Posts by Dallas IT 34 publicly visible posts • joined 4 May 2015
"The number of possible moves at the beginning of a Go game starts at around 2.08 x 10170, and decreases from there."
Huh? Aren't there only a few hundred spots at most on the board? A move consists of placing a single rock/stone so how can the beginning move of the game have more choices than the number of spots on the board?
"The Rest-of-the-World doesn't rate US bachelors degrees very highly and normally want a Master's from US candidates to make up for this perceived deficit. Just so you know ..."
What's your basis for that? The US has some of the best universities in the world and the number of foreigners attending them seems to contradict your statement.
That is extremely common in the USA as well. The H-1B requires that employers have made a good faith effort to find a US applicant first before getting their H-1B. But the employers simply game the system so they can't or won't find a US person willing and able to do the job. They post ads in places no one looks, or with impossible requirements that will disqualify any US applicant. If some applicant does make it to an interview they look for any reason to disqualify them. In fact here's a video of a legal seminar being given to companies on how to AVOID finding a qualified and interested US applicant, so they can get their cheap laborer. If this doesn't show that the H-1B program is nothing about finding hard-to-find skills and is simply a cheap labor avenue I don't know what does.
Fake Perm Ads Defraud Americans of Jobs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyPFpJg8wMY
"How long does a US visa last for?"
The H-1B is a 3 year visa with one renewal, for a total of 6 years. Then the worker is eligible, with employer sponsoring, to apply for permanent residence (green card). But guess how many employers sponsor a green card vs simply kick their butts back to India? Almost none.
"This does not reflect the real cost of the local vs import. You nearly always end up with additional retention costs for locally hired staff - you have to raise their salary and run salary reviews, you have to provide bonuses, share options, etc. That in IT accounts for ~ 50K of employer costs per retainable head. At least.
So frankly, the cost of the work permit should not go down. It should go UP. To 50K or thereabouts so that only qualified staff which is worth it is imported on work permit programmes."
I think there are two easy fixes for the H-1B problem:
1) Don't use the H-1B - simply give each qualified immigrant that's request an instant green card. With that green card they can shop for an employer like any native can during their 6 year tenure. That means employers can no longer lord their status over them, pay them chump wages, or abuse them in terms of hours and time off. The desire for H-1Bs would shrivel overnight.
or
2) Pay all H-1Bs a minimum of $100,000 - if these people are as skilled as employers claim (they aren't) then this shouldn't be a problem and would prevent the import of these workers from depressing wages (although if utilizied it would still add to unemployment/underemployment of US workers). But if this were done I predict the number of H-1Bs would be nearly zero.
"But US made the wrong move. They should have ruled illegal, and fined heavily, any wage discrimination. Thus company would have been free to hire whoever they liked. Just, they would have to pay them the same regardless where they are from, gender, etc. - as it should be the right way - pay for skills."
Exactly right - and even then, with equal wages, there would still be massive advantages to the imported worker since they can't work for anyone else in their 3-6 year tenure and you can work them long/hard hours without time off. But you're right that demand would shrink to nothing for them if pay was required to be equal (not the hand-waving "prevailing wage" non-standard that exists today, where a comparable Indian gets 65% of what an American would get doing the same job).
This whole program assumes that Indian IT-related degree graduates are the equivalent of US graduates, but they aren't. Studies I've seen indicate that Indians only attend 3 years for a bachelor's degree, and that their graduates barely compete with US high school diploma holders. Only their top tier institutions like IIT (which graduate a tiny minority of Indian college grads) are competitive with even the average US IT worker. So the idea that companies can get equal talent to what they can find in the US is wishful thinking. As you noted above, if they weren't cheap and easily controlled they wouldn't be seeking them; they'd let the labor market within the US adjust wages and attract more talent where it's needed.
Who ever claimed that every person in America is for "free trade" (a euphemism for somebody is losing something, and that somebody will always be the one who has something to lose")? We are not - we are for FAIR trade. And allowing US companies to import what is little better than indentured servants who remove jobs from US citizens and undercut wages (driving down all wages) isn't a workable scenario. It's done a ton of damage already, made our unemployment and social safety net issues worse and contributed to the housing crisis, driven down home prices (as people lose their jobs or income and lose their homes; floods the market with cheap(er) foreclosed homes). The H-1B and L-1 visa programs should never have been started; they were begging to be corrupted with their vague rules and language. If employers need skills like they claim then pay the wage the US labor market demands for it.
"On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
(More leisure time for artists everywhere)
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free"
Part of the lyrics to "IGY", by Donald Fagen
These tiny systems (laptops, all-in-ones, etc) all have a big problem; they overheat and downclock far too-easily, resulting in very slow performance. It's why I gave up trying to use a laptop as a primary system (plugging it into a dock when home/stationary); it's simply unusable and too slow for any power-user type activities.
"As for my favourite tunes, too many to list but include: Shadow of the Beast; Obliterator; Gods (amazing); Xenon 2 (naturally); Jesus on Es mega-demo; Pinball Dreams."
Into... the wonderful.
I leave as an exercise for the astute reader which track had that sample/lyric. And I agree - an epic tune!
"Turns out they have to outsource most of their manufacturing from the US to China - that's the point that Cook was making - they are forced to do so because of the lack of skilled workers in the US - that was the whole point of the article."
Which is a lie. Whatever training they're giving the Chinese workers, if they gave that same training any American that was otherwise capable would easily be doing the job.
"If it was unskilled workers only which were needed then the USA has tens of millions of unskilled, uneducated workers prepared to work for peanuts - no problem - but it had nowhere near enough skilled workers."
Nonsense. The USA has 15,000,000 STEM grad citizens but only 5,000,000 STEM-related jobs. The USA already has THREE TIMES the number of workers for these jobs as is needed, but is still importing labor at a rapid rate. Such that nearly 25% of all IT being done today in the USA is being done by H-1B visa holders. Don't tell me that and offshoring has any basis on lack of skills or available workers. A free labor market should have a rise in wages for desired labor skills, followed by an influx of new workers to that field as others train to meet the demand (seeking those higher wages). At which point the wages regulate. But this artificial mucking about with the labor force (by deflating jobs by offshoring, and inflating local labor pool by inshoring workers) resulted in IT wages not even beating inflation during the 2000-2010 decade! And this, despite IT unemployment being less than 3% (many having vacated the profession after being dumped on their heads).
The problem with 4K (mislabeled - it's actually 2160P which is slightly lower res than 4K which is a broadcast standard) is that until there is media, streaming or cable/satellite programming using it everything you watch in 1080P or below is being upscaled to fit the native 2160P resolution. Every pixel is being quadrupled, so you're ending up with a worse image than if you simply stayed at a 1080P resolution until actual 2160P material is available.
"Whilst resolutions greater than 1080p may not be noticeable to most people with a good 1080p source. Most TV is broadcast with such high compression that the jpeg artefacts are obvious:-(
Higher resolutions will mean less noticeable artefacts:-)"
How do you figure? The artifacts being introduced in today's 1080P channels is precisely because of bandwidth constraints in carrying that info to your home. How do you think we'll get less artifacts when they're trying to send a signal that's 4 times higher in resolution?
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