> In order to be H-1B eligible a position has to pay at least the prevailing wage for the job title in the region that the job is located. .
That's not really enforced.
The big problem with H1Bs is that they're basically indentured servants (as you note), and it's very difficult for them to change jobs. So the companies can pressure them for more work, via unpaid overtime.
They need to change the system so that H1Bs can switch jobs at any time, with no penalty. If companies are really THAT desperate for workers, they'll pay the filing costs and legal fees anyway, even if there's a chance the employee will leave. If they don't want to, then they're really not that desperate for workers are they?
No, ALL Americans or their ancestors are immigrants. Every single one of them.
Also, every person in Europe is descended from an immigrant. So is every person in Asia.
The only place on Earth where there are people who are not descended from immigrants is Africa. Because that's where the first humans came from. Everyone else is a product of migration.
Really? That would surprise me. The Tokyo and Manhattan subways handle an incredible number of people on a daily basis, and I have a hard time seeing SkyTran moving tens of millions of riders around per day, just looking at how much room a single person takes on a subway vs. a SkyTran car. Obviously, during non-peak times (esp. late at night) SkyTran shouldn't have any problem, but I'm thinking about the peak times.
Compared to cars, trains, and buses, it's no question that SkyTran would be more efficient and convenient and faster. But when a giant group of people all want to go from a cluster of points in one place to another cluster of points at another place, all along a straight line, at the very same time, it's pretty hard to beat rail transport.
SkyTran will totally replace city buses right away, and then shorter passenger rail and light rail. As it's built out between cities, it'll replace long-distance passenger rail too, along with short airline flights. It'll also replace most car commuting. A lot of people will still keep their cars for other things though, like being able to carry stuff, or if they have kids. But the amount of car traffic overall will be drastically reduced, and "rush hour traffic" will become a memory.
Two reasons: 1) Why go slower than you have to? Your car will go 10mph just fine, why not drive at that speed all the time?
2) SkyTran is envisioned to do more than short-distance commuting; eventually the idea is to build it out enough that you can travel between cities in it. Yes, inside a denser city, the speeds would probably be kept lower, but when you have 100+ miles to go, why would you limit yourself to 30mph when your vehicle will easily go 150mph? At that kind of speed, SkyTran threatens to render inter-city passenger trains totally obsolete, and also shorter flights.
There's nothing stopping US cities from adopting SkyTran too, except their own short-sightedness and stupidity.
It's like this with everything developed in the US. Other countries see how great the idea is, and adopt it, and it takes us decades to catch up. Just look at Deming's statistical quality control methods, adopted by the Japanese.
>I see they've dumped their old, aerodynamic-disaster "fully egg-shaped" cars that was all over their old promotional materials in favor of ones with streamlining that works in the real-world (egg-shaped front, rear taper). Good to see.
Every new system or mode of transport has growing pains. Look at what cars used to look like when they were new. The stuff you saw before wasn't even prototype, it was concept art. The same thing happens in cars: designers draw up some concept art that looks little like real cars that are developed based on the concepts; real-world concerns and engineering realities change many things.
>SkyTran seems to address well one of the three main complaints about public transport (the "It doesn't go straight from where you are to where you want to go" aspect, meaning you have to wait for the right line, go on pointless detours, sometimes to exchanges, etc)
It also addresses other big problems with regular public transit: 1) having to share with other passengers 2) having to wait for the next ride (you kinda mentioned that above, but not really), as SkyTran is on-demand. There would probably be some wait time at a low-traffic stop, but it depends on how busy the system is and how many cars are available. 3) energy usage; buses are gas guzzlers, and we'd be better off with everyone driving personal cars than using buses if it weren't for the parking and density issues. Other trains aren't much better. The amount of vehicle weight per passenger in those modes is very high, even compared to a mid-size car. The steel wheels (versus rubber tires), resulting in lower friction, helps some, but not enough. SkyTran has extremely low weight per passenger, plus it's maglev so friction is negligible.
>the lack of terminals being present both directly at the start of your destination and the end of your destination, rather than having to walk for blocks or more on each end of the journey;
This isn't perfect, but it's better than other systems because it's not that hard to add in extra stops if they're needed. The system can be initially built with only a few stops, and then new stops can be filled in later. (This also happens to be a big advantage of buses over trains/subways: it's easy to modify a bus route, but it's enormously expensive to build new rail stations or subway lines.) Remember, the whole thing is basically metal rails suspended on utility poles: the installation just isn't very hard compared to things like trains. The basic idea, long term, is to have lots and lots of stops, perhaps every quarter-mile or so, depending on density and usage. Since, unlike a bus or train, SkyTran doesn't have to stop at every single stop along the way, there's no extra time penalty to having more stops. (And, unlike regular cars, there's no stop lights: greater density with cars results in more roads, and more intersections and more stop lights, which increases travel time greatly.) If you had a commuting service that only required you to walk a block from your house to get to, is that really such a big deal?
>and, inability to store things in your vehicle / take large objects with you
How do buses and trains compare? They aren't any better. No, it's not like a car that way, and it isn't intended to be. It's meant to be a small vehicle optimized for commuting, not a replacement for every single mode of transport out there. Built out enough, it could take the place of cars for many, many uses, but not all. It's never going to be usable for getting 2 months' worth of groceries from Costco, or hauling sheets of 4x8 drywall or plywood or loads of mulch. It's not even very good for transporting a bunch of children, so if you have quadruplet toddlers you'll probably want to keep your minivan. For most other uses, though, it's a great alternative, and really should be able to replace city buses at the minimum, and quite likely many passenger trains if it's built out enough. It probably won't replace subways in extremely dense urban are
I'm not getting defensive, I honestly didn't understand your response because you said I was "lucky" when all I did was complain about housekeepers being bad. I'm confused.
As for supervision, if I have to stand over someone to make sure they're not pocketing my things, then why would I want to hire them in the first place? I hired housekeepers so I could spend my time doing something besides housekeeping. It's not like I can't do it myself. I thought I'd save myself time that I could spend doing something more productive or enjoyable, and also provide some employment for someone else who needed it. But if they're going to steal things and break stuff, it just isn't worth it. Luckily, there's a bright side to the story; we moved a while ago, and two of our neighbors have a housekeeper they've been using for a long time and are very happy with. So we hired him recently and he did a great job, and I haven't noticed anything missing yet (judging by his vehicle, it looks like he isn't exactly desperate anyway, he's a youngish gay guy). Maybe it was just the ones in Arizona that really sucked. (You might think it was the personal recommendation thing that made the difference, but at least two of the bad ones were recommended by friends.)
Huh? What are you talking about? I didn't refer to any of them who actually proved themselves trustworthy in my post above.
There was actually one who was trustworthy, so she was an exception, but I didn't mention her above, just the bad ones. Did you mean to reply to a different post?
>So, you don't see any non-Republicans critical of Obama privacy/surveillance issues and his responsibility?
I see non-Republicans critical of Obama, yes. Those people are not Democrats. You're part of the problem. You, like so many Americans, think everyone must absolutely either be a Democrat or Republican, and if you aren't one, then you must be the other. I see this here on Slashdot all the time.
No, I don't see any strong Democrats who are critical of Obama. Luckily, there are more people who aren't willing members of either party than 2-party thinkers realize.
Mechanical engineers don't try to make things fit together perfectly because manufacturing processes aren't that accurate (or, making them more accurate drives up cost greatly). As manufacturing tolerances have gotten more precise with better technology, things do fit together more closely, and extra labor to account for this has been rendered less necessary. Cars used to need extra labor for body panels to fit together properly; now they don't because manufacturing tolerances are so precise.
The variability of people has nothing to do with manufacturing tolerances.
You should report this company's behavior on Glassdoor.com, so that prospective employees can know what they're up to. Glassdoor.com allows you to make anonymous reviews of companies, as an employee (or ex-employee), so you don't have to leave your name there.
A few months ago, I backed out of a job interview based on many reviews I read on Glassdoor.com. The company was Extron Electronics (they have two locations, one in the Bay Area and one in NJ near Princeton). I was lined up for an interview with them for a software engineering position, through a 3rd-party recruiter, but the recruiter mentioned some oddities about this company; I guess they had other candidates back out too. So I got on Glassdoor.com, read the reviews, and found out that this company has strict working hours, reprimands employees for leaving early (regardless of when they arrive), HR drives around the parking lot to see who's hanging out in their cars, and worst of all they have cameras monitoring the bathroom entrances so they can track how long employees spend in the restroom, and reprimand them for taking too long in there. After reading all this, I called up the recruiter and cancelled the interview. I'd rather go on welfare and move to the ghetto than work in such a place. Strangely, after this happened, I got two more calls from the HR lady at Extron (whom many interviewers on Glassdoor.com mentioned specifically as "Iron Lady" or something like that) trying to bypass the recruiter and get me to come in for an interview.
It's like that in America too, if you have any housekeepers. We tried having some Hispanic housekeepers come over every week or two back when we lived in Arizona, and later found that a bunch of stuff (the rarely-used stuff you refer to) had "walked away". They even stole toothbrushes, of all things (unused ones bought in a 10-pack, not used ones of course). Another one kept asking us, over and over and over and over, when we were going on vacation. Hmm.... Another one broke a lot of stuff and never told us (mugs, glasses, etc.).
That's not what I see. I see the Democrat voters either giving Obama a free pass for everything he does, or trying to blame it all on Bush somehow (as if Obama is somehow forced to maintain Bush's policies), while the Republican voters blame Obama for anything and everything, and completely ignore any contributions by Republican politicians, and also totally forget how they supported similar or identical policies during Bush's term. Both sides are exactly the same: they're all for everything "their guy" does, and they're completely against anything "the other guy" does. American politics is just like sports, where you have to cheer "your team" no matter what.
I'm not sure what I'd do if I had kids, since the future looks so incredibly bleak for them now. Not everyone is cut out for management; I know I wouldn't last very long at it with my personality. You have to be a blowhard and like to talk a lot to be a successful manager; introverts need not apply.
If I had kids, I'd probably be doing my best to move to Europe, where they could look forward to a much better future than here.
Another part of the "whatever" could be students visiting workplaces and finding out they've all switched to open-plan work environments with extremely high noise levels, constant interruptions, and zero privacy, and students are switching to other majors where they can have a career path that doesn't cap out by the time they're 35 and in which they have a work environment conducive to concentration.
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> In order to be H-1B eligible a position has to pay at least the prevailing wage for the job title in the region that the job is located. .
That's not really enforced.
The big problem with H1Bs is that they're basically indentured servants (as you note), and it's very difficult for them to change jobs. So the companies can pressure them for more work, via unpaid overtime.
They need to change the system so that H1Bs can switch jobs at any time, with no penalty. If companies are really THAT desperate for workers, they'll pay the filing costs and legal fees anyway, even if there's a chance the employee will leave. If they don't want to, then they're really not that desperate for workers are they?
>It's a federal civil infraction, legally less serious than minor copyright infringement.
No, it's a crime. Just like copyright infringement.
If the MAFIAA can continue to say that copyright infringement is a crime, then we need to do the same for all civil infractions.
No, ALL Americans or their ancestors are immigrants. Every single one of them.
Also, every person in Europe is descended from an immigrant. So is every person in Asia.
The only place on Earth where there are people who are not descended from immigrants is Africa. Because that's where the first humans came from. Everyone else is a product of migration.
Really? That would surprise me. The Tokyo and Manhattan subways handle an incredible number of people on a daily basis, and I have a hard time seeing SkyTran moving tens of millions of riders around per day, just looking at how much room a single person takes on a subway vs. a SkyTran car. Obviously, during non-peak times (esp. late at night) SkyTran shouldn't have any problem, but I'm thinking about the peak times.
Compared to cars, trains, and buses, it's no question that SkyTran would be more efficient and convenient and faster. But when a giant group of people all want to go from a cluster of points in one place to another cluster of points at another place, all along a straight line, at the very same time, it's pretty hard to beat rail transport.
Exactly.
SkyTran will totally replace city buses right away, and then shorter passenger rail and light rail. As it's built out between cities, it'll replace long-distance passenger rail too, along with short airline flights. It'll also replace most car commuting. A lot of people will still keep their cars for other things though, like being able to carry stuff, or if they have kids. But the amount of car traffic overall will be drastically reduced, and "rush hour traffic" will become a memory.
Two reasons:
1) Why go slower than you have to? Your car will go 10mph just fine, why not drive at that speed all the time?
2) SkyTran is envisioned to do more than short-distance commuting; eventually the idea is to build it out enough that you can travel between cities in it. Yes, inside a denser city, the speeds would probably be kept lower, but when you have 100+ miles to go, why would you limit yourself to 30mph when your vehicle will easily go 150mph? At that kind of speed, SkyTran threatens to render inter-city passenger trains totally obsolete, and also shorter flights.
There's nothing stopping US cities from adopting SkyTran too, except their own short-sightedness and stupidity.
It's like this with everything developed in the US. Other countries see how great the idea is, and adopt it, and it takes us decades to catch up. Just look at Deming's statistical quality control methods, adopted by the Japanese.
>I see they've dumped their old, aerodynamic-disaster "fully egg-shaped" cars that was all over their old promotional materials in favor of ones with streamlining that works in the real-world (egg-shaped front, rear taper). Good to see.
Every new system or mode of transport has growing pains. Look at what cars used to look like when they were new. The stuff you saw before wasn't even prototype, it was concept art. The same thing happens in cars: designers draw up some concept art that looks little like real cars that are developed based on the concepts; real-world concerns and engineering realities change many things.
>SkyTran seems to address well one of the three main complaints about public transport (the "It doesn't go straight from where you are to where you want to go" aspect, meaning you have to wait for the right line, go on pointless detours, sometimes to exchanges, etc)
It also addresses other big problems with regular public transit:
1) having to share with other passengers
2) having to wait for the next ride (you kinda mentioned that above, but not really), as SkyTran is on-demand. There would probably be some wait time at a low-traffic stop, but it depends on how busy the system is and how many cars are available.
3) energy usage; buses are gas guzzlers, and we'd be better off with everyone driving personal cars than using buses if it weren't for the parking and density issues. Other trains aren't much better. The amount of vehicle weight per passenger in those modes is very high, even compared to a mid-size car. The steel wheels (versus rubber tires), resulting in lower friction, helps some, but not enough. SkyTran has extremely low weight per passenger, plus it's maglev so friction is negligible.
>the lack of terminals being present both directly at the start of your destination and the end of your destination, rather than having to walk for blocks or more on each end of the journey;
This isn't perfect, but it's better than other systems because it's not that hard to add in extra stops if they're needed. The system can be initially built with only a few stops, and then new stops can be filled in later. (This also happens to be a big advantage of buses over trains/subways: it's easy to modify a bus route, but it's enormously expensive to build new rail stations or subway lines.) Remember, the whole thing is basically metal rails suspended on utility poles: the installation just isn't very hard compared to things like trains. The basic idea, long term, is to have lots and lots of stops, perhaps every quarter-mile or so, depending on density and usage. Since, unlike a bus or train, SkyTran doesn't have to stop at every single stop along the way, there's no extra time penalty to having more stops. (And, unlike regular cars, there's no stop lights: greater density with cars results in more roads, and more intersections and more stop lights, which increases travel time greatly.) If you had a commuting service that only required you to walk a block from your house to get to, is that really such a big deal?
>and, inability to store things in your vehicle / take large objects with you
How do buses and trains compare? They aren't any better. No, it's not like a car that way, and it isn't intended to be. It's meant to be a small vehicle optimized for commuting, not a replacement for every single mode of transport out there. Built out enough, it could take the place of cars for many, many uses, but not all. It's never going to be usable for getting 2 months' worth of groceries from Costco, or hauling sheets of 4x8 drywall or plywood or loads of mulch. It's not even very good for transporting a bunch of children, so if you have quadruplet toddlers you'll probably want to keep your minivan. For most other uses, though, it's a great alternative, and really should be able to replace city buses at the minimum, and quite likely many passenger trains if it's built out enough. It probably won't replace subways in extremely dense urban are
It seems like Microsoft has been exhibiting all kinds of totally bizarre behavior in the past 5 years.
I'm not getting defensive, I honestly didn't understand your response because you said I was "lucky" when all I did was complain about housekeepers being bad. I'm confused.
As for supervision, if I have to stand over someone to make sure they're not pocketing my things, then why would I want to hire them in the first place? I hired housekeepers so I could spend my time doing something besides housekeeping. It's not like I can't do it myself. I thought I'd save myself time that I could spend doing something more productive or enjoyable, and also provide some employment for someone else who needed it. But if they're going to steal things and break stuff, it just isn't worth it. Luckily, there's a bright side to the story; we moved a while ago, and two of our neighbors have a housekeeper they've been using for a long time and are very happy with. So we hired him recently and he did a great job, and I haven't noticed anything missing yet (judging by his vehicle, it looks like he isn't exactly desperate anyway, he's a youngish gay guy). Maybe it was just the ones in Arizona that really sucked. (You might think it was the personal recommendation thing that made the difference, but at least two of the bad ones were recommended by friends.)
> I see tons of democrats and Obama voters voice stark criticism against Obama on this.
You must be frequenting different forums than me. All I ever seem to see is "we must support Obama's agenda!!!!"
>If you haven't seen any you need to broaden your choice of friends and news sources.
I guess Reddit isn't broad enough....
>Either you are very lucky and found an exception
Huh? What are you talking about? I didn't refer to any of them who actually proved themselves trustworthy in my post above.
There was actually one who was trustworthy, so she was an exception, but I didn't mention her above, just the bad ones. Did you mean to reply to a different post?
>So, you don't see any non-Republicans critical of Obama privacy/surveillance issues and his responsibility?
I see non-Republicans critical of Obama, yes. Those people are not Democrats. You're part of the problem. You, like so many Americans, think everyone must absolutely either be a Democrat or Republican, and if you aren't one, then you must be the other. I see this here on Slashdot all the time.
No, I don't see any strong Democrats who are critical of Obama. Luckily, there are more people who aren't willing members of either party than 2-party thinkers realize.
Nope. Bad analogy.
Mechanical engineers don't try to make things fit together perfectly because manufacturing processes aren't that accurate (or, making them more accurate drives up cost greatly). As manufacturing tolerances have gotten more precise with better technology, things do fit together more closely, and extra labor to account for this has been rendered less necessary. Cars used to need extra labor for body panels to fit together properly; now they don't because manufacturing tolerances are so precise.
The variability of people has nothing to do with manufacturing tolerances.
You should report this company's behavior on Glassdoor.com, so that prospective employees can know what they're up to. Glassdoor.com allows you to make anonymous reviews of companies, as an employee (or ex-employee), so you don't have to leave your name there.
A few months ago, I backed out of a job interview based on many reviews I read on Glassdoor.com. The company was Extron Electronics (they have two locations, one in the Bay Area and one in NJ near Princeton). I was lined up for an interview with them for a software engineering position, through a 3rd-party recruiter, but the recruiter mentioned some oddities about this company; I guess they had other candidates back out too. So I got on Glassdoor.com, read the reviews, and found out that this company has strict working hours, reprimands employees for leaving early (regardless of when they arrive), HR drives around the parking lot to see who's hanging out in their cars, and worst of all they have cameras monitoring the bathroom entrances so they can track how long employees spend in the restroom, and reprimand them for taking too long in there. After reading all this, I called up the recruiter and cancelled the interview. I'd rather go on welfare and move to the ghetto than work in such a place. Strangely, after this happened, I got two more calls from the HR lady at Extron (whom many interviewers on Glassdoor.com mentioned specifically as "Iron Lady" or something like that) trying to bypass the recruiter and get me to come in for an interview.
It's like that in America too, if you have any housekeepers. We tried having some Hispanic housekeepers come over every week or two back when we lived in Arizona, and later found that a bunch of stuff (the rarely-used stuff you refer to) had "walked away". They even stole toothbrushes, of all things (unused ones bought in a 10-pack, not used ones of course). Another one kept asking us, over and over and over and over, when we were going on vacation. Hmm.... Another one broke a lot of stuff and never told us (mugs, glasses, etc.).
That's not what I see. I see the Democrat voters either giving Obama a free pass for everything he does, or trying to blame it all on Bush somehow (as if Obama is somehow forced to maintain Bush's policies), while the Republican voters blame Obama for anything and everything, and completely ignore any contributions by Republican politicians, and also totally forget how they supported similar or identical policies during Bush's term. Both sides are exactly the same: they're all for everything "their guy" does, and they're completely against anything "the other guy" does. American politics is just like sports, where you have to cheer "your team" no matter what.
That's impossible to do in software engineering, since it's a sausage-fest.
I'm not sure what I'd do if I had kids, since the future looks so incredibly bleak for them now. Not everyone is cut out for management; I know I wouldn't last very long at it with my personality. You have to be a blowhard and like to talk a lot to be a successful manager; introverts need not apply.
If I had kids, I'd probably be doing my best to move to Europe, where they could look forward to a much better future than here.
An alternative
or they're deluded prima donnas with demands that no other employer with a brain would want to even contemplate.
Like wanting an old-fashioned cubicle instead of an open-plan work area, so they can concentrate on their work?
How is an open-plan work area an advantage for post-menopausal women? That really doesn't make any sense.
No way, they pay people visits with machine guns when they need to. Didn't you see Sneakers?
That sounds like the older generation. The modern-day "brogrammers" don't fit that profile at all.
Another part of the "whatever" could be students visiting workplaces and finding out they've all switched to open-plan work environments with extremely high noise levels, constant interruptions, and zero privacy, and students are switching to other majors where they can have a career path that doesn't cap out by the time they're 35 and in which they have a work environment conducive to concentration.