"I don't think you can stop your queue jumping problem- there is always india, europe, etc. (Some people from the states are going to india for medical care (esp heart surgery) since it is cheaper than the cost here *with* insurance - including airfare there and back!)"
You know, if America made peace with Cuba, there's a ton of doctors there, and they're so much closer.:)
The queue is shorter in America, not because people are getting treated. Poor people who cant afford expensive treatment simply don't get on the queue at all.
Health care wise, if you're rich, you want to be in America. Otherwise, the place to be is Europe.
The 3rd world countries buying these laptops are not exactly dirt poor. China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, Thailand, while not as rich as the developed world, do have significant resources. It is not like children in these countries are having to do without textbooks because the money have been wasted on these laptops. The choice is not between whether the children should have books OR computers. They already have books. The choice is between books + even more books vs books + computers. I suspect it isn't even that. The money for these notebooks are not going to be coming out of the the budget to buy school books for the poor children. The education departments will ask for, and get additional money to buy these notebooks.
Now, if some rich guy from the 3rd world were to ask his own government for US$200 million, everybody will be crying foul, corruption, waste, etc. But if a white guy from MIT (a prestigious educational institution, not a greedy capitalist corporation), were to do the same, he will be treated differently. It's how the world is. The education secretary in India, who said "We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools" will find out that he will end up with no laptops, and no additional money for classrooms and teachers. The money would have misteriously dried up.
I live in Malaysia. Not one of the countries in the initial round of negotiation. But it is right next door to Thailand, and economically, about the same level. We have here a school book loan scheme. Poor children gets their school books for free. On loan. At the end of the year, you return the text books, and the next year, it's given to the next batch of kids. The books probably last about 5 to 10 years. They're pretty worn down by the 3rd year. I know cause I got free books till I was 12. Then they tightened the rules a bit, and I was disqualified. My parents weren't rich, but we weren't poor either.
Let me put it another way. How many computers do you have. How productive will you be if, in a freak storm, an electrical surge come down the wire frying all your computers, and you had to do all your work without a computer for an entire month? I know I would be almost entirely useless. My boss might as well send me home until the new computers came. I don't have children yet, but if your kids ask you for a computer to help with their studies, would you tell them no, I'd much rather you spend the money buying more books.
It would be better if the laptops could eventually replace textbooks. Most children remain in school for about 12 years. The cost of providing textbooks might be comparable to the laptops. With the laptops, the kids could get an unlimited number of the latest textbooks in electronic form for free. While books are cheap to print, they cannot be updated. Either your throw them away and print new books, or condemn your kids to study with 10 year old textbooks. That might be OK 30 years ago, but science and technology progress much too fast these days.
I don't know how many books you can print for US$100, but I am sure the number is no where close to 19,000 (the number of books on Project Gutenberg's website so far). You certainly cannot print the entire Wikipedia (1.3 million articles as at today).
What I don't like is the fact that we cannot buy this laptop. They should release a commercial version we can buy online, same spec, higher price, but different casing (so kids don't sell their laptops, or have it get stolen and sold). Why? Cause if nobody but 7 year old kids gets one of these, who's going to write free software for these things?
A computer is only as good as the software it runs. If in the first two years of it's release, 100% of the owners are 7 and 8 year olds, the production of software is going to be severely limited.
I'd buy one immediately. It's definitely more powerful than the Dell Axim I just bought for about US$350. Millions of people will buy one immediately.
Megapixel camera, hooked directly to the visual cortex -> the blind can see again.
20 megapixel all-round camera -> 360 degrees all around sight, see in infrared and ultraviolet, night vision.
Computer display that interface directly to the brain -> multitask, more time to read/.
Hey boss, you know I really like working here. The benefits and bonuses, flexi-time, telecommuting, the co-workers, and you're a good boss. But I feel like I need something more challenging. I realize that all the Excel, Access, and VBA stuff is important. Not that I am not happy doing it. But perhaps, once in a while, if there's any work that involves more programming. Well, I'd like to volunteer for it. Of course this isn't going to work if your entire department only ever does Excel, Access, and VBA stuff.
> However, the work I actually do seems to be a waste of my CS education.
I wouldn't ever say that to anybody at work. Ever. Not even away from work. I know you don't mean it that way, but it could be miscontrued. Your boss may conclude that you think some jobs are beneath you. A waste of your skills. If I'm interviewing, and the candidate said something even remotely like that, I wouldn't hire him/her.
> The other day I was asked to export a Lotus Notes database into an Excel file and format it.
After finishing that in 10 minutes, what did you do for the rest of the day?:)
My sister is a researcher with an M.Sc. Once in a while she'll tell me about how she has to do clerical work. Stuffing envelopes, arranging transport for seminar participants, etc. Seems that a lot of her colleagues are in the same boat (new hires, 2 years there). None of them has yet managed to get a grant, hence no money to hire assistants. So got to do everything yourself.
In working life, there's always the good stuff that you want to do; and the lousy stuff that you have to do. Well, somebody has got to do it.
Just a couple of months ago, I had to fire one of our programmers. In terms of technical skills, he was the best we ever had. But he wouldn't share the "nobody wants to do stuff". I tried various ways to get him to change his attitude, but after a while, he was starting to poison the environment in the office.
We have about 80 desktops, spread out in 60 locations. About 65 of them are Windows, the rest Linux. Everyday, some of these Windows PCs gets infected with virus. Our techs remove them. They soon come back. We have been using Linux for 2 years. Total number of virus, spyware, etc, found on the Linux PCs so far: 0.
Our techs are spending a large fraction of the working hours simply removing virus from the Windows PCs. The problem is so bad, they are now simply ignoring spyware. We are thinking of moving ALL the PCs to Linux, save maybe 2 or 3 in HQ.
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"I don't think you can stop your queue jumping problem- there is always india, europe, etc. (Some people from the states are going to india for medical care (esp heart surgery) since it is cheaper than the cost here *with* insurance - including airfare there and back!)" You know, if America made peace with Cuba, there's a ton of doctors there, and they're so much closer. :)
The queue is shorter in America, not because people are getting treated. Poor people who cant afford expensive treatment simply don't get on the queue at all. Health care wise, if you're rich, you want to be in America. Otherwise, the place to be is Europe.
Over here in Malaysia, the cinemas are showing Cicak Man (www.cicakman.com). Cicak is the local name for gecko.
The 3rd world countries buying these laptops are not exactly dirt poor. China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, Thailand, while not as rich as the developed world, do have significant resources. It is not like children in these countries are having to do without textbooks because the money have been wasted on these laptops. The choice is not between whether the children should have books OR computers. They already have books. The choice is between books + even more books vs books + computers. I suspect it isn't even that. The money for these notebooks are not going to be coming out of the the budget to buy school books for the poor children. The education departments will ask for, and get additional money to buy these notebooks.
Now, if some rich guy from the 3rd world were to ask his own government for US$200 million, everybody will be crying foul, corruption, waste, etc. But if a white guy from MIT (a prestigious educational institution, not a greedy capitalist corporation), were to do the same, he will be treated differently. It's how the world is. The education secretary in India, who said "We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools" will find out that he will end up with no laptops, and no additional money for classrooms and teachers. The money would have misteriously dried up.
I live in Malaysia. Not one of the countries in the initial round of negotiation. But it is right next door to Thailand, and economically, about the same level. We have here a school book loan scheme. Poor children gets their school books for free. On loan. At the end of the year, you return the text books, and the next year, it's given to the next batch of kids. The books probably last about 5 to 10 years. They're pretty worn down by the 3rd year. I know cause I got free books till I was 12. Then they tightened the rules a bit, and I was disqualified. My parents weren't rich, but we weren't poor either.
Let me put it another way. How many computers do you have. How productive will you be if, in a freak storm, an electrical surge come down the wire frying all your computers, and you had to do all your work without a computer for an entire month? I know I would be almost entirely useless. My boss might as well send me home until the new computers came. I don't have children yet, but if your kids ask you for a computer to help with their studies, would you tell them no, I'd much rather you spend the money buying more books.
It would be better if the laptops could eventually replace textbooks. Most children remain in school for about 12 years. The cost of providing textbooks might be comparable to the laptops. With the laptops, the kids could get an unlimited number of the latest textbooks in electronic form for free. While books are cheap to print, they cannot be updated. Either your throw them away and print new books, or condemn your kids to study with 10 year old textbooks. That might be OK 30 years ago, but science and technology progress much too fast these days.
I don't know how many books you can print for US$100, but I am sure the number is no where close to 19,000 (the number of books on Project Gutenberg's website so far). You certainly cannot print the entire Wikipedia (1.3 million articles as at today). What I don't like is the fact that we cannot buy this laptop. They should release a commercial version we can buy online, same spec, higher price, but different casing (so kids don't sell their laptops, or have it get stolen and sold). Why? Cause if nobody but 7 year old kids gets one of these, who's going to write free software for these things? A computer is only as good as the software it runs. If in the first two years of it's release, 100% of the owners are 7 and 8 year olds, the production of software is going to be severely limited. I'd buy one immediately. It's definitely more powerful than the Dell Axim I just bought for about US$350. Millions of people will buy one immediately.
Megapixel camera, hooked directly to the visual cortex -> the blind can see again. 20 megapixel all-round camera -> 360 degrees all around sight, see in infrared and ultraviolet, night vision. Computer display that interface directly to the brain -> multitask, more time to read /.
Hey boss, you know I really like working here. The benefits and bonuses, flexi-time, telecommuting, the co-workers, and you're a good boss. But I feel like I need something more challenging. I realize that all the Excel, Access, and VBA stuff is important. Not that I am not happy doing it. But perhaps, once in a while, if there's any work that involves more programming. Well, I'd like to volunteer for it. Of course this isn't going to work if your entire department only ever does Excel, Access, and VBA stuff.
:)
> However, the work I actually do seems to be a waste of my CS education.
I wouldn't ever say that to anybody at work. Ever. Not even away from work. I know you don't mean it that way, but it could be miscontrued. Your boss may conclude that you think some jobs are beneath you. A waste of your skills. If I'm interviewing, and the candidate said something even remotely like that, I wouldn't hire him/her.
> The other day I was asked to export a Lotus Notes database into an Excel file and format it.
After finishing that in 10 minutes, what did you do for the rest of the day?
My sister is a researcher with an M.Sc. Once in a while she'll tell me about how she has to do clerical work. Stuffing envelopes, arranging transport for seminar participants, etc. Seems that a lot of her colleagues are in the same boat (new hires, 2 years there). None of them has yet managed to get a grant, hence no money to hire assistants. So got to do everything yourself.
In working life, there's always the good stuff that you want to do; and the lousy stuff that you have to do. Well, somebody has got to do it.
Just a couple of months ago, I had to fire one of our programmers. In terms of technical skills, he was the best we ever had. But he wouldn't share the "nobody wants to do stuff". I tried various ways to get him to change his attitude, but after a while, he was starting to poison the environment in the office.
It was a hoax. This was apparent to everybody at that time. Everybody not living in America and Western Europe. Oh, don't forget Australia.
We have about 80 desktops, spread out in 60 locations. About 65 of them are Windows, the rest Linux. Everyday, some of these Windows PCs gets infected with virus. Our techs remove them. They soon come back. We have been using Linux for 2 years. Total number of virus, spyware, etc, found on the Linux PCs so far: 0. Our techs are spending a large fraction of the working hours simply removing virus from the Windows PCs. The problem is so bad, they are now simply ignoring spyware. We are thinking of moving ALL the PCs to Linux, save maybe 2 or 3 in HQ.