Really is spam that big of a problem anymore? Ever since I've switched to Gmail all my spam has been blocked by it or blocked by a simple mail filter. Now then again, I don't give my real e-mail address to everyone and their brother, but individual spam blockers have come a long, long ways.
But Apple seems actively marketing and developing the idea of multi touch (just look at newer MacBooks, and the iPhone/iPod Touch). The problem isn't that there won't be other ways to do it, it is that there will be too many ways to do something. For example, the qwerty keyboard isn't the most effective layout, but if it got (somehow) patented and everyone who wasn't using an Apple based system had to switch to Devorak or other alternative layouts, I imagine that typing speed would be hindered for a few years until people could regain their old speed back. While there are going to undoubtedly be better ways of doing multi-touch, if it isn't standardized, how good is it if the "natural" gestures or the gestures you are used to don't work?
The problem with patenting multi-touch gestures is it can lead to a huge learning curve challenge. For example the Linux/Windows/BSD/etc multi-touch is going to be totally different than OS X's methods because of these patents, making it not only hard for people going to OS X but from people who primarily use OS X but can't use the gestures they are used to when on a different computer. This is similar to patenting QWERTY so every other keyboard manufacturer has to pick different keyboard layouts to typing becomes unbearable on different systems.
WinLinux 2000's main selling point is that it can be installed onto a Windows drive without the need for tricky partitioning. It's based on Slackware and claims to be "the easiest to install Linux system in the Windows world". By working with the UMSDOS filesystem, WinLinux uses a Windows directory to hold the Linux files, although it's slower than a proper, dedicated partition. We booted Windows 95 and ran the SETUP.EXE program. A typical installation utility appeared, and after choosing the 'Typical' choice for packages, the installer started copying files onto our C: drive. So far, so good.
...And just to think that Linux being installed from Windows only caught on in 2008 (via Wubi) though the technology was being used 8 years previous...
Ok ok... so a -single- universal one-size-fits-all standard is probably a bad idea. But how about a standard family? Laptops, printers, lcd panels, scanners all use one, cell phones mp3s etc all use another... etc?
But again, not all phones/MP3 players are created equal. What makes perfect sense for an iPhone may be disastrous when on a flip phone, etc. I can see a single one being used though for laptops and LCDs.
how many of those "powerbricks" do you have on the floor under your desk? I have like 20 in my office it seems, each with a different power rating, and plugs.
Sure, a lot, but different technologies that seem alike to most customers might require different voltages and having similar plugs may prove disastrous. Such as someone thinking that the monitor cable from a CRT can go to an LCD, etc.
Or better still, you could buy one powerbrick with a dozen leads off it, and use it to power all the gadgets in your office... like a mid-high end power supply inside your PC has multiple lines to power all the devices inside your PC, with modular cable support?
Yes, but think of how big a mess that would be? its already a tangled mess when I have about 3 things in a USB hub, let alone tens of leads off of a powerbrick. And how long they would be to really do anything useful.
There is little reason to even get a universal power adapter. USB is standard for just about every modern phone today along with most low-cost MP3 players, etc. There are a multitude of reasons not to go with a universal power adapter other than "the evil corporations are making us pay more". The most obvious one is that some devices require more power than others. Other reasons are some of the port sizes are too large/small for the device to be useful. For example, a tiny MP3 player might not have room for even a mini USB plug, however it can use the headphone jack to power/sync it. Similarly larger electronics may need more secure connections (as in not falling out, not like encryption) than others. Some might need to be designed to be easily yanked out, others might need ways of making sure it doesn't fall out.
For just about all popular gadgets, it is very very easy to walk into almost any store and get a replacement or third party cable. About the only industry that I would see benefiting from this is laptops, a standard laptop connection cable (like desktops) would be a lifesaver some times.
...But for the average person who doesn't use Exchange or who uses personal e-mail, a netbook will do just fine. Sure, if you absolutely must have exchange support for some odd reason, no, Linux isn't going to get you that, but if you have Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or just about everything else (like most people who don't work at a large corporation have), it will work perfectly.
Because most people WANT TO RUN THEIR APPS and not dick around with Linux. When will people realise that vast majority of the mass market actually wants windows and will continue to want Windows for the foreseeable future.
Ummm... No, the vast majority of people wants a computer that works. For the tasks that a informed consumer will use a netbook for (browsing, e-mail, etc) Linux is perfect for it. Now, if I'm a big gamer, I'm not going to want Linux nor OS X for that matter, I'm going to have to use Windows. But there are almost no disadvantages to using Linux on a netbook if you are informed. Far too often the ill informed attempt to use the argument that "Its different" to address what they see as flaws. However, an informed customer (and by informed consumer, I mean someone reasonably intelligent, knows the strengths and weaknesses of Linux, etc) will almost certainly pick Linux unless they have an application that they can not live without and for a personal netbook, there aren't many applications that could fit that.
But really, it does matter. If I am going to buy a netbook with a 1.6 GHz Atom CPU, 1 GB of RAM and integrated graphics, I'm going to want something that runs fast. On either platform I will have E-mail, basic games, web browsing, videos, music, etc, and whichever one runs the fastest (and the cheapest) is going to be the one someone usually picks. So when Windows 7 comes out and you can either buy the $300 netbook with Linux that runs faster, or the $350 netbook with Windows 7 that runs slower, the choice for any informed customer is obvious.
The thing is, everyone associates Java with slow psudo-3-D games that take forever to load on a cell phone or browser. People associate other (sometimes slower) languages such as Python and.NET/Mono to be much, much, faster. Now, this isn't really correct, but if I was going to learn a new language, it probably would be.NET or Mono and not Java.
Schools will always turn out code monkeys. You can't learn innovation and leadership in the classroom - you have to learn them by applying them.
Yes, but especially today there is very little innovation being used/taught in the classroom. Whereas in the 1980s or 1990s you would get high marks for finding a different, better way of coding a program, today the "know-it-all" IT professor is more apt to fail you because you didn't do it his way that might have actually been a disaster. There also seems to be less innovation in the workplace. It used to be that faster ways were praised and lead to promotion, today they are frowned upon because innovation makes it a pain to teach the secretary how to use it.
It honestly depends on the system. For example, I recently was faced with a decision to either replace an old $700 desktop (1 gig RAM, AMD Athlon 3500+, integrated ATI card) or replace it's SATA HD. I found that a cheap SATA HD was around $40, on the other hand, I could just about double the computer for only $350 plus a (free) two year warranty. I ended up buying the $350 desktop and scraping the old desktop for parts.
Similarly, a laptop HD might only cost $40, but unlike desktops, most people aren't going to be opening up their laptops for anything more than a change of RAM (and even then, most people would rather not), so that $40 repair can be $150 with the install and then all the headaches of restoring your two year old backups that you swore you just made last week.
then, can ANYONE bloody tell me the difference between how these less-useful people were oh-so-gently laid off, and just fucking firing them?
Usually when someone gets laid off, about 30 or so other people go with them. Entire departments are cut out, projects abandoned. On the other hand usually firing someone is simply firing one or perhaps two people.
They've cut about 5,000 here in the U.S. (IBM said worldwide, but the cuts were almost exclusively in the US). Meanwhile, IBM now has 70,000 people in India.
Hm, I wonder why? Is it perhaps that the people in India make good tech support and code monkeys, oh and will happily work for half the pay of employees in the USA?
IBM doesn't need more code monkeys and tech support, it needs managers, leaders, innovators, those are the people that usually come from the developed countries, the problem is, all the US schools seem to turn out is more code monkeys.
After each state makes a list of citizens (you know, voter card lists + DMV lists + W2 from last year + other sources), then make it a requirement to check all new hires through this system. Now make this system a registered public one, where you go to the courthouse and log on a terminal with your business name and check. If you dont, it's a misdemeanor. If you happened to hire illegals without checking, felony. Of course, if you can show that you made the searches and their information was fraudulent, then the business owner is off the hook completely.
So in other words making it a pain in the butt to hire anyone? Not to mention if its that easy to go into, you can sure as heck bet that someone will be there gaining information for other purposes (junk mail, identity theft, etc). The other problem is, if there is anything worse than an illegal immigrant, it is an illegal immigrant without a job. Now how are these illegal immigrants going to get jobs if no one legitimately will hire them (especially the ones far from their home country and can't just jump the fence back into Mexico). They will then either get money from A) Violent crimes, B) Drug and other black market deals, or C) The government/public.
Then there are a multitude of privacy issues. If theoretically any business owner can get on this system and check for the identities of people then it obviously has some very sensitive information on it. What happens if a hacker gets in and gets the entire record of citizens in New York complete with Social Security Numbers, drivers license, voting IDs, this basically lets anyone do whatever with little to no accountability, then with the accountability what happens when/if it crashes and the access logs are wiped? How does a business owner then get verified about the immigrant's status?
Your idea is a nice idea, unfortunately it just can't work in the real world.
the problem is minimum wage isn't enough to live on already
But similarly by having a minimum wage it inflates goods and raises the cost of living. By removing it it would cause prices to fall in today's economy and people would also have more jobs.
minimum wage is a saftey net which i think needs to be there, too many employers already screw their employees we don't need to go making it even easier for them.
But again, it would lead to falling prices of everything else. For example, rather than paying $3 for a gallon of milk you might only pay only like $.50 for it. It would lead to a massive deflation that would in essence equal everything out, now 20-30 years down the line we would have the same problem, but minimum wage doesn't solve that either.
And yet the executives of those companies using that logic don't seem to apply it to themselves.
...Because you are going to turn down an extra $50000+ if you were CEO? It isn't the CEO that is to blame, its the idiot board of directors that voted for the CEO and the pay raise.
The foreign workers don't expect to be paid as much because they DO expect to save most of it and then return home where the cost of living is significantly lower.
Of course. If the cost of living in the USA dropped, I would see people working for much less.
Now, if the companies want to play that game, then fine. They should be required to move their offices to India or wherever.
Instead, they want to "game" the system by paying to cheap labour rates of India, but enjoying all the benefits of the USofA. Meanwhile they're hiding their assets in the Cayman Islands and such.
Umm... Because it suddenly now makes sense to turn away large cooperations who are paying millions of dollars to the government in tax dollars. All the while turning away tax-paying visa workers too.
Why should the American citizens support their government allowing such behaviour? It's just a race to the bottom.
The free market is a race to the bottom. Thats kinda why it works so well. The problem is, the government with unions, tariffs and minimum wage prevent it from becoming a race to the bottom and thus prevent cheaper goods and services from being sold. A race to the bottom is a good thing, just look at computer prices, I don't think that Apple and MS could have survived if the price of a cheap desktop was still $1000+, similarly Google and the internet businesses would also be gone.
And why wouldn't I want the government allowing this? Why wouldn't I want the government to collect millions in tax dollars so I can in effect pay less taxes?
The problem also is, education basically sucks in America. Basically in all classes from elementary school onward, you regurgitate information to please the teacher/professor pass that class and go on with the next. So much is either A) irrelevant to your field B) Has information that is relevant but is taught by someone who makes their class almost impossible to learn anything in C) rephrasing things in order to please the teacher because otherwise you will fail even though the information is the same or D) wasting your time because the teacher decides to rant about something totally irrelevant to the subject at hand (and these are always the few that actually care that you show up to class every day).
All "education" is in America is jumping through hoops to get a good grade to get a good degree to get a good job to get more money to live a (hopefully) happier life. Now, there are a few professors/teachers who actually teach and actually give you an education, but for the vast majority, its jumping through more hoops.
The problem is it is a vicious circle. Whereas in India it is easy to find a decent low-skill tech job (tech support anyone?), most US tech jobs either expect a degree, many hours of work (that would interfere with classes), or are require a certification of some kind. Unless you are going to college in a major city (New York, LA, Boston, etc) about your only options for tech jobs while you are still in school are A) Sales (such as Best Buy) B) Repair (such as Geek Squad which doesn't really give you any experience), or if you are lucky you can get a low skill secretary-type job at a local business, but that won't give you more than keyboarding experience.
The problem with technology in America is you have to have experience to get the experience. And unless you are lucky enough to go to school close to a major IT firm, your options for job experience is sorely limited. Now, you can play with Apache on your Linux box all you want, but what good does that do you on a resume?
If there was TRULY a shortage of good people, the companies should do what they did before H1-B -- TRAIN PEOPLE.
But the problem is the wages. For example, say the average American expects to get paid $9 per hour for a job, when they have been trained specifically for that job they expect even higher wages (just look at certifications in the computer world, such as how a Red Hat Certified technician expects to get paid more than a recent IT graduate of the local college). The average H1-B person might expect to be paid $7 per hour for a job that they are already trained at. Its simple economics, if you were looking for a systems administrator for a Red Hat server, do you want the 23 year old thats fresh out of college that expects $80K a year, or the 30 year old experienced sysadmin that is certified and expects only $70K per year.
The problem with most Americans is they won't work for less than a certain amount (and the minimum wage only serves to make that worse) and expect to be paid more after training.
Or you know, you can always have the government let you work at a competitive wage. The problem is, if Pedro who came here from Mexico is willing to work for $7 per hour and no native-born American wants to work for less than $9 per hour, who is the logical choice? Now, without unions its easy to get a job by saying that you would work $7 per hour just like Pedro, the Mexican immigrant would, but with unions that you might be forced to join you would easily lose out because the company would obviously want to pay $7 per hour rather than $9 per hour even though you are slightly more qualified.
Basically, if the government would eliminate the minimum wage, allow cooperations more freedom in hiring people, we would see unemployment drop like a rock, prices would fall and we would be back to economic stability. These days, if a company (think more of the lines of manual labor) can't make minimum wage on 100 workers, they might have to cut 25% of their workforce, on the other hand without minimum wage they could employ the same number of people just with a cut salary.
But the problems are A) Cable TV music channels are mostly similar to the radio in crappy-ness, sure, they have some nice retro music now and then, but other than that, theres not much there, B) With video on demand you end up paying for something you are only going to see once or twice in your life, now for some things it makes sense, such as sporting events and some movies, but for music... not so much, C) Neither of them are portable or able to be modified. I can't exactly put MTV on my iPod, nor can I put the music video from a video-on-demand on my computer. On the other hand, it is easy to put a CD onto a MP3 player, easy to make backups of it to protect against scratches, easy to play in a car, etc. DVDs are the same way, with DeCSS I can modify a DVD so it only plays what I want, puts it on my iPod and can rip audio tracks off of it.
I see this a lot but I don't know what "more respect" is supposed to mean. Sure I'd like to see more new music but haven't all great bands eventually had to scrape up from nothing?
As in, allow radio stations to play them, promote them (thats what the RIAA and record labels were supposed to do in the first place), and stick with them. And yes, all great bands had to scrape up from nothing, but just look at the popular music of today. "Hannah Montana" only acheved fame because she is Billy Ray Cyrus's daughter, if she was born into a middle class home I doubt that she would be any greater than being in a school musical. Half the bands being played on radio today haven't had a real hit single for years, Basically, if the record companies would give the same respect to *random indie band* as they do, say Brittney Spears, the world would be a better place.
This means they will cost more, unfortunately. And if you don't want to spend the money on a CD then why would you start buying if it cost more, even with the new stuff? I actually don't mind the loss of cool liner art. I find myself buying music from new artists if they allow me to pay online and download their stuff, I'm not really looking for a physical disc and if I ever need one I can just burn one.
Ummm... No. Will it mean that the RIAA might need to take a smaller cut of profits, sure, but if I pay $10 for a CD, I can expect about $.25 is for the physical CD and case itself, about $.25 for printed meterials (or less), about $.50 going to the artist and the rest goes back to the RIAA. Really, having a nice physical CD is the one advantage that record companies can always have over the MP3s downloaded off of The Pirate Bay.
The main problem with this is that a cell phone is not becoming more and more of a tool used to increase freedom of the press. For example, someone in a prison could quickly videotape abuse and send it to a news agency with a cell phone, thus increasing freedom, but this law is a serious attack on free press.
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Really is spam that big of a problem anymore? Ever since I've switched to Gmail all my spam has been blocked by it or blocked by a simple mail filter. Now then again, I don't give my real e-mail address to everyone and their brother, but individual spam blockers have come a long, long ways.
But Apple seems actively marketing and developing the idea of multi touch (just look at newer MacBooks, and the iPhone/iPod Touch). The problem isn't that there won't be other ways to do it, it is that there will be too many ways to do something. For example, the qwerty keyboard isn't the most effective layout, but if it got (somehow) patented and everyone who wasn't using an Apple based system had to switch to Devorak or other alternative layouts, I imagine that typing speed would be hindered for a few years until people could regain their old speed back. While there are going to undoubtedly be better ways of doing multi-touch, if it isn't standardized, how good is it if the "natural" gestures or the gestures you are used to don't work?
The problem with patenting multi-touch gestures is it can lead to a huge learning curve challenge. For example the Linux/Windows/BSD/etc multi-touch is going to be totally different than OS X's methods because of these patents, making it not only hard for people going to OS X but from people who primarily use OS X but can't use the gestures they are used to when on a different computer. This is similar to patenting QWERTY so every other keyboard manufacturer has to pick different keyboard layouts to typing becomes unbearable on different systems.
WinLinux 2000's main selling point is that it can be installed onto a Windows drive without the need for tricky partitioning. It's based on Slackware and claims to be "the easiest to install Linux system in the Windows world". By working with the UMSDOS filesystem, WinLinux uses a Windows directory to hold the Linux files, although it's slower than a proper, dedicated partition. We booted Windows 95 and ran the SETUP.EXE program. A typical installation utility appeared, and after choosing the 'Typical' choice for packages, the installer started copying files onto our C: drive. So far, so good.
Ok ok... so a -single- universal one-size-fits-all standard is probably a bad idea. But how about a standard family? Laptops, printers, lcd panels, scanners all use one, cell phones mp3s etc all use another... etc?
But again, not all phones/MP3 players are created equal. What makes perfect sense for an iPhone may be disastrous when on a flip phone, etc. I can see a single one being used though for laptops and LCDs.
how many of those "powerbricks" do you have on the floor under your desk? I have like 20 in my office it seems, each with a different power rating, and plugs.
Sure, a lot, but different technologies that seem alike to most customers might require different voltages and having similar plugs may prove disastrous. Such as someone thinking that the monitor cable from a CRT can go to an LCD, etc.
Or better still, you could buy one powerbrick with a dozen leads off it, and use it to power all the gadgets in your office... like a mid-high end power supply inside your PC has multiple lines to power all the devices inside your PC, with modular cable support?
Yes, but think of how big a mess that would be? its already a tangled mess when I have about 3 things in a USB hub, let alone tens of leads off of a powerbrick. And how long they would be to really do anything useful.
There is little reason to even get a universal power adapter. USB is standard for just about every modern phone today along with most low-cost MP3 players, etc. There are a multitude of reasons not to go with a universal power adapter other than "the evil corporations are making us pay more". The most obvious one is that some devices require more power than others. Other reasons are some of the port sizes are too large/small for the device to be useful. For example, a tiny MP3 player might not have room for even a mini USB plug, however it can use the headphone jack to power/sync it. Similarly larger electronics may need more secure connections (as in not falling out, not like encryption) than others. Some might need to be designed to be easily yanked out, others might need ways of making sure it doesn't fall out.
For just about all popular gadgets, it is very very easy to walk into almost any store and get a replacement or third party cable. About the only industry that I would see benefiting from this is laptops, a standard laptop connection cable (like desktops) would be a lifesaver some times.
...But for the average person who doesn't use Exchange or who uses personal e-mail, a netbook will do just fine. Sure, if you absolutely must have exchange support for some odd reason, no, Linux isn't going to get you that, but if you have Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or just about everything else (like most people who don't work at a large corporation have), it will work perfectly.
Because most people WANT TO RUN THEIR APPS and not dick around with Linux. When will people realise that vast majority of the mass market actually wants windows and will continue to want Windows for the foreseeable future.
Ummm... No, the vast majority of people wants a computer that works. For the tasks that a informed consumer will use a netbook for (browsing, e-mail, etc) Linux is perfect for it. Now, if I'm a big gamer, I'm not going to want Linux nor OS X for that matter, I'm going to have to use Windows. But there are almost no disadvantages to using Linux on a netbook if you are informed. Far too often the ill informed attempt to use the argument that "Its different" to address what they see as flaws. However, an informed customer (and by informed consumer, I mean someone reasonably intelligent, knows the strengths and weaknesses of Linux, etc) will almost certainly pick Linux unless they have an application that they can not live without and for a personal netbook, there aren't many applications that could fit that.
But really, it does matter. If I am going to buy a netbook with a 1.6 GHz Atom CPU, 1 GB of RAM and integrated graphics, I'm going to want something that runs fast. On either platform I will have E-mail, basic games, web browsing, videos, music, etc, and whichever one runs the fastest (and the cheapest) is going to be the one someone usually picks. So when Windows 7 comes out and you can either buy the $300 netbook with Linux that runs faster, or the $350 netbook with Windows 7 that runs slower, the choice for any informed customer is obvious.
The thing is, everyone associates Java with slow psudo-3-D games that take forever to load on a cell phone or browser. People associate other (sometimes slower) languages such as Python and .NET/Mono to be much, much, faster. Now, this isn't really correct, but if I was going to learn a new language, it probably would be .NET or Mono and not Java.
Schools will always turn out code monkeys. You can't learn innovation and leadership in the classroom - you have to learn them by applying them.
Yes, but especially today there is very little innovation being used/taught in the classroom. Whereas in the 1980s or 1990s you would get high marks for finding a different, better way of coding a program, today the "know-it-all" IT professor is more apt to fail you because you didn't do it his way that might have actually been a disaster. There also seems to be less innovation in the workplace. It used to be that faster ways were praised and lead to promotion, today they are frowned upon because innovation makes it a pain to teach the secretary how to use it.
It honestly depends on the system. For example, I recently was faced with a decision to either replace an old $700 desktop (1 gig RAM, AMD Athlon 3500+, integrated ATI card) or replace it's SATA HD. I found that a cheap SATA HD was around $40, on the other hand, I could just about double the computer for only $350 plus a (free) two year warranty. I ended up buying the $350 desktop and scraping the old desktop for parts.
Similarly, a laptop HD might only cost $40, but unlike desktops, most people aren't going to be opening up their laptops for anything more than a change of RAM (and even then, most people would rather not), so that $40 repair can be $150 with the install and then all the headaches of restoring your two year old backups that you swore you just made last week.
then, can ANYONE bloody tell me the difference between how these less-useful people were oh-so-gently laid off, and just fucking firing them?
Usually when someone gets laid off, about 30 or so other people go with them. Entire departments are cut out, projects abandoned. On the other hand usually firing someone is simply firing one or perhaps two people.
They've cut about 5,000 here in the U.S. (IBM said worldwide, but the cuts were almost exclusively in the US). Meanwhile, IBM now has 70,000 people in India.
Hm, I wonder why? Is it perhaps that the people in India make good tech support and code monkeys, oh and will happily work for half the pay of employees in the USA?
IBM doesn't need more code monkeys and tech support, it needs managers, leaders, innovators, those are the people that usually come from the developed countries, the problem is, all the US schools seem to turn out is more code monkeys.
After each state makes a list of citizens (you know, voter card lists + DMV lists + W2 from last year + other sources), then make it a requirement to check all new hires through this system. Now make this system a registered public one, where you go to the courthouse and log on a terminal with your business name and check. If you dont, it's a misdemeanor. If you happened to hire illegals without checking, felony. Of course, if you can show that you made the searches and their information was fraudulent, then the business owner is off the hook completely.
So in other words making it a pain in the butt to hire anyone? Not to mention if its that easy to go into, you can sure as heck bet that someone will be there gaining information for other purposes (junk mail, identity theft, etc). The other problem is, if there is anything worse than an illegal immigrant, it is an illegal immigrant without a job. Now how are these illegal immigrants going to get jobs if no one legitimately will hire them (especially the ones far from their home country and can't just jump the fence back into Mexico). They will then either get money from A) Violent crimes, B) Drug and other black market deals, or C) The government/public.
Then there are a multitude of privacy issues. If theoretically any business owner can get on this system and check for the identities of people then it obviously has some very sensitive information on it. What happens if a hacker gets in and gets the entire record of citizens in New York complete with Social Security Numbers, drivers license, voting IDs, this basically lets anyone do whatever with little to no accountability, then with the accountability what happens when/if it crashes and the access logs are wiped? How does a business owner then get verified about the immigrant's status?
Your idea is a nice idea, unfortunately it just can't work in the real world.
the problem is minimum wage isn't enough to live on already
But similarly by having a minimum wage it inflates goods and raises the cost of living. By removing it it would cause prices to fall in today's economy and people would also have more jobs.
minimum wage is a saftey net which i think needs to be there, too many employers already screw their employees we don't need to go making it even easier for them.
But again, it would lead to falling prices of everything else. For example, rather than paying $3 for a gallon of milk you might only pay only like $.50 for it. It would lead to a massive deflation that would in essence equal everything out, now 20-30 years down the line we would have the same problem, but minimum wage doesn't solve that either.
And yet the executives of those companies using that logic don't seem to apply it to themselves.
The foreign workers don't expect to be paid as much because they DO expect to save most of it and then return home where the cost of living is significantly lower.
Of course. If the cost of living in the USA dropped, I would see people working for much less.
Now, if the companies want to play that game, then fine. They should be required to move their offices to India or wherever. Instead, they want to "game" the system by paying to cheap labour rates of India, but enjoying all the benefits of the USofA. Meanwhile they're hiding their assets in the Cayman Islands and such.
Umm... Because it suddenly now makes sense to turn away large cooperations who are paying millions of dollars to the government in tax dollars. All the while turning away tax-paying visa workers too.
Why should the American citizens support their government allowing such behaviour? It's just a race to the bottom.
The free market is a race to the bottom. Thats kinda why it works so well. The problem is, the government with unions, tariffs and minimum wage prevent it from becoming a race to the bottom and thus prevent cheaper goods and services from being sold. A race to the bottom is a good thing, just look at computer prices, I don't think that Apple and MS could have survived if the price of a cheap desktop was still $1000+, similarly Google and the internet businesses would also be gone.
And why wouldn't I want the government allowing this? Why wouldn't I want the government to collect millions in tax dollars so I can in effect pay less taxes?
The problem also is, education basically sucks in America. Basically in all classes from elementary school onward, you regurgitate information to please the teacher/professor pass that class and go on with the next. So much is either A) irrelevant to your field B) Has information that is relevant but is taught by someone who makes their class almost impossible to learn anything in C) rephrasing things in order to please the teacher because otherwise you will fail even though the information is the same or D) wasting your time because the teacher decides to rant about something totally irrelevant to the subject at hand (and these are always the few that actually care that you show up to class every day).
All "education" is in America is jumping through hoops to get a good grade to get a good degree to get a good job to get more money to live a (hopefully) happier life. Now, there are a few professors/teachers who actually teach and actually give you an education, but for the vast majority, its jumping through more hoops.
The problem is it is a vicious circle. Whereas in India it is easy to find a decent low-skill tech job (tech support anyone?), most US tech jobs either expect a degree, many hours of work (that would interfere with classes), or are require a certification of some kind. Unless you are going to college in a major city (New York, LA, Boston, etc) about your only options for tech jobs while you are still in school are A) Sales (such as Best Buy) B) Repair (such as Geek Squad which doesn't really give you any experience), or if you are lucky you can get a low skill secretary-type job at a local business, but that won't give you more than keyboarding experience.
The problem with technology in America is you have to have experience to get the experience. And unless you are lucky enough to go to school close to a major IT firm, your options for job experience is sorely limited. Now, you can play with Apache on your Linux box all you want, but what good does that do you on a resume?
If there was TRULY a shortage of good people, the companies should do what they did before H1-B -- TRAIN PEOPLE.
But the problem is the wages. For example, say the average American expects to get paid $9 per hour for a job, when they have been trained specifically for that job they expect even higher wages (just look at certifications in the computer world, such as how a Red Hat Certified technician expects to get paid more than a recent IT graduate of the local college). The average H1-B person might expect to be paid $7 per hour for a job that they are already trained at. Its simple economics, if you were looking for a systems administrator for a Red Hat server, do you want the 23 year old thats fresh out of college that expects $80K a year, or the 30 year old experienced sysadmin that is certified and expects only $70K per year.
The problem with most Americans is they won't work for less than a certain amount (and the minimum wage only serves to make that worse) and expect to be paid more after training.
Or you know, you can always have the government let you work at a competitive wage. The problem is, if Pedro who came here from Mexico is willing to work for $7 per hour and no native-born American wants to work for less than $9 per hour, who is the logical choice? Now, without unions its easy to get a job by saying that you would work $7 per hour just like Pedro, the Mexican immigrant would, but with unions that you might be forced to join you would easily lose out because the company would obviously want to pay $7 per hour rather than $9 per hour even though you are slightly more qualified.
Basically, if the government would eliminate the minimum wage, allow cooperations more freedom in hiring people, we would see unemployment drop like a rock, prices would fall and we would be back to economic stability. These days, if a company (think more of the lines of manual labor) can't make minimum wage on 100 workers, they might have to cut 25% of their workforce, on the other hand without minimum wage they could employ the same number of people just with a cut salary.
But the problems are A) Cable TV music channels are mostly similar to the radio in crappy-ness, sure, they have some nice retro music now and then, but other than that, theres not much there, B) With video on demand you end up paying for something you are only going to see once or twice in your life, now for some things it makes sense, such as sporting events and some movies, but for music... not so much, C) Neither of them are portable or able to be modified. I can't exactly put MTV on my iPod, nor can I put the music video from a video-on-demand on my computer. On the other hand, it is easy to put a CD onto a MP3 player, easy to make backups of it to protect against scratches, easy to play in a car, etc. DVDs are the same way, with DeCSS I can modify a DVD so it only plays what I want, puts it on my iPod and can rip audio tracks off of it.
That would work great until some prisoner got a guard in his cell and beat him up and the guard couldn't call for backup.
I see this a lot but I don't know what "more respect" is supposed to mean. Sure I'd like to see more new music but haven't all great bands eventually had to scrape up from nothing?
As in, allow radio stations to play them, promote them (thats what the RIAA and record labels were supposed to do in the first place), and stick with them. And yes, all great bands had to scrape up from nothing, but just look at the popular music of today. "Hannah Montana" only acheved fame because she is Billy Ray Cyrus's daughter, if she was born into a middle class home I doubt that she would be any greater than being in a school musical. Half the bands being played on radio today haven't had a real hit single for years, Basically, if the record companies would give the same respect to *random indie band* as they do, say Brittney Spears, the world would be a better place.
This means they will cost more, unfortunately. And if you don't want to spend the money on a CD then why would you start buying if it cost more, even with the new stuff? I actually don't mind the loss of cool liner art. I find myself buying music from new artists if they allow me to pay online and download their stuff, I'm not really looking for a physical disc and if I ever need one I can just burn one.
Ummm... No. Will it mean that the RIAA might need to take a smaller cut of profits, sure, but if I pay $10 for a CD, I can expect about $.25 is for the physical CD and case itself, about $.25 for printed meterials (or less), about $.50 going to the artist and the rest goes back to the RIAA. Really, having a nice physical CD is the one advantage that record companies can always have over the MP3s downloaded off of The Pirate Bay.
The main problem with this is that a cell phone is not becoming more and more of a tool used to increase freedom of the press. For example, someone in a prison could quickly videotape abuse and send it to a news agency with a cell phone, thus increasing freedom, but this law is a serious attack on free press.