at least it "feels" a bit like that 1980's Games Workshop game I had on ZX Spectrum.
Ha, I grew up on ZX Spectrum, too... learned how to program on its rubber keys:).
That's why I haven't heard of Dishonored, most likely. 2012 release? It's just starting to come into my "look it up, see if it was actually any good, set aside a few quid on Steam" considerations. Wouldn't be able to play it without thinking of Shadow Warrior, most likely, or even Thief.
I don't know, that argument doesn't work for me. It's like saying that you can't play Quake without thinking of Wolfenstein?
Dishonored mechanics will obviously be very much based on previous first-person games, but with its own twists and additions, and has a very interesting story. That makes it a good game -- it doesn't have to be a groundbreaking original work that has never been seen before. There hasn't been anything like that since.... well, Wolfenstein, probably.
You can say that pretty much every first-person game that's got a story and character development reminds you of Ultima Underworld, and miss out on a lot of really good stuff. Just because modern game designers churn out a lot of worthless crap, it doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of really good things available, too. It's just like movie, TV, and music industries.
This saga illustrates exactly what the H1-B program is designed to accomplish: disenfranchise highly skilled US workers and replace them with cheaper foreign workers.
It's not at all designed to do that. The fact that some companies are (mis)using it that way doesn't mean that it was created with that (mis)use in mind. The loopholes need to be closed, or rules enforced (or changed) to limit the undesired uses, and promote the desired ones (i.e. bringing in highly skilled workers to fill in critical positions).
I'm getting old, too, yet Fallout and Dishonored are amazing games. The original Fallout is a classing from '97, so unless you were already very old in '97, you're probably not much of a gamer if you've never played a Fallout game.
All the big-name games I have wanted in the last ten years that were hyping me up - disappointed in them all. Aliens:CM, Elite:Dangerous, you name it.
I can name plenty of them, but let's start with Fallout and Dishonored:). I think the wrong games were hyping you up!
But in order to hire H1Bs, I thought a company needs to demonstrate that they have advertised locally for the positions and can't find any sufficiently qualified people to take them.
Well, two things -- first, they are not hiring any of these guys directly.. They have hired a "service provider" (HCL) that is providing a service through these workers. These workers are HCL's employees, and not Disney's.
And, second, these employees are very likely not on H1-Bs, but on L1-Bs. H1-Bs are a popular bashing topic these days, so the article writer threw that in without doing much research. Reading other articles on the topic, it's clear that neither HCL nor Disney have provided any visa-related information, and there are no public records of 250+ H1-Bs being brought in for these jobs. (There are, however, 60 or so labor certifications filed in the area, which are used for green card applications of either L1 or H1-B workers)
2) H1-B's aren't hired just for their cheaper salaries. They also come with a number of other perks. For one thing, they are indentured servants, meaning they can't leave your employ no matter how badly you treat them. If they quit or try to go somewhere else, they lose their visa.
That is not true. H1-B holders are free to switch jobs. They can't just quit and stick around in US, but they most certainly can transfer their visa to another job.
In this case, it's unlikely to be the L1 visa. Back when I had one, the L1 was sub-titled as the "executive transfer visa".
There are actually two sub-categories -- L1-A, and L1-B. The L1-A is the "executive" one, which is harder to get and carries great benefits (such as getting a green card fairly quickly).
The L1-B is the "run of the mill" corporate transfer. It's fairly trivial to get, and is often used even for very temporary work (i.e. bringing somebody in for a week from a foreign office to help out with silicon bring-up).
The author of the article is guessing (*) (and presenting it as a fact) that they are on H1-B visas, since they happen to be unpopular... Most likely, though, these are L1 visas, used by foreign companies with offices in US to do intra-company transfers.
The L1 visa has no caps and no requirements for prevailing wages, and makes it much easier to bring in foreign workers into US.
It's why once you start going to Alamo, you can't watch movies anywhere else. There are still cartoons and funny clips before the movie, no commercials, zero policy on noise and phones...
I wish I could tell my young self to go find a promising startup or start something on his own... I didn't know, at the time, how much harder that would be once I have a family with children.
Being young & single, you can move any time, you can switch jobs any time, you can work 16 hour days and actually enjoy it, and you can lose your job and not care too much.
That's the time to go for it, to chase the big ideas, to go for broke. You don't get that chance again without very significant risks.
Or better yet, untie H1Bs from a company, make it a 2 year visa, and let them go wherever they want. My guess is the companies will not be so hot on using H1B labor at that point.
A lot of people (including, obviously, you), don't understand that that's how H1B works already:
I myself competed in D1 college wrestling at an EIWA school while getting an engineering degree and I now have two master's degrees, one in business and one in engineering.
Not to take anything away from your achievements (I certainly couldn't compete in any sport at that level), but college wrestling isn't exactly "professional-level sports". Your athletic activity was still a part-time one while focusing on your education... The professional athletes, whose full-time job is to play sports, are exceedingly rarely accomplished academics at the same time.
Is it? What is the normal (i.e. cars with drivers) average?
A random Forbes article I googled says that on average, every driver gets into an accident once every 18 years. Cut that down to 1.5 years, and you get one out of 12 cars get into an accident in 1.5 year period... (which is same as 4 out of 48)
I rode in one a couple of months ago, and it seemed like it was only a couple of seconds. It felt very strange for the car to go completely quiet on every red light.
The question is, as U.S. government revenue dries up from so many unemployed or underemployed - who's going to (1) pay for all the social costs to support U.S. citizens and, perhaps more important, (2) how will the U.S. government survive as its tax revenue shrivels up into nothingness?
The H1-Bs and L1s (and their spouses, L2s) all pay taxes. Why would tax revenue shrivel into nothingness?
And, how does L1 visa go after trade jobs? L1 has been around for a long time, why is it bad now?
You are extrapolating based on a very limited window. With the current priority date for EB3 from India being 11 years, there's nobody out there who's waited more than 11 years.
We'll see how it moves going forward, but even it moves only 4 months per year, it'll be another 14 years before the priority date falls behind 20 years, making it "decades".
Europeans can get out of H1Bs into green cards much much faster. The US diversity law only allows at most 10% of the immigrants every year to be from one country and so, Indians and Chinese nationals have to wait in line for their turn to come up. There is no line for Europeans.
It's a little misleading to say "Europeans"... *Every* country except for India and China has a shorter waiting list, including all other Asian and South American countries, as well as Canada and Mexico.
And even China is only about 3 years behind the rest of the world. Only India has a real problem where the current wait is 8-11 years (*not* decades).
It's good and easy to get, but has a few bad downsides... First, it offers no direct path to immigration -- it's there for your to do the work and leave when you're done. That's fine for temporary jobs, but not a good way to grow your company. There is no real time limit, however if it looks like you've used it to permanently move to US, the renewals could be denied.
The second is that because it offers no path to green card, the spouses are never allowed to work (unless they get their own TN visas independently), which is not very attractive to families.
Because of these issues, many TN holders apply and transition to H1-B while working in US.
What makes science and technology different? Why do we need a large specialty VISA program specifically for what we do? "Normal" immigration is fine for every other sector of the economy.
"The best" foreign people in science and tech are more likely to be here on a different program anyway. I just did a round of interviews for my company. Three of the top applicants were foreign born. One was in the real "exceptional technical ability" temporary visa program (O-1), one was a greencard holder (EB-2), and one was a naturalized citizen. These program work a lot better than H-1B (they have more protections for the employee as well), why don't we expand those instead?
You are quite misinformed about immigration works. What is this "normal immigration" you speak of? There's only two ways to immigrate into US -- through a family petition, and through employment (there are a bunch of other very special cases, but they are minor in numbers... such "visa for victim of human trafficking", or "iraqis support US military"). Naturalization and EB-2 green cards are the end-result of employment-based visa programs such as H1-B, L, and O visas -- they are not some separate programs that work "better".
Your EB-2 and naturalized citizen candidates most likely got in through H1-B or L-1 (inter-company transfer) originally, which are the two most common employment-based visas that allow eventual transition to green card.
So we need to restructure out of wasteful mass consumption and shift to more sustainable with a focus on quality, durability and fit for life (products that last your lifetime, rather than fad or disposable products).
That only works for things like furniture and other simple solid objects. For everything else, the technology advances too fast to make this practical. Why make a car that works for 100 years when in 10-15 years the cars will be much more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, and we'll be better off having everybody switch to them? If the Nokias from 10 years ago were made to last a 100 years, would that make any difference in how quickly they disappeared?
When it comes to TVs, yes... but projectors would see a huge benefit. When you project 1080p onto a 120+" screen, things definitely start getting a bit fuzzy.
Of course, that's a niche market, but it could be enough to drive the prices down into somewhat reasonable category. Projectors themselves have gotten cheap enough that way..
I did, too.. Then I read somewhere that if you wipe your phone and reinstall it could eliminate a lot of the problems. So, I backed up my data, wiped it, installed the new OS and it's been running perfectly ever since.
There's something in the upgrade of Nexus 5 that goes wrong with some units, it seems like.
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Ha, I grew up on ZX Spectrum, too... learned how to program on its rubber keys :).
I don't know, that argument doesn't work for me. It's like saying that you can't play Quake without thinking of Wolfenstein?
Dishonored mechanics will obviously be very much based on previous first-person games, but with its own twists and additions, and has a very interesting story. That makes it a good game -- it doesn't have to be a groundbreaking original work that has never been seen before. There hasn't been anything like that since.... well, Wolfenstein, probably.
You can say that pretty much every first-person game that's got a story and character development reminds you of Ultima Underworld, and miss out on a lot of really good stuff. Just because modern game designers churn out a lot of worthless crap, it doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of really good things available, too. It's just like movie, TV, and music industries.
It's not at all designed to do that. The fact that some companies are (mis)using it that way doesn't mean that it was created with that (mis)use in mind. The loopholes need to be closed, or rules enforced (or changed) to limit the undesired uses, and promote the desired ones (i.e. bringing in highly skilled workers to fill in critical positions).
I'm getting old, too, yet Fallout and Dishonored are amazing games. The original Fallout is a classing from '97, so unless you were already very old in '97, you're probably not much of a gamer if you've never played a Fallout game.
I can name plenty of them, but let's start with Fallout and Dishonored :). I think the wrong games were hyping you up!
Well, two things -- first, they are not hiring any of these guys directly.. They have hired a "service provider" (HCL) that is providing a service through these workers. These workers are HCL's employees, and not Disney's.
And, second, these employees are very likely not on H1-Bs, but on L1-Bs. H1-Bs are a popular bashing topic these days, so the article writer threw that in without doing much research. Reading other articles on the topic, it's clear that neither HCL nor Disney have provided any visa-related information, and there are no public records of 250+ H1-Bs being brought in for these jobs. (There are, however, 60 or so labor certifications filed in the area, which are used for green card applications of either L1 or H1-B workers)
That is not true. H1-B holders are free to switch jobs. They can't just quit and stick around in US, but they most certainly can transfer their visa to another job.
There are actually two sub-categories -- L1-A, and L1-B. The L1-A is the "executive" one, which is harder to get and carries great benefits (such as getting a green card fairly quickly).
The L1-B is the "run of the mill" corporate transfer. It's fairly trivial to get, and is often used even for very temporary work (i.e. bringing somebody in for a week from a foreign office to help out with silicon bring-up).
The author of the article is guessing (*) (and presenting it as a fact) that they are on H1-B visas, since they happen to be unpopular... Most likely, though, these are L1 visas, used by foreign companies with offices in US to do intra-company transfers.
The L1 visa has no caps and no requirements for prevailing wages, and makes it much easier to bring in foreign workers into US.
(*) - http://www.computerworld.com/article/2915904/it-outsourcing/fury-rises-at-disney-over-use-of-foreign-workers.html
It's why once you start going to Alamo, you can't watch movies anywhere else. There are still cartoons and funny clips before the movie, no commercials, zero policy on noise and phones...
And, of course, great selection of beer and food.
I wish I could tell my young self to go find a promising startup or start something on his own... I didn't know, at the time, how much harder that would be once I have a family with children.
Being young & single, you can move any time, you can switch jobs any time, you can work 16 hour days and actually enjoy it, and you can lose your job and not care too much.
That's the time to go for it, to chase the big ideas, to go for broke. You don't get that chance again without very significant risks.
A lot of people (including, obviously, you), don't understand that that's how H1B works already:
H1B Visa Transfer FAQ
Not to take anything away from your achievements (I certainly couldn't compete in any sport at that level), but college wrestling isn't exactly "professional-level sports". Your athletic activity was still a part-time one while focusing on your education... The professional athletes, whose full-time job is to play sports, are exceedingly rarely accomplished academics at the same time.
Is it? What is the normal (i.e. cars with drivers) average?
A random Forbes article I googled says that on average, every driver gets into an accident once every 18 years. Cut that down to 1.5 years, and you get one out of 12 cars get into an accident in 1.5 year period... (which is same as 4 out of 48)
It seems about average.
I rode in one a couple of months ago, and it seemed like it was only a couple of seconds. It felt very strange for the car to go completely quiet on every red light.
The H1-Bs and L1s (and their spouses, L2s) all pay taxes. Why would tax revenue shrivel into nothingness?
And, how does L1 visa go after trade jobs? L1 has been around for a long time, why is it bad now?
What's the downside of flywheels? Looking at wikipedia, the comparison to batteries is very one-sided, offering zero downsides.
I would imagine that there must be some, or we'd all have flywheels sitting in our basements. Is it cost?
You are extrapolating based on a very limited window. With the current priority date for EB3 from India being 11 years, there's nobody out there who's waited more than 11 years.
We'll see how it moves going forward, but even it moves only 4 months per year, it'll be another 14 years before the priority date falls behind 20 years, making it "decades".
It's a little misleading to say "Europeans"... *Every* country except for India and China has a shorter waiting list, including all other Asian and South American countries, as well as Canada and Mexico.
And even China is only about 3 years behind the rest of the world. Only India has a real problem where the current wait is 8-11 years (*not* decades).
It's good and easy to get, but has a few bad downsides... First, it offers no direct path to immigration -- it's there for your to do the work and leave when you're done. That's fine for temporary jobs, but not a good way to grow your company. There is no real time limit, however if it looks like you've used it to permanently move to US, the renewals could be denied.
The second is that because it offers no path to green card, the spouses are never allowed to work (unless they get their own TN visas independently), which is not very attractive to families.
Because of these issues, many TN holders apply and transition to H1-B while working in US.
You are quite misinformed about immigration works. What is this "normal immigration" you speak of? There's only two ways to immigrate into US -- through a family petition, and through employment (there are a bunch of other very special cases, but they are minor in numbers... such "visa for victim of human trafficking", or "iraqis support US military"). Naturalization and EB-2 green cards are the end-result of employment-based visa programs such as H1-B, L, and O visas -- they are not some separate programs that work "better".
Your EB-2 and naturalized citizen candidates most likely got in through H1-B or L-1 (inter-company transfer) originally, which are the two most common employment-based visas that allow eventual transition to green card.
That only works for things like furniture and other simple solid objects. For everything else, the technology advances too fast to make this practical. Why make a car that works for 100 years when in 10-15 years the cars will be much more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, and we'll be better off having everybody switch to them? If the Nokias from 10 years ago were made to last a 100 years, would that make any difference in how quickly they disappeared?
I thought you were joking. But that's really what he's been suspend for the previous two times.
That's insanity...
Any links to back that up? The Oxford dictionary says that both are correct.
When it comes to TVs, yes... but projectors would see a huge benefit. When you project 1080p onto a 120+" screen, things definitely start getting a bit fuzzy.
Of course, that's a niche market, but it could be enough to drive the prices down into somewhat reasonable category. Projectors themselves have gotten cheap enough that way..
I'm completely ignorant on this topic.. but that sounds like something that computers should be able to do easily, no?
I did, too.. Then I read somewhere that if you wipe your phone and reinstall it could eliminate a lot of the problems. So, I backed up my data, wiped it, installed the new OS and it's been running perfectly ever since.
There's something in the upgrade of Nexus 5 that goes wrong with some units, it seems like.