] After more than 20 years at Sun Microsystems Inc.,
] cofounder and Chief Scientist Bill Joy is leaving the
] company, Sun announced Tuesday.

Hmmmm....

ITworld.com - Bill Joy to leave Sun

]
] ASHINGTON, July 29 - The Pentagon office that proposed
] spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential
] terrorists has quickly abandoned an idea in which
] anonymous speculators would have bet on forecasting
] terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups in an online
] futures market.
]
] Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads
] the Senate Armed Services Committee, said today that he
] had conferred with the program's director at the
] Pentagon, ``and we mutually agreed that this thing should
] be stopped."

Someone must have read JB's paper...

Pentagon Abandons Plan for Futures Market on Terror

] "You can get crackerjack Java programmers in India right
] out of college for $5,000 a year versus $60,000 here,"
] said Stephanie Moore, vice president for outsourcing at
] Forrester Research. "The technology is such, why be in
] New York City when you can be 9,000 miles away with far
] less expense?"

This is a better article then the one I previous recommended, simply because the comments are, well, raw and uncut, and often quite arrogant. My favorite:

] "It's not about one shore or another shore," an I.B.M.
] spokeswoman, Kendra R. Collins, said. "It's about investing
] around the world, including the United States, to build
] capability and deliver value as defined by our customers."

Um, yes Kendra, we understand your motives. We're not dumb. However, Its ABOUT the macroeconomic impact of your strategy, something you ought to be thinking about. For example, drinking bottles of lye is a bad idea even IF you are helping your customers dispose of the lye, and therefore delivering value as they define it.

The last time I posted on this, Jeremy responded as follows:

] ] "He won't be able to have a career designing and building
] ] stuff because all those jobs have moved to India."
]
] So move to India already.
]
] Seriously, choosing one 'thing' and doing it repeatedly
] for decades on end. What's the term I'm looking for ...?
]
] Industrial age! That's it!
]
] Actually, that approach still applies, as long as your
] 'thing' happens to be learning.

Oh, if only things were so simple. There are several problems:

First: After studying computer engineering for 5 years at Georgia Tech, I'm honestly quite dismayed that my degree appears to have been useful for about 2 years after graduation. It is now extremely difficult to get good jobs in my chosen profession, and it looks as if that situation may never improve.

I might be exaggerating. 400,000 jobs overseas is far less then the margin between the estimated future growth in the need for computer professionals and estimated growth in the availability of computer professionals. However, I don't think the estimates that people still seem to be operating on take in to account the events of the last few years. I've seen people looking at the supply in horror (college admissions for said professions are way down), but not really adjusting their demand estimates. Basically, it remains to be seen.

Retrain? Should I go back to school for 5 more years, so that I can practice biology for another 2? Surely if people india can do CS they can do biology.

There are more problems...

The HR industry is set up to hire people who have degrees in particular professional fields. Our educational systems and dominate ideas about corporate management are simply not set up to support people engaged in continuous learning. So it may be extremely diff... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

I.B.M. Explores Shift of White-Collar Jobs Overseas

] Their legislation, introduced Wednesday, would punish an
] Internet user who shares even a single file without
] permission from a copyright holder with prison terms of
] up to five years and fines of up to $250,000.

Totally asinine.

House proposal targets file swappers | CNET News.com

] BRAUNSCHWEIG, Germany — In these girth-conscious times,
] even weight itself has weight issues. The kilogram is
] getting lighter, scientists say, sowing potential
] confusion over a range of scientific endeavor.
]
] The kilogram is defined by a platinum-iridium cylinder,
] cast in England in 1889. No one knows why it is shedding
] weight, at least in comparison with other reference
] weights, but the change has spurred an international
] search for a more stable definition.

What a mess...

Scientists Struggling to Make the Kilogram Right Again

] Commercial users and distributors of the Linux operating
] system could face legal action from the key patent holder
] of Unix, which said Wednesday it will suspend sales of
] its own Linux products.
]
] SCO Group, formerly known as Caldera International,
] claims its intellectual property has been illegally
] included in all distributions of the Linux operating
] system.

OK, I'm now officially declaring Caldera the North Korea of Linux Distributions. SCO has to figure out if it can offer itself up for less money then these legal wranglings are going to cost the major players in terms of slower adoption rates. There are a number of companies that have made a significant investment in Linux who have a lot of cash in the bank. The big IF is whether the market will beleive that there are real risks. Ultimately, this will be bad for the Linux Business any way you cut it. No one is going to pony up for Caldera until they bleed a bit, and Caldera has absolutely nothing to loose.

Wired News: Unix Developer Stops Linux Sales

] House leaders agreed with Senate fears about the threat
] to personal privacy in the Pentagon program, known as
] Total Information Awareness. So they accepted a Senate
] provision in the omnibus spending bill passed last month,
] said Representative Jerry Lewis, the California
] Republican who heads the defense appropriations
] subcommittee.

The House follows up with the Senate. There seems to be a broad base of support of this, but its a non-decision. It doesn't really restrict TIA. It says that Congress will restrict TIA if the DOD doesn't provide a report on it within a certain period of time. Its easy for Congress to agree that Congress has authority.

Conferees in Congress Bar Using a Pentagon Project on Americans