Suppose two publically traded software companies make software for the same problem. The CEO of Company A outsources development and reduces costs by 5%.
The problem is that it doesn't actually reduce costs, it is just a sound-bite that gets the approval of the financial pundits who laud Company A's stock. The CEOs of companies B and C follow suit because company A's stock went up and company A's CEO got a whopping bonus even though the profits were down. (See Carly Fiorina if you think I'm kidding.)
Perhaps the shareholders agree that the CEO gets 5% of the new proffits and they get the other 4%. Shareholders win.
No. The shareholders have no say in it. The board of directors decides the CEO's compensation, and they answer to nobody - usually, they are CEOs of other companies. CEOs of major companies are already being paid millions of dollars per year. If they need extra incentive to do their job, then they really need to be fired. I don't tell my company that I'm only going to do minimal work unless I get a bonus, and I only make 1/600th what the CEO makes.
The CEO of Company B will see this and do the same. Now both CEOs have incentive to steal marketshare from eachother by lowering prices. Eventually this will balance out. There will be more money in the shareholders' pockets.
The first part is exactly what has happened. Other companies are jumping on the outsourcing bandwagon whether it makes sense for their company or not. It has not resulted in lower prices for customers, nor have shareholders benefited more than a pittance (as I can testify).
Plutocracy doesn't enter in to it.
When you have a wealthy class that dictates who runs corporate America, and when corporate America dictates what legislation will be passed, it sounds like a plutocracy to me.
You want the answer? I'll give you the answer - as an engineer from one of this nation's better technology schools, let me tell you this: if you are good quality material, there is no dearth of opportunity. And if you are willing to work up ideas in an area which has hitherto been unexplored, you'd be making a whole lot more than you could ever imagine.
As an engineer with degrees in two different fields, let me tell you this: you completely missed the point. Engineering is not generally about "hitherto unexplored" areas; it is about applied science. It is not about making more than you could ever imagine; it is about doing your job in a professional manner, with all that implies, including adherence to standards of performance, conduct, and ethics. And all that has little to do with the real reasons for local engineering unemployment.
Become a plumber or electrician. Nobody has figured out how to offshore a plumbing problem yet:-).
Sure. That is taking up a new occupation - it is not an engineer "reinventing" themself in the context of their profession and education which may have cost many thousands of dollars. That is also giving up what they want to do for a living.
There was an occupation called "telephpne operator". Got replaced by dial phones.
Domestic engineers are not being replaced by machines, they are being replaced by foreign engineers who make a little bit less. What happens when there is nobody left in the country who can make the phones work? Should we really be dependent on others for basic infrastructure? Alexander Hamilton said no, and that was very a long time ago - it still holds true.
You should look in to this thing called "capitalism."
I think I'm fairly well-versed in the concept at least. What does that have to do with the plutocracy practiced in the US? Capitalism, like communism, has never really been tried except in very small communities. Personally, I like the ecomonic concept of capitalism better, but in every case, both break down when confronting government regulation and the personal power that allows - some are always more "equal" than others. (You should be able to recognize the source.)
This is what happens when you let MBAs do the counting...
Really, that's more insightful than funny. Engineering math is completely different from MBA math, which says: 20% Engineering unemployment + 100,000 new H-1B imported IT workers = REALLY HUGE BONUS (buy that island in the Bahamas to avoid prosecution and forget the US because I got mine). Engineering math would account for effects to the entire company as a whole. I know there must be a number of good CEOs out there, but they aren't getting their names in the paper over the ones indicted or convicted, and our CEO is a great example of why (just barely skirting the law).
For example, electrical engineering seems to have been going through a time of less employment recently (probably brought on by increasing ease of automated design of digital circuits, use of FPGAs and programmable DSP chips, killing the analog design field).
Electrical and Computer Engineering jobs have continued with high unemployment rates because the goverment has increased the number of imported workers in the field to over 90,000 new workers per year. This is likely underestimated since the DHS recently said the USCIS doesn't have the capability to really control the number of work-based visas. If the goverment was importing 100,000 firemen per year, you'd be better off not training to be a firefighter - it's supply and demand.
Engineers will have to reinvent themselves to stay in the game. Those that can't won't make it.
Well hey, you leave us all waiting for the answer. Engineers should "reinvent themselves" into what? A lot of American IT workers have been asking the same question. C'mon Kreskin, if you have the answer, give it up.
Engineers are engineers. Everybody's gotta eat. Why should I whether a Chinese engineer has a job and an American engineer is out of work or vice versa?
So does it make any difference if an American engineer who made many contributions to the success of the company is put out of a job so that the profitable American company can replace him/her with a cheaper and less experienced Chinese engineer and thereby redirect even more profit into the CEOs compensation? That is what it is about. There are little or no cost savings being passed on to the customers. The cost goes down while the price remains the same. The added profit goes somewhere, and it is not benefitting the long-term health of industry in this country or the country in general.
The results speak for themselves since the PS2 is the oldest and the most dated performance the fact that the performance is extremely dynamic and probably *still not maxed*. People are still pulling tricks that no one could predict the PS2 to do. I suspect we wouldn't have games on the PS2 like GT4 or the beautiful Shadow of the Collosius if it had been made with more cache yet small bandwidth.
Agreed. People have complained about the camera movements on Shadow of the Colossus, yet they don't seem to realize that during those movements everything is still being rendered at a normal frame rate. I think people just aren't used to it. There is still unused horsepower (no SotC pun intended) in the old box yet.
I can assure you that the most offending facts about english are th non sense relations between written and spoken language and the english morons who cannot realise that half of the World is struggling to learn such a stupid language.
It's good that you rightfully blamed it on the English instead of the Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, etc., who are merely victims. BTW, nonsense is one word.:)
At the time, I was an active bracket racer, which is really beside the point. At 2 AM, with nobody else on the road, the danger to others is nonexistent. The point is about more government intervention in our lives (and our deaths for that matter).
What does being released late have to do with being convicted? Unless you're talking about MS, which has been convicted of making many late releases.:)
If I had right of way and he had a stop sign, I would have made no effort to avoid him.
He would have said that he was responding to a call, possibly even that he had his lights on - your word against a bona fide law officer unless you have a witness that is willing to testify - gee, where did that witness dude go?. Your insurance rates go up, and you should just be grateful you weren't shot on the spot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Because the risk of letting a convicted criminal get away is more than the risk of a cop wiping out an SUV full of kids and puppies.
I'm probably missing the joke here, but a pursuit usually involves only a *suspected* criminal, and won't someone please think about the KIDS and PUPPIES (and possibly KITTENS)!?
Even with your most benign interpretation, there still has to be a computer-controlled device installed in the acceleration control mechanism that has the ability to impede your use of said mechanism.
I am a programmer who has worked on typical software as well as embedded systems for several decades. I am not a fan of employing computerized solutions when safety is a major concern and where purely mechanical options exist. Adding complexity does not add reliability, and usually added complexity reduces reliability. I believe that BMW and Mercedes (and other companies) have good reasons to regret computerizing some functions.
You know, I'm sure you say that merely because you know police can't be everywhere at once. And the buggy software is a bit of a red herring to be honest. I haven't seen any news articles where people were convicted because of buggy software.
You know, you're wrong and right. I don't know of anyone convicted because of buggy software either, but I do know about people killed by buggy software in radiation therapy machines. I know about people who had baggage destroyed by a buggy system in Denver. I am a programmer by trade, and although I try to follow the best practices, I have seen enough debacles that I'm unwilling to trust my fate to the latest Windows software and some newly minted VB coder. As for red herring, it's not - but better red than dead.
Well, you know, aspirin therapy didn't work. About ten years later, we lost him. I still think that a qualified medical staff is the patient's best bet. Insensitive clod.
incorporate a big emergency override button that turns the system off instantly, no questions asked, and sends a little report to the local authorities that says you hit the button and records how fast, how far, how long you went. You are then required to file an emergency report in the next week or so explaining why you used the button
That's better than a total lock-out, but are you going to make this button bigger that the hazard warning button? I can't add a new radio channel without the user's manual. This is not something that I want to have to remember/mess with in an emergency.
incorporate some sort of passing toggle, automatic or manual, which allows you to override the system for short durations but doesn't send any report unless it passes a certain speed or certain duration. This wouldn't require you to toggle a report unless there are indications of abuse
Again, more complications, and why should a black-box system determine what is an abuse? How about the presumption of innocence unless found and proven otherwise by an officer of the law and the court? Should you be fined every time Windows says that your program has performed an illegal operation?
Unlike seatbelt laws, this is not about protecting you from yourself... speed limits are about protecting other people from you.
If that is true, then why are the police not required to observe speed limits when not in pursuit? Yes, the police are supposedly "trained" drivers and "trained" observers, but a "safe" speed limit should be safe for all drivers.
I've seen police do some pretty bone-headed things besides speeding as well. I had one run a stop sign in front of me on a snow-packed road last week - no lights, no siren. If I had hit him, I would have been at fault of course.
How about when your father is having a heart attack and there is no local ambulance? It happened. Having some government nanny controlling my accelerator is not welcome or appropriate. If they want to monitor my speed and report it, that's also unwelcome but a different story. Enforcement of the law is up to the police, not some computer that may have buggy software - and how much is it going to cost for this big-brother system that is able to monitor every vehicle on the roads?
Depends on if we can send the governator to mars to reactivate the alien machines...
That would depend on how Captain Carter reacted to the Governator's intrusion. Brains and brawn versus brawn and brawn. Hmm . . . despite the Conan sword-swinging thing, I'll take Carter to win by one limb and a head, and his cheerleader squad is soooo hot.
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Suppose two publically traded software companies make software for the same problem. The CEO of Company A outsources development and reduces costs by 5%.
The problem is that it doesn't actually reduce costs, it is just a sound-bite that gets the approval of the financial pundits who laud Company A's stock. The CEOs of companies B and C follow suit because company A's stock went up and company A's CEO got a whopping bonus even though the profits were down. (See Carly Fiorina if you think I'm kidding.)
Perhaps the shareholders agree that the CEO gets 5% of the new proffits and they get the other 4%. Shareholders win.
No. The shareholders have no say in it. The board of directors decides the CEO's compensation, and they answer to nobody - usually, they are CEOs of other companies. CEOs of major companies are already being paid millions of dollars per year. If they need extra incentive to do their job, then they really need to be fired. I don't tell my company that I'm only going to do minimal work unless I get a bonus, and I only make 1/600th what the CEO makes.
The CEO of Company B will see this and do the same. Now both CEOs have incentive to steal marketshare from eachother by lowering prices. Eventually this will balance out. There will be more money in the shareholders' pockets.
The first part is exactly what has happened. Other companies are jumping on the outsourcing bandwagon whether it makes sense for their company or not. It has not resulted in lower prices for customers, nor have shareholders benefited more than a pittance (as I can testify).
Plutocracy doesn't enter in to it.
When you have a wealthy class that dictates who runs corporate America, and when corporate America dictates what legislation will be passed, it sounds like a plutocracy to me.
You want the answer? I'll give you the answer - as an engineer from one of this nation's better technology schools, let me tell you this: if you are good quality material, there is no dearth of opportunity. And if you are willing to work up ideas in an area which has hitherto been unexplored, you'd be making a whole lot more than you could ever imagine.
As an engineer with degrees in two different fields, let me tell you this: you completely missed the point. Engineering is not generally about "hitherto unexplored" areas; it is about applied science. It is not about making more than you could ever imagine; it is about doing your job in a professional manner, with all that implies, including adherence to standards of performance, conduct, and ethics. And all that has little to do with the real reasons for local engineering unemployment.
Not everyone can change into the same new role.
I think there is an oxymoron imbedded in that.
Become a plumber or electrician. Nobody has figured out how to offshore a plumbing problem yet :-).
Sure. That is taking up a new occupation - it is not an engineer "reinventing" themself in the context of their profession and education which may have cost many thousands of dollars. That is also giving up what they want to do for a living.
There was an occupation called "telephpne operator". Got replaced by dial phones.
Domestic engineers are not being replaced by machines, they are being replaced by foreign engineers who make a little bit less. What happens when there is nobody left in the country who can make the phones work? Should we really be dependent on others for basic infrastructure? Alexander Hamilton said no, and that was very a long time ago - it still holds true.
You should look in to this thing called "capitalism."
I think I'm fairly well-versed in the concept at least. What does that have to do with the plutocracy practiced in the US? Capitalism, like communism, has never really been tried except in very small communities. Personally, I like the ecomonic concept of capitalism better, but in every case, both break down when confronting government regulation and the personal power that allows - some are always more "equal" than others. (You should be able to recognize the source.)
This is what happens when you let MBAs do the counting...
Really, that's more insightful than funny. Engineering math is completely different from MBA math, which says: 20% Engineering unemployment + 100,000 new H-1B imported IT workers = REALLY HUGE BONUS (buy that island in the Bahamas to avoid prosecution and forget the US because I got mine). Engineering math would account for effects to the entire company as a whole. I know there must be a number of good CEOs out there, but they aren't getting their names in the paper over the ones indicted or convicted, and our CEO is a great example of why (just barely skirting the law).
For example, electrical engineering seems to have been going through a time of less employment recently (probably brought on by increasing ease of automated design of digital circuits, use of FPGAs and programmable DSP chips, killing the analog design field).
Electrical and Computer Engineering jobs have continued with high unemployment rates because the goverment has increased the number of imported workers in the field to over 90,000 new workers per year. This is likely underestimated since the DHS recently said the USCIS doesn't have the capability to really control the number of work-based visas. If the goverment was importing 100,000 firemen per year, you'd be better off not training to be a firefighter - it's supply and demand.
Engineers will have to reinvent themselves to stay in the game. Those that can't won't make it.
Well hey, you leave us all waiting for the answer. Engineers should "reinvent themselves" into what? A lot of American IT workers have been asking the same question. C'mon Kreskin, if you have the answer, give it up.
Engineers are engineers. Everybody's gotta eat. Why should I whether a Chinese engineer has a job and an American engineer is out of work or vice versa?
So does it make any difference if an American engineer who made many contributions to the success of the company is put out of a job so that the profitable American company can replace him/her with a cheaper and less experienced Chinese engineer and thereby redirect even more profit into the CEOs compensation? That is what it is about. There are little or no cost savings being passed on to the customers. The cost goes down while the price remains the same. The added profit goes somewhere, and it is not benefitting the long-term health of industry in this country or the country in general.
The results speak for themselves since the PS2 is the oldest and the most dated performance the fact that the performance is extremely dynamic and probably *still not maxed*. People are still pulling tricks that no one could predict the PS2 to do. I suspect we wouldn't have games on the PS2 like GT4 or the beautiful Shadow of the Collosius if it had been made with more cache yet small bandwidth.
Agreed. People have complained about the camera movements on Shadow of the Colossus, yet they don't seem to realize that during those movements everything is still being rendered at a normal frame rate. I think people just aren't used to it. There is still unused horsepower (no SotC pun intended) in the old box yet.
I can assure you that the most offending facts about english are th non sense relations between written and spoken language and the english morons who cannot realise that half of the World is struggling to learn such a stupid language.
It's good that you rightfully blamed it on the English instead of the Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, etc., who are merely victims. BTW, nonsense is one word. :)
Why does the name Rambus jump to mind?
Short of putting an ugly sticker on the console that says "Read the manual, dumbfuck!" what more can they do?
Given all the constraints, they should put a big sticker on the outside of the box that says, "NOT SUITABLE FOR HOME USE."
At the time, I was an active bracket racer, which is really beside the point. At 2 AM, with nobody else on the road, the danger to others is nonexistent. The point is about more government intervention in our lives (and our deaths for that matter).
What does being released late have to do with being convicted? Unless you're talking about MS, which has been convicted of making many late releases. :)
If I had right of way and he had a stop sign, I would have made no effort to avoid him.
He would have said that he was responding to a call, possibly even that he had his lights on - your word against a bona fide law officer unless you have a witness that is willing to testify - gee, where did that witness dude go?. Your insurance rates go up, and you should just be grateful you weren't shot on the spot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Because the risk of letting a convicted criminal get away is more than the risk of a cop wiping out an SUV full of kids and puppies.
I'm probably missing the joke here, but a pursuit usually involves only a *suspected* criminal, and won't someone please think about the KIDS and PUPPIES (and possibly KITTENS)!?
Even with your most benign interpretation, there still has to be a computer-controlled device installed in the acceleration control mechanism that has the ability to impede your use of said mechanism. I am a programmer who has worked on typical software as well as embedded systems for several decades. I am not a fan of employing computerized solutions when safety is a major concern and where purely mechanical options exist. Adding complexity does not add reliability, and usually added complexity reduces reliability. I believe that BMW and Mercedes (and other companies) have good reasons to regret computerizing some functions.
You know, I'm sure you say that merely because you know police can't be everywhere at once. And the buggy software is a bit of a red herring to be honest. I haven't seen any news articles where people were convicted because of buggy software.
You know, you're wrong and right. I don't know of anyone convicted because of buggy software either, but I do know about people killed by buggy software in radiation therapy machines. I know about people who had baggage destroyed by a buggy system in Denver. I am a programmer by trade, and although I try to follow the best practices, I have seen enough debacles that I'm unwilling to trust my fate to the latest Windows software and some newly minted VB coder. As for red herring, it's not - but better red than dead.
And I probably shouldn't admit that I'm a contractor for NASA.
There may have been a glitch in the software, but you are booked on the next Mars mission, and the 65 MPH speed limit will be enforced. :)
Try giving him an aspirin.
Well, you know, aspirin therapy didn't work. About ten years later, we lost him. I still think that a qualified medical staff is the patient's best bet. Insensitive clod.
incorporate a big emergency override button that turns the system off instantly, no questions asked, and sends a little report to the local authorities that says you hit the button and records how fast, how far, how long you went. You are then required to file an emergency report in the next week or so explaining why you used the button
That's better than a total lock-out, but are you going to make this button bigger that the hazard warning button? I can't add a new radio channel without the user's manual. This is not something that I want to have to remember/mess with in an emergency.
incorporate some sort of passing toggle, automatic or manual, which allows you to override the system for short durations but doesn't send any report unless it passes a certain speed or certain duration. This wouldn't require you to toggle a report unless there are indications of abuse
Again, more complications, and why should a black-box system determine what is an abuse? How about the presumption of innocence unless found and proven otherwise by an officer of the law and the court? Should you be fined every time Windows says that your program has performed an illegal operation?
Unlike seatbelt laws, this is not about protecting you from yourself... speed limits are about protecting other people from you.
If that is true, then why are the police not required to observe speed limits when not in pursuit? Yes, the police are supposedly "trained" drivers and "trained" observers, but a "safe" speed limit should be safe for all drivers.
I've seen police do some pretty bone-headed things besides speeding as well. I had one run a stop sign in front of me on a snow-packed road last week - no lights, no siren. If I had hit him, I would have been at fault of course.
How about when your father is having a heart attack and there is no local ambulance? It happened. Having some government nanny controlling my accelerator is not welcome or appropriate. If they want to monitor my speed and report it, that's also unwelcome but a different story. Enforcement of the law is up to the police, not some computer that may have buggy software - and how much is it going to cost for this big-brother system that is able to monitor every vehicle on the roads?
Here's a short summary without the depth of the IEEE article.
Depends on if we can send the governator to mars to reactivate the alien machines...
That would depend on how Captain Carter reacted to the Governator's intrusion. Brains and brawn versus brawn and brawn. Hmm . . . despite the Conan sword-swinging thing, I'll take Carter to win by one limb and a head, and his cheerleader squad is soooo hot.