pav7en

What happens to the concept of service? Public service is not meant to be completely and perfectly safe. Hell, life doesn't come with any guarantees. How does being in a constant state of stress and fear about life help you in preserving your life?

You're telling me that it's ok for a police officer in civilian life in the U.S to pull out a gun and intimidate a person like this article's author who did foot patrols deep in enemy territory, patrolling those very people who would initially have gladly watched him being gorily dismembered by IEDs or worse.

The concept of service is what you're forgetting. There are some jobs, some careers which can never be adequately compensated for in material benefits or guarantees of life.

You do it because of the intangibles- your values, your society's welfare, you country's welfare.

And service never ever comes with a sense of entitlement on the part of the person serving. Entitlement to life even. The only thing that matters is getting the job done right. If this is expected of your military, why shouldn't it be expected out of police officers or any other emergency worker or any other public servant?

It's the mark of a better society that realizes what public service means, values it, respects people who've served their society and still expects and holds up the highest standards of service from service members and not just the military.

Thanks, very good advice.

On the same lines of the previous comment, I've found this book to be very useful:

http://www.amazon.com/Wherever-You-Go-There-Are/dp/140130778...

Was recommended on one of HN's threads about meditation.

Yup, and this led to an imbalance in the officer corps too, with sikhs being disproportionate to their population. Though it's generally not talked about, that imbalance in the officer corp has been corrected. Started during the 1980's.

Another interesting aspect of Indian Army regiments is that they are based on a region or caste for the enlisted members, but the officers can be from any part of the country. So if you're a south Indian officer then you must know hindi and if your parent regiment is say the Gorkhas, they'll teach you Nepali.

Also, there has been a greater emphasis on recruiting from all parts of the country for the enlisted members. Military recruiting has certainly improved and has become much more diverse over the years. The Army doesn't release this data because of political considerations. Politicians are sure to demand quotas if those numbers come out. And letting politicians meddle with the internal systems of a really good institution like the Indian Army is a sure way to gut it.

To clarify recruiting means recruiting of enlisted members. Selection may be the right term for officers.

Haha, that's kind of ironic, someone downvoted you for this.

Doesn't seem negative at all. And makes a very good case.

It's always a good thing to question. Unless of course you belong to the camp who choose to be wilfully ignorant and closed in light of overwhelming evidence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679537

Had a few moments of such afterglow. And then the anguish. And then the thought that, is that not ok too? That the point is not to live in an eternal state of bliss, but to be more forgiving and compassionate when we do slip. And not let it cause any anguish. Though we might be talking about different things here haha.

In short these are not real H1Bs. But a glaring example of how the system is being gamed.

And also stigmatising legitimate H1Bs in the country and the American product (mostly) companies which champion their cause.

No, these 250 H1Bs are not direct petitions filed on behalf of Disney. That would've been great for Florida and the Federal govt.

What these companies do is insidious. Say, you're working for HCL in India, HCL files a H1B for you and sends you over for 6 months to the US and then you come back to India and hand over your H1B to them. Not very clear on the specifics, as I've only heard about it.

So during the time you're in the US, you don't get paid US wages for a H1B s/w engineer, which are pretty good. What you get is a stipend for those 6 months and your regular Indian salary which at the very max for the very best won't be more than $40,000 in conversion.

So these are significant savings for Disney and significant profits for HCL.

So why can't lawmakers agree on preventing these consulting companies from applying for H1bs?

Corruption all the way through:

US Congress/Senate: "oh wait India is going to buy defence h/w worth $47B, we got to get in on the action"

Indian consulting companies: "dear Indian politician, we get a lot of money through Forex/labor arbitrage, let us help you get rich. In return protecting us from the fallout of these pesky articles is a national interest and oh hey how about getting us another 2000 acres of land out there."

Indian politicians and babus to US counterparts: "yep you can sell us your mil. h/w, but first let your contractors bribe us and then let our IT companies bribe you"

Pretty simplistic and only focuses on the corruption angle, while there are definitely other issues as well, but does bring up why the US can't just say "hey no visas for you".

This kind of a system is more damaging to India than the US at the macro level. Since it makes Indian companies and people who work for them incapable of doing something original and working on really hard problems in our backyard.

The attitude which it engenders is "oh hey, we can always stay in business by selling ourselves cheap and replacing Americans." This party will sooner or later come to an end. At which point hopefully a lot of such Indian companies will go extinct and only the best will survive.

At the personal level, the Americans who got fired are going to be more resilient and will come out on top of the situation, however great their pain may be in the moment.

Oh, one more thing, this is not the only threat faced by employment in the US, there's automation too.

So, hatred of something, say Indian consulting companies, or people employed by them, immigrants in general, against robots or automated systems is no solution. I say this since this is the most knee-jerk reaction.

The only way anyone hope to cope with this is by not expecting it to get any easy. Not expecting ease or having a sense of entitlement. But by being open to learning, growth, reinvention and hope.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/indi...

Seems like a valid point of view. Not sure why it got downvoted.

Though there are very big kinks to work out in getting Hadoop production ready.

So the thesis of the parent article is valid too and not just propaganda.

No, it's not speculative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Estimated_ca...

@kungfooey

And you wonder about ageism in the industry?

Sure: "Two things changed. The first was the rule of law. For most of the world's history, if you did somehow accumulate a fortune, the ruler or his henchmen would find a way to steal it. But in medieval Europe something new happened. A new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns. [10] Together they were able to withstand the local feudal lord. So for the first time in our history, the bullies stopped stealing the nerds' lunch money. This was naturally a great incentive, and possibly indeed the main cause of the second big change, industrialization."

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Oh and courage, well it's nothing. War is all about working effectively with fear, that's why the emphasis on training, the more and more you train, the better you're able to keep fear as a background process and not panic.

You misunderstood me. Whom do you consider a truly professional soldier? In my view it's a marine, a SEAL, or another military member of a modern state. Heck even a Pakistan army soldier is a professional soldier.

So what drives these professional soldiers is not the paycheck, its the idea of patriotism or that they are upholding some set of values for their country, or the idea that they are protecting their country. That is what allows them to hang in there when it goes well beyond limits of human endurance.

Refer the marine campaign of Iwo Jima 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima', where soldiers went for 3-4 months without adequate food, rest or even barely human conditions against a fanatical enemy. Or for that matter any campaign during the world war. Or any other war worth something for the parties involved.

And my point is you can't get such kind of men or women to fight for money as mercenaries. And if I'm paying for mercenaries I want people like the ones who fought Iwo Jima.

So, if you look at the recruiting for the private armies most of them are ex-soldiers of a nation-state's army.

After a while some guys come to view it as any other profession. And then probably start working for a private army.

But even then I'd be surprised if private armies would be able to hold up their own against national armies or even if their members expect to.

Not sure if it had been shared earlier. Relevant to optimising for personal happiness. Since that's the ultimate variable to optimise for.

Hmm, mercenaries, 'soldiers of fortune', a very romantic concept. I'd like to be one, but then not.

Military training is tough and if the only thing you're fighting for is a paycheck, then you won't hang in there when it counts the most and hence are worth jackshit as a mercenary.

Most private armies worth anything consist of ex-soldiers of a republic. In essence these companies are subsidized by a/the republic's taxpayers.

So they are not a major threat to established governments, but still constitute a worrying trend. For if the world becomes sufficiently fucked, these will be the only dignified jobs left.

Hence, need to be regulated and monitored heavily by established governments. In no way should these emerge as alternates to democratic state power. As is modern democracies face an onslaught of challenges-look at freedom of expression. And I can only laugh at the ludicrousness of this term 'freedom of expression' if these private armies metastasize into something powerful.

Judah, very nice effort. Two points of note for me:

1. When I click shelter it shows a very small nbr of beds available when compared to the nbr of beds shown when I click the Search icon on the homepage. Also agree with cpeterso's comment on this.

2. It was when I clicked the Search icon and scrolled to the bottom that I saw the wind chill advisory and only then saw it on the main page under Urgent news. Perhaps putting this link (Alerts/Urgent news) at the top of the page will improve its visibility. Not sure how it's rendered on a mobile browser.

All the very best.

Good article. Saviano writes from the heart and avoids platitudes. He covers most everything when someone does something never done before or does it better: 1. Intimidation, in this case with threats to life. 2. Anger and a sense of irritation from the lay public for shining such a bright light on the problem. 3. Attempts at discrediting the person and hence by extension the person's work.

And the reward for this is: The immense loneliness of the person who treads the new path.

Hmm, reminds of what PG says (paraphrasing) "the modern age (in the western world) started when the good kids started to keep their candy." This seems to have missed parts of Italy.

Thanks for the link. Was illuminating, humanizes the people of USSR and their government. A reminder that not all stories are stereotypical.