Shhh... don't let facts get in the way of a good argument.
The biggest issue with the high-speed rail, which just about every other industrialized country has, is NIMBY. San Mateo County of course goes out of their way to block it (like they do every other major transportation project).
I'd love to be able to go between the Bay Area and LA without having to deal with airports, the TSA or with driving. If it tied in to BART that would be even better since I can just walk to the BART station and not have to worry about parking my car.
You fail to realize how much habitat is now available for growing and raising animals and how much land is not destroyed by periodic massive floods. Water in California is a precious resource. It is what makes California the most productive agricultural state in the nation. The value of the crops grown in California are almost double the next largest state (Texas). Because of this, there are many acres of land that are used to grow crops, which consume CO2 in order to grow which are far more productive than the usual desert one would find for much of the year. Without the dam there would be periodic massive flooding and most likely the land would be used for cattle grazing, which is what much of the grassland in California is used for.
The Oroville dam was built in large part to prevent major flood damage, estimated to have prevented more than $1.3 billion in damage between 1987 and 1999 alone.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the water from the reservoir used in agriculture was more than enough to offset any greenhouse gases emitted. Many trees are alive because of the water where the central valley grows a lot of nut and fruit trees.
Exactly. An hour ago I finished debugging a problem with a non-approved SFP+ module not working. It turns out that Intel SFP+ SR 10G Ethernet modules do not have a proper checksum in their EEPROMs as defined in the SFF-8472 specification (section 8.8), hence my software rejects them (it turns out that the Linux Intel IGB driver doesn't validate the checksum either). I've come across a number of crap products that fail (don't get me started on USB thumb drives) because they are either buggy or don't follow the standards. I've spent way too much time debugging customer issues because they chose a crappy thumbdrive or SD card (even from very well-known vendors (I'm looking at you Sandisk). Since there's so much crap out there the best way is to only approve certain devices that have been tested and verified to work. If other devices happen to work, great, but don't contact support if they don't.
The sad part is that years ago when my father worked for Unisys (The same company that patented GIF) he added a barrel connector to one of the PC board blanks in the back to provide 12v power. Unisys patented it.
Many of those I've met were educated here in the US. I've met plenty of American engineers too who I consider substandard. It all depends, there are good universities and mediocre ones.
What's to say that they aren't American? Most of the people I work with are US citizens, and even those who aren't still pay taxes to pay for the local infrastructure. Another fact is that a disproportionate percentage of businesses in the US are started by immigrants.
He cares very much what the media thinks. Why do you think he threw a temper tantrum when it was shown that he didn't have the biggest inauguration crowd? He's always checking the media because he's so insecure and so narcissistic.
And I've worked with plenty of them who understand this stuff quite well. It all depends on what sort of quality of engineers a company wants. I've interviewed people from certain companies to the point where seeing a certain company name in the resume is a red flag.
I second this. Where I work we often have positions open for months looking for good engineers. Hell, the best engineer I ever interviewed for a position here was a transgender Russian and we made an offer on the spot.
If you wonder why Indians are over represented one just needs to look at who is graduating with STEM degrees who also have the language skills. Where I work, if you're qualified we'll hire you. I work in a truly international team with a group of men and women from all over the world.
I've interviewed people from China and elsewhere, but often while they may have the engineering skills they lack the language skills needed to communicate in an effective manner.
When you have a country with a billion people where many speak English and that values education and with a hard work ethic, is it any wonder that they're well represented?
I say this as a white guy who goes back generations in silicon valley. My great grandfather had an orchard just a mile from where I currently work.
I call BS. That may be the case with some companies but in my experience it's because there just aren't enough non-American engineers. In my experience, Americans are in the minority of candidates I interview and they don't do any better (and often do worse) than their Indian counterparts. The group I work in is truely international. I work with Indians, Russians, an Israeli and a guy from Venezuela, oh, and a few white Americans as well. Few of them are H1B. We have a hard time finding good engineers and jump at the chance to hire them, regardless of where they come from.
I've interviewed plenty of Americans that are not qualified for the positions, who pad their resumes. That's not to say that Indians and others don't do that too.
One thing to note is that international students are overrepresented when it comes to advanced degrees in STEM. Is it any wonder?
I too live in silicon valley and work at a tech company. When I interview people most of the candidates I see are Indian and some of the best engineers I've worked with are Indian. While I myself am not, I have a lot of respect for many of those engineers. Hell, we don't care what ethnicity you are as long as you're good at what you do. And no, we don't look for the cheapest engineers but are picky about wanting good engineers. We ask programming problems that I don't consider all that difficult but it's surprising how many people fall down. It all comes down to skills.
The problem is that too many Americans are lazy. I say this as someone whose family goes back over 10 generations in this country and 4 generations in California. In India you have a billion people who tend to value education more so than Americans, and they'll work damned hard to better their lives and get ahead. They're not coddled as children. Their parents work hard to make sure their kids succeed, and their culture puts a bigger emphasis on education and learning than ours does.
Having toured the Tesla factory where my car was made and having toured it back when it was still a GM plant when I was a kid it's night and day. The number of people needed to build a modern car is a fraction of what it used to be, however, a high percentage of the people that do work there need the skills to maintain the robots and program them for changes, etc. When I was a kid, much of the welding, bodywork, etc. was done by hand. Now it's all handled by robots who do it much faster and with a higher degree of precision. When people are involved there is often robotic assists, such as helping lift and place bulky items into place. The robots are becoming more sophisticated as well, with a number of the robots I saw able to switch heads to perform a multitude of tasks.
There are plenty of manufacturing jobs in the US. The problem is that they are advanced manufacturing which requires a lot of training and skill and are generally not open to someone fresh out of highschool.
I watched a documentary (Frontline) discussing how a bad strain of Samnoinella Heidelberg was being distributed by Foster Farms chickens and how powerless the FDA was to put an end to it. Basically the FDA is powerless unless they can prove a smoking gun. Despite thousands of people getting sick and them tracking it down to certain farms they could do nothing until one person who got sick happened to have another batch of chicken from the same lot that they froze. It took something like 18 months and the FDA could not force Foster Farms to clean up its act because of how hamstrung it is, which is why you usually hear that the recalls are "voluntary" by the manufacturers.
That's how I invest and I've done extremely well by doing this. Many of my investments are in companies that do a lot of R&D and I've done quite well from this. One of my investments that has done extremely well the investor blogs keep complaining about the company spending a lot of money. Generally, established companies that invest a lot in R&D tend to do fairly well. Startups have been and probably always will be a risky venture, but when they succeed the payouts tend to be big. Companies investing in long-term R&D are more like venture capitalists in that the projects that succeed can bring in a lot of revenue.
And how many people have been killed in this country by terrorists from any of those countries compared to countries not on the list? Oh, wait, it's zero, compared to people from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, UAE, Kyrgystan and Lebanon, or for that matter, those born here in the USA.
In many places where he wants to build the wall it's nearly impossible. The terrain is extremely rugged or there's sand dunes. Good luck building a wall in sand dunes and rough terrain like Big Bend, Tx. He also has never heard of tunnels or drones. Most illegals overstay their visas and enter the country legally.
Obama was prohibited from closing Gitmo due to an act of congress. There are a lot fewer people being held there than when he started. I don't know where you get the idea that it expanded under Obama, if anything, he did a lot to shrink it.
And what could the left do about it when the right controls most state houses, governorships and congress? Stuff that happens on campus is handled locally and by the state for the most part, not the federal government. And getting the republican congress to pass laws to crack down on it? Good luck with that.
Tantrums? You mean like the one Trump threw when less people showed up for his inauguration than Obama's? I'm sorry, but Trump is behaving a lot more like a petulant child than presidential. I mean, things like science must be vetted by political appointees now? Or how about the fact that his national security council is now headed by Steve Bannon, a guy who loves pushing conspiracy theories. I mean, politically, the most Trump accomplished before being elected was getting Obama to show his birth certificate. So if you want to talk about sanity, the presidency is not a reality TV show.
I've seen more resume faking Americans than indians in my experience. I've interviewed American engineers who couldn't code a hello world program if their life depended on it.
Add to that the copying and stealing a lot of intellectual property. Taking some people with him he could probably get away with due to the non-compete clause, though transferring any proprietary information would be covered by an NDA, and stealing the source code will get you in a lot of trouble.
If they had started the new company by building their IP from scratch that would be less of an issue.
<sarcasm> But towns aren't private companies and hence are bad. That's why states are banning the practice. How dare people get cheap good reliable Internet service! Their big political contributors deserve a big chunk of the pie!</sarcasm>
I love it. It's keeping my sister alive (literally). Without it, due to her condition there's no way she could buy insurance other than work provided insurance, especially given that her medication that keeps her alive costs $5K/month, most of that being the medication (a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_globulin">gamma globulin). With her work insurance her co-pay for her medicine would be $500/month (she makes $11/hour as a teacher). Thanks to the ACA she was able to get a plan that covers her medication. I have a number of friends who also rely on it who would otherwise be without insurance which they need. While far from perfect, in most cases it's an improvement over what we had before. I had a friend who relied on it once he got cancer and could no longer work due to it. It kept him alive for a couple of years he otherwise wouldn't have had with his family. He eventually died from the cancer, but it didn't leave his family totally bankrupt from it either.
Given that we pay the among the highest broadband prices in the world yet are well behind many other countries I think we pay more than enough. We're getting gouged by the likes of Comcast. Also, there's the fact that in many places in the country they make it difficult or impossible for things like municipal broadband which typically has lower prices and better service. Given the fact that he's from the telecom industry, I expect things to get worse, not better, for rural America since it's not in the best interest of the telecom businesses to serve them given the higher costs involved. He's already come out against things like net neutrality.
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Shhh... don't let facts get in the way of a good argument.
The biggest issue with the high-speed rail, which just about every other industrialized country has, is NIMBY. San Mateo County of course goes out of their way to block it (like they do every other major transportation project).
I'd love to be able to go between the Bay Area and LA without having to deal with airports, the TSA or with driving. If it tied in to BART that would be even better since I can just walk to the BART station and not have to worry about parking my car.
You fail to realize how much habitat is now available for growing and raising animals and how much land is not destroyed by periodic massive floods. Water in California is a precious resource. It is what makes California the most productive agricultural state in the nation. The value of the crops grown in California are almost double the next largest state (Texas). Because of this, there are many acres of land that are used to grow crops, which consume CO2 in order to grow which are far more productive than the usual desert one would find for much of the year. Without the dam there would be periodic massive flooding and most likely the land would be used for cattle grazing, which is what much of the grassland in California is used for.
Before spouting off that California is wasteful of water, California agriculture has been getting more efficient with water use and already leads most of the country. They've been moving away from gravity irrigation/flooding to drip irrigation and other methods.
The Oroville dam was built in large part to prevent major flood damage, estimated to have prevented more than $1.3 billion in damage between 1987 and 1999 alone.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the water from the reservoir used in agriculture was more than enough to offset any greenhouse gases emitted. Many trees are alive because of the water where the central valley grows a lot of nut and fruit trees.
Exactly. An hour ago I finished debugging a problem with a non-approved SFP+ module not working. It turns out that Intel SFP+ SR 10G Ethernet modules do not have a proper checksum in their EEPROMs as defined in the SFF-8472 specification (section 8.8), hence my software rejects them (it turns out that the Linux Intel IGB driver doesn't validate the checksum either). I've come across a number of crap products that fail (don't get me started on USB thumb drives) because they are either buggy or don't follow the standards. I've spent way too much time debugging customer issues because they chose a crappy thumbdrive or SD card (even from very well-known vendors (I'm looking at you Sandisk). Since there's so much crap out there the best way is to only approve certain devices that have been tested and verified to work. If other devices happen to work, great, but don't contact support if they don't.
The sad part is that years ago when my father worked for Unisys (The same company that patented GIF) he added a barrel connector to one of the PC board blanks in the back to provide 12v power. Unisys patented it.
Many of those I've met were educated here in the US. I've met plenty of American engineers too who I consider substandard. It all depends, there are good universities and mediocre ones.
What's to say that they aren't American? Most of the people I work with are US citizens, and even those who aren't still pay taxes to pay for the local infrastructure. Another fact is that a disproportionate percentage of businesses in the US are started by immigrants.
He cares very much what the media thinks. Why do you think he threw a temper tantrum when it was shown that he didn't have the biggest inauguration crowd? He's always checking the media because he's so insecure and so narcissistic.
And I've worked with plenty of them who understand this stuff quite well. It all depends on what sort of quality of engineers a company wants. I've interviewed people from certain companies to the point where seeing a certain company name in the resume is a red flag.
I second this. Where I work we often have positions open for months looking for good engineers. Hell, the best engineer I ever interviewed for a position here was a transgender Russian and we made an offer on the spot.
If you wonder why Indians are over represented one just needs to look at who is graduating with STEM degrees who also have the language skills. Where I work, if you're qualified we'll hire you. I work in a truly international team with a group of men and women from all over the world.
I've interviewed people from China and elsewhere, but often while they may have the engineering skills they lack the language skills needed to communicate in an effective manner.
When you have a country with a billion people where many speak English and that values education and with a hard work ethic, is it any wonder that they're well represented?
I say this as a white guy who goes back generations in silicon valley. My great grandfather had an orchard just a mile from where I currently work.
I call BS. That may be the case with some companies but in my experience it's because there just aren't enough non-American engineers. In my experience, Americans are in the minority of candidates I interview and they don't do any better (and often do worse) than their Indian counterparts. The group I work in is truely international. I work with Indians, Russians, an Israeli and a guy from Venezuela, oh, and a few white Americans as well. Few of them are H1B. We have a hard time finding good engineers and jump at the chance to hire them, regardless of where they come from.
I've interviewed plenty of Americans that are not qualified for the positions, who pad their resumes. That's not to say that Indians and others don't do that too.
One thing to note is that international students are overrepresented when it comes to advanced degrees in STEM. Is it any wonder?
I too live in silicon valley and work at a tech company. When I interview people most of the candidates I see are Indian and some of the best engineers I've worked with are Indian. While I myself am not, I have a lot of respect for many of those engineers. Hell, we don't care what ethnicity you are as long as you're good at what you do. And no, we don't look for the cheapest engineers but are picky about wanting good engineers. We ask programming problems that I don't consider all that difficult but it's surprising how many people fall down. It all comes down to skills.
In India they really value education unlike vast areas of this country. In 2012-2013 57% of students with doctoral degrees in engineering were international students. 53% of doctoral degrees in CIS and 50% of degrees in mathematics. Is it any wonder why native-born Americans are in the minority?
The problem is that too many Americans are lazy. I say this as someone whose family goes back over 10 generations in this country and 4 generations in California. In India you have a billion people who tend to value education more so than Americans, and they'll work damned hard to better their lives and get ahead. They're not coddled as children. Their parents work hard to make sure their kids succeed, and their culture puts a bigger emphasis on education and learning than ours does.
Having toured the Tesla factory where my car was made and having toured it back when it was still a GM plant when I was a kid it's night and day. The number of people needed to build a modern car is a fraction of what it used to be, however, a high percentage of the people that do work there need the skills to maintain the robots and program them for changes, etc. When I was a kid, much of the welding, bodywork, etc. was done by hand. Now it's all handled by robots who do it much faster and with a higher degree of precision. When people are involved there is often robotic assists, such as helping lift and place bulky items into place. The robots are becoming more sophisticated as well, with a number of the robots I saw able to switch heads to perform a multitude of tasks.
There are plenty of manufacturing jobs in the US. The problem is that they are advanced manufacturing which requires a lot of training and skill and are generally not open to someone fresh out of highschool.
I watched a documentary (Frontline) discussing how a bad strain of Samnoinella Heidelberg was being distributed by Foster Farms chickens and how powerless the FDA was to put an end to it. Basically the FDA is powerless unless they can prove a smoking gun. Despite thousands of people getting sick and them tracking it down to certain farms they could do nothing until one person who got sick happened to have another batch of chicken from the same lot that they froze. It took something like 18 months and the FDA could not force Foster Farms to clean up its act because of how hamstrung it is, which is why you usually hear that the recalls are "voluntary" by the manufacturers.
That's how I invest and I've done extremely well by doing this. Many of my investments are in companies that do a lot of R&D and I've done quite well from this. One of my investments that has done extremely well the investor blogs keep complaining about the company spending a lot of money. Generally, established companies that invest a lot in R&D tend to do fairly well. Startups have been and probably always will be a risky venture, but when they succeed the payouts tend to be big. Companies investing in long-term R&D are more like venture capitalists in that the projects that succeed can bring in a lot of revenue.
And how many people have been killed in this country by terrorists from any of those countries compared to countries not on the list? Oh, wait, it's zero, compared to people from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, UAE, Kyrgystan and Lebanon, or for that matter, those born here in the USA.
In many places where he wants to build the wall it's nearly impossible. The terrain is extremely rugged or there's sand dunes. Good luck building a wall in sand dunes and rough terrain like Big Bend, Tx. He also has never heard of tunnels or drones. Most illegals overstay their visas and enter the country legally.
Obama was prohibited from closing Gitmo due to an act of congress. There are a lot fewer people being held there than when he started. I don't know where you get the idea that it expanded under Obama, if anything, he did a lot to shrink it.
And what could the left do about it when the right controls most state houses, governorships and congress? Stuff that happens on campus is handled locally and by the state for the most part, not the federal government. And getting the republican congress to pass laws to crack down on it? Good luck with that.
Tantrums? You mean like the one Trump threw when less people showed up for his inauguration than Obama's? I'm sorry, but Trump is behaving a lot more like a petulant child than presidential. I mean, things like science must be vetted by political appointees now? Or how about the fact that his national security council is now headed by Steve Bannon, a guy who loves pushing conspiracy theories. I mean, politically, the most Trump accomplished before being elected was getting Obama to show his birth certificate. So if you want to talk about sanity, the presidency is not a reality TV show.
Trump was mostly projecting about Hillary. After all, he won't give up his unsecured personal cell phone, and he and his senior staff use a private email server, the same one where 22 million emails mysteriously disappeared and that US intelligence services believe was compromised by the Russians.
I've seen more resume faking Americans than indians in my experience. I've interviewed American engineers who couldn't code a hello world program if their life depended on it.
NDAs are legal, however, and copying material is clearly a huge no-no.
Add to that the copying and stealing a lot of intellectual property. Taking some people with him he could probably get away with due to the non-compete clause, though transferring any proprietary information would be covered by an NDA, and stealing the source code will get you in a lot of trouble.
If they had started the new company by building their IP from scratch that would be less of an issue.
<sarcasm> But towns aren't private companies and hence are bad. That's why states are banning the practice. How dare people get cheap good reliable Internet service! Their big political contributors deserve a big chunk of the pie!</sarcasm>
I love it. It's keeping my sister alive (literally). Without it, due to her condition there's no way she could buy insurance other than work provided insurance, especially given that her medication that keeps her alive costs $5K/month, most of that being the medication (a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_globulin">gamma globulin). With her work insurance her co-pay for her medicine would be $500/month (she makes $11/hour as a teacher). Thanks to the ACA she was able to get a plan that covers her medication. I have a number of friends who also rely on it who would otherwise be without insurance which they need. While far from perfect, in most cases it's an improvement over what we had before. I had a friend who relied on it once he got cancer and could no longer work due to it. It kept him alive for a couple of years he otherwise wouldn't have had with his family. He eventually died from the cancer, but it didn't leave his family totally bankrupt from it either.
Given that we pay the among the highest broadband prices in the world yet are well behind many other countries I think we pay more than enough. We're getting gouged by the likes of Comcast. Also, there's the fact that in many places in the country they make it difficult or impossible for things like municipal broadband which typically has lower prices and better service. Given the fact that he's from the telecom industry, I expect things to get worse, not better, for rural America since it's not in the best interest of the telecom businesses to serve them given the higher costs involved. He's already come out against things like net neutrality.