"Do you think these foreign workers sould be entitled to some sort of guaranteed wage minimum, comparable to those holding similar skills that are native to the country?"
Actually yes.
Follow my logic here...
If the intent of H1B is to get talent that simply isn't available locally, then the best way to treat these workers is to give them a green card the moment they're hired. That way, there is no pressure to stay with an employer if they are underpaid. If takes away any incentive to underpay these folks because they'll simply move elsewhere. That protects the H1B and the American worker.
If the intent of the H1B is to get cheaper labor, then these folks are little better than indentured servent filling out time being underpaid for the promise of a green card after 5 years. If that's the intent of the law, then lets be honest about it and stop lying about the lack of local talent.
[BTW: You can tell an ad to prove no local talent exists... its always like this:
WANTED: Senior Oracle DBA (10+ yr) with extensive Java programming skills, and Masters Degree in Mathematics. Salary up to $48K depending on relevant experience.]
Re:Slightly incorrect research.
on
The H-1B Swindle
·
· Score: 1
"One need to compare H1B to the people in the same position."
That's precisely what the study attempted to do.
Taking everything you say into account, the study still found that the H1B's as a group occupy the bottom of the pay scale.
And lets assume the study was wrong and you're right... if companies are unwilling to hire local talent for entry level positions, then where will the skilled, experienced talent come from in 10 years? When those H1B's are done, they go home, and we're left with little except cheap wages for a few years. The valuable commodity here is the experience, not the fact that HP et al saved a few million this year.
Companies are bottom line oriented for this quarter; that doesn't mean congress has to help them.
Actually, I didn't massage any data; I simply gave you websites that appeared to refute a couple key points. Emotion aside
I thought it undermined your entire premise, but as you're posting AC, its difficult to hold a reasonable discussion if you're going to try to refute reason with emotion.
You understand yet another reason that we should hold onto the root servers now.
"Did you know a typical Chinese peasant now lives longer than a US citizen? (Bet they don't mention facts like that on Fox)"
That's an interesting theory, but not proven by sources. A typical Chinese citizen lives just under 71 years, but a typical US citizen lives just under 78 years.
"Ok, and what is Joe Blow American going to do when he can't buy his latest model Nokia cell phone over the internet because the DNS is misrouted?"
Can you explain how that would happen?
On a social level, nobody in the U.S. buys cell phones directly from Nokia. Perhaps "nobody" is too strong. Almost nobody.
On a practical level, if I go to www.nokia.com, where precisely do you think you're sent? What servers are authoritative for.com,.net,.org,.edu,.gov?
But lets look at this on a more practical level. If I go to www.amazon.com, I don't really care where some root server in France points. Its irrelevant to me. And sure, the EU could really fracture things by taking existing TLD's pointing them to some other which disagrees with the U.S. servers, but so what? If some ISP in Ireland wants to point "slashdot.org" to some other place, I suspect its the people in Ireland that lose out.
With the Internet being founded in U.S., the founding institutions would still be here and would be largely unaffected by the EU move. The infrastructure is here. Its one thing we didn't outsource.
Finally, the EU is a "talking" organization. They have no authority beyond a a little in few countries in europe and absolutely none outside it. So my reaction is that (a) the EU would never do anything like what they're threatening (b) They will likely debate in brussels for about 5 years (c) on the offchance they actually do something, it will have zero impact on the U.S. and will simply hurt people with ISPs too dumb to point to the actual root servers controlled by ICANN.
I think you'll find both conservatives and liberals speaking with one voice on this issue in the U.S. And that, my friend, is probably the most impressive thing the EU has done this year.
"Today, the housing and every other market is way over saturated in debt - and the writing is on the wall. (watch out for a major economic "adjustment")"
Generally, the type of adjustment you're talking about here doesn't happen in residential real-estate for a simple reason: People can't afford to sell for less than they paid. They can't because they generally don't have the means to sell for less than their mortagage without declaring bankruptcy.
That's not to say there won't be some downward pressure on housing prices, but the usual effect is very temporary and usually only effects very specific properties. In the late 80's and early 90's there was some deflation in housing prices, but it was only for 18 months and prices clearly are higher than they were in the late 80's.
I think commercial real-estate is more sensitive to deflation because small companies readily fold when their debt service exceeds their cash flow. For residential mortagages, people will pay as long as they can, and even if there's a problem, banks are not eager to foreclose because its more profitable to let customers work through the problem.
"Free network television is not in the bill of rights."
Neither is commercial television. Nor televisions. Neither is the right to make a profit from television.
I'm not sure what your point is... that unless something is in the bill of rights, we have no rights to it?
Look, I get what you're saying, that its "their" material, they can broadcast it anyway they like. And it might surprise you to know that I agree with you. But at the same time, I'm not sure why the government is spending time and effort to ensure a profit by mandating a broadcast flag.
After all, a broadcast flag isn't in the bill of rights!
The quality of NPR over FM is significantly better than Sirius.
ESPN is significantly better over AM than Sirius.
And most of Sirius's content is produced in-house and originates in NYC. And all the talk channels sound terrible.
Tell you what. Give it a listen rather than argue with me. You'll see the 2nd response to my original post that I'm not the only person who has noted this. In fact, there's probably a bunch of people that you know or work with that listen to Sirius; they'll probably let you listen if you ask.
"There is a distinctly possible scenario that allows the copyright to be breached."
Yes, but its the same possible scenario that allows the copyright to be breached with terrestrial radio. The quality, or lack thereof, has nothing to do with copyright infringement.
That distinction between digital and analog seems to have been made by the RIAA/MPAA as an arbitrary way of dispensing with fair-use defenses by getting different copyright laws passed on digital content.
The whole thing breaks down at the point the signal is digitized because the distinction is not important.
"It's the fact that whatever the satellite broadcasts will make it intact to the receiver, in pretty much perfect digital form."
No, not really. Because the digital signals go through the air as analog, they are subject to interference, which causes dropouts. Yes, satellite signals drop out all the time in a moving car. In heavily wooded areas, the signal is frequently dropped.
But that misses the point. If I send highly compressed music to you in digital form, yes, you can make a perfect digital copy of highly compressed music. The same way that I plug the line-out of an expensive FM receiver into the input jack of my PC and make perfect digital copies of FM radio.
There is no difference in either theory or sound quality.
"A tape copy of radio is a far cry from a digital copy. "
Why?
Quality-wise, there won't be any difference; the quality of Satellite broadcasts is low; its lower than the shoutcasts broadcasts you can get with iTunes or WinAmp.
Perhaps it is within possibility that if the satellite providers used a significant amount of bandwidth for a channel, and the analog station compressed the hell out of the FM station, then it might be better, but the reality is that good FM (i.e. WGMS out of Washington DC, or lots of other PBS stations) blows away any satellite service.
On the Sirius service, voice channels sound about the same or worse as shortwave broadcasts; the bit rates are so low that it takes you a couple weeks to get used to the sound. The music is okay, but clearly like low-grade FM; things like Saxophones are rendered so poorly on Sirius that you can barely tell that's what they are. Certain stations (i.e. Classical) are obviously given a higher bandwidth.
But stuff like NPR is better via FM because there is a lot less compression.
The advantages satellite has over terrestrial radio is country-wide access and no commercials. Sound quality is average at best.
" but the EU will not accept the current situation anymore "
What *is* the current situation?
Its not clear what you mean. Simply the root servers? That's easy. Set up your own root servers. Congratulations. You just need to convince ISP's to pay attention to those servers.
IP allocation? Go to IPV6 and we don't need to have this conversation anymore.
I suspect this is all about control of content and or some sort of levy/fee system, not about anything technical. The U.S. has a much different view on free speech than the EU and most of the rest of the world, one that can't be easily reconciled. There are probably some financial implications that are playing a role as well.
I'd like to understand what "control" means before anything is changed.
But the bottom line to me is if the EU would take the technical lead by heavily promoting IPV6 and all associated protocols, they might gain control the old fashioned way: innovate your way to the top.
I realize technically they can do something like that, but if they disable customer's DVD players, they're going to have to offer compenstation of some sort. It's kind of like the threat of dropping the bomb. Everybody understands it could happen, but no sane person would do it.
"However, I think everyone can agree that a fully automatic assault rifle could take out quite a few people in an airport in no time flat."
Which is why you aren't allowed to own one.
You never really were allowed to own an "assault rifle", whatever that means. Fully automatic weapons have been banned by the ATF longer than most of us have been alive, and are only allowed for use in certain circumstances (i.e. collectors or museums).
What politicians are calling "assault rifles" is banning guns that mimic military rifles. Its the equivalent of taking a 1995 civic, putting a loud exhaust, big spoiler, stripes, big wheels and tires and then calling it a race car. Its not.
The digital equivalent of a TBC or video distribution amplifier will have to exist to support the same type of functionality commonly done today.
Those types of devices will have to have a digital certificate built into them, and that will be a place to get high quality video. That's a place off the top of my head.
The parent suggested a complex workaround, but more likely, we'll see the equivalent of what we have now with chinese DVD players: press the magic code on the remote and the copy-protection is gone.
You see, the only people who have an interest *really* in the DRM are the hollywood studios; everyone else in the chain would rather not support it as it costs them money and makes their products less desirable.
I meant from the standpoint of the end user; their paradigm is thin client.
Look at this from another viewpoint. If there are "millions of dollars of computers" to purchase, it will be NASA doing it, not google. Again, nothing for the county to tax.
"I'm sure there are literally millions of dollars in computers being moved into that facility."
I'm not so sure.
Google's paradigm is centralized computing, probably not within this facility. At best, they'll lease some office equipment, desks, etc. Seems to me there isn't going to be anything to tax.
Google's value is not in its physical assets, but in its people. I don't see anything for the county to tax here.
If google is *renting* the building, how would they be liable for any special taxes related to coming to the county?
I get that by moving to a federal building on federal land they don't get money from the federal government for property tax.
But think of the alternative. Google rents some space from "Joe's Management Company". There still is no additional revenue from taxes. I'm not a tax expert, and I can't even spell "CPA", but this article seems to have a flawed premises.
I think this is the beginning of market saturation and a fall in the value of so-called Intellectual Property.
We have so many outlets for entertainment right now that the sheer volume means I can never get to a significantly fraction of movies, books, records, video games or web sites.
And when there is too much of something, prices will fall. Not quickly, as copyright laws work to keep prices high. But fall they will.
Yes, there is a lot of sucky bands, movies, books, but the amount of material out there means there are a lot of genuinely good entertainers out there, yes, even with RIAA affiliated labels. But because there is so much material, I think the amount of material means the market is segmented and its harder to differentiate from the pack.
But again, in that kind of environment where there is a lot of decent entertainment readily available, prices will fall. Its inevitable, even in the face of lawsuits, new laws, technical hurdles. It's as inevitable as gravity.
The screen does scratch very easily. A friend got one and a few hours later, the screen had fine scratches all over it. His 3G iPod had no scratches on it, so he seems to be very careful. There's something different about the Nano than other iPods that must contribute to this.
I'll bet Apple will very quietly introduce some changes to contruction but won't admit to it. The scratches will not be heard from again.
Re:He's not wrong
on
Palm's Mistakes
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The problems for me arose with the Outlook/MS Exchange combo. A stand-alone Outlook tends to work okay. Its really kind of hit or miss. My earlier palms seemed to work fine worked fine, but my Lifedrive won't synchronize with Outlook/MS Exchange (although it does work fine with stand-alone Outlook). I contacted Palm, but they couldn't figure it out.
Fortunately, that wasn't a critical feature for me, or I would have been up the creek.
Slashdot Mirror
"Do you think these foreign workers sould be entitled to some sort of guaranteed wage minimum, comparable to those holding similar skills that are native to the country?"
Actually yes.
Follow my logic here...
If the intent of H1B is to get talent that simply isn't available locally, then the best way to treat these workers is to give them a green card the moment they're hired. That way, there is no pressure to stay with an employer if they are underpaid. If takes away any incentive to underpay these folks because they'll simply move elsewhere. That protects the H1B and the American worker.
If the intent of the H1B is to get cheaper labor, then these folks are little better than indentured servent filling out time being underpaid for the promise of a green card after 5 years. If that's the intent of the law, then lets be honest about it and stop lying about the lack of local talent.
[BTW: You can tell an ad to prove no local talent exists... its always like this:
WANTED: Senior Oracle DBA (10+ yr) with extensive Java programming skills, and Masters Degree in Mathematics. Salary up to $48K depending on relevant experience.]
"One need to compare H1B to the people in the same position."
That's precisely what the study attempted to do.
Taking everything you say into account, the study still found that the H1B's as a group occupy the bottom of the pay scale.
And lets assume the study was wrong and you're right... if companies are unwilling to hire local talent for entry level positions, then where will the skilled, experienced talent come from in 10 years? When those H1B's are done, they go home, and we're left with little except cheap wages for a few years. The valuable commodity here is the experience, not the fact that HP et al saved a few million this year.
Companies are bottom line oriented for this quarter; that doesn't mean congress has to help them.
"are NOT the property of the people of the USA they are the property of the government of the USA and there is a major difference between thoses two"
I've never heard that before. Can you point to a link that explains the difference? It sounds interesting.
Actually, I didn't massage any data; I simply gave you websites that appeared to refute a couple key points. Emotion aside
I thought it undermined your entire premise, but as you're posting AC, its difficult to hold a reasonable discussion if you're going to try to refute reason with emotion.
You understand yet another reason that we should hold onto the root servers now.
"There exist outrageous levels of crime that create a powder keg every time the police isn't controlling the streets."
l e_id=4797/ 2002520986_katmyth26.html0 05-09-29-after-further-review_x.htm
b lick.htmU nited_States_(People).html#p73
This is not correct. The crime rate in the U.S. has been declining since 1993:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance.htm#Crime
And the reporting of violent crimes in New Orleans is mostly devoid of facts (i.e. sensationalism):
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?artic
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2
"Did you know a typical Chinese peasant now lives longer than a US citizen? (Bet they don't mention facts like that on Fox)"
That's an interesting theory, but not proven by sources. A typical Chinese citizen lives just under 71 years, but a typical US citizen lives just under 78 years.
http://www.china-club.de/english/chinaguide/ueber
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_1741500824_4/
"Ok, and what is Joe Blow American going to do when he can't buy his latest model Nokia cell phone over the internet because the DNS is misrouted?"
.com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov?
Can you explain how that would happen?
On a social level, nobody in the U.S. buys cell phones directly from Nokia. Perhaps "nobody" is too strong. Almost nobody.
On a practical level, if I go to www.nokia.com, where precisely do you think you're sent? What servers are authoritative for
But lets look at this on a more practical level. If I go to www.amazon.com, I don't really care where some root server in France points. Its irrelevant to me. And sure, the EU could really fracture things by taking existing TLD's pointing them to some other which disagrees with the U.S. servers, but so what? If some ISP in Ireland wants to point "slashdot.org" to some other place, I suspect its the people in Ireland that lose out.
With the Internet being founded in U.S., the founding institutions would still be here and would be largely unaffected by the EU move. The infrastructure is here. Its one thing we didn't outsource.
Finally, the EU is a "talking" organization. They have no authority beyond a a little in few countries in europe and absolutely none outside it. So my reaction is that (a) the EU would never do anything like what they're threatening (b) They will likely debate in brussels for about 5 years (c) on the offchance they actually do something, it will have zero impact on the U.S. and will simply hurt people with ISPs too dumb to point to the actual root servers controlled by ICANN.
I think you'll find both conservatives and liberals speaking with one voice on this issue in the U.S. And that, my friend, is probably the most impressive thing the EU has done this year.
"Today, the housing and every other market is way over saturated in debt - and the writing is on the wall. (watch out for a major economic "adjustment")"
Generally, the type of adjustment you're talking about here doesn't happen in residential real-estate for a simple reason: People can't afford to sell for less than they paid. They can't because they generally don't have the means to sell for less than their mortagage without declaring bankruptcy.
That's not to say there won't be some downward pressure on housing prices, but the usual effect is very temporary and usually only effects very specific properties. In the late 80's and early 90's there was some deflation in housing prices, but it was only for 18 months and prices clearly are higher than they were in the late 80's.
I think commercial real-estate is more sensitive to deflation because small companies readily fold when their debt service exceeds their cash flow. For residential mortagages, people will pay as long as they can, and even if there's a problem, banks are not eager to foreclose because its more profitable to let customers work through the problem.
"Free network television is not in the bill of rights."
Neither is commercial television. Nor televisions. Neither is the right to make a profit from television.
I'm not sure what your point is... that unless something is in the bill of rights, we have no rights to it?
Look, I get what you're saying, that its "their" material, they can broadcast it anyway they like. And it might surprise you to know that I agree with you. But at the same time, I'm not sure why the government is spending time and effort to ensure a profit by mandating a broadcast flag.
After all, a broadcast flag isn't in the bill of rights!
The quality of NPR over FM is significantly better than Sirius.
ESPN is significantly better over AM than Sirius.
And most of Sirius's content is produced in-house and originates in NYC. And all the talk channels sound terrible.
Tell you what. Give it a listen rather than argue with me. You'll see the 2nd response to my original post that I'm not the only person who has noted this. In fact, there's probably a bunch of people that you know or work with that listen to Sirius; they'll probably let you listen if you ask.
"There is a distinctly possible scenario that allows the copyright to be breached."
Yes, but its the same possible scenario that allows the copyright to be breached with terrestrial radio. The quality, or lack thereof, has nothing to do with copyright infringement.
That distinction between digital and analog seems to have been made by the RIAA/MPAA as an arbitrary way of dispensing with fair-use defenses by getting different copyright laws passed on digital content.
The whole thing breaks down at the point the signal is digitized because the distinction is not important.
"It's the fact that whatever the satellite broadcasts will make it intact to the receiver, in pretty much perfect digital form."
No, not really. Because the digital signals go through the air as analog, they are subject to interference, which causes dropouts. Yes, satellite signals drop out all the time in a moving car. In heavily wooded areas, the signal is frequently dropped.
But that misses the point. If I send highly compressed music to you in digital form, yes, you can make a perfect digital copy of highly compressed music. The same way that I plug the line-out of an expensive FM receiver into the input jack of my PC and make perfect digital copies of FM radio.
There is no difference in either theory or sound quality.
"A tape copy of radio is a far cry from a digital copy. "
Why?
Quality-wise, there won't be any difference; the quality of Satellite broadcasts is low; its lower than the shoutcasts broadcasts you can get with iTunes or WinAmp.
"Analog radio is of lesser quality, "
It is not.
Perhaps it is within possibility that if the satellite providers used a significant amount of bandwidth for a channel, and the analog station compressed the hell out of the FM station, then it might be better, but the reality is that good FM (i.e. WGMS out of Washington DC, or lots of other PBS stations) blows away any satellite service.
On the Sirius service, voice channels sound about the same or worse as shortwave broadcasts; the bit rates are so low that it takes you a couple weeks to get used to the sound. The music is okay, but clearly like low-grade FM; things like Saxophones are rendered so poorly on Sirius that you can barely tell that's what they are. Certain stations (i.e. Classical) are obviously given a higher bandwidth.
But stuff like NPR is better via FM because there is a lot less compression.
The advantages satellite has over terrestrial radio is country-wide access and no commercials. Sound quality is average at best.
" but the EU will not accept the current situation anymore "
What *is* the current situation?
Its not clear what you mean. Simply the root servers? That's easy. Set up your own root servers. Congratulations. You just need to convince ISP's to pay attention to those servers.
IP allocation? Go to IPV6 and we don't need to have this conversation anymore.
I suspect this is all about control of content and or some sort of levy/fee system, not about anything technical. The U.S. has a much different view on free speech than the EU and most of the rest of the world, one that can't be easily reconciled. There are probably some financial implications that are playing a role as well.
I'd like to understand what "control" means before anything is changed.
But the bottom line to me is if the EU would take the technical lead by heavily promoting IPV6 and all associated protocols, they might gain control the old fashioned way: innovate your way to the top.
That's going to be a tough sell.
I realize technically they can do something like that, but if they disable customer's DVD players, they're going to have to offer compenstation of some sort. It's kind of like the threat of dropping the bomb. Everybody understands it could happen, but no sane person would do it.
"However, I think everyone can agree that a fully automatic assault rifle could take out quite a few people in an airport in no time flat."
Which is why you aren't allowed to own one.
You never really were allowed to own an "assault rifle", whatever that means. Fully automatic weapons have been banned by the ATF longer than most of us have been alive, and are only allowed for use in certain circumstances (i.e. collectors or museums).
What politicians are calling "assault rifles" is banning guns that mimic military rifles. Its the equivalent of taking a 1995 civic, putting a loud exhaust, big spoiler, stripes, big wheels and tires and then calling it a race car. Its not.
So-called "assault rifles" aren't.
The digital equivalent of a TBC or video distribution amplifier will have to exist to support the same type of functionality commonly done today.
Those types of devices will have to have a digital certificate built into them, and that will be a place to get high quality video. That's a place off the top of my head.
The parent suggested a complex workaround, but more likely, we'll see the equivalent of what we have now with chinese DVD players: press the magic code on the remote and the copy-protection is gone.
You see, the only people who have an interest *really* in the DRM are the hollywood studios; everyone else in the chain would rather not support it as it costs them money and makes their products less desirable.
How can you prohibit scanning of PD books?
I meant from the standpoint of the end user; their paradigm is thin client.
Look at this from another viewpoint. If there are "millions of dollars of computers" to purchase, it will be NASA doing it, not google. Again, nothing for the county to tax.
"I'm sure there are literally millions of dollars in computers being moved into that facility."
I'm not so sure.
Google's paradigm is centralized computing, probably not within this facility. At best, they'll lease some office equipment, desks, etc. Seems to me there isn't going to be anything to tax.
Google's value is not in its physical assets, but in its people. I don't see anything for the county to tax here.
If google is *renting* the building, how would they be liable for any special taxes related to coming to the county?
I get that by moving to a federal building on federal land they don't get money from the federal government for property tax.
But think of the alternative. Google rents some space from "Joe's Management Company". There still is no additional revenue from taxes. I'm not a tax expert, and I can't even spell "CPA", but this article seems to have a flawed premises.
I think this is the beginning of market saturation and a fall in the value of so-called Intellectual Property.
We have so many outlets for entertainment right now that the sheer volume means I can never get to a significantly fraction of movies, books, records, video games or web sites.
And when there is too much of something, prices will fall. Not quickly, as copyright laws work to keep prices high. But fall they will.
Yes, there is a lot of sucky bands, movies, books, but the amount of material out there means there are a lot of genuinely good entertainers out there, yes, even with RIAA affiliated labels. But because there is so much material, I think the amount of material means the market is segmented and its harder to differentiate from the pack.
But again, in that kind of environment where there is a lot of decent entertainment readily available, prices will fall. Its inevitable, even in the face of lawsuits, new laws, technical hurdles. It's as inevitable as gravity.
I just looked at my 3rd gen iPod, and the screen is not recessed.
The buttons and scroll wheel are, however.
The screen does scratch very easily. A friend got one and a few hours later, the screen had fine scratches all over it. His 3G iPod had no scratches on it, so he seems to be very careful. There's something different about the Nano than other iPods that must contribute to this.
I'll bet Apple will very quietly introduce some changes to contruction but won't admit to it. The scratches will not be heard from again.
The problems for me arose with the Outlook/MS Exchange combo. A stand-alone Outlook tends to work okay. Its really kind of hit or miss. My earlier palms seemed to work fine worked fine, but my Lifedrive won't synchronize with Outlook/MS Exchange (although it does work fine with stand-alone Outlook). I contacted Palm, but they couldn't figure it out.
Fortunately, that wasn't a critical feature for me, or I would have been up the creek.