OK, at least you understand that infrastructure upgrades are necessary. So... why should Comcast customers who don't use Netflix pay for upgrades to benefit those who do?
If I only use the internet for email and online shopping, why should my prices go up because other people are using it for video streaming?
No, the problem is that people don't understand what they've paid for. If you'd really paid for both ends of the traffic, with unlimited bandwidth, the prices would have been much higher than they are.
Why should Comcast customers who don't use Netflix subsidize those that do?
The amount you pay your ISP is based on traditional usage patterns. Someone has to pay for the extra equipment.
Either the ISP raises their prices or the content providers do, and why should Comcast customers who don't use Netflix pay extra in order to subsidize those that do?
No, they didn't cut prices and they didn't pocket the money - they spent it. You know, on the extra equipment that was needed to improve performance for Netflix customers?
Oh, for heaven's sake - haven't we gone over this enough times by now? Comcast *wasn't* throttling the bandwidth. They simply declined to pay for additional equipment that would only be of benefit to Netflix customers.
Why should Comcast customers who don't use Netflix subsidize those that do?
Better than it being subsidized by Comcast customers who don't use Netflix.
The whole tangled mess could have been avoided with data caps - that way, the only customers paying extra for the equipment Comcast had to install to support Netflix are those who actually use it. US consumers have been very reluctant (to say the least) to accept broadband data caps, and that's fair enough - but you need to accept the consequences, and this is one of them.
Reminds me of a student, many years ago, who told me very seriously that hackers regularly broke into his home computer to mess with him. The evidence? Visual Studio (IIRC) kept changing between "inserting characters" and "overwriting characters" when he typed.
I asked if he might be accidentally hitting the Insert key. He had no idea what the Insert key did.
To his credit, when I explained, he acknowledged that this might have been the cause and perhaps there weren't any hackers in his computer after all.
Because the H1-Bs are indentured servants they can pay them Mickey D's wages
But can they? Obviously I have no personal knowledge, but several of the comments on the FWD.us site say otherwise. I have no particular reason to believe that you know what you're talking about: do you have a reputable reference?
What makes you think the consultant is necessarily earning less for his company than the full time employee? We have consultants come in fairly often, even though we're charged substantially more than an extra employee would cost - the argument is that they have highly specialized skills that we lack, and/or that they'll only be here for part of each year so it's cheaper than adding extra full-time people. Or perhaps management just think we're incompetent, I've never been entirely sure.
It's not always entirely stupid. There are skills that are only needed occasionally by any particular business, it hardly makes sense to hire someone yourself and have him or her doing busywork the rest of the year. Better for the people with those skills to move around from company to company as needed.
I dunno, the salaries shown in the database linked to from the lobbying site don't look too shabby to me. Of course that might all be made up for all I know.
Be that as it may, I still don't see the connection to the outsourcing companies. How does the fact that they're getting a large proportion of the allocated visas help prove that the visas aren't really needed?
... of course, it still makes sense to at least try to allocate the visas sensibly. I'd have thought the obvious approach was to give priority in any given period to the workers who are being offered the highest pay - that should favour the companies with a genuine need over those offering cut-rate replacements to existing workers.
It still works out the same regardless of who the visas are issued to. If there are enough graduates to fill the available jobs, then you don't need any tech visas. That's an entirely different question.
I'm not at all sure I understand the purpose of tech visas, but if the problem they're supposed to solve is that there aren't enough tech workers to fill the available jobs, then surely the upshot is the same either way? The visas issued to Infosys may be used to displace existing US tech workers, but those displaced workers are then available for Facebook to hire.
In my experience, their business products are well-designed (in the sense of being robust and convenient to work with) and moderately reliable, certainly more so overall than any of the smaller, generic manufacturers we've tried over the years. We have had some bad batches from Dell. But I'm not sure how much competition they've got; HP is the only one I can think of at the moment, and I don't think they can offer us comparable pricing. But I don't work in purchasing so I'm not really up to date with this stuff.
Note also that the product in question is one sold almost exclusively to, you guessed it, large companies. So I guess it was impossible for anyone to order this by mistake, so there's no problem, right?
You seem to be imaging that someone at Dell said to themselves "how can we trick people into giving us extra money".
It's much more likely that some important client phoned up and asked Dell, "Please put Firefox on the computers we're about to buy from you."
From what I've gathered of Dell's procedures - and I'm not dealing with them directly here, so I could be wrong, but FWIW - they can't sell you a special option without putting it into their purchasing system first. From there it could easily wind up on the web site, either accidentally or just because someone thought to themselves, "Well, this client wanted it, maybe other clients will too."
That's probably why it was only on this one model. That was the one the original client was buying.
The TOS don't actually say that. They talk about "distribution" but it isn't at all clear that installing software is the same thing as distributing it. No, let me put that another way: installing software is *not* the same thing as distributing it. If the law doesn't recognize the difference, it should.
Pardon? Dell is installing Firefox on a customer's machine before shipping it to them. How is that any different from my installing it on a customer's machine *after* it's shipped to them?
What if the customer ships their machine to me, I install Firefox, and then ship it back?
This clause is pretty bizarre, though: "As a civil ceremony is non religious in all aspects, all readings and music must be of a secular nature."
So... you've either got a choice of an all-out religious marriage, with a celebrant belonging to a recognized religion, or a marriage with no religious elements whatsoever, not even a favorite hymn? Does "here comes the bride" count as religious music?:-)
The fact that the location of the civil marriage has to be approved by the local council is also a bit dodgy, IMO. Are chapels routinely approved for civil ceremonies?
Slashdot Mirror
OK, at least you understand that infrastructure upgrades are necessary. So ... why should Comcast customers who don't use Netflix pay for upgrades to benefit those who do?
If I only use the internet for email and online shopping, why should my prices go up because other people are using it for video streaming?
This isn't about QoS. This is about who pays for the extra equipment necessary to support streaming video.
No, the problem is that people don't understand what they've paid for. If you'd really paid for both ends of the traffic, with unlimited bandwidth, the prices would have been much higher than they are.
Why should Comcast customers who don't use Netflix subsidize those that do?
The amount you pay your ISP is based on traditional usage patterns. Someone has to pay for the extra equipment.
Either the ISP raises their prices or the content providers do, and why should Comcast customers who don't use Netflix pay extra in order to subsidize those that do?
No, they didn't cut prices and they didn't pocket the money - they spent it. You know, on the extra equipment that was needed to improve performance for Netflix customers?
Oh, for heaven's sake - haven't we gone over this enough times by now? Comcast *wasn't* throttling the bandwidth. They simply declined to pay for additional equipment that would only be of benefit to Netflix customers.
Why should Comcast customers who don't use Netflix subsidize those that do?
Uh ... so you want Netflix to pay Cogent to provide a service that Comcast can provide more cheaply? Why's that again?
Better than it being subsidized by Comcast customers who don't use Netflix.
The whole tangled mess could have been avoided with data caps - that way, the only customers paying extra for the equipment Comcast had to install to support Netflix are those who actually use it. US consumers have been very reluctant (to say the least) to accept broadband data caps, and that's fair enough - but you need to accept the consequences, and this is one of them.
Reminds me of a student, many years ago, who told me very seriously that hackers regularly broke into his home computer to mess with him. The evidence? Visual Studio (IIRC) kept changing between "inserting characters" and "overwriting characters" when he typed.
I asked if he might be accidentally hitting the Insert key. He had no idea what the Insert key did.
To his credit, when I explained, he acknowledged that this might have been the cause and perhaps there weren't any hackers in his computer after all.
But can they? Obviously I have no personal knowledge, but several of the comments on the FWD.us site say otherwise. I have no particular reason to believe that you know what you're talking about: do you have a reputable reference?
What makes you think the consultant is necessarily earning less for his company than the full time employee? We have consultants come in fairly often, even though we're charged substantially more than an extra employee would cost - the argument is that they have highly specialized skills that we lack, and/or that they'll only be here for part of each year so it's cheaper than adding extra full-time people. Or perhaps management just think we're incompetent, I've never been entirely sure.
It's not always entirely stupid. There are skills that are only needed occasionally by any particular business, it hardly makes sense to hire someone yourself and have him or her doing busywork the rest of the year. Better for the people with those skills to move around from company to company as needed.
Have you seen http://www.h1bwage.com/ ?
I dunno, the salaries shown in the database linked to from the lobbying site don't look too shabby to me. Of course that might all be made up for all I know. Be that as it may, I still don't see the connection to the outsourcing companies. How does the fact that they're getting a large proportion of the allocated visas help prove that the visas aren't really needed?
It still works out the same regardless of who the visas are issued to. If there are enough graduates to fill the available jobs, then you don't need any tech visas. That's an entirely different question.
I'm not at all sure I understand the purpose of tech visas, but if the problem they're supposed to solve is that there aren't enough tech workers to fill the available jobs, then surely the upshot is the same either way? The visas issued to Infosys may be used to displace existing US tech workers, but those displaced workers are then available for Facebook to hire.
In my experience, their business products are well-designed (in the sense of being robust and convenient to work with) and moderately reliable, certainly more so overall than any of the smaller, generic manufacturers we've tried over the years. We have had some bad batches from Dell. But I'm not sure how much competition they've got; HP is the only one I can think of at the moment, and I don't think they can offer us comparable pricing. But I don't work in purchasing so I'm not really up to date with this stuff.
Note also that the product in question is one sold almost exclusively to, you guessed it, large companies. So I guess it was impossible for anyone to order this by mistake, so there's no problem, right?
Did it need to be? Why would you check the box if you don't know what Firefox is? Is there any evidence at all that *anyone* ordered this by mistake?
> "Accidents" don't happen in large tech companies.
Large tech companies don't make mistakes? Ever?
I don't think the reporter was at all confused, just looking for a story. YMMV.
You seem to be imaging that someone at Dell said to themselves "how can we trick people into giving us extra money". It's much more likely that some important client phoned up and asked Dell, "Please put Firefox on the computers we're about to buy from you." From what I've gathered of Dell's procedures - and I'm not dealing with them directly here, so I could be wrong, but FWIW - they can't sell you a special option without putting it into their purchasing system first. From there it could easily wind up on the web site, either accidentally or just because someone thought to themselves, "Well, this client wanted it, maybe other clients will too." That's probably why it was only on this one model. That was the one the original client was buying.
That's not distribution! By that definition, every time you moved house, you'd be "distributing" all of the software installed on your computer.
The TOS don't actually say that. They talk about "distribution" but it isn't at all clear that installing software is the same thing as distributing it. No, let me put that another way: installing software is *not* the same thing as distributing it. If the law doesn't recognize the difference, it should.
Pardon? Dell is installing Firefox on a customer's machine before shipping it to them. How is that any different from my installing it on a customer's machine *after* it's shipped to them? What if the customer ships their machine to me, I install Firefox, and then ship it back?
This clause is pretty bizarre, though: "As a civil ceremony is non religious in all aspects, all readings and music must be of a secular nature."
So ... you've either got a choice of an all-out religious marriage, with a celebrant belonging to a recognized religion, or a marriage with no religious elements whatsoever, not even a favorite hymn? Does "here comes the bride" count as religious music? :-)
The fact that the location of the civil marriage has to be approved by the local council is also a bit dodgy, IMO. Are chapels routinely approved for civil ceremonies?