first point: how much do you think it costs right now in a) legal fees and b) relocation costs. Having been through the process myself (I'm a British H1-B holder) I can tell you that neither is trivial. It isn't cheap to pull someone in from overseas. The INS process is truly a nightmare.
To your second point, about H1-Bs being supposed to be temporary, that is not correct. The H1-B is the first step in the employment related immigration process. There is no other employment based immigration method than to start with an H1-B. When you establish residency, then you can apply for a green card to become a permanent resident. The INS refers to this as the "principle of dual intent". The name "temporary" refers to those without a gc, who are "permanent resident aliens". So there you go. I'm a temporary alien.
As an H1-B holder, the ignorance and unashamed racism that typifies these discussions irritates the hell out of me.
Why does anybody think that stopping immigration of engineers would protect American jobs? I have seen several posts here talk about immigration and outsourcing to other countries as if they are the same thing. They are not.
Immigration keeps the jobs in the US, which ultimately is good for the US engineering industry. Outsourcing overseas sends the jobs elsewhere, which long term is very bad for the US engineering industry.
If the H1-B program was cancelled and not replaced with something else (killing off employment related immigration, since this is the only mechanism there is) what do you think would happen?
Despite all of the screams about record unemployment, EE unemployment really isn't that high. I know, of course, that for any individual there are only two levels of unemployment: there's 0%, which means you have a job, and 100%, which means that you don't. But the current level of EE unemployment is still sufficiently low that most companies struggle to find the right people. Today, both Europe and China outstrip the US in terms of EE graduate and PhD production rates. If US engineering companies were restricted any more in who they could employ in (and bring to, if necessary) the US, their reaction will not be to hire more US engineers. It will be to move whatever centers they need somewhere else. If you really think that "restricting the supply of engineers" (in the words of the IEEE-USA) will make for a stronger US engineering industry and greater levels of employment for US engineers, you are truly deluded.
yeah, but this stuff isn't targeted at Joe sixpack. It's squarely targeted at the corporate market. JS typically buys a "desktop replacement" (aka luggable) laptop which weighs as much as a pile of bricks and has a processor that was intended for desktops.
stunning. If AMD had released something that performs as well as their top end desktop processor but at half the clock speed, would it have been billed here as a "slower" processor? I don't think so.
the problem isn't a single device jamming a radar. It won't. A point jammer isn't going to be much of a concern, because the direction is obvious.
What the military are concerned with is millions of such devices in the area of a radar raising the noise floor. It's a collective effect, rather than a jammer. To build an effective jammer, the jamming signals would need to be coming from all directions simultaneously.
ok, so maybe it doesn't say anything in the article about detecting radar, but that is what it is.
Here's the deal - there has been a long running dispute between the military and industry on this issue. At issue for some time has not been whether Wi-Fi should switch channel on detecting a radar, but what the detection threshold is. Bear in mind that the pulses you're looking for are extremely weak at the periphery of range of the radar. The DoD originally wanted WLANs to vacate the channel on detecting a radar-like signal at a level of -67dBm or greater (that's pretty weak, and there was a major issue of false detection).
The new proposal requires a detection threshold of -62dBm for WLANs transmitting less than 200mW, or -64dBm for WLANs transmitting between 200mW and 1W. In return for industry support at these levels, the DoD is prepared to supporting freeing up some extra 5GHz spectrum to give WLANs more channels.
And no, none of this applies to 2.4GHz. That's beacause there are no radars there, and there's no extra spectrum in the vicinity that isn't already spoken for.
explain how their pricing is predatory? We're talking about the cost of the license, for which the unit cost is zero. If they were selling something below unit cost, that would be dumping and illegal.
What they're doing here is merely competing. How is that bad?
Scrap the H1-B visa. The whole premise of "temporary workers" is essentially broken. What is needed instead is a system that permits immigration of qualified and experienced people, and gives them reason to stay without the "cheap labor" issues many people report (although I haven't seen them myself) arising from the nature of the visa being tied to a specific job.
Instead, allocate a number of green cards to be allocated in much the same way as H1-B visas currently are. There is no real reason to have the current multi-step, multi-year immigration process that I am aware of.
That would be nice. As it is, the INS takes 4 months to acknowledge receipt of paperwork. With the additional "security measures" now in place (my quotes reflect my skepticism that there is any useful security involved) processing times are getting longer and longer. After becoming a permanent resident aka green card holder, it is then necessary to wait 8 years before becoming eligible to apply for citizenship (at least, that is what I was told - it's so far off I haven't investigated further). In the meantime, an H1-B is the only option to work legally. The rules on renewals of H1-Bs have now been extended beyond the originally permitted 6 years precisely because so many immigrants were being forced to leave at the end of 6 years, still waiting for their GC application to be processed.
Remember when you say "financed by your government" what you mean is "paid for through taxation". Since, in my case, I worked for many years after graduating in my home country, and in well paid (read: highly taxed) jobs, I already paid back the education cost. There's a bunch of other factors here that I won't go into - but, what is it you're arguing for to make things "fair"? Higher taxes?
As an H1-B holder, I'll certainly go with that. Current estimates are that it will be about 10 - 11 years before I become eligible to apply for citizenship...
There is not a global market for labor except for a few specific cases, like H1-B, where government action has created artificial influences that expand the reach of the natural market.
I can't agree here. The H1-B program doesn't promote movement of labor, and it doesn't cause it to happen. It merely permits in certain limited circumstances. I'll stick with my original view that it is a hole in an artificial barrier, not a promotion tool. Even with the H1-B program, the barrier to relocating is large, and has to be overcome by something else - like market forces.
H1-B subsidises the local employer and the foreign worker at the expense of the local worker and in interference of the micro-economic supply and demand
I think this is flawed. The H1-B program doesn't subsidize anything.
"Worry about the impact of the 10:1 ratio of new engineering graduates in China and America first. Think about the impact of that on US engineering jobs in a free market for goods."
This feeds my argument. Why are there so many engineering graduates in India and China? If it were not a well known fact that these professions enabled one of the easiest ways to emmigrate to a country with more freedom and oportunity, would this ratio change?
No, it doesn't feed your argument at all. The reason there are so many engineering graduates in China is that the state has decided it needs them. Do you think they're not competing for US jobs if they stay in China?
Aside from that, do you not agree that the current policy is likely accelerating the movement of certain service jobs overseas as former H1-B holders return home with a network of connections and up-to-date knowledge of particular American markets?
Partly - if what you mean is that we would be better off with a system that immediately recognizes permanent immigrants, rather than forces them to exist as "temporary workers" while they go through the insanely long green card process. None of the H1-B holders I know (including myself) have any intention of leaving the US, and all of us brought with us significant cash, qualifications and experience. I do get annoyed at the constant inference that immigrants are "coming to the US to be trained, and then taking their money and experience with them". If you want to remove that aspect of the system, I would agree.
I agree. By the way, just as an additional, you should know that immigrants from many countries aren't permitted to participate in the GC lottery at all. My own nationality happens to be one of them...
you're missing the point of what I said. Here's the bit I object to:
The harm comes if/when you leave, transferring the experience you have gained and the finances you've earned with you
The problem I have is the assumption that I intend to leave. I don't. And I brought a large amount of experience I gained from elsewhere (two masters degrees, 8 years experience) and finances I earned (enough for 50% of a house) with me.
There is another purpose in the H1-B program, and it is explicitly stated by the INS. It is for permanent immigration. Not only is it intended for the purpose, but it is the only mechanism there is. That's really why I object to the characterization you wrote.
I can't agree. As I stated earlier (many, many, times) the analysis is flawed because it assumes that the "free market" consists only of the US. The market is global, it is not the US.
The H1-B program is not an "artificial subsidy", rather it is a small hole in a huge artificial barrier set up to prevent free movement of labor, into the US, in an attempt to artificially restrict the supply of engineering talent into the US.
The problem is that the same artificial barriers would never be allowed to exist (at least, not of the same magnitude) in the demand side (for goods, that is). The market for goods is much more free, globally, than the market for labor. The strategy of trying to artifically restrict supply of engineering talent into the US is, long term, a very bad one. Worry about the impact of the 10:1 ratio of new engineering graduates in China and America first. Think about the impact of that on US engineering jobs in a free market for goods.
of course, you do get a bunch of the benefits you mention - except for the one about processing H1-Bs. We pay for that - I very much doubt, given the size of fees paid over time, that there's tax dollars supporting the program.
So, we get roads, parks, schools. You can probably list some more. We don't get any kind of social security benefits. Those we pay for through taxes, but don't get in return.
Not that I'm complaining, you understand, but the suggestion that H1-Bs are somehow a drain on taxpayer funded programs is incorrect.
I really can't agree with that. As stated in another post, the H1-B program is the only available route to immigration. As an H1-B holder myself, you can guess I know many others, and what you describe doesn't apply to anybody I know. If you think what you state is a problem, we should be campaigning for an alternative route to immigration that doesn't require the artificial "temporary worker" intermediate step.
As you say, I pay taxes, and much of what I earn gets returned to the local economy. I own a house in the US. My family and I are heavily involved in the local community. The characterization of myself and others as "not contributing to the social framework" and "harming the economy" by "transferring wealth and experience outside the US" is wrong, and frankly, pretty offensive. It sounds plain racist to me...
oh no, not this one again. Every time this comes up (on many message boards, I might add) I post the same argument, and as far as I know, nobody has ever replied.
Here it is - what makes you think that just because an "alien worker" is working somewhere else in the world, they aren't competing with Americans for jobs? The economy is global, and much of the global market is outside of the US. Much of it, for many products, is in China, the rest of Asia, and Europe. This whole pseudo-economic argument that typically gets presented as a justification for "keeping aliens out" or, more and more frequently, "sending all the foreigners home" is nothing more than xenophobia. It has nothing to do with economics. If America chooses to become more isolationist, and stop its current policy of bringing in the best people it can find to work here, America will go backwards, not forwards. The biggest single threat to American engineering jobs is the (approximately) 10:1 ratio of new engineering graduates in China and the US. You will not do any service to US engineering jobs by restricting the supply of engineers in the US. Maybe this will help short term, but long term it's very bad news.
One more thing - the constant references to H1-B holders as "temporary" or "guest workers" is strictly correct, but otherwise misleading. None of the H1-B holders I know (and in case you hadn't guessed, I'm one too) have no intention of turning up in the US for a few years and then "going home". It's simply the only immigration route available. You have to get an H1-B and be resident in the US in order to apply for a green card, and eventually citizenship.
wasn't the justification for the CTEA (aka the Sonny Bono act) that it was needed to "bring US law into line with the rest of the world"?
Now we find that European law (in general) provides shorter terms than were in force before the CTEA? Maybe my memory is fauly here - perhaps somebody can correct.
No, there is enough deuterium in the oceans to outlast the sun. Read carefully. The original said "to supply all our energy needs...". Nobody is suggesting that there is the same amount of energy in the deuterium in the oceans as there is in the sun - but our energy consumption is a vanishingly small fraction of the sun's output
they're not allowed to. FCC regulations specify that they use a non-standard antenna connector. It's a prerequisite to getting FCC certification.
The logic goes that you have to certify with a known antenna, so if you use standard connectors anybody could hook up a different antenna and make the device noncompliant...
and yes, it sounds screwy to me too, but those are the rules
Re:Who cares about NAT?
on
802.11 RF Amp
·
· Score: 1
it sounds like you work for an ISP, yes? If so, I have a question, and a clarification on some previous posts.
What I think people mean (and what I mean) when they say "charge for bandwidth" is really "charge for bits", that is to say, a charge on the amount of actual usage.
What I, and many others, find incredibly frustrating is having no option other than a flat fee contract, but which then places all kinds of restrictions on what you are allowed to do. Particularly irritating are things like "no servers", "no wireless connection sharing", "no NAT" and "no peer-to-peer".
I understand that bandwidth usage costs money, and it has to be paid for fairly. Nobody is arguing that they should get guaranteed bandwidth and be able to fill the pipe 24/7 for $40 a month. But ISPs should realise that many people want to use their connectivity to do things like run web servers, mail servers, multiple machines and peer-to-peer connections, and don't run large amounts of traffic through the network using such applications.
I dropped my old ISP when it introduced and started enforcing an AUP (it wasn't part of the T&C when I signed up) and moved to a local ISP (still offering a flat fee contract, but without the restrictions). The AUP said no servers, no peer-to-peer. My website (password access, used for communicating with friends and family, takes about 5 hits a month) suddenly stopped working when they blocked port 80, without warning or notification. I suddenly found I couldn't play online games with a friend across the street because they blocked routing to other users of the same ISP. They didn't (and still don't) have a way to do those things and pay for them. They just said "you can't do that on our network".
If ISPs offered a per MB charge service, rather than a flat fee, concerns about open WLAN APs would be pushed from the ISP to the user - every time somebody uses such an unsecured WLAN, the user pays, and the ISP gets the fee.
So can you tell me why not one ISP I can find actually offers such a service? It's what I hear many here requesting, and it doesn't look like it would be negative for the ISP. So what's the problem?
Slashdot Mirror
To your second point, about H1-Bs being supposed to be temporary, that is not correct. The H1-B is the first step in the employment related immigration process. There is no other employment based immigration method than to start with an H1-B. When you establish residency, then you can apply for a green card to become a permanent resident. The INS refers to this as the "principle of dual intent". The name "temporary" refers to those without a gc, who are "permanent resident aliens". So there you go. I'm a temporary alien.
Why does anybody think that stopping immigration of engineers would protect American jobs? I have seen several posts here talk about immigration and outsourcing to other countries as if they are the same thing. They are not.
Immigration keeps the jobs in the US, which ultimately is good for the US engineering industry. Outsourcing overseas sends the jobs elsewhere, which long term is very bad for the US engineering industry.
If the H1-B program was cancelled and not replaced with something else (killing off employment related immigration, since this is the only mechanism there is) what do you think would happen?
Despite all of the screams about record unemployment, EE unemployment really isn't that high. I know, of course, that for any individual there are only two levels of unemployment: there's 0%, which means you have a job, and 100%, which means that you don't. But the current level of EE unemployment is still sufficiently low that most companies struggle to find the right people. Today, both Europe and China outstrip the US in terms of EE graduate and PhD production rates. If US engineering companies were restricted any more in who they could employ in (and bring to, if necessary) the US, their reaction will not be to hire more US engineers. It will be to move whatever centers they need somewhere else. If you really think that "restricting the supply of engineers" (in the words of the IEEE-USA) will make for a stronger US engineering industry and greater levels of employment for US engineers, you are truly deluded.
yeah, but this stuff isn't targeted at Joe sixpack. It's squarely targeted at the corporate market. JS typically buys a "desktop replacement" (aka luggable) laptop which weighs as much as a pile of bricks and has a processor that was intended for desktops.
stunning. If AMD had released something that performs as well as their top end desktop processor but at half the clock speed, would it have been billed here as a "slower" processor? I don't think so.
What the military are concerned with is millions of such devices in the area of a radar raising the noise floor. It's a collective effect, rather than a jammer. To build an effective jammer, the jamming signals would need to be coming from all directions simultaneously.
Here's the deal - there has been a long running dispute between the military and industry on this issue. At issue for some time has not been whether Wi-Fi should switch channel on detecting a radar, but what the detection threshold is. Bear in mind that the pulses you're looking for are extremely weak at the periphery of range of the radar. The DoD originally wanted WLANs to vacate the channel on detecting a radar-like signal at a level of -67dBm or greater (that's pretty weak, and there was a major issue of false detection).
The new proposal requires a detection threshold of -62dBm for WLANs transmitting less than 200mW, or -64dBm for WLANs transmitting between 200mW and 1W. In return for industry support at these levels, the DoD is prepared to supporting freeing up some extra 5GHz spectrum to give WLANs more channels.
And no, none of this applies to 2.4GHz. That's beacause there are no radars there, and there's no extra spectrum in the vicinity that isn't already spoken for.
imagine a beowulf cluster of those...
What they're doing here is merely competing. How is that bad?
Scrap the H1-B visa. The whole premise of "temporary workers" is essentially broken. What is needed instead is a system that permits immigration of qualified and experienced people, and gives them reason to stay without the "cheap labor" issues many people report (although I haven't seen them myself) arising from the nature of the visa being tied to a specific job.
Instead, allocate a number of green cards to be allocated in much the same way as H1-B visas currently are. There is no real reason to have the current multi-step, multi-year immigration process that I am aware of.
Anybody agree/disagree?
That would be nice. As it is, the INS takes 4 months to acknowledge receipt of paperwork. With the additional "security measures" now in place (my quotes reflect my skepticism that there is any useful security involved) processing times are getting longer and longer. After becoming a permanent resident aka green card holder, it is then necessary to wait 8 years before becoming eligible to apply for citizenship (at least, that is what I was told - it's so far off I haven't investigated further). In the meantime, an H1-B is the only option to work legally. The rules on renewals of H1-Bs have now been extended beyond the originally permitted 6 years precisely because so many immigrants were being forced to leave at the end of 6 years, still waiting for their GC application to be processed.
do you want to elaborate?
Remember when you say "financed by your government" what you mean is "paid for through taxation". Since, in my case, I worked for many years after graduating in my home country, and in well paid (read: highly taxed) jobs, I already paid back the education cost. There's a bunch of other factors here that I won't go into - but, what is it you're arguing for to make things "fair"? Higher taxes?
As an H1-B holder, I'll certainly go with that. Current estimates are that it will be about 10 - 11 years before I become eligible to apply for citizenship...
I can't agree here. The H1-B program doesn't promote movement of labor, and it doesn't cause it to happen. It merely permits in certain limited circumstances. I'll stick with my original view that it is a hole in an artificial barrier, not a promotion tool. Even with the H1-B program, the barrier to relocating is large, and has to be overcome by something else - like market forces.
H1-B subsidises the local employer and the foreign worker at the expense of the local worker and in interference of the micro-economic supply and demand
I think this is flawed. The H1-B program doesn't subsidize anything.
"Worry about the impact of the 10:1 ratio of new engineering graduates in China and America first. Think about the impact of that on US engineering jobs in a free market for goods."
This feeds my argument. Why are there so many engineering graduates in India and China? If it were not a well known fact that these professions enabled one of the easiest ways to emmigrate to a country with more freedom and oportunity, would this ratio change?
No, it doesn't feed your argument at all. The reason there are so many engineering graduates in China is that the state has decided it needs them. Do you think they're not competing for US jobs if they stay in China?
Aside from that, do you not agree that the current policy is likely accelerating the movement of certain service jobs overseas as former H1-B holders return home with a network of connections and up-to-date knowledge of particular American markets?
Partly - if what you mean is that we would be better off with a system that immediately recognizes permanent immigrants, rather than forces them to exist as "temporary workers" while they go through the insanely long green card process. None of the H1-B holders I know (including myself) have any intention of leaving the US, and all of us brought with us significant cash, qualifications and experience. I do get annoyed at the constant inference that immigrants are "coming to the US to be trained, and then taking their money and experience with them". If you want to remove that aspect of the system, I would agree.
I agree. By the way, just as an additional, you should know that immigrants from many countries aren't permitted to participate in the GC lottery at all. My own nationality happens to be one of them...
The harm comes if/when you leave, transferring the experience you have gained and the finances you've earned with you
The problem I have is the assumption that I intend to leave. I don't. And I brought a large amount of experience I gained from elsewhere (two masters degrees, 8 years experience) and finances I earned (enough for 50% of a house) with me.
There is another purpose in the H1-B program, and it is explicitly stated by the INS. It is for permanent immigration. Not only is it intended for the purpose, but it is the only mechanism there is. That's really why I object to the characterization you wrote.
The H1-B program is not an "artificial subsidy", rather it is a small hole in a huge artificial barrier set up to prevent free movement of labor, into the US, in an attempt to artificially restrict the supply of engineering talent into the US.
The problem is that the same artificial barriers would never be allowed to exist (at least, not of the same magnitude) in the demand side (for goods, that is). The market for goods is much more free, globally, than the market for labor. The strategy of trying to artifically restrict supply of engineering talent into the US is, long term, a very bad one. Worry about the impact of the 10:1 ratio of new engineering graduates in China and America first. Think about the impact of that on US engineering jobs in a free market for goods.
So, we get roads, parks, schools. You can probably list some more. We don't get any kind of social security benefits. Those we pay for through taxes, but don't get in return.
Not that I'm complaining, you understand, but the suggestion that H1-Bs are somehow a drain on taxpayer funded programs is incorrect.
As you say, I pay taxes, and much of what I earn gets returned to the local economy. I own a house in the US. My family and I are heavily involved in the local community. The characterization of myself and others as "not contributing to the social framework" and "harming the economy" by "transferring wealth and experience outside the US" is wrong, and frankly, pretty offensive. It sounds plain racist to me...
Here it is - what makes you think that just because an "alien worker" is working somewhere else in the world, they aren't competing with Americans for jobs? The economy is global, and much of the global market is outside of the US. Much of it, for many products, is in China, the rest of Asia, and Europe. This whole pseudo-economic argument that typically gets presented as a justification for "keeping aliens out" or, more and more frequently, "sending all the foreigners home" is nothing more than xenophobia. It has nothing to do with economics. If America chooses to become more isolationist, and stop its current policy of bringing in the best people it can find to work here, America will go backwards, not forwards. The biggest single threat to American engineering jobs is the (approximately) 10:1 ratio of new engineering graduates in China and the US. You will not do any service to US engineering jobs by restricting the supply of engineers in the US. Maybe this will help short term, but long term it's very bad news.
One more thing - the constant references to H1-B holders as "temporary" or "guest workers" is strictly correct, but otherwise misleading. None of the H1-B holders I know (and in case you hadn't guessed, I'm one too) have no intention of turning up in the US for a few years and then "going home". It's simply the only immigration route available. You have to get an H1-B and be resident in the US in order to apply for a green card, and eventually citizenship.
So is anybody going to refute this?
Now we find that European law (in general) provides shorter terms than were in force before the CTEA? Maybe my memory is fauly here - perhaps somebody can correct.
No, there is enough deuterium in the oceans to outlast the sun. Read carefully. The original said "to supply all our energy needs...". Nobody is suggesting that there is the same amount of energy in the deuterium in the oceans as there is in the sun - but our energy consumption is a vanishingly small fraction of the sun's output
no, that would be the first law of thermodynamics. The second law is about entropy...
The logic goes that you have to certify with a known antenna, so if you use standard connectors anybody could hook up a different antenna and make the device noncompliant...
and yes, it sounds screwy to me too, but those are the rules
What I think people mean (and what I mean) when they say "charge for bandwidth" is really "charge for bits", that is to say, a charge on the amount of actual usage.
What I, and many others, find incredibly frustrating is having no option other than a flat fee contract, but which then places all kinds of restrictions on what you are allowed to do. Particularly irritating are things like "no servers", "no wireless connection sharing", "no NAT" and "no peer-to-peer".
I understand that bandwidth usage costs money, and it has to be paid for fairly. Nobody is arguing that they should get guaranteed bandwidth and be able to fill the pipe 24/7 for $40 a month. But ISPs should realise that many people want to use their connectivity to do things like run web servers, mail servers, multiple machines and peer-to-peer connections, and don't run large amounts of traffic through the network using such applications.
I dropped my old ISP when it introduced and started enforcing an AUP (it wasn't part of the T&C when I signed up) and moved to a local ISP (still offering a flat fee contract, but without the restrictions). The AUP said no servers, no peer-to-peer. My website (password access, used for communicating with friends and family, takes about 5 hits a month) suddenly stopped working when they blocked port 80, without warning or notification. I suddenly found I couldn't play online games with a friend across the street because they blocked routing to other users of the same ISP. They didn't (and still don't) have a way to do those things and pay for them. They just said "you can't do that on our network".
If ISPs offered a per MB charge service, rather than a flat fee, concerns about open WLAN APs would be pushed from the ISP to the user - every time somebody uses such an unsecured WLAN, the user pays, and the ISP gets the fee.
So can you tell me why not one ISP I can find actually offers such a service? It's what I hear many here requesting, and it doesn't look like it would be negative for the ISP. So what's the problem?