Oh - Sorry, I jumped to answering. You did say unoficiallyUS and Mexico work to keep the rates stable.

That's exactly true. It's not that the peso is artificially held at a fixed per-dollar level (as it happened in the past), but that it is kept in a relatively stable value through "real" action.

But, of course, this is because the USA is not only Mexico's closest economic partner but its neighbour country. But anyway, the reason I sent here my original comment is that in the 2002-2014 period, the Euro went to over double of its original value against the US Dollar, then down a bit.

Nope. The peso floats freely; twice in the last five years there has been economic unstability, and the central bank "intervened" by selling a chunk of its reserves in order to keep the peso from falling further. It has worked: In the 2008-2010 period (remember, global economic recession), stable exchange levels jumped from 10 to 12, but we did at some point reach (for just a couple of days) 16, then went back to 12. And a similar thing seems to be happening now, as the dollar jumped from ~12.50 to ~15, and seems to have stabilized.

But no, the Mexican peso is not tied to the dollar, or to any other currency.

Right, I see what you did there...

I am Mexican. We have been told the peso has been mostly stable for almost two decades... Well, lets say, a decade and a half. When Vicente Fox was appointed president (2000), one dollar was at about MX$10, and it has very slowly slided. This year started with the dollar at ~MX$13. (Our last couple of months notwithstanding, as we are now at about 15). You can look at the last 10 years' graph

However, when the Euro started circulating (2002), one Euro was at about 7 pesos. It has since gone up to 17, then down a little. That is, it has moved from ~US$0.80 to ~US$1.40; it has peaked at US$1.60, and in the last 10 years, had valleys of US$1.20. (you can see the last ten years exchange levels history)

So, in short: There's quite a bit more to it if you dig into the whole world of currencies :)

No. The owners and employees of "lesser" companies are terribly affected. The State should stop any company that is tending to become a monopoly.

When a company is *way* more successful than their competition, you don't have to wait until the competition dies in order to see a monopoly is forming. Yes, I do not believe in a pure free market. Much to the opposite. I believe that players should be able to enter the stage on a field that's as leveled as possible. And this particular case itches me because Amazon found some bits of inovation in a field, then its scope broadened, and now it is causing distorsions in all kinds of unrelated fields. And that is where regulation should kick in.

Authors have long suffered the publishers pay them a misery compared to what they earn. I have published very little, and via my university (which means, very little distribution but relatively very good terms). I get 10% of the sales. In the "real world", maybe a third of that is normal.

Now, Amazon is continuing to pay the authors the same 3%. But not only no exchange of tangible goods happens, now we the readers also pay Amazon for the book-of-all-books (that is, the Kindle). Yes, some people will use the Kindle store to read on the computer, tablet or whatnot, but it's definitively a lesser experience.

So anyway, Amazon is still paying something to the publishers (except, of course, for Amazon Direct published works). But given the goods themselves "cost" no money, they are getting *way* more than by selling books — Of course, the authors would prefer their income to increase proportionally as well.

Not shrink proportionally.

On the other hand, this is a very good example on how specific business practices can hurt quite different areas of endeavour. Bezos started off early and Amazon became an effective monopoly. When a large enough group feels (and proves!) a single provider is hurting them, the State should intervene regulating monopolies; I'm sure that were Amazon to be audited, many strange issues would arise as a result of the strict application of the described scheme.

After all, some market regulation is better for everybody, even if you are free-marketist.

OK, you proved the GP false. Given the huge disbalance, with ~30% of the world's Great Idiots born in the US, anything based on a representatively significant distribution is proven to be false.

The amount of great programmers who don't want to live in the USA.

This.

After posting my post (of course, I got to brag before reading your opinions), I started reading how valued "multitouch" seems to be among /. readers.

It's, granted, a game-changer that enabled buttonless phones, for better and for worse. But in a car, you want to avoid as hard as you can all kinds of interfaces that require your visual attention. My body knows where most useful buttons in my car are (and in the strange event I need to, say, switch the airflow setting, I know I can do it while at a red light or something like that). I do not want a car that enables me to do what I should only do with my full attention on it.

I neither want my neigbour driver's car to provide such abilities, of course.

This sounds exactly like the tech used by Hewlett Packard in the mid-1980s (here in Mexico, maybe it was known earlier elsewhere) for their HP110 and HP150 lines. The HP110 had (25x80? Probably...) holes on the screen edge, with a LED and a receiver at the opposite ends. IIRC, for the HP150 the "magic" was that the screen borders were now smooth, because the LEDs were higher power, and infrared instead of visible-spectrum.

I never used those machines; I remember seeing them and drooling at the finger-detecting magic :-) But thirty years later, it's hardly a new technological development.

I have been three times to Cuba; first time (in 1999) I went to visit a friend at the Health Ministry, and they had quite a good dialup access point; back then, dialup was still the main Internet access mode where I live (Mexico). The lacking part was, of course, computer access in the population.

The last time I was there (2010) was shortly before the connection to Venezuela started operation. I was invited to give a talk at the "Universidad de Ciencias Informáticas" campus, near La Habana. There, basically every student lives on-campus (the university is in a decomissioned Soviet base). All rooms have a computer — Old one, but working. And yes, network access was quite slow. Students also had a terribly low monthly bandwidth allowance (IIRC it was in the vicinity of 300MB), and after hitting that ceiling, there was no way to get more bits for them. It was quite interesting to see how a large group of people learnt to use the Internet with Javascript off, images off!

There was no censorship I could find (using a regular student account). Of course, I didn't go testing everything, as I didn't want to leave my host disconnected — But the main issue was the limits derived from having a single satellite uplink for the whole nation. I was told the situation improved vastly after the fiber to Venezuela was laid, but I cannot comment first-hand on it.

Of course, I'd expect now a fat fiber will be laid to Florida.

If I were to get a H1B visa, I might want to do the work you currently do for a much lower wage than yours (since I come from an allegedly poor country or something like that). So, is getting a PHP newbie developer who was born in the USA and charges US$100K a year, or getting a good, talented programmer who will do the same work for US$60K a year... Is on the same level only because they will fill the same job position?

(I live in Mexico, and am *not* interested in living in the USA. I have a ~US$25K yearly salary, and live quite well off it. But many colleagues have migrated to the USA, just because of that salary difference)

Right. You want to live in a free-market economy? Then people like you and me become part of the market. And, it's not like getting a H1-B visa is that simple: For a non-USian, only being quite qualified and skilled can get you a work-enabling visa. Of course, were I to get a visa to work on the US, I would probably be a cheaper hire than you — So, for (supposed) equal skills, I'd be more valuable.

So, if you push for a free market and reduced state, you'd be pushing for me to be hired over you.

Yes, we tend all to think that things that happen to us are related to the IT industry. However, nothing in "the H1-B debate" restricts this issue you mention to the IT sector.

This issue is not even related to immigration — If a company prefers to hire me to do $foobar because I'm better and cheaper for the job than the guy who did it before me, the company will do its best not to get bad press. It might include paying him a bit extra so you leave happy, or adding judicial clauses to shut his mouth up.

Of course, specific cases can be mentioned to say "hey, this is a specific issue for us techies and it involves them non-USians!". But it's the way things have always worked.