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***** Outsourced Programmer Starts Business
From: "Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 01 May 2005 07:27:56 -0500
------- Original message ------- From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh () hserus net> Sent: 1/5/'05, 15:28 David Farber wrote:
From: Andreas Ramos <andreas () andreas com> "My parents paid for me to get a (degree) in math and now I am a pooper scooper..." Is this an example of "putting the cherry on top" that Thomas Friedman is talking about?
Speaking of high value jobs to do with poop, here's a wired article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/toilet.html on how PhDs in aerospace engineering (including an Indian - there, that should raise the pooper scooper guy's hackles enough) are making lots and lots of money developing new and improved flush toilets, and testing them by trying to flush golf balls and plastic tubes full of a mixture of concentrated miso soup and flour .. And speaking of Thomas Friedman, I saw his documentary on Bangalore and Outsourcing, on CNBC (I think) last year, when I was attending a conference in Beijing. I was quite jet lagged back then, but one thing struck me about the documentary - his careful choice of "opponents" of globalization ... 1. A rich and quite possibly empty headed socialite of the sort that sits on the boards of one social work organization after the other 2. A typically inarticulate member of the RSS, which is a militantly right wing hindu religious organization with rather extreme views on the "superiority" of Indian culture and a rather fixed hatred of the USA as a polluter of that culture with rock music and KFCs. Note: Friedman did manage to interview a couple of kids who worked at a call center and enjoyed both these, right before interviewing the RSS guy. An analogy would be asking the Rev Jerry Falwell, or Lou Dobbs on CNN, or maybe the grand wizard of a Klan chapter, what they thought about mexican laborers, or indian software engineers, for that matter - you can hardly expect a balanced or reasoned argument from either of these people. His arguments are weak, and based on sensationalism and soundbites rather than logic, besides being one sided and focused on the whole "globalization works" theme, without being in any way sensible of its defects, especially when badly implemented. I wouldn't take a Tom Friedman article about globalization and outsourcing at face value without a large pinch, no, make that a large truckload of salt, any more than I would articles about people scooping dog poop at $10 a lawn because those nasty outsourced indian programmers drove them out of work. In fact, I'd be quite happy to lend the Pooper Scooper guy a whole lot of newspaper clippings of Tom Friedman articles to help him scoop up the dog poop .. they'd be a lot more productively used that way ?srs ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- ***** Outsourced Programmer Starts Business Dave Farber (May 01)