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Re:Most Television Sets are actually Made in the U by ericspinder · 2004-01-08 07:59 · Score: 1 · on Tech Firms Defend Moving Jobs Overseas

Ok, I did a little research and came up with this link about American made televisions. ATTA (According To The Article) the last one was made in 1995.

Re:It will swing back to balance... by ninejaguar · 2004-01-06 08:27 · Score: 1 · on Bangalore Beats Silicon Valley

The greatest threat to U.S. programmers isn't foreign programmers. The biggest threat comes from U.S. corporate management. Essentially, it's U.S. citizen of one skillset pitted against U.S. citizen of another skillset. All in order to appease the appetite for returns demanded by stockholders who are made up of...programmers and management and clerks and cashiers and secretaries and truck drivers and let's not forget the independently wealthy (filthy rich)...etc.

But, at the front lines, it comes down to the decision makers (management) and the doers (programmers). Management concern over programming labor costs, salaries and rates that dared to nearly approach their own at the height of the bubble, has given many of them cause to support terrible Visa-abuse (H1B, L-something or other...etc), and now massive offshoring of our future's brainshare, skills, and technical experience for short-term gains and long-term losses.

The result is clear if the course continues. When manufacturing jobs left the U.S., never to return, white-collar workers didn't speak up. Economists, in corporate pockets, wrote articles about how this was natural progression towards some bizarre form of economic evolution. Those people would go into the service sector. We would go from the world's premier nation of manufactures, creating the goods that the world would buy, to the premier nation of service providers, offering services that the world couldn't live without. Now that elected and purchased officials are allowing the mass migration of service jobs out of the U.S., what are the laborers, the largest consumers, in the U.S. to do for a living? Consume? Currently, U.S. and foreign corporations want nothing more than to bang down our doors to sell us the best goods they can manufacture. This is because of the fact that we have the incomes to spend money on their wares. What do you think will happen when that income drops to nothing as we end up in low-paying jobs servicing each other because all the high-paying service jobs have long fled, never to return?

There are inherent dangers in outsourcing which will bite first-timers in the ass. This is a natural deterrent, but not an permanent obstacle. Outside of putting in donations to purchase key politicians, there are only two and half things I can think of that can help slow down, and maybe even turn the tide against this bleeding of our technical edge.

One suggestion is obvious. Unionize. Read this and join here. The collective who holds the plug to the data-center in its hand has some bargaining power. The individual who doesn't, is ignored.

If you like the fact that you have two day weekends, you can thank Unions for it. If you like the fact that you no longer are required to work 16-19 hour days, you can thank Unions for it. Support all Unions during their weakest point in history and stop crossing the line. The person with the sign is your neighbor and helps make your community strong. The manager and scabs flown in from out of state are not your neighbors, and will fly out to the next place their corporate masters tell them to. They weaken your community.

A second suggestion requires the understanding that management needs programmers. This is why they're going to India. If they had the skills to actually get something done, they'd do it themselves. Programmers don't need managers. They can get all the management services they can stand from contracting companies (i.e. headhunters). In addition, Indian management services exist to provide low cost management services as well. However, the basic idea is that all programmers have to do is partner together (for those with irrational fears of Unions), and undercut cost of providing services by removing the prohibitive costs of having to support useless management and executive jets. Programmers don't need managers. They need administrators to get the

Court == Double Edged Sword? by Peeet · 2003-12-19 05:18 · Score: 0, Redundant · on Appeals Court Rules Against RIAA in DMCA Subpoena Case

From the freep.com article:
"Verizon had argued at its trial that Internet providers should only be compelled to respond to such subpoenas when pirated music is stored on computers that providers directly control, such as a Web site, rather than on a subscriber's personal computer.

In his ruling, the trial judge wrote that Verizon's interpretation ``makes little sense from a policy standpoint,'' and warned that it ``would create a huge loophole in Congress' effort to prevent copyright infringement on the Internet.'' "

So the judges also told Verizon that part of their arguement was laughable as well.

X steps forward, Y steps back, you fill in the two variables, what do you think?

I think this ruling is like 3 steps forward, 1 step back.

Another story in the Detroit Free Press... by MikeVx · 2003-12-19 05:04 · Score: 4, Informative · on Appeals Court Rules Against RIAA in DMCA Subpoena Case

I submitted this, but not soon enough.

Re:bin laden.. by Valdrax · 2003-12-15 05:26 · Score: 1 · on Saddam Hussein Arrested

Woah, woah, woah, woah!

Okay, I didn't support the war on Iraq for many reasons, but to claim that Saddam's not a bad guy is just simply ludicrous revisionist history.
Put down the agitprop and step away from the soapbox.

Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party has done several horrible things that have been well-documented. His regime has a history of torture, oppression, and genocide. The Kurds, the Marsh Arabs, and the Shiites have all suffered greatly at his regime's hands for helping us in the Gulf War and for standing up for their own rights. My mother works with an Iraqi Kurd who fled with her husband to America after her husbands brothers were tortured and killed and had their bodies returned to them in mutilated condition because the two of them were reporters trying to expose the abuses of the regime to the international community. Whole towns of Kurds were killed with chemical weapons for their aid of the UN forces in the Gulf War.

Then you have the draining of Iraq's wetlands as punishment to the Marsh Arabs. An entire ecosystem and economic infrastructure has been utterly destroyed, leaving many of the Marsh Arabs without a means of sustenance and without a home. This is in addition to the usual panorama of torture, kidnapping, and execution that faced many dissidents in Iraq.

Oh, and in case all of this doesn't convince you, how about the senseless, retaliatory destruction of the economic lifeblood of Kuwait that poisoned thousands? You know, the blackening of the skies which was visible from space? Then, there's the man's sweetheart sons who reveal how good of a man he was as a father. How about the horrible life story of a man who was forced to act as a body double for Uday?

I don't think that all necessarily justified us getting involved when we have made a policy of ignoring or supporting many other brutal regimes -- especially when close friends of certain of our administration stand to profit mightily -- but saying that there's no evidence that Saddam's a bad guy is farsical. As to his popularity, Saddam didn't just get 90%+ of the vote. He got 100% of the vote on a ballot where he was the ONLY candidate listed. No candidate gets that kind of support in any healthy democracy, and we are right to question anyone who does.

Mirror by TPS+Report · 2003-12-14 19:30 · Score: 5, Informative · on Build Your Own NOC

Mirror Here. I'll mirror the rest of the page, as soon as he recovers from the shock and replaces the charred, smoking remains of the server he once had.

Re:Spamming method by swordboy · 2003-12-09 01:29 · Score: 5, Funny · on Spamholes Fighting Spammers

Alternatively, you could hit their house. It really is amazing that a spammer would use their home address to register their spam business. In case you were wondering, the delivery joints in this area won't deliver stuff to this address anymore. Mr. Ralsky apparently didn't pay for *any* of the last 500 large with pineapple and andchovie pizzas that were ordered.