) of companies tha try to abuse their system. I think that would be fair; punish those that try to beat the system.
Ugh, I just posted that exact same comment. :]
I think the thing that people (especially business owners) should keep in mind is that Google is in no obligation to anybody. They are simply a search engine.
I know it's just an idiom but I think it's fair to say a Google can help a business "make" it but it doesn't "break" it. The article is all about how fortunate you can be if you have top rank in Google but Google in no way is obligated to help anyone nor does it actually break anybody.
There is a difference between manufacturing and software development, and to compare the two will lead to some pretty specious arguments.
Quite true. It can be broken down into a further abstract argument to be better understood. The thing this is all about is "training".
Perhaps that's not the best word, but it's true. Americans have a higher standard of living and can do complex jobs because we go to school. Those who go to college can get jobs where the workers are in less supply (knowledge work as compared to flipping burgers).
The reason why India is so popular for IT is because their people have been TRAINED to do IT. Look at their schools.
But, like you said, the problem fails with quality and then cost. While they have been trained, it seems that many are not as well trained as they have been here. There IS a difference in education (or what one could call "better training").
With that said, it's only a matter of time until Indian educational institutions start churning out more workers and/or the crappy outsourcers die off while the good ones thrive. It also tends to tell me that graduate school will be come the new college in America and a undergraduate degree will become the new GED. This means that jsut with a BS you will soon have a very difficult finding a job and can only be guaranteed a job with a MS (whereas a BS would've sufficed before).
For the future of America that sounds great because we'll have insanely smart and trained people. But for us who have been working for a while it sucks unless you have the option of going back to school.
Does anyone recall the story about the Indian (or was it Pakistani? Is there a difference?)
To start off this gives me the impression taht you're quite ignorant. Asking if there's a difference between India and Pakistan is like asking if there's a difference between Scotland and Ireland. Or maybe the difference between US and Mexico. If you knew ANYTHING about world politics you'd know that India and Pakistan nearly went to war within the past 2 years (and this isn't mentioning their long history and dispute over Kashmir). Yes, they are different (and, no, I'm not middle-eastern).
Let's forget for a moment that the dollars spent in other countries is all but permanantly not returning to this country and that the dollars which would otherwise be spent in the US stimulating the economy will be lost forever.
If you RTFA-ed, you'd see that the same could've been said about the loss of farming jobs, and then the following loss of industrial jobs. The point was that jobs are always created. The thing you have to remember is that a dollar saved is a dollar earned. This means that all the software that companies are buying out there from firms like IBM Global Services can now get that software for cheaper. They can then use that saved money to invest in other sorts of research which is a job created and money put back into OUR economy. So you're not entirely right. But this is the point of wealth creation.
Even if that incident never repeats itself, we are dealing with nations that do not necessarily have our fullest national trust..
This is true, and is addressed by our leaders. This is why when India was on the brink of war they got pressure from politicians and business owners sayign that they could not handle this instability and if it continued they would not export their jobs to their country. This is a HUGE reason why Pakistan and India are now making attempts at peace; because there's money behind it. Furthermore, this can be used to influence foreign country's to create laws and regulations that are up to our standards. Trust me. If you threaten to take the job away, India/Pakistan/China will reform. It's up to our politicians to get the message across though.
Maybe these rich corporate bastards think the declining middle-class and soon to be lower-class will just silently die off? Maybe we'll wither away and stop voting? Perhaps we'll join gangs and kill each other off because we have nothing better to do and there'll be a mere 10,000 or so people left with all the money?
I feel for you and there's actually an intellectual point to be made. The truth is that high unemployment DOES lead to higher crime. (Look at the Arab world). And, yes, there is an increasing gap between the have and have-nots. It's sad.
I think the thing I should mention that was said in the article was about how the farming era and industrial era at least died off over a long period of time. IT and knowledge worker is crumbling at an exponential rate and so you have a SHITLOAD of people who are not new graduates AND are nowhere near retirement. How do you retrain someone who is 30 or 35 when they've done IT/knowledge work their whole life? That's sad and I dont' knwo what's going to happen. I am admittedly scared.
Well, true. But there is much overlap between white-collar jobs and service jobs. The service job wave came and already went. That's why all the consulting jobs (which I meant by white-collar jobs by maybe deserve a distinction) are gone. Back in 1998-2000 I remember ANYONE could go into consulting because they needed people so badly. Consulting firms dont' hire like that anymore and many laid off all their employees.
But, I finally got to the end of the article, and I do see some good compromise. The part I liked was how they said that software and systems coudl be "imagined" and created by American workers while the costly process of maintaining and bug fixes could be relegated to indians.
That's not to say that Indians can't innovate or the all Americans are innovators, but I think, as of today, our one advantage is that there are more American engineers who are innovative than indian engineers (merely because of the prevalence of the IT, software, systems technology in America over India).
Sounds like the dot-com days. ;)
I'm a fan of trade and I work in IT but I think you got things wrong (as far as people's outlook).
We don't want all products to be made in the USA. But we also don't want all products to be made overseas.
By manufacturing our products here, we're not necessarily depriving foreign workers. Well, we dont' see it that way. And the reason why is because American probably consumes a very large percentage of these items. It would make sense if people felt some "entitlement" the job created by the item demand was in America.
Also many jobs, at least in teh past, could only be done in America. It's the reason why IT went to India and NOT South Africa. India has schools and training for IT. YOu could say that THAT was their killer app.
We don't have a God given right to any of it but you don't you think there will be some irony if we break our own economy because a few companies wanted to get the cheapest labor? I guess I'd be more optimistic if I felt people coudl actually be "retrained" or if I saw some other fields where people could move to. And I don't see that. Don't get mad at me for feeling a little desperate here.
That's the big obvious question. It was "ok" that we got rid of blue collar jobs because they were replaced with white collar jobs. But when you replace the white collar jobs then what?
It's not. Look at Detroit.
Well, I guess you could've said it was a win when we had all these "knowledge worker" jobs but then they're all leaving so what's left?
Yeah, but they aren't trying to rip you off. They're still providing you (hopefully) with an awesome game. If anything, they don't have to make any game and you don't have to play it. They have no obligation to you (nor do you have an obligation to them) despite all the teasers. Yeah, it sucks to wait for something good, but, hey, all good things are worth waiting for.
I'm not a game freak so maybe I'm out of place but really, what is the big deal if they delay? Yes, so it kinda sucks that they keep on delaying a game and building anticipation (and need the time, anyway, to finish a game). But when it comes out and it's awesome then it's going to be worth it. Either way this is entertainment and so I don't really see the point of bitching about it being delayed. Gamers act like Valve OWE them something, like there's some sort of entitlement that comes with being game-obsessed. Come on people.
On that note, I'd like to agree that if I ever got my money's worth it was for HL/CS.