..."programmers need to stop thinking about themselves as some sort of "upper" class."...
A point well made, the practice outlined in the original article along with quite a few other labour issues highlighted on slashdot as affecting IT workers have been and are still common practie in manufacturing.
A few of my ex-colleagues have had to work in China or the old eastern european countries setting up plants to replace the current facilities here in the UK. Two months of hotel living then it's down to the brew, the only upside being that the experience does make it much easier to find alternative employment.
The bottom line is labour is labour, skill, education or even position within a company (remember middle management) offer little or no protection from capital/ownership changes in direction.
In a highly pressured environment with a number of tasks competing for my attention, deadlines looming (and past) I'm pretty sure I could convince a doctor that I was suffering from ADHD.
Many Kids are under a lot of stress, don't get enough sustained physical exercise, is it possible a lot of these cases are stress.
I'm not dismissing ADHD as a disorder but it does seem over diagnosed, maybe if drugs companies could make some cash out of PLAY a lot of these kids would have the time to develop coping mechanisms.
All this is nice stuff to dream about but the fact is many designers and manufacturers are returning to fast multi axis machining centres for rapid proto typing. The alternatives, wax/resin deposit, or 3d stl are just too slow too expensive and produce items which require further work to finish them or careful handling to prevent damage. It is also not possible to lay down just any material using these processes, they all rely on particular material properties like melting point, or sensitivity to light. Where they may play a big part in the near future is probably in pattern making.
This is an interesting field and does it's uses particularly some of the work that is being done by medics. I've seen nice examples of models created from 3d scan data, although again when it comes to making replacement parts I believe they fall back to using high speed machining centres.
The long sighted may want to keep an eye on this for their kids but I wouldn't put off any major purchases in the mean time.
While I agree with your point I think you have missed the trend to integrate Hotmail into MS Outlook this would discourage new users to explore alternatives much as the packaging of Explorer has with Windows. However the most probable reason that Hotmail is so popular is that it isn't a bad service. A lot of the webmail alternatives are probably no more secure or reliable.
Slashdot Mirror
All slashdot readers agree that splitting hairs will produce karma.
..."programmers need to stop thinking about themselves as some sort of "upper" class."...
A point well made, the practice outlined in the original article along with quite a few other labour issues highlighted on slashdot as affecting IT workers have been and are still common practie in manufacturing.
A few of my ex-colleagues have had to work in China or the old eastern european countries setting up plants to replace the current facilities here in the UK. Two months of hotel living then it's down to the brew, the only upside being that the experience does make it much easier to find alternative employment.
The bottom line is labour is labour, skill, education or even position within a company (remember middle management) offer little or no protection from capital/ownership changes in direction.
How about stress?
In a highly pressured environment with a number of tasks competing for my attention, deadlines looming (and past) I'm pretty sure I could convince a doctor that I was suffering from ADHD.
Many Kids are under a lot of stress, don't get enough sustained physical exercise, is it possible a lot of these cases are stress.
I'm not dismissing ADHD as a disorder but it does seem over diagnosed, maybe if drugs companies could make some cash out of PLAY a lot of these kids would have the time to develop coping mechanisms.
All this is nice stuff to dream about but the fact is many designers and manufacturers are returning to fast multi axis machining centres for rapid proto typing. The alternatives, wax/resin deposit, or 3d stl are just too slow too expensive and produce items which require further work to finish them or careful handling to prevent damage. It is also not possible to lay down just any material using these processes, they all rely on particular material properties like melting point, or sensitivity to light. Where they may play a big part in the near future is probably in pattern making.
This is an interesting field and does it's uses particularly some of the work that is being done by medics. I've seen nice examples of models created from 3d scan data, although again when it comes to making replacement parts I believe they fall back to using high speed machining centres.
The long sighted may want to keep an eye on this for their kids but I wouldn't put off any major purchases in the mean time.
While I agree with your point I think you have missed the trend to integrate Hotmail into MS Outlook this would discourage new users to explore alternatives much as the packaging of Explorer has with Windows.
However the most probable reason that Hotmail is so popular is that it isn't a bad service. A lot of the webmail alternatives are probably no more secure or reliable.