Yeah, that's not really true. H-1B workers routinely get paid less than their American counterparts, and once hired, seldom get raises and never talk back.

At a big corporation with dozens of lawyers on staff or retainer, the costs of bringing on an H-1B are minimal.

Yeah, I liked that manga too.

No.

Humans poisoned the crap out of it with absolutely complete regard for the future of the species. Passenger Pigeons were regarded as a menace by early settlers, like locust. And like locust, they were eliminated. Yes, Passenger Pigeons were hunted, and yes, the last few thousand were likely killed by hunters. But the first 100,000,000 million were poisoned or had their trees cut down.

The unusualness of your job pales in comparison to high school.

Imagine a building that is constructed along the lines of a prison. Students are routinely padded down, put through metal detectors, and practice going into lockdown. There is no freedom of thought or speech.

Deviation from social norms is treated with torment by fellow inmates or punishment from the building staff. The ostensible goal of the institution, education, is secondary to social and athletic considerations.

No one wants to be there. Ungodly sums of money are spent on this program, yet the results are worse than most of the rest of the developed world.

And the nerds program computers on their own time because the teachers will not give them a relevant education. That is without a doubt the most unusual place any of us has programmed.

Cruel and unusual.

Business skills are not actually applicable in business. Sure, like recognizes like, but that mostly applies in golf, accounting, and working on Cisco routers. Three completely separate skill sets. Once you are pigeon-holed as IT, there you will stay.

You can move to marketing and run reports and websites. But don't try to be creative, because you are IT.
Senior Management won't want you around, because IT are nerds.
HR? Well, that's a career for paid liars, so maybe you could work there.
Accounting? Get your CPA.
Sales? No, because you are IT.

Get it? Good. Now get a golf club and start making friends.

We all know robots aren't competent. They are consistently being defeated by John Connor, the Doctor, and Starbuck.

The back half of this comment is what needs to be paid attention to:

Just bite the bullet and get Access. Everyone can use it. Training is fairly universal. The next guy through will be able to use it right off the bat with no effort. Do these folks a favor and future proof them with Access.

So basically owners of hybrids could start to think about getting Total Cost of Ownership of their cars to somewhere in the neighborhood of my more fuel efficient diesel. Consumer Reports link. And that on top of the under-reported diesel MPG formula used in the US. Consumer Reports shows 36 average MPG for the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Wagon. My total combined is 38.6. On long trips, it averages about 44 MPG, with the AC on. I have not met a Jetta TDI owner that does not say likewise.

Hybrids owners, see me rolling, they hating, controlling,

'cause I'm riding diesel.

> Why does the legal system allow settling class action suits?

Because when all the basic facts are the same, it makes *a lot* more sense to have one trial covering 64,000 victims than it does to have 64,000 trials. The *only* people who benefit from having all those unnecessary trials are the lawyers. If anything, class actions are less profitable for lawyers than the alternative.

Furthermore, unlike this case (where each plantiff suffered substantial harm: tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each), imagine a case where the harm suffered is small-but-nonzero. (For example, a few years back, the music CDs with the rootkits on them. For most people, the harm is the cost of the CD, around $15. Maybe twice to four times that if you want to include the cost of rootkit removal) In those cases, nobody in their right mind is going to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to file a lawsuit to recover $15. So the victim's choice is a class action suit or nothing at all.

Absolutely. Folks on H1Bs are basically indentured servants. This will only make it worse. So rather than one person losing a job, two people will. A lose of your job means that your spouse cannot work either. This is an unacceptable situation. Both immoral and unethical.

Further, this will have the effect of depressing middle and working class wages even further by increasing the labor pool. The spouses of H1Bs may not have unique skills, but rather will end up working anywhere. This increases the labor pool at a time when true unemployment is north of 15% - at Great Depression levels.

It's easy to say what's wrong. Now here's what the US should be doing: Granting green cards to foreigners who graduate with masters and phds. If the US is going to subside education of foreigners, then we should be retaining them.

Further, we should reduce the cost of college for all US citizens. It should not cost 25000 a year to attend a state school. If we need to build cheap and frugal dorms, then do it. If we need soup lines rather than McDonalds, then do it. If we need recycled text books, that's fine too. Let students do without a bit. They gladly will in exchange for cheap tuition. Pay the professors, but do not pay for facilities or sports.

Probably. It can also give you cancer.

It's simply about the US losing the power to police its borders. The real reason you go through the scantron is to keep you from packing hundreds to your torso and walking out of the country. The same is true with gold. The US government hates the idea of people moving money without their consent.

PATRIOT Act has mainly been used to suppress this activity.

You stole my pun. I'll kill you!

Since the US, by controlling in the Internet, more or less is capable of re-writing any history that is less than praising of its methods, I suppose the US is on the right side of history. They can write the history, after all.

heh. When cops start using it, then I will consider it.