Some of us lost our careers because of this. Yes you can be snarky about it, but then maybe someday it happens to you. There should be consequences for this. You can rationalize it into oblivion, but at the end of the day vendors supplied the software and people in HR bought it, both knowing full well that it would eliminate US citizens who were less inclined to lie on resumes and applications, helping to make the case for sending work off shore. Just for grins and giggles look into how many of these vendors also provided technical staff, off shore services, etc.. There should be consequences. To that end, somewhere there is a lawyer who needs a new class action case to keep the rent paid. There are plenty of lead plaintiffs around. Make the software vendors pay us for the time we wasted. Make them pay us for the careers lost. In a few weeks maybe you will see my lawyer friends ads on TV. If you are also a victim of this scam, give that boy a call.

Senior management are in a class known as business morons. They are far too stupid to ever understand IT stuff. Why else would the ship all the knowledge of how to operate their companies on a day to day basis to Bangalore, or where ever? The fact that as of yet no company in Bangalore has cloned a big American company is further proof the people they sent the code too are also missing a few synapses ...

The business morons want our degrees to be more like the ones they get so cheap from Bangalore, but they refuse to hire community college and tech school graduates because they have associates instead of bachelor's degrees. We just need to relabel Associates in computer programming to Bachelors in Technology. The business morons will never know.

There is NO possible way anyone with a technical degree will be able to find a job with the US Congress poised to pass laws disguised as immigration reform which allow 250,000 more H1-B visas per year.

With undergraduate unemployment rates at 50% in the US why does anyone want a Bachelors degree in anything? Anyone who has a brain knows the Math-Science-Engineering-Technology shortage is manufactured by business morons and the glorious chamber who aren't even smart enough to know what they have done! Spare all of us the whining, shut the department down, and spare our children the expense of an education they will NEVER actually be able to use, or pay for.

American business are so narrow minded they refuse to use American workers who are already trained and knowledgeable enough to do these jobs. The only reason to have anyone major in software testing has more to do with the fact no other part of the industry still exists in the US. Let CS departments either shut down or merge back into math, physics, engineering, or accounting.

Why would a US university develop a BS in software testing when all those jobs will be outsourced to Bangalore, Shanghi, or Moscow long before anyone in the US could finish the program?

The problem is not the English, but the local understanding of the English. Many English words originate from other languages. By my guesstimate a lot of English words are of Swedish origin. Absolute is just one example of a word which comes to English from Latin, and Greek, by way of Swedish. I realize that many, if not most people from Europe are multi-lingual, and learn several languages simultaneously. Lets suppose the girl who picks up your article learned English as a third language. If she is Swedish there is some probability that she will use Swedish definitions and ideas with the new English words. Again, only as an example, the word absolute in the languages of continental Europe can have a range of meanings including: unrestricted, free, and pure. On the other hand, when the word absolute is used in American English it typically has to do with being restricted, constrained, and definite. For example, If a worker at Micky D's asks the manager: Should I clean the floor? the manager might reply: Absolutely! Meaning that if you value you job you WILL clean the floor. Everyone agrees the the guy with absolute power is unrestricted, and free to do anything he wants. In America the guy with absolute power is a negative figure, who is free to constrain others to do his will. The American view of absolute derives from the point of view of the one being constrained, rather than the holder of the power. An American might say that a jumper from lead A should absolutely be connected to lead Z. A native English speaker from another part of the world may interpret that to mean it is ok if he connects lead A to lead Z, or the worker in Micky-D's might feel free to clean the floor, if he wants. Perhaps as a result of the borrowing of words, phrases, and terms from other languages, one of the advantages of modern English is the ability to express many similar ideas in several different ways. This allows the English writer to constrain the idea he or she is communicating so there is less chance of a direct miss interpretation, such as the example given with the word absolute. To answer your question: It is probably best to get a native translation, otherwise it may not matter all that much.

These tests are too easy for all of these companies to use in eliminating people which they consider undesirable: too old, too young, too long out of work, wrong gender, wrong skin, whatever. It is not just the big companies, a lot of places are using online tests to screen candidates. Some of the tests I have seen serve no purpose other than to make the candidate feel completely worthless - so they can drive the rate down. Language tests "drill down" beyond the level of language trivia, where the answers they demand are likely wrong anyway. As a consultant for many years I did lots of technical interviews. The absolute best method is putting someone who actually has knowledge of the technical area, in the room with the candidate and let them talk. If you want to know how well they know PL/1 give them a PL/1 listing and let them tell you about it. Don't send in the Guru your hired last time, because he is only out to prove he is a better programmer than the candidate. That will never end well. On the other hand too often a project manager is hired who knows little or nothing about the implementation technology. For example PL/1. The project manager will eventually find the Hughes Book, which he will peruse for highlights. The Hughes Book uses a collection of words to describe PL/1 storage types which those of us who have done PL/1 extensively simply do not use. So the PM asks the candidate over the phone to name those types: The candidate replies automatic, based, controlled, and static. The candidate is disqualified because the list does not match the terms used in the Hughes Book. Another candidate who had a PL/1 class in college and read the Hughes Book the night before will get the job because he is working from the same script as the PM. This is the main reason knowledge professionals (including programmers) need to organize.

Probably that is not a good idea. Much of the Unix/Linux security advantage has to do with the tiered organization of the system of executable files. Unix/Linux has no other method of controlling access to programs based on the role of the user. Access by user role is efficiently implemented using this tiered file system. - if implemented correctly. The idea is four layers of security (installation(admin), developer(programmer), privileged application user, unprivileged user). Critical system programs are in /sbin (parted and other sysadmin programs), /bin is used for common utilities and programs publicly available to all users. /usr/bin contains programs which are used primarily by software developers (compilers etc..) /usr/sbin is used for development admin tools. Application packages go in /opt//[bin,include,...]. The unpriviledged user can put files he wishes to execute in his own /bin directory and mark them as executable. This system allows each user to be given access only to the application software actually needed. You don't want the guy in the mail room running the payroll system. The original reason for dividing up executable programs may have differed from this, and the reasons for doing so in the modern era of personal systems are perhaps different from the historic large/mid frame machines it evolved on. Today the primary reason everyone should want to maintain this file architecture is the number of program name collisions between packages. If you build distributions you are either terribly naive, or you know what I mean. The traditional unix/linux file system does a relatively good job of limiting (i did not say eliminating) the name collision problem. It can be used for limiting the damage a system, application, or user can do to itself, friends, or frenemies. You don't really want a executing daemon to have access to it's own or anyone else's development software. There must be a better way. I am sure there are more than 4 roles, or at least a better way to implement access - The $PATH shell variable is the great failure in this scheme, and perhaps why no one bothers with taking any of the rest of it seriously. I am sure there must be some more efficient way to implement roles. I have been looking for a while now, and I have not seen it yet. Just because this method is an old idea don't mean it is a bad idea. It simply is not possible that a better solution involves a single directory with huge numbers of files. The Path method already makes search times too long. The solution has more to do with using the tiered method properly and fixing shell implementations to make it impossible for a user to change his own role ( by tinkering with $PATH). Scrapping the tiered method would make Linux too much like Windows.

They would be right about that. I used to be too busy to be bored, then some business genius decided to send the non-boring part to some other shore. The only part of IT that was NEVER boring was the making of PL/1 or REXX code ...