Recently I have been on a tear about the outsourcing issue, and probably should explian. I have been a software engineer for more than a couple decades, and have seen the birth and tremendous growth of the internet from its miltiary research roots.

The problem I see now is twofold. The exclusion of engineering talent from the US, and the security risk of placing it elsewhere. During Desert Storm, and recently Iraq, our victories came as a product of our innovation in technology fueled primarilly by private sector research percolating back into the military research organizations. In other words, all of those toys the military used in war were created based upon technologies such as ICs, GPS, TCP/IP, MPEG, etc... Taken seperately they are powerfull, but together they produce a formidable product which gives the US military a huge advantage.

None of this could have happened if those we fought had the same technology. Imagine if you will what would have happened if during the second world war, Germany had developed the atomic bomb first and had successfully deployed it against London or New York. They only thing that seperated Germany and the US at the time technologically was a mere shaving of noetic substance in nuclear physics. They had the advantage with aircraft, bombs, guidence systems, comunications, and much more, but the overwelming power of nuclear force trumped all of that with the use to two low-yeild devices half a world away.

With smart bombs (a bomb with rudimetary attitude fins and a GPS or laser guidence system) a conventional force defeated a heavily armed opponent. If the same technology became available to an opponent of similar size, the tables would have been quickly turned. Sadly, today, that technology can be purchased on the street in in several socalist countries, and is identical down to the silkscreened DOD identifiers.
How did it get there? It was sent there by defense contractors looking for a cheaper labor force. If capitalism embraces communism, it will come away with a social disease, and that is the very exploitation of labor the communists spent so much time murdering to avoid, it is also something which neo-cons and protectionists warned against. Jobs are going to tacit or factual enemies of the US at an astounding rate, and when the electorate of this country finally catches on, it will be too late to recover.

Even if you wanted to, in the near future, you as an engineer, will be locked out of engineering by the very market forces that created your first job. When CPUs will not accept "uncertified" code, and development systems are region coded to exclude the US, you will not get paid for any work done in the US, since nothing you make will run on the newest hardware. Since the hardware designs will come out of China, and the Software India, a simple collaboration between the two will complete the act of sewing the cat in the bag.

While you as an engineer might not like the trend, the CEOs and CTOs love it. At least until it bites them back. Companies are making more money than ever, and spending it too. Where are they spending it? In those countries that we outsource to.
Remember the oil fields the US and europe developed in the 60s and 70s? Who owns them now, and how did they get them? While the pointy headed economists say it is market evolution, I say it is the act of economic traitors. Much in the same way the sea change of the loss of oil rights changed our technological development in the US, the loss of technology itself will bring about its own form of chaos.

Recently I posted a comment about the relationship between spammers and politicians. I have to say, I still believe I am entirely correct. In the last election, in these parts, a Democratic party thug was walking through my neighborhood with a bullhorn and a chip on his shoulder. There he is, standing in front of my house, shouting into a device which amplifies his already loud and obnoxious voice, saying how his boss will help "the people". I call the police, since by this time, I have a crying baby. A patrol car arrives and the untidy officer says he has a permit.

After a lengthy argument, I find out my house was specifically targetted, by the politoc as being the residence of a non-democrat in the neighborhood.

Needless to say, I was just a little ticked off, but I should not have over-reacted. Apparently, thuggery is an acceptable political method in my neck of the woods. Boom! No mailbox. Suprise! Glue in door locks, jb-weld on widnshield-whiper arms, and worst of the ONLY property in the locality which has its property tax doubled. And all because I might of overreacted on election day.

You see, there is this family of skunks living at the front of my property, out near Mr Bullhorn, mafia, demo-thug, and normally don't bother anyone but nightime dogs walking the street. Anyways, they have a den right near one of my sprinklers, and whenever I water, they come out to play in the yard, all six of them (mother and five kits). Well being angry at the commie-dog polisher, I take of the sprinkler head from behind a maple tree and turn on the water.

Fiteen minutes later I hear shouting, cussing, threats, and insults on the bullhorn, which my security system catches on tivo. I back up tivo to watch the entire event unfold.

11:42) Water flows into hole.
11:57) Skunks get wet, wake up, and apear.
12:02) Union thug begins another round of declarations on how his boss will make our streets safer, add IQ points to our children, and care more and more. (Though he clearly doesn't give a rats behind about PEACE-AND-QUIET!)
12:03) The mommy skunk indicates to the moron what she thinks with a blast that cover ten feet, at least. Kids follow suit (no doubt practicing).
12:04) Thug's backside is coated with the fetid oil and only now realises what has happened.
12:07) Thug commences verbally abusing skunks, which proves that mommy has more than one shot available.
12:15) Thug finally realizes it was probably something I set up since water is now coming out of the den. He verbally changes the target of his aggression on me and mine.
12:31) The moron finally calms down enough to walk back to his utility/campagne/heist mobile and extracts a baseball bat. At which point he commences to destroy my mailbox, my lampposts, my iron fence, and anything else he can find. The police car stationed across the street finally shows a little activity, when the officer comes out of the car and call thug-boy by name and tells him to stop (though he should have arrested him on the spot for destruction of private property, at least).

12:40) Thug and officer are shooting the bull, though officer is standing at a noticable distance, when they both notice one of my security cameras high up on a maple. At this point the thug knows he's in trouble, and the officer relises his career is over.

Being a few minutes behind on tivo, I fast forward to see both morons coming up the 75 yard walkway to my house. Both bent on fixing the problem. My other camera watches the front door. I change stations and watch them approach.

They try the door, both of them, and since I locked it behind me, they ring the door-bell.

Funny thing, doorbells and dogs. You ring the doorbell and the dog, in pavlovian fashion comes running. I nearly peed myself as the officer, and the thug are sent running back to the gate by 250 pounds of mailman-hating carnivour. I imagine they probably peed themselves as well.

Having recorded the complete incident, I decided to send it to police HQ on a video, later that day. My mistake.

The officer's chief, dog-catcher, and the very politician who audio-spammed me, show up at my door step with an unsigned order for the destruction of my dogs, the removal of my cameras, and not a mention of their own personel's behaviour. The chief also hinted at other actions if I didn't cooperate. I tivod this as well, and sent both tapes to a friend for safe-keeping. I noted the lack of seal and signature, and sent them packing before they could get into my house, and resolved to conceal my cameras better.

Two weeks later I go out to my car to meet with a client when I discover to my horror that considerable damage has been done to my car. nothing shows up on video because I was parked in a blind spot, inside my property.

Next spring a get the last shocker, it seems domo-thug's boss won and used my property as a source of revenue for his tax-and-spend policies, by doubling my taxes. Unfair, but legal under a loop-hole he personally built into the system. I'm suprised it took him six months to screw me, what with his mafia friends and all, but who knew?

I gues I'll sell the estate and move on to a place unpolluted by the creeps, but unfortuantely, they live in all of the nice places. The demo-creep will probably come by when I put it up for sale and try to offer me a substandard price along with a threat.

He'll likely get away with it too.

I'm writing this web server which presents dynamic pages to the browser for various purposes. Because of the nature of the server, I have to reuse the same URL for different content frequently. So in the header I send back to the browser I turn caching off. In the meta headers I turn caching off. In the header expiration date, I make the date 0. In every single broswer I can dig up, The browser responds to the first method properly and asks for a new copy of the page... But not explorer. No instead: If the URL doesn't change, NONE of the server side or browser specific methods work worth a ding-dangle. My solution: I put a random number variable in the URL and amazingly the brain-dead URL cache mechanism requests a new page, but get this. If I don't turn any of the cache thingies on, it still fetches the page. Methinks the problem is a quite literal implimentation of the cache concept based purely on the URL content and nothing else.

But maybe it's a feature and not a bug...