I think I wasn't being clear in my original post, it happens.

I know there are people in other countries that are fantastically smart, definitely smarter than me. My issue isn't with smart immigrants. My issue is with the system that isn't bringing a ton of those smart people here, but instead bringing people with limited training, fake resumes (provided by the "body shop", I don't want to imply the immigrants are complicit), and low skills and then selling them as geniuses. I use to be told by people that since I was working with Indians, I must be on a very good team since they are so good with technology. They aren't... at least not any more than any other person. Entrepreneurs in India just figured out a way to game the system, coupled with entrepreneurs in the US.

And you're correct, American jobs aren't truly American, they should go to whoever has the proper merits to earn the position. Any job anywhere should.

However, I'm not competing against smart immigrants. I'm competing against falsified credentials/experience that come with a bargain of a significantly lower salary than I do. At that point, I lose, the client loses, and the immigrant loses as well... the only ones winning are the "body shops" for abusing the system and blatantly lying.

I want to agree with this statement (assuming "China or Russia" can be replaced with a generic "overseas"), but my experience tells me otherwise. While anecdotal, I have spent time on many teams where I am one of a few, or possibly the only, non-Indian immigrant on the team (team size varies from 10-50 people). I'm a consultant, and I'm pulled in to help on different projects for my firm's clients.

The immigrants I've worked with, while nice (very much so), and knowledgeable in very specific technology, have no broad critical thinking skills, software design/architecture skills, or outside-the-box thinking. Basically, if what they need to code doesn't match an example from whatever 6-week class they took before getting the visa, they won't have a clue. This means the solutions end up being a glut of cobbled together code until things work. There's entire segments of code that are usually obsolete or do nothing... worse yet, silently fail; users just get tired of reporting bugs and find their own workarounds, so management falsely believes things are being fixed when the bug reports die down.

This isn't their fault mind you. They are being exploited... first by the inadequate training farms in their native country (or possibly online), and then by the "body shops" that bring them to the US and hire them out at outrageous rates while paying as little as possible. While their client is getting subpar coding infused into their software, ultimately increasing costs over time.

I want the H-1B visas overhauled not only to ensure America jobs stay American, but also so these immigrants aren't exploited. They are more than welcome to move to this country, but it should be on better terms, even if that prevents a multitude of them from coming here without more effort than is being expended now.

You are the real troll, but I'll bite...

Europe is not a country, it is a continent.
Europe does not have a Queen, but England does.
Chancellors are not just a "Star Wars thing", because Angela Merkel is currently the Chancellor of Germany.

Non-existent? You said it yourself, "Twitter is for attention whores." You are absolutely correct, and they most definitely existed before Twitter and they are the target demographic.

It seems like he's trying to be a con-man, and doing a real bad job of it. I'm not sure if any of that is intentional, or it's just the voices in his head making him do asinine things.

I see Captain Obvious is in charge of the Belgian police.

Everything Facebook does is to support its ad-based revenue model. "More options for users" is not the same as "more options for the customer", since the users with profiles are not the customer, the ad agencies are.

Would you like to be the first Handicapper General of the United States?

Harrison Bergeron

Look, obsoleting certain monotonous, low-skill jobs isn't a problem. When cashiers, burger-flippers, and other basic/front-line customer-facing jobs can be eliminated and replaced with automation all that's really happened is the available jobs in a society have shifted to OTHER industries.

No more cashiers because of self-checkout lanes at the grocery store? Fine, now there's a whole sector of NEW jobs for building, installing, and maintaining those self-checkout machines.

Can Suzie, who lost her cashier job, now take one of those new jobs to maintain the auto-cashier? Of course she can. Can she do it without additional training? It depends, but most likely not. All that tells me is that if people really want a higher wage, then they need higher-paying skills. They better hurry, too, because their current job is about to go the way of the dodo.

Now, is this a very black and white viewpoint of this situation? Probably.

Is it as easy as just showing up at classes at the local community college for Suzie to get the skills needed? Not really.

However, that IS the solution. Education. It's almost ALWAYS the solution for most problems in society. Instead of artificially propping up low-skill jobs with arbitrary increases to the minimum wage*, we should really be investing in getting additional training for those with low-skill/low-paying jobs. These jobs were meant for teenagers (in high school) and college-age people anyways, people that by the nature of their age group should be in an educational institute as it is.

The entire problem came about when adults simply stayed in their high school jobs and had little to no ambition to do more. Or maybe it truly was the only job they could find. The solution is to get MORE SKILLS, not demand more money. More skills means you've earned that extra money. Demanding an increase to wages for a job that ANY jackass can do simply passes the cost on to the consumer, including the employee that got the raise...making the raise worthless.

* I do recognize that the minimum raise has not kept up with inflation. I would be comfortable tying the minimum wage to changes in the value of the dollar (due to inflation or whatever). That's different than an arbitrary $15...even if the changes in inflation would necessitate a higher value than $15. At least it would be a rational reason rather than just, "I feel like I'm worth $15 an hour", when they are obviously not.

I mean, I like it when information is clearly communicated, but isn't it kind of a no-brainer that when your employer provides you with a phone that they are going to monitor its usage? Even if they don't, it should be the default assumption of the user that they do. Same thing with any desktop/laptop and internet connection they provide.

All this does is point out the obvious.

Now, if they had a message that told me my Service Provider was in some way monitoring my privately purchased/owned personal phone, that would be fantastic!

The problem is there is rarely, if ever, somewhere else to go play. Monopolies are the problem and why these pricing schemes survive where in any other industries they would be laughed at and fail.

It's also not about the cap, which is fairly arbitrary. The real issue is that most of these ISPs were given government subsidies (taxpayer money) to build out the network in exchange for the monopoly. Then they pocket the subsidies and the network lags behind in technology and is not expanded to meet the expected and obvious growth in an area. Several metropolitan areas are currently working on suing Verizon for this exact thing.

If the ISPs actually did with the money what people are giving them money for (both the government and consumers), then caps wouldn't even be needed! They'd rather just funnel it up the chain of command so they can have their second mansion or third jet.

Not to mention the marketing ploy of selling you Unlimited data, but then capping/throttling it later (or the whole time). If they were just upfront with everything and priced accordingly (which won't happen without competition), it wouldn't be as much as an issue.

Not exactly. Your shortened version returns users where the url has both "sex" and "politics" in it at the same time.

The original query returns users where the url has "sex" and the same user has OTHER urls that include "politics".

You're right of course, but I wanted to add that a decent example of this was in a Michael Keaton comedy, of all places, called Multiplicity. The basic premise was he had too much to do, got a clone of himself to handle his job (architect or something), while he spent time with the wife and kids and still did some household chores.

Eventually, the original wanted more leisure time and created a second clone for the household chores. Ultimately, the architect copy became more manly (grunting, drank beer, roughhoused, deeper voice) and the household cleaner became more feminine. After a while, neither clone wanted to do the grunt work and they made a clone of a clone...which turned out to be less intelligent than the others.

Long story short, it showed how a clone (even though it had the same memories of the original up to the point of cloning) would eventually branch off and have their own experiences that shaped their needs and wants.

Please share, I'd love to hear about your experiences with HIPAA violations.

I'm not sure ownership of a modern cellphone is a high enough bar. If that were true, then a majority of people (the ones I know anyways) would have zero expectation of privacy at all times, which would allow all kinds of snooping (whether by private persons or government agents) at all times. I do not want to live in that world.

I do think that the moment a butt-dial occurs, the third party (call receiver) is now privy to the information discussed during the still private conversation (that they were invited to) and can disseminate as they so choose.

It does not open up the specific call or conversation to snooping by a 4th party (private or government) because the expectation of privacy really hasn't changed, the caller just inadvertently and unknowingly invited a 3rd party to join/listen in. In this case, that 3rd party decided to share the information gathered, which I feel was within their rights.

This is not about a private call. The call remained private the whole time. Huff called Spaw directly. He didn't know he called her, but he did. No one had wire tapped the call (at least no one more than usual *cough* NSA *cough*). That call remained private until Spaw divulged information obtained from the call. I think she did not have a legal responsibility to keep the information private, so she can share it at will.

What should be discussed here is whether the CONVERSATION overheard in the background should be private, since Spaw understood she was hearing privileged information during an accidental call. Personally, I think it shouldn't be. If you're so clueless that you butt-dial me and I hear something you're saying (whether I share that info or not), that's your problem, not mine.

Again, the call remained private between the caller and receiver, what's really being argued is if the background conversation overheard during the call should be private. My answer: NO.