The lawyers gave explicit suggestions on how to rig the interview and advertising process to avoid getting responses from qualified US citizens. If that isn't bad faith, I don't know what is.
The lawyers advised their clients on what the minimum required advertising effort is, and what legally sound reasons for turning down an applicant are. I don't see that as "rigging" or "evading". Companies better know exactly how to reject applicants in this case, because otherwise they can get into hot water. (The same applies to hiring and firing of minorities and women: the legal department needs to make sure that the language and reasons are legally impeccable.) If the law wants to require more advertising as part of the green card process, then it needs to specify so.
The accusation of "bad faith" is particularly misplaced because many companies not only advertised and interviewed widely for the original position prior to the green card application, they often continue recruiting efforts in parallel with green card applications. Companies want want US applicants, they simply don't want US applicants in response to newspaper ads connected with green card applications.
I think you simply don't appreciate how badly it can mess up someone's life if something goes wrong during this phase of the green card application process. People get a job offer, or even work for a company for many years, and then when they finally want to become US citizens, it might all fall apart because of a newspaper ad.
Companies are trying to tread a fine line between complying with the law and doing the right thing for people they have already made commitments to.
The law firm is marketing their services to bring in cheap foreign labor by following the letter of the law in bad faith
I see no evidence of that they are trying to bring in cheap foreign labor. Where do they say that?
advising clients how to, by whatever means possible, interview and EXCLUDE FULLY QUALIFIED citizen applicants by conducting sham interviews to satisfy the good faith clause of the law
Yes, but you don't understand why. By the time a company applies for a green card for someone, the position is already filled; there are no "applicants" anymore. If you hired anybody at that point, the company would have to break its commitment to the person they are applying for. This may be someone who received a job offer a few months earlier after a competitive job search, or it may be someone who has been at the company and in the US for many years.
Basically, what you're asking for is not that US applicants are given preference in hiring (which they usually are), what you are asking for is that months or years after someone has been hired already, a US applicant can use the law to force the immigrant out of his job. Do you think that's fair? I don't. It's particularly unfair because it happens just as the person is trying to actually become a US citizen.
You pathetic shill.
I'm just an immigrant who has had to suffer from the regulations that uninformed knee-jerk reactions like yours have caused. People like you have create so many loopholes and uncertainties in the immigration process that immigrants remain in limbo for many years.
This corporate shill is posting the same crap over and over again here, so I'm going to keep posting again and again to call him out.
I'm not a "corporate shill", I'm an immigrant, like about half the people in Silicon Valley. And I'm tired of people like you, who have no idea about how the immigration system works, posting crap about it. Someone has to respond the kind of nonsense people like you are spewing.
This is about one thing: violating the good faith letter of the law to sell out american workers and save on the bottom line.
The video talks about green card applications. People with green cards are American workers; companies have no hold over them and save no money by hiring them.
by 1) advising clients how to post ads with the explicit inention of EXCLUDING all reasonably QUALIFIED citizen applicatns, and 2) advising clients how to, by whatever means possible, interview and EXCLUDE FULLY QUALIFIED citizen applicants by conducting sham interviews to satisfy the good faith clause of the law.
Yes, and if you understood how the green card process works, you'd understand why. Companies first advertise their jobs, then they make hiring decisions, and then they apply for green cards for foreign workers. Nobody is being excluded and everybody can apply for the jobs. The company just doesn't want to have reopen the hiring phase once they have started the green card application process, among other things, because they'd probably lose the applicant.
You know, I love this country and I won't leave again. But thoughtless demagoguery by people like you is hurting many people.
I have worked many contracts with allot of companies and have found everytime people who have the same responsabilities, but have 1/3 the salary. Also, applicants DO NOT find it easy to swap contracts.
You're still missing the point: these lawyers are talking about getting green cards for the people involved. These "foreigners" are US workers by the time they start work. If they have 1/3 the salary, it's by choice.
because it fails simple market logic. If you are willing to pay more, people will come.
Strangely enough, such simplistic market logic doesn't work: the most highly qualified people are not the most highly paid ones. Companies like Google could quadruple their salaries and they'd still not any more qualified applicants. In practice, many highly qualified people deliberately choose lower paying occupations. And, personally, I have never taken the job offer with the highest salary.
In any case, again, all of these salary arguments are besides the point because the lawyer is talking about green card applications; the workers involved will be US workers, with the same negotiating power as any US citizen.
I believe that the law says more then that. The employer must make a good faith effort to fill the job with an American citizen.
In real-life high-tech recruiting, you first post the jobs everywhere, then you select all the applicants that meet your standards regardless of where they come from, and then you apply for a green card for those that need it. The formal job posting requirement in the green card application process is just out of step with how recruiting works in a tight labor market. In fact, companies that post these fake job ads to which they don't want any responses usually have real job ads running at the same time to which they do want responses; it's just that the real ads don't count for the green card.
The problem here isn't "bad faith" by anybody, it's government regulations that are out of step with the real world.
Meanwhile, I'll focus on hiring the best workers possible, regardless of where they are from, and eventually run these other guys out of business anyway.
Yes, and how does that work? You do a long job search, with networking, Internet postings, etc. and recruit all over the world. You look at resumes and interview people. So, let's say, Xi Jiang from China is the best applicant. She comes with stellar academic credentials and has worked for Google China and Microsoft China.
Now you need a work visa for her. Because you're a good employer, you even try to get a green card for her. As part of the green card process, you need to make a job posting in a newspaper. Do you want a lot of responses to that? No, because you're unlikely to get a better applicant from a newspaper than from your extensive job search, and you don't want to spend another three months interviewing people. Besides, Xi Jiang probably has other offers as well. But every resume you get back in response to your newspaper ad is going to have to be reviewed and may delay getting a visa for Xi Jiang.
So there you have it: that's why companies post fake job postings when they are going through the green card process. By the time it gets to that point, you simply don't want a lot of responses. If you wanted to hire the best applicants, you would too.
f a company has decided they want to get someone a green card, then of course they do whatever they can to achieve that. If they instead wanted to replace the person with a US worker then they'd be doing an honest job search, and NOT pursing a green card.
And what's wrong with that? When the green card process is over, the company has a US worker. The only reason for going through the extra expense and delay of the green card process is because they think that the person they are sponsoring for a green card is genuinely better than any of the US workers that have applied for the job in the past.
One has to wonder are they being investigated for breaking the law,
Which law have they broken? Not only do they post the jobs, they look at the resumes that come in; they have to. And if they find a good applicant among those resumes, you can bet they are going to hire them.
No, the reason why they don't want a lot of applications in response to these job ads is because they already know that the applications they are going to get are going to be crap because almost nobody worth their salt applies in response to a newspaper ad.
What the H-1B worker gets you is someone that can't switch jobs.
That used to be true but isn't anymore. H1b workers can switch jobs quite easily.
But you're missing something more basic: the lawyer in the video isn't talking about H1b applications, he's talking about green card applications.
This has little to do with wages and everything to do with worker "loyalty."
In principle, the argument that enforced loyalty can lead to depressed wages is correct; the problem with the argument is simply that most legal foreign labor in the US actually has high mobility.
These lawyers are talking about job ads as part of the green card application process. That is, the goal of the process is to get a current or future employee a green card. As soon as the employee gets the green card, they can quit and work somewhere else if they aren't being paid competitively.
So, why don't companies want responses to these ads? Because they already know that they aren't going to get any good responses to a newspaper ad. How do they know that? Because they are already running lots of ads all over the place. Any response they are going to get is just going to hold up the green card application unnecessarily.
These companies are trying to do the right thing--getting their foreign employees green cards. They don't deserve to be dragged through the mud for it.
Employers are only doing this so that they can get lower cost labor.
The lawyer is talking about getting green cards for foreign workers.
The easist way to fix it is to require them to pay equal pay to all workers and not pay someone lower just because they do not have a green card.
The easy way to fix this is to RTFA. These "fake ads" are being posted as part of the green card application process; the companies are trying to get their H1b workers green cards!
So, why don't they want any real applicants? Because high tech companies already know that they aren't going to find qualified workers through newspaper ads. Any application that comes in in response to one of these ads is only going to hold up the green card application and cause lots of extra work.
Geez, think about what you're saying. The seminar is about the process of getting green cards for H1b workers. Why would companies get their supposedly "low paid" H1b workers green cards, if those workers could just pack up and leave as soon as the green card comes through? The fact that a company is trying to get a green card for one of their workers tells you that they are competitively paid.
So, why don't they want any applicants in response to the job postings? Because most of these companies are constantly recruiting anyway; they aren't going to get any additional good applicants through newspaper ads. Any response they get to those ads is potentially only going to mess up the green card application for the guy that's already been working at the company for several years.
What the lawyer is talking about is a green card application, usually for someone who has already worked many years at a company and lived and paid taxes in the US. There is a formal requirement that the company post a job ad. Of course, companies don't want any applicants for that job ad: they already have someone for that job that they have invested a lot of time and money in. Do you seriously think they are going to send that guy home based on someone who sends in a resume? And companies are likely paying that guy competitively because once they get the green card, he could leave immediately.
I've seen these requirements for formal job postings in non-immigration contexts as well, and they never work. If finding qualified, good applicants were as simple as posting a job ad and collecting resumes, headhunters and hiring bounties would be such a booming business.
I have a 3G phone with a great screen, and I still use all the mobile versions of web sites on it. The iPhone an EDGE device with a tiny screen (even if it's not quite as tiny as other EDGE devices). You will not want to browse regular "Web 2.0" web sites with this even if the browser can (sort of) render it and you can get to each part of the page with a lot of scrolling.
No, I don't foresee a lot of web sites changing because of this. There will be some die-hard iPhone web sites that will make sure that they only render correctly on the iPhone, but everybody else will have desktop and mobile sites, and the mobile sites will aim for usability on something between a 120x120 and 240x240 screen (the smaller dimensions of common landscape/portrait screens), with larger screens seeing a bit more.
Regular web sites start becoming usable on a mobile device at 640x480 and 3G speeds.
This affects "GPLv2 or later" projects that can't be relicensed because some of the contributors can't be reached.
For new projects, or if all the developers agree, or for new contributions to existing projects, you can strike the clause permitting earlier deals if you like.
Thing is, invention on it's own isn't enough. There are plenty of inventions languishing on the scrap heap. The key to the world changing part is economics.
Yes, but once you have an invention that potentially changes the world, with few exceptions, the economic part can be done by many people and is almost automatic.
In different words, people who take care of the economic part of making an invention happen get their financial rewards directly from the market. It's the inventors that often get screwed and go unrewarded. The patent system was supposed to help with that, but it ended up screwing inventors over even more.
I wouldn't be so hard on NASA as an organization; politicians keep telling them screwy things to do, like build space shuttles, make deep pocketed contractors happy, and deal with military types.
I think the best thing to do would be to split NASA into an unmanned/science organization and a manned organization. Politicians can then deal with the latter, and funding for the former would at least be more stable and predictable.
Pournelle got it half right: every dollar spent on NASA's budget for manned space travel is a dollar wasted.
NASA's satellites, robotic missions, etc., however, are highly successful and yield incredible results. They are also the kinds of missions that, like all basic science, would never get funded by comparnies.
The committee has it right: trying to impose a manned trip to Mars on NASA without a huge funding increase is going to wreak havoc with NASA's science programs. If the president wants this, he needs to fund it.
The Mars society should be ashamed for trying to have this language removed; apparently, they think that going to Mars is worth dismantling the rest of our space program.
Strictly speaking, "innovation" refers to the successful introduction of new technology into a market or community, not the invention of the technology. So, in a certain sense, companies like Apple and Microsoft are "innovators" even though they are far less frequently inventors.
The consequence of this is that we should probably not value innovation very highly; innovation is frequently achieved through marketing, business strategy, and copycat products, and the purpose and consequence of innovation is frequently not to help people, but to make more money. The people we should reward are inventors and risk takers, not "innovators".
I didn't assume anything. You said: "As a web designer, I design valid (X)HTML and test it in Safari, Firefox or Konqueror, confident that I know it will render the same way in all three browsers."
To me it seems to be pretty much in the same league as "if we rewrote Newton's mechanics so that gravity is repulsive, we'd get apples to fall downwards".
But it isn't in the same league. We know that gravity is not repulsive, therefore assuming that it is contradicts known physical laws and observations (although around here, apples actually do fall downwards:-).
In contrast, there are no observations and no known physical or mathematical laws that contradict the existence of spatial shortcuts--there is nothing to "rewrite".
Ultimately, the limiting factor for productivity is solar flux. If you plant the right mix of vegetation, you're pretty much going to use up all the solar energy on a single level.
So, rooftop gardens are probably a great idea for NYC and other cities, but multi-level gardens don't make much sense unless you put a nuclear power plant somewhere nearby to supply power for artificial lighting.
Why don't they just evaluate the "volunteers" in Guantanamo? They have been stuck in tiny rooms for much longer than 17 months, sometimes completely isolated.
But then again, I'm an enemy of standards apparently. I guess I should stop validating all my sites. You've convinced me.
You should validate your sites; unfortunately, you don't. All you do is to test whether they render correctly in a particular browser:
As a web designer, I design valid (X)HTML and test it in Safari, Firefox or Konqueror, confident that I know it will render the same way in all three browsers.
The fact that your site renders correctly in one (or even several) standards-compliant browser tells you little about whether your content is actually standards compliant. A "standards compliant browser" is merely a browser that renders standards-compliant content correctly, but all such browsers also render a lot of non-standards-compliant content as well. Therefore, you can't use a "standards-compliant browser" to test whether your content is standards-compliant or will render correctly in other browsers.
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The lawyers gave explicit suggestions on how to rig the interview and advertising process to avoid getting responses from qualified US citizens. If that isn't bad faith, I don't know what is.
The lawyers advised their clients on what the minimum required advertising effort is, and what legally sound reasons for turning down an applicant are. I don't see that as "rigging" or "evading". Companies better know exactly how to reject applicants in this case, because otherwise they can get into hot water. (The same applies to hiring and firing of minorities and women: the legal department needs to make sure that the language and reasons are legally impeccable.) If the law wants to require more advertising as part of the green card process, then it needs to specify so.
The accusation of "bad faith" is particularly misplaced because many companies not only advertised and interviewed widely for the original position prior to the green card application, they often continue recruiting efforts in parallel with green card applications. Companies want want US applicants, they simply don't want US applicants in response to newspaper ads connected with green card applications.
I think you simply don't appreciate how badly it can mess up someone's life if something goes wrong during this phase of the green card application process. People get a job offer, or even work for a company for many years, and then when they finally want to become US citizens, it might all fall apart because of a newspaper ad.
Companies are trying to tread a fine line between complying with the law and doing the right thing for people they have already made commitments to.
The law firm is marketing their services to bring in cheap foreign labor by following the letter of the law in bad faith
I see no evidence of that they are trying to bring in cheap foreign labor. Where do they say that?
advising clients how to, by whatever means possible, interview and EXCLUDE FULLY QUALIFIED citizen applicants by conducting sham interviews to satisfy the good faith clause of the law
Yes, but you don't understand why. By the time a company applies for a green card for someone, the position is already filled; there are no "applicants" anymore. If you hired anybody at that point, the company would have to break its commitment to the person they are applying for. This may be someone who received a job offer a few months earlier after a competitive job search, or it may be someone who has been at the company and in the US for many years.
Basically, what you're asking for is not that US applicants are given preference in hiring (which they usually are), what you are asking for is that months or years after someone has been hired already, a US applicant can use the law to force the immigrant out of his job. Do you think that's fair? I don't. It's particularly unfair because it happens just as the person is trying to actually become a US citizen.
You pathetic shill.
I'm just an immigrant who has had to suffer from the regulations that uninformed knee-jerk reactions like yours have caused. People like you have create so many loopholes and uncertainties in the immigration process that immigrants remain in limbo for many years.
This corporate shill is posting the same crap over and over again here, so I'm going to keep posting again and again to call him out.
I'm not a "corporate shill", I'm an immigrant, like about half the people in Silicon Valley. And I'm tired of people like you, who have no idea about how the immigration system works, posting crap about it. Someone has to respond the kind of nonsense people like you are spewing.
This is about one thing: violating the good faith letter of the law to sell out american workers and save on the bottom line.
The video talks about green card applications. People with green cards are American workers; companies have no hold over them and save no money by hiring them.
by 1) advising clients how to post ads with the explicit inention of EXCLUDING all reasonably QUALIFIED citizen applicatns, and 2) advising clients how to, by whatever means possible, interview and EXCLUDE FULLY QUALIFIED citizen applicants by conducting sham interviews to satisfy the good faith clause of the law.
Yes, and if you understood how the green card process works, you'd understand why. Companies first advertise their jobs, then they make hiring decisions, and then they apply for green cards for foreign workers. Nobody is being excluded and everybody can apply for the jobs. The company just doesn't want to have reopen the hiring phase once they have started the green card application process, among other things, because they'd probably lose the applicant.
You know, I love this country and I won't leave again. But thoughtless demagoguery by people like you is hurting many people.
I think the Wikipedia article is a pretty good summary.
But, again, TFA talks about green cards, not H1b anyway.
I have worked many contracts with allot of companies and have found everytime people who have the same responsabilities, but have 1/3 the salary. Also, applicants DO NOT find it easy to swap contracts.
You're still missing the point: these lawyers are talking about getting green cards for the people involved. These "foreigners" are US workers by the time they start work. If they have 1/3 the salary, it's by choice.
because it fails simple market logic. If you are willing to pay more, people will come.
Strangely enough, such simplistic market logic doesn't work: the most highly qualified people are not the most highly paid ones. Companies like Google could quadruple their salaries and they'd still not any more qualified applicants. In practice, many highly qualified people deliberately choose lower paying occupations. And, personally, I have never taken the job offer with the highest salary.
In any case, again, all of these salary arguments are besides the point because the lawyer is talking about green card applications; the workers involved will be US workers, with the same negotiating power as any US citizen.
I believe that the law says more then that. The employer must make a good faith effort to fill the job with an American citizen.
In real-life high-tech recruiting, you first post the jobs everywhere, then you select all the applicants that meet your standards regardless of where they come from, and then you apply for a green card for those that need it. The formal job posting requirement in the green card application process is just out of step with how recruiting works in a tight labor market. In fact, companies that post these fake job ads to which they don't want any responses usually have real job ads running at the same time to which they do want responses; it's just that the real ads don't count for the green card.
The problem here isn't "bad faith" by anybody, it's government regulations that are out of step with the real world.
Meanwhile, I'll focus on hiring the best workers possible, regardless of where they are from, and eventually run
these other guys out of business anyway.
Yes, and how does that work? You do a long job search, with networking, Internet postings, etc. and recruit all over the world. You look at resumes and interview people. So, let's say, Xi Jiang from China is the best applicant. She comes with stellar academic credentials and has worked for Google China and Microsoft China.
Now you need a work visa for her. Because you're a good employer, you even try to get a green card for her. As part of the green card process, you need to make a job posting in a newspaper. Do you want a lot of responses to that? No, because you're unlikely to get a better applicant from a newspaper than from your extensive job search, and you don't want to spend another three months interviewing people. Besides, Xi Jiang probably has other offers as well. But every resume you get back in response to your newspaper ad is going to have to be reviewed and may delay getting a visa for Xi Jiang.
So there you have it: that's why companies post fake job postings when they are going through the green card process. By the time it gets to that point, you simply don't want a lot of responses. If you wanted to hire the best applicants, you would too.
f a company has decided they want to get someone a green card, then of course they do whatever they can to achieve that. If they instead wanted to replace the person with a US worker then they'd be doing an honest job search, and NOT pursing a green card.
And what's wrong with that? When the green card process is over, the company has a US worker. The only reason for going through the extra expense and delay of the green card process is because they think that the person they are sponsoring for a green card is genuinely better than any of the US workers that have applied for the job in the past.
One has to wonder are they being investigated for breaking the law,
Which law have they broken? Not only do they post the jobs, they look at the resumes that come in; they have to. And if they find a good applicant among those resumes, you can bet they are going to hire them.
No, the reason why they don't want a lot of applications in response to these job ads is because they already know that the applications they are going to get are going to be crap because almost nobody worth their salt applies in response to a newspaper ad.
What the H-1B worker gets you is someone that can't switch jobs.
That used to be true but isn't anymore. H1b workers can switch jobs quite easily.
But you're missing something more basic: the lawyer in the video isn't talking about H1b applications, he's talking about green card applications.
This has little to do with wages and everything to do with worker "loyalty."
In principle, the argument that enforced loyalty can lead to depressed wages is correct; the problem with the argument is simply that most legal foreign labor in the US actually has high mobility.
These lawyers are talking about job ads as part of the green card application process. That is, the goal of the process is to get a current or future employee a green card. As soon as the employee gets the green card, they can quit and work somewhere else if they aren't being paid competitively.
So, why don't companies want responses to these ads? Because they already know that they aren't going to get any good responses to a newspaper ad. How do they know that? Because they are already running lots of ads all over the place. Any response they are going to get is just going to hold up the green card application unnecessarily.
These companies are trying to do the right thing--getting their foreign employees green cards. They don't deserve to be dragged through the mud for it.
Employers are only doing this so that they can get lower cost labor.
The lawyer is talking about getting green cards for foreign workers.
The easist way to fix it is to require them to pay equal pay to all workers and not pay someone lower just because they do not have a green card.
The easy way to fix this is to RTFA. These "fake ads" are being posted as part of the green card application process; the companies are trying to get their H1b workers green cards!
So, why don't they want any real applicants? Because high tech companies already know that they aren't going to find qualified workers through newspaper ads. Any application that comes in in response to one of these ads is only going to hold up the green card application and cause lots of extra work.
Geez, think about what you're saying. The seminar is about the process of getting green cards for H1b workers. Why would companies get their supposedly "low paid" H1b workers green cards, if those workers could just pack up and leave as soon as the green card comes through? The fact that a company is trying to get a green card for one of their workers tells you that they are competitively paid.
So, why don't they want any applicants in response to the job postings? Because most of these companies are constantly recruiting anyway; they aren't going to get any additional good applicants through newspaper ads. Any response they get to those ads is potentially only going to mess up the green card application for the guy that's already been working at the company for several years.
What the lawyer is talking about is a green card application, usually for someone who has already worked many years at a company and lived and paid taxes in the US. There is a formal requirement that the company post a job ad. Of course, companies don't want any applicants for that job ad: they already have someone for that job that they have invested a lot of time and money in. Do you seriously think they are going to send that guy home based on someone who sends in a resume? And companies are likely paying that guy competitively because once they get the green card, he could leave immediately.
I've seen these requirements for formal job postings in non-immigration contexts as well, and they never work. If finding qualified, good applicants were as simple as posting a job ad and collecting resumes, headhunters and hiring bounties would be such a booming business.
I have a 3G phone with a great screen, and I still use all the mobile versions of web sites on it. The iPhone an EDGE device with a tiny screen (even if it's not quite as tiny as other EDGE devices). You will not want to browse regular "Web 2.0" web sites with this even if the browser can (sort of) render it and you can get to each part of the page with a lot of scrolling.
No, I don't foresee a lot of web sites changing because of this. There will be some die-hard iPhone web sites that will make sure that they only render correctly on the iPhone, but everybody else will have desktop and mobile sites, and the mobile sites will aim for usability on something between a 120x120 and 240x240 screen (the smaller dimensions of common landscape/portrait screens), with larger screens seeing a bit more.
Regular web sites start becoming usable on a mobile device at 640x480 and 3G speeds.
This affects "GPLv2 or later" projects that can't be relicensed because some of the contributors can't be reached.
For new projects, or if all the developers agree, or for new contributions to existing projects, you can strike the clause permitting earlier deals if you like.
Thing is, invention on it's own isn't enough. There are plenty of inventions languishing on the scrap heap. The key to the world changing part is economics.
Yes, but once you have an invention that potentially changes the world, with few exceptions, the economic part can be done by many people and is almost automatic.
In different words, people who take care of the economic part of making an invention happen get their financial rewards directly from the market. It's the inventors that often get screwed and go unrewarded. The patent system was supposed to help with that, but it ended up screwing inventors over even more.
I wouldn't be so hard on NASA as an organization; politicians keep telling them screwy things to do, like build space shuttles, make deep pocketed contractors happy, and deal with military types.
I think the best thing to do would be to split NASA into an unmanned/science organization and a manned organization. Politicians can then deal with the latter, and funding for the former would at least be more stable and predictable.
Pournelle got it half right: every dollar spent on NASA's budget for manned space travel is a dollar wasted.
NASA's satellites, robotic missions, etc., however, are highly successful and yield incredible results. They are also the kinds of missions that, like all basic science, would never get funded by comparnies.
The committee has it right: trying to impose a manned trip to Mars on NASA without a huge funding increase is going to wreak havoc with NASA's science programs. If the president wants this, he needs to fund it.
The Mars society should be ashamed for trying to have this language removed; apparently, they think that going to Mars is worth dismantling the rest of our space program.
Strictly speaking, "innovation" refers to the successful introduction of new technology into a market or community, not the invention of the technology. So, in a certain sense, companies like Apple and Microsoft are "innovators" even though they are far less frequently inventors.
The consequence of this is that we should probably not value innovation very highly; innovation is frequently achieved through marketing, business strategy, and copycat products, and the purpose and consequence of innovation is frequently not to help people, but to make more money. The people we should reward are inventors and risk takers, not "innovators".
I didn't assume anything. You said: "As a web designer, I design valid (X)HTML and test it in Safari, Firefox or Konqueror, confident that I know it will render the same way in all three browsers."
To me it seems to be pretty much in the same league as "if we rewrote Newton's mechanics so that gravity is repulsive, we'd get apples to fall downwards".
:-).
But it isn't in the same league. We know that gravity is not repulsive, therefore assuming that it is contradicts known physical laws and observations (although around here, apples actually do fall downwards
In contrast, there are no observations and no known physical or mathematical laws that contradict the existence of spatial shortcuts--there is nothing to "rewrite".
Ultimately, the limiting factor for productivity is solar flux. If you plant the right mix of vegetation, you're pretty much going to use up all the solar energy on a single level.
So, rooftop gardens are probably a great idea for NYC and other cities, but multi-level gardens don't make much sense unless you put a nuclear power plant somewhere nearby to supply power for artificial lighting.
Why don't they just evaluate the "volunteers" in Guantanamo? They have been stuck in tiny rooms for much longer than 17 months, sometimes completely isolated.
You should validate your sites; unfortunately, you don't. All you do is to test whether they render correctly in a particular browser:
The fact that your site renders correctly in one (or even several) standards-compliant browser tells you little about whether your content is actually standards compliant. A "standards compliant browser" is merely a browser that renders standards-compliant content correctly, but all such browsers also render a lot of non-standards-compliant content as well. Therefore, you can't use a "standards-compliant browser" to test whether your content is standards-compliant or will render correctly in other browsers.