cheap does not always mean bad. similarly expensive does not always mean good.
most the h1b's have not gone home after their visa has expired. they have gotten their green cards and are working here in US - yours truly included. A lot of them have and still going back because there is more interesting work being done overseas now.
what has happened is that the talentless and expensive workers ( US and non-US workers) who got into IT because it was good paying during the boom are no longer thankfully in the IT field as a result of all layoffs. they have moved to other more lucrative industries.
the people who are left are more experienced, skilled workers - H1B's , former H1B's and US workers included.
Fossett has a whole team in mission control who feed him navigational , weather , aircraft data and in constant communication with Fossett. All he doing up there is piloting the plane. They could have could have the plane of remote control and still made the trip. Fossett should lose his mission control , navigate around the world on his own.
then proabably he can compared with Magellan.
I couldn't help but notice the two kind of replies on this thread. one - surprise and anger ( probably culmination of pentup anger over loss of high-tech and low-tech jobs to India). two - genuine concern and apprehension why India would use money for this purpose when there several poor to be fed and taken care off.
addressing the first case - India has a good space program since 60. ISRO maynot have the kind of money NASA but it has a good ROI. US has denied india in past access to technology and going to the level of presurising other countries to do the same. The reasons, I think were basically comercial .
Examples:
1. India built and sells PARAM supercomputer for quarter the price of equivalent crays after US denied India super computers. only a handfull of countries can boast of this.
2. India is building cryogenic engines for launching spacecraft after US forced Russia not to sell them to India out of fear that NASA will lose the market for lauching commerical spacecraft to a new cheaper compititor.
3. India last elections were held completely electronic. these electronic voting machines were built for a few millions dollars and used successfully. US is still struggling to introduce electronic voting technology mainly because the technology is too fancy (read more profits for corporates ) and hence many problems. India used the KISS concept and built it with simple s/w burnt on microprccessors. there was a good article in MSNBC abt it sometime back... try a google search on it.
4. the big hoopla abt bad s/w being written in India as a result of outsourcing....wonder why companies like google still have offices in india ?
5. India conducted nuclear tests in may 99 after figuring out the orbiting spy crafts trajectories and moving men and equipment almost 1000 miles to the remote desert test site when the spy craft were not watching. the result - nobody in the world knew abt the test till the India PM announced it.
6. have you heard of health tourism ? if not check it out .
I can go on....
So bottam line- people in other countries can do things better and cheaper than in US. Not in all cases but where ever they choose to and have some funding.
Now to address the other case -
many spacecraft have been launched to help telecomunication access to remote regions, spread long distance education (television based classes ), weather and other uses. you can take those millions of dollars and feed people but how long can you do it ? how will you come up with the money to feed again and again ? only by providing people with access to technology and jobs. how will u get access to technology ? the cheapest way is to come up with the technology.
Slashdot Mirror
cheap does not always mean bad. similarly expensive does not always mean good.
most the h1b's have not gone home after their visa has expired. they have gotten their green cards and are working here in US - yours truly included. A lot of them have and still going back because there is more interesting work being done overseas now.
what has happened is that the talentless and expensive workers ( US and non-US workers) who got into IT because it was good paying during the boom are no longer thankfully in the IT field as a result of all layoffs. they have moved to other more lucrative industries.
the people who are left are more experienced, skilled workers - H1B's , former H1B's and US workers included.
would you have cared if it was a company which didn't "take away american jobs" ?
.....
I don't think so
What part of "capitalism" and "free market economy" do you not understand ----
Fossett has a whole team in mission control who feed him navigational , weather , aircraft data and in constant communication with Fossett. All he doing up there is piloting the plane. They could have could have the plane of remote control and still made the trip. Fossett should lose his mission control , navigate around the world on his own. then proabably he can compared with Magellan.
I couldn't help but notice the two kind of replies on this thread. one - surprise and anger ( probably culmination of pentup anger over loss of high-tech and low-tech jobs to India). two - genuine concern and apprehension why India would use money for this purpose when there several poor to be fed and taken care off.
addressing the first case - India has a good space program since 60. ISRO maynot have the kind of money NASA but it has a good ROI. US has denied india in past access to technology and going to the level of presurising other countries to do the same. The reasons, I think were basically comercial .
Examples:
1. India built and sells PARAM supercomputer for quarter the price of equivalent crays after US denied India super computers. only a handfull of countries can boast of this.
2. India is building cryogenic engines for launching spacecraft after US forced Russia not to sell them to India out of fear that NASA will lose the market for lauching commerical spacecraft to a new cheaper compititor.
3. India last elections were held completely electronic. these electronic voting machines were built for a few millions dollars and used successfully. US is still struggling to introduce electronic voting technology mainly because the technology is too fancy (read more profits for corporates ) and hence many problems. India used the KISS concept and built it with simple s/w burnt on microprccessors. there was a good article in MSNBC abt it sometime back... try a google search on it.
4. the big hoopla abt bad s/w being written in India as a result of outsourcing....wonder why companies like google still have offices in india ?
5. India conducted nuclear tests in may 99 after figuring out the orbiting spy crafts trajectories and moving men and equipment almost 1000 miles to the remote desert test site when the spy craft were not watching. the result - nobody in the world knew abt the test till the India PM announced it.
6. have you heard of health tourism ? if not check it out .
I can go on....
So bottam line- people in other countries can do things better and cheaper than in US. Not in all cases but where ever they choose to and have some funding.
Now to address the other case -
many spacecraft have been launched to help telecomunication access to remote regions, spread long distance education (television based classes ), weather and other uses. you can take those millions of dollars and feed people but how long can you do it ? how will you come up with the money to feed again and again ? only by providing people with access to technology and jobs. how will u get access to technology ? the cheapest way is to come up with the technology.