Shareholders are the owners of the company.A publicly traded company is less likely to be managed on "whim" of an individual or a small group as the ownership in publicly traded companies is widely distributed. Note that most successful companies have been there for long and are publicly traded. So in the long run publicly traded companies do well.You are just speaking emotionally than basing your views on any objective data. Whims happen in closely held companies that are not publicly traded, not in companies with widely held stock that are publicly traded.
Name all successful companies that you know of which are not publicly traded.
my two cents
While some of the above things may be true, it is important to know that on an average an American is as smart as an Indian in terms of native intelligence. But what would make a difference is their education and exposure. I think in terms of formal education Indians are getting better of their American counterparts but still have to catch up on the exposure/experience. In the short run there may be a depletion in quality of support being delivered but i would call these teething troubles. So the quality is going to quickly move to acceptable levels. Each individual will learn so that he or she can resolve 80 % of the high runner issues. BTW my experience with American tech support or any customer service is not that great either. Individuals on the other side of the phone have typically shown fairly minimal intelligence and application quite often. So while individual experiences add up to the macro-truths/generalizations they arent in themselves macro-truths.
Outsourcing and off-shoring are two distinct concepts. Outsourcing your core competence is definitely not a great idea. For example, Coke should not outsource brand management, Intel shouldnt outsource chip design etc. But offshoring to a country with a larger skilled labour pool is not a bad idea. In a global economy, state and national boundaries are conceptually similar but are different only in magnitude. So the processes/systems needed to scale national boundaries have to be more robust and efficient than what are needed to scale state or provincial boundaries. There is, though, one problem with Offshoring core-competency that needs to addressed. The fact that demand or market drives innovation means that moving core areas to India/China may impact ability of companies to innovate to meet the demand in the western markets. Now this can possibly be addressed by two factors viz., demand growing in these markets (which is happening already) and setting up processes and systems that ensure complete communication of the market needs to product design or service design teams sitting in these remote places. Note that the latter, as mentioned earlier, while a challenge, is an extension of existing mechanisms to feeding back market inputs to existing local design teams.
So what am I saying? I think over a period of time, companies will continue to out-source non-core aspects of their businesses and the companies that would get this business would be the ones with a lower cost base. Companies would also continue to off-shore (not outsource) their core areas to tap into larger skilled labour pool in some of these markets (india/china) and also to take innovation creation groups closer to these markets that are growing at a greater rate than the western economies.
Western economies also would have to make structural changes to make larger pool of skilled labour available locally. This would also drive the cost of hiring skilled labour to more competitive levels. For this the cost of college education needs to come down especially in areas of engineering and technology.
my two cents
I paid my toll through an EZpass at midtown at 12.00 paid a toll at NJTP at 12.45 and 1.15. Used my credit card to pay some movers at 3.15. Went to the ATM at 4.00 in Rahway NJ. Used my credit card at a restaurant at 4.45 on Route 22. and so on.
All this information I thinks tells you at least this much:
I drove from Long Island to somewhere around Rahway NJ. Probably i moved from Long Island to NJ as I had paid the movers. Looking at the amount one can guess if this move is from Long Island to NJ and how big is my house and so on and so forth.....I sometimes use my chronologically ordered statements to track my own movements. Its fun but easy.
If my hand can manipulate the displayed application/data then wind can blow it away as well. I mean somebody can literally destroy an application/data (if not the screen) by just throwing something at it. My current computer monitor damage doesnt cause the data loss or damage. Unless, they have biometric authentication combined here so only my hand can do those actions.
Combining biometrics makes it really cool.
I dont know Bill Joy at all but from his accomplishments and his contributions like this one http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.htm l he seems like a great mind. He admits that he is not a scientist as someone in the previous postings have indicated. He is more a computer architect. His view is that scientists have a bigger role to play in advancement of computing than computer engineers.
But most importantly he has pointed to the much needed change to human ideal of a utopian world. He urges us to change ultimate human goal to compassion from blind pursuit of scientific knowledge. In fact, I think he quit his pursuit of technology and he is going to be in the realm of fighting battles against unbridled pursuit of scientific excellence which has the potential of a larger destruction than the current dystopia of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
all the best in the pursuit Bill. Its great to see people believe in and pursue goals that are aligned with the bigger objective than most can see or comprehend but reap the benefits of. Carl Sagan in his book Cosmos had a chapter called "Who thinks of Mother Earth?" which showed human parochialism. Bill has echoed this sentiment quite strongly and persuasively in his articles and work which talks about maximising narrow gains at the expense of larger humanity wide goals.
I think in telecommunication the computing infrastructure technology have a reached a level where you dont need economies of scale for setting up a computing node in the network. I mean you dont need to buy a mainframe or supercomputer- you can buy an inexpensive PC. So information generation is cheap at nodes. Couple that with well established transport networks connecting all points and the transport of data unaffected by the distance traversed, makes for a vastly distributed telecom data network. Also the billing capabilities (technically with things like usage data records, business-wise by having revenue sharing agreements, legally by having a framework to impose these agreements across national boundaries) are sophisticated to an extent where this can be done. Moreover, data/information is not "primary resource constrained meaning", there is no dearth of the commodity (most of the data is commodity) being exchanged.
Power on the other hand, needs to have technology where generation can be done by small units. Transportation/transmission losses should be so low that distance traversed doesnt deplete small power by much. Power exchange standards like voltage frequency etc. need to be standardised across all users. The power exchange network needs to be meshed as against hub and spoke today. How will billing happen? I mean whom do I pay for my power bill?
I think 3 decades are needed for this to work out.
Most Phds that I know are gainfully employed in two kinds of jobs:
Wall street: The work here is highly quantitative/mathematical in nature. Things like derivatives pricing, risk management models, trading strategy models etc. Most phds irrespective of the field are very quantitatively oriented and hence this expertise is what us used in these jobs.
Specialized product development shops: A friend of mine who did is Phd in Imaging, works for a company where his specific specialization is used to develop software products that can analyse image data to detect physical events like physical security breach. So in such cases your narrow specialization in IT would be relevant. For example, if you specialize in network security RSA may be a good place.
As far as professional career goes, I think technical specialization is less important than some of the other things like people management, business management, financial management, political savviness etc. In other words professional success is more about building personality traits that help maximise the potential of the whole organization than just maximising your own direct output.
There is an interesting whitepaper by people from MIT and harvard here http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ltac98/whitepaper.doc
This brings out the need for changing spectrum regulations from auctions to open spectrum access for three specific reasons:
Technical: The system of allocating a particular frequency band to a single user is based on outdated technology. Early receivers and transmission schemes were such that we needed to be concerned about the possibility of interference. The development and implementation of spread spectrum and digital radio technology allow us to use receivers and transmission schemes such that interference is not a significant concern.
Economic: An auction acts as barrier to entry to small firms and unproven technologies, which are often the sites of innovation.
Constitutional/Legal: By allocating spectrum licenses, the government is essentially picking who can talk and who cannot.
It would be interesting to see if the technical reasons stand the test of these problems of interference. On another note: With so much electromagnetic transmissions, I wonder if the health hazards are being evaluated and addressed systematically and strategically.
VoIP technically would mean that some segment of the path between the two end points traverses on IP or maybe some form of packet or data networks. (say ATM frame). There are what are called Next generation end points like SIP phones that use IP network (or data networks) throughout. There is no traditional class 5 anywhere in a voice call between two SIP phones. Then there is what is called tandem replacements where the class 4 switches are being switched with what is called a softswitch and a media gateway that converts cicuit voice to packet till the class 5 at the other end. In this case the last mile is still the same. So the investment in the class 5 is safe and VoIP solutions dont have to contend with the five to six 9 reliability the the class 5 switches provide today. Then there are solutions like VoB (or voice over broadband) that uses VoDSL technology. Now here again the calls would by pass the 5E in the sense that it goes with packet traffic that passes through a DSLAM (DSL access multiplexer). All these options are at various stages of trial and adoption and none of them is a success.
Now what does all this mean? It means that when somebody says VoIP is a success, it is understood differently by different people as VoIP as a business is still not defined in a standard way. If somebody says that carrying voice on data networks in part or in full is successful I would say it is premature to make this statement. Even today more than 99 % of voice data passes through pure voice/ss7 controlled networks (though SS7 is a packet network). So what can be said is that VoP (Voice over packet) holds promise which has been said before and with that I agree.
my 2 paise.
shak
This is dramatic but wrong. Just like its a slice of 20b industry its a portion of the incremental electronics business that sony is trying to balance which is nowhere close to 40b +.
Imagine me selling apples and the total market being $100 and me selling $20 out of that. Now oranges come (strictly the analogy is wrong but will suffice to make the point)in. Obviously if oranges come in then growth in orange market (because if new varities) may decrease. But the decrease would still be less than the new orange market. Also remember you dont want to squash (no pun intended) orange market because it is contributing to the increase in fruit eating habits of people resulting in an increase in apple market. So what do you do you participate in the orange market while being aware that you may lose some of the apple market but all in all you still have more money coming in. all in all its not as simple as you are stating it to be. Maybe your conclusion is the right one but its not obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
Shareholders are the owners of the company.A publicly traded company is less likely to be managed on "whim" of an individual or a small group as the ownership in publicly traded companies is widely distributed. Note that most successful companies have been there for long and are publicly traded. So in the long run publicly traded companies do well.You are just speaking emotionally than basing your views on any objective data. Whims happen in closely held companies that are not publicly traded, not in companies with widely held stock that are publicly traded. Name all successful companies that you know of which are not publicly traded. my two cents
Lost Doctor Who Found... sounds like an incomplete sentence. You could have posted it as Lost "Doctor Who" Found.
While some of the above things may be true, it is important to know that on an average an American is as smart as an Indian in terms of native intelligence. But what would make a difference is their education and exposure. I think in terms of formal education Indians are getting better of their American counterparts but still have to catch up on the exposure/experience. In the short run there may be a depletion in quality of support being delivered but i would call these teething troubles. So the quality is going to quickly move to acceptable levels. Each individual will learn so that he or she can resolve 80 % of the high runner issues. BTW my experience with American tech support or any customer service is not that great either. Individuals on the other side of the phone have typically shown fairly minimal intelligence and application quite often. So while individual experiences add up to the macro-truths/generalizations they arent in themselves macro-truths.
Outsourcing and off-shoring are two distinct concepts. Outsourcing your core competence is definitely not a great idea. For example, Coke should not outsource brand management, Intel shouldnt outsource chip design etc. But offshoring to a country with a larger skilled labour pool is not a bad idea. In a global economy, state and national boundaries are conceptually similar but are different only in magnitude. So the processes/systems needed to scale national boundaries have to be more robust and efficient than what are needed to scale state or provincial boundaries. There is, though, one problem with Offshoring core-competency that needs to addressed. The fact that demand or market drives innovation means that moving core areas to India/China may impact ability of companies to innovate to meet the demand in the western markets. Now this can possibly be addressed by two factors viz., demand growing in these markets (which is happening already) and setting up processes and systems that ensure complete communication of the market needs to product design or service design teams sitting in these remote places. Note that the latter, as mentioned earlier, while a challenge, is an extension of existing mechanisms to feeding back market inputs to existing local design teams. So what am I saying? I think over a period of time, companies will continue to out-source non-core aspects of their businesses and the companies that would get this business would be the ones with a lower cost base. Companies would also continue to off-shore (not outsource) their core areas to tap into larger skilled labour pool in some of these markets (india/china) and also to take innovation creation groups closer to these markets that are growing at a greater rate than the western economies. Western economies also would have to make structural changes to make larger pool of skilled labour available locally. This would also drive the cost of hiring skilled labour to more competitive levels. For this the cost of college education needs to come down especially in areas of engineering and technology. my two cents
Simone, the Al Pacino movie, was a synthetic celebrity.
I paid my toll through an EZpass at midtown at 12.00 paid a toll at NJTP at 12.45 and 1.15. Used my credit card to pay some movers at 3.15. Went to the ATM at 4.00 in Rahway NJ. Used my credit card at a restaurant at 4.45 on Route 22. and so on. All this information I thinks tells you at least this much: I drove from Long Island to somewhere around Rahway NJ. Probably i moved from Long Island to NJ as I had paid the movers. Looking at the amount one can guess if this move is from Long Island to NJ and how big is my house and so on and so forth.....I sometimes use my chronologically ordered statements to track my own movements. Its fun but easy.
If my hand can manipulate the displayed application/data then wind can blow it away as well. I mean somebody can literally destroy an application/data (if not the screen) by just throwing something at it. My current computer monitor damage doesnt cause the data loss or damage. Unless, they have biometric authentication combined here so only my hand can do those actions. Combining biometrics makes it really cool.
I dont know Bill Joy at all but from his accomplishments and his contributions like this one http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.htm l he seems like a great mind. He admits that he is not a scientist as someone in the previous postings have indicated. He is more a computer architect. His view is that scientists have a bigger role to play in advancement of computing than computer engineers.
But most importantly he has pointed to the much needed change to human ideal of a utopian world. He urges us to change ultimate human goal to compassion from blind pursuit of scientific knowledge. In fact, I think he quit his pursuit of technology and he is going to be in the realm of fighting battles against unbridled pursuit of scientific excellence which has the potential of a larger destruction than the current dystopia of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
all the best in the pursuit Bill. Its great to see people believe in and pursue goals that are aligned with the bigger objective than most can see or comprehend but reap the benefits of. Carl Sagan in his book Cosmos had a chapter called "Who thinks of Mother Earth?" which showed human parochialism. Bill has echoed this sentiment quite strongly and persuasively in his articles and work which talks about maximising narrow gains at the expense of larger humanity wide goals.
I think in telecommunication the computing infrastructure technology have a reached a level where you dont need economies of scale for setting up a computing node in the network. I mean you dont need to buy a mainframe or supercomputer- you can buy an inexpensive PC. So information generation is cheap at nodes. Couple that with well established transport networks connecting all points and the transport of data unaffected by the distance traversed, makes for a vastly distributed telecom data network. Also the billing capabilities (technically with things like usage data records, business-wise by having revenue sharing agreements, legally by having a framework to impose these agreements across national boundaries) are sophisticated to an extent where this can be done. Moreover, data/information is not "primary resource constrained meaning", there is no dearth of the commodity (most of the data is commodity) being exchanged. Power on the other hand, needs to have technology where generation can be done by small units. Transportation/transmission losses should be so low that distance traversed doesnt deplete small power by much. Power exchange standards like voltage frequency etc. need to be standardised across all users. The power exchange network needs to be meshed as against hub and spoke today. How will billing happen? I mean whom do I pay for my power bill? I think 3 decades are needed for this to work out.
Most Phds that I know are gainfully employed in two kinds of jobs: Wall street: The work here is highly quantitative/mathematical in nature. Things like derivatives pricing, risk management models, trading strategy models etc. Most phds irrespective of the field are very quantitatively oriented and hence this expertise is what us used in these jobs. Specialized product development shops: A friend of mine who did is Phd in Imaging, works for a company where his specific specialization is used to develop software products that can analyse image data to detect physical events like physical security breach. So in such cases your narrow specialization in IT would be relevant. For example, if you specialize in network security RSA may be a good place. As far as professional career goes, I think technical specialization is less important than some of the other things like people management, business management, financial management, political savviness etc. In other words professional success is more about building personality traits that help maximise the potential of the whole organization than just maximising your own direct output.
There is an interesting whitepaper by people from MIT and harvard here http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ltac98/whitepaper.doc
This brings out the need for changing spectrum regulations from auctions to open spectrum access for three specific reasons:
Technical: The system of allocating a particular frequency band to a single user is based on outdated technology. Early receivers and transmission schemes were such that we needed to be concerned about the possibility of interference. The development and implementation of spread spectrum and digital radio technology allow us to use receivers and transmission schemes such that interference is not a significant concern.
Economic: An auction acts as barrier to entry to small firms and unproven technologies, which are often the sites of innovation.
Constitutional/Legal: By allocating spectrum licenses, the government is essentially picking who can talk and who cannot.
It would be interesting to see if the technical reasons stand the test of these problems of interference. On another note: With so much electromagnetic transmissions, I wonder if the health hazards are being evaluated and addressed systematically and strategically.
VoIP technically would mean that some segment of the path between the two end points traverses on IP or maybe some form of packet or data networks. (say ATM frame). There are what are called Next generation end points like SIP phones that use IP network (or data networks) throughout. There is no traditional class 5 anywhere in a voice call between two SIP phones. Then there is what is called tandem replacements where the class 4 switches are being switched with what is called a softswitch and a media gateway that converts cicuit voice to packet till the class 5 at the other end. In this case the last mile is still the same. So the investment in the class 5 is safe and VoIP solutions dont have to contend with the five to six 9 reliability the the class 5 switches provide today. Then there are solutions like VoB (or voice over broadband) that uses VoDSL technology. Now here again the calls would by pass the 5E in the sense that it goes with packet traffic that passes through a DSLAM (DSL access multiplexer). All these options are at various stages of trial and adoption and none of them is a success. Now what does all this mean? It means that when somebody says VoIP is a success, it is understood differently by different people as VoIP as a business is still not defined in a standard way. If somebody says that carrying voice on data networks in part or in full is successful I would say it is premature to make this statement. Even today more than 99 % of voice data passes through pure voice/ss7 controlled networks (though SS7 is a packet network). So what can be said is that VoP (Voice over packet) holds promise which has been said before and with that I agree. my 2 paise. shak
This is dramatic but wrong. Just like its a slice of 20b industry its a portion of the incremental electronics business that sony is trying to balance which is nowhere close to 40b +.
Imagine me selling apples and the total market being $100 and me selling $20 out of that. Now oranges come (strictly the analogy is wrong but will suffice to make the point)in. Obviously if oranges come in then growth in orange market (because if new varities) may decrease. But the decrease would still be less than the new orange market. Also remember you dont want to squash (no pun intended) orange market because it is contributing to the increase in fruit eating habits of people resulting in an increase in apple market. So what do you do you participate in the orange market while being aware that you may lose some of the apple market but all in all you still have more money coming in. all in all its not as simple as you are stating it to be. Maybe your conclusion is the right one but its not obvious.
my char anna (an indian quarter)