I work for a multi-billion software products company. And here the line item 'Marketing & Sales' on the P&L statement is roughly twice as that of the 'Research & development' line item. And the wage gap between a developer and a sales guy with the same years of experience is roughly 30%. As in, the sales guys get paid 1.3 times that of a developer. And not to mention the annual sales 'kick-off' meetings held at Monaco or Bali. And the occasional free tickets to the Grand-Prix or a Euro tour for sales guys who have exceeded their sales targets, plus the hefty commissions for doing so on top of their wages. Where as, the annual R&D kick-off meetings are held on Webex and we got a leather wallet as gift because the product was selling like hot cakes, because it beat the crap out of the competition. And yeah, the CEO is ex-sales.

I guess there is too much supply of engineers in the market. So we can do nothing about it.

I would neither shop locally nor perhaps at Amazon. I would fire up a price search site like www.fetchbook.info and find the cheapest deal, then go for a walk in the near by park.
We have been inventing various things all these decades and centuries to bring in more efficiencies in what we do. Now the President want's us to throw away all those inventions and go to the local store instead!? Is the President turning Amish?

Occam's razor cuts both ways I guess.
So, Hobbes is after all real. Power to Hobbes. Ye the almighty, blessed art thee who kneels in front of Hobbes. Blessed art thou who counts to three and lobs the holy hand grenade at thy enemy.

First, Galileo was a Mathematician and a Physicist and not a satellite or meteor as the article falsely claims. His full name was Galileo Galilei. He had other minor interests in Music, Weaving, Religion and Philosophy too. He was prosecuted and persecuted, by some church people in Europe, until he died of it. He never returned back after that.

Coming to the topic of Europeans, ask me and I will tell you what I as a European feel. But please stop speculating about what Europeans think. It's the feelings that are more important than thinking and that's what's keeping the EU united. Of course, the Germans are an exception to this. And also the Italians and the Spaniards. The Catholic dominated countries are a weak link in the EU.

Certainly not Church. Because, most computer scientists are agnostic so they won't remember Church. Post? Email is faster, cheaper, and greener.

To stop buying everything is an extreme. You will have a hard time getting any supporters for it. Instead, ask people to stop buying useless trinkets. Like the iPhone's, the Android tablets, Coca-colas, Bonobos Khakis, Cadillac's, Nike's etc. My parents never had any of these things and even now they are not impressed one bit with all these trinkets. Yet, they lead a very happy and contended life. If you think about it, corporations lure you into buying supposedly "cool" stuff. They are in the business of creating the cool. Putting it out on the street and building a cult out of it. That's when you apply the brakes on your rationality and let the emotion take it on from there. And that's exactly what the B-school educated corporate managers love. Once you are in the emotion mode, they can take you on a roller-coaster drive to anywhere. That's where all the big margins and big money is. Don't succumb to emotion in materialistic matters. Hey! But that's the way wealth gets re-distributed in capitalism. Besides, if people stop buying stuff, many will become jobless. Materialism. That's the bedrock on which we have produced our sprawling populace. That is until the machines take over.

Banks: Seriously, I think all the banks should be nationalized. Bankers have no incentive to run the banks safely. They want to expand their books as fast as they can. They want to show they have a huge spread on their books. And then they want to turn the spread into profits NOW. What incentive do they have to ensure the quality of their assets? High quality assets are a low margin business. It's the low quality assets that are available in abundance and that's where all the big margins are. At least in the short term. Who cares for the long-term anyways? In the long-term we are all dead. The bankers then use jump-processes, diffusion equations, stochastic calculus, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, Alice in the wonderland, "what ever shows you are dumb and they are smart" to cover up the "quality" of their assets. Profits!

That's the difference between Wall street bankers and the rest of the folks. And that's probably why Wall street bankers take huge paychecks, while the rest of the folks just pass money for "What will my so called friends and colleagues think about me?".

Now that prior art does not matter, first to file for a patent is the owner. Microsoft filed for patents for this idea that it ripped off from Mono. Also, a few years down the line, their patent for linked lists will be valid in the courts.

MSFT trading at 9 P/E.

Gerstner was a tough, no-nonsense guy. Just like Bartz. Both were good at streamlining operations, cutting jobs, cutting costs, improving the bottom-line etc. Had Gerstner been the CEO of Yahoo, I bet he would have screwed up too. The thing is, it's just not their forte.

Yahoo needed/needs a visionary, someone who can give it a direction, and a sense of purpose. Someone who can cull the wrong people, and put the right people in charge to realize the dream. Technology is no retail or brick and mortar business. It's no AutoCAD too.

I am willing to be hired for the position of a CEO for any company. I know how to screw up a company. I am really really good at it. I am also really good at taking a big severance pay check. Any takers? Please...!!

That's not at all an easy task. Spotting talent is really hard. You hire one bozo at the top, and soon enough than you realize, the entire place will be overflowing with bozo's. Yeah... bozo's are good for billable projects.

Microsoft has a long long history of screwing up every one of their allies to their own advantage. And some how there are companies that still tend to think... "This time it's going to be different". Unbelievable! You put your head in the lions mouth and, for once, it might be different. Not with MSFT.

AutoCAD had no competitors who were the likes of Google and friends. AutoCAD had (and still has) management/operations thinking competitors. So common sense (which is not so common) worked for her there. Same goes with Carly Fiorina. She had put a halt to R&D at HP and went the operations way like Dell and friends (acquiring compaq). Now that the margins in the computer hardware business have dried up, HP is limping and vacillating with no direction in sight. Both of them, ... black swans.

India and China make up for 40% of that 7 billion population. Most of them are at the bottom of the pyramid/food-chain. There are fortunes to be made... at the bottom of the pyramid. Apple is doing it. Many Indians are starving to be able to afford an iPhone. It seems its a prestige issue in that country.

I don't know what it means for humanity, but its no good for the planet. It better sort this out before its too late.