You reduce the economic value for corporations but you increase the economic value for individuals. Doing so would encourage more patents to be owned by individuals instead of corporations.
My question for the parent's parent would be, why is it better for an individual to own a patent rather than a corporation?
As a resident of San Diego, I want to say that kidnapping here is not a problem. The only kidnapping in San Diego I've heard about was the kidnapping of a wealthy Mexican citizen who was held in a house somewhere in the county, but he was rescued and the thugs are being prosecuted. Although I believe tighter border security would help with overall crime, I also believe building a giant wall is a complete waste of money.
I also don't think Mexico is as scary a place as people make it out to be. I've traveled to many places there including Tijuana and Mexico City. If you use common sense, like not walking around the city alone, staying out of the bad areas, not drinking yourself into a vulnerable stupor and not being a drug dealer, then you'll be ok.
I agree. Cox start using Sandvine last November. I'd prefer them to take a more neutral approach and throttle connections that are using a lot of bandwidth so that those who are using less bandwidth can get their fair share of a speed connection. Oh, and to upgrade their infrastructure, because their internet connection is slow as hell during prime time. I don't think that's just P2P, I think that's because everyone in my area is browsing the internet or watching youtube videos at the same time.
ISPs often have to close ports because badly written operating systems full of security holes leave users, who have no idea how to secure a computer let alone a network, vulnerable to attacks and an eventual takeover of their systems for malicious purposes. Since things like spam-spitting zombie computers or a digital plague of viruses can really affect network performance, it is in the best interest of the ISP to secure these ports.
Of course on the other hand, if this new technique of theirs works and even the zombie computers are throttled enough to where they can't bring down the network, then allow the ports and drop the computers trying to send out massive amounts of spam from the network until their computers have been secured. The only problem you have left are viruses and trojan horses which do not necessarily need a lot of bandwidth to perform malicious actions. In that case, the related ports may need to be kept closed for security purposes.
I agree though. If you can throttle my always-on connection then I should be able to run an always-on server, since if the bandwidth it is using becomes a problem, my connection just becomes throttled. If my always-on servers results in my connection becoming frequently throttled and negatively affects my normal web browsing experience, then maybe I should consider taking my server down or upgrading my broadband to a business plan.
Whether or not this is true, I think the IOC should be taking this more seriously. They should look at the evidence and if it is sufficient to suggest that fraud may have occurred, perform a further investigation into the gymnasts age.
The sad thing is that, even if the Chinese did commit fraud and are stripped of their medal, it will be a false victory if the runner up is handed the gold, simply because they still lost to a 14 year old.
Maybe they should have separate gymnastic competitions based on weight classes, so that age isn't even an issue.
Can you just kindly correct him/her instead of being a total ass about it, or is this your way of getting revenge for the times when the older kids in elementary school would kick sand in your face while you were trying to read Amelia Bedelia?
Ok, so we should have to compete against foreigners. But why is it primarily science and engineering jobs are the ones the government is pushing to allow more foreigners to compete for? Why not allow foreigners to compete for all jobs, from bus drivers to corporate sales? Remember, the reason why we have H1-B visas in the first place is because there is supposedly a shortage of skilled American workers, not because the skilled American workers are asking for too much pay.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but I question your statement that "A lot of universities give foreign students partial or full scholarships. Not on need, but for 'diversity' reasons."
Every foreign student I've talked to about how they pay for college has told me it's very hard to get scholarships from the University. Diversity scholarships are typically given to American citizens and I've never seen a minority scholarship that a foreign student was eligible for. I'm not saying your wrong, I'm just asking if you can provide an example.
Also, a lot of foreign students go to schools which will give them the best bang for their buck. SDSU (San Diego) probably has so many foreign students because in-state tuition is so cheap AND foreign students can qualify for in-state tuition.
As I said, competition can be a good thing, but where is the limit? If we have to work 15 hour days to compete, is that reasonable? It seems that if you try to argue that long work days, even if they negatively affect your health, you can just expect to be told that "there are no meal tickets."
I know we're not there quite yet, but we are very close. There are already companies that expect you to work insane hours; I know because I've worked for them.
Also, would you support opening up all jobs in the U.S. to foreign competition without any requirements to hire American workers? Why or why not?
Here are some reasons why Americans are not getting these jobs and foreigners are:
1. Global competition now exists in the U.S. classroom. Foreigners study harder and get better grades, which raises the bar and leaves American students with lower grades and less motivation. Many American students leave majors for this very reason, because the major has been monopolized by foreigners. We are essentially outsourcing our very students.
For example, I took a ComSci Masters class at SDSU; there were probably 10 people out of a class of 80 who were not foreigners, presumably, Indian or South Asian. The foreign students would study relentlessly and work together, ending up with an average of 95 - 100% on assignments and tests. The Americans, on the other hand, didn't appear to study as much and didn't appear to work together a lot. I saw the foreign students success at studying and repeatedly tried to join some of their study groups, but they passively refused to let me join. As a result, I was kept out of the most successful study groups and did not perform as well as those who were. It's a bit like a company with a monopoly keeping competition out.
2. Americans can't find the jobs/opportunities. This is the most perplexing one. I hear constantly about how companies can not find Americans to hire, yet I had the hardest time finding an opportunity after graduating college. It seemed everything required at least 2 years of experience and when I applied to those jobs I typically was rejected. I was also unsuccessful at internships, presumably because there was so much competition for these internships. If there was an internship out there that had no one applying for it, I would have loved to know. It seems that companies are not that interested in searching the country to find American workers, but prefer to give the job to the first foreigner they come across and claim that there's no Americans to be had.
3. Foreigners tend to work harder. In some cases foreigners are underpaid and in other cases foreigners are paid a reasonable wage, but in both cases my experience has been that they work a lot harder than Americans do. They work faster and for longer hours. Once again, just like the classroom, the bar is being raised and it makes foreigners look more appealing and Americans look less appealing to employers.
I understand that competition is a good thing, but by allowing foreigners to saturate a given field we are essentially handing them exclusivity to that field. Should we compete against foreigner workers by working 15 hour days or for several days straight? How successful have American companies been when they have had to compete with Chinese companies? American workers will be just as successful when they have to compete with foreign workers.
First, the link is down so I wasn't able to read the linked article.
Second, This may not resemble slavery as we usually see it, but it certainly represents semi-slavery conditions after emancipation, specifically sharecropping.
Instead of people working land owned by someone else, whom can demand whatever share of the crop he wishes resulting in unfair compensation, these employees are working for a business owned by someone else whom has them work relentless without being fairly compensated. Both are situations of peonage.
Third, I once worked as a software engineer for a company which hired me on as salary and then had me work and insane amount of hours. A standard day was 12 hours, a longer day was 15, sometimes employees would work 20 hours and take a 5 hour nap at work on the floor or a couch, if one was available, and then get up and get back to work for another 20 hours. One time I worked two days straight without sleep. One month I was working 100 hours each week. With the salary I was making and the hours I was working, I was effectively making $10 an hour. At that rate the contractors from Mexico were making more than I was, the contractors from India were making double.
Why didn't I leave? Well, it was my first job and I guess I was worried about finding another with so little experience under my belt; there were a lot of other employees in the same boat. The culture was very cult-like and they used the fear of getting fired to keep us motivated. There was also a $20,000 bonus we would start collecting after 6 months, but of course half the company was laid off before that ever happened.
Was I enslaved? Probably not, it was my fear of finding another job that enslaved me. Was I being exploited? You bet. They hired me on salary knowing I would be working long hours and they would effectively be saving money. I was classified as an exempt employee so I would not be protected under FLSA, yet I was working more like a non-exempt employee, hammering out code while being micro-managed. I've heard Google is kind of like this, that if you don't work long hours then your not googley enough for the team. I wouldn't be surprised if this is what Apple employees are up in arms about.
The more work employers can get out of us, the cheaper we become and the more money they get to line their pockets with. The more employers that adopt this practice, the less options we have when it comes to jobs requiring a reasonable amount of hours, the more this looks like the sharecropping situation that followed emancipation. You can be sure that employers would like nothing better than to be able to turn us into slaves by another name.
I think the difference between my example and your example is direct versus indirect harm. In my example, the action of placing the peanuts in the sandwich is directly harming the person. In your example, your action of dating another person is indirectly harming that person. It'd be like making a peanut butter sandwich for your daughter without telling her what kind of sandwich it is, and then your daughter sharing it with a friend with a peanut allergy. Just because one person is allergic to peanuts doesn't mean everyone has to stop eating them.
Also, if you did date the girl in high school and then rubbed it in his face, then yes I think you would have some liability in it. At that point, you are doing something with the intent to harm, and the level of harm that occurs is more than you had expected.
Mental health is like physical health. Imagine instead that this girl had a peanut allergy, one strong enough that it could be fatal. Say that the girl told the women, "I don't like peanuts" but did not tell the women that she could die from peanuts. Then say that the women gives the girl a sandwich and slips some peanuts in it, just to be mean. When the girl dies from an allergic reaction to the peanuts, is the women liable?
According to the eggshell skull rule, she is, and most likely involuntary manslaughter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull
I'm assuming the women did not know the girl was depressed, but if she did then that makes the women even more liable. That would be akin to secretly giving peanuts to someone whom you know has a peanut allergy.
Stop fighting the pressure for music sharing and give customers what they want, but make money by injecting advertising into the songs/lyrics. The more popular the band is, the more people will share it, the more they will be exposed to the advertising in the songs. The same can be said for TV and movies.
If the customers don't want ads, then they'll stop pirating the music/videos.
I really like your points. I think this is about AT&T having total control over the network and all data that passes through it. Right now, if you use Skype or download a large file, AT&T can see that and either degrade or kill your connection. But P2P acts like a network within a network, and it is a network you can encrypt to keep AT&T's prying eyes out. That means AT&T can only see how much bandwidth you are using and not what you are using it for. How are they going to know who is using VoIP or watching TVoIP? How will they continue to peddling their phone and television services when a competitor can offer it cheaper and with better quality?
If AT&T is allow to discriminate against data traveling over their network, then they will grant themselves a monopoly in several markets (phone, television, etc) in their own network. They should only concern themselves with how much bandwidth is available and how much of that bandwidth to give each user. An ISP should act like an ISP, not a cable or phone company.
Why is there so much concern for censoring child porn from the internet when there is so little concern for getting children who have been sexually abused the proper mental health care they will need to deal with what happened to them?
Screw the MagLev, make the California High Speed Rail System a reality:
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/
It's cheaper and can work with existing infrastructure. Plus, there's even an effort to get private investors to build a high speed rail line from Las Vegas to Victorville:
http://www.desertxpress.com/
Obama, Clinton and McCain supported the immigrant bill of 2007 that would have automatically increased HB1 visas 20% every time the cap was met. Here is a reply I wrote to an article about Obama supporting a temporary increase in HB1 Visas:
"I'm a software engineer. After I graduated college, it was very, very challenging to find a job, because none of them were entry level. Of course, all of the entry level jobs have been outsourced to foreign countries. Still, I managed to get a job at a start-up, where I worked 12 - 15 hours a day for much less than the typical salary in my region. While I was there, almost HALF the software engineers were foreign, India and Mexico to be specific. They were HB1 contractors with roughly 7 years of experience each. My company would pay the contracting company and the contracting company would pay the hb1 worker roughly 30% of that, it was highway robbery!
A HB1 visa increase will just reward companies that outsource entry level work to foreign countries as well as contractors that hire hb1 workers and then take 60%. I'm sorry, but $15 an hour is NOT prevailing wage for a software engineer with 7 years experience, which is what some of these hb1 visa employees were getting paid. You know what though, they were happy with $15 a hour, because that is a lot of money compared to what they would earn in their native countries. So what happens? Wages are kept down while inflation increases and Americans are out of jobs.
Fix the HB1 visa program before you increase the cap. Start by auctioning off HB1 visas to the highest bidder instead of just giving them away first come first serve to contracting companies. Don't allow HB1 visa workers rights like in-state tuition or tax breaks. Then, funnel money into creating entry level jobs in the U.S. Force companies to hire entry level citizens and train them, if we have to.
The company with the highest number of HB1 visas? Infosys, a contracting company with it's headquarters located in Bangalore, India."
I would add creating more accountability for private business to hire American's with a college degree and train them if they don't meet their exact qualifications. Can't find someone with 5 - 7 years in some obscure specialization? Then train them and pay them a competitive wage so that you don't lose them to another company!
The "skilled" labor or "superstar" programmer shortage argument is a bad excuse for foreign worker visa increased. The HB1 visa employees I worked with were no smarter than any U.S. citizen with the same amount of experience. They also preferred to be just as "lazy" as most U.S. citizens are stereotyped to be. One used to brag to me about jobs he had where he only did about 5 hours of real work a day, those were the jobs he preferred. Of course, if he was given deadlines that required him to work 15 hours a day he would, because he's at the mercy of his employer who has full control over his worker visa. For every 1 "skilled" or "superstar" programmer you get via an HB1 visa, you'll get 9 that are no smarter or passionate than the average college-educated U.S. programmer and those will flood an already wage-suppressed market.
Here are two more notable comments from the same article:
"When there is a shortage, you pay more, not less." This makes sense to me. When there is an oil shortage, prices go up like crazy. As of 2001, wages have been flat although productivity has continued to increase and corporate profits rose 20%; I saw a BBC article on this a week ago and would post a link but can't find it currently.
"I'm an EMPLOYED IT manager. We can easily train high school people to do a lot of the IT jobs, they don't need BS degrees, a microsoft cert is sufficient. Yet my own company drives down wages routinely by bringing in H1B people rather than trying to compete or train Americans. We routinely offshore development and then lay off our developers."
Obama, Clinton and McCain supported the immigrant bill of 2007 that would have automatically increased HB1 visas 20% every time the cap was met. Here is a reply I wrote to an article about Obama supporting a temporary increase in HB1 Visas:
"I'm a software engineer. After I graduated college, it was very, very challenging to find a job, because none of them were entry level. Of course, all of the entry level jobs have been outsourced to foreign countries. Still, I managed to get a job at a start-up, where I worked 12 - 15 hours a day for much less than the typical salary in my region. While I was there, almost HALF the software engineers were foreign, India and Mexico to be specific. They were HB1 contractors with roughly 7 years of experience each. My company would pay the contracting company and the contracting company would pay the hb1 worker roughly 30% of that, it was highway robbery!
A HB1 visa increase will just reward companies that outsource entry level work to foreign countries as well as contractors that hire hb1 workers and then take 60%. I'm sorry, but $15 an hour is NOT prevailing wage for a software engineer with 7 years experience, which is what some of these hb1 visa employees were getting paid. You know what though, they were happy with $15 a hour, because that is a lot of money compared to what they would earn in their native countries. So what happens? Wages are kept down while inflation increases and Americans are out of jobs.
Fix the HB1 visa program before you increase the cap. Start by auctioning off HB1 visas to the highest bidder instead of just giving them away first come first serve to contracting companies. Don't allow HB1 visa workers rights like in-state tuition or tax breaks. Then, funnel money into creating entry level jobs in the U.S. Force companies to hire entry level citizens and train them, if we have to.
The company with the highest number of HB1 visas? Infosys, a contracting company with it's headquarters located in Bangalore, India."
I would add creating more accountability for private business to hire American's with a college degree and train them if they don't meet their exact qualifications. Can't find someone with 5 - 7 years in some obscure specialization? Then train them and pay them a competitive wage so that you don't lose them to another company!
The "skilled" labor or "superstar" programmer shortage argument is a bad excuse for foreign worker visa increased. The HB1 visa employees I worked with were no smarter than any U.S. citizen with the same amount of experience. They also preferred to be just as "lazy" as most U.S. citizens are stereotyped to be. One used to brag to me about jobs he had where he only did about 5 hours of real work a day, those were the jobs he preferred. Of course, if he was given deadlines that required him to work 15 hours a day he would, because he's at the mercy of his employer who has full control over his worker visa. For every 1 "skilled" or "superstar" programmer you get via an HB1 visa, you'll get 9 that are no smarter or passionate than the average college-educated U.S. programmer and those will flood an already wage-suppressed market.
Here are two more notable comments from the same article:
"When there is a shortage, you pay more, not less."
This makes sense to me. When there is an oil shortage, prices go up like crazy. As of 2001, wages have been flat although productivity has continued to increase and corporate profits rose 20%; I saw a BBC article on this a week ago and would post a link but can't find it currently.
"I'm an EMPLOYED IT manager. We can easily train high school people to do a lot of the IT jobs, they don't need BS degrees, a microsoft cert is sufficient. Yet my own company drives down wages routinely by bringing in H1B people rather than trying to compete or train Americans. We routinely offshore development and then lay off our developers."
See the article for more comments: http://pradeepc.net/blog/?p=193
I did some phone banking to locate Obama supporters. Sometimes people would tell me as to why they were not voting for Obama. One women I talked to said she would love to vote for Obama, but that most likely if he won the nomination he would be assassinated, just as Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy were assassinated.
I agree with these people, I too fear that he may be assassinated, but I'm not about to let my fear make my decision regarding whom I choose for president. I mean, isn't that how we ended up where we are now in the first place?
Slashdot Mirror
I remember taking some tests in college where you could get 50% just by writing your name on the exam.
And let's not forget the lovely curves where an F would magically turn into a B because the entire class performed so poorly.
You reduce the economic value for corporations but you increase the economic value for individuals. Doing so would encourage more patents to be owned by individuals instead of corporations. My question for the parent's parent would be, why is it better for an individual to own a patent rather than a corporation?
Glad to hear a first-person account then baseless attacks from people who know someone who know someone.
Don't point out that the emperor is naked, lest you become a hypocrite!
Those damn niggle lovers!
As a resident of San Diego, I want to say that kidnapping here is not a problem. The only kidnapping in San Diego I've heard about was the kidnapping of a wealthy Mexican citizen who was held in a house somewhere in the county, but he was rescued and the thugs are being prosecuted. Although I believe tighter border security would help with overall crime, I also believe building a giant wall is a complete waste of money.
I also don't think Mexico is as scary a place as people make it out to be. I've traveled to many places there including Tijuana and Mexico City. If you use common sense, like not walking around the city alone, staying out of the bad areas, not drinking yourself into a vulnerable stupor and not being a drug dealer, then you'll be ok.
I agree. Cox start using Sandvine last November. I'd prefer them to take a more neutral approach and throttle connections that are using a lot of bandwidth so that those who are using less bandwidth can get their fair share of a speed connection. Oh, and to upgrade their infrastructure, because their internet connection is slow as hell during prime time. I don't think that's just P2P, I think that's because everyone in my area is browsing the internet or watching youtube videos at the same time.
ISPs often have to close ports because badly written operating systems full of security holes leave users, who have no idea how to secure a computer let alone a network, vulnerable to attacks and an eventual takeover of their systems for malicious purposes. Since things like spam-spitting zombie computers or a digital plague of viruses can really affect network performance, it is in the best interest of the ISP to secure these ports.
Of course on the other hand, if this new technique of theirs works and even the zombie computers are throttled enough to where they can't bring down the network, then allow the ports and drop the computers trying to send out massive amounts of spam from the network until their computers have been secured. The only problem you have left are viruses and trojan horses which do not necessarily need a lot of bandwidth to perform malicious actions. In that case, the related ports may need to be kept closed for security purposes.
I agree though. If you can throttle my always-on connection then I should be able to run an always-on server, since if the bandwidth it is using becomes a problem, my connection just becomes throttled. If my always-on servers results in my connection becoming frequently throttled and negatively affects my normal web browsing experience, then maybe I should consider taking my server down or upgrading my broadband to a business plan.
Whether or not this is true, I think the IOC should be taking this more seriously. They should look at the evidence and if it is sufficient to suggest that fraud may have occurred, perform a further investigation into the gymnasts age.
The sad thing is that, even if the Chinese did commit fraud and are stripped of their medal, it will be a false victory if the runner up is handed the gold, simply because they still lost to a 14 year old.
Maybe they should have separate gymnastic competitions based on weight classes, so that age isn't even an issue.
Can you just kindly correct him/her instead of being a total ass about it, or is this your way of getting revenge for the times when the older kids in elementary school would kick sand in your face while you were trying to read Amelia Bedelia?
I meant San Diego State University
Ok, so we should have to compete against foreigners. But why is it primarily science and engineering jobs are the ones the government is pushing to allow more foreigners to compete for? Why not allow foreigners to compete for all jobs, from bus drivers to corporate sales? Remember, the reason why we have H1-B visas in the first place is because there is supposedly a shortage of skilled American workers, not because the skilled American workers are asking for too much pay.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but I question your statement that "A lot of universities give foreign students partial or full scholarships. Not on need, but for 'diversity' reasons." Every foreign student I've talked to about how they pay for college has told me it's very hard to get scholarships from the University. Diversity scholarships are typically given to American citizens and I've never seen a minority scholarship that a foreign student was eligible for. I'm not saying your wrong, I'm just asking if you can provide an example. Also, a lot of foreign students go to schools which will give them the best bang for their buck. SDSU (San Diego) probably has so many foreign students because in-state tuition is so cheap AND foreign students can qualify for in-state tuition.
As I said, competition can be a good thing, but where is the limit? If we have to work 15 hour days to compete, is that reasonable? It seems that if you try to argue that long work days, even if they negatively affect your health, you can just expect to be told that "there are no meal tickets."
I know we're not there quite yet, but we are very close. There are already companies that expect you to work insane hours; I know because I've worked for them.
Also, would you support opening up all jobs in the U.S. to foreign competition without any requirements to hire American workers? Why or why not?
Here are some reasons why Americans are not getting these jobs and foreigners are:
1. Global competition now exists in the U.S. classroom. Foreigners study harder and get better grades, which raises the bar and leaves American students with lower grades and less motivation. Many American students leave majors for this very reason, because the major has been monopolized by foreigners. We are essentially outsourcing our very students.
For example, I took a ComSci Masters class at SDSU; there were probably 10 people out of a class of 80 who were not foreigners, presumably, Indian or South Asian. The foreign students would study relentlessly and work together, ending up with an average of 95 - 100% on assignments and tests. The Americans, on the other hand, didn't appear to study as much and didn't appear to work together a lot. I saw the foreign students success at studying and repeatedly tried to join some of their study groups, but they passively refused to let me join. As a result, I was kept out of the most successful study groups and did not perform as well as those who were. It's a bit like a company with a monopoly keeping competition out.
2. Americans can't find the jobs/opportunities. This is the most perplexing one. I hear constantly about how companies can not find Americans to hire, yet I had the hardest time finding an opportunity after graduating college. It seemed everything required at least 2 years of experience and when I applied to those jobs I typically was rejected. I was also unsuccessful at internships, presumably because there was so much competition for these internships. If there was an internship out there that had no one applying for it, I would have loved to know. It seems that companies are not that interested in searching the country to find American workers, but prefer to give the job to the first foreigner they come across and claim that there's no Americans to be had.
3. Foreigners tend to work harder. In some cases foreigners are underpaid and in other cases foreigners are paid a reasonable wage, but in both cases my experience has been that they work a lot harder than Americans do. They work faster and for longer hours. Once again, just like the classroom, the bar is being raised and it makes foreigners look more appealing and Americans look less appealing to employers.
I understand that competition is a good thing, but by allowing foreigners to saturate a given field we are essentially handing them exclusivity to that field. Should we compete against foreigner workers by working 15 hour days or for several days straight? How successful have American companies been when they have had to compete with Chinese companies? American workers will be just as successful when they have to compete with foreign workers.
First, the link is down so I wasn't able to read the linked article.
Second, This may not resemble slavery as we usually see it, but it certainly represents semi-slavery conditions after emancipation, specifically sharecropping.
Instead of people working land owned by someone else, whom can demand whatever share of the crop he wishes resulting in unfair compensation, these employees are working for a business owned by someone else whom has them work relentless without being fairly compensated. Both are situations of peonage.
Third, I once worked as a software engineer for a company which hired me on as salary and then had me work and insane amount of hours. A standard day was 12 hours, a longer day was 15, sometimes employees would work 20 hours and take a 5 hour nap at work on the floor or a couch, if one was available, and then get up and get back to work for another 20 hours. One time I worked two days straight without sleep. One month I was working 100 hours each week. With the salary I was making and the hours I was working, I was effectively making $10 an hour. At that rate the contractors from Mexico were making more than I was, the contractors from India were making double.
Why didn't I leave? Well, it was my first job and I guess I was worried about finding another with so little experience under my belt; there were a lot of other employees in the same boat. The culture was very cult-like and they used the fear of getting fired to keep us motivated. There was also a $20,000 bonus we would start collecting after 6 months, but of course half the company was laid off before that ever happened.
Was I enslaved? Probably not, it was my fear of finding another job that enslaved me. Was I being exploited? You bet. They hired me on salary knowing I would be working long hours and they would effectively be saving money. I was classified as an exempt employee so I would not be protected under FLSA, yet I was working more like a non-exempt employee, hammering out code while being micro-managed. I've heard Google is kind of like this, that if you don't work long hours then your not googley enough for the team. I wouldn't be surprised if this is what Apple employees are up in arms about.
The more work employers can get out of us, the cheaper we become and the more money they get to line their pockets with. The more employers that adopt this practice, the less options we have when it comes to jobs requiring a reasonable amount of hours, the more this looks like the sharecropping situation that followed emancipation. You can be sure that employers would like nothing better than to be able to turn us into slaves by another name.
I think the difference between my example and your example is direct versus indirect harm. In my example, the action of placing the peanuts in the sandwich is directly harming the person. In your example, your action of dating another person is indirectly harming that person. It'd be like making a peanut butter sandwich for your daughter without telling her what kind of sandwich it is, and then your daughter sharing it with a friend with a peanut allergy. Just because one person is allergic to peanuts doesn't mean everyone has to stop eating them.
Also, if you did date the girl in high school and then rubbed it in his face, then yes I think you would have some liability in it. At that point, you are doing something with the intent to harm, and the level of harm that occurs is more than you had expected.
Mental health is like physical health. Imagine instead that this girl had a peanut allergy, one strong enough that it could be fatal. Say that the girl told the women, "I don't like peanuts" but did not tell the women that she could die from peanuts. Then say that the women gives the girl a sandwich and slips some peanuts in it, just to be mean. When the girl dies from an allergic reaction to the peanuts, is the women liable?
According to the eggshell skull rule, she is, and most likely involuntary manslaughter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull I'm assuming the women did not know the girl was depressed, but if she did then that makes the women even more liable. That would be akin to secretly giving peanuts to someone whom you know has a peanut allergy.
Stop fighting the pressure for music sharing and give customers what they want, but make money by injecting advertising into the songs/lyrics. The more popular the band is, the more people will share it, the more they will be exposed to the advertising in the songs. The same can be said for TV and movies.
If the customers don't want ads, then they'll stop pirating the music/videos.
I really like your points. I think this is about AT&T having total control over the network and all data that passes through it. Right now, if you use Skype or download a large file, AT&T can see that and either degrade or kill your connection. But P2P acts like a network within a network, and it is a network you can encrypt to keep AT&T's prying eyes out. That means AT&T can only see how much bandwidth you are using and not what you are using it for. How are they going to know who is using VoIP or watching TVoIP? How will they continue to peddling their phone and television services when a competitor can offer it cheaper and with better quality? If AT&T is allow to discriminate against data traveling over their network, then they will grant themselves a monopoly in several markets (phone, television, etc) in their own network. They should only concern themselves with how much bandwidth is available and how much of that bandwidth to give each user. An ISP should act like an ISP, not a cable or phone company.
Why is there so much concern for censoring child porn from the internet when there is so little concern for getting children who have been sexually abused the proper mental health care they will need to deal with what happened to them?
Screw the MagLev, make the California High Speed Rail System a reality: http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/ It's cheaper and can work with existing infrastructure. Plus, there's even an effort to get private investors to build a high speed rail line from Las Vegas to Victorville: http://www.desertxpress.com/
I screwed up the formatting. Please ignore this reply and read the following one. Sorry about the double post.
Obama, Clinton and McCain supported the immigrant bill of 2007 that would have automatically increased HB1 visas 20% every time the cap was met. Here is a reply I wrote to an article about Obama supporting a temporary increase in HB1 Visas:
"I'm a software engineer. After I graduated college, it was very, very challenging to find a job, because none of them were entry level. Of course, all of the entry level jobs have been outsourced to foreign countries. Still, I managed to get a job at a start-up, where I worked 12 - 15 hours a day for much less than the typical salary in my region. While I was there, almost HALF the software engineers were foreign, India and Mexico to be specific. They were HB1 contractors with roughly 7 years of experience each. My company would pay the contracting company and the contracting company would pay the hb1 worker roughly 30% of that, it was highway robbery!
A HB1 visa increase will just reward companies that outsource entry level work to foreign countries as well as contractors that hire hb1 workers and then take 60%. I'm sorry, but $15 an hour is NOT prevailing wage for a software engineer with 7 years experience, which is what some of these hb1 visa employees were getting paid. You know what though, they were happy with $15 a hour, because that is a lot of money compared to what they would earn in their native countries. So what happens? Wages are kept down while inflation increases and Americans are out of jobs.
Fix the HB1 visa program before you increase the cap. Start by auctioning off HB1 visas to the highest bidder instead of just giving them away first come first serve to contracting companies. Don't allow HB1 visa workers rights like in-state tuition or tax breaks. Then, funnel money into creating entry level jobs in the U.S. Force companies to hire entry level citizens and train them, if we have to.
The company with the highest number of HB1 visas? Infosys, a contracting company with it's headquarters located in Bangalore, India."
I would add creating more accountability for private business to hire American's with a college degree and train them if they don't meet their exact qualifications. Can't find someone with 5 - 7 years in some obscure specialization? Then train them and pay them a competitive wage so that you don't lose them to another company!
The "skilled" labor or "superstar" programmer shortage argument is a bad excuse for foreign worker visa increased. The HB1 visa employees I worked with were no smarter than any U.S. citizen with the same amount of experience. They also preferred to be just as "lazy" as most U.S. citizens are stereotyped to be. One used to brag to me about jobs he had where he only did about 5 hours of real work a day, those were the jobs he preferred. Of course, if he was given deadlines that required him to work 15 hours a day he would, because he's at the mercy of his employer who has full control over his worker visa. For every 1 "skilled" or "superstar" programmer you get via an HB1 visa, you'll get 9 that are no smarter or passionate than the average college-educated U.S. programmer and those will flood an already wage-suppressed market.
Here are two more notable comments from the same article:
"When there is a shortage, you pay more, not less."
This makes sense to me. When there is an oil shortage, prices go up like crazy. As of 2001, wages have been flat although productivity has continued to increase and corporate profits rose 20%; I saw a BBC article on this a week ago and would post a link but can't find it currently.
"I'm an EMPLOYED IT manager. We can easily train high school people to do a lot of the IT jobs, they don't need BS degrees, a microsoft cert is sufficient. Yet my own company drives down wages routinely by bringing in H1B people rather than trying to compete or train Americans. We routinely offshore development and then lay off our developers."
See the article for more comments: http://pradeepc.net/blog/?p=193
Obama, Clinton and McCain supported the immigrant bill of 2007 that would have automatically increased HB1 visas 20% every time the cap was met. Here is a reply I wrote to an article about Obama supporting a temporary increase in HB1 Visas: "I'm a software engineer. After I graduated college, it was very, very challenging to find a job, because none of them were entry level. Of course, all of the entry level jobs have been outsourced to foreign countries. Still, I managed to get a job at a start-up, where I worked 12 - 15 hours a day for much less than the typical salary in my region. While I was there, almost HALF the software engineers were foreign, India and Mexico to be specific. They were HB1 contractors with roughly 7 years of experience each. My company would pay the contracting company and the contracting company would pay the hb1 worker roughly 30% of that, it was highway robbery! A HB1 visa increase will just reward companies that outsource entry level work to foreign countries as well as contractors that hire hb1 workers and then take 60%. I'm sorry, but $15 an hour is NOT prevailing wage for a software engineer with 7 years experience, which is what some of these hb1 visa employees were getting paid. You know what though, they were happy with $15 a hour, because that is a lot of money compared to what they would earn in their native countries. So what happens? Wages are kept down while inflation increases and Americans are out of jobs. Fix the HB1 visa program before you increase the cap. Start by auctioning off HB1 visas to the highest bidder instead of just giving them away first come first serve to contracting companies. Don't allow HB1 visa workers rights like in-state tuition or tax breaks. Then, funnel money into creating entry level jobs in the U.S. Force companies to hire entry level citizens and train them, if we have to. The company with the highest number of HB1 visas? Infosys, a contracting company with it's headquarters located in Bangalore, India." I would add creating more accountability for private business to hire American's with a college degree and train them if they don't meet their exact qualifications. Can't find someone with 5 - 7 years in some obscure specialization? Then train them and pay them a competitive wage so that you don't lose them to another company! The "skilled" labor or "superstar" programmer shortage argument is a bad excuse for foreign worker visa increased. The HB1 visa employees I worked with were no smarter than any U.S. citizen with the same amount of experience. They also preferred to be just as "lazy" as most U.S. citizens are stereotyped to be. One used to brag to me about jobs he had where he only did about 5 hours of real work a day, those were the jobs he preferred. Of course, if he was given deadlines that required him to work 15 hours a day he would, because he's at the mercy of his employer who has full control over his worker visa. For every 1 "skilled" or "superstar" programmer you get via an HB1 visa, you'll get 9 that are no smarter or passionate than the average college-educated U.S. programmer and those will flood an already wage-suppressed market. Here are two more notable comments from the same article: "When there is a shortage, you pay more, not less." This makes sense to me. When there is an oil shortage, prices go up like crazy. As of 2001, wages have been flat although productivity has continued to increase and corporate profits rose 20%; I saw a BBC article on this a week ago and would post a link but can't find it currently. "I'm an EMPLOYED IT manager. We can easily train high school people to do a lot of the IT jobs, they don't need BS degrees, a microsoft cert is sufficient. Yet my own company drives down wages routinely by bringing in H1B people rather than trying to compete or train Americans. We routinely offshore development and then lay off our developers." See the article for more comments: http://pradeepc.net/blog/?p=193
I did some phone banking to locate Obama supporters. Sometimes people would tell me as to why they were not voting for Obama. One women I talked to said she would love to vote for Obama, but that most likely if he won the nomination he would be assassinated, just as Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy were assassinated.
I agree with these people, I too fear that he may be assassinated, but I'm not about to let my fear make my decision regarding whom I choose for president. I mean, isn't that how we ended up where we are now in the first place?