You may ask -- software development is has always been my muse, and continues to be -- I've saved enough money to be financially independent, and live simply.

I have over 30 years working on the cutting edge of software development, at some the the leading companies in the field, in Silicon Valley. I have difficulty in restraining myself from challenging your credibility, so I'll focus on what you said. It is economics 101 that if there is a shortage of engineers, salaries should be increasing, until supply meets demand. There should be a lot of movement of engineers from company to company as the competion and salaries increase -- this isn't happening -- salaries remain flat. As you've read here, and elsewhere companies like Google and Apple have agreed not to seek to hire engineers from each other, eliminating competion in engineers and salaries. I know H1B software engineers working 60 to 70 hours a week, just so they can keep their jobs. Senior engineers, like myself and others I know, who have modern and even cutting edge skills, are sitting out, because we won't take the low salaries. I'm offered salaries in the neighborhood of the same salary I was making 20 years ago. I code and do research everyday, because it's what I love to do, not because I'm getting payed any longer. What's needed in not more H1B's but for the industry to stop manipulating the market for engineers and set the market free to work. I've been at this long enough to realize it won't happen -- the industry leaders will continue to manipulate the market, hold down salaries, abuse H1B's, and demand an increasing supply -- because they can. I and others I know, aren't employed, and aren't counted in the 2.2%, so the rate is higher. In my long career, I've never collected unemployment, so how would I ever be counted as unemployed, by the Labor Department?

Of course, the previous observation is only stating the obvious, which needs repeating. Microsoft, has always been managed by arrogance, and continues. They'll do whatever they want, and customers will have nothing to say about it, unless they vote with their dollars, in droves. Lest you think I'm a Sony troll, I say much the same about them -- I have a bricked Playstation III, which will stay bricked.

I would prefer to solve the problem of publishing research in an open, free, non-commercial environment, but don't know of one. I wonder, if it wouldn't be workable to self-publish on Amazon.com, which has the bandwidth, storage, and infrastructure to support the publishing of the research and associated reviews.

USA has made a deal with the devil, and is betrayed one more time. Leave Pakistan to their own devices, and get out of the arena. Bin Laden is no longer an excuse for American occupation. The generals led in Viet Nam, and Afghanistan, with the same results. History has repeated itself - enough.