(InformationWeek reports 341k managers vs 632k computer programmers.. but that report based upon those numbers is obviously misleading.)
I doubt it. When I was in IT at a fairly large publicly traded company one major department had, if I remember correctly, about that ratio as the layoffs were hitting the common folks. It was really freaking bizarre but I figured it was office politics--the managers know how to save themselves--at least for a while.
And I also sat in on a LOT of interviews (as one of the pre-screeners) where desperate people with Ph.D's in computer science and/or mucho amounts of experience were piling up coming to us for relatively low level development jobs, which look great today, as that was back in 2002.
What I think is more interesting is that the b.s. seems to have dropped and people are talking about the reality of just how hard IT has been hit across the country, and those statistics are terrible in that they drop off people who've given up no matter what their skill level is.
The real unemployment rate in IT is probably much higher than what's reported if you count skilled programmers who have demonstrated their skill in the past, who now cannot get jobs to save their lives.
Micosoft is still there and making work for plenty of companies with insecure software and hard to use software that does weird things.
That's not enough.
Open source is the frontier of the progamming world where the new ideas and innovations arrive.
Meanwhile it's also the foundation which supports a tremendous amount of intellectual activity around the world with products like Apache--just to name a big and obvious one among many.
Big companies come and go, but the foundations laid today by programmers willing to look to the future versus short-term gain with crappy, buggy software built in a closed system, will last as long as there is a technological civilization to use them.
Decades from now Microsoft will just be a footnote in the history books, but there will probably be some child of Apache pushing data around the world.
Open source is the past, present and future of software that works for you, rather than making you work for it.
Well, I don't trust mathematicians. And I have a good base to say that from as I found the prime counting function that leads to a partial differential equation, which provides the link that Riemann was looking for between the prime distribution and complex functions like x/ln(x) and li(x), which is the reason behind his hypothesis. If you don't know about that, consider that the number of primes up to 1000 is 168 and 1000/ln(1000) = 144.76... It turns out that Gauss noticed that, a guy named Chebeyshev found a better limit, and Riemann's hypothesis would make it even better. I, on the other hand, simply provided the link. And I did that last year. Yes, I've talked to top mathematicians about it. No, they don't say I'm wrong. But they claim my work isn't interesting to them. That's the real world of modern mathematics.
Check out John Doe. A slightly sci-fi, slightly X-Files, slightly CSI type show that delivers on suspense, mystery, and solid writing.
Did you watch the same John Doe I did? All it does is find horribly contrived situations in which to demonstrate his super intellect which half the time doesn't even make sense, what does leg length and shoe size have to do with a theoretical maximum sprint speed?!? Is it a popular show?
I was fascinated to find a discussion about Firefly and it's supposed cancellation because I read a news article on the subject of this year's new shows last week!
And no, John Doe is not a popular show and industry watchers were surprised it escaped cancellation. I've watched it regularly and it's painful at this point as the writing is slipshod. My favorite faux pas was where the police detective buddy of John Doe was introduced for the second time to the bartender.
As for what networks are doing this season, from the article (sorry can't remember where I read it) apparently they're keeping on a lot of shows that normally would get cancelled. While John Doe was mentioned as a troubled show with an uncertain future, Firefly was NOT.
My guess is that Fox is doing their usual, which got them some attention (gee, aren't they lucky?) and the news article was correct, so Firefly will last out the season, at least.
Oh, I think the news article was in the Grey Lady, but I'm not sure.
I said that about SlashDot, MSN and Google, then I went to check Google statistics and saw no mention of me! Mein Gott!!! I'm cuckoo! Macht's nicht. Ich will nicht geschwunden. And no, ich nicht spreche deutsch. I just know a little bit that I like to throw out when I'm dealing with a certain type of people.
And it's people like you who end up helping to break a system. You called me a "crank" which is derogatory, but you were rewarded by the SlashDot system. And here you get another point which makes this look like loser-ville. As for those who might be deluded about the how big SlashDot is, just consider that when I first saw that link on sci.math and clicked on it, soon after it was posted, I couldn't even reach the post as SlashDot itself was unavailable. My Internet activity has created reactions from organizations as diverse as MSN and Google, as I pull and push the Internet, so you might want to consider that when you consider celebrity. And also consider that as far as I'm concerned SlashDot replies more often than not attract people who try to win at someone else's expense, so I *quit* reading them.
I notice that rpresser got a score of 2 for his reply where he put in the subject line that I'm a "crank", and I'm now motivated to see how this discussion area works, so I've noticed a few things.
1) People who are familiar with it all can pull in an outsider with an anonymous post by making that post and putting up a link, as was done with the original post that drew me here as it was posted on the sci.math newsgroup, which is how I knew about it.
2) The person they're drawing in, if they rush in and make a post as I did, is unlikely to have an understanding of the system, so they're unlikely to make an effective reply (like my problems with html formatting).
3) Then someone else can come in and clean up, like rpresser and score some points at the sucker's expense, as he got 2 points even though he was off-topic.
But isn't that the point of these pages anyway? Get as much action as possible, no matter how it's done?
Flamed again. I guess I'm wearing a sign "Flame me on SlashDot" or something.
Um, I'm less than interested in dealing with mad mathematicians on SlashDot, any advice?
Can anyone offer some help?
Or is flaming standard operations here?
Sigh. Someone flamed me, and did it anonymously.
If you followed the flame link and are curious about what mathematical work could generate so much heat, then look at http://groups.msn.com/AmateurMath, as I'm one of the most well known people in math circles that most of you have probably never heard of.
Oh, and after you look around you should check out a Java implementation of THE prime counting function at http://groups.msn.com/AmateurMath/page.msnw?&pss=k .
(Yes I'm trying to make lemonade out of a lemon.)
James Harris
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt it. When I was in IT at a fairly large publicly traded company one major department had, if I remember correctly, about that ratio as the layoffs were hitting the common folks. It was really freaking bizarre but I figured it was office politics--the managers know how to save themselves--at least for a while.
And I also sat in on a LOT of interviews (as one of the pre-screeners) where desperate people with Ph.D's in computer science and/or mucho amounts of experience were piling up coming to us for relatively low level development jobs, which look great today, as that was back in 2002.
What I think is more interesting is that the b.s. seems to have dropped and people are talking about the reality of just how hard IT has been hit across the country, and those statistics are terrible in that they drop off people who've given up no matter what their skill level is.
The real unemployment rate in IT is probably much higher than what's reported if you count skilled programmers who have demonstrated their skill in the past, who now cannot get jobs to save their lives.
That's not enough.
Open source is the frontier of the progamming world where the new ideas and innovations arrive.
Meanwhile it's also the foundation which supports a tremendous amount of intellectual activity around the world with products like Apache--just to name a big and obvious one among many.
Big companies come and go, but the foundations laid today by programmers willing to look to the future versus short-term gain with crappy, buggy software built in a closed system, will last as long as there is a technological civilization to use them.
Decades from now Microsoft will just be a footnote in the history books, but there will probably be some child of Apache pushing data around the world.
Open source is the past, present and future of software that works for you, rather than making you work for it.
Well, I don't trust mathematicians. And I have a good base to say that from as I found the prime counting function that leads to a partial differential equation, which provides the link that Riemann was looking for between the prime distribution and complex functions like x/ln(x) and li(x), which is the reason behind his hypothesis. If you don't know about that, consider that the number of primes up to 1000 is 168 and 1000/ln(1000) = 144.76... It turns out that Gauss noticed that, a guy named Chebeyshev found a better limit, and Riemann's hypothesis would make it even better. I, on the other hand, simply provided the link. And I did that last year. Yes, I've talked to top mathematicians about it. No, they don't say I'm wrong. But they claim my work isn't interesting to them. That's the real world of modern mathematics.
I was fascinated to find a discussion about Firefly and it's supposed cancellation because I read a news article on the subject of this year's new shows last week!
And no, John Doe is not a popular show and industry watchers were surprised it escaped cancellation. I've watched it regularly and it's painful at this point as the writing is slipshod. My favorite faux pas was where the police detective buddy of John Doe was introduced for the second time to the bartender.
As for what networks are doing this season, from the article (sorry can't remember where I read it) apparently they're keeping on a lot of shows that normally would get cancelled. While John Doe was mentioned as a troubled show with an uncertain future, Firefly was NOT.
My guess is that Fox is doing their usual, which got them some attention (gee, aren't they lucky?) and the news article was correct, so Firefly will last out the season, at least.
Oh, I think the news article was in the Grey Lady, but I'm not sure.
I said that about SlashDot, MSN and Google, then I went to check Google statistics and saw no mention of me! Mein Gott!!! I'm cuckoo! Macht's nicht. Ich will nicht geschwunden. And no, ich nicht spreche deutsch. I just know a little bit that I like to throw out when I'm dealing with a certain type of people.
And it's people like you who end up helping to break a system. You called me a "crank" which is derogatory, but you were rewarded by the SlashDot system. And here you get another point which makes this look like loser-ville. As for those who might be deluded about the how big SlashDot is, just consider that when I first saw that link on sci.math and clicked on it, soon after it was posted, I couldn't even reach the post as SlashDot itself was unavailable. My Internet activity has created reactions from organizations as diverse as MSN and Google, as I pull and push the Internet, so you might want to consider that when you consider celebrity. And also consider that as far as I'm concerned SlashDot replies more often than not attract people who try to win at someone else's expense, so I *quit* reading them.
I notice that rpresser got a score of 2 for his reply where he put in the subject line that I'm a "crank", and I'm now motivated to see how this discussion area works, so I've noticed a few things.
1) People who are familiar with it all can pull in an outsider with an anonymous post by making that post and putting up a link, as was done with the original post that drew me here as it was posted on the sci.math newsgroup, which is how I knew about it.
2) The person they're drawing in, if they rush in and make a post as I did, is unlikely to have an understanding of the system, so they're unlikely to make an effective reply (like my problems with html formatting).
3) Then someone else can come in and clean up, like rpresser and score some points at the sucker's expense, as he got 2 points even though he was off-topic.
But isn't that the point of these pages anyway? Get as much action as possible, no matter how it's done?
Flamed again. I guess I'm wearing a sign "Flame me on SlashDot" or something. Um, I'm less than interested in dealing with mad mathematicians on SlashDot, any advice? Can anyone offer some help? Or is flaming standard operations here?
Sigh. Someone flamed me, and did it anonymously. If you followed the flame link and are curious about what mathematical work could generate so much heat, then look at http://groups.msn.com/AmateurMath, as I'm one of the most well known people in math circles that most of you have probably never heard of. Oh, and after you look around you should check out a Java implementation of THE prime counting function at http://groups.msn.com/AmateurMath/page.msnw?&pss=k .
(Yes I'm trying to make lemonade out of a lemon.)
James Harris