As an American, I think Wikileaks screwed my country.
As an American I think that the American government screwed my country by allowing diplomats to act is such a manner and not immediately revealing that information to the citizens they represent.
And really, the fact that it might strain the relationship between the US and a country who's leader is willing to claim that the country bombed itself, is really no strain at all. Plus this puts pressure on the citizens of that country to reform their own government, possibly into a government I would be more interested in maintaining a relationship with.
The PS3 was not a well planned design, it was what they could hack together in the time they had.
You are being far from accurate in your statement here. The PS3 was well planned, but as it turned out the cost of the cell turned out to be prohibitive. The original PS3 planned for multiple cell processors, as many as four in one design. Multiple Cell Processors would have handled the necessary vector processing to handle what is traditionally off loaded to a GPU (a dedicated vector processor). This is not all that different than the PS2 architecture which also did not have a dedicated traditional GPU (The GS did not perform geometric transformations only textures and shading). But in the end the cost of the Cell processors made multiple cost prohibitive, They even had to cut down on the number of active SPUs to increase yield.
So this was not a matter of poor design, but one of misunderstood costs (The PS2 chip, which was also a very original design, was far cheaper to produce.)
There may not be a way around it, IBM canceled further Cell production because it just doesn't stack up well.
This is also disingenuous. Yes IBM has cancelled continuing the cell architecture, but not because it "doesn't stack up well" but instead because better techniques for implementing single chip multi-processors have been developed. All major CPU manufacturers are moving to similar design, using a general purpose processing unit in conjunction with dedicated vector processors. The basic architecture laid out by the Cell is the future of CPUs, just not the specific Cell line because improvements have been made, and rather get tied into a legacy architecture and having to work around it's weaknesses (like Intel and AMD have to do with the X86 architecture) they chose to innovate and move to a new and improved architecture.
Once you are actually here and working tell me if you are making more pay than others with your assigned duties and working the same number of hours as you. What you are very likely to find out is that you will be handling duties normally assigned to a pay grade above yours and you will be working longer hours. I hope that is not the case and you happen to be getting a fair deal, but I would not bet on it (though being on an L-1 rather than an H-1B you might be getting a better deal).
There is a study out there that shows H1-B's are paid more.
Find the study, and then find the analysis. What you will find out is that it is made to appear that H1-Bs are paid more. This is due to the concept of prevailing wage. The problem is that these wage reports are based on title not actual job duties. So they hire foreign workers with Masters Degrees into entry level titles but then assign them senior responsibilities. This lets them hire people at a much lower wage than the equivalent domestic worker who is not willing to accept the lesser pay, or title, to do the more advanced work. It can't go as far as to say that it is legally fraud since it follows the letter of the law, but is certainly an ethical fraud.
There are 75K openings on Dice right now. 20K over 2 years is a drop in a ocean.
There are 75k listings on Dice. Most of those are duplicates of the same job listed by 3 or 4 different head hunters. So you are talking more like 25k unique listings. Then you have to count out the listings that are in place specifically to meet the requirements that allow the company to hire foreign works, by creating unrealistic requirements. This ranges from asking for more experience than is possible (10 years experience with something that has only been around for five), or setting unnecessary requirements (Master Degree required for a job that can be accomplished by a high school drop out).
Now I don't know the actual numbers, but if you take the time you will find out that your short analysis is certainly far from accurate, or even useful.
Yeah, I remember Myst. The best selling game nobody played...
The 7th Guest, which came out 6 months earlier, was a far superior game in the narrative puzzle genre, with full motion rendered video (not still pictures) and FAR more creative puzzles.
Obsidian was Better than Myst and 7th Guest, but this is probably only known by the three of us that actually played it.
I currently work 80 hours a week for two weeks straight, then take two full weeks off.
Unless you happen to work in a job where a larger portion of your reported hours is time spent resting (e.g. On Duty Emergency Services personnel), then who ever is paying you is making a huge mistake.
The 40 hour work week did not grow out of any workers rights movement, It came from a study in productivity. This initial study showed that productivity drop over the long run if employees worked greater than 36 hours a week. Since there have been many further studies showing that working higher number hours reduces productivity.
In your case (with the exception listed above) you are working at less than 70% efficiency and possibly as low as 50% efficiency. Meaning your employer (even if you are self employed) is getting no more than 56 hours of actual productive work for every 80 hours you work. If your hours were cut to 40 hours and a second employee was added who also worked 40 hours (assuming the task can be partitioned as such) your employer would get at least and additional 24 hours of productivity per week.
The situation gets far worse if you are a knowledge worker, such as an engineer, as you will actually reach negative productivity if your working long enough hours (You end up making costly mistakes rather than producing anything of value).
I was tasked with bringing all development back in-house because the offshore projects were behind schedule and suspect quality, not to mention the communication issues.
In two years, the leadership of your company will either be new, or forgot about the past issues, and they will outsource your position again. This cycle happens over and over in companies.
I was also hired by my company to clean up after out sourcing (I built my career on doing that). I was the head of a team of all on shore resources. Two years later the all American team had a very high success rate, high enough for the company to start out sourcing work again. Now another year later and the team consist of me, and a completely outsourced indian team. I stay because I realize it won't take long for the cycle to repeat and I will have a completely American team again (plus being the only one that actually gets real work done I get a lot of undocumented perks). And if things don't keep getting better I know there will be another outsourcing disaster to clean up at another job.
Just wanted to add some corrections to the above statement.
The maximum duration of the H-1B visa is six years, unless the alien has applied for citizenship, in which has it is effectively indefinite. This does not mean they need to have any intention of becoming a citizen, only that they have applied for a green card. (which I see is mentioned but some what buried in the above post).
Prevailing Wage is based purely upon title, and not at all upon actual assigned duties. In many cases H-1B workers are hired with entry level titles but assigned senior level tasks. In other cases they are assigned similar but not exact titles (such as being titled and Application Programers title while doing Software Engineering, where the form title is often used by smaller lower paying companies).
More importantly, though the number of H-1B workers appears to be low, it has a fairly large impact since they are used to fill the higher paying positions. This higher pay, which is often taken completely out of the country, has a large impact on the over all economy. The wages of an H-1B, though lower than they would have to pay an american citizen, is orders of magnitude higher than that of most illegal immigrants.
having children leads to a significant degradation in morals
As a parent I can say that this is not universally true. Though I can't say for sure what I would do in the heat of the moment, I have thought a lot about it and do feel that my child is no more important than any other capable child. It all comes down to the risk and the future capability of all involved. I won't risk my child to stop a fire at a retirement home, but I probably would at a day care or school.
In this particular instance I would hope that I would have the sense of mind to do the exact same thing as this driver.
Lets just say that not everyone is so arrogant as to believe that there offspring are more valuable to society than everyone else.
No, they are people who want the poor to become rich, just like they are.
So close yet so far off. Economic conservatives want people to try to become rich because this causes lots of spending that can be funneled to the actual rich. For you to attempt to set up your private business you will have to shift what little capital you might have into the hands of those that control the overwhelming majority of the capital.
The really funny thing though, is that Republicans and not Economic conservatives, but they want to believe they are. Republics, or more accurately the top capital controllers, support and collect more government hand outs than anyone. Even Social Security is simply a way to funnel more funds back into the hands of those controlling capital.
There where a number of bright people around 200 years ago that started writing about this, but sadly their terminology was usurped by power hunger people who made a mockery of their ideas and have caused everyone to dismiss the actual concepts based on name alone.
I bought a PS3 to run linux and play around with cell programming...Sony broke my ps3 by updating the firmware to 3.30
I'm not going to defend Sony, because really I think what they are doing is stupid, but lets be honest here. Sony did not break your PS3. You were not forced to update your firm ware, you chose to. You broke your PS3. Now had you purchased the PS3 to play games and run linux you would have some argument, but even then it was your choice.
I bought my PS3 to play PS1, PS2 and PS3 games. Because my launch unit broke, not by any choice of my own but by poor craftsmanship, and I chose not to pay for a refurbished unit, I now can't play PS2 games. Is that Sony's fault? Not really. The unit lasted way past the warranty period and I chose not to pay to keep the feature. Sure the Other OS is different, but lets be honest, it was still your choice to lose the Other OS option, which is pretty stupid since you bought your PS three "to run linux and play around with cell programming".
Company I work for only gives out cost of living increases, across the board from top to bottom.
In theory, if your company offers good salaries initially and you are already a trained and experienced employee, then this is how things should be. The only reason companies should offer a raise above Cost of Living, would be if they undercut your salary initially and need to catch up, or if you actually supply more productivity than you did previously. Usually after a year or so you are doing your job at, or near, your peak efficiency so a raise is not really warranted. Now a promotion on the other hand is a different story.
I thought I was the only one that had Car Wars memories when I saw the bit about four independent motors. I can't believe we haven't been doing this for years. Now they need to set it up with four wheel independent steering and I'll finally be able to pivot my car.
I don't like the guy, but I would bet that most of the people treated to his 'hospitality', as you put it, either never had the privilege to vote (a.k.a. Illegal Immigrants) or chose not to vote. And in my opinion, choosing not to vote, is just as bad as voting for a bad candidate.
Justice is not about revenge...Justice is saying we don't accept what Mr X has done and therefore he is punished.
Revenge - To inflict punishment in return for (injury or insult).
The aim... is to ensure that others won't try to do it themselves.
Sure, and that aim is brought about through threat of revenge. Our justice system is based on deterrent, not protection. Through fear and doubt we hope that the threat of revenge will prevent criminal activities, but the reality is that there is nothing protecting use from criminal activities, only the after the fact ability to extract revenge on those that injure or insult us.
I stand by my original statement that even in a civilization with a legal system you have freedom to do anything that you are physically capable of doing, you just might have to pay a price if you are caught and convicted. This is no different than without civilization, accept that even people that are not liked, or not powerful, have the same capability for revenge.
Some where in that chain of sales, someone knew that it was stolen. At that moment that person was never able to legally transfer ownership. So even though down the line you have two people that had no knowledge of the theft, neither of them was ever a rightful owner so the sale is invalid.
A steals item. A sells to B, nether A or B are legal owners. B, believing they own the property sells to C. Just because B and C believe that the are making a legal sale does not make that sale binding. If it does, then England and Wales have worse fucked up laws than the the US. That kind of law basically legalizes laundering.
A person not under the domain of any government or any other higher power has no restrictions on their actions at all.
Governments do not restrict your ability to act. You are just as capable of theft, and murder under a government as you are without one. Governments simply create a system of punishment for those that act against the laws, but they do not actually stop you from breaking the law (with the possible accept of conspiracy to commit, but that's a strange grey area I am not knowledgeable enough to talk about).
The only difference, in this regard, between external government and self government is who gets to extract revenge. In an a true government and lawless society it is up to you to extract your own revenge, by what ever means available (including coercing others to do so for you). With a government you have an organized set of rules for extracting revenge. The advantage to having a government in this regard is you know where the revenge ends, rather than everyone going blind.
Proved his point? Debunked the Libertarian Mantra? Supported the Establishment of Government?
I was not aware the right to life was an inherent right, if the government was not here to grant it to you, anyone can come along and stab you all they want.
But to be honest even with government anyone can come along and stab you all they want, you just have the support of a large organization to seek out revenge against that person. It's really no different than if there was no government, accept that there is an end to the cycle of retribution that doesn't end in mutually assured destruction.
Wait, you're saying a world without private property is a plus? Guess you don't mind if I come over and borrow your car for a while.
You are confusing the current situation, which has private property, with a civilization that does not have private property. If there were no private property this wouldn't even be an issue, as you would be able to use any vehicle not currently in use (assuming you are licensed, as otherwise would be dangerous). I mean what is the use of a parked car, like more than half of all cars are at any given time. Sorry, but if you can't see the benefit in shared resources then there is no way I, or anyone else, would be able to convince you in the benefit of a society without private property.
But of course you do understand the benefit of shared resources or else you wouldn't be on the internet, or even have much need for a car, since you need to use shared resources to get much use out of either one.
They will probably be home schooled, and be graced with all the ignorances and prejudices of their parents without any dissenting viewpoints.
I'm not disagreeing with your intention here, but are you implying that being exposed to more ignorance and prejudice necessarily leads to a positive outcome?
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As an American, I think Wikileaks screwed my country.
As an American I think that the American government screwed my country by allowing diplomats to act is such a manner and not immediately revealing that information to the citizens they represent.
And really, the fact that it might strain the relationship between the US and a country who's leader is willing to claim that the country bombed itself, is really no strain at all. Plus this puts pressure on the citizens of that country to reform their own government, possibly into a government I would be more interested in maintaining a relationship with.
The PS3 was not a well planned design, it was what they could hack together in the time they had.
You are being far from accurate in your statement here. The PS3 was well planned, but as it turned out the cost of the cell turned out to be prohibitive. The original PS3 planned for multiple cell processors, as many as four in one design. Multiple Cell Processors would have handled the necessary vector processing to handle what is traditionally off loaded to a GPU (a dedicated vector processor). This is not all that different than the PS2 architecture which also did not have a dedicated traditional GPU (The GS did not perform geometric transformations only textures and shading). But in the end the cost of the Cell processors made multiple cost prohibitive, They even had to cut down on the number of active SPUs to increase yield.
So this was not a matter of poor design, but one of misunderstood costs (The PS2 chip, which was also a very original design, was far cheaper to produce.)
There may not be a way around it, IBM canceled further Cell production because it just doesn't stack up well.
This is also disingenuous. Yes IBM has cancelled continuing the cell architecture, but not because it "doesn't stack up well" but instead because better techniques for implementing single chip multi-processors have been developed. All major CPU manufacturers are moving to similar design, using a general purpose processing unit in conjunction with dedicated vector processors. The basic architecture laid out by the Cell is the future of CPUs, just not the specific Cell line because improvements have been made, and rather get tied into a legacy architecture and having to work around it's weaknesses (like Intel and AMD have to do with the X86 architecture) they chose to innovate and move to a new and improved architecture.
Once you are actually here and working tell me if you are making more pay than others with your assigned duties and working the same number of hours as you. What you are very likely to find out is that you will be handling duties normally assigned to a pay grade above yours and you will be working longer hours. I hope that is not the case and you happen to be getting a fair deal, but I would not bet on it (though being on an L-1 rather than an H-1B you might be getting a better deal).
There is a study out there that shows H1-B's are paid more.
Find the study, and then find the analysis. What you will find out is that it is made to appear that H1-Bs are paid more. This is due to the concept of prevailing wage. The problem is that these wage reports are based on title not actual job duties. So they hire foreign workers with Masters Degrees into entry level titles but then assign them senior responsibilities. This lets them hire people at a much lower wage than the equivalent domestic worker who is not willing to accept the lesser pay, or title, to do the more advanced work. It can't go as far as to say that it is legally fraud since it follows the letter of the law, but is certainly an ethical fraud.
There are 75K openings on Dice right now. 20K over 2 years is a drop in a ocean.
There are 75k listings on Dice. Most of those are duplicates of the same job listed by 3 or 4 different head hunters. So you are talking more like 25k unique listings. Then you have to count out the listings that are in place specifically to meet the requirements that allow the company to hire foreign works, by creating unrealistic requirements. This ranges from asking for more experience than is possible (10 years experience with something that has only been around for five), or setting unnecessary requirements (Master Degree required for a job that can be accomplished by a high school drop out).
Now I don't know the actual numbers, but if you take the time you will find out that your short analysis is certainly far from accurate, or even useful.
Am I included in that count or do I make it four?
We find one more and we'll have all three.
Yeah, I remember Myst. The best selling game nobody played... The 7th Guest, which came out 6 months earlier, was a far superior game in the narrative puzzle genre, with full motion rendered video (not still pictures) and FAR more creative puzzles.
Obsidian was Better than Myst and 7th Guest, but this is probably only known by the three of us that actually played it.
You forgot an important step:
???
Which in this case happens to be:
"Sell product with a reasonable margin"
But it appears that Kinect might actually be sold at a loss (sorry I see mixed reports)
I currently work 80 hours a week for two weeks straight, then take two full weeks off.
Unless you happen to work in a job where a larger portion of your reported hours is time spent resting (e.g. On Duty Emergency Services personnel), then who ever is paying you is making a huge mistake.
The 40 hour work week did not grow out of any workers rights movement, It came from a study in productivity. This initial study showed that productivity drop over the long run if employees worked greater than 36 hours a week. Since there have been many further studies showing that working higher number hours reduces productivity.
In your case (with the exception listed above) you are working at less than 70% efficiency and possibly as low as 50% efficiency. Meaning your employer (even if you are self employed) is getting no more than 56 hours of actual productive work for every 80 hours you work. If your hours were cut to 40 hours and a second employee was added who also worked 40 hours (assuming the task can be partitioned as such) your employer would get at least and additional 24 hours of productivity per week.
The situation gets far worse if you are a knowledge worker, such as an engineer, as you will actually reach negative productivity if your working long enough hours (You end up making costly mistakes rather than producing anything of value).
You can start here for reference.
I was tasked with bringing all development back in-house because the offshore projects were behind schedule and suspect quality, not to mention the communication issues.
In two years, the leadership of your company will either be new, or forgot about the past issues, and they will outsource your position again. This cycle happens over and over in companies.
I was also hired by my company to clean up after out sourcing (I built my career on doing that). I was the head of a team of all on shore resources. Two years later the all American team had a very high success rate, high enough for the company to start out sourcing work again. Now another year later and the team consist of me, and a completely outsourced indian team. I stay because I realize it won't take long for the cycle to repeat and I will have a completely American team again (plus being the only one that actually gets real work done I get a lot of undocumented perks). And if things don't keep getting better I know there will be another outsourcing disaster to clean up at another job.
Just wanted to add some corrections to the above statement.
The maximum duration of the H-1B visa is six years, unless the alien has applied for citizenship, in which has it is effectively indefinite. This does not mean they need to have any intention of becoming a citizen, only that they have applied for a green card. (which I see is mentioned but some what buried in the above post).
Prevailing Wage is based purely upon title, and not at all upon actual assigned duties. In many cases H-1B workers are hired with entry level titles but assigned senior level tasks. In other cases they are assigned similar but not exact titles (such as being titled and Application Programers title while doing Software Engineering, where the form title is often used by smaller lower paying companies).
More importantly, though the number of H-1B workers appears to be low, it has a fairly large impact since they are used to fill the higher paying positions. This higher pay, which is often taken completely out of the country, has a large impact on the over all economy. The wages of an H-1B, though lower than they would have to pay an american citizen, is orders of magnitude higher than that of most illegal immigrants.
having children leads to a significant degradation in morals
As a parent I can say that this is not universally true. Though I can't say for sure what I would do in the heat of the moment, I have thought a lot about it and do feel that my child is no more important than any other capable child. It all comes down to the risk and the future capability of all involved. I won't risk my child to stop a fire at a retirement home, but I probably would at a day care or school.
In this particular instance I would hope that I would have the sense of mind to do the exact same thing as this driver.
Lets just say that not everyone is so arrogant as to believe that there offspring are more valuable to society than everyone else.
No, they are people who want the poor to become rich, just like they are.
So close yet so far off. Economic conservatives want people to try to become rich because this causes lots of spending that can be funneled to the actual rich. For you to attempt to set up your private business you will have to shift what little capital you might have into the hands of those that control the overwhelming majority of the capital.
The really funny thing though, is that Republicans and not Economic conservatives, but they want to believe they are. Republics, or more accurately the top capital controllers, support and collect more government hand outs than anyone. Even Social Security is simply a way to funnel more funds back into the hands of those controlling capital.
There where a number of bright people around 200 years ago that started writing about this, but sadly their terminology was usurped by power hunger people who made a mockery of their ideas and have caused everyone to dismiss the actual concepts based on name alone.
I bought a PS3 to run linux and play around with cell programming...Sony broke my ps3 by updating the firmware to 3.30
I'm not going to defend Sony, because really I think what they are doing is stupid, but lets be honest here. Sony did not break your PS3. You were not forced to update your firm ware, you chose to. You broke your PS3. Now had you purchased the PS3 to play games and run linux you would have some argument, but even then it was your choice.
I bought my PS3 to play PS1, PS2 and PS3 games. Because my launch unit broke, not by any choice of my own but by poor craftsmanship, and I chose not to pay for a refurbished unit, I now can't play PS2 games. Is that Sony's fault? Not really. The unit lasted way past the warranty period and I chose not to pay to keep the feature. Sure the Other OS is different, but lets be honest, it was still your choice to lose the Other OS option, which is pretty stupid since you bought your PS three "to run linux and play around with cell programming".
Company I work for only gives out cost of living increases, across the board from top to bottom.
In theory, if your company offers good salaries initially and you are already a trained and experienced employee, then this is how things should be. The only reason companies should offer a raise above Cost of Living, would be if they undercut your salary initially and need to catch up, or if you actually supply more productivity than you did previously. Usually after a year or so you are doing your job at, or near, your peak efficiency so a raise is not really warranted. Now a promotion on the other hand is a different story.
IBM gets some tech people with only a HS education. I'm sure they will be paid as well as college grads.
Statistically they will actually be better paid.
I thought I was the only one that had Car Wars memories when I saw the bit about four independent motors. I can't believe we haven't been doing this for years. Now they need to set it up with four wheel independent steering and I'll finally be able to pivot my car.
I don't like the guy, but I would bet that most of the people treated to his 'hospitality', as you put it, either never had the privilege to vote (a.k.a. Illegal Immigrants) or chose not to vote. And in my opinion, choosing not to vote, is just as bad as voting for a bad candidate.
The fact that he was re-elected 2 years ago, kind of implies that he was at least fairly popular then, and probably still is now.
Justice is not about revenge...Justice is saying we don't accept what Mr X has done and therefore he is punished.
Revenge - To inflict punishment in return for (injury or insult).
The aim... is to ensure that others won't try to do it themselves.
Sure, and that aim is brought about through threat of revenge. Our justice system is based on deterrent, not protection. Through fear and doubt we hope that the threat of revenge will prevent criminal activities, but the reality is that there is nothing protecting use from criminal activities, only the after the fact ability to extract revenge on those that injure or insult us.
I stand by my original statement that even in a civilization with a legal system you have freedom to do anything that you are physically capable of doing, you just might have to pay a price if you are caught and convicted. This is no different than without civilization, accept that even people that are not liked, or not powerful, have the same capability for revenge.
Some where in that chain of sales, someone knew that it was stolen. At that moment that person was never able to legally transfer ownership. So even though down the line you have two people that had no knowledge of the theft, neither of them was ever a rightful owner so the sale is invalid.
A steals item. A sells to B, nether A or B are legal owners. B, believing they own the property sells to C. Just because B and C believe that the are making a legal sale does not make that sale binding. If it does, then England and Wales have worse fucked up laws than the the US. That kind of law basically legalizes laundering.
A person not under the domain of any government or any other higher power has no restrictions on their actions at all.
Governments do not restrict your ability to act. You are just as capable of theft, and murder under a government as you are without one. Governments simply create a system of punishment for those that act against the laws, but they do not actually stop you from breaking the law (with the possible accept of conspiracy to commit, but that's a strange grey area I am not knowledgeable enough to talk about).
The only difference, in this regard, between external government and self government is who gets to extract revenge. In an a true government and lawless society it is up to you to extract your own revenge, by what ever means available (including coercing others to do so for you). With a government you have an organized set of rules for extracting revenge. The advantage to having a government in this regard is you know where the revenge ends, rather than everyone going blind.
See what I did there?
Proved his point? Debunked the Libertarian Mantra? Supported the Establishment of Government?
I was not aware the right to life was an inherent right, if the government was not here to grant it to you, anyone can come along and stab you all they want.
But to be honest even with government anyone can come along and stab you all they want, you just have the support of a large organization to seek out revenge against that person. It's really no different than if there was no government, accept that there is an end to the cycle of retribution that doesn't end in mutually assured destruction.
Wait, you're saying a world without private property is a plus? Guess you don't mind if I come over and borrow your car for a while.
You are confusing the current situation, which has private property, with a civilization that does not have private property. If there were no private property this wouldn't even be an issue, as you would be able to use any vehicle not currently in use (assuming you are licensed, as otherwise would be dangerous). I mean what is the use of a parked car, like more than half of all cars are at any given time. Sorry, but if you can't see the benefit in shared resources then there is no way I, or anyone else, would be able to convince you in the benefit of a society without private property.
But of course you do understand the benefit of shared resources or else you wouldn't be on the internet, or even have much need for a car, since you need to use shared resources to get much use out of either one.
They will probably be home schooled, and be graced with all the ignorances and prejudices of their parents without any dissenting viewpoints.
I'm not disagreeing with your intention here, but are you implying that being exposed to more ignorance and prejudice necessarily leads to a positive outcome?