...when every programmer (and tech support person, and manufacturing person) in the US can get a job, that's the time for US operations to be looking for foreign help.

But since age, health, formal schooling, in-country location, and credit score are widely and consistently used to deny highly skilled US programmers jobs -- I am very confident in saying that Mr. Graham has not even come close to identifying the "programmer problem" from the POV of actual US programmers. All he's trying to do here is save a buck, while screwing US programmers in the process.

Do it his way, and the US economy will suffer even further at the middle class level as decent jobs go directly over our heads overseas, while, as per usual, corporations thrive.

This is exactly the kind of corporate perfidy that's been going on for some time. Graham should be ashamed. He represents our problem. Not any imaginary lack of US based skills.

Am I the only one who read this initially thinking that "supercharger" meant a pump that forces compressed air into an internal combustion engine?

Not my choice, we got them in a deal with a VC. And I will tell you from experience that they're not all great programmers. A *few* of them were very good programmers, most of them were OK, and a few were very *bad* programmers. Just like everyone else. The idea that the H1B program just brings in technical giants is pure fantasy. This isn't 1980; if a CS genius living in Bangalore wants to work he doesn't have to come to the US anymore, there are good opportunities for him at home..

H1B brings in a cross section of inexperienced programmers and kicks them out of the country once they've gained some experience. I have nothing against bringing more foreign talent into the US, but it should be with an eye to encouraging permanent residency. I think if you sponsor an H1B and he goes home, you should have to wait a couple years before you replace him. Then companies will be pickier about who they bring over.

I have to say, managing a team of H1Bs was very rewarding, not necessarily from a technical standpoint but from a cultural standpoint. Because I had to learn about each programmer on my team and the way things are done in his culture, I think I became closer to a lot of them than I would have to a team of Americans.

Thats right. Fraud is a recent phenomena in technology and science, and Bill is the first dupe ever to be swindled. It isn't as though it's so common that there are entire catalogs of scientific frauds going back hundreds of years. Nope. LENR/Cold Fusion is the very first.

And why are these fraudsters emerging when there were none before? Capitalism. Obviously.

Maybe Paul Graham should go and live (and capitalize) the part of the world with the 95% of the awesomest programmers and leave this (apparent) intellectual backwater he calls home. I mean, what's he doing slumming here if 15-20% of the great worldwide programmers are bouncing around China and another 15-20% are making magic in India. If he wants to leverage brainpower, he should go where the brains are.

Oh, and I hope he doesn't let the door hit him in the ass on the way out.

As for the "VARIANT PARAGRAPH COMMENT", apparently you were given several selections to choose from, including the following:

One can make an appeal to justice for persecuted cable companies:

Or maybe this is your style:

If the main text of a religion isn't a reliable guidebook to that religion, how can we determine if anything is?

Obviously, we can't.

What made you think we could?

All major (and most minor) religions present huge diversity. Within Christianity, the bible is taken as everything from vague metaphor to the "inerrant word of God." The Koran for Islam, the same. Buddhist practice ranges from meditative to non, from vegetarian to non, from rigidly scientific to the most laughable crystal-gazing nonsense you've ever heard of. New agers.... that's a basket so broad I don't even have a clue as to what it really means, although I have to say, I've rarely come away from someone's description of their new age ideas thinking "wow, that made sense." OK, actually, never. But I figure it could happen. :)

In addition to actual sect differences, there are practitioner differences, and they range all the way from non-believers who are there for the social aspect, to rigid adherents to every jot and tittle in every book (and some, like the Catholics, have quite a few books.)

For my part, I figure, if I want to know what someone thinks, just ask them. Unless I have specific relevant evidence, I don't assume people fit into standardized boxes. I have found that to very rarely be true.

Most stores don't want to minimize your time in the story. I think they want to maximize the time you spend near high-margin impulse-buy items, and up-sells of the items you originally intended to buy.

If I was a sleazy developer of software like this, and especially if I had access to the customer's whole shopping list, I'd send them on a pretty different path than their ideal one.

Ur/Web is a Functional Programming language like Haskell, F# and the like. The performance gains are real -- both in numbers of coders and execution, but the larger questions remain:

Do we want compiled web languages? Why exactly? Not only does this introduce a compilation layer to the development workflow, but it introduces millions of "black boxes" into a once open and readable landscape. While there may be gains in code protection, there will also likely be losses in flexibility.

And of course, is it all worth the effort?

Not true at all. If I witness Bob murder Tom, I know Bob murdered Tom. If, however, Bob manages to destroy all physical evidence of murdering Tom, convicting him can't be done on my word alone.

There are many cases where it is well-known that someone is a criminal, and yet they are not prosecuted for lack of admissible evidence.

Anyone with enough money to build a private, self-contained floating city has enough money to not worry about the cost of securing it against most any attack short of that launched by a national military force.

It seems the largest part of the communication problem when talking about libertarian ideas is the misconception that "libertarian" means "no government." There are those who attach themselves to libertarian causes who would like to see "no government," but a libertarian government would exist with the mandate to protect people from exactly the sorts of things you just questioned.

Being against the initiation of force is not, in any way, the same as being against all uses of force at all times.

That's also the description of every other system of government once put into practice.

Well THAT is fucking offensive, the way you said "codifying" it sounded like "codpiece".

Yes? Well then...

Baldric... Bring me... The Black Russian!