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Comment Re:Isn't this how Free Trade works!!! (Score 1) 325

That's why we have so many illegal immigrants. "If I don't hire them (for peanuts), my competitors will and I'll go out of business!" Democrats see illegal immigrants as future voters, Republicans see them as cheap labor. Same with H-1B visa workers. Eliminate or reduce the H-1B visas and eliminate illegal immigration and wages will go up. Your comment only applies when our Congressmen game the system, and not even then precisely. Employers pay the prevailing rate, which often would be higher than minimum wage if there was no gaming. The comment about CEO pay is a non-sequitur for this topic.

Comment Re:Ya know ... (Score 1) 325

Except that Citizens United works like this: A rich guy and a poor guy both go talk to a politician about an issue. The rich guy stuffs money into the politician's pocket, the poor guy can't. Guess which way the politician votes? When all men were created equal, apparently that doesn't include influence in the laws that are passed.

Neither unions or corporations should be allowed to steer money to politicians. If corporations, unions, and individuals are limited as to the monetary influence that can make, that levels the playing field.

Comment Re:Forbit all HFT (Score 1) 246

I remember years ago on Sixty Minutes a story about Grace Hopper, who taught computer science. She had a spool of wire one thousand feet long and told students that that was a microsecond. I thought that it was a nice way to illustrate how much time you are wasting when your code takes just one microsecond longer to execute than necessary.

Submission + - Enumerating Android installed applications without special permissions (wroot.org)

An anonymous reader writes: It seems like it's nothing serious but actually any app can list the other installed apps on your Android system without user consent — and it's by design.

While analyzing traffic for an Android app, we figured out that the app was sending competitor data back home, dug up a little and found some interesting design flaw on the Android platform that enforces no special permissions on retreiving installed applications list.

Submission + - National Security Draft for Fining Tech Company "Noncompliance" on Wiretapping

Jeremiah Cornelius writes: A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Facebook and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur. "The importance to us is pretty clear," says Andrew Weissmann, the FBI’s general counsel. "We don’t have the ability to go to court and say, 'We need a court order to effectuate the intercept.' Other countries have that." Under the draft proposal, a court could levy a series of escalating fines, starting at tens of thousands of dollars, on firms that fail to comply with wiretap orders, according to persons who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. "This proposal is a non-starter that would drive innovators overseas and cost American jobs," said Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "They might as well call it the Cyber Insecurity and Anti-Employment Act."

Submission + - German Ministry of Education throws away PCs for 190,000 € due to infection (google.com)

An anonymous reader writes: German IT magazine Heise reports (original in German) that the Ministry of Education in Schwerin had a Conficker virus infection on 170 machines, that was dealt with by simply throwing them on the trash. Other German authorities have now decided that "the approach taken is not up to the principle of efficiency and economy" and that the 187,300 Euro invested in this radical form of virus removal were inappropriate. The ministry had earlier estimated the cost of cleaning their desktops and servers by more conventional means to 130,000 Euro.

Submission + - Tech Talent Sortage and Guestworkers (theatlantic.com)

mk1004 writes: The Atlantic has an article, based upon an Economic Policy Institute report http://www.epi.org/publication/bp359-guestworkers-high-skill-labor-market-analysis/, saying that America's tech-talent shortage is a myth. As noted in the article, the current immigration bill running through the Senate would greatly increase the number of H1-B visas, solving a non-existing problem. The EPI report states that "U.S. employers have access to the world’s largest body of STEM students."

Submission + - Why iTunes is dying (networkworld.com)

colinneagle writes: As the iTunes Store celebrates the 10th anniversary of a very successful run, it may have fallen too far behind competing services to survive in the next 10 years. Currently, iTunes’ share of online music sales stands at 63%, its lowest figure since 2006 and a steep drop from its peak of 69% in 2010, according to market researchers at the NPD Group. And while Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, HBO Go and all the other competitors keep signing up new customers, only rumors have emerged about an Apple streaming service, and they aren't very flattering.

Apple will reportedly use a streaming service to drive sales of songs on iTunes, and will use advertisements to help boost revenues even further. That may appease content providers, but consumers who can pay for unlimited access to Spotify's library without advertisements wouldn't even consider it.

By the time Apple does get its streaming service off the ground, customers will be too entrenched in competing services to be swayed by another that doesn't offer any advantage. As the concept of "owning" content becomes more outdated, so will iTunes.

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