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User: rsilvergun

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  1. No it won't on Immigration Bill Passes the Senate, Includes More H-1B Visas · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's not what happens. It's just wishful thinking. Outsourcing isn't being brought back on shore because of communication problems, it's because a few of the outsourcing firms got greedy and cut corners a little too thin. They'll learn.

    Plus code written by slaves is cheap. So Cheap I can throw out your old code and start from scratch and still come out ahead. The last piece to the puzzle is to remember that for the top 1% who are pushing these things through they own a piece of just about every major company. So if company A overcharges company B the 1% still make gobs of money.

    And Managing a Mickey D's is incredibly hard. First it's brutally difficult work. 50 to 60 hours a week. Next, you're constantly jockeying to keep your employees because you don't pay them enough to have anything near a stable lifestyle (and no, they're not all kids. That workforce is graying too).

    Basically, the world doesn't work the way you think it does. I'd be OK if you were only hurting yourself, but when you go and vote you hurt me too...

  2. There are law firms on Immigration Bill Passes the Senate, Includes More H-1B Visas · · Score: 2

    that exist for the sole purpose of teaching businesses how to do an end run around every rule regarding hiring H1-Bs.

    Saying "I'd be fine with a lift on the H-1B visa limits if it required them to actually demonstrate that they had made real efforts to hire Americans first." is pointless. It's not just wishful thinking, its fundamentally ignoring the purpose of the system...

  3. Not all jobs are done well remotely on Ask Slashdot: Getting Hired As a Self-Taught Old Guy? · · Score: 1

    if they could be, why in God's name would the companies go to the trouble of paying for the Visas? Those aren't free you know. Also, the H1-Bs typically work for $35-$40k/yr and work 60-80 hours a week. They're doing the work of 2 people for half the pay, in effect replacing 4 Salaries.

    There are other factors. India has a growing middle class looking for opportunities. If they find them here then they won't care so much that their native country is a hell hole. It takes the pressure off the 1% of India to make their country a better place. At the end of the day it's all about the race to the bottom.

  4. Forget commoditized on Ask Slashdot: Getting Hired As a Self-Taught Old Guy? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    they don't send H1-B applicant's home after their visas expire. So while there's only suppose to be about 60,000 here there's more like 3 times that. And they want to bump the minimum to 300,000. Try to imagine close to 1 million new tech workers hitting the job market in 3 years...

  5. I'm old enough to remember what Coke did on The Glorious Return of the Twinkie · · Score: 2

    to Unions in South America. Mostly because it wasn't wasn't that long ago...

  6. The management wasn't incompetent on The Glorious Return of the Twinkie · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've got MOD points but I can't let this slide. The management was very, very competent. It's just they were after something other than a successful company. To wit: The Pension Fund. The hard part about stealing a pension fund is doing it legally. It requires enormous skill, business and legal knowledge to do it.

    What Hostess' management did wasn't just mismanagement, it was a complete lack of management. The bought the company, paid themselves just well enough to stay within the bounds of legality, and then ignored the company entirely. They put no effort into expanding, into controlling and managing the supply chain, or into anything else. Then they sat back, waiting for the company to die and used the pension to pay back the creditors they'd racked up debt with.

    The last part that makes it all nice and legal is when a judge ruled that the creditors get paid before employees do. If you paid your own cash money into your pension while working at Hostess you literally got robbed. As an added bonus they killed a major Union without any bad press.

    But nobody talks about that. All they talk about is playing an imaginary game of chicken. FYI: You can't win a game that the other side isn't really playing.

  7. Re:Can someone explain to me why this matters? on Lawmakers Try To Block Black Box Technology In Cars, DVR Tracking · · Score: 1

    Well, that'd be nice. But I can't see any of that happening. We're all terrified about losing our freedom, but our economic freedom is being taking away faster than anything. You can't be free if somebody controls your access to food, shelter and medicine. It's one thing to band together to get more of those things. That's society and that's government. But it's looking more and more like about 20,000 people are going to be the ones that decide who lives and dies, and that that they're not the sort that say: everybody gets to live. Because where's the fun in that?

  8. Good enough is always good enough on Sony, Microsoft Squabble Over Console Features, But the Real Opponent Is Apple · · Score: 1

    and you can do Xbox 360 level graphics on a $300 android. Apple could easily subsidize that and get the cost down to $150. They probably wouldn't even lose that much money if they bought in quantity. The Shield's a niche item, I bet nVidia's not making that many of 'em.

  9. Re:Can someone explain to me why this matters? on Lawmakers Try To Block Black Box Technology In Cars, DVR Tracking · · Score: 1

    Whoops, meant to write, 'Last 30 years of declining wages'. But the next 30 years of declining wages don't look too hot either. Oh, and there was an article in WaPo a few days ago talking about a major shift in wages: employers cutting salaries instead of just waiting for inflation to do the dirty work for 'em. That didn't even make front page. I read about it from Fark, and even then only because it fit the 'old an busted/new hotness' Fark meme the mods love so much.

  10. Can someone explain to me why this matters? on Lawmakers Try To Block Black Box Technology In Cars, DVR Tracking · · Score: 1

    I keep hearing about how important my privacy is, but next to the last 30 years of declining wages it just sorta seems like a drop of piss in the 'ole bucket. I mean, what good is privacy if I'm so poor I'm easily oppressed through economic means? It just seems like we're all ignoring the elephant in the room on stuff like wealth inequality, banking deregulation, workers rights issues, etc... Why does this matter enough that it makes national news for months when the Wisconsin union busting is long forgotten after just a few weeks?

  11. Re:I'm getting tired of bureaucrat bashing on U.S. House Wants 'Sustained Human Presence On the Moon and the Surface of Mars' · · Score: 1

    Well, if a washed up 80's band says it, it must be true! :).

    Also, woosh. My point was that popular culture (like music) is heavily biased against bureaucrats without ever considering that there might be reasons for them to exist.

    And for the record, I don't worry about the government. Corporate power dwarfs it.

  12. I'm getting tired of bureaucrat bashing on U.S. House Wants 'Sustained Human Presence On the Moon and the Surface of Mars' · · Score: 1

    did anyone every think about the _good_ bureaucrats do? Stop laughing, I'm serious. Every time there's a major disaster the lawmakers sneak several nasty little bills through. All perfectly legal. Who do you think used to call them on that? The press? They've been owned by the powers that be since the 70s, so now you're making me laugh. The police? They do murders and petty crime. Those committees of bureaucrats aren't just faceless minions. They're the ones in charge of enforcing the less immediate but no less important laws.

    Next time you meet a bureaucrat thank them. They're people too, and they do good work.

  13. it's not about the boondoggles. The reason we got away with it was the super rich were just as scared of the Soviets as the rest of us, and they let the rest of us have some money long enough to do something great. Now that the threat is proved to be silly they've gone back to grabbing up all the wealth and power and running us head long to a new dark age. For those of you keeping score at home that's what: Austerity means.

  14. Am I missing something on MS To Indie Devs: You Have a To Have a Publisher · · Score: 2

    or are they not really an Indie anymore, are they? I kept reading the phrase "published by Microsoft" and I get the sense that this bloke now has Microsoft publishing his games. That's great if you won the pot last gen when XBLA was free to all comers, but what if you're just getting started? Or did I miss something? If this guy really doesn't have a publisher then he won't be making XBox One games. If Microsoft will act as his publisher that's great for him, but it still leaves real "Independent" game devs up a creak....

  15. I keep hearing this comment on MS To Indie Devs: You Have a To Have a Publisher · · Score: 1

    and I hear a lot of complaints from all my hardcore gamer buds and I've seen several rants, but they've all ending their rant with "...but I'll probably buy one anyway".

  16. Legal liability on Comcast To Expand Public WiFi Using Home Internet Connections · · Score: 1

    You'll still spend $5 grand defending yourself from the lawsuit, and God help you if it's an obscenity charge and you're not a happily married, dashing 6'5" tall man...

  17. It's not going to change all at once. Keep voting for the most viable and most liberal candidate and you'll gradually shift the country away from the current corporate run mess. Obama is one of the most liberal candidate in 20 years. Short of Alan Grayson I don't know anyone else who has a chance in politics and would be a better pick. As for what changed? If the Affordable care act is properly implemented it will change the face of health care. That's important, because right now seniors are single issue voters afraid of losing their lives. Take that fear away and we can start getting them to vote for things like banking reform.

    Baby steps. You're up against professionals who's only goal is to bleed you dry if everything. But they lost once (after WWII). For example, Britain told Churchill to talk a long walk off a short pier on the NSA. So if they lost once they can lose again.

  18. Wikipedia sources say it was largely symbolic on Larry Ellison Rejuvenating Hawaii's Sixth-Largest Island (Which He Owns) · · Score: 2

    and at any rate it was 23 years ago. Not really a "recent" example... I'd also argue that corporations have much tighter control today. They do learn after all. I remember when Pakistan and India had that dust up where a bunch of Pakistanis launched a major terrorist strike. In the 80s that woulda started a war, and we were all expecting it. Except a war would be bad for all the corps using cheap Indian/Pakistani labor...

  19. Yep on Larry Ellison Rejuvenating Hawaii's Sixth-Largest Island (Which He Owns) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and If I don't like Larry and I live on that island I can boycott him. Wait, no. I can't. He _owns_ the entire island. Seriously, can we all just just read the wikipedia article on the railroad trusts and call it a day? Oh, and vote. We can vote. Heck, I'll bet the number of successful changes due to election dwarfs the number of successes from a boycott. Can anyone name me the last successful large scale boycott?

  20. First to file on Ancient Roman Concrete Is About To Revolutionize Modern Architecture · · Score: 4, Interesting

    didn't most countries move to a first to file system? I'm pretty sure Julius didn't get to the Patent office on time for this one.

  21. Not this one again... on Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom · · Score: 1

    The world is a complex place. We've had several things that held back are standard of living from going to heck in the first world. Two world wars that wiped out large portions of the populace and wrecked civilization helped. Moving our slave labor to China/India/Mexico etc also helped. But there are very real events going on right now that are going to crash the quality of life for those of us who've managed to obtain little things like shelter and a steady food supply. China/India/Mexico are industrializing and competing with you for food and fuel now. And Just because it took a little longer for the software to catch up than the doomsayers in the 80s doesn't mean we haven't lost millions of jobs to software. How many accounting clerks do you know? How many were there before Lotus 1-2-3? Better questions: how many employees does it take to run a sleeping bag factory that churns out 1 million bags/yr? 1000? 500? Try 100 (google it). Heck, just look at how much better Windows XP is than NT. How many IT jobs were lost when Microsoft software halved (or better) the rate at which it crashed.

    Just because something bad took longer to happen than expected, doesn't mean it's not going to happen. Nice try though.

  22. I Guess I'll be the first to say... on Dell's Haswell-Powered Alienware X51 R2 SFF, a PC Gamer's Console Alternative · · Score: 1

    that at $700 (starting) it's not really a viable alternative to a $400 PS4. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure it'll be more powerful. But that didn't work out well this generation. Everything had to be toned down graphics wise so you could port it to the consoles. Even Crysis.

  23. That's remarkably sensible on Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Guy's right. We're all basically being reduced to cogs in a machine. There's a really tiny group of super geniuses that will do the basic research. Maybe a few hundred thousand out of 6 billion. The rest of us will be replaced by robots and software. The fun part is sitting back watching all the rubes convince themselves their part of that tiny fraction of geniuses and that this doesn't apply to them.

  24. Why pay for basic research on Genomics Impact On US Economy Approaches $1 Trillion · · Score: 1

    When you can have it paid for by the gov't. When will people learn that the rich always have socialism. The only question is will everyone else have it.

  25. Who then? on What Charles G. Koch Can Teach Us About Campaign Finance Data · · Score: 0

    The "Free" market can't. Have you stopped to consider there's a reason the Gov't did it? Maybe because no other force is strong enough to stand up to a group of 20,000 people that collectively own the everything, while the other 6 billion wallow in abject poverty?

    And it worked great. Tons of economic growth in the past. I think the phrase is "Nordic Socialism". Most people, including yourself, confuse it with Soviet Era fascism and/or Chinese Kleptocracy.