Of course! My good friend Hash Tag! We went to university together--great guy... Can really wail on the guitar.

Since most H1-B's are entry level, not "advanced" workers at all, and we have millions of fresh grads chomping at the bit for the few entry level positions available, what sense does it make to then import people to drive down wages and increase competition for a group that can barely get employed in the first place?

Split it demographically by age and you find that unemployment for "techies" north of 40 is significantly higher--closer to double the national unemployment for all industries. The problem this creates is that these are educated, skilled people who expected another 20 "high-earning" years before we put them on an ice floe.

Modern history. Specifically, the scandal of H1-B abuse in this country which is used by our largest corporations to artificially deflate the market-price for high-tech labor by importing cheap foreign labor to replace Americans. The "you must exhaust all opportunities to hire an American!" rule of H1-B hiring is just a fig-leaf that these companies get around by posting a role that NOBODY meets the requirements for, then using the fact that none of the applicants met the (insane) criteria for hiring as an excuse to import a much-cheaper H1-B.

Yes, really.

Althought "jobs" aren't actually what are being stolen: Its prosperity. And it isn't being stolen by the immigrants, but by the bloodsucking corporations that want to grind all of our pay down so low by flooding the market with third-world-educated-on-governmen-tax-dollars-so-they-don't-have-student-loans folks that we're glad--even ecstatic!--to accept third-world plus 25% wages.

It's a naked attempt to flood the market and thereby drive down wages, period.

Of course, the corollary to this is that the bigger the number the fewer actual Americans will get an opportunity to shine, too. ...And isn't the government of this country supposed to be working int he best interests of actual citizens first?

Could the mod who moderated "flamebait" on this please anonymously post justification? We have 20 million unemployed, many of them techies over 40 who can't get a call back because the employer prefers cheaper (pronounced "younger") people who don't have as many family complications and the expectations of good benefits (like health insurance and pension/401k match.)

It seems to me that it is a perfectly legitimate point of view, and not an invitation to flaming, that we shouldn't be importing something we already have a supply of (and the capacity to generate more of) just to depress wages. Part of the problem is the attitude that an employee must either have the sun, moon, and stars (and often in quantities that don't jive with reality--i.e. a demand for 15 years of .Net experience, for example) to earn a competitive salary (i.e. one that would entice you to leave your current job) or be willing to work so cheaply that the employer would be foolish not to pay for a little training to "catch them up" on the job.

In this context it clearly is intended to imply a person is reading it: The advertisement and smear campaign aren't related to "linux manuals pages"--it is directed at an audience that would unquestionably infer that their messages were being "read" by a person.

It's a disingenuous lie to say they're being "read" by a person because they aren't. It is even more disingenuous because what Google is doing is "parsing" the messages, not reading them, and achieves galactic levels of hypocrisy when you realize Microsoft's cloud services parse your email too.

Really? Are you aware that SMTP transactions are, at heart, a parsing of your message? That an automated program is parsing through the message to figure out where the headers end and the body begins? To do this they must parse the message.

So if they're not parsing your email, how is it being delivered? Osmosis? Telepathy? Carrier pigeon?

So might Microsoft in their cloud hosting service! ...Your point?

Once again you gave the same permission to Microsoft, specifically the clause that lets them change TOS at will with your only recourse being to stop using the service.

Of course, that same user agreement also give Microsoft the option of changing those rules at their convenience, and the burden is on you to discover the change, not on them to reveal it.

It gets worse: An infiltration wouldn't even be needed--a successful extortionist could simply use his profits from the previous extortion attempt to BUY access to the data since these databases would undeniably be "commercialized" by some scum-bag looking to make a quick buck.

And when you factor in the "transnational" status of our world's largest corporations (i.e. they aren't "American," "British," or "French" companies anymore but "multinationals") the number of governments that you could be targeted by is essentially unlimited, since corporations have no conscience (by definition they don't: They aren't living things) they'll sell the product to anybody they can legally sell to that has money to spend.

Had a conversation about this recently and was pretty shocked at the apathy. Granted, I was talking to a Facebook addict at the time, but its shocking how little people think about what permanent records exist of their private lives.

There are a lot of Obama-hating Bullshit Artists on here today: Obama didn't raise taxes, so what did you change? Did you pay off a large mortgage that gave you a large tax deduction? Did you stop donating to charity? The rates are (literally) IDENTICAL to what they were when he took office, so you're either lying or omitting a crucial detail.

So I read his link and am not sure how you came to that conclusion.

Bullshit: Please cite how your taxes have "shot-up" since Obama took office. Is it because you have a job now, and thus are paying more in taxes than you were while unemployed during the Bush administration that makes you believe your taxes have "shot up?"