Everywhere I have worked, the H1-Bs have been very close to slave labor. They often make less than half the rate/salary of a US citizen or green card holder.
As someone currently working on an H1-B, I'm puzzled that people think workers on H1-B are somehow slave labour, or that they're taking jobs from the local population by accepting lower wages.
As it was explained to me, part of the process of getting an H1-B involves submitting the details of the post to be filled by the foreign worker to the state authorities. They tell the employer the going rate for that position and the employer is required to pay at that level. I don't believe that they can legally undercut that wage and pay an immigrant worker significantly less than the going rate for that job.
Of course, this assumes that the employer is honest and isn't out to recruit himself cheap labour, but then if exploitation is commonplace, the problem is with the exploitative companies, not the H1-B system or the immigrant workers.
This is another very useful technology just begging to be abused.
Practically every useful technology is open to abuse. It's been that way since some guy picked up a rock and realised he could get himself a nice fur coat through careful application of said rock.
While it's sensible to keep that in mind when considering the uses of new technology, I can't help thinking that slashdot might be getting close to crossing the line between reasoned reporting and paranoid rambling. It seems like the announcement of any new advance in any field of research is accompanied by dire warnings about the privacy implications, the possible misuses, the increasing stranglehold of big business etc.
I share these concerns but I also worry that when someone from general populace (by which I people who don't know that there's a difference between a "hacker" and a "cracker") stumbles across slashdot and skims or wholly misreads a post, they'll go away thinking that these forums are entirely populated by people who believe that their insurance agents are secretly checking them out for genetic deformities.
I don't really give a damn whether people outside of slashdot take the news posted here seriously or not - mainstream recognition is not the point. What I do care about is that the public and even some regular readers of slashdot are going to gradually form the impression that communities like slashdot are just a bunch of crackpots and conspiracy theorists - a bunch of crackpots who can be safely ignored in their little corner of the web. The first warnings about the next major infringements of personally liberty by big business or government are likely to come from this quarter, and the guy on the street is going to dismiss them as the harmless ramblings of a bunch of freaks.
Just a few thoughts...
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"Science and technology are just tools. What they do for you is entirely dependent on what you do with them."
- Stanley Schmidt
Far be it from me to be the voice of doom and gloom, but I'd be very surprised if a drug like can have a significant long term impact on viruses such as the common cold. I used to work on the structures of picornaviruses, and reading a bit between the lines, I think the drug that the CNN article talks about probably works the same way as many other drugs which have been tried in the past. The only difference appears to be that someone has "designed" this one, rather than stumbled upon it with the "shotgun" approach.
The major problem with all drugs which target the picornaviruses is the high mutation rate of the virus. As the other reply to this message points out, it's not a question of whether a virus will learn how to avoid a particular drug, but when. Mutations will happen and the viruses which come into contact with the drug will. Just like bacteria become resistant to drugs, viruses will too. It won't take long before subtle changes to the virus structures will render any drug useless, especially if it's thrown about with gay abandon, like antibiotics have been.
Another doubt that I have surrounds the blanket statement that the drug will be effective against the "common cold": the last time I checked there were 102 distinctly different viruses which fitted that bill, and they were divided into two groups. Antibodies - the sharp end of the immune systems response to a viral infection - which recognise members of one group won't have any impact on members of the other group. Yet we're to believe that a single, simple drug molecule is going to knock out every type of common cold virus, plus polio, plus enteroviruses, plus a handful of other viruses ?
Maybe I'm just a sceptic, but I find it hard to see how this drug can live up the hype which will undoubtedly surround it.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone currently working on an H1-B, I'm puzzled that people think workers on H1-B are somehow slave labour, or that they're taking jobs from the local population by accepting lower wages.
As it was explained to me, part of the process of getting an H1-B involves submitting the details of the post to be filled by the foreign worker to the state authorities. They tell the employer the going rate for that position and the employer is required to pay at that level. I don't believe that they can legally undercut that wage and pay an immigrant worker significantly less than the going rate for that job.
Of course, this assumes that the employer is honest and isn't out to recruit himself cheap labour, but then if exploitation is commonplace, the problem is with the exploitative companies, not the H1-B system or the immigrant workers.
Practically every useful technology is open to abuse. It's been that way since some guy picked up a rock and realised he could get himself a nice fur coat through careful application of said rock.
While it's sensible to keep that in mind when considering the uses of new technology, I can't help thinking that slashdot might be getting close to crossing the line between reasoned reporting and paranoid rambling. It seems like the announcement of any new advance in any field of research is accompanied by dire warnings about the privacy implications, the possible misuses, the increasing stranglehold of big business etc.
I share these concerns but I also worry that when someone from general populace (by which I people who don't know that there's a difference between a "hacker" and a "cracker") stumbles across slashdot and skims or wholly misreads a post, they'll go away thinking that these forums are entirely populated by people who believe that their insurance agents are secretly checking them out for genetic deformities.
I don't really give a damn whether people outside of slashdot take the news posted here seriously or not - mainstream recognition is not the point. What I do care about is that the public and even some regular readers of slashdot are going to gradually form the impression that communities like slashdot are just a bunch of crackpots and conspiracy theorists - a bunch of crackpots who can be safely ignored in their little corner of the web. The first warnings about the next major infringements of personally liberty by big business or government are likely to come from this quarter, and the guy on the street is going to dismiss them as the harmless ramblings of a bunch of freaks.
Just a few thoughts...
--------
"Science and technology are just tools. What they do for you is entirely dependent on what you do with them."
- Stanley Schmidt
The major problem with all drugs which target the picornaviruses is the high mutation rate of the virus. As the other reply to this message points out, it's not a question of whether a virus will learn how to avoid a particular drug, but when. Mutations will happen and the viruses which come into contact with the drug will. Just like bacteria become resistant to drugs, viruses will too. It won't take long before subtle changes to the virus structures will render any drug useless, especially if it's thrown about with gay abandon, like antibiotics have been.
Another doubt that I have surrounds the blanket statement that the drug will be effective against the "common cold": the last time I checked there were 102 distinctly different viruses which fitted that bill, and they were divided into two groups. Antibodies - the sharp end of the immune systems response to a viral infection - which recognise members of one group won't have any impact on members of the other group. Yet we're to believe that a single, simple drug molecule is going to knock out every type of common cold virus, plus polio, plus enteroviruses, plus a handful of other viruses ?
Maybe I'm just a sceptic, but I find it hard to see how this drug can live up the hype which will undoubtedly surround it.