The Evil of Outsourcing

I was never a very vociferous opponent of outsourcing because I believe in the cause of free trade and that money pouring into India is a good thing. The more players we have in the world economy the better. After all, I believe in the methods of teaching CS at the top 10 American schools over the education of some dude in India. But that's not what I wanted to address here. The problem with using such cheap labor is that they don't care about the company since they can't move up that much anyway and so they won't have many reservations about selling private information. The Sun managed to buy bank account records of about 1,000 British people from some crooked call center workers, and that's bad news for that bank (who was not named in the article). With problems like this arising, I feel pretty confident that I, and people like me, will be able to find programming jobs upon graduation from college (assuming they have previous experience) so I don't feel too worried about my economic future.



There's even less nerd news today than there was yesterday. Think Secret managed to get a sneak peak at a development kit for an Intel-based Mac and tested it out a bit. It looks like Windows works on it but conversely, OS X didn't work on non-Apple machines because of some sort of handshake upon startup. Very smart, Steve. It turns out that Google's so-called threat to PayPal is just an internal payment system to manage transactions with their AdSense program. I wonder if the press gave them an idea for a move to make in the future? Before you download an ad-blocking plug-in for your Firefox you should check out this article explaining the damage an ad-free internet could do. I'm personally only bothered by those Flash-based pop-up ads that appear over the window. Monopoly is taking fun to a whole new level with an online game based on real-life taxis in London outfitted with GPS equipment. Didn't have time to play around with it, but just thought it was crazy that they'd actually do that. If you would like to play music in your home among several rooms you should look into the Sonos Digital Music System, which I'd get if I had the money because that is a problem that I often encounter (especially while doing chores). Lastly, a bunch of MIT physicists managed to discover a new form of matter that could possibly be the missing link in superconductivity. A lot of that goes over my head, but I'm glad there are some smart people out there investigating it.

I have some good movie news today, and a lot of it is in media form. I highly reccomend taking a look at the new video blog entry from Bryan Singer revealing some big plot details and neat footage from Superman Returns. Apparently, the film takes place after Superman disappears after the first movie and comes back to an even worse world. Things are starting to look up for it. The status hasn't changed for Fantastic Four, but there are some character featurettes online, which I only mention for the Sue Storm one (Alba in underwear). Moviefone has a trailer for the new Jim Carrey flick, Fun with Dick and Jane, about a couple who moonlight as armed robbers to help pay the bills and it actually looks better than I would've thought. Also looking better than I would've thought is this 7 minute video of randomness from Elizabethtown. I originally didn't give the movie a second thought but maybe it will be as good as everyone claims it will be. Yahoo! Movies has a few clips from the dance documentary Rize, which I think I have to see for all the crazy dancing. Rumor mills are still churning for a sequel to Batman Begins and Paul Bettany may be a frontrunner for the role of Joker. I think he could do an awesome job. Lastly, AICN has a review of Bewitched and more impressions of Land of the Dead if you need any more convincing on that one. Apparently, the former movie did not turn out well.

Now for some 3x Thursday:

1. Are you a realist or an idealist? How so?
Probably more of a realist. I'm very practical about my thinking and I tend not to daydream too much. I do have aspirations, but they're pretty realistic goals.

2. Is the glass usually half empty or half full? Why?
Half full I think. I like to think of things in happier terms because life is too short to be cynical and pessmisitic.

3. Are things usually black and white for you, or is there in fact a grey area?
A lot of times there seems to be a grey area! It's easier to say that matters are black and white than in actual practice.

Oh, and I likely won't have my Friday post up on Friday. I'll probably try to get it online Saturday morning.