At my office, I have MCK units in the company's two buildings talking ADPCM32 over bridged D-Link 2000APs (yes, I'm a cheap bastard, but I was saving company money!) through a FreeSWAN/PIX VPN. Nine lines total, plus the usual data traffic. Works beautifully (as long as the APs don't freeze).
I used USPS Express Mail to send a few packages to my relatives in Kharkov, Ukraine. Every single one of them arrived within five days, it cost me about a quarter of what UPS/DHL/FedEx would ask, the declared value was higher than $100 (can't remember the exact numbers, sorry), and my mother just had to go to the main postal office of the city to get those packages (not a single incident with customs). On the other hand, when I was living there, I bought a few books at bn.com, and getting it through the local customs was a major pain (bn.com was using either DHL or FedEx).
If anyone cared to look at the contact page, they could notice the addresses of the company labs: Israel, Russia and (unlisted, but mentioned) Ukraine. Seems like some clever people tapped into a very rich source of brains: Russian scientific community (many Israelis are former Russians:). I hope they'll have more money than the Elbrus team, because we could live without faster processors (RC5-64 can wait:), but you can never have enough storage.
Yes, I'm underpaid (about 20%-25%), but it's not because I'm on a visa that restricts my freedom. The problem is that my 7 years of overseas experience mean nothing here. I can switch my visaholder any time I want (and no, I'm not going to, because they can make EBGC through RIR for me - another couple of acronyms for you to wonder about), but any time I'm interviewed, I get this question "How many years of US experience do you have?", I answer "8 months" and that's the end of the hope for a higher salary. As for the quality of H1B workers in general, beware of Indian sweatshops. I came here through one of the better ones, even though I'm not from India, and I saw the people they bring. I wouldn't trust them with writing a Pacman game. If you ever think of hiring an H1B worker, try people from the countries where English is not so widespread, because in this case good English (which is easily tested) typically means good education, good brains, motivation etc.
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At my office, I have MCK units in the company's two buildings talking ADPCM32 over bridged D-Link 2000APs (yes, I'm a cheap bastard, but I was saving company money!) through a FreeSWAN/PIX VPN. Nine lines total, plus the usual data traffic. Works beautifully (as long as the APs don't freeze).
I used USPS Express Mail to send a few packages to my relatives in Kharkov, Ukraine. Every single one of them arrived within five days, it cost me about a quarter of what UPS/DHL/FedEx would ask, the declared value was higher than $100 (can't remember the exact numbers, sorry), and my mother just had to go to the main postal office of the city to get those packages (not a single incident with customs). On the other hand, when I was living there, I bought a few books at bn.com, and getting it through the local customs was a major pain (bn.com was using either DHL or FedEx).
If anyone cared to look at the contact page, they could notice the addresses of the company labs: Israel, Russia and (unlisted, but mentioned) Ukraine. Seems like some clever people tapped into a very rich source of brains: Russian scientific community (many Israelis are former Russians :). I hope they'll have more money than the Elbrus team, because we could live without faster processors (RC5-64 can wait :), but you can never have enough storage.
Yes, I'm underpaid (about 20%-25%), but it's not because I'm on a visa that restricts my freedom. The problem is that my 7 years of overseas experience mean nothing here. I can switch my visaholder any time I want (and no, I'm not going to, because they can make EBGC through RIR for me - another couple of acronyms for you to wonder about), but any time I'm interviewed, I get this question "How many years of US experience do you have?", I answer "8 months" and that's the end of the hope for a higher salary. As for the quality of H1B workers in general, beware of Indian sweatshops. I came here through one of the better ones, even though I'm not from India, and I saw the people they bring. I wouldn't trust them with writing a Pacman game. If you ever think of hiring an H1B worker, try people from the countries where English is not so widespread, because in this case good English (which is easily tested) typically means good education, good brains, motivation etc.