Yes, i misread that part. It states:- "A telerobot is an electronic puppet controlled across a wire by a human using a PC and devices like joysticks and gloves. Consider replacing the on-site operator with a $10-per-day handler in an overseas call center."
However, using a telerobot is absurd as well. Wouldn't it be much easier to take the call from home, or replace the human being entirely with a speech capable software that answers users' calls all day long?
Another absurdity is:- "Should robots excrete byproducts? When cars were invented, no one imagined that hundreds of millions of them would spew carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. But they do, and yet we still feel entitled to drive them. Imagine the pollution levels if we add hundreds of millions of robots powered by internal combustion engines."
This has nothing to do with ethics. Nobody considers the power wastage of an electrical appliance as "excrement".
While your points on ethics is valid, what's the practical use of humanoid robots anyway?
The author talks about robots manning call centers. This, IMHO, is an absurd use of humanoid robots. It would be infinitely more practical to make an "intelligent" telephone or EPABX than it is to employ a humanoid robot to answer phones all day long. The same holds true for most other cases. Even if you take a hazardous job such as mining, i'm sure that specialized machines with specific domain intelligence in mining will easily outperform and be more cost effective than a humanoid robot.
The way i see it, humanoid robots will always be a novelty, and will not serve any practical purpose. I know i run the risk of making a "640kb RAM should be enough for anybody" kind of comment. However, in real terms, i don't see humanoid robots (costing millions) substituting specialized machines or even human beings anytime soon, if ever. A more practical scenario, in my opinion, would be an integration of man with robot. Medical prosthetics has already made significant progress in this regard. This will only continue and someday move upwards until it reaches the brain.
Another thing is that the root cause for this discussion is not the robots themselves but the AI driving the robots. My guess is that human beings would rather integrate AI into their own brain and rely on the AI to augment their own knowledge and thinking power. Comapared to this, using AI-enabled humanoid robots to clean one's dishes simply does not make sense.
"We live in a world where your loved ones aren't allowed to access your mail after you're dead, but gmail can "read" through it to target marketing to you... and keep reading through it post-mortem for deeper demographic research?!?"
What kind of logic is that? By the same token, a hard-drive not only "reads" your emails, but also "owns" your email. For that matter, your processor, motherboard, and RAM also reads your emails. Wait a minute, do you think your browser is not parsing the HTML content of your web-based email? Do you think the router doesn't read your email when it's routed to you?
I think you're creating an emotive issue here when there isn't one.
Noticed on the iPod Shuffle site:- "1. Music capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128Kbps AAC encoding. 2. Do not eat iPod shuffle. 3. Rechargeable batteries h..."
Do not EAT iPod shuffle??!!
Hey, why not? After all, an Apple a day keeps the doctor away, right?
I can understand if someone gives an exact figure on the accuracy of a measurement. For example, if i measure 1cm with a normal ruler (with 1mm markings), i can say that my measurement was accurate upto 1mm. However, can i really say that i'm 90% sure of my ruler measurement? It doesn't make sense because a figure like 90% signifies probability and not accuracy.
In fact, even if we take probability, say a coin toss, it doesn't hold true. I can say that the probability of getting a "heads" is 50%. However, i cannot say that i'm 50% sure of getting a "heads". The statement doesn't make sense because there's a subtle difference. I'm now quantifying my level of surety (91%) instead of assigning a quality to it (no chance in hell, slightly sure, extremely sure). Giving a highly accurate number to surety does not convey any meaning (at least to the lay person). Most people subconsciously convert a 90% accuracy into "very sure" and a 99% accuracy into "almost dead sure". However, a figure like 91% doesn't add any more value over a figure like 90%.
From the article:- "University of Arizona astronomer Glenn Schneider, who led the new study, said he's 99.1 percent sure the object is in orbit around the brown dwarf."
How does one calculate the probability of accuracy and arrive at an exact figure like 99.1%? I mean, isn't this self-contradictory, or am i missing something?
Yes. I had arbitrarily assumed the (total)height of the iceberg to be 100mts, for lack of data. It turned out to be 200-350mts from a subsequent post so i wasn't that far off:-)
By the way, why do you give your email ID domain as "gmail.google.com"? "gmail" should suffice.
Thanks for the correction. I knew that for water, 1000cc = 1kg. I realize that since ice is less dense than water, it would weigh less than 1000kg for a cubic meter.
From the site:- "The B-15A iceberg is a 3,000-square-kilometer (1,200-square-mile) behemoth"
Pulling figures from the nether region, i'm assuming the berg to be 100mts high. This would give us:- Surface area = 3000 sq. km = 3000 x 1000 x 1000 = 3 x 10^9 sq. mt. Thus, volume of berg = 3 x 10^9 x 100 = 3 x 10^11 cubic mts.
Now, i know that roughly, 1 cubic meter of ice (water) = 1000kg.
Thus, weight of berg = 3 x 10^11 x 1000 = 3 x 10^14 kgs.
Yes, American education is still the best when it comes to "applied" disciplines and a European education is the best for theoretical and abstract disciplines. A few years of the global economy doing flip-flops does not change things so drastically.
Indian education still woefully lacks infrastructure, good research, and good professors. While there has been a lot of improvement in recent times, the Indian schools are still miles behind their American or French counterparts. This is true even for a business education, though less so (ISB or the Indian School of Business is perhaps an exception).
"I hope they don't use different colors for each card each time it's used in a new graph like they do in this article. Kinda makes it harder to read and compare..."
No, Anandtech is not known for changing its colours;-)
I'm curious to know how "peercasting" and peer-to-peer softwares change the network bandwidth usage for a country or across geos.
Currently, even though the internet is supposed to be a decentralized network, it's still built with old network usage patterns in mind. Bandwidth is allocated accordingly as well.
I think that along with P2P network usage, wireless usage (WiMax, for example) will also change the bandwidth usage pattern.
Although i'm not a network designer by any means, i would still be very interested to know how the network designs of the future would look like, and the kinds of bottlenecks one would face in the future, if still connected to the older networks.
Thank you for talking some sense here! Although i'm an Indian, i find this extreme thin-skinnedness irritating. Especially the fact that people try to bring in issues like race or 9/11 when it's not even the issue.
You're right, it's pretty weak. Granted that most Indian cops don't know their arsehole from their armpit when it comes to computers, they don't really need to. What i mean is that this issue can easily be solved by setting up a dedicated cyber-crime unit. All the dummkops need to do is to redirect any computer/internet related crimes to the concerned department.
Guess what? There's already such a unit in place (at least in Mumbai). Quoth the article:- "It was a triumph for the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell after the public embarrassment of having its own website defaced."
Recent articles in Indian newspapers have also mentioned some very good successes by the Cyber Crime Cell.
Another thing: The belt-beating sadly is very commonplace and IMHO, is very mild compared to the other police brutality incidents. However, in all fairness, there is a bit of background behind this. Mumbai has always been know as the organized crime capital of India, and with very good reason. In a country where gun related violence is quite rare, Mumbai was going crazy with a spate of shootings.
In response to this, the mayor, police chief, and the top brass decided to wage war on organized crime. Their MO was simple: Catch the buggers, shoot them dead, and call it an "encounter" death. In fact, the "encounter" squad of the Mumbai police was so successful that they completely broke the back of most of the major crime syndicates. My point of this digression being that this official acceptance of police violence does have a trickle down effect.
Another aspect to the excessive violence is that in India, the majority of the crime commited is petty in nature and the thieves are often dirt poor compulsives. Very often, the police simply decide to give the common thief a "sound thrashing", lock them up for a couple of days, and then release them. They don't have much experience with white-collared criminals and don't have a clue of how they should behave with them.
It's easy to ridicule something that seems very quaint or barbaric. A lot of it is justified as well. However, please also realize that social systems in different countries often have a history of their own. Usually, these are borne out of good reasons, and they only seem barbaric today because the reasons have become outdated.
Having said this, i do shudder to get into the wrong side of the law in India, especially in the really backward states like Bihar or UP. Which reminds me, back when i was in high school, a couple of friends of mine were caught drunk driving by the Delhi police. They were made to squat frog-legged with 2 heavy bricks on their backs! All night. Now, that's a backache for you!
"If you want to buy a digital music player, or digital music, you do not have to deal with Apple. If you do deal with Apple, and they live up to the agreement you made, you have no one to blame but yourself. You could just as easily have gone with a competitor. Get it?"
At one level i agree with you. However, if what you say is true, then how do you explain the fact that Microsoft was forced to remove the Windows Media Player from its operating system? They were not preventing you from installing or using any other media player. In fact, what they did (by bundling the two) seems even milder that what Apple is doing! Microsoft was only forced to do so because they are a monopoly in the OS market just as Apple is in the internet music distribution market. I see no difference between the two cases.
between a user suing a record company because he/she can't play a CD in their PC because of DRM, and a user suing a record distribution company (Apple) because he/she can't play a song in his/her choice of mp3 player?
IMHO, the gripe is a valid one, especially so because Apple is not a fringe player in the internet distributed music market but a monopolistic player. Most of the arguments to the contrary do not consider the monopoly issue. The main reason why MS had to delink the Windows Media Player from their OS was because they're a monopoly in the OS market.
Another thing is that one monopoly cannot be compared to another. You cannot compare say, the television market with the PC market or the music market. This is because the nature of competition and user expectation is different in every market. A TV buyer is not expected to assemble his/her TV but buys it as a black box. Similarly, a person who purchases a CD expects to play their CD in any popular CD player.
You're right. India is a good example of this. Indian happens to be one of those rare countries where (pulling stats off my ass) half of the population is vegetarian. As a result, a lot of the big fast food chains have bigtime problems adjusting their menus. However, they've done that and doing really well here.
For example, McDonald's India sells 3 different kinds of vegetarian burgers and 2 types of vegetarian wraps. Their McVeggie burger is crisp and delicious, and way better than their meat burgers to boot! On top of it, the McVeggie burger only costs half vis a vis a meat burger. Note however that the burgers are not organic. Organic stuff in India sells at a premium as well, though the markup isn't all that high (20-40% higher).
So, i guess the economies of scale theory has some merit. However, there's a flip side to it. It's a chicken-and-egg dilemma. If veggie burgers or organic food items are priced lower in the US, more people would be willing to buy them, thus further reducing the price.
Things have improved, but not by much. Bombay (Mumbai) is an exception, and in my 2 years there, we only had a power outage a couple of times. However, almost all the modern apartments come with 24x7 power backup. The monthly electric bill is about Rs.300 ($6), but can easily shoot up to about $20 if you use the airconditioning very heavily.
Some cities are better than the others. Bangalore gets a power outage of about an hour, once a week. Delhi is pretty bad though. Most people fit their houses with an inverter.
"Every indian who comes here has a Masters in Mathematics, which is not as rigorous as a basic engineering degree from a US university." Dude, that's an anomaly. The best and the brightest Indians go for engineering and medicine. Mathematics is not even considered an employable profession in India. I didn't mean this to be a comparison contest, but was only saying that the top Indian engineering colleges are world class and cheap as hell to boot.
"A person who checks groceries for a living in the US does better than the professionals you mention in India." Perhaps. However, that doesn't mean that the software professionals in the US are all millionaires either. I've been to Texas and California several times. Yes, the standard of living is definitely high in the US. However, and this may come as a surprise to you, i found that i lead an equally good life in India. The only difference is that in the US, even if you don't have skills or an education, you can life comfortably. In India, a person without a decent education gets plastered. However, a person with good skills leads a diametrically opposite lifestyle, and can live a very very decent life.
To add, while the IITs may not be the best in the world, they're ranked 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8 in Asia. Source: http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/features/universi ties2000/scitech/sci.overall.html
"any underlying "flaw" in the U.S. economic system" You misunderstood. I never meant to say that the US economy is going down or whatever. In terms of education and technology, US is still miles ahead of anybody else. However, most people think that because Indian computer professionals get paid so cheaply in dollar terms, they must also be starving to death while elephants walk the road. What they don't realize that stuff in India, in most cases, is cheaper by a magnitude of 5 or more. I buy a movie ticket for $2. I get my car washed everyday, and i pay $4 a month for the service. You can get house-help for as little as $10 a month. A good chauffeur charges about $100 a month. Books are dirt cheap, and even cheaper if you buy them on the roadside.
While the life may be bigger and better in the US, India pampers you, if you've got a little dough. There's no way i can afford all this in the US, even if i earn $100k.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, i misread that part. It states:-
"A telerobot is an electronic puppet controlled across a wire by a human using a PC and devices like joysticks and gloves. Consider replacing the on-site operator with a $10-per-day handler in an overseas call center."
However, using a telerobot is absurd as well. Wouldn't it be much easier to take the call from home, or replace the human being entirely with a speech capable software that answers users' calls all day long?
Another absurdity is:-
"Should robots excrete byproducts? When cars were invented, no one imagined that hundreds of millions of them would spew carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. But they do, and yet we still feel entitled to drive them. Imagine the pollution levels if we add hundreds of millions of robots powered by internal combustion engines."
This has nothing to do with ethics. Nobody considers the power wastage of an electrical appliance as "excrement".
While your points on ethics is valid, what's the practical use of humanoid robots anyway?
The author talks about robots manning call centers. This, IMHO, is an absurd use of humanoid robots. It would be infinitely more practical to make an "intelligent" telephone or EPABX than it is to employ a humanoid robot to answer phones all day long. The same holds true for most other cases. Even if you take a hazardous job such as mining, i'm sure that specialized machines with specific domain intelligence in mining will easily outperform and be more cost effective than a humanoid robot.
The way i see it, humanoid robots will always be a novelty, and will not serve any practical purpose. I know i run the risk of making a "640kb RAM should be enough for anybody" kind of comment. However, in real terms, i don't see humanoid robots (costing millions) substituting specialized machines or even human beings anytime soon, if ever. A more practical scenario, in my opinion, would be an integration of man with robot. Medical prosthetics has already made significant progress in this regard. This will only continue and someday move upwards until it reaches the brain.
Another thing is that the root cause for this discussion is not the robots themselves but the AI driving the robots. My guess is that human beings would rather integrate AI into their own brain and rely on the AI to augment their own knowledge and thinking power. Comapared to this, using AI-enabled humanoid robots to clean one's dishes simply does not make sense.
"We live in a world where your loved ones aren't allowed to access your mail after you're dead, but gmail can "read" through it to target marketing to you... and keep reading through it post-mortem for deeper demographic research?!?"
What kind of logic is that? By the same token, a hard-drive not only "reads" your emails, but also "owns" your email. For that matter, your processor, motherboard, and RAM also reads your emails. Wait a minute, do you think your browser is not parsing the HTML content of your web-based email? Do you think the router doesn't read your email when it's routed to you?
I think you're creating an emotive issue here when there isn't one.
Noticed on the iPod Shuffle site:-
"1. Music capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128Kbps AAC encoding.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
3. Rechargeable batteries h..."
Do not EAT iPod shuffle??!!
Hey, why not? After all, an Apple a day keeps the doctor away, right?
Thank you for the excellent explanation.
Please bear with me if i'm off-base here.
I can understand if someone gives an exact figure on the accuracy of a measurement. For example, if i measure 1cm with a normal ruler (with 1mm markings), i can say that my measurement was accurate upto 1mm. However, can i really say that i'm 90% sure of my ruler measurement? It doesn't make sense because a figure like 90% signifies probability and not accuracy.
In fact, even if we take probability, say a coin toss, it doesn't hold true. I can say that the probability of getting a "heads" is 50%. However, i cannot say that i'm 50% sure of getting a "heads". The statement doesn't make sense because there's a subtle difference. I'm now quantifying my level of surety (91%) instead of assigning a quality to it (no chance in hell, slightly sure, extremely sure). Giving a highly accurate number to surety does not convey any meaning (at least to the lay person). Most people subconsciously convert a 90% accuracy into "very sure" and a 99% accuracy into "almost dead sure". However, a figure like 91% doesn't add any more value over a figure like 90%.
Thanks.
It does make sense now.
From the article:-
"University of Arizona astronomer Glenn Schneider, who led the new study, said he's 99.1 percent sure the object is in orbit around the brown dwarf."
How does one calculate the probability of accuracy and arrive at an exact figure like 99.1%? I mean, isn't this self-contradictory, or am i missing something?
Yes. :-)
I had arbitrarily assumed the (total)height of the iceberg to be 100mts, for lack of data. It turned out to be 200-350mts from a subsequent post so i wasn't that far off
By the way, why do you give your email ID domain as "gmail.google.com"? "gmail" should suffice.
Thanks for the correction. I knew that for water, 1000cc = 1kg. I realize that since ice is less dense than water, it would weigh less than 1000kg for a cubic meter.
:-)
I took the water density for simplicity.
(been a long time since i did some math)
From the site:-
"The B-15A iceberg is a 3,000-square-kilometer (1,200-square-mile) behemoth"
Pulling figures from the nether region, i'm assuming the berg to be 100mts high. This would give us:-
Surface area = 3000 sq. km = 3000 x 1000 x 1000 = 3 x 10^9 sq. mt.
Thus, volume of berg = 3 x 10^9 x 100 = 3 x 10^11 cubic mts.
Now, i know that roughly, 1 cubic meter of ice (water) = 1000kg.
Thus, weight of berg = 3 x 10^11 x 1000 = 3 x 10^14 kgs.
That's 3000000,000,00,000kgs. = 3000000,000,00 metric tons = 300000000 kilotons = 300000 million tons!
If my math is correct, then oooh boy, this is going to be one heck of a fender bender.
Yes, American education is still the best when it comes to "applied" disciplines and a European education is the best for theoretical and abstract disciplines. A few years of the global economy doing flip-flops does not change things so drastically.
Indian education still woefully lacks infrastructure, good research, and good professors. While there has been a lot of improvement in recent times, the Indian schools are still miles behind their American or French counterparts. This is true even for a business education, though less so (ISB or the Indian School of Business is perhaps an exception).
here's an Anandtech article on BTX:-7 6
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=18
"I hope they don't use different colors for each card each time it's used in a new graph like they do in this article. Kinda makes it harder to read and compare..."
;-)
No, Anandtech is not known for changing its colours
I'm curious to know how "peercasting" and peer-to-peer softwares change the network bandwidth usage for a country or across geos.
Currently, even though the internet is supposed to be a decentralized network, it's still built with old network usage patterns in mind. Bandwidth is allocated accordingly as well.
I think that along with P2P network usage, wireless usage (WiMax, for example) will also change the bandwidth usage pattern.
Although i'm not a network designer by any means, i would still be very interested to know how the network designs of the future would look like, and the kinds of bottlenecks one would face in the future, if still connected to the older networks.
Anandtech has a review on the same.5
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=231
Thank you for talking some sense here! Although i'm an Indian, i find this extreme thin-skinnedness irritating. Especially the fact that people try to bring in issues like race or 9/11 when it's not even the issue.
You're right, it's pretty weak. Granted that most Indian cops don't know their arsehole from their armpit when it comes to computers, they don't really need to. What i mean is that this issue can easily be solved by setting up a dedicated cyber-crime unit. All the dummkops need to do is to redirect any computer/internet related crimes to the concerned department.
Guess what? There's already such a unit in place (at least in Mumbai). Quoth the article:-
"It was a triumph for the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell after the public embarrassment of having its own website defaced."
Recent articles in Indian newspapers have also mentioned some very good successes by the Cyber Crime Cell.
Another thing: The belt-beating sadly is very commonplace and IMHO, is very mild compared to the other police brutality incidents. However, in all fairness, there is a bit of background behind this. Mumbai has always been know as the organized crime capital of India, and with very good reason. In a country where gun related violence is quite rare, Mumbai was going crazy with a spate of shootings.
In response to this, the mayor, police chief, and the top brass decided to wage war on organized crime. Their MO was simple: Catch the buggers, shoot them dead, and call it an "encounter" death. In fact, the "encounter" squad of the Mumbai police was so successful that they completely broke the back of most of the major crime syndicates. My point of this digression being that this official acceptance of police violence does have a trickle down effect.
Another aspect to the excessive violence is that in India, the majority of the crime commited is petty in nature and the thieves are often dirt poor compulsives. Very often, the police simply decide to give the common thief a "sound thrashing", lock them up for a couple of days, and then release them. They don't have much experience with white-collared criminals and don't have a clue of how they should behave with them.
It's easy to ridicule something that seems very quaint or barbaric. A lot of it is justified as well. However, please also realize that social systems in different countries often have a history of their own. Usually, these are borne out of good reasons, and they only seem barbaric today because the reasons have become outdated.
Having said this, i do shudder to get into the wrong side of the law in India, especially in the really backward states like Bihar or UP. Which reminds me, back when i was in high school, a couple of friends of mine were caught drunk driving by the Delhi police. They were made to squat frog-legged with 2 heavy bricks on their backs! All night. Now, that's a backache for you!
"If you want to buy a digital music player, or digital music, you do not have to deal with Apple. If you do deal with Apple, and they live up to the agreement you made, you have no one to blame but yourself. You could just as easily have gone with a competitor. Get it?"
At one level i agree with you. However, if what you say is true, then how do you explain the fact that Microsoft was forced to remove the Windows Media Player from its operating system? They were not preventing you from installing or using any other media player. In fact, what they did (by bundling the two) seems even milder that what Apple is doing! Microsoft was only forced to do so because they are a monopoly in the OS market just as Apple is in the internet music distribution market. I see no difference between the two cases.
between a user suing a record company because he/she can't play a CD in their PC because of DRM, and a user suing a record distribution company (Apple) because he/she can't play a song in his/her choice of mp3 player?
IMHO, the gripe is a valid one, especially so because Apple is not a fringe player in the internet distributed music market but a monopolistic player. Most of the arguments to the contrary do not consider the monopoly issue. The main reason why MS had to delink the Windows Media Player from their OS was because they're a monopoly in the OS market.
Another thing is that one monopoly cannot be compared to another. You cannot compare say, the television market with the PC market or the music market. This is because the nature of competition and user expectation is different in every market. A TV buyer is not expected to assemble his/her TV but buys it as a black box. Similarly, a person who purchases a CD expects to play their CD in any popular CD player.
You're right. India is a good example of this. Indian happens to be one of those rare countries where (pulling stats off my ass) half of the population is vegetarian. As a result, a lot of the big fast food chains have bigtime problems adjusting their menus. However, they've done that and doing really well here.
For example, McDonald's India sells 3 different kinds of vegetarian burgers and 2 types of vegetarian wraps. Their McVeggie burger is crisp and delicious, and way better than their meat burgers to boot! On top of it, the McVeggie burger only costs half vis a vis a meat burger. Note however that the burgers are not organic. Organic stuff in India sells at a premium as well, though the markup isn't all that high (20-40% higher).
So, i guess the economies of scale theory has some merit. However, there's a flip side to it. It's a chicken-and-egg dilemma. If veggie burgers or organic food items are priced lower in the US, more people would be willing to buy them, thus further reducing the price.
or will it simply be re-tired in the annals of history?
i wonder.
Things have improved, but not by much. Bombay (Mumbai) is an exception, and in my 2 years there, we only had a power outage a couple of times. However, almost all the modern apartments come with 24x7 power backup. The monthly electric bill is about Rs.300 ($6), but can easily shoot up to about $20 if you use the airconditioning very heavily.
Some cities are better than the others. Bangalore gets a power outage of about an hour, once a week. Delhi is pretty bad though. Most people fit their houses with an inverter.
I think that five years down the line, someone could compile a dictionary on the mutations of the word "blog".
This is the only word that i refuse to pun about.
Harrumph.
"Every indian who comes here has a Masters in Mathematics, which is not as rigorous as a basic engineering degree from a US university."
i ties2000/scitech/sci.overall.html
Dude, that's an anomaly. The best and the brightest Indians go for engineering and medicine. Mathematics is not even considered an employable profession in India. I didn't mean this to be a comparison contest, but was only saying that the top Indian engineering colleges are world class and cheap as hell to boot.
"A person who checks groceries for a living in the US does better than the professionals you mention in India."
Perhaps. However, that doesn't mean that the software professionals in the US are all millionaires either. I've been to Texas and California several times. Yes, the standard of living is definitely high in the US. However, and this may come as a surprise to you, i found that i lead an equally good life in India. The only difference is that in the US, even if you don't have skills or an education, you can life comfortably. In India, a person without a decent education gets plastered. However, a person with good skills leads a diametrically opposite lifestyle, and can live a very very decent life.
To add, while the IITs may not be the best in the world, they're ranked 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8 in Asia.
Source: http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/features/univers
"any underlying "flaw" in the U.S. economic system"
You misunderstood. I never meant to say that the US economy is going down or whatever. In terms of education and technology, US is still miles ahead of anybody else. However, most people think that because Indian computer professionals get paid so cheaply in dollar terms, they must also be starving to death while elephants walk the road. What they don't realize that stuff in India, in most cases, is cheaper by a magnitude of 5 or more. I buy a movie ticket for $2. I get my car washed everyday, and i pay $4 a month for the service. You can get house-help for as little as $10 a month. A good chauffeur charges about $100 a month. Books are dirt cheap, and even cheaper if you buy them on the roadside.
While the life may be bigger and better in the US, India pampers you, if you've got a little dough. There's no way i can afford all this in the US, even if i earn $100k.