Jul 2003
Tue, 22 Jul 2003
Big Blue Sends Tech Jobs Afar
Many would think of IBM as being as quintessentially American as apple pie. Think again.
One thing that the article fails to mention is that software companies must address the commoditization of software via open source. Open source is an inherently global undertaking with virtually zero engineering costs. Moving technology jobs overseas will likely help IBM compete with other products having high dollar engineering costs, and co-opting the products doesn't hurt, but in the end, it's probably a losing battle. It begs the question of whether technology companies will demand more or less H1B visas in light of this offshoring.
One thing's for certain, if you're a US citizen looking for a technology job now, your chances of finding one, without creating it yourself, are going down by the day. You'd probably get farther selling oil filters at a parts counter. That's what a lot of those displaced steel workers are doing since the stunning machine of globalization flattened their industry twenty years ago.
Taken another way, if your goal was to terrorize the US and you have lots of money - that's easy. Fund international companies targeting vertical markets in the US whose sole purpose is to offshore the jobs within that vertical. Why stop with the technology industry? Why not do the same thing to healthcare, finance, etc. When you've mastered the five top verticals, set your sights on offshoring the US government. Service levels may actually improve.
Oh well, there's always Canada.
Posted at: 11:09 | permalink
Sun, 20 Jul 2003
Clark (Dis) Connect Linux
I've been running clark connect linux for years now, since the pre-1.0 release. I've come to depend on it in a milk and cookies sort of way. So imagine my excitement when they finally started building the redhat 9-based ClarkConnect 2.0 and released a beta. I decided to skip the beta and wait to test on a release candidate. This week they released an RC1. I downloaded the ISO and started installing it on a venerable old PII-333, 640 MB, 2x 8 GB disks. I had read that the list of outstanding issues, but they seemed mostly cosmetic. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
The trouble began with the installer which ran extremely slowly and crashed with an "unable to read glib-blah-blah" error. And yes, I had tested the disk with the checksum thingy. I sensed that the old cirrus logic agp video card might be part of the problem so I swapped in a spare fire gl 1000 pro. That got me past the crash. When the installer had finished, it had taken 6 hours to install the single 300 MB CD-ROM!
The slowness didn't stop there. The machine took multiple restarts to boot and when booted correctly (?), the entire boot process took ~ 20 minutes! Once it booted, the web config interface barely worked taking minutes to load a single page with some pages failing on a timeout. Running top indicated that mrtg appeared to be eating CPU so I did, "pkill mrtg" but it came back to life and I couldn't quite find the startup script to really kill it.
After a day or so of this disappointing experience, I decided to try and document my experience on the clark connect forums. That too was hopeless as I couldn't remember my login and when I created a new login, never received the confirmation mail, even after 3 days - so I blogged it.
I'm hoping that clark connect gets the issues straightened out and refrains from calling something barely beta quality a release candidate in the future. I used to think those guys walked on water.
Posted at: 08:33 | permalink
Tue, 15 Jul 2003
Don't Need A Motorcycle Helmet?
Keep an eye on that passenger.
Posted at: 13:56 | permalink
Wed, 09 Jul 2003
Engineers Are From Mars
HR people are from Venus. Dave Copeland shoots and scores with one of the funniest blogs I've read in eons. It might not be so funny if the reactions of the HR people weren't so damn revealing. Unfortunately, I've had more than a few conversations like this on the phone.
Posted at: 08:52 | permalink
Close Encounters Of The Bear Kind
I was on my usual daily run with the dog today at Moraine State Park when I was crossing the entrance road to the first boat launch on the north shore when a black bear appeared in the trail about a hundred feet ahead.
Fortunately, the dog didn't see the bear so I started sprinting for the boat launch where there were at least a few more people around. The bear seemed to hurry off as soon as he saw me. I stood talking to the tour boat operator for a few minutes and then headed back to the trail since I needed to get through there to get to my car and the remainder of the area is heavily wooded. I got about 50 feet down the trail before I discovered that the bear was still foraging around in the deep vegetation at the trail's edge. Heart palpitations set in when I heard the unmistakable sound that the bear made while rushing through the underbrush.
For the second time, I turned and started sprinting back toward the boat launch, all the while realizing that I couldn't possibly outrun the bear. The bear had retreated a second time when I decided to take the road back which is a long way around after running that far in all that heat and humidity but the tour boat operator was nice enough to follow along in his car and make sure I made it out of the vicinity in one piece. Thanks to the kindness of strangers.
I understand that black bear attacks are rare but it's still a frightening experience due to the sheer size of the animal. Now I'm just debating what, if anything, I should do on my future excursions through the park. Ironically, the section of the park I was running yesterday is one of the most heavily trafficked and I usually take the most unused and remote trail I can find. One things for sure, the reports of bear sightings in previously uncharted territory for bears are true.
Posted at: 07:28 | permalink
Sat, 05 Jul 2003
MIT Launches Government Watch
The Inquirer: "It is a chillingly Orwellian departure."
Posted at: 06:43 | permalink
Died On The Fourth Of July
RIP Barry White, a huge loss to the music world.
Posted at: 06:38 | permalink
Fri, 04 Jul 2003
Oh Say Can You See
what's happening to our liberty?
Tony Norman of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette hits one out of the park.
Posted at: 07:32 | permalink
Thu, 03 Jul 2003
Times They Are A Changin'
Just as the near-ubiquity of cell phones changed the vernacular in the US in recent history, expect the now dominant growth of laptop sales to do the same in the next five years.
Posted at: 08:42 | permalink
