Mood:
sharpTopic: Yahoo Chat Stuff
In this supposed "rotten Bush economy"?
Tech jobs still plentiful in U.S.Optimistic report calls offshoring's effects overstated
By Carrie Kirby, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sending tech jobs overseas has had a smaller impact on U.S. workers than was widely expected, a report released Thursday claims, but the practice of offshoring will grow in the years to come, posing new risks and challenges.
The Association for Computing Machinery, a group of information technology professionals and academics, studied piles of data on the impact of sending jobs to burgeoning tech centers in India, China and other areas overseas. After a year of study, the group arrived at a conclusion that is sure to be welcomed by industry and computer science departments: It's not as bad out there as it looks.
"The average high school student and parent thinks all IT jobs have already gone to China or India," said UC Berkeley computer science Professor David Patterson, who serves as the association's president.
"People who could have wonderful careers in the field aren't even considering computer science because they've got the wrong facts. If you've got the talents, this is a pretty exciting field with lots of exciting things to do," Patterson said.
As evidence, the group uses Bureau of Labor Statistics figures to estimate that new tech jobs are being created in the United States as fast or faster than jobs are being shipped overseas. It estimates that 2 to 3 percent of information technology jobs are being offshored each year, while tech employment has increased annually by 3 percent or more in recent years.
The report criticizes reports of widespread job losses to offshoring -- such as Forrester Research's much-quoted prediction that 3.3 million service jobs would go overseas by 2015 -- criticizing the other researchers' failure to provide baseline comparisons and methodology information.
The report, like much of what has been written about offshoring, laments the lack of reliable figures showing the extent of the phenomenon. However, the report bases its own estimates on what research it could find.
It also quotes Berkeley researchers Ashok Deo Bardhan and Cynthia Kroll, who found that 12 million to 14 million jobs in the United States are vulnerable to offshoring. Kroll and Bardhan told The Chronicle in 2004 that Silicon Valley was at special risk, with 1 in 7 jobs vulnerable to overseas replacement, compared with 1 in 10 nationwide. Those numbers should be looked at as "at best, an upper limit on the number of jobs at risk," the report said.
As for this latest survey from the association, some observers criticized the report's emphasis on the positive as a self-serving attempt to boost sagging computer science enrollment at universities. Enrollment in undergraduate computer science program has declined by 7 percent in each of the past two years, according to the Computing Research Association.
"The deans and the department chairs are absolutely panicked because enrollment is plummeting," said Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at UC Davis who is a well-known critic of visa worker programs and offshoring in the technology industry.
Matloff says satisfying jobs in computer science are still on the decline, and he routinely warns high school students of that.
"I think the report was a bit overly optimistic," said Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, who has studied offshoring. "I find it strange that although they admit there's no good data, they come out as very optimistic that this isn't that big a deal."
Hira provided a briefing for the report's authors and reviewed one chapter before publication.
Despite the optimistic tone, the report did include some cautionary notes about the offshoring trend:
♣ While most economists agree that offshoring can benefit both developing and developed countries, some argue that the practice could actually cause a technology leader like the United States to lose its dominant position.
♣ Offshoring can create new threats to national security, intellectual property and personal privacy.
♣ Higher-level jobs are beginning to be offshored, posing a job-loss risk to a wider variety of IT professionals.
San Francisco Chronicle ~ Carrie Kirby ** Tech jobs still plentiful in U.S.
Posted by yaahoo_2006iest
at 7:26 PM EST
Updated: Saturday, 4 March 2006 7:38 PM EST
spacey
This sums up the state of "higher" education in America. Also proves how much the left loves terrorists and hates America.
Yale University: Taliban Yes; US Military No
On February 26, the New York Times Magazine reported that Yale admitted Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the Deputy Foreign Secretary of the Taliban, into a non-degree program, with a chance to gain full degree status by 2006.
"In some ways I'm the luckiest person in the world," Hashemi told the Times. "I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale."
Prior to his arrival as a student, Hashemi was imprisoned at Bagram Air Base. He had been a member of the Taliban government, serving both in Afghanistan and in the United States as Second Foreign Secretary and Ambassador-at-Large. Yale has not commented on why the university, which accepts only ten percent of all applicants, granted admission to this former Taliban officer. One Yale official claims it's part of creating diversity on campus, but opponents of having a Taliban officer attend a premier college say that excuse has been used by colleges and universities to invite everyone including cop-killers to their campuses.
Hashemi possesses a 4th grade formal education, never took the SATs and advocated violence against homosexuals. As the mouthpiece for the Taliban, Hashemi advocated the oppression of women, gays and non-Muslims. The Taliban are known associates and allies of Al-Qaeda. Not surprising, one intelligence report indicates Hashemi attended an Al-Qaeda terrorism training camp in Afghanistan.
Yale alumnus, and former Army Captain Flagg Youngblood said, "That my alma mater would embrace an ambassador from one of America's declared and defeated enemies and in the same breath keep ROTC and military recruiters off campus shows where Yale's allegiance falls. Yale's actions show that they consider the US military more evil than the Taliban."
While at Yale in the mid-nineties, Flagg worked with members of Congress and other Yale students and alumni to combat ROTC's second-class status on many campuses across the country. Flagg's frustration with the 70-mile drive to the University of Connecticut in order to participate in ROTC culminated in the passage of the Pombo and Solomon amendments which are currently before the US Supreme Court.
Hashemi's enrollment at Yale was aided by CBS news cameraman Mike Hoover, who developed a friendship with the Taliban government apologist during several trips to Afghanistan, dating back to 1991. According to Hoover, he contacted an attorney in his hometown of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. That attorney, Bob Schuster, who had earned his undergraduate degree at Yale, brought Hashemi to the attention of Richard Shaw, the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions.
According to the Times, Shaw said of his interview with Hashemi, "My perception was, 'It's the enemy!' But, the interview with him was one of the most interesting I've ever had. I walked away with a sense: Whoa! This is a person to be reckoned with and who could educate us about the world."
Yale refuses to comment on how Hashemi's tuition -- almost $160,000 for four years -- is being paid.
John Fund, writing for the Opinion Journal does not view this admission as any great achievement, even though he quotes Richard Shaw as saying that... "another foreign student of Rahmatullah's [Hashemi's] caliber had applied for special student status. We lost him to Harvard. I didn't want that to happen again."
Fund does not agree, saying "This is taking the obsession that US universities have been promoting diversity a bit too far."
However, Yale's response to criticism appeared in their campus newspaper:
"This is our burden to tend to, and there is no better way to develop a clearer understanding of our differences and similarities to the Afghani people than to invite Hashemi to learn in our system. Despite our anxieties, we must maintain the energy and tolerance to seek the origins of other ideologies. If Hashemi's voice were absent from University discourse, we would risk crippling our perception of today's world."
"I suspect they're already mentally crippled on that [Yale] campus and having an official from the Taliban isn't going to change that mental infirmity," says a former Marine combat officer.
irritated
Carter Seeks Vote in U.N. Against U.S.
President Carter personally called Secretary of State Rice to try to convince her to reverse her U.N. ambassador's position on changes to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the former president recalled yesterday in a talk in which he also criticized President Bush's Christian bona fides and misstated past American policies on Israel.
Mr. Carter said he made a personal promise to ambassadors from Egypt, Pakistan, and Cuba on the U.N. change issue that was undermined by America's ambassador, John Bolton. "My hope is that when the vote is taken," he told the Council on Foreign Relations, "the other members will outvote the United States."
While other former presidents have tried to refrain from attacking the sitting chief executive, Mr. Carter's attacks on President Bush have increased. The episode he recounted yesterday showed how he tried to undermine officials at lower levels in an effort to influence policy.
The story, as Mr. Carter recalled, began with a recent dinner for 17 he attended in New York, where the guests included the president of the U.N. General Assembly, Jan Eliasson; an unidentified American representative, and other U.N. ambassadors from "powerful" countries at Turtle Bay, of which he mentioned only three: Cuba, Egypt, and Pakistan. The topic was the ongoing negotiations on an attempt to replace the widely discredited Geneva-based Human Rights Commission with a more accountable Human Rights Council.
"One of the things I assured them of was that the United States was not going to dominate all the other nations of the world in the Human Rights Council," Mr. Carter said. However, on the next day, Mr. Carter said, Mr. Bolton publicly "demanded" that the five permanent members of the Security Council will have permanent seats on the new council as well, "which subverted exactly what I have promised them," Mr. Carter said.
"So I called Condoleezza Rice and told her about the problem, and she said that that statement by our representative was not going to be honored," he said. But despite Mr. Carter's assessment that there are "a lot of people" in Washington who oppose Mr. Bolton on the Human Rights Council, Mr. Bolton's opposition to the proposed new structure became American policy.
Publications not known for their support of the Bush administration or Mr. Bolton, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, recently backed the ambassador's policy on the Human Rights Council, saying in editorials that the compromise hashed out by Mr. Eliasson is an inadequate fix for the existing structure.
Mr. Bolton's spokesman, Richard Grenell, told The New York Sun yesterday that it is "naive" to think that Mr. Bolton has "a different position than the rest of the United States government on this issue."
Asked yesterday about his views on religion, Mr. Carter said, "The essence of my faith is one of peace." In a clear swipe at Mr. Bush's faith, and to a round of applause, he then added, "We worship the prince of peace, not of pre-emptive war." Mr. Carter then went on to attack American Christians who support Israel.
He also reiterated his known view that most of the problems in the Israeli-Arab front derive from Israel's settlement policies and its building of a defensive barrier in what he insisted on calling "Palestine."
"From Dwight Eisenhower to the road map of George W. Bush, our policy has been that Israel's borders coincide with those of 1949," Mr. Carter said, adding, "All my predecessors have categorized each settlement as both illegal and an obstacle to peace."
Strange, I thought you had to be an active employee of the government to be able to conduct diplomacy abroad. Jimmuh's been puffin' Castro's cigar too long... Condi Rice should have declined to take the call from this idiot.
surprised
Prof resigns over graphic video
Grand Rapids - A Grand Rapids Community College professor resigned after allegedly showing ten seconds of a sexually explicit video in his criminal justice class.
Professor Samuel Naves resigned after the story appeared on the front page of the GRCC newspaper. Administrators had no comment, except to say it is a personnel matter.
The campus paper said students were watching clips about criminal justice from Naves' e-mail when he flipped past the clip. According to the paper, students begged to see it. Naves warned them it was an explicit clip of a man having sex with a pig.
24 Hour News 8 was unable to speak with anyone who was in class at the time of the alleged incident.
According to the campus paper, the Dean of Workforce Development at GRCC spoke with the class after Naves' resignation. The dean said Naves is no longer teaching his classes and that the behavior may have violated state and local laws.
Naves declined comment to 24 Hour News 8. 
chatty
Capsouras said Kyle, an eight-year teacher at the high school, was in good spirits despite some crank calls. He said that Kyle, in terms of his job, should be in the clear unless "somebody decides they didn't give him permission" for the project.
Student outlook
A smaller number praised Kyle.
"So-called conservatives don't have a clue as to what they've bred or are breeding. We need more teachers like Joseph Kyle," wrote Belita R. T. Franklin of Jacksonville, Fla.
Jamie Barberio, defeated in the Republican primary for mayor last year, joined former county Sheriff John Fox of Parsippany and Freeholder Jack Schrier of Mendham Township in slamming the project.
"We're presuming that President Bush is an indictable war criminal, when he's not," Barberio said. "How about teaching that he's not a war criminal."
A phone call to the White House press office was not returned Thursday.
Dwyer, Sciaino and Kyle did not return phone calls.
Learning process
loud
Clarification: Katrina-Video story
WASHINGTON - In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.
The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.
The day before the storm hit, Bush was told there were grave concerns that the levees could be overrun. It wasn't until the next morning, as the storm was hitting, that Michael Brown,
then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had inquired about reports of breaches. Bush did not participate in that briefing.
d'oh
The timing of the levees breach has been a key issue in exhaustive reviews of failures to respond to Katrina and highlights miscommunication about the scope of the storm's damage at all levels of government.
The new video, which runs 45 minutes, details uncertainty and despair among state and local emergency response officials as they began chronicling the disaster that swept across 90 square miles in the Gulf Coast.
Blanco is not shown in the video but is heard as a disembodied voice speaking from an emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, La., to 11 people sitting around a table at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington. She sounds uncertain about the reliability of her information and cautioned that the situation "could change."
She reported that floodwaters were rising in parts of the city "where we have waters that are 8 to 10 feet deep, and we have people swimming in there."
"That's got a considerable amount of water itself," the governor said. "That's about all I know right now on the specifics that you haven't heard."
Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher said Thursday that "our people on the ground were telling us that there could be over-topping and breaching, but it was hard to tell" by the noon briefing.
Another official who was heard but not seen on the video was then-FEMA Director Michael Brown, who was also at the federal emergency operations center in Baton Rouge. He implored officials to "push the envelope as far as you can," noting that he had already spoken to President Bush twice that day and described the president as "very, very interested in this situation."
"He's very engaged, and he's asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask," Brown said of Bush. "I say that only because I want everyone to recognize ... how serious the situation remains."
Brown has criticized the White House for miscommunication that led to some delays but said in an interview Thursday that he never directly blamed Bush.
The video shows weather forecasters predicting the storm's path and also briefly cuts to White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin asking Blanco about the status of the levees and the situation at the Superdome in New Orleans.
By that time, an estimated 15,000 evacuees had gathered at the stadium, where food and water was beginning to run out, said Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana's emergency preparedness deputy director. Smith also reported up to 10 feet of flooding in neighboring St. Bernard Parish and that there were 45 patients on life-support at one area hospital that lost its power.
Still, "the coordination and support we are getting from FEMA has just been outstanding," Smith said.
Mississippi officials were less complimentary, reporting significant damage to hospitals, flooded and collapsed emergency operations centers and people trapped on the roofs or in the attacks who were begging for help.
"It certainly looks like it is a catastrophic event that we all expected," said one Mississippi official, who was not identified. "I could tell you that the preliminary reports coming off of our Gulf Coast are not good, not good at all.
The Homeland Security Department played down the new video. Spokesman Russ Knocke said it "reveals nothing new because the transcript had previously been released."
The new video came to light a day after the AP obtained footage of an Aug. 28 briefing - the day before Katrina hit - that showed officials warning the storm might breach levees, put lives at risk in the Superdome and overwhelm rescuers. Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff were among those on the videotaped call.
Lawmakers from both parties said the pre-Katrina briefing for Bush and top administration officials raised new questions about government response to the storm that flooded New Orleans and killed more than 1,300 people.
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said the Aug. 28 video "makes it perfectly clear once again that this disaster was not out of the blue or unforeseeable. It was not only predictable, it was actually predicted. That's what made the failures in response - at the local, state and federal level - all the more outrageous."
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said it "confirms what we have suspected all along," charging that Bush administration officials have "systematically misled the American people."
Reid and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California renewed their calls for an independent commission to investigate the federal response to the hurricane.
The House and Senate have conducted separate investigations of the federal response, and the White House did its own investigation. House Democrats for the most part refused to participate in the House probe, insisting since last fall that an independent commission should be created to handle the probe.
The White House did not immediately respond Thursday to the renewed Democratic calls for an independent investigation.
Audio: 
GREGORY'S GIGGLES: NBCNEWS WHITE HOUSE REPORTER CALLS SHOW WHILE 'DRUNK'?
NBC White House correspondent David Gregory, who apologized last week for calling White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan a "jerk," called into MSNBC's IMUS Thursday morning -- apparently drunk!
[
Gregory is traveling with the president in India.
IMUS: Let's go to the White House correspondent David Gregory.
DAVID GREGORY: I'm OK.
IMUS: You can calls us later if you want.
GREGORY: [Laughter] [Laughter] [Laughter] [Laughter]
IMUS: Are you drunk?
GREGORY: [Laughter] [Laughter]
IMUS: Are you all right David?
GREGORY: India is a wonderful language and i've been learning, where's my little sheet here. I've been learning some new phrases to come home. But any way, that being one of them and i just think it's nice.
IMUS: It is.
GREGORY: Thank you.
IMUS: Having a lot of fun there. What's wrong with you?
GREGORY: I just think it's funny. [Laughter] [Laughter] [Laughter]
CHARLES: He's drunk.
IMUS: He is drunk!
CHARLES: Oh god.
IMUS: Why don't you compose yourself and get back to us. You want to?
GREGORY: [Laughter] [Laughter] [Laughter]
IMUS: What are you in some harrem?
IMUS: What? David?
GREGORY: No, i'm fine.
IMUS: We need a camera.
Oh my lord.
IMUS: Somebody's got --
GREGORY: i was -- remember that movie "Arthur" with Dudley Moore where he just thinks funny things and that's what was going on. If i could find this sheet, actually i just found it. Anyway.
IMUS: You have any news? [Laughter]
IMUS: we got to go, we'll get back to you.
GREGORY: I'm sorry.
IMUS: That's all right.
IMUS: Well, call us back will you?
GREGORY: Anyway. There are serious things going on here which i know you're very interested in.
IMUS: We don't have any time for them now. Quickly.
GREGORY: Big deal between India and the United States. The upshot is we're going to provide nuclear know-how and fuel to india which they need for their economy to grow. But since they never signed the nonproliferation treaty it's a real turn around and critics worry that it sends the wrong message to other parts of the world.
IMUS: Ok.
GREGORY: I would add, i would add that this is how you say thank you.
IMUS: What is it again?
[Speaking foreign language]
IMUS: Well that's great. But we have to go. It's always nice to hear from you.
GREGORY: I'll call you after dinner.
silly
A Parsippany High School teacher is conducting a war crimes hearing of President George W. Bush as part of a classroom assignment in his AP Government class. Here, Bush addresses the media after his talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, India today. >>>>>
Bush goes on 'trial' in Morris
Parsippany students confront issues of terrorism and war
AURORA - A 16-year-old boy at Overland High School doesn't want to hear what he calls his teacher's left-wing political rants.
Sean Allen (left) frequently recorded his teachers to back up his notes. Allen recorded Jay Bennish, his 10th grade World Geography teacher, making comments about President Bush's State of the Union Address.
Allen's father claims the comments made in the recording are biased and inappropriate for a geography class.
"I'm not saying Bush and Hitler are exactly the same, obviously they're not. OK? But there are some eerie similarities to the tones that they use," says Bennish in his critique of U.S. economic and foreign policy.
Towards the end of the class, Bennish (right) goes on to say, "I'm not in anyway implying that you should agree with me, I don't even know if I'm necessarily taking a position. But what I'm trying to get you to do is to think about these issues more in depth and not to just take things from the surface."
The Cherry Creek School District is conducting a thorough investigation of the complaint from the Overland High School parent and student concerning comments.