Maybe I don't understand, but I have a hard time thinking of an oath of allegiance as meaningless procedure.
It is meaningless because refusing to pledge allegiance to the flag does not strip the citizen of the United States of their citizenship. If I have to agree to the pledge in order to become a citizen, then a citizen needs to stop being one whenever they start disagreeing with the pledge.
So, try this with me. I'm Russian by origin, and I have lived in the US for the past 10 years. I look like your average white American, I speak with no accent, and largely as a direct result of that I experience no discrimination in my daily life.
That breaks whenever I have to deal with the authorities with regards to my H1-B and related paperwork, because I am very quickly and rudely reminded that I am apparently a "second-rate human" simply by virtue of having been born in a different country. I have to stand in long lines in order to be able to get a visa simply to re-enter the country after I've visited my aging parents, I have to go through humiliating "look straight into the camera" and "place your thumb squarely on the glass" procedures upon arriving in the US, and if a promotion opportunity comes up, I have to turn it down since it's too much of a pain in the ass to modify my job status. If I'm ever arrested for whatever reason, even if I just happened to be at a wrong place at the wrong time, I do not qualify for a free lawyer (even though I pay all the same taxes), and it's a crime for me to be in posession of a firearm even if I live in a neighborhood where armed robbery is routine. Oh, and I can be deported if I do not carry my passport with me at all times, or if I fail to notify the authorities of a change of address when I change apartments.
This makes me wonder -- we all get indignant when a government somewhere discriminates based on race or religion. Apartheid was boycotted for discriminating against blacks, and when some country somewhere makes Christianity illegal, everyone goes running for the nearest soapbox. However, everyone expects their government to discriminate against someone who just happens to have been born outside the imaginary political borders of their fiefdom, unless they go through the meaningless procedure of raising a hand and reciting the pledge after finding a desperate enough partner for a quick green-card marriage.
What's the moral justification in that? Why is it wrong to discriminate based on the color of skin, but perfectly fine based on the birthplace? I realize that there are political reasons to do this, but it amazes me that so few people have any moral trouble denying the same rights that they have to someone who happened to grow up in a different geographical spot than they did.
Fine, but you're not everyone. People go bungee jumping, run with bulls, climb cliff faces with no safety line, and so on precisely because it has real dangers, stress, and your basic survival in its primal gore. To them, a holodeck will never "cut it."
Sure, I'm not arguing the usefulness of technology. The original post was stating that "if holodecks are invented we'll spend all our time in them thus ending as species, since nobody would care about the real world any more."
I can see myself using holodeck technology for recreation, visualisation, sexual gratification, etc, but I doubt it will consume much more of my time than I spend now on reading slashdot, browsing for porn, and renting movies.
I'm coming up on 30 years of age. A couple of weekends ago I had a choice of whether to play a video game or to catch up on my language exercises. Believe it or not, declining Latin nouns appealed as something far more fun than whacking monsters, casting spells, or jumping ladders. This is not a decision I would have made when I was 20 or even 25.
To some people, a holodeck, by the virtue of being a fake replica, can never replace the real world; and this will hold true for the time to come--as long as you are able to tell apart the real world and the world of make-believe, some people will voluntarily not partake in whatever the technology of play has to offer simply because they will perceive it as ultimately fruitless.
Now, whether they will choose to procreate is an entirely different matter.:)
See, managers wised up. They found out that you can either hire a domestic techie for 50-80k/yr or hire an imported techie for 25-35k/yr.
It doesn't work that way. There are laws in place that forbid companies from hiring foreign workers at a lower wage than local force. Any company doing what you describe is breaking the law.
Have you ever considered that some of us are just BETTER than locals for the job offered?
There are several kinds of programmers, at least when it comes to the language selection:
The Hardcore Kind: Everything must be written in something as low-level as possible, meaning C, but only if you absolutely cannot do ASM.
The I'm Special Kind: I am going to pick a language that is not commonly used, because having an obscure preference in programming languages makes me feel special. To justify my preference, I am going to learn a few facts that make this language marginally better than a similar language $FOO, ignoring all other advantages of $FOO.
The Hammer-Happy Kind: I know one language and I will use it whether it makes sense or not
The first kind gives us applications that cannot be easily ported to other OSes or platforms, because everything is so low-level that it is tied to the underlying architecture. The second kind gives us duplicated effort and software that becomes unmantained whenever the main developer quits, since few other programmers know the language in which the project is written. The third kind gives us solutions that make sane people scream, like shell scripts that start with #!/usr/bin/php -q.
It's fun to learn other programming languages, and contribute to the development of new ones, but in the open-source environment it is also very important to remember that you a) do not and should not work in a vacuum, b) that there are freaks who will probably try to run your software on bizarre setups, and c) that there is always a chance that circumstances will require that you quit working on that project.
This is the reason why when picking a development environment for a project it is important to consider things like portability, maintainability, and suitability for the purpose. I'm not sure I can justify writing something in Ruby at this point, seeing as its adoption is far below Python, while its advantages over Python are slim to questionable.
I fully agree with you. Getting rid of the 6-year limit and making changing jobs for H1Bs easier would actually solve more problems than it creates. Some steps were already taken in that direction -- e.g. 3 years ago the new legislation allowed a foreign worker to change jobs without waiting for the approval from the then-INS (now Department of Homeland Security... *shudder*). Nowadays if you are tired of your job, all you have to do is find another and send in the application paperwork. Once you receive "your paperwork has been accepted" slip, you can start working at the new position. It's not a perfect solution, but at least now H1Bs don't have to wait for 6-7 months for the approval of their transfer from DHS.
As to the 6-year limit, the result a lot of times is that foreign workers, knowing that they will likely have to leave the country eventually, will view their employment in the US as a venue for making money and then taking it with them back to their country of origin, where their savings suddenly become a small fortune. The country loses both the worker (if they managed to stay an H1B for 6 years, they are most likely a valuable asset to the country's economy) and the worker's savings.
Personally, I'm not bitter at all about having to leave my job. I knew this was coming for the past 3 years and was able to plan accordingly. Besides, I am looking at switching careers eventually down the line anyway.
That's not a loophole, that's breaking the law, since the law clearly states that the company wishing to employ a foreign worker must attempt to find a citizen to fill the position in question. Sure, it is unlikely that a) they will be caught, and b) that someone would care, but the same argument applies to smuggling goods through customs. Given, it's not shaking babies, but it's nonetheless illegal.
A "loophole," on the other hand, is something that is technically legal, even though contrary to the intention of the law. For example, a loophole would be to create a position with "required skills" completely matching those of the foreign worker. This is how you see job postings that require both graphic design skills and low-level kernel hacking. Creating jobs to match foreign workers is not technically illegal, but it's not the intention of the law.
And what, are these "just out of school foreign graduates" taking a place of an American worker? Do you think qualified American programmers would *work* for a company that is clearly looking to abuse their human resources just to dump them later?
I was talking specifically about the common complaint that H1Bs are taking over the jobs of American workers. You are giving me an example of some job that no sensible American programmer would do anyway. Give me an example where a company fired an American programmer to hire an H1B in his place and I will show you a company that broke the law.
Moreover, I cite 8 usc 1182 (n)(1)(G)(i) which you mention yourself:
(i) In the case of an application described in subparagraph (E)(ii), subject to clause (ii), the employer, prior to filing the application-- (I) has taken good faith steps to recruit, in the United States using procedures that meet industry-wide standards and offering compensation that is at least as great as that required to be offered to H-1B nonimmigrants under subparagraph (A), United States workers for the job for which the nonimmigrant or nonimmigrants is or are sought; and (II) has offered the job to any United States worker who applies and is equally or better qualified for the job for which the nonimmigrant or nonimmigrants is or are sought.
If this confuses you:
(ii) The conditions described in clause (i) shall not apply to an application filed with respect to the employment of an H-1B nonimmigrant who is described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) of section 1153 (b)(1) of this title.
It only applies to "Aliens with extraordinary ability" which is pretty much limited to people with brains oozing out of their ears or "Certain multinational executives and managers"
Would you stop it about the H1Bs? They are *NOT* "stealing" your jobs! For an H1B to be hired, the company has to *prove* that the foreign worker is better qualified than local available workforce for the position they are being hired. And the salary level *must* be approved by the local dept. of labor. In fact, many companies avoid H1Bs like a plague because it takes too much effort to do the paperwork, and they have to wait 4-5 months before getting an approval.
No US company would hire an H1B if they could have an American doing that job. Especially considering that H1Bs are limited to 6 years.
I'm an H1B and I've been one for the past 6 years. I'm leaving to go to Canada in the spring because I'm coming up on my limit and can't continue working at my current job past July. I'm good at what I do, I have excellent English skills (and Russian, and now French), and I have good references. I have paid all my taxes (including Social Security, which I won't ever see back, since I don't qualify for it), and nearly everything I earned in the past 6 years went back into your economy.
Feel free to bitch about offshoring your jobs, since the money actually leaves your economy forever, but don't blame H1Bs if you lose your job. That's not how it works.
The Soviets put quite a lot of industry in Siberia (why?)
When nazis were advancing, a whole lot of factories were pretty much picked up and moved far away from the front -- mostly Urals
Siberia is where all the prisoner slave labor was kept, though they mostly performed low-level tasks such as mining and building railroads, which made these industries relatively easy to access.
Siberia is very far from borders and very hard to get to for an invading force, and since a lot of heavy industry were considered military targets, placing them in Siberia made sense
You don't have to worry about cooling in Siberia.:)
Keeping potentially dangerous industries in one of the most sparsely populated regions of the country makes lots of sense.
However, to my knowledge, most Soviet-era factories were abandoned in late 80s and early 90s, when the economy completely tanked, so the ecological situation should actually be dramatically improving there, since I would estimate that at most 5-10% of those factories are still operational, and even those have heavily modernized. Current Russian economy is almost solely based on exporting oil, natural gas, and other natural resources, and importing the same stuff that you guys in the US are importing yourselves--from China and neighboring industrial armpits.
So, I wouldn't go around blaming Siberians for spoiling your air. There's just not much there to spoil it. Remember, Russia is about 140 million people and dwindling rapidly. It's hard for us to compete with Indo-China and South Asia, with almost 3 billion people population.
Killing babies, though... man. That's a moral issue, not a religious one.
It's not killing babies. It's killing life-forms in early stages of development. Technically, a month-old embryo is about as advanced as a shrimp. If you are against killing them, then you better be vegetarian, because when you're munching on a ham sandwich, you are partaking in killing and consuming of a creature far more advanced than an embryo, or, hell, moreso than a fully matured pre-natal human child. Pigs can be pretty damn smart.
Now, I am against abortions myself: I think it's a vile, degrading, and dangerous operation. I just don't think that making it illegal will accomplish much other than make abortions more vile, degrading, and dangerous. Most of those I've met who wish to outlaw abortion only want it because that makes them feel good about themselves, not because of any belief in "sanctity of life" or concern about the well-being of the mother or the future child involved.
We have plenty of born children to worry about -- hundreds of thousands of them die worldwide due to malnutrition and diseases. In my opinion this is something far more immoral than the philosophically dubious question of the rights to life of early embryos. Let's not jump ahead of ourselves.
Sorry, but I still fail to see the significance of this story. What makes a small bunch of kids getting an iPod for free significant.
They are not free. You have to get enrolled at Duke to be able to get one, which is anything but free. In fact, with the cost of Duke tuition, the price of a 20G iPod is more or less a rounding error.
I never used ${APPLICATION}, but I thought I would ${ACTION} it after reading about it on ${NEWS_SITE}. The very first impression was that ${COMPONENT} was taking way too ${SPEED} to ${ACTION}, and I don't know why the ${THEOLOGICAL_CONCEPT} they made the ${COMPONENT} use the ${UI_CONCEPT}, unless they were all ${ALTITUDE} on ${ILLICIT_SUBSTANCE}.
I gave up after ${INT} ${UNIT_OF_TIME} of trying to make ${COMPONENT} work -- the ${UI_CONCEPT} is cludgy, the ${LAYOUT_CONCEPT} seems to have been written by a ${INT}-year-old, ${COMPONENT} is downright ${DEROGATORY_ADJECTIVE}, and such an essential feature as ${FEATURE} is not even present.
The reason why ${APPLICATION} functions so ${DEROGATORY_ADJECTIVE} is ${LACK_OF_DOUBT} related to the fact that it was written in ${LANGUAGE}. ${SOFTWARE_CATEGORY} should not be written in ${LANGUAGE}, as every programmer with even ${INT} years of experience knows -- ${LANGUAGE} should only be used for ${ANOTHER_AREA_OF_PROGRAMMING}, and not in ${THIS_AREA_OF_PROGRAMMING}. ${COMPETING_APPLICATION} is the ${PRAISING_ADJECTIVE} example of that -- it was written in ${ANOTHER_LANGUAGE}, which is precisely suited for this ${SOFTWARE_CATEGORY}.
After suffering for ${INT} ${UNIT_OF_TIME}, I switched back to using the ${COMPETING_APPLICATION}, which I would suggest to anyone who needs to ${ACTION} and actually have it done.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I don't understand, but I have a hard time thinking of an oath of allegiance as meaningless procedure.
It is meaningless because refusing to pledge allegiance to the flag does not strip the citizen of the United States of their citizenship. If I have to agree to the pledge in order to become a citizen, then a citizen needs to stop being one whenever they start disagreeing with the pledge.
So, try this with me. I'm Russian by origin, and I have lived in the US for the past 10 years. I look like your average white American, I speak with no accent, and largely as a direct result of that I experience no discrimination in my daily life.
That breaks whenever I have to deal with the authorities with regards to my H1-B and related paperwork, because I am very quickly and rudely reminded that I am apparently a "second-rate human" simply by virtue of having been born in a different country. I have to stand in long lines in order to be able to get a visa simply to re-enter the country after I've visited my aging parents, I have to go through humiliating "look straight into the camera" and "place your thumb squarely on the glass" procedures upon arriving in the US, and if a promotion opportunity comes up, I have to turn it down since it's too much of a pain in the ass to modify my job status. If I'm ever arrested for whatever reason, even if I just happened to be at a wrong place at the wrong time, I do not qualify for a free lawyer (even though I pay all the same taxes), and it's a crime for me to be in posession of a firearm even if I live in a neighborhood where armed robbery is routine. Oh, and I can be deported if I do not carry my passport with me at all times, or if I fail to notify the authorities of a change of address when I change apartments.
This makes me wonder -- we all get indignant when a government somewhere discriminates based on race or religion. Apartheid was boycotted for discriminating against blacks, and when some country somewhere makes Christianity illegal, everyone goes running for the nearest soapbox. However, everyone expects their government to discriminate against someone who just happens to have been born outside the imaginary political borders of their fiefdom, unless they go through the meaningless procedure of raising a hand and reciting the pledge after finding a desperate enough partner for a quick green-card marriage.
What's the moral justification in that? Why is it wrong to discriminate based on the color of skin, but perfectly fine based on the birthplace? I realize that there are political reasons to do this, but it amazes me that so few people have any moral trouble denying the same rights that they have to someone who happened to grow up in a different geographical spot than they did.
Think about it.
Thank you for so off-handedly making us feel like shit. No, really.
Fine, but you're not everyone. People go bungee jumping, run with bulls, climb cliff faces with no safety line, and so on precisely because it has real dangers, stress, and your basic survival in its primal gore. To them, a holodeck will never "cut it."
Sure, I'm not arguing the usefulness of technology. The original post was stating that "if holodecks are invented we'll spend all our time in them thus ending as species, since nobody would care about the real world any more."
I can see myself using holodeck technology for recreation, visualisation, sexual gratification, etc, but I doubt it will consume much more of my time than I spend now on reading slashdot, browsing for porn, and renting movies.
LOL!!!!1
U g0t a r8tsh311 b4kd8r 0n p0rt 1337!!!!
Pwnz0r3d!!
I'm coming up on 30 years of age. A couple of weekends ago I had a choice of whether to play a video game or to catch up on my language exercises. Believe it or not, declining Latin nouns appealed as something far more fun than whacking monsters, casting spells, or jumping ladders. This is not a decision I would have made when I was 20 or even 25.
To some people, a holodeck, by the virtue of being a fake replica, can never replace the real world; and this will hold true for the time to come--as long as you are able to tell apart the real world and the world of make-believe, some people will voluntarily not partake in whatever the technology of play has to offer simply because they will perceive it as ultimately fruitless.
Now, whether they will choose to procreate is an entirely different matter. :)
APT doesn't support multilib. This means that you can't sanely install i386 packages on x86_64, which sometimes you must.
Perfect!/
New definition:
Open Source Software purists -- people who have a haunting suspicion that someone somewhere could have spit in their salad.
It doesn't work that way. There are laws in place that forbid companies from hiring foreign workers at a lower wage than local force. Any company doing what you describe is breaking the law.
Have you ever considered that some of us are just BETTER than locals for the job offered?
It works very well. To upgrade from FC2 to FC3 using yum do:
Then watch it churn. Of course, if you have third-party software installed, you may want to wait till your vendors catch up with FC3.
There are several kinds of programmers, at least when it comes to the language selection:
The first kind gives us applications that cannot be easily ported to other OSes or platforms, because everything is so low-level that it is tied to the underlying architecture. The second kind gives us duplicated effort and software that becomes unmantained whenever the main developer quits, since few other programmers know the language in which the project is written. The third kind gives us solutions that make sane people scream, like shell scripts that start with #!/usr/bin/php -q.
It's fun to learn other programming languages, and contribute to the development of new ones, but in the open-source environment it is also very important to remember that you a) do not and should not work in a vacuum, b) that there are freaks who will probably try to run your software on bizarre setups, and c) that there is always a chance that circumstances will require that you quit working on that project.
This is the reason why when picking a development environment for a project it is important to consider things like portability, maintainability, and suitability for the purpose. I'm not sure I can justify writing something in Ruby at this point, seeing as its adoption is far below Python, while its advantages over Python are slim to questionable.
I fully agree with you. Getting rid of the 6-year limit and making changing jobs for H1Bs easier would actually solve more problems than it creates. Some steps were already taken in that direction -- e.g. 3 years ago the new legislation allowed a foreign worker to change jobs without waiting for the approval from the then-INS (now Department of Homeland Security... *shudder*). Nowadays if you are tired of your job, all you have to do is find another and send in the application paperwork. Once you receive "your paperwork has been accepted" slip, you can start working at the new position. It's not a perfect solution, but at least now H1Bs don't have to wait for 6-7 months for the approval of their transfer from DHS.
As to the 6-year limit, the result a lot of times is that foreign workers, knowing that they will likely have to leave the country eventually, will view their employment in the US as a venue for making money and then taking it with them back to their country of origin, where their savings suddenly become a small fortune. The country loses both the worker (if they managed to stay an H1B for 6 years, they are most likely a valuable asset to the country's economy) and the worker's savings.
Personally, I'm not bitter at all about having to leave my job. I knew this was coming for the past 3 years and was able to plan accordingly. Besides, I am looking at switching careers eventually down the line anyway.
That's not a loophole, that's breaking the law, since the law clearly states that the company wishing to employ a foreign worker must attempt to find a citizen to fill the position in question. Sure, it is unlikely that a) they will be caught, and b) that someone would care, but the same argument applies to smuggling goods through customs. Given, it's not shaking babies, but it's nonetheless illegal.
A "loophole," on the other hand, is something that is technically legal, even though contrary to the intention of the law. For example, a loophole would be to create a position with "required skills" completely matching those of the foreign worker. This is how you see job postings that require both graphic design skills and low-level kernel hacking. Creating jobs to match foreign workers is not technically illegal, but it's not the intention of the law.
And what, are these "just out of school foreign graduates" taking a place of an American worker? Do you think qualified American programmers would *work* for a company that is clearly looking to abuse their human resources just to dump them later?
I was talking specifically about the common complaint that H1Bs are taking over the jobs of American workers. You are giving me an example of some job that no sensible American programmer would do anyway. Give me an example where a company fired an American programmer to hire an H1B in his place and I will show you a company that broke the law.
Whatever. I went through the process three times, I think I know the pains involved. I refer you to:
o c.htm
http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/Title_20/Part_655/t
Moreover, I cite 8 usc 1182 (n)(1)(G)(i) which you mention yourself:
(i) In the case of an application described in subparagraph (E)(ii), subject to clause (ii), the employer, prior to filing the application--
(I) has taken good faith steps to recruit, in the United States using procedures that meet industry-wide standards and offering compensation that is at least as great as that required to be offered to H-1B nonimmigrants under subparagraph (A), United States workers for the job for which the nonimmigrant or nonimmigrants is or are sought; and
(II) has offered the job to any United States worker who applies and is equally or better qualified for the job for which the nonimmigrant or nonimmigrants is or are sought.
If this confuses you:
(ii) The conditions described in clause (i) shall not apply to an application filed with respect to the employment of an H-1B nonimmigrant who is described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) of section 1153 (b)(1) of this title.
It only applies to "Aliens with extraordinary ability" which is pretty much limited to people with brains oozing out of their ears or "Certain multinational executives and managers"
Am I missing something here?
Would you stop it about the H1Bs? They are *NOT* "stealing" your jobs! For an H1B to be hired, the company has to *prove* that the foreign worker is better qualified than local available workforce for the position they are being hired. And the salary level *must* be approved by the local dept. of labor. In fact, many companies avoid H1Bs like a plague because it takes too much effort to do the paperwork, and they have to wait 4-5 months before getting an approval.
No US company would hire an H1B if they could have an American doing that job. Especially considering that H1Bs are limited to 6 years.
I'm an H1B and I've been one for the past 6 years. I'm leaving to go to Canada in the spring because I'm coming up on my limit and can't continue working at my current job past July. I'm good at what I do, I have excellent English skills (and Russian, and now French), and I have good references. I have paid all my taxes (including Social Security, which I won't ever see back, since I don't qualify for it), and nearly everything I earned in the past 6 years went back into your economy.
Feel free to bitch about offshoring your jobs, since the money actually leaves your economy forever, but don't blame H1Bs if you lose your job. That's not how it works.
</rant>However, to my knowledge, most Soviet-era factories were abandoned in late 80s and early 90s, when the economy completely tanked, so the ecological situation should actually be dramatically improving there, since I would estimate that at most 5-10% of those factories are still operational, and even those have heavily modernized. Current Russian economy is almost solely based on exporting oil, natural gas, and other natural resources, and importing the same stuff that you guys in the US are importing yourselves--from China and neighboring industrial armpits.
So, I wouldn't go around blaming Siberians for spoiling your air. There's just not much there to spoil it. Remember, Russia is about 140 million people and dwindling rapidly. It's hard for us to compete with Indo-China and South Asia, with almost 3 billion people population.
--The Soviet (former)Something I've noticed: if you flip the pages too fast, they all become blank with the only message showing:
Warning: mysql_connect(): Too many connections in /usr/hand/book.php on line 4431.
Killing babies, though... man. That's a moral issue, not a religious one.
It's not killing babies. It's killing life-forms in early stages of development. Technically, a month-old embryo is about as advanced as a shrimp. If you are against killing them, then you better be vegetarian, because when you're munching on a ham sandwich, you are partaking in killing and consuming of a creature far more advanced than an embryo, or, hell, moreso than a fully matured pre-natal human child. Pigs can be pretty damn smart.
Now, I am against abortions myself: I think it's a vile, degrading, and dangerous operation. I just don't think that making it illegal will accomplish much other than make abortions more vile, degrading, and dangerous. Most of those I've met who wish to outlaw abortion only want it because that makes them feel good about themselves, not because of any belief in "sanctity of life" or concern about the well-being of the mother or the future child involved.
We have plenty of born children to worry about -- hundreds of thousands of them die worldwide due to malnutrition and diseases. In my opinion this is something far more immoral than the philosophically dubious question of the rights to life of early embryos. Let's not jump ahead of ourselves.
Poor guy must think that casually dropping "I own a patent on the 10 laws of robot ethics" in a bar conversation will land him a date.
He should have "Asked Slashdot" first, the idiot. Right, brothers?
No they didn't. Linux@DUKE created and maintains yum
I never used ${APPLICATION}, but I thought I would ${ACTION} it after reading about it on ${NEWS_SITE}. The very first impression was that ${COMPONENT} was taking way too ${SPEED} to ${ACTION}, and I don't know why the ${THEOLOGICAL_CONCEPT} they made the ${COMPONENT} use the ${UI_CONCEPT}, unless they were all ${ALTITUDE} on ${ILLICIT_SUBSTANCE}.
I gave up after ${INT} ${UNIT_OF_TIME} of trying to make ${COMPONENT} work -- the ${UI_CONCEPT} is cludgy, the ${LAYOUT_CONCEPT} seems to have been written by a ${INT}-year-old, ${COMPONENT} is downright ${DEROGATORY_ADJECTIVE}, and such an essential feature as ${FEATURE} is not even present.
The reason why ${APPLICATION} functions so ${DEROGATORY_ADJECTIVE} is ${LACK_OF_DOUBT} related to the fact that it was written in ${LANGUAGE}. ${SOFTWARE_CATEGORY} should not be written in ${LANGUAGE}, as every programmer with even ${INT} years of experience knows -- ${LANGUAGE} should only be used for ${ANOTHER_AREA_OF_PROGRAMMING}, and not in ${THIS_AREA_OF_PROGRAMMING}. ${COMPETING_APPLICATION} is the ${PRAISING_ADJECTIVE} example of that -- it was written in ${ANOTHER_LANGUAGE}, which is precisely suited for this ${SOFTWARE_CATEGORY}.
After suffering for ${INT} ${UNIT_OF_TIME}, I switched back to using the ${COMPETING_APPLICATION}, which I would suggest to anyone who needs to ${ACTION} and actually have it done.