If they aren't going to do any more development on it, others might be inclined to do so if it were released.
There are plenty of good browsers available for the Mac anyway, such as Safari, Mozilla/Firefox, Opera, Omniweb and iCab, so it's no great loss if Microsoft doesn't release the code.
It's a different angle on the same old labor shortage song and dance. As another poster pointed out, if India can't supply the labor, another country will and they'll do it cheaper. There's still a vast supply of labor in the world.
There are some of us still employed in our 40s. I'm 48 and have been coding since I was 38. So I buck the trend. One reason is I write good code. My stuff works. I avoid becoming a victim of age discrimination because I'm also a karate instructor the size of a linebacker and can still beat most men in a fight. So my coworkers don't yet think of me as old. They just think I'm nuts.
But the vast majority of my coworkers and new hires are in their 20s. Most of the programmers I know who have been laid off in their 30s or 40s, did not fare very well in their searce for new jobs. Many ended up doing something else. There are counter-examples like me but I am not typical.
Industry trade groups periodically whine about shortages of engineers, scientists and programmers. I graduated from engineering school 25 years ago and every few years they trot out the same old dog-earred dire projections. And yet, those of us who work as engineers, programmers and scientists never see these shortages materialize. Their magazine articles are plants used by their lobbyists to justify the need for increases in work visa quotas to the politicians they court.
The majority of those who graduate from engineering schools do very little or no actual engineering work. That's because there ain't enough engineering work to go around. It's been like that since I got out of school and older engineers told me that was their experience as well. Engineering schools seem to still be fighting the cold war. The old timers told me engineering schools went into high gear after the Russians launched Sputnik and only now are enrollments beginning to decline. Only after a 5+ year tight engineering job market are some of the prospective engineering students reevaluating their choice.
It's been a real challenge to stay employed in technically stimulating work. Somehow I've done it but my circumstances have been better than those of many engineers burdened with more intense family obligations. I've worked hard and I've been lucky. I'll stick with it because I'm pushing 50 and it's the best option I have. But through no fault of my own, I may be forced out of technical work before I reach 65. If and when that happens, I will no longer be counted as an unemployed engineer in the statistics should I accept a job doing something else. Instead, I will be counted as an employed hardware store stock clerk or whatever. One more engineer will have disappeared into the employment statistics to be counted no more and the industry trade groups will continue to whine about shortages.
So, while it's not so untrue that America is becoming a services based economy, I think it would be more accurate to say that it is becoming an UNSKILLED or lesser-skilled services economy.
... and many of the jobs this lesser-skilled services economy produces seem to be going to Mexicans.
Your experience isn't unique. I've seen a company do nothing and let the worker continue working up until his last day. Earlier, I saw the same company send a security guard to supervise the employee who quit clean out their office and assist them in getting their stuff out of the building to their car. It depended on where the employee was going to work and the general mood of management. In either case, all you can do is give 2 weeks notice and the ball is in their court.
This same outfit had fired 2 employees because they discovered these individuals were seeking employment elsewhere. I noticed an objectionable trend 8 years ago during my last job hunt. Prospective employers wanted to talk to my boss before they made a written offer, I accepted and had the opportunity to resign from my old job. Basically, they didn't want candidates to bargain from a position of strength. I was put in this situation. I refused to give my blessing for them to call my boss. My rationale was and is that a worker doesn't deserve to be fired just for trying to get a better job. In the end, I got the job because an insider knew me. A buddy of mine had a similar experience. He felt the same way I do about it and refused. He was taken out of consideration for the job. He eventually got a much better job somewhere else.
Traditional radio is a wasteland thanks to outfits like Clear Channel and when they move into digital radio, it'll become a wasteland too.
I listen to ballgames when I'm driving. Sometimes I listen to Clark Howard or the news. Radio went into a downward spiral in the early 80s and with the advent of Clear Channel, it hit bottom and started to dig.
I particularly like "Hire by Committee". This tends to weed out those individuals with work disrupting character flaws.
I don't like "Pack 'em in". Individual offices are much better. Phone tag and emails are not that big a problem. The practice of setting up "war rooms" or "pack 'em in" is done to indimidate workers. The way to get out of one of these bullpens is to eat Mexican food, chili or perhaps Indian food and cut rank farts until they beg you to move.
If you place an order with some outfit and someone calls you back asking for some or all of the same information or to verify this or that, that's red flag. A properly designed site run by an honest company gets the info right the first time and verifies your credit card number when you initially place the order. There is no need to call back and "verify" anything.
This is being driven by labor costs. Technical workers in China and India work for a fraction of the pay of US technical workers. So the work is done there. Less manufacturing work and engineering work in the US means fewer technical workers are needed in the US.
During the recession of the early 90s, US companies laid off employees by the thousands ever other week. During the past 5 years, US companies having been laying of employees by the tens of thousands. This means there are lots of unemployed and underemployed technical people. Prospective students see this and reconsider their field of study. Technical curricula are hard and required lots of work. The reward for obtaining an engineering degree has been dramatically reduced.
Anything done to artificially stimulate the graduation rates of engineers will only add to the numbers of unemployed and underemployed engineers. Just because you graduate more engineers does not mean companies will spring up to employ them.
It's bad enough they want to break our televisions, but the way that they are subverting democracy is just astounding.
There's nothing new about this kind of subversion. Lawmakers are already ignoring their constituents on issues such as the Iraq war, immigration and the economy. They have been bought off by corporate interests. The United States is being cannibalized to generate profits for big corporations.
The Netflix ad CNN runs is a real CPU hog. So I only use Firefox to view it and I've got pretty much everything disabled. I don't mind pictures but when it starts to slow down my machine, I put the quietus on it.
I thought the point of insurance was to spread risk. Since noody can afford the treatment for certain catastrophic illnesses, the idea is to put everyone in a pool to share the risk. If insurers are allowed to cherry pick, why bother even having insurance, other than for accidental trauma?
This guy is right about cubicles. Cubicles are a red flag when you're interviewing.
But don't overlook restrooms. Make sure to use the restroom when you interview. The condition of the restroom speaks volumes about the company. Was it clean? Did the commodes and urinals flush? Was there toilet paper? paper towels? soap? hot water?
Sometimes, I just lay the phone down and say nothing or cut a big fart or hold the phone down and get my cat to meow. I've used airhorns, the alarm clocks on Dark Side of the Moon, police whistles and tape recordings of me talking about something.
Engineering is hard. It just is. No amount of sugar coating will make it easier. Studying hard, going to office hours, going to class and actually doing the homework, instead of copying, makes one better. I partied my fair share, managed to play an intercollegiate sport, got exceptional grades, co-opped 6 terms, and am involved in many extra-curricular activities. I'm not an exceptionally smart person, I just work hard, and I budget my time.
Well said. There's no way to take the work out of the work. All the rigors this guy described are familiar to those of us who stuck it out and got engineering degrees.
Hell yes it's hard. But in the past, there were usually high paying job opportunities awaiting engineering graduates. That is no longer the case. Many of the businesses which hired these US engineers in the past no longer do because they can hire an engineer in China at a fraction of the pay. That's where the work went. For example, twenty years ago, there used to be a couple dozen good places in the RTP NC area where a skillful analog circuit design engineer could find a good paying job. Today theres one or two. There's still plenty of circuit design work in the world. It's just not being done here.
Today, engineering is still just as hard as it ever was. There are still good and bad educators at each engineering school. But what is different is the reward is vastly less than in decades past. When companies cease to manufacture and design products in the US, fewer engineers are needed here. There's too much stick and not enough carrot.
Its pretty obvious that the US as a superpower was a post-WWII accident...
Others have stated the same observation a little differently, that it was easy for the US to be the world leader after WWII when so many other industrialized countries lay in ruins and others had succumbed to communism.
... and the rest of the world has caught up, thus the decentrilization of wealth, power, industry, ideas, etc. Instead of lamenting "this sad state" we should be preparing for a future where the US isnt the king of all things and learn how to better compete, create new markets, etc.
They didn't just catch up. American companies basically gave it to them for a song. We should indeed be preparing for a world "where the US isnt the king of all things" or the ace, queen or jack. For during the past 20 years, we've been exporting our industry and importing poor people.
There's nothing wrong with old timey books. They don't need fixing. I've used e-books in a course. At the conclusion of the course, the e-book disappeared. Instead of a book I was familiar with to keep as a reference, I had nothing. I didn't like being tethered to an internet connected computer to view the adobe acrobat based file. It's OK to read supplimental material this way but not a textbook.
Slashdot Mirror
If they aren't going to do any more development on it, others might be inclined to do so if it were released.
There are plenty of good browsers available for the Mac anyway, such as Safari, Mozilla/Firefox, Opera, Omniweb and iCab, so it's no great loss if Microsoft doesn't release the code.
It ain't like many Mac users were running IE. Heck there's plenty of browsers available for the Mac.
Safari
Firefox
Mozilla
Opera
iCab
Omniweb
to name a few.
It's a different angle on the same old labor shortage song and dance. As another poster pointed out, if India can't supply the labor, another country will and they'll do it cheaper. There's still a vast supply of labor in the world.
Here's a link with some interesting info.
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html#tth_
There are some of us still employed in our 40s. I'm 48 and have been coding since I was 38. So I buck the trend. One reason is I write good code. My stuff works. I avoid becoming a victim of age discrimination because I'm also a karate instructor the size of a linebacker and can still beat most men in a fight. So my coworkers don't yet think of me as old. They just think I'm nuts.
But the vast majority of my coworkers and new hires are in their 20s. Most of the programmers I know who have been laid off in their 30s or 40s, did not fare very well in their searce for new jobs. Many ended up doing something else. There are counter-examples like me but I am not typical.
Industry trade groups periodically whine about shortages of engineers, scientists and programmers. I graduated from engineering school 25 years ago and every few years they trot out the same old dog-earred dire projections. And yet, those of us who work as engineers, programmers and scientists never see these shortages materialize. Their magazine articles are plants used by their lobbyists to justify the need for increases in work visa quotas to the politicians they court.
The majority of those who graduate from engineering schools do very little or no actual engineering work. That's because there ain't enough engineering work to go around. It's been like that since I got out of school and older engineers told me that was their experience as well. Engineering schools seem to still be fighting the cold war. The old timers told me engineering schools went into high gear after the Russians launched Sputnik and only now are enrollments beginning to decline. Only after a 5+ year tight engineering job market are some of the prospective engineering students reevaluating their choice.
It's been a real challenge to stay employed in technically stimulating work. Somehow I've done it but my circumstances have been better than those of many engineers burdened with more intense family obligations. I've worked hard and I've been lucky. I'll stick with it because I'm pushing 50 and it's the best option I have. But through no fault of my own, I may be forced out of technical work before I reach 65. If and when that happens, I will no longer be counted as an unemployed engineer in the statistics should I accept a job doing something else. Instead, I will be counted as an employed hardware store stock clerk or whatever. One more engineer will have disappeared into the employment statistics to be counted no more and the industry trade groups will continue to whine about shortages.
So, while it's not so untrue that America is becoming a services based economy, I think it would be more accurate to say that it is becoming an UNSKILLED or lesser-skilled services economy.
Your experience isn't unique. I've seen a company do nothing and let the worker continue working up until his last day. Earlier, I saw the same company send a security guard to supervise the employee who quit clean out their office and assist them in getting their stuff out of the building to their car. It depended on where the employee was going to work and the general mood of management. In either case, all you can do is give 2 weeks notice and the ball is in their court.
This same outfit had fired 2 employees because they discovered these individuals were seeking employment elsewhere. I noticed an objectionable trend 8 years ago during my last job hunt. Prospective employers wanted to talk to my boss before they made a written offer, I accepted and had the opportunity to resign from my old job. Basically, they didn't want candidates to bargain from a position of strength. I was put in this situation. I refused to give my blessing for them to call my boss. My rationale was and is that a worker doesn't deserve to be fired just for trying to get a better job. In the end, I got the job because an insider knew me. A buddy of mine had a similar experience. He felt the same way I do about it and refused. He was taken out of consideration for the job. He eventually got a much better job somewhere else.
Traditional radio is a wasteland thanks to outfits like Clear Channel and when they move into digital radio, it'll become a wasteland too.
I listen to ballgames when I'm driving. Sometimes I listen to Clark Howard or the news. Radio went into a downward spiral in the early 80s and with the advent of Clear Channel, it hit bottom and started to dig.
Vaguely worded rules don't mean much until they're applied. Sucks to be the testcase.
I particularly like "Hire by Committee". This tends to weed out those individuals with work disrupting character flaws.
I don't like "Pack 'em in". Individual offices are much better. Phone tag and emails are not that big a problem. The practice of setting up "war rooms" or "pack 'em in" is done to indimidate workers. The way to get out of one of these bullpens is to eat Mexican food, chili or perhaps Indian food and cut rank farts until they beg you to move.
If you place an order with some outfit and someone calls you back asking for some or all of the same information or to verify this or that, that's red flag. A properly designed site run by an honest company gets the info right the first time and verifies your credit card number when you initially place the order. There is no need to call back and "verify" anything.
Does your face hurt?
No, why?
It's killin' me.
The bigger problem is there are not enough science jobs to go around.
It sucks, but about the only thing that stops this race to the bottom is us being better.
No. The only thing that stops this race to the bottom is arrival at the bottom.
The Ruby Eclipse plugin is the best debugger I know of. It's been indespensble. The time you spend setting it up will pay off big.
This is being driven by labor costs. Technical workers in China and India work for a fraction of the pay of US technical workers. So the work is done there. Less manufacturing work and engineering work in the US means fewer technical workers are needed in the US.
During the recession of the early 90s, US companies laid off employees by the thousands ever other week. During the past 5 years, US companies having been laying of employees by the tens of thousands. This means there are lots of unemployed and underemployed technical people. Prospective students see this and reconsider their field of study. Technical curricula are hard and required lots of work. The reward for obtaining an engineering degree has been dramatically reduced.
Anything done to artificially stimulate the graduation rates of engineers will only add to the numbers of unemployed and underemployed engineers. Just because you graduate more engineers does not mean companies will spring up to employ them.
It's bad enough they want to break our televisions, but the way that they are subverting democracy is just astounding.
There's nothing new about this kind of subversion. Lawmakers are already ignoring their constituents on issues such as the Iraq war, immigration and the economy. They have been bought off by corporate interests. The United States is being cannibalized to generate profits for big corporations.
The Netflix ad CNN runs is a real CPU hog. So I only use Firefox to view it and I've got pretty much everything disabled. I don't mind pictures but when it starts to slow down my machine, I put the quietus on it.
I thought the point of insurance was to spread risk. Since noody can afford the treatment for certain catastrophic illnesses, the idea is to put everyone in a pool to share the risk. If insurers are allowed to cherry pick, why bother even having insurance, other than for accidental trauma?
Officer, I cannot lie. I put that pair of old running shoes at the bottom of that mound of trash.
This guy is right about cubicles. Cubicles are a red flag when you're interviewing.
But don't overlook restrooms. Make sure to use the restroom when you interview. The condition of the restroom speaks volumes about the company. Was it clean? Did the commodes and urinals flush? Was there toilet paper? paper towels? soap? hot water?
You may be surprised.
Sometimes, I just lay the phone down and say nothing or cut a big fart or hold the phone down and get my cat to meow. I've used airhorns, the alarm clocks on Dark Side of the Moon, police whistles and tape recordings of me talking about something.
Have some fun with 'em.
Engineering is hard. It just is. No amount of sugar coating will make it easier. Studying hard, going to office hours, going to class and actually doing the homework, instead of copying, makes one better. I partied my fair share, managed to play an intercollegiate sport, got exceptional grades, co-opped 6 terms, and am involved in many extra-curricular activities. I'm not an exceptionally smart person, I just work hard, and I budget my time.
Well said. There's no way to take the work out of the work. All the rigors this guy described are familiar to those of us who stuck it out and got engineering degrees.
Hell yes it's hard. But in the past, there were usually high paying job opportunities awaiting engineering graduates. That is no longer the case. Many of the businesses which hired these US engineers in the past no longer do because they can hire an engineer in China at a fraction of the pay. That's where the work went. For example, twenty years ago, there used to be a couple dozen good places in the RTP NC area where a skillful analog circuit design engineer could find a good paying job. Today theres one or two. There's still plenty of circuit design work in the world. It's just not being done here.
Today, engineering is still just as hard as it ever was. There are still good and bad educators at each engineering school. But what is different is the reward is vastly less than in decades past. When companies cease to manufacture and design products in the US, fewer engineers are needed here. There's too much stick and not enough carrot.
Its pretty obvious that the US as a superpower was a post-WWII accident ...
... and the rest of the world has caught up, thus the decentrilization of wealth, power, industry, ideas, etc. Instead of lamenting "this sad state" we should be preparing for a future where the US isnt the king of all things and learn how to better compete, create new markets, etc.
Others have stated the same observation a little differently, that it was easy for the US to be the world leader after WWII when so many other industrialized countries lay in ruins and others had succumbed to communism.
They didn't just catch up. American companies basically gave it to them for a song. We should indeed be preparing for a world "where the US isnt the king of all things" or the ace, queen or jack. For during the past 20 years, we've been exporting our industry and importing poor people.
There's nothing wrong with old timey books. They don't need fixing. I've used e-books in a course. At the conclusion of the course, the e-book disappeared. Instead of a book I was familiar with to keep as a reference, I had nothing. I didn't like being tethered to an internet connected computer to view the adobe acrobat based file. It's OK to read supplimental material this way but not a textbook.