In an article linked to through a Slashdot submitter, I read a tirade about why the IT business is not lucrative and so on... yada yada yada...

The article says: Employers and corporations are cheap. They have complicated IT needs, but aren't willing to spend the money to retain quality employees.

I'll agree to a certain extent. Gone are the days where IT professionals are worshipped as "gods" for doing their magical technical work. I think many senior level IT professionals came from the early days of the computer age and enjoyed this status for a long time. Things are changing. More and more people are acquiring these technical skills, including professionals in developing nations who can work at cheaper rates.

What we're witnessing is the effect of market forces. IT skills, which were once very, very rare... are now more widely available and at competitive rates. And even the non-technical people have become savvy to a certain extent as well. We have witnessed the IT "gods" become commoditized... and not everyone out there is happy about that.

The article also says that college students are "smart" in not pursuing career tracks in the IT field. I don't think so. U.S. educational surveys suggest otherwise. Actually, college students are "stupid"... surveys show that U.S. college students are steering away from math, hard science and engineering disciplines and into other educational pursuits. My interpretation of that is that engineering is difficult. Not everyone can handle that... especially since the U.S. education system has a notorious record for ranking low on the totem pole internationally as far as skills in math and sciences.

The article quoted a commenter who says it is wiser for a college student to go into some career track more "secure" like medicine or government work. Pfft. That's an entire argument in itself. Again, at the top of the list the nagging fact: students are less inclined to pursue the hard math and science curriculum.

I guess it still boils down to a whole lot of bellyaching. Bad hours, difficult and demanding requirements, lower pay (beginning to sound familiar?)

Certainly the conditions have changed (for the worse) for IT professionals compared to maybe one or two decades ago... or have they?

The more things change... the more they seem to stay the same.

Read a Slashdot newswire announcement that the famous XO laptop will be provided for school children in the Alabama school districts. For those of you who don't know, the XO is the well-known "sub-$100" laptop designed for children to use in developing countries. It was designed to allow accessibility to the internet for children.

Certain features were also integrated such as wi-fi wireless mesh-networking (for allowing shared internet access) and also a smaller keyboard (ideal for children and discouraging for adults to use), a webcam and a hand-crank or solar recharging device for the battery.

The intent was to make sure that these laptops do not end up in the hands of adults and people not intended as the audience for this "inexpensive" benefit.

If you ask me, I have mixed responses to this laptop. First of all, internet access is nice but it isn't a necessity in countries where children cannot even get enough food to eat or even clothing to wear. These children need access to BASIC necessities FIRST and instead of spending on laptops ($100 is very expensive for people in developing countries), their government should spend on more fundmental elements of educational infrastructure such as: training teachers, buying books, classroom learning materials and scholarships for student tuition.

Then again, the technology curve is a steep one. Access to technology tools such as computers is part of the "great divide" between developing nations and ones such as the United States. To survive in the new generation, children may benefit from having early access to the tools that drive the world around them. So I have mixed feelings about this new product.

Perhaps the one thing that I find beneficial is the buy one get two deal that the manufacturing company has arranged. For every laptop bought by a family in the United States, two additional laptops are paid for and shipped to children in a developing nation. So the parents of children here have to pay $400 or so to obtain the same sub-$100 laptop. The charity effect is a good one, and arguably a computer at the price of $400 is still "reasonable" for most American families.

So I signed up for a user account on slashdot. Wow. It seems that almost every site out there under the sun requires users to create an account. I have so many accounts that even my accounts have accounts. Oh the tangled webs that we weave. Still, there are a select few sites under my affinity that actually offer useful enough info to justify maintaining a user account. We shall see if slashdot is one of them.