"Anyone who makes, uses, or sells anything containing patented technology who is not licensed by the patent owner is liable for damages as a result of infringement of the patent. Full stop. While typically the end-user is not targeted, there is no legal impediment to doing so."
This is almost true. It should read
Anyone who KNOWINGLY makes...
It is not the responsibility of the end customer to determine whether the products they buy are infringing. If I go to Micro Center and buy the latest accounting software, and I didn't know that the makers ripped off Quicken code, I am not liable for patent infringement. Period.
Well, this is a little different than the Ford/Firestone case. In the latter, the customers were perfectly free to drive within the speed limit, keep their tires inflated to proper spec, and to not kill themselves. This issue was between the Customer and the manufacturer.
The microsoft issue is between the Customer's Vendor, and the customer's vendor's competitor. The customer really should have nothing to do with IP claims over software they buy to use. SCO has no business suing Linux end users over IP claims. SCO's beef is with the Linux authors, but customers are easier to go after because they have money.
It's all a bunch of legal horse shit if you ask me. There's no way a customer should ever be held responsible for the content of stuff they buy from their vendors because they have little or no control over what goes into that stuff.
1) We have never stolen anyone else's code 2) Even if we did, we believe it cannot be proven 3) If someone does claim to prove it, we will destroy them in court
1 + 2 + 3 = We own all software anyway, so you don't have to worry...
PREDICTION: Unless Bush has problems passing a law allowing Corporate America to loot social security (instead of the neo-cons looting it), the "Alert Level" thing is going to quietly fade away.
Wow, troll bait, but I have to bite. If you look at the numbers, you'll see that Social Security has seen a bigger surplus in the first 4 years under Bush than it saw under all 8 years of Clinton.
You'll also see that we only saw one year of REAL surplus under Clinton - 2000. There was an 86.6 billion surplus in the budget. 1.9B the year before, but that's not anything to have a party over.
One other interesting thing you'll see is that the national debt, in terms of GDP, was higher under Clinton than under any other President in the presented data. Under Bush, the national debt has fallen from 49.5% GDP at Clinton's highest point to 36.1% in 2003.
Finally, if you look at total government spending in terms of GDP, we're spending on average less now than we did under Clinton.
Hah, as I read your post I started thinking "this guy wants a MicroCenter..." then I got to the end and laughed my ass off..
I live 2.5 miles from a MicroCenter and I am very thankful for that.. they have EVERYTHING.. they are expensive as all hell on some things (RAM, CPU, etc..) but occasionally have good deals. But, if you're just looking for that odd widget, chances are they have it..
Aside from the two people who admitted to me that they cast multiple votes in the election, I don't know what more proof you want. Voting cheaters are like cockroaches, if you see one, there are a thousand more.
The news media ranmultiplestories on Ed Rendell's scheme to disenfranchise overseas (and mostly republican) PA voters. In addition to two overseas voters filing suit, The Republicans filed suit immediately and a federal judge ultimately ruled that the deadline to receive overseas absentee ballots must be extended by two weeks.
The only outcome of this that I don't like is that Ed Rendell is still a free man when he should be in a federal prison.
Sure - how about all of the people who flooded Pennsylvania and voted illegally? I personally know two college students who are not legal residents of PA who not only cast absentee ballots in NY, but also managed to register in PA and cast ballots here. Ed Rendell is certainly not very interested in maintaining fair voting in PA (which is why he took it upon himself to prevent the state from sending out absentee ballots to oversees PA residents and military personnel).
There were also a bunch of moveon.org folks at my polling place trying to get people not to vote by making false claims about what ID was required, threatening that people who didn't have the right ID would be arrested, and so on...
It's funny how this stuff doesn't get any media coverage...
Ok folks, this is just asinine. Here we have CBS making a judgement call about the quality of "journalism" somewhere else... CBS certainly has balls, I'll give them that, considering they have no right to say anything about anyone else's journalistic integrity (seeing as how they don't have any).
OKay... they're a couple of criminal thugs that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They certainly took it upon themselves to make the wrong choices in life that led to them being criminals. These criminals are solely to blame for their crime.
You cannot cite the 9/11 report as rebuttal to the evidence we had as justification for going into Iraq because the 9/11 report happened after the fact. It's temporal causality at work.
You're also missing one subtle point. There are many many people, and I am one of them, that think that 20 years of noncompliance with World demands, gassing his own people, torturing his dissidents, invading other countries, firing missiles into Israel, firing missiles at our military jets, firing missiles at his own people, posessing banned weapons (the Al Samoud-II missiles), was plenty enough reason to go in, whether or not WMDs were suspected.
When Bush was talking about using WMDs as justification for removing Saddam, the thought that ran through my mind was, "Why the hell are WMDs even relevant? There's plenty cause for going in without WMDs."
This man has caused instability in the middle east and the world economy for far too long. As far as I am concerned (and about, oh, 60 million other people), there was plenty of justification.
"And No, don't bother saying it. Yes, I know what you're about to say, it's what ALL Bush supporters say at this point. You dissmiss that world oppinion information. France. Germany. Oil-for-Food curruption. I'm right, aren't I?"
Absolutely right. The UN, France, Germany, Russia, and all of the other criminal nations that were taking part in the oppresion and murder of 30 million Iraqi citizens for profit need to be held accountable.
People like you REALLY piss me off. You think that just because people don't agree with you, that they're somehow "brainwashed" or "stupid." You don't stop for a second to consider that you are the one who may be wrong, or that your needs and desires may be different than those of other people.
Personally, I think Europe can go fuck themselves. I have no desire for the U.S. to stoop to their level and become a bunch of lazy appeasists. Jimmy "don't hurt me please" Carter was the biggest appeasist that ever held office, which is why the whole world (like Iran? remember that?) pushed us around while he was in office. Reagan was about as popular througout the "other" hemisphere as Bush is now, because he didn't take shit from anybody, least of all Europe and Asia.
I'm not at all sorry to say that the majority of Americans are prouder than that, and believe that special privelege becomes the strongest and wealthiest nation on the planet. I happen to agree. The U.S. drives the rest of the world, and if not for our unbridled success as a thriving, wealthy society, the rest of the world would be far worse off than they are now.
If anything, we have a responsibility to the rest of the world as their caretaker to remain the driven, motivated society that we are. Just imagine if we got as lazy as the Europeans and decided we'd only work 6 hours 5 days per week, and only 8 months out of the year, and decided to just sit around and smoke pot all the time. The world economy would go down the toilet faster than Kerry's campaign. If the rest of the world were half as motivated as we are, there's not a single person on this planet that wouldn't eventually come to live comfortably.
We had a major traumatic experience on 9/11. It was a wakeup call, and our populace did something about it yesterday. We re-elected the man that has taken care of the problem. Instead of flying jumbo jets into our buildings, the terrorists are on the run. So what if we haven't caught Bin Laden yet? When we do kill that SOB, someone else will simply take his place, and we'll get that SOB, too. The point is that we're not sitting around waiting to be attacked, then begging the UN's permission to defend ourselves. We have no obligation to do so, and any candidate that wants to will never get my vote.
The thing you liberals just don't understand is that there is no negotiating with terrorists. They do not care! You cannot negotiate with someone who wants to chop your head off. They hate you liberals as much as they hate everyone else. You think they will be your friends if you just appease them and kneel to their demands. That is complete and utter bullshit and until you people start to admit that to yourselves, you will continue to live in your respective mental caves.
The thing about the liberal elite is that you think you are better than everyone else - that you are somehow gifted with some divine enlightenment that makes you more adept at interpreting the world. I have news for you. That's not enlightenment. That's unbridled arrogance, and complete ignorance of reality.
The reality of the situation is that there is a job to do, and Bush is doing it, and Kerry was going to quit doing it in order to appease those who were criminally on the take, which include France, Germany, and Russia, among others. You don't get up in front of 280 million people and admit that you're going to crawl your country into bed with known criminals and terrorists and not expect an uprising.
You are the one who is brainwashed by your own self-righteousness. You are not divine. You are not enlightened. You are simply arrogant. You think that 56 million people are just stupid ignoramuses, when the only stupid ignoramus lives in your mirror.
You are free to leave any time you wish. If other countries are so goddamn attractive to you, why are you still living here? Hmmm? Really, I'm seriously asking you to for an answer to this. If you hate it here so much, why stay? You can easily pick up and move to another country that is oh-so-much better than this one..
I went to the polls in PA this morning at 6. There were already people standing on line to vote, and more were showing up early in droves. The democrats were there in full force, lying to people about having to prove their eligibility in order to vote. One woman, wearing a John Kerry button, who stated that she worked for the "Democrat Committee," who did not have the proper identification as such and did not give her name, was telling me and other people in line that we would need our ID if we wanted to vote. She stated that she was there to make sure people knew about the law, or something to that effect.
This is a blatant mistruth, as identification is required only if you have never voted in that precint before (this applies to PA only), and only if the person running the election asks for it.
If you plan to vote today at Precint 7, Ward 2, in Delaware county in Pennsylvania, beware of this woman. She has shoulder-length straight dark hair, very liberal-looking glasses (don't know how else to describe them), and was wearing a greenish overcoat this morning.
There were probably half a dozen people from Moveon.org and the Kerry campaign there intimidating people or trying to intimidate people into not voting, or into casting a vote for John Kerry.
The important thing is to vote for who you want to vote for and not to let yourself be harassed or intimidated into changing your vote or abstaining. I don't care if you're a democrat or a republican, it is despicable in the extreme to resort to these tactics. They amount to an attempt to steal the election.
That's nearly one Internet bar for every 500 people in China! That would be the equivalent of 560000 Starbucks joints in the US. There are less than 30,000 starbucks shops in the WORLD, let alone more than half a million in the US.
"So out of curiosity, what exactly are you training for? Courtroom law (an Indian with a law book and degree could answer any question an American lawyer could for any situation where they didn't need to appear in court)? Accounting (Indians can use calculators just as well as you)? Labor?"
JD/MBA
You may have a good point about the tax loophole, but we should make sure that the deductibility of taxes paid to foreign governments is not a requirement of the World Trade Organization. We just had to re-write our entire corporate law structure because of the EU/WTO. It wouldn't surprise me if there were rules that we are required to have this "loophole."
Ok, first of all, it is not this phantom tax loophole that makes offshoring attractive - and it's not as if this tax "loophole" even exists. It is not a loophole at all. What makes it advantageous for taxes is that the US cannot collect income tax from people who don't live and work in the US. Duh! That's not a loophole, it's just the law. We will never be able to close this loophole because we cannot collect income tax from foreign citizens working in a foreign country.
Moving on. The factor that really makes offshoring attractive is that, for a call center as an example, the labor and utility costs are so much less. An American might demand $12/hr to work at a call center, which is expensive for someone who just reads a script over the phone all day. On top of that, the company has to pay for real-estate (which is ridiculous in this country right now), insurance (which is also ridiculous thanks to frivolous lawsuits), payroll taxes (FICA, Medicare) which are high because of government fat, high utilities due to high cost of energy in general, and a host of other factors that makes low-income jobs difficult to maintain in the US.
What makes these things cheaper in a place like India? Well, first of all, a dollar in America goes a long way in India because of the exchange rate and the differentiated standard of living. Something that costs $10 to buy here costs $1 in India, including labor. Second, India itself has a hugely growing economy and infrastructure, and for American businesses to participate in building that growing nation, they have to have a presence there anyway. India has a very nationalist government and they won't allow foreign companies to simply walk in and take money out of the country. India needs call centers for India, too, and those call centers by Indian law must be located in India. Also, Indian law also requires things that are sold in India to have some % of Indian-manufactured content. So, for infrastructure companies to sell their goods, they have to have a presence there as well.
India's nationalist policies are working well for them because they are a growing nation. There is so much stuff to be done and sold there that it is worthwhile for companies to locate jobs there. Nationalist policies often work for rapidly growing countries because it keeps money in the country. However, once that nation is mature, those companies and the jobs they brought will leave just as quickly as they came. This is why nationalism does not work in a world where it is easy to move resources around, or in a matured nation that is in a state of continuation rather than development.
This is also why nationalist policies will not solve our outsourcing "problem." There really is no solution because we cannot control what is going on in other nations. The best we can do is do what we've always done - persevere. I've been fortunate enough to keep my job even though I can definitely see my job going to India in the next 24-36 months. I will have to get another one, which is why I am training for it now and not later.
This really is a sink or swim situation, and the choice lies with each individual. One cannot be dead-set on a specific job at a minimum rate of compensation. If you are flexible, willing to learn a new profession, and willing to relocate, you will be able to find employment. The jobs are out there. The unemployment rate has been falling steadily since the post-9/11 peak, and is lower now than it was for the first 4 years of Clinton's presidency. Historically, the unemployment rate has fallen in between 5 and 7%, which occasional excursions outside that range both above and below. Right now it is 5.4%.
What we're seeing is a shift away from technology jobs because that period of growth is over. The explosion of the Internet is what gave us the first period of prosperity, and now we're in a period of continuation. Time to find something else to do.
I would like to know just what google investors are thinking. It must be wild speculation, because I don't believe any rational investor will pay 364 times earnings for a share of stock, in any company - least of all one that has only been on the exchange for a VERY short period of time...
Someone please convince me to spend $175 on a share of stock that is going to earn 19 cents...
"(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.""
Uhh, it's called PARANOIA, folks - in this case hackers feel as if the government is out to get them - BECAUSE THEY ARE... Hackers that steal IP and break into peoples' systems have no respect for the rule of law, and they know they are criminals. They try to justify their crimes by espousing these ridiculous "IP wants to be free" arguments or other similar senseless drivel.
Of course, the government wouldn't be after them if they didn't break the law, but they continue to refuse to play by the rules.
Here's a clue: Change your title to "Systems Security Specialist" or something similar and GET A JOB. I'm tired of hearing hackers ranting and raving about all of the injustices that are directed toward them. They are the ones who are responsible for their situation....
Slashdot Mirror
"Anyone who makes, uses, or sells anything containing patented technology who is not licensed by the patent owner is liable for damages as a result of infringement of the patent. Full stop. While typically the end-user is not targeted, there is no legal impediment to doing so."
This is almost true. It should read
Anyone who KNOWINGLY makes...
It is not the responsibility of the end customer to determine whether the products they buy are infringing. If I go to Micro Center and buy the latest accounting software, and I didn't know that the makers ripped off Quicken code, I am not liable for patent infringement. Period.
Well, this is a little different than the Ford/Firestone case. In the latter, the customers were perfectly free to drive within the speed limit, keep their tires inflated to proper spec, and to not kill themselves. This issue was between the Customer and the manufacturer.
The microsoft issue is between the Customer's Vendor, and the customer's vendor's competitor. The customer really should have nothing to do with IP claims over software they buy to use. SCO has no business suing Linux end users over IP claims. SCO's beef is with the Linux authors, but customers are easier to go after because they have money.
It's all a bunch of legal horse shit if you ask me. There's no way a customer should ever be held responsible for the content of stuff they buy from their vendors because they have little or no control over what goes into that stuff.
Of course, they are saying the following:
1) We have never stolen anyone else's code
2) Even if we did, we believe it cannot be proven
3) If someone does claim to prove it, we will destroy them in court
1 + 2 + 3 = We own all software anyway, so you don't have to worry...
PREDICTION: Unless Bush has problems passing a law allowing Corporate America to loot social security (instead of the neo-cons looting it), the "Alert Level" thing is going to quietly fade away.
Wow, troll bait, but I have to bite. If you look at the numbers, you'll see that Social Security has seen a bigger surplus in the first 4 years under Bush than it saw under all 8 years of Clinton.
Click here to see the numbers for yourself.
You'll also see that we only saw one year of REAL surplus under Clinton - 2000. There was an 86.6 billion surplus in the budget. 1.9B the year before, but that's not anything to have a party over.
One other interesting thing you'll see is that the national debt, in terms of GDP, was higher under Clinton than under any other President in the presented data. Under Bush, the national debt has fallen from 49.5% GDP at Clinton's highest point to 36.1% in 2003.
Finally, if you look at total government spending in terms of GDP, we're spending on average less now than we did under Clinton.
46,000,000 (FORTY-SIX MILLION)... to go...
bunch of lower case letters to increase the ratio of caps to uncaps to please the slashdot filter...
Hah, as I read your post I started thinking "this guy wants a MicroCenter..." then I got to the end and laughed my ass off..
I live 2.5 miles from a MicroCenter and I am very thankful for that.. they have EVERYTHING.. they are expensive as all hell on some things (RAM, CPU, etc..) but occasionally have good deals. But, if you're just looking for that odd widget, chances are they have it..
Aside from the two people who admitted to me that they cast multiple votes in the election, I don't know what more proof you want. Voting cheaters are like cockroaches, if you see one, there are a thousand more.
The news media ran multiple stories on Ed Rendell's scheme to disenfranchise overseas (and mostly republican) PA voters. In addition to two overseas voters filing suit, The Republicans filed suit immediately and a federal judge ultimately ruled that the deadline to receive overseas absentee ballots must be extended by two weeks.
The only outcome of this that I don't like is that Ed Rendell is still a free man when he should be in a federal prison.
Sure - how about all of the people who flooded Pennsylvania and voted illegally? I personally know two college students who are not legal residents of PA who not only cast absentee ballots in NY, but also managed to register in PA and cast ballots here. Ed Rendell is certainly not very interested in maintaining fair voting in PA (which is why he took it upon himself to prevent the state from sending out absentee ballots to oversees PA residents and military personnel).
There were also a bunch of moveon.org folks at my polling place trying to get people not to vote by making false claims about what ID was required, threatening that people who didn't have the right ID would be arrested, and so on...
It's funny how this stuff doesn't get any media coverage...
Ok folks, this is just asinine. Here we have CBS making a judgement call about the quality of "journalism" somewhere else... CBS certainly has balls, I'll give them that, considering they have no right to say anything about anyone else's journalistic integrity (seeing as how they don't have any).
I just started and I'm getting an abyssmal 40KB/s down (80KB/s up)...
:)
speed: 46.2 KB/s down - 85.3 KB/s
totals: 7.6 MB down - 15.3 MB up
Seems kinda unfair to me
... with an HDTV output... it would be oh-so-nice to throw 1080 resolution to my 42" HDTV..
I haven't seen any thus far... has anyone else?
I've got an even better method for you. How about you stop stealing other people's work? Wow, that would work great, wouldn't it?
OKay... they're a couple of criminal thugs that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They certainly took it upon themselves to make the wrong choices in life that led to them being criminals. These criminals are solely to blame for their crime.
You cannot cite the 9/11 report as rebuttal to the evidence we had as justification for going into Iraq because the 9/11 report happened after the fact. It's temporal causality at work.
You're also missing one subtle point. There are many many people, and I am one of them, that think that 20 years of noncompliance with World demands, gassing his own people, torturing his dissidents, invading other countries, firing missiles into Israel, firing missiles at our military jets, firing missiles at his own people, posessing banned weapons (the Al Samoud-II missiles), was plenty enough reason to go in, whether or not WMDs were suspected.
When Bush was talking about using WMDs as justification for removing Saddam, the thought that ran through my mind was, "Why the hell are WMDs even relevant? There's plenty cause for going in without WMDs."
This man has caused instability in the middle east and the world economy for far too long. As far as I am concerned (and about, oh, 60 million other people), there was plenty of justification.
"And No, don't bother saying it. Yes, I know what you're about to say, it's what ALL Bush supporters say at this point. You dissmiss that world oppinion information. France. Germany. Oil-for-Food curruption. I'm right, aren't I?"
Absolutely right. The UN, France, Germany, Russia, and all of the other criminal nations that were taking part in the oppresion and murder of 30 million Iraqi citizens for profit need to be held accountable.
Let the mod points fly on this one..
People like you REALLY piss me off. You think that just because people don't agree with you, that they're somehow "brainwashed" or "stupid." You don't stop for a second to consider that you are the one who may be wrong, or that your needs and desires may be different than those of other people.
Personally, I think Europe can go fuck themselves. I have no desire for the U.S. to stoop to their level and become a bunch of lazy appeasists. Jimmy "don't hurt me please" Carter was the biggest appeasist that ever held office, which is why the whole world (like Iran? remember that?) pushed us around while he was in office. Reagan was about as popular througout the "other" hemisphere as Bush is now, because he didn't take shit from anybody, least of all Europe and Asia.
I'm not at all sorry to say that the majority of Americans are prouder than that, and believe that special privelege becomes the strongest and wealthiest nation on the planet. I happen to agree. The U.S. drives the rest of the world, and if not for our unbridled success as a thriving, wealthy society, the rest of the world would be far worse off than they are now.
If anything, we have a responsibility to the rest of the world as their caretaker to remain the driven, motivated society that we are. Just imagine if we got as lazy as the Europeans and decided we'd only work 6 hours 5 days per week, and only 8 months out of the year, and decided to just sit around and smoke pot all the time. The world economy would go down the toilet faster than Kerry's campaign. If the rest of the world were half as motivated as we are, there's not a single person on this planet that wouldn't eventually come to live comfortably.
We had a major traumatic experience on 9/11. It was a wakeup call, and our populace did something about it yesterday. We re-elected the man that has taken care of the problem. Instead of flying jumbo jets into our buildings, the terrorists are on the run. So what if we haven't caught Bin Laden yet? When we do kill that SOB, someone else will simply take his place, and we'll get that SOB, too. The point is that we're not sitting around waiting to be attacked, then begging the UN's permission to defend ourselves. We have no obligation to do so, and any candidate that wants to will never get my vote.
The thing you liberals just don't understand is that there is no negotiating with terrorists. They do not care! You cannot negotiate with someone who wants to chop your head off. They hate you liberals as much as they hate everyone else. You think they will be your friends if you just appease them and kneel to their demands. That is complete and utter bullshit and until you people start to admit that to yourselves, you will continue to live in your respective mental caves.
The thing about the liberal elite is that you think you are better than everyone else - that you are somehow gifted with some divine enlightenment that makes you more adept at interpreting the world. I have news for you. That's not enlightenment. That's unbridled arrogance, and complete ignorance of reality.
The reality of the situation is that there is a job to do, and Bush is doing it, and Kerry was going to quit doing it in order to appease those who were criminally on the take, which include France, Germany, and Russia, among others. You don't get up in front of 280 million people and admit that you're going to crawl your country into bed with known criminals and terrorists and not expect an uprising.
You are the one who is brainwashed by your own self-righteousness. You are not divine. You are not enlightened. You are simply arrogant. You think that 56 million people are just stupid ignoramuses, when the only stupid ignoramus lives in your mirror.
You are free to leave any time you wish. If other countries are so goddamn attractive to you, why are you still living here? Hmmm? Really, I'm seriously asking you to for an answer to this. If you hate it here so much, why stay? You can easily pick up and move to another country that is oh-so-much better than this one..
I went to the polls in PA this morning at 6. There were already people standing on line to vote, and more were showing up early in droves. The democrats were there in full force, lying to people about having to prove their eligibility in order to vote. One woman, wearing a John Kerry button, who stated that she worked for the "Democrat Committee," who did not have the proper identification as such and did not give her name, was telling me and other people in line that we would need our ID if we wanted to vote. She stated that she was there to make sure people knew about the law, or something to that effect.
This is a blatant mistruth, as identification is required only if you have never voted in that precint before (this applies to PA only), and only if the person running the election asks for it.
If you plan to vote today at Precint 7, Ward 2, in Delaware county in Pennsylvania, beware of this woman. She has shoulder-length straight dark hair, very liberal-looking glasses (don't know how else to describe them), and was wearing a greenish overcoat this morning.
There were probably half a dozen people from Moveon.org and the Kerry campaign there intimidating people or trying to intimidate people into not voting, or into casting a vote for John Kerry.
The important thing is to vote for who you want to vote for and not to let yourself be harassed or intimidated into changing your vote or abstaining. I don't care if you're a democrat or a republican, it is despicable in the extreme to resort to these tactics. They amount to an attempt to steal the election.
You might want to tell them that the winner will need more than 270 votes to win, not 170...
That's nearly one Internet bar for every 500 people in China! That would be the equivalent of 560000 Starbucks joints in the US. There are less than 30,000 starbucks shops in the WORLD, let alone more than half a million in the US.
"So out of curiosity, what exactly are you training for? Courtroom law (an Indian with a law book and degree could answer any question an American lawyer could for any situation where they didn't need to appear in court)? Accounting (Indians can use calculators just as well as you)? Labor?"
JD/MBA
You may have a good point about the tax loophole, but we should make sure that the deductibility of taxes paid to foreign governments is not a requirement of the World Trade Organization. We just had to re-write our entire corporate law structure because of the EU/WTO. It wouldn't surprise me if there were rules that we are required to have this "loophole."
Ok, first of all, it is not this phantom tax loophole that makes offshoring attractive - and it's not as if this tax "loophole" even exists. It is not a loophole at all. What makes it advantageous for taxes is that the US cannot collect income tax from people who don't live and work in the US. Duh! That's not a loophole, it's just the law. We will never be able to close this loophole because we cannot collect income tax from foreign citizens working in a foreign country.
Moving on. The factor that really makes offshoring attractive is that, for a call center as an example, the labor and utility costs are so much less. An American might demand $12/hr to work at a call center, which is expensive for someone who just reads a script over the phone all day. On top of that, the company has to pay for real-estate (which is ridiculous in this country right now), insurance (which is also ridiculous thanks to frivolous lawsuits), payroll taxes (FICA, Medicare) which are high because of government fat, high utilities due to high cost of energy in general, and a host of other factors that makes low-income jobs difficult to maintain in the US.
What makes these things cheaper in a place like India? Well, first of all, a dollar in America goes a long way in India because of the exchange rate and the differentiated standard of living. Something that costs $10 to buy here costs $1 in India, including labor. Second, India itself has a hugely growing economy and infrastructure, and for American businesses to participate in building that growing nation, they have to have a presence there anyway. India has a very nationalist government and they won't allow foreign companies to simply walk in and take money out of the country. India needs call centers for India, too, and those call centers by Indian law must be located in India. Also, Indian law also requires things that are sold in India to have some % of Indian-manufactured content. So, for infrastructure companies to sell their goods, they have to have a presence there as well.
India's nationalist policies are working well for them because they are a growing nation. There is so much stuff to be done and sold there that it is worthwhile for companies to locate jobs there. Nationalist policies often work for rapidly growing countries because it keeps money in the country. However, once that nation is mature, those companies and the jobs they brought will leave just as quickly as they came. This is why nationalism does not work in a world where it is easy to move resources around, or in a matured nation that is in a state of continuation rather than development.
This is also why nationalist policies will not solve our outsourcing "problem." There really is no solution because we cannot control what is going on in other nations. The best we can do is do what we've always done - persevere. I've been fortunate enough to keep my job even though I can definitely see my job going to India in the next 24-36 months. I will have to get another one, which is why I am training for it now and not later.
This really is a sink or swim situation, and the choice lies with each individual. One cannot be dead-set on a specific job at a minimum rate of compensation. If you are flexible, willing to learn a new profession, and willing to relocate, you will be able to find employment. The jobs are out there. The unemployment rate has been falling steadily since the post-9/11 peak, and is lower now than it was for the first 4 years of Clinton's presidency. Historically, the unemployment rate has fallen in between 5 and 7%, which occasional excursions outside that range both above and below. Right now it is 5.4%.
What we're seeing is a shift away from technology jobs because that period of growth is over. The explosion of the Internet is what gave us the first period of prosperity, and now we're in a period of continuation. Time to find something else to do.
Verizon is obviously not running their qualification server on this service... it's thoroughly slashdotted...
The Integral of e to the x is equal to F times mu times N.
But seriously...
One of my favorites is equation 2.36 in my master's thesis (from waaaay back)..
I would like to know just what google investors are thinking. It must be wild speculation, because I don't believe any rational investor will pay 364 times earnings for a share of stock, in any company - least of all one that has only been on the exchange for a VERY short period of time...
Someone please convince me to spend $175 on a share of stock that is going to earn 19 cents...
"(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.""
...
Uhh, it's called PARANOIA, folks - in this case hackers feel as if the government is out to get them - BECAUSE THEY ARE... Hackers that steal IP and break into peoples' systems have no respect for the rule of law, and they know they are criminals. They try to justify their crimes by espousing these ridiculous "IP wants to be free" arguments or other similar senseless drivel.
Of course, the government wouldn't be after them if they didn't break the law, but they continue to refuse to play by the rules.
Here's a clue: Change your title to "Systems Security Specialist" or something similar and GET A JOB. I'm tired of hearing hackers ranting and raving about all of the injustices that are directed toward them. They are the ones who are responsible for their situation.