Awesome job with the compilation of a large list of Live Linux distros. However, I think you're missing out on a primary function: porn. I mean, c'mon, having a live CD means no history to keep on hard disk!
The DENIM Project might be something you could look into. It is a tool for web page and UI design but it should be easily adaptable for your needs (especially with its export to HTML). You could also try Visual Thought though it is no longer developing nor supported (but is more tailored to what you're describing than DENIM).
I can't count the occasions which I'm walking down a noisy street (hence no voice recognition) and dying to jot down my stream of consciousness (without using two hands for a stylus and walking in front of a bus)? I would kill for something like this!"
Wouldn't a digital recorder built into a pen or something like a mobile phone with voice recorder built in be much better for this task?
As for the device itself, the above usage of voice brings about what I think is the best interface and that's voice. If you only have one hand to type with (and not because of a disability), it's probably best to use voice to do so. It will be hard to type faster with just one hand than the speed at which you can speak. Improvement of our existing speech-to-text technologies may be required.
I think this is the wrong attitude. Just because something is given analysis does not mean that it must be enjoyed at an academic level. There are plenty of academic papers on Tolkien's novels, but that doesn't prevent someone from picking up his books and reading it for the pure pleasure of doing so. The same can be said of video games.
Plus, not all books that are required reading for analysis are bad even post-analysis. For example, I really enjoyed reading The Great Gatsby and the literary analysis of it only helped me increase my understanding and joy of reading it. This too can apply to video games. I wrote a research paper on Tomb Raider and the issues of gender definition and gender-roles that it raises through androgyny. That doesn't mean I just analyze the game. I also enjoy playing it and kicking ass.
Games vary with tastes just like books. If I were asked to analyze Of Mice and Men I would gladly agree. But ask me to analyze To the Lighthouse and I'd much rather hear nails grinding on a chalkboard. Similarly, ask me to analyze Max Payne and I'd definitely have no problem. But ask me to analyze Daikatana and I'd smash the monitor's screen in with my boom stick. Video games can be enjoyed on many levels (yes, that's a pun).
Of course overanalysis is possible in the study of videogames as art, but that's not really important. First, video games are nearing the point where, in a few years, it can begin to be considered an art form in the mainstream. However, we're not quite at that point yet so there's no real point in worrying about overanalysis. Second, any art can be overanalyzed so that's really not a concern. You could easily apply lots of analysis for a novel, painting, etc. and just go overboard.
I recently took a course on the history of video games and in the process, we explored a lot of the concept of games as art and I really think that it's the right path to take. When film first started out, it was not considered art and took a good few decades to be considered more than just entertainment. I think the same is true of video games and its transition to both art and entertainment is happening today.
The big concern that I see is convincing the mainstream audience that video games can be an art. Whereas film was widely accessible to all audiences, video games tend to cater to a specific market. The typical gamer is a 28-year-old male and games will need to broaden their base so that other groups (especially women and older generations) can come to appreciate them as an art. Will that happen in the near future? I think so but it's not looking too good when games, like Tomb Raider, that really challenge gender roles fall flat in sales.
... before everyone starts bashing on outsourcing, let's not forget that this problem isn't a result of outsourcing, but an unscrupulous programmer. This could just as well happen on usenet with someone asking for programming advice from any company. It is the programmer who was not careful with data and the fault is on his side (and possibly the company who gave him the data and did not give him specific instructions for care of the data).
It's pointless to teach assembly as a method of creating "star programmers" -- all you'd do is teach people how to write a for-loop but in ten lines instead of three (in a higher level language). The real benefit that people get from being good assembly programmers is understanding the inherent problems/benefits of a certain processor architecture and that's what lets them generate good, optimized code for the platform they are engineering for. Teaching assembly may provide some insight into that but all it really does is teach a new language. Teaching the architecture would give the student real appreciation of what's going on and how to build efficient code. Because think about it: assembly only describes what the architecture is capable of doing.
Lots of people have given suggestions over the types of hardware to buy or other places to invest your $7000. Why not just reply to one of the many, many friendly people from Nigeria and use your $7000 as a transaction fee for a transfer of funds. You'll receive a good 30% of a $50 million transfer in funds, which is $15 million. It's a no-brainer!
While this is true and I definitely agree with your sentiments, it should be noted that players at the GM level spend a considerable amount of time in preparation for their specific opponents. They spend countless hours analyzing the games of the person that they will be playing tomorrow. In this sense, a computer will and already is better facilitated to analyzing styles/methods/openings/etc. to play against a human than any human being is capable of. A computer could easily go through every game someone has ever played and at least know which opening(s) to present and which variations based on statistics. While a human might have some intuition, the computer should have a more comprehensive view of this.
Already games have appeared for linux such as ut2k3 and Neverwinter Nights. More and more people see Linux as a viable platform for games (e.g. Doom 3). Games on linux do not have to be OSS nor be based on the OSS model. Just because most linux apps have OSS roots doesn't mean everything on the system itself has to be. There aren't going to be OSS movies any time soon, but that doesn't mean people aren't going to play DVDs on their linux boxes (DeCSS being a whole different topic of course).
If they're anti-screw, does that make them pro-nut? But joking aside, I definitely agree with you. How is it that Apple, one of the big innovators in hardware designs and interfaces, was unable to provide easy battery access for its iPods? Of course, like you said, it's most overreaction and not that much of a problem, but you'd think that they'd make it easy on the consumer. The miPod I think will really show how much of an impact iPods have had on the market for portable music players.
That's a very good question. How can we help the people in China have better access to information on the Internet? But I think an equally important question that no one seems to have asked yet is, "Are the people of China ready for a democratic, capitalistic system?"
Don't get me wrong here, I am a full supporter of the individual and the democratic system, but taking a look at the Chinese governments over the past years, and if you look at the Chinese cultural mindset, I might be inclined to say that China isn't quite ready for a fully democratic system in the way that we imagine it. I'm Chinese and I would love nothing more than to see a lot of the people enjoy the same freedoms (speech, press, assocation, etc.) that we do here in the US. However, the Chinese mentality has always been of subservience and obedience. Hierarchy has been one of the fundamental institutions in our way of life. Even today, families form the nuclear unit, but a hierarchy exists spanning generations (the father makes the decisions, the grandfather has an even greater influence, etc.). And during the entire period before the Revolution of 1911, China was governed in a feudal manner (emporer->governors->officials->etc.) Going from what is a bureaucracy of pseudo-feudalism and the control of an oligarchy with certain members having more power than others (e.g. Jiang and the CCP) to a system where everyone can vote and elect officials would be a huge transition that I think most of China will not be able to handle.
Literacy in China is decent, but education in the countryside is poor. People in the countryside, I feel, are not quite ready to take the big leap. For years, decisions have been made for them. I think collectivization is a good example of how the Communist party has helped the poor, less educated earn better livings for themselves. In the early 1950s, after the Nationalists had fled the country, China implemented mass collectivization of farms and actually increased productivity levels dramatically. It was only the Great Leap Forward and Mao's crazed vision that ruined the whole system. When farms decollectivized, farmers actually saw a decline in farming output. Similarly, I think that the central planning government has many advantages for helping redevelop the countryside and reeducate the people to help get them ready for a democratic system. They just aren't ready yet.
Of course, I'm not an expert in the politics of China and I'm working off of what I have experienced living there and studying the history of the nation. I do feel that at this point, China is similar (but not the same) to the Taiwan of the late 1980s. It is emerging as a huge source of labor and production, but it is under a government which is not efficient nor understanding of human rights. In Taiwan, the effects were less dramatic under a dictatorship of the Nationalist party, but the effects were there: secret police, one-candidate elections, no freedom of speech, etc. China is in a similar position, but the relative faults are exarcerbated by the size of the country and the bureauracracy involved. But, I think because of these similarities, China has a lot to learn about the way that Taiwan has turned out. After its first true, free election just a few years ago (and its second one coming up), Taiwan has turned into a political nightmare. Political parties are self-destructing, backstabbing occurs on a daily basis, fights break out in the Legislature, etc. etc. This is from a country that was "democratic" since the 1970s and has just recently actually become so. Now, imagine that happening in China going from a communist system to something completely different. The political system could very well implode even more so than Taiwan's political system has. Taiwan is badly off, but it can slowly right its course. Were China to implode, could it ever regain any footing again? Is China ready for democracy?
Ah yes, the caste system. Point well taken. However, some might say that at the rate the US is going, we too will have a group of very very rich, and some very very poor, with little or no in between. India does seem to have an emerging middle class. (I'm just playing devil's advocate here).
But, otoh, as you mentioned, the caste system in India is pretty oppressive and I will agree that the ethical issues with exporting jobs to India is a sound reason for the protection of jobs in the US.
Unfortunately, I will have to flip masks once again and go with this: yes, the caste system in India is terrible, but with American companies going in, perhaps they can help bring new trends of thought with them in terms of class oppression, etc. I've spent considerable time in China and I feel that there, the US companies along with investments from Taiwan, have helped create a middle and upper middle class where before, there were only the upper class and the poor. This is a great change for the coastal cities of China in bringing about both social and economic reform and I can only hope that development moves more and more inland for China as well as continued development on the coast. We can only hope similarly of India.
First, I want to address your initial point that "EVERYTHING can be done cheaper elsewhere." It may be true that everything can be done cheaper elsewhere and for many, many countries, this is their reality. As I mentioned before, it's all about comparative advantage. If things were judged by absolute advantage, that is, whoever makes it for cheaper makes it and no one else does, then I'd say a lot of the world would be screwed over. But that's not what happens.
This is a quick refresher in Comparative vs. Absolute advantage (see any introductory economics text book, including Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith)
Pretend there are only two goods in the world: cars and lines of code. Let's say that in the US, we can produce 500 cars per hour and 1000 lines of code per hour. Meanwhile, in India, they can produce 300 cars and 900 lines of code per hour. Looks like we're kicking their ass on both fronts right? That's absolute advantage. So, in the US, for every car we produce, it 'costs' us 2 lines of code. In India, it 'costs' them 3 lines of code for every car. Flip it around, and it costs 1/3 of a car to generate a line of code in India versus 1/2 a line of code in the US. You can see then, that India has a comparative advantage in producing code (1/3 of a car is cheaper than 1/2 of a car) whereas the US has a comparative advantage in producing cars (2 lines is cheaper than 3 lines for a car). Woah... so if the two countries were to trade... say 2.5 lines of code per car, then both countries would benefit. India gets a car for cheaper than its 3 lines of code, and the US gets 2.5 lines of code instead of the 2 it would have produced. So, despite the US having absolute advantage on both fronts, it still makes more sense to buy code from India than to make it at home.
Sure, the world economy has tons of goods and tons of countries, but in principle, that's how it works. And that's how Everyone Wins. Of course, if you looked at that example, then you would realize that in order to produce more cars to trade for code, you have to retrain your coders. Which is why I say that in the short run, transitioning current programmers and software engineers to related, albeit slightly different fields in computer engineering will be hard on everyone. But, at the same time, I believe in the principles of the invisible hand guiding the market and free trade and I feel that it will be better for both countries in the long run.
I can't agree that offshoring is "life destroying" as you coin it. Hopefully you will realize that what you study in college is not necessarily the means to an end nor is it the end of a journey or anything like that. Sure, your major can be very influential in the first or even second job that you work at, but afterward, it's all about your accomplishments and track record. You don't spend ten years doing a computer science Ph.D. so that someone in India takes your programming job, anyway. You'd be doing research with a Ph.D where, AFAIK, is still a prevalent and growing field. Now, let's say you spent only four years and you expected to come out a programmer/software engineer. In four years, sure, you've invested a lot into a degree in Computer Science, but there are many applications of the tools and thinking skills that you've acquired that aren't part of the software development jobs being offshored to India.
I do agree that the reciprocity is not there in terms of education and I can see a valid point in denying Indians the visas to come study in the US until both sides decide to allow the free flow of students. However, it's important for both countries to work something out since the flow of education and knowledge is beneficial to everyone.
Why not just hire a flock of interns in the US? It'd be just as good, and the accent wouldn't be there.
It's not the accent that's a problem since most of the outsourcing from what I've heard is mostly coding jobs and speaking isn't an integral part of that job process for them. Yes, it might be harder to communicate, but all ideas are commutable through e-mail as opposed to if you were to offshore all tech support jobs in which case the accent might be a barrier since their job function will be dependent on their language skills.
Now, looking past the accent, let's look at the experience skillset between an intern in the US and a cheap Indian programmer. An intern would basically be a college undergrad or graduate student with a limited two or three years at most (total) experience in the field. Multiply this skill by a dozen and you're not getting that much. On the other hand, if you were to contract with an Indian development firm, you would be getting a dozen coders who have worked together before on past projects in a professional environment for the past few years. Oh, and they also happen to have B.S. degrees from some of the best universities in India. Yes, you might say that India's educational system is not on par with the US's, but actually, some of the universities in India are better academically not to mention more selective than even some of the top US universities.
Not that it is better. Not that it is equal. Just that it is cheaper.
If it wasn't delivering acceptable results such that the final product were comparable to US products, would you really think that big corporations would be willing to send these important jobs overseas? We're talking about building software that power companies. The Chinese can do just as well as India on this regard; that is, building software that is comparable in quality to that written in the US, but they have an additional language barrier to deal with and so are not quite at the forefront of the offshoring. Give China a few more years and when their number of English speaking computer professionals increase, you'll start to see India lose jobs to China just as the US is losing jobs to India. But, just as with the US, it will end up being the better good for the global economy, as India will be able to specialize even further. However, in this case, the benefits to India when China starts taking its programmer jobs maybe not be as great as the benefits to the US right now with India taking our programming jobs because India has had less time to transition and has a more unstable economy so transitions are much harder on the people there.
I know I'm going to make some enemies with this post, but I seriously urge you all, who think that it's bad that jobs are going to India, to consider the benefits of offshoring IT jobs.
By having cheaper labor do the same work and produce equally good or better products and services is a good thing. Remember your college economics class? Comparative Advantange? It's important for a nation's economy to do what it does best. Just as the poster asked whether or not she should get into the computer science field, I would say, if you like it and you think you will be better at it than medicine, then by all means, go for it.
By having people do what they do best, it allows for specializiation and the way corporations work the way they do today. Specialization allows more output from the same input by increasing the productivity of workers. Similarly, specialization applies to the global level and when nations specialize in one service or good, that is better for the entire global economy. Just think back to the 70s and 80s when the auto industry was screaming bloody murder over the import of cheaper and better made Japanese cars. Americans learned to respond to that. Similarly, the currently shrinking job market in the IT field is not something to be afraid of. There are plenty of problems that require solving in the technological sciences involving computers that currently displaced employees can help solve and this is an overall benefit to global society. Yes, there will be a short-run hard hit to people at home, but allowing free trade is a good thing. And in this case, it's the free trade of jobs in the computer industry. But remember, in the long run, it's in the best interest of everyone.
The article seems to highly stress the practical application of this new form of matter. Doesn't this seem too optimistic or unrealistic? If it's a new form of matter, surely there must be properties which even researchers are unsure about. What are the safety and health issues involved in using this in 'practical applications'?
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Awesome job with the compilation of a large list of Live Linux distros. However, I think you're missing out on a primary function: porn. I mean, c'mon, having a live CD means no history to keep on hard disk!
The DENIM Project might be something you could look into. It is a tool for web page and UI design but it should be easily adaptable for your needs (especially with its export to HTML). You could also try Visual Thought though it is no longer developing nor supported (but is more tailored to what you're describing than DENIM).
I can't count the occasions which I'm walking down a noisy street (hence no voice recognition) and dying to jot down my stream of consciousness (without using two hands for a stylus and walking in front of a bus)? I would kill for something like this!"
Wouldn't a digital recorder built into a pen or something like a mobile phone with voice recorder built in be much better for this task?
As for the device itself, the above usage of voice brings about what I think is the best interface and that's voice. If you only have one hand to type with (and not because of a disability), it's probably best to use voice to do so. It will be hard to type faster with just one hand than the speed at which you can speak. Improvement of our existing speech-to-text technologies may be required.
He's definitely going to need a job to pay for the excess bandwidth generated by the /. effect.
I think this is the wrong attitude. Just because something is given analysis does not mean that it must be enjoyed at an academic level. There are plenty of academic papers on Tolkien's novels, but that doesn't prevent someone from picking up his books and reading it for the pure pleasure of doing so. The same can be said of video games.
Plus, not all books that are required reading for analysis are bad even post-analysis. For example, I really enjoyed reading The Great Gatsby and the literary analysis of it only helped me increase my understanding and joy of reading it. This too can apply to video games. I wrote a research paper on Tomb Raider and the issues of gender definition and gender-roles that it raises through androgyny. That doesn't mean I just analyze the game. I also enjoy playing it and kicking ass.
Games vary with tastes just like books. If I were asked to analyze Of Mice and Men I would gladly agree. But ask me to analyze To the Lighthouse and I'd much rather hear nails grinding on a chalkboard. Similarly, ask me to analyze Max Payne and I'd definitely have no problem. But ask me to analyze Daikatana and I'd smash the monitor's screen in with my boom stick. Video games can be enjoyed on many levels (yes, that's a pun).
Of course overanalysis is possible in the study of videogames as art, but that's not really important. First, video games are nearing the point where, in a few years, it can begin to be considered an art form in the mainstream. However, we're not quite at that point yet so there's no real point in worrying about overanalysis. Second, any art can be overanalyzed so that's really not a concern. You could easily apply lots of analysis for a novel, painting, etc. and just go overboard.
I recently took a course on the history of video games and in the process, we explored a lot of the concept of games as art and I really think that it's the right path to take. When film first started out, it was not considered art and took a good few decades to be considered more than just entertainment. I think the same is true of video games and its transition to both art and entertainment is happening today.
The big concern that I see is convincing the mainstream audience that video games can be an art. Whereas film was widely accessible to all audiences, video games tend to cater to a specific market. The typical gamer is a 28-year-old male and games will need to broaden their base so that other groups (especially women and older generations) can come to appreciate them as an art. Will that happen in the near future? I think so but it's not looking too good when games, like Tomb Raider, that really challenge gender roles fall flat in sales.
You mean to say that your friend is a movie called "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels"?
You have a very high user ID. You don't have the minerals to tell us what to do.
And you have no user ID. You don't have the minerals to challenge me.
I'm just presenting my opinion and suggesting how people might approach teaching CS. I don't tell you what to do.
It's pointless to teach assembly as a method of creating "star programmers" -- all you'd do is teach people how to write a for-loop but in ten lines instead of three (in a higher level language). The real benefit that people get from being good assembly programmers is understanding the inherent problems/benefits of a certain processor architecture and that's what lets them generate good, optimized code for the platform they are engineering for. Teaching assembly may provide some insight into that but all it really does is teach a new language. Teaching the architecture would give the student real appreciation of what's going on and how to build efficient code. Because think about it: assembly only describes what the architecture is capable of doing.
Lots of people have given suggestions over the types of hardware to buy or other places to invest your $7000. Why not just reply to one of the many, many friendly people from Nigeria and use your $7000 as a transaction fee for a transfer of funds. You'll receive a good 30% of a $50 million transfer in funds, which is $15 million. It's a no-brainer!
No, that was the end which led to the draw by repetition.
You're missing the remainder of the game:
26.f5 gxf5 27.Bxf5 cxd5 28.Bxe6 Rxe6 29.Rxf7 Kxf7 30.Qh7+ Ke8 31.Qxh5+ Ke7 32.Qg5+ Ke8 33.Qh5+ Ke7 34.Qh7+ 1/2-1/2.
While this is true and I definitely agree with your sentiments, it should be noted that players at the GM level spend a considerable amount of time in preparation for their specific opponents. They spend countless hours analyzing the games of the person that they will be playing tomorrow. In this sense, a computer will and already is better facilitated to analyzing styles/methods/openings/etc. to play against a human than any human being is capable of. A computer could easily go through every game someone has ever played and at least know which opening(s) to present and which variations based on statistics. While a human might have some intuition, the computer should have a more comprehensive view of this.
Already games have appeared for linux such as ut2k3 and Neverwinter Nights. More and more people see Linux as a viable platform for games (e.g. Doom 3). Games on linux do not have to be OSS nor be based on the OSS model. Just because most linux apps have OSS roots doesn't mean everything on the system itself has to be. There aren't going to be OSS movies any time soon, but that doesn't mean people aren't going to play DVDs on their linux boxes (DeCSS being a whole different topic of course).
If they're anti-screw, does that make them pro-nut? But joking aside, I definitely agree with you. How is it that Apple, one of the big innovators in hardware designs and interfaces, was unable to provide easy battery access for its iPods? Of course, like you said, it's most overreaction and not that much of a problem, but you'd think that they'd make it easy on the consumer. The miPod I think will really show how much of an impact iPods have had on the market for portable music players.
As long as the battery is replaceable and doesn't blow up, I think I'd be content.
That's a very good question. How can we help the people in China have better access to information on the Internet? But I think an equally important question that no one seems to have asked yet is, "Are the people of China ready for a democratic, capitalistic system?"
Don't get me wrong here, I am a full supporter of the individual and the democratic system, but taking a look at the Chinese governments over the past years, and if you look at the Chinese cultural mindset, I might be inclined to say that China isn't quite ready for a fully democratic system in the way that we imagine it. I'm Chinese and I would love nothing more than to see a lot of the people enjoy the same freedoms (speech, press, assocation, etc.) that we do here in the US. However, the Chinese mentality has always been of subservience and obedience. Hierarchy has been one of the fundamental institutions in our way of life. Even today, families form the nuclear unit, but a hierarchy exists spanning generations (the father makes the decisions, the grandfather has an even greater influence, etc.). And during the entire period before the Revolution of 1911, China was governed in a feudal manner (emporer->governors->officials->etc.) Going from what is a bureaucracy of pseudo-feudalism and the control of an oligarchy with certain members having more power than others (e.g. Jiang and the CCP) to a system where everyone can vote and elect officials would be a huge transition that I think most of China will not be able to handle.Literacy in China is decent, but education in the countryside is poor. People in the countryside, I feel, are not quite ready to take the big leap. For years, decisions have been made for them. I think collectivization is a good example of how the Communist party has helped the poor, less educated earn better livings for themselves. In the early 1950s, after the Nationalists had fled the country, China implemented mass collectivization of farms and actually increased productivity levels dramatically. It was only the Great Leap Forward and Mao's crazed vision that ruined the whole system. When farms decollectivized, farmers actually saw a decline in farming output. Similarly, I think that the central planning government has many advantages for helping redevelop the countryside and reeducate the people to help get them ready for a democratic system. They just aren't ready yet.
Of course, I'm not an expert in the politics of China and I'm working off of what I have experienced living there and studying the history of the nation. I do feel that at this point, China is similar (but not the same) to the Taiwan of the late 1980s. It is emerging as a huge source of labor and production, but it is under a government which is not efficient nor understanding of human rights. In Taiwan, the effects were less dramatic under a dictatorship of the Nationalist party, but the effects were there: secret police, one-candidate elections, no freedom of speech, etc. China is in a similar position, but the relative faults are exarcerbated by the size of the country and the bureauracracy involved. But, I think because of these similarities, China has a lot to learn about the way that Taiwan has turned out. After its first true, free election just a few years ago (and its second one coming up), Taiwan has turned into a political nightmare. Political parties are self-destructing, backstabbing occurs on a daily basis, fights break out in the Legislature, etc. etc. This is from a country that was "democratic" since the 1970s and has just recently actually become so. Now, imagine that happening in China going from a communist system to something completely different. The political system could very well implode even more so than Taiwan's political system has. Taiwan is badly off, but it can slowly right its course. Were China to implode, could it ever regain any footing again? Is China ready for democracy?
China is in the WTO. If you had read the entirety of the link you posted, you might have also realized this fact.
And to think, that enough people got MikeRoweSoft.com confused with microsoft.com to warrant a security bulletin.
Ah yes, the caste system. Point well taken. However, some might say that at the rate the US is going, we too will have a group of very very rich, and some very very poor, with little or no in between. India does seem to have an emerging middle class. (I'm just playing devil's advocate here).
But, otoh, as you mentioned, the caste system in India is pretty oppressive and I will agree that the ethical issues with exporting jobs to India is a sound reason for the protection of jobs in the US.
Unfortunately, I will have to flip masks once again and go with this: yes, the caste system in India is terrible, but with American companies going in, perhaps they can help bring new trends of thought with them in terms of class oppression, etc. I've spent considerable time in China and I feel that there, the US companies along with investments from Taiwan, have helped create a middle and upper middle class where before, there were only the upper class and the poor. This is a great change for the coastal cities of China in bringing about both social and economic reform and I can only hope that development moves more and more inland for China as well as continued development on the coast. We can only hope similarly of India.
First, I want to address your initial point that "EVERYTHING can be done cheaper elsewhere." It may be true that everything can be done cheaper elsewhere and for many, many countries, this is their reality. As I mentioned before, it's all about comparative advantage. If things were judged by absolute advantage, that is, whoever makes it for cheaper makes it and no one else does, then I'd say a lot of the world would be screwed over. But that's not what happens.
This is a quick refresher in Comparative vs. Absolute advantage (see any introductory economics text book, including Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith)
Pretend there are only two goods in the world: cars and lines of code. Let's say that in the US, we can produce 500 cars per hour and 1000 lines of code per hour. Meanwhile, in India, they can produce 300 cars and 900 lines of code per hour. Looks like we're kicking their ass on both fronts right? That's absolute advantage. So, in the US, for every car we produce, it 'costs' us 2 lines of code. In India, it 'costs' them 3 lines of code for every car. Flip it around, and it costs 1/3 of a car to generate a line of code in India versus 1/2 a line of code in the US. You can see then, that India has a comparative advantage in producing code (1/3 of a car is cheaper than 1/2 of a car) whereas the US has a comparative advantage in producing cars (2 lines is cheaper than 3 lines for a car). Woah... so if the two countries were to trade... say 2.5 lines of code per car, then both countries would benefit. India gets a car for cheaper than its 3 lines of code, and the US gets 2.5 lines of code instead of the 2 it would have produced. So, despite the US having absolute advantage on both fronts, it still makes more sense to buy code from India than to make it at home.
Sure, the world economy has tons of goods and tons of countries, but in principle, that's how it works. And that's how Everyone Wins. Of course, if you looked at that example, then you would realize that in order to produce more cars to trade for code, you have to retrain your coders. Which is why I say that in the short run, transitioning current programmers and software engineers to related, albeit slightly different fields in computer engineering will be hard on everyone. But, at the same time, I believe in the principles of the invisible hand guiding the market and free trade and I feel that it will be better for both countries in the long run.
I can't agree that offshoring is "life destroying" as you coin it. Hopefully you will realize that what you study in college is not necessarily the means to an end nor is it the end of a journey or anything like that. Sure, your major can be very influential in the first or even second job that you work at, but afterward, it's all about your accomplishments and track record. You don't spend ten years doing a computer science Ph.D. so that someone in India takes your programming job, anyway. You'd be doing research with a Ph.D where, AFAIK, is still a prevalent and growing field. Now, let's say you spent only four years and you expected to come out a programmer/software engineer. In four years, sure, you've invested a lot into a degree in Computer Science, but there are many applications of the tools and thinking skills that you've acquired that aren't part of the software development jobs being offshored to India.
I do agree that the reciprocity is not there in terms of education and I can see a valid point in denying Indians the visas to come study in the US until both sides decide to allow the free flow of students. However, it's important for both countries to work something out since the flow of education and knowledge is beneficial to everyone.
Why not just hire a flock of interns in the US? It'd be just as good, and the accent wouldn't be there.
It's not the accent that's a problem since most of the outsourcing from what I've heard is mostly coding jobs and speaking isn't an integral part of that job process for them. Yes, it might be harder to communicate, but all ideas are commutable through e-mail as opposed to if you were to offshore all tech support jobs in which case the accent might be a barrier since their job function will be dependent on their language skills.
Now, looking past the accent, let's look at the experience skillset between an intern in the US and a cheap Indian programmer. An intern would basically be a college undergrad or graduate student with a limited two or three years at most (total) experience in the field. Multiply this skill by a dozen and you're not getting that much. On the other hand, if you were to contract with an Indian development firm, you would be getting a dozen coders who have worked together before on past projects in a professional environment for the past few years. Oh, and they also happen to have B.S. degrees from some of the best universities in India. Yes, you might say that India's educational system is not on par with the US's, but actually, some of the universities in India are better academically not to mention more selective than even some of the top US universities.
Not that it is better. Not that it is equal. Just that it is cheaper.
If it wasn't delivering acceptable results such that the final product were comparable to US products, would you really think that big corporations would be willing to send these important jobs overseas? We're talking about building software that power companies. The Chinese can do just as well as India on this regard; that is, building software that is comparable in quality to that written in the US, but they have an additional language barrier to deal with and so are not quite at the forefront of the offshoring. Give China a few more years and when their number of English speaking computer professionals increase, you'll start to see India lose jobs to China just as the US is losing jobs to India. But, just as with the US, it will end up being the better good for the global economy, as India will be able to specialize even further. However, in this case, the benefits to India when China starts taking its programmer jobs maybe not be as great as the benefits to the US right now with India taking our programming jobs because India has had less time to transition and has a more unstable economy so transitions are much harder on the people there.
I know I'm going to make some enemies with this post, but I seriously urge you all, who think that it's bad that jobs are going to India, to consider the benefits of offshoring IT jobs.
By having cheaper labor do the same work and produce equally good or better products and services is a good thing. Remember your college economics class? Comparative Advantange? It's important for a nation's economy to do what it does best. Just as the poster asked whether or not she should get into the computer science field, I would say, if you like it and you think you will be better at it than medicine, then by all means, go for it.
By having people do what they do best, it allows for specializiation and the way corporations work the way they do today. Specialization allows more output from the same input by increasing the productivity of workers. Similarly, specialization applies to the global level and when nations specialize in one service or good, that is better for the entire global economy. Just think back to the 70s and 80s when the auto industry was screaming bloody murder over the import of cheaper and better made Japanese cars. Americans learned to respond to that. Similarly, the currently shrinking job market in the IT field is not something to be afraid of. There are plenty of problems that require solving in the technological sciences involving computers that currently displaced employees can help solve and this is an overall benefit to global society. Yes, there will be a short-run hard hit to people at home, but allowing free trade is a good thing. And in this case, it's the free trade of jobs in the computer industry. But remember, in the long run, it's in the best interest of everyone.
The article seems to highly stress the practical application of this new form of matter. Doesn't this seem too optimistic or unrealistic? If it's a new form of matter, surely there must be properties which even researchers are unsure about. What are the safety and health issues involved in using this in 'practical applications'?