When China launched its first microprocessor, the Godson 1 in 2002, it wasn't much of a competitor to what Intel and AMD had to offer. The 64bit Godson 2, released in 2005, still didn't worry the Western chip makers, but the chip did start to pop up here and there outside of China. Expect to see a lot more of them in the coming years, as the Godson 3 promises to be a chip that can compete head on with the big ones: quad-core, eight core version in the pipeline, and 200 extra instructions aiding in x86 compatibility.
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Member since:2005-07-06
I disagree that there is no problem with our education system. Pretty much my first year of college was spent undoing the brain-damage that had been done to students in public schools.
That said, I agree with you about the cost/benefit issues of going into engineering. If you're smart and hard-working enough to get through engineering school, then you're smart and hard-working enough to get a good LSAT score and do well in law-school. Considering the pay difference between a good lawyer and a good engineer...
The problem along those particular lines is that engineers themselves haven't protected the value of their profession in the way doctors and lawyers have. Engineers create plenty of value in the economy, but they're quite willing to simply be worker-bees and let their company take most of the value they create. This is true even among very good engineers. There is nothing akin to, for example, the private law segment of the law profession, where partnership allows individual employees to get a stake in their firm. Engineers have allowed their profession to become commoditized, even as the rigorous demands for working in the field have not been reduced.
Member since:2006-01-10
I agree with you 100%.
Engineers could have protected their field through licensing. Then again, we probably wouldn't have had facebook 
But especially for government, banks, operating systems...
On the other hand, if licensing protection is not your cup of tea, engineers could have at least formed partnerships / employee owned corporations instead of being corporate workerbees.
On the other hand, many engineers miss the 'easier money', to provide a constant stream of money. Google for example makes money off ads and then funnels that into all kinds of projects some of which don't have a direct revenue stream. Imagine if Engineers owned a telecom or something. We could plow the money earned from those into R&D and what not.
Nonetheless, I think we're in agreement here
Suffice to say, my kids aren't going into this field.
Member since:2007-01-13
There is a huge difference between writing software (it ain't engineering BTW) and medicine. A software crash is in most cases no more than a nuisance. The simplest medical 'glitch' is highly likely to result in serious injury or death.
For the most part software architects do not act like engineers. The primary goal of an engineer is to ensure safety and reliability. An engineer (or doctor) can be sued or even imprisoned for negligence. No commercial software writer has that pressure.
Member since:2005-09-20
Medicare/Medicaid is welfare for sick people -- and Doctors are expected to sacrifice the payments due them because these people are entitled to subsidized medical care. If younger people voted in larger numbers than the AARP crowd, Congress would be forced to change the status-quo.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
"The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Member since:
2006-01-10
There's no problem in our education system. Plenty of Americans and Western people in general are very capable of being engineers and scientists.
medicare/aid is welfare for doctors. They never made this much more than teachers or engineers before it. There is an adjustment in the world. Our quality of life has to go down. There's is going up. That's just reality.
The only question is why would they?
It's much easier going into medicine, law, finance, education, business, management... easier and more pay.
I recall from my high school, some of the dumbest kids are just going to the Caribbean for med school. They'll be doctors pulling in 150-200K/year just using the system. All they need to do is pass the USMLE which they get an unlimited number of tries... some have already pased.
Why would anyone, besides the nerdiest people really go into the engineering/software field? They wouldn't. Other fields just pay too damn well. With our aging population, you can bed the health care field is going to get even more lucrative.
You blame George Bush. I blame the democrats for making health care and education pay too well
Edited 2008-09-09 20:06 UTC