I'm not sure about grammar, as I've been able to receive perfect scores on standardized writing/grammar tests, but instant messaging has actually improved my spelling. Granted, I turned on the spelling feature when I installed GAIM, and it has improved my spelling by clearly indicating when I'm writing a word incorrectly.
Lack of annoying ads. Adblocker or not, they've managed to make users cringe at the thought of ads. I've been on sites that were creative enough to bypass several types of adblockers just for the purpose of badgering the user.
On a more upsetting note, this abuse of ads makes legitimate advertising almost unworkable. I'm talking nonintrusive ads that allow a site to stay afloat despite costs. It's a pity to say the least.
I think they're not allowing us to have clubs on our own with a teacher so that they can complain about it for the budget, which they'll only use to fund sports. It's kind of sad.
I think you took it the wrong way. Where did I say that it's just another form of life less important than ours? I respect all forms of life and care for my companions (two cats, two dogs) a great deal. It's not like I had intentionally killed them for the purpose of examining them; most of them died of disease and starvation from being out in the wild and overpopulated.
It was fun to learn and examine. I hope to use this knowledge in the future to repair and save, not kill and rip apart. It's just one step on that path.
Actually, the state goes crazy over mercury so we just avoid it. To be honest, we haven't really lost any potential by avoiding it altogether. Since my class has 650 students, and some are intensely allergic to peanut butter, we can't do anything like that either. There's a ban preventing all students in my school from bringing in food related to peanuts.
Even with those restrictions, however, we managed to do the other things. Just recently we had a pretty cool lab where we only had 5-10mL of 5 unknown solutions and had to identify cations using everything from flame tests, colors of the solution, boiling water and dissolving precipitates (AgCl and PbCl2 are both white, but only one of them dissolves in hot water), etc.
Lucky you for math team. All of our clubs were scrapped because of the budget! They spent all the remaining money on new uniforms instead of giving us some clubs. Is your school able to get a sufficient amount of students into the BC class? I think only 15 of us took the AP Calculus BC exam while something like 50 or 60 took the AB exam.
The required sciences for graduation at my school are: Earth Science, Living Environment, and Chemistry.
It's designed for the bare minimum. Then there is Regents Physics, which is optional for your senior year.
Mind you, I just listed the bare minimum to graduate. We offer a very large amount of advanced placement courses in the sciences - all of them, actually. It's possible to take Computer Science, Living Environment, Earth Science, Chemistry, AP Chemistry, AP Biology, AP Physics B, AP Physics C, Gentics I and II, and Human Anatomy & Physiology all before graduating. That's what I did. However, I was unable to fit in AP Environmental due to scheduling issues. At any rate, it boils down to having a lot available for students with the potential, but making the actual requirements crap so that all can graduate without even thinking much. That's quite a bit wrong if you ask me.
Culture is indeed a major issue. One of my teachers said on a daily basis, "Why are you pretending to not know anything?" It was health, and since it was required the bottom, middle, and upper students were all shoved together and you really saw what mainstream culture was like. He said it just about everyday during the Drug unit and the Sex unit. It was actually a disturbing experience because I hoped that the majority of the country wasn't going to be based off these people who whined and complained when told to do something minor and then bragged about theft, drugs, and promiscuity.
Nevertheless, some got the message. Most didn't. Culture, definitely.
To probe the culture issue even more, I asked my uncle about it. He's a successful Chemical Engineer who is sent out of the US frequently to direct work in Europe, India, and China. In these recent years, mostly the latter two and occasionally Austria. He said, for the most part, that while he sees most of the factory workers exploited until they're burned out, and just replaced soon after due to the massive work force, they certainly hold those who are intelligent in much higher regard because they're the future.
Really? I've always found the sciences in my school, from middle school all the way to my senior year, to be quite interesting. We're talking about a school that didn't get its budget passed too (wasted all remaining money on new equipment for sports though...).
Yeah, 8th grade earth science was boring. We played with rocks. That was about it.
9th grade biology was a bit more fun. Dissections!
10th grade chemistry was a blast. First demonstration involved putting group I elements in distilled water. Boom! We also made race bottles; we dried old soda bottled and put methanol in them. We also made icecream. We did fun stuff. It wasn't boring at all. Comp. Sci. was what it was; we did nerdy things and laughed.
11th grade AP Physics and AP bio brought even more fun. AP Bio was tied with anatomy so we dissected a cat in June. It really doesn't get better than that. In Physics we did a number of experiments all year. One of the last ones was an engineering project where we had to build a rocket of some sort (no 'fuel' though, it was through water and pressure - the engineering part came with delivering the payload properly).
Finally, senior year AP Physics (C), AP Chemistry, and Genetics proved to be even more interesting. For physics we're now working on building up some of the fundamental models from ground up (Bohr atom, for instance). In Chemistry we're required to do two demos, and we're told to blow things up because it's simply more interesting than anything else. In genetics we created experiments where we actually found some organic foods to be genetically modified (PCR) [Though the occurrence of this happening was very, very low. It just goes to show that not everything is perfect and GMOs can spread easily.]
All in all, the trend was for the experiments to get more interesting and involved as we progressed through the years. Of course, we're also more experienced by that time and tend to be more careful. The proper safety equipment is available as well and as long as we follow the rules and don't screw around, we get to have fun and nobody gets injured.
At my High School, where I'm graduating in June, they've actually had to increase the amount of science teachers. Enrollment in Physics is up so high that another physics teacher is probably going to hire and they're going to extend the amount of periods for the class.
However, this is only a small slice of the roughly 650 students in each class. You'll only see this trend continuing up until #100. After that, it really starts dwindling and you can see the lack of care for science as a disaster area.
The required Health class really shows students the other side of the class, or the majority, and it's a sad thing at that. I am not surprised by these statistics, but at the same time it can't be applied to everyone. There are still many willing to go the distance in my high school, and plenty on the island I live on.
Just recently I attended an awards dinner for science, where I met some 38 other students who accomplished similar feats in the various fields of science. To be honest, it was quite amazing to see all of these people in one room. I certainly felt welcome. However, it hardly represented the masses, and if they're all like the ones I've met in the aforementioned health class, then that statistic is probably doomed until there's a shift in culture as a whole.
A DNA database is a huge issue that could be exploited by the government and businesses. Think of what a health insurance company would do if they could have access to your DNA; we may not have identified all the genes and sequences for diseases today, but we will always find more in time. That kind of information is easily abused.
Using DNA for such purposes is a severe violation of privacy. We're talking about our building blocks, our information that defines much of who we are, and a fair share of our offspring. This isn't simple identification, a fingerprint, or a social security card.
It has many uses for violent criminals and has helped in the identification of seemingly elusive killers. Is the general populace a pack of violent criminals now? I think not. This can only be abused.
You're off to a good start. I've had a sufficiently positive experience with all three of the listed anti-virus programs with very few problems.
If I had to choose one, however, it would most likely be AVG Free because I found its interface the most useful. Avast was less intuitive and looks like it attempts to be striking. AntiVir was all right. As far as detecting viruses, I found that they were just about the same. Depending on the most recent updates, some would detect a virus that another missed. However, considering that no software is entirely perfect and the software may not have been updating, neither program is at fault.
In all honesty, I don't think one is signficantly better to warrant a completely acceptable conclusion. I can vouch for all of them as far as detection is concerned, and personally recommend AVG on the basis that it is user-friendly.
Thanks for clearing that up. I thought that number sounded strange. I hadn't heard of Ubuntu until a little over a year ago. When it said "for a few years now" I thought I must've missed a lot.
If Windows breaks down enough or users go through enough spyware troubles, even if those troubles are caused by other users on the system, then there is a fairly good chance of a switch from Windows to Linux.
Of course, this is based on observation. When I recently burned a bunch of knoppix CDs, I accidentally left one on the family's desk. My dad asked what it was, and I explained it to him. He thought it was interesting but didn't express any desire to try it out.
When my younger brother then installed malicious spyware that required hours of cleaning, he decided to pop it in. To his amazement, it worked beautifully. Since knoppix was able to detect everything and the web browser (konqueror/firefox) was right there to click, he was very satisfied.
In short, the serious problems with security flaws in the Operating System and the ease of shooting oneself in the foot on Windows made the majority of my family open to the idea of switching, and not even by my pushing. Other relatives went through a similar experience. I think if users go through this crap enough times when they realize that they don't have to, then perhaps they will switch.
Ease of desktop management is a necessity. If knoppix didn't "just work" when placed in the drive when the computer was booting, the story probably woouldn't be as nice.
First off, anyone who wants to read the article should enable javascript. Flipping through the two-page article, or even clicking for the Printer Friendly version, won't work without it enabled. However, this may only apply to readers using Opera, as that's what I'm currently using.
Coming back to the article, it would seem that the analyst predicts a different story than that of the summary:
Video game analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities sees the DVD standards war determining the winner in the current video game console battle instead of the other way around.
To be honest, this doesn't seem like it would actually apply. Not many gamers, to my knowledge, care about the DVD standards of their system. But this could be from my skewed knowledge of predominantly using consoles to play games. If someone actually used it just for DVDs, I can see Prachter's vision as being correct; otherwise, it seems a bit backwards. The market for consoles as media centers appears to be only a niche in the industry as a whole.
I think we'll end up exploring both routes. Whichever is more viable will end up taking the lead. Twenty years may be a long time, an especially long time in the technological world, but one never really knows where we'll end up. Predicting future technology seems to be as difficult as forecasting weather.
I find it difficult to read anything involving Jack Thompson seriously at this point. The media coverage he has gained just makes him look like the lead act in a ridiculous circus. While it may have even been funny in a stomach-turning way at one point or another, it's essentially just pathetic to see news involving him.
I can only hope that he learns his lesson sooner or later, or at least it'll get to the point where nobody cares about Jack Thompson. At this stage in the game to say otherwise owuld be an exercise in futility.
After recent news, I know a lot of people that want to switch. I want to switch as well. However, it's cost prohibitive. Most of the people I know are students, and students trying to afford college at that. Apple hardware is just out of our small budgets.
Sure, it doesn't need approval. But that doesn't mean we can't comment on it or discuss it. Much like the regular flow of articles, we haven't much control over them but we can bring about a fairly interesting series of comments.
In this case, I think it's still necessary for us to maintain our critical nature of such things. Who knows? Maybe it could happen to us one day. If we're complacent now, we'll be complacent then; it would be commonplace in the world.
Granted, that's a bit of a stretch; however, the point still remains.
Perhaps I've been going about experimentation and research wrong, or it only applies to the scope of my own fields of study, but I thought theories were either supported or disproved. Proof is completely valid, accepted as true. It's always a bit of a stretch to use it in science.
It can be more of flamebait in a way. A news article cites findings and exclaims proof only to instigate an argument with the other side. More flock to it.
Anyhow, I don't want to detract from this interesting article. I just found it a poor choice of words for an article related to science. Definitive proof will always be elusive, but I'm glad to see we're still headed on the right track for evolution.
I found it sort of strange that they referred to 25 as being old, senior citizen old. When I played Star Wars Galaxies (before it tanked), the average age for guild members was in the ~23-26 range. Most had jobs, a couple had children, a lot had wives/girlfriends.
I think I was the only one under 18 at the time (2 years back, I turn 18 this month). Most players that were in my age group were incredibly annoying; there's no doubt in my mind that the guild just wanted a more mature gaming group.
Granted, I no longer play MMORPGs as they take too much time. They suck the life blood out of me. I prefer just kicking back on less time consuming games, and my ideal teammate/opponent is usually a bit older than I am just for the sake of a greater chance of it being more fun (or tolerable).
I think what the article is hinting at is it seems to be artificial.
For example, from the article:
"People lured to Australia on the promise of lucrative jobs in IT get here and find they don't have a hope of getting a job," he said.
This creates a mess of problems. Perhaps Australia was getting the standard immigration scenario you outlined there - work for less money ($10 instead of $100) - and then the government stepped in. The program outlined dramatically increased immigration in hopes of getting promising IT jobs. Only problem? The reverse happened. They were expecting that $100 but instead got $10. The immigrant loses and the company hiring wins.
From the article:
"People lured to Australia on the promise of lucrative jobs in IT get here and find they don't have a hope of getting a job," he said.
But Australian Computer Society chief executive officer Dennis Furini said that while there was possibly an oversupply of entry-level programmers, there was a shortage of specialists in areas such as e-commerce and network security.
...the Federal Government had brought in large numbers of IT workers over the past four years, even though there was a serious oversupply in the Australian labour market
It might've been easier on all parties involved to have highlighted that, according to the article, that the shortage involved was in e-commerce and network security. The oversupply is just going to make the jobs worthless if the companies have an enormous supply of workers. The promise of lucrative jobs is then a blatant lie - but perhaps the influx is desired by companies for that very reason.
Either way, that's fairly unfortunate. The immigrants and the natives both lose in the long run. The fierce competition could easily drive down wages. If you're willing to work for less, you're hired; it may not apply toward the highly skilled jobs, but it's still employed to a degree.
On the extreme, it seriously cuts future supply by discouraging future students from IT. Money is a powerful number, and high unemployments means a certain lack of money. And then the cycle continues, as someone put it earlier.
I bet they were *real* laptops and *real* mp3 players, the only difference was the label. What you're saying is they can fake *labels*. But that's just because the USA has become a fake brand country, companies license a brand like Polaroid or Caterpillar, buy in cheap Asian crap, stick a "Polaroid" badge on it and charge loads more money because people think they're buying American.
Yeah, and the stuff they sell on NYC streets are of great quality.
No, they're not. It's more than just a fake label. They're usually lower quality goods along with a fake label. Sometimes they may be of equal quality, but that is unusual. This goes for most counterfeit goods. I was sold a counterfeit hard drive several years back. It was some cheap drive slapped into a quality drive's box. I was rather disappointed when I found out but the company did replace it without a hassle.
This isn't talking about cheap fakes. Instead, you're getting unreliable fakes for the brand price. You're getting ripped off twice as much. That's not good at all, no matter what spin you put on it. I think you're confusing this with just getting stuff dirt cheap from China. The article focuses on the fakes commonly being put in place of the real goods.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure about grammar, as I've been able to receive perfect scores on standardized writing/grammar tests, but instant messaging has actually improved my spelling. Granted, I turned on the spelling feature when I installed GAIM, and it has improved my spelling by clearly indicating when I'm writing a word incorrectly.
So says the person known as "P3NIS CLEAVER"
*Shudders*
On a more upsetting note, this abuse of ads makes legitimate advertising almost unworkable. I'm talking nonintrusive ads that allow a site to stay afloat despite costs. It's a pity to say the least.
I think they're not allowing us to have clubs on our own with a teacher so that they can complain about it for the budget, which they'll only use to fund sports. It's kind of sad.
It was fun to learn and examine. I hope to use this knowledge in the future to repair and save, not kill and rip apart. It's just one step on that path.
Even with those restrictions, however, we managed to do the other things. Just recently we had a pretty cool lab where we only had 5-10mL of 5 unknown solutions and had to identify cations using everything from flame tests, colors of the solution, boiling water and dissolving precipitates (AgCl and PbCl2 are both white, but only one of them dissolves in hot water), etc.
Lucky you for math team. All of our clubs were scrapped because of the budget! They spent all the remaining money on new uniforms instead of giving us some clubs. Is your school able to get a sufficient amount of students into the BC class? I think only 15 of us took the AP Calculus BC exam while something like 50 or 60 took the AB exam.
It's designed for the bare minimum. Then there is Regents Physics, which is optional for your senior year.
Mind you, I just listed the bare minimum to graduate. We offer a very large amount of advanced placement courses in the sciences - all of them, actually. It's possible to take Computer Science, Living Environment, Earth Science, Chemistry, AP Chemistry, AP Biology, AP Physics B, AP Physics C, Gentics I and II, and Human Anatomy & Physiology all before graduating. That's what I did. However, I was unable to fit in AP Environmental due to scheduling issues. At any rate, it boils down to having a lot available for students with the potential, but making the actual requirements crap so that all can graduate without even thinking much. That's quite a bit wrong if you ask me.
Culture is indeed a major issue. One of my teachers said on a daily basis, "Why are you pretending to not know anything?" It was health, and since it was required the bottom, middle, and upper students were all shoved together and you really saw what mainstream culture was like. He said it just about everyday during the Drug unit and the Sex unit. It was actually a disturbing experience because I hoped that the majority of the country wasn't going to be based off these people who whined and complained when told to do something minor and then bragged about theft, drugs, and promiscuity.
Nevertheless, some got the message. Most didn't. Culture, definitely.
To probe the culture issue even more, I asked my uncle about it. He's a successful Chemical Engineer who is sent out of the US frequently to direct work in Europe, India, and China. In these recent years, mostly the latter two and occasionally Austria. He said, for the most part, that while he sees most of the factory workers exploited until they're burned out, and just replaced soon after due to the massive work force, they certainly hold those who are intelligent in much higher regard because they're the future.
True enough. Mod this guy up, as the other person said.
Yeah, 8th grade earth science was boring. We played with rocks. That was about it.
9th grade biology was a bit more fun. Dissections!
10th grade chemistry was a blast. First demonstration involved putting group I elements in distilled water. Boom! We also made race bottles; we dried old soda bottled and put methanol in them. We also made icecream. We did fun stuff. It wasn't boring at all. Comp. Sci. was what it was; we did nerdy things and laughed.
11th grade AP Physics and AP bio brought even more fun. AP Bio was tied with anatomy so we dissected a cat in June. It really doesn't get better than that. In Physics we did a number of experiments all year. One of the last ones was an engineering project where we had to build a rocket of some sort (no 'fuel' though, it was through water and pressure - the engineering part came with delivering the payload properly).
Finally, senior year AP Physics (C), AP Chemistry, and Genetics proved to be even more interesting. For physics we're now working on building up some of the fundamental models from ground up (Bohr atom, for instance). In Chemistry we're required to do two demos, and we're told to blow things up because it's simply more interesting than anything else. In genetics we created experiments where we actually found some organic foods to be genetically modified (PCR) [Though the occurrence of this happening was very, very low. It just goes to show that not everything is perfect and GMOs can spread easily.]
All in all, the trend was for the experiments to get more interesting and involved as we progressed through the years. Of course, we're also more experienced by that time and tend to be more careful. The proper safety equipment is available as well and as long as we follow the rules and don't screw around, we get to have fun and nobody gets injured.
However, this is only a small slice of the roughly 650 students in each class. You'll only see this trend continuing up until #100. After that, it really starts dwindling and you can see the lack of care for science as a disaster area.
The required Health class really shows students the other side of the class, or the majority, and it's a sad thing at that. I am not surprised by these statistics, but at the same time it can't be applied to everyone. There are still many willing to go the distance in my high school, and plenty on the island I live on.
Just recently I attended an awards dinner for science, where I met some 38 other students who accomplished similar feats in the various fields of science. To be honest, it was quite amazing to see all of these people in one room. I certainly felt welcome. However, it hardly represented the masses, and if they're all like the ones I've met in the aforementioned health class, then that statistic is probably doomed until there's a shift in culture as a whole.
Using DNA for such purposes is a severe violation of privacy. We're talking about our building blocks, our information that defines much of who we are, and a fair share of our offspring. This isn't simple identification, a fingerprint, or a social security card.
It has many uses for violent criminals and has helped in the identification of seemingly elusive killers. Is the general populace a pack of violent criminals now? I think not. This can only be abused.
If I had to choose one, however, it would most likely be AVG Free because I found its interface the most useful. Avast was less intuitive and looks like it attempts to be striking. AntiVir was all right. As far as detecting viruses, I found that they were just about the same. Depending on the most recent updates, some would detect a virus that another missed. However, considering that no software is entirely perfect and the software may not have been updating, neither program is at fault.
In all honesty, I don't think one is signficantly better to warrant a completely acceptable conclusion. I can vouch for all of them as far as detection is concerned, and personally recommend AVG on the basis that it is user-friendly.
Thanks for clearing that up. I thought that number sounded strange. I hadn't heard of Ubuntu until a little over a year ago. When it said "for a few years now" I thought I must've missed a lot.
Of course, this is based on observation. When I recently burned a bunch of knoppix CDs, I accidentally left one on the family's desk. My dad asked what it was, and I explained it to him. He thought it was interesting but didn't express any desire to try it out.
When my younger brother then installed malicious spyware that required hours of cleaning, he decided to pop it in. To his amazement, it worked beautifully. Since knoppix was able to detect everything and the web browser (konqueror/firefox) was right there to click, he was very satisfied.
In short, the serious problems with security flaws in the Operating System and the ease of shooting oneself in the foot on Windows made the majority of my family open to the idea of switching, and not even by my pushing. Other relatives went through a similar experience. I think if users go through this crap enough times when they realize that they don't have to, then perhaps they will switch.
Ease of desktop management is a necessity. If knoppix didn't "just work" when placed in the drive when the computer was booting, the story probably woouldn't be as nice.
Coming back to the article, it would seem that the analyst predicts a different story than that of the summary:
Video game analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities sees the DVD standards war determining the winner in the current video game console battle instead of the other way around.
To be honest, this doesn't seem like it would actually apply. Not many gamers, to my knowledge, care about the DVD standards of their system. But this could be from my skewed knowledge of predominantly using consoles to play games. If someone actually used it just for DVDs, I can see Prachter's vision as being correct; otherwise, it seems a bit backwards. The market for consoles as media centers appears to be only a niche in the industry as a whole.
I think we'll end up exploring both routes. Whichever is more viable will end up taking the lead. Twenty years may be a long time, an especially long time in the technological world, but one never really knows where we'll end up. Predicting future technology seems to be as difficult as forecasting weather.
I find it difficult to read anything involving Jack Thompson seriously at this point. The media coverage he has gained just makes him look like the lead act in a ridiculous circus. While it may have even been funny in a stomach-turning way at one point or another, it's essentially just pathetic to see news involving him.
I can only hope that he learns his lesson sooner or later, or at least it'll get to the point where nobody cares about Jack Thompson. At this stage in the game to say otherwise owuld be an exercise in futility.
After recent news, I know a lot of people that want to switch. I want to switch as well. However, it's cost prohibitive. Most of the people I know are students, and students trying to afford college at that. Apple hardware is just out of our small budgets.
Sure, it doesn't need approval. But that doesn't mean we can't comment on it or discuss it. Much like the regular flow of articles, we haven't much control over them but we can bring about a fairly interesting series of comments.
In this case, I think it's still necessary for us to maintain our critical nature of such things. Who knows? Maybe it could happen to us one day. If we're complacent now, we'll be complacent then; it would be commonplace in the world.
Granted, that's a bit of a stretch; however, the point still remains.
Perhaps I've been going about experimentation and research wrong, or it only applies to the scope of my own fields of study, but I thought theories were either supported or disproved. Proof is completely valid, accepted as true. It's always a bit of a stretch to use it in science.
It can be more of flamebait in a way. A news article cites findings and exclaims proof only to instigate an argument with the other side. More flock to it.
Anyhow, I don't want to detract from this interesting article. I just found it a poor choice of words for an article related to science. Definitive proof will always be elusive, but I'm glad to see we're still headed on the right track for evolution.
I found it sort of strange that they referred to 25 as being old, senior citizen old. When I played Star Wars Galaxies (before it tanked), the average age for guild members was in the ~23-26 range. Most had jobs, a couple had children, a lot had wives/girlfriends.
I think I was the only one under 18 at the time (2 years back, I turn 18 this month). Most players that were in my age group were incredibly annoying; there's no doubt in my mind that the guild just wanted a more mature gaming group.
Granted, I no longer play MMORPGs as they take too much time. They suck the life blood out of me. I prefer just kicking back on less time consuming games, and my ideal teammate/opponent is usually a bit older than I am just for the sake of a greater chance of it being more fun (or tolerable).
I think what the article is hinting at is it seems to be artificial.
For example, from the article:
"People lured to Australia on the promise of lucrative jobs in IT get here and find they don't have a hope of getting a job," he said.
This creates a mess of problems. Perhaps Australia was getting the standard immigration scenario you outlined there - work for less money ($10 instead of $100) - and then the government stepped in. The program outlined dramatically increased immigration in hopes of getting promising IT jobs. Only problem? The reverse happened. They were expecting that $100 but instead got $10. The immigrant loses and the company hiring wins.
From the article:
"People lured to Australia on the promise of lucrative jobs in IT get here and find they don't have a hope of getting a job," he said.
But Australian Computer Society chief executive officer Dennis Furini said that while there was possibly an oversupply of entry-level programmers, there was a shortage of specialists in areas such as e-commerce and network security.
It might've been easier on all parties involved to have highlighted that, according to the article, that the shortage involved was in e-commerce and network security. The oversupply is just going to make the jobs worthless if the companies have an enormous supply of workers. The promise of lucrative jobs is then a blatant lie - but perhaps the influx is desired by companies for that very reason.
Either way, that's fairly unfortunate. The immigrants and the natives both lose in the long run. The fierce competition could easily drive down wages. If you're willing to work for less, you're hired; it may not apply toward the highly skilled jobs, but it's still employed to a degree.
On the extreme, it seriously cuts future supply by discouraging future students from IT. Money is a powerful number, and high unemployments means a certain lack of money. And then the cycle continues, as someone put it earlier.
Yeah, and the stuff they sell on NYC streets are of great quality.
No, they're not. It's more than just a fake label. They're usually lower quality goods along with a fake label. Sometimes they may be of equal quality, but that is unusual. This goes for most counterfeit goods. I was sold a counterfeit hard drive several years back. It was some cheap drive slapped into a quality drive's box. I was rather disappointed when I found out but the company did replace it without a hassle.
This isn't talking about cheap fakes. Instead, you're getting unreliable fakes for the brand price. You're getting ripped off twice as much. That's not good at all, no matter what spin you put on it. I think you're confusing this with just getting stuff dirt cheap from China. The article focuses on the fakes commonly being put in place of the real goods.