I interpret "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" as being something that might have been said by Karl Marx. The original article doesn't really go into the context of the court case, but it is intereting that this came from Texas which conjures up images of rugged individualism.

The flaw in your logic is that the H1B visa has hard time leaving for another job. The biggest hurdle is that if an H1B visa holder changes job, he has to restart to long and drawn out process for getting a green card. That means that the visa holder cannot participate in the job market, so if he is underpaid or overworked or whatever he cannot change jobs as easily as a citizen. This, of course, distorts the labor market both for the H1B visa holder and for citizens.

If you are going to argue for free markets, H1B visas should not be used as an example of markets working.

I saw this report and blogged about it yesterday (shameless plus: click on the link in my sig to read it). Basically my opinion is that if Verizon gets the iPhone then this could kill Android.

I never had wisdom teeth so I guess I am out of luck, too. Funny thing is that I never had any wisdom either, so go figure.

When they catch the people who did this, they should be forced to listen to those vuvuzelas at high volume until their ears bleed. That'll teach 'em.

They copied this idea from _Law and Order_.

Funny you should say that, because I was just thinking today that the company I work for (big multinational) has about 4000 people in the Information Technology group, but it seems like only about 40 actually do any coding. The rest of us are architects, business analysts, testers, project managers, etc, who tell the 40 how to do their job.

Maybe 40 is an exaggeration but it isn't off by much!

Seems like the article focuses on the interface layer (hence the name "The State of Mapping API's). However, I think the hard work is the collection of the underlying map data. One of the more interesting projects is the OpenStreetMap project where map data is crowdsourced.

I think it is a fine line. On the one hand, you want to teach something that is useful for the students, regardless of where they end up. However, you don't want it to be too specific as to make what they learn obsolete in 5 years.

Personally, I think there are two directions you can go. First, you use a pre-CS syllabus where you teach programming basics like bits and bytes. Second way is that you can use a syllabus where you stress computers for non-CS people which might include the Internet, file systems, etc.

I think the general syllabus that they have chosen with stressing free and open source products really doesn't accomplish either of these goals. If you are aiming for the pre-CS philosophy, the basics are technology-agnostic and it should stress theory over specific platforms at least at the begining.

If you are aiming for a general computer awareness type of class, then while open source is all good, it unfortunately doesn't apply to 99.9% of the real world. If anything, the class should be more a survey of the existing tools. For instance, if there is a section on using browsers to access the internet, then the class should touch upon all of the existing ones, maybe pointing out pros and cons, with the acknowledgement that Internet Explorer is, for better or worse, the dominant browser. Not even touching upon non-open source products which happen to be prevalent creates a serious blind spot on the student's education. It is akin to not even mentioning evolution in biology because of religious biases.

Now some of the open source people might grouse at this suggestion. However, if you are looking to gain mind-share, isn't it better to do so by comparing open source to non-open source and let the chips fall where they may, rather than by just ignoring the non-open source and hope that they go away?

There can only be one...

Who is more scientifically accurate, Joan Rivers or Dick Clark?

Ideas + Infrastructure = Profit

Startups seem to be good at coming up with new and groundbreaking ideas because they are not constrained by corporate bureaucracy, internal politics, etc. In addition, existing companies often have a "cash cow" that brings in tons of money, so there is some complacency there. A startup is a sink-or-swim type of endevor that fosters creativity out of sheer despiration to succeed.

What Startups don't necessarily have is the Infrastructure to take a good idea to market. Big companies have manufacturing plants, sales and martketing departments, access to capital, brand recognition, and all of the little details to make money from a good idea.

So what ends up happening is that Startups that come up with truly good ideas end up being bought by big companies who can take the idea and make money from it. This makes sense for the big company. Rather than the big company spending its own money on fleshing out 1000 ideas, out of which only 10 or so might end up being moneymakers, they let the startups take the risk and once it becomes clear which startups have promise, then they spend their money.

It used to be that big companies have their own R&D departments where ideas could be incubated internally (PARC, Bell Labs, etc). However, that sort of thing seems to have fallen out of favor as large companies have become more risk averse.

As someone who owns an Android phone AND a dedicated GPS, perhaps I can inject something into this conversation:

Another consideration is how well it will hold up under the elements. Even the cheapest Garmin eTrex (which I own BTW) is pretty rugged. I wouldn't trust my Android smartphone out in the woods in the rain, mud, etc. Some other pluses of going the dedicated route:

- Battery life is better on the dedicated GPS, and when it does run down, it takes standard AA's.

- The dedicated GPS seems to have a better "time to first fix" than my Android phone, but that just might be because of the specific model. However, if your one purpose is to do GPS, it makes sense that you would do it better than a multipurpose device.

I do think it would be cool if there was a dedicated GPS that took pictures too. You could use the GPS to geotag the picture and have it as an icon for a waypoint to help remind you what that waypoint is.

Not sure what you mean by "abusive place to work". I know a couple people who work for, or have worked for, Microsoft in various capacities, but so I have some insight into what it is like there.

My college roomate worked for them for a number of years out at the Redmond home office as a developer. This was back in the 90's, so things might have changed. He said that although the workload was sometimes heavy, especially near the time of a release, most of their policies were very developer friendly.

Every developer had their own office, even the junior level ones. That way, you don't have the distractions that you would get in a standard cube farm. You could pretty much set your own hours, including working at home if you wanted to. My friend was a night owl, so he would go into the office around noon, stay till five, leave for a few hours to eat and recreate, and then he might go back to the office around 9 or 10 and work past midnight. Not many places give you that type of freedom. If you needed some piece of hardware or software, you got it. My friend had like 4 or 5 PC's in his office to test the software on various versions of Windows. He even had a Mac (!) to test the Mac version.

As far as work environment goes, MS bent over backwards to keep people happy. The department had a "morale" budget that was used for outings to the movies, to set up a LAN for gaming, and other stuff that the team wanted. And of course you had your free beverages and snacks available to you. Not to mention, the Redmond campus is just gorgeous. It had the feel of a college campus with its expansive greens and pristine buildings. There were even folks taking a break playing ultimate frisbee on one of the lawns. And of course, you got all of the usual benefits: health care, 401(k), employee discounts on software. Then there are those stock options that everyone talks about. Back in the 90's when the stock was on the rise, those options were worth more than your salary in some cases.

That's not to say that everything was all wine and roses there. As I mentioned he did work some long hours at times because there is a lot of pressure to "ship" products. However, I never heard of him refer to anything there as being abusive. He was well compensated for his hard work, and he had a lot of freedom and a lot of fun there, too.