The friends I referred to aren't in the most directly threatened IT class (programmers) - Most of them are in networking or onsite hardware support. IT is still the spark for them! Why should they leave? It's not all about money. Personal satisfaction and self actualization was the driving force behind my decision to resume the degree I'd abanonded a decade ago. Offshoring really became a buzzword within the last year or two, the timing is completely coincidental.
Actually, I didn't lose a job. I was an entrepreneur in two IT companies up to 3 years ago and a wireless network installer until 18 months ago. I announced I was leaving to return to college. I left IT because it no longer interested me and it was getting harder to learn emerging technologies up for soley that reason. I'm happy I made the decision. I was not affected by outsourcing. But I worry about the many friends I have back in the trenches.
As a few readers have pointed out so far - The Bobs are earning less money, so consequently they are injecting much less back into the tax base and are not purchasing the same amount of goods and services.
How much less?
If 830,000 people are forced to take jobs elsewhere for 50% less pay, that's 33.2 billion dollars/yr in lost income. That's assuming they are able to find jobs AT ALL.
This is using the "$80,000/yr" figure from my first post. Obviously not everyone that has lost their job to offshoring earns $80k. Some earned less, some earned more. One interesting factor is that most of the lost jobs are from fortune 1000 companies, which tends to suggest that the average salary of the affected positions IS much higher than the average salary at a 50-1500 employee company in the Midwest.
Needless to say, regardless of the actual figures, the amount of lost income is in the tens of billions of dollars. If those people have not been able to find replacement IT jobs at all, it's.. you get the idea.
Offshoring creates a much larger problem that none of these articles have touched on. I call it the "Bob Factor." Here's how it works-
Bob worked for CitiGroup in Chicago. Bob was earning $80,000/yr for his database programming position in a light supervisory position with a few other coders under him. Bob had fifteen years experience and has worked on numerous mission-critical multimillion dollar projects.
Bob lost his job a year ago to offshoring.
Bob is now in his late 30's or 40's. Bob has a mortgage, car payment, spouse and kids to support. Bob cannot afford to quickly change careers. Starting over gets a lot harder with age for financial reasons.
Bob is now willing to relocate to smaller midwestern markets like.. South Bend, Akron, Indianapolis, etc. etc. Bob will now be competing with you for the $48,000/yr job that you had your eye on.
These displaced IT workers with gobs of experience and resumes 3x thicker than yours are out there competing for the same jobs that new graduates and guys with a few years and a couple certifications were hoping to get. They are the ones making new positions in IT harder and harder to find.
Ph33r the Bobs, people. They are making it harder to GET jobs or CHANGE jobs. And worse yet, they are destroying the IT salary horizon by bringing superior job skills to the table for entry and mid-level positions out of need, creating an environment where the average REAL-LIFE starting salary for IT is DECLINING.
In the area I live in, people with Masters' degrees and a handful of certifications are showing up for entry-level programming positions advertised at ~ $25,000/yr in the paper.
Offshoring is doing precisely the same thing to the IT market that the Japanese did to big steel in the U.S. in the 70's and 80's. The U.S. government did absolutely nothing to level the playing field then - What makes you think they will now? Who has more lobbyists buttonholing congressmen in the hallway on their into work? You, Joe Schmoe Slashdot reader, or Tata?
Signed,
Frustrated former IT shmuck changing careers
Exercise your 2nd amendment rights and obtain a concealed carry permit. Oh, wait..
Sorry guys, I couldn't resist, having noted that most of the early posts went the same way. I enjoy having mine. It's not the posessions so much as your life - Remember, when seconds count, help is only minutes away.
I drove my 2002 Prius exactly 300 miles door-to-door from Canton Ohio to South Bend Indiana this past Monday with the cruise control set at 72 MPH and the A/C on the entire trip. My fuel economy, as reported to me right on the center console? 47.1 MPG.
I *ROUTINELY* get 49-52 MPG around town. ROUTINELY. These are NOT inflated sticker numbers. This is NOT granny driving. I briskly accellerate to 5 MPH over the posted limit and set the cruise control, even in town at speeds 30 MPH+. Doing this WILL deliver those window sticker numbers.
Nosir. The people posting "My XYZ car gets 44 MPG on the highway" are missing the point. Great. My car would do that with 3 passengers, 200 pounds of luggage and the heater running. What your XYZ car does NOT do:
-50+ MPG CITY. -Shut the engine off at stops or very low forward speed
Hybrids are the perfect stop gap until practical hydrogen arrives.
Apple is not winning the game with a superior song catalogue, superior interface, or the ethereal Apple "coolness" factor.
They are winning because of the iPod, the slickest portable digital audio player in the game.
It's the hardware.
If I could go to Best Buy and browse from a selection of six to eight portable digital audio players that worked with Napster's DRM, and these products were reasonably affordable and well designed, Napster's bottom line would be much better off. Much better off if Napster got a kickback off every one sold, that is.
People do not like having audio files they can only play on their PC, or (in the case of Apple) having to purchase an absurdly expensive player. Apple could blow the lid off the maket if the mini iPod had been $149 with 128 megs of RAM and memory card slots instead of getting stuck in MUST-HAVE-INTERNAL HARD DRIVE tunnel vision.
Jobs: How about this- I already buying memory cards for various electronics in my home. How about if I can use them in my new iPod as well? Must everything be proprietary? And must my audio player look as though it must be held by a blonde 17 year old girl rollerblading down the boardwalk in hotpants whilst sipping a double shot swiss water process half-calf soy milk mochaccino? Cool is only worth so much more, you know. If Napster had a line of solid players and relaxed their DRM restrictions a little they could knock iTunes out of the box.
I for one cannot wait to hear that Peter Jackson has untangled the legal web surrounding the rights to The Hobbit. As a child I enjoyed it much more than the trilogy. It's the perfect 3 hour film. Massive battle at the end. The dwarves! The eagles! Smaug! Mirkwood, the elves en masse - PJ, please get King Kong out of the way and give us The Hobbit in 2007 or 2008!
Hm. Which ethnic minority (sans powerful community presence/voice) can Rockstar exploit in this title?
You are all misinformed about the H1-B Visa.
on
No Americans Need Apply
·
· Score: 5, Informative
My fiance' is presently working in the U.S. on an H1-B Visa. A quick refresher:
H1-B visas are only granted to persons with the equivalent of a 4-year Bachellor's degree. Part of the application process involves going through a degree equivalency comparison by an accredited lawyer. My fiance' has a Masters' in Computer Science.
H1-B visa holders have a minimum salary stipulation. I believe the last time I checked it was $35,000 US. My fiance is being paid the same salary as the person that held her position before her, which is substantially higher than minimum.
The position she was hired for was unfilled for some time as the company could not find someone with her required database/programming/java skills locally (we reside in a small midwestern community of ~150,000 population including neighboring villages and suburbs.)
The real culprit here is twofold: 1. The L-1 Visa. The L-1 has *substantially* lower pay requirements. These are the job-stealing visas.
2. Corporate greed and government inaction. CEO's just see their programming expense as a budget line item to be reduced, like finding a cheaper widget supplier. Government inaction is self-explanitory. They are closing the door too slowly.
H1-B's are typically attracting highly educated Western Europeans to the U.S. for a number of reasons. Salaries that are 1.5 to 2x higher than back home (not 5-8x as compared to India), A significant other in the states (grin) or a sense of adventure and desire to try the U.S. for a while. I find it baffling that in the wake of the articles regarding Teller's passing that we're questioning the H1-B situation. Post WWII, alot of our brainpower came from Western Europe. Highly skilled, highly educated persons who desire to become U.S. citizens and melt into the pot are what strengthens the U.S.
So, the Swedish government levies incredibly high taxes on hard liquor and beer >3% alcohol content. OR something like that. My memory isn't perfect, I just returned from Goteborge two weeks ago. So, moving along with the story - You can only buy alcohol at Systembolaget, the state owned, state operated liquor store. They have bankers' hours. To their credit, the selection is amazing and the employees are incredibly knowledgeable about the product.
To buy alcohol cheaply, Swedes from Gothenburg and the surrounding area take the ferry to Denmark. And do they. The day I rode the ferry was two days before the Derby - The big soccer match between two Gothenburg city teams. The ferry probably had 200-300 people on it. They were using airline carry-on bags, shopping carts, little wheeled dollies - all LOADED with liquor for the 20 minute trip back to Sweden.
So Swedish merchants will be forced to sell CDR's for $4/ea. This means what, exactly? The little shops that stack FORKLIFT PALLETS full of wine, liquor and beer at the curbside in little towns on the Danish side will just add blank CDR's for $1/ea to the pile.
I really dislike the implication by the government that ALL CONSUMERS are purchasing CDR's to further CRIMINAL ACTIVITY.
This is really about the recording industry being slow to evolve and adapt to a changing marketplace. Kudos to iTunes & Steve Jobs. When the customer is given a fair and realistic alternative to buying a CD for $20 with two good songs on it or pirating it off Kazaa, they'll probably take it - As evidenced in iTunes runaway success.
These laws are being created by men and women who call tech support three times a week with Outlook Express questions.
Quite the number of trolls out today. Considering that Wil has enjoyed a somewhat unique experience in one of the most loved TV franchises in the modern era you think people would be more inclined to post thoughtful replies.
Then again, I suspect the trolls are simply driven by a wracking, crushing feeling of sexual inadequacy.
"Do you have that dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?"
I did some work for a law firm a few years ago. They were using an MS-DOS package called "Juris" to handle all their time billing. As you can imagine, this was the #1 priority mission-critical application for them. Juris is allegedly the 800 pound gorilla in the legal sector.
IIRC, Juris was written in 1986, or something like that. The company that makes it was getting ready to roll out a "test" version now featuring - WINDOWS support. *Gasp!* This was a few years ago.
I wager that the oldest running application is probably in a factory somewhere, producing something very low tech. Like an 8088 hooked up to a lathe trimming brown rubber toilet plunger bulbs. Those manufacturing guys rarely upgrade, and arguably never need to.
Instead of fixing the exploit in their keycard system, the company in question finds it easier to have their lawyers drop a house on the students.
Doesn't "Security through Obscurity" create an environment where persons with malicious intent are free to exercise it?
The students discovering the security hole = The Good Guys. The knowledge they posses equal a Munition (or, a firearm.) They were not planning to use their knowledge maliciously.
Essentially the DMCA has turned knowledge into a weapon to be regulated through the legal system. Just be careful what you know, because speaking of it publicly is becoming the 21st century equivalent of pulling a gun out of your pocket at the mall to discuss it's function with another gun enthusiast.
Of course, we all know the gun paradox. Seriously. Increasingly orwellian gun laws !=less crime. Criminals will always find weapons. On the electronic mean streats, crackers & hackers will always find exploits, but unlike the Good Guys, the Bad Guys won't go to a symposium to divulge the PROBLEM, embarassing the company into FIXING IT. Instead, the Bad Guys will EXPLOIT the FUCK OUT OF IT.
I'm not a philosopher, psychologist, ethicist or sociologist by profession, but perhaps the DMCA needs to be re-evaluated by a panel consisting of a few. Right now it seems to favor only the government and very, very large corporations. Oh, and it makes learning a criminal act.
Civilization is doomed to a fifty to one hundred year cycle of terrible wars with smaller regional conflicts every ten years. Our species is burdened with short life spans and a dreadful willingness to blindly ignore the wisdom of those who preceeded us.
The mixed message Germany is sending to it's youth: War is bloodless, and the military is evil.
History has been a long and winding highway littered with the wreckage of civilizations led by madmen bent on conquest. They were put down by strong, peaceful democracies.
You cannot appease dictators. People who attain and hold power through strength, fear and intimidation only respect equal or greater strength and the resolve to apply it.
So long as the earth is covered by hundreds of unique cultures and sovereign countries competing for fixed resources there will be the need for a strong military. Regrettably, as those resources are taxed by a burgeoning population the worst aspects of human nature will be on display.
Germans cannot stick their heads in the sand. The world is not, and never will be a utopian conflict-free society. Diplomacy will never solve *all* problems. It's far too easy to sit on the sidelines of world politics and criticize the United States for taking the military initiative.
Germanic tribesmen had an old saying: Never have by sweat and work what you can take by sword. Historically speaking, there is only one country on earth that's had the power of ancient Rome without the expansionist policies. One that has fought wars on principle and not occupied, expanded or enslaved. That country is not Germany.
The German government's video game policy is being determined by the continuing shame and knee-jerk reaction to World War II and Gerhard Schroeder's pandering to public opinion polls.
Put blood in your video games, Germany. Show violent war movies. Let your youth understand the consequences. Or forget all too soon how horrible it really is. That is truely what's dangerous.
I know what you think. Unions are for trades workers. Not so, ask a school teacher.
Historically in the U.S., unions were created to correct the horrible treatment of workers by large, overpowerful corporations during the robber-baron era circa 1920's and 1930's. The relevance of unions today has been questioned by big business, citing numerous government regulations that work to protect employees from hazards in the workplace, discrimination, work hours, etc. What these government regulations don't protect you from is being treated like shit by companies that cut hours, push for unpaid overtime, cut perks, cut staffing, cut benefits - All while operating profitably.
We live in an age when companies are reclaiming the type of power not seen since the 1920's. Where we have robber-barons. CEO's that cut jobs to improve stock performance while taking $10 million dollar bonus packages.
It works both ways, of course. There are tradeoffs. But I.T. is becomming a basic commoditiy to employers. Don't stroke your ego. While the Slashdot readership may be a clever barrel of monkeys - Inteligent, highly innovative and/or intelligent - The jobs you perform as programmers, sysadmins, network engineers, etc... Are no longer "magical." The magic is gone folks, and they're just jobs now. Sorry to break this to you.
I've always been anti-union. But that was before the dot-com bubble burst. I was working at an ISP a few months ago. I had a guy with a Masters' degree and two certifications walk in our door looking for a job. At an ISP.
My fiance' is Swedish. In Europe, almost all jobs are protected by government regulations or unions. You -can- fire someone for poor job performance, but it requires a review process. Not the whim of an asshole manager playing office politics.
Large companies don't like unions. Collective bargaining gives employees power. Review boards investigating alleged employee peformance problems or misconduct puts employees on the same level as management during administrative issues. Employees are no longer drones to be dumped on by management. Peter will in fact NOT work this saturday, Bob.
Did you know that the Teamsters is trying to unionize nursing staff in hospitals across the country? Why? Because hospitals are mistreating nurses. Underpaid, overworked, and being replaced by cheaper H1-B labor.
I'm out of rant for now. Discuss amongst yourselves.:)
C'mon, I want photos of the circle perpetrators! I can't believe that in this era of cheap technology that someone hasn't camcorder'd yay-hoos stomping around in their field in the act of making crop circles. Or, after hearing their dog barking at 2 AM, driven down the road to inspect their fence and photographed idiot kids in the process of throwing their 2x4's into a pickup before racing off. Forget the ET's - Circulate enough photos of the real circle makers and this one will go quietly into the dark night of historical obscurity.
Guys, Give him a break! My fiance' graduated with a Masters' from Chalmers. It's considered one of the more prestigious engineering schools in Europe. It's the Swedish "MIT". I think a little is being lost in the translation.. Don't mistake sarcasm for criticism. Slashdot is truely an international affair; Don't push our guests away.:)
(my Swede and I reside in Indiana, and I'm a homegrown Ohio boy)
Oh yes.. Believe me, We have become somthing close to immigration experts after dealing with tons of paperwork. The problem with the K-1 is that you must marry within 30 days of your fiance' arriving in the country. If you don't want a trip to the local mayor or a jaunt to vegas (read: you want a 'normal' wedding and all the 1-year out planning that entails) then you find a job for your fiance' or you're boned.
Immigration is a tiring, challenging path to walk fraught with beaurocratic obstacles.
Slashdot Mirror
The friends I referred to aren't in the most directly threatened IT class (programmers) - Most of them are in networking or onsite hardware support. IT is still the spark for them! Why should they leave? It's not all about money. Personal satisfaction and self actualization was the driving force behind my decision to resume the degree I'd abanonded a decade ago. Offshoring really became a buzzword within the last year or two, the timing is completely coincidental.
Actually, I didn't lose a job. I was an entrepreneur in two IT companies up to 3 years ago and a wireless network installer until 18 months ago. I announced I was leaving to return to college. I left IT because it no longer interested me and it was getting harder to learn emerging technologies up for soley that reason. I'm happy I made the decision. I was not affected by outsourcing. But I worry about the many friends I have back in the trenches.
As a few readers have pointed out so far - The Bobs are earning less money, so consequently they are injecting much less back into the tax base and are not purchasing the same amount of goods and services.
How much less?
If 830,000 people are forced to take jobs elsewhere for 50% less pay, that's 33.2 billion dollars/yr in lost income. That's assuming they are able to find jobs AT ALL.
This is using the "$80,000/yr" figure from my first post. Obviously not everyone that has lost their job to offshoring earns $80k. Some earned less, some earned more. One interesting factor is that most of the lost jobs are from fortune 1000 companies, which tends to suggest that the average salary of the affected positions IS much higher than the average salary at a 50-1500 employee company in the Midwest.
Needless to say, regardless of the actual figures, the amount of lost income is in the tens of billions of dollars. If those people have not been able to find replacement IT jobs at all, it's
Offshoring creates a much larger problem that none of these articles have touched on. I call it the "Bob Factor." Here's how it works-
Bob worked for CitiGroup in Chicago. Bob was earning $80,000/yr for his database programming position in a light supervisory position with a few other coders under him. Bob had fifteen years experience and has worked on numerous mission-critical multimillion dollar projects.
Bob lost his job a year ago to offshoring.
Bob is now in his late 30's or 40's. Bob has a mortgage, car payment, spouse and kids to support. Bob cannot afford to quickly change careers. Starting over gets a lot harder with age for financial reasons.
Bob is now willing to relocate to smaller midwestern markets like.. South Bend, Akron, Indianapolis, etc. etc. Bob will now be competing with you for the $48,000/yr job that you had your eye on.
These displaced IT workers with gobs of experience and resumes 3x thicker than yours are out there competing for the same jobs that new graduates and guys with a few years and a couple certifications were hoping to get. They are the ones making new positions in IT harder and harder to find.
Ph33r the Bobs, people. They are making it harder to GET jobs or CHANGE jobs. And worse yet, they are destroying the IT salary horizon by bringing superior job skills to the table for entry and mid-level positions out of need, creating an environment where the average REAL-LIFE starting salary for IT is DECLINING.
In the area I live in, people with Masters' degrees and a handful of certifications are showing up for entry-level programming positions advertised at ~ $25,000/yr in the paper.
Offshoring is doing precisely the same thing to the IT market that the Japanese did to big steel in the U.S. in the 70's and 80's. The U.S. government did absolutely nothing to level the playing field then - What makes you think they will now? Who has more lobbyists buttonholing congressmen in the hallway on their into work? You, Joe Schmoe Slashdot reader, or Tata?
Signed,
Frustrated former IT shmuck changing careers
Exercise your 2nd amendment rights and obtain a concealed carry permit. Oh, wait..
Sorry guys, I couldn't resist, having noted that most of the early posts went the same way. I enjoy having mine. It's not the posessions so much as your life - Remember, when seconds count, help is only minutes away.
You guys are all hitting the crack pipe.
I drove my 2002 Prius exactly 300 miles door-to-door from Canton Ohio to South Bend Indiana this past Monday with the cruise control set at 72 MPH and the A/C on the entire trip. My fuel economy, as reported to me right on the center console? 47.1 MPG.
I *ROUTINELY* get 49-52 MPG around town. ROUTINELY. These are NOT inflated sticker numbers. This is NOT granny driving. I briskly accellerate to 5 MPH over the posted limit and set the cruise control, even in town at speeds 30 MPH+. Doing this WILL deliver those window sticker numbers.
Nosir. The people posting "My XYZ car gets 44 MPG on the highway" are missing the point. Great. My car would do that with 3 passengers, 200 pounds of luggage and the heater running. What your XYZ car does NOT do:
-50+ MPG CITY.
-Shut the engine off at stops or very low forward speed
Hybrids are the perfect stop gap until practical hydrogen arrives.
My mileage doesn't vary.
Apple is not winning the game with a superior song catalogue, superior interface, or the ethereal Apple "coolness" factor.
They are winning because of the iPod, the slickest portable digital audio player in the game.
It's the hardware.
If I could go to Best Buy and browse from a selection of six to eight portable digital audio players that worked with Napster's DRM, and these products were reasonably affordable and well designed, Napster's bottom line would be much better off. Much better off if Napster got a kickback off every one sold, that is.
People do not like having audio files they can only play on their PC, or (in the case of Apple) having to purchase an absurdly expensive player. Apple could blow the lid off the maket if the mini iPod had been $149 with 128 megs of RAM and memory card slots instead of getting stuck in MUST-HAVE-INTERNAL HARD DRIVE tunnel vision.
Jobs: How about this- I already buying memory cards for various electronics in my home. How about if I can use them in my new iPod as well? Must everything be proprietary? And must my audio player look as though it must be held by a blonde 17 year old girl rollerblading down the boardwalk in hotpants whilst sipping a double shot swiss water process half-calf soy milk mochaccino? Cool is only worth so much more, you know. If Napster had a line of solid players and relaxed their DRM restrictions a little they could knock iTunes out of the box.
I for one cannot wait to hear that Peter Jackson has untangled the legal web surrounding the rights to The Hobbit. As a child I enjoyed it much more than the trilogy. It's the perfect 3 hour film. Massive battle at the end. The dwarves! The eagles! Smaug! Mirkwood, the elves en masse - PJ, please get King Kong out of the way and give us The Hobbit in 2007 or 2008!
Britney Spears is scheduled to be replaced by two writers, a perfect-pitch filter, and a hacked Aibo.
Hm. Which ethnic minority (sans powerful community presence/voice) can Rockstar exploit in this title?
My fiance' is presently working in the U.S. on an H1-B Visa. A quick refresher:
i ng .jobs.market.in.the.US.
H1-B visas are only granted to persons with the equivalent of a 4-year Bachellor's degree. Part of the application process involves going through a degree equivalency comparison by an accredited lawyer. My fiance' has a Masters' in Computer Science.
H1-B visa holders have a minimum salary stipulation. I believe the last time I checked it was $35,000 US. My fiance is being paid the same salary as the person that held her position before her, which is substantially higher than minimum.
The position she was hired for was unfilled for some time as the company could not find someone with her required database/programming/java skills locally (we reside in a small midwestern community of ~150,000 population including neighboring villages and suburbs.)
The real culprit here is twofold:
1. The L-1 Visa. The L-1 has *substantially* lower pay requirements. These are the job-stealing visas.
2. Corporate greed and government inaction. CEO's just see their programming expense as a budget line item to be reduced, like finding a cheaper widget supplier. Government inaction is self-explanitory. They are closing the door too slowly.
H1-B's are typically attracting highly educated Western Europeans to the U.S. for a number of reasons. Salaries that are 1.5 to 2x higher than back home (not 5-8x as compared to India), A significant other in the states (grin) or a sense of adventure and desire to try the U.S. for a while. I find it baffling that in the wake of the articles regarding Teller's passing that we're questioning the H1-B situation. Post WWII, alot of our brainpower came from Western Europe. Highly skilled, highly educated persons who desire to become U.S. citizens and melt into the pot are what strengthens the U.S.
It.is.the.L-1.visa.that.is.killing.the.programm
PERIOD.
Addition: He could have purchased a low-hour used ultralight for what he paid for this setup.
..I've always wondered what it feels like to be a hotdog inside a microwave oven.. There's a guy that knows!
Bear with me-
So, the Swedish government levies incredibly high taxes on hard liquor and beer >3% alcohol content. OR something like that. My memory isn't perfect, I just returned from Goteborge two weeks ago. So, moving along with the story - You can only buy alcohol at Systembolaget, the state owned, state operated liquor store. They have bankers' hours. To their credit, the selection is amazing and the employees are incredibly knowledgeable about the product.
To buy alcohol cheaply, Swedes from Gothenburg and the surrounding area take the ferry to Denmark. And do they. The day I rode the ferry was two days before the Derby - The big soccer match between two Gothenburg city teams. The ferry probably had 200-300 people on it. They were using airline carry-on bags, shopping carts, little wheeled dollies - all LOADED with liquor for the 20 minute trip back to Sweden.
So Swedish merchants will be forced to sell CDR's for $4/ea. This means what, exactly? The little shops that stack FORKLIFT PALLETS full of wine, liquor and beer at the curbside in little towns on the Danish side will just add blank CDR's for $1/ea to the pile.
I really dislike the implication by the government that ALL CONSUMERS are purchasing CDR's to further CRIMINAL ACTIVITY.
This is really about the recording industry being slow to evolve and adapt to a changing marketplace. Kudos to iTunes & Steve Jobs. When the customer is given a fair and realistic alternative to buying a CD for $20 with two good songs on it or pirating it off Kazaa, they'll probably take it - As evidenced in iTunes runaway success.
These laws are being created by men and women who call tech support three times a week with Outlook Express questions.
Quite the number of trolls out today. Considering that Wil has enjoyed a somewhat unique experience in one of the most loved TV franchises in the modern era you think people would be more inclined to post thoughtful replies.
Then again, I suspect the trolls are simply driven by a wracking, crushing feeling of sexual inadequacy.
"Do you have that dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?"
I did some work for a law firm a few years ago. They were using an MS-DOS package called "Juris" to handle all their time billing. As you can imagine, this was the #1 priority mission-critical application for them. Juris is allegedly the 800 pound gorilla in the legal sector.
IIRC, Juris was written in 1986, or something like that. The company that makes it was getting ready to roll out a "test" version now featuring - WINDOWS support. *Gasp!* This was a few years ago.
I wager that the oldest running application is probably in a factory somewhere, producing something very low tech. Like an 8088 hooked up to a lathe trimming brown rubber toilet plunger bulbs. Those manufacturing guys rarely upgrade, and arguably never need to.
Rediculous. Everyone knows the M-16 ammunition magazine .OGG player is better!
We need a department of the Search for Terrestrial Intelligence. ;(
So.
Instead of fixing the exploit in their keycard system, the company in question finds it easier to have their lawyers drop a house on the students.
Doesn't "Security through Obscurity" create an environment where persons with malicious intent are free to exercise it?
The students discovering the security hole = The Good Guys. The knowledge they posses equal a Munition (or, a firearm.) They were not planning to use their knowledge maliciously.
Essentially the DMCA has turned knowledge into a weapon to be regulated through the legal system. Just be careful what you know, because speaking of it publicly is becoming the 21st century equivalent of pulling a gun out of your pocket at the mall to discuss it's function with another gun enthusiast.
Of course, we all know the gun paradox. Seriously. Increasingly orwellian gun laws !=less crime. Criminals will always find weapons. On the electronic mean streats, crackers & hackers will always find exploits, but unlike the Good Guys, the Bad Guys won't go to a symposium to divulge the PROBLEM, embarassing the company into FIXING IT. Instead, the Bad Guys will EXPLOIT the FUCK OUT OF IT.
I'm not a philosopher, psychologist, ethicist or sociologist by profession, but perhaps the DMCA needs to be re-evaluated by a panel consisting of a few. Right now it seems to favor only the government and very, very large corporations. Oh, and it makes learning a criminal act.
Do you have a permit for your mind?
Civilization is doomed to a fifty to one hundred year cycle of terrible wars with smaller regional conflicts every ten years. Our species is burdened with short life spans and a dreadful willingness to blindly ignore the wisdom of those who preceeded us.
The mixed message Germany is sending to it's youth: War is bloodless, and the military is evil.
History has been a long and winding highway littered with the wreckage of civilizations led by madmen bent on conquest. They were put down by strong, peaceful democracies.
You cannot appease dictators. People who attain and hold power through strength, fear and intimidation only respect equal or greater strength and the resolve to apply it.
So long as the earth is covered by hundreds of unique cultures and sovereign countries competing for fixed resources there will be the need for a strong military. Regrettably, as those resources are taxed by a burgeoning population the worst aspects of human nature will be on display.
Germans cannot stick their heads in the sand. The world is not, and never will be a utopian conflict-free society. Diplomacy will never solve *all* problems. It's far too easy to sit on the sidelines of world politics and criticize the United States for taking the military initiative.
Germanic tribesmen had an old saying: Never have by sweat and work what you can take by sword. Historically speaking, there is only one country on earth that's had the power of ancient Rome without the expansionist policies. One that has fought wars on principle and not occupied, expanded or enslaved. That country is not Germany.
The German government's video game policy is being determined by the continuing shame and knee-jerk reaction to World War II and Gerhard Schroeder's pandering to public opinion polls.
Put blood in your video games, Germany. Show violent war movies. Let your youth understand the consequences. Or forget all too soon how horrible it really is. That is truely what's dangerous.
This is a long disorganized rant.
.. Are no longer "magical." The magic is gone folks, and they're just jobs now. Sorry to break this to you.
:)
I know what you think. Unions are for trades workers. Not so, ask a school teacher.
Historically in the U.S., unions were created to correct the horrible treatment of workers by large, overpowerful corporations during the robber-baron era circa 1920's and 1930's. The relevance of unions today has been questioned by big business, citing numerous government regulations that work to protect employees from hazards in the workplace, discrimination, work hours, etc. What these government regulations don't protect you from is being treated like shit by companies that cut hours, push for unpaid overtime, cut perks, cut staffing, cut benefits - All while operating profitably.
We live in an age when companies are reclaiming the type of power not seen since the 1920's. Where we have robber-barons. CEO's that cut jobs to improve stock performance while taking $10 million dollar bonus packages.
It works both ways, of course. There are tradeoffs. But I.T. is becomming a basic commoditiy to employers. Don't stroke your ego. While the Slashdot readership may be a clever barrel of monkeys - Inteligent, highly innovative and/or intelligent - The jobs you perform as programmers, sysadmins, network engineers, etc.
I've always been anti-union. But that was before the dot-com bubble burst. I was working at an ISP a few months ago. I had a guy with a Masters' degree and two certifications walk in our door looking for a job. At an ISP.
My fiance' is Swedish. In Europe, almost all jobs are protected by government regulations or unions. You -can- fire someone for poor job performance, but it requires a review process. Not the whim of an asshole manager playing office politics.
Large companies don't like unions. Collective bargaining gives employees power. Review boards investigating alleged employee peformance problems or misconduct puts employees on the same level as management during administrative issues. Employees are no longer drones to be dumped on by management. Peter will in fact NOT work this saturday, Bob.
Did you know that the Teamsters is trying to unionize nursing staff in hospitals across the country? Why? Because hospitals are mistreating nurses. Underpaid, overworked, and being replaced by cheaper H1-B labor.
I'm out of rant for now. Discuss amongst yourselves.
C'mon, I want photos of the circle perpetrators! I can't believe that in this era of cheap technology that someone hasn't camcorder'd yay-hoos stomping around in their field in the act of making crop circles. Or, after hearing their dog barking at 2 AM, driven down the road to inspect their fence and photographed idiot kids in the process of throwing their 2x4's into a pickup before racing off. Forget the ET's - Circulate enough photos of the real circle makers and this one will go quietly into the dark night of historical obscurity.
hej e8johan -
Guys, Give him a break! My fiance' graduated with a Masters' from Chalmers. It's considered one of the more prestigious engineering schools in Europe. It's the Swedish "MIT". I think a little is being lost in the translation.. Don't mistake sarcasm for criticism. Slashdot is truely an international affair; Don't push our guests away.
(my Swede and I reside in Indiana, and I'm a homegrown Ohio boy)
Oh yes.. Believe me, We have become somthing close to immigration experts after dealing with tons of paperwork. The problem with the K-1 is that you must marry within 30 days of your fiance' arriving in the country. If you don't want a trip to the local mayor or a jaunt to vegas (read: you want a 'normal' wedding and all the 1-year out planning that entails) then you find a job for your fiance' or you're boned.
Immigration is a tiring, challenging path to walk fraught with beaurocratic obstacles.