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Comment Higher wages. (Score 1) 484

You could argue the reason tech workers want to keep or tighten immigration controls is to keep wages high. There is greed on both sides, and overall tech workers are not the worse off either.

The only way to resolve this kind of conflict is to go back to first principle and ethics (see Michael Huemer [1] for example). Is it right to use force to prevent a peaceful foreigner to buy a house in the US and live there? Is it right to use force to prevent a peaceful foreigner to make a voluntary contract with a US employer?

One way to see that this is not right is to think about analogies in our daily lives and the answer is that we would not condone such force in civil society.

[1] http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/immigration.htm (Is There a Right to Immigrate?)

Comment Open borders (Score 1) 484

I recommend Bryan Caplan's Youtube talk on immigration [1]. This is a broader question than just changing quota of H1-Bs.
First, the moral case is for letting people move freely and not use force against such peaceful people.
Second, the practical and political case is what is the impact on local workers, the local culture and also fiscal considerations. The evidence shows that those effects are at most small, and the net overall effect is positive.
The worries about negative effects can be addressed with simple but humane rules (unlike current immigration restrictions). For example, ask for some minimum language skills, add an income tax on immigrants to help local workers who are impacted, and possibly voting restrictions for such guest workers. All of those would be much better than current system of quota, both for locals and for foreigners.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYk00Ufiqb4

Comment How much data actually needed for a course? (Score 1) 222

Most online courses are voice with some whiteboarding or slides (coursera, opencourseware, khan academy). It should be relatively easy to produce low-bandwidth versions if you remove the video of the talking face.
Voice and slides don't need much bandwidth. Whiteboarding doesn't need much either, if it is properly encoded.

Comment Re:Doesn't work (Score 2) 369

Of course, it works: you haven't spent money on products that you don't support. Those companies and products have done you no harm.
If by "doesn't work" you mean other people did not have the same behavior as you, that is not the game editor's problem. That is your problem. Maybe you should try to convince people to adopt your preferences.

Comment Misplaced credit (Score 1) 535

"United States' military's gift"
DARPA certainly contributed to the development of internet and the web as we know it today, but it is an erroneous simplification to ignore the work leading to TCP/IP and the work after that. Singling out one step in the chain of investments, research and innovations is intellectually lazy.

Comment No jurisdiction (Score 2) 604

"the Federal Communications Commission has the power to issue regulations that protect net neutrality."
No. They don't. But, they sure would like to, and will certainly pretend to.

That a sad thing with government, you can't trust it with the power to redefine its own power, as it will invariably be abused.

Comment Incentives -- subsidies (Score 1) 164

The article really means subsidies, which imply that the real incentives to switching don't actually quite make sense compared to the costs of switching. But Cerf thinks he knows best than other people involved, ignore or override the economics of the reality, and looks for ways to get his way without having to solve the costs problem or having to convince people. Convincing politicians to spend money that is not theirs (or Cerf's) is special interest lobbying,which only invites further special interest lobbying.
Patents

Red Hat Settles Patent Case 76

darthcamaro writes "Red Hat has settled another patent case with patent holding firm Acacia. This time the patent is US Patent #6,163,776, 'System and method for exchanging data and commands between an object oriented system and relational system.' While it's great that Red Hat has ended this particular patent threat, it's not yet clear how they've settled this case. The last time Red Hat tangled with Acacia they won in an Texas jury trial. 'Red Hat routinely addresses attempts to impede the innovative forces of open source via allegations of patent infringement,' Red Hat said in a statement. 'We can confirm that Red Hat, Inc and Software Tree LLC have settled patent litigation that was pending in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas.'"
Image

White House Correspondent Tweets His Heart Attack 77

Tommy Christopher, who writes for mediate.com, has reporting in his blood, so much so that he livetweeted every part of his recent heart attack. "I gotta be me. Livetweeting my heart attack. Beat that!" and "This is not like the movies. Most deadpan heart attack evar. Still hurts even after the morphine," were among his updates as he was rushed to the hospital. Christopher is now in stable condition after recovering from emergency surgery.

Comment Then don't do it (Score 1) 267

Unless something changed, nothing forces you or anybody to access the terms of the mechanical turk. Use it or don't.
Writing a review of the Turk is fine, but pulling in "employment lawyers" is completely pointless.

"Trade unions disagree, saying that anyone undertaking work deserves proper remuneration."
Of course, unions don't like competition; they will try to take advantage of government power to get some competitive advantages for its members. But if you listened to unions, we would also get ride of productivity tools and make free contributions to open source projects illegal.

Comment Job losses (Score 1) 1115

".... claims from organizations like the RIAA that piracy [...] costs thousands of jobs. "
Such claims about job loses make no economic sense from the start anyways. If people pay less for something, they have more money to spend on other things. If the music busiess becomes unprofitable due to piracy, then the jobs will shift to more profitable activities, over time.

Comment Police Officers Seek Right Not To Be Watched (Score 1) 1123

Please avoid deliberate sensionalist terms like "guns", shooting and weapons in this context. In any case, my body (including my eyes and my brain) are my property. The police has no right to force me to keep them shut, unless I violated someone else's rights. Same thing for my camera. Filming, just like watching, is doing nothing wrong by itself.

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