As a former H1B programmer, I have to say that indentured servitude is a fact. H1B workers cannot change jobs quickly. The labor laws in many states don't offer much protection to anyone, therefore a lot of salaried workers put in incredibly long hours for mediocre pay and conditions. The difference for me was that if I was fired (or perhaps more likely, just laid off), I'd have had 10 days to say goodbye to my friends, try to wriggle out of the lease on my apartment, placate my girlfriend and help her move to a smaller place, and then leave the country.
And if the threat wasn't enough, how about the certainty that after 6 years here, when I was finally settled, I'd have to leave anyway! Who makes these rules up? H1Bs aren't fair to the foreign workers, they are often unfair to local workers, they are even not in the best interest of the US economy as a whole. They are designed to help big business (since small businesses can't afford the legal fees to deal with the INS).
The people to blame here are the corrupt politicians who constantly pass laws that may seem innocuous but almost inevitably are just favors for big business.
I signed up for some yahoo alerts, which are actually a pretty cool service for free, as long as you can swallow their privacy policy. I recall that they sent a code to my phone first, which I had to enter on the website before I could sign up for anything.
Of course, that doesn't help with unsubscribing if someone has already registered your number iwth them... I guess they should make these things time-limited so that you have to renew them every month or two.
They run some cool stuff like sending reminders based on your yahoo calender, or sending a weather alert every day so you can dress up nice and warm when you need to. (and yes, I need this hand holding stuff, unlike most slashbots I don't live with my mum!)
I have an eBookman from Franklin (unfortunately discontinued after losing them $$$) and I do read books on it all the time! I also share a lot of my books on P2P networks and see an awful lot of upload activity.
I have a sneaky suspicion that e-books didn't take off mainly because no-one realized how convenient and affordable the devices could be. I can carry 30+ books on a device the size of a large wallet, read it with one hand on the subway and yes, I've even taken it on walks into the countryside and sat in the middle of nowhere reading some great books. The backlight means you can even take in a few pages at bedtime, sleeping out under the stars.
Not only is all this possible, it's easy, it cost me less than $50 and in my opinion it's better than carrying around pocket novels, let alone giant works like Finegan's Wake! Just because you think it's silly, or that internet == (PC with 14" LCD and 20GB HD), doesn't mean there's not people out there interested. And I've been surprised by the amount of books downloaded from my P2P server.
Re:[rant] They could have written _something_
on
Meteorite Hits Girl
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· Score: 1
Man bites dog!
Several years ago the UK government made it more or less impossible for young people to receive unemployment benefits. This had the wonderful effect of reducing the unemployment figures, since if they aren't on the dole, surely all those kids must have found grrreat jobs! At the same time, they cut university grants and introduced tuition fees for higher education, and forced everyone else onto various nefarious schemes in which the government pays the young person a training grant, and that person works for a real (money making) company for nothing or next to nothing.
These schemes have been euphemismed out of all recognition, but most people's favourite term is still 'YTS', or Youth Training Scheme. An example of the quality of 'training' that these people get is that my first thought on reading this story was 'did they get a YTS to write that or what?'
Just a long winded way of saying that there's a crapload of 'journalism' that isn't worth printing, let alone reading, let alone LINKING TO on the front page of/.
If that's the way M$ do math then it's no wonder their software SUCKS so badly!
Here's the breakdown for those who are too tired to figure it out - I have a book of ~500 pages, plain text, that's about 1MB, or 10^6 bytes. Figuring 2000 pages/person means 4x10^6 B/person 6 billion people in the world - 6x10^9 4x10^6 x 6x10^9 = 2x10^16, or 20 PETAbytes.
However! I just bzipped said book, compressing it down to 290KB - that makes our numbers 4 x 290x10^3 x 6x10^9 = 7 Petabytes...
Not that I'd EVER want to read 2000 pages from everyone in the world (ignoring translation issues) - anyone fancy 1999 pages more of this crap from me?
The terminal velocity of a human body (skydiving) is more like 90mph. I expect a smooth rock might be a bit more. Depending on size, I'd expect it to hurt lots, but then she was probably wearing shoes.
Ever been hit by a cricket ball? I saw one bounce of my teacher's head once and he barely even blinked, and that must have been travelling at 50mph... I guess people are tougher than we look!
Not any more. Kazaa locked Morpheus out of their network a few months ago. (And put the kaibosh on giFT, the open source alternative trying to use the same network.) Since then Morpheus went over to using the Gnucleus gnutella engine wrapped in their own interface. Of course, being based on gnutella, it sucks ass, but if it actually worked, it would be a great victory for OSS over adware/spyware/steal-your-cycles-and-bandwidth-war e like kazaa.
Except Vespas are pretty cool, and have stood the test of time, whereas a Microsoft server is just a liability. Maybe the anology would stretch to a Reliant Robin? It's in insult to most forms of engineering to be compared to Microsoft, so don't use this put-down too liberally.
Good Job! I've been using Pan for a couple of months and I love it. The whole yEnc issue is a moot point, since binary downloads are so transparent and effective in Pan that it's hard to realise exactly what I *don't* have to do... I just look at the "please help because Outlook is making me grab several parts to each binary and click on them and combine them and decode them" posts and shuddder. Software exists that takes yEnc, and even uuencode into it's stride. Get over it! and thanks again for Pan.
Yeah, there's so many people bitching about being disturbed by laptops whilst trying to watch the movie, but they've clerly never been to the Draft House. If anyone was easily disturbed by noise then they wouldn't be making that mistake twice. The Alamo is, perhaps, the single coolest thing about Austin. The main problem with this plan is surely that anyone using a laptop wouldn't be able to concentrate on their pr0n because the crowd is laughing to hard at Mr Sinus Theater 3000.
My favourite moment was falling off my chair during Evil Dead last summer. Alamo, it's the way to go!
Re:half.com has a lot of bargains
on
Low-end Laptops?
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· Score: 1
You must be kidding. Thinkpads have notoriously buggy audio and modems (cough MWAVE cough!). The thinkpad I had was quite a nice machine, but the hacks for running audio on it were overly complex (e.g. boot into DOS, loadlin...) and IBM even lost a lawsuit when they were sued for putting such crappy modems in their laptops/ Aptivas.
My 760 also had a pretty crappy keyboard. Try the Toshiba Tecras from around the same era - nice keyboard, ok speakers, and the audio & video have no problems under linux.
This surprises me, as a European in the US, so I looked it up on Google... Found this in the Irish Times (just what came up first.
"For example, the United States has the second highest per capita income, with $29,600, and it ranks 20th in terms of poverty. Luxembourg has the highest income per capita in the world, with $33,500, but ranks only seventh in terms of poverty.
So, not only does the US have the second highest per-capita income in the world, but it also has one of the worst wealth distributions... not that this is news. The high cost of living you mention is probably just a symptom of this - e.g. if your rent is high, that money is flowing up the pyramid to your landlord, who probably feels cheated by their bank, etc.
(GmM)/(R^2) gives the acceleration of the system for two masses in space
That is newtonian gravity. By definition, gravitational radiation is a general relativistic effect. The source of gravitational radiation is likely to be a fairly close supernova, or perhaps a binary black-hole system etc.
The weak-field effect or nearby planets will be taken into account, I presume, but will not contribute to gravitational radiation.
Even better, I decided to bite the bullet at Yahoo because they offer smtp & pop access with an 'opt-in' email every week as the catch. I clicked on really obscure interests (i.e. not computing!) and I haven't received an ad in the 4 months I've been with them. Nor have they ever lost several weeks worth of incoming mail with no explanation (unlike mail.com).
I recall that this article was in the NY times a few weeks ago, but searching the site it seems it's in the 'Premium' archive. It was a great article tho, especially the insight into Marcus' relationship with his parents, which would definitely suggest that the 15 year olds are in control.
You could try this
for a conversation with Marcus & Johnathan Lebed.
I heard that the Informix have retreated from their much heralded linux support, and that IBM probaly aren't too bothered about that either. I think it was probably a lack of interest:(
'course, I could be wrong...
Slashdot Mirror
the miracles of google!
As a former H1B programmer, I have to say that indentured servitude is a fact. H1B workers cannot change jobs quickly. The labor laws in many states don't offer much protection to anyone, therefore a lot of salaried workers put in incredibly long hours for mediocre pay and conditions. The difference for me was that if I was fired (or perhaps more likely, just laid off), I'd have had 10 days to say goodbye to my friends, try to wriggle out of the lease on my apartment, placate my girlfriend and help her move to a smaller place, and then leave the country.
And if the threat wasn't enough, how about the certainty that after 6 years here, when I was finally settled, I'd have to leave anyway! Who makes these rules up? H1Bs aren't fair to the foreign workers, they are often unfair to local workers, they are even not in the best interest of the US economy as a whole. They are designed to help big business (since small businesses can't afford the legal fees to deal with the INS).
The people to blame here are the corrupt politicians who constantly pass laws that may seem innocuous but almost inevitably are just favors for big business.
I signed up for some yahoo alerts, which are actually a pretty cool service for free, as long as you can swallow their privacy policy. I recall that they sent a code to my phone first, which I had to enter on the website before I could sign up for anything.
Of course, that doesn't help with unsubscribing if someone has already registered your number iwth them... I guess they should make these things time-limited so that you have to renew them every month or two.
They run some cool stuff like sending reminders based on your yahoo calender, or sending a weather alert every day so you can dress up nice and warm when you need to. (and yes, I need this hand holding stuff, unlike most slashbots I don't live with my mum!)
I have a sneaky suspicion that e-books didn't take off mainly because no-one realized how convenient and affordable the devices could be. I can carry 30+ books on a device the size of a large wallet, read it with one hand on the subway and yes, I've even taken it on walks into the countryside and sat in the middle of nowhere reading some great books. The backlight means you can even take in a few pages at bedtime, sleeping out under the stars.
Not only is all this possible, it's easy, it cost me less than $50 and in my opinion it's better than carrying around pocket novels, let alone giant works like Finegan's Wake! Just because you think it's silly, or that internet == (PC with 14" LCD and 20GB HD), doesn't mean there's not people out there interested. And I've been surprised by the amount of books downloaded from my P2P server.
Man bites dog!
/.
Several years ago the UK government made it more or less impossible for young people to receive unemployment benefits. This had the wonderful effect of reducing the unemployment figures, since if they aren't on the dole, surely all those kids must have found grrreat jobs! At the same time, they cut university grants and introduced tuition fees for higher education, and forced everyone else onto various nefarious schemes in which the government pays the young person a training grant, and that person works for a real (money making) company for nothing or next to nothing.
These schemes have been euphemismed out of all recognition, but most people's favourite term is still 'YTS', or Youth Training Scheme. An example of the quality of 'training' that these people get is that my first thought on reading this story was 'did they get a YTS to write that or what?'
Just a long winded way of saying that there's a crapload of 'journalism' that isn't worth printing, let alone reading, let alone LINKING TO on the front page of
If that's the way M$ do math then it's no wonder their software SUCKS so badly!
Here's the breakdown for those who are too tired to figure it out -
I have a book of ~500 pages, plain text, that's about 1MB, or 10^6 bytes.
Figuring 2000 pages/person means 4x10^6 B/person
6 billion people in the world - 6x10^9
4x10^6 x 6x10^9 = 2x10^16, or 20 PETAbytes.
However! I just bzipped said book, compressing it down to 290KB - that makes our numbers
4 x 290x10^3 x 6x10^9 = 7 Petabytes...
Not that I'd EVER want to read 2000 pages from everyone in the world (ignoring translation issues) - anyone fancy 1999 pages more of this crap from me?
The terminal velocity of a human body (skydiving) is more like 90mph. I expect a smooth rock might be a bit more. Depending on size, I'd expect it to hurt lots, but then she was probably wearing shoes.
Ever been hit by a cricket ball? I saw one bounce of my teacher's head once and he barely even blinked, and that must have been travelling at 50mph... I guess people are tougher than we look!
Not any more. Kazaa locked Morpheus out of their network a few months ago. (And put the kaibosh on giFT, the open source alternative trying to use the same network.) Since then Morpheus went over to using the Gnucleus gnutella engine wrapped in their own interface. Of course, being based on gnutella, it sucks ass, but if it actually worked, it would be a great victory for OSS over adware/spyware/steal-your-cycles-and-bandwidth-war e like kazaa.
Except Vespas are pretty cool, and have stood the test of time, whereas a Microsoft server is just a liability. Maybe the anology would stretch to a Reliant Robin? It's in insult to most forms of engineering to be compared to Microsoft, so don't use this put-down too liberally.
Good Job! I've been using Pan for a couple of months and I love it. The whole yEnc issue is a moot point, since binary downloads are so transparent and effective in Pan that it's hard to realise exactly what I *don't* have to do... I just look at the "please help because Outlook is making me grab several parts to each binary and click on them and combine them and decode them" posts and shuddder. Software exists that takes yEnc, and even uuencode into it's stride. Get over it! and thanks again for Pan.
Yeah, there's so many people bitching about being disturbed by laptops whilst trying to watch the movie, but they've clerly never been to the Draft House. If anyone was easily disturbed by noise then they wouldn't be making that mistake twice. The Alamo is, perhaps, the single coolest thing about Austin. The main problem with this plan is surely that anyone using a laptop wouldn't be able to concentrate on their pr0n because the crowd is laughing to hard at Mr Sinus Theater 3000.
My favourite moment was falling off my chair during Evil Dead last summer. Alamo, it's the way to go!
You must be kidding. Thinkpads have notoriously buggy audio and modems (cough MWAVE cough!). The thinkpad I had was quite a nice machine, but the hacks for running audio on it were overly complex (e.g. boot into DOS, loadlin ...) and IBM even lost a lawsuit when they were sued for putting such crappy modems in their laptops/ Aptivas.
My 760 also had a pretty crappy keyboard. Try the Toshiba Tecras from around the same era - nice keyboard, ok speakers, and the audio & video have no problems under linux.
This surprises me, as a European in the US, so I looked it up on Google... Found this in the Irish Times (just what came up first.
"For example, the United States has the second highest per capita income, with $29,600, and it ranks 20th in terms of poverty. Luxembourg has the highest income per capita in the world, with $33,500, but ranks only seventh in terms of poverty.
So, not only does the US have the second highest per-capita income in the world, but it also has one of the worst wealth distributions... not that this is news. The high cost of living you mention is probably just a symptom of this - e.g. if your rent is high, that money is flowing up the pyramid to your landlord, who probably feels cheated by their bank, etc.
(GmM)/(R^2) gives the acceleration of the system for two masses in space
That is newtonian gravity. By definition, gravitational radiation is a general relativistic effect. The source of gravitational radiation is likely to be a fairly close supernova, or perhaps a binary black-hole system etc.
The weak-field effect or nearby planets will be taken into account, I presume, but will not contribute to gravitational radiation.
Even better, I decided to bite the bullet at Yahoo because they offer smtp & pop access with an 'opt-in' email every week as the catch. I clicked on really obscure interests (i.e. not computing!) and I haven't received an ad in the 4 months I've been with them. Nor have they ever lost several weeks worth of incoming mail with no explanation (unlike mail.com).
You could try this for a conversation with Marcus & Johnathan Lebed.
I heard that the Informix have retreated from their much heralded linux support, and that IBM probaly aren't too bothered about that either. I think it was probably a lack of interest :(
'course, I could be wrong...