Well said. This is a positive aspect of H1B visas; it can (emphasis on can) allow for an elastic workforce that can filled in economic boom times, and scaled back during economic decline.

Woah, can't believe anyone else knows about Arc. I was one of the unfortunate few that had to use it for a regression class in college. The language is used in the textbook Applied Regression including Computing Graphics. Since the professor also wrote the textbook and Arc has strong ties to my alma mater, I figured they just had blinders on since the rest of the statistics world was already using R.

If you are interested in trying this (awful) software out for yourself, it is available for download here http://www.stat.umn.edu/arc/software.html.

It runs OK (google Chrubuntu), but the WiFi and trackpad drivers were so finicky that it was a deal breaker. ChromeOS actually is a stripped down version of Linux, which means that you can actually run a full-blown linux desktop along side it via Crouton (using a chroot). If that sounds tedious, it is actually fool-proof to install.
Since the trackpad and WiFi drivers are still handled by ChromeOS (again, a linux kernel), it works great! If you are looking for a good linux laptop, I'd highly recommend it, especially if price and battery are your two main considerations.

I recently replaced my MacBook Air with a Acer Chromebook refurb I picked up for $150 on ebay. It is an awesome portable dev machine. Good battery life, and Crouton is incredible. You can run Linux and ChromeOS simultaneously (via a chroot); it makes switching between the a matter of two keystrokes. I never thought I'd actually like ChromeOS, but it's actually pretty slick.

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by him:

Universities are not technical schools. Ideally, they provide a broad theoretical framework that allows people to develop a career over the next few decades following their graduation. What the article is suggesting is that people be forced to pay for narrow training, pigeonholing them into a career path which may or may not exist (or be practical) in 20 years.

University education is meta-education. It enables life-long learning. Businesses expecting fresh graduates to have received (and paid for) training in technology-dejour is a disturbing trend in the software industry.

It's not a matter of maturity. Many organizations hide behind the disclaimer "we are not an I.T. company", despite having sizable I.T. departments. And despite having this sizable department, which offers mission-critical applications and infrastructure, zero effort is made towards working smarter. Problems are fixed with mandatory overtime, cutting staffing/costs, and "quick-and-dirty" fixes to long standing problems.

I think some companies are starting to understand that their project management methodologies are flawed, but most cannot connect the concepts of "software debt" to decreasing marginal output in their I.T. efforts. An hour of work today is less effective than in the past because you are paying "interest" on your previous bad decisions.

I think that the 27% is reflective of companies that can connect the longevity and cost-effectiveness of I.T. systems to proper project planning, management, and I.T. expertise. Whether or not this is an upper-bound remains to be seen, because a lot of organizations simply don't understand that inventing your own project management ideas dooms you to repeating the same failures that have happened over the last 50 years.

The Android NDK lets you write code in C/C++. http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html

Seriously Slashdot, bring out the nerds. There is so much incorrect information in this thread getting modded up. Hold the obligatory "you must be new here" jokes.

You can write Objective-C on Linux and Windows, it's fully supported by GCC. You meant to say Cocoa. There is no reason why you can't write a QT GUI, or WinAPI application using Objective-C.

But the .NET managed code environment, which is essentially MSIL (a language), certainly is tied to Windows. Most new Windows applications are written in .NET, which creates the same vendor lock-in problem you are trying to bash objective-c for. Mono is too incomplete to count, I'd imagine it lacks support for WPF, WCF, and other emerging .NET technologies.

You can always use MonoTouch (http://xamarin.com/monotouch), if you want to write C# on iOS.

Fixed that for you. For the uninitiated, trimming a string is as simple as

NSString *s = [stringToTrim stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet: [NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]];

The way the language functions is beautiful, but they seriously need to get rid of stuff like this.

Yes that is the point, to separate layout (styling) from semantics. Use a <style> tag if it bothers you that much.

FTFY. I work with developers who share your sentiments. I also feel like bashing my head into my desk when I work on the mangled, crufty, mess of nested tables that has been globbered together over 7 years. I will definitely agree with you that CSS is a pain in the ass to wrap your head around, but it really doesn't take much more than a basic understanding of margin/float/display/padding to do about 90% of layout work.

It cuts the amount of code required by at least a two-thirds. <table><tr><td>Foo</td></tr></table> is more typing than <div>Foo<div>

"There is a club for people who don't like their job, it is called "EVERYBODY"; they meet at a bar".

-Drew Carey

Interest is not purely profit. Interest is designed to offset inflation and the other ways you can spend your money. If I owed you $81,000 would you prefer that paid as a lump sum today or paid as a 0% interest loan over 25 years ($3,2400 /yr)?

So in order to make $100,000 today equal to $100,000 in 25 years, we need interest (at least to cover inflation). So for the purposes of this loan $100,000 (at time 0) == $181,000 (at time 25). In addition to the interest, you pay portions of the $100,000 you borrowed. Each payment of $687 is an uneven mix of Interest payments and Principal payments, the ratio changes as the loan approaches time 25.

So if you stop paying halfway through the loan, you may have paid in total $100,000 (combination of interest and principal). But $100,000 (at time 0) is less than $100,000 (at time 25), the lender loses money.

(Disclaimer: I do not work in the financial industry but as a math nerd I am familiar with basic financial math)

5.5% APR with interest payable monthly
Loan of: $100,000
Payment: $687

Present Value: $72,000
Total Profit: -$28,000

I don't think your math is correct.