"Pols are ALWAYS paid more than they are worth, and always make far more than the people they represent."
While this has some merits, you have to realize that the average salary is considered horribly low for most people from the middle/upper class and that if politicians were paid less, no one would try for these positions unless they had enough money that they didn't really need to work. If the salary wasn't enough to lead a comforotable upper/middle-class lifestyle, very few middle-class or upper/middle-class people would even consider the position.
I'm sure the costs included labor costs to input all of the information into the database (which was probably a huge process since it requires no just the input, but also getting all the information from wherever it is currently stored and processing it). I doubt they paid $45 million for just the software.
To play Devil's Advocate isn't there something good arising from virus writers? If there were no major viruses out there, I guarantee you most users wouldn't have anti-virus software and wouldn't know not to click on email attachments from unknown sources. Then, if someone really did want to cause major havoc, it would be even worse than it is now. I don't know if this is true, but I think it's possible. If no one ever expected a virus/worm, how long would it take to actually get the virus/worm off of every user's computer. It's rather quick now because most people have anti-virus software that can be updated really quickly.
Until the people hiring understand that it's important for someone to be able to "tell a div tag from their ass hole" it doesn't matter if the employee can. What will solve the idiots in the tech industry phenomenon is when the people employing those idiots can tell the difference between people who know buzzwords and people who know what they're doing.
On a side note, whenever I have a problem w/ my cable modem at home and I call up the cable company, they run me through a bunch of basic things that they HAVE to do (such as is the cable modem plugged into the computer) because they have so many users whose problem is something as dumb as that. If this is the average person's problem, why pay for someone who can handle real problems? People expect their technology to break and accept it, which is ridiculous, but true.
It's also a result of the fact that many jobs that used to require specifically trained IT people, no longer do since a lot of students learn basic computer science/programming skills. I've mentioned this before but at my school, every engineer must have a basic competency in computer programming, and many applied math/economics courses involve some sort of computer programming. So instead of needing a programmer to write simple little scripts and programs for you, you can do it yourself. I also know of several large investment banks requiring a basic competency in Excel, and require you to go to a short training course if you do not have it. It's the same with basic computing knowledge. While a lot of people are still clueless, there are now a lot more people (than before, not a lot more than who are clueless) who can get by on their own without the help of a special IT person when something goes wrong who aren't in the IT industry directly. An education solely in IT is only valuable when not that many people have it. A lot more people have it, and a lot more people in other industries have a basic competency and it's cheaper to allow them to be basically competent than to higher someone who is highly skilled.
While this might be slightly off topic, this is in response to your anger at how our society is so competition driven.
There was recently an article written in my campus newspaper entitled "Riding the Curve". It had to do with the fact that most classes are graded on a curve, and consequently, your grade (supposedly a measure of competence) is merely a reflection of how well you do solely in comparison to everyone else.
His examples included a small computer science seminar in which his friend was happy to hear that his project did not work out, because his friend's did not either and perhaps this meant most people failed at there task and the grading would be much easier. Also mentioned was how taking an intro-level comp sci course which was filled with CS majors in the fall, had a much more forgiving curve in the spring and how this was ridiculous.
It all boils down to everything is competition based. It doesn't matter how well you do, just how many people you do better than. It was the same thing with the selective clubs here that people try to get into. They have X spots, and they take the X people with the most votes (and percentage of votes needed is usually insane for some of them, last year one was 94%) which generally fucks anyone without a sports team/fraternity/sorority backing them. From a game theoretic perspective, if I want to get my 10 friends in, my best option would be to vote for my 10 friends and vote against everyone else. It's how our society is and it sucks. I couldn't agree with you more that 1) the solution to most issues is to educate the masses, and 2) we need to push away from everything being a competition.
That's partially because there are different ways to file a tax return. My dad can declare me as a dependant, and then I have to pay more taxes but he pays less (which makes much more sense since he's in a much higher tax bracket than I am since I'm still a full-time student and pretty much only work during the summer). He can also not do that, pay more in taxes, and have me pay pretty much nothing. My parents can file separately, or jointly, etc. These options allow you to file in whichever manor works out best for you.
There are also certain cases where it's not clear if something is deductible. For instance, using an example from Shawshank redemption, if you're a police officer and buy your own gun, that's tax deductible. But if one accountant doesn't know that you had to pay for your own gun, he wouldn't know to deduct that. Simple example, doesn't explain a $4100 difference, but lots of small things add up.
I'm currently a college sophomore and when choosing my major, the advice given to me was pretty much stay away from the IT sector. Basic economics, pay reflects supply and demand, not skill-level/education required to do the job. There's supposedly (and this does hold in many cases) a direct correlation between supply and the skill-level/education level needed for a job which is why there are statistics that the average college grad earns a lot more than the average high school grad. However, there's currently a huge supply of people who want to do programming/IT work and who are skilled enough to do it, and not nearly enough demand to support that supply. Consequently, pay will be low and many people wont find work in this sector.
Until the industry starts valuing skill more highly, which in my experience it does not*, pay will remain low because there's not much desire to attract real talent to most of these programmer/tech support/sys admin positions.
* Basic competency is all that's desired because the average person generally uses nowhere near the full capabilities of their technology. My parents were impressed when I showed them how to feed our Christmas cards into the printer and print them out instead of writing them by hand/having them professionally done. I still have friends who are in shock that it's possible, using an audio cable and an s-video cable, I can use the dvd player on my laptop to play a dvd on the TV. I also worked at a company two summers ago where they still had paperwork faxed to them instead of emailed (other companies wanted them to switch) because the owner of the company didn't understand "that tech stuff" and didn't want to deal with email.
Furthermore, a mildly-competent IT person still knows insanely more about their field than the average businessman. While skill is still recognized and appreciated, it's often not considered necessary and it's absence isn't even always recognized.
As much as I might like that sentiment, assuming Kerry gets the democratic nomination, who are you going to vote for? There's no one else to vote for who would even stand an outside shot at winning the election.
Side note, how do you get politicians to take a stand on issues you care about, but aren't central. For instance, I'd love to see copyright/patent reform (copyright reform because I feel like it's no longer serving it's purpose, and patent reform because one-click shopping is not an innovative idea) but I care much more about the economy than those ideas. The choice between a candidate who supports those reforms and one who does not but is better for the economy (in my opinion) is not a choice at all for me. Basically my question boils down to, if their choice wont make or break my vote for them, is there anyway to get politicians to make a stance on something short of having lots of money for campaign contributions?
Re:I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher.
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Comic Book Physics
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· Score: 3, Interesting
In my high school physics class we watched an instance where superman dove off the top of what I believe was a waterfall to catch someone who was falling. We calculated how high the fall would have to be in order superman to actually have the 5 seconds he wasted before even jumping to save the person (and then we assumed that he jumped downwards to provide himself with more acceleration even though it doesn't look like that's what he did from the movie). The waterfall would've had to have been several times the height of Niagra Falls (I don't remember the actualy height by now but I believe if you walked off the top of Niagra Falls you would have about 2-3 seconds before you hit the water). Talk about movies getting their physics wrong.
Locks may not help so much in the residential setting but they do a lot here at college (people will sometimes steal stuff if it's seen lying around, but I don't know of any case when someone's room was broken into), especially if you're throwing a party. At the clubs people go out to, if a room isn't locked, it's assumed you can be in there, even if it's someone's bedroom (the officers of the clubs - who are seniors at my university - live there). However, I don't know of any case when someone's door was knocked down so someone could get into their room.
I actually have the same exact question. Now, I consider myself a quasi-decent programmer, and I could probably write a program in about 5 minutes, that can tally votes from people and will have 0 bugs in it. It'll take a little longer to make it flexible to more than just vote for one candidate, most votes wins (such as vote for 5 of 7 judges). Now I understand that the touchscreen program is most likely rather complex but isn't this just an I/O interface? Why are there even bugs in software that's supposed to log if you picked option a, b, c, etc. and count how many picked each option?
I would love to be enlightened as to why this is. Another somewhat-related question. I know of a school district near me that licenses software for about $50,000 a year (US$ for you international people) to keep track of students grades/test scores/keep this information confidential. Now I'm sure the software must have some added functionality, but how is it that software that can be easily written by a first year undergraduate student (I could definitely do basic data-base information, querying/searching/basic encryption last year), can cost so much and people will pay for it?
Well for one thing, I personally do not consider tech support/call centers as high paying jobs. Just because a job requires education, does not make it necessarily high-paying. It does not make economic sense (in terms of the global economy) to pay U.S. workers more than Indian workers for the same production - whether or not outsourced work is just as productive is a different argument. It only makes the U.S. companies less competitive.
The problem, as I see it, is that too many people are relying on their technology education as a guarantee that they will have a job. At my university, all engineering graduates are required to have a basic competency in programming. My Optimization course teaches utilizes AMPL (A mathematical Programming Language) for many of the problems we have to solve, and my linear algebra course used matlab for several problems. Basically what this means is that Computer Programming/scripting is becomming required knowledge in many other fields, reducing the need for someone who is simply a computer programmer.
While this obviously does not cover the entire technology sector, my point is, there are many "IT" skills that are now being learned by people in other industries. Yes we still need System Administrators, security consultants, etc. but there is no reason to have tech support people living in the United States, nor is there the same need (read: demand) for people whose main skill is programming. Yes there is still a demand, but it's lessened. This is a fact of life. There is no reason to hamper U.S. companies by requiring them to buy expensive labor if the same labor is available more cheaply. It simply makes the companies less competitive, in the long-run hurting our countries economy.
My analogy, which I mentioned before. Suppose OpenOffice and Microsoft Office are of the same quality. The argument that U.S. companies should not be allowed to outsource because it takes jobs away from "deserving" Americans, is the same as saying using OpenOffice is wrong because the money you save would otherwise have gone to Microsoft. Same "argument" SCO used when attacking the GPL and claiming that Open Source software was a detriment to the economy.
Shameless plug for my university. Princeton no longer offers student loans to pay for college in their financial aid packages. They now offer grants, so that you can graduate debt-free (at least as far tuition/room & board debt goes).
-- Brad
Not to bash on cheaper state schools, but there is one major non-educationally-related advantage to ivy-league-type schools. Aside from name-recognition, there is the always-useful networking factor. Friends of mine who have already graduated from here (I'm currently a sophomore at Princeton University) had access to an extensive alumni network from which to draw upon when job hunting. Furthermore, when you're trying to bring in business to your firm/corporation/philanthropic organization, it helps when you have friends with money. Historically, most ivy-league graduates do go on to make a good deal of money in whatever they do.
In sum, while there might not be that much educational difference between an ivy-league institution and something cheaper (in my experience there, but that is a separate argument altogether), there are other benefits to attending a school such as MIT over Maryland.
Not to try and argue that there are plenty of jobs but just pointing out that the market isn't non-existant. While I don't know how many CS majors graduated last year (my completely uneducated guess would be between 20 and 40), I do know that they were hired by 17 different companies, plus grad schools.
First of all, if you're only going to college to be prepared for a specific job, you're at a trade school, not a college/university. Colleges/universities are not in the business of preparing you for a specific job/industry but in giving you skills that should ideally be valuable in most industries (your major more than others but still).
Furthermore, as a financial engineering major, in most cases, government interference with market powers in a competitive market usually mucks things up more than it fixes anything. Now don't get my wrong, I'm not saying that our government should not have any role in the economy or that it should not do anything to encourage employment/discourage offshoring. I'm just saying that historically, trying to re-shape a competitive market (and the market is clearly competitive if there are a lot of people willing to perform this job) almost always has more negative effect thans positive effects.
As a final note, which I'm sure will be accepted extremely poorly here at/., is that perhaps it's time to reconsider your job if you're in an industry that has so many people capable of doing your job who are willing to perform it for much less money.
The difference has to do with the purpose of the copyright. Most/.ers (IMHO) feels that copyright is supposed to promote science and the arts. The issue with the RIAA is there evil tactics. Supporting someone who claims the copyright on their GPL'd source code was violated is in an effort to make sure all derivative works of said source code remain open to the public and thus contribute to the "art" or "science" of programming.
The RIAA is a dying organization, not really needed anymore IMHO. What's sad to me is the statistics I've seen that show just how little artists make from CD sales. They make nearly all of their money from touring/promotional stuff (if you're Britney Spears)/selling T-shirts and the such. To me, that means if the RIAA's copyright is violated, artists don't suffer that much but the evil RIAA does suffer. That's why it's generally considered acceptable here on/.. Copyright reform seems to be pretty favored by/.ers and consequently, most don't respect the RIAA's copyrights all that much (while if it were the artists copyrights - and artists who took in most of the profit from CDs, I bet it would be very different).
There was a past article on/. about Interviewing with the NSA. One of the things it mentions in it is the polygraph examination used in the "security check". The polygraph works by measuring certain physiological metrics. As was mentioned in the NSA article, a polygraph's "effectiveness in an exam is significantly (and so far, intractably) linked to the examiner's performance, many an applicant's belief in the
infallibility of the machine, and the fact that the machine scares the crap out of people and gets them to talk." Based on this information, I can't imagine how the voice-detector can actually detect lying. If you're a good liar and not stressed about lying or if you're nervous but telling the truth, it's probably just as inaccurate as a polygraph.
Why do people believe stuff without any scientific proof? All the article says is that law enforcement version achieved 70 percent accuracy (which is horrible if you're actually going to use it as evidence) - means 3 out of every 10 uses will be wrong, and that it measures changes in voice. Where is the proof that these voice measures accurately measure lying? I'm not saying that they don't, or that they never do, but I want some sort of proof that they actually do.
While I'm not even going to start to try and defend Microsoft as not evil, I still think they get railed pretty unfairly. "Putting Profits over user experience and security". They're a public company, they have to defend their bottom line to their shareholders. We live in a capitalist society, there's nothing inherently evil about making profits your most important priority.
While I don't agree that their propoganda is ethical, I see nothing that makes them legal from trying to convince the consumer that their product is the best. Every other company does it, it's how the game is played (doesn't mean you have to like the game but it doesn't make them anymore evil than any other corporation - and no, corporations are not inherently evil just because they happen to have a few people who make loads of $$ from managing them and often don't care about their product).
The solution to the Microsoft "monopoly" is, like the solution to many things, education. While you might not like the fact that they have managed to brainwash the masses into thinking they have no alternative, it's an incredibly talented feat, one that most companies in any sector (be it corporations or small businesses or whatever company you work for) would LOVE to be able to accomplish.
While I agree with your other points (breaking the law and anti-trust agreements = evil), I am somewhat bothered by the fact that you consider them evil for simply accomplishing what every company tries to do. While one can argue that capitalism in itself is evil, find a better alternative and then we'll talk.
The state of matter in the traditional sense of solid, liquid, gas (I am not up to date on all the knew states) has to do with how far apart atoms are and how fast they are moving. In a gas, atoms are the furthest apart and move the most, liquid - closer together and slower, and solid - closest and slowest. This is why liquids have no shape - they take the shape of whatever container they are in.
Pressure pushes atoms closer together making it possible for Helium to "freeze" (become a solid) even though it can not under normal atmospheric pressure.
-- Brad
I feel like the general sentiment here on/. is that big corporations are out to kill the little guy. That their goal is to be evil and only make the CxO's rich.
Look at it from this point of view: Microsoft hires a lot of American workers. Say you can purchase two equal products (assuming their quality is equal - which it's not), one called Microsoft Office, producted by Microsoft and costing however much it costs, and one called OpenOffice which is free. Which would you choose? The one that costs more but benefits American workers or the one that's free and benefits no workers?
Just because the outsourcing of tech jobs negatively affects many of the readers on this forum doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing.
Another impression that I'm seeing from these comments is that simply because you're educated and are knowledgable and competent in certain tech jobs means you're entitled to one. If other people are willing/able to perform the same job for less money, they get the job, it's how the world works.
CEOs aren't evil just because they're concerned with how much money they make. And despite the sentiment that it's a rigged system, don't you think there's a reason that these CxO's make so much money? Might it have something to do with how challenging it is to run a company (Corrupt CEO's - e.g., Enron - not withstanding)?
Slashdot Mirror
"Pols are ALWAYS paid more than they are worth, and always make far more than the people they represent."
While this has some merits, you have to realize that the average salary is considered horribly low for most people from the middle/upper class and that if politicians were paid less, no one would try for these positions unless they had enough money that they didn't really need to work. If the salary wasn't enough to lead a comforotable upper/middle-class lifestyle, very few middle-class or upper/middle-class people would even consider the position.
I'm sure the costs included labor costs to input all of the information into the database (which was probably a huge process since it requires no just the input, but also getting all the information from wherever it is currently stored and processing it). I doubt they paid $45 million for just the software.
To play Devil's Advocate isn't there something good arising from virus writers? If there were no major viruses out there, I guarantee you most users wouldn't have anti-virus software and wouldn't know not to click on email attachments from unknown sources. Then, if someone really did want to cause major havoc, it would be even worse than it is now. I don't know if this is true, but I think it's possible. If no one ever expected a virus/worm, how long would it take to actually get the virus/worm off of every user's computer. It's rather quick now because most people have anti-virus software that can be updated really quickly.
Until the people hiring understand that it's important for someone to be able to "tell a div tag from their ass hole" it doesn't matter if the employee can. What will solve the idiots in the tech industry phenomenon is when the people employing those idiots can tell the difference between people who know buzzwords and people who know what they're doing.
On a side note, whenever I have a problem w/ my cable modem at home and I call up the cable company, they run me through a bunch of basic things that they HAVE to do (such as is the cable modem plugged into the computer) because they have so many users whose problem is something as dumb as that. If this is the average person's problem, why pay for someone who can handle real problems? People expect their technology to break and accept it, which is ridiculous, but true.
It's also a result of the fact that many jobs that used to require specifically trained IT people, no longer do since a lot of students learn basic computer science/programming skills. I've mentioned this before but at my school, every engineer must have a basic competency in computer programming, and many applied math/economics courses involve some sort of computer programming. So instead of needing a programmer to write simple little scripts and programs for you, you can do it yourself. I also know of several large investment banks requiring a basic competency in Excel, and require you to go to a short training course if you do not have it. It's the same with basic computing knowledge. While a lot of people are still clueless, there are now a lot more people (than before, not a lot more than who are clueless) who can get by on their own without the help of a special IT person when something goes wrong who aren't in the IT industry directly. An education solely in IT is only valuable when not that many people have it. A lot more people have it, and a lot more people in other industries have a basic competency and it's cheaper to allow them to be basically competent than to higher someone who is highly skilled.
While this might be slightly off topic, this is in response to your anger at how our society is so competition driven.
There was recently an article written in my campus newspaper entitled "Riding the Curve". It had to do with the fact that most classes are graded on a curve, and consequently, your grade (supposedly a measure of competence) is merely a reflection of how well you do solely in comparison to everyone else.
His examples included a small computer science seminar in which his friend was happy to hear that his project did not work out, because his friend's did not either and perhaps this meant most people failed at there task and the grading would be much easier. Also mentioned was how taking an intro-level comp sci course which was filled with CS majors in the fall, had a much more forgiving curve in the spring and how this was ridiculous.
It all boils down to everything is competition based. It doesn't matter how well you do, just how many people you do better than. It was the same thing with the selective clubs here that people try to get into. They have X spots, and they take the X people with the most votes (and percentage of votes needed is usually insane for some of them, last year one was 94%) which generally fucks anyone without a sports team/fraternity/sorority backing them. From a game theoretic perspective, if I want to get my 10 friends in, my best option would be to vote for my 10 friends and vote against everyone else. It's how our society is and it sucks. I couldn't agree with you more that 1) the solution to most issues is to educate the masses, and 2) we need to push away from everything being a competition.
That's partially because there are different ways to file a tax return. My dad can declare me as a dependant, and then I have to pay more taxes but he pays less (which makes much more sense since he's in a much higher tax bracket than I am since I'm still a full-time student and pretty much only work during the summer). He can also not do that, pay more in taxes, and have me pay pretty much nothing. My parents can file separately, or jointly, etc. These options allow you to file in whichever manor works out best for you.
There are also certain cases where it's not clear if something is deductible. For instance, using an example from Shawshank redemption, if you're a police officer and buy your own gun, that's tax deductible. But if one accountant doesn't know that you had to pay for your own gun, he wouldn't know to deduct that. Simple example, doesn't explain a $4100 difference, but lots of small things add up.
I'm currently a college sophomore and when choosing my major, the advice given to me was pretty much stay away from the IT sector. Basic economics, pay reflects supply and demand, not skill-level/education required to do the job. There's supposedly (and this does hold in many cases) a direct correlation between supply and the skill-level/education level needed for a job which is why there are statistics that the average college grad earns a lot more than the average high school grad. However, there's currently a huge supply of people who want to do programming/IT work and who are skilled enough to do it, and not nearly enough demand to support that supply. Consequently, pay will be low and many people wont find work in this sector.
Until the industry starts valuing skill more highly, which in my experience it does not*, pay will remain low because there's not much desire to attract real talent to most of these programmer/tech support/sys admin positions.
* Basic competency is all that's desired because the average person generally uses nowhere near the full capabilities of their technology. My parents were impressed when I showed them how to feed our Christmas cards into the printer and print them out instead of writing them by hand/having them professionally done. I still have friends who are in shock that it's possible, using an audio cable and an s-video cable, I can use the dvd player on my laptop to play a dvd on the TV. I also worked at a company two summers ago where they still had paperwork faxed to them instead of emailed (other companies wanted them to switch) because the owner of the company didn't understand "that tech stuff" and didn't want to deal with email.
Furthermore, a mildly-competent IT person still knows insanely more about their field than the average businessman. While skill is still recognized and appreciated, it's often not considered necessary and it's absence isn't even always recognized.
As much as I might like that sentiment, assuming Kerry gets the democratic nomination, who are you going to vote for? There's no one else to vote for who would even stand an outside shot at winning the election. Side note, how do you get politicians to take a stand on issues you care about, but aren't central. For instance, I'd love to see copyright/patent reform (copyright reform because I feel like it's no longer serving it's purpose, and patent reform because one-click shopping is not an innovative idea) but I care much more about the economy than those ideas. The choice between a candidate who supports those reforms and one who does not but is better for the economy (in my opinion) is not a choice at all for me. Basically my question boils down to, if their choice wont make or break my vote for them, is there anyway to get politicians to make a stance on something short of having lots of money for campaign contributions?
In my high school physics class we watched an instance where superman dove off the top of what I believe was a waterfall to catch someone who was falling. We calculated how high the fall would have to be in order superman to actually have the 5 seconds he wasted before even jumping to save the person (and then we assumed that he jumped downwards to provide himself with more acceleration even though it doesn't look like that's what he did from the movie). The waterfall would've had to have been several times the height of Niagra Falls (I don't remember the actualy height by now but I believe if you walked off the top of Niagra Falls you would have about 2-3 seconds before you hit the water). Talk about movies getting their physics wrong.
Locks may not help so much in the residential setting but they do a lot here at college (people will sometimes steal stuff if it's seen lying around, but I don't know of any case when someone's room was broken into), especially if you're throwing a party. At the clubs people go out to, if a room isn't locked, it's assumed you can be in there, even if it's someone's bedroom (the officers of the clubs - who are seniors at my university - live there). However, I don't know of any case when someone's door was knocked down so someone could get into their room.
I actually have the same exact question. Now, I consider myself a quasi-decent programmer, and I could probably write a program in about 5 minutes, that can tally votes from people and will have 0 bugs in it. It'll take a little longer to make it flexible to more than just vote for one candidate, most votes wins (such as vote for 5 of 7 judges). Now I understand that the touchscreen program is most likely rather complex but isn't this just an I/O interface? Why are there even bugs in software that's supposed to log if you picked option a, b, c, etc. and count how many picked each option?
I would love to be enlightened as to why this is. Another somewhat-related question. I know of a school district near me that licenses software for about $50,000 a year (US$ for you international people) to keep track of students grades/test scores/keep this information confidential. Now I'm sure the software must have some added functionality, but how is it that software that can be easily written by a first year undergraduate student (I could definitely do basic data-base information, querying/searching/basic encryption last year), can cost so much and people will pay for it?
Well for one thing, I personally do not consider tech support/call centers as high paying jobs. Just because a job requires education, does not make it necessarily high-paying. It does not make economic sense (in terms of the global economy) to pay U.S. workers more than Indian workers for the same production - whether or not outsourced work is just as productive is a different argument. It only makes the U.S. companies less competitive.
The problem, as I see it, is that too many people are relying on their technology education as a guarantee that they will have a job. At my university, all engineering graduates are required to have a basic competency in programming. My Optimization course teaches utilizes AMPL (A mathematical Programming Language) for many of the problems we have to solve, and my linear algebra course used matlab for several problems. Basically what this means is that Computer Programming/scripting is becomming required knowledge in many other fields, reducing the need for someone who is simply a computer programmer.
While this obviously does not cover the entire technology sector, my point is, there are many "IT" skills that are now being learned by people in other industries. Yes we still need System Administrators, security consultants, etc. but there is no reason to have tech support people living in the United States, nor is there the same need (read: demand) for people whose main skill is programming. Yes there is still a demand, but it's lessened. This is a fact of life. There is no reason to hamper U.S. companies by requiring them to buy expensive labor if the same labor is available more cheaply. It simply makes the companies less competitive, in the long-run hurting our countries economy.
My analogy, which I mentioned before. Suppose OpenOffice and Microsoft Office are of the same quality. The argument that U.S. companies should not be allowed to outsource because it takes jobs away from "deserving" Americans, is the same as saying using OpenOffice is wrong because the money you save would otherwise have gone to Microsoft. Same "argument" SCO used when attacking the GPL and claiming that Open Source software was a detriment to the economy.
Shameless plug for my university. Princeton no longer offers student loans to pay for college in their financial aid packages. They now offer grants, so that you can graduate debt-free (at least as far tuition/room & board debt goes). -- Brad
Not to bash on cheaper state schools, but there is one major non-educationally-related advantage to ivy-league-type schools. Aside from name-recognition, there is the always-useful networking factor. Friends of mine who have already graduated from here (I'm currently a sophomore at Princeton University) had access to an extensive alumni network from which to draw upon when job hunting. Furthermore, when you're trying to bring in business to your firm/corporation/philanthropic organization, it helps when you have friends with money. Historically, most ivy-league graduates do go on to make a good deal of money in whatever they do.
In sum, while there might not be that much educational difference between an ivy-league institution and something cheaper (in my experience there, but that is a separate argument altogether), there are other benefits to attending a school such as MIT over Maryland.
Not to try and argue that there are plenty of jobs but just pointing out that the market isn't non-existant. While I don't know how many CS majors graduated last year (my completely uneducated guess would be between 20 and 40), I do know that they were hired by 17 different companies, plus grad schools.
First of all, if you're only going to college to be prepared for a specific job, you're at a trade school, not a college/university. Colleges/universities are not in the business of preparing you for a specific job/industry but in giving you skills that should ideally be valuable in most industries (your major more than others but still).
/., is that perhaps it's time to reconsider your job if you're in an industry that has so many people capable of doing your job who are willing to perform it for much less money.
Furthermore, as a financial engineering major, in most cases, government interference with market powers in a competitive market usually mucks things up more than it fixes anything. Now don't get my wrong, I'm not saying that our government should not have any role in the economy or that it should not do anything to encourage employment/discourage offshoring. I'm just saying that historically, trying to re-shape a competitive market (and the market is clearly competitive if there are a lot of people willing to perform this job) almost always has more negative effect thans positive effects.
As a final note, which I'm sure will be accepted extremely poorly here at
The difference has to do with the purpose of the copyright. Most /.ers (IMHO) feels that copyright is supposed to promote science and the arts. The issue with the RIAA is there evil tactics. Supporting someone who claims the copyright on their GPL'd source code was violated is in an effort to make sure all derivative works of said source code remain open to the public and thus contribute to the "art" or "science" of programming.
/.. Copyright reform seems to be pretty favored by /.ers and consequently, most don't respect the RIAA's copyrights all that much (while if it were the artists copyrights - and artists who took in most of the profit from CDs, I bet it would be very different).
The RIAA is a dying organization, not really needed anymore IMHO. What's sad to me is the statistics I've seen that show just how little artists make from CD sales. They make nearly all of their money from touring/promotional stuff (if you're Britney Spears)/selling T-shirts and the such. To me, that means if the RIAA's copyright is violated, artists don't suffer that much but the evil RIAA does suffer. That's why it's generally considered acceptable here on
There was a past article on /. about Interviewing with the NSA. One of the things it mentions in it is the polygraph examination used in the "security check". The polygraph works by measuring certain physiological metrics. As was mentioned in the NSA article, a polygraph's "effectiveness in an exam is significantly (and so far, intractably) linked to the examiner's performance, many an applicant's belief in the
infallibility of the machine, and the fact that the machine scares the crap out of people and gets them to talk." Based on this information, I can't imagine how the voice-detector can actually detect lying. If you're a good liar and not stressed about lying or if you're nervous but telling the truth, it's probably just as inaccurate as a polygraph.
Why do people believe stuff without any scientific proof? All the article says is that law enforcement version achieved 70 percent accuracy (which is horrible if you're actually going to use it as evidence) - means 3 out of every 10 uses will be wrong, and that it measures changes in voice. Where is the proof that these voice measures accurately measure lying? I'm not saying that they don't, or that they never do, but I want some sort of proof that they actually do.
While I'm not even going to start to try and defend Microsoft as not evil, I still think they get railed pretty unfairly. "Putting Profits over user experience and security". They're a public company, they have to defend their bottom line to their shareholders. We live in a capitalist society, there's nothing inherently evil about making profits your most important priority. While I don't agree that their propoganda is ethical, I see nothing that makes them legal from trying to convince the consumer that their product is the best. Every other company does it, it's how the game is played (doesn't mean you have to like the game but it doesn't make them anymore evil than any other corporation - and no, corporations are not inherently evil just because they happen to have a few people who make loads of $$ from managing them and often don't care about their product). The solution to the Microsoft "monopoly" is, like the solution to many things, education. While you might not like the fact that they have managed to brainwash the masses into thinking they have no alternative, it's an incredibly talented feat, one that most companies in any sector (be it corporations or small businesses or whatever company you work for) would LOVE to be able to accomplish. While I agree with your other points (breaking the law and anti-trust agreements = evil), I am somewhat bothered by the fact that you consider them evil for simply accomplishing what every company tries to do. While one can argue that capitalism in itself is evil, find a better alternative and then we'll talk.
The state of matter in the traditional sense of solid, liquid, gas (I am not up to date on all the knew states) has to do with how far apart atoms are and how fast they are moving. In a gas, atoms are the furthest apart and move the most, liquid - closer together and slower, and solid - closest and slowest. This is why liquids have no shape - they take the shape of whatever container they are in. Pressure pushes atoms closer together making it possible for Helium to "freeze" (become a solid) even though it can not under normal atmospheric pressure. -- Brad
I feel like the general sentiment here on /. is that big corporations are out to kill the little guy. That their goal is to be evil and only make the CxO's rich.
Look at it from this point of view: Microsoft hires a lot of American workers. Say you can purchase two equal products (assuming their quality is equal - which it's not), one called Microsoft Office, producted by Microsoft and costing however much it costs, and one called OpenOffice which is free. Which would you choose? The one that costs more but benefits American workers or the one that's free and benefits no workers?
Just because the outsourcing of tech jobs negatively affects many of the readers on this forum doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing.
Another impression that I'm seeing from these comments is that simply because you're educated and are knowledgable and competent in certain tech jobs means you're entitled to one. If other people are willing/able to perform the same job for less money, they get the job, it's how the world works.
CEOs aren't evil just because they're concerned with how much money they make. And despite the sentiment that it's a rigged system, don't you think there's a reason that these CxO's make so much money? Might it have something to do with how challenging it is to run a company (Corrupt CEO's - e.g., Enron - not withstanding)?