Just goes to show that you can make a lot of money by copying someone else's work if you just market it with a few silly looking monsters (Sesame Street, Barnie, Teletubbies, John and Teresa Kerry... oops!).
Two years after I first learned to program in GW-Basic through some data processing classes in middle school, I was faced with the challenge to develop something for the required science fair. I had no idea how to develop games, but I knew that I wanted to, and I also knew that I enjoyed fishing at a particular pond near my home. I did about 3 hours of research via the encyclopedia to learn about how water alkalinity, water depth, seasonal changes, and tidal changes affect the fish I was going for.
Then I started programming. I had never seen any game code and likely wouldn't have understood it if I did, but 9 hours later, I had a fully functioning text based fishing simulator with a grid based map and bait selector, as well as a menu to change the conditions in which I fished in. I used this project through all 4 years of high school, only changing the poster boards each time, and it got me out of approximately 3 weeks of classes to go through local, parish, regional, and state fairs. I always ranked at the state level.
Here are my suggestions that you may take with a grain of salt (or not):
You need to set a realistic set of goals in front of you before you attempt this project. You do not have to surprise anybody to get credit for this; the main focus is that you learn something through independent study. Take a look at some of the game development sites on the net and read a few of the tutorials to see what you're getting yourself into.
Once you have decided on your project, discuss your plans with your teacher or advisor to see if the project you've picked is realistic for your skill level. Don't get discouraged if they disagree with you, simply choose something simpler and put that project aside for your personal enjoyment. Regardless of how smart you might be, you want something that is manageable. No 3d, no action games.
I would take a look at the source code of some of the simpler games on the net. Some might suggest that you simply take an open source program and modify it, but I can guarantee you that it is NOT the purpose of your assignment to take someone's work and turn it in as your own, no matter how you changed it.
If I were you, I'd focus on a game with a static game board that only changes slightly during the game. Mahjong and Solitare would be my two top choices simply because they both use a game loop and don't require a whole lot of graphic movement. If you want movement, tetris would be next because it does not require AI; it simply speeds up the game as you drop more blocks. If a 2 player only game is allowed, Pong and Tic Tac Toe are good places to start. Pong will allow you to demonstrate collision detection and Tic Tac Toe is simply an easy game. Breakout might also be a cool game to lay on them. You could also do a rougelike game, which is curses based and demonstrate your knowledge of data structures by giving your little squiggle person some items to fight parentheses with.
Why don't you just throw yourself at them while yelling "I'm a karma whore!?" It'd be much less demeaning and a whole lot more insightful. Besides, what do you think they're running on now, hmmmm? Not everyone uses mainframes anymore.
Medical organizations have had to deal with multiple new sets of standards over the years, costing them billions of dollars. I would imagine that any computer utilizing the proposed system would be very hardened against possible security threats, to the point where they might very well be standalone machines whose sole purpose is to transfer the information.
... since geniuses often obfuscate simple things that people have already grown accustomed to. And as such, I see it perfectly reasonable to waste another 2 million dollars on this ridiculous project.
People don't think spatially; they think categorically. This is why filing systems and folders work so well and why it's so easy for some people to get lost on a desktop which is larger than the viewable image on the screen.
Yeah, because everyone wants to spend time editing/etc/fstab just to get their OS to recognize that new hard drive they just stuck in the system and chmodding files just so they can install them. Most people will still want to run their out of date, broken copies of Windows than install an OS that has more library dependency problems than you can shake a stick at and virtually zero support from game manufacturers.
Even apt and yum have their share of problems with the stupidity that goes on with some of the repository owners. The entire point of having these repositories in the first place from an end user standpoint is to help users install software without having to deal with dependencies, yet installing eclipse via apt on Fedora was like pulling teeth. Tons of unresolved dependencies whose solution is to merge multiple source rpms and build them simply to install them.
Know what I have to do on Windows to install Eclipse? Double click on the damned file! I'm busy and I don't have time to sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for libraries I didn't even develop to compile.
I prefer a Linux desktop, but sometimes it's equivalent to taking your car apart and reassembling it every time you want to go somewhere new.
The sad part about this is that someone might actually give you a job someday to do something that involves programming when your real calling is at the CBS News department.
... this community normally berates or degrades companies that keep their products closed or proprietary, yet Apple, whose history in this matter makes Microsoft look like Santa Claus, gets a pass? Apple has a history of generating revenue by selling overpriced hardware to stupid marks who don't know any better, and the iPod is no different.
These people all work for companies that make it easier for other companies to lay off their back office people and cast off their proprietary software (and developers).
I suppose I should feel some level of sympathy for them, but then that would be like feeling bad for the priest who got caught with his pants around his ankles with an altar boy on his knees.
I'll pass, but you keep on fighting that good fight, fellas.
Get closer to a monopoly? That would be like Apple acquiring Amiga and proclaiming newfound dominance.
Peoplesoft did the same thing to a number of JD Edwards employees just a year or two ago, so I guess turnabout is fair play. What will be interesting is what happens to that mid market manufacturing market... SAP already has a version of their software that can compete with JDE and can definitely compete with Oracle.
In my computer science ethics class, we discussed mundane things like hacking, virii, and open source software.
I guess when you're going to a school like Brandeis, though, you like to expand their horizons by seriously considering whether robots should go make poopy.
All I know is that I'm moving to a remote island when our robot overlords get constipated.
You make the erroneous assumption that morons know how to operate books when it is quite certain that the lack of handling said books is a mitigating factor in their moronity in the first place.
Now, if the Coors Light twins were fighting over the mouse in a commercial, followed by step by step instructions embedded in a pop song played over a Clear Channel affiliate, then you'd have their attention.
Well, what do you expect? The person on the other end of that phone when you're negotiating contracts is usually a kid who is straight out of college with his brand new waffle stacking degree.
Here's the training:
(1) Spend 2 seconds on each resume (2) Ask the consultant what they do (3) Doodle on the resume while they explain how great they are and why NOBODY has their skills (other than the huge stack of resumes you have on your desk) (4) get their references (5) turn the references checks into sales calls . . . PROFIT!!!
I once had a consultant who I had a great working relationship with who I recruited to go work for a major chemical company based out of St. Louis. He's expensive, but the client said that the job was to do a fit/gap so that they could implement SAP Treasury. He said he could do it, he had a gap in his schedule, so he took it. The client said they had a limited budget, but we were able to work it out to 4 weeks. $250 an hour.
Consultant gets out there, gets familiarized with the system, and then they tell him that they want him to spend the rest of his time to train an intern, who has NEVER touched an SAP system, to implement Treasury during his last 3 weeks there.
The consultant refused, the client badgered him, and he refused to go further on a project that was destined to fail. Couldn't blame him. I lost $1800 bucks on the deal, though. Bastid!:)
Peoplesoft isn't the big dog in this market, SAP is. Watching Microsoft build a comparable product to SAP would be like watching a 3 year old attempt to solve a calculus problem. Cute effort, but no way in hell would they succeed.
ABAP# anyone?
Why not get a double major (CS, nursing)? Medical software development is big business, and the companies you'll work for rarely have these ridiculous interviews.
In September, I quit a technical recruiting position because I wanted to get back into development (I hate recruiting, but it paid the bills) and because I wanted to get away from the firm I was at, and I was then told about a recruiting position where the money was too good to pass up. I had multiple former coworkers there who I'm friends with who work there.
First interview, I go in, and am seated on a nice leather couch and given a beverage. I wait a while, chatting with a few friends who went out of their way to great me, and finally got to go into the interview. I just blew the team manager away, or so I thought. I dotted every "i," crossed every "t," and displayed my mastery of the subject. After about a half hour or so, he asked if I could come back and interview with the district manager. I was scheduled to be in New Orleans the next week, but told him I could do it on the following Thursday.
On that Thursday, I went back, and interviewed with the DM. Another great interview. I answered and asked every question and the DM was very excited with the possibility of bringing me on. Especially with the one part of the interview where I told him that it looked like most of the people in the office were just screwing around. They weren't on the phone and they weren't researching anything... they were just wasting time at their desks, and that ain't how I do business. He told me to call the team manager to inform him of my decision.
At this point, I'm feeling pretty good. I had other offers for development positions, but I could conceivably (and realistically) make more at this job in 4 months than I could in a year at an entry level development position. So I call the manager. No answer. Leave a message. No answer. Call again. No answer. Finally catch him on a Friday (this is 3 weeks after the initial interview), and he tells me to come in Monday, but doesn't give me any details.
So I go in on the Monday, and I wait for about a half hour before he gets into the office. We go into the conference room, and he tells me that he likes me, and just wants to make sure I'm a fit for the position. He explained that I seemed kind of laid back during my interview, and he just wanted to make sure I was a fit for the job. I assured him that I was given my background and the proof of sales that I had provided to him earlier, and when we were leaving the interview, he asked me if I was going to carpool with a neighbor of mine. I said yeah, and he said that he'd talk to the DM and get back to me on Monday. Monday comes, I call at the end of the day, get the answering machine. Tuesday comes, same deal. By Thursday, I finally get in touch with him, and he still hasn't talked to the DM. The next week comes and mostly goes. Three different buddies all asked the manager about me, and he still hadn't talked to the division manager.
I decided to send the DM and corporate recruiter follow up thank you letters via email, and got a prompt response from the corporate recruiter. The recruiter called me back and we had a nice chat about the manager, and I told her that I felt that if he didn't want to hire me, he could have at least let me know so that I could move on in my job search. She said that he had never given her a decision either way, and that he had still not talked to the division manager. I asked to be transferred to the DM, and I had a nice conversation with him as well. We talked about the general lack of courtesy that the team manager had given me, and he patched the team manager into the conversation where we basically tag teamed him and lit him up like a Christmas tree for his incompetence regarding the matter. The DM then offered me a position in the full time IT placement office with a considerable base salary, but it was in the same set of offices as engineering and I felt it would be better to stay away lest I cross that idiot's path again.
I've done business with IBM before. The non-technical interviews are there to make sure you're neither a raving lunatic nor a pathetic introvert, since you will be working with clients and trying not to offend them or destroy their systems. They can do background checks without having to check your references directly. Reference checks at the consulting level are just ways for companies to solicit business from your prior contacts. Always keep that in mind should you decide to eventually go independent.
"Give that motherfucker the Nobel prize, Alex! He can drive a standard!"
Different tool, same principle. You didn't design the car, you didn't build the car, you just fucking drive the car. Compiling code from scratch that you didn't write doesn't make you creative; it makes you a sycophant. Deciding what window manager you run and what shell you use is no harder than picking a paint job and an interior.
By the way, lay off the flowery language. OSes don't "bend to your will." They do what they're designed to do. Piss off the help desk.
American businesses don't give American labor the chance. If we lower the wages we ask for, they assume that the labor they'll get isn't worth paying for, and go to an H1 from a body shop in our stead.
Of course, you'd know that if you got off your ivory throne.
So in other words, the government rations you a bowl of rice when you could choose to have that nice steak dinner otherwise.
The founding fathers were very much capitalists. Your problem is that you think the founding fathers were Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.
Just like you're leaving out the feasability of just picking up and leaving. You also don't have a clue about how the job market works from a placement standpoint.
... don't need to. The fact of the matter is that with the job boom in India, they get on-the-job training on positions that have been outsourced. Once they reach a level of expertise, they come here to take the jobs that have yet to be outsourced.
These jobs could have been filled by US citizens, but the fact of the matter is that employers don't want to spend the money to train them. What you end up with is a large group of unemployed CS grads with a lot of theoretical knowledge but no practical experience, and that will put you on the fast track for a manager's position at McDonalds.
I used to be a headhunter until recently (long story... graduated during the tech bust), and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the inclusion of H1s in this marketplace has lowered the standards of production and has lowered the wages and rates that American citizens can expect. Many managers have complained to me about the poorly documented crap that they have gotten from H1 shops, only to balk when they hear what the going rates are for American labor.
You're jumping to some pretty silly conclusions.
First, you claim that an open source solution is going to pop out of thin air and replace the software that Microsoft already delivers with every one of their desktops as a part of Windows. And before you start, Firefox is not an adequate counterexample, because it works with the exact same documents and document formats that Explorer does.
I can give you many reasons why it won't work the way you want it to. The main one is this: most desktops are Windows based, most of them contain Word or Wordpad, and most people learn to edit documents with these tools. They are used, they are accepted, and within the context of purchasing additional software above and beyond the PC and OS that comes with it, they are free.
Students don't have a reason to switch to a web-based CMS because it's overkill, and they certainly won't do it for the sake of supporting open source software. And when they get into the real world? They'll STILL be using Word based formats, because it will continue to do what they need it to do. Microsoft's 96 format isn't the same as their 2004 format. They change with the times, and if CMS systems become all the rage, they will change with the times and continue to own the market.
... will find it tougher and tougher to find work soon. The problem is that Peoplesoft's system is nothing like Oracle's and managers aren't going to care how much experience they have if they don't have that Oracle ERP experience.
Consulting in the ERP sector is TOUGH business. You spend thousands and thousands of dollars on training, get categorized based on what version number of the software you've worked on, and now, there will be a huge number of extra workers who will flood the Oracle market. This is going to lower the rates for Oracle consultants, which were already some of the lowest in the ERP sector and considerably lower than SAP's. You can get a year's worth of training at Oracle University on virtually their entire software library for a few hundred bucks.
Well, it would make more sense if OO.org actually saved files to the.doc format properly. I've written resumes and saved them to.pdf properly, but when I saved them to.doc, they had all kinds of wierd spacing errors. They also have wierd bullet point fonts that don't work outside of OO.org.
I think people need to understand that, in some instances, you are not going to push an open (or open source) format on them no matter how hard you try. Microsoft Word documents are one of these formats that will remain the gold standard because it just plain works.
Slashdot Mirror
Just goes to show that you can make a lot of money by copying someone else's work if you just market it with a few silly looking monsters (Sesame Street, Barnie, Teletubbies, John and Teresa Kerry... oops!).
Two years after I first learned to program in GW-Basic through some data processing classes in middle school, I was faced with the challenge to develop something for the required science fair. I had no idea how to develop games, but I knew that I wanted to, and I also knew that I enjoyed fishing at a particular pond near my home. I did about 3 hours of research via the encyclopedia to learn about how water alkalinity, water depth, seasonal changes, and tidal changes affect the fish I was going for.
Then I started programming. I had never seen any game code and likely wouldn't have understood it if I did, but 9 hours later, I had a fully functioning text based fishing simulator with a grid based map and bait selector, as well as a menu to change the conditions in which I fished in. I used this project through all 4 years of high school, only changing the poster boards each time, and it got me out of approximately 3 weeks of classes to go through local, parish, regional, and state fairs. I always ranked at the state level.
Here are my suggestions that you may take with a grain of salt (or not):
You need to set a realistic set of goals in front of you before you attempt this project. You do not have to surprise anybody to get credit for this; the main focus is that you learn something through independent study. Take a look at some of the game development sites on the net and read a few of the tutorials to see what you're getting yourself into.
Once you have decided on your project, discuss your plans with your teacher or advisor to see if the project you've picked is realistic for your skill level. Don't get discouraged if they disagree with you, simply choose something simpler and put that project aside for your personal enjoyment. Regardless of how smart you might be, you want something that is manageable. No 3d, no action games.
I would take a look at the source code of some of the simpler games on the net. Some might suggest that you simply take an open source program and modify it, but I can guarantee you that it is NOT the purpose of your assignment to take someone's work and turn it in as your own, no matter how you changed it.
If I were you, I'd focus on a game with a static game board that only changes slightly during the game. Mahjong and Solitare would be my two top choices simply because they both use a game loop and don't require a whole lot of graphic movement.
If you want movement, tetris would be next because it does not require AI; it simply speeds up the game as you drop more blocks. If a 2 player only game is allowed, Pong and Tic Tac Toe are good places to start. Pong will allow you to demonstrate collision detection and Tic Tac Toe is simply an easy game. Breakout might also be a cool game to lay on them. You could also do a rougelike game, which is curses based and demonstrate your knowledge of data structures by giving your little squiggle person some items to fight parentheses with.
Whatever you do, I wish ya luck!
Why don't you just throw yourself at them while yelling "I'm a karma whore!?" It'd be much less demeaning and a whole lot more insightful. Besides, what do you think they're running on now, hmmmm? Not everyone uses mainframes anymore. Medical organizations have had to deal with multiple new sets of standards over the years, costing them billions of dollars. I would imagine that any computer utilizing the proposed system would be very hardened against possible security threats, to the point where they might very well be standalone machines whose sole purpose is to transfer the information.
... since geniuses often obfuscate simple things that people have already grown accustomed to. And as such, I see it perfectly reasonable to waste another 2 million dollars on this ridiculous project. People don't think spatially; they think categorically. This is why filing systems and folders work so well and why it's so easy for some people to get lost on a desktop which is larger than the viewable image on the screen.
Yeah, because everyone wants to spend time editing /etc/fstab just to get their OS to recognize that new hard drive they just stuck in the system and chmodding files just so they can install them. Most people will still want to run their out of date, broken copies of Windows than install an OS that has more library dependency problems than you can shake a stick at and virtually zero support from game manufacturers.
Even apt and yum have their share of problems with the stupidity that goes on with some of the repository owners. The entire point of having these repositories in the first place from an end user standpoint is to help users install software without having to deal with dependencies, yet installing eclipse via apt on Fedora was like pulling teeth. Tons of unresolved dependencies whose solution is to merge multiple source rpms and build them simply to install them.
Know what I have to do on Windows to install Eclipse? Double click on the damned file! I'm busy and I don't have time to sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for libraries I didn't even develop to compile.
I prefer a Linux desktop, but sometimes it's equivalent to taking your car apart and reassembling it every time you want to go somewhere new.
The sad part about this is that someone might actually give you a job someday to do something that involves programming when your real calling is at the CBS News department.
... this community normally berates or degrades companies that keep their products closed or proprietary, yet Apple, whose history in this matter makes Microsoft look like Santa Claus, gets a pass? Apple has a history of generating revenue by selling overpriced hardware to stupid marks who don't know any better, and the iPod is no different.
These people all work for companies that make it easier for other companies to lay off their back office people and cast off their proprietary software (and developers).
I suppose I should feel some level of sympathy for them, but then that would be like feeling bad for the priest who got caught with his pants around his ankles with an altar boy on his knees.
I'll pass, but you keep on fighting that good fight, fellas.
Get closer to a monopoly? That would be like Apple acquiring Amiga and proclaiming newfound dominance. Peoplesoft did the same thing to a number of JD Edwards employees just a year or two ago, so I guess turnabout is fair play. What will be interesting is what happens to that mid market manufacturing market... SAP already has a version of their software that can compete with JDE and can definitely compete with Oracle.
Search appliance? That's one freaking expensive flashlight.
In my computer science ethics class, we discussed mundane things like hacking, virii, and open source software.
I guess when you're going to a school like Brandeis, though, you like to expand their horizons by seriously considering whether robots should go make poopy.
All I know is that I'm moving to a remote island when our robot overlords get constipated.
You make the erroneous assumption that morons know how to operate books when it is quite certain that the lack of handling said books is a mitigating factor in their moronity in the first place. Now, if the Coors Light twins were fighting over the mouse in a commercial, followed by step by step instructions embedded in a pop song played over a Clear Channel affiliate, then you'd have their attention.
Well, what do you expect? The person on the other end of that phone when you're negotiating contracts is usually a kid who is straight out of college with his brand new waffle stacking degree.
:)
Here's the training:
(1) Spend 2 seconds on each resume
(2) Ask the consultant what they do
(3) Doodle on the resume while they explain how great they are and why NOBODY has their skills (other than the huge stack of resumes you have on your desk)
(4) get their references
(5) turn the references checks into sales calls
.
.
.
PROFIT!!!
I once had a consultant who I had a great working relationship with who I recruited to go work for a major chemical company based out of St. Louis. He's expensive, but the client said that the job was to do a fit/gap so that they could implement SAP Treasury. He said he could do it, he had a gap in his schedule, so he took it. The client said they had a limited budget, but we were able to work it out to 4 weeks. $250 an hour.
Consultant gets out there, gets familiarized with the system, and then they tell him that they want him to spend the rest of his time to train an intern, who has NEVER touched an SAP system, to implement Treasury during his last 3 weeks there.
The consultant refused, the client badgered him, and he refused to go further on a project that was destined to fail. Couldn't blame him. I lost $1800 bucks on the deal, though. Bastid!
Peoplesoft isn't the big dog in this market, SAP is. Watching Microsoft build a comparable product to SAP would be like watching a 3 year old attempt to solve a calculus problem. Cute effort, but no way in hell would they succeed. ABAP# anyone?
Why not get a double major (CS, nursing)? Medical software development is big business, and the companies you'll work for rarely have these ridiculous interviews.
In September, I quit a technical recruiting position because I wanted to get back into development (I hate recruiting, but it paid the bills) and because I wanted to get away from the firm I was at, and I was then told about a recruiting position where the money was too good to pass up. I had multiple former coworkers there who I'm friends with who work there. First interview, I go in, and am seated on a nice leather couch and given a beverage. I wait a while, chatting with a few friends who went out of their way to great me, and finally got to go into the interview. I just blew the team manager away, or so I thought. I dotted every "i," crossed every "t," and displayed my mastery of the subject. After about a half hour or so, he asked if I could come back and interview with the district manager. I was scheduled to be in New Orleans the next week, but told him I could do it on the following Thursday. On that Thursday, I went back, and interviewed with the DM. Another great interview. I answered and asked every question and the DM was very excited with the possibility of bringing me on. Especially with the one part of the interview where I told him that it looked like most of the people in the office were just screwing around. They weren't on the phone and they weren't researching anything... they were just wasting time at their desks, and that ain't how I do business. He told me to call the team manager to inform him of my decision. At this point, I'm feeling pretty good. I had other offers for development positions, but I could conceivably (and realistically) make more at this job in 4 months than I could in a year at an entry level development position. So I call the manager. No answer. Leave a message. No answer. Call again. No answer. Finally catch him on a Friday (this is 3 weeks after the initial interview), and he tells me to come in Monday, but doesn't give me any details. So I go in on the Monday, and I wait for about a half hour before he gets into the office. We go into the conference room, and he tells me that he likes me, and just wants to make sure I'm a fit for the position. He explained that I seemed kind of laid back during my interview, and he just wanted to make sure I was a fit for the job. I assured him that I was given my background and the proof of sales that I had provided to him earlier, and when we were leaving the interview, he asked me if I was going to carpool with a neighbor of mine. I said yeah, and he said that he'd talk to the DM and get back to me on Monday. Monday comes, I call at the end of the day, get the answering machine. Tuesday comes, same deal. By Thursday, I finally get in touch with him, and he still hasn't talked to the DM. The next week comes and mostly goes. Three different buddies all asked the manager about me, and he still hadn't talked to the division manager. I decided to send the DM and corporate recruiter follow up thank you letters via email, and got a prompt response from the corporate recruiter. The recruiter called me back and we had a nice chat about the manager, and I told her that I felt that if he didn't want to hire me, he could have at least let me know so that I could move on in my job search. She said that he had never given her a decision either way, and that he had still not talked to the division manager. I asked to be transferred to the DM, and I had a nice conversation with him as well. We talked about the general lack of courtesy that the team manager had given me, and he patched the team manager into the conversation where we basically tag teamed him and lit him up like a Christmas tree for his incompetence regarding the matter. The DM then offered me a position in the full time IT placement office with a considerable base salary, but it was in the same set of offices as engineering and I felt it would be better to stay away lest I cross that idiot's path again.
I've done business with IBM before. The non-technical interviews are there to make sure you're neither a raving lunatic nor a pathetic introvert, since you will be working with clients and trying not to offend them or destroy their systems. They can do background checks without having to check your references directly. Reference checks at the consulting level are just ways for companies to solicit business from your prior contacts. Always keep that in mind should you decide to eventually go independent.
"Give that motherfucker the Nobel prize, Alex! He can drive a standard!"
Different tool, same principle. You didn't design the car, you didn't build the car, you just fucking drive the car. Compiling code from scratch that you didn't write doesn't make you creative; it makes you a sycophant. Deciding what window manager you run and what shell you use is no harder than picking a paint job and an interior.
By the way, lay off the flowery language. OSes don't "bend to your will." They do what they're designed to do. Piss off the help desk.
American businesses don't give American labor the chance. If we lower the wages we ask for, they assume that the labor they'll get isn't worth paying for, and go to an H1 from a body shop in our stead. Of course, you'd know that if you got off your ivory throne.
So in other words, the government rations you a bowl of rice when you could choose to have that nice steak dinner otherwise. The founding fathers were very much capitalists. Your problem is that you think the founding fathers were Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.
Just like you're leaving out the feasability of just picking up and leaving. You also don't have a clue about how the job market works from a placement standpoint.
... don't need to. The fact of the matter is that with the job boom in India, they get on-the-job training on positions that have been outsourced. Once they reach a level of expertise, they come here to take the jobs that have yet to be outsourced.
These jobs could have been filled by US citizens, but the fact of the matter is that employers don't want to spend the money to train them. What you end up with is a large group of unemployed CS grads with a lot of theoretical knowledge but no practical experience, and that will put you on the fast track for a manager's position at McDonalds.
I used to be a headhunter until recently (long story... graduated during the tech bust), and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the inclusion of H1s in this marketplace has lowered the standards of production and has lowered the wages and rates that American citizens can expect. Many managers have complained to me about the poorly documented crap that they have gotten from H1 shops, only to balk when they hear what the going rates are for American labor.
You're jumping to some pretty silly conclusions. First, you claim that an open source solution is going to pop out of thin air and replace the software that Microsoft already delivers with every one of their desktops as a part of Windows. And before you start, Firefox is not an adequate counterexample, because it works with the exact same documents and document formats that Explorer does. I can give you many reasons why it won't work the way you want it to. The main one is this: most desktops are Windows based, most of them contain Word or Wordpad, and most people learn to edit documents with these tools. They are used, they are accepted, and within the context of purchasing additional software above and beyond the PC and OS that comes with it, they are free. Students don't have a reason to switch to a web-based CMS because it's overkill, and they certainly won't do it for the sake of supporting open source software. And when they get into the real world? They'll STILL be using Word based formats, because it will continue to do what they need it to do. Microsoft's 96 format isn't the same as their 2004 format. They change with the times, and if CMS systems become all the rage, they will change with the times and continue to own the market.
... will find it tougher and tougher to find work soon. The problem is that Peoplesoft's system is nothing like Oracle's and managers aren't going to care how much experience they have if they don't have that Oracle ERP experience. Consulting in the ERP sector is TOUGH business. You spend thousands and thousands of dollars on training, get categorized based on what version number of the software you've worked on, and now, there will be a huge number of extra workers who will flood the Oracle market. This is going to lower the rates for Oracle consultants, which were already some of the lowest in the ERP sector and considerably lower than SAP's. You can get a year's worth of training at Oracle University on virtually their entire software library for a few hundred bucks.
Well, it would make more sense if OO.org actually saved files to the .doc format properly. I've written resumes and saved them to .pdf properly, but when I saved them to .doc, they had all kinds of wierd spacing errors. They also have wierd bullet point fonts that don't work outside of OO.org.
I think people need to understand that, in some instances, you are not going to push an open (or open source) format on them no matter how hard you try. Microsoft Word documents are one of these formats that will remain the gold standard because it just plain works.