The Yin and Yang of Hour of Code & Immigration Reform 220
theodp writes "The weeklong Hour of Code kicks off tomorrow, with Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates doing their part to address a declared nationwide CS crisis by ostensibly teaching the nation's schoolchildren how to code. But a recent NY Times Op-Ed by economist Paul Collier criticizing Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC as self-serving advocacy (echoing earlier criticism) serves as a reminder that Zuckerberg and Gates' Code.org and Hour of Code involvement is the Yin to their H-1B visa lobbying Yang. The two efforts have been inextricably linked together for Congress, if not for the public. And while Zuckerberg argues it's 'the right thing to do', Collier argues that there are also downsides to the tech giants' plans to shift more bright, young, enterprising people from the poorest countries to the richest. 'An open door for the talented would help Facebook's bottom line,' Collier concludes, 'but not the bottom billion.'"
Parasites (Score:5, Insightful)
Uses complex offshore shell companies in order to not pay taxes to fund roads, schools, community, civilization.
Wont train Americans (or anyone else) in IT, actively seeking to import labor again that someone else paid for their education
how is this company even got a voice in America? in the old days they would be run out of town or worse
today ? fuck you you i got mine and there is nothing you can do to stop me
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Uses complex offshore shell companies in order to not pay taxes to fund roads, schools, community, civilization.
They pay plenty of taxes, including payroll taxes, sales taxes, and taxes on dividends and capital gains paid by their shareholders. They only avoid income tax. But corporate income tax comes out of the pockets of some combination of their employees, customers, and shareholders. If you think employees should pay more, then raise payroll taxes. If you think customers should pay more, then raise sales taxes. If you think shareholders should pay more then raise taxes on dividends and capital gains. Any o
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They pay plenty of taxes ...
How did you determine it's "plenty", by noting that they pay more in the way of taxes than you do? "Plenty" should be in proportion to income.
But corporate income tax comes out of the pockets of some combination of their employees, customers, and shareholders.
"Some combination" leaves a lot of latitude and the biggest question of all unanswered. You did however make the observation that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Let me add that the sun rises in the east and that water is wet. They're all truisms, but so obviously true as to make the mention of them trite.
If you think customers should pay more, then raise sales taxes. If you think shareholders should pay more then raise taxes on dividends and capital gains.
I'll vote for the last. Taxing "long term" (greater than
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I'll vote for the last. Taxing "long term" (greater than 1 year is long term?) capital gains at a a max marginal rate of 15%, even if you're a billionaire, while middle class schnooks pay a higher marginal rate on their earned income (IRS term), is obscene. Have you noticed the vast political movement to change that? Or that the average person in the street, fed "information" by the sycophantic media, are even aware of such an absurd disparity?
The problem here is there are people who are middle class and people who think they are middle class. You are middle class if you have a professional job or are a tradesmen with some savings and the ability to make choices. You quit and move to a different city because you want to for example. If you nothing but debts and your credit is maxed out and would be looking at foreclosure after a few months if you lose a job, you are not middle class. I don't care how big your McMansion is or have many SUVs yo
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The actual middle class has savings in investments and that 15% tax rates helps them lots.
The vast majority of middle class investments are in IRA's and 401k's, where they should be, and where you don't pay taxes on them until you retire anyway. Very few retirees pay above a 15% tax rate, so the limit on capitals gains rates doesn't help them at all.
Maybe it should be 15% on the first 100K and go up from there but just blanket raising the capital gains would be bad for middle class America.
That's the same idea as the progressive rates on other forms of income. Ergo, there is no need to do anything other than eliminate the 15% ceiling on capital gains rates. Even Reagan thought that was a good idea, and signed into law a bill that did t
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All Taxes are regressive. ALWAYS. Liberals always talk about "equity" of taxes, but they never realize that taxes themselves are regressive. The rich can always avoid taxes via their wealth. The poor can never avoid taxes. Targeting the rich at their wealth, does nothing but hurt those that it is designed to help.
If you want to punish the successful, reward failure, you're going to have a really backwards country. And since you are a liberal, I doubt you'll ever understand this simple little truth.
You want
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Talk about blind (Score:2)
Wont train Americans (or anyone else) in IT
What mindless babble is this? It's posted in the VERY STORY about the "hour of code" designed to train young people everywhere (which includes Amercia!) how to code!
As for not paying anything - the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate on earth. Lots of companies (and people for that matter) don't mind paying taxes but hate being robbed. Can you blame them? Well I know YOU can, but could anyone reasonable?
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It's posted in the VERY STORY about the "hour of code" designed to train young people everywhere (which includes Amercia!) how to code!
A week long "hour of code" just puts a positive spin on their overall program, which focuses mostly on things like the H-1B program. If you're fooled by that propaganda effort, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
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We need to give MORE MONEY to really, really, really rich people, so they can do a few charities for AIDS and have after school programs for kids to play with code.
Then we bend over and let them import labor from people who were college educated where it was subsidized getting paid less than an American to do a job. Did they mention how we pay for our own educations now?
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As for not paying anything - the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate on earth.
Except for being completely wrong in the real world where most of the Fortune 500 are paying around 5% -- good points there.
Lots of companies (and people for that matter) don't mind paying taxes but hate being robbed. Can you blame them? Well I know YOU can, but could anyone reasonable?
I'm sorry, I'm too busy sending out resumes and keeping the lights on for my kids while my wife and I both work full time temp jobs without be
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Nah, in the old days people would've tried to run them out of town, but they would've hired some private thugs (Pinkertons, etc.) to run the other people out of town instead.
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" in the old days they would be run out of town or worse"
In which alternate universe were those "old days"?
In the real old days, companies hired Pinkertons etc to kill laborers who resisted them, and had little problem importing coolie labor.
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In which alternate universe were those "old days"?
But, as the AC immediately above you pointed out, at least people would have tried to run them out of town. Or, at the very least, people would have wanted to run them out of town, and thought they deserved it.
Compare that to today where most people don't think they should be run out of town. Talk about effective brainwashing! At least most people back then understood economic reality, despite supposedly being less educated. Maybe the absence of TV, not to mention the existence of an actual opposition press
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Why is it the job of corporations to train people?
I've always been willing to forge my own path to learning, I learn what I want to learn and I'm willing to dedicate my time and money to doing so.
All the greatest developers I've known are those who have a passion for learning, and they keep doing so, they never stop. If someone has this entitlement attitude where industry owns them training then they don't have that trait, sure you could send them on a training course for this, that, and the other, but if t
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stop being such an entitlist
Why? FB/Zuck and MS/Gates are the ultimate entitlists. They think they're entitled to not pay taxes, unlike us middle class schnooks. They think they're entitled to special government programs, like the H-1B visa program, to increase the profitability of already wealthy corporations and their major stockholders.
By contrast, you play the useful idiot [wikipedia.org], regurgitating propaganda like the "global economy you need to give companies an incentive to stay and support your local economy". As for "why should they even
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Its not their responsibility to train you but we probably should ask the question whey they don't want to. Is it because the American education system is not turning out young adults that are even fit for entry level positions in tech firms?
Is it that other nations are turning out young adults that are so much better qualified?
Do companies no longer see a benefit from developing and retaining talent in house? People used to have entire professional careers at just one or two organizations. Why has this c
the education system was not meant for job skill (Score:2)
And we pushed to many people in to it while at the same time give tech / trade schools a bad rap.
Now the tech / trade schools are hurt by being roped into the old college system
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It isnt their responsibility to train you
Yet they came up with the curriculum, dubbed it "Common Core", and are helping fund the implementation. But, yea, they expect the middle class taxpayers to fund the actual training for the next generation of corporate cogs.
When You Hear Talk About Any Reform (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When You Hear Talk About Any Reform (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider the interests of the would-be reformer
Apparently that economist, Mr. Paul Collier, doesn't even have any braincell to think.
From the TFA:
Collier argues that there are also downsides to the tech giants' plans to shift more bright, young, enterprising people from the poorest countries to the richest
MOST of those young, bright and enterprising people from the POOREST COUNTRIES won't get ANY chance to tap on their potential in their own country, and I am speaking as someone who had been through exactly that scenario.
When I came out of China, back in the early 1970's, China was in a VERY TERRIBLE STATE.
Millions of ordinary citizens had died of hunger.
Social upheaval were everywhere - goons waving that little red book were ransacking/looting people's houses they accused of "anti-revolutionary".
If I WERE to stay in China, I had only two choices: Either joined those goons in doing all the WRONG THINGS they had been doing, or to stay absolutely low key, go into a remote village somewhere, and work as a farm hand.
But I got out of China and ended up in America.
In America, I got to further my education (I already had high school education back in China), I got to learn many things from many very brainy people who came to America from all over the world, I got the chance to participate in the American dream, I got to start my own companies, I got to sell my companies for huge profit and re-invest the monies into even more startups.
I could NEVER do any of that had I stuck in China.
Nowadays I am helping many young, bright and very enterprising people in poor countries in Asia, Africa and South America, by either inviting them to become my co-workers in the companies that I own (full or part), or I invest in their startups.
That Mr. Paul Collier is nothing but a talking head.
Most of the poor countries in the world simply do not have the infrastructure to allow those young, bright and enterprising people to do what they can do.
Most of the governments in those poor countries are mired in unbelievably mountains of bureaucratic red tapes, red tapes that do nothing but making the lives of their own citizens even that much more miserable.
I came from one of those poor countries, I know what was/is happening.
I am not saying that Bill Gates and/or Mark Zuckerberg are right to do whatever they do, but at least they are offering many young, bright and enterprising people from poor countries A CHANCE TO PROVE THEIR WORTH TO THE WORLD, and also to themselves.
As for Mr. Paul Collier, other than being a talking head, what did/does he do to help out those young, bright and enterprising people in the poorest countries in the world ?
Re:When You Hear Talk About Any Reform (Score:5, Insightful)
Nowadays I am helping many young, bright and very enterprising people in poor countries in Asia, Africa and South America, by either inviting them to become my co-workers in the companies that I own (full or part), or I invest in their startups.
Are you helping them IN the poor countries in Asia, Africa, and South America -- or are you bringing them to America and "helping" them here?
If all you ever do is bring people here, how the hell are the poor countries ever going to become anything other than poor? Build things THERE. Don't bring them here, to take opportunities from American citizens. Yeah, yeah, you have your little pity stories to tell about poverty and oppression, and I'm sure it's all true. But I care about that, and your "young, bright, and very enterprising people" from all over the world, to the exact same extent you care about anyone in America -- not at all.
The American Dream was supposed to be FOR Americans. Make your own damn dreams. No, seriously -- make all those other countries WORTH staying in, and living in, and being in. Or can you only have your dreams here in America, with the infrastructure paid for by Americans, with the legal systems built and maintained and paid for by Americans, with the society and ideals fought and paid and died for by Americans?
Re:When You Hear Talk About Any Reform (Score:5, Insightful)
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Great.
I'm a native of America and I'd like this opportunity too!
All I have to do is pretend I won't complain that they pay me a third the standard, and that they can deport me at any time based on a whim.
Anyone in India willing to sell their identity to me?
Tea Party welcomes LEGAL immigrants (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time an H1B story is posted here, we get a lot of Tea Party-type comments from people
No you don't. I've been reading Slashdot for years and have never seen Tea Party members of any kind post against LEGAL immigration, which is healthy. In fact most of us stick up for H1B guys because we know a lot of them... it's the liberals who cry that H1B are stealing jobs from America and need to be banned.
The problem the Tea Party has is with illegal immigrants, which generally are not nearly as desirable or productive members of society (and who would expect they would be when the very act of coming here starts out by committing a crime?)
It's criminal how you and others cannot seem to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration, which are vastly different things.
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I agree. Go to someplace like DailyKos. You will find a lot of anti-H1B rants by the same people who want illegals to be given amnesty.
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Fine. Let's swarm every corner of this country with Homeland Security goons to collar anyone who looks a little brown, ask him Sus papeles, por favor, and beat the mierda out of him when he answers in English, all in the name of freedom. Let's build the Great Wall of Texas.
And the Tea Party can be the ones to propose some taxes to pay for it all.
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Speaking as someone who would not be offended to be labels a TEA party member my problem with illegal immigration is its a basic question of rule of law. If the law does not work or we don't want to enforce it, than it should be repealed or amended. If its on the books it should be enforced. No exceptions no playing favorites, collar them a prosecute them; deport them. Its a stupid policy but we should change it not just ignore it and fail to enforce it.
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People should go back and look up the Know Nothing party of the 1840's ...
Those people include you, because you don't understand what the Know Nothing party was about. Mostly it was anti-Catholic, because supposedly Catholics would obey what the pope said and hence were anti-democratic. Nevertheless there were more general xenophobic sentiments, but don't view things from a 21st century POV and underestimate the strength of anti-Catholic sentiment back then.
Contrast that to today. Do you see any concern here for guest workers having different religious beliefs than most Americans
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Was the difference between the two situations an essential difference that invalidate the comparison, or was it mere variation due to historical circumstances?
The former. If you have a valid criticism of my characterization of the Know-Nothing party, then please cite it. Your "just kind of know" version of history is not very convincing.
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Not expressis verbis. But it is a dual intent visa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_intent [wikipedia.org]
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But it is a dual intent visa.
Why do we need a "dual intent" visa? Many of the people here, who join Zuckerberg and Gates in extolling the virtues of an expanded H-1B program, confuse the issue by saying things like "immigrants are an integral part of the American Dream". I agree with their sentiment about immigrants, but how does immigration of the past compare to today's H-1B program? Amongst other things, American immigration law eschewed guest worker programs, and forbade employers from seeking out or hiring people in foreign countr
Re:When You Hear Talk About Any Reform (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh for fuck's safe, "The American Dream was supposed to be FOR Americans"?? Which Americans were those? Are the Irish and Italians and Jews allowed to prosper, or is success only for the WASPs? Anyone who's willing to follow our laws and pay their taxes should be welcome. They certainly contribute more than the tax-dodging, money-laundering elite.
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Ah, yes, the old "Europe is so much older than America" condescension. Not a one of you Europeans doesn't trace his or her ancestry back to Africa.
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Re:When You Hear Talk About Any Reform (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue isn't whether the best and the brightest from overseas should be able to fill the gaps in the demand for skilled workers. The issue is whether they should be doing it through the flawed H1-B program. If Zuckerberg and Gates were arguing for a streamlined path to citizenship or even green cards for workers with skills that are at a shortage in the US, that would be a different matter. But the H1-B allows companies to pay 60%-70% of what they would pay a citizen for 3-6 years before they get sent home.
If the workers could become US citizens, they could build their lives here and be active members of the community invested in our collective future. But the tech giants want disposable talent to use and send home. It's short-sighted and will ensure that we have a lot more foreign competition as skilled talent leaves at the end of their H1-Bs and build competing technology in their home countries.
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I'm on a H1B working for Microsoft. My salary is at the same level as my American coworkers
Microsoft is one of the few companies that's actually pretty good about that.
and if Microsoft decides to lay me off tomorrow, I have 30 days to move to another tech company
30 days, woo-hoo! But if you're out of work for the unheard of period of 5 weeks, you're supposed to be deported.
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You're confusing the supposed market value of Zuck's stock with FB's income. FB has a P/E of 123. If they don't reduce that, somebody may eventually wake up and issue a lot of sell orders for FB. Besides, there's the principle of the thing. Even if Zuck didn't personally like the idea (admittedly a very big "if"), the Wall Street buys will derate your stock if you're not doing everything possible to screw your American employees.
There are plenty of American coders (Score:5, Informative)
They just don't want to play American wages.
Ten years of unemployment as a software engineer (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, that is my point. There are plenty of talented and educated people in this country. The tech companies just don't want to pay a fair wage in a regular display of union busting. I know my story might be on the edge of a bellcurve, but I'm just saying I understand personally what it is like to never get a chance at a job. If you don't watch, it can grind into your very self worth.
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Certainly having friends well placed will help you to get better jobs, I do not contend that, but you can manage well even without them.
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There's an odd preference for already-employed people, so there's this kind of self-reinforcing phenomenon where, if you already have a job, you can easily get five job offers, but if you have no job, you can't get any job offers. Especially true if you've been unemployed for a non-negligible period of time: 3 months or something is fine, looks like you're just between jobs, but 3 years and employers start to assume there must be some horrible dark reason, and pass on the resume. Basically a variety [wikipedia.org] of "soc
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I'm just getting off about ten years of unemployment as a software engineer.
How closely were your loss of your job and subsequent inability to get another one correlated with your claims of God talking to you? http://www.goodnewsjim.com/ [goodnewsjim.com]
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How closely were your loss of your job and subsequent inability to get another one correlated with your claims of God talking to you?
The irony is very amusing, all the more for how so many are oblivious to it. Many of those who join Zuck and Bill in being pro-H1-B visa program, liken those who are opposed to the Know-Nothings. Uh, folks, read your history - the Know-Nothings were primarily anti-Catholic. Meanwhile this sort of bigotry, where someone is made fun of for having religious beliefs, passes almost entirely without comment.
Re:Ten years of unemployment as a software enginee (Score:4, Informative)
He's not making fun of him for having religious beliefs, he's making fun of him for being completely oblivious to the fact that maybe he's unemployable because he's suffering delusions.
It's one thing to believe in some god, I think most people have no problem with that. It's not my cup of tea, but each to there own. However, it's a whole other thing to believe he speaks to you. That requires you to hear voices in your head. That requires you to be actually clinically insane.
People who are clinically insane tend not to be the best workers.
You'd have had a point if you'd instead talked about the fact we shouldn't joke about people who have mental health issues, then you'd be right.
Re:Ten years of unemployment as a software enginee (Score:4, Informative)
a. you are lazy
b. you are incompetent
c. you printed the website you have in your sig on your resume
But most likely, it's just all BS.
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You have to remember, companies would rather have an H1B with marginal qualifications rather than a citizen with marginal qualifications. I've seen programmers struggle because they have poor people skills even though they take "people classes". Should they just change careers?
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Would you care to make an argument instead of a series of assertions? Otherwise your post is most likely BS.
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I'll make an argument, software development is a profession with logic at it's core. It's inherent in just about everything you do as a developer.
You hence need to be capable of logical thinking that is to be able to make logical deductions.
When you get a job as a developer you'll hence most likely be working with very logical people, people who can deduce when your arguments and ideas don't make sense, and will expect you to back down if you can't logically defend your claim.
GoodNewsJim.com is probably one
CS degrees come with skill gaps and BS / BA is to (Score:2)
CS degrees come with skill gaps and BS / BA is to much class room time.
also IT jobs do not need CS much less 4 years pure class room
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CS degrees come with skill gaps and BS / BA is to much class room time.
You mean the type of CS degrees that are a primary justification for H-1B's?
Blue collar society (Score:5, Insightful)
I have friend with decades of film production experience and he is de facto unemployable. The jobs are outsourced, or filled by 1H-B holders. He can't find work outside the film industry because he is "overqualified". When he applies for retail like Target or Starbucks, they don't want him because younger workers are easier to push around and abuse.
If you think that you are immune because you are "a professional", just wait. Get 10 or 15 years of experience and watch that become the reason that you won't be hired.
Meanwhile, Wall Street hits new highs on a regular basis. There is a direct causal relationship going on here. The wealth going to the rich is being siphoned from the rest of society. If things don't change the US will have a economic/social structure like the Spanish speaking part of the Americas. Don't be surprised when this happens, you had plenty of warning.
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If you think that you are immune because you are "a professional", just wait. Get 10 or 15 years of experience and watch that become the reason that you won't be hired.
Hmm. I have 26 years of experience. How much longer do I need to wait? I work with a couple of guys who've been professional programmers for nearly 40 years. The industry had better hurry up and ruin them pretty quickly, or they'll retire first.
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Here's the cold, hard facts: For every one of you who win that fucking friend lottery, there are thousands of people who don't.
That sort of observation is only relevant when a) it's actually a "fact", and b) a different bunch of "thousands of people" for each person who won the "friend lottery".
An actual survey [chicagotribune.com] found that more than half of all jobs offered were filled internally or by referral. That indicates to me that a lot of people, not merely one in a few thousand, found jobs via the "friend lobby".
I personally, have picked up at least three jobs via the "friend lottery". I don't think I'm even remotely unusual in that.
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since when is blue collar a problem?
Perhaps the problem is rather "blue collar with no benefits" and perhaps no unions that would pave the way to a new manchester capitalism.
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that is right since the 1980's when some wanna be hipppy farts decided we are a country of innovators
Hippies (at least learn to spell it right - only two p's and ending in "ie"), a species that was extinct even back then, were responsible for the 80's loss of industry that was largely due to an overvalued dollar? Who knew.
The need four-year degree is the issue as well (Score:3)
The need four-year degree is the issue as well.
Most community colleges don't offer them
Lot's of IT / tech classes are offed non degree and some should be able to take classes and get some for doing that with out having to commit to the full degree time table.
Also the college Tenure system leads to people with little to no real IT skills teaching the classes VS community / tech schools with real pros teaching.
What about a TXT or free to cover basic health car (Score:2)
basic health care plan for all you must pay an added H1B tax.
remove health benefits from jobs and that will hel (Score:2)
remove health benefits from jobs and that will help with hiring older people.
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paradoxial (Score:2)
H-1B cap would make US workers 'privileged elite' (Score:2)
"Greenspan provided a list of reasons for increasing competition in the skilled labor force. In particular, he said it would help fix a problem -- the housing bubble -- that grew during his tenure as Fed chair, a position he held from 1987 to 2006." [computerworld.com]
This has always been about manipulating the labor market for the benefit of people like Gates and Zuckerberg.
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Btw, yes, I am an immigrant in North America, coming from the old' Europe, currently in Canada, but YES, I *am* lurking hard to move south within the next 5 years. And YES, if that mean being a whore to a big tech company, I WILL be, without any remorse.
Looking back, I should probably have moved to the US first, but well... life...
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I don't think you're as smart as you think you are. And I don't think you understand the U.S.
It's a lot easier to get an undergraduate degree in most of Europe.
In the U.S., paying for a degree costs as much as the mortgage on a house. There are a lot of smart kids working at McDonald's, and it's pretty hard to earn college tuition at McDonald's.
I usually hear that "toughen up and get better" line from rich conservative hypocrites whose parents handed it all to them.
Stupidest fucking ad I ever saw (Score:2)
The stupidest fucking public service ad I ever saw was the Hour of Code video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC5FbmsH4fw [youtube.com] on YouTube that Google linked to today on its home page.
It's full of women, minorities, older people, and every affirmative action group that has a lobby or a voting block behind it (with a few prominent product placements).
But it doesn't tell you anything about what code is. (Nor does http://csedweek.org/ [csedweek.org])
There's nothing in here that would actually appeal to some kid who would be intere
umm (Score:2)
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Maybe you should make it easy for the "guy who does phone tech support" to go to college for an undergraduate and even a STEM Ph.D or M.D. degree, rather than having to pay $20,000 a year for 4 years.
He might turn out to be smarter than you think.
Many of the European countries where these geniuses are coming from have free university education (with expenses).
And before you tell me that the guy who does phone tech support could go to a community college part time, name a couple of Ph.Ds or M.D.s who graduat
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guy who earned a STEM Ph.D. or M.D. at a U.S. university
Very few H-1B's have Ph.D.'s, and the program has nothing to do with M.D.'s.
Whee! Where is common sense? (Score:2)
Re:Two of the most immoral people (Score:4, Interesting)
yeah spending hundreds of millions of dollars eradicating diseases like malaria in poor countries is so immoral...oh right but you only care that Windows is closed source.
To be fair, Gates got that money by breaking the law. His unfair competition resulted worldwide adoption of an insecure system, causing untold hardship across the industry (against more robust systems with few security flaws).
Should we cheer Al Capone for the good he was doing for Chicago?
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Should we cheer Al Capone for the good he was doing for Chicago?
Many people do. He donated a significant amount of money to charity, and ran several soup kitchens during the depression.
Unlike Bill Gates, he helped people throughout his career, not only after he'd become filthy rich and needed a tax deduction.
Re: Two of the most immoral people (Score:5, Informative)
Actually up until the point of the gates foundation, Bill Gates was the ultimate Scrooge. He gae away not one penny, it wasn't until he was called out on that very fact that the Gates foudration was formed.
Even much of the supposedly altruistic efforts also seem to have an angle:
http://m.slashdot.org/story/171367
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/31/bill-gates-corporate-profit-vs-humanity.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Philanthropy
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Actually up until the point of the gates foundation, Bill Gates was the ultimate Scrooge. He gae away not one penny, it wasn't until he was called out on that very fact that the Gates foudration was formed.
Even much of the supposedly altruistic efforts also seem to have an angle
That's right. Gates was hated, and he wanted to do something about it before Congress held any more hearings and found something (like antitrust) to prosecute him for.
The philanthropy thing was created by his PR agency, and they did a good job. At their advice, he did fund some important projects, like international disease programs that were exactly what all the public health people knew would give tremendous returns for only a relatively few (billion) dollars.
He was like John D. Rockefeller, the other bil
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While I largely agree with most of your post, I don't see what the problem is with this part.
I mean, the current US system, with its overload of money sucking
Re:Two of the most immoral people (Score:5, Informative)
Have you considered that the lack of viable competition might have been the result of robust set of anti-competitive practices? Also, by grossly oversimplifying things like you did, you forget that things weren't all that simple. MS was strong-arming OEMs if they dared to install competing OS's or browsers, and they ignored standards in IE while actively breaking compatibility of plugins.
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Clever, aggressive, and at times outright illegal business practices. Windows may have won because of a lack of good competition (in part due to MS efforts to sabotage OS/2), but they also used a bundling technique to kill off competition for browser and media players, and a lock-in technique to achieve dominance for a time in media technology.
The old 'divx ;-)' codec was actually just Microsoft's video codec with a hack. The codec was fine, but the decoder shipped with Windows was deliberately limited to o
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...Microsoft decided to "cut off their air supply" (their words) by releasing Internet Explorer (a browser they purchased from a company called Spyglass after Navigator's release) as part of Windows. Not just as an app that happened to ship with Windows, but as a necessary PART OF WINDOWS...
The skeeziest part of that deal actually wasn't Microsoft's attack on Netscape - it was their raw screwing of Spyglass. For those who don't remember this history, Microsoft licensed Mosaic (which they re-branded as Internet Explorer) from Spyglass for a minimal quarterly licensing fee plus a cut of the revenue from every copy of the browser that they sold. They then proceeded to give the browser away for free** with every copy of Windows, thereby not owing Spyglass any of the commission. Spyglass threatened
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I'm not familiar with the backstory, but my intuition tells me, and this article agrees (http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/january/new0122d.htm), that once the payout happened it replaced the royalty deal. That settlement was January 1997, long predating any serious integration of IE with Windows (IE4 was the first with shell integration in October 1997).
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Gates was a robber baron in the mode of Rockefeller and Carnegie
What was Gates' equivalent to the Homestead Strike [wikipedia.org]? Please, stop the hyperbole. It doesn't help your arguments. I remember Microsoft in the 80's and (especially) the 90's. Their sleazy business practices should have been stopped. They did economic harm to customers (the main concern of anti-trust law). The company should have been broken up after the anti-trust trial (MS Office on Linux would make Linus desktop adoption much easier). Nevertheless, last I checked, Microsoft IP goons are generally unarmed.
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yeah spending hundreds of millions of dollars eradicating diseases like malaria in poor countries is so immoral...oh right but you only care that Windows is closed source.
The harm done by the organization and the companies that the foundation fund invests in does too much damage for the disease mitigation efforts they spend some of the money on. They created, lobbied for and are funding the implementation of "Common Core" (and, yes, Common Core is bad. I trust what the teachers say about it).
And despite what you have heard about the foundation's funding for immunizations in poor countries, a great amount of money goes to fund sterilization and abortion programs. It's a
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Actually, the internets disagree with you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang [wikipedia.org]
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To be fair, AC's probably too busy with a Ying Yang Twins [wikipedia.org] track whispering [wikipedia.org] in their ear to think straight.
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The iDot... Apple's new (patent and copyright pending) way to end sentences and provide a break between the integer and fractional parts of a number. According to Apple, it looks better than the old "decimal point" that it replaces, it has more caché, has been designed with usability in mind, and it runs the latest version of iOS.
It is also fully compatible with your web browser and email system, and all such systems will be automatically upgraded to work with the new symbol.
A small licensing fee will
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Bah, I hate it when /. blocks characters it knows nothing about... Pnyn should come out to be something like Pinyin, but with a bar over the i's :(
Hopefully the community do not slaughter me for that mistake *prays*...
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His plan is essentially to produce enough low-quality** "code monkey"programmers to mirror the situation in 'service' jobs (e.g. retail), where there's a great enough excess of would-be employees even without H1Bs to force wages down into the minimum-wage part-time range. The reduction in incomes tends to have a ripple effect up through the ranks, so companies like Facebook couldd be able to slash their payroll/benefits costs down to a tiny fraction of what they are now. The only people fucked over would
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His plan is essentially to produce enough low-quality** "code monkey"programmers to mirror the situation in 'service' jobs (e.g. retail)
Come on. We ALL (and that includes Zuckerburg) know what a stupid plan that would be. Masses of simple coders produce only a tangled mess that would never work.
The thing is everyone needs GOOD coders, people who are really good at it are hard to come by. So the plan is to get a million or so people to try coding who would not otherwise, and a small percentage find they l
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yes they are trying to get an army of disposable low quality coders. Yes they need some good folks and will always need to some good folks to put together the infrastructure.
A company like facebook though is a little bit of technology developed by good people, and whole lot monkeys that know just enough about it string it together with the presentation layer.
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For too many Slashdot mods, "flamebait" means "opinion I don't agree with".
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needed a tech from a Canadian company to go to Detroit to fix a system
That's your first reason? You want "open borders" because you were inconvenienced?
a friend had her undocumented husband who lived & worked 20 years in the US and had teenage kids deported without warning after a misdemeanor traffic infraction
Good heavens, they got caught violating laws that they knew perfectly well existed, even before they came here. They also received a "punishment" that was no more than ending the violation that they were getting away with or 20 years. Is there no justice?
A Danish family renting a house I own got thrown out of the country because of an H1B mixup, now I am out a few months of rent.
You poor dear - an economic loss to you (that was far less than the economic loss of an American losing a job due to the H-1B program).
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