I agree. Although I wouldn't want economic interests to decide every immigration case, it seems to me that America should be greedily hoarding the smartest people in the world by offering them a ticket into our culture, paid for by attending a major university, excelling there, and working in the field afterwards. Why the hell would we give them our top-notch education and then afterwards not let them stick around to grow our economy? Sure, many foreign students will want to return home and help their homelands, and that's nice and all, but in the marketplace of nations I think we should be grabbing all the talent we can get our hands on.

If we don't do that we will be doomed to export our brightest candidates leading to a talent drain and resulting in a washed-up nation of uneducated pasty-white assholes. Well, I guess that's the Republican agenda so maybe it's not surprising.

Whenever I've asked a PhD who I met how they "advanced human knowledge of the field", they have giggled at my naiveté. Based on a number of those experiences, I now take that requirement as not at all literal. Some PhDs advance the field; most don't.

I've long heard suicide described as the only action which is illegal to attempt, but not to succeed at. The reason attempted suicide is illegal is because society judges that only a mentally ill person would do it, so we use criminal law as a wedge to force a person to get help. Obviously this is at odds with euthanasia so society has been discussing that for a generation or more.

Oh, goodness no, if they deleted the Geocities data then they did a laudable favor to future generations. I had a Geocities site, it was stupid, and if it's totally gone then I'm glad.

That's a good answer, thank you, but I still have to wonder:

an immediate termination of your work contract, you'd lose your severance, and the first 6 weeks of unemployment help

What I really meant is what happens when an employee wants to leave for a new job. In that case, of course termination of the work contract is what you want, you wouldn't be getting any severance because you are quitting not getting fired, and you don't qualify for unemployment because you are going to a new job.

That leaves two things: the black mark of contract breach (a fair point) and legal liability (definitely a fair point). How often do people get sued? Would employers prefer to have the new employee they want, or prefer am employee that cleaves to severance periods?

Is MS Word in a browser inherently better or just different?

If it's the same in every way except that it's inside a browser, then it's inherently better.

Webapps have pushed usability a good 20 years back.

In 2005, webapps had pushed usability back about 15 years but had pushed accessibility forward about fifty years. That was the tradeoff. In 2013, webapps have pushed usability back about 10 years, and maintain that fifty years of accessibility. In 2020, they will have pushed usability back zero, and we'll still have that fifty years. Not all new technology is 100% as good as old technology in every single way; typically it is better in some ways, less good in other ways, and improves over time.

Do you mean a website?

Nope, that's not what it means. Do you really not know that? Are you sure you belong on Slashdot? I mean, you're welcome to hang out and we'll try to educate you but you could help yourself get up to speed by looking up terms you don't understand before asking about them.

Back in the day, the web was a fast, simple, stateless request/response document retrieval system.

You forgot "and useless for anything but looking at plain text documents". On today's web, almost nobody ever looks at a plain text document, so it strikes me as pretty silly to pine for that web.

Do you have any complaints about it that don't boil down to "I hate dynamic languages" or "classes are the one true way to do oop".

Maybe he does, but he doesn't need any, because those two reasons are more than enough.

Maybe we're talking about different things, but

How is your install base not ALSO zero?

It's not also zero because one hundred million people (more, actually) don't have to install any software to run your app. The software required, a web browser, is already installed on their computer. If you make a smartphone app or a desktop application users have to install your app to run it.

It's not typical because most people are interchangeable. Even we programmers (if that is also what you do) are interchangeable. Sure, I know my work and the code better than a new guy would, but my boss would have no problem finding another Java jockey.

People who aren't interchangeable have the word "necessary" or "essential" in their employment contract -- as in "this employee is necessary for business operations". I don't have either of those words in mine, nor do most people who have employment contracts, and a large majority of workers don't have employment contracts at all.

Only a half a percent or so of workers are not interchangeable. Not everyone can fit into that half a percent so I think it's a little disingenuous to tell people to fix that within themselves.

I don't understand the hypothetical situation you describe. You did quit. Why would they need to fire you or try to lie to say you quit?

People used to joke any time someone cleaned their desk and took home excess personal stuff that they were about to give notice.

Yeah my previous company got bought out, so I started to watch for "signs" of a downward spiral. Then we got bought again about a year later, and I started to watch job boards for new openings. Then they laid off 20 people (out of about 120), and that day I cleaned all my personal belongings out of my desk. I felt like that action was visually obvious, but I guess most bosses don't pay close attention to how many family photos are on an employee's desk.

Starting the next morning I completely stopped doing any work and spent 100% of my time looking for new work. I took phone interviews during work hours and started no new work. I edited my resume at work, kept copies on my computer desktop, and printed copies on the company printer. I openly spoke to the people in nearby cubicles about new jobs. They called me crazy, wasn't I afraid of being fired? Afraid!? No! If I got fired then I'd get unemployment!

Eventually I started getting job offers so I knew I was golden; I took a day off work to travel for an interview; quitting was eminent. I passed on some offers and eventually got a really great offer so I knew I could quit.

I waited one more day... because the next day was my birthday! I came in and my new pseudo-boss called me into his office to talk about new work items. I said, golly, yeah, all that new work sounds great and all, but I won't be here much longer. Later that day I quit to my real boss and he asked me how much time I was giving him. I replied "Up to two weeks, but I don't have any work going on right now" (remember, I'd stopped taking new work six weeks earlier). He was a chap: he said they'd pay me for the whole two weeks, and I could go any time I wanted. I coasted out of there a little less than two weeks later.

The question was, why did my boss treat me so nicely? I found out a month later when I heard he himself had quit. He was a planner, like me, so obviously he was planning his exit when I quit. He gave me a favor on the company dime because he felt similarly to how I felt. Man, the day I quit was one of my days of self actualization.

What does an employee do if they find a new job and want to start it before three months later?