What Kerry says, essentially, is "I AM GOING TO TAX THE AMERICAN COMPANIES SO THAT THEY CAN'T OPERATE AT A PROFIT ANYMORE, SO THAT THE JAPS WILL WIN THE COMPETITION !"
The Freedom House index of media freedom shows the countries with the most media freedom are (in order): Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Andorra, Monaco and then USA.
All the top countries are in... Europe.
In any case, presumably you'd be the first to applaud Germany if they allowed complete freedom to spout Nazi propaganda, anti-semitism, racism, eastward imperialism, anti-Catholic screeds, state-sponsored prostitution, white supremacy and all the other rabid nonsense that happened before? Never mind that Europe suffered dreadfully as a result and would be horrified if Germany allowed such 'freedom'...
In my experience, a good technical PM must understand the development process intimately.
About the only way to get this experience is to have gone through the experience of development and design yourself. But those skills are being outsourced, the skill base is leaking, a whole industry is gradually being shifted to Asia...
The vast majority of our politicians in thrusting go-ahead 21st century Britain do not read emails. That's why we have FaxYourMp site which is marginally less ignored. You can always write to your MP but this too is often ignored. Finally, you can try to get to your MP's surgery and make your point personally. Usually, though, these are for local problems and a complicated discussion on software patents or GM food will not be entertained.
My own MP, Oona King has studiously ignored every communication I have sent, not even an acknowledgement have I received. So I write to the relevant ministers or MPs known to have an interest (Tam Dalyell is good for technical stuff although he retires at the next election unfortunately).
Can't remember exactly, it was a set of initials that meant something, they were based in Rotterdam and did not have a Web site (make of that what you will...).
The Senate being elected is not like the EU Commission which is unelected. The members of the Commission get away with rampant corruption, sack whistleblowers and could (theoretically) keep the job for life. They are political appointees of the government at the time but they do not necessarily change when the government changes. They are not responsible to the electorate, only the small coterie of a cabinet.
The EU Commission is not elected and ignores the EU Parliament. The only viable way is to get your country's government to agree with you and they then tell their commissioner (if they have any sense of duty, which is questionable). Shouldn't be too hard to get the majority of 25 wildly different governments to see sense... and opposing big spending lobbyists who generously oil a massively corrupt bureaucracy should be child's play as well.
You could try this EuroParl or write to your MEP (if they bother to attend). I've found the Greens are the most responsive by far. But writing to your MEP is moot as the EU Commission is appointed and generally snootily ignores the EU Parliament. Witness the software patent recommendations from the EU Parliament. The Irish (as the rotating presidency at the time) just threw it all away! The Commission utterly ignored any representation with which they (or at least the biggest spending lobbyists) did not agree.
The European Commission is not elected. It is a body of (now since enlargement, I believe) of 25 good and highly trustworthy people (eg: Edith Cresson) who decide the laws of some 400+ million people. We don't get a say...
Several years ago, I was up for an interview with a company in Holland who had already got a government (not EU) grant to start Internet snooping which they were intending to extend to SMS and eventually voice.
And a lot of snooping already happens in the UK, plus we have more CCTV watching our every move than any other country in the world. This has, of course, dramatically reduced the amount of crime and petty crime we see and we must now be the most pleasant and safest country in the world in which to bring up children. It's getting so good, we will soon be emptying our prisons - which I predict will become quaint tourist destinations at which outsourced Asian tourists can wonder. We live in Arcadia!
Oh joy, oh joy that we should have more snooping to make our lives so much better! We should do away with envelopes or sealed packages and ban curtains or blinds and have web cams in every room (discreetly pointed away from the toilet perhaps).
We could, at last, realise the communist utopia of living like a termite colony. And look how efficient they are! The future beckons comrades, embrace, embrace!!
You've missed my point. 1 Even if tech. jobs were paid at subsistence rates in the West, they would still be way over what is paid in India. 2 It's a lot easier to move service based jobs offshore and with a skill based industry that comprises (possibly) up to 15% of the economy, offshoring can (and probably will) have a very adverse long term effect.
Having said that, I don't think you can just make offshoring illegal and I don't know what the answer might be...
Because it's not a manufacturing industry. Building a car or a suit is a repetitive process that can be aided with robots. Building a VB app is not the same thing at all. Once one is built, that's it, move onto the next. It's a completely different skill. And S/W dev. is an industry that needs constant newcomers to learn the trade.
But outsourcing sends a signal that your job is not at all secure, so no newcomers (this is already happening in the UK). The industry becomes de-skilled and you end up with no industry at all. As the IT industry comprises up to 15% of an advanced economy, you are effectively emasculating that economy. I worry about the long term effects...
We didn't price ourselves out of the market. Even a subsistence wage in the West is a substantial wage in general in India. The cost of living in the West causes me to demand a lot more than my Indian counterpart. Of course, one way to compete is to force the cost of living right down by not providing a decent infrastructure, housing, medical services, retirement homes etc.etc.
Then I could easily reduce my income as my taxes would be a lot lower and I could step over the people sleeping on the pavement (as I have had to do in Mumbai) happy that at least I can live reasonably whilst the poor can fend for themselves...
Software development is not the same as manufacturing. Copying and production of software onto CDs is the same as manufacturing. New ideas, design and prototyping for new cars, routers, trainers (which have similar aspects to software development) are not outsourced. Why is software development treated so differently?
On the other hand, accountancy could easily be outsourced but I don't see this happening much, because they run the show generally...
Simple, try to keep certain core industries and research in the country, and do moderate outsourcing which opens the doors for the wealth of everybody. But for heavens sake, keep some industries and research in the country or at least in the monetary zone.
Not so simple, I suspect. Who do you stop from outsourcing? Specific industries or govt. departments only? By amount? Since the bulk of IT growth in the last couple of years in the UK has been from govt. IT contracts, I can't see the govt. deciding to pay extra by preventing companies from outsourcing. Restricting by amount would simply be worked around by splitting projects.
Another problem with outsourcing is that it does not send a positive signal to new recruits. Later, if and when an IT boom starts, wage inflation then rockets because there's not enough 'spare' resource left. Companies are then forced to outsource from a resource and cost point of view. The initial costs of setting up outsourcing can be high, so once the cost benefits accrue, companies will not eagerly drop the process.
But don't ask me what the solution might be. Perhaps this report might give us some answers.
There's been discussion before on this subject which affects us here in the UK too.
I maintain the major problem is gradual de-skilling. If potential software engineers simply see that their future jobs are likely to go offshore, they will not go into the profession. Software is still a somewhat apprentice based profession in that you usually require some coding skills before becoming team leaders or designers and then development managers and CIOs or CTOs.
If you are pulling away base support in the profession, then de-skilling will gradually move up the ladder. More jobs,more high-powered jobs will move offshore until wage parity ensues. By then, it's too late, corporates will have followed the skill base. An industry responsible for (a rough guess) 15% of Western economies will have moved elsewhere.
And you can't compare the software industry to manufacturing. Software is not manufactured and, so far as I can see, will not be manufactured for at last 25-30 years. But guess which countries will reap the benefit of writing the code manufacturing software?
Not quite true. It doesn't matter if you're in Holland, Switzerland, Belgium or wherever the rules have been relaxed - growing, importing, supplying, buying etc. strictly speaking are still illegal or very restricted, it's just that the authorities turn a conveniently blind eye to the illegal activities provided they are small enough operations. In Switzerland, for example, in the German areas of the country (Zurich etc.), it is quite normal to see people sitting on public stairs openly smoking. In Holland, this can be frowned upon (especially outside Amsterdam), coffee shops are the place to be, not openly public spaces. On the other hand, coffee shops in Switzerland are far less open about their presence than in Holland but again strictly speaking, in Switzerland, it never was illegal to grow industrial quantities of weed whereas selling the product for smoking and possession is... (although some Cantons might have relaxed the laws lately, I haven't kept up with changes).
Slashdot Mirror
The rich employ clever tax lawyers to avoid paying alot of tax. Even Bush admits it: The rich hire lawyers and accountants so that the middle class gets stuck with the bill.
Sweden has dramtically changed since the 60s & 70s. In the index of economic freedom, Sweden comes =22 of 123 countries, the same level as Taiwan.
What Kerry says, essentially, is "I AM GOING TO TAX THE AMERICAN COMPANIES SO THAT THEY CAN'T OPERATE AT A PROFIT ANYMORE, SO THAT THE JAPS WILL WIN THE COMPETITION !"
You mean he might actually get them to pay some taxes? 82 Big U.S. Corporations Paid No Tax in One or More Bush Years.
"School administrators will provide a list of students, with their ages ..."
Surely, it will be with their birth date. In any case, how is this administered? Can we guarantee no administrator will be a paedophile?
The Freedom House index of media freedom shows the countries with the most media freedom are (in order): Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Andorra, Monaco and then USA.
... Europe.
All the top countries are in
In any case, presumably you'd be the first to applaud Germany if they allowed complete freedom to spout Nazi propaganda, anti-semitism, racism, eastward imperialism, anti-Catholic screeds, state-sponsored prostitution, white supremacy and all the other rabid nonsense that happened before? Never mind that Europe suffered dreadfully as a result and would be horrified if Germany allowed such 'freedom'...
In my experience, a good technical PM must understand the development process intimately.
About the only way to get this experience is to have gone through the experience of development and design yourself. But those skills are being outsourced, the skill base is leaking, a whole industry is gradually being shifted to Asia...
Well, if lying openly in public is the norm for the current administration, then Bo'R (a bore however you spell it), is a prime candidate.
this whole 186,000 miles per second thing
/.-ers not in the US...
300,000km/s for those
The vast majority of our politicians in thrusting go-ahead 21st century Britain do not read emails. That's why we have FaxYourMp site which is marginally less ignored. You can always write to your MP but this too is often ignored. Finally, you can try to get to your MP's surgery and make your point personally. Usually, though, these are for local problems and a complicated discussion on software patents or GM food will not be entertained.
My own MP, Oona King has studiously ignored every communication I have sent, not even an acknowledgement have I received. So I write to the relevant ministers or MPs known to have an interest (Tam Dalyell is good for technical stuff although he retires at the next election unfortunately).
Can't remember exactly, it was a set of initials that meant something, they were based in Rotterdam and did not have a Web site (make of that what you will...).
The Senate being elected is not like the EU Commission which is unelected. The members of the Commission get away with rampant corruption, sack whistleblowers and could (theoretically) keep the job for life. They are political appointees of the government at the time but they do not necessarily change when the government changes. They are not responsible to the electorate, only the small coterie of a cabinet.
The EU Commission is not elected and ignores the EU Parliament. The only viable way is to get your country's government to agree with you and they then tell their commissioner (if they have any sense of duty, which is questionable). Shouldn't be too hard to get the majority of 25 wildly different governments to see sense... and opposing big spending lobbyists who generously oil a massively corrupt bureaucracy should be child's play as well.
You could try this EuroParl or write to your MEP (if they bother to attend). I've found the Greens are the most responsive by far. But writing to your MEP is moot as the EU Commission is appointed and generally snootily ignores the EU Parliament. Witness the software patent recommendations from the EU Parliament. The Irish (as the rotating presidency at the time) just threw it all away! The Commission utterly ignored any representation with which they (or at least the biggest spending lobbyists) did not agree.
The European Commission is not elected. It is a body of (now since enlargement, I believe) of 25 good and highly trustworthy people (eg: Edith Cresson) who decide the laws of some 400+ million people. We don't get a say...
Several years ago, I was up for an interview with a company in Holland who had already got a government (not EU) grant to start Internet snooping which they were intending to extend to SMS and eventually voice.
And a lot of snooping already happens in the UK, plus we have more CCTV watching our every move than any other country in the world. This has, of course, dramatically reduced the amount of crime and petty crime we see and we must now be the most pleasant and safest country in the world in which to bring up children. It's getting so good, we will soon be emptying our prisons - which I predict will become quaint tourist destinations at which outsourced Asian tourists can wonder. We live in Arcadia!
Oh joy, oh joy that we should have more snooping to make our lives so much better! We should do away with envelopes or sealed packages and ban curtains or blinds and have web cams in every room (discreetly pointed away from the toilet perhaps).
We could, at last, realise the communist utopia of living like a termite colony. And look how efficient they are! The future beckons comrades, embrace, embrace!!
You've missed my point. 1 Even if tech. jobs were paid at subsistence rates in the West, they would still be way over what is paid in India. 2 It's a lot easier to move service based jobs offshore and with a skill based industry that comprises (possibly) up to 15% of the economy, offshoring can (and probably will) have a very adverse long term effect.
Having said that, I don't think you can just make offshoring illegal and I don't know what the answer might be...
Why is IT supposed to be special?
Because it's not a manufacturing industry. Building a car or a suit is a repetitive process that can be aided with robots. Building a VB app is not the same thing at all. Once one is built, that's it, move onto the next. It's a completely different skill. And S/W dev. is an industry that needs constant newcomers to learn the trade.
But outsourcing sends a signal that your job is not at all secure, so no newcomers (this is already happening in the UK). The industry becomes de-skilled and you end up with no industry at all. As the IT industry comprises up to 15% of an advanced economy, you are effectively emasculating that economy. I worry about the long term effects...
We didn't price ourselves out of the market. Even a subsistence wage in the West is a substantial wage in general in India. The cost of living in the West causes me to demand a lot more than my Indian counterpart. Of course, one way to compete is to force the cost of living right down by not providing a decent infrastructure, housing, medical services, retirement homes etc.etc.
Then I could easily reduce my income as my taxes would be a lot lower and I could step over the people sleeping on the pavement (as I have had to do in Mumbai) happy that at least I can live reasonably whilst the poor can fend for themselves...
Software development is not the same as manufacturing. Copying and production of software onto CDs is the same as manufacturing. New ideas, design and prototyping for new cars, routers, trainers (which have similar aspects to software development) are not outsourced. Why is software development treated so differently?
On the other hand, accountancy could easily be outsourced but I don't see this happening much, because they run the show generally...
What In-Jinns? The outsourcing to which I was referring was to Poland and the Ukraine...
Simple, try to keep certain core industries and research in the country, and do moderate outsourcing which opens the doors for the wealth of everybody. But for heavens sake, keep some industries and research in the country or at least in the monetary zone.
Not so simple, I suspect. Who do you stop from outsourcing? Specific industries or govt. departments only? By amount? Since the bulk of IT growth in the last couple of years in the UK has been from govt. IT contracts, I can't see the govt. deciding to pay extra by preventing companies from outsourcing. Restricting by amount would simply be worked around by splitting projects.
Another problem with outsourcing is that it does not send a positive signal to new recruits. Later, if and when an IT boom starts, wage inflation then rockets because there's not enough 'spare' resource left. Companies are then forced to outsource from a resource and cost point of view. The initial costs of setting up outsourcing can be high, so once the cost benefits accrue, companies will not eagerly drop the process.
But don't ask me what the solution might be. Perhaps this report might give us some answers.
Really, ten or twenty execs spending has such an enormous trickle down effect? I don't think so...
There's been discussion before on this subject which affects us here in the UK too.
I maintain the major problem is gradual de-skilling. If potential software engineers simply see that their future jobs are likely to go offshore, they will not go into the profession. Software is still a somewhat apprentice based profession in that you usually require some coding skills before becoming team leaders or designers and then development managers and CIOs or CTOs.
If you are pulling away base support in the profession, then de-skilling will gradually move up the ladder. More jobs,more high-powered jobs will move offshore until wage parity ensues. By then, it's too late, corporates will have followed the skill base. An industry responsible for (a rough guess) 15% of Western economies will have moved elsewhere.
And you can't compare the software industry to manufacturing. Software is not manufactured and, so far as I can see, will not be manufactured for at last 25-30 years. But guess which countries will reap the benefit of writing the code manufacturing software?
...'successful' correctly helps a lot.
Not quite true. It doesn't matter if you're in Holland, Switzerland, Belgium or wherever the rules have been relaxed - growing, importing, supplying, buying etc. strictly speaking are still illegal or very restricted, it's just that the authorities turn a conveniently blind eye to the illegal activities provided they are small enough operations. In Switzerland, for example, in the German areas of the country (Zurich etc.), it is quite normal to see people sitting on public stairs openly smoking. In Holland, this can be frowned upon (especially outside Amsterdam), coffee shops are the place to be, not openly public spaces. On the other hand, coffee shops in Switzerland are far less open about their presence than in Holland but again strictly speaking, in Switzerland, it never was illegal to grow industrial quantities of weed whereas selling the product for smoking and possession is... (although some Cantons might have relaxed the laws lately, I haven't kept up with changes).