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Old 03-24-2004, 08:55 PM   #16
Razorfish
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More stuff related to outsourcing:

Outsourcing and its effects on new CS undergrads

and

Our school system sucks

These articles are fairly general but as a future computer science grad it has me worried. Why hire an American programmer for $35 dollars an hour when you can get an equally capable Russian one for one-third the cost? Even the computer gaming industry is starting to outsource.

Also as said earlier by tw, the selling of our innovation to foreign competitors for short term gain is not helping the situation at all. Makes me wish I understood economics a little better, although it seems the financial analysts of the world don't have a clue either.
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Old 03-24-2004, 09:41 PM   #17
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Originally posted by tw
History does not agree with you. When jobs disappear, then we run up debt to keep buying those things.
I suggest you study history. Consider the case of Germany after the First World War. That nation was saddled with huge reparations to pay the victors of the war and also suffered from the world wide economic depression of the 30's along with everyone else. There were no jobs. The economy was a shambles and Germany ran up so much debt that their currency became worthless, and if you look through the history books you'll find pictures of German people with wheel barrels full of worthless money.

What was the result? Hitler.
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Old 03-24-2004, 10:56 PM   #18
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Quote:
Originally posted by marichiko
I suggest you study history. Consider the case of Germany after the First World War. That nation was saddled with huge reparations to pay the victors of the war and also suffered from the world wide economic depression of the 30's along with everyone else.
The US is not paying massive reparations to other nations. However this economic situation you have defined occurred previously in the 1970s. No reparations. Just job loss compensated for by massive debt and a president whose solution was to have both 'guns and butter'. People kept working. But to punish an economy that was basically printing money, economics too appropriate revenge. Therefore we got something that should not happen - stagflation. And then even jobs were disappearing.

The prolem was solved when interest rates were run up approaching 20%. Only then was inflation eliminated. Ironic how many events of the 1960s are being repeated today. Hopefully someone remembers those lessons of history; we don't repeat the economic stagnation called he 70s.

In the meantime, post WWI Germany teaches us nothing.

Last edited by tw; 03-24-2004 at 11:05 PM.
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Old 03-24-2004, 11:40 PM   #19
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Quote:
Originally posted by Razorfish
Also as said earlier by tw, the selling of our innovation to foreign competitors for short term gain is not helping the situation at all. Makes me wish I understood economics a little better, although it seems the financial analysts of the world don't have a clue either.
Selling or stifling innovation is one one factor of a larger problem. The point is that there is no simple magic solution. To be for outsourcing or against outsourcing means both sides are ignorant.

For example, as the article implies, about 50% of our technical people come from immigration. Not so much because our school system sucks. Mostly because so many Americans would rather say "Math is Hard" (a direct quote from 'Barbie') rather than do the hard work. Many people think trivial courses for an MBA are hard.

Previously I asked how many knew what a Karnaugh map was. Only one out of ten posters could answer. IOW what - maybe 10% or 20% of the technical people here even knew a basic and important logic tool. Much like a math major not able to factor a polynomial. Yes there is another problem. But we solve that problem, in part, by massive immigration. The rest is solved by outsourcing.

How many build computers? If so, then how many of those power supply specs do you builders first study? IOW most computer builders (who talk as if they were experts) don't even know basic functions in a power supply. They purchase only on price - the only specification they understand. As a result, failures that should never happen are too common in clone (home built) machines. Those PSU functions are so trivial and yet in a high tech nation, even computer repairmen often don't know what those PSU functions are, why they exist, and why they are so important.

So yes. We have another problem. Every year since 1990, America has graduated less engineers. Not less engineers by percentage. Less engineers by numbers. So much a problem that Leigh U, once known as The Engineers, is now called Mountain Hawks as their engineering schools are being replaced by business schools. IOW people who know how to enrich their own pocket but who cannot see an innovation if it was stuck up their nose. People so corrupt as to think the purpose of a business was to make money.

So yes, another reason for outsourcing is a nationwide attitude that we are technically knowledgeable but do not have to do the hard work to first learn. Too many computer experts who know about as much about computers as truck drivers know how to design a truck.

A third reason for the problem was specifically cited in another post. We spend big bucks on ISS - that does no science. We killed the Super Collider that was necessary to advance America's potentially future products, markets, and jobs. IOW with an MBA for president, how do we create new jobs? Promote a boondoogle to Mars? Why not just pay everyone to replant their lawns and call it a tax cut. Or give more money to the rich. That certainly will make more jobs...... To create new jobs, top management must not play money games with Mars missions while innovative science is quashed. Just another reference to the Union for Concern Scientists multi-year study on how George Jr even perverts science for his own political agenda. Just another reason why outsourcing of *low tech* jobs hurts more.

Stifled new innovations means less jobs as China, et al figure out how to do the stuff many of us currently do in Philly. How many will be working on jobs based upon Quantum Mechanics in ten years? That means one understands principle of Quantum Mechanics today.

Plenty of reasons why outsourcing occurs. But none of the political remedies about being for or against outsourcing fix anything. That rhetoric is for the same minds who call themselves computer savvy but don't even know how electricity works. Plenty of reasons why outsourcing is a problem. And none of those political soundbytes provides a solution - let alone really identifies reasons why outsourcing can be a problem.
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Old 03-25-2004, 01:42 PM   #20
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Why tw is completely wrong, part n

On the racial inferiority of Americans ("Math is hard"):

1) Our primary and secondary school systems do mostly suck. Badly. Particularly in mathematics.

2) The immigrants we see in the technical fields are not representative of their populations as a whole; there's a sampling artifact. Bright people in foreign countries often come here for post-secondary education because we DO have a good post-secondary system. And they come here to work, because this IS still a relatively good place for technical people to work. Personally, I'd like to see that continue; I'd much rather compete with an Indian here than that same Indian in India, for what should be obvious reasons.

On what sort of technical education is necessary:

A technical person not knowing what a Karnaugh map is does not reflect much on them; Karnaugh maps are almost never needed in either academic computer science or in programming. They have more application in Electrical Engineering, actually -- but even there, logic reduction is more easily automated than done via Karnaugh map, for problems of the size a Karnaugh map can handle.

In any case, a Karnaugh map is a specific tool, not a basic concept. If you want to go to a math analogy, it's more like synthetic division than factoring a polynomial.

On building computers:

"Building computers" nowadays is like Lego for adults.

On engineering majors being replaced by business majors:

Engineering can be and is being outsourced. It's only rational to pick a major which is more likely to avoid that pitfall. That was a point of the article. You're putting the effect before the course.

On abstraction violation:

You don't NEED to know a thing about electricity to program a computer. There is absolutely no benefit to the programmer in knowing how a transistor works, or a voice coil, or a power supply. Or quantum mechanics, for that matter, which underlies them all. A future computer which ran entirely on photonics would not affect programming or theoretical computer science in the least. For the same reason, you don't need to know x86 assembly language to understand how Windows works, nor do you need to know programming at all to understand how to use Word or Photoshop. All different layers of abstraction, and -- if the people doing the abstraction have done their job well enough -- knowledge of lower layers is not necessary for expertise in the upper layers.
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Old 03-25-2004, 02:45 PM   #21
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I was looking at It courses. I looked at the market. yea bloody right. Unless you're some kinda of uberteach you're an idiot to do a CS degree today. Same applier to engineering. R&D will go overseas next. Personally I'm going for industries that aren't vunerable and getting myself out of the whole joke ASAP.
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Old 03-25-2004, 04:04 PM   #22
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Re: Why tw is completely wrong, part n

Quote:
Originally posted by russotto
You don't NEED to know a thing about electricity to program a computer. There is absolutely no benefit to the programmer in knowing how a transistor works, or a voice coil, or a power supply. Or quantum mechanics, for that matter, which underlies them all. A future computer which ran entirely on photonics would not affect programming or theoretical computer science in the least. For the same reason, you don't need to know x86 assembly language to understand how Windows works, nor do you need to know programming at all to understand how to use Word or Photoshop.
Rightly so. But the computer expert that only knows how to program is called a technician. Technicians are support personel. Designers must have sufficient knowledge of related technologies. They must know more than just programming to even be considered computer experts - to be able to effectively innnovate.

A computer repairman who only 'shotguns' need not know anything about electricity. (Shotgunners are not good repairman anyway.) But a desiger to build a reliable machine - even if only 'rack and stacking' the machine (buying motherboard, power supply, disk drive etc) - must even understand basic electrical parameters to appreciate what does and does not makes a machine reliable.

Just because someone can program - knows nothing about hardware or electricity - does not make a computer expert. Such people with so limited technical knowledge are called technicians - or technical support people. A productive economy needs people who can innovate - know more than a technician so the innovator can employ (make jobs for) technicians.

Discussion is about outsourcing. Why do the job here if top management does not have sufficient knowledge to 'innovate' a new product? It is easier to outsource - let them foreigners do the hard work. Then the domestic MBA can reap $millions - and not have to get his fingers dirty with innovation. That is but one problem in America. A many faceted problem called outsourcing. Many companies find it easier to drop the 'dirty innovation' on foreign designers rather than *risk* doing the design at home.

Why would a domestic design be so risky? Because the bean counting manager could not understand how to support or effectively employ innovators. Simpler and safer for an MBA to let foreigners do the hard part. Just one of many different reasons why outsourcing exists - technical incompetance in top management.
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Old 03-25-2004, 04:08 PM   #23
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How can these engineers operate without understanding basic microeconomics? It's the principles by which most of the business world around them operates. Without a complete understanding of it, they are not even capable of making the decisions of middle managers.
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Old 03-25-2004, 06:13 PM   #24
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Quote:
Originally posted by tw
In the meantime, post WWI Germany teaches us nothing.
Economically, perhaps...but politically, well...I really don't need to go there, do I?
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Old 03-25-2004, 09:32 PM   #25
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All over China, parents tell their children to stop complaining and to finish their quadratic equations and trigonometric functions because there are sixty-five million American kids going to bed with no math at all.
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Old 03-25-2004, 09:54 PM   #26
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Originally posted by tw:

Quote:
How many build computers? If so, then how many of those power supply specs do you builders first study? IOW most computer builders (who talk as if they were experts) don't even know basic functions in a power supply. They purchase only on price - the only specification they understand. As a result, failures that should never happen are too common in clone (home built) machines. Those PSU functions are so trivial and yet in a high tech nation, even computer repairmen often don't know what those PSU functions are, why they exist, and why they are so important.
Not to hijack the thread but this is definitely a good point. Its easy to make an unstable system by doing things like say, putting too many devices on a voltage rail that isn't rated to handle it. I've seen it happen before.

Originally posted by russotto:

Quote:
"Building computers" nowadays is like Lego for adults.
Not true. Technically, any idiot can build a computer but can he make it stable, fast, and cheap? There are a lot of places a person can screw up because they don't understand how all of the components interact with each other and what parts are TRUELY compatible with each other. Granted, building a computer is far from the hardest thing to do in in computer science but its certainly not legos.

A person does not need to know the nitty gritty to be a programmer or a network specialist but it helps. When you understand things on theri most basic level it allows to to make the abstract upper layers much better. It scares me that I meet future IT people at school that have no idea how the internet works.

MBA thinking needs to change and the government should be regulating this. Tariffs and business retrictions happen when American jobs are at a serious risk but where are they? In the past it was foreign competition but know its American companies that are hurting our workforce.
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Old 03-26-2004, 10:50 AM   #27
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Re: Re: Why tw is completely wrong, part n

Quote:
Originally posted by tw
Rightly so. But the computer expert that only knows how to program is called a technician.
No, he's called a programmer. A technician is someone else -- someone for whom knowledge of electricity is actually more important, not less.

Quote:
Just because someone can program - knows nothing about hardware or electricity - does not make a computer expert. Such people with so limited technical knowledge are called technicians - or technical support people. A productive economy needs people who can innovate - know more than a technician so the innovator can employ (make jobs for) technicians.
And knowing something about hardware or electricity does not make -- or contribute to making -- a computer expert, at least not an expert in designing useful software systems. It's important for such a person to know how much a drive holds; it's not important for him to know how much power it takes up. It is not necessary for the system designer to know everything at every layer of abstraction; it's not even possible.

Quote:

Discussion is about outsourcing. Why do the job here if top management does not have sufficient knowledge to 'innovate' a new product?
You keep using that word, but I do not think you know what it means. In any case, "outsourcing" isn't supposed to be about outsourcing innovation. The idea behind outsourcing in programming is supposed to be that top management keeps the architects and the top engineers who do the innovative work, and hand off to the cheap labor the supposedly noncreative grunt work of actually coding (or designing and coding) the system.
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Old 03-26-2004, 06:22 PM   #28
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Why russotto want to start an emotional arguement

Quote:
Originally posted by russotto
You keep using that word, but I do not think you know what it means. In any case, "outsourcing" isn't supposed to be about outsourcing innovation. The idea behind outsourcing in programming is supposed to be that top management keeps the architects and the top engineers who do the innovative work, and hand off to the cheap labor the supposedly noncreative grunt work of actually coding (or designing and coding) the system.
Outsourcing involves the many reasons that jobs go overseas. There is no simple reasons as both Democrats and Republicans would have us think. Some outsourcing is just to manufacturer components - as General Instruments did so aggressively. Other outsourcing even takes the designing overseas - as is done even with most every laptop computer. Some outsourcing because the work is better performed by lower skilled employees - makes the domestic nation wealthier. Some outsourcing because top management is so technically naive (so trained by his business school) as to find the safest way to make money- only makes the other nation an eventual market leader.

Some outsourcing such as capacitors, resistors, MOs, and transistors is now best done overseas where people are quite well skilled at making and advancing those components. But one common reason why those jobs were not done here - the domestic industry feared to innovate for so many decades.

Classic example of why we must outsource steel making - the domestic steel industry stifled innovation for 40 years - meaning foreigners are better at making common grades of steel. Outsourciing made necessary because executives of US Steel, Bethlehem Steel, etc were classic examples of anti-Americans - people who fear to innovate. Best thing now for America is to outsource that steel manufacturing.

A programmer who only knows how to program is only a technician. A software technician if it makes you feel better. An electronics technician only knows basic electronics to build or repair a known design. They both still are only technicians.

But the expert must be versatile - widely trained. The expert is where new products, jobs, and markets come from. These are the people who make domestic jobs so productive as to not be outsourced. These are the people who create the new American jobs by making new products and industries. These are the people from which corporate leadership must be found - else we get outsourcing.

Someone who is only a programmer is not (yet) a computer expert. He is the classic definition of a technician. Any computer expert who does not even understand simple electrical and hardware principles is no expert. Typically he might be called a power user - just another word for technician.

Last edited by tw; 03-26-2004 at 06:28 PM.
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Old 03-26-2004, 06:46 PM   #29
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Quote:
Originally posted by Razorfish
Not to hijack the thread but this is definitely a good point. Its easy to make an unstable system by doing things like say, putting too many devices on a voltage rail that isn't rated to handle it. I've seen it happen before.
So how big need a power supply be in most every ATX computer today? So many have suffered failures. They had no idea why the failures happened. So they use a Tim Allen concept of "More Power". That result alone is sufficient (to them) to prove that ATX computers need 400 or 500 watt power supplies. They need not even know what the original problem was.

What do engineers put in their (equivalent) computers. Brand name computers do same with only 200 and 300 watt supplies. So why the 400+ watt solutions? So many computer experts cannot even first do the numbers or even make basic measurements. They have insufficient knowledge to know why failure happens. Furthermore, without basic knowledge, then that 'expert' doesn't even demand specifications. Many of those 400 watt power supplies cannot even output 400 watts. Of course. Manufacturer didn't provide written specs for good reason. He is not selling to computer 'experts'. He is selling to someone without sufficient background information. A power user who calls himself an 'expert' only because he can replace a power supply - and not know what the problem really is.

Shortage of basic computer knowledge is rampant where domestic computer builders select power supplies. Urban myth rather than basic technical knowledge often decides. Then when those supplies cause problem (fail, damage motherboard, cause intermittent crashes, permit surge damage, etc), then the ill trained builder solves the problem with a bigger supply - "More Power".

It is a shortage of basic knowledge even among computer power users that demonstartes only one reason why even computer technical support jobs are better performed overseas. Just one of many reasons for outsourcing. Again, we graduated less engineers every year since 1990. Who then will do the innovating? More reasons to outsource - or why we need more immigrants. A problem commonly demonstrated by so many domestic computer 'experts'.
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Old 03-26-2004, 07:30 PM   #30
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Most builders I've known or heard about have extensively used reviews to determine which components to use. They aren't counting on their own knowledge, they're building based on people with a great deal more knowledge. They include tricked-out power supplies because their entire systems are tricked-out with lights and RAIDs and other items that suck up a lot of power.
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