To be able to use this, the employer must certify that they not only are unable to find an employee who is a legal resident.
Wrong! I think you are getting confused with employer sponsored permanent residency (ie commonly called green card). This requirement does not apply to H1-B.
IMHO it is a good system. Like any sysyem, its not perfect, but I believe its mostly the best of several worlds. Your 'party vote' determines who the next government is (most likely a coalition) but your 'electorate vote' helps determine who the individual people are in that government. Its nice to be able to support a local candidate even if you don't like their party. The electorate vote lets you do this.
One of the most significant things about MMP is that it gives minor parties a much bigger chance of being part of a goverment than the old 'first past the post' system where a minor party could get sigificant numbers of votes in many electorates but not win any, therefore ending up with nothing and therefore lots of people were not represented. There is a threshold of 5% or one electorate member before a party's party vote counts. This tends to avoid the problem if one weirdo holding the balance of power in the house.
One thing I miss having moved from New Zealand to the USA is being able to put a 'No Junk Mail' sign on my mailbox. Since New Zealand is big on freedom and deregulation, 'NZ Post' (the modern corporatised version of the old Post Office) does not have a monopoly on mailboxes like the USPS does. Lots of organisations (phone company, power company, junk mailers etc) use their own delivery people. A 'No Junk Mail' sign is usually respected.
A long time ago I knew someone who spent a winter at Scott Base which is the New Zealand base close to the US base at McMurdo. A funny thing he told me was that the biggest machine the americans had there was a diesel powered ice making machine for the bar.
He also commented on how Scott Base was kept at 40 something deg F inside. People soon acclimatised to it. McMurdo was about 80F.
Yes, disqualification is possible. I don't recall that ever actually happening though. The billboards really are gone (down, not done... typo) by election day.
In New Zealand we have pretty much a total political news blackout on election day until the polls close. They can talk about voter turnout estimates etc but nothing much else. Exit polling is illegal. All billboards must be done by midnight before election day. Party volunteers giving rides to elderly people etc to polling places can have coloured ribbons on their cars but no party or candidate names.
IMHO, these rules all make good sense. For one thing, we don't have billboard trash lying around the roadsides for weeks after an election.
I remember a radio interview with someone in South Korea the day before their recent election. The interviewer asked 'how was ???? doing in the polls this week?', the answer 'we don't allow polls in the week leading up to an election'.
Recently I had some serious dental work done. My dentist offers a discount if I pay a couple of days before the treatment. I show up to pay this with my Visa debit card. I was told that they can only give the discount if I pay early by check because they then avoid the card transaction fee. No big deal, I came back later with a check.
That got my thinking. Why in the world should an electronic transaction cost more than a check? A check needs to be physically transported, probably read by a human etc but the debit card gives instantly secured funds pretty much without moving parts.
Something is upside down here. This is in the USA.
Others have answered the specific question here but this sort of talk always brings up a broader, almost philosophical, question for me.
It often sounds reasonable to say things like: (substitute your own country)
"Americans should get jobs before foreigners." "I don't want my tax dollars helping foreigners before Americans." "Buy American!".
Hard to argue there but... people don't really complain so much about their tax dollars helping someone in another state or their state tax helping someone in another city or their local tax helping someone on the other side of town.
What is so fundamentally different about a country border compared to state or city borders?
I've recently found that 'Virtual Server' Linux accounts are a good compromise between standard shared hosting and a dedicated machine. You get all the appearance of having your own machine with root access at a much lower price (and obviously less resources) than a dedicated machine. I'm paying $29.95 US per month for 2 Gb disk space and 15 Gb traffic. It avoids the usual shared hosting issues of all web scripts needing to be world readable for Apache to read them. Email me if anyone wants to know where. My only connection with them is as a happy customer. tetranz (at) yahoo.com
In my not humble at all opinion, the biggest problem is that our elections are from 7am to 7pm on TUESDAYS!
I agree. I just saw on TV that the out of about 170 democracies the US is about 120 on voter turnout.
I'm a New Zealander living in the US. At the risk of being told 'go home if you don't like it', here are a few other differences that strike me:
NZ does not allow campaigning on election day. Surely its a time for the candidates to shutup and let the people have their say. All billboards have to be down by midnight before the day. If nothing else that serves a good trash collection function.
In NZ we have a news blackout until the polls close. The media is allowed to comment on voter turnout etc but not say anything political.
Exit polling is not allowed.
No votes are counted until all polls are closed. Admittedly that is easier with only one timezone but even so, announcing results on the east coast while campaigning and voting is still going on in the west just seems wrong.
Most of the negative ads on radio and TV here just sound pathetic and childish.
The amount of money spent on campaigning here is sickening.
I won't bore you with NZ's proportional representation system but for all its ups and downs I think it has been a good move.
A bizarre thing that I found, on my two machines, was that Windows 2000 SP2 was very slow to boot if the disk also had a Linux partition. It would grind away tediously on the disk for much longer than usual. I verified this several times. If I deleted the Linux partition everything came right, put it back and it slows down.
I'm curious. How much has the UK really changed? Are road distances Km or miles? And road speeds?
Twenty something years after New Zealand changed to metric I find it interesting and a little disappointing sometimes to observe the results.
Degrees F quickly disappeared because (I assume) of TV weather forecasts. MPH has gone because of car speedos but I think you would get blank looks if you asked a mechanic or tyre installer about pressure in Kpa.
Pounds and ounces seem to be long forgotten except for babies' weights.
Commercial floor space still seems to be advertised in sq ft, land area often in acres although I'm sure the official documentation is metric.
Off the cuff comments on TV by police etc at the scene of some event will often make it clear that feet and yards are still more comfortable than meters.
New born babies' weights are more often than not quoted in the newspapers in pounds.
Some adults still quote weight in stones (14 pounds?) although I doubt that you can even buy scales with stones now.
When flying on Air New Zealand (747's) I've heard the captain announce the altitude in meters. I've wonder if his instruments really tell him that or is it a rough calculation in his head?
Not really in the same category, I know, but for personal internet (smtp and pop) mail and usenet, I've been happy with Agent for about eight years now. Development has been dormant for a while but now a new group have taken it over and things are forging ahead with great plans. Its Windows but works well with Wine. I wish them well!
Whenever I see something like http://mydomain.com?id=1234 I can't resist inserting a semicolon in the number. Its very common for this to create an error exposing the SQL statement and leaving me wondering what http://mydomain.com?id=1234;DELETE * FROM mytable (url encoded) would do. I would never do something like that but something like http://mydomain.com?id=1234 OR 1=1 often yields interesting results.
There doesn't seem to be much on the news about the 24,000 people thehungersite.org who died of hunger on 9/11. I would have thought that a tragedy of that magnitude would deserve a large multinational operation to make sure it doesn't happen again.
It goes without saying but, just in case, no I'm not denying the pain, suffering or heroism related to other events of that day but it does need to put into perspective.
You are mostly right about the price of imported things but for normal living expenses, forget about the exchange rate. A kiwi dollar in NZ buys you about the same as a US dollar buys you in the US.
I wonder of people think about exchange rates more frequently when the unit of currency uses the same word.
I'm a kiwi who was foolish enough to move to the US. Well... it sounded like a good idea at the time:-(
The opposite situation is a bigger problem. Here is a thread google about a person legitimately in the US, married to a citizen but waiting for the paperwork to be done to get a greencard. South Carolina says 'No greencard, No drivers license'. Therefore this person cannot drive for many months! But of course the issue has NOTHING to do with driving a motor vehicle! Its all because of the nonsense of using a drivers license as a default ID card and it seems that (to use the popular phrase) 'in the light of 9/11', SC used some bizarre reverse logic and tightened up on issuing drivers licenses so less people would be easily identifiable.
A group was making some submissions to the state government. It may have been resolved by now.
I don't know how relevent this is but I read somewhere long ago that newspapers ended up with more errors if they had multiple people proof reading the same text because nobody was really taking responsibility. Even if it is not intentional, there is always a feeling of 'the other guy will pick that up'.
I vaguely remember something similar being said about the space shuttle disaster.
Slashdot Mirror
Just wondering.
To be able to use this, the employer must certify that they not only are unable to find an employee who is a legal resident.
Wrong! I think you are getting confused with employer sponsored permanent residency (ie commonly called green card). This requirement does not apply to H1-B.
As for your MMP voting system, never heard of it, sounds a bit complicated, interested in learning more though.
e lect.html
http://www.elections.org.nz/elections/esyst/govt_
IMHO it is a good system. Like any sysyem, its not perfect, but I believe its mostly the best of several worlds. Your 'party vote' determines who the next government is (most likely a coalition) but your 'electorate vote' helps determine who the individual people are in that government. Its nice to be able to support a local candidate even if you don't like their party. The electorate vote lets you do this.
One of the most significant things about MMP is that it gives minor parties a much bigger chance of being part of a goverment than the old 'first past the post' system where a minor party could get sigificant numbers of votes in many electorates but not win any, therefore ending up with nothing and therefore lots of people were not represented. There is a threshold of 5% or one electorate member before a party's party vote counts. This tends to avoid the problem if one weirdo holding the balance of power in the house.
One thing I miss having moved from New Zealand to the USA is being able to put a 'No Junk Mail' sign on my mailbox. Since New Zealand is big on freedom and deregulation, 'NZ Post' (the modern corporatised version of the old Post Office) does not have a monopoly on mailboxes like the USPS does. Lots of organisations (phone company, power company, junk mailers etc) use their own delivery people. A 'No Junk Mail' sign is usually respected.
A long time ago I knew someone who spent a winter at Scott Base which is the New Zealand base close to the US base at McMurdo. A funny thing he told me was that the biggest machine the americans had there was a diesel powered ice making machine for the bar.
He also commented on how Scott Base was kept at 40 something deg F inside. People soon acclimatised to it. McMurdo was about 80F.
Yes, disqualification is possible. I don't recall that ever actually happening though. The billboards really are gone (down, not done ... typo) by election day.
In New Zealand we have pretty much a total political news blackout on election day until the polls close. They can talk about voter turnout estimates etc but nothing much else. Exit polling is illegal. All billboards must be done by midnight before election day. Party volunteers giving rides to elderly people etc to polling places can have coloured ribbons on their cars but no party or candidate names.
IMHO, these rules all make good sense. For one thing, we don't have billboard trash lying around the roadsides for weeks after an election.
I remember a radio interview with someone in South Korea the day before their recent election. The interviewer asked 'how was ???? doing in the polls this week?', the answer 'we don't allow polls in the week leading up to an election'.
this is a good idea as long as you can assume that the majority of people make the correct choices, but certainly this is not always the case.
Kind of like electing a government.
Recently I had some serious dental work done. My dentist offers a discount if I pay a couple of days before the treatment. I show up to pay this with my Visa debit card. I was told that they can only give the discount if I pay early by check because they then avoid the card transaction fee. No big deal, I came back later with a check.
That got my thinking. Why in the world should an electronic transaction cost more than a check? A check needs to be physically transported, probably read by a human etc but the debit card gives instantly secured funds pretty much without moving parts.
Something is upside down here. This is in the USA.
Others have answered the specific question here but this sort of talk always brings up a broader, almost philosophical, question for me.
... people don't really complain so much about their tax dollars helping someone in another state or their state tax helping someone in another city or their local tax helping someone on the other side of town.
It often sounds reasonable to say things like: (substitute your own country)
"Americans should get jobs before foreigners."
"I don't want my tax dollars helping foreigners before Americans."
"Buy American!".
Hard to argue there but
What is so fundamentally different about a country border compared to state or city borders?
Phrame
I've recently found that 'Virtual Server' Linux accounts are a good compromise between standard shared hosting and a dedicated machine. You get all the appearance of having your own machine with root access at a much lower price (and obviously less resources) than a dedicated machine. I'm paying $29.95 US per month for 2 Gb disk space and 15 Gb traffic. It avoids the usual shared hosting issues of all web scripts needing to be world readable for Apache to read them. Email me if anyone wants to know where. My only connection with them is as a happy customer. tetranz (at) yahoo.com
In my not humble at all opinion, the biggest problem is that our elections are from 7am to 7pm on TUESDAYS!
I agree. I just saw on TV that the out of about 170 democracies the US is about 120 on voter turnout.
I'm a New Zealander living in the US. At the risk of being told 'go home if you don't like it', here are a few other differences that strike me:
NZ does not allow campaigning on election day. Surely its a time for the candidates to shutup and let the people have their say. All billboards have to be down by midnight before the day. If nothing else that serves a good trash collection function.
In NZ we have a news blackout until the polls close. The media is allowed to comment on voter turnout etc but not say anything political.
Exit polling is not allowed.
No votes are counted until all polls are closed. Admittedly that is easier with only one timezone but even so, announcing results on the east coast while campaigning and voting is still going on in the west just seems wrong.
Most of the negative ads on radio and TV here just sound pathetic and childish.
The amount of money spent on campaigning here is sickening.
I won't bore you with NZ's proportional representation system but for all its ups and downs I think it has been a good move.
A bizarre thing that I found, on my two machines, was that Windows 2000 SP2 was very slow to boot if the disk also had a Linux partition. It would grind away tediously on the disk for much longer than usual. I verified this several times. If I deleted the Linux partition everything came right, put it back and it slows down.
SP3 fixed the problem.
Shouldn't be to difficult for them to do. Most of the spam I get originates from Hotmail.
Oh really? Do you check the headers?
Please learn the difference between the real source of a message and simply what the 'From:' address is set to.
That's a surprise.
I'm curious. How much has the UK really changed? Are road distances Km or miles? And road speeds?
Twenty something years after New Zealand changed to metric I find it interesting and a little disappointing sometimes to observe the results.
Degrees F quickly disappeared because (I assume) of TV weather forecasts. MPH has gone because of car speedos but I think you would get blank looks if you asked a mechanic or tyre installer about pressure in Kpa.
Pounds and ounces seem to be long forgotten except for babies' weights.
Commercial floor space still seems to be advertised in sq ft, land area often in acres although I'm sure the official documentation is metric.
Off the cuff comments on TV by police etc at the scene of some event will often make it clear that feet and yards are still more comfortable than meters.
New born babies' weights are more often than not quoted in the newspapers in pounds.
Some adults still quote weight in stones (14 pounds?) although I doubt that you can even buy scales with stones now.
When flying on Air New Zealand (747's) I've heard the captain announce the altitude in meters. I've wonder if his instruments really tell him that or is it a rough calculation in his head?
Not really in the same category, I know, but for personal internet (smtp and pop) mail and usenet, I've been happy with Agent for about eight years now. Development has been dormant for a while but now a new group have taken it over and things are forging ahead with great plans. Its Windows but works well with Wine. I wish them well!
Whenever I see something like http://mydomain.com?id=1234 I can't resist inserting a semicolon in the number. Its very common for this to create an error exposing the SQL statement and leaving me wondering what http://mydomain.com?id=1234;DELETE * FROM mytable (url encoded) would do. I would never do something like that but something like http://mydomain.com?id=1234 OR 1=1 often yields interesting results.
There doesn't seem to be much on the news about the 24,000 people thehungersite.org who died of hunger on 9/11. I would have thought that a tragedy of that magnitude would deserve a large multinational operation to make sure it doesn't happen again.
It goes without saying but, just in case, no I'm not denying the pain, suffering or heroism related to other events of that day but it does need to put into perspective.
You are mostly right about the price of imported things but for normal living expenses, forget about the exchange rate. A kiwi dollar in NZ buys you about the same as a US dollar buys you in the US.
... it sounded like a good idea at the time :-(
I wonder of people think about exchange rates more frequently when the unit of currency uses the same word.
I'm a kiwi who was foolish enough to move to the US. Well
The opposite situation is a bigger problem. Here is a thread google about a person legitimately in the US, married to a citizen but waiting for the paperwork to be done to get a greencard. South Carolina says 'No greencard, No drivers license'. Therefore this person cannot drive for many months! But of course the issue has NOTHING to do with driving a motor vehicle! Its all because of the nonsense of using a drivers license as a default ID card and it seems that (to use the popular phrase) 'in the light of 9/11', SC used some bizarre reverse logic and tightened up on issuing drivers licenses so less people would be easily identifiable.
A group was making some submissions to the state government. It may have been resolved by now.
I don't know how relevent this is but I read somewhere long ago that newspapers ended up with more errors if they had multiple people proof reading the same text because nobody was really taking responsibility. Even if it is not intentional, there is always a feeling of 'the other guy will pick that up'.
I vaguely remember something similar being said about the space shuttle disaster.
Posting doesn't like it when the textbox wraps on a dot.
o lin k.co.nz/costs.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19961018082318
/ipr
Still seems to add an unwanted space between the n and k.