It's all about cheaper salaries. The truth is that the vast majority of US techies are far superior. But for big box companies with all their managers trying to justify their jobs they actually just want the equivalent of code monkeys and lots of bureaucracy. Americans are truly lazy; we actually want the systems to work and work well so that we can relax and think up new ways to make the system actually easier or more flexible. Code monkeys know the managers only care about numbers so they actually want to make buggy code with lots of simple fixes so as to create the illusion of doing something called work. Fix one error and create two more for next time; this makes your manager happy. These people can be just as smart/lazy/efficient as their American equivalents; they just understand their job is to make their managers look good.

What is happening is that the majority of H1B workers are being hired through labor agencies. They are indeed making a better living than they would back at home. The labor agency is rotating the workers though. There are working more than a 40 hours a week and they know better than to complain because the culture is such that whomever breaks the unwritten rules of silence can expect consequences from their fellow workers/friends at a later time. Your friends and family are punished as well. Think back to the early union days but the union thugs are there to make sure no one complains which would ruin it for the group as a whole.

I have no problem with having unlimited H1B workers so long as they are being paid slightly more than what comparable US workers would cost and are actually getting the benefits they earned according to our labor laws here. So theoretically the number of $100,000 H1B's should be unlimited.

And 90% of the problem would go away if you simply get rid of the agencies and made the tech companies hire directly. They know they are cheating the system and would fear class action suits. They use agencies to buffer their legal exposure.

For the people on the bottom that physically work and produce nothing really changes. All that people really need is food and shelter and in the western world we can afford to eat a lot less. The people at the bottom already live paycheck to paycheck and they know how to do physical work and how to fix things themselves. The people that will be hurt are the infirm that our modern society supports which includes the elderly, chronically sick and cripples. Most of us will someday at some point join the infirm.

This is the scenario after a "worldwide bankruptcy" All the land with all the houses and apartments will still exist. All the farmland that produces all the food that overfeeds our country and the rest for the world will still exist. All the fertilizers, chemicals, and natural resources will still exist. At least two thirds of the people, working to produce and distribute the above, will continue doing what they already do. Many of the poorest people of today live in luxury compared to a hundred and two hundred years ago. What will change is the "rich" will be out on the street sort to speak with their bank accounts decimated. There will be a memorable backlash against lawyers, investment bankers, and politicians that support their rackets and games.

Medical patents will be vacated and health care will go back to being affordable. Doctors will be better protected legally and not need insurance like the do now but will be subject to more public records, reviews and audits. Medicine will go back to being affordable comparable to the 1960. There will be no million dollar procedures unless you have a million dollars. People will die at 85 instead of 90. Doctors pay checks will no longer be quite so big but they will no longer need to support the insurance industry and lawyers. They will become more respectable and esteemed members of society back when children wanted to grow up to be a doctor not because of the paycheck but rather to be a hero of society.

Higher education will become affordable again but no longer be government subsidized.

Manning is a confused nut. He obviously had and has issues. I could theoretically admired him and condemned him before I found out he was a nut case. (He's not a nut for wanting to be a women; that confusion is just part of his problems.) I have to put blame of those under whom he worked. You don't let a nut job (confused and troubled individual) handle and process classified information. You supervise your employees. I believe his commanders should be the ones in jail.

He was working with classified info. The moment he said he didn't want to be in the army his security clearance should have been revoked and he should have been moved to non secure work. It's really that simple.

P.S. I remember my short stint in the military a long time ago. They kicked me out because I couldn't do enough pushups. My MOS was 74D. I would like had the same access as manning or probably even better since all he did was have access at a terminal. I wanted to serve, had skills far beyond my MOS training and I knew my place and yet they kicked me out because my body didn't respond to traditional physical training.

Being a contractor I can earn more money if I'm motivated. Work semi regularly at half a dozen businesses and be exposed to new businesses and people all the time. In good times I can choose between projects that I'm interested in doing.

I really don't see the point. What needs to happen is for the politicizations that knew and supported/allowed it to be publicly exposed and punished/shammed in some way that will follow them forever.

I think they will change their minds later but I do agreed that stereovision is a joke. With the Oculus Rift in beta things are just getting started. Anything recorded now in stereovision can later more readily be converted to to whatever VR format evolves. The future is the Oculus Rift and then augmented reality displays that overlay 3d on top of what you already see. Then a shift hopefully of contact lens display.

And finally bionic direct optical nerve interface which could leap frog the contact lens display in my opinion. A similar nerve interface for the ear but not so much for sound but for virtualizing balance and momentum. And finally either a spinal tap or direct brain implant for tapping into the rest of the nerves of the body to simulate touch. There is zero chance of this not happening outside of the human race destroying itself in the next 50 years. The more sci-fi-esque future will be when your injected with nanites at birth and the implants automatically grow in the body.

Back on the subject of 3D. VR/AR displays make real hologram displays academic. If they ever become reality they will be pointless to implement commercially.

PS4 will use FreeBSD for it's OS code base. Where is there proof that it will still use DirectX?

I would think Microsoft would have a problem with a DirectX clone/port/emulation.

I can easily see that question coming up next to bring back this case.

First you can have someone do an exhaustive search to prove that a sequence has occurred naturally through random chance. And just because it occurs does not mean it will catch and become significantly dominant. I can predict right now that every possible sequence has probably occurred many times on this planet.

Second one can create the environment for the sequence to naturally evolve. And even if you did define something like this as unnatural you can't so easily prove such an example if released in the wild didn't evolve naturally.

It also doesn't address the issue of artificial human DNA. Can a corporation sue for infringement if a modified human has a child?

The simple fact is that the majority of accounts are just single people; sole authors. The vast majority of whose hello world programs will never gain any traction. It the least they want to know if anyone even looks at their code and said person will ask about the license if they have any intention of using it. Seems reasonable to me.

It also defers the question of which license until there are at least a couple other people willing to invest their time in the code. By choosing early you are creating more friction where a project really needs to gather developers to achieve some momentum.

You can't mandate a technology that doesn't exist or isn't practical. So invent it before you make it law.

I think such a requirement if made into law should be found to violate the 2nd amendment. But I do want the option of such technology so what you could do is mandate the availably of the tech for all new firearm models. Kind of like requiring automobiles be made with seat belts but not requiring people to use them.

The US taxes income that is already taxed in another country. It should be that money is taxed where it's earned. If something is sold to someone in France then the seller needs to pay French income, vat and sales taxes. If it's sold to someone in Germany then the French should collect no taxes and nor should the United States.

You simply can not survive as a business without tax shelters if you have to pay foreign and US taxes. So in for a penny, in for a pound. Your forced to do business so may as well defraud as much as you can and the taxes they would normally pay is used for buying off US federal politicians. That is politicizations rig the game so money goes in their coffers.

I think Amtrack should for frequent travelers price match air travel (including non luxury rooms for multiple people). They need to romanticize rail travel again. Also probably work with travel agencies and cities with circular routes to popular destinations.

A modern video card uses lots of power and needs lots of cooling so I am not really impressed with mobile video chips.

Thunderbolt is more exciting. It's PCIE over a cable. So you can have an external graphics card and enclosure. Plug power cable into wall. Plug thunderbolt cable from video card into notebook and voila.... top end graphics power. With some variations the thunderbolt tech the cable could carry enough power to power the laptop over the thunderbolt cable.

  The great thing is you still have a great portable laptop that can focus on saving power and having a great battery life but can be upgraded on the spot to a powerful gaming computer when you really need performance. The same setup can also upgrade a desktop computer in the same way so you can have a couple desktop computers and multiple notebooks and only need to buy one high end graphics card which can be quite an investment.

This tech is so revolutionary it will lead to a new desktop form factor without slots on the motherboard. You'll have a small CPU box with a closed loop liquid cooler. It might even be completely powered by a thunderbolt cable. You will then have a bus/hub box that will be similar in many way to a classic desktop in size. The difference here is that it can be large or small. It can have many slots or just one. It can be have many type of form factors.

I'm really tired of repeating that...

I dislike the idea of the Saturday night specials that these types of printers will make. I can only hope that the courts will finally rule that past regulations are pointless and ineffective and give people their rights back.

3D printers will likely lead to complete real life all plastic firearms which will make metal detectors pointless.

Everywhere concealed carry is permitted crime is much much lower and overall people become more friendly and pleasant. When everyone has the option to carry a gun it truly makes everyone equal. No more advantage for size and no more intimidation.

If I or my neighbor can walk down the street with a camcorder or place one on my property looking out on the street I see no problem the police also doing so. Public is public. If it is effective I see no reason police can't put cameras up everywhere they could patrol. Furthermore the cameras don't need to be visible or obvious. I would personally place them outside bars and in high crime areas.

What I do object to is that the police are not required to be discrete about information they acquire. They and their employers need to be held accountable for disservice to the public. In other words they should not be able to blackmail or otherwise manipulate people. For example if someone commits adultery they should need a court order/oversight to reveal that information to anyone.

It's like the old days of switchboard operators in small towns that listened on on other peoples business. The police are in a position and have the opportunity to witness very private moments. Like for example a teenage girl in an auto accident resulting in a mutilated face. As private citizens they can do what they want but as police on the job they should be accountable to be discrete.