The ethnic composition of developers was inaccurate. If you work in software development, look around you. You will usually find a lot of immigrants (not just one from Arabia(???) as in Office Space) and a few token white guys.
But, of course, Office Space is the closest hollywood has even gotten to portraying developers accurately.
As a person from India, I really enjoyed all the episodes about Apu, the Kwik-e-mart guy. The episodes about his marriage and child(ren)-birth are both hilarious, especially if you have some idea how Indian families work. I am sad that none of Apu's episode's have been included.
Some sample dialogues:
Apu (about his impending arranged marriage): Has the whole world gone crazy?
Homer: Nah, just your screwy country!
and
Marge:This is delicious! What is it?
Apu: Chick peas, lentils and rice
Marge: What is this?
Apu: Chick peas and lentils. Try it with rice
I guess you have to know India to appreciate these jokes!!!
I use IE and Mozilla and honestly, Mozilla kicks butt. Even with a 404, your desktop will still be cluttered with too many windows (pop ups, unders etc.)
With Mozilla, not only do I get no popups, but I also have only one window open when I navigate multiple websites using tabbed browsing.
Ignoring your "stupid" tag, here is what I think - This is a cyclical phenomenon. The only reason jobs are going abroad is because the cost of labor is very high in USA. When more jobs go abroad, the cost of labor and the cost of living will come down (it has to.) And once that happens, American labor will become attractive again!
To all those of you who think my post is stupid - here is a challenge. The next time you go to a store, try and buy only products that are completely made in your own country. Not only does this mean the manufacturing is done here, but also that the company should not have any interests outside USA.
You will end up with very few things left to buy!!!
Also, even if the actual "making" of the product happens abroad, it Americans who make the most money. Take nike, for example. If you buy a $100 sneaker, where do you think that money goes? To the worker in Indonesia???
Americans will continue to have jobs in area where they have more expertise, i.e., management. Get over it.
This issue has been debated many times on/. (Like every other popular issue).
The bottomline: If we don't send jobs abroad and reduce our costs, we'll end up sending customers to other countries!
Wouldn't that be worse? Let us say there is a law against American companies having their work done by foreign workers. Let us also assume that we stop all immigration, since most people who want the former want the latter too. That would make American products much more costlier.
So, foreign companies will develop the same products with lower costs and end up hijacking the marketshare. Is that really better for American prosperity?
I have posted this before, but was unfortunately modded down, so bere is go again.
This is not a match between man and machine. It is a match between humans - the human chess player vs the human software programmer. Please keep that in perspective.
Just because my desk calculator performs multiplications faster than me, doesn't mean that it is better at mathematics than I am.
While this may be conceptually true, there are different considerations involved when picking an OS and a language. A programming language is more like a tool that is selected because it is good for a particular operation.
A single machine could have multiple languages co-existing for different tasks. Some of these tasks require quick and dirty scripting, some require high performance and some other application programs might concentrate on object oriented features and such.
The operating system, on the other hand, is typically only one per machine and performance and stability might be the major considerations (other than compatibility with the popular applications around!)
We should abolish all H1Bs! But, before you jump all over this, let me explain. Instead of H1B visas (which are given to the companies and NOT the foreign workers, FYI), INS should either accept people as permanent residents or outright reject them.
The current system is very inefficient and stressful, not just for the workers but also the companies. Everyone knows that H1 workers are people of indentured servitude - I don't want to use the word slave because it has other contexts in USA. But, people don't seem to realize how painful it is for companies to hire a H1 worker.
Most project cycle in software are very short (a few months). So, if you interview someone for the project, you would like him/her to start ASAP. Unfortunately, INS can take months to approve the H1 visa (in spite of the recent improvements)! Plus, there are legal fees and INS fees and so on.
After all this, if companies still hire H1 workers, it is only because there is a shortage of skilled technical workers in USA. If my recommendation are followed, immigration workers will be more secure and will demand as much pay as US citizens. That will fix most of the problems. Companies will not hire H1 workers just for the (perceived) lower costs!
Re:Whither Globalization?
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2
I am not protesting globalization. As I said, it is a wonderful thing.
What I am concerned about is why steps are not being taken by the advocates of globalization to ensure corporations and its executives are held responsible for its actions?
Why is Nike able to get away with sweat shops in Indonesia where people work in inhuman conditions?
Why are the other junk food companies are held responsible for the amount of garbage they generate?
Are there effective pollution checks in place all over the world, just like in the West?
Sure, most of the responsibility lies with that country itself. But, let's face it - some of these countries haven't even solved their basic problems of food and water yet!
In the place of corporate appeasement, if the West starts to have real capitalism, may be these things will be resolved. Till then, companies will use "globalization" as an excuse for circumventing wage laws, pollution control laws and consumer safety laws.
Whither Globalization?
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I grew up in India and whenever I think back to the Bhopal tragedy, I still feel nauseated. American politicians today who scream about Iraq gassing its own people should take a look at this.
A negligent American company releases poisonous gases in a third-world country and kills or injures tens of thousands of (dark-skinned) people. You would think the world would be outraged.
No. Suddenly, Dow chemicals was no longer a global company - it was an American company, run by American citizens who are bound only by American laws! The Indians had to struggle very hard to bring these people to court - it is still not over, 18 years after the 'accident'.
Globalization is a wonderful thing, but only if all such aspects are dealt with. People tend to forget that free markets in countries like the USA work well only when the companies are governed by law and regulated by watchdog organizations. While the West aggressively pushes for global free markets, they don't seem to realize that there is no global law and no global watchdog or regulatory body.
What Dow chemicals did is an extremity, but there are many other simpler violations. Think about it - Coke sells cans in USA, among hundreds of other countries. That is great. But, how many of these countries have proper recycling facilities? Many third world countries are being pressurized by the world bank to open up to MNCs and are they are all becoming dumping grounds for these multi national companies. Heck, most of these countries don't even have proper drinking water for its population, but Coke and Pepsi are available everywhere!
This is ridiculous - freedom to vote includes the freedom not to vote!
What if I don't like any of my candidates (which is quite often the case)? Should I still be forced to vote for one of them? When I choose not to vote, I am basically casting a vote against the current system and stating my disgust with it. In the Australian system, there is no way to do this.
And please don't tell me that if I don't like the candidates, I should be one!
The way we try and control the Internet using American laws, may be we should just call it AmeriNet or something like that.
And don't try telling me that other countries try to control it too - for two reasons:
Countries like China or even Australia don't shout 'Freedom' from the rooftops the way we do.
Other countries are mostly interested only in controlling the internet usage in their country (not that that's a good thing...)
We, on the other hand, want to control what everyone else in the world does with the Internet. We wait for them to come to our shores for some conference and arrest them. And all this, after feeding illegal porn into those other countries.
Our politicians must realize that the Internet is what it is today only because it is globally accessible. Attempting to regulate it on our own is in very bad faith!
If MS gives away its OS, it would lose revenue from its other applications and not the other way around.
Remember that MS was virtually non-existant in the applications space till the Windows OS (with its secret apis) became a desktop standard - think of Lotus, WordPerfect and the millions of other applications that have been squashed over the last decade.
There are two kinds of posts in/. when a story is posted about India. One is the intelligent (and technical) analysis of the news itself. The other is posts such as yours. The main point of the latter is simply this - there are many poor, illiterate people in India, therefore, India should forget about technology and concentrate on feeding and educating its masses.
Well, I have been living in the US for many years now and I have seen my share of poor and homeless people in NY and SF. Does that stop the USA from spending billions on fighter planes? Whenever a luxury car or a costly tech gadget comes to the market, do you ever stop yourself to ask -"Can the people in trailer parks really afford this?"
Of course not. Then why the hypocrisy when it comes to India (and other non-white countries) alone?
Every country in this world (first or third or otherwise) has its share of have-nots and haves and the extremely wealthy. This should not prevent the scientific and engineering communities in those countries from innovating.
I am not sure if the Simputer will succeed. If I were to guess, I would say no. But, disregarding the merits and demerits of Simputer as a whole and merely repeating "India is poor" does not make a proper discussion.
Every time a topic about India or China is posted to/. we have to wade through scores of such arguments and counter-arguments before finding any real discussions about the topic itself. That is ludicrous.
This is NOT a man Vs. machine matchup in any way. This, like all the previous ones, is between the human chess player and the human computer scientist.
Just because a computer can multiply two large numbers faster and more accurately than I do, does not prove that it is mathematically superior.
Exactly my point. Last year, in the midst of all the animosity (this happened after 9/11), we managed to get these Americans out of Afghanistan unharmed. Why did we do that? If they had indeed broken a local law, why didn't we let them be punished for it as per their laws?
Seems to me that Americans only have to obey American laws wherever they are in the world. At the same time, people of all other countries have to obey American laws even in their own country!
How would we feel if Saudi Arabia arrested Larry Flint (let us say he is on a visit there) because pr0n is illegal there and he peddles it here in America (and through the Internet to Saudi too)?
More realistically, how did we react last year when the Taliban arrested three Americans who had gone there to spread christianity and convert muslims? It is illegal in Afghanistan, so did we let them die?
We must stop acting as if American law, and only American law, applies to the rest of the world too. This might answer a lot of "why"s!
Perfect search results are only present in the minds of the searchers. Google is, without doubt, the best search engine around.
The pagerank algorithm is one of the most important reasons why it is so good in bringing up relevant and popular results. But, this is just one of the ways of searching for good results and will not always work to your satisfaction.
Google gives preference to the number and quality of links to a particular site rather than the content of the site itself. One can easily come up with cases when this is probably not the best approach.
For example, consider a portion of the web containing lyrics of songs. If you search by artist name or song name, google will return excellent results, because the pages are probably linked using the names. However, if you only know the soneg from radio, you might want to search for songs containing a few particular lines. The pagerank algorithm might not be the best fit here.
Microsoft has plans to incorporate evil stuff into its future OS.
MS has patents on this stuff.
This might be a good thing as this will prevent other operating systems from incorporating similar evil technologies.
Why don't we go ahead and gift patents for fraudulent accounting and industrial pollution to MS. This way we can prevent all the other companies from cooking their books or polluting the environment. MS' lawyers will do a better job of enforcing this than the government!
The uniform UI assumption has been around for some time - I remember Bill Gate$ talking about it about 6 years ago.
The emergence of the Web proved them both wrong. Each website (atleast initially) had its own color schema and navigation mechanism. Users never complained. I rather like the fact that each application has its own look-and-feel identity rather than a communist approach to how an app should look.
Even on the desktop, the popularity of skins is proof of that (to some extent).
The bottom line is that the application should be intuitively easy to use - having a uniform look and feel does not necessarily guarantee that.
My first computer was a 8086 based PC with one 360KB floppy drive and NO hard drive. The monitor was black and white (green and white actually).
In one 360KB floppy, I would have an editor, a compiler, a couple of utilities and a couple of games plus some space for your own programs.
Of course, the system had 512 KB Ram, so I would create a RAM drive and use it for the.obj files and other temp files. Just FYI.
The more important aspect is how voluntary the developer's contribution is. The developer who voluntarily stays 12 hours a day to develop code that interests him will definitely be more productive. Because he is doing it out of his free will.
When forced to work long hours though, it may be counter-productive.
We have learnt over centuries (including the episodes of slavery) that free and happy labor will always produce better quality goods than forced and bound labor. This is especially true of something like software which not "manufactured" and whose productivity cannot be easily measured.
Too much documentation is just as bad as too little documentation, even when the documentation is good. It is very difficult to strike a balance.
For example, many of the core java apis are well written and well documented. If you see the HTML javadocs, you can get a pretty good idea of the class.
However, when you open the source code of the same class, it is not good looking anymore. Why? Because each method is preceded with dozens of lines of javadoc, each of which is embedded with HTML markup. That is good when the javadoc HTML pages are finally generated, but not so good when you look at the source itself. C# is worse with its XML based documentation!
When I look at the source code, I want to see the flow of the code easily. All the documentation in the source should only aid this and not hinder this. Javadoc does both. The explanation part of the javadoc can be very useful in understanding what the author's intent was when he/she wrote the method, but I am not so sure about the rest. The param, return and exception tags are no doubt useful, but often developers don't explain these very well. Plus, these are the tags that can easily become outdated.
I would prefer short and succint pieces of information documenting the code, preferrably close to the line of code that it documents.
Slashdot Mirror
The ethnic composition of developers was inaccurate. If you work in software development, look around you. You will usually find a lot of immigrants (not just one from Arabia(???) as in Office Space) and a few token white guys.
But, of course, Office Space is the closest hollywood has even gotten to portraying developers accurately.
Some sample dialogues:
andI guess you have to know India to appreciate these jokes!!!
With Mozilla, not only do I get no popups, but I also have only one window open when I navigate multiple websites using tabbed browsing.
Try it out.
To all those of you who think my post is stupid - here is a challenge. The next time you go to a store, try and buy only products that are completely made in your own country. Not only does this mean the manufacturing is done here, but also that the company should not have any interests outside USA.
You will end up with very few things left to buy!!!
Also, even if the actual "making" of the product happens abroad, it Americans who make the most money. Take nike, for example. If you buy a $100 sneaker, where do you think that money goes? To the worker in Indonesia???
Americans will continue to have jobs in area where they have more expertise, i.e., management. Get over it.
The bottomline: If we don't send jobs abroad and reduce our costs, we'll end up sending customers to other countries!
Wouldn't that be worse? Let us say there is a law against American companies having their work done by foreign workers. Let us also assume that we stop all immigration, since most people who want the former want the latter too. That would make American products much more costlier.
So, foreign companies will develop the same products with lower costs and end up hijacking the marketshare. Is that really better for American prosperity?
This is not a match between man and machine. It is a match between humans - the human chess player vs the human software programmer. Please keep that in perspective.
Just because my desk calculator performs multiplications faster than me, doesn't mean that it is better at mathematics than I am.
A single machine could have multiple languages co-existing for different tasks. Some of these tasks require quick and dirty scripting, some require high performance and some other application programs might concentrate on object oriented features and such.
The operating system, on the other hand, is typically only one per machine and performance and stability might be the major considerations (other than compatibility with the popular applications around!)
We should abolish all H1Bs! But, before you jump all over this, let me explain. Instead of H1B visas (which are given to the companies and NOT the foreign workers, FYI), INS should either accept people as permanent residents or outright reject them.
The current system is very inefficient and stressful, not just for the workers but also the companies. Everyone knows that H1 workers are people of indentured servitude - I don't want to use the word slave because it has other contexts in USA. But, people don't seem to realize how painful it is for companies to hire a H1 worker.
Most project cycle in software are very short (a few months). So, if you interview someone for the project, you would like him/her to start ASAP. Unfortunately, INS can take months to approve the H1 visa (in spite of the recent improvements)! Plus, there are legal fees and INS fees and so on.
After all this, if companies still hire H1 workers, it is only because there is a shortage of skilled technical workers in USA. If my recommendation are followed, immigration workers will be more secure and will demand as much pay as US citizens. That will fix most of the problems. Companies will not hire H1 workers just for the (perceived) lower costs!
What I am concerned about is why steps are not being taken by the advocates of globalization to ensure corporations and its executives are held responsible for its actions?
Why is Nike able to get away with sweat shops in Indonesia where people work in inhuman conditions?
Why are the other junk food companies are held responsible for the amount of garbage they generate?
Are there effective pollution checks in place all over the world, just like in the West?
Sure, most of the responsibility lies with that country itself. But, let's face it - some of these countries haven't even solved their basic problems of food and water yet!
In the place of corporate appeasement, if the West starts to have real capitalism, may be these things will be resolved. Till then, companies will use "globalization" as an excuse for circumventing wage laws, pollution control laws and consumer safety laws.
A negligent American company releases poisonous gases in a third-world country and kills or injures tens of thousands of (dark-skinned) people. You would think the world would be outraged.
No. Suddenly, Dow chemicals was no longer a global company - it was an American company, run by American citizens who are bound only by American laws! The Indians had to struggle very hard to bring these people to court - it is still not over, 18 years after the 'accident'.
Globalization is a wonderful thing, but only if all such aspects are dealt with. People tend to forget that free markets in countries like the USA work well only when the companies are governed by law and regulated by watchdog organizations. While the West aggressively pushes for global free markets, they don't seem to realize that there is no global law and no global watchdog or regulatory body.
What Dow chemicals did is an extremity, but there are many other simpler violations. Think about it - Coke sells cans in USA, among hundreds of other countries. That is great. But, how many of these countries have proper recycling facilities? Many third world countries are being pressurized by the world bank to open up to MNCs and are they are all becoming dumping grounds for these multi national companies. Heck, most of these countries don't even have proper drinking water for its population, but Coke and Pepsi are available everywhere!
What if I don't like any of my candidates (which is quite often the case)? Should I still be forced to vote for one of them? When I choose not to vote, I am basically casting a vote against the current system and stating my disgust with it. In the Australian system, there is no way to do this.
And please don't tell me that if I don't like the candidates, I should be one!
How about X Windows?
And don't try telling me that other countries try to control it too - for two reasons:
We, on the other hand, want to control what everyone else in the world does with the Internet. We wait for them to come to our shores for some conference and arrest them. And all this, after feeding illegal porn into those other countries.
Our politicians must realize that the Internet is what it is today only because it is globally accessible. Attempting to regulate it on our own is in very bad faith!
Remember that MS was virtually non-existant in the applications space till the Windows OS (with its secret apis) became a desktop standard - think of Lotus, WordPerfect and the millions of other applications that have been squashed over the last decade.
There are two kinds of posts in /. when a story is posted about India. One is the intelligent (and technical) analysis of the news itself. The other is posts such as yours. The main point of the latter is simply this - there are many poor, illiterate people in India, therefore, India should forget about technology and concentrate on feeding and educating its masses.
Well, I have been living in the US for many years now and I have seen my share of poor and homeless people in NY and SF. Does that stop the USA from spending billions on fighter planes? Whenever a luxury car or a costly tech gadget comes to the market, do you ever stop yourself to ask -"Can the people in trailer parks really afford this?"
Of course not. Then why the hypocrisy when it comes to India (and other non-white countries) alone?
Every country in this world (first or third or otherwise) has its share of have-nots and haves and the extremely wealthy. This should not prevent the scientific and engineering communities in those countries from innovating.
I am not sure if the Simputer will succeed. If I were to guess, I would say no. But, disregarding the merits and demerits of Simputer as a whole and merely repeating "India is poor" does not make a proper discussion.
Every time a topic about India or China is posted to /. we have to wade through scores of such arguments and counter-arguments before finding any real discussions about the topic itself. That is ludicrous.
Just because a computer can multiply two large numbers faster and more accurately than I do, does not prove that it is mathematically superior.
Seems to me that Americans only have to obey American laws wherever they are in the world. At the same time, people of all other countries have to obey American laws even in their own country!
More realistically, how did we react last year when the Taliban arrested three Americans who had gone there to spread christianity and convert muslims? It is illegal in Afghanistan, so did we let them die?
We must stop acting as if American law, and only American law, applies to the rest of the world too. This might answer a lot of "why"s!
The pagerank algorithm is one of the most important reasons why it is so good in bringing up relevant and popular results. But, this is just one of the ways of searching for good results and will not always work to your satisfaction.
Google gives preference to the number and quality of links to a particular site rather than the content of the site itself. One can easily come up with cases when this is probably not the best approach.
For example, consider a portion of the web containing lyrics of songs. If you search by artist name or song name, google will return excellent results, because the pages are probably linked using the names. However, if you only know the soneg from radio, you might want to search for songs containing a few particular lines. The pagerank algorithm might not be the best fit here.
This might be a good thing as this will prevent other operating systems from incorporating similar evil technologies.
Why don't we go ahead and gift patents for fraudulent accounting and industrial pollution to MS. This way we can prevent all the other companies from cooking their books or polluting the environment. MS' lawyers will do a better job of enforcing this than the government!
The emergence of the Web proved them both wrong. Each website (atleast initially) had its own color schema and navigation mechanism. Users never complained. I rather like the fact that each application has its own look-and-feel identity rather than a communist approach to how an app should look.
Even on the desktop, the popularity of skins is proof of that (to some extent).
The bottom line is that the application should be intuitively easy to use - having a uniform look and feel does not necessarily guarantee that.
I remember one of the founders of eLance.com was arrested about a year for some reason. Anyone has more details about it? Anyone know where he is now?
My first computer was a 8086 based PC with one 360KB floppy drive and NO hard drive. The monitor was black and white (green and white actually). In one 360KB floppy, I would have an editor, a compiler, a couple of utilities and a couple of games plus some space for your own programs. Of course, the system had 512 KB Ram, so I would create a RAM drive and use it for the .obj files and other temp files. Just FYI.
When forced to work long hours though, it may be counter-productive.
We have learnt over centuries (including the episodes of slavery) that free and happy labor will always produce better quality goods than forced and bound labor. This is especially true of something like software which not "manufactured" and whose productivity cannot be easily measured.
For example, many of the core java apis are well written and well documented. If you see the HTML javadocs, you can get a pretty good idea of the class.
However, when you open the source code of the same class, it is not good looking anymore. Why? Because each method is preceded with dozens of lines of javadoc, each of which is embedded with HTML markup. That is good when the javadoc HTML pages are finally generated, but not so good when you look at the source itself. C# is worse with its XML based documentation!
When I look at the source code, I want to see the flow of the code easily. All the documentation in the source should only aid this and not hinder this. Javadoc does both. The explanation part of the javadoc can be very useful in understanding what the author's intent was when he/she wrote the method, but I am not so sure about the rest. The param, return and exception tags are no doubt useful, but often developers don't explain these very well. Plus, these are the tags that can easily become outdated.
I would prefer short and succint pieces of information documenting the code, preferrably close to the line of code that it documents.