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Comment Re:How to make a man sound flustered (Score 1) 108

There is no official definition for "Middle East" but it generally refers to the Arabic-speaking countries of South West Asia and North Africa (plus Iran). Even Afghanistan is debatable, and Pakistan does not qualify at all. The only reason you or anyone else qualifies Pakistan as Middle East is because it is an Islamic country, by which definition Indonesia should be in there as well. In every other way, in terms of language, culture, ethnicity, Pakistan is very similar to India. Maybe that's because they were one country till 60 years ago?

Comment Re:did i read that right (Score 1) 209

That's the whole point...they aren't really getting them cheaper.

Speaking from personal experience, I graduated from a US university a few years ago and applied for a job at various tech companies, including Microsoft. I was competing with everybody else who had graduated, and would be paid the same as any entry level developer (which was about 65k at the time).

The only difference was that, as a foreign national, if they decided to hire me, they would have to provide me with an H-1B visa.

A large number of the H-1B professionals who work for MS and Intel and other tech companies, have come in the same way, by competing against other qualified candidates, including Americans, for the same salary, and proving themselves to be the best candidate.

There is a big difference between them and the "sweatshop" candidates being brought in by the outsourcing companies.

Submission + - Is Godwin's Law sometimes a bad thing? (salon.com)

Whatshisface writes: Glenn Greenwald of Salon magazine makes the claim that sometimes the ubiqitous use of Goldwin's Law on discussions sometimes prevents valid comparisions from being made. There are times when a comparison of specific actions to those of Hitler and Nazi Germany are actually valid, but more often than not the validity of such a point is blown away in the anger that treats any such comparison as the ultimate insult.

Interestingly the particular reference in this article is to a post made by Greenwald himself where he claims the universal pro-war propaganda that exists among the mainstream media and Washington culture, that continuously trumpets the noble war that the US is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, is reminiscent of the propaganda in Nazi Germany before and during their invasion of Europe.

What do Slashdotters think. Is it fair to make such a comparison, and more importantly, should he come under attack just because he actually made it?

Comment Re:Ethics (Score 3, Insightful) 162

Except that most of Asimov's robot stories were actually about the fact that the 3 Laws were simplistic and impractical, and that sufficiently developed robots would look to bend or break the laws eventually.

The Prime Directive had its own problems as well.

The point is that it is not easy to define a universal set of rules that would apply in all situations.

Comment Re:Sounds like a culture problem to me... (Score 1) 245

Freedom is valued in India, but the concept of absolute freedom of speech is not as ingrained in the culture as it is in some western countries.

The general rise in Hindu nationalism is a recent thing, and has come from certain political leaders exploiting the discontentment among the poor and unemployed. Because India has a fair amount of affirmative action for minority communities, the Hindus are incited into believing that everyone else is being favoured apart from them, and that freedom of speech means people can do and say anything against their culture and religion.

The problem with free speech is that of course anyone has the right to say anything they like, and it requires a certain level of education to understand that that's not a bad thing.

Comment Re:Lets see (Score 2, Insightful) 736

Bingo! This is the part that most people don't get. Its amazing how many terrorists are not fundamentalist Muslims, but simply young kids from Muslim countries who are pissed off at the treatment their people get from the Americans and Israelis. And every time a drone indiscriminately kills 30 civilians in a failed attempt to kill one Al-Qaeda member, they gain a few more recruits.

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