I totally disagree with Andrew Leonard's point that "it's even more absurd [than India's censorship], in this day and age, to believe that the Internet could do anything to resolve such a conflict [as the one in Kashmir]." Free speech may not alone end that war, but it can be a powerful vehicle for competing ideas. The Internet can be and often is a powerful catalyst for free speech.

-- Nick Dennany
Kalamazoo, Mich.

Leonard touched a raw nerve. There is a bigger underlying problem here in India: the growing difference between the info-haves and info-have-nots. The action of VSNL raises further questions. Can we expect the Net to be a democratic medium or is it going to consolidate the established powers? Is it true that he who owns the server (read "the network") controls the Net?

Fifty years ago India made a change from a feudal society to a "license Raj" democracy. Organizations like the VSNL are one of the last pillars of this license Raj. In the last few years we have been experimenting with a liberalized economy. I am an optimist. I believe what we are experiencing today is a passing phase; and I envisage a free India based on freedom of expression and right to information.

-- Hemant Adarkar
Bombay, India

India has also barred Web access to another Pakistani newspaper, the Nation, and has also stopped cable companies from showing Pakistan Television to the Indian public. Despite putting in more than 30,000 troops, aided by war planes, India has failed to clear the Kargil mountaintops, held by a few hundred "intruders." India claims to have killed more than 800 mujahideen and Pakistanis, against less than 350 Indian dead. How can that be? When someone attacks entrenched positions on top of mountains, the attacker is liable to suffer many more casualties than the defender. The disinformation put out by the Indian government is simply mind-boggling. That is why they want to shield their public form the media.

-- Asaf Ali Shah,
Islamabad, Pakistan

The overtime stigma
BY ALICIA NEUMANN (07/12/99)

There is a way to be paid overtime as a technology worker, of course: be a contractor. Obviously, you don't get employee benefits -- although the pay is higher, so you can buy your own, and it's amazing how much more respect you get.

But the problem with overtime is that it leads to a culture where quantity of work matters more than quality. It's very easy to get very little real work done and yet work a 70-hour week; should that employee get more credit than his co-worker who finishes the same amount of work in a regular 40 hours? Of course not, and yet this is often the case.

"Putting in the hours" is generally more about proving dedication, loyalty and effort than actually getting useful work done. Many studies have been done that show that increasing the number of hours worked does not increase productivity that much. Employees get tired. Employees goof off. Employees compensate for not being given personal time at home by taking personal time out of the work day.

Entrenched overtime week after week does little except get everyone macho points for how tough and hard-working they are. The high-tech industry would survive well without it.

-- Matt Brown

I used to work for a company where you were required to submit a time card stating that you had only worked eight hours a day, five days a week -- even though that was a joke, and everyone knows it. People routinely work 70, 80 hours a week; friends of mine have gone days without even leaving the building. When I submitted the hours I actually worked (when I first started there), I was reprimanded and told not to do it again.

Are they in violation of labor laws for doing this?

-- Mark Fischer
Los Gatos, Calif.

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