We bash h1bs and that too works out in favor of out sourcing companies. They quietly bring in more L1s. Also restricting H1B has opposite effect like IBM moving almost their entire workforce abroad.

Another related outsourcing loop hole - Govt. purchase contracts mandate that the service calls/support is done within USA. So, the calls are attended by onsite persons, then tickets are logged. Sub-tickets are created for the tickets and the subtickets are worked on from offshore. The parent ticket is worked in USA(practially 0) thus they are in compliance.

H1b employees also get displaced by TCS/Infosys. Their official policy is 85% offshore and 15% on shore employees. The onshore 15% exists mostly for co-ordination. An H1b employee's CTC is always higher by at least by 1.5x times to locals. Recently my friend who is on h1b was forced to look for another h1b sponsor because the company A signed a partnership agreement with TCS. TCS provided 3 sysadmins for his replacement but they were not upto the mark as expected by A because TCS's sysadmin's won't know scripting. This H1b guy was forced to train the TCS guys(10 of them) in perl scripting. He did that too but then they quit TCS for better salary and work hours. A new PM from TCS would come onshore every 1.5 to 2 years and he would question why they are employing a h1b guy for 2x the cost of an L1B. In the mean time the h1b guy's extension process etc. would be delayed. He used to be in lot of stress, they would still be search for an replacement and apply for the extension on the last week/day of original h1b expiry and then too they will provide 1 yr extension. Frustrated he quit for another company B. The same story has started to repeat at company B now. There is another category of visas called L1A and L1B(intra company transfer visa) where prevailing wages doesn't have to be shown and qualifications are not a factor. Almost 95% of the TCS onsite guys had either L1A or L1B and they were getting 60k for a 110k job position and their taxes found some loop hole and they were hardly paying any taxes, that is around 4k. The h1b guy was getting 85k and his vendor the rest. CTC was around 140k to the company. L1A visa is also eligible for immediate green card processing under "multinational manager"(eb1) category. The master degree H1b guys on an average wait for 10 years(talking Indian), the bachelor degree holders wait for 20 or more years. L1A guys just 3 to 6 months. For a foreign student he has to become a scientist(Phd + papers etc) to qualify for the equivalent category as "multinational manager". Some "multinational managers" are just 10+3(diploma) qualified. Last year there were around 500 eb1 gc applications(search 485 inventory on google). This year already 13000 eb1 applications have been received. H1b guys are under the Eb2 and Eb3 green card quotas. So companies have figured out the L1 loop hole and bringing in the 15% onsite workers as managers. That explains the huge jump in eb1 category. So the foreign scientists/Phds are unhappy too. The L1As get green cards in 6 months and then are not counted as foreign workers, qualifying the company as less than 30% dependent on foreign workers. Thus they import for L1As. So I would say, the anger is misdirected towards H1b instead of L1x visas.

I would agree with you partially, especially if it is ADD and ADHD is total bs(mostly a disciplinary problem with parents). My kid(now 9) was diagnosed with autism last year. We had some meetings with psychiatrists and then some google search. After the research we took the following action -

1. We threw out our microwave, findings are subjective but one outcome was confirmed, that is according to wikipedia - microwave food and forget the B vitamins, and many articles mention B vitamin deficiency was observers in most of the ASD(Autism Spectrum Disorder) kids. Food reheating is now done in a tiny 15 usd oven(2-3 mins). 2. Stopped milk completely, milk is no longer normal and the cows die in 5 years instead of the natural 25 years, too much of hormones leak into the milk 3. Added iron pills(careful here overdose can be deadly). After the diet change, he showed a lot of improvement in 3-4 weeks. We thought we may be biased as parents but school teacher confirmed the same. He used to avoid playing with other kids, but this year he goes out and plays with the kids in the neighbourhood and in school playground too.

We used microwave for the last 7 years only. Good old granny era methods seem to be best. We are avoiding packaged food too, that is wherever preservatives are added. We do however let our guard down and eat packaged food during some weekend getaways. At home we simply cook rice, legumes and some veggies or beans or goat meat or organic chicken or tiny(1-2 inch length) fishes (to avoid mercury). We are fully satisfied with the outcome. And my kid's grades have climbed up steadily and are on par with other kids. His social skill level was at 4 year old level last year but this year he is close to 7 yr old level.

The natural order of affairs in the world is that the Mighty will rule the rest. Just like Tiger->Deer population control, the rest will eventually rise(yes economy ultimately translates to food) and put Democracy in place but the gravity of the natural order will pull back and restore tyranny. Pendulum will swing again. This is what Newton's law tries to tell us. Action -> Equal and "opposite" reaction - Evolution of Democracy -> Devolution of Democracry > ED > DV > .... No amount of whistle blowing etc.. can slow down the Devolution part. Everything is natural. Nature is unimaginably powerful. It is arrogance that makes us believe that we can make an impact, save earth, do good, democracy etc... , Nature will ultimately make you realize it is all futile. You are born to have fun. As per Newton's law Fun's equal and opposite.. Misery!, so unless some have misery how can some have fun? If everyone on earth had 20 bucks then who will be rich and who will be poor. Economy stalls. Equality means, no activity that is death like a still pond. Throw a stone and you will have creation, creation of waves, fun. Action is disturbance - result is fun.. In fact in nature there is no such thing as good or bad, it is human perception, a win for me is loss for someone else. Breathing is good for me but bad for many who(micro organism) will die because of me breathing. We don't care about them(micro o) but for nature they are as important or as useless as we are. There are too many circular or cyclical order of things around us as evidence that nothing goes in a straight line forever. In the larger picture or long run everything is circular err. spherical. And everything needs the other for their existence. Cops need crooks for the cops to exist and vice versa.

java app => cron: reboot/restart apache/jboss/tomcat : every week

We don't know chemical composition of a drop of saliva or blood or snake venom or spider saliva. In otherwords, if I put the best scientist in a lab and give all the elements on the periodic table, will he/she be able to produce a drop of blood! We sure know one basic organic number system - dna but we still don't know 100s of other fundamental concepts involved in make a drop of blood. Human body has adapted to the environment over a course of millions of years. Food is part of that environment, manipulating it without understanding is like a kid playing with a blow torch. We think we are the most intelligent, think again, we don't know how a plant converts the inorganic materials into food. We don't even know how stomach digests meat but not itself(when it too is made of meat). Stingray genes were mixed with tomatos to prolong the shelf life. It means tomatos cells won't break down easily. Stomach breaks the food and then absorbs, so as a lay man I would think stomach must be struggling with breaking down a GM tomato. Sure I ate GM tomatos and I am fine, human body is extremely adaptable too but will it be the case past my prime, say age 35, where my body has started decaying and I put the additional burden on it to cope with the modified food. I eat GM food because I don't care how long I will live. But dismissing the others as freaks is probably a bad idea. In software analogy you are closed source :-)

I agree with this Anonymous Coward. I too paid for pregnancy total 6k including taxi etc.. Surgeries etc are 99% of the time planned, so for these visit another country like Mexico or India. Even a heart surgery would cost around 8-15k including hotel, tickets etc. For infectious diseases etc there is no cure anyways(unless vaccinated), also by the time you get a diagnosis you are dead anyways. Eat home cooked(anything packaged is junk food), go to a gym and keep hydrated. Sleeping with open windows keep the flu/cold away(open early morning or 10-5 or 1 hour in winter). Stay away from caffine, caffine is the root cause of anxiety/depression in many. Try quitting coffee it is more difficult to give up than smoking.

Please get your facts right - h1b workers are way more expensive than local workers, in some cases almost double. L1 are cheaper(almost half) but not h1b. During recession L1s replace both h1b and local workers, h1bs first. And there is no cap on L1, green card for L1 requires no Labor approval. Want the jobs back then focus on L1. When h1bs are squeezed, Corporations look more towards outsourcing via L1 route. H1bs add money back into the economy. In the middle class, H1bs are the biggest contributors to Social Security and Tax.

oops brake

Mandatory stick shift, the old clutch systems. Will prevent the accidents resulting from use of gas pedal(instead of break) by old people while stopping. Not that it is not possible in manual but you have to make two mistakes to crash into a store. Advantages in terms of accident prevention: 1. On a manual your clutch is depressed while coming to a complete stop. 2. Also even if you let the clutch go by mistake while stopping then it would be a sudden release and engine would stall. 3. If you can't co-ordinate clutch and gear then you are either too old or unfit(mentally) to drive and save others the misery.

Medicine is not science, it is a practice.

Doctors may be right but parent's concern is right too, because complications do happen, say 1 in 10000. It may be 0.01% for the doctor. Who knows which perfectly healthy child would not be there next day because he/she got a vaccine yesterday and 0.01% mathematical probability got to him/her. When it is your own child that 0.001% becomes 100% devastating. I vaccinated my kids but did worry and it was a tough decision, left it to fate and proceeded to vaccinate. Considering the outcome from parent's perspective doctors denying care seem arrogant to me. But that is nothing, compared to other corruption in medical industry. 70% paediatricians malpractice and more alarming is that the malpracticing doctors are more famous than regular doctors. Think imaging labs and doctors tie up here. I was almost scammed when I took my 3 days old baby for a regular after birth check up. The best clue is ask the clinic if they will see non-insured patient, if they say no then they exist only to scam. I have no insurance yet the doctor I got was a scammer. His clinic is rated 4/5 too because he makes more money and thus is able to afford more good looking attendants and patients give high rating because there was less wait.

Depends on perspective. If movement is life then electrons move inside an atom and septillions+ of complex combinations of these movements gives rise to the so called life from human perspective. From non-human universal perspective it appears that the whole universe is alive.

H1b candidate may be getting paid less but most of them work via a vendor. Cost to the end company is much higher than for an local employee, H1b employee costs at least 60 per hour. To qualify for h1b visa 60000 is the minimum pay on application paper. Visa fee itself is 5000 approx.