5.9.2004Real Groaners.Q: What's purple and commutes?
A: An abelian grape.
Q: Why did the mathematician name his dog "Cauchy"?
A: Because he left a residue at every pole.
Q: Why is it that the more accuracy you demand from an interpolation
function, the more expensive it becomes to compute?
A: That's the Law of Spline Demand.
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: One, who gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing it to an
earlier riddle.
Q: What do a mathematician and a physicist [or engineer, or musician,
or whatever the profession of the person addressed] have in common?
A: They are both stupid, with the exception of the mathematician.
Q: What do you call a teapot of boiling water on top of Mount Everest?
A: A high-pot-in-use.
Q: What do you call a broken record?
A: A Decca-gone.
Q: What do you get when you cross 50 female pigs and 50 male deer?
A: One hundred sows-and-bucks.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the Moebius strip?
A: To get to the other ... er, um ...
Q: What is the world's longest song?
A: "Aleph-naught Bottles of Beer on the Wall."
Q: What does a mathematician do when he's constipated?
A: He works it out with a pencil.
Q: What's yellow and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice.
A: Zorn's Lemon.
Q: What do you get if you cross an elephant with a zebra.
A: Elephant zebra sin theta.
Q: What do you get if you cross an elephant with a mountain climber.
A: You can't do that. A mountain climber is a scalar.
Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant with a banana?
A: Elephant banana sine theta in a direction mutually perpendicular to
the two as determined by the right hand rule.
Q: To what question is the answer "9W."
A: "Dr. Wiener, do you spell your name with a V?"
A doctor, a lawyer and a computer programmer were discussing the relative
merits of having a wife or a mistress.
The lawyer says: "For sure a mistress is better. If you have a wife
and want a divorce, it causes all sorts of legal problems."
The doctor says: "It's better to have a wife because the sense of
security lowers your stress and is good for your health."
The computer programmer says: "You're both wrong. It's best to have both so
that when the wife thinks you're with the mistress and the mistress
thinks you're with your wife --- you can get some serious code done!"
TOP TEN EXCUSES FOR NOT DOING THE MATH HOMEWORK
- I accidentally divided by zero and my paper burst into flames.
- Isaac Newton's birthday.
- I could only get arbitrarily close to my textbook. I couldn't
actually reach it.
- I have the proof, but there isn't room to write it in this margin.
- I was watching the World Series and got tied up trying to prove
that it converged.
- I have a solar powered calculator and it was cloudy.
- I locked the paper in my trunk but a four-dimensional dog got in
and ate it.
- I couldn't figure out whether I am the square of negative one or
I is the square root of negative one.
- I took time out to snack on a doughnut and a cup of coffee.
I spent the rest of the night trying to figure which one to dunk.
- I could have sworn I put the homework inside a Klein bottle, but
this morning I couldn't find it.
"Opinion: Offshore Doublespeak
ComputerWire
April 8, 2004
As the political backlash over the wholesale movement of IT services and business process outsourcing jobs to cheaper labor markets gathers pace, those with the most to gain from offshoring are keeping very quiet.
Companies considering an offshore strategy are very reticent to reveal their plans because they are wary of a backlash from consumers and their own soon-be-redundant workforce. One BPO vendor recently said at a conference that as these companies go to ground, they are leaving the vendors to take the flak. But now vendors have joined them in a virtual vow of silence, and are trying to deny that moving work to lower cost countries should be called offshore at all. For example, an IBM spokesperson recently told ComputerWire that IBM does not do "offshoring" because it is a global company and has always had operations in places such as India.
Such doublespeak is already rife in the industry, and the use of the word "offshore" is often replaced. Cap Gemini Ernst & Young calls it "Rightshore", Computer Horizons and EDS both use "Bestshore", and BearingPoint calls it "Anyshore", for example.
The National Association of Software and Service Companies recently told its members that they would be better off keeping quiet about offshoring until after the US election. It has also come to our attention that contracts are being signed but not disclosed.
In addition, conference organizers have started to bar journalists from their outsourcing events as a result of pressure from attendees and speakers who want to discuss their cost-cutting schemes in private. Those that we have attended have been curious affairs, involving a series of vendors announcing the amazing cost benefits of offshore outsourcing, followed by a series of customers trying to explain that "it's not just about cost-cutting". We've heard managers speak of how Indian employees "love doing repetitive tasks", how cutting 1,000 jobs in Ohio gave one call-center manager a "fantastic opportunity to move up the value chain to project management", and how touched one executive was by the maturity of his staff training up Indian counterparts to replace them for a third of their wages. No one mentions Kevin Flanagan, the Bank of America employee who shot himself after he lost his job in an outsourcing "initiative".
Occasionally the infamous McKinsey report gets wheeled out, which claims that for every US $1 spent on offshore jobs, the US economy gets $1.12 back, but everyone knows the benefits of the $1.12 don't go to the same people that benefited from the $1 in the first place.
A consequence of all this cowardice is that much of the great outsourcing debate is never aired - such as the behavior the public can expect from multinationals, the rights of less powerful nations to utilize free trade to their own advantages for once, and the alleviation of poverty through the economic investment and jobs brought to developing nations. Minor points, we know, especially when $0.01 earnings per share is at stake, but it would make the debate a bit more interesting if Nasscom and outsourcing vendors would at least stand up and fight."
<Note from JobFairy.com: Harley Shand once said that a manner of speaking becomes a way of thinking. Ever read 1984? Part of what makes up the set of Fairy skills is a healthy dose of distrust, coupled with a sensitive bull**** meter, and a memory that stretches back for years. We're cynical, and that's a good thing. I remember, a long time ago, when Computer Horizons Corporation didn't call it bestshoring; they referred to it as plain old offshoring back in their press releases of the early 1990s. Moreover, they bragged left and right about how they could solve your Y2K problems with the snap of a finger and their good friends over at Tata Consulting. Back in the day, they used to name names. If it's such a good thing all around, why don't they - or anyone else - do so now? A large dose of skepticism is the best thing for you, we always say.>
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