can anyone offer Lisp job?
Alex Mizrahi
i would like to have some remote, not so big, complex or urgent job in
Common Lisp. since i live in Ukraine, fee could be surprisingly low as for
USA/EU-living people. :)
i don't have much experience with Common Lisp, but i estimate my general
programming skills as quite high (i was among the best students in
nation-wide ACM programming contests and other contests, for example), and i
have no problems hacking different Lisp libs and implementations (as i
remember, i helped to fix some bugs in ECL and ABCL, and found one in
CormanLisp's code, don't know if it's fixed :)), so i think i can cope with
almost any job.
i have some experience in lots of different technologies, including
web-related stuff, SQL, 3D graphics (especially OpenGL), COM, Win32 API,
low-level code optimizations etc.
i estimate my chances of getting any Lisp-related job as very low, but maybe
someone can offer such, so i'll get proof that lisp is not dead :) ?
(actually i would like to participate in some interesting projects, like
writting Common Lisp implementation for .NET with innovative features,
advanced IDE, lib for web-programming etc., but all people need to eat :(,
so i have to search for job, and jobs that are not connected with Lisp are
much more boring as i feel :))
with best regards, Alex 'killer_storm' Mizrahi.
Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
> i would like to have some remote, not so big, complex or urgent job
> in Common Lisp. since i live in Ukraine, fee could be surprisingly
> low as for USA/EU-living people. :)
I live in California and would be willing to work for the legal minimum
wage, something like $5something/hour. I have 15 years Lisp programming
experience. Would you be willing to undercut my wage-bid?
> i don't have much experience with Common Lisp
It sounds like you have less than one year Common Lisp experience,
is that a correct assessent? Accordingly:
Would you be willing to work for less than one dollar per hour,
in rough proportion to your lesser amount of experience than I have?
Do you have experience writing WebServer applictions using Common Lisp?
I do. I have an online demo I made when I first started CGI/CL
programming near the 2000/2001 boundary.
http://shell.rawbw.com/~rem/cgi-bin/topscript.cgi
Do you have a demo of your CGI/CL programming to compare to mine?
Brandon J. Van Every
news:REM-2005...@Yahoo.Com:
>> From: "Alex Mizrahi" <udod...@users.sourceforge.net>
>> i would like to have some remote, not so big, complex or urgent job
>> in Common Lisp. since i live in Ukraine, fee could be surprisingly
>> low as for USA/EU-living people. :)
>
> I live in California and would be willing to work for the legal
> minimum wage, something like $5something/hour. I have 15 years Lisp
> programming experience. Would you be willing to undercut my wage-bid?
Selling yourself so low, I think most people would (quite rightly)
believe that they'd get what they pay for. I do not suggest "I'm super
cheap" as a business model. I would suggest the newsgroup
misc.business.consulting if you want a serious education in business
models. If this is patronizing, well, I can't fathom how you could
acquire 15 years of practical Lisp experience and presently be willing
to work for $5/hour in the USA. It seems like your argument is either
completely disingenuous, or else, well, nobody in their right mind would
hire you.
I mean geez, I've made $8/hour registering voters, $12/hour
scrubbing floors, $15/hour painting apartments, $17/hour on heavy yard
work, and $20/hour gathering signatures when it's going well.
So where's my own business model? Honestly, I still don't have one. My
goal is to be paid to program on my own terms. But my terms don't quite
agree with what the game industry wants. Oh well, I plod along, using
the "day jobs" to fund what I actually want to be doing. At least in
programming and game design, I do what I want to do.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
> Selling yourself so low,
No, I'm desperately *trying* to "sell myself", but so-far no companies
are willing to hire people in the USA to write computer software
because even at the legal minimum wage we're still more expensive than
people in India, so all computer-programming work is being farmed out
to shops in India.
I'm desperately hoping some company in the USA will realize that the
overhead in dealing with people who no spekka ingish widout badd aksent
and live so far away it takes an international long distance phone call
to talk to them live (as if that did any good with their accent), and
whose documentation is illegible due to lack of English skills, is just
not worth dealing with just to shave a couple dollars off the
already-low minimum wage here in the USA.
Or if nobody is willing to pay me to write the actual software,
somebody could hire me to re-do all the broken-English documentation
produced by the Indians who wrote the software, so that customers can
understand it instead of having to call customer support and talk to a
live Indian who is unintelligible and makes the customer abandon the
product and never again buy from that company.
> I think most people would (quite rightly) believe that they'd get
> what they pay for.
If that's your best opinion, then *you* are a fucking idiot who doesn't
know the difference between cost and value. I do good work, but I can't
legally work at a lower hourly wage than the people in India do.
Also if your remark is applied to the Indians, then it contradicts the
fact that companies are outsourcing their software work, and even their
customer-support work, to India, in order to pay even lower wages than
I ask. Why don't they consider the workers in India to be only worth
what they pay for, per your statement?? Why are Indians working for
below-minimum-wage considered a bargain whereas Americans such as
myself willing to work at minimum wage considered worthless?
> I do not suggest "I'm super cheap" as a business model.
Fuck you! That "business model" works fine for Indians. They're
currently getting all the jobs that Americans used to get. If that
business model works, why don't you suggest it?
> I can't fathom how you could acquire 15 years of practical Lisp
> experience and presently be willing to work for $5/hour in the USA.
I'd like to work for more, but no paying work whatsoever is available
during this recession, so I'm making the best offer I can legally make
in the hope of competing (if and when the recession ever lightens) with
the Indians who currently have all the jobs.
> It seems like your argument is either completely disingenuous, or
> else, well, nobody in their right mind would hire you.
You have a fucking stupid attitude. I'm telling the truth. I have 15
years experience programming in Lisp (and 7 years experience in other
programming languages). I'm very good at programming. Anyone who would
hire me to do the kind of work I am good at doing would get a true
bargain, good work at low cost. Somebody hiring me would be very much
in "right mind". It's the people like you, who conclude since I got
laid off during a recession and am still unemployed that I must be
worthless, who are not in their right mind.
> I've made $8/hour registering voters
That's basically a sales position, harassing random people to try to
get them to spend time doing something for you, right? Or do you just
sit waiting for people to come to you? I've never seen such paying work
offered around here. How do I apply?
> $12/hour scrubbing floors
> $15/hour painting apartments
> $17/hour on heavy yard work
I have a flattened spinal disk, so I probably couldn't do such work on
any regular basis, like more than an hour a day for the first two, or
ten minutes for the last. A few years ago when I was moving to a new
apartment, all by myself, no help from anyone, at the end I accidently
twisted my back and for the next three days I was unable to get out of
bed except by spending a full hour maneuvering over to hands and knees
whereupon I could finally crawl but not stand up.
> $20/hour gathering signatures when it's going well.
Definitely "sales" job, harassing people to spend their time for no
benefit to them. Is there any money for gathering signatures for a
petition to outlaw hiring overseas workers for less than the legal
minimum wage in the USA? I think I could "get into that".
Christopher C. Stacy
> I'm desperately hoping some company in the USA will realize that the
> overhead in dealing with people who no spekka ingish widout badd aksent
> and live so far away it takes an international long distance phone call
> to talk to them live (as if that did any good with their accent), and
> whose documentation is illegible due to lack of English skills, is just
> not worth dealing with just to shave a couple dollars off the
> already-low minimum wage here in the USA.
>
> Or if nobody is willing to pay me to write the actual software,
> somebody could hire me to re-do all the broken-English documentation
> produced by the Indians who wrote the software, so that customers can
> understand it instead of having to call customer support and talk to a
> live Indian who is unintelligible and makes the customer abandon the
> product and never again buy from that company.
I don't think desperate hope is a rational approach to the problem of
outsourcing. Long-distance phone calls are not expensive, and my
limited recent experience with calling customer support in India
is that they were perfectly intelligable. As for actually being
able to help me, They were just as useful as the USA people.
(Which means of course, not very helpful at all. LINKSYS sucks.)
I haven't had the pleasure of reading any Indian-produced documentation
that I know of. I suspect that it would be hard to make it any worse
than most documentation that I've ever had to suffer through.
But if that's being outsourced to India, that means less opportunity
for a chance at someone writing good documentation here,
which has been known to happen on occasion.
Software-wise, I don't know how they're doing lately. I've heard
plenty of horror stories about both quality and team communication
over the last 5 years. But I expect that as they gain more people
with experience, this will improve. I see no reason to believe
that such a vast pool of extraordinatily motivated people will
not be able to compete just as well as us, globally, in English.
I haven't thought about why it is that te USA has enjoyed such
a lead in the software market. I assume it mostly has to do
with our education system, and the general leg-up from our
wealth compared to the less developed nations like India.
Japan tried and failed in the 1980s, perhaps due to cultural
differences. Now India is becoming serious competition.
I don't know exactly what we ought to do differently to continue
to dominate this market, but desperately hoping that the folks
in India won't improve their capabilities isn't the answer.
Ulrich Hobelmann
> I don't think desperate hope is a rational approach to the problem of
> outsourcing. Long-distance phone calls are not expensive, and my
> limited recent experience with calling customer support in India
> is that they were perfectly intelligable. As for actually being
> able to help me, They were just as useful as the USA people.
> (Which means of course, not very helpful at all. LINKSYS sucks.)
Intelligible, no. I even find it hard to understand Indian
professors in Wisconsin (ok, I'm not native...).
Readable, yes (Amazon seems to have their email customer support
in India or Pakistan, judging by the name under the email).
> I haven't thought about why it is that te USA has enjoyed such
> a lead in the software market. I assume it mostly has to do
> with our education system, and the general leg-up from our
> wealth compared to the less developed nations like India.
> Japan tried and failed in the 1980s, perhaps due to cultural
> differences. Now India is becoming serious competition.
I've always wondered why most software is written in the USA. It
can't be the education, when I compare what typical BScs do for
math or CS in the US and in Europe. Maybe there is more customer
orientation and work attitude than in Europe (because there you
expect to get everything for free from the government, yuck!).
It's no surprise to me that now the US software landscape moves to
other countries.
> I don't know exactly what we ought to do differently to continue
> to dominate this market, but desperately hoping that the folks
> in India won't improve their capabilities isn't the answer.
We can tell people to buy "home-made" software in preference, or
try to build better software than the Indians. OTOH, they so much
outnumber us that that might be a losing proposition.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
david....@gmail.com
> We can tell people to buy "home-made" software in preference, or
> try to build better software than the Indians. OTOH, they so much
> outnumber us that that might be a losing proposition.
Where is the boundary? Is software written by Ukrainians more or less
home-made than
one written by Indians?
Of the currently available Common Lisp implementations, are
those maintained by people of Russian, German or any other origin
better or worse than
those written in the USA by offsprings of pilgrims?
How do you distinguish great high quality software written in the USA
by the real programmers
from Indian/Russian/Romanian crap?
When an american programmer gets unemployed and replaced by a guy from
Hungary, is it because the hungarian guy is dumb and therefore cheap?
Or is it because the Hungarian guy is smarter, and it does not make
sense to pay even the same money to the american programmer just
because he is american?
Can you point me at some masterpieces of American Software so that I
understand what to pay for?
David Tolpin
Brandon J. Van Every
>>
>> experience and presently be willing to work for $5/hour in the USA.
>
> I'd like to work for more, but no paying work whatsoever is available
> during this recession,
You are lying, particularly to yourself. The truth is, you're making
choices about what you will / won't do to hustle yourself, and what
languages you will / won't work with. I make those choices too. I'm
just honest with myself about them.
If you wanna get paid to do Lisp, you're gonna have to make the right
moves. "I'll work for peanuts!" is the wrong move. Nobody will take
you seriously. The right move is more like putting some compelling Lisp
app on your website, and networking with a whole bunch of people who
actually have Lisp jobs. You're probably also going to have to move to
wherever the job is, as there's no concentration of jobs anywhere in the
country for any of the 'fancy' languages.
>> It seems like your argument is either completely disingenuous, or
>> else, well, nobody in their right mind would hire you.
>
> You have a fucking stupid attitude.
No, frankly you do. Anyone with your intelligence and experience who's
offering himself for minimum wage is fucking stupid, in a certain
respect. Put another way, your weakness is in business schmoozing. You
seem very clueless about how one would go about advertizing oneself to
get a Lisp job.
You also seem to be missing some basic business math. I don't know how
you are supporting yourself currently, if you think it is possible to
live in California on minimum wage. Let alone make enough money to
mitigate the risks of running a business.
Again, misc.business.consulting for starter materials. Also, go to the
public library. They have lots of free books on what to do.
> I'm telling the truth. I have 15
> years experience programming in Lisp (and 7 years experience in other
> programming languages). I'm very good at programming. Anyone who would
> hire me to do the kind of work I am good at doing would get a true
> bargain, good work at low cost. Somebody hiring me would be very much
> in "right mind". It's the people like you, who conclude since I got
> laid off during a recession and am still unemployed that I must be
> worthless, who are not in their right mind.
You're crying to the wrong guy about the recession. Circumstances suck,
but it's your responsibility to decide how you're going to market
yourself and get others to pay you.
>> $12/hour scrubbing floors
>> $15/hour painting apartments
>> $17/hour on heavy yard work
>
> I have a flattened spinal disk, so I probably couldn't do such work on
> any regular basis, like more than an hour a day for the first two, or
> ten minutes for the last. A few years ago when I was moving to a new
> apartment, all by myself, no help from anyone, at the end I accidently
> twisted my back and for the next three days I was unable to get out of
> bed except by spending a full hour maneuvering over to hands and knees
> whereupon I could finally crawl but not stand up.
Are you on permanent disability? As bad as a disability might
be, I think having a legitimate excuse to receive permanent funding from
the government would be an enviable position as a software developer.
You could build some killer app on disability money and spring it on the
world when you're good and ready to. Sure beats minimum wage.
>> $8/hour registering voters
>> $20/hour gathering signatures when it's going well.
>
> Definitely "sales" job, harassing people to spend their time for no
> benefit to them.
I get tired of people with that kind of attitude. Signature gatherers
allow the common person to participate in the political process
directly. This *is* of benefit to those who sign, and also to those who
at least evaluate the initiatives whether they sign them or not. Every
once in awhile I meet some stick-in-the-mud who thinks their elected
officials are infallible and that ordinary citizens shouldn't be a
direct part of the political process. I think such people are morons.
My own view of politicians is they aren't inherently better than lots of
other people out there. They are simply better at cutting deals and
getting their way.
> Is there any money for gathering signatures for a
> petition to outlaw hiring overseas workers for less than the legal
> minimum wage in the USA? I think I could "get into that".
*Forming* petitions is a different ballgame than getting people to
*sign* petitions. Signature gatherers are low on the political food
chain. We're all mercenaries. We're all there to make money, and we
have varying degrees of idealism and mores. I'm 'somewhat idealistic'.
There are measures I won't carry. Others don't care what they carry.
They see people as a dollar sign and nothing more.
I don't know much about the art of *forming* a petition. That's a kind
of political lobbying. You'd need funding from some source to pay the
signature gatherers. The reality is, you can't get measures qualified
for the ballot with volunteers. Volunteers just don't have the stamina
to do all the hard work required to qualify a measure for the ballot.
Anyways if you want to *form* petitions, to some degree you're talking
about a career in politics. With all the dealmaking, huckstering, and
salesmanship that entails.
BR
> When an american programmer gets unemployed and replaced by a guy from
> Hungary, is it because the hungarian guy is dumb and therefore cheap? Or
> is it because the Hungarian guy is smarter, and it does not make sense
> to pay even the same money to the american programmer just because he is
> american?
It's not about brains, but about mobility. If people were as mobile as
their jobs? At least the playing field would be more equitable.
Ulrich Hobelmann
>>We can tell people to buy "home-made" software in preference, or
>>try to build better software than the Indians. OTOH, they so much
>>outnumber us that that might be a losing proposition.
>
>
>
> Where is the boundary? Is software written by Ukrainians more or less
> home-made than
> one written by Indians?
Probably not. I'm just saying like some people buy American cars
instead of Japanese ones, you can buy $YOUR-COUNTRY's software in
preference (if it's any good).
> Of the currently available Common Lisp implementations, are
> those maintained by people of Russian, German or any other origin
> better or worse than
> those written in the USA by offsprings of pilgrims?
I think the commercial ones (Franz, Xanalys) are US-based. For
Free Software the matter doesn't arise. In theory it all destroys
jobs, as you don't pay anybody.
> How do you distinguish great high quality software written in the USA
> by the real programmers
> from Indian/Russian/Romanian crap?
How do you distinguish crap from quality? Hm, dunno, I just do ;)
> When an american programmer gets unemployed and replaced by a guy from
> Hungary, is it because the hungarian guy is dumb and therefore cheap?
> Or is it because the Hungarian guy is smarter, and it does not make
> sense to pay even the same money to the american programmer just
> because he is american?
Maybe it's because things are cheaper in Hungary and therefore the
Hungarian guy can live on less money. Maybe it's because less
people import things from Hungary (that is changing), so their
currency might be cheap (does Hungary have the Euro? I'm SO
uninformed!).
It might not make sense to pay the US guy more money, no. In a
worldwide economy you might even consider that discriminating
against foreigners ;)
But I think there's nothing wrong with supporting local brands and
companies (and it reduces transportation of material goods all
over the globe).
> Can you point me at some masterpieces of American Software so that I
> understand what to pay for?
Buy whatever you like. The software I paid for is Mac OS X, and,
um, I think that's it so far. I think it's worth the money.
Well, in the past I bought a couple of games, too. These days I
mostly buy CDs (some), books (rarely) or just save my money for
other things like travel.
Note: I'm a proponent of global free trade, so I don't really care
where anything comes from as long as it's good, cheap, and created
without badly exploiting people and violating human rights.
Edi Weitz
> david....@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> Of the currently available Common Lisp implementations, are those
>> maintained by people of Russian, German or any other origin better
>> or worse than those written in the USA by offsprings of pilgrims?
>
> I think the commercial ones (Franz, Xanalys) are US-based.
You think that but it's not true. (Hint: Replace "Xanalys" with
"LispWorks", that's how they're called now, and check their website.)
Edi.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq "spam...@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
Brandon J. Van Every
>
> Maybe it's because things are cheaper in Hungary and therefore the
> Hungarian guy can live on less money. Maybe it's because less
> people import things from Hungary (that is changing), so their
> currency might be cheap (does Hungary have the Euro? I'm SO
> uninformed!).
>
> It might not make sense to pay the US guy more money, no. In a
> worldwide economy you might even consider that discriminating
> against foreigners ;)
One factor you should take into consideration: various countries, such
as China, don't have laws about workplace safety or worker treatment
that the USA does. In many cases, the foreign worker is cheaper not
just because of economic disparity, but because it's more acceptable in
that country for workers to be exploited. It's very difficult to
compete on such an uneven playing field. Corporations, as you may be
aware, rarely have a conscience. This is at the heart of WTO protests
and the like. There's always this tension as to whether industrialized
nations have developed standards that are more safe / more equitable to
its citizens, vs. poor countries that don't give a shit, are behind
economically, and just want to catch up as fast as possible, damn the
cost to people.
There is of course the reverse argument of how much safety and
regulation is of benefit to a society, vs. how much is needless red tape
by some overbearing rulesmonger. These competing value systems
ultimately have to just fight it out.
> Note: I'm a proponent of global free trade, so I don't really care
> where anything comes from as long as it's good, cheap, and created
> without badly exploiting people and violating human rights.
That last clause is a huge caveat.
Ulrich Hobelmann
> One factor you should take into consideration: various countries, such
> as China, don't have laws about workplace safety or worker treatment
> that the USA does. In many cases, the foreign worker is cheaper not
> just because of economic disparity, but because it's more acceptable in
> that country for workers to be exploited. It's very difficult to
> compete on such an uneven playing field. Corporations, as you may be
> aware, rarely have a conscience. This is at the heart of WTO protests
> and the like. There's always this tension as to whether industrialized
> nations have developed standards that are more safe / more equitable to
> its citizens, vs. poor countries that don't give a shit, are behind
> economically, and just want to catch up as fast as possible, damn the
> cost to people.
Yes, but the consumer has all power not to buy from that company.
Infortunately most people don't give a s**t about that. I buy
"normal" clothes, too, just because I'm not really aware of good
alternatives. I try to buy fairly traded coffee and chocolate,
though.
> There is of course the reverse argument of how much safety and
> regulation is of benefit to a society, vs. how much is needless red tape
> by some overbearing rulesmonger. These competing value systems
> ultimately have to just fight it out.
As long as there is no worldwide enforcement of human rights (and
thoses countries also don't care), only the consumer can kick some
ass by complaining and not buying.
>>Note: I'm a proponent of global free trade, so I don't really care
>>where anything comes from as long as it's good, cheap, and created
>>without badly exploiting people and violating human rights.
>
>
> That last clause is a huge caveat.
True. But restricting the freedom of trade doesn't improve any of
this, either.
Thomas F. Burdick
> I'm desperately hoping some company in the USA will realize that the
> overhead in dealing with people who no spekka ingish widout badd aksent
> and live so far away it takes an international long distance phone call
> to talk to them live (as if that did any good with their accent), and
> whose documentation is illegible due to lack of English skills, is just
> not worth dealing with just to shave a couple dollars off the
> already-low minimum wage here in the USA.
It wasn't charming when you were just a whining loser, but this
newfound or newly expressed racism and xenophobia of yours is really
disgusting. Go crawl back into your South Bay hole.
david....@gmail.com
less
> > home-made than
> > one written by Indians?
>
> Probably not. I'm just saying like some people buy American cars
> instead of Japanese ones, you can buy $YOUR-COUNTRY's software in
> preference (if it's any good).
>
I had written or participated in writing several pieces of American
software, some of which you may well be using right now. I grew up in
Moscow, and live in Yerevan, Armenia now. Many of my friends
are behind 'american software', both good and bad; most programs are
written in America mostly because America is more tolerant to engineers
from all over the world, and welcomes innovation.
Things may change with the current movement against outsourcing; but it
will just mean that 'most software' will be written in a part of the
world which provides shelter to talented people no matter what country
they come from. And America will have to resort to using low-quality
domestic software much in the same way a part of americans uses
low-quality domesitc cars.
> > Of the currently available Common Lisp implementations, are
> > those maintained by people of Russian, German or any other origin
> > better or worse than
> > those written in the USA by offsprings of pilgrims?
>
> I think the commercial ones (Franz, Xanalys) are US-based. For
> Free Software the matter doesn't arise. In theory it all destroys
> jobs, as you don't pay anybody.
Franz is in California, right. Xanalysis (and LispWorks) are in the UK.
> Maybe it's because things are cheaper in Hungary and therefore the
> Hungarian guy can live on less money. Maybe it's because less
> people import things from Hungary (that is changing), so their
> currency might be cheap (does Hungary have the Euro? I'm SO
> uninformed!).
>
Yes, Hungary has Euro; and no, the hungarian guy does not charge less.
He just works better.
> Buy whatever you like. The software I paid for is Mac OS X, and,
> um, I think that's it so far. I think it's worth the money.
> Well, in the past I bought a couple of games, too. These days I
> mostly buy CDs (some), books (rarely) or just save my money for
> other things like travel.
>
I know of at least a half dozen significant components of Mac OS X
which are written by Russians,
Germans (and other non-americans). The Apple boxes are made in China.
There is not so much 'american code' in there, really.
Bulent Murtezaoglu
[...]
CCS> I haven't thought about why it is that te USA has enjoyed
CCS> such a lead in the software market. I assume it mostly has
CCS> to do with our education system, and the general leg-up from
CCS> our wealth compared to the less developed nations like India.
[...]
I am no big fan of Tom Friedman but there's some truth to what he says:
http://www.indianembassy.org/US_Media/2004/mar/The%20Secret%20of%20Our%20Sauce.htm
I quote:
[on hi-tech companies in India]
"They thrive by defying their political-economic environment, not by
emerging from it."
In my limited experience of working both in the US and Turkey (between
the US and India as far as standard of living goes) I can confirm
this.
cheers,
BM
Alex Mizrahi
(you :wrote :on '(Sun, 17 Apr 2005 14:45:12 -0700))
(
??>> i don't have much experience with Common Lisp
RMs> It sounds like you have less than one year Common Lisp experience,
RMs> is that a correct assessent? Accordingly:
RMs> Would you be willing to work for less than one dollar per hour,
RMs> in rough proportion to your lesser amount of experience than I have?
no, because at any time i can work as C++ or PHP programmer at least for
1.5-2$ per hour. :)
RMs> Do you have experience writing WebServer applictions using Common
RMs> Lisp? I do. I have an online demo I made when I first started CGI/CL
RMs> programming near the 2000/2001 boundary.
RMs> http://shell.rawbw.com/~rem/cgi-bin/topscript.cgi
RMs> Do you have a demo of your CGI/CL programming to compare to mine?
:)
i see no benefits of using CGI with CL..
i've nearly production-quality web-site for my university with CL (based on
mod_lisp) -- but unfortunately other developers didn't like Lisp, so it was
replaced with PHP one.
also i've done small game working via HTTP that is intended to be used from
mobile phones,
and now i'm doing educational program for my diplom work doing
web-programming in Common Lisp..
)
(With-best-regards '(Alex Mizrahi) :aka 'killer_storm)
"People who lust for the Feel of keys on their fingertips (c) Inity")
Brandon J. Van Every
Why is his sentiment racist or xenophobic? Offensive about some
people's language skills, yes, but it also contains the grain of truth.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.
Brandon J. Van Every
>
>And America will have to resort to using low-quality
>domestic software much in the same way a part of americans uses
>low-quality domesitc cars.
>
>
Heh! My ass. See you in the future.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"We live in a world of very bright people building
crappy software with total shit for tools and process."
- Ed McKenzie
Matthias Buelow
>Yes, Hungary has Euro; and no, the hungarian guy does not charge less.
No, not yet:
http://www.ecb.int/bc/intro/html/map.en.html
According to http://www.ecb.int/ecb/enlargement/html/index.en.html:
"The new countries will adopt the euro only when they fulfil certain
economic criteria, namely, a high degree of price stability, a sound
fiscal situation, stable exchange rates and converged long-term
interest rates."
And of course, if they want to. Not all "old" EU member states have
adopted it (yet).
mkb.
Pascal Bourguignon
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
>
> >rem...@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes:
> >
> >
> >>I'm desperately hoping some company in the USA will realize that the
> >>overhead in dealing with people who no spekka ingish widout badd aksent
> >>and live so far away it takes an international long distance phone call
> >>to talk to them live (as if that did any good with their accent), and
> >>whose documentation is illegible due to lack of English skills, is just
> >>not worth dealing with just to shave a couple dollars off the
> >>already-low minimum wage here in the USA.
> >>
> >
> >It wasn't charming when you were just a whining loser, but this
> >newfound or newly expressed racism and xenophobia of yours is really
> >disgusting. Go crawl back into your South Bay hole.
> >
> Why is his sentiment racist or xenophobic? Offensive about some
> people's language skills, yes, but it also contains the grain of truth.
English is the main language of India. There's no reason to believe
an Indian would be less skilled at English than a North American.
Often North Americans are less understandable than other (of British
influence) English speakers...
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/in.html
English enjoys associate status but is the most important language
for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is
the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people;
there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi,
Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi,
Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular
variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but
is not an official language.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
In a World without Walls and Fences,
who needs Windows and Gates?
Pascal Bourguignon
> I know of at least a half dozen significant components of Mac OS X
> which are written by Russians,
> Germans (and other non-americans). The Apple boxes are made in China.
> There is not so much 'american code' in there, really.
MacOSX (NeXTSTEP) would not exist without French people such as
Jean-Marie Hulot (Interface Builder).
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
You never feed me.
Perhaps I'll sleep on your face.
That will sure show you.
Paul F. Dietz
> I haven't thought about why it is that te USA has enjoyed such
> a lead in the software market. I assume it mostly has to do
> with our education system, and the general leg-up from our
> wealth compared to the less developed nations like India.
> Japan tried and failed in the 1980s, perhaps due to cultural
> differences. Now India is becoming serious competition.
One barrier in the past was the cost of hardware. It didn't
make much sense to try to save on labor costs if it meant
your (say) million dollar systems weren't being used effectively.
Nowadays the hardware is dirt cheap, of course.
There's also a lot to be said for putting developers close
to customers. Cheaper international telecom helps there,
but it's not yet a panacea. This argument suggests that
the lead in software development is due to the presence
of customers here rather than there. A low wage economy
has less incentive to automate, and so would have fewer
customers.
Paul
israel
> I live in California and would be willing to work for the legal minimum
> wage, something like $5 something/hour.
That translates to around 200 Indian Rupees / hour
ie: 32,000 Rupees / month for a 40 hour week.
Indians ( and perhaps ukrainians ) would undercut that by a factor of 3
and still make a profit.
israel
> I'm desperately hoping some company in the USA will realize that the
> overhead in dealing with people who no spekka ingish widout badd aksent
...
> somebody could hire me to re-do all the broken-English documentation
> produced by the Indians who wrote the software
I think that I begin to understand why you are not getting hired.
You have a serious attitude problem.
israel
> You think that but it's not true. (Hint: Replace "Xanalys" with
> "LispWorks", that's how they're called now, and check their website.)
Office Address
LispWorks Ltd.
St John's Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge
CB4 0WS
England
israel
> One factor you should take into consideration: various countries, such
> as China, don't have laws about workplace safety or worker treatment
> that the USA does.
So ?
The US does not have laws on paternity leave or non-discrimination against gays
that many other countries do.
Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
> When an american programmer gets unemployed and replaced by a guy
> from Hungary, is it because the hungarian guy is dumb and therefore
> cheap?
No, it's because the Hungarian guy is not bound by the Federal minimum
wage, so he can undercut the wage of any American guy. The Hungarian
guy probably doesn't have 22 years experience programming computers, as
the American guy does, but it's the difference in legal minimum wage,
not the skill difference, that causes American companies to outsource
for their software needs.
By the way, does anybody know what the typical hourly wage is for
writing computer software, for workers in India and Hungary, when
outsourced by American companies? I need to know so that I can petition
for a lowering of the legal minimum wage here so that I could legally
compete with them. For example, could I incorporate myself in India,
have all income go to that corporation, then I get dividends back from
my corporation, and there's no law requring dividends to exceed a
minimum wage?
Alternately, is there any way I could work legally in another country,
not subject to USA minimum wage law, while I'm still physically in the
USA? Sort of like an offshore shelter for employment, just like
companies have offshore shelters for all their financial stuff to avoid
having to pay corporate income tax?
> Or is it because the Hungarian guy is smarter, and it does not make
> sense to pay even the same money to the american programmer just
> because he is american?
It's definitely not that. I'm as smart as any Hungarian guy.
david....@gmail.com
, but it's the difference in legal minimum wage,
> not the skill difference, that causes American companies to outsource
> for their software needs.
Don't even hope for that. I routinely get contractor's job for much
more than you were
going to work for. And I get my job at least partly because I work
better and more skilled.
> By the way, does anybody know what the typical hourly wage is for
> writing computer software, for workers in India and Hungary, when
> outsourced by American companies? I need to know so that I can
petition
> for a lowering of the legal minimum wage here so that I could legally
> compete with them.
You are welcome to compete. The hourly rate varies from $5 for third
year university students
to $25 for experienced coders and more. The money is paid for better
skills, not for lower rates.
With additional risks and expenses, the difference is not that high.
F> Alternately, is there any way I could work legally in another
country,
> not subject to USA minimum wage law, while I'm still physically in
the
> USA?
Is it prohibited by the US laws?
David Tolpin
Paolo Amoroso
> Alternately, is there any way I could work legally in another country,
> not subject to USA minimum wage law, while I'm still physically in the
> USA? Sort of like an offshore shelter for employment, just like
Consultant Mark Watson, who also happens to be a Lisper, is a case of
"reverse outsourcing":
Some time ago he told in his blog about a job he was
then--still?--doing for an Indian company. He was physically in the
USA, but I don't know about your other requirements.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
Brandon J. Van Every
The goodness of a given country's laws is a sliding scale. Judge
accordingly. I can't remember what states, if any, have laws against
discrimination by sexual orientation, although I'm inclined to guess
Califorina does and I can't remember about Washington. Many companies
in the USA have explicit policies of not discriminating against gays,
although of course lacking a law, taking legal action on such matters
would be more difficult. Not impossible though: when companies have a
uniform policy, one can indeed sue for being treated differently than
one's peers.
Svenne Krap
> By the way, does anybody know what the typical hourly wage is for
> writing computer software, for workers in India and Hungary, when
> outsourced by American companies? I need to know so that I can petition
> for a lowering of the legal minimum wage here so that I could legally
> compete with them. For example, could I incorporate myself in India,
> have all income go to that corporation, then I get dividends back from
> my corporation, and there's no law requring dividends to exceed a
> minimum wage?
I think you are on the wrong track. Have you considered that there is
quite a big difference between living expenses in the US and
India/Hungary (well, I am a native of neither, but anyways).
I don't know what your living expenses are in the US, but here you can
barely live for say 1200$ a month after taxes as a single person (I
figure it is not that different in the US). So even if I was tax free
(which I am not in this heavily taxed country), I would still have to
make 60 hours a week to barely make it.
In comparison over half a billion chinese (and I figure that goes for
Indians as well) live for less than 1$ a day (granted that are farmers
with no electricity and so on and not highly skilled professionals).
By the way, I go for around 100$ an hour (as an indepedant consultant,
not employee), so I think you 5$ an hour sound like you have no
confindence in your own skills.
I would not take a paid job for less that say 40-45.000 dollars/year
before taxes (as I am danish there is not such things as
medical/dental/whatever benefits paied by an employer - the only
exception is pension payment).
Brandon J. Van Every
>By the way, does anybody know what the typical hourly wage is for
>writing computer software, for workers in India and Hungary, when
>outsourced by American companies?
>
Worth knowing...
>I need to know so that I can petition
>for a lowering of the legal minimum wage here so that I could legally
>compete with them.
>
...but not for the reason you state. I hope you're not serious here.
If you are, then you need to seek psychiatric help. The effort
necessary to get a Lisp job is far, far, far less than the effort needed
to enact an unpopular political idea. Thus this sounds like you're
living in a delusional world where you avoid your employment problems.
> For example, could I incorporate myself in India,
>have all income go to that corporation, then I get dividends back from
>my corporation, and there's no law requring dividends to exceed a
>minimum wage?
>
>
*What* dividends? You aren't going to make any money!
>Alternately, is there any way I could work legally in another country,
>not subject to USA minimum wage law, while I'm still physically in the
>USA? Sort of like an offshore shelter for employment, just like
>companies have offshore shelters for all their financial stuff to avoid
>having to pay corporate income tax?
>
>
>
IIRC the loophole typically exploited is the L1 Visa for
"intra-corporate transfers." This allows a foreigner to come to US
shores and get paid the same peanuts he'd get paid back home.
Unscrupulous companies make a business of fronting these guys overseas.
There's been much political teeth gnashing about closing the loophole in
recent years, but I don't know that it has happened.
I believe you'd have to become a foreigner to take advantage of such a
thing. Also there is probably a time expiry on the L1 Visa, so in
becoming a foreigner, you're not going to be able to stay in the USA for
very long. It seems the only rational course of action if you're bound
and determined to lower your wages is for you to emmigrate to somewhere
like Hungary. Try to convince them that they want you as a citizen. I
don't know how eager the poor countries are to accept new citizens with
skills. Maybe very eager for all I know. In the USA I believe it takes
5 years to become a citizen. I mentioned before that you'd probably
have to be willing to move to solve your problems, to go to where the
job is. This is a variation on the theme, and hardly a lucrative variation.
>
>It's definitely not that. I'm as smart as any Hungarian guy.
>
>
You certainly aren't with regards to business. Are you at least smart
enough to realize what you don't know, and go seek out better answers to
make you a more effective businessman? Again, misc.business.consulting
for starters.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
20% of the world is real.
Brandon J. Van Every
>English is the main language of India.
>
I thought it was Hindi.
>There's no reason to believe
>an Indian would be less skilled at English than a North American.
>
>
Are you saying this as a matter of theory, or a matter of personal
experience in India?
Brandon J. Van Every
Yes he does, but it is not because he's ragging on the English skills of
foreigners. It's because he invents elaborate scenarios about how the
foreigners prevent him from getting a Lisp job. What's really
preventing him is his utter unwillingness to do a proper job search, to
do the right things, and say the right things to the right people.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.
Andras Simon
> > From: "david....@gmail.com" <david....@gmail.com>
> > When an american programmer gets unemployed and replaced by a guy
> > from Hungary, is it because the hungarian guy is dumb and therefore
> > cheap?
>
> No, it's because the Hungarian guy is not bound by the Federal minimum
> wage, so he can undercut the wage of any American guy. The Hungarian
I doubt that you'll find many Hungarian programmers who are
willing to work for less then $5 (after tax)/hour.
> guy probably doesn't have 22 years experience programming computers, as
What makes you think so?
[...]
> It's definitely not that. I'm as smart as any Hungarian guy.
You can certainly make as bold statements as any Hungarian guy.
Andras
Edi Weitz
> I'm as smart as any Hungarian guy.
As smart as, say, Paul Erdös? Or John von Neumann?
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq "spam...@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
Robert Swindells
> On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 08:20:31 -0700, rem...@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
>
>> I'm as smart as any Hungarian guy.
>
> As smart as, say, Paul Erdös? Or John von Neumann?
Charles Simonyi has done ok for himself as well.
Hungarian hackers have been in demand for a long time.
israel
> It's because he invents elaborate scenarios about how
> the foreigners prevent him from getting a Lisp job. What's really
> preventing him is his utter unwillingness to do a proper job search,
> to do the right things, and say the right things to the right people.
His truly pathetic personal web site is unlikely to help either.
He lists writing "Hello World" programs in 2002 as a significant achievement.
Reading this and the long winded story on it about his credit card debt and
his impending eviction is unlikely to encourage any prospective employer.
israel
>> English is the main language of India.
> I thought it was Hindi.
My experience has been that educated Indians invariably speak English.
Only North Indians speak Hindi.
South Indians view Hindi the way the English view French.
Something they study in school, but not something they generally speak.
Ulrich Hobelmann
> rem...@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes:
>
>
>>Alternately, is there any way I could work legally in another country,
>>not subject to USA minimum wage law, while I'm still physically in the
>>USA? Sort of like an offshore shelter for employment, just like
>
>
> Consultant Mark Watson, who also happens to be a Lisper, is a case of
> "reverse outsourcing":
>
> http://www.markwatson.com
>
> Some time ago he told in his blog about a job he was
> then--still?--doing for an Indian company. He was physically in the
> USA, but I don't know about your other requirements.
(Was it in WIRED?) I read that Americans export much more work
than they import/offshore work (factor 2, several billions?). So
if there would be laws against working for or other countries +
letting them work for you, the US would lose big time.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Pascal Bourguignon
> writing computer software, for workers in India and Hungary, when
> outsourced by American companies? I need to know so that I can petition
> for a lowering of the legal minimum wage here so that I could legally
> compete with them. For example, could I incorporate myself in India,
> have all income go to that corporation, then I get dividends back from
> my corporation, and there's no law requring dividends to exceed a
> minimum wage?
Why do you want to work by the hour?
Be free-lance and work with fixed price, so you can bid any price you want.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Until real software engineering is developed, the next best practice
is to develop with a dynamic system that has extreme late binding in
all aspects. The first system to really do this in an important way
is Lisp. -- Alan Kay
Ulrich Hobelmann
> English is the main language of India. There's no reason to believe
> an Indian would be less skilled at English than a North American.
> Often North Americans are less understandable than other (of British
> influence) English speakers...
Maybe they are skilled, but sometimes you can read that they
aren't native (even though as you say their are legally). I
(German) have really trouble understanding blacks and indians here
in the US, and I don't consider myself racist (except that I
dislike my own country :D). English people are hard sometimes
(when they use their very own slang words), but otherwise quite
clear, yes.
>
> http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/in.html
>
> English enjoys associate status but is the most important language
> for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is
> the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people;
> there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi,
> Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi,
> Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular
> variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but
> is not an official language.
Well, in Germany about everybody learns 5-10 years of English.
Have you heard their accents though? Seriously, it's not pretty
(though I can understand most people; but I grew up with with that
accent). Maybe the Indians learn English from teachers with bad
accents too? ;)
Tayssir John Gabbour
> >>>>> "CCS" == Christopher C Stacy <cst...@news.dtpq.com> writes:
> [...]
> CCS> I haven't thought about why it is that te USA has enjoyed
> CCS> such a lead in the software market. I assume it mostly has
> CCS> to do with our education system, and the general leg-up from
> CCS> our wealth compared to the less developed nations like
> CCS> India.
> [...]
>
> I am no big fan of Tom Friedman but there's some truth to what he
> says:
>
>
http://www.indianembassy.org/US_Media/2004/mar/The%20Secret%20of%20Our%20Sauce.htm
NYT points out how the US gov't had been feeding America's tech
industry. Through DARPA...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/technology/02darpa.html?hp&ex=1112504400&en=8232d070f1a41760&ei=5094&partner=homepage
(In particular, their "Multimedia" sidebar, which has a couple cute
graphs showing a couple examples of this welfare.)
Incidentally, I agree that Tom Friedman is a suspicious guy, and am
reminded of Paul Graham's article...
http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Pascal Bourguignon
> Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
>
> > English is the main language of India.
> I thought it was Hindi.
Only spoken by 30% of the population, as indicated by the quote from
the CIA World Fact you justiciously elided.
> >There's no reason to believe
> >an Indian would be less skilled at English than a North American.
> >
> Are you saying this as a matter of theory, or a matter of personal
> experience in India?
You're right, if I must judge from the number of weapon of mass
destruction foundin Irak, the CIA must be completely wrong and 100% of
Indians must speak Hindi, and none can speak decent English.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
In deep sleep hear sound,
Cat vomit hairball somewhere.
Will find in morning.
Brandon J. Van Every
>NYT points out how the US gov't had been feeding America's tech
>industry. Through DARPA...
>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/technology/02darpa.html?hp&ex=1112504400&en=8232d070f1a41760&ei=5094&partner=homepage
>
>(In particular, their "Multimedia" sidebar, which has a couple cute
>graphs showing a couple examples of this welfare.)
>
>
"Welfare?" That's hysterical. Every industrialized nation in the world
invests in R&D, so that they can maintain economic and military
advantages over other countries. Maybe you'd prefer that everywhere was
some Third World shithole?
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
(Currently investigating a French-funded research compiler.)
Tayssir John Gabbour
> Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
>
> >NYT points out how the US gov't had been feeding America's tech
> >industry. Through DARPA...
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/technology/02darpa.html?hp&ex=1112504400&en=8232d070f1a41760&ei=5094&partner=homepage
> >
> >(In particular, their "Multimedia" sidebar, which has a couple cute
> >graphs showing a couple examples of this welfare.)
> >
> "Welfare?" That's hysterical. Every industrialized nation in the
> world invests in R&D, so that they can maintain economic and
> military advantages over other countries. Maybe you'd prefer that
> everywhere was some Third World shithole?
What's hysterical is that you think the general welfare is a bad thing.
Polls show that many Americans favor "aid to the poor." But once you
phrase it as "welfare", it conjures images of arrogant black mothers
with 20 children, and they're far more against it.
If I were as mean-spirited as you, I would point out it's even more
hysterical that you're an embarrassingly unconvincing fellow lecturing
others on how to be convincing. (If mistakes are the best teacher, you
must be the great guru of PR.) On newsgroups about tools you don't have
the slightest notion how to use.
But I'm not as mean-spirited as you, and so I don't say that. (And I
have my own insanities which people could criticize.) In another
thread, I see someone's tired of offtopic postings, so I'll leave you
with final words.
David Steuber
> Charles Simonyi has done ok for himself as well.
I like the way he inflicted that cruel notation on Microsoft
programmers and the folks who actually /like/ it. Very crafty.
--
An ideal world is left as an excercise to the reader.
--- Paul Graham, On Lisp 8.1
No excuses. No apologies. Just do it.
--- Erik Naggum
Ulrich Hobelmann
> invests in R&D, so that they can maintain economic and military
> advantages over other countries. Maybe you'd prefer that everywhere was
> some Third World shithole?
Actually universities seem to do some research on their own. I'm
sure Harvard and others don't exclusively live on DARPA (and
other) grants. Also, not all research costs resources (except
paying the researchers, but professors are paid, and students are
often free).
Lots of companies do research too, to maintain those advantages
you mention.
Actually I don't quite know what research in one nation has to do
with not being a shithole as you call it. Even without federally
funded research companies would have brought us technology. And
Third World shitholes can just as well use that research we have
in industrial countries and develop technology with it!
aabl...@cableone.net
Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t wrote:
[much snippage]
> overhead in dealing with people who no spekka ingish widout badd
aksent
> and live so far away it takes an international long distance phone
call
> to talk to them live (as if that did any good with their accent), and
> whose documentation is illegible due to lack of English skills, is
just
[snip]
> If that's your best opinion, then *you* are a fucking idiot who
doesn't
[snip
> Fuck you! That "business model" works fine for Indians. They're
> You have a fucking stupid attitude. I'm telling the truth. I have 15
[snip snip]
Judging by the above, I think I know why you have not had any luck
getting hired. Here's a hint: it has nothing at all to do with
outsourcing...
A.B.
Brandon J. Van Every
>Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>
>
>>Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>NYT points out how the US gov't had been feeding America's tech
>>>industry. Through DARPA...
>>>
>>>
>>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/technology/02darpa.html?hp&ex=1112504400&en=8232d070f1a41760&ei=5094&partner=homepage
>>
>>
>>>(In particular, their "Multimedia" sidebar, which has a couple cute
>>>graphs showing a couple examples of this welfare.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>"Welfare?" That's hysterical. Every industrialized nation in the
>>world invests in R&D, so that they can maintain economic and
>>military advantages over other countries. Maybe you'd prefer that
>>everywhere was some Third World shithole?
>>
>>
>
>What's hysterical is that you think the general welfare is a bad thing.
>Polls show that many Americans favor "aid to the poor." But once you
>phrase it as "welfare", it conjures images of arrogant black mothers
>with 20 children, and they're far more against it.
>
>
>
You're completely ducking the point. And for the most part I do take a
dim view of "corporate welfare" in addition to the
spew-out-babies-to-get-free-money kind. I consider R&D to be a
legitimate societal need. Many kinds of R&D wouldn't get done if the
government didn't fund them, and we'd all be the poorer for it. R&D is
inherently exploratory and prone to risk. Not every project is going to
be of direct benefit to society. It is the aggregate act of ongoing
research which is of benefit, as something always hits. You can't leave
fundamental research solely to the beancounters in private corporations,
because they're too timid to take that level of risk.
>But I'm not as mean-spirited as you, and so I don't say that.
>
Sure you didn't.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
Taking risk where others will not.
Brandon J. Van Every
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>
>> "Welfare?" That's hysterical. Every industrialized nation in the
>> world invests in R&D, so that they can maintain economic and military
>> advantages over other countries. Maybe you'd prefer that everywhere
>> was some Third World shithole?
>
>
> Actually universities seem to do some research on their own. I'm sure
> Harvard and others don't exclusively live on DARPA (and other)
> grants. Also, not all research costs resources (except paying the
> researchers, but professors are paid, and students are often free).
>
Why are you so sure? To say that universities, in general, keep going
on "independent funding" is silly. Mostly they either get it from the
government or from corporate partnerships.
> Lots of companies do research too, to maintain those advantages you
> mention.
Define "lots." I would say far more gets done by universities.
> Actually I don't quite know what research in one nation has to do with
> not being a shithole as you call it. Even without federally funded
> research companies would have brought us technology.
How would you substantiate that claim? There is no recent alternate
history to compare it to.
> And Third World shitholes can just as well use that research we have
> in industrial countries and develop technology with it!
>
Technology transfer isn't a cakewalk.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.
Ulrich Hobelmann
> Why are you so sure? To say that universities, in general, keep going
> on "independent funding" is silly. Mostly they either get it from the
> government or from corporate partnerships.
The latter seems fine.
>> Lots of companies do research too, to maintain those advantages you
>> mention.
>
>
> Define "lots." I would say far more gets done by universities.
Most big companies in technical business (except maybe HP and
Dell). Lots of small companies, too, that want an edge over the
competition.
Sure, universities are probably more, but again, most of those
people are employed professors, and they say "publish or perish"
for a reason.
If a CS prof stopped doing research because DARPA doesn't pay for
it, I would be surprised and disappointed. What more can you
expect than being payed for all your work hours?
>> Actually I don't quite know what research in one nation has to do with
>> not being a shithole as you call it. Even without federally funded
>> research companies would have brought us technology.
>
>
> How would you substantiate that claim? There is no recent alternate
> history to compare it to.
I think most important human inventions were made by private
inventors/hobbyists, people at universities (even without grants)
and companies. I may be wrong (so there's no substance).
>> And Third World shitholes can just as well use that research we have
>> in industrial countries and develop technology with it!
>>
> Technology transfer isn't a cakewalk.
>
--
israel
> I (German) have really trouble understanding blacks and indians here in the US, and I
> don't consider myself racist
Of course you dont...
israel
>> Charles Simonyi has done ok for himself as well.
>
> I like the way he inflicted that cruel notation on Microsoft
> programmers and the folks who actually /like/ it. Very crafty.
After which he cleverly left to pursue aspect oriented programming.
Hungarian notation probably saved us from global control by Microsoft.
israel
>> For example, could I incorporate myself in India,
> Why do you want to work by the hour?
> Be free-lance and work with fixed price, so you can bid any price you want.
Or even better, bid low and outsource the contract you get via your
Indian incorporated company to Indian programmers.
You can have 10 projects going on simultaneously and the margin you make
will give you a far greater income than if you worked on your own.
Plus, if the Indians get too expensive, you can move your jobs to
Hungary or the Ukraine.
Rob Warnock
+---------------
| I don't know what your living expenses are in the US, but here you can
| barely live for say 1200$ a month after taxes as a single person (I
| figure it is not that different in the US).
*HAH!* We wish. $1200/month won't even pay my *rent*!!
[And I'm getting a good deal, due to long tenancy...]
+---------------
| By the way, I go for around 100$ an hour (as an indepedant consultant,
| not employee)...
+---------------
A highly-experienced person can certainly still get that in
the SF Bay area for short-term technical gigs, though you'll
have to do some serious negotiation to have that hold up for
longer-term work.
+---------------
| I would not take a paid job for less that say 40-45.000 dollars/year
| before taxes (as I am danish there is not such things as
| medical/dental/whatever benefits paied by an employer - the only
| exception is pension payment).
+---------------
Here fairly-hefty medical/dental/etc. benefits are considered standard
for full-time employees, though of course independent consultants don't
get any of that. The typical benefits package around here is ~30% of
base salary, so if you think you're worth a $45K/yr salary you shouldn't
price yourself at less than $31/hr (minimum).
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
indiaBPOking
If your business is finished and goes down the drain what will you
outsource to Hungary and Ukraine?? The only thing left will be your
poor self, which you can outsource to the highest bidder.
indiaBPOking.
Christopher C. Stacy
> Actually universities seem to do some research on their own. I'm sure
> Harvard and others don't exclusively live on DARPA (and other) grants.
Actually, such places do pretty much depend on DARPA (and other) grants.
and have been in dire straights since the Cold War ended.
Less research is getting done.
Espen Vestre
> Maybe the Indians learn English from teachers with bad accents too? ;)
I think the Indian accent is charming. With that many native English
speaking, isn't it natural that they have their own dialects of
English? Your question is almost equivalent to asking if all Bavarian
children learn German from teachers with bad accents!
--
(espen)
Tim X
>> From: "Alex Mizrahi" <udod...@users.sourceforge.net>
>> i would like to have some remote, not so big, complex or urgent job
>> in Common Lisp. since i live in Ukraine, fee could be surprisingly
>> low as for USA/EU-living people. :)
>
> I live in California and would be willing to work for the legal minimum
> wage, something like $5something/hour. I have 15 years Lisp programming
> experience. Would you be willing to undercut my wage-bid?
>
Shzzz - are you serious! I wouldn't even get out of bed for $5 per
hour. My minimum consulting rate is $80 per hour and if I'm working as
an employee, its a minimum of $30 per hour + 15% super. I've been
either employed or consulting without a period of unemployment for 15
years.
One thing I learnt early in my consulting days was that there was more
of a danger of under selling yourself than over selling. I initially
lost jobs because I wasn't charging enough and pospective employers
thought I either wasn't serious or didn't have the necessary
skills. At the time, this seemed counter intuitive, but now I realise
that pricing yourself too cheap puts you in the 'amateur' class and
prevents you from getting good jobs.
I think its a mis-conception to believe you have to be cheap in order
to compete with cheap labour from India, western europe etc. In many
cases, while the people doing the work get paid very little, there is
some level of management/coordinator who charges quite high and just
keeps the cream for themselves - something I find very exploitative
and which I find somewhat annoying. This out sourcing of programming
to 3rd world countries also doesn't seem to be paying off quite as
well as some employers have hoped. In many cases, they have found
cultural differences have led to misunderstandings wrt specifications
and the additional coordination and handling of what is produced is
eating up any savings made through outsourcing - plus usually its not
as cheap as it looks because some middle layer is taking all the
profits. In reality it just means two different groups being exploited
and played off against each other for some 3rd parties gain.
Tim
--
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
Tim X
> On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 08:20:31 -0700, rem...@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
>
>> I'm as smart as any Hungarian guy.
>
> As smart as, say, Paul Erdös? Or John von Neumann?
>
With the sort of statement he made, I doubt if he even knows who Erdos
is and if he does, lets find out what his erdos number is!
Edi Weitz
> I think its a mis-conception to believe you have to be cheap in
> order to compete with cheap labour from India, western europe etc.
Cheap labour in Western Europe? Hmmm - I hope this was a typo.
Edi.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq "spam...@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
Frank Buss
> I initially
> lost jobs because I wasn't charging enough and pospective employers
> thought I either wasn't serious or didn't have the necessary
> skills.
and it works the other way, too: I've read an article in a magazin (I think
it was a German issue of Scientific American) about an experiment, which
leads to the conclusion that if you get less income, you are less motivated
and you don't think it is worth to do as much as you can for the job. So if
you get $80 instead of $5 you are 16 times more productive for the company
for which you are working :-) Ok, perhaps not that much more productive,
but you get the idea.
--
Frank Buß, f...@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
Tim X
I think there are a couple of points missing in all of this. My
experience when studying comp sci at university was that nearly 90% of
the post graduate students where either from India or China. I also
found that while all the Indian students had an accent, they were easy
to understand and their english was very good. Where were all the
non-india/chinese etc post grads? As udnergrads, the mix was pretty
much the reverse - only about 10 to 20% were indian or chinese.
The point which seems to be over looked to some degree is the number
of Indians who have adequate IT skills - certainly as adequate as many
of the Austsralian/American/English programmers I've known who program
in VB, Java or C. In fact, many of them have been very talented (well,
I've yet to meet a truely talented VB programmer). Moving programming
jobs off-shore doesn't quite mean the same as moving a manufacturing
job to Mexico or Indonesia or china or india as the skill sets
required are much higher and more defficult to obtain. What I'm
wondering is if the shift to India is due to cheaper wages or was it
due to an over priced labour market in the US which developed because
of a shortage in the pool of skilled labour available? Is it possible
that programmers in the US/Australia have contributed to the situation
by not putting in the same effort to become as knowledgable and
experienced as they could?
One final bit on language and difficulties of understanding - I think
it was Oscar Wild who said, when visiting the US, something along the
lines of "Its so nice to be here - we have so much in common, with the
exception of english"
Point being we have to be very careful about the importance of being
able to speak english well. While it is certainly one of the most (if
not the most) widely spoken language, its not the only language spoken
and many software companies are marketing globally - the ability of
staff to speak english may not be that important or that much of a
benefit.
david....@gmail.com
> that programmers in the US/Australia have contributed to the
situation
> by not putting in the same effort to become as knowledgable and
> experienced as they could?
Yes, that's what I have been trying to say. Outsourcing is at least
partially a result of lack of skill and knowledge on the american side.
The competition is not (only) in price, it is more often than not in
the ability to get the job done on time and with good quality.
In the past, american software industry had a clear and
hard-to-overcome advantage of much easier and cheaper access to the
expensive equipment. This is not an issue anymore; and american
programmers have to compete with smart, knowledgeable and willing to
work engineers from just about any country in the world.
Better skills matter to a much greater extent than lower price of
labour.
David Tolpin
http://davidashen.net/
Marc Battyani
"Frank Buss" <f...@frank-buss.de> wrote
> and it works the other way, too: I've read an article in a magazin (I
think
> it was a German issue of Scientific American) about an experiment, which
> leads to the conclusion that if you get less income, you are less
motivated
> and you don't think it is worth to do as much as you can for the job. So
if
> you get $80 instead of $5 you are 16 times more productive for the company
> for which you are working :-) Ok, perhaps not that much more productive,
> but you get the idea.
Is the 16 times factor including or in addition to the 20 times productivity
boost for using Common Lisp? ;-)
Marc
(a poor low cost western european Lisper ;-)
(My name is even Hungarian!)
Bulent Murtezaoglu
[...]
TJG> What's hysterical is that you think the general welfare is a
TJG> bad thing. [...]
I suspect you didn't do this on purpose, and I realize I am on thin
ice as a non-native speaker, but might I point out that "general
welfare" is only percieved as synonymous with "wealth transfer through
government coercion" because of an Orwellian corruption of language.
Who, afterall, can be against "general welfare"? (and, say, support
general ill-being!?). I think we are losing our ability to talk and
reason about these things because the very tools we'd use to communicate
are getting destroyed by propaganda.
cheers,
BB
alex goldman
> no, because at any time i can work as C++ or PHP programmer at least for
> 1.5-2$ per hour. :)
That's pretty low. I was told that in Moscow, a good programmer or
electrical engineer has to be paid about $1,000 - $2,000 per month. Are
Ukrainians so much cheaper?
alex goldman
I noticed that you reacted very belligerently to suggestions and criticism
by others in this thread. However, I'm going to say this anyway. Your web
site alone puts you in the "unemployable" pile in the eyes of most
potential employers.
While you had 15 years of mostly free time, have you considered creating
your own product and perhaps selling it?
Tayssir John Gabbour
You're right. In fact, "the general welfare" is in the first line of
the US Constitution. However, now it invokes images of welfare mothers
breeding like rabbits (by implication black); a racist political PR
tool.
I did use the term "welfare" on purpose actually, because it's sadly
funny. ;) Many programmers call themselves "libertarian," which in the
US means an extreme free-market type. But we above all benefitted from
government subsidies, and ideologically we claim we have a RIGHT to it
and no one could use it better. Poor nations are "shitholes", and tech
subsidies are the only things holding the US back from extreme poverty.
I think people should take the nice subsidies and use them responsibly.
;) Tech is neutral but can have wonderful uses. One good first step is
to stop lying to ourselves on the internet.
Ulrich Hobelmann
> I did use the term "welfare" on purpose actually, because it's sadly
> funny. ;) Many programmers call themselves "libertarian," which in the
> US means an extreme free-market type. But we above all benefitted from
> government subsidies, and ideologically we claim we have a RIGHT to it
> and no one could use it better. Poor nations are "shitholes", and tech
> subsidies are the only things holding the US back from extreme poverty.
If subsidies are the only way that keeps programmers in
employment, then there is no hope for the USA. This is about the
same as just putting all programmers in the government, where they
can collect nice money from the taxpayers. Doesn't make sense to
me. Why not pay subsidies to minimum-wage employees instead, so
they can maybe even *live* on three of these jobs? Why not
subsidize whatever? Why not just subsidize *everybody*? Oh wait,
then we could maybe just let people keep their tax money in the
first place...
(sidenote: I'm actually for a small general distribution;
everybody gets a fixed amount of money from the government, which
shifts some money from the rich to all those minimum-wage workers.
In return there are no other welfare systems, no subsidies of
any kind etc.)
Ulrich Hobelmann
> and it works the other way, too: I've read an article in a magazin (I think
> it was a German issue of Scientific American) about an experiment, which
> leads to the conclusion that if you get less income, you are less motivated
> and you don't think it is worth to do as much as you can for the job. So if
> you get $80 instead of $5 you are 16 times more productive for the company
> for which you are working :-) Ok, perhaps not that much more productive,
> but you get the idea.
Tell that to the people who employ students. I'm not really
motivated working for $10/h. If someone would employ me for $25,
I'd really try to do most excellent work (because I would think
I'm treated fairly).
Why is it that once you graduate (even though you don't know
anything more than before and still have the same experience
level) you are able to charge 5 times what you earned before??
(well, it seems like in Germany you don't even get IT jobs at all
anymore, but the people who do earn way more than $10/h)
Brandon J. Van Every
That is not fair. People in certain parts of the USA have *very* heavy
accents. I will never forget the black movers when I was moved from San
Francisco to North Carolina at age 11. I was watching something on TV.
The mover asked me, "Dyawannabeawrassler?" Only because I was watching
TV, and some guy in spandex was giving some other guy a body slam in a
ring, did I figure it out. A wrestler! "wrassler" == wrestler. Lotsa
things went like that. I had to think really really hard for awhile to
understand certain people.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.
Brandon J. Van Every
> Tell that to the people who employ students.
So you are a student then? That would explain a number of things about
the debates we've had.
> I'm not really motivated working for $10/h. If someone would employ
> me for $25, I'd really try to do most excellent work (because I would
> think I'm treated fairly).
You could try poverty as a motivator. :-) Of course my poverty is
self-inflicted. I am very purist about wanting to do exactly my own
thing in the programming and game design depts. So rather than put
energy into getting paid a lot of money to solve other people's
problems, I do these "dumb jobs" that pay little. I come close to
having $0 all the time. When you actually want to *eat*, and, say,
$12/hour is going to enable you to *eat*, you'll tough it out and do
what you gotta do. I must admit though, $15/hour is my threshold of
motivation. Really the only reason I've take $12/hour from my landlord
is because it made him happy. Having him remain lenient about my debts
has *tremendous* value, so it's actually worth a lot more than
$12/hour. Anyone else, if it's less than $15/hour, I'm not interested.
And my attention isn't going to be kept for less than $20/hour.
Remember too I'm only talking about "stupid jobs." I'm not talking
computer money. Perhaps if you want to get paid more than $10/hour, you
should try stupid jobs? Sure, lotsa stupid jobs only pay $10/hour or
less and that's a ripoff. But there are stupid jobs that pay better.
> Why is it that once you graduate (even though you don't know anything
> more than before and still have the same experience level) you are
> able to charge 5 times what you earned before??
> (well, it seems like in Germany you don't even get IT jobs at all
> anymore, but the people who do earn way more than $10/h)
>
"In life, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate."
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.
Brandon J. Van Every
>
>You're right. In fact, "the general welfare" is in the first line of
>the US Constitution.
>
Indeed, and it's a *long* friggin' first line!
>However, now it invokes images of welfare mothers
>breeding like rabbits
>
The line in the Constitution is "the general welfare," not "the welfare
recipients." Welfare recipients are rather specific welfare. General
welfare is things like having a First Amendment, a Second Amendment,
etc. Remember that you're entitled to the *pursuit* of happiness.
>(by implication black); a racist political PR
>tool.
>
>
Do you even live in the USA? Are stereotypes from abroad your only tool
for analyzing US politics?
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
20% of the world is real.
Frank Buss
> So rather than put
> energy into getting paid a lot of money to solve other people's
> problems, I do these "dumb jobs" that pay little.
dumb jobs would make me dumb. What about getting a lot of money by solving
other people's problems for a year and then concentrating a year on your
gaming projects?
Brandon J. Van Every
>
> If subsidies are the only way that keeps programmers in employment,
> then there is no hope for the USA. This is about the same as just
> putting all programmers in the government, where they can collect nice
> money from the taxpayers. Doesn't make sense to me.
If indeed you are a student, as per another post of yours, then I must
say you are certainly sounding like a silly foreign student in this
post. Do you have any first-hand basis on which to speak of the job
market in the USA?
> Why not pay subsidies to minimum-wage employees instead, so they can
> maybe even *live* on three of these jobs?
Because such workers don't have the skills to do the R&D that the
government wants.
> Why not subsidize whatever? Why not just subsidize *everybody*? Oh
> wait, then we could maybe just let people keep their tax money in the
> first place...
The more practical approach is to raise the Federal or State minimum
wage. Which does happen. Of course, minimum wage is always minimum
wage. It is never terribly livable.
Ulrich Hobelmann
> That is not fair. People in certain parts of the USA have *very* heavy
> accents. I will never forget the black movers when I was moved from San
> Francisco to North Carolina at age 11. I was watching something on TV.
> The mover asked me, "Dyawannabeawrassler?" Only because I was watching
> TV, and some guy in spandex was giving some other guy a body slam in a
> ring, did I figure it out. A wrestler! "wrassler" == wrestler. Lotsa
> things went like that. I had to think really really hard for awhile to
> understand certain people.
The worst was one time at Taco Bell. That guy asked me "do you
want a haaaa or saaaahaaa?". After re-asking three times (like
"hot, or with sauce??") and getting feeling really embarrassed, I
found out that he wanted to know if I want a Hard or Soft shell.
Leaving out consonants is something that I just can't deal with,
especially when people make all vowels sound about the same too.
But admittedly that guy was quite unique in his not having any
remotely "standard" pronunciation.
Ulrich Hobelmann
No, I'd rather not work than for an unfair wage. That's because
if I work more and study less for college (ok, not important) and
study less for myself, what I think might give me an edge. So I'm
wasting time @ $10/h instead of getting done faster and finding a
well-paying job earlier. I'm really lucky that my dad pays me
some so I don't starve.
At the university they pay €8, in the US even much less. So I
quit my €8 job after a semester.
>> Why is it that once you graduate (even though you don't know anything
>> more than before and still have the same experience level) you are
>> able to charge 5 times what you earned before??
>> (well, it seems like in Germany you don't even get IT jobs at all
>> anymore, but the people who do earn way more than $10/h)
>>
> "In life, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate."
Yes, this summer I'll look for something outside of the University.
Brandon J. Van Every
>"Brandon J. Van Every" <mylastname...@mycompanyname.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>So rather than put
>>energy into getting paid a lot of money to solve other people's
>>problems, I do these "dumb jobs" that pay little.
>>
>>
>
>dumb jobs would make me dumb. What about getting a lot of money by solving
>other people's problems for a year and then concentrating a year on your
>gaming projects?
>
>
>
It's a gambit, but I have been loath to put my own problems on hold at
all. My fear has been, if I am working full time on computer stuff for
someone else, then at the end of the day, I'll have no desire to work on
my own stuff. My stuff will just slip into a void as life marches onwards.
"Stupid jobs" is a tradeoff. It does suck away time, as any job would
do. However, instead of draining my brain, I get physical exercise.
Instead of sitting in front of the computer, I get people interaction.
It's not so stupid at all to get other life needs met with paying work.
I do a lot of "Wax on, wax off!"
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
Taking risk where others will not.
Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
> How do you distinguish crap from quality?
Well as a starter you could define a complete set of "use cases", and
then test several examples of each such case just to make sure the
programmer hasn't overlooked or grossly flubbed one of them.
> It might not make sense to pay the US guy more money, no.
No need to pay me more than the Hungarian or Indian guy. I don't ask
for a large hourly wage. I'd rather get less than somebody in Hungary
or India, than get nothing at all as I'm currently getting.
Any pay for my work is an improvement from the current situation.
> But I think there's nothing wrong with supporting local brands and
> companies (and it reduces transportation of material goods all
> over the globe).
Is anybody keeping a list of the companies which outsource the largest
quantity of software programming, so that we might target those
companies to try to pursuade them to support local labor, or start a
boycott against those who refuse to hire local labor even when it's
available at a lower cost than foreign labor?
Alex Mizrahi
(you :wrote :on '(Wed, 20 Apr 2005 04:33:35 -0700))
(
??>> no, because at any time i can work as C++ or PHP programmer at least
??>> for 1.5-2$ per hour. :)
ag> That's pretty low. I was told that in Moscow, a good programmer or
ag> electrical engineer has to be paid about $1,000 - $2,000 per month. Are
ag> Ukrainians so much cheaper?
Moscow is the capital of Russia, so salaries there are highest in former
USSR, i think.
in capital city of Ukraine, Kiev, they are somewhat smaller. in regions of
Ukraine it gets even more smaller..
something around 500$ is ok for a good programmer on a normal job, i think.
in state-owned companies, banks for example, people get as low as 100-200$,
that's definitely a horror..
"1.5-2$" i wrote is a lower bound, i believe i always can get something like
that if i wish :), but that's ok for me only as part-time job while studying
in university..
you wouldn't think that 5$/hour is ok in California basing on Robert Maas'
demands, ye? :)
)
(With-best-regards '(Alex Mizrahi) :aka 'killer_storm)
"People who lust for the Feel of keys on their fingertips (c) Inity")
Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
> English is the main language of India. There's no reason to believe
> an Indian would be less skilled at English than a North American.
> Often North Americans are less understandable than other (of British
> influence) English speakers...
I've encountered a large number of Indians in recent years, and I found
virtually all of them to be very difficult to understand audibly. Also
many of them write horrid English when they compose WebPages. They seem
to really have no basic understanding or intuition for English grammar
and idioms.
Ulrich Hobelmann
>
>>
>> If subsidies are the only way that keeps programmers in employment,
>> then there is no hope for the USA. This is about the same as just
>> putting all programmers in the government, where they can collect nice
>> money from the taxpayers. Doesn't make sense to me.
>
>
> If indeed you are a student, as per another post of yours, then I must
> say you are certainly sounding like a silly foreign student in this
> post. Do you have any first-hand basis on which to speak of the job
> market in the USA?
I'm not involved with the job market in the US, no (I'm not
allowed to work here). I was simply referring to the claim that
subsidies keep programmers in employment. If the government needs
to subsidize them, why not employ them in the goverment. Then we
would have almost communism, with nobody unemployed -- oh wait.
(The statement I made was totally not referring to the US job market.)
>> Why not pay subsidies to minimum-wage employees instead, so they can
>> maybe even *live* on three of these jobs?
>
>
> Because such workers don't have the skills to do the R&D that the
> government wants.
So the government wants research (with unknown outcomes) more than
the employment and not-starving of its citizens? 25% of all USA
families are *poor*, and that's not just poor as in "can't afford
designer clothes".
>> Why not subsidize whatever? Why not just subsidize *everybody*? Oh
>> wait, then we could maybe just let people keep their tax money in the
>> first place...
>
>
> The more practical approach is to raise the Federal or State minimum
> wage. Which does happen. Of course, minimum wage is always minimum
> wage. It is never terribly livable.
Which was one reason why I rallied for the Democrats (Kerry) last
year. Well, it kinda worked in Wisconsin, but Florida and others
screwed up on this.
Adrian Kubala
> I'd rather get less than somebody in Hungary or India, than get
> nothing at all as I'm currently getting. Any pay for my work is an
> improvement from the current situation.
It doesn't have to be; you can invest your time in making yourself more
employable, which is worth much more in the long term than spending all
your time in dead-end work for minimum wage. Also see "opportunity
cost". Working a crappy job means *losing* whatever benefit you could
see from spending that time in ways more valuable to you.
Tim Lavoie
> I've encountered a large number of Indians in recent years, and I found
> virtually all of them to be very difficult to understand audibly. Also
> many of them write horrid English when they compose WebPages. They seem
> to really have no basic understanding or intuition for English grammar
> and idioms.
The same could be said of many people whose first and only language is
English. As prime examples, check blogs with user comments, or any
chat service. (#lisp is naturally rife with brilliance, but is a poor
example.)
Tim
--
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere."
- Voltaire
Brandon J. Van Every
>
>Is anybody keeping a list of the companies which outsource the largest
>quantity of software programming, so that we might target those
>companies to try to pursuade them to support local labor, or start a
>boycott against those who refuse to hire local labor even when it's
>available at a lower cost than foreign labor?
>
>
I know I've seen sites that put various companies on shitlists for
worker maltreatment. But darned if I can't find 'em in my bookmarks
now. My job bookmarks are a complete mess, unlike all my other ones
which are neat and orderly. Anyways, Google is your friend. For that
trouble, you'd be better off just getting on with a more traditional job
hunt, though.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every
>On 2005-04-20, Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t <rem...@Yahoo.Com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I've encountered a large number of Indians in recent years, and I found
>>virtually all of them to be very difficult to understand audibly. Also
>>many of them write horrid English when they compose WebPages. They seem
>>to really have no basic understanding or intuition for English grammar
>>and idioms.
>>
>>
>
>The same could be said of many people whose first and only language is
>English. As prime examples, check blogs with user comments, or any
>chat service. (#lisp is naturally rife with brilliance, but is a poor
>example.)
>
>
>
Not for spoken English. I've never met an educated American that I had
any difficulty understanding. It's the uneducated / insufficiently
educated ones that are hard to decipher.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
20% of the world is real.
Brandon J. Van Every
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>
>> Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
>>
>>> Why not pay subsidies to minimum-wage employees instead, so they can
>>> maybe even *live* on three of these jobs?
>>
>> Because such workers don't have the skills to do the R&D that the
>> government wants.
>
>
> So the government wants research (with unknown outcomes) more than the
> employment and not-starving of its citizens?
Yep. This is the arch-Capitalist country. And if you're afraid of
"unknown outcomes," you have no business even discussing R&D.
> 25% of all USA families are *poor*, and that's not just poor as in
> "can't afford designer clothes".
They are nevertheless incredibly wealthy compared to the poor sots in
the Third World. Even our homeless bums are living an enviable
existence compared to various Third World slimeholes. Nobody starves
over here. They might be malnourished, and their health is surely poor,
but those are secondary effects from the lifestyles they're choosing.
Anyone who wants to eat properly can do so here, for free. It's a
simple matter of showing up at the right place at the right time, a
discipline that a surprising number of people can't avail themselves
of. They'd rather "spare change" you for a burger, a pack of cigs,
booze, and drugs. In general a lot of services are available for people
here. You need to live in close proximity to these lazy bums and avail
yourself of the services yourself, to really get a sense of how lazy
they are.
Tayssir John Gabbour
> >(by implication black); a racist political PR
> >tool.
> >
> Do you even live in the USA? Are stereotypes from abroad your only
> tool for analyzing US politics?
Is this one of your PR tactics? ;) Coax me to respond with silly
personal accusations, rather than cooly request evidence? And if I
ignore you, you "win"? That's reminiscent of Bush/Rove's smear against
well known Republican John McCain. Such as the implications he fathered
an illegitimate black daughter (she was adopted from Mother Teresa's
orphanage in Bangladesh), and so on.
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/03/21/the_anatomy_of_a_smear_campaign/
Amy Goodman interviewed McCain as he surprisingly supported Bush in
2004; go ahead and search for it. Shades of Reagan's Willie Horton.
In fact, PBS pointed out that drug laws (in this case marijuana) were
based on racism:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html
The HORRORS of marijuana (drug of presidents, as Bush admitted on
tape!) heavily contribute to our world-beating levels of incarceration.
We disproportionately lock up minorities, of course.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r234.pdf
Most forums have someone who intentionally posts in such a personal
manner to coax people to respond. You are ours, and you'll forgive me
for ignoring your future histrionics. I love my nation, but we have
problems to solve. I'm sure you mean well in defending the status quo.
David Steuber
> It's a gambit, but I have been loath to put my own problems on hold at
> all. My fear has been, if I am working full time on computer stuff
> for someone else, then at the end of the day, I'll have no desire to
> work on my own stuff. My stuff will just slip into a void as life
> marches onwards.
I think you would find working in a real computer job with talented
programmers around you a rewarding experience. I recomend it.
It would also be nice if a higher ratio of postings had some obvious
connection to Lisp.
--
An ideal world is left as an excercise to the reader.
--- Paul Graham, On Lisp 8.1
No excuses. No apologies. Just do it.
--- Erik Naggum
Tim Lavoie
>>
>>The same could be said of many people whose first and only language is
>>English. As prime examples, check blogs with user comments, or any
>>chat service. (#lisp is naturally rife with brilliance, but is a poor
>>example.)
>>
>>
>>
> Not for spoken English. I've never met an educated American that I had
> any difficulty understanding. It's the uneducated / insufficiently
> educated ones that are hard to decipher.
Such as... the President? <grin>
I'm not disagreeing, but the latter group seems to have discovered the
InterWeb (sic) as well.
--
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the
subject."
-- Winston Churchill
Ulrich Hobelmann
> They are nevertheless incredibly wealthy compared to the poor sots in
> the Third World. Even our homeless bums are living an enviable
> existence compared to various Third World slimeholes. Nobody starves
> over here. They might be malnourished, and their health is surely poor,
> but those are secondary effects from the lifestyles they're choosing.
I don't think it's that simple. When a single mom has to do three
minimum-wage jobs (obviously she has neither the time nor the
money to get a better education then) to pay the bills and raise
her one or two kids, I wouldn't say she *chooses* that lifestyle.
It's called getting by.
> Anyone who wants to eat properly can do so here, for free. It's a
> simple matter of showing up at the right place at the right time, a
> discipline that a surprising number of people can't avail themselves
> of. They'd rather "spare change" you for a burger, a pack of cigs,
Ok, now we're talking beggars. I think most (or a large number)
of "poor" households in the US are families, mostly with a single
mother. Some can't even afford a place, so they live in cars (all
that info from my Sociology 110 class). Most of them work, though.
> booze, and drugs. In general a lot of services are available for people
> here. You need to live in close proximity to these lazy bums and avail
> yourself of the services yourself, to really get a sense of how lazy
> they are.
Sure, some people just hang out on the streets. Maybe it even
pays well, like for some of the beggars in Chicago downtown (I
suppose), or the numerous people on the NYC subway (I highly
suspect, at least when tourists are around).
But most households in poverty are small, broken families.
Obviously it's much harder to pay the bills for more than one
person AND care for them (kids), especially when you're just one
person working and maybe don't have as good an education as the
average male in this country.
Brandon J. Van Every
>Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>
>
>>Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
>>
>>
>>>(by implication black); a racist political PR
>>>tool.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Do you even live in the USA? Are stereotypes from abroad your only
>>tool for analyzing US politics?
>>
>>
>
>Is this one of your PR tactics? ;) Coax me to respond with silly
>personal accusations, rather than cooly request evidence?
>
How do you fathom that the above is anything but a request for evidence?
You are on your own tangent about America == Bush. We are talking past
each other, and this is now grossly off-topic. Thus I will bow out from
future discussion on the matter.
Rob Warnock
+---------------
| Bulent Murtezaoglu wrote:
| > I suspect you didn't do this on purpose, and I realize I am on thin
| > ice as a non-native speaker, but might I point out that "general
| > welfare" is only percieved as synonymous with "wealth transfer
| > through government coercion" because of an Orwellian corruption of
| > language. Who, afterall, can be against "general welfare"?
|
| the US Constitution. However, now it invokes images of welfare mothers
| breeding like rabbits (by implication black); a racist political PR tool.
Maybe it's time for a more politically-correct update?
% diff -c USConstitution-1.0.txt USConstitution-1.1.txt
*** USConstitution-1.0.txt 2005-04-20 20:34:06.000000000 -0700
--- USConstitution-1.1.txt 2005-04-20 20:34:41.000000000 -0700
***************
*** 1,5 ****
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect
Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for
! the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
--- 1,5 ----
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect
Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for
! the common defence, promote general Wellbeing, and secure the
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
%
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
ajv2003
>>> For example, could I incorporate myself in India,
>
>
>
>>Why do you want to work by the hour?
>>Be free-lance and work with fixed price, so you can bid any price you want.
>
>
> Or even better, bid low and outsource the contract you get via your
> Indian incorporated company to Indian programmers.
>
> You can have 10 projects going on simultaneously and the margin you make
> will give you a far greater income than if you worked on your own.
>
> Plus, if the Indians get too expensive, you can move your jobs to
> Hungary or the Ukraine.
Need a good Lawyer? We got lot's and cheap to. Everybody is going into law.
BR
> But most households in poverty are small, broken families. Obviously
> it's much harder to pay the bills for more than one person AND care for
> them (kids), especially when you're just one person working and maybe
> don't have as good an education as the average male in this country.
There's a lot of ways to get into poverty. Medical expenses for instance.
An awful lot of people are at most two paychecks away from poverty.
Sashank Varma
> Edi Weitz <spam...@agharta.de> writes:
>
> > On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 08:20:31 -0700, rem...@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas,
see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
> >
> >> I'm as smart as any Hungarian guy.
> >
> > As smart as, say, Paul Erdös? Or John von Neumann?
>
> With the sort of statement he made, I doubt if he even knows who
Erdos
> is and if he does, lets find out what his erdos number is!
In prior posts Robert Maas has stated that he placed highly (top 20) on
the Putnam exam while in college.
I've been away from this newsgroup for six months but at first glance
it seems to have taken a turn for the worse. Some flip comments (like
Edi's) are to be expected, of course, but what's with the collection of
hangers-on sniffing the water for blood?
Tim X
> On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:25:00 +1000, Tim X <ti...@spamto.devnul.com> wrote:
>
>> I think its a mis-conception to believe you have to be cheap in
>> order to compete with cheap labour from India, western europe etc.
>
Opps, must have been facing the wrong way - should have been eastern!
--
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!