It seems that in the U.S. different jobs are subject to different market forces dependent on the political clout that an industry has relative to labor in the industry. The H1-B program was created specifically to address what was, at one time, a shortage of talent. By most accounts that shortage no longer exists. Today the program has the effect of slowing wage growth in the field (or in some cases depressing wages).
My own problem with the H1-B program isn't that it allows foreign competition into the U.S. labor market; the problem is that software engineers have been singled out among other professions. Additionally, the program is not reciprocal. Do the countries that H1-B's come from have similarly generous guest worker programs? Not that I know of. Also, by depressing salaries in the American software industry and making jobs more competitive to get, fewer Americans are going into the software field.
Again, the problem isn't that competition from foreign workers is inherently unfair; the problem is that a particular profession has essentially been targeted for an across the board salary cut through legislation.
Alice receives a note from Bob skewering Charles' new toupee. Alice is a two faced shit, so she tries to forward it to Charles. Bob had set rights on the email so that it can't be forwarded, and it can only be read once. Alice can't send the email, doesn't realize that she can only read it once, but tells Charles about the message anyway. When Alice tries to show Charles the email when they're both in the office the next day she looks like an idiot because she can't show it to him. Charles fires Alice and gives Bob her job. Voila, digital rights management has benefits for content consumers (who are also, on occasion, content producers).
If I was gainfully employed, I'd probably be shopping for another just to have a spare.
You'd hafta be looking for a used one because Hitachi's stopped making CRT's. Too bad...I've got the same monitor (I bought it in '98) and I love it, too. Not as much as the 19" Planar LCD I just picked up, though (PL191M). Highly recommended!
part of the US purpose in Iraq was (and remains through sanctions) to reduce the level of civilian population in order to reduce the number of males entering the military
Please, someone give this nut a pill. The sanctions are intended to prevent the production of weapons of mass destruction by the Iraqi government. Stop ignoring the fact that Saddam Hussein is a cold, heartless, utterly inhuman beast who has used chemical weapons against his own people, supply an alternative to the sanctions that allows the rest of the region security, and I'll start to consider thinking about maybe listening a little bit to you.
I used to work for a Herman Miller dealer. If Compaq bought 1000+ Aerons they certainly didn't pay $700 each...probably more like $300 - 400 each (typical dealer discount for a big order would be 50|30 or better, or 65-70%, with margins around 10-20%). When you look at the costs of RSI, etc., if the chair helps, it's worth it. Of course if all of your employees are laid off a year after you buy them you won't get to see the payoff:)
Since when is the Phillipines desert? AFAIK, it's tropical rainforest. But, getting back to your original point, yeah, I don't understand why people live in countries like Western Sahara or Mali. I'm sure their rich neighbors (like the wealthy Mauritanians) would welcome their millions of impoverished citizens with open arms.
Does GFY come to mind? How about providing a link to the documentation? Do you HAVE to participate in every discussion, even if it doesn't interest you? And who moderated this comment up? Jeez...
The various man pages, HOWTO's, etc. are generally very good, but they're not necessarily completely up to date. If you check the video card HOWTO's you'll see that the 3Dfx-HOWTO was last updated in February of 1998. So, it can be nice to get current information.
Where were people denied ballots after they spoiled their first ones? Not here in Brevard county, that's for sure! I can tell you of at least one man that got a new ballot; he was the guy in front of me in line at the ballot box.
Well, as long as someone as obviously fair minded and non-partisan as you saw someone getting a new ballot, that must mean everyone who asked at every polling place in Florida must have gotten one. Thank you for clearing up this little mess.
Feh! A fair number of the posts on this subject here at/. are simply disgusting. The ballots were confusing, more than likely some people screwed up. I voted Gore, but I hope that he doesn't drag this out -- recount, yes; revote, no.
If the dems let the election go if the recounts don't go their way, they'll be in fine shape in four years. In the meantime, given their slim margin in both houses of congress, the GOP won't be able to rape, pillage and plunder. In two years, the dems will take the Senate and probably the House, they'll win the White House in 2004, and the whole beautiful cycle can start over again.
It doesn't change the amount of your return, however funding of the Presidential Election Campaign Fund is limited by the number of people who check "YES" on the little box. If no one checked "YES" the fund would be out of money and out of luck.
Ahh, yes, we can ALL be CEO's. Why not? If we just put our minds to it, we'll be there before ya' know it! Hey, that makes me want to sing a song! Everybody, join in.
Sousa march starts playing in the background. The chorus line enter stage left, high kicking. The star of the show, Biff, climbs the stairs behind him, hangs off the staircase by one arm, and starts singing the song the audience came to hear, "Everyday, in Every Way, I'm Getting Better and Better!" An immense American flag drops behind Biff, and the entire cast and audience stand and sing America the Beautiful. We all leave weeping
You know that box that says "Presidential Election Campaign: Do you want $3 to go to this fund?" on your 1040? I suggest that this year, you simply check the "NO" box! That way they will just be stealing from us idiots who check the "YES" box.
Speech has the power to inspire volunteers to perform a multitude of tasks on a campaign trail, on a battleground, or even on a football field. Money, meanwhile, has the power to pay hired laborers to perform the same tasks. It does not follow, however, that the First Amendment provides the same measure of protection to the use of money to accomplish such goals as it provides to the use of ideas to achieve the same results.
The reason people "love and promote" campaign finance reform is because our political system has enough going against it without the corruption, and appearance of corruption that all that money promotes. When large corporations or wealthy individuals donate to BOTH major political parties, it appears that they may desire special consideration from the winning candidate, regardless of which party he or she comes from. It doesn't matter if the winner's votes would have been favorable to the donor without the contributions. The votes appear to have been bought.
Is your number unlisted? If it isn't, you've given away your name and address already. But you have to realize that selling your name and address isn't the same thing as selling information about your usage of the wires. The scary part happens when credit reporting agencies get your name and address. Ever wonder why your neighbor gets platinum card junk-mail while you get "Send us $500 and we'll send you a credit card with a $250 credit limit!" offers? The reporting agencies sell names and addresses categorized by credit ratings!
Bottom line is, I don't like people selling my name and address, either, but I'm not nearly as worried about telcos doing it as I am about companies that deal with financial information.
Hmm. . . Permanent Normal Trade Relations = tenuous terms with the US? I think not. And I think that if push came to shove, and for some reason the US decided to embargo Windows, the Chinese government would happily give its imprimateur to millions of quickly burnt copies of the software:
Perhaps, though, the real reason for China's love of Linux is that they ferreted out the truth about Windows. It was actually developed as a crafty method of sabotaging the Red Army! Its distribution in the West has been an elaborate cover.
Wow, the Satanic Bible is as whacked out as Ayn Rand!? Who'd've thunk it.
Go ahead, Rand lovers, flame away. If you've actually been able to plow through Fountainhead I guess you've earned the right to call me names. Does anyone know, was she self-published? If not, whoever edited her must have followed up that job with a stint writing for a high school yearbook. Even if you agree with her "ideas" you've got to admit, the woman couldn't write her way out of a paper bag.
As far as I know, there is still no SMP capable chipset available for Athlon processors which makes servers built around them much less scalable than those built around Intel or Alpha CPU's. Without SMP, I can't see much of a market for Athlon servers.
I'm worried that newer PDA's and such are going to start using voice recognition (don't some phones already do this?). Cell phones in restaurants are bad enough. Imagine being on a plane full of people whispering into black boxes . . . yeecch. I know that there is something called the "Twiddler" that is basically a one handed keyboard. Anything else on the horizon that might work?
As far as I'm concerned (and I was born in the US), you're welcome here. You do need to lose some of the attitude, though:}. Bottom line is, the US is a better place to live than many other places. You may denigrate the work ethic (I think that's what you're implying...but if I'm wrong, I'm sorry) and the culture (although, I don't see people in other countries staying away from American film in droves...;> ) but you can't deny that there is no other country in the world that provides as many people as great an opportunity as the US does.
Is it always easy for immigrants? No, it isn't, but you need to remember that this nation has a border thousands of miles long shared with a much less prosperous nation. To many Americans, immigrants are immigrants and that usually means Latin Americans. I don't have a problem with controlled immigration from the south, but there are huge infrastructure and social issues that need to be considered. No other industrialized nation that I know of is in a similar situation. I don't think it's as simple an issue as many of the comments imply.
I took a flight on an Embraer regional jet (I think it was an ERJ-145...50 passengers, 3 crew) about a month ago...it's a beautiful aircraft, designed and manufactured by a Brazilian company. You should be proud of yourself if you had a part in bringing that to market.
Regarding your decision to live in Brazil due to the quality of life, I daresay that if you've got a well paying job in a developing or third world country (and I'd be surprised if an AE in Brazil wasn't making 10 - 20 times the per capita average if not more) your standard of living would be pretty high. Probably much higher than a better paying job in the US or EU would make for you.
Check out this site at NASA. It describes a satellite built by undergraduate students at Arizona State University. It was launched successfully on Jan. 27. I belive students could actually register for a class where the lab involved working on the satellite (I'm not sure...I'm EE, not Aerospace). In any case, the numbers are pretty impressive: more than 350 students worked on the program including a substantial number of undergrads. The launch vehicle also boosted a number of projects from other universities into orbit as well.
Come on, the whole DeCSS brouhaha is business as usual in the US business world. Of course it's familiar. It sounds a lot like the tactics of any large corporation that feels threatened. I'm not saying their tactics are proper, or that they should be litigating in this case (they probably shouldn't), but the discussions on/. make it sound like corporate America has suddenly become meaner than ever and geeks are the target.
My guess is that wider and deeper equity investment through mutual funds has made executives beholden to a small group of elite fund managers. Perform or deliver! Protect your assets! That's what they are hearing and if they don't listen, they're more likely than ever to be out on their ears. Look what happened at Coca Cola recently - Ivester wasn't seen as protecting the mark and now he's on his way out (although, granted, Warren Buffet rather than a fund manager was probably the one behind his resignation). If execs at the media conglomerates start dropping off the twig, execs at DVDCCA will probably follow. These guys are covering their asses and running scared as much as anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like Whacking Day!
My own problem with the H1-B program isn't that it allows foreign competition into the U.S. labor market; the problem is that software engineers have been singled out among other professions. Additionally, the program is not reciprocal. Do the countries that H1-B's come from have similarly generous guest worker programs? Not that I know of. Also, by depressing salaries in the American software industry and making jobs more competitive to get, fewer Americans are going into the software field.
Again, the problem isn't that competition from foreign workers is inherently unfair; the problem is that a particular profession has essentially been targeted for an across the board salary cut through legislation.
Alice receives a note from Bob skewering Charles' new toupee. Alice is a two faced shit, so she tries to forward it to Charles. Bob had set rights on the email so that it can't be forwarded, and it can only be read once. Alice can't send the email, doesn't realize that she can only read it once, but tells Charles about the message anyway. When Alice tries to show Charles the email when they're both in the office the next day she looks like an idiot because she can't show it to him. Charles fires Alice and gives Bob her job. Voila, digital rights management has benefits for content consumers (who are also, on occasion, content producers).
Please, someone give this nut a pill. The sanctions are intended to prevent the production of weapons of mass destruction by the Iraqi government. Stop ignoring the fact that Saddam Hussein is a cold, heartless, utterly inhuman beast who has used chemical weapons against his own people, supply an alternative to the sanctions that allows the rest of the region security, and I'll start to consider thinking about maybe listening a little bit to you.
I used to work for a Herman Miller dealer. If Compaq bought 1000+ Aerons they certainly didn't pay $700 each...probably more like $300 - 400 each (typical dealer discount for a big order would be 50|30 or better, or 65-70%, with margins around 10-20%). When you look at the costs of RSI, etc., if the chair helps, it's worth it. Of course if all of your employees are laid off a year after you buy them you won't get to see the payoff :)
Nah...forget Star Trek...forget the couch potato crap...if you want a really cool chair, you'd get an Aeron chair from Herman Miller. Best chair ever.
Wow. Pay you a million dollars for you to sleep with your own wife! Sounds like a bad deal for me.
Sorry, I couldn't help it.
Since when is the Phillipines desert? AFAIK, it's tropical rainforest. But, getting back to your original point, yeah, I don't understand why people live in countries like Western Sahara or Mali. I'm sure their rich neighbors (like the wealthy Mauritanians) would welcome their millions of impoverished citizens with open arms.
The various man pages, HOWTO's, etc. are generally very good, but they're not necessarily completely up to date. If you check the video card HOWTO's you'll see that the 3Dfx-HOWTO was last updated in February of 1998. So, it can be nice to get current information.
Feh! A fair number of the posts on this subject here at /. are simply disgusting. The ballots were confusing, more than likely some people screwed up. I voted Gore, but I hope that he doesn't drag this out -- recount, yes; revote, no.
If the dems let the election go if the recounts don't go their way, they'll be in fine shape in four years. In the meantime, given their slim margin in both houses of congress, the GOP won't be able to rape, pillage and plunder. In two years, the dems will take the Senate and probably the House, they'll win the White House in 2004, and the whole beautiful cycle can start over again.
It doesn't change the amount of your return, however funding of the Presidential Election Campaign Fund is limited by the number of people who check "YES" on the little box. If no one checked "YES" the fund would be out of money and out of luck.
Sousa march starts playing in the background. The chorus line enter stage left, high kicking. The star of the show, Biff, climbs the stairs behind him, hangs off the staircase by one arm, and starts singing the song the audience came to hear, "Everyday, in Every Way, I'm Getting Better and Better!" An immense American flag drops behind Biff, and the entire cast and audience stand and sing America the Beautiful. We all leave weeping
You know that box that says "Presidential Election Campaign: Do you want $3 to go to this fund?" on your 1040? I suggest that this year, you simply check the "NO" box! That way they will just be stealing from us idiots who check the "YES" box.
"Money is property; it is not speech." Justice Stevens, concurring, Shrink Missouri Government.
Quoting further from the same decision:
The reason people "love and promote" campaign finance reform is because our political system has enough going against it without the corruption, and appearance of corruption that all that money promotes. When large corporations or wealthy individuals donate to BOTH major political parties, it appears that they may desire special consideration from the winning candidate, regardless of which party he or she comes from. It doesn't matter if the winner's votes would have been favorable to the donor without the contributions. The votes appear to have been bought.
Bottom line is, I don't like people selling my name and address, either, but I'm not nearly as worried about telcos doing it as I am about companies that deal with financial information.
Hmm. . . Permanent Normal Trade Relations = tenuous terms with the US? I think not. And I think that if push came to shove, and for some reason the US decided to embargo Windows, the Chinese government would happily give its imprimateur to millions of quickly burnt copies of the software:
Perhaps, though, the real reason for China's love of Linux is that they ferreted out the truth about Windows. It was actually developed as a crafty method of sabotaging the Red Army! Its distribution in the West has been an elaborate cover.
Ready, Aim, Blue Screen of Death!
Wow, the Satanic Bible is as whacked out as Ayn Rand!? Who'd've thunk it.
Go ahead, Rand lovers, flame away. If you've actually been able to plow through Fountainhead I guess you've earned the right to call me names. Does anyone know, was she self-published? If not, whoever edited her must have followed up that job with a stint writing for a high school yearbook. Even if you agree with her "ideas" you've got to admit, the woman couldn't write her way out of a paper bag.
As far as I know, there is still no SMP capable chipset available for Athlon processors which makes servers built around them much less scalable than those built around Intel or Alpha CPU's. Without SMP, I can't see much of a market for Athlon servers.
I'm worried that newer PDA's and such are going to start using voice recognition (don't some phones already do this?). Cell phones in restaurants are bad enough. Imagine being on a plane full of people whispering into black boxes . . . yeecch. I know that there is something called the "Twiddler" that is basically a one handed keyboard. Anything else on the horizon that might work?
As far as I'm concerned (and I was born in the US), you're welcome here. You do need to lose some of the attitude, though :}. Bottom line is, the US is a better place to live than many other places. You may denigrate the work ethic (I think that's what you're implying...but if I'm wrong, I'm sorry) and the culture (although, I don't see people in other countries staying away from American film in droves... ;> ) but you can't deny that there is no other country in the world that provides as many people as great an opportunity as the US does.
Is it always easy for immigrants? No, it isn't, but you need to remember that this nation has a border thousands of miles long shared with a much less prosperous nation. To many Americans, immigrants are immigrants and that usually means Latin Americans. I don't have a problem with controlled immigration from the south, but there are huge infrastructure and social issues that need to be considered. No other industrialized nation that I know of is in a similar situation. I don't think it's as simple an issue as many of the comments imply.
I took a flight on an Embraer regional jet (I think it was an ERJ-145...50 passengers, 3 crew) about a month ago...it's a beautiful aircraft, designed and manufactured by a Brazilian company. You should be proud of yourself if you had a part in bringing that to market.
Regarding your decision to live in Brazil due to the quality of life, I daresay that if you've got a well paying job in a developing or third world country (and I'd be surprised if an AE in Brazil wasn't making 10 - 20 times the per capita average if not more) your standard of living would be pretty high. Probably much higher than a better paying job in the US or EU would make for you.
Check out this site at NASA. It describes a satellite built by undergraduate students at Arizona State University. It was launched successfully on Jan. 27. I belive students could actually register for a class where the lab involved working on the satellite (I'm not sure...I'm EE, not Aerospace). In any case, the numbers are pretty impressive: more than 350 students worked on the program including a substantial number of undergrads. The launch vehicle also boosted a number of projects from other universities into orbit as well.
Come on, the whole DeCSS brouhaha is business as usual in the US business world. Of course it's familiar. It sounds a lot like the tactics of any large corporation that feels threatened. I'm not saying their tactics are proper, or that they should be litigating in this case (they probably shouldn't), but the discussions on /. make it sound like corporate America has suddenly become meaner than ever and geeks are the target.
My guess is that wider and deeper equity investment through mutual funds has made executives beholden to a small group of elite fund managers. Perform or deliver! Protect your assets! That's what they are hearing and if they don't listen, they're more likely than ever to be out on their ears. Look what happened at Coca Cola recently - Ivester wasn't seen as protecting the mark and now he's on his way out (although, granted, Warren Buffet rather than a fund manager was probably the one behind his resignation). If execs at the media conglomerates start dropping off the twig, execs at DVDCCA will probably follow. These guys are covering their asses and running scared as much as anything else.