Slashdot Mirror
Offshoring to a Ship in International Waters
JasdonLe writes "Sourcing Mag posted an article about Roger Green and David Cook, who hope to avoid US visa regulations that usually accompany outsourcing, with their company SeaCode, and a used cruise ship, sitting in international waters three miles off the coast of Los Angeles.""
Apparently, they have plans for 600 software engineers on this ship. Their major point of having them on the ship appears to be that they can maintain low costs to produce software, while only being 3.1 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. I am assuming they don't have to pay corporate taxes to any entity.
But this just seems to be asking for a lot of trouble. Humanitarily speaking, since they are not actually in any country, who protects the rights of those 600 laboring software engineers? Does anyone have the authority to make sure that it's not (child) slave labor? No government agency can make sure that working conditions are safe and healthy.
SourcingMag says that SeaCode will treat their workers fairly. That's great and all if we suddenly believed that corporations are honest and will regulate themselves. How many times have companys ran sweat-shops and claimed that they were treating their worker's fairly?
At first, I thought this was a joke. I am still unsure if it is.
Not too bright.
Admittedly, I don't have much to contribute to this born and raised in the States, but it's not often we see something actually using a fair amount of ingenuity.. this is a cool idea. :)
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Is this is the same David Cook who created the infamous TaskMaker game for the Mac platform?
No Posts, already /.ed -- Good Job!
How would this affect taxes?
Agile Artisans
Not sure this plan will hold water. I hope they've weighed all the options.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Dumbest idea EVER. I do not understand this infatuation with outsourcing professional workers. You can't tell me it's anywhere near as cost effective as they're making it out to be. (My own experience says otherwise.) I smell another crash of DotCom proportions...
But if they're going to do this thing, they should at least do it in style. By utilizing an inexpensive aircraft carrier they could at least send these people home for occasional weekends and vacations. Under the proposed plan, they're basically prisoners on the ship unless they can manage to get a Visa to enter the country. Which, of course, negates the entire point of not messing with H1-Bs. And how do they think the government is going to react to having these people parked right off our shore? (Hmm... maybe they could refit the guns on the old carrier to keep the coast guard off their backs.)
Did I mention that this is a dumb idea?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...of a horde of unshowered, dropcloth wearing Indians chained to a deck with oars next to their keyboards...
(first post?)
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Arg! Torpedo to the server room!
Arh! Shiver'me Packets!
Google cache of article
:|
Seems to be down so there's the google cache
foar!
Until that 70' wave hits you broadside.
Fucking sleazy.
Jesus.
Now, with our awesome Slashdot power, we have now set fire to the servers on the ship, and it is in the process of sinking.
Good job, everyone! Now, World Domnination is within our grasp!
"Visa regulations" do not accompany "outsourcing". Visa regulations accompany the importation of foreign workers. The problems cited with outsourcing are mostly related to distance.
I smell another crash of DotCom proportions...
I smell a crash of Titanic or U.S.S. Cole proportions.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Where can I find a map of where international waters begin and end (especially on the California coast)? Catalina Island is west of LA some 30-40 miles, and is part of Los Angeles County.
... I wonder what the tax implications for the workers are. And what happens if a crime is committed in International Waters? What about a guarantee of workplace safety and anti-discrimination policy?
I see lots of problems here.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
BB reader Kate says:
Generally, maritime folks consider "international waters" to be the high seas, which start outside of 200 nautical miles from any coastline. If by "international waters" they mean Mexican waters then they could have a ship three miles from San Diego. It would be subject to Mexican law, and there are a number of fishing collectives off Baja that patrol the area.
I thought that a country generally could claim the 12 miles of water offshore and in the case of the United States, we tend to claim 200 miles of offshore waters as being U.S. territory. How is a ship three miles offshore in international waters?
until they anchor it three miles off the coast to tell them the US claims territorial waters twelve nautical miles off the coast?
I think calling 3 miles international waters is misleading. I'm guessing the ship is going to be registered in another country and 3 miles is how far you have to go to be officially "not in a dock". Sorry I don't have a Snowcrash "The Raft" joke
The main site is going pretty slow already.
. sea-code.com/index%2Ehtml
http://www.networkmirror.com/YnHA0cvnVUq0BRo6/www
L. Ron Hubbard ALREADY owns the patent to this! Just ask his friendly help desk people at the scientoloaserfgad
asdfasdfasdfa
ASDFAESRFA
NO CARRIER
Upset I didn't think of it first. :)
..don't panic
Was this site hosted on a offshore ship?
Watch out for the German U-Boats!
I thought that International waters started at 12 miles, or at 200 miles, not at 3 miles.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
This won't last. Fed and State of Cali won't like a busniess operating outside its jurisdiction and will make their lives a living hell...
Buying stuff on the ship? Customs time. Don't forget, the DEA will have to check your luggage as well.
Want to go home? Sure thing, we'll just need to make sure your passport is in order. What, you didn't bring a passport? You did know you were leaving the country, right?
-- Terry
Yikes! What happens when the entire company calls in sick? http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/pub/Norovirus/Noroviru s.htm
Because they are in international waters whats their security, a boat full of computer nerds isn't going to put up a fight against a bunch of raiders who decide they want to "aquire" a whole heap of new computers to sell cheaply, no police will help a boat thats used to avoid tax laws getting raided in international waters.
Also whats to stop the RIAA or the MPAA blowing the boat out of the water if they get scared they are developing a new evil P2P network to steal their work?
Didn't anyone bother telling them that the US has terrirorial waters of 12 nautical miles, and an exclusive exconomic zone of 200 nauticle miles?
p
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/w1/waters-t.as
When will they start drumming and having sex to share code?
No, the U.S. considers the fishing, mineral, and sphere of influence within 100-150 nautical miles. U.S. LAW only applies to within 3 miles to shore. The only thing backing up this position is the 15 carrier taskgroups it can call upon. That's pretty much enough so that the U.N. doesn't want to make an issue of it.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
The US claims 200 miles as its costal waters....I believe, however, that the state of California ends at the waters edge.
I'm gonna get a speedboat and pirate there software!
oops.
That's pretty fucked up.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
"SourcingMag says that SeaCode will treat their workers fairly. That's great and all if we suddenly believed that corporations are honest and will regulate themselves. How many times have companys ran sweat-shops and claimed that they were treating their worker's fairly?"
Well by that logic. How do we know ANYBODY treats people under them right? Has your supervisor stop beating his employees?
I'd hate to be a coder on the ship during a good storm. We'll probably start seeing variable names like upanddown, backandforth, sidetoside, puke, makeitstop, and soseasick.
I think we all have seen that Simpsons episode.
I for one expect hilarious consequences from this.
600 people, mostly men (but enough women to cause chaos), but a sweet mix of Western Europeon Catholics and Mid-Eastern.*s Never mind the fact that they are all going to go crazy living on the ocean for any good length of time. Sounds like Mad Max on a ship! It's going to be like running a mini Iraq. I wish them luck!
"All employees are required to enroll in one of our two offered team building courses.
'Endurance Swimming', to ensure you can get back to the shore in case of this office sinking.
or
'How to be an effective boat anchor', for those who are out of breath after the 30ft walk to the coffee machine.
I totally want to set up a web server there and illegally distribute Windows ISOs from there, just so I can be charged with Piracy on the High Seas
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
monkey knife fights, pirates with multiple parrots, the horror
"International Waters" has been 12 nautical miles for like 40 years now. I'm not even going to go look for links since I bet that 30s and google will tell you that.
Next the real Pirates will become IP Pirates 'cause the **AA can't get to them.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
...women? Oh, wait, you said programmers? Ah, never mind!
For liability purposes, it is the sea, not the pirates that will kill the software engineers.
Linux sucks. And you're fat. Take a shower hippy.
From TFA: Staff can make the three-mile voyage into town in their off hours by calling a water taxi. Or they can spend time shopping in the on-board duty-free shop.
I've done my fair share of time aboard a ship, and let me just say that anchoring out and taking a ferry (or water taxi, or whatever you want to call the vomit inducing small craft that transport you to and from the port) a "mere three miles," is a much bigger pain in the arse than you might think. If you're lucky, they run once every 30 minutes. In a situation like this, it's more likely to be every hour, or every few hours.
Do some shopping during the day, and now you'd like to change and grab some dinner and maybe go out? Enjoy catching the ferry back to your boat and then waiting for the next one to get back to land.
Oh, and that moderate sized TV you just bought? Have fun carrying it up the brow.. not to mention just getting it off the ferry, which is probably using its own power to stay pressed against a barge tied alongside the ship. Oops, you slipped? That's a shame. Dropped your TV in the drink? Hope you have a good credit card company, and they believe you.
But I guess maybe it's better than the pay and conditions in the country you come from, and I'm just a spoiled American.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Sounds an awful lot like Sealand. They provide offshore webhosting without "imperialist entanglements". Funny stuff.
adventure-today.com
"International waters" don't start three miles off-shore. The US maritime claims are as follows:
Maritime claims:
territorial sea: 12 nm
contiguous zone: 24 nm
exclusive economic zone: 200 nm
continental shelf: not specified
In other words, they'd have to be at least 12 miles from shore, and possibly (depending on who's doing the interpretation) over 200.
Also, as far as I'm aware, the ship will have to be flagged somewhere, which means that it's effectively that country's territory when in international waters.
Someones tax man will find them.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Where're YT and L. Bob Rife?
The 200-mile limit is a "Exclusive Economic Zone".
Countries may claim a 200-mile territorial limit, but that's not recognized generally - IIRC from my days in the US Navy, most countries claim a 12-mile limit for territorial waters.
And the US Navy regularly drives warships through waters that countries claim as there's but where the US (and other countries with maritime industries) don't recognize the claim. IIRC those are called FON ops (Freedom Of Navigation).
And every now and then, the country whose claim is being rather rudely disputed responds. Somewhere in this html or PPT presentation is an instance where a Soviet ship actually rammed the USS Yorktown as it traversed what they claimed were their territorial waters. Since I was on another Navy ship also in the Mediterranean at that same time (USS Forrestal battle group), I actually got to see the video of that incident.
That made me think of two things:
http://www.freedomship.com/
(a project that is not going anywhere soon, but a cool concept), and
http://www.sealandgov.com/
(sysadmins wanted)
And while you're at it, why not just drop a super long anchor out at sea, declare your cruise ship to be an artificial island, and petition the U.N. to recognize you as an autonomous state?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
I actually like the idea.
I can't wait for the spaceship version of it.
From above hopefully there is a better perspective about entities like countries, governments, laws.
it's all fun and games until Hiro Protaganist shows up and carves a hole in the hull with his chain gun on steroids.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
It's upAndDown, backAndForth, sideToSide, makeItStop, and soSeaSick.
I like it. Has potential as a seastead-based business.
Actually, each country is different. The US claims 3 miles, some nations claim up to 12. 7s and google told me that.
Video Production Support
You should have seen what happened when I tried to claim Hawaii in my name!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
This must be a fake ....
Notice how their first "Company News" lists an Article-FORBES with no link. If you go to Forbes.com and search their site for "SeaCode" you get: "Sorry, your search for SeaCode did not return any Documents. Please revise your search and try again."
Besides, 3.1 miles makes no sense as your not in international waters.
Countries can claim up to 200 miles as an "Exclusive Economic Zone". In other words, the US can't put an oil rig in the Persian Gulf 25 miles off the coast of Iran, and the Russians aren't supposed to send fishing boats to park 52 miles off the eastern coast of the US and/or Canada.
Countries can claim up to 24 miles as "territorial waters" which are then treated as being within that country. Pretty much. There are exclusions for ships merely transiting such waters to go somewhere else.
The US currently claims 12nm as territorial waters.
And there is a lot more backing that up than the US Navy. There is a whole series of treates going back at least half a century, and a body of international admiralty law going back 500 years or more.
1. To code in the sea.
2. To live in sea.
3. To live by the code of sea.
Rrrrr, it be a pirates life for thee
Why is it that the really amusing articles and comments hit /. right after I use my last moderation point? Damn...
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
wow, living on cruise ship permanently with 600 other humans. just wait till the whole damn place comes down with some ghastly flu. then again.
and given to the pirate nature of this thing, I think in such a case, we should quaranteen the place offshore. let the local medical folks rake em over the coals to service them out at sea.
a couple of those incidents should scare off the smartest people, as well as leave some angst amonst those thinking about giving them a time-critical project.
I suppose it won't be hard to find 600 people on this planet who will take such a crappy job.
love boat, huh? well that show was stupid too
Imagine a passed over supertanker refitted with lots of small decks (a la being John Malkovitch). Fitted with UV lighting and irrigation many plants could be harvested in international waters. Customers would
arrive via boat.
Eventually some pissed govt sticks a torpedo in it.
It should be pretty easy to get a high power and supremely noisy transmitter to play havock with this threat to national security.
Might even make the pringles cans go 'POOF'
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"Delive ry dealine approaching!" "Chain the slaves to the keyboards!" "CODE!CODE!CODE!CODE!"
Furthermore, since I think Reagan, the US (unilaterally) declared that its waters extend for 200 miles: the first 6 miles belong to the state, and the rest 194 miles belong to federal government.
Either way, 3.5 offshore is not International waters.
First of all, the 3-nmi line serves only as the boundary between state- and federally-controlled waters. The end of federal jurisdiction and the beginning of International waters actually occurs at the line 12 nautical miles from shore.
The official 3- and 12-nmi lines are demarcated on the highest-resolution NOAA charts for a particular area. These charts can be hard to find on-line, though it is possible to find certain areas though various state GIS websites and such. I also think the NOAA is systematically making vector data of the lines available.
In the case of Catalina Island, it has it's own 12-nmi belt of territorial sea, but the space between it and the mainland (so long as it is at least 12 nmi from either shore) is International waters.
There is a belt extending 24-nmi from shore called the "Contiguous Zone", in which a nation may exercize authority mainly to enforce environment and customs regulations. This area is still considered Internation waters, however.
Considering I've had to swim in excess of 12 miles, I'd say that if the U.S. claims it is 3, we certainly understand that no one agrees with us.
- SEAL
Off shoring... in SPACE!!!!
Wow, you're athletic and you post on /.?!?!
Anyway, the way it is is those countries claim ownership to that many miles out, its not that they dispute where each other's waters begin and/or end.
But this just seems to be asking for a lot of trouble.
You raise a good point (-ed fanblad), what happens if the 600 software engineers make the pointy haired bosses walk the plank and sail off for Tahiti?
Call her the FSF Crimson Permanent Assurance, and you'd have a great movie and some killr appz!
Oh, come on. No one would hire child slave labor! Everyone knows child slaves are horrible at commenting their code.
You know what?
Slowly, we can start thinking of moving the whole silicon valley 'on cruise'.
BTW, do they supply telescopes to watch LA beaches. ;)
hilarious
It is unclear what is the advantage of having a bunch of nerds working on a ship 3 miles off the US coast, as opposed to having them work from an office in India or wherever.
Anyhow, the idea is not new. Some years ago a Dutch medical ship offered to perform abortions in international waters for countries where abortion was not allowed.
I don't have any idea where I'm remembering this from, but I seem to recall that, in international waters, you're bound by the laws of whatever country you're from, or whatever country the vessel is registered in, or whatnot.
I'm not sure getting 3 miles away from the coast puts you into a magical, law-free, no man's land.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
"Staff can make the three-mile voyage into town in their off hours by calling a water taxi. Or they can spend time shopping in the on-board duty-free shop."
I'm not sure how this would work. If they are in international waters because they didn't wanna be a part of the whole H1-B quotas etc., they don't have U.S. visas! So apparently they are stuck there, unless they're employer can get them flown to Mexico or somewhere else in the Carribean, in which case again they would need visas.
Dumb idea. Dumber in fact.
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?
The IRS will point out to the proprietors that, while it was an amusing idea the first time it was tried (decades ago -- "Hey, if we operate a casino on the high seas then we don't have to tax winnings!"), they're still responsible for federal income taxes on income earned in places America has no soverign jurisdiction over. Thats why, for example, I have to file a tax return every year from Japan. Of course, the ship could just try to ignore them, but they'd have bank accounts and shore leave in places where the long arm of the law reaches quite easily.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Actually, each country is different. The US claims 3 miles, some nations claim up to 12. 7s and google told me that.
Tell that to the US Third Fleet as a full carrier group pulls along side and warns you to prepare to be boarded. With about 200 planes, 180+ missiles, and 5" deck guns pointed your way, you're lible to listen.
Of course, that's only if we want to make them shit their pants. Otherwise the First Fleet (i.e. The Coast Guard) has more than enough power to raid and shutdown this operation. If I were them, I would hedge my political connections *very* carefully.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
This while idea sounds like the beginning of the plotline for a murder mystery/thriller/disaster movie.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
That's piracy, and covered under international law. They can make the US go down fucking hard for that one.
Anyway, the way it is is those countries claim ownership to that many miles out, its not that they dispute where each other's waters begin and/or end.
;)
Except in the case of North and South Korea
Beware the killer waves
Hey, can they take the boat off San Diego. I'd like to surf cortes reef 105 miles off the coast on my lunch break.
maybe you should have used your additional 23s to find http://www.csc.noaa.gov/opis/html/summary/ts.htm where noaa mentions reagan signing the 12 mile territorial claim in 1988 giving the US full sovereignty over that area. this was part of the 200 mile claim over fisheries and other rights.
Clicky
This guy is way out there
CIA Factbook
Maritime claims:
territorial sea: 12 nm
contiguous zone: 24 nm
exclusive economic zone: 200 nm
continental shelf: not specified
They got the picture of their "ship" off a postcard.
So this is offshoring for cheap labor - literally. XD
I wonder if they are somehow associated with the seaorg: http://www.xenu.net/archive/so/
Umm... no. The ship, being of US registry, can be confiscated and searched by US authorities. Not to mention that the US *has* enforced its borders beyond its 3 mile claim in the past.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
... a-a-b-b select start?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Which makes me wonder if a radio shack could set up shop just offshore and offer cheap wireless net access. Just an idea, please don't send a carrier group or two to "check me out".
In Stephenson's "Snow Crash" we have infomogul L Bob Rife fretting over his programmers going home with HIS precious intellectual property in their heads:
"See, it's the first function of any organization to control its own sphincters. We're not even doing that. So we're working on refining our management techniques so that we can control information no matter where it is--on our hard disks or even inside the programmers' heads."
His solution is... novel, and happens to involve ships in international waters.
This sounds oddly familiar. I'm not at all sure I'd take a job with these people.
Sea++.
Thank you. I'm here all week.
International law says you control (as a nation) all waters up to 3 miles from your coast exclusively. Ok, fine, but remember that international law is a set of loose agreements between nations. There's isn't an international government that comes in and enforces them. The US says no, we claim 12 nautical miles off our coast as territorial waters.
Now, if there was a ship registered to and flying the flag of another nations, perhaps the US respects the 3nm international convention. After all, if the US claimed they were subject to US law, their parent country would likely object. However in the case of these people, they've got no one to go to bat for them since they are claiming independant status. The US would be free to impose their laws, and it'd be legal under US law.
Not sure you could really do it thou, not if you want to be voted in again next term, or have any respect in the int. community.
"You can't simply shut down your propulsion system and drift in the sea lanes three miles off the LA coast."
If they are really talking about 200 miles out to sea (outside of the U.S. Economic Zone), yes, you can indeed shut down and drift as long as you want.
Inside, you can do the same, as long as you're not in a navigation channel. That covers a lot of territory, but then they'd be subject to other U.S. laws, which is what I think they want to avoid.
Heck, off the port of Humbolt on the Northern Californian coast, way out to sea, the ships actually ANCHOR out there, waiting for a spot to dock. It's a pretty odd site when you come up to them in the fog; it looks like a fleet out in the middle of the ocean.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
And they still can't get their stupid links working on their site.
RP
I rather doubt the Coast Guard or Navy will have any difficulty claiming jurisdiction over a vessel that is more or less permenently "anchored" within 200 miles of the U.S. coast.
You get to live on a cruise ship in international waters, and work "below the radar", so to speak. What a great way to lie low until the heat cools off. Shoot, forget running there AFTER the feds are looking for you, it seems like a great place from which to RUN all kinds of criminal activity.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
... then your head is skewered on a stake...
Surely if a SeaCoders gets ill he won't be denied health care. Heck it's only a three mile boat ride to a fine American hospital. And in order to be competitive, SeaCode won't offer health insurance. So get ready to get boned out of your job, while taking some other low paying job without health care subsidizing SeaCoder's health plan through US taxes. Why not just cut out the boat and offer that to American workers.
Scurvy.
-- Mace only makes me hornier.
Time to study Greenpeace tactics. How about a big "international waters" radio signal jammer? Who they gonna sue? It will belong to the Floating Geek Nation, and we have no courts.
Table-ized A.I.
Furthermore, doesn't this venture sound like a geek-cruise
http://www.geekcruises.com/ gone bad?
This would make an interesting reality TV show where once a week
a coder is voted off and has to walk a gang-plank to sleep with the phishes.
"You ARE weakest geek...Goodbye."
Think Gillivan's Island meets The Aprentice meets MTV's The Real World
and call it: The Virtual World
Actually, United States territory extends to wherever the hell they want - atleast according to George W. Bush.
Check out the HTML! They're so lame that they didn't fix the TITLE tag!!
sailing the ship to india seems a bit expensive. on the other hand if they stay a few miles off of LA, the indian coders will need to fly into LA, get admitted into the US, and then take a boat to their cruise ship. something tells me the immigration officers at LAX will not like that.
in addition to that, if they want to go anywhere once they are on the ship they have to either enter the US without a visa, which is a felony and will get you banned for 10 years, or find a way to get a visa while on the ship. good luck!
Dev elpizw tipota, dev phoboumai tipota eimai lephteros http://euclidian.org
mitch
Dude, it's a cruise ship. Have there been any of those of US registry in the past half-century?
Wikipedia says that the 24 nm "territorial waters" limit is for "smuggling and illegal immigration." The main purpose behind this SeaCode idea is so that they can get talented foreign workers without having to go through HB1 visas (Worker visas for technical workers.) They said that all of the workers would still have travel visas, however, so they could go to shore. I'm not sure how the immigration law plays out in this respect and I wasn't able to find out after a couple minutes of websurfing.
Yes and No... Most of the current law is based on the historical treaties, but the US is not a signatory to the UN Convention Law of the Sea, which set up the modern boundaries, and therefore just about every point about "International Law" is moot. The US does claim similar boundaries as UNCLOS, but the only thing backing these up are the Coast Guard, Navy, and other segments of the military.
Stuck on a ship at sea with 599 other programmers? Kill me now.
What happens when the US Coast Guard or the US Navy kindly asks you to leave US territorial waters? It's tough to argue with .50 caliber bullets and governments don't suffer such insulting gestures to their sovereignty. The aforementioned SeaLand off the coast of Britain had the same problems. Even if the government nearest you puts up with it what happens when you piss off some other country? They have destroyers, submarines, torpedoes, and aircraft. They will come and blow your ass right out of the water if you thumb your nose at them.
Here's what I'd like to see.
Week 1: Operations launch. Works getting done. Going well.
Week 2: Work is better.
Week 3: Pirates came in and confiscated all our computers and electronic equipment. Called the coast guard. I think I heard them laughing in the background.
Week 4: We've drifted into China due to a complete lag of navigation or ship control systems. I, for one, welcome our new communist overlords.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I've wanted to do something similiar on a small scale for a *long* time now, I run my own consultancy and do most of my work for clients remotely, there's no real reason I need to be land based to do any of that stuff, so I started looking into maybe buying a houseboat on a local river, with the advent of wireless internet it was entirely practical to do so, and I thought that I could travel up and down the river and drop anchor closer to clients and thus have a shorter commute in the event that I ever did need to make onsite visits. That turned out to be a fairly feasible idea with no obvious gotchas, you run diesel generators for excess power requirements with a large battery pack hooked up to solar and wind generators, and you're fairly self sufficient when it comes to low end energy requirements.
This is from a twenty five year old guy that had lived all his life on land, and I have to say I consider myself a fairly practical person, so something about the entire idea just kept hitting me the wrong way, it had that "no, this is pie in the sky, it can't happen" feeling to it, and I just couldn't figure out why. I went into dramatic levels of detail in speccing out the lifestyle, you can purchase water generators which will create freshwater from seawater using nothing but energy (provided from the aforementioned power infrastructure) and there's plenty of storage room in a houseboat for food, which is pretty much the only thing you cannot harvest directly from your immediate environment.
That last statement triggered my attention and I thought, well, what about the ocean? What does it really take to make ocean passages on the high seas? or even just clinging to the eastern coast of Australia? If all the provisioning you've done so far works for a houseboat, why wouldn't it work for an oceangoing vessel?
So I looked into that some more, and found it very interesting indeed, there's an entire subculture, admittedly mostly of retired people, that live onboard their sailing yachts, travelling the world mostly at leisure. They had all the facilities that I had imagined you would need for a life at sea, large capacity batteries, solar and wind generators, backup diesel capacity, watermakers, etc etc etc, and lived almost entirely self sufficiently, travelling where they wished, when they wished.
This sounded like a pretty ideal lifestyle to me, I'm actually currently in the process of saving up enough money to buy a suitable vessel for precisely this purpose, investigating further I found that catamarans provided a very good level of stability and comparitively low preparation time, as monohull vessels would tend to have a more severe angle of keel whilst under passage, catamarans were a better choice for a real working environment.
The only remaining hurdles are *absolute* global internet access, and raising enough money to buy the catamaran itself, I've tentatively decided on a Perry 57 catamaran, as I figure if I intend to spend the rest of my life on a vessel, I had best get something I'm not soon going to tire of.
I hope by the time I purchase the vessel broadband global satellite access may be a step closer to reality, if not it will likely be mostly hugging various coasts for doing actual real work rather than wandering the ocean blue at a moments notice and entirely on a whim, but even that is a hell of a lot more freedom than a five day a week desk job back on terra firma.
All I can say is, it sounds crazy, but it isn't. The only reason I can come up with that this deep seated belief that it really is insane remains with me is that we're conditioned from birth to believe that the infrastructure modern society and government provides us with in order to aid our survival is so complex that we could never hope to sever that link, because if a large amount of people really did do this, it would greatly reduce the current "democratic" and utilitarian justifications for the absolute power of modern government.
Don't take my word for it, though, if you're feeling restless, ill at ease, whatever, investigate it yourself, you may be pleasantly surprised at the results of your enquiries.
informative.. thanks :)
if the boat moved around. i'd take a pay cut to spend my offtime in the bahamas.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
What Carnival does is to cycle employees through the Miami head office (whoa, that's not the HEAD office, for tax purposes, of course, it's just where... well, all the heads are) and the employees will do "training" for six weeks or a month and then, maybe, go visit a ship for an afternoon to collect their "training pay."
Of course, they don't work on the ship, and they are staying in a hotel in Miami, sometimes for two years at a stretch, but that's one way that Carnival employees people.
When it becomes inconvenient to even pay this lipservice to the rules, they don't. Illegal foreign employees are a dime a dozen. And H1B's? Don't even consider them -- they're passe, Carnival uses nothing but the latest worker visas allowing "training."
Two floors of lawyers means that Carnival doesn't have to obey the same rules that everybody else does.
And no, they don't pay taxes on the vast, vast majority of their earnings. Hey, it wasn't earned in the US. And their "head office" is in Panama. Welcome to America.
Using the handy-dandy "WHOIS", I noticed that the site was registered by a "John Goetsch". I then GOOGLED "John Goetsch" and SeaCode and got this information about him: Here's his personal bio Mr. Goetsch is a parachute instructor in Orange, MA; but a "software geek" at heart. Further information HERE would make me think this is a real idea, but in its earlier stages.
That's my [educated] guess, at least.
Just a ploy to keep the meddling wives even further away from EA employees...
Anyone else think it a bit suspicious that the CEO's last name is Cook?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
What exactly happens when the order situation goes to hell? Someone dies? Someone gets raped? Thefts?
I could not read anywhere that they would have their own police. And if they have that planned, who will police the police?
Dont make a better sig, you insensitive clod!
Doesn't surprise me, I've been planning an escape from irritating government interference in my business by running to international waters for years. A company just decided to make it their gimmick.
Foreign registed ships have the right to employ foreigners without local visas, within both the 200 mile economic zone & the 12 mile line.
Next idea: outsourced programmers in submarines -- 20,000 megabytes under the sea.
-cbare
While this is a cool idea, and something I've pondered myself (it would be very hard to make it work), I think you guys have been trolled.
There is some merit to the idea (or at least varients of it), though. What's to stop someone from buying an old aircraft carrier, refitting it, and declaring it a sovereign nation? It would probably be difficult to get large nations to recognize it, but that wouldn't necessarily be a problem.
Of course, I'm far from the first to have such an idea, but I haven't seen anyone else suggesting that such a vessel could or should be a sovereign nation. Maybe I'm just crazy. Crazy like a fox!
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
remove the hyphen from their domain name. Idiots.
Foreign registed ships have the right to employ foreigners without local visas, within both the 200 mile economic zone & the 12 mile line
As they'd be working for the ship's owners they'd be consided ships crew regardless of what they do. Just as when a ships' owner comes aboard with his own personal staff for a trip, or the owners' fleet management people are onboard on a trip, they have the same status as ships' crew when in foreign waters & ports.
Excuse me, I'm filling out a patent application...
They don't need H1B if they are not going to work in the US. Toursit visas are much easier to get...
But I just can't believe it will really work. I mean, they either have to fly some country's flag, or really be without government -- fly the Jolly Roger. I don't see a bright future for total anarchy.
The overall hack of being physically near one country while technically being in another one, though, probably does have some great applications.
I can't help but think of doing something opposite of what these guys are doing: as a US citizen, I wonder if there might be some advantage to being technically employed in, say, some near-anarchist African country, while still getting to live in USA (but with a 12 mile commute by boat, instead of having to fly across the globe). One of the shitty things about most government services, is that you're not allowed to opt out of the ones you don't like. Maybe if you could "shop" for jurisdictions in which to have your income happen, things would be a lot nicer.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Wouldn't want these to sink the project.
... near-shoring.
Because the US is special and international law doesn't apply to them:
"In 1999, U.S. agencies were empowered by presidential proclamation to enforce American law up to 24 miles (39 km) offshore"
Free BSD versus Windows XP
XP: Has the most advanced and easy to use GUI available.
FreeBSD: Has no GUI of note.
XP: Supported by the world's largest and most trusted software company.
FreeBSD: Supported by some losers who got kicked off of the 386BSD core team
XP: Available for free preinstalled on computers from every major manufacturer.
FreeBSD: Available for free as an unstable source release that you have to compile yourself in C and then manually build your own base system.
XP: Stable and reliable, and scalable from the desktop to the datacenter.
FreeBSD: Basically unusable due to major bugs. And it doesn't fix FreeBSD's SMP problems, so don't worry about running it on your server.
XP: Everyone else uses it, so it has all the popular software.
FreeBSD: It runs...uh...vi...and...uhm...thats it actually...
XP: Microsoft has a licensing agreement with SCO, so all SCO IP is fully licensed when you buy a licensed copy of XP!
FreeBSD: You may be liable for the same $699 licensing fee as linux users if you use it, after all, Microsoft is already paying licensing fees for the same code.
XP: Alive
FreeBSD: Dead
As you can see, Free BSD is the clear choice!
SeaWhores.
*clap* *clap* *clap*
Just the potential wordplays might be worth it...
um... you do realize it's a freaking pleasure ship, pleasure being the primary word here. The entire boat was designed for people to have fun on, you make it sound like a jail.
The pleasure does not derive from the ship itself, it derives from the crew that is there to care for you and to provide you with luxury. The pleasure also derives from the ship being something new and different.
If you want a ship that is a more appropriate comparison think the navy. You get food, quarters, laundry, exercise room, etc. Yet the chaplains have to keep an eye out for the kids on their first cruise getting suicidal. A shipboard workplace gets old very fast.
for trying something different. hell i hope it works. without large corperate taxes to pay they can put that money back into hiring top noth developers and charge a fair rate for their quality services. hell i'd work for them. if the contract is right i'd sign it. if they treat me badly i just walk away (swim perhaps). if they got out of hand 500 -600 angry workers will be a force to be reckoned with. watch them hold to our demand as we start pushing pointy heads over board
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
how will they take care of sea-sickness? what about scurvy? they aer already a bunch of pasty things!
Manojar - pronounced like Manager
I'd be interested to hear how they get enough internet bandwidth out there to satisfy 600 nerds in the middle of the ocean. I'm also surprised to hear that 3.1 miles is enough as the U.S. enforces 230 miles of control, not 3.1 miles.
Arr! We be coding on the high seas!
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
Too bad International Waters was extended to 15 miles out from the coast not that long ago...
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
UV lighting would kill your plants in no time. chlorophile absorbs in the visible spectrum, the most around the yellow wavelength IIRC.
Besides, you can just grow pot in your own backyard, or some out-of-sight land nobody seems to care about/look after.
Or if you want it more expensive: do the indoor cultivation thing and only use the stuff for yourself, lots of people do it that way.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/22/news-reed.php I think is the same story. I haven't compared them that much.
... four empty torpedo tubes, 600 more jobs for American programmers.
Now it's Miller Time!
...Programmers Wanted
;)
Good Rates
Free Food
Free Accomodation
Must have C experience
This seemed relevant, somehow.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
Would you do bussiness with a company that tries hard to screw over their government?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yarr sayeth me--if ye think that ye gets a console with named buttons, then ye be overly optimistic. Neigh--what is nigh for ye is an atari with dirty paddle controllers...and a copy of pac man
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
The UN-sponsored Law of the Sea Treaty, which went into effect in 1994, codified territorial waters of 12 nautical mi (13.8 mi/22.2 km) and an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical mi (230 mi/370 km). In 1999, U.S. agencies were empowered by presidential proclamation to enforce American law up to 24 miles (39 km) offshore, doubling the previous limit.
google and 30s tells you that Texas is an exception, using old spanish laws (you get special privleges when joining the US if you come from a position of total sovreinity). http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography- book/coastalzone.htm:
By 1975 the Texas Coastal Management Program had defined the Texas coastal zone as "southwest along the coast from the Sabine to the Rio Grande, seaward into the Gulf of Mexico for a distance of 10.35 miles (9 nautical miles, which was originally 3 leagues under Spanish law), and inland to include 36 counties." (Handbook of Texas)
So, the US was empowered by the leader of the US, to enforce US law within some arbritary area...
I can't see peace-and-harmony lasting long if the leaders of other countries around the world decided to change their legal boundaries.
And what about hurricanes? Who will airlift these guys without visa?
Being in international waters does not actually mean anything. States do not abide by (international) laws because they have to or feel a moral obligation to do so; they do so because they think they'll be better off in the end by doing so.
So it really depends on two things:
1) How much would the USA gain if it ignored the fact that it's international waters and cracked down on this? (Or, phrased differently, how much would they lose if they decided to not do anything?)
2) How much of a fuss/public outcry/diplomatic incident would there be if they did?
Ultimately, if they decide that the benefits outweigh the risks, they WILL crack down on this. And if you think that you can just tell the soldiers entering your ship that you're in international waters and that they have no right to do what they do, then you're naive. (Well, of course, you CAN tell them, but don't expect more than something along the lines of "cry me a river".)
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
National territory goes out 12 miles. I hope they don't quit their day jobs. ay
The RIAA was reported to be in negotiations to purchase a "kilo" class submarine from the former Soviet Union.
A spokesman for the RIAA said that while they could afford it, a nuclear sub was not necessary. "We will only be going out three miles or so, so a diesel sub will do just fine".
"A 24-hour-a-day programming shop" indeed.
Nobody quits... in fact, nobody ever leaves!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
For the record I am a Protestant so I have no vested interest in who the pope is or what he does.
That being said you should know he was conscripted in to the Army out of the Hitler youth and deserted his unit rather than serving for Hitler.
Why clone Unix when I can clone Windows instead. http://www.reactos.org
...through due process of law. But should hang them and those of that ilk. Indict, try, convict, sentence, and execute. As economic traitors. For economic treason. It's all about the political consciousness, man. We just need another constitutional amendment.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Real software pirates loot the SeaCode!
No. It's not THAT far! It's only about 26 miles!
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
The ship, being of US registry, can be confiscated and searched by US authorities.
What makes you think they'll be using a US registered ship??? DOH! I been on several cruise ships, none registered to the US.
Just another day in Paradise
But you can't play pac-man with the paddle contro...
ohhhhhh...
Or did everyone else who saw their website have the theme from the "Love Boat" going threw their head?
"We address a lot of the gotchas -- security issues, intellectual property rights."
A ship full of computer equipment is anchored just outside of US territorial waters. It has every modern form of communications equipment on board. It is close to many defense contractors and military bases. It is populated by foreign nationals with technical training. This is much too reminiscent of the KGB cold war "fishing fleet". The three-letter government agencies surely will be interested in what really goes on aboard that ship.
If they operate beyond US labor laws can they expect to any privacy protections, such as court orders for wire(less) taps and sanctions against industrial espionage? If they claim to be beyond immigration laws, how will US "IP" laws protect the clients?
It sounds like a bad plot for a 007 movie. Or is it an off-shore "phishing trip" for gullible PHBs?
"Hunkered down on a North Sea fortress, a crew of armed cypherpunks, amped-up networking geeks, and libertarian swashbucklers is seceding from the world to pursue a revolutionary idea: an offshore, fat-pipe data haven that answers to nobody."
This sounds like one of those chain letters that play on people's fears and misconceptions. Many in developed countries believe it is easy to hire highly qualified foreigners and they would accept any conditions. The reality is very different. A case in point is Germany's professional visa program. The hords of professionals lining up to get a visa did not materialize. It managed to fill about half of the available slots. The program likely failed because applicants had no hope of eventualy obtaining a permanent visa. People don't like uprooting their families if they know they will be forced back within a few years. It is easier to attract professionals to the US because there is an expectation they can stay. This story about confining highly qualified professionals on a ship sounds bogus.
I am amazed that they can actually turn this into a profitable venture with the cost of the cruise ship along with the cost of fuel and consumables.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
If this takes off I'm going to start a business to supprot their staff.
I'm thinking that they'll probably have several hundred programmers. Given the current environment, they'll be about 90% male. They won't be able to enter the US because of their status.
I think running a boatload (literally) of women to them on payday is a guaranteed money maker.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
is this a GeekCruise then?
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Attention Capitalists:
Welcome to the logical result of your dogma. Free trade and the race to the bottom. McCarthy did such a wonderful job on your country.
The government -- which is supposed to be of, by and for the people -- has been replaced as a body to be mistrusted. This mistrusted body is then made impotent to all but a trade regulation body lead by the Plutocracy.
A boat full of nickle-paid-coders off your coast? WHAT ELSE DID YOU EXPECT! Trade, like the economy, has to be regulated to produce desireable results (like, employment, a middle class, worker-safety). Willfully abandoning tarrifs and other mechanisms to influence International Trade has lead you to the a place where you cannot prevent this behaviour.
Why cant you prevent it? because the Oligarchy rules your government (it is your government) and the population is so attached to their American Capitalism Religion(TM) that anyone who suggests its out-of-control is burned at the stake (like Im about to be).
So, in short, Americans, time to start reaping what you have sown.
On a side note, the web site says there will be 600 "world-class" software engineers. Just how big *is* this World Class? Seems like everybody's got some.
meh. weird suits ... is there anyone who actually would like to work on that ship?
why not use a old oil drilling platform instead of an old cruise ship?
just my 0.02 EUR
Yeah, it worked well for all those James Bond villians.
"No prints can come from fingers / If machines become our hands." -- Jack Johnson
Food, health, entertainment, contraband... and recruiting workers from small island nations. It's the rare soul who can last over 6 months at sea without a break.
When you have to lie to make a point, it's not much of a point.
Even if this is a dumb idea for offshoring IT, who's to say Wal-Mart won't arm-twist their suppliers into setting up floating sweatshops? That way they can screw the americans AND the chinese!
Maybe they would commute from home ?
http://www.freedomship.com/
And of course, try prooving that you didn't "drift" inside that 3 mile boundary.
Especially if you are Just skirting it.
Oh, we're sorry, you drifted into territorial waters according to our GPS, and ours are much more accurate than yours. We're going to have to seize your ship.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Why not do it in the gulf instead? You could moored near one of the offshore rigs and use natural gas right from it for power. Or even better find an old off shore rig that has run dry of oil but still has gas and put them on that :)
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
EEZ is only 200 nanometres?? Wow...watch where you point that UV source.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
26 miles from the coast to Catalina != 26 miles from LA to Catalina.
I am thinking I may have found a perfectly legal and good reason to write off my next cruise. Thank you Sea Code!
Summary: corporations owe to the state, state owes to the people, and so corporation owe to the people.
The logic needs to go a bit further bit further -- where do the people get their riches? Without employers (mostly corporations), the people would have no money. Without consumer goods makers and retailers (mostly corporations), the money paid by a job would have no value. So the people owe their riches to the corporations and we have come full circle.
The point is that economies are mutually dependent networks with no simple linear chain of who owes whom. I'm not saying the current balance of power is right, only that people are dependent on corporations and corporations are dependent on people.
Seeking profit does not necessitate a race to the bottom on wages. Henry Ford knew that if he could make his workforce more productive he would both create wealthier workers and create a product those workers could afford. Ford paid higher wages than other companies at the time and was rewarded with high productivity. Ford also designed systems to make those worker vary productive so that the amount of high-wage cost per car was low and the car was affordable to a great many people (including Ford's own workers).
If any company or country wants to compete on the world market its need to find a way to create more value than costs. Yes, cut-rate wages can avoid costs and some companies try to go that route, but it is a dead end. Smarter companies find a way to create greater value per unchanged unit of cost (Ford actual increased wages) and then use greater productivity, greater efficiency, and better products to create extraordinary value.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
1. Claim another island somewhere in international waters.
2. Declare war on on the "prince of sealand" for being a "looney"
3. He will fire some warning shots from his battlecruiser, sorry dingy.
4. Using your L337 nerd skills, you send wave after wave of GPS guided RC planes with thermite/chlorine bombs.
5. Proclaim yourself emperor of two countries.
6. Sell sealand to the UK.
7. Profit
If they'd just cruise the baby around the world for a year or so I'm sure they could get a boat-load (ha) of programmers who'd be happy to work for a very low wage. I'd be tempted to work for low pay for a year in exchange for the opportunity to see the world and travel to exotic locations. Slogan: See the world, meet interesting people, and replace them with small shell scripts!
I find laziness to be an excellent motivator.
and therefore just about every point about "International Law" is moot.
Only to rogue states like the USA. The civilized world has a different opinion.
Ever try reading a book as a passenger in a car? What happens to you?
Now, imagine a computer screen and a gently rocking boat, and a programmer's work week. You'd need an IV drip bottle of Dramamine to survive this gig.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
This might actually work. Sort of a portable office building. If the US authorities started getting annoying, up anchor and move somewhere more friendly. Or just find a calm spot in the middle of the ocean and hover.
It would be really convenient for supplying employee perks that you could never think of here, like women.
They don't want US labor laws, but they do want: "...including the protection of U.S. Intellectual Property laws..." How convenient. Lets pick and choose which laws we want to be covered by.
Still, I like the concept. It could be expanded. You could build a floating condominium outside US jurisdiction. That has lots of interesting possibilities.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"And how long do they think coders are willing to stay on this ship before they _need_ some R&R? I'd say max 4 weeks. What then? How do they get visas so they can visit LA? And how do they get back to LA anyway? What about productivity and retaining workers?"
What R&R do computer nerds need? The ship will be one huge LAN party so they can frag each other after work. All of their female companionship will come in the standard geek form known as Internet pr0n. The supply ships can fill up with cold pizza and sodas so that part is covered.
I'm only wondering if the designers thought about the most significant byproduct of hard-core computer geeks. Body odor which is never washed away (as that would require bathing).
what it takes to operate a ship.
This is getting old really fast. I know it has been brought up before, but I think that we geeks ought to start organizing in some manner. If someone can pull a barge three miles out and call that off-shoring, what is next? Flying Call Centers?
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Even if you ignore the issue of the 3 mile versus 12 mile territorial water, and the fact that any company using them would be exposing themselves to massive risk (e.g. what happens when the company runs out of money / ship sinks due to hurricane etc) there is still the problem of letting the staff visit the USA for shore leave. Most of these folks would be coming from countries that do not have visa-waivers (do those still even exist post 9/11 ?), such as the UK. This means they would either have to get a visa for every time they wanted to visit the USA, which they're not going to get, or get a multiple entry visa, which again, in a lot of cases, they're not going to get. So it would be extremely difficult for the vast majority of the staff to visit the USA... unless they chose to enter via Mexico of course...
Yes, you are bound to the laws of the vessel is registred (the ship flag). That is why most ships are registered in Panama and Bermuda.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
"Staff can make the three-mile voyage into town in their off hours by calling a water taxi."
I smell something rotten here. Specifically the usage of the word "staff".
I smell a number of things rotten here, including the fact that the "entrepreneur" (or article writer) hasn't a fucking clue about international waters, which extend twelve miles from shore, not 3. This is the 21st century, not the 19th, and maritime law may not have changed much, but the definition of "international waters" has.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
...they be Software Pirates, matey! Arrrgg!
They be coding in Sea#! Arrrggg.
Instead of Blackberry, they be using Blackbeard. Arrrggg.
Shiver me compiler! HO YO a pirates life for me!
*click**beep**beep* Scotty, One to Mod up!
I'm sure that any such ship would have a tough time keeping the local marine life such as seals from causing, ummm, mechanical difficulties. Thus forcing said ship into the nearest port (and subject to closer inspection).
Bah dum dum TCHSSSSSHHHHHH!!!!
Karma: NaN
Hell have a drug cruise. People can do what ever drugs they want to. Its international waters, go crazy. The deuling room. Prostitution. Its like a trip to the ghetto without all the cops.
"brxref
I for one just want to see 600 software engineers muntiny agaist their managers, just once!
I think this is a great idea, and if it works for these guys I bet all those old unused oil platforms could quickly turn into off shore software and/or manufacturing plants of various goods. As far as people getting sick cause of being on a boat, that completely depends on the person. I take boat trips regularly and have no problem reading or doing work on my laptop. The issue with visas is a non issue cause the only thing people on this tub will need to come to the US is a tourist visa which is easy to get if you got no criminal record in your own country. As far as the difficulty of running a ship these guys are retired navy and one was a tanker captain so I'm pretty sure they know what it takes to run a ship. I hope these guys succeed, this is the kind of entrepreneurial ship that makess this country great. So go ahead and flame me cause I support people with innovative ideas.
WTF?
Or does anyone else picture Orc's weilding whips screaming "CODE! CODE!" while cracking those whips.
"Oh your project is going to run over schedule? Walk the plank!"
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
They don't need no stink'n diesel for their power! In their off hours they can power peddle powered generators! They can also have smaller models under the desk. Those extra pounds their developers have will melt right off! They could also sell slim down plans to all of the fat sl^h^h^h^h^h^hoverweight people in Los Angeles.
Check out http://www.freedomship.com/ 1 mile (nearly) of telecommuters omg!
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
And then, just when it's getting really interesting, you're beginning to wonder what the world'll be like tomorrow, the shipboard printing house runs out of paper and ink so we don't have many pages left and stuff goes boom and the bad guys die. The end!
(Sorry, Neal. If you're reading this, I still loved the book. But a little cuddle after the climax wouldn't have killed ya, would it? :)
Let's hear it for the return of the company store! By charging for room and board, toiletries, the company store, over priced drinks at the lounge, plane ticket to LAX (+ interest, and don't forget to hand over your passport when you get on board) and by making the water taxi very expensive, they'll never get out of indentured servitude!
It's a capitalist's wet dream....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Last time I remember we shipped in really cheap labor was from Africa just before a horrible war broke out. If my memory serves me correctly, it wasn't very humane then, just as it isn't very humane now either. Corporate greed must not have learned this history lesson.
Be sure to remember the Programmers Prayer
Humanitarily speaking, since they are not actually in any country, who protects the rights of those 600 laboring software engineers?
As long as most jobs aren't handled this way, those people have a choice. If they don't want to do this, they don't have to.
Hell, I'd love to go out there, and live in international waters, and not worry that I might suddenly be thought of as a terrorist.
Sysadmin for Hire!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Well the s*** has hit the fan! Its been hard enough to get tech contract in the US, now this! This proves why we countrys see us as loud dumb hicks. allowing companies to freely piddle away jobs to other countries for profit and bypass laws. And whers our goverment? Neck deep in corporate americas ass! Lobbyists pumping cash and gifts to keep that gravy train goin! Wake up America! b4 you end up like that homeless person you try to ignore on you way to where ever. What comes around goes around!
Oh God, where's the +1 Groan moderation? ;)
... to a time where piracy can literally be a bunch of scalliwags swinging with ropes to the deck of another ship to steal its booty. :)
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Yes, the US can enforce laws out further than that. On the other hand, you don't need a work visa if you work on a ship that just happens to anchor in territorial waters.
How this falls out depends on what politicians make of it. They can prohibit this sort of conduct and send the coast guard to send the ship packing, or they can actually view it as a reasonable political compromise that doesn't force them to touch the H1b issue one way or another.
I suspect that, if this ever were to become a big thing commercially, inaction and silent toleration would be the preferred course for most politicians. Only if it looked like it became a media debacle would they likely start acting.
Sealands legal status as an actual soveriegn nation is actually debatable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealand#Legal_statusl
but just to stay on topic. Sealands "Prince" has invited a computer securities company to work from the island to avoid legal hassles(like copyright laws) of being in a real countrie http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven.htm
look out for them software pirates, arr.
If you thought software pirates were bad, wait until you see the real deal!
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
""If you go to India, some incredibly talented women [developers] have a very difficult time getting a job." In contrast, Cook says, his company specifically plans to hire some percentage of women to take advantage of that overlooked talent pool."
Yeah right. What do you know about India, Cookie monster?
India has had women prime ministers several times over, and no where is a woman stopped in technical field. While your country is still wondering if you will have a woman president in the next 30 years.
But cookie boy is just talking like any other idiot in US who does not know anything other than what fox tv feeds them - or what their green-card seeking wife from some thirdworld country told them.
whatever.
The guys who thought this idea up are similar to those who tried offshore casinos. The problems are mostly legal. For one thing, where do you register the ship? If the ship is registered in the USA then it's part of the US legal system and visas are required so that's out. But if it's registered in a foreign country (say... Panama or Liberia) then there are certain legal niceties that have to be observed. And the Panamanians (or Liberians) may have something to say about who works aboard that ship and what sorts of licenses or documentation they carry.
And if the US gets really pissed then you may find other restrictions. Like the 3-mile limit is really a 12-mile limit. Oh, wait.. there is an economic zone that extends 200 miles out. Providing food or a crew change 3 miles out isn't so hard... but 200 miles out gets beyond the useful range of helicopters and you begin to need crew boats (with LOTS of sicksacks) and offshore supply vessels (one reason offshore drilling costs millions a day).
And ocean waves, even off California, can be BIG and ships, including those with stabilizers, need to be moving in order to position themselves to ride those waves safely. Otherwise they just roll around in the trough (more sicksacks). This means that the ship has to either be dynamically positioned (with thrusters and computers and GPS - not cheap to retrofit onto a used cruise ship) or just keep underway all the time. And there goes the fuel bill right up the smokestack.
The idea is so bizarre that I suspect it's a holdover from someone's April Fool joke.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
If you're BOTH hard working and knowledgeable, nobody would dare take away your job. Problem is you're maybe not one of the two you mentioned you are...
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
People get wealth from work. Workers are the source of all wealth. Employers simply leach off the workers, doing no real work and providing no real value. All they do is lend money, which they wouldn't have had in the first place if they weren't leaching. People have become dependent on corporations, but that doesn't have to be so. On the other hand, corporations are legal fictions who owe their existence entirely to the state and thus the people. So no, it isn't a nice, evenly balanced co-dependency. We made them up and if they don't serve us, we can get rid of them.
Originially, corporations were very limited. They would be dissolved upon the death of the last founding member. They could only do the business they were chartered to do, in the area they were chartered to do it. They are essentially fiefdoms without the checks and balances that real fiefdoms have such as being tied to the land and the people that live there.
You can say in theory that seeking profit does not necessitate a race to the bottom in wages, but look at what happens in practice. The vast majority of corporations take the easy route and do everything they can to cut wages and other labor costs. How many US companies offer full medical coverage now, or pensions? Not as many as used to offer them, that's for sure. Real wages here have been stagnant for years while the rich have been getting richer. And We The People set up this system. If it isn't working for us, we can tear it down and try something else.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
... sharks in the water. Our shark.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
Here's a company that uses a geographically-distributed business model to hire the best programmers. Their coders are in the USA, but the company doesn't have to pay top-dollar. How do they do this? They hire people in lower-cost areas. Not every brilliant programmer works in the bay area. Check 'em out here.
The site appears to be down, but here's a Google cache of the article.
I'd be willing to do this as long as the pay/timescale was reasonable (20k for 6 months and they charge nothing for room and board and this in a clear contract enforced by who?). Would I be required to pay taxes on it? that would impact my decision. Even if I had to leave the money in offshore accounts to avoid taxation it would be tempting. 6 months with no expenses and 20 thousand would almost make it worthwhile (provided they were trustworthy hah)
So, employees will be beyond the reach of labor laws, in a location to which the company controls all access, and where the company owns the store and all the utilities.
Boy, that's going to be one-sided.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I sit here typing at a terminal where each keystoke forces a robot running in India to hit an identical keystroke on its terminal, a camera shows me the robot's terminal screen on my lcd projector, my paychecks are deposited directly to my back account and thus I have virtually offshored myself to India and get US tax free india wages.
Science fiction at best but doctors are doing remote operations now.
The only benefits I see are avoiding payroll taxes and when staff go on-shore to LA or SD they can come over as a short-term visitor. Many people can visit this country with just a passport for a short stay or with an easy to get visitor visa, which I think is good for 90 days each time you come over. Obviously, it makes it easier for the off-shore contracting company to visit employees, too. Rather than go to India it's just a short trip to see the actual production facility. I think it's a really good idea!
Will this be how "The Raft" from Snow Crash gets started? Those poor programmers have to live on a damned boat? And, when the Raft drifts close to shore, I wonder how many of them will try to make a break for the mainland.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States has claimed 12 nautical miles of territorial waters, which is roughly 13.8 miles.
Have fun being only a quarter of the way out.
All your searching needs (and free money!) - 4Lancer.net
If one were to go thru the logistical trouble of setting up a "permanent" off-shore facility like this, why wouldn't you do something more profitable, like a casino, or brothel? Is the problem with that the cost of the ferry to get customers?
Might as well toss in a high-power pirate radio station while you are at it too, LA is a big market. How about a TV station too...
Seems to me there must be some reason this stuff hasn't been done before.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
As a landlubber with good science background, I read nm as "nano meters". That would surely simplify the task of patrolling our maritime territory.
Where you been for the last 4 years? ANY ship, person, vehicle or sovereign country can be confiscated and searched by US authorities. :-)
This is SO ripped of from Neal Stephensons Snowcrash... They just have to attach lots of floating junk and watch out for the aleut...
I thought the EEZ extended out to 200 miles these days...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
4) Unauthorized broadcasting
So it will be illegal for them to distribute "pirated" software and mp3s. The coast guard could sail out their to enforce things.
because, according to the US law you are taxed on your worldwide income. The same is true for US resident aliens (unless a tax treaty has special clasuses).
People get wealth from work. Workers are the source of all wealth.
The second sentence does not follow from the first, assuming that the first is even true. The output of any given individual worker is not really worth anything unless that worker (or someone connected to that worker) can find a market or consumer of their work product. In an idyllic era of agrarian output or simple hand-crafted products, it may have been possible for individual workers to sell their individual work. But the increasing sophistication of both products and services in the modern world mean that individual workers are valueless without some entity to coordinate, connect, and manage a grouo of workers who each contribute an individually value-less effort to a collectively-valueable output. As governments have proven horribly inept at managing workforces, it falls on the shoulders of managers in corporations to provide that valuable service. What corporations do is create an organized structure that efficiently connects workers to work and work output to markets.
If corporations really were mere leaches, why wouldn't workers leave and go into business for themselves? In a world in which corporations add no value, any individual worker would be able to undercut the price charged by a corporation because that worker would not have to add the leach's fees and profits into the price. The answer is three-fold. First, many workers do start small businesses that grow and inevitably recreate the corporate structure of management and workers. Second, some work is not individualizable -- building an automobile requires the coordinated effort of hundreds or thousands of people. In this case, corporations provide value in management. Third, individuals often lack capital for equipment, start-up costs, etc. -- and capital is hard (in-efficient) to raise in small quantities. Corporations provide a convenient, cost-effective way of raising and managing capital.
You can say in theory that seeking profit does not necessitate a race to the bottom in wages, but look at what happens in practice. The vast majority of corporations take the easy route and do everything they can to cut wages and other labor costs.
I blame "The People" for this. How many people buy the lowest price whatever with no regard for the management practices of the company that made the product? There are companies that try to treat their workers well, but does that translate into more sales? Instead, 100 million people shop at Wal-Mart everyday despite the well-known wage and benefits practices of that company. For a company, a competitor to Wal-mart or a supplier to Wal-Mart, the choice is clear, the people have spoken. The People want cheap goods and will gladly go to another company to buy them. Faced with a choice between closing the factory because nobody will buy high-priced goods or cutting wages & benefits, most sane, ethical, and moral managers chose the cuts.
How many US companies offer full medical coverage now, or pensions?
Defined benefit pensions are a deathtrap for a company and that fact will only get worse as the Baby Boomers age. Look at the old steel companies in this country to see what happens when the retiree population exceeds the employee population. Companies can read the actuarial tables, take one look at the ballooning numbers of retirees and know that they cannot afford to pay for everything. Moreover, in a world where people move, change jobs, change careers, it makes more sense to create defined contribution retirement plans or leave it up to each worker to use their pay as they see fit. In some ways the lessening of retirement benefits is a lessening of the golden handcuffs that keep workers tied to an employer.
The problem with medical coverage is even more insidious -- we've separated the benefactor (the patient) from the payor (the employer/insurance company). Patients have no incentive to manage their own healthcare costs. Healthcare costs
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
"Arrrr matey, yer pod is only billin'70 hours a week, and if ye don't like it ye can walk the plank. The Santa Monica Pier only be two leagues thataway..."
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I hope these guys bring some serious firepower...pirates these days don't carry rapiers, and a boatful of expensive electronics sitting in international waters is quite the treasure ;)
http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=10959 excerpts: "During off hours, programming teams can partake of the ship's recreational facilities or head for the lights of L.A. on a water taxi, since each worker will be required to have a U.S. tourist visa, Cook says. "At first blush, admits COO Roger Green, it sounds like they're trying to avoid U.S. taxes, regulations and pay rates. Not so, he maintains. SeaCode will be a U.S. corporation, and the ship will fall under a number of state and federal regulations. Green, who has managed outsourcing projects before, says just 10 percent of every dollar spent will go to paying developers--most of whom will probably be non-U.S. citizens. Remaining expenses will overhead--for equipment and supplies, fuel and other costs--all purchased in the U.S., the three say. "The company will use microwave and U.S. providers for phone and Internet access, thus addressing a common outsourcing concern: ownership of intellectual property. Under international law, Cook says, the first point of contact with land determines whose laws will apply. "One of reasons we're doing things this way is so U.S law will apply."
Is that what they call it? 'no-shoring'? Well, that sounds way better than the 'rightshoring' corp talk!
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cruise 18.html
That and most indians dont know how to swim! Dont think they will be very comfortable living at sea
Why didn't I think of that?
Forget the original idea! SeaCode is a waste of a perfectly good cruise ship. I mean, just look at all those staterooms! And, in International waters, where not only gambling is legal...
Gentlemen (and ladies, if you're so inclined), I give you... SeaSkank! A floating whorehouse^Wbordello^WHo-Tel, where you can rent 'em by the hour, a day, a week, or your standard Three Hour Tour.
You specify the race, age (remember, international waters!) and kinks/fetishes, and we plan the vacation for you.
Why go all the way to south-east Asia for that questionable sex tour, when you can just duck out of the office for a few hours, and no one will be the wiser.
All the "staffers" are checked regularly for crabs, barnacles, lamprey and other infestation, but just to be sure, there's also a medical facility on board, so you can get back to shore with the same peace of mind you had upon departure.
Just bring your wallet.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
I am almost 100% sure there's a law or two against what they're doing...
Outsourcing Software Development
that this ship must be sunk. (metaphorically speaking, natch.)
Well, that's the whole point, isn't it. You only have "law" when the police are stronger than the criminals. There is, therefore, no international law.
How long before the hacked Harpoon missiles take them out?
"...and not only can any military board you, they can legally just sink you if they feel like it. "
A whole new way to sink your competition.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Have you ever met Navy nuclear power people?
I've seen more flexible thinking in an RMS rant...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
It's not a bad idea, the Colombians already tried to do such a thing: http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read.html?id= 3341
In his 1990 book "Nations at Risk: The Impact of the Computer Revolution", Edward Yourdon gave an example of a contract proposal received by Ford Aerospace. The company proposed to do exactly what this new company is talking about; park a ship full of maintenance programmers three miles off the California coast. I don't remember now what reason he listed for them not winning the contract.
For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.
There are a fair amount of people in the world who don't get motion sick. I can read or use a computer in the front or back seats while on the road just fine. Busses too. I've been out to sea in boats smaller than the cruise liner they're talking about and I wasn't ever bothered (ferry in the english channel, and small cruise ship in the north sea).
So it's a critera for the job. So what?
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
While a simple broadcast network is basically a transmitter and receiver. The Internet is not like that.
The Internet is a group of networks all run by various parties. The different networks need to cooperate+agree if they want to hook up to each other.
So if you actually want to "broadcast" or communicate via the Internet from a ship or satellite, you'd need at least a connection to the Internet. Someone has to allow you to connect to them, and the routes to your visible IP have to be advertised to the relevant networks.
If you are sending stuff various governments really disapprove of, you will find that no one will allow you to connect to them for long.
If you just signed up a throwaway DSL/dialup account while they can keep shutting you down, it's cheap for you to keep setting another one up (spammers do that all the time).
With the ocean liner/satellite approach, that's not so cheap.
...become international waters? The US claims 12 miles as its territorial boundary, and 200 miles as it's Exclusive Economic Zone.
antipaucity
Not to mention that the US *has* enforced its borders beyond its 3 mile claim in the past.
Yep. All the way to Iraq, apparently.
So, does one need a saddle to ride SeaWhores?
First - oddly enough, SeaCode is a REAL CA corporation, and is currently active.
/. posts made after the parent post (Subject: Baloney), speculate whether or not the boat would be located just outside of LA County or San Diego. Again referencing the information from the Online resource, the company's mainland address is in San Diego. So, it's possible that the boat is anchored somewhere between US and Mexican Waters... in International Waters.
/. reader posted the quote "I heard it at a party last night here at the Gartner conference, then did a quick interview with them" - this article is the source. And, I agree with that /.-er, how can you trust someone who heard something at a party?
According to the Official California Business Search Online hosted by the CA State Government, SeaCode Inc. was incorporated on August 5, 2004. In fact, you can even get their CA Corporate Number. As mentioned in another post (which I can't locate at the moment), David R. Cook is listed as the "Agent of Service for Process". Question it? Do a search for Google (yes, the company name), and you'll find
Secondly - Does this filing really prove that SeaCode, Inc. really is what it's described as in the few articles floating around the 'Net?
Various other
Sounds realistic and legit, no? Oh, but read on.
Thirdly - Here's another article on the SeaCode, Inc mystique. Another
I agree with dpud1234 - if the Forbes article doesn't exist, then how do we know the deal is real? I can't seem to find any WSJ or AP-affiliated news on SeaCode Inc, not to mention a corporate website (anyone have any ideas?). Yahoo, MSN, NYT, nothing turns up.
Finally - It's somewhat inconclusive.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in nautical law and barely have a general understanding of how the waters are charted. Heck, I don't quite understand many things. All I am is the over-analyzing citizen who likes to learn more... and is probably taking this one too far.
--Chag
We will all look back on this day at some point in the future and say, "Well, if it hadn't happened already, outsourcing really jumped the shark when we heard that goofy fucking story on Slashdot about a bunch of coders in a cruise ship".
600 programmers * 270 hours each a month * $25/hr markup per programmer = $4,050,000/month. Somehow I don't think a supply ship at $15,000/day is going to be much of a problem -- that's only 3 hours of 24-hour-a-day revenue.
under Threats - does it mention "Rogue Wave"?
As much as I am sensitive to the current state of outsourcing the jobs in the US...
Wouldn't this whole "outside the law" type of operation be something the pharmaceutical companies and biotech be more interested in than software developers.
It's a scary thought, but there are more reasons a company with limited morality would want to duck around the law than tax evasion and cheap labor. There are many types of medical testing that are universally illegal, and for good reason. Is this a potential way of getting around such laws?
Yes, that might actually turn out to be the part that gets the original venture in trouble.
By the way, I also found it strange that we get paid by Uncle Sam, and then he takes some of it right back. I agree that it would be nice to just make our base pay non-taxable as well, just to simplify things... But then again, I'd also like to see income tax done away with entirely, or at least vastly simplified.
Spoken like someone who's never actually worked in the world.
Does anyone remember the short story about a joint Moon mission where the Brits angled to go home last, thus spending >x months 'out of the country', greatly reducing their tax liability?
that's an interesting point. I'll have to keep an eye on china & india, who might make a difference. Let's just hope that india doesn't get nuked, since hoping for increased labour standards from china doesn't sound very promising.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Surely the US authorities aren't dumb enough to consider a measely 3 miles to be outside its jurisdication.
In Canada you have to be roughly 250 miles off-shore to be in any international area and even those ships (fishing, human trafficing) get boarded when necessary.
Let them write code all they want way out there; Wont be too pleasant on some days.
When I get a girlfriend, I hope she says those things in my ear.
My hotdog is not yet been thrown into any buns.
I have not yet taken the skinboat to tuna-town.
My man-meat is bloody-depressed, but as soon as I take my growth hormones it becomes one lively beast that is a fit meal for any queen.
I'm only 14, a Catholic girl of delicate upbringing of wearing short scottish skirts, but Jesus demand I truthfully answer (I have a weiner/dog) that I am no less twenty-three a blue-eyed warrior whose face is circumcised with a fire of genetic warfare from Scottish hell that can put the spear under any fat bastard that tries to fall on my blessed graces.
If they could see me now, Out on a sweat shop cruise, OSHA cant say shit because there are no rules, If the could see me now they'd saaayyyyyy... This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. I think they've grossly underestimated the costs to maintain and keep a ship of that size - and that's what'll be their financial undoing.
Canadian citizens have to pay taxes on their income wherever they live regardless of their income. In the US, I have heard, there is an exception up to US$70,000 for overseas work.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
I seem to remember an article, some years back, about a proposal from a Japanese company to an American bank.
This was back in the mainframe only days. They were going to park a ship full of coders in international waters. Specs and computer tapes would be flown back and forth by helicopter.
Keep in mind, this was before practically free high-speed international data lines became available.
Does anyone else recall this?
CmdrTaco will blow them up.
Do you have any links to these communities? I think it would be interesting to read more about this.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Minsk World Industries Co. bankrupt with debts totaling US$105M. Minsk World Industries ran a wide range of businesses including restaurants, beauty salons, cultural shows and trading, in addition to the popular theme park aboard the Minsk. Minsk amusement park itself has been hit with visitors from Hong Kong & relatively affluent south China, where many can afford its steep admission price of US$12. The pride of the Soviet Union's Pacific Fleet during the Cold War, the aircraft carrier looms over Chinese fishing boats in harbor near Shenzhen, its decks crammed with carnival attractions & souvenir booths. The carrier was sold for scrap in 1995 to South Korea, which sold it on to China in 1998. Better she should just have retired. Aircraft carrier Minsk now for sale?
Sounds like some other stuff I've seen. http://www.seastead.org/
The letters RTFA come to mind after reading all these bogus posts about 3 miles vs 12 miles vs 200 miles. Do you really think the crew on international cruise ships file for individual H1 visa's and pay US taxes? Of course not. This is the same principle. A foreign registered ship full of non-citizen employees with D1 visa's - except in this case they are coding, not pampering fat American tourists. It's actually an interesting loophole they are using. Cruise ships can pretty much come and go as they please and getting a six month D1 visa for the entire crew takes 6-9 days. Most countries are signatories to international conventions which regulate the issuance of crew visa's.
I appreciate it. This should be good reading material.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I'm wondering if they ganked the idea from them. If it weren't for the overhead of running the ship; there are bound to be a lot of people from all over the world that would love to work this way; particularly if the ship travelled.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.