iQor is providing good jobs for Americans in places where those jobs are needed. However, we must be careful here. In reading the article, iQor is depending on their employees having (or developing) a strong technical background. They are also happy with their low turn-over rates.
If you prefer people with a strong technical background, you pay high salaries, and you want to decrease turnover rates, you risk falling into the same H-1B- and foreign consultant-hiring trap which many technology companies have.
They are searching for "financial records, photos, and Web site histories." Which of these do most people not have on their smart phone? I would say most people have at least one or two of them if not all of them.
How will people react to someone going through their iPhone/Blackberry/etc? What about their child's device! Excuse me, ma'am, but I have to look through your daughter's iPhone...
Do what most businesses are no doubt already doing: ship the laptop via UPS, FedEx, etc.
This is an excellent idea. But, most of the researchers I know use the flight time to tweak slides for presentations, paper submissions, grant proposals, or read papers as a referee. Most own at least two batteries for long flights. If they did not have their laptop on the plane, they would go nuts.
Another note: If laptops are going to be searched, would iPhones, etc. not be essentially the same? Someone should bring that up in court.
Carry a large USB stick. Back up your personal information (browser history, saved email, etc.) to it and put it in your pocket or even better, mail it home to yourself at your destination before you board the airplane. When you arrive, replace the personal information.
Looking through browser history is equivalent to asking you to provide your personal diary in order to get into the country. Similarly, looking at your saved email is equivalent to requiring you to bring copies of all your personal correspondence for the previous 12 months in order to get into the country.
This is really, really disgusting, and should not happen in the United States of America.
If Mexico is able to show good results with this, maybe it will make sense to look at doing something similar in the US. At least someone in North America is trying it.
Of course, San Francisco is ignoring marijuana for personal use, as is Canada (as mentioned by someone else in an earlier comment), but I do not think marijuana is the "problem drug" from which we need to help people recover. Given a choice between marijuana and alcohol, I think we would do better paying more attention to alcohol. Similarly, given the choice between marijuana and crack/meth/heroin/etc., I think marijuana is not the larger problem.
Todd
Note for employers: I do not use any illicit drugs.
(Side note: A quick reminder: These are K-12 textbooks, not college-level texts.)
Here are some positive things to think about, which assumes the books will be available electronically--making them easily printable and available from anywhere. These comments come from someone who grew up in a family of K-12 teachers:
1. Being able to "take a textbook home" without having to carry it will almost certainly lead to more at-home study and better students.
2. People who choose to do home schooling will benefit from this. And, by using the same texts, there is an opportunity for a smooth transition to/from home schooling.
3. Schools with budget problems might see a big win here.
4. The moderate hassle of keeping track of textbooks which are loaned to students each semester/school-year/etc. will be mitigated.
I am sure there are some others.
As for the problem of teaching aids, I believe an on-line repository allowing teachers to contribute aids they have developed for themselves for others to use would quickly fill this void. In my experience, K-12 teachers are almost always willing to contribute their efforts to help fellow teachers.
The Computer History Museum is free and has an unbelievable collection of computer artifacts. It is in the Bay Area, so there are lots of other things you can see in San Francisco, San Jose, etc. I will leave recommendation of those up to others who will certainly chime in.
Yes. If I am an expert in branch prediction and I work for Intel on their branch predictor (which was one of their most-guarded secrets when I worked for Intel Labs), then if AMD hires me, I am going to have a hard time working on AMD's branch predictor.
Now, if AMD wants to hire me to work on something different from branch prediction, fine.
I do not think Google is going to ask the On2 engineers to work on anything other than CODECs, as least at first.
You are correct. I guess when professors I know at a top-10 school are not allowed to consult for company B because they have consulted for company A in the past, this is not related.
Also, when Intel goes to court to keep one of their engineers from working for AMD, this is not related.
I believe IBM often participates in this sort of court battle.
But, all of this is off topic. If you want to get a team that works on a certain type of technology and does it well, the best way is to find a team that has been doing it. Hiring that entire team away from a company without the companies blessing may be legal, but it is not the sort of thing that wins praise outside of the boardroom or a shareholder's meeting.
Purchasing a company outright is the best way to take control of the technology and get a set of already-trained engineers.
Perhaps someone who knows someone at Google or On2 can confirm whether or not Google wanted the engineers or just the IP. Then we can quit arguing about this issue.
I have not been a hiring manager, but I have worked with many people who have been. Although, I think this is more of a topic for HR and company lawyers.
Engineers are considered (or at least they were at one time) an asset, and companies protect this asset in several ways:
1. They restrict people from working for a direct competitor for some period of time after leaving a company.
2. They restrict people from hiring co-workers away from a company from which they have recently left.
3. Leaking information about the people who work for a company can be grounds for termination.
If you are unfamiliar with these issues, perhaps you have never been in a position which makes you not easily replaceable. Some of the least replaceable people are analog and VLSI circuit designers (which I am not).
The non-evil, best way to acquire this talent is to buy the company. Sometimes this is not possible because the company has many other assets which make it expensive. This should not be the case with On2.
Also, maybe the original investors in On2 were smart enough to put non-compete clauses in the contracts of the engineers they hired for their start-up. After all, when you invest millions of dollars in a start-up, you usually want to protect your investment.
After 6 years at the University of Wisconsin studying Computer Architecture, 3 years of that time working with James Smith, an Eckert-Mauchley award winner (the Nobel Prize of the computer architecture community), I spent three years looking for work.
I ended up driving a cab for the Union Cab Company of Madison. Thank God for them, otherwise I would have been on the street.
I do not know how to deal with situations like this. I do know that 100s of H-1B people are doing jobs which I could do, but there is no way to establish the situation. Other than this, I know of no other way to help anyone like myself or this student.
Will someone with the appropriate experience please chime in here? I know there are many people in the recording industry with opinions. Please help us out.
The number of comments on this posting makes a statement about how important this issue is.
I believe we need to attend to possible mental disability issues the same way we attend to physical disability issues. Of course, we know some people use this sort of thing as an excuse, but it might be valid in some cases.
Having a hacked card is of no use if one cannot find a parking space. Most people who have attempted to park in SF know the time wasted finding a space is usually worth more than the cost of the parking.
My question was rhetorical, but as rjhubs pointed out, AMD's market cap is about $3B. Thus, $4B would be a reasonable amount of cash to have on hand if one were interested in a cash purchase of AMD.
So, my real question is, does Microsoft want to become less vertically challenged?
-Todd
Rolex does the same thing Alienware is doing in this story. If you send Rolex a watch which has non-Rolex-made parts, they will confiscate them and charge you for the replacements.
Maybe Alienware thinks it is a bit too high up the quality scale to treat their customers like real people.
-Todd
The ability to focus light is currently a limiting factor for reducing the feature size on VLSI chips below 0.45nm. Has this lens been discussed for this use? Thank you in advance for any pointers to write-ups or other information.
Read Dr. Temple Grandin's book _Thinking In Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism_ for more information about the uses of hugging to comfort humans with Autism and animals undergoing veterinary care.
Slashdot Mirror
iQor is providing good jobs for Americans in places where those jobs are needed. However, we must be careful here. In reading the article, iQor is depending on their employees having (or developing) a strong technical background. They are also happy with their low turn-over rates.
If you prefer people with a strong technical background, you pay high salaries, and you want to decrease turnover rates, you risk falling into the same H-1B- and foreign consultant-hiring trap which many technology companies have.
I hope I am wrong.
-Todd
They are searching for "financial records, photos, and Web site histories." Which of these do most people not have on their smart phone? I would say most people have at least one or two of them if not all of them.
How will people react to someone going through their iPhone/Blackberry/etc? What about their child's device! Excuse me, ma'am, but I have to look through your daughter's iPhone...
I do not think people will put up with this.
-Todd
Do what most businesses are no doubt already doing: ship the laptop via UPS, FedEx, etc.
This is an excellent idea. But, most of the researchers I know use the flight time to tweak slides for presentations, paper submissions, grant proposals, or read papers as a referee. Most own at least two batteries for long flights. If they did not have their laptop on the plane, they would go nuts.
Another note: If laptops are going to be searched, would iPhones, etc. not be essentially the same? Someone should bring that up in court.
-Todd
Carry a large USB stick. Back up your personal information (browser history, saved email, etc.) to it and put it in your pocket or even better, mail it home to yourself at your destination before you board the airplane. When you arrive, replace the personal information.
Looking through browser history is equivalent to asking you to provide your personal diary in order to get into the country. Similarly, looking at your saved email is equivalent to requiring you to bring copies of all your personal correspondence for the previous 12 months in order to get into the country.
This is really, really disgusting, and should not happen in the United States of America.
Todd
If Mexico is able to show good results with this, maybe it will make sense to look at doing something similar in the US. At least someone in North America is trying it.
Of course, San Francisco is ignoring marijuana for personal use, as is Canada (as mentioned by someone else in an earlier comment), but I do not think marijuana is the "problem drug" from which we need to help people recover. Given a choice between marijuana and alcohol, I think we would do better paying more attention to alcohol. Similarly, given the choice between marijuana and crack/meth/heroin/etc., I think marijuana is not the larger problem.
Todd
Note for employers: I do not use any illicit drugs.
Todd
(Side note: A quick reminder: These are K-12 textbooks, not college-level texts.)
Here are some positive things to think about, which assumes the books will be available electronically--making them easily printable and available from anywhere. These comments come from someone who grew up in a family of K-12 teachers:
1. Being able to "take a textbook home" without having to carry it will almost certainly lead to more at-home study and better students.
2. People who choose to do home schooling will benefit from this. And, by using the same texts, there is an opportunity for a smooth transition to/from home schooling.
3. Schools with budget problems might see a big win here.
4. The moderate hassle of keeping track of textbooks which are loaned to students each semester/school-year/etc. will be mitigated.
I am sure there are some others.
As for the problem of teaching aids, I believe an on-line repository allowing teachers to contribute aids they have developed for themselves for others to use would quickly fill this void. In my experience, K-12 teachers are almost always willing to contribute their efforts to help fellow teachers.
Todd
The Computer History Museum is free and has an unbelievable collection of computer artifacts. It is in the Bay Area, so there are lots of other things you can see in San Francisco, San Jose, etc. I will leave recommendation of those up to others who will certainly chime in.
Here is a link to the museum: http://www.computerhistory.org/
Enjoy your trip!
Todd
Yes. If I am an expert in branch prediction and I work for Intel on their branch predictor (which was one of their most-guarded secrets when I worked for Intel Labs), then if AMD hires me, I am going to have a hard time working on AMD's branch predictor.
Now, if AMD wants to hire me to work on something different from branch prediction, fine.
I do not think Google is going to ask the On2 engineers to work on anything other than CODECs, as least at first.
-Todd
You are correct. I guess when professors I know at a top-10 school are not allowed to consult for company B because they have consulted for company A in the past, this is not related.
Also, when Intel goes to court to keep one of their engineers from working for AMD, this is not related.
I believe IBM often participates in this sort of court battle.
But, all of this is off topic. If you want to get a team that works on a certain type of technology and does it well, the best way is to find a team that has been doing it. Hiring that entire team away from a company without the companies blessing may be legal, but it is not the sort of thing that wins praise outside of the boardroom or a shareholder's meeting.
Purchasing a company outright is the best way to take control of the technology and get a set of already-trained engineers.
Perhaps someone who knows someone at Google or On2 can confirm whether or not Google wanted the engineers or just the IP. Then we can quit arguing about this issue.
-Todd
I have not been a hiring manager, but I have worked with many people who have been. Although, I think this is more of a topic for HR and company lawyers.
Engineers are considered (or at least they were at one time) an asset, and companies protect this asset in several ways:
1. They restrict people from working for a direct competitor for some period of time after leaving a company.
2. They restrict people from hiring co-workers away from a company from which they have recently left.
3. Leaking information about the people who work for a company can be grounds for termination.
If you are unfamiliar with these issues, perhaps you have never been in a position which makes you not easily replaceable. Some of the least replaceable people are analog and VLSI circuit designers (which I am not).
-Todd
The non-evil, best way to acquire this talent is to buy the company. Sometimes this is not possible because the company has many other assets which make it expensive. This should not be the case with On2.
Also, maybe the original investors in On2 were smart enough to put non-compete clauses in the contracts of the engineers they hired for their start-up. After all, when you invest millions of dollars in a start-up, you usually want to protect your investment.
-Todd
-Todd
After 6 years at the University of Wisconsin studying Computer Architecture, 3 years of that time working with James Smith, an Eckert-Mauchley award winner (the Nobel Prize of the computer architecture community), I spent three years looking for work.
I ended up driving a cab for the Union Cab Company of Madison. Thank God for them, otherwise I would have been on the street.
I do not know how to deal with situations like this. I do know that 100s of H-1B people are doing jobs which I could do, but there is no way to establish the situation. Other than this, I know of no other way to help anyone like myself or this student.
-Todd
Will someone with the appropriate experience please chime in here? I know there are many people in the recording industry with opinions. Please help us out.
Thanks.
-Todd
The number of comments on this posting makes a statement about how important this issue is.
I believe we need to attend to possible mental disability issues the same way we attend to physical disability issues. Of course, we know some people use this sort of thing as an excuse, but it might be valid in some cases.
-Todd
Having a hacked card is of no use if one cannot find a parking space. Most people who have attempted to park in SF know the time wasted finding a space is usually worth more than the cost of the parking.
Nevertheless, hacking the system is interesting.
-Todd
My question was rhetorical, but as rjhubs pointed out, AMD's market cap is about $3B. Thus, $4B would be a reasonable amount of cash to have on hand if one were interested in a cash purchase of AMD.
So, my real question is, does Microsoft want to become less vertically challenged? -Todd
Is Microsoft thinking of getting involved in hardware? -Todd
Rolex does the same thing Alienware is doing in this story. If you send Rolex a watch which has non-Rolex-made parts, they will confiscate them and charge you for the replacements. Maybe Alienware thinks it is a bit too high up the quality scale to treat their customers like real people. -Todd
I expect someone else already pointed this out, but just in case... -Todd
The ability to focus light is currently a limiting factor for reducing the feature size on VLSI chips below 0.45nm. Has this lens been discussed for this use? Thank you in advance for any pointers to write-ups or other information.
Read Dr. Temple Grandin's book _Thinking In Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism_ for more information about the uses of hugging to comfort humans with Autism and animals undergoing veterinary care.