Bosses who don't allow it usually find themselves with companies that fail. Sure, workers should be productive, but if you as an employer try and make the workplace into something too rigid and constraining, your employees will be demoralized and will not function as well as in a more relaxed enviroment. I know that you might be thinking of a company which is at the other end of the spectrum - where very little work is done, and it's true that that is not a desirable situation. The truth is, though, that the optimum level lies somewhere inbetween.
You have to allow a certain amount of goofing around, you have to arrange company braais (BBQs for you American folks), go-karting, bowling, golf, horse-riding, etc. What you want is for your employees to get along with you and with eachother. If you don't allow that to happen, your employees will either not care about what they are supposed to be doing, or try in vain to do what they are supposed to be doing in an enviroment that they hate. Noone wins.
Now a whole lot of people will say: "But the employer has the power! They can outsource! Your job is not safe! As an employee you have no right to complain!". That's true, to a certain extent. But remember: If an employer was thinking of outsourcing, it probably wouldn't make a difference how well you were or were not performing, the key factor to companies that outsource is saving money and increasing profit margins at all costs. They will learn in time that quality products do make a difference, however, and will be back at square one. I've dealt with outsourcing first hand, and there are pros and cons to it, like with anything. In reality, what most companies will probably end up doing is outsourcing things that make sense to outsource, and bring things that make little sense to outsource back to the physical office. So that "but you'll be outsourced" argument goes out the window.
As for people having no right to complain and being forced to be happy that they have a job at all, this might be true for a lot of people in the current economy, but it still doesn't mean that slave-driving will produce good results. You'll end up with an employee-base that really hates working at the company, and every time you fire someone and get someone new in, the same thing will happen. They will start detesting their working conditions and perhaps even deliberately go on go-slows or worse.
Both employers and employees have to find a balance in the work enviroment. Employees must understand that they can't party at work and goof off for 6 hours a day, and employers must understand that trying to impose draconian rules and policies will not benefit them in the long run.
Now India has an interesting democracy - a 22-party coalition (which is expected to win this election as well) in control of the government. That's quite a refreshing change from the point of view of someone in an (effectively) one-party state like South Africa (with the African National Congress getting a controlling 69% in the recent election). I'm not sure which would be better, 2 strong parties, like in the US, or dozens of small parties forming coalitions, like in India. I would guess that the coalitions would allow for more fluidity in politics than 2 (or a few) strong parties.
How do you know ISV's are getting annoyed? Do you go to lunch with ISV's every other day?
No, but working for a medium-sized ISV who deals with Microsoft (we buy bulk embedded XP licenses for use in custom gaming machines), I can tell you a few things about how Microsoft deals with customers. They have actually tried to offer us better deals if we discontinued our Linux solutions and marginalized our dealings with our Russian partners who produce hardware and software for use with Mandrake Linux 9.x in gaming solutions. (Sounds impossible? Think again). I can only imagine how much more underhanded Microsoft are when dealing with bigger ISVs.
Not only are you crudely generalizing, I think your point is actually not sound at all. You think Adobe cares about Microsoft dominating?
I'm sure Netscape and Sun didn't care either, until Microsoft took them out of the market. You are really insulting the intelligence of the Adobe executives if you think that they haven't considered this possibility or what they could do to avoid something similar happening.
Not only with hardware manufacturers/drivers, but also general software. ISV's are getting annoyed by Microsoft's dominance of the desktop market, and through that, their (heavy) influence on desktop software. It's not inconceivable that in a decade, Microsoft could control every aspect of the standard desktop PC and desktop software market. At the moment some of the only really strong ISVs in their respective areas are Adobe, Corel, Intuit, Macromedia, Oracle, and a few specialized companies. Expect a big ISV push towards a "neutral" platform, like Linux or FreeBSD. Windows is too big to stop supporting, but ISVs will be smart to at least try and carve out a suitable alternative and avoid being completely dominated by Microsoft. All that most ISVs might be able to hope for in a decade is being bought out by Microsoft or making deals with Microsoft, if things don't go the way of creating a vendor-neutral platform.
How about changing the method of testing? Unless, of course, you meant: "Make kids science- and math- test friendly."
If all you want is for kids to score higher in maths and science tests, then teach them what to expect in science and mathematics tests and how to prepare for that specific type of test. This was the key difference between the government school I went to between 1993-1995, and the private school I went to in 1996-1997. Of course the difficulty level of the material went up each year, but the methods of teaching were also completely different. It's not that the private school had its students best interests at heart at all, or that it wanted its students to really enjoy and understand what they were studying - all the school wanted, and the school counselor even went as far as to state this, was for its students to score as many Higher Grade distinctions (similar to British A-levels) as possible, and make the school look good. So what was different? Certainly not the depth that the maths teachers went into, just the methods. Whereas in the public school we were taught quadratic equation theory, or trigenometry graphs, or linear programming, or whatever, then given homework and made to do tests, in the private school we were given the theory, then made to do past exam papers, drilled on what to expect in the exams, and taught where the majority of the points in the exam lay, and how to get the highest score possible with only the main sections of the material - in fact, overall, we probably did LESS studying at the private school, and the teachers encouraged this, focusing on getting higher scores rather than actually learning mathematics, for example.
Now, keep in mind that although I am talking about South African high school here, my experience did not differ that much when I went to college in the US between 1999 and 2001. In my final year at high school (1997), I got a B for mathematics (a far cry from almost failing in 1995). In my freshman year in the US, I got an A in Calculus I (partly because I'd done most of it in high school, admittedly), and a B in Calculus II. I don't consider myself a mathematical mind at all, by the way. I got Cs and Ds and sometimes worse for most of my school career. But learning how to prepare for tests and exams really put a different light on the whole issue, and not one that I'm entirely comfortable with. Who are we really fooling here? Are kids that do well in maths and science really mathematically and scientifically minded, or are they just good at performing well on these types of tests? Probably a bit of both - some are really good at, and enjoy, math and science, and some are just perceived that way, because they are better at performing well on standardised tests.
Actually, the vast majority of people I know who are brilliant adults were early learners as children. The ones who didn't do well in school usually had problems because they were bored, often because they were in a school that did not believe in tracking for political reasons. Not every bright child is an early learner, but it is a very strong predictor.
That's great, but purely anecdotal.
You give them the opportunity to move ahead when they are ready.
Fair enough, but as stated, the focus tends to be on younger kids for "advanced" classes at the moment, and even if there is an Einstein somewhere in the US, he or she will not be in a good position to get into the advanced classes - he or she would probably do quite badly in maths and physics early on, like Einstein did (and no, not because he was too bored or the material was too easy for him - if you're too bored and find the material easy, you can generally pull good grades despite being bored), and because they would not be "picked up" early, and would probably never be "brilliant" at pre-prepared exams like some of the "brilliant" adults that you know, for example, but I'd venture to say that none of the brilliant adults you know would ever get to the level that an Einstein-type person could get to. That is the point that the parent poster was trying to make.
Often, they were perceived this way because they were bored stiff in "mainstream" classes. When most of the stuff you hear in class is repetition of stuff that is obvious and trivial, it is easy to tune out and miss the stuff that you really need to learn.
This just isn't the case, often. The central issue is: tests prepared for mainstream education don't really prove much. All they prove is that the child in question can perform well at the given types of test. This is even true of IQ tests and SAT-type tests. To paraphrase Kevin Warwick, it would be like marking English literature papers by binding them and throwing them down a flight of stairs, and having the ones that go down the fastest graded the highest. The kids wouldn't need to learn much about English literature to do well in this test, all they would need to do is either write a lot and make their paper heavier, or find out ways to make the paper more aerodynamic, so that it went down the flight of stairs faster than the other papers. So - it would teach the kids something, all right, but would not be an indication of how good they actually are at the subject that is under consideration at all.
Good one:) If I hadn't commented already I'd mod you up.
Seriously though, I don't think anyone is expecting geeks to suddenly just stop doing geeky things - I'm still interested in fantasy, I still chat with people on MUDs, I still read Slashdot (As you rightly pointed out), I like collecting guns (well, at least, I used to, until the SAPS decided that I have too many licenses in my name, damn the new South African gun laws, and I can't convince my parents to apply for any more licenses under their names), but I also have several interests that are outside of the traditional geek mould, such as horse riding.
I don't think it's neccessary to cut geeks who are extremely introverted off from their interests, but just to allow them time to find out what social activities (not online) they are interested in and encourage them in that direction. Usually things like martial arts clubs, shooting clubs, comedy clubs or trivia clubs, museums (scientific or historical), or something like that will appeal to them. Of course, these are just the things that I enjoy doing, there are so many activities out there to pursue that even trying to list them would take days.
When people talk about traditional "geeks", a lot of people think a lot of different things. People think of computer programming, for one thing. But are all programmers geeks? Cobol programmers, or SAP programmers, or other "corporate" programmers, including to a large extent many of the modern-day "business app" programmers (Java, Delphi, VB, Clarion, etc), for example have been around for a long time, and typically they don't have all of the same qualities traditional geeks are supposed to have: they don't mind wearing suits and ties, they don't usually like comic books or chatting on the internet, in fact, besides the fact these programmers code for a living, they have nothing in common with traditional geeks.
What else are geeks sometimes known for? Guns. A lot of geeks are gun freaks, but is this a geek-only thing? Certainly not, a lot of non-geeks are gun enthusiasts.
Lord of the Rings fans? Yes, most self-respecting geeks love Tolkien's work, but there are a lot of non-geeks who feel the same, especially in literary or academic circles. These people might love the Tolkien mythology and the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit stories, but that doesn't neccessarily mean they are gun geeks or computer programmers as well...
Martial arts is another thing that lot of geeks are into. But the majority of martial artists are not traditional geeks, either.
And of course, computer knowledge. At one stage, computer operation was a hobby of geeks - they loved tweaking the systems, setting up systems, trying out new software, and so forth. But as computers have grown in popularity, even watered-down geeks or borderline non-geeks can handle all of these things and even have come to enjoy learning more about software and computers.
So what's really happening here? These individual things are becoming popular, and suddenly it seems that the sky is falling and Geekdom is becoming "too mainstream". This reminds me of the Linux crisis - "Everyone is running Red Hat, it's not Elite Enough anymore! Time to switch to Debian..." Next year: "Too many people are running Debian, time to switch to SuSE/Gentoo/etc." And now that non-geeks are starting to use Linux, a lot of people are looking into FreeBSD. It's quite the same sort of thing. Geek boundaries will just keep expanding.
It's mentioned in the article, I know a guy who's like this. It's like a Geek disease or something. He used to come hang out but now he NEVER leaves his bedroom. He's been like that for the past 3-4 years. Last year it got even worse, he doesn't even socialize on IRC anymore! Anyone else know someone like that?
I think, to a certain extent, we all go through phases like that, although not so extreme in the majority of cases. For me, this period was 1994-1995, two of the worst years of my life. My grades slipped, I was preoccupied with computers and fantasy/fiction, and I only had a handful of friends, all of them also computer geeky, but besides that shared computer interest, I didn't really have much in common with them. I was luckier than some geeks in that position would have been, since I did get a better opportunity to at least meet girls than most did, because I was involved with horse riding, but I never really got to know any of them extremely well, and my life in general was not good in those two years.
In 1996 we moved to a new city, I started a new school, and met friends that I was more compatible with, and started riding at a new stable, and had a better time relating to the people I was riding with. The new geek friends that I had introduced me to AD&D, and a few of us started doing a sport that was new (in South Africa, at least) at the time - Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art. My grades improved tremendously since the new school was a private one and I had access to (virtually) unlimited tutoring and better facilities, but I don't think that was all that put me back on track - I think it was just that my life in general was improving, I felt better, and it was reflected in the way that I did everything: whereas in the darker years I was apathetic, now I was more enthused.
I think that this is probably the experience of a lot of geeks, and even non-geeks: things change, and sometimes for the better. Most children go through phases, and it is wrong to start labelling, stereotyping, and start trying to "correct the behaviour" of people who are still developing on intellectual, physical, and spiritual levels. I think the guy who wrote this article needs to realize this and try to relax. He sounds like he was having a really bad Karma day when he wrote that article.
Georgia Tech and others are working on a product called Squeak which could gain ground in this regard. Some of the players involved are key names from the early years of computer interface/graphics research, including Dr Alan Kay.
Squeak is an open source product with quite a flexible license, and although they are mainly concentrating on educational apps, it is worth noting that in the system itself they have developed an unusual, yet addictive, UI. It is such an easy system to learn, that quite complex tasks can be done within a few hours of learning the basics of the system and going through the tutorials.
A lot of GSM folks champion that standard, and it has done well in becoming "the" standard in Europe, Africa and Asia, but technnologically, CDMA is superior technically - for example, it has higher data transfer capacity and has lower radiation levels. It is a pity that such a huge infrastructure based on GSM exists, but I think that a move towards CDMA can only be a good thing.
There are some really smart and talented people at NASA, and it's nice to see that their work has finally been recognized after a period of NASA-bashing. It really peeves me that people have settled into this anti-American groove over the last few years.
Some of the top minds in history have been American, few modern scientific or engineering feats have been untouched by Americans in one way or another. Half the people who criticise Americans haven't actually been to the United States. I studied in the US for 3 years, and before I left for the US from South Africa, I had a few pre-conceived ideas about Americans, all of which turned out to be untrue. So before you bash Americans, think about these things, and consider actually spending some time in the US.
While I think the parent poster could have been more subtle, he has got a point about physical exercise. The problem is that for most 20 and 30somethings, most traditional physical exercise for that age group is considered boring, so once they've finished high school and college, they just don't bother anymore.
Capoeira is a Brazilian Martial art which combines music, dance, and fighting techniques. It contains both fitness training and strength building, and good instructors will cater to any fitness level/age group to start with, until the person is up to the neccessary levels to start doing the more strenuous moves. A few years back an instructor came to our club, from Brazil, and displayed a dazzling array of moves - this guy was 65 years old. When you've seen a 65 year old doing backflips, cartwheel kicks, three-move air kicks, and hold his entire body weight on one forearm, you know that it's a tragedy that some older folks are having problems with basic movement and so forth, because it really is unncessary.
MS got to be market dominant (which is NOT a true monopoly) by making genuinely good programs
That's debatable. Some of it might have had to do with Word/Excel/VbDos and other MS programs being preferred by users, but I doubt that was the whole story - in the MS-DOS days there was still a lot of competition in these areas, some very strong and obviously preferred by users (eg, WordPerfect). I don't know if you are aware of the extent of Microsoft's underhanded tactics, which goes way back to the company's first days.
MS Basic was ripped off from Dec Labs (Gates worked as an intern there), Gates used his uncle's position on the IBM board of directors to wrangle a deal for MS DOS (originally Q-DOS, bought by Microsoft from another company, called Seattle Software Products), and from there they've tightened their grip on the desktop market ever since. There is abundant documentation of their illegal tactics used against the makers of DR-DOS (Digital Research DOS), their illegal tactics that basically force OEMs to accept only Microsoft, and their illegal tactics forcing against competing products such as Netscape, Java, etc. Capitalism is one thing, but what Microsoft have done is not right. The sad thing is, although these are all proven facts, even Governments seem to scared to punish Microsoft with anything more than a (relative to Microsoft) slap on the wrist, because Microsoft has become such a powerful entity.
There are demos on the GarageGames website, some of them run on Linux, download a few for yourself and see. If your system meets all of the requirements (P2-500 or higher, 256M of RAM, NVidia TNT2 or higher, OpenGL/Mesa and SDL, the games that specify that they run on Linux will (as far as I've experienced) run without problems.
If you are talking about writing games yourself, it depends how you write the game. With the Torque engine, you get the source code for the engine itself and you basically do your own thing. If you add a lot of Windows-specific C++, you are just asking to have issues when you try and port it. If you write a game specifically for Linux, though, obviously, it will not be a problem. The best thing to do is download the Torque engine demo from the GarageGames site and give it a try, and if you like what you see, get the Indie developer license for the Torque engine source code ($100). The features that come with the engine make it a lucrative proposition - commercial quality games are possible (Tribes 2 uses the Torque engine, for example).
OpenGL is used in the Torque engine alongside Direct3D (D3D on Windows, OpenGL on Mac and Linux). It would be great if OpenGL could eclipse Direct3D, and become the premiere 3D platform once again. Perhaps we will see this with the release of OpenGL 2.0, but for a few years Direct3D has been slowly but surely catching up and then surpassing the aging OpenGL standard.
A lot of our customers demand Linux in their solutions (networked gaming terminals) to avoid the cost of licensing Windows XP Embedded for each machine, and the option so far has been to go the Mesa/OpenGL/SDL route (WineX is still too slow for what we do), which, while it has worked, is technically slightly inferior to our Windows equivalents. Hopefully OpenGL 2.0 will change this.
Unless you specifically sign an NDA or it's in your contract that you are not allowed to do this, I don't see what the problem is. Writing everything from scratch every time you go onto a new project at a new company when you have code snippets that could be used would be ridiculous - it would be a waste of time and money for your employer. On the other hand, taking work that was done by you (and probably other programmers) and using it at another employer is certainly underhanded, especially if you've signed an NDA stating that you will not do it. If you haven't signed an NDA, check your contract. If nothing about code is mentioned, you are probably safe. Even a lot of "intellectual property" paragraphs can be invalid - people falsely assume that if the y have "intellectual property" protection, they are safe. Actually, the terms have to be very verbose and descriptive, incorporating either copyright rules or patent rules. A lot of NDA contracts that I've seen from prospective employees from their former companies (in the gaming arena, where NDAs are almost universal) were invalid!
I've found a great way to keep in shape is capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, which is a combination of music, dancing and fighting techniques.
You start off with fitness training (including a lot of running), then focus strengthening your muscles and practicing the basic balancing needed for fundamental moves. The first thing you will usually do in this regard is practice headstands, and then practice putting weight only your forearms, until you have enough strength and balance to go into the next stage: over-head flips. Eventually, you will be able to balance your entire body and support yourself using only your arms. There are lots of moves, some of which seem impossible to most people at first glance, but with enough practice just about anyone can do.
It's great fun and extremely good exercise. Capoeira, horse riding and power-walking are three main exercise activities, and they complement eachother well. Power-walking is definitely an option for joggers, as it puts less pressure on the knees and you still get some of the benefits of jogging, although I wouldn't say that one activity alone will be sufficient for most people for reasonable fitness, so it's a better idea to vary what you do and take part in a variety of activities.
Does this not make perfect sense? I mean... how large can the learning curve be for Unix developers moving to MacOS X?
The core of OS X is Darwin, which is based on FreeBSD, but the upper layers of the OS are based on Apple's own APIs (such as Cocoa, Carbon, etc) and NeXT framework. So, depending on what the Unix developers are planning to write (lower level stuff will undoubtedly be very similar, but higher level stuff will probably be quite different, unless they use X11 on OS X, which is also possible), the degree of difficulty in adapting will vary.
However, Unix developers, usually being quite descerning, will probably find OS X to be an extremely well designed and put together development platform. It's great to see support for this OS increasing, Apple certainly deserves it.
Buddy, capitalism is all about greedy and unpatriotic corporations that hold nothing sacred except profits. Their only goal is to maximize profits without getting caught.
My father's company has dealt with several firms in India, China and Russia who write software for specialized gaming systems. Essentially, the problem is this: The software produced is not of high quality. It works, but it's not good. We had the option of buying software from these companies, hardware from our suppliers, and assembling solutions that way, but the fact of the matter is that in-house programming of the software components has lead to higher quality products, and I can assure you of one thing: the programmers we have hired are NOT from Bangalore, or educated in India. The majority of them are from South Africa, educated in South Africa, with a few specialists from Europe and the United States. Doing it this way has raised costs to a certain extent, but the product seems to sell well, and outclass the offerings that make use of lower-quality components.
Are these Indian workers really as qualified as their American counterparts? I have met a few Indian programmers here in South Africa, and all of their qualifications seem to be technically-rich, but there is nothing to balance that technical training out. Having studied in the USA, I can testify that American colleges tend to be far more diverse in their teaching, concentrating not only on technical knowledge, but adding the vital components of logic, mathematics, physics and humanities. Compared to this, the content of Indian degrees looks more like what you'd find in trade schools or certificate programmes.
Having said all that, let's say that Indians somehow manage to get through a US-equivalent college degree programme. What of the cultural gaps and communication gaps? There are tons of anecdotes about awful experiences with Indian call centers and messes made by Indian development teams, both outsourced and H1-B workers. I forsee a lot of mess-ups being made by these teams, and companies contracting the more qualified American workers to clean up the messes. (This is already happening to a certain extent, from what I've gathered, but I forsee it happening on a much larger scale as outsourcing becomes more common).
If you go for quantity instead of quality, you will end up shooting yourself in the foot. American management will realize this sooner or later and things will start to normalize. In the mean time, a lot of out-of-work American programmers can probably expect to get lucrative contracting positions at their former companies.
Ok. I'm not in a position to argue with you about this, sorry if I misunderstood you and good luck with your research.
My own experience was completely different. As a forgein student, I did not work in the US and my father paid for all of my expenses while I was there. I understand your point about the infrastructure costs etc, but I think you're being a bit nitpicky. My tuition wasn't paid for by the state, and I also spent a LOT of money while I was there, while not taking any jobs from American workers (I didn't work, only studied and played). I could have stayed an extra year for practical experience with my student visa, but decided to return to South Africa and work for my father's company. It was a great experience, and I'm sorry to hear that things have turned so anti-forgeiner since then.
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Bosses who don't allow it usually find themselves with companies that fail. Sure, workers should be productive, but if you as an employer try and make the workplace into something too rigid and constraining, your employees will be demoralized and will not function as well as in a more relaxed enviroment. I know that you might be thinking of a company which is at the other end of the spectrum - where very little work is done, and it's true that that is not a desirable situation. The truth is, though, that the optimum level lies somewhere inbetween.
You have to allow a certain amount of goofing around, you have to arrange company braais (BBQs for you American folks), go-karting, bowling, golf, horse-riding, etc. What you want is for your employees to get along with you and with eachother. If you don't allow that to happen, your employees will either not care about what they are supposed to be doing, or try in vain to do what they are supposed to be doing in an enviroment that they hate. Noone wins.
Now a whole lot of people will say: "But the employer has the power! They can outsource! Your job is not safe! As an employee you have no right to complain!". That's true, to a certain extent. But remember: If an employer was thinking of outsourcing, it probably wouldn't make a difference how well you were or were not performing, the key factor to companies that outsource is saving money and increasing profit margins at all costs. They will learn in time that quality products do make a difference, however, and will be back at square one. I've dealt with outsourcing first hand, and there are pros and cons to it, like with anything. In reality, what most companies will probably end up doing is outsourcing things that make sense to outsource, and bring things that make little sense to outsource back to the physical office. So that "but you'll be outsourced" argument goes out the window.
As for people having no right to complain and being forced to be happy that they have a job at all, this might be true for a lot of people in the current economy, but it still doesn't mean that slave-driving will produce good results. You'll end up with an employee-base that really hates working at the company, and every time you fire someone and get someone new in, the same thing will happen. They will start detesting their working conditions and perhaps even deliberately go on go-slows or worse.
Both employers and employees have to find a balance in the work enviroment. Employees must understand that they can't party at work and goof off for 6 hours a day, and employers must understand that trying to impose draconian rules and policies will not benefit them in the long run.
Now India has an interesting democracy - a 22-party coalition (which is expected to win this election as well) in control of the government. That's quite a refreshing change from the point of view of someone in an (effectively) one-party state like South Africa (with the African National Congress getting a controlling 69% in the recent election). I'm not sure which would be better, 2 strong parties, like in the US, or dozens of small parties forming coalitions, like in India. I would guess that the coalitions would allow for more fluidity in politics than 2 (or a few) strong parties.
How do you know ISV's are getting annoyed? Do you go to lunch with ISV's every other day?
No, but working for a medium-sized ISV who deals with Microsoft (we buy bulk embedded XP licenses for use in custom gaming machines), I can tell you a few things about how Microsoft deals with customers. They have actually tried to offer us better deals if we discontinued our Linux solutions and marginalized our dealings with our Russian partners who produce hardware and software for use with Mandrake Linux 9.x in gaming solutions. (Sounds impossible? Think again). I can only imagine how much more underhanded Microsoft are when dealing with bigger ISVs.
Not only are you crudely generalizing, I think your point is actually not sound at all. You think Adobe cares about Microsoft dominating?
I'm sure Netscape and Sun didn't care either, until Microsoft took them out of the market. You are really insulting the intelligence of the Adobe executives if you think that they haven't considered this possibility or what they could do to avoid something similar happening.
Not only with hardware manufacturers/drivers, but also general software. ISV's are getting annoyed by Microsoft's dominance of the desktop market, and through that, their (heavy) influence on desktop software. It's not inconceivable that in a decade, Microsoft could control every aspect of the standard desktop PC and desktop software market. At the moment some of the only really strong ISVs in their respective areas are Adobe, Corel, Intuit, Macromedia, Oracle, and a few specialized companies. Expect a big ISV push towards a "neutral" platform, like Linux or FreeBSD. Windows is too big to stop supporting, but ISVs will be smart to at least try and carve out a suitable alternative and avoid being completely dominated by Microsoft. All that most ISVs might be able to hope for in a decade is being bought out by Microsoft or making deals with Microsoft, if things don't go the way of creating a vendor-neutral platform.
Even SearchKing is better known than Gigablast... and SearchKing pretty much faded into obscurity after the Google/SearchKing problems a while back.
How about changing the method of testing? Unless, of course, you meant: "Make kids science- and math- test friendly."
If all you want is for kids to score higher in maths and science tests, then teach them what to expect in science and mathematics tests and how to prepare for that specific type of test. This was the key difference between the government school I went to between 1993-1995, and the private school I went to in 1996-1997. Of course the difficulty level of the material went up each year, but the methods of teaching were also completely different. It's not that the private school had its students best interests at heart at all, or that it wanted its students to really enjoy and understand what they were studying - all the school wanted, and the school counselor even went as far as to state this, was for its students to score as many Higher Grade distinctions (similar to British A-levels) as possible, and make the school look good. So what was different? Certainly not the depth that the maths teachers went into, just the methods. Whereas in the public school we were taught quadratic equation theory, or trigenometry graphs, or linear programming, or whatever, then given homework and made to do tests, in the private school we were given the theory, then made to do past exam papers, drilled on what to expect in the exams, and taught where the majority of the points in the exam lay, and how to get the highest score possible with only the main sections of the material - in fact, overall, we probably did LESS studying at the private school, and the teachers encouraged this, focusing on getting higher scores rather than actually learning mathematics, for example.
Now, keep in mind that although I am talking about South African high school here, my experience did not differ that much when I went to college in the US between 1999 and 2001. In my final year at high school (1997), I got a B for mathematics (a far cry from almost failing in 1995). In my freshman year in the US, I got an A in Calculus I (partly because I'd done most of it in high school, admittedly), and a B in Calculus II. I don't consider myself a mathematical mind at all, by the way. I got Cs and Ds and sometimes worse for most of my school career. But learning how to prepare for tests and exams really put a different light on the whole issue, and not one that I'm entirely comfortable with. Who are we really fooling here? Are kids that do well in maths and science really mathematically and scientifically minded, or are they just good at performing well on these types of tests? Probably a bit of both - some are really good at, and enjoy, math and science, and some are just perceived that way, because they are better at performing well on standardised tests.
Actually, the vast majority of people I know who are brilliant adults were early learners as children. The ones who didn't do well in school usually had problems because they were bored, often because they were in a school that did not believe in tracking for political reasons. Not every bright child is an early learner, but it is a very strong predictor.
That's great, but purely anecdotal.
You give them the opportunity to move ahead when they are ready.
Fair enough, but as stated, the focus tends to be on younger kids for "advanced" classes at the moment, and even if there is an Einstein somewhere in the US, he or she will not be in a good position to get into the advanced classes - he or she would probably do quite badly in maths and physics early on, like Einstein did (and no, not because he was too bored or the material was too easy for him - if you're too bored and find the material easy, you can generally pull good grades despite being bored), and because they would not be "picked up" early, and would probably never be "brilliant" at pre-prepared exams like some of the "brilliant" adults that you know, for example, but I'd venture to say that none of the brilliant adults you know would ever get to the level that an Einstein-type person could get to. That is the point that the parent poster was trying to make.
Often, they were perceived this way because they were bored stiff in "mainstream" classes. When most of the stuff you hear in class is repetition of stuff that is obvious and trivial, it is easy to tune out and miss the stuff that you really need to learn.
This just isn't the case, often. The central issue is: tests prepared for mainstream education don't really prove much. All they prove is that the child in question can perform well at the given types of test. This is even true of IQ tests and SAT-type tests. To paraphrase Kevin Warwick, it would be like marking English literature papers by binding them and throwing them down a flight of stairs, and having the ones that go down the fastest graded the highest. The kids wouldn't need to learn much about English literature to do well in this test, all they would need to do is either write a lot and make their paper heavier, or find out ways to make the paper more aerodynamic, so that it went down the flight of stairs faster than the other papers. So - it would teach the kids something, all right, but would not be an indication of how good they actually are at the subject that is under consideration at all.
Good one :) If I hadn't commented already I'd mod you up.
Seriously though, I don't think anyone is expecting geeks to suddenly just stop doing geeky things - I'm still interested in fantasy, I still chat with people on MUDs, I still read Slashdot (As you rightly pointed out), I like collecting guns (well, at least, I used to, until the SAPS decided that I have too many licenses in my name, damn the new South African gun laws, and I can't convince my parents to apply for any more licenses under their names), but I also have several interests that are outside of the traditional geek mould, such as horse riding.
I don't think it's neccessary to cut geeks who are extremely introverted off from their interests, but just to allow them time to find out what social activities (not online) they are interested in and encourage them in that direction. Usually things like martial arts clubs, shooting clubs, comedy clubs or trivia clubs, museums (scientific or historical), or something like that will appeal to them. Of course, these are just the things that I enjoy doing, there are so many activities out there to pursue that even trying to list them would take days.
When people talk about traditional "geeks", a lot of people think a lot of different things. People think of computer programming, for one thing. But are all programmers geeks? Cobol programmers, or SAP programmers, or other "corporate" programmers, including to a large extent many of the modern-day "business app" programmers (Java, Delphi, VB, Clarion, etc), for example have been around for a long time, and typically they don't have all of the same qualities traditional geeks are supposed to have: they don't mind wearing suits and ties, they don't usually like comic books or chatting on the internet, in fact, besides the fact these programmers code for a living, they have nothing in common with traditional geeks.
What else are geeks sometimes known for? Guns. A lot of geeks are gun freaks, but is this a geek-only thing? Certainly not, a lot of non-geeks are gun enthusiasts.
Lord of the Rings fans? Yes, most self-respecting geeks love Tolkien's work, but there are a lot of non-geeks who feel the same, especially in literary or academic circles. These people might love the Tolkien mythology and the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit stories, but that doesn't neccessarily mean they are gun geeks or computer programmers as well...
Martial arts is another thing that lot of geeks are into. But the majority of martial artists are not traditional geeks, either.
And of course, computer knowledge. At one stage, computer operation was a hobby of geeks - they loved tweaking the systems, setting up systems, trying out new software, and so forth. But as computers have grown in popularity, even watered-down geeks or borderline non-geeks can handle all of these things and even have come to enjoy learning more about software and computers.
So what's really happening here? These individual things are becoming popular, and suddenly it seems that the sky is falling and Geekdom is becoming "too mainstream". This reminds me of the Linux crisis - "Everyone is running Red Hat, it's not Elite Enough anymore! Time to switch to Debian..." Next year: "Too many people are running Debian, time to switch to SuSE/Gentoo/etc." And now that non-geeks are starting to use Linux, a lot of people are looking into FreeBSD. It's quite the same sort of thing. Geek boundaries will just keep expanding.
It's mentioned in the article, I know a guy who's like this. It's like a Geek disease or something. He used to come hang out but now he NEVER leaves his bedroom. He's been like that for the past 3-4 years. Last year it got even worse, he doesn't even socialize on IRC anymore! Anyone else know someone like that?
I think, to a certain extent, we all go through phases like that, although not so extreme in the majority of cases. For me, this period was 1994-1995, two of the worst years of my life. My grades slipped, I was preoccupied with computers and fantasy/fiction, and I only had a handful of friends, all of them also computer geeky, but besides that shared computer interest, I didn't really have much in common with them. I was luckier than some geeks in that position would have been, since I did get a better opportunity to at least meet girls than most did, because I was involved with horse riding, but I never really got to know any of them extremely well, and my life in general was not good in those two years.
In 1996 we moved to a new city, I started a new school, and met friends that I was more compatible with, and started riding at a new stable, and had a better time relating to the people I was riding with. The new geek friends that I had introduced me to AD&D, and a few of us started doing a sport that was new (in South Africa, at least) at the time - Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art. My grades improved tremendously since the new school was a private one and I had access to (virtually) unlimited tutoring and better facilities, but I don't think that was all that put me back on track - I think it was just that my life in general was improving, I felt better, and it was reflected in the way that I did everything: whereas in the darker years I was apathetic, now I was more enthused.
I think that this is probably the experience of a lot of geeks, and even non-geeks: things change, and sometimes for the better. Most children go through phases, and it is wrong to start labelling, stereotyping, and start trying to "correct the behaviour" of people who are still developing on intellectual, physical, and spiritual levels. I think the guy who wrote this article needs to realize this and try to relax. He sounds like he was having a really bad Karma day when he wrote that article.
Georgia Tech and others are working on a product called Squeak which could gain ground in this regard. Some of the players involved are key names from the early years of computer interface/graphics research, including Dr Alan Kay.
Squeak is an open source product with quite a flexible license, and although they are mainly concentrating on educational apps, it is worth noting that in the system itself they have developed an unusual, yet addictive, UI. It is such an easy system to learn, that quite complex tasks can be done within a few hours of learning the basics of the system and going through the tutorials.
Skytel
A lot of GSM folks champion that standard, and it has done well in becoming "the" standard in Europe, Africa and Asia, but technnologically, CDMA is superior technically - for example, it has higher data transfer capacity and has lower radiation levels. It is a pity that such a huge infrastructure based on GSM exists, but I think that a move towards CDMA can only be a good thing.
There are some really smart and talented people at NASA, and it's nice to see that their work has finally been recognized after a period of NASA-bashing. It really peeves me that people have settled into this anti-American groove over the last few years.
Some of the top minds in history have been American, few modern scientific or engineering feats have been untouched by Americans in one way or another. Half the people who criticise Americans haven't actually been to the United States. I studied in the US for 3 years, and before I left for the US from South Africa, I had a few pre-conceived ideas about Americans, all of which turned out to be untrue. So before you bash Americans, think about these things, and consider actually spending some time in the US.
While I think the parent poster could have been more subtle, he has got a point about physical exercise. The problem is that for most 20 and 30somethings, most traditional physical exercise for that age group is considered boring, so once they've finished high school and college, they just don't bother anymore.
Capoeira is a Brazilian Martial art which combines music, dance, and fighting techniques. It contains both fitness training and strength building, and good instructors will cater to any fitness level/age group to start with, until the person is up to the neccessary levels to start doing the more strenuous moves. A few years back an instructor came to our club, from Brazil, and displayed a dazzling array of moves - this guy was 65 years old. When you've seen a 65 year old doing backflips, cartwheel kicks, three-move air kicks, and hold his entire body weight on one forearm, you know that it's a tragedy that some older folks are having problems with basic movement and so forth, because it really is unncessary.
MS got to be market dominant (which is NOT a true monopoly) by making genuinely good programs
That's debatable. Some of it might have had to do with Word/Excel/VbDos and other MS programs being preferred by users, but I doubt that was the whole story - in the MS-DOS days there was still a lot of competition in these areas, some very strong and obviously preferred by users (eg, WordPerfect). I don't know if you are aware of the extent of Microsoft's underhanded tactics, which goes way back to the company's first days.
MS Basic was ripped off from Dec Labs (Gates worked as an intern there), Gates used his uncle's position on the IBM board of directors to wrangle a deal for MS DOS (originally Q-DOS, bought by Microsoft from another company, called Seattle Software Products), and from there they've tightened their grip on the desktop market ever since. There is abundant documentation of their illegal tactics used against the makers of DR-DOS (Digital Research DOS), their illegal tactics that basically force OEMs to accept only Microsoft, and their illegal tactics forcing against competing products such as Netscape, Java, etc. Capitalism is one thing, but what Microsoft have done is not right. The sad thing is, although these are all proven facts, even Governments seem to scared to punish Microsoft with anything more than a (relative to Microsoft) slap on the wrist, because Microsoft has become such a powerful entity.
There are demos on the GarageGames website, some of them run on Linux, download a few for yourself and see. If your system meets all of the requirements (P2-500 or higher, 256M of RAM, NVidia TNT2 or higher, OpenGL/Mesa and SDL, the games that specify that they run on Linux will (as far as I've experienced) run without problems.
If you are talking about writing games yourself, it depends how you write the game. With the Torque engine, you get the source code for the engine itself and you basically do your own thing. If you add a lot of Windows-specific C++, you are just asking to have issues when you try and port it. If you write a game specifically for Linux, though, obviously, it will not be a problem. The best thing to do is download the Torque engine demo from the GarageGames site and give it a try, and if you like what you see, get the Indie developer license for the Torque engine source code ($100). The features that come with the engine make it a lucrative proposition - commercial quality games are possible (Tribes 2 uses the Torque engine, for example).
OpenGL is used in the Torque engine alongside Direct3D (D3D on Windows, OpenGL on Mac and Linux). It would be great if OpenGL could eclipse Direct3D, and become the premiere 3D platform once again. Perhaps we will see this with the release of OpenGL 2.0, but for a few years Direct3D has been slowly but surely catching up and then surpassing the aging OpenGL standard.
A lot of our customers demand Linux in their solutions (networked gaming terminals) to avoid the cost of licensing Windows XP Embedded for each machine, and the option so far has been to go the Mesa/OpenGL/SDL route (WineX is still too slow for what we do), which, while it has worked, is technically slightly inferior to our Windows equivalents. Hopefully OpenGL 2.0 will change this.
Depends on the country. IIRC in the UK the default position is that code you develop at work belongs to the company.
Good point. I should have mentioned that I am talking from a South African perspective.
Unless you specifically sign an NDA or it's in your contract that you are not allowed to do this, I don't see what the problem is. Writing everything from scratch every time you go onto a new project at a new company when you have code snippets that could be used would be ridiculous - it would be a waste of time and money for your employer. On the other hand, taking work that was done by you (and probably other programmers) and using it at another employer is certainly underhanded, especially if you've signed an NDA stating that you will not do it. If you haven't signed an NDA, check your contract. If nothing about code is mentioned, you are probably safe. Even a lot of "intellectual property" paragraphs can be invalid - people falsely assume that if the y have "intellectual property" protection, they are safe. Actually, the terms have to be very verbose and descriptive, incorporating either copyright rules or patent rules. A lot of NDA contracts that I've seen from prospective employees from their former companies (in the gaming arena, where NDAs are almost universal) were invalid!
I've found a great way to keep in shape is capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, which is a combination of music, dancing and fighting techniques.
You start off with fitness training (including a lot of running), then focus strengthening your muscles and practicing the basic balancing needed for fundamental moves. The first thing you will usually do in this regard is practice headstands, and then practice putting weight only your forearms, until you have enough strength and balance to go into the next stage: over-head flips. Eventually, you will be able to balance your entire body and support yourself using only your arms. There are lots of moves, some of which seem impossible to most people at first glance, but with enough practice just about anyone can do.
It's great fun and extremely good exercise. Capoeira, horse riding and power-walking are three main exercise activities, and they complement eachother well. Power-walking is definitely an option for joggers, as it puts less pressure on the knees and you still get some of the benefits of jogging, although I wouldn't say that one activity alone will be sufficient for most people for reasonable fitness, so it's a better idea to vary what you do and take part in a variety of activities.
Does this not make perfect sense? I mean... how large can the learning curve be for Unix developers moving to MacOS X?
The core of OS X is Darwin, which is based on FreeBSD, but the upper layers of the OS are based on Apple's own APIs (such as Cocoa, Carbon, etc) and NeXT framework. So, depending on what the Unix developers are planning to write (lower level stuff will undoubtedly be very similar, but higher level stuff will probably be quite different, unless they use X11 on OS X, which is also possible), the degree of difficulty in adapting will vary.
However, Unix developers, usually being quite descerning, will probably find OS X to be an extremely well designed and put together development platform. It's great to see support for this OS increasing, Apple certainly deserves it.
Buddy, capitalism is all about greedy and unpatriotic corporations that hold nothing sacred except profits. Their only goal is to maximize profits without getting caught.
My father's company has dealt with several firms in India, China and Russia who write software for specialized gaming systems. Essentially, the problem is this: The software produced is not of high quality. It works, but it's not good. We had the option of buying software from these companies, hardware from our suppliers, and assembling solutions that way, but the fact of the matter is that in-house programming of the software components has lead to higher quality products, and I can assure you of one thing: the programmers we have hired are NOT from Bangalore, or educated in India. The majority of them are from South Africa, educated in South Africa, with a few specialists from Europe and the United States. Doing it this way has raised costs to a certain extent, but the product seems to sell well, and outclass the offerings that make use of lower-quality components.
Are these Indian workers really as qualified as their American counterparts? I have met a few Indian programmers here in South Africa, and all of their qualifications seem to be technically-rich, but there is nothing to balance that technical training out. Having studied in the USA, I can testify that American colleges tend to be far more diverse in their teaching, concentrating not only on technical knowledge, but adding the vital components of logic, mathematics, physics and humanities. Compared to this, the content of Indian degrees looks more like what you'd find in trade schools or certificate programmes.
Having said all that, let's say that Indians somehow manage to get through a US-equivalent college degree programme. What of the cultural gaps and communication gaps? There are tons of anecdotes about awful experiences with Indian call centers and messes made by Indian development teams, both outsourced and H1-B workers. I forsee a lot of mess-ups being made by these teams, and companies contracting the more qualified American workers to clean up the messes. (This is already happening to a certain extent, from what I've gathered, but I forsee it happening on a much larger scale as outsourcing becomes more common).
If you go for quantity instead of quality, you will end up shooting yourself in the foot. American management will realize this sooner or later and things will start to normalize. In the mean time, a lot of out-of-work American programmers can probably expect to get lucrative contracting positions at their former companies.
Ok. I'm not in a position to argue with you about this, sorry if I misunderstood you and good luck with your research.
My own experience was completely different. As a forgein student, I did not work in the US and my father paid for all of my expenses while I was there. I understand your point about the infrastructure costs etc, but I think you're being a bit nitpicky. My tuition wasn't paid for by the state, and I also spent a LOT of money while I was there, while not taking any jobs from American workers (I didn't work, only studied and played). I could have stayed an extra year for practical experience with my student visa, but decided to return to South Africa and work for my father's company. It was a great experience, and I'm sorry to hear that things have turned so anti-forgeiner since then.