could you and I, not with fate, conspire
to break this sorry scheme of things entire
could we not shatter it to bits and then
remold it nearer to our heart's desire!
- The Internet Swansong
More seriously, this is just a PR news item for a piddly little grant of $200K. MIT researchers routinely engage in this kind of vaporware research including much-hyped off-their-bottoms position papers in tight community-knit workshops.
NSF routinely awards much larger grants greater than $500K and very often even more than $1 million on collaborative grants. None of them make news, but this one does because Dave Clark is soooooo good at PR. Of course, as the article says, the program managers refused to talk to this reporter because they knew what it was worth -- nothing!!
For more info, search for recent awards on http://www.nsf.gov/
What's the big deal here? We already have self-replicating worms and viruses in software. These guys have shown a hardware realization of software self-replication, but the fundamentals are basically the same. Heck, even a 5th grade kid can wtite a self-replicating program. All the mysterious aura about robots taking over the world makes the/.ers gape at this story with their jaws open. Nothing new here that can't be done already -- move on fellas.
I agree. But dear, working hard and working smart are two different things. In that sense, your company may be no different than a sweatshop in China, except it pays you higher but doesn't care two hoots about your future.
Few months back, there was a New York Times article about a 20 year old American kid working for Infosys in Bangalore (as if it represented some major trend). Apparently he was treated like God in the company.
You'll live comfortably (maybe even lavishly) while you are working in India. What you cannot do is to dream of saving enough to return back to USA and retire happily-every-after on those savings. The 1:40 currency ratio of dollar:rupee value kills any such plans. Remember, its primarily cheap labor that's driving their hi-tech growth.
By the same logic, you can get rid of your right arm and start getting adjusted to living with just your left arm...
I'd have to say while it'll take a while to get used to -- the one arm will be much more intuitive than two arms.
You can do everything simple using just one arm.... If you really need the second arm, you could just use one of your legs instead... or maybe hire a secretary (which is better:)
"Moscow, we have a problem..."
"Please describe your problem."
"Our landing shuttle blew up..."
"Wait, we'll send you one of our soyuz capsules.."
(Yes, I know they're made in Russia.)
Going back a few decades in history...
In 1945, Vanaver Bush wrote about his vision of Memex
"Bush saw the ability to navigate the enormous data store as a more important development than the futuristic hardware. Here he describes building a path to connect information of interest:
When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined [...]
Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. "
I've definitely heard this story about stapling floppies. But it was 10 years ago when I was an undergrad in Delhi...there's NO WAY it could have happened two years ago. 5.25in floppies were neother manufactured nor available 2 years ago in India.
Half-truths and half-rumors seem to have been liberally mixed in this story.
I agree the story is somewhat funny. But there sure is an undertone of "look-at-the-smart-assed-Indians" in the story...
They won' be laughing for long though:-)
Won't be too long before rest of the world outsources its cybercrime investigations to the lower-paid techie-cops in India.
Well, MS is not afraid because they only need to wait long enough and copy all of Firefox's new innovative features in their next version of IE. Then Firefox will look like a Firefly! Isn;t this what MS is known to have done all its life?
Batch processing advocate - Don Knuth
on
Life Interrupted
·
· Score: 1
One of the more famous advocates of batch processing by humans is Don Knuth (the inventor of LaTeX and the author of "The Art of Computer Programming"). Read about why he doesn't have an email address. Of course, unlike us mere mortals, he can afford not to have one:-)
But are they taking into account the maintenance and support costs? As it stands now, I believe its mostly done by grad students on "free pizza". Administration costs in production-scale systems typically can run up to 5 times the original equipment acquisition costs. Wonder why no one talks about that aspect?
By some latest counts, already 37,000 Iraqis have been killed since invasion of Iraq -- majority of them, admittedly, are not insurgents. That's 37 Iraqis for every American soldier killed.
Q-1 : How many Iraqis is it "all right" to kill before it becomes worthwhile to have toppled one Saddam Hussein -- All for the sake of some non-existent WMDs?
Q-2 : Why doesn't the US keep an official count of the number of Iraqis killed? What's the justification behind the "we don't keep body count" policy?
Slashdot Mirror
could you and I, not with fate, conspire
to break this sorry scheme of things entire
could we not shatter it to bits and then
remold it nearer to our heart's desire!
- The Internet Swansong
More seriously, this is just a PR news item for a piddly little grant of $200K. MIT researchers routinely engage in this kind of vaporware research including much-hyped off-their-bottoms position papers in tight community-knit workshops.
NSF routinely awards much larger grants greater than $500K and very often even more than $1 million on collaborative grants. None of them make news, but this one does because Dave Clark is soooooo good at PR. Of course, as the article says, the program managers refused to talk to this reporter because they knew what it was worth -- nothing!!
For more info, search for recent awards on http://www.nsf.gov/
What's the big deal here? We already have self-replicating worms and viruses in software. These guys have shown a hardware realization of software self-replication, but the fundamentals are basically the same. Heck, even a 5th grade kid can wtite a self-replicating program. All the mysterious aura about robots taking over the world makes the /.ers gape at this story with their jaws open. Nothing new here that can't be done already -- move on fellas.
I agree. But dear, working hard and working smart
are two different things. In that sense, your company may be no different than a sweatshop in
China, except it pays you higher but doesn't care
two hoots about your future.
Few months back, there was a New York Times article about a 20 year old American kid working for Infosys in Bangalore (as if it represented some major trend). Apparently he was treated like God in the company.
You'll live comfortably (maybe even lavishly) while you are working in India. What you cannot do is to dream of saving enough to return back to USA and retire happily-every-after on those savings. The 1:40 currency ratio of dollar:rupee value kills any such plans. Remember, its primarily cheap labor that's driving their hi-tech growth.
He can't play minesweeper with just one button...
By the same logic, you can get rid of your right arm and start getting adjusted to living with just your left arm...
:)
I'd have to say while it'll take a while to get used to -- the one arm will be much more intuitive than two arms.
You can do everything simple using just one arm.... If you really need the second arm, you could just use one of your legs instead... or maybe hire a secretary (which is better
"Moscow, we have a problem..."
"Please describe your problem."
"Our landing shuttle blew up..."
"Wait, we'll send you one of our soyuz capsules.." (Yes, I know they're made in Russia.)
Going back a few decades in history... In 1945, Vanaver Bush wrote about his vision of Memex
"Bush saw the ability to navigate the enormous data store as a more important development than the futuristic hardware. Here he describes building a path to connect information of interest:
When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined [...]
Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. "
Well ... why didn't they study whether female monkeys would pay to watch naked male (or even female) monkeys?
:)
What do female readers of slashdot have to say about this? (Are there any, BTW?
Come on..What makes you think they give two hoots to the US customer data? Or for that matter, their gory medical information?
I've definitely heard this story about stapling floppies. But it was 10 years ago when I was an undergrad in Delhi...there's NO WAY it could have happened two years ago. 5.25in floppies were neother manufactured nor available 2 years ago in India. Half-truths and half-rumors seem to have been liberally mixed in this story. I agree the story is somewhat funny. But there sure is an undertone of "look-at-the-smart-assed-Indians" in the story... They won' be laughing for long though :-)
Won't be too long before rest of the world outsources its cybercrime investigations to the lower-paid techie-cops in India.
Well, MS is not afraid because they only need to wait long enough and copy all of Firefox's new innovative features in their next version of IE. Then Firefox will look like a Firefly! Isn;t this what MS is known to have done all its life?
One of the more famous advocates of batch processing by humans is Don Knuth (the inventor of LaTeX and the author of "The Art of Computer Programming"). Read about why he doesn't have an email address. Of course, unlike us mere mortals, he can afford not to have one :-)
It probably radiates so much power, you could heat your coffee by keeping it next to the 1gbps transmitter :-)
But are they taking into account the maintenance and support costs? As it stands now, I believe its mostly done by grad students on "free pizza". Administration costs in production-scale systems typically can run up to 5 times the original equipment acquisition costs. Wonder why no one talks about that aspect?
By some latest counts, already 37,000 Iraqis have been killed since invasion of Iraq -- majority of them, admittedly, are not insurgents. That's 37 Iraqis for every American soldier killed. Q-1 : How many Iraqis is it "all right" to kill before it becomes worthwhile to have toppled one Saddam Hussein -- All for the sake of some non-existent WMDs? Q-2 : Why doesn't the US keep an official count of the number of Iraqis killed? What's the justification behind the "we don't keep body count" policy?