There is something that is pretty much axiomatic regarding things of this nature (and this is important, so please listen). Rarely does blaming someone else for your condition result in a change in that condition. Even when it is someone else's fault.
Except for very small companies even the CEO salary, regardless of how inflated is typically only a modest fraction of the profits. Bonuses for mid to large corporations always exceed the base salary for the most part.
These things are always hard to interpret and it's difficult to see significance in any trends. What does seem evident is that many corporations value talent in a different way now than they did 10 years ago.
Talent for many companies now is thought of as a more common commodity with less unique value. Talent can be replaced now as easily as replacing a resource such as the office fax machine. This seems to be the sentiment and the reality is that with the more diverse work force you may always be able to find someone willing to work for less than what they are really worth.
Cultural factors do depress salaries and allow companies to focus more on the bottom line.
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There is another reason that outsourcing works with the contries that have long-standing trade agreements with the U.S. : The quality of the work is usually always dependeble and you are working with known quantities.
Many companies are beginning to realize that the attractiveness of outsourcing to India for IT is often times outweighed by the quality of the product that they receive. This often times has nothing to do with the competance of the programmer or IT specialist either. It often has more to do with differencecs in perception of needs and different standards.
It not the same as being able to go down the hallway and yell at the programmer when something is not done correctly. You have to maintain virtual offices and contrary to much popular belief this is unefficient.
seems like everyone is getting hung up on the buzzwords and missing some significance here. Regardless of what it may look like at least someone out there is raising an important issue. There is a need for a good current generation scientific programming language. The last decent one was Fortran 77. No incarnation of Fortran has really come close to its utility because of the misguided effort to make it look like C++. Java, C++, C, etc are not scientific programming languages. There is a need for something new.
Amateur radio is a warning to the open source movement, I hope we dont see a load of 60-something OS coders in 30 years time excluding a new generation because they perceive that their patch is being encroached upon.
You will and you will probably be among them. It is the nature of becoming an old fart. It is simply the way of things grasshopper.
I heard there were about 9 cases in Santa Clara county and that Stanford had isolated one group of cottages for suspected cases. I live in Sacramento county and there have not been any reported cases yet.
sometimes I wonder if I am just an alarmist. I have to look around and see if other people are really that concerned and if I don't see it I figure I am just overreacting. Perhaps we are not hearing the closed door version of possible projections that would alarm the public. Anyway, anyone out there feeling sick ?
The parallels of the nature of SARS and the 1918 flu are a little scary too. Although the virus that causes SARS is not believed to be a flu virus, the 1918 flu was distinctly different than other flus. The 1918 flu virus also caused awful pneumonia where the victums suffocated. The 1918 flu affected people between 20 and 40 and SARS is killing people at mid age. The 1918 flu started in China and SARS started in China. Here's the scariest part. In 1918 the flu spread around the world without the aid of passenger air travel. With the early statistics the mortality rate of SARS is higher than the 1918 flu that may change with time but living in a portal of entry state like California raises my concerns.
I wonder what level facility to CDC handles the blood samples collected from SARS patients (Level 3 or Level 4 ?) Has anyone heard ?
There is a class of wavelet transforms that allow for data compression in the form of time-series or images. The amount of compressiblity here is also directly proportional to the amount of determinism in the data. An interesting place to look is here.
The criteria by which someone can legally call themselves an engineer will vary from state to state. This has been repeated in this topic. However, if you want to be picky about it for many states you can only call yourself and engineer if you hold an ABET accredited engineering degree and have passed the PE exam for that state making you a liscenced engineer. Now this only seems to make a difference when you have to build a bridge or a skyscraper. Research Laboratories that are part of the Federal government classify employees as engineers if they hold and engineering degree regardless if the are a PE or not. I think the question really should be: "Can programming be considered engineering ?" You can be involved in engineering without worrying about legal labels and if programming involves a sufficient amount of the design phase part of the software lifecycle then yes, that form of programming is engineering.
This should not really come as any surprise to most programmers. especially those that are involved in design. Any engineer will tell you that engineering is a creative process. It is an act of creation that produces the functional and should be appreciated as such.
Here is a lot of the problem. What are being called "tech jobs" are being confused with engineering and scinece. A lot of things that classify as tech I don't really consider high-tech other than they require the use of a computer and computer application. Programming is a different story but serious development of real high-technology is still right here in the US.
I know a lot of folks like this usability thing. Personally when I got into Linux there was all the usability I needed in TWM ! Of course I wanted a nicer look so MWM, fvwm was fine. Others need more some need less. My problem with both KDE and Gnome is there is just something about both of them that looks just really cartoonish ! I can't stand it !
I never stated anything was wrong with right to knowledge. I am a big proponent myself. My statement was one of fact. SCO was around in x86 unixland before the age of popularity. You are the one that seems to be dismissing any possible merit because the suit is unpopular. And yes they will have to prove their case. All I know is that I had invested in development and the possiblity existed that my technology was being given out freely without permission or licensing I would be in court too.
... how can you say that no one is really taking the lawsuit seriously. There may very well be a lot of merit there. Just because the implications are unpopular doesn't mean something is without merit. SCO was around with an x86 UNIX flavor long before the open-source, free software, GPL + whatever else right to knowledge doctrine became so infused into current culture. I don't think the suit will be overlooked.
My experience with full spectrum lights is that they don't cast anything that really looks like daylight. I experience this eerie blue hue to everything.
I have been using math packages such as Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, Macsyma since the late 80's. I have also done my share of FORTRAN and C++ programming. It is going to depend on what your need is. If you are developing something that will be used by a group then a stand-alone application written in FORTRAN or C++ is appropriate. If it is something that you need for yourself and your require rapid prototyping of a concept or numerical experiment then a math environment is appropriate. You are not going to be doing any "grand challenge" computing with a math environment. If you don't want to deal with a bunch of graphics coding then go with the math packages. Matlab (and the GNU semi-clone Octave) are good general purpose environments. Mathematica is a great computer algebra system (and much more) but the cost is prohibitive (and getting worse). So it is really dependent on what your needs are or the needs of your group.
Slashdot Mirror
Once we stop calling it AI it will work.
There is something that is pretty much axiomatic regarding things of this nature (and this is important, so please listen). Rarely does blaming someone else for your condition result in a change in that condition. Even when it is someone else's fault.
Hardly of any concern for a citizenry that post everything about themselves on facebook.
Check out PDL (Perl Data Language). It may not be the most convenient solution but it's free and has a great, informed and responsive user group.
This statement is true for commercial development also.
Except for very small companies even the CEO salary, regardless of how inflated is typically only a modest fraction of the profits. Bonuses for mid to large corporations always exceed the base salary for the most part.
These things are always hard to interpret and it's difficult to see significance in any trends. What does seem evident is that many corporations value talent in a different way now than they did 10 years ago. Talent for many companies now is thought of as a more common commodity with less unique value. Talent can be replaced now as easily as replacing a resource such as the office fax machine. This seems to be the sentiment and the reality is that with the more diverse work force you may always be able to find someone willing to work for less than what they are really worth. Cultural factors do depress salaries and allow companies to focus more on the bottom line. ----
There is another reason that outsourcing works with the contries that have long-standing trade agreements with the U.S. : The quality of the work is usually always dependeble and you are working with known quantities. Many companies are beginning to realize that the attractiveness of outsourcing to India for IT is often times outweighed by the quality of the product that they receive. This often times has nothing to do with the competance of the programmer or IT specialist either. It often has more to do with differencecs in perception of needs and different standards. It not the same as being able to go down the hallway and yell at the programmer when something is not done correctly. You have to maintain virtual offices and contrary to much popular belief this is unefficient.
You will and you will probably be among them. It is the nature of becoming an old fart. It is simply the way of things grasshopper.
I wonder what level facility to CDC handles the blood samples collected from SARS patients (Level 3 or Level 4 ?) Has anyone heard ?
2.) At the first sign of emotional dysfunction get to a counselor or shrink to repair the childhood damage that will haunt you at middle age.