Admittedly, a male character with "a codpiece the size of a melon" might turn me away from the game if I had to look at it, but it would probably turn female players away as well. But I also find it difficult to believe that if the game designers used realistic "average American" proportions, the game would lose appeal to both genders. Maybe Sammo Hung can pull off the acrobatics, but I doubt anyone wants to see chubby cheeks, a beer belly, or flapping flab on their character.
For example, how many women Quake 3 gamers played the fat woman avatar as opposed to the skinny, perky, long-legged ones? As a member of a Q3 ally clan of RvF ("really violent femmes") back in '99, which was females only, I recall that exactly zero of them used the fat woman avatar.
Both genders play games because of both the subject matter of the game and the image that it transfers to them.
First, try not to confuse the terms aperture and f-stop. They both refer to something similar but are inversely releated. When the aperture is wide-open, the f-stop is at its minimum for that lens. When the aperture is "small" or "narrow" the f-stop is a larger number. To achieve a maximum depth of field, you would shoot either at the highest (numerically) f-stop or use the hyperfocal (explained in the link at the end of this post). If you wanted minimum depth of field to achieve a blurred background, you would use the lowest f-stop.
Depth of field depends on a number of factors including distance to plane of focus, circle of confusion (based on sensor size), focal length, and aperture. So in fact, your point-and-shoot will achieve a better DoF than your ElanIIE at a similar f-stop or aperture due to the tiny sensor size. Thus point-and-shoot can be more useful than a dSLR due to the large DoF.
Try a web search for Circle of Confusion for more information. This site also seems to have a decent explanation: photo tidbits
I think the quote takes into consideration that outsourcing work is usually done by other countries into India because of the lower cost. There is a higher concentration of outsourced employees in India than Europe. Also, a greater number of Indians leave their country to pursue technology jobs outside of their country than Europeans. Therefore, it is a combination of outsourcing to the people of countries that usually outsource the work and migration of workers from an environment of lower outsourced concentration to greater outsourced concentration.
I don't see any bigotry here, but I guess this kind of issue is subjective.
Memory made in Korea (e.g. Samsung or LG) is purchased in Korea for 2x the price of memory sold in the US. If the import tax into the US were lowered, the companies would naturally raise their prices to try and reduce their losses (or increase profits). Thus supply and demand will not change due to this, so you will pay the same price.
Power-supply prices are about the same as US in Korea, if you don't include the hefty 19% import tax and an additional sale profit margin tacked on. CPU's are more expensive here, storage is more expensive here, case is probably similar to US prices... CD/DVD recordable media might be cheaper!
Only if you can buy directly from a manufacturer, not in the domestic market in Asia. RAM, Motherboard, CD-ROM, etc. are cheaper in the US due to higher levels of competition. Some companies lose money by selling in the US, but gain marketshare...
Re:I interned at Wal-Mart's IT department...
on
Inside Wal-Mart IT
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· Score: 1
That's not much different than the Samsung corporate anthem.
Try the Wolfson DACs (hi-resolution mode) on the Chaintech AV-710, a $27 soundcard, using this guide to setup the driver:
http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=75 655
There's also the EMU 1212u model for around $200 if you are interested in high recording quality as well.
Audigy 2 is pretty crappy value, but is suitable for 3d gaming because it wins out in the low cpu utilization category.
Isn't nVidia's Soundstorm still used in XBOX?
Furthermore as solid state memory advances and cheapens (we already have 1gb cf cards commerically available)
Well Pretec offers 12GB CF memory already, perhaps a bit overpriced, but I'm sure affordable 15GB is just around the corner.
That's a minor effect, if even true. The US has a larger number of expats from the rest of the world than does Korea (including a 10% permanent population that reads Spanish)...Plus, servers from Japan to Brazil to Germany use English as their default alternative language. Where do you find significant Korean servers, outside of SK itself?
Most Koreans can read English, though their speaking and writing skills are a bit underdeveloped. I never said anything about Korean being a standard language in other countries.
As far as accessing US websites, Korea is probably not among the top few countries that accesses sites physically in the US, but a lot of business content published in English is mirrored in Korea.
Although the frustration level of reading English is much lower than a native English speaker, I think most high school-educated Koreans can read a fair amount of English and understand it (unfortunately, not as well as Indians -- hence US companies do not often use Korea for outsourcing). It's a requirement of most public schools to learn English starting from elementary school.
A lot of multiplayer fps games (in which latency is probably most important for playability) are not even popular in Korea (UT, Q3, etc). CS-CZ is an exception since that only became popular a couple months ago. What is interesting is that the most popular online game, Starcraft, has a huge tolerance for high latency.
HTTP is no longer the driving protocol in SK. TV, VoIP/video chat, and games outweigh it.
Isn't this true in the US? Doesn't spam + p2p traffic account for most of US internet traffic? How could HTTP traffic ever overtake that?
I'm not sure why mods gave you a point for being insightful; I thought of your post as humor.
1. Everyone in korea speaks korean.
Other than many of the foreigners in Korea, including US Army and expats.
2. Noone else speaks korean.
You probably got that impression from Rick Yune in Die Another Day.
3. Koreans are mainly interested in korean websites.
But they are more open to reading foreign language websites than most US citizens are.
Ergo, when they pay $5 USD a month for 4mb internet accesss
Most internet access in Korea is $20+/month (my ADSL in Korea is ~$38/mo for approx 10mbit). Korea also has half the per capita income and a much more tail-heavy distribution of income, so using a straight currency conversion comparison does not work so well.
But now that you mention the price of LCD screens, the quality of your laptop screen is not nearly as good as a 17" wide-aspect ratio Samsung LCD monitor for $600 with a 700:1 contrast ratio, 0.264 dot pitch, and 178 degree viewing angle. I wouldn't use the laptop for even viewing/editing digital photos, but $900 is admittedly a decent price for a laptop with those specs.
Rather than waiting for the iPod Mini overseas release (originally scheduled for April), I purchased one on a timely business trip to San Francisco which happened to coincide with the new downtown SF store opening. Patting myself on the back for purchasing it aside, here are some reasons for its success:
1) Appeal
Mostly appeals to the female demographic with the pastel colors, primitive shapes, sleek ergonomics, and conspicuous backlight (reminds me of old B&W macs).
Looking at their marketing strategy, you will see the iPod mini with fashion items in department store displays. It becomes a must-have accessory like a certain pair of shoes or handbag, but probably has a higher reusability.
Take a look at trends in the digital camera market... portable cameras are becoming more portable (e.g. Casio EXLIM, Pentax Optio-S, Canon SD10, Sony ?) and even use brand names such as Porsche and Coach to enhance their stylishness.
2) Price Competitiveness
The closest competitor is the Creative Muvo 2 4GB mp3 player $200, which is somewhat ugly and not highly publicized. Many people have been purchasing the Muvo 2 only to extract the 4GB microdrive and use it in their digital cameras since purchasing a high-speed 4GB microdrive would have cost them $400 more.
3) Usability
There is a very short learning curve for this device. There are few enough buttons and features to make it simple enough to use similar to the Mac OS. If you search deeper, you can find a lot more hidden features for the power user. This seems to be a pattern followed by many OS designers including Apple and Microsoft.
4) Performance
Having compared the iPod mini to other portable mp3 players such as the Yepp and iRiver, the sound circuitry seems to be higher quality. It's not to the point where it could even replace a quality sound card, but good enough to justify using a nice set of headphones/earphones.
The only qualm I have about it is that it crashes every so often... and there's no sad Mac or bomb to indicate it.
Moving back to the subject, I don't think it's a mistake not to open it up to other formats since MP3 is still the dominant format. I would predict that 10 years from now, mp3 players will lose their style like the digital watch and will become just another function of another device. But, opening it up to all formats would simply accelerate this process and Apple would not be able to reap as much profit.
I'll take the example of Korea one more time... Students go to school from 7am to 9pm during weekdays(some schools till 11pm). Many students have to go to academic institutions to study more after they get out of school at night. Many get back home after 12am to wake up 6 hours later. On Saturdays many have to stay in school till 6pm. Some schools even make students come on Sundays. Most highschools make students go to school during the vacations. It doesn't matter if it's raining, snowing, hailing(?), or even if they're in war...
I think that you are glorifying your own experience a bit here, or times have changed drastically. Let me point out some facts of the present:
This past winter, it snowed about 4-5 inches and pretty much all Korean students in the Seoul area were given the day off. Most schools have gates which are locked on weekends, thus it is not really possible to attend school during those times.
Friends of mine who attended the Computer Science program at Seoul National University and KAIST took an average of 4 courses per semester, mostly computer-related. I'm still a better programmer and understand much more computer theory than most of them with only 14 semester courses of computer-related undergraduate work. So, I was not the average student, but they are supposed to be Korea's elite?
Even middle school students smoke in the bathrooms, avoid punishment at home by living in PC bangs, join gangs, etc. They are no better behaved than Americans despite their punishments.
Whether or not they get into a good college really depends on the national college exam not your grades. If you fail, you can still attend vocational schools or study abroad...
As a part time teacher at one of those "schools" (hagwon in Korea) that the students go to after school or on weekends, most students have no motivation to study and simply attend to be with friends. The reason they are there is to obey their parents, not because they are interested in doing well.
Should I also point out that the US is still far more productive per man hour? The work culture is such that you should not leave work until your other team members do so, which means that during that time you may have absolutely no work to do. Luckily, my current company has adopted some Westernized values and this is not a strict norm.
Sure, Asians still believe in punishment-based learning rather than reward-based learning and still practice corporeal punishment. What sense does this make in the workplace?
How come you didn't mention the drinking culture? In certain situations, you are expected to drink alcohol as often as every night until 2-4am. Koreans turn to alcohol to relieve their stress, and tend to keep drinking or engage in activities that promote drinking for the entire night. It's really sickening to smell the breath of coworkers who smell like both alcohol and garlic at the same time, but apparently it is acceptable here...
Koreans who go through college have completed 10 years of education in English, yet they have a really difficult time communicating in English. In countries like India, English is one of the national languages and people are expected to speak it, so at least they have some language competency. Though Koreans tend to work for only about 3x as much money as Indians in the IT sector, they are not a viable solution for offshoring because of the communication problems.
I agree with the subject...
Thanks for the collection of references, I've come across most of them in my recent research as I consider the future of my current career path.:)
I work at a CMM Level 5 company in Korea with a few Indians that we decided to bring from India last year. They are paid the same amount as me, get free housing, 2x more vacation days with paid plane tickets, and a personal cook. They have about 2-3 years more experience than me in programming Java, yet the quality of work they produce is garbage.
To elaborate, they were slow, had immutable cultural differences that hindered communication, and their English skills are rather lacking grammar-wise. Perhaps we didn't get the cream of the crop, but they must have been good enough to hold their jobs for a couple years in India before coming to Korea.
I asked one about salaries in India -- they don't match too well with the Wired article. In addition, they get many benefits that would be quite difficult to acquire in the US. Here are the average offers that his friends and family have been getting:
2-4 Years Experience $8k-$11k
+ medical insurance for the entire family
+ interest free loans
4-6 Years Experience $12k-$18k
+ medical insurance for the entire family
+ interest free loans
Senior positions $20k+
+ house rent
+ car
+ medical insurance for the entire family
+ many more benefits...
I also heard from them that job hunters in India spend most of their time deciding between 5 different companies that will hire them. Cost of living is low in India -- but with all the influx of newfound wealth, I would not be surprised if they found themselves battling inflation.
Hopefully US contries begin to realize the hidden costs and drastic change in values of the companies due to the movement of jobs will only harm their businesses.
I work at an overseas CMM Level 5 IT company in Korea that started offshoring recently and have been working with a team of guys that we brought from India. Though I just started with the company as a software developer, I almost immediately became a member of their team and a full-time interpreter -- though I was much closer to being a manager as many people at the company prefer not to deal with them.
I can't say much positive about their attitudes and work either, though I don't want to stereotype all ethnic Indians. Whenever I visit their cubicles, they are browsing the web or chatting with their buddies rather than completing their assigned work. I wasn't receiving any respect from certain members of the team, mainly because I had fewer years of experience in software development. However, it certainly did not appear that they had the four years of experience in Java cited on their resumes. I was reviewing their code and fixing major logic errors in code and the grammar mistakes and typos made in the comments. This was work they could have easily done themselves in the very lax 3 week deadline they had to fix their 3-5 test cases. Instead, I spent two weeks fixing their code and writing the documentation that they had "written". I asked one guy to fix a mistake in two of his test cases, pointing out the error and explaining how he could fix it, and he got really angry at me and sent me e-mails about me being the newbie. Since I was not the manager he refused to change his code.
My co-worker has been also working in India for a few months and he does not appreciate the attitudes of certain programmers either. Some of them decided to change some of the code our company had written causing several bugs to appear in the build. None of the developers would take blame for it, though it was probably obvious who had changed it from the PVCS logs.
These experiences have led me to decide to transfer departments and work with people that have experience that actually counts, even if they are not involved in software development (which I hoped to pursue by finding an overseas job and obtaining experience with the company).
There are two questions companies should consider when making the decision to offshore (outsource) to India which directly relate to cost efficiency:
1) Do we fully understand their culture and will conflicts in culture present a problem? In other words, how much additional money and resources will be spent on interpreting and managing their work, making sure that they maintain a certain level of quality?
2) Are we just outsourcing to become trend-followers, blindly following the reocmmendations of McKinsey, Gartner, and Accenture to find cheap labor in India and China? Do we know exactly how much domestic labor will cost in current times (older BW article)?
It's my opinion on getting them to be efficient workers is that you need an Indian motivator/manager who understands their culture very well, is older than them and has a more impressive resume. Then, have someone from your company who is very knowledgeable about business processes and the related field, in this case software development, communicate the requirements to the Indian manager.
My manager has been assessing the quality of their work to present to our CTO whose initiative was to increase our offshoring in India. Does anyone have a good way to measure the the value of a software developer which includes factors such as cultural differences and communication problems?
I agree, spend on professional quality lenses for quality. You'll save even more time (time = $) by not having to edit the final products in PS/GIMP (we're still a Linux geek community right?).
1) Running Cost Effectiveness
Fixed costs (purchasing the digital camera body, memory card, and printer vs. purchasing film camera body, developing tools, scanner) will be different, but the total costs of creating a final print for film SLRs will soon exceed your cost total for the digital SLR because the film SLR has a higher running cost.
You'll want to take pictures of everything and setup your own tests to improve. It's essential to test your lenses as well to make sure that you didn't get a defective copy.
Many of your film shots you will regret having developed whereas taking a digital shot will allow you to conveniently preview them on your computer before deciding to make a print out of it.
The cost of a decent dSLR body like the Canon 10D or crippled Canon 300D will run you between $750-1300 (non-gray market) whereas the film equivalent Canon EOS bodies cost around $100-300. The lenses cost the same since you can use them on either digital or film body...
2) Instant Development/Feedback
With digital, you can view the histogram immediately after taking the shot to see if you overexposed, underexposed, or blew the highlights. You can also view the picture to see if you framed the shot properly, and most importantly, chicks (or whatever gender-orientation you may prefer) dig it when you show them the shot you just took of them.
Time is money, so I'd rather save a lot of time than a little bit of money.
3) High resale value
Check eBay for used prices on dSLRs. The ones that still function are very close to the price of a new one. Most film SLRs don't retain their value quite as well.
4) Limitations
Limitations of digital photography will probably cause you to encounter more issues in which you will need to be careful about. It is advantageous to learn about these in advance. For example, blown highlights is a common problem in digital photography. You will learn methods of avoiding blown highlights and become particularly conscious about it, while film photographers mostly ignore the possibility.
This being said, I would recommend the Canon 10D ($1300) and 28-135mm IS lens ($400) to start with. It's a great combination
You can judge for yourself if you made the right decision, and if not, you could sell off the equipment for close to the price you paid for it.
I would also recommend the site dpreview.com -- the forums are especially helpful for getting others' opinions.
Slashdot Mirror
Funded by government or IMF? I wish people would do their research. --;;
Admittedly, a male character with "a codpiece the size of a melon" might turn me away from the game if I had to look at it, but it would probably turn female players away as well. But I also find it difficult to believe that if the game designers used realistic "average American" proportions, the game would lose appeal to both genders. Maybe Sammo Hung can pull off the acrobatics, but I doubt anyone wants to see chubby cheeks, a beer belly, or flapping flab on their character. For example, how many women Quake 3 gamers played the fat woman avatar as opposed to the skinny, perky, long-legged ones? As a member of a Q3 ally clan of RvF ("really violent femmes") back in '99, which was females only, I recall that exactly zero of them used the fat woman avatar. Both genders play games because of both the subject matter of the game and the image that it transfers to them.
As if we need robots for that!
Imagine if someone posted some child pornography images in a hidden layer on Slashdot... there could be quite a few arrests ;)
First, try not to confuse the terms aperture and f-stop. They both refer to something similar but are inversely releated. When the aperture is wide-open, the f-stop is at its minimum for that lens. When the aperture is "small" or "narrow" the f-stop is a larger number. To achieve a maximum depth of field, you would shoot either at the highest (numerically) f-stop or use the hyperfocal (explained in the link at the end of this post). If you wanted minimum depth of field to achieve a blurred background, you would use the lowest f-stop.
Depth of field depends on a number of factors including distance to plane of focus, circle of confusion (based on sensor size), focal length, and aperture. So in fact, your point-and-shoot will achieve a better DoF than your ElanIIE at a similar f-stop or aperture due to the tiny sensor size. Thus point-and-shoot can be more useful than a dSLR due to the large DoF.
Try a web search for Circle of Confusion for more information. This site also seems to have a decent explanation: photo tidbits
This way you multiply the number of points of failure. Since the risk is human life, I don't see this becoming a reality for at least 15 years.
I think the quote takes into consideration that outsourcing work is usually done by other countries into India because of the lower cost. There is a higher concentration of outsourced employees in India than Europe. Also, a greater number of Indians leave their country to pursue technology jobs outside of their country than Europeans. Therefore, it is a combination of outsourcing to the people of countries that usually outsource the work and migration of workers from an environment of lower outsourced concentration to greater outsourced concentration. I don't see any bigotry here, but I guess this kind of issue is subjective.
Memory made in Korea (e.g. Samsung or LG) is purchased in Korea for 2x the price of memory sold in the US. If the import tax into the US were lowered, the companies would naturally raise their prices to try and reduce their losses (or increase profits). Thus supply and demand will not change due to this, so you will pay the same price. Power-supply prices are about the same as US in Korea, if you don't include the hefty 19% import tax and an additional sale profit margin tacked on. CPU's are more expensive here, storage is more expensive here, case is probably similar to US prices... CD/DVD recordable media might be cheaper!
Only if you can buy directly from a manufacturer, not in the domestic market in Asia. RAM, Motherboard, CD-ROM, etc. are cheaper in the US due to higher levels of competition. Some companies lose money by selling in the US, but gain marketshare...
That's not much different than the Samsung corporate anthem.
Try the Wolfson DACs (hi-resolution mode) on the Chaintech AV-710, a $27 soundcard, using this guide to setup the driver: http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=75 655
There's also the EMU 1212u model for around $200 if you are interested in high recording quality as well.
Audigy 2 is pretty crappy value, but is suitable for 3d gaming because it wins out in the low cpu utilization category.
Isn't nVidia's Soundstorm still used in XBOX?
Furthermore as solid state memory advances and cheapens (we already have 1gb cf cards commerically available) Well Pretec offers 12GB CF memory already, perhaps a bit overpriced, but I'm sure affordable 15GB is just around the corner.
That's a minor effect, if even true. The US has a larger number of expats from the rest of the world than does Korea (including a 10% permanent population that reads Spanish)...Plus, servers from Japan to Brazil to Germany use English as their default alternative language. Where do you find significant Korean servers, outside of SK itself?
Most Koreans can read English, though their speaking and writing skills are a bit underdeveloped. I never said anything about Korean being a standard language in other countries.
As far as accessing US websites, Korea is probably not among the top few countries that accesses sites physically in the US, but a lot of business content published in English is mirrored in Korea.
Although the frustration level of reading English is much lower than a native English speaker, I think most high school-educated Koreans can read a fair amount of English and understand it (unfortunately, not as well as Indians -- hence US companies do not often use Korea for outsourcing). It's a requirement of most public schools to learn English starting from elementary school.
A lot of multiplayer fps games (in which latency is probably most important for playability) are not even popular in Korea (UT, Q3, etc). CS-CZ is an exception since that only became popular a couple months ago. What is interesting is that the most popular online game, Starcraft, has a huge tolerance for high latency.
HTTP is no longer the driving protocol in SK. TV, VoIP/video chat, and games outweigh it.
Isn't this true in the US? Doesn't spam + p2p traffic account for most of US internet traffic? How could HTTP traffic ever overtake that?
I'm not sure why mods gave you a point for being insightful; I thought of your post as humor. 1. Everyone in korea speaks korean. Other than many of the foreigners in Korea, including US Army and expats. 2. Noone else speaks korean. You probably got that impression from Rick Yune in Die Another Day. 3. Koreans are mainly interested in korean websites. But they are more open to reading foreign language websites than most US citizens are. Ergo, when they pay $5 USD a month for 4mb internet accesss Most internet access in Korea is $20+/month (my ADSL in Korea is ~$38/mo for approx 10mbit). Korea also has half the per capita income and a much more tail-heavy distribution of income, so using a straight currency conversion comparison does not work so well.
But now that you mention the price of LCD screens, the quality of your laptop screen is not nearly as good as a 17" wide-aspect ratio Samsung LCD monitor for $600 with a 700:1 contrast ratio, 0.264 dot pitch, and 178 degree viewing angle. I wouldn't use the laptop for even viewing/editing digital photos, but $900 is admittedly a decent price for a laptop with those specs.
Rather than waiting for the iPod Mini overseas release (originally scheduled for April), I purchased one on a timely business trip to San Francisco which happened to coincide with the new downtown SF store opening. Patting myself on the back for purchasing it aside, here are some reasons for its success: 1) Appeal Mostly appeals to the female demographic with the pastel colors, primitive shapes, sleek ergonomics, and conspicuous backlight (reminds me of old B&W macs). Looking at their marketing strategy, you will see the iPod mini with fashion items in department store displays. It becomes a must-have accessory like a certain pair of shoes or handbag, but probably has a higher reusability. Take a look at trends in the digital camera market... portable cameras are becoming more portable (e.g. Casio EXLIM, Pentax Optio-S, Canon SD10, Sony ?) and even use brand names such as Porsche and Coach to enhance their stylishness. 2) Price Competitiveness The closest competitor is the Creative Muvo 2 4GB mp3 player $200, which is somewhat ugly and not highly publicized. Many people have been purchasing the Muvo 2 only to extract the 4GB microdrive and use it in their digital cameras since purchasing a high-speed 4GB microdrive would have cost them $400 more. 3) Usability There is a very short learning curve for this device. There are few enough buttons and features to make it simple enough to use similar to the Mac OS. If you search deeper, you can find a lot more hidden features for the power user. This seems to be a pattern followed by many OS designers including Apple and Microsoft. 4) Performance Having compared the iPod mini to other portable mp3 players such as the Yepp and iRiver, the sound circuitry seems to be higher quality. It's not to the point where it could even replace a quality sound card, but good enough to justify using a nice set of headphones/earphones. The only qualm I have about it is that it crashes every so often... and there's no sad Mac or bomb to indicate it. Moving back to the subject, I don't think it's a mistake not to open it up to other formats since MP3 is still the dominant format. I would predict that 10 years from now, mp3 players will lose their style like the digital watch and will become just another function of another device. But, opening it up to all formats would simply accelerate this process and Apple would not be able to reap as much profit.
I'll take the example of Korea one more time... Students go to school from 7am to 9pm during weekdays(some schools till 11pm). Many students have to go to academic institutions to study more after they get out of school at night. Many get back home after 12am to wake up 6 hours later. On Saturdays many have to stay in school till 6pm. Some schools even make students come on Sundays. Most highschools make students go to school during the vacations. It doesn't matter if it's raining, snowing, hailing(?), or even if they're in war... I think that you are glorifying your own experience a bit here, or times have changed drastically. Let me point out some facts of the present: This past winter, it snowed about 4-5 inches and pretty much all Korean students in the Seoul area were given the day off. Most schools have gates which are locked on weekends, thus it is not really possible to attend school during those times. Friends of mine who attended the Computer Science program at Seoul National University and KAIST took an average of 4 courses per semester, mostly computer-related. I'm still a better programmer and understand much more computer theory than most of them with only 14 semester courses of computer-related undergraduate work. So, I was not the average student, but they are supposed to be Korea's elite? Even middle school students smoke in the bathrooms, avoid punishment at home by living in PC bangs, join gangs, etc. They are no better behaved than Americans despite their punishments. Whether or not they get into a good college really depends on the national college exam not your grades. If you fail, you can still attend vocational schools or study abroad... As a part time teacher at one of those "schools" (hagwon in Korea) that the students go to after school or on weekends, most students have no motivation to study and simply attend to be with friends. The reason they are there is to obey their parents, not because they are interested in doing well. Should I also point out that the US is still far more productive per man hour? The work culture is such that you should not leave work until your other team members do so, which means that during that time you may have absolutely no work to do. Luckily, my current company has adopted some Westernized values and this is not a strict norm. Sure, Asians still believe in punishment-based learning rather than reward-based learning and still practice corporeal punishment. What sense does this make in the workplace? How come you didn't mention the drinking culture? In certain situations, you are expected to drink alcohol as often as every night until 2-4am. Koreans turn to alcohol to relieve their stress, and tend to keep drinking or engage in activities that promote drinking for the entire night. It's really sickening to smell the breath of coworkers who smell like both alcohol and garlic at the same time, but apparently it is acceptable here... Koreans who go through college have completed 10 years of education in English, yet they have a really difficult time communicating in English. In countries like India, English is one of the national languages and people are expected to speak it, so at least they have some language competency. Though Koreans tend to work for only about 3x as much money as Indians in the IT sector, they are not a viable solution for offshoring because of the communication problems.
I agree with the subject... Thanks for the collection of references, I've come across most of them in my recent research as I consider the future of my current career path. :)
I work at a CMM Level 5 company in Korea with a few Indians that we decided to bring from India last year. They are paid the same amount as me, get free housing, 2x more vacation days with paid plane tickets, and a personal cook. They have about 2-3 years more experience than me in programming Java, yet the quality of work they produce is garbage.
To elaborate, they were slow, had immutable cultural differences that hindered communication, and their English skills are rather lacking grammar-wise. Perhaps we didn't get the cream of the crop, but they must have been good enough to hold their jobs for a couple years in India before coming to Korea.
I asked one about salaries in India -- they don't match too well with the Wired article. In addition, they get many benefits that would be quite difficult to acquire in the US. Here are the average offers that his friends and family have been getting:
2-4 Years Experience $8k-$11k
+ medical insurance for the entire family
+ interest free loans
4-6 Years Experience $12k-$18k
+ medical insurance for the entire family
+ interest free loans
Senior positions $20k+
+ house rent
+ car
+ medical insurance for the entire family
+ many more benefits...
I also heard from them that job hunters in India spend most of their time deciding between 5 different companies that will hire them. Cost of living is low in India -- but with all the influx of newfound wealth, I would not be surprised if they found themselves battling inflation.
Hopefully US contries begin to realize the hidden costs and drastic change in values of the companies due to the movement of jobs will only harm their businesses.
I work at an overseas CMM Level 5 IT company in Korea that started offshoring recently and have been working with a team of guys that we brought from India. Though I just started with the company as a software developer, I almost immediately became a member of their team and a full-time interpreter -- though I was much closer to being a manager as many people at the company prefer not to deal with them.
I can't say much positive about their attitudes and work either, though I don't want to stereotype all ethnic Indians. Whenever I visit their cubicles, they are browsing the web or chatting with their buddies rather than completing their assigned work. I wasn't receiving any respect from certain members of the team, mainly because I had fewer years of experience in software development. However, it certainly did not appear that they had the four years of experience in Java cited on their resumes. I was reviewing their code and fixing major logic errors in code and the grammar mistakes and typos made in the comments. This was work they could have easily done themselves in the very lax 3 week deadline they had to fix their 3-5 test cases. Instead, I spent two weeks fixing their code and writing the documentation that they had "written". I asked one guy to fix a mistake in two of his test cases, pointing out the error and explaining how he could fix it, and he got really angry at me and sent me e-mails about me being the newbie. Since I was not the manager he refused to change his code.
My co-worker has been also working in India for a few months and he does not appreciate the attitudes of certain programmers either. Some of them decided to change some of the code our company had written causing several bugs to appear in the build. None of the developers would take blame for it, though it was probably obvious who had changed it from the PVCS logs.
These experiences have led me to decide to transfer departments and work with people that have experience that actually counts, even if they are not involved in software development (which I hoped to pursue by finding an overseas job and obtaining experience with the company).
There are two questions companies should consider when making the decision to offshore (outsource) to India which directly relate to cost efficiency:
1) Do we fully understand their culture and will conflicts in culture present a problem? In other words, how much additional money and resources will be spent on interpreting and managing their work, making sure that they maintain a certain level of quality?
2) Are we just outsourcing to become trend-followers, blindly following the reocmmendations of McKinsey, Gartner, and Accenture to find cheap labor in India and China? Do we know exactly how much domestic labor will cost in current times (older BW article)?
It's my opinion on getting them to be efficient workers is that you need an Indian motivator/manager who understands their culture very well, is older than them and has a more impressive resume. Then, have someone from your company who is very knowledgeable about business processes and the related field, in this case software development, communicate the requirements to the Indian manager.
My manager has been assessing the quality of their work to present to our CTO whose initiative was to increase our offshoring in India. Does anyone have a good way to measure the the value of a software developer which includes factors such as cultural differences and communication problems?
I agree, spend on professional quality lenses for quality. You'll save even more time (time = $) by not having to edit the final products in PS/GIMP (we're still a Linux geek community right?).
Advantages over film SLR:
1) Running Cost Effectiveness
Fixed costs (purchasing the digital camera body, memory card, and printer vs. purchasing film camera body, developing tools, scanner) will be different, but the total costs of creating a final print for film SLRs will soon exceed your cost total for the digital SLR because the film SLR has a higher running cost.
You'll want to take pictures of everything and setup your own tests to improve. It's essential to test your lenses as well to make sure that you didn't get a defective copy.
Many of your film shots you will regret having developed whereas taking a digital shot will allow you to conveniently preview them on your computer before deciding to make a print out of it.
The cost of a decent dSLR body like the Canon 10D or crippled Canon 300D will run you between $750-1300 (non-gray market) whereas the film equivalent Canon EOS bodies cost around $100-300. The lenses cost the same since you can use them on either digital or film body...
2) Instant Development/Feedback
With digital, you can view the histogram immediately after taking the shot to see if you overexposed, underexposed, or blew the highlights. You can also view the picture to see if you framed the shot properly, and most importantly, chicks (or whatever gender-orientation you may prefer) dig it when you show them the shot you just took of them.
Time is money, so I'd rather save a lot of time than a little bit of money.
3) High resale value
Check eBay for used prices on dSLRs. The ones that still function are very close to the price of a new one. Most film SLRs don't retain their value quite as well.
4) Limitations
Limitations of digital photography will probably cause you to encounter more issues in which you will need to be careful about. It is advantageous to learn about these in advance. For example, blown highlights is a common problem in digital photography. You will learn methods of avoiding blown highlights and become particularly conscious about it, while film photographers mostly ignore the possibility.
This being said, I would recommend the Canon 10D ($1300) and 28-135mm IS lens ($400) to start with. It's a great combination You can judge for yourself if you made the right decision, and if not, you could sell off the equipment for close to the price you paid for it.
I would also recommend the site dpreview.com -- the forums are especially helpful for getting others' opinions.