Are you sure? I'm fairly positive most people don't make their own cocaine. ;)

Yeah, well, honestly, I'm a good pilot, and I have excellent reflexes. I drive defensively, always alert, and I can avoid most accidents. I was involved in an accident ~3 months. An idiot merged into the highway at high speed without looking or any warning, I was doing ~95km/h, I dodged him but lost control while doing so, and hit the floor at that speed.

I was lucky, I didn't hurt myself at all, and the motorcycle just had some broken plastics, I was able to just ride out of there. The asshole didn't even stop.

I understand the risks, but I'm willing to take my chances.

I get your point. Sure, it doesn't apply everywhere, but it applies in 70% of the world. it hasn't snowed here since '92, but we do have chilly winters, it's -2C right now, and I just drove 12.5km to get home, through heavy crosswinds and zero visibility. I just fucking love riding on two wheels, cold or not. It's enjoyable, it relaxes me. I leave the problems at work on the road and get home happy as a clam.

Regarding groceries/passengers, etc., well, as I said, I leave 12.5km away from the city, and the stores around are closed by the time I get home, so I usually do my shopping on the city. Yesterday I brought ~5kg of meat and ~2kg of vegetables using just the storage below the seat and a small backpack. I do have additional storage (saddlebags and a top-box) that I can just attach to my ride if needed. And I'm used to riding with one on the back, not a problem. I've taken two people too many times.

I have tried snowmobiles in Argentina, in Bariloche. Loads of fun. I just happen to live 30 meters from the beach, in a city where it hasn't snowed since 1992.

Cars park by the curb, and if you park your motorcycle there, some asshole will move it to make room for his car. It's happened to me every time I parked that way. Fuck that.

It rains like hell all year in here, and right now it's -2C, well below freezing. And I just drove 12.5 km through heavy crosswinds in almost zero visibility to get home.

I'm a software developer, I own 50% of the company, so I can dress however the fuck I want, but I dress formally most of the time. If I need to wear a tie that day, I just change at the office.

I drive a 110cc motorcycle everywhere I go. I do ~60km every day. It goes up to 95km/h, it fits anywhere, I don't have to worry about parking, I just leave it in the sidewalk right at the door wherever I go, I never get stuck in traffic since I can fit just about anywhere. If the road is truly congested, I just driver over the yellow line, nobody ever seems to use that space anyway ;)

And my fuel consumption? I go through ~1.5 liters of shell v-power every day, or around 1.6 dollars taking into account the fuel price and exchange rate where I live (Argentina).

It's a lot more fun and enjoyable than riding a car, it's cheap as fuck, and it's certainly more eco-friendly than the most advanced electric car.

If I have to travel out of town, I take a motherfucking train.

EU grants asylum to Snowden. That would send the message home quite effectively.

Yes, the Israelis routinely spy on their sugar daddy. That attitude is but one of the many reasons that Israel is one of the worlds least popular countries, almost break even with North Korea. I don't think you should use them as an example of why that's OK. Incidentally the USA is less popular than the EU.

My first job was when I was 17 years old at a used book store. I had been playing with *nix for 6 years already. My next job was at a small hosting company as a jr sysadmin. Then as a half senior sysadmin at a small telco. Then moved to the big city, as a sr sysadmin for another (bigger, nationwide) telco. Then for another company that provided administration services for telcos, and helped them migrate their infrastructure to Asterisk. They mistreated me, and owed me money, so I spoke to their biggest customer and offered to work for them directly, and reduce their costs in half. So I home-worked for ~2 years for them (I live in Argentina). I used that easy-to-earn, no-strings-attached job that payed in dollars (that I sold locally at a very succulent exchange rate) to start my own business. My associate and I did just about everything in the beginning. We developed a web-based DVR/NVR solution (this was back in 2007, and at the time most DVRs where ie-only and required activex. Our Firefox/Chrome/Mac/Linux/Tablet/iPhone/Android friendly alternative took off real quick). So I found myself developing, then beta-testing, then field-testing, doing sales and managing providers, building the systems, hand-crafting the aluminum cases we sold them in, laying cable, installing PTZ domes hanging from a tower 40m above ground, etc, etc, etc. I haven't had a more fulfilling job, ever. Our company grew quickly, and we now employ several guys, from coders to guys that work in the field laying cable, we branched into digital signage, e-learning, ERP software, home-automation, etc, etc. Now I don't have to do everything on my own anymore, but I get to choose when I want to get away from my desk and travel to a 5-star resort in the Iguazu Falls to deploy 200+ cameras, or travel the country for a few weeks deploying cctv for a company that manufactures agriculture equipment.

If you want to work out, see the sun, work out in the open, work with people, and essentially leave your desk to do some work in the real world, while still keeping your coding/administration day job so you don't lose your skills at the keyboard, start your own business.

There have also been videos of presentations by firms who work in this area that teach companies how not to hire americans (You can google that). If their really was no advantage to hiring H1-B over a US worker, then why would companies go out of their way to disqualify US workers...?

Seriously? Have you ever actually been in a hiring position?

Hiring people is hard, and risky. Even in jobs where the skill set required is very precise and easily measured, as in engineering, there are all kinds of other random factors that can make or break a new hire (personality, lazyness, ability to co-operate, etc). Companies use every trick in the book to try and reduce this risk, most commonly by tapping employees networks to try and find other people who are known quantities, instead of the random walk-ins you get via normal hiring.

So now you have an open position. Maybe it requires specialised skills. Maybe it doesn't exactly require specialised skills, but there's someone who you just know would be the perfect fit for that position. You know they're capable, creative, etc. Only problem - not an American (and for "American" you can also read "European" for an EU based company, etc).

So what do you do? Obviously the "cannot hire an American to do the same work" standard is absurd, you can always hire an American to do any job, they just won't do it as well as the guy you actually want would. But you have to prove you tried. Hence - gaming of the system. The goal of this process is often not to hire just any H1-B because they're cheaper (they have to be paid the same salary or higher, right?), it's often to hire a specific person and this is especially true at the higher job levels.

The simplest solution would be to eliminate the "cannot hire an X" standard which is unenforceable, unmeasurable garbage anyway. Just ensure the salaries are the same, and, longer term, try and convince people that they don't have some kind of right to a well paid job just because they got lucky in the birth lottery. That other guy who is more qualified but has the wrong coloured skin should have a chance too.

Strong understanding of existing and emerging web standards, accessibility (WCAG1/2) and usability.
Familiarity with several JavaScript libraries, including Backbone and JQuery

lolwut, familiarity with some random JavaScript library is required? Dude, start writing your own job ads. It's clear that whoever is churning these out has no clue.

Unfortunately judging from the questions asked in that poll as given further down by Okian Warrior, that confirmation bias would be accurate and reasonable in this case.

(A recent poll asked people if "Ben Ghazi" should be deported for his crimes, and many people said "yes, definitely!". It's easy to lead people into the position you want by framing it in the right way.)

It's ironic that in a post talking about misleading and biased poll questions, you refer to a "recent poll" asking people about Ben Ghazi. The only such "poll" I was able to find boiled down to some random girl on YouTube asking passersby on the beach. As you might expect, most of them were shirtless bro's. Example answer: "come on, we're better than that".

I happen to agree with what you wrote about the Assange poll, especially the second question which is a textbook case of how to produce manipulated polls. In the USA leaking IS a criminal matter so it'd not be surprising if a lot of people wrongly believed Assange had actually broken the law, meaning they couldn't reasonably answer "not a criminal matter". But you shouldn't segue from talking about opinion polls conducted by newspapers to "polls" conducted by some girl on a beachfront for laughs.

Tell them you have experience with BOTH decades-old software AND murdering children. That goes right down their alley.