"What if it applied to *all* careers, not just IT? If my doctors, auto-mechanics, and lawyers were all imported, then maybe my cost of living wouldn't be so high. The burden of free trade goes on IT workers but the benefits go to careers not targeted by visa workers."
It does apply to nearly all careers that aren't unskilled labor. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, actuaries, and even fashion models can and have been hired with H1B visas. It just happens that companies are more willing to use H1B for programmers than for other types of jobs.
The H-1B is a nonimmigrant classification used by an alien who will be employed temporarily in a specialty occupation or as a fashion model of distinguished merit and ability.
What is a specialty occupation?
A specialty occupation requires theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge along with at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent. For example, architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, medicine and health, education, business specialties, accounting, law, theology, and the arts are specialty occupations.
"MEGABIGCO won't occur in a free market if there are no barriers to entering that market."
Barriers to entry or not, companies can make more money if they collude or merge rather than compete. In a fully free market, you probably wouldn't have one company growing into MEGABIGCO; the several existing smaller companies would merge into MEGABIGCO, and new entrants would also merge into MEGABIGCO so they can charge the monopoly prices.
The dogs have been specially trained by Scotland Yard to be able to not only sniff for the existence of DVDs in a package, but to sniff the bits and bytes embedded on the DVD. The 0s have a different smell from the 1s, so the dogs have been trained to interpret the bit patterns to know whether the DVD is pirated or legitimate.
Still, the dogs have trouble in determining the legitimacy of 10% of the DVDs. For those where the dogs have doubt, the Customs agents have been instructed by the MPAA to classify them as pirated copies. It will then be up to the sender to show up in court to prove it was not pirated.
All the more reason to keep work hours down to a more sensible level like 45 or less per week. People constantly working 80-100 hours aren't going to be great at avoiding mistakes.
They must have discussed the "harmonizing" of Internet regulations, to have the US government monitor Internet communications as actively as China does.
Another useless rule of thumb is the one that locks you out after three unsuccessful login attempts. It was based on the theory that the authentic user would be able to remember the password within three attempts.
In reality, with passwords being case sensitive and people having to remember dozens of passwords for different systems at work and personal web sites, three attempts will end up locking out numerous legitimate users.
Caps lock is on... one failed attempt. You turn off caps lock and enter the password for a different system... another bad attempt. You think your bad attempt was due to a typo, so you re-enter the same password... you're locked out.
With so many people getting locked out, either they become lax with the password-reset procedures, allowing an intruder to take advantage of that. Or they stay strict, which results in numerous users losing hours of productive time.
What I would do is try to sell my books to another student, so they'd get it cheaper than buying it used from the bookstore, and I'd get more for it than selling it back to the bookstore.
I aced one math class using a twenty-year-old textbook. Luckily the prof didn't require graded assignments from the book.
Except for certain computer-based classes like Numerical Analysis, undergrad-level math hasn't changed in the past 100 years, so there really is no need to have more than one freakin' edition of an undergraduate textbook (other than the profits of the publishers and authors).
"That almost every algorithm is mostly R&D rings false to me, since most games sure don't feel like there's much new in them."
But that's the point. They AREN'T doing the R&D and experimentation in order to make innovative and creative games. They just keep recoding the same junk.
The trouble is that importing workers isn't so easy because Japan is so restrictive about immigration. They'll let you work for 1-3 years, anything longer than that is extremely difficult to get approval for. And becoming a citizen is just about impossible. Even when you're born in Japan, you aren't automatically a citizen unless your parents are also. So workers will prefer to go elsewhere where they have a realistic chance of being able to settle down with full rights.
"Business method patents did not exist then, but to me that if it were invented today would be prime for a valid business method patent."
Innovative business methods are their own reward; a truly innovative business method will cut costs, increase sales, reduce time to market, or increase profits by some other means. So the incentive of a patent is not necessary for business methods.
"You do realize that before a patent is awarded (and a short time thereafter), there is no property for other people to lament the restrictions applied to?"
The property -- namely the hands, minds, tools, and materials owned by other people -- exists before the patents come along telling them what they cannot do with it. A patent is telling me what I CANNOT do with my own hands and hammer and metal and wood and chemicals.
"So you believe an inventor should invest their time/money/talent into something and just sit and hope they can make money off of it before some well-monied schmoe takes it and pumps the crap out of it, forcing our poorer inventor(s) to get next to nothing for their efforts?"
So what? As it is, there is no guarantee that a patent of anything will make money for the inventor. And there should be no such guarantee. The market may not want the product, or the inventor may lack the materials to mass produce it, etc. When the standards for getting a patent are low, inventors have bigger problems worrying about accidentally infringing other people's patents.
The purpose of a patent is to encourage inventions, not to guarantee profits for those who happen to be the first to invent something that would be independently created anyway. A patent is only useful if it brings something into existence that otherwise would not have existed (or would have had a significantly delayed existence) without the patent.
"The PO has horrible problems, not the least of which is pug-ignorance. That in no way negates the desirablilty of allowing an inventor to make a living inventing."
Inventors should not be able to "make a living inventing" at the expense of the restrictions imposed on the rest of society's property. That is plain robbery. It only isn't robbery if what they invented has not been created and would not have been created anyway by somebody else.
I totally agree. In fact, I independently came up with the same idea, like what happens with many patents! I wrote my post above on the same thing (having a patent quota) before reading yours.
"Remember, this has to be a relatively objective, legally intuitive definition. Is such a thing even possible for patents, where the subject matter is, by definition, unknown?"
It is impossible to have such a definition. But such objectiveness is not needed if they get away from the idea that inventors are entitled to patents. Patents need to be seen as a privilege and not a right, because a patent restricts the rights of millions of other people to do what they want with their own property.
I think there should be a patent quota, which is about 20% or less of the current number of patents granted per year (even 20% is probably too high -- there aren't that many useful patents granted). That total would be dividied into categories with sub-quotas within each category. Every year, panels of examiners would rate each application on a combination of factors (non-obviousness, usefulness, the likelihood of prior art (if its actual existence cannot be determined), the likelihood that the thing would be built anyway without a patent, the likelihood that it would actually be built if given a patent, etc.). Applicants can get extra points by stating that they want a shorter patent validity term or having a working model.
Those that don't meet a certain threshold of points get discarded; of those that remain, the best X number of them get patents up to the amount allowed by the quota. The next best 10% or so would get forwarded for consideration the following year, the rest are rejected outright.
Would this result in good patents being rejected? Sure. No patent system can be perfect. But it is better to err by NOT granting a few good ones than by granting several bogus patents. The bogus patents would find it very difficult to rise above the other applicants.
"Since the success of THEIR company depends on the quality of their services, how can that possibly make any sense?"
Outsourcing customer service has conflicting incentives which often make it to the advantage of the vendor to provide sub-par service.
For example, some vendors providing the customer service are paid per call. So the service reps don't properly solve your problem on the first call, forcing you to call again. Bad service, but they get paid more. Maybe they'll lose some clients in the long run because of the bad service, but the extra money they make from the extra calls may more than compensate for that.
Or the contract may be for a fixed-price. So the vendor puts the cheapest people or fewer people on the phones to increase their own profit margin.
When they compete on price, they have to find creative ways to squeeze some profits from the situation. Either that or they raise prices and then their client doesn't save much anyway.
"Why would you need to sneak in bombs through a port? People can make bombs from materials available locally."
Because somebody buying huge quantities of materials to make tons of bombs is more likely to be caught than somebody who buys and builds them outside the country and then ships them in by a port operated by his cronies.
"local security has and always will protect the ports"
Protecting the ports themselves is not the issue. The issue is about what and who may be allowed into the country via the foreign-controlled ports. Sure, individual terrorists can sneak in anyway at the Mexican border, but at the border you can't just sneak in a huge boatload of bombs (pun intended).
"Differences in mean IQ among various races are a fact."
It's only a "fact" within the USA where blacks are encumbered by racism and poverty. Blacks in economically well-off Caribbean countries such as Barbados, Bahamas, and Cayman do just as well or better than white Americans.
Patent applications are presumed as non-obvious until the examiner can show otherwise. And showing otherwise depends on having prior art. With a standard like that, the obviousness standard is useless.
"I believe the burden of proof is on you for that. I cannot see our economy functioning without copyright, but that just might be that I can't see too far beyond my next pay stub."
The poster mentioned a change to the law, not necessarily the elimination of copyright. Such a change could involve reducing the copyright term from umpteen decades back to something more sane like the 14 years that was defined in the original copyright laws centuries ago.
MySQL isn't a real database. Certainly not before version 5.0, at least.
However, upgrading to a real database didn't have to involve an expensive commercial brand. They could have moved to another free database like PostgreSQL.
Slashdot Mirror
"What if it applied to *all* careers, not just IT? If my doctors, auto-mechanics, and lawyers were all imported, then maybe my cost of living wouldn't be so high. The burden of free trade goes on IT workers but the benefits go to careers not targeted by visa workers."
It does apply to nearly all careers that aren't unskilled labor. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, actuaries, and even fashion models can and have been hired with H1B visas. It just happens that companies are more willing to use H1B for programmers than for other types of jobs.
See http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/howdoi/h1b.htm
What is an H-1B?
The H-1B is a nonimmigrant classification used by an alien who will be employed temporarily in a specialty occupation or as a fashion model of distinguished merit and ability.
What is a specialty occupation?
A specialty occupation requires theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge along with at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent. For example, architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, medicine and health, education, business specialties, accounting, law, theology, and the arts are specialty occupations.
It's Finland, not America. There they can't sue you for harm to themselves that comes about of their own actions.
"MEGABIGCO won't occur in a free market if there are no barriers to entering that market."
Barriers to entry or not, companies can make more money if they collude or merge rather than compete. In a fully free market, you probably wouldn't have one company growing into MEGABIGCO; the several existing smaller companies would merge into MEGABIGCO, and new entrants would also merge into MEGABIGCO so they can charge the monopoly prices.
Not a checking account.
The dogs have been specially trained by Scotland Yard to be able to not only sniff for the existence of DVDs in a package, but to sniff the bits and bytes embedded on the DVD. The 0s have a different smell from the 1s, so the dogs have been trained to interpret the bit patterns to know whether the DVD is pirated or legitimate.
Still, the dogs have trouble in determining the legitimacy of 10% of the DVDs. For those where the dogs have doubt, the Customs agents have been instructed by the MPAA to classify them as pirated copies. It will then be up to the sender to show up in court to prove it was not pirated.
All the more reason to keep work hours down to a more sensible level like 45 or less per week. People constantly working 80-100 hours aren't going to be great at avoiding mistakes.
They must have discussed the "harmonizing" of Internet regulations, to have the US government monitor Internet communications as actively as China does.
Another useless rule of thumb is the one that locks you out after three unsuccessful login attempts. It was based on the theory that the authentic user would be able to remember the password within three attempts.
In reality, with passwords being case sensitive and people having to remember dozens of passwords for different systems at work and personal web sites, three attempts will end up locking out numerous legitimate users.
Caps lock is on... one failed attempt. You turn off caps lock and enter the password for a different system... another bad attempt. You think your bad attempt was due to a typo, so you re-enter the same password... you're locked out.
With so many people getting locked out, either they become lax with the password-reset procedures, allowing an intruder to take advantage of that. Or they stay strict, which results in numerous users losing hours of productive time.
Give 10 or 20 attempts, dammit.
Selling it back to the bookstore is a ripoff.
What I would do is try to sell my books to another student, so they'd get it cheaper than buying it used from the bookstore, and I'd get more for it than selling it back to the bookstore.
I aced one math class using a twenty-year-old textbook. Luckily the prof didn't require graded assignments from the book.
Except for certain computer-based classes like Numerical Analysis, undergrad-level math hasn't changed in the past 100 years, so there really is no need to have more than one freakin' edition of an undergraduate textbook (other than the profits of the publishers and authors).
"That almost every algorithm is mostly R&D rings false to me, since most games sure don't feel like there's much new in them."
But that's the point. They AREN'T doing the R&D and experimentation in order to make innovative and creative games. They just keep recoding the same junk.
... will help red rings, but has never been tested on blue ones.
The trouble is that importing workers isn't so easy because Japan is so restrictive about immigration. They'll let you work for 1-3 years, anything longer than that is extremely difficult to get approval for. And becoming a citizen is just about impossible. Even when you're born in Japan, you aren't automatically a citizen unless your parents are also. So workers will prefer to go elsewhere where they have a realistic chance of being able to settle down with full rights.
"Business method patents did not exist then, but to me that if it were invented today would be prime for a valid business method patent."
Innovative business methods are their own reward; a truly innovative business method will cut costs, increase sales, reduce time to market, or increase profits by some other means. So the incentive of a patent is not necessary for business methods.
"You do realize that before a patent is awarded (and a short time thereafter), there is no property for other people to lament the restrictions applied to?"
The property -- namely the hands, minds, tools, and materials owned by other people -- exists before the patents come along telling them what they cannot do with it. A patent is telling me what I CANNOT do with my own hands and hammer and metal and wood and chemicals.
"So you believe an inventor should invest their time/money/talent into something and just sit and hope they can make money off of it before some well-monied schmoe takes it and pumps the crap out of it, forcing our poorer inventor(s) to get next to nothing for their efforts?"
So what? As it is, there is no guarantee that a patent of anything will make money for the inventor. And there should be no such guarantee. The market may not want the product, or the inventor may lack the materials to mass produce it, etc. When the standards for getting a patent are low, inventors have bigger problems worrying about accidentally infringing other people's patents.
The purpose of a patent is to encourage inventions, not to guarantee profits for those who happen to be the first to invent something that would be independently created anyway. A patent is only useful if it brings something into existence that otherwise would not have existed (or would have had a significantly delayed existence) without the patent.
"The PO has horrible problems, not the least of which is pug-ignorance. That in no way negates the desirablilty of allowing an inventor to make a living inventing."
Inventors should not be able to "make a living inventing" at the expense of the restrictions imposed on the rest of society's property. That is plain robbery. It only isn't robbery if what they invented has not been created and would not have been created anyway by somebody else.
I totally agree. In fact, I independently came up with the same idea, like what happens with many patents! I wrote my post above on the same thing (having a patent quota) before reading yours.
"Remember, this has to be a relatively objective, legally intuitive definition. Is such a thing even possible for patents, where the subject matter is, by definition, unknown?"
It is impossible to have such a definition. But such objectiveness is not needed if they get away from the idea that inventors are entitled to patents. Patents need to be seen as a privilege and not a right, because a patent restricts the rights of millions of other people to do what they want with their own property.
I think there should be a patent quota, which is about 20% or less of the current number of patents granted per year (even 20% is probably too high -- there aren't that many useful patents granted). That total would be dividied into categories with sub-quotas within each category. Every year, panels of examiners would rate each application on a combination of factors (non-obviousness, usefulness, the likelihood of prior art (if its actual existence cannot be determined), the likelihood that the thing would be built anyway without a patent, the likelihood that it would actually be built if given a patent, etc.). Applicants can get extra points by stating that they want a shorter patent validity term or having a working model.
Those that don't meet a certain threshold of points get discarded; of those that remain, the best X number of them get patents up to the amount allowed by the quota. The next best 10% or so would get forwarded for consideration the following year, the rest are rejected outright.
Would this result in good patents being rejected? Sure. No patent system can be perfect. But it is better to err by NOT granting a few good ones than by granting several bogus patents. The bogus patents would find it very difficult to rise above the other applicants.
"Since the success of THEIR company depends on the quality of their services, how can that possibly make any sense?"
Outsourcing customer service has conflicting incentives which often make it to the advantage of the vendor to provide sub-par service.
For example, some vendors providing the customer service are paid per call. So the service reps don't properly solve your problem on the first call, forcing you to call again. Bad service, but they get paid more. Maybe they'll lose some clients in the long run because of the bad service, but the extra money they make from the extra calls may more than compensate for that.
Or the contract may be for a fixed-price. So the vendor puts the cheapest people or fewer people on the phones to increase their own profit margin.
When they compete on price, they have to find creative ways to squeeze some profits from the situation. Either that or they raise prices and then their client doesn't save much anyway.
"Why would you need to sneak in bombs through a port? People can make bombs from materials available locally."
Because somebody buying huge quantities of materials to make tons of bombs is more likely to be caught than somebody who buys and builds them outside the country and then ships them in by a port operated by his cronies.
"local security has and always will protect the ports"
Protecting the ports themselves is not the issue. The issue is about what and who may be allowed into the country via the foreign-controlled ports. Sure, individual terrorists can sneak in anyway at the Mexican border, but at the border you can't just sneak in a huge boatload of bombs (pun intended).
If you're an independent consultant you don't have a boss, you have clients.
"Differences in mean IQ among various races are a fact."
It's only a "fact" within the USA where blacks are encumbered by racism and poverty. Blacks in economically well-off Caribbean countries such as Barbados, Bahamas, and Cayman do just as well or better than white Americans.
Patent applications are presumed as non-obvious until the examiner can show otherwise. And showing otherwise depends on having prior art. With a standard like that, the obviousness standard is useless.
I thought their motto was "Do no evil"?
"I believe the burden of proof is on you for that. I cannot see our economy functioning without copyright, but that just might be that I can't see too far beyond my next pay stub."
The poster mentioned a change to the law, not necessarily the elimination of copyright. Such a change could involve reducing the copyright term from umpteen decades back to something more sane like the 14 years that was defined in the original copyright laws centuries ago.
MySQL isn't a real database. Certainly not before version 5.0, at least.
However, upgrading to a real database didn't have to involve an expensive commercial brand. They could have moved to another free database like PostgreSQL.