Like hell. The NYT is further left than Clinton or Gore. When they're further left than Democrat candidates/presidents, they're definitely not close to center, unless your definition of absolute left is so far as to include Lenin.
It's even got to the point where X as a substitute for 10 is unacceptable, simply because it looks dumb. Do not say "Version X," please say "Version 10."
..>System V? Is that OK, or is "X" the only Roman numeral you dislike?
The IBM case is about alleged breach of contracts by IBM. The Red Hat case is about the claims SCO's been making that there is code in Linux that breaches its copyrights. The two are quite different.
Obviously, but the factual bases of the two cases amount to exactly the same: namely, is there any SCO code in linux? The only difference is that Red Hat may be able to force SCO's hand in terms of evidence disclosure.
Given the public nature of the parties involved, the burden of proof for fault is called "actual malice". Actual malice requires that the alleged defamer either knew the it was false when it was said or recklessly disregarded the truth or falsity of the statement.
Right, I overlooked that one, but given that SCO obviously has the ability to know what's in their own source as well as it's origins, I'd say that more than covers the reckless angle. If it turns out there's no SCO in Linux, they'd be hard pressed to get out of that one.
It's sure a good thing that the world works according to sterile, mechanistic, meritocratic principles, isn't it? Nope, nothing can possibly go wrong if you make plans in advance.
Damn straight. What would you rather have, protectionism, favoritism, and nepotism? Things go wrong, but if you don't take risks and prepare yourself, they tend not to. It's amazing how all the "bad things" seem to happen predominantly to those who don't plan and don't work hard. For those who don't, I have exactly zero pity. For the truly unlucky, that's another story, but that's not what we're talking about with programmers, is it?
Only businesses run by the lazy and incompetent fail.
Employees who sign on with small, weak businesses generally do so for more money, knowing the risks. Enron happens, and for those employees I truly feel for them. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about people who suck at their jobs making too much money having it farmed out to a half-assed third-world programmer. If "that guy" is, on average, as good a programmer as you, you don't deserve your $50,000 a year.
There are a lot of poor minorities because they are lazy and stupid and didn't prepare for the future.
What a ridiculous, racist strawman. There are poor people of all colors who didn't plan for the future. There are successful people of all colors who do. With programmers, we're talking about people who went to college here, your "minority" strawman isn't even applicable to this discussion.
Anyone who wants to can go to a "top 5" college, no matter what their background is.
First, they can if they're talented, because those schools are falling all over themselves to let underrepresented minorities in. Second, I did my undergrad at a crappy, cardinal-direction state school, where there were many poor and disadvantaged. If you do well enough wherever you are, you'll get noticed. I did. Believe me, I grew up closer to the "underpriveleged" category than not.
Essentially, if you're poor, it's your own fucking fault, so stop crying in your beer.
You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I grew up poor. I guarantee you, you took things for granted that I never even thought of having when I was growing up. It's called pulling yourself up and doing something with your life instead of asking for a handout and "crying in your beer." And that's still a strawman, because the truly POOR isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about college-graduate mostly priveleged programmers losing their jobs. And by your own admission, you were FINE with the blue collars losing THEIR jobs, ya goddamn hypocrite. It's only now that the "white collars" are losing theirs that you care. That totally invalidates your whole "bleeding-heart" angle, which only applied to the blue-collars. Such damned hypocrisy. If you want, reply with a non-strawman response that actually applies to what I said instead of inventing off-topic, inflammatory things for me to have said.
That sum it up? God, you come across as a real cock,
First, it may surprise you,but I don't really give a damn what you think. Second, you don't have a fucking clue. You don't know what disadvantage is, how it works, nor what to do about it. You grew up rich (by my standards, middle class was rich), so you don't know what you're talking about. And yeah, if a bunch of untalented upper-middle-class programmers lose their jobs, I ain't cryng for them any more than I do for the machinist, and probably a whole lot fucking less. Maybe the machinist wouldn't have been expected to know better, but the programmer SHOULD HAVE. By your own arguments, the programmers HAD the opportunity. They were IN college. They could have DONE MORE with their lives, and they either lacked the talent or initiative to do it. Wherever they got a job, if they were better at what they did, their job wouldn't have been the one farmed out. Survival of the Fittest, not the Shittiest.
When you sue for defamation, the burden of proof is entirely on the person who brings the suit, and not only do you need to prove that the defamation has damaged you, you also have to prove that the defamation was comitted willingly and intentionally.
So, naturally for a libel suit there are generally three standards. 1) Did they say it? 2) Was it damaging? and 3) Is what they say factually incorrect?
Here, the first is a foregone conclusion, and the second nearly is. The third is effectively the IBM case.
But think about what that means. To prove that Linux DIDN'T steal from SCO, then either 1) SCO can actually turn over their allegations, for RedHat to refute, or 2) RedHat can subpoena the entire Sys V source code to show that any matches can be attributed to BSD or textbooks.
This is exactly what SCO is trying to avoid - you know, an actual lawsuit? So I think this is more of a "put up or shut up" move by Red Hat than anything else. Effectively, it's a way of letting teh Open Source camp control the pace of the lawsuit that SCO has no intention of actually following through with. They're trying to use it for their pump'n'dump scheme, and the Open Source camp (here, Red Hat) is attempting to take that away, to force their hand.
Bullshit. I was the most motivated when I worked insane hours for a company that made something that I believed in. That company was bought, and I was laid off.
That's a damned small minority and virtually no one over 25 is that idealistic. And you learned your lesson too, didn't you? That sort of commitment and loyalty isn't rewarded. If you have sense, you won't do it again. That's how most of the labor market works these days. It's not a "what have you done for me" market, it's "what can you do for me" and it works that way on both sides.
It's hard to be motivated and dedicated when you're wondering when the knife in the back will come next time and thinking about how to be ready for the next job.
Which is why, outside of an idealistic few, no one behaves loyally. Hence the need for other means of motivation, as I mentioned.
Maybe in the software world. My neighbor's company has laid off its entire engineering department in favor of outsourcing to a company in mexico that hires Chinese nationals with MS/PhDs in engineering degrees from universities in the United States and gives them wonderful places to live in a nice part of Mexico.
I would say this could still be a net-good thing. First, I doubt this will be widespread, again, for departments doing really mission critical things. Second, this will never steal the best people. The best people want to work in the US, mainly on the coasts, as that's where most of the best are educated (there are few top-notch schools between the coasts, outside of chicago). Hell, you couldn't set up a brain-drain in Iowa, because that's not where the action is. And the top-notch R&D jobs will always be where the action is.
He tells me that working with these people is exactly like working with any other fresh-out-of college hire, since thats exactly what they are.
Right, and you get what you pay for. These people can never interact with clients by and large, won't go to conferences and communicate effectively, etc. This will happen to some extent, and it's part of living in a global economy. I welcome it. After it all shakes out and the xenophobia stops, it should be a great thing.
That's not happening though. College graduates aren't wanted. I'm seeing ads requiring 3-5 years experience most of the time. For jobs that obviously don't require it, but I guess they can get people with that level of experience right now.
Right now, they can dictate terms, and there are a lot of unemployed coders (like yourself). In a weak labor market (ie, now), employers can always dictate terms. When the economy picks up, that will change, and they'll be taking college kids. For companies that are outsourcing, they're not going to hire kids and spend money training them only to then fire them. They'll put them on a fast track to a more cerebral job.
So, I'm a decent coder and I'm out of the IT industry currently because I can't get my foot in the door.
Things will change. Small confort, I know, but they will.
The main reason I haven't retrained is I've still not paid for my existing degree. I plain can't afford it.
I know it sucks, but it still might be a good idea. First, if you get another degree, you can defer that stafford loan (if that's what you have). It would also buy you time to weather out the hiring lull.
You seem to not mind that the jobs now considered low level are being farmed out.
That's right.
I got new for you, they are only low level cause all the jobs lower were already farmed out.
By definition only. Or it could be the first round of cuts.
This outsourcing is eating its way up the chain. First it was manufacturing and no one really worried casue they were only the low level jobs.
Different chains. People don't go from manufacturer to coder. The lowest-level jobs on both chains go overseas. This is my entire thesis, and I'm not bothered.
Now its the white collar jobs were losing.
I would say the coding jobs we're losing are the non-upwardly-mobile "no collar" jobs. Just because you work at a keyboard doesn't make you less replaceable than a bolt-turner. For the least talented, that's pretty much what they are.
When they sold us on free trade, these were the jobs we werent supposed to lose!
What, it was OK when it was someone else, but now that it's untalented programmers instead of untalented machinists getting outsourced, you're pissed? That's a tad hypocritical. Take it all, or nothing.
It might not be your job yet that is getting eaten, but just wait awhile. And when you complain, no one will listen.
I'm making myself irreplaceable by getting a better education. Ph.D. in chemistry from a top 5 school. Those types of jobs tend not to get outsourced.
It's like that poem: they'll eventually come for you and no one will be left to care. Its ironic, we bought free trade with our freedom.
Hey, great. Look at it this way - protectionism only delays the inevitable (ie, outsourcing untalented workers) and increases prices for the rest of us. I say get rid of the dead weight. Those of us who made sure to be worth more as employees reap the rewards. You can choose which camp you'd rather be in.
Welcome to the world of real corporate slavery.
Slavery my ass. You have no right to a high salary for doing something half the world can do. If anything, it's welcome to the real world for the untalented coder. He can join the untalented bolt-turner in the unemployment line.
I could see where this is very counterproductive for companies, because a key good programmer leaving the company for greener fields in the middle of a project can be more costly than an average programmer who's not being offered 100K a year by your competition.
That's a key point. Certainly, if a company is stupid enough to outsource the job of someone who has relevant skills to important projects, they deserve to implode. So I would fully agree that an indiscriminate outsourcing as a panacea is unwise. Perhaps I'm giving management far too much credit, but I can't see that happening outside of isolated instances.
Having people fearing for their jobs in the industry, and implicitely expecting to be laid off to save costs (through no fault of their own) is NOT going to increase their productivity, though.
I may have been hasty making that comment; I was trying to counter the "complete job security == morale" point. Having employees constantly look over their shoulders is bad. Allowing them to get away with anything is bad too. Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium - good work is rewarded, bad work isn't, and any layoffs or firings are well communicated both to the affected parties as well as those not laid off.
You're not training any local code monkeys to become the next generation of Senior Engineers anymore.
I think we're seeing, in part, a fundamental shift between how things used to work then vs. the future. Part of "code monkey" work becoming a commidity job means that, indeed, it won't be upwardly-mobile any more than a wrench-turner becomes senior management at GM. You'll see talented college kids graduate and go straight into more relevant coding jobs or management training. And that may in fact be a good thing if it accelerates talented people into jobs where their talent pays off.
But if you're not hiring any college graduates because their job can be done by junior programmers in Bangalore, the experience and expertise you'll need in a decade will have to be imported from Bangalore.
True, and like I said, I don't think this can be done in totality for those exact reasons. I think, as I said above, that the lowest-level code monkey jobs will become dead-end jobs.
And don't expect to find too many of those in the US either unless companies are specifically planning to grow them and train them.
I think you hit the nail on the head, and I think it'll happen as I described above.
I know, lets see it strengthen itself by only keeping managers on the payroll. We can call the company the Titanic. Oh, and just to make sure, hiring lawyers is off-limits.
Strawman. No one ever said they were getting rid of all the coders, just those whose job can be done by a drain-bamaged chimp. What's wrong with outsourcing jobs that require a bare minimum skill level? You obviously have a vested interest in this. I'm an interested outsider.
Thats odd, I thought it was in all those people who put in overtime and ran the company without pay because they really wanted to see it succeed. You can call them stupid, I call them loyal.
If those people existed, they did it because they had stock options in the company. That's not loyalty, it's just an efficient way to tie performance to compensation. You can idealize the employee all you want, I can show more examples of where employees manipulated companies and managers. I'm not saying they shouldn't have, but fair's fair - a lack of loyalty cuts both ways.
Amusingly enough, the foreign auto industries strengthened themselves by moving their manufacturing to the US.
They only did it to agoid import tariffs. In the absense of that, they never would have done it. Also, those companies were already strong when they did it. Additionally, they came to the US after the auto labor shakeout in the late 70's early 80's, when Detroit jobs left for, say, Mexico. Since then, the UAW has come to realize that a healthy labor market, that is healthy to both sides, is beneficial for all. Prior to that, they priced themselves out of jobs. Now they don't. I'd call that a lesson learned, and it feeds my argument.
Except that we *are* [outsourcing mission-critical jobs]. Read the article. Do you think DHL's software is not mission critical? And what about the failed projects that didn't get mentioned by name in the article?
Any project has a mission-critical core and non-mission critical portions. Moving the non-critical portions makes sense. Or look at it this way - if any company's stupid enough to outsource on mission-critical portions, it'll bite them in the ass, just like you say. If it's a fad, it'll be a short one. Because it won't work, like you say. Or if it does work, it'll teach us something about the quality of mixing foreign workers with management they never meet, but I like you doubt that very much.
Right now it won't guarantee $60k to people with excellent skills.
You can thank the dot bomb bubble for that to a large extent, certainly. But it will pick up. And we're not talking about unemployment here (which is certainly a problem), we're talking about shipping less valuable jobs overseas.
In fact, I might turn that argument. If a company is doing poorly and needs to cut costs, getting rid of the low-end bloat is a good thing for the remaining, highly-skilled employees. It can strengthen the company and make cutting a whole division unnecessary. In other words, outsourcing crappy jobs protects the better ones. If it works like that, I think it's a net Good Thing.
Management has been blinded by the capitalist $ worship
Unfortunately, that's management's *job.* Caring about money is what they're there for. Granted, they can be short-sighted in this. And performing a hatchet-job indiscriminately can be a horrible idea (Hatchet Al at Sunbeam comes to mind). But reducing costs efficiently, including labor, is frequently a good thing. People are a resource. If the manufacturing division were using an expensive part that underperformed, it would be replaced. I hate to say it, but labor's the same way.
After all, morale, skills, and other touchy-feely stuff like that doesn't even figure in to the bonus your buddy-buddy incestuous board members voted you last month
It's not always the most efficient model, but the truly skilled usually aren't unemployed long. And I agree, any job cutting has to be done
Does it improve the quality of support? Arguably no.
Does it improve the quality and tightness of the product? Arguably no.
These last two are almost certainly true, but it's how they compare to the first that matters. The engineers always want to make the best product, and understandably so if they take pride in their work. But management has to consider the possibility of making the second-best product if it's a damn sight cheaper. It can certainly be a good move.
Does it strengthen the company from within? No.
That's pretty nebulous, and doesn't really translate effectively to the company's bottom line. Strengthening the company by reducing costs might be worth more. And it's questionable how a company would strengthen itself by keeping overpaid, underskilled, non-management-material American coders on the payroll.
Does it lower cost in a reasonably reached fashion that increases internal productivity and doesn't make the other 10,000 workers in your company pray every night that their job isn't going to be shipped overseas to someone else? Likely not.
Like hell. First, the most motivated worker is the one whose job is on the line, like it or not. It may not be pretty, it's the truth. Hell, remember the dot com boom? Where was the employee loyalty to the company then when employees were shopping themselves to the highest bidder? That shows how taking a hit for a "stronger company" gets the company nothing. Why should they take that cost hit for nothing when their employees leave anyway when the economy gets good?
Face it, today neither labor nor the company has any loyalty to the other side, as neither has earned it. Bottom line is if your job can be performed by an Indian almost as well as you do it for 20% of the cost, that's what they'll do.
If anyone has any actual numbers to counter this, I'd like to hear it. All I know is that the American auto industry strengthened itself immeasurably after moving manufacturing jobs overseas. For one, it actually became profitable again and stopped hemorraging market share to foreign manufacturers.
And that's the kind of jobs we're talking about here. We're not talking about people on mission-critical projects fearing for their jobs. We're talking about code monkeys, the equivalent of the assembly-line bolt-turner of the auto industry. That under-educated person has never had security in any other industry, and I fail to see why the code monkey should expect anything different.
What it means is that the economy will no longer guarantee $60,000 a year and job security to someone who can only write mediocre code with no other skills. Most other people are probably safe.
Yeah, and Scott Tissue is "Safe For Septic Systems." They don't mention that so are all the others, too. It's marketing.
For many products this is true, but some batteries are specifically designed for high-drain devices. In fact they are inferior to standard batteries for normal devices, having tycially shorter lifetimes and lower efficiencies. This is an example where it's actually an engineering tradeoff, unlike paper towels.
That's because for all their tough talk and taking on third world nations, the Americans have never beat France in a war. Hell, the Americans had to COOPERATE with the frogs back in 1776. What a bunch or "lu seurs". Just like the French.
That's because we took pity on them and have spend the last century bailing their asses out of jams. If it weren't for us, they'd be speaking Deutsch right now.
Panzers came through, and the French folded like a cheap card table.
But, if your only requirement was making a battery system that produced a lot of power, it's quite easy to do, compared to doing the same with a mechanical system.
More cylinders? It's pretty easy with a combustion engine as well. Conceivably, I could but a turboprop engine in a car, but the thing would be too damned big. Same with batteries - to get an appropriate current at a given potential, you'd have to have a lot of them in parallel. Problem is that they're heavy, expensive, and take up a lot of space.
You might be able to solve the weight problem by using rechargeable fuel cells (like the ones that crashed on Helios), but then you might as well go all fuel cell...
Not likely. Fuel cells suffer from the same problem of drain rate. For cars, IC engines still give higher power densities (power/volume or power/mass).
The electrics are generally used when you can string up a lot of wire (you can power them cheaply with central generation), but the reason for the diesel electric is its much improved performance over the diesel locomotive, because you can use things like regenerative breaking and easily couple them together.
Very true, and this really just amplifies my point. Because of their very nature, trains don't do a lot of starting and stopping. They care mostly about top speed and efficiency, and don't give a damn about weight. This makes batteries idea. However, cars do a lot of starting and stopping. Cars need a power source that is smaller, lighter, and can drain very fast. Trains don't.
Electric drive, in one form or another, is The Future.
And always will be.;) Seriously, we're getting there, but a solely electric vehicle isn't ready for prime-time yet.
Actually camera flashes usually use a standard battery to charge a capacitor. The capacitor can then discharge almost instantly. That's why you have to wait a few seconds for the flash to prep.
Many do, but not all (I don't believe). I've seen alkaline batteries specifically designed for cameras.
I'm not sure how the pickup is slow.. The beauty of electric DC motors is the constant acceleration.
It's about discharge power. One of the real challenges in battery selection is the total power they can output, which is dependent on the battery architectures. This is why you need different batteries for "high-drain" devices like camera flashes than you do for, say, a walkman. For acceleration, you need the drain as high as possible, and at some point it tops out.
It's hard, given all the engineering considerations, to make a battery that drains as fast (ie, Watts) as a typical gasoline engine.
Pet Peeve #1: All Americans who whine about the price of gas. If you really want to whine, come to the UK where our Government has turned taxing petrol into an art form.
Hey, we didn't found the hell out of Iraq twice for nothing. Now we reap the rewards.;)
I was only pointing out that the Rockefellers owned and used guns. I'm glad to know that whatever you political bias you see murder as "Oh, that shit..."
Not the point. You made it sound like a war. You know, as Americans, the Rockefellers can just go BUY GUNS. They don't need the Bushes. Which you still have no ev for.
As I said previously, I come from a long line of WV coal miners, and I likely know more about coal mining than you ever thought of. I'm not a Rockefeller fan. We're talking about your crack-smoking link between the Bushes and the Rockefellers that implies the Bushes somehow aided and abetted them, and you have nothing.
Don't forget that GHWB directly benefited from his father Nazi dealings.
Doesn't mean shit. He was 18 when this happened for christ's sake.
When the Bush/Prescott lawyer turned out to be Allen Dulles brother of John Foster Dulles it created a very important link in the history of power in the US
You can play 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon all day with this crap, but with no evidence other than "this guy knew that guy" you've got nothing.
JFD later went on to runt he CIA, which was later run by GHWB. I have been told by 2nd son of a first hand witness that Prescott traded in other Nazi sympathizers to JFD for political cache for his son in the CIA.
And I was told by Kennedy's widow's second husband's son's fiance's cousin's gardner that he was gay. You have nothing.
Also you will not I have not said anything about GHWB or his motives rather that his father and son have serious proclivities towards fascism and profiteering.
Then that doesn't even make sense. To show this link exists, you'd have to have a link between GWB and Gramps' political machine, which was long dead and buried by that point. Right now, Dulles is nothing but an airport. So what, are you claiming that fascism is a recessive gene or what?
Slashdot Mirror
Like hell. The NYT is further left than Clinton or Gore. When they're further left than Democrat candidates/presidents, they're definitely not close to center, unless your definition of absolute left is so far as to include Lenin.
Michael just can't pass up a micropayments story. Michael - it just won't work. Give it up.
..>System V? Is that OK, or is "X" the only Roman numeral you dislike?
Obviously, but the factual bases of the two cases amount to exactly the same: namely, is there any SCO code in linux? The only difference is that Red Hat may be able to force SCO's hand in terms of evidence disclosure.
Right, I overlooked that one, but given that SCO obviously has the ability to know what's in their own source as well as it's origins, I'd say that more than covers the reckless angle. If it turns out there's no SCO in Linux, they'd be hard pressed to get out of that one.
Damn straight. What would you rather have, protectionism, favoritism, and nepotism? Things go wrong, but if you don't take risks and prepare yourself, they tend not to. It's amazing how all the "bad things" seem to happen predominantly to those who don't plan and don't work hard. For those who don't, I have exactly zero pity. For the truly unlucky, that's another story, but that's not what we're talking about with programmers, is it?
Only businesses run by the lazy and incompetent fail.
Employees who sign on with small, weak businesses generally do so for more money, knowing the risks. Enron happens, and for those employees I truly feel for them. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about people who suck at their jobs making too much money having it farmed out to a half-assed third-world programmer. If "that guy" is, on average, as good a programmer as you, you don't deserve your $50,000 a year.
There are a lot of poor minorities because they are lazy and stupid and didn't prepare for the future.
What a ridiculous, racist strawman. There are poor people of all colors who didn't plan for the future. There are successful people of all colors who do. With programmers, we're talking about people who went to college here, your "minority" strawman isn't even applicable to this discussion.
Anyone who wants to can go to a "top 5" college, no matter what their background is.
First, they can if they're talented, because those schools are falling all over themselves to let underrepresented minorities in. Second, I did my undergrad at a crappy, cardinal-direction state school, where there were many poor and disadvantaged. If you do well enough wherever you are, you'll get noticed. I did. Believe me, I grew up closer to the "underpriveleged" category than not.
Essentially, if you're poor, it's your own fucking fault, so stop crying in your beer.
You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I grew up poor. I guarantee you, you took things for granted that I never even thought of having when I was growing up. It's called pulling yourself up and doing something with your life instead of asking for a handout and "crying in your beer." And that's still a strawman, because the truly POOR isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about college-graduate mostly priveleged programmers losing their jobs. And by your own admission, you were FINE with the blue collars losing THEIR jobs, ya goddamn hypocrite. It's only now that the "white collars" are losing theirs that you care. That totally invalidates your whole "bleeding-heart" angle, which only applied to the blue-collars. Such damned hypocrisy. If you want, reply with a non-strawman response that actually applies to what I said instead of inventing off-topic, inflammatory things for me to have said.
That sum it up? God, you come across as a real cock,
First, it may surprise you,but I don't really give a damn what you think. Second, you don't have a fucking clue. You don't know what disadvantage is, how it works, nor what to do about it. You grew up rich (by my standards, middle class was rich), so you don't know what you're talking about. And yeah, if a bunch of untalented upper-middle-class programmers lose their jobs, I ain't cryng for them any more than I do for the machinist, and probably a whole lot fucking less. Maybe the machinist wouldn't have been expected to know better, but the programmer SHOULD HAVE. By your own arguments, the programmers HAD the opportunity. They were IN college. They could have DONE MORE with their lives, and they either lacked the talent or initiative to do it. Wherever they got a job, if they were better at what they did, their job wouldn't have been the one farmed out. Survival of the Fittest, not the Shittiest.
I don't cry for the lazy.
So, naturally for a libel suit there are generally three standards. 1) Did they say it? 2) Was it damaging? and 3) Is what they say factually incorrect?
Here, the first is a foregone conclusion, and the second nearly is. The third is effectively the IBM case.
But think about what that means. To prove that Linux DIDN'T steal from SCO, then either 1) SCO can actually turn over their allegations, for RedHat to refute, or 2) RedHat can subpoena the entire Sys V source code to show that any matches can be attributed to BSD or textbooks.
This is exactly what SCO is trying to avoid - you know, an actual lawsuit? So I think this is more of a "put up or shut up" move by Red Hat than anything else. Effectively, it's a way of letting teh Open Source camp control the pace of the lawsuit that SCO has no intention of actually following through with. They're trying to use it for their pump'n'dump scheme, and the Open Source camp (here, Red Hat) is attempting to take that away, to force their hand.
All in all, it's a damned good strategy.
That's a damned small minority and virtually no one over 25 is that idealistic. And you learned your lesson too, didn't you? That sort of commitment and loyalty isn't rewarded. If you have sense, you won't do it again. That's how most of the labor market works these days. It's not a "what have you done for me" market, it's "what can you do for me" and it works that way on both sides.
It's hard to be motivated and dedicated when you're wondering when the knife in the back will come next time and thinking about how to be ready for the next job.
Which is why, outside of an idealistic few, no one behaves loyally. Hence the need for other means of motivation, as I mentioned.
I would say this could still be a net-good thing. First, I doubt this will be widespread, again, for departments doing really mission critical things. Second, this will never steal the best people. The best people want to work in the US, mainly on the coasts, as that's where most of the best are educated (there are few top-notch schools between the coasts, outside of chicago). Hell, you couldn't set up a brain-drain in Iowa, because that's not where the action is. And the top-notch R&D jobs will always be where the action is.
He tells me that working with these people is exactly like working with any other fresh-out-of college hire, since thats exactly what they are.
Right, and you get what you pay for. These people can never interact with clients by and large, won't go to conferences and communicate effectively, etc. This will happen to some extent, and it's part of living in a global economy. I welcome it. After it all shakes out and the xenophobia stops, it should be a great thing.
Right now, they can dictate terms, and there are a lot of unemployed coders (like yourself). In a weak labor market (ie, now), employers can always dictate terms. When the economy picks up, that will change, and they'll be taking college kids. For companies that are outsourcing, they're not going to hire kids and spend money training them only to then fire them. They'll put them on a fast track to a more cerebral job.
So, I'm a decent coder and I'm out of the IT industry currently because I can't get my foot in the door.
Things will change. Small confort, I know, but they will.
The main reason I haven't retrained is I've still not paid for my existing degree. I plain can't afford it.
I know it sucks, but it still might be a good idea. First, if you get another degree, you can defer that stafford loan (if that's what you have). It would also buy you time to weather out the hiring lull.
That's right.
I got new for you, they are only low level cause all the jobs lower were already farmed out.
By definition only. Or it could be the first round of cuts.
This outsourcing is eating its way up the chain. First it was manufacturing and no one really worried casue they were only the low level jobs.
Different chains. People don't go from manufacturer to coder. The lowest-level jobs on both chains go overseas. This is my entire thesis, and I'm not bothered.
Now its the white collar jobs were losing.
I would say the coding jobs we're losing are the non-upwardly-mobile "no collar" jobs. Just because you work at a keyboard doesn't make you less replaceable than a bolt-turner. For the least talented, that's pretty much what they are.
When they sold us on free trade, these were the jobs we werent supposed to lose!
What, it was OK when it was someone else, but now that it's untalented programmers instead of untalented machinists getting outsourced, you're pissed? That's a tad hypocritical. Take it all, or nothing.
It might not be your job yet that is getting eaten, but just wait awhile. And when you complain, no one will listen.
I'm making myself irreplaceable by getting a better education. Ph.D. in chemistry from a top 5 school. Those types of jobs tend not to get outsourced.
It's like that poem: they'll eventually come for you and no one will be left to care. Its ironic, we bought free trade with our freedom.
Hey, great. Look at it this way - protectionism only delays the inevitable (ie, outsourcing untalented workers) and increases prices for the rest of us. I say get rid of the dead weight. Those of us who made sure to be worth more as employees reap the rewards. You can choose which camp you'd rather be in.
Welcome to the world of real corporate slavery.
Slavery my ass. You have no right to a high salary for doing something half the world can do. If anything, it's welcome to the real world for the untalented coder. He can join the untalented bolt-turner in the unemployment line.
That's a key point. Certainly, if a company is stupid enough to outsource the job of someone who has relevant skills to important projects, they deserve to implode. So I would fully agree that an indiscriminate outsourcing as a panacea is unwise. Perhaps I'm giving management far too much credit, but I can't see that happening outside of isolated instances.
Having people fearing for their jobs in the industry, and implicitely expecting to be laid off to save costs (through no fault of their own) is NOT going to increase their productivity, though.
I may have been hasty making that comment; I was trying to counter the "complete job security == morale" point. Having employees constantly look over their shoulders is bad. Allowing them to get away with anything is bad too. Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium - good work is rewarded, bad work isn't, and any layoffs or firings are well communicated both to the affected parties as well as those not laid off.
You're not training any local code monkeys to become the next generation of Senior Engineers anymore.
I think we're seeing, in part, a fundamental shift between how things used to work then vs. the future. Part of "code monkey" work becoming a commidity job means that, indeed, it won't be upwardly-mobile any more than a wrench-turner becomes senior management at GM. You'll see talented college kids graduate and go straight into more relevant coding jobs or management training. And that may in fact be a good thing if it accelerates talented people into jobs where their talent pays off.
But if you're not hiring any college graduates because their job can be done by junior programmers in Bangalore, the experience and expertise you'll need in a decade will have to be imported from Bangalore.
True, and like I said, I don't think this can be done in totality for those exact reasons. I think, as I said above, that the lowest-level code monkey jobs will become dead-end jobs.
And don't expect to find too many of those in the US either unless companies are specifically planning to grow them and train them.
I think you hit the nail on the head, and I think it'll happen as I described above.
Strawman. No one ever said they were getting rid of all the coders, just those whose job can be done by a drain-bamaged chimp. What's wrong with outsourcing jobs that require a bare minimum skill level? You obviously have a vested interest in this. I'm an interested outsider.
Thats odd, I thought it was in all those people who put in overtime and ran the company without pay because they really wanted to see it succeed. You can call them stupid, I call them loyal.
If those people existed, they did it because they had stock options in the company. That's not loyalty, it's just an efficient way to tie performance to compensation. You can idealize the employee all you want, I can show more examples of where employees manipulated companies and managers. I'm not saying they shouldn't have, but fair's fair - a lack of loyalty cuts both ways.
Amusingly enough, the foreign auto industries strengthened themselves by moving their manufacturing to the US.
They only did it to agoid import tariffs. In the absense of that, they never would have done it. Also, those companies were already strong when they did it. Additionally, they came to the US after the auto labor shakeout in the late 70's early 80's, when Detroit jobs left for, say, Mexico. Since then, the UAW has come to realize that a healthy labor market, that is healthy to both sides, is beneficial for all. Prior to that, they priced themselves out of jobs. Now they don't. I'd call that a lesson learned, and it feeds my argument.
Except that we *are* [outsourcing mission-critical jobs]. Read the article. Do you think DHL's software is not mission critical? And what about the failed projects that didn't get mentioned by name in the article?
Any project has a mission-critical core and non-mission critical portions. Moving the non-critical portions makes sense. Or look at it this way - if any company's stupid enough to outsource on mission-critical portions, it'll bite them in the ass, just like you say. If it's a fad, it'll be a short one. Because it won't work, like you say. Or if it does work, it'll teach us something about the quality of mixing foreign workers with management they never meet, but I like you doubt that very much.
Right now it won't guarantee $60k to people with excellent skills.
You can thank the dot bomb bubble for that to a large extent, certainly. But it will pick up. And we're not talking about unemployment here (which is certainly a problem), we're talking about shipping less valuable jobs overseas.
In fact, I might turn that argument. If a company is doing poorly and needs to cut costs, getting rid of the low-end bloat is a good thing for the remaining, highly-skilled employees. It can strengthen the company and make cutting a whole division unnecessary. In other words, outsourcing crappy jobs protects the better ones. If it works like that, I think it's a net Good Thing.
Management has been blinded by the capitalist $ worship
Unfortunately, that's management's *job.* Caring about money is what they're there for. Granted, they can be short-sighted in this. And performing a hatchet-job indiscriminately can be a horrible idea (Hatchet Al at Sunbeam comes to mind). But reducing costs efficiently, including labor, is frequently a good thing. People are a resource. If the manufacturing division were using an expensive part that underperformed, it would be replaced. I hate to say it, but labor's the same way.
After all, morale, skills, and other touchy-feely stuff like that doesn't even figure in to the bonus your buddy-buddy incestuous board members voted you last month
It's not always the most efficient model, but the truly skilled usually aren't unemployed long. And I agree, any job cutting has to be done
These last two are almost certainly true, but it's how they compare to the first that matters. The engineers always want to make the best product, and understandably so if they take pride in their work. But management has to consider the possibility of making the second-best product if it's a damn sight cheaper. It can certainly be a good move.
Does it strengthen the company from within? No.
That's pretty nebulous, and doesn't really translate effectively to the company's bottom line. Strengthening the company by reducing costs might be worth more. And it's questionable how a company would strengthen itself by keeping overpaid, underskilled, non-management-material American coders on the payroll.
Does it lower cost in a reasonably reached fashion that increases internal productivity and doesn't make the other 10,000 workers in your company pray every night that their job isn't going to be shipped overseas to someone else? Likely not.
Like hell. First, the most motivated worker is the one whose job is on the line, like it or not. It may not be pretty, it's the truth. Hell, remember the dot com boom? Where was the employee loyalty to the company then when employees were shopping themselves to the highest bidder? That shows how taking a hit for a "stronger company" gets the company nothing. Why should they take that cost hit for nothing when their employees leave anyway when the economy gets good?
Face it, today neither labor nor the company has any loyalty to the other side, as neither has earned it. Bottom line is if your job can be performed by an Indian almost as well as you do it for 20% of the cost, that's what they'll do.
If anyone has any actual numbers to counter this, I'd like to hear it. All I know is that the American auto industry strengthened itself immeasurably after moving manufacturing jobs overseas. For one, it actually became profitable again and stopped hemorraging market share to foreign manufacturers.
And that's the kind of jobs we're talking about here. We're not talking about people on mission-critical projects fearing for their jobs. We're talking about code monkeys, the equivalent of the assembly-line bolt-turner of the auto industry. That under-educated person has never had security in any other industry, and I fail to see why the code monkey should expect anything different.
What it means is that the economy will no longer guarantee $60,000 a year and job security to someone who can only write mediocre code with no other skills. Most other people are probably safe.
For many products this is true, but some batteries are specifically designed for high-drain devices. In fact they are inferior to standard batteries for normal devices, having tycially shorter lifetimes and lower efficiencies. This is an example where it's actually an engineering tradeoff, unlike paper towels.
That's because we took pity on them and have spend the last century bailing their asses out of jams. If it weren't for us, they'd be speaking Deutsch right now.
Panzers came through, and the French folded like a cheap card table.
More cylinders? It's pretty easy with a combustion engine as well. Conceivably, I could but a turboprop engine in a car, but the thing would be too damned big. Same with batteries - to get an appropriate current at a given potential, you'd have to have a lot of them in parallel. Problem is that they're heavy, expensive, and take up a lot of space.
You might be able to solve the weight problem by using rechargeable fuel cells (like the ones that crashed on Helios), but then you might as well go all fuel cell...
Not likely. Fuel cells suffer from the same problem of drain rate. For cars, IC engines still give higher power densities (power/volume or power/mass).
The electrics are generally used when you can string up a lot of wire (you can power them cheaply with central generation), but the reason for the diesel electric is its much improved performance over the diesel locomotive, because you can use things like regenerative breaking and easily couple them together.
Very true, and this really just amplifies my point. Because of their very nature, trains don't do a lot of starting and stopping. They care mostly about top speed and efficiency, and don't give a damn about weight. This makes batteries idea. However, cars do a lot of starting and stopping. Cars need a power source that is smaller, lighter, and can drain very fast. Trains don't.
Electric drive, in one form or another, is The Future.
And always will be. ;) Seriously, we're getting there, but a solely electric vehicle isn't ready for prime-time yet.
Many do, but not all (I don't believe). I've seen alkaline batteries specifically designed for cameras.
It's about discharge power. One of the real challenges in battery selection is the total power they can output, which is dependent on the battery architectures. This is why you need different batteries for "high-drain" devices like camera flashes than you do for, say, a walkman. For acceleration, you need the drain as high as possible, and at some point it tops out.
It's hard, given all the engineering considerations, to make a battery that drains as fast (ie, Watts) as a typical gasoline engine.
Hey, we didn't found the hell out of Iraq twice for nothing. Now we reap the rewards. ;)
Seriously, tell your psychiatrist your fucking prescription ran out. You'd hear a conspiracy in a damned dial tone.
Not the point. You made it sound like a war. You know, as Americans, the Rockefellers can just go BUY GUNS. They don't need the Bushes. Which you still have no ev for.
As I said previously, I come from a long line of WV coal miners, and I likely know more about coal mining than you ever thought of. I'm not a Rockefeller fan. We're talking about your crack-smoking link between the Bushes and the Rockefellers that implies the Bushes somehow aided and abetted them, and you have nothing.
Oh, that shit in WV? I really want to see a Bush connection to that. And proof, not your schizo-induced rantings or "evidence" from senile relatives.
Half my family were WV coal miners at that time, so I know quite a bit about it.
You're nucking futs.
Doesn't mean shit. He was 18 when this happened for christ's sake.
When the Bush/Prescott lawyer turned out to be Allen Dulles brother of John Foster Dulles it created a very important link in the history of power in the US
You can play 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon all day with this crap, but with no evidence other than "this guy knew that guy" you've got nothing.
JFD later went on to runt he CIA, which was later run by GHWB. I have been told by 2nd son of a first hand witness that Prescott traded in other Nazi sympathizers to JFD for political cache for his son in the CIA.
And I was told by Kennedy's widow's second husband's son's fiance's cousin's gardner that he was gay. You have nothing.
Also you will not I have not said anything about GHWB or his motives rather that his father and son have serious proclivities towards fascism and profiteering.
Then that doesn't even make sense. To show this link exists, you'd have to have a link between GWB and Gramps' political machine, which was long dead and buried by that point. Right now, Dulles is nothing but an airport. So what, are you claiming that fascism is a recessive gene or what?