This is an interesting view... and what makes it even more interesting is the book "Confessions of an International Hit Man" that I just started reading. This is an autobigraphical NON-FICTIONAL account of an american hired secretly by the government to control other nations by giving them huge "loans" to develop themselves (and pay American firms for that) and when they default on those impossible loans, the US would get various concessions from the nation. Of course, the nation would continue to repay as much as it could. So, the US is literally stealing their money as the loans mostly end up remaining in the US itself.
Now, believe it or not, this IS true. So, the actual "innovation" that the US did was in developing it's technique of stealing other countries' wealth. So quit complaining about another country taking away your money and jobs. This is the real world. Deal with it.
It is a global economy. Noone is taking away your jobs. The jobs just go where the competition is best. The US still has the best higher education system and thats why a large percentage of R&D takes place here. Let the US continue to innovate instead. There are plenty of jobs that americans can still do.
P.S. I have no interest in the debate on racism. I find jokes on Indian call centers just as funny as most other ppl... and I also agree that many of my friends and classmates respect the Indians that are their colleagues despite the fact that many of them have funny accents.
Actually, the Indian government has launched many satellites to help it's own people.
India does not really have many known spy satellites. What it does have many of is: Weather and Remote sensing satellites to help farmers through rainfall prediction, actual land usage and study etc. India also has launched the INSAT series of satellites for communications, telephone lines, Television broadcasting. Some transponders on these satellites have been reserved for distance education programs so that universities like the IITs can broadcast classes to the remote areas.
Indian satellites also supply some of the cheapest high resolution photographs. The IRS series were the first to allow public access to satellite pictures of as high resoltion as 3.5m till the IKONOS was launched in 1999... Soo... It's a good thing:).
From what I have heard, it is what stands out in your application that gets you into an MIT or Caltech. They get a ton of applications... but how good are you relative to the rest of the applicant pool.. and how much can You contribute to the school.
You seem to have good leadeship skills... good grades... and all you need is an absolute positive attitude. The last is essential as you have to really sell yourself all the time. Really. If you want to succeed in anything.. it's all about selling yourself right.
However, I also agree that an MIT or a Caltech is not necessarily the best "education". Wherever you go, just work hard and spend time to get a broad education (as in... work hard...party harder:-D). You will learn amazing things I promise.
If you read the article, it actually says that the images would be carefully camaflouged, not just blurred. So, you see low res pics or you see buildings etc that are not actually there. This has been done to various US military installations already (and even the white house)... so it's nothing new really.
Quoting from the article " Official sources said Google Earth would distort building plans by adding structures where none existed or masking certain aspects of a facility. This could be done without attracting attention to such establishments, which range from laboratories, mines, military sites, space and atomic centres and residences of high-profile VVIPs. "
The main reason why this was done was because India's President (a highly respected man and very intelligent) was worried that such high resolution imagery could pose security implications.
I personally think that this will help reduce access to terrorists that may be planning attacks. It is nothing against major governments that already have all the satellite information that they need. A bit too much info actually.. as the US found out when India blasted their nuclear device right under everyone's noses:-)
I am actually an International student. When I was in high school, we used mostly log books as those were the only tables allowed at the examinations (in India, not everyone can purchase a calculator). However, I have had and used a regular 2 line Casio throughout.. including for my SATs. I did not think you really needed a calculator for the SATs.
I finished my bachelors in Electrical Engineering. During my courses, I always used a 10$ casio with a 2 line display. Many people with TI's were not allowed to use them as some people would bring in notes and crib sheets typed in their multifunction calculators. I never had that problem.. and I never felt limited by my calculator. Most of the time, you do calculations in logs, powers, simple equations... anything too complex for the calculator can be simplified by hand.
My suggestion, get a standard 2 line calculator that cannot store data for college.. and if you really want to play around.. get a TI or a HP as so many ppl here have recommended.
Well... drug screening can be anything. Maybe to screen potential drug candidates by studying them at that scale and studying their interactions. Maybe you just have a one track mind;):-p
Actually, in the last couple of models, AMD has been making huge strides in reducing the heat dissipation of their models, beating intel pretty often. Wikipedia has an article showing some of the heat dissipation details..: Wikipedia.
But then again, given that the specs of the notebook show it to be a 500 MHz machine, it is true that the Intel chips of that time were more thermally efficient as show by these websites: Intel CPU thermal ratings and some others including many AMD cores. But then again, we have the AMD Geode that consumes max of 4 watts at 500 Mhz. So... it's really something that AMD is just as competent at I presume.
Well, patenting a process wouldn't really cut it. I could make the exact same pill using a different process. That's the way the patent system in India works and that's not really that workable as many medical companies have found out to their disadvantage. What IS patentable (AFAIK) is a particular molecule or substance that you identified in.. say... the willow bark. Which is where the whole problem starts.
The main reason why the Indian government wants to make it a publicly known document is because there have been many cases where products like basmati (long grained rice from India and Pakistan), turmeric (used as an antiseptic in ayurvedic medicine), the neem tree (used for anything from disinfectant to toothbrush to itch reliever for chicken pox), bitter gourd(excellent for treatment of diabetes) etc. It took 10 years to revoke the patent on Turmeric (from the BBC website). I don't think anyone wants to go through that kind of litigation without having some strong proof of prior art.
Suppose some Indian company wants to export these products to the US at some later stage, or the patent laws allow for greater integration with worldwide patents (it's not probable... but anything's possible right?), then the patents issued would cause problems for them at that stage. It is this that the Indian government wants to avoid by creating a searchable digital archive with proof of prior art.
-Mohan
it should be noted that India does have one of the world's largest railway system (5th as per most statistics). But it is still insufficient for the purposes of trade or transportation of goods.
from wikipedia: "It is also one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world, transporting just under five billion passengers and almost 350 million tonnes of freight annually. IR is the world's largest commercial or utility employer, with more than 1.6 million employees."
Isnt this projector system also at the envision centre? I went there a few months ago... and they did seem to have a kool setup.
I think the main thing behind the display is an big cluster of PC's (Or thats what I gathered from the info written there)... so u can like...render huge images et al... They also have a 3-d visualization system setup at the place.... And the place is on the Accessgrid (or some kind of grid...forget whatexactly it is...)so... guess ppl can remotely operate the 140 inch screen and take classes.
Basically.... it is more impressive in person than the darned website.
I should say that I have used some of these programs from time to time. I had used rambooster(http://www.download.com/3000-2086-14000 43.html) for a long time (On win 98 and ME).. and that seemed to be pretty effective. However, it did not seem to make any difference once I got XP.
I still use a few tweaks. I use windows tweakui and I think it helps me set a few things the way I like it. Other than that... a 300% improvement...is hard to obtain.
Then again... using windows powertoys slowed down my comp at one time by 50% (Judged by the time it took me to run a seti unit). So... random programs may have random effects.:)
that's not exactly true. I had a maxtor die on me after around a year of heavy duty usage. I just had to download a diagnosis tool, run it to show that my hard disk, was indeed, damaged and they sent me a replacement immediately.
As for saying that they always give warranties less than the life of the product.... why would they first reduce the warranties to 1 year... and then now increase it to 5? methinks... they think... noone will think of asking for a replacement after 5 years. You know... like the whole Mail In Rebate scam. Half the people tend to forget to send them in!! And what with hard disks becoming sooo cheap...
And to think I just bought a maxtor with a measly 1 year warranty:|
5 years. Wonder if I would use a hard disk that long. I mean... 5 years ago... I dont even know what was standard... 7 gigs? and now? 250 gigs seem to be the norm. U could so copy 7 gigs over to ur 250 gig machine:D
now... 3 years sounds more reasonable to me. Actually useful... I say
IWILL ZMAX based on nVIDIA nForce3 Pro 250Gb chipset will sample in July. Volume production is planned in September, with a suggested price of $499."
Sheesh!! 500 bucks AND available only after september. I think Shuttle plans to be out with one by then too. ( http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17337 )
Basically, I believe that the 939 chipset will allow for greater upgrade options in the future. Especially since the 754 will be phased out pretty soon. Of course...I am a poor college student;) Sooo...... I guess I am more budget minded. But then again... would a budget minded student spend money on fancy computers?/me wonders.....
I thought it was pretty cool at that time.
Personally, I am waiting for the athlon 64 Shuttle XPC to come out WITH the nvidia 250 chipset. The current chipsets just arent worth it;)
U think India is more protectionist than the US??? Try getting a visa for India and then tell me abt it. ( well... lemme make it easier for you. India will welcome you with open hands)
I'm not saying that the US should totally let others 'use n throw' it. But then again, the US is a nation that has profitted immensely by utilizing the non protectionist policies of other nations (even going to the extent of arm twisting them at times...to get policies to match with their needs) and it is only fair that they are now going to help others make some money. After all... as per the american dream, the best person wins irrespective of race..creed..colour...and I add nationality:)
Somehow I think we are missing the point here. and going off topic:D So heyy... back to ipods and Apple:D
I am Indian and I know that they are not slave labour. But the typical american's view on outsourcing to India is that underpaid slaves work there who are willing to go to any extent to steal jobs away from the united states. And the reason they are so cheap is because their output is of questionable quality.
Atleast thats what I sense from all the reading I do. So, I dont necessarily agree with it. I am just writing keeping the typical reader in mind. Maybe I am wrong. But I dont really care.
At my LARGE public university, we have a few mac labs... maybe 3-4 out of around 50. We do have an active mac user group... but it seems to me.. that macs are losing out. Especially as ppl dont understand how to use macs or they dont want to. Surprisingly scary!!! I work in our campus labs... and I see that ppl would rather not use a comp than use macs.
On top of that... MS sells us win XP for like 5$ whereas apple sells us panther for 50$ (Through the school). As a result... most ppl buy win XP pro and use that as it is much cheaper. These guys now get used to windows... and viola... they're not gonna buy macs. Apple got it right with its 1984 ad. Big Brother IS out there trying to control your mind.
I also believe that mac OS 9 put off a lot of ppl. A lot of my classmates hated mac os 9. So, they'd rather not try out mac OS 10.3 (SO AWESOOOME) because they do not trust the mac OS anymore.:(.
There is hope, however. I feel macs are a more personal computer type of computer. You get pretty possessive abt them:). so.. putting them in labs.. and asking ppl to share them... seems so wrong:-D
I wonder how many people noticed that some of the work on the iPod was outsourced to India!!
Yeahh baby. Apple also used that cheap slave labour!!! No wonder they have such huge margins on the iPod and are able to like..give away free songs.
Yeahh..
Therapy is expensive... bubble wrap is cheap. You choose.
Actually... I believe it does.
on news.google.com, I often come across articles which are shown as subscription only. Typically free to register... but some are otherwise. So yeah... the googlebot actually may be a registered user of these websites;)
Though....I wonder if the results are cached...........
Mohan.
Slashdot Mirror
This is an interesting view... and what makes it even more interesting is the book "Confessions of an International Hit Man" that I just started reading. This is an autobigraphical NON-FICTIONAL account of an american hired secretly by the government to control other nations by giving them huge "loans" to develop themselves (and pay American firms for that) and when they default on those impossible loans, the US would get various concessions from the nation. Of course, the nation would continue to repay as much as it could. So, the US is literally stealing their money as the loans mostly end up remaining in the US itself. Now, believe it or not, this IS true. So, the actual "innovation" that the US did was in developing it's technique of stealing other countries' wealth. So quit complaining about another country taking away your money and jobs. This is the real world. Deal with it. It is a global economy. Noone is taking away your jobs. The jobs just go where the competition is best. The US still has the best higher education system and thats why a large percentage of R&D takes place here. Let the US continue to innovate instead. There are plenty of jobs that americans can still do. P.S. I have no interest in the debate on racism. I find jokes on Indian call centers just as funny as most other ppl... and I also agree that many of my friends and classmates respect the Indians that are their colleagues despite the fact that many of them have funny accents.
Actually, the Indian government has launched many satellites to help it's own people.
India does not really have many known spy satellites. What it does have many of is: Weather and Remote sensing satellites to help farmers through rainfall prediction, actual land usage and study etc.
India also has launched the INSAT series of satellites for communications, telephone lines, Television broadcasting. Some transponders on these satellites have been reserved for distance education programs so that universities like the IITs can broadcast classes to the remote areas.
Indian satellites also supply some of the cheapest high resolution photographs. The IRS series were the first to allow public access to satellite pictures of as high resoltion as 3.5m till the IKONOS was launched in 1999...
Soo... It's a good thing:).
From what I have heard, it is what stands out in your application that gets you into an MIT or Caltech. They get a ton of applications... but how good are you relative to the rest of the applicant pool.. and how much can You contribute to the school. You seem to have good leadeship skills... good grades... and all you need is an absolute positive attitude. The last is essential as you have to really sell yourself all the time. Really. If you want to succeed in anything.. it's all about selling yourself right. However, I also agree that an MIT or a Caltech is not necessarily the best "education". Wherever you go, just work hard and spend time to get a broad education (as in... work hard...party harder :-D). You will learn amazing things I promise.
If you read the article, it actually says that the images would be carefully camaflouged, not just blurred. So, you see low res pics or you see buildings etc that are not actually there. This has been done to various US military installations already (and even the white house)... so it's nothing new really.
:-)
Quoting from the article
" Official sources said Google Earth would distort building plans by adding structures where none existed or masking certain aspects of a facility. This could be done without attracting attention to such establishments, which range from laboratories, mines, military sites, space and atomic centres and residences of high-profile VVIPs. "
The main reason why this was done was because India's President (a highly respected man and very intelligent) was worried that such high resolution imagery could pose security implications.
I personally think that this will help reduce access to terrorists that may be planning attacks. It is nothing against major governments that already have all the satellite information that they need. A bit too much info actually.. as the US found out when India blasted their nuclear device right under everyone's noses
I am actually an International student. When I was in high school, we used mostly log books as those were the only tables allowed at the examinations (in India, not everyone can purchase a calculator). However, I have had and used a regular 2 line Casio throughout.. including for my SATs. I did not think you really needed a calculator for the SATs.
I finished my bachelors in Electrical Engineering. During my courses, I always used a 10$ casio with a 2 line display. Many people with TI's were not allowed to use them as some people would bring in notes and crib sheets typed in their multifunction calculators. I never had that problem.. and I never felt limited by my calculator. Most of the time, you do calculations in logs, powers, simple equations... anything too complex for the calculator can be simplified by hand.
My suggestion, get a standard 2 line calculator that cannot store data for college.. and if you really want to play around.. get a TI or a HP as so many ppl here have recommended.
Well... drug screening can be anything. Maybe to screen potential drug candidates by studying them at that scale and studying their interactions. :-p
Maybe you just have a one track mind;)
Actually, in the last couple of models, AMD has been making huge strides in reducing the heat dissipation of their models, beating intel pretty often. Wikipedia has an article showing some of the heat dissipation details..: Wikipedia.
But then again, given that the specs of the notebook show it to be a 500 MHz machine, it is true that the Intel chips of that time were more thermally efficient as show by these websites: Intel CPU thermal ratings and some others including many AMD cores. But then again, we have the AMD Geode that consumes max of 4 watts at 500 Mhz. So... it's really something that AMD is just as competent at I presume.
Even McDonalds is investing in India now.(100 million dollars approx)
Article
So all you guys hoping that you can get a job at McDonalds asking "Do you want fries with that"... think again;);););).
Well, patenting a process wouldn't really cut it. I could make the exact same pill using a different process. That's the way the patent system in India works and that's not really that workable as many medical companies have found out to their disadvantage. What IS patentable (AFAIK) is a particular molecule or substance that you identified in .. say... the willow bark. Which is where the whole problem starts.
-Mohan
The main reason why the Indian government wants to make it a publicly known document is because there have been many cases where products like basmati (long grained rice from India and Pakistan), turmeric (used as an antiseptic in ayurvedic medicine), the neem tree (used for anything from disinfectant to toothbrush to itch reliever for chicken pox), bitter gourd(excellent for treatment of diabetes) etc. It took 10 years to revoke the patent on Turmeric (from the BBC website). I don't think anyone wants to go through that kind of litigation without having some strong proof of prior art.
Suppose some Indian company wants to export these products to the US at some later stage, or the patent laws allow for greater integration with worldwide patents (it's not probable... but anything's possible right?), then the patents issued would cause problems for them at that stage. It is this that the Indian government wants to avoid by creating a searchable digital archive with proof of prior art.
-Mohan
it should be noted that India does have one of the world's largest railway system (5th as per most statistics). But it is still insufficient for the purposes of trade or transportation of goods.
from wikipedia: "It is also one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world, transporting just under five billion passengers and almost 350 million tonnes of freight annually. IR is the world's largest commercial or utility employer, with more than 1.6 million employees."
Some statistics
Wikipedia article on Indian Railways
Didn't you know???
72.36458% of all statistics are are made up on the spot!!!!
-Mohan
Yeah... verrry funny. Poor guys are worried about load handling and you go ahead and slashdot them!!
I already got one "unable to connect" error.
poor fellas
On my univ bandwidth:) The Link Enjoy Mohan Yeah...I am up too:p
Isnt this projector system also at the envision centre? I went there a few months ago... and they did seem to have a kool setup.
I think the main thing behind the display is an big cluster of PC's (Or thats what I gathered from the info written there)... so u can like...render huge images et al...
They also have a 3-d visualization system setup at the place....
And the place is on the Accessgrid (or some kind of grid...forget whatexactly it is...)so... guess ppl can remotely operate the 140 inch screen and take classes.
Basically.... it is more impressive in person than the darned website.
I should say that I have used some of these programs from time to time. I had used rambooster(http://www.download.com/3000-2086-14000 43.html) for a long time (On win 98 and ME).. and that seemed to be pretty effective. However, it did not seem to make any difference once I got XP.
I still use a few tweaks. I use windows tweakui and I think it helps me set a few things the way I like it. Other than that... a 300% improvement...is hard to obtain.
Then again... using windows powertoys slowed down my comp at one time by 50% (Judged by the time it took me to run a seti unit). So... random programs may have random effects.:)
Mohan.
that's not exactly true. I had a maxtor die on me after around a year of heavy duty usage. I just had to download a diagnosis tool, run it to show that my hard disk, was indeed, damaged and they sent me a replacement immediately. As for saying that they always give warranties less than the life of the product.... why would they first reduce the warranties to 1 year... and then now increase it to 5? methinks... they think... noone will think of asking for a replacement after 5 years. You know... like the whole Mail In Rebate scam. Half the people tend to forget to send them in!! And what with hard disks becoming sooo cheap...
WOW.
:|
And to think I just bought a maxtor with a measly 1 year warranty
5 years. Wonder if I would use a hard disk that long. I mean... 5 years ago... I dont even know what was standard... 7 gigs? and now? 250 gigs seem to be the norm. U could so copy 7 gigs over to ur 250 gig machine:D
now... 3 years sounds more reasonable to me. Actually useful... I say
Off that link
/me wonders.....
"Pricing and Availability
IWILL ZMAX based on nVIDIA nForce3 Pro 250Gb chipset will sample in July. Volume production is planned in September, with a suggested price of $499."
Sheesh!! 500 bucks AND available only after september. I think Shuttle plans to be out with one by then too.
( http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17337 )
Basically, I believe that the 939 chipset will allow for greater upgrade options in the future. Especially since the 754 will be phased out pretty soon. Of course...I am a poor college student;) Sooo...... I guess I am more budget minded. But then again... would a budget minded student spend money on fancy computers?
Mod? yeahhhhhh
I thought it was pretty cool at that time.
Personally, I am waiting for the athlon 64 Shuttle XPC to come out WITH the nvidia 250 chipset. The current chipsets just arent worth it;)
Yummmmm......
waiddaminit!!
U think India is more protectionist than the US??? Try getting a visa for India and then tell me abt it. ( well... lemme make it easier for you. India will welcome you with open hands)
I'm not saying that the US should totally let others 'use n throw' it. But then again, the US is a nation that has profitted immensely by utilizing the non protectionist policies of other nations (even going to the extent of arm twisting them at times...to get policies to match with their needs) and it is only fair that they are now going to help others make some money. After all... as per the american dream, the best person wins irrespective of race..creed..colour...and I add nationality:)
Somehow I think we are missing the point here. and going off topic:D So heyy... back to ipods and Apple:D
Well, see
I am Indian and I know that they are not slave labour. But the typical american's view on outsourcing to India is that underpaid slaves work there who are willing to go to any extent to steal jobs away from the united states. And the reason they are so cheap is because their output is of questionable quality.
Atleast thats what I sense from all the reading I do. So, I dont necessarily agree with it. I am just writing keeping the typical reader in mind. Maybe I am wrong. But I dont really care.
At my LARGE public university, we have a few mac labs... maybe 3-4 out of around 50. We do have an active mac user group... but it seems to me.. that macs are losing out. Especially as ppl dont understand how to use macs or they dont want to. Surprisingly scary!!! I work in our campus labs... and I see that ppl would rather not use a comp than use macs.
:(.
On top of that... MS sells us win XP for like 5$ whereas apple sells us panther for 50$ (Through the school). As a result... most ppl buy win XP pro and use that as it is much cheaper. These guys now get used to windows... and viola... they're not gonna buy macs. Apple got it right with its 1984 ad. Big Brother IS out there trying to control your mind.
I also believe that mac OS 9 put off a lot of ppl. A lot of my classmates hated mac os 9. So, they'd rather not try out mac OS 10.3 (SO AWESOOOME) because they do not trust the mac OS anymore.
There is hope, however. I feel macs are a more personal computer type of computer. You get pretty possessive abt them:). so.. putting them in labs.. and asking ppl to share them... seems so wrong:-D
I wonder how many people noticed that some of the work on the iPod was outsourced to India!!
Yeahh baby. Apple also used that cheap slave labour!!! No wonder they have such huge margins on the iPod and are able to like..give away free songs. Yeahh..
Therapy is expensive... bubble wrap is cheap. You choose.
Actually... I believe it does. on news.google.com, I often come across articles which are shown as subscription only. Typically free to register... but some are otherwise. So yeah... the googlebot actually may be a registered user of these websites;) Though....I wonder if the results are cached........... Mohan.