As an American I'm less bothered about the FSB doing it that than the NSA. Seriously, for my personal stuff, what does the FSB care? I'm much more concerned about the NSA (and if it can be done, I'm sure they are). For similar reasons I use Kaspersky on my personal computers. The FSB doesn't care about my bank account or the web sites I visit. The NSA/CIA/FBI maybe another story. Not that I'm terribly interesting, but having once looked at a web site that was slightly to the left of the Democratic party, I'm probably on some automated terrorist watchlist somewhere.
If there is a genuine shortage you will see pay and benefits rise accordingly (market dynamics).
Thank you! Someone who's willing to apply basic economics. For some odd reason that isn't done by the H-1B proponents in this country. Maybe I'm overly cynical, but could that be because the objective data doesn't support their position?
And as to people who have genuinely rare skills or are truly exceptional, there are lots of visa categories here in the US for them, and I know no one who objects to their use.
The causes of the high cost of living needs to be tackled
The only issue is that you have a high cost of living relative to other countries. You suggest that Australians in a particular field of work will have to work for less (in inflation adjusted AUD), but there is another way: lower the exchange rate. Because of your large natural resource exports, you have a bit of a Dutch disease issue, but I notice that for 2012 you're back to a trade deficit (which Australia has often run). That suggests the your currency is overvalued in international exchange.
An overvalued currency is a big problem here in the US too, though we definitely don't suffer from the Dutch disease. We have however had a "strong dollar" policy since the 1990's, thanks to the influence of the finance sector, which loves a strong USD though it screws all our exporting industries. There's also lots of currency manipulation by China and numerous other countries, which the US doesn't even try to do something about. So when the CEO says American workers earn too much to be competitive, agree and point out that he/she is just fancy labor. Instead of pro-rating everybody's salary down (don't ya just love my sense of the absurd? I do one on world peace too) it makes sense to lower the exchange rate of the USD.
Maybe it should be "bloody hard" (gee I love that kinda talk). Otherwise companies would abuse it, rather than not using it except when it serves a real purpose. In the US the international intra-company visa is the L-1. For years it worked fine with little oversight, but it's become incredibly abused. If they actually tightened up the requirements and properly vetted applications I'm sure companies would complain about government bureaucracy impeding their business, but they've got no one to blame but themselves for abusing it.
Where it's possible they already off-shore jobs. If it could be off-shored to India they'll do it.
Thanks for making those points, but I'll add one more. The H-1B visa actually facilitates off-shoring rather than preventing it. There's a reason The Indian Commerce Minister himself called the H-1B the outsourcing visa. About half the H-1B's in the US go to foreign owned body shops that then rotate those people back to their native countries when they've learned enough over here.
You do realize that any reasonably non-crap programmer ALREADY basically competes with you no matter what country you live in.
Only to a limited extent. There are still plenty of reasons to want employees who are local, or at least national. Otherwise there would be no IT people employed in Australia or the US at anything other than poverty wages. And if we truly lived in a globalized world, the same would be true of everyone from doctors to carpenters. Generally I'm staying out of the 457 visa debate because as an American I don't understand enough about the politics and the situation, but the principle I described is widely applicable.
it means we get to enjoy that crocodile-tooth hat icon
To each his own mate (that's Australian right? I saw it on a Foster's commercial), but I'd rather see the next Elle MacPherson. Come to think of it, even at 48 the old one is looking pretty good.
That depends on what you mean by "old Unix", as the GP called it. Go back far enough (20+ years) and Unix security was atrocious, even by the standards of an era where servers weren't attacked 24/7. What you get today is not your father's Unix.
I thought it was stone cold dead. Thanks. Guess I'll postpone the memorial service. A shame though that it's slowly dying instead of being a real alternative OS.
An uptime of 3737 days rightly suggests that it's very reliable. I simply thought that it might be worth pointing out that it wasn't a record breaker, especially for the benefit of those who haven't had the opportunity to work with anything other than Windows or various Unix's. Forgive my presumptuousness in pointing it out.
But that still doesn't explain how the gold got into the solder. Connectors are selectively plated with gold only on the mating surfaces. It doesn't go on the part that gets soldered.
You're doing something wrong if your documentation sounds better when translated into Latin.
What's strange is how the gold got mixed into the solder. Long gone are the days of cheap gold when they would plate every metallic surface on a connector. Now they selectively plate the mating surfaces. Certainly they don't plate the part you solder. Gold contamination of solder is a well known phenomenon, but I haven't heard of it in decades, literally. The only other thing I can figure is that sometimes they flash plate some gold on the PC board to reduce solder whiskers or something. But that's a well known process. What the hell happened here?
Yay VMS! That was one hell of an OS. It's a shame they didn't open source it before they shut off the lights. And as to the people that think Ken Olsen was a clown for saying that "Unix is snake oil", back in the 1980's when he said it he was largely right. Those old Unix'es sucked in terms of security, reliability, efficiency, standardization (no POSIX, BSD vs. ATT, oh boy!) you name it. They were nothing like the Unix'es we have today, or even 15 years ago. And the idea of any Unix being open source was iffy and conditional at best (maybe in an academic environment).
Alpha was amazing too. First 64 bit uP and the fastest one out there from the day it was introduced. Even after they stopped upgrading it, it took 2-3 years for the competition to catch up. So much for the idea that if you build a better mouse trap the world will beat a path to your door.
So I've heard, but I believe it is a "computer operating system". Hence I thought it was a more appropriate comparison than to a bicycle.
and I don't believe you can get ahold of VMS any more
Then into the memory hole!
The IBM mainframes are too expensive
For whom? To operations like banks, for whom downtime is incredibly expensive, they're still worth it. For me, an UltraSPARC like the 280R breaks the piggy bank. I get my x86 hardware from other people's castoffs.
and not open source
As you pointed out, OSS Solaris is toast.
What's your point exactly?
Umm, that some other OS's are/were at least as reliable as Solaris. Was I being that obtuse?
a slab of concrete has been found with an uptime of 3737 years
You exaggerate. The oldest concrete structure I know of is the dome of the Pantheon, and that's only been around for 1887 years. Time will tell if it was well built.
I will never for the life of me understand the "uptime fetish" that uneducated sysadmins have. Who the hell cares? The only people who give a crap about this sort of thing are linux fanbois. The only thing this tells me is that this machine has had an uninterrupted power supply, which is mildly impressive. Otherwise it's a Solaris box which is missing A SHITLOAD OF PATCHES. WTF, sysadmins? What kind of pro sysadmin worships at the altar of individual machine uptime? Much less a Solaris sysadmin?
While never patching a box is obviously bad practice, it being able to stay up for over 10 years is a good indication of the reliability of the system. If you were patching from time-to-time, then how long it stayed up without being brought down for any reason other than to patch it would be a useful metric.
As reliable as Solaris is (was?), it's neither a record breaker nor a first. The old DEC VMS had that sort of reliability, and while I'm personally not as familiar with them, various IBM mainframe OS's are supposed to be/have been even better.
Do you work for GM or something? I've never seen someone get appreciably better than EPA mileage unless they were in a high mileage competition or something. OTOH I will say that the EPA tests that they revised a few years ago are pretty realistic.
True, but as unjustifiable as it was, within 3 years (even before the end of the war) the people were released. Here we are over 11 years after 9/11, and things are still getting worse.
We already know who the financial terrorists are that are the biggest threat to our economy and national security. And they're all Obama donors.
True, but they were even bigger donors to Romney. Bad or worse. Your choice. I voted Green.
Why does Obama need a financial monitoring network when he can't bother to throw Lloyd Blankfein in jail for well established fraud, perjury, and racketeering?
But he hasn't answered the follow up to the follow up: define "engaged in combat". Judging by current trends, the definition might get pretty creative, or include "preparing to engage in combat" based on the say-so of some jerk off in the executive branch. Just because we survived the British Empire, the Civil War, the Kaiser, the Nazis, the Japanese Empire and the USSR with the Constitution more or less intact doesn't mean we can continue with that luxury. Now we face a serious enemy, don't ya know?
Slashdot Mirror
I predict antitrust problems for Google Chrome/Android products in a few years.
Nah, they've already rolled over. It's not a violation of "do no evil" to piss on the Constitution as long as the Government tells you it's ok.
As an American I'm less bothered about the FSB doing it that than the NSA. Seriously, for my personal stuff, what does the FSB care? I'm much more concerned about the NSA (and if it can be done, I'm sure they are). For similar reasons I use Kaspersky on my personal computers. The FSB doesn't care about my bank account or the web sites I visit. The NSA/CIA/FBI maybe another story. Not that I'm terribly interesting, but having once looked at a web site that was slightly to the left of the Democratic party, I'm probably on some automated terrorist watchlist somewhere.
If there is a genuine shortage you will see pay and benefits rise accordingly (market dynamics).
Thank you! Someone who's willing to apply basic economics. For some odd reason that isn't done by the H-1B proponents in this country. Maybe I'm overly cynical, but could that be because the objective data doesn't support their position?
And as to people who have genuinely rare skills or are truly exceptional, there are lots of visa categories here in the US for them, and I know no one who objects to their use.
Change "uni" to "college" and you'll hear the same from many Americans - and both are right.
The causes of the high cost of living needs to be tackled
The only issue is that you have a high cost of living relative to other countries. You suggest that Australians in a particular field of work will have to work for less (in inflation adjusted AUD), but there is another way: lower the exchange rate. Because of your large natural resource exports, you have a bit of a Dutch disease issue, but I notice that for 2012 you're back to a trade deficit (which Australia has often run). That suggests the your currency is overvalued in international exchange.
An overvalued currency is a big problem here in the US too, though we definitely don't suffer from the Dutch disease. We have however had a "strong dollar" policy since the 1990's, thanks to the influence of the finance sector, which loves a strong USD though it screws all our exporting industries. There's also lots of currency manipulation by China and numerous other countries, which the US doesn't even try to do something about. So when the CEO says American workers earn too much to be competitive, agree and point out that he/she is just fancy labor. Instead of pro-rating everybody's salary down (don't ya just love my sense of the absurd? I do one on world peace too) it makes sense to lower the exchange rate of the USD.
Maybe it should be "bloody hard" (gee I love that kinda talk). Otherwise companies would abuse it, rather than not using it except when it serves a real purpose. In the US the international intra-company visa is the L-1. For years it worked fine with little oversight, but it's become incredibly abused. If they actually tightened up the requirements and properly vetted applications I'm sure companies would complain about government bureaucracy impeding their business, but they've got no one to blame but themselves for abusing it.
Where it's possible they already off-shore jobs. If it could be off-shored to India they'll do it.
Thanks for making those points, but I'll add one more. The H-1B visa actually facilitates off-shoring rather than preventing it. There's a reason The Indian Commerce Minister himself called the H-1B the outsourcing visa. About half the H-1B's in the US go to foreign owned body shops that then rotate those people back to their native countries when they've learned enough over here.
You do realize that any reasonably non-crap programmer ALREADY basically competes with you no matter what country you live in.
Only to a limited extent. There are still plenty of reasons to want employees who are local, or at least national. Otherwise there would be no IT people employed in Australia or the US at anything other than poverty wages. And if we truly lived in a globalized world, the same would be true of everyone from doctors to carpenters. Generally I'm staying out of the 457 visa debate because as an American I don't understand enough about the politics and the situation, but the principle I described is widely applicable.
it means we get to enjoy that crocodile-tooth hat icon
To each his own mate (that's Australian right? I saw it on a Foster's commercial), but I'd rather see the next Elle MacPherson. Come to think of it, even at 48 the old one is looking pretty good.
What's a "bogan"?
That depends on what you mean by "old Unix", as the GP called it. Go back far enough (20+ years) and Unix security was atrocious, even by the standards of an era where servers weren't attacked 24/7. What you get today is not your father's Unix.
I thought it was stone cold dead. Thanks. Guess I'll postpone the memorial service. A shame though that it's slowly dying instead of being a real alternative OS.
An uptime of 3737 days rightly suggests that it's very reliable. I simply thought that it might be worth pointing out that it wasn't a record breaker, especially for the benefit of those who haven't had the opportunity to work with anything other than Windows or various Unix's. Forgive my presumptuousness in pointing it out.
You're doing something wrong if your documentation sounds better when translated into Latin.
The Catholic clergy disagrees.
What's strange is how the gold got mixed into the solder. Long gone are the days of cheap gold when they would plate every metallic surface on a connector. Now they selectively plate the mating surfaces. Certainly they don't plate the part you solder. Gold contamination of solder is a well known phenomenon, but I haven't heard of it in decades, literally. The only other thing I can figure is that sometimes they flash plate some gold on the PC board to reduce solder whiskers or something. But that's a well known process. What the hell happened here?
Yay VMS! That was one hell of an OS. It's a shame they didn't open source it before they shut off the lights. And as to the people that think Ken Olsen was a clown for saying that "Unix is snake oil", back in the 1980's when he said it he was largely right. Those old Unix'es sucked in terms of security, reliability, efficiency, standardization (no POSIX, BSD vs. ATT, oh boy!) you name it. They were nothing like the Unix'es we have today, or even 15 years ago. And the idea of any Unix being open source was iffy and conditional at best (maybe in an academic environment).
Alpha was amazing too. First 64 bit uP and the fastest one out there from the day it was introduced. Even after they stopped upgrading it, it took 2-3 years for the competition to catch up. So much for the idea that if you build a better mouse trap the world will beat a path to your door.
VMS isn't a Unix
So I've heard, but I believe it is a "computer operating system". Hence I thought it was a more appropriate comparison than to a bicycle.
and I don't believe you can get ahold of VMS any more
Then into the memory hole!
The IBM mainframes are too expensive
For whom? To operations like banks, for whom downtime is incredibly expensive, they're still worth it. For me, an UltraSPARC like the 280R breaks the piggy bank. I get my x86 hardware from other people's castoffs.
and not open source
As you pointed out, OSS Solaris is toast.
What's your point exactly?
Umm, that some other OS's are/were at least as reliable as Solaris. Was I being that obtuse?
Maybe that's because *buntu actually gets patched when needed.
a slab of concrete has been found with an uptime of 3737 years
You exaggerate. The oldest concrete structure I know of is the dome of the Pantheon, and that's only been around for 1887 years. Time will tell if it was well built.
I will never for the life of me understand the "uptime fetish" that uneducated sysadmins have. Who the hell cares? The only people who give a crap about this sort of thing are linux fanbois. The only thing this tells me is that this machine has had an uninterrupted power supply, which is mildly impressive. Otherwise it's a Solaris box which is missing A SHITLOAD OF PATCHES. WTF, sysadmins? What kind of pro sysadmin worships at the altar of individual machine uptime? Much less a Solaris sysadmin?
While never patching a box is obviously bad practice, it being able to stay up for over 10 years is a good indication of the reliability of the system. If you were patching from time-to-time, then how long it stayed up without being brought down for any reason other than to patch it would be a useful metric.
As reliable as Solaris is (was?), it's neither a record breaker nor a first. The old DEC VMS had that sort of reliability, and while I'm personally not as familiar with them, various IBM mainframe OS's are supposed to be/have been even better.
Do you work for GM or something? I've never seen someone get appreciably better than EPA mileage unless they were in a high mileage competition or something. OTOH I will say that the EPA tests that they revised a few years ago are pretty realistic.
True, but as unjustifiable as it was, within 3 years (even before the end of the war) the people were released. Here we are over 11 years after 9/11, and things are still getting worse.
We already know who the financial terrorists are that are the biggest threat to our economy and national security. And they're all Obama donors.
True, but they were even bigger donors to Romney. Bad or worse. Your choice. I voted Green.
Why does Obama need a financial monitoring network when he can't bother to throw Lloyd Blankfein in jail for well established fraud, perjury, and racketeering?
Because Lloyd is doing God's work.
But he hasn't answered the follow up to the follow up: define "engaged in combat". Judging by current trends, the definition might get pretty creative, or include "preparing to engage in combat" based on the say-so of some jerk off in the executive branch. Just because we survived the British Empire, the Civil War, the Kaiser, the Nazis, the Japanese Empire and the USSR with the Constitution more or less intact doesn't mean we can continue with that luxury. Now we face a serious enemy, don't ya know?