Ultrix 4.2a, here. have not seen a virus on this machine, ever.

still clean after all these years.

as long as you can find scsi1 disks, you can keep running Mosaic and some versions of lynx. DECwindows rocks!

(what? whaaaaat?)

I've even asked 'is this a real job? are you willing and able to hire a local?'

the look of shock on their faces when asked this very direct question is priceless.

usually, they lie. no, I'm wrong. they ALWAYS lie. and they fucking waste my time, collect my resume and my salary (a $100 data point, I'm told) and then I'm persona non-grateful (sic) to them.

does not work anymore unless you are very generic.

recruiters now work for THE COMPANY. they are hired by them, often exclusively, and they ONLY hunt for them or a few others. they don't work for you (they never really did, but they used to be more independant).

I have recruiters I've known for 20 years and yet, when I'm out of work, I call and its 'sorry, nothing to fit your quals right now.'

does that sound like someone who 'works for me' ?

you hunt for a job, you apply for that job and the guy-in-the-suit that is assigned to that job calls you, if even that. you don't go to generic recruiters anymore; they wont even waste any (real) time with you unless you are an instant match.

law enforcement is a joke, in the US. its about power, greed, money grabs, politics and racism.

I'll go on record saying: we could end all 'LE' for a full year and we would not even notice any change in our daily lives. except maybe some of us would NOT be hassled, shot, tased or framed.

I find the whole 'law enforcement' system a pathetic joke. if I'm in trouble, the LAST person I could call is a cop. so, if they all went away and never came back, I would never notice.

they don't really investigate things, anyway. they look for easy low hanging fruit and fund themselves with theft from citizens (civil asset forfeiture).

seriously, they would all fly to mars, one day, and we'd be better off. there really is not THAT much crime that not having cops around would not be a big problem.

yup, this is how far we've gone. cops used to be good guys, but now they are thugs with badges and military weapons. I'd just assume they DID all fly to mars and stay there.

I'd go one further.

like we have 'independant auditors' who inspect WMDs, we would need some rival country (not UN, UN is fucking worthless) to come in and 'inspect' us for compliance.

OF COURSE we can't trust ourselves. the foxes are really bad at guarding the chicken coop...

imagine that, though; what a world wide headline that would be! "amercia agreed to disarm from its worldwide mass surveillance and will be audited to ensure its real by country X Y and Z"

bzzzt. is that my morning alarm? is it take to wake up now?

"its not a matter of where he grips it, its a matter of weight ratios!"

oh, sorry. wrong thread. carry on.

you're indian, right?

lets turn it around and see how you like it. suppose the shoe was on the other foot and your country was allowing 'cheap foreign labor' to enter the country and take jobs from locals. I know, its laughable - your country can't even give reliable electricity or sanitation to most of its citizens, but lets suppose you were the tech advanced country and we were the third world.

you study for years, you pay your dues and you are invested in your country. you want to grow old there and live your life there. you care about it and you want your home to be prosperous. but the invading hoards are taking - not only the lower end jobs but ALL jobs - and your own people are now being displaced. you would just shrug it off as 'well, we tried to compete but we lost. let the better man win!'. you going to say that? and feel that way??

its so terribly one-sided, you h1b fans. you come like thieves, you take take take and the only receipient is the company who sponsored you. the rest of the folks all end up LOSING because of your presence there.

see, jobs are finite and they don't expand to fill the resources available. when the jobs are taken, those who are without are left to starve. I happen to NOT enjoy starving; especially in my own country where I have paid taxes for more decades than you have been live (very likely).

you have no clue what impact you have on the US, do you?

I bet you fucking don't even CARE! you're the perfect little capitalist: "I got mine, so fark you!". is that it?

look, just admit to being a job thief, say you simply don't CARE and at least we can give you points for honesty.

sorry, but I have to call BS on the 'its mostly about the elite programmers'. it SHOULD be about the specialty fields or where exceptional experience is needed and some researcher from a foreign country is the only expert who can do this job, that's fine.

what I have seen (been living in the bay area 25 years; born in the US and lived here all my life; and, yes, I have travelled outside the US) is that the jobs that are being filled by h1b's (at cisco, for example, where I -used- to work) are ordinary common jobs. I have met some very sharp folks who where h1b but also lots of very inexperienced, shabby programmers who created more work as clean-up after them than they added during their stay.

I mostly apply for 'regular old' programming jobs, these days. I consider myself average or a bit above, but certainly not genius level. I'm capable and I can usually get the job done or at least escalate if I'm stuck. but even for the common jobs, I'm being pushed aside in preference for the h1b. I see it at interviews. I see it when I am working, the ability level and experience level of those around me. we can all see it, its not hard. and we all know that its not the high-end programmer that we mostly import. its the common guy, and I have to tell you, lots of us 'common guys' are out of work and companies simply won't hire us because we are not as abusable as foreigners. plain and simple, cut and dried for you.

I understand you have needs and your family is important to you. but why should my country spend more time and energy supporting YOU instead of ME? I don't expect YOUR country to support me or take care of me. I don't expect country A or B or C to support me. I DO expect my own damned country to prefer its own people be working here, getting the rewards of their life-long investment in the place and helping to make the next generation of americans even better off than their parents.

that brings up another sore point. am I better off than my parents generation? I'm mid 50's and I still don't own my own house. I make (or made, when I was still working) a nice figure in the $100-$200k range. but in the bay area, its really hard to afford to buy a house if you didn't have help, and with employers throwing you under the bus every other year, no bank wants to loan money to a 'contractor' who has 'uncertain employment'. therefore, I'm a renter and may never have the chance to buy my own home. my parents grew up in the WW2 era and they made a fraction (translated) of what I make/made. but they owned their own home, could afford to have kids and treat them well, they didn't worry about 'will I be working again next year' like I do, pretty much all the time, now. they had a retirement and pension and overall they had many things I will never have.

I'm worse off than my parents' generation, overall. and its not looking like its going to improve any time soon.

so WHY should I - and people like me - just hand over my country to visitors? again, would your home country willingly accept me? my country is accepting you. where do *I* go?

you have to understand the feelings of those who invested their whole lives here, only to be told 'sorry, social contract is now off.'

you bring up a good point.

what IS the role of a government? isn't it to promote the well-being or safety of its people?

are h1b's citizens where they get the same level of protection as those who were born here or got citizenship the long/slow/hard way?

why do we owe anyone else a job? its often asked 'why do US companies owe US workers jobs?' but I turn it around, why should US companies NOT support their own people, FIRST ??

find me another country that offers anything close to this h1b bullshit to foreigners coming to their shores to work. name one country - just one - that thinks its own citizens should be 2nd to 'guest workers'. ONLY the US fits that description.

we start wars with the presumption of keeping americans safe. we collect taxes to pay for infrastructure to benefit those who live here. there are many examples of what countries do for their own people. that's kind of the whole point of 'membership'; by being an american, I should have priority in employment over those who have paid NO dues here and have no vested interest - whatsoever - in the long-term success and stability of our country.

but my country sold me out. I can go months (or much longer) without getting a job offer and I have decades of useful IT experience. is that right? does that sound like my country is taking care of me? sure doesn't sound like that to me, from where I sit.

republicans - democrats - none of them lift a finger to help the struggling middle class. as far as I'm concerned, we have nothing but traitors in congress, these days.

this is disney; and so, americans are put back into 'the vault' for future release at a date yet to be determined...

you witnessed crimes (you know that) and did nothing to stop it.

do you REALLY want me to godwin you here? I'm sure you're not stupid. you knew better and yet stood by and allowed it.

sorry to have to keep saying it, but you are scum. sleep well mr scumbag.

the last 2 contract jobs I had, the employer insisted that I bring 'my' work laptop home with me each nite. when I explained that I'm not paid beyond 8 hours a day (hey, it was YOU, mr employer, who forced contract on me; I would have gone f/t if offered the chance but nooooo! you didn't want that, did you?) - they simply said that everyone takes their laptop home. its expected.

they want it both ways. no benes for you, ability to can your ass on a moment's notice and yet they expect you to work for them before the workday begins and after it ends; all for fixed income and, again, NO benes. when the US monday holidays come around, guess who can only bill 32 hours that week while everyone else gets their 40?

I'm seriously sick of this shit!!

all I can say is: its a good goddamned thing that I am not a violent person and don't have any tendancy to want to buy a gun. but I am just waiting for the first 'nothing left to lose' IT guy to go truly postal and make the news. maybe that's what's needed, afterall (?)

$65k? you can't even live in the bay area on that unless you live 'dorm style' with 2 people per bedroom and 3 or more BR's per house or apartment.

but he's right that IT is a race to the bottom. we need unions. we won't get them because young kids think they are invinceable and its ONLY young kids who are being hired. you think this is a coincidence? young kids also tend not to use insurance and their insurance costs are much lower, hence the cost to the company is much lower.

finally, companies are using more and more 'contractors' and so they can avoid paying ANY benefits to them while keeping them just as many hours and only paying 40/week (yes, personally been there, had that done to me).

"mammas, don't let your babies grow up to be programmers"

sad but there's no future in this. none. fucking sucks!!

quoting this wonderful gem:

Several of these workers, in interviews, said they didn't want to appear as xenophobic, but couldn't help but to observe, as one did, that "there were times when I didn't hear English spoken" in the hallways. As the layoff date neared, "I really felt like a foreigner in that building," the worker said.

I'll go ahead and name names: I used to work at cisco. I have said many times that I could walk down the hallway at any random cisco san jose building and for most of the day, not hear a single word spoken in english (in hallways or breakrooms).

is this what we want to see IN AN AMERICAN COMPANY??

I don't dislike indians. I like the culture, love the food, think people from india are fine and decent, overall. but why should it be 'normal' to walk down the hallway of a san jose, california company and not hear english for hours and hours at a time?

I should have had a gopro cam or something on me and taped what a typical day was like, there (when I still worked there; they canned my ass not too long ago). I would then send a copy to the congresscritters who think that there are not ENOUGH foreign workers in the US. maybe they want me to go a full week between hearing english in an american company?

if I go thru an interview and hear 'not a cultural match' one more time, I swear to zeus I'm going to go postal. I'm nearly at the end of my rope, here....

so, you admit openly to brazenly breaking the law?

please turn yourself in and the rest of your firm.

(I do hate you, you are scum for selling out your own people. and like the cops that turn a blind eye on the thin blue line, you are just as guilty of helping to ruin the middle classs as those cops are of protecting their own even when laws are being broken by them).

its scumbags like you that nod, smile and keep letting the system crush our country.

and yes, I'm one of those who has been out of work WAY too long because I'm a white guy in the bay area and that means I'm 'too expensive'. people like you have helped keep me OUT of work.

I hold you responsible for a part of it. how do you sleep at night? dammit!!