Behold, a new weblog about TW is afoot. Steve Kapsinow, the managing editor of 15Seconds and WeboPedia, has begun a 15Seconds Weblog, kicking it off with Tech Writing - What Is It Good For? He says it can be good for gaining prestige and making money. Welcome to our world, Steve.
Thanks to the creative tech writer for the tip.
The IEEE-USA (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.) has issued a great position paper on offshore outsourcing. It was:
…developed by the IEEE-USA’s Career and Workforce Policy Committee and represents the considered judgment of a group of U.S. IEEE members with expertise in the subject field.
It is well reasoned and recommends some specific actions that could be taken to analyze and moderate the loss of American technical jobs overseas.
In like a dimwit, out like a light.
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
Having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts.
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
The woman whose behavior indicates that she will make a scene if she is told the truth asks to be deceived.
Elizabeth Jenkins
Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts.
Claire Boothe Luce
Calumny is like counterfeit money; many people who would not coin it circulate it without qualms.
Diane de Poitiers
The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.
Lucille Ball
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
Edith Sitwell
If you are a Californian, do visit A Californian’s Conception of the Continental United States. I await the revelation of a New Yawker’s conception of same.
Thanks to Rebecca Blood for including this in her pocket.
CNN reports that people, as well as tech jobs are moving to India.
Robert Dunn first spotted the warning signals three years ago, after the dot-com bust.
That’s when his Las Vegas-based company, Creative Healthcare Solutions, which provides Internet technology services to healthcare clients, started seeing jobs being awarded to companies in India and China.
Instead of protesting against the offshoring of work that might have gone to U.S. firms like his, Dunn, 55, has decided to get in on the game.
…
“It’s important for Americans to collaborate more than they have been,” Dunn says. “It’s unfortunate that everyone has put a stake in the ground that outsourcing is totally bad or totally good. No one’s looking in the middle.”
Thomas Friedman writes from Bangalore to explain the “outsource computer jobs to India” phenomenon.
Nine years ago, as Japan was beating America’s brains out in the auto industry, I wrote a column about playing a computer geography game with my daughter, then 9 years old. I was trying to help her with a clue that clearly pointed to Detroit, so I asked her, “Where are cars made?” And she answered, “Japan.” Ouch.
…
So now I wonder: if I have a granddaughter one day, and I tell her I’m going to India, will she say, “Grandpa, is that where software comes from?”
He ends his tale with some good news and some bad news.
Thanks to Eric Meyer, I found the What is your grammar aptitude? quiz. Its banner is subtitled, in very tiny print:
Do people call you a “grammar Nazi?” Do you hate people who constantly pick on your spelling or grammar? This quiz will determine if those people are correct. Just don’t come crying to me if you fail. After all, it’s not my fault you’re stupid.
Naturally, like Eric, I am diagnosed as a “grammar Fuhrer.”
Naturally, I must point out that the correct spelling is “Führer.”
*sigh*
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
M. Cartmill
According to an article in the Hindustan Times:
Outsourcing is here to stay. And the tacit acknowledgement comes from the redoubtable Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by starting a regular course on outsourcing at its famed Alfred P Sloan School of Management….Students from Harvard, not wanting to be left out, have begun flocking to Sloan with requests to stand in the aisle and benefit from the guest lectures
An article in the MIT Sloan Management Review reports:
Transformational OutsourcingJane C. Linder
When executives began outsourcing substantial portions of their operations more than a decade ago, they did it to offload activities they declared to be noncore in order to cut costs and improve strategic focus. Today, however, companies are looking outside for help for more fundamental reasons — to facilitate rapid organizational change, to launch new strategies and to reshape company boundaries….
Jane C. Linder is executive research fellow and director of research at the Accenture Institute for High Performance Business in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the author of the forthcoming Outsourcing for Radical Change: A Bold Approach to Enterprise Transformation (New York: Amacom, 2004)
But this is nothing new.
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