However, the impact of losing the job is much higher for H1Bs,
In business there is always the trade-off between "upside potential" and "downside risk." The upside potential for H1Bs is the pay and the life style in the U.S.A. the downside is rapid loss if they lose their jobs.
Screw the foreigners, send them home. If they can get a green card or become citizens, then "Welcome to America" otherwise, work in your own damn country.
Yeah, it has nothing to do with that except the FTL drive. That's what made me interested in it in the first place.
Well, this is a perfect example of my point. The FTL drive has some very interesting properties. Do they explore, in any real sense, the device or do they use it as a prop?
Such as inventing a sentient artificial servant class?
In my original post:
"The closest BSG comes to science fiction is in the first episode where Adama critiques and disdains technology. (Ignoring, of course, he's on a space ship.)"
Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, and even a little Douglas Adams were science fiction writers. They wrote about how society changes around technology and envision life in the context of new technology.
BSG has nothing to do with science fiction. They don't contemplate the benefits or dangers of science. They use it as nothing more than a backdrop. The closest BSG comes to science fiction is in the first episode where Adama critiques and disdains technology. (Ignoring, of course, he's on a space ship.)
A few days ago I was modded "flamebait" for saying he's dying and he knows it, because who announces that they are, in fact, healthy despite appearances.
Now we hear he needs a liver transplant. Sorry, he knew his condition, he knows he's dying. Pancreatic cancer is no joke, and the treatment is harsh.
While I do seriously feel for Mr. Jobs, I think he is being irresponsible to the employees and stock holders of Apple. Information should come sooner rather than later and as honest as possible. Maybe he's in denial, who knows, but he has a responsibility to make sure Apple continues regardless of his presence. Denying his condition is not a solution.
So, for you people who feel you need to mod me flame bait because I state my opinion which may or may not be politically correct, do what you will.
You sound like you work more in marketing than IT.
Sadly, sometimes the job of "IT" is to sell (internally) the solutions it presents. It is important.
You can't convince people to like something that doesn't work or doesn't work the way they want it to.
That is just a bogus statement on so many levels. "They way they want it to work." is pretty arbitrary, and as a different poster said, later versions of Office work differently than 2000. So regardless which they use (MSO vs OO.o), there will be a learning curve.
How they "want" it to work has been neutralized as any upgrade involved change.
Your formula will result in disaster unless all the stars align and good karma sweeps the world.
It is statements like this that call into question your actual agenda for your post. I suspect FUDster.
Please, be a little more careful in how you evaluate a project, plan a project, and then execute the project.
Sometimes a company wide upgrade is the best solution, "shark pit." It seems more painful and stressful than it actually is. It amounts to a couple days or a week of grumbling, but it generates a few workgroup experts/helpers (the fast learners) and camaraderie in the office.
If the program is an improvement, people will feel a sense of pride and accomplishment at conquering it.
If you are going from Office 2000 to OpenOffice.Org you will go almost effortlessly.
There may be a few small things here and there that users may gripe about, like obscure formatting issues, but nothing earth shattering.
If, as you say, you are going from MSO-2000 to OO.o3.x, then Microsoft Office XML should not be an issue as 2000 can't open that anyway.
Tell everyone to check their spreadsheets for numeric accuracy and functionality as some funtions and macros work differently.
After that, you have to sell it!! Tell them how wonderful it is. Talk about PDF export. Tell them they can have a copy for home!! Tell them they don't have to enter an endless stream of letters and numbers just to install it.
While I don't have any verified tests or studies to support this claim, I do have my personal experiences to draw my own conclusions.
(1) Electronic file sharing has not affected music/movie purchases. Some percentage of people will always share. There were a lot of dubbing cassette decks in the 70s and 80s designed specifically to copy cassettes. In the 90s and this decade, we use MP3s.
Similarly, we recorded TV and movies on our VCRs. There were pulse amplifiers to eliminate the effects of copy protection.
(2) People who copy and download are INTERESTED in the media. They are consumers and they buy what they like but they like to try before they buy. The emergent fact is that they DON'T buy everything the download and that is because it, to them, not all of it is worth it.
(3) The very people who download and share are their best customers.
While fraud may be a problem, I don't think it is. Pre-screeners get a copy of the films just for these sorts of things.
I know for a fact that if you look for it, you can get "Taken," "Defiance," and other movies on the internet in DVD quality over the internet "for free." I am further certain that members film community and/or MPIAA uploaded the movies to drive up viewership at the box office.
For instance, "The Day The Earth Stood Still" sucked, so the "screening" video is not out there. "Gran Torino" was an excellent movie and did well at the box office, and the screening video *is* out there.
My new criteria for seeing a movie in a theater is looking for the screening video on-line. If it is out there, its probably a good movie because someone put it out there.
, Microsoft or one of the other 5,000 IT companies, has already hired them up. It takes us 8+ months to fill even entry-level positions. I don't know
Well, I am not in the position to verify or refute your claim, but it runs counter to my experience. I can't speak to your hiring process, but there is a glut in the market.
There is practically *no* inexperienced or cheaper workers in MA, but there's plenty experienced workers. This is why H1Bs are so bad. They get lots of fresh youngsters who are cheap, but leave the experienced "more expensive" IT workers looking.
Hey, Ray, seriously, love your work. Love reading your posts.
I just have a thing about Nazi comparison. They are not helpful at all because no matter how valid the finer points of the analogy, there is several truck loads of emotional baggage that gets evoked. Rather than initiating the intellectual process of evaluating the analogy to further understand the point, all a Nazi comparison does is label.
I'm sick of people wasting screen real-estate with their references to Godwin's law, as if it makes an analogy any less valid.
Any analogy that uses "Hitler" or Nazis *is* less valid. Did RIAA/MPIAA kill (literally) thousands of innocent civilians. Did RIAA or MPIAA develop ballistic missiles to bomb another nation?
No, the analogy is bad. "Godwin's Law" is a recognition of the "argument from the absurd."
RIAA and MPIAA are scum, but they are not genocidal dictators.
If you need an expert in a certain field and all you have is joe blow half decent php programmer then you need to import people.
yes, and that is simply not the case. There is NO lack of experienced, skilled, and available talent in the U.S.A. to state otherwise is simply a lie. The H1B visa program allows companies to hire people from out of the country willing to work less than the prevailing wage and thus reduce the prevailing wage.
This is not racism, that is a lie propagated by the companies who want to keep wages depressed.
The more smart people that the US can convince to come over the better it will be so I don't understand why you'd have a problem with this unless you're complaining because all those smart people are making competition for you.
"Other" countries are more protected of their skilled labor. The U.S.A. is anti-labor to the extreme and having been in the iindustry for almost 30 years, I have seen wages pretty much freeze for the last 10 years.
You've actually nailed everything that's wrong with antitrust law! Your suggestion is basically this: MS is really successful. Like, really really successful. If we were to just give a little bit of that success to other companies, many other companies would be successful as well. To achieve this distribution of success, we should break up Microsoft. Basically, you're advocating punishing success!
That is, of course, the Bill Gates argument. "I'm successful, so let me be successful." Al Capone was successful as well. Standard Oil was successful too.
Microsoft is successful because of its illegal and unethical actions. Its "success" is at the expense of the consumer and the industry. That sort of "success" denies a functioning market place of greater success.
Wait, are you saying that Obama should create or save Jobs?
The government can not directly create or destroy private sector jobs, it can, however, enforce the laws and create an environment of competition which, in itself, creates jobs.
The question I have for Obama is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single fat colored mammy sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check?
Far from helping the economy, Microsoft has harmed it. It has reduced competition in the computer industry, which means fewer jobs and higher prices. It has a long history of pushing for H1B visa increases intended to reduce the average wage of skilled tech workers. Why when there are so many people out of work are they STILL pushing H1B visas?
Also, Microsoft is an abnormally profitable company. That comes from somewhere. For every dollar that Microsoft makes in profit, that could have been $0.25 ~~ $0.30 to a normally profitable company. Which means, because of Microsoft's monopoly, we have one business employing fewer people instead of 3 or 4 business of roughly the same size employing 3 or 4 times that number of people.
Microsoft should be broken up by the government as an anti-competitive monopoly.
It won;t escalate like most of us would like. When it's looking like things will go bad, they'll "settle" and not allow it to follow through making a precedent.
In a counter claim, the defendant has to "agree" to settle, and I don't think Nesson and his students are looking to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
However, the impact of losing the job is much higher for H1Bs,
In business there is always the trade-off between "upside potential" and "downside risk." The upside potential for H1Bs is the pay and the life style in the U.S.A. the downside is rapid loss if they lose their jobs.
Screw the foreigners, send them home. If they can get a green card or become citizens, then "Welcome to America" otherwise, work in your own damn country.
Yeah, it has nothing to do with that except the FTL drive. That's what made me interested in it in the first place.
Well, this is a perfect example of my point. The FTL drive has some very interesting properties. Do they explore, in any real sense, the device or do they use it as a prop?
Such as inventing a sentient artificial servant class?
In my original post:
"The closest BSG comes to science fiction is in the first episode where Adama critiques and disdains technology. (Ignoring, of course, he's on a space ship.)"
After that, it is nothing more than soap-opera.
Well, technically, insulin is a hormone.
That's exactly the point isn't it? I didn't have a stroke, I had a minor blood circulation issue in the head.
A lie of omission is still a lie, in fact, I'd say it is a worse type of lie.
It is a space opra.
2001 was science fiction.
Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, and even a little Douglas Adams were science fiction writers. They wrote about how society changes around technology and envision life in the context of new technology.
BSG has nothing to do with science fiction. They don't contemplate the benefits or dangers of science. They use it as nothing more than a backdrop. The closest BSG comes to science fiction is in the first episode where Adama critiques and disdains technology. (Ignoring, of course, he's on a space ship.)
I mostly agree, but the previous denial as a "hormone imbalance" was totally irresponsible.
A few days ago I was modded "flamebait" for saying he's dying and he knows it, because who announces that they are, in fact, healthy despite appearances.
Now we hear he needs a liver transplant. Sorry, he knew his condition, he knows he's dying. Pancreatic cancer is no joke, and the treatment is harsh.
While I do seriously feel for Mr. Jobs, I think he is being irresponsible to the employees and stock holders of Apple. Information should come sooner rather than later and as honest as possible. Maybe he's in denial, who knows, but he has a responsibility to make sure Apple continues regardless of his presence. Denying his condition is not a solution.
So, for you people who feel you need to mod me flame bait because I state my opinion which may or may not be politically correct, do what you will.
The chances are also good that you really will be getting a full version of Office - with components like Outlook that are missing from OpenOffice.
IMHO, *not* having Outlook is a good thing.
You sound like you work more in marketing than IT.
Sadly, sometimes the job of "IT" is to sell (internally) the solutions it presents. It is important.
You can't convince people to like something that doesn't work or doesn't work the way they want it to.
That is just a bogus statement on so many levels. "They way they want it to work." is pretty arbitrary, and as a different poster said, later versions of Office work differently than 2000. So regardless which they use (MSO vs OO.o), there will be a learning curve.
How they "want" it to work has been neutralized as any upgrade involved change.
Your formula will result in disaster unless all the stars align and good karma sweeps the world.
It is statements like this that call into question your actual agenda for your post. I suspect FUDster.
Please, be a little more careful in how you evaluate a project, plan a project, and then execute the project.
Sometimes a company wide upgrade is the best solution, "shark pit." It seems more painful and stressful than it actually is. It amounts to a couple days or a week of grumbling, but it generates a few workgroup experts/helpers (the fast learners) and camaraderie in the office.
If the program is an improvement, people will feel a sense of pride and accomplishment at conquering it.
If you are going from Office 2000 to OpenOffice.Org you will go almost effortlessly.
There may be a few small things here and there that users may gripe about, like obscure formatting issues, but nothing earth shattering.
If, as you say, you are going from MSO-2000 to OO.o3.x, then Microsoft Office XML should not be an issue as 2000 can't open that anyway.
Tell everyone to check their spreadsheets for numeric accuracy and functionality as some funtions and macros work differently.
After that, you have to sell it!! Tell them how wonderful it is. Talk about PDF export. Tell them they can have a copy for home!! Tell them they don't have to enter an endless stream of letters and numbers just to install it.
I guess that means we can completely ignore the rest of your post because it is, at best, an anecdote.
Perhaps, but it seems to concur with the study in question. Anecdote is the beginning of the quest for knowledge.
Police do pursue murders by computer forensics
The Boston Globe just had a section on how police aren't solving homicides very well.
the DEA doesn't spend an inordinate amount of time on "a few ounces of pot",
Yea, tell that to all the people pursued and convicted in CA after the medical marijuana law passed.
a history of violence against women is not a crime in itself,
no but "beating countless women" is.
some Islamic charities are known to support terrorism,
yes, but the vast majority of charities do not fund terrorism. Why not go after irish catholic charities? Some of those helped the IRA.
bilking millions of dollars is also not necessarily a crime
The term "bilk" absolutely describes fraud.
lastly the incident in San Francisco you referenced was not at all typical.
Yea? Well, how many cops do you know. You can find stories like this on a regular basis.
While I don't have any verified tests or studies to support this claim, I do have my personal experiences to draw my own conclusions.
(1) Electronic file sharing has not affected music/movie purchases. Some percentage of people will always share. There were a lot of dubbing cassette decks in the 70s and 80s designed specifically to copy cassettes. In the 90s and this decade, we use MP3s.
Similarly, we recorded TV and movies on our VCRs. There were pulse amplifiers to eliminate the effects of copy protection.
(2) People who copy and download are INTERESTED in the media. They are consumers and they buy what they like but they like to try before they buy. The emergent fact is that they DON'T buy everything the download and that is because it, to them, not all of it is worth it.
(3) The very people who download and share are their best customers.
It seriously depends on your crime as to how far police will go to obtain data from a hard disk.
If, for instance, to kill no more than three people in cold blood. They won't even look.
If, you have a few ounces of pot, the DEA will use the FBI forensics labs.
If you have a history of violence and have beaten countless women, they won't even look.
If you've given more than a few hundred bucks to an Islamic charity, the NSA will step in.
If you bilk hundreds or thousands of people out of millions of dollars, they won't even look.
if you are accused of fighting on the train in San Fransisco, they'll just hold you down and shoot you in the back. Fuck the computer.
While fraud may be a problem, I don't think it is. Pre-screeners get a copy of the films just for these sorts of things.
I know for a fact that if you look for it, you can get "Taken," "Defiance," and other movies on the internet in DVD quality over the internet "for free." I am further certain that members film community and/or MPIAA uploaded the movies to drive up viewership at the box office.
For instance, "The Day The Earth Stood Still" sucked, so the "screening" video is not out there. "Gran Torino" was an excellent movie and did well at the box office, and the screening video *is* out there.
My new criteria for seeing a movie in a theater is looking for the screening video on-line. If it is out there, its probably a good movie because someone put it out there.
, Microsoft or one of the other 5,000 IT companies, has already hired them up. It takes us 8+ months to fill even entry-level positions. I don't know
Well, I am not in the position to verify or refute your claim, but it runs counter to my experience. I can't speak to your hiring process, but there is a glut in the market.
There is practically *no* inexperienced or cheaper workers in MA, but there's plenty experienced workers. This is why H1Bs are so bad. They get lots of fresh youngsters who are cheap, but leave the experienced "more expensive" IT workers looking.
Hey, Ray, seriously, love your work. Love reading your posts.
I just have a thing about Nazi comparison. They are not helpful at all because no matter how valid the finer points of the analogy, there is several truck loads of emotional baggage that gets evoked. Rather than initiating the intellectual process of evaluating the analogy to further understand the point, all a Nazi comparison does is label.
I'm sick of people wasting screen real-estate with their references to Godwin's law, as if it makes an analogy any less valid.
Any analogy that uses "Hitler" or Nazis *is* less valid. Did RIAA/MPIAA kill (literally) thousands of innocent civilians. Did RIAA or MPIAA develop ballistic missiles to bomb another nation?
No, the analogy is bad. "Godwin's Law" is a recognition of the "argument from the absurd."
RIAA and MPIAA are scum, but they are not genocidal dictators.
If you need an expert in a certain field and all you have is joe blow half decent php programmer then you need to import people.
yes, and that is simply not the case. There is NO lack of experienced, skilled, and available talent in the U.S.A. to state otherwise is simply a lie. The H1B visa program allows companies to hire people from out of the country willing to work less than the prevailing wage and thus reduce the prevailing wage.
This is not racism, that is a lie propagated by the companies who want to keep wages depressed.
The more smart people that the US can convince to come over the better it will be so I don't understand why you'd have a problem with this unless you're complaining because all those smart people are making competition for you.
"Other" countries are more protected of their skilled labor. The U.S.A. is anti-labor to the extreme and having been in the iindustry for almost 30 years, I have seen wages pretty much freeze for the last 10 years.
Put aside antitrust law for a minute and then tell me what law MS has broken
Put murder aside for a second and what law did Jeffrey Dahmer break?
It doesn't work that way. We have laws and we can't have a legitimate discussion without considering them and why they were enacted.
You don't need antitrust law for a free market.
Well, that is why you are wrong. When you have a monopoly, especially one like Microsoft, you don't have a free market.
You've actually nailed everything that's wrong with antitrust law!
Your suggestion is basically this: MS is really successful. Like, really really successful. If we were to just give a little bit of that success to other companies, many other companies would be successful as well. To achieve this distribution of success, we should break up Microsoft. Basically, you're advocating punishing success!
That is, of course, the Bill Gates argument. "I'm successful, so let me be successful." Al Capone was successful as well. Standard Oil was successful too.
Microsoft is successful because of its illegal and unethical actions. Its "success" is at the expense of the consumer and the industry. That sort of "success" denies a functioning market place of greater success.
Wait, are you saying that Obama should create or save Jobs?
The government can not directly create or destroy private sector jobs, it can, however, enforce the laws and create an environment of competition which, in itself, creates jobs.
The question I have for Obama is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single fat colored mammy sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check?
Far from helping the economy, Microsoft has harmed it. It has reduced competition in the computer industry, which means fewer jobs and higher prices. It has a long history of pushing for H1B visa increases intended to reduce the average wage of skilled tech workers. Why when there are so many people out of work are they STILL pushing H1B visas?
Also, Microsoft is an abnormally profitable company. That comes from somewhere. For every dollar that Microsoft makes in profit, that could have been $0.25 ~~ $0.30 to a normally profitable company. Which means, because of Microsoft's monopoly, we have one business employing fewer people instead of 3 or 4 business of roughly the same size employing 3 or 4 times that number of people.
Microsoft should be broken up by the government as an anti-competitive monopoly.
Looks like a game of chicken.
Perhaps, but in a fair court, the defendant has a whole lot less to lose.
It won;t escalate like most of us would like. When it's looking like things will go bad, they'll "settle" and not allow it to follow through making a precedent.
In a counter claim, the defendant has to "agree" to settle, and I don't think Nesson and his students are looking to do that.