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Comment temporary vs permanent visas (Score 5, Informative) 261

the disappointing thing about FWD.us is it focuses too much on increasing the quota of temporary (H-1B) visas, and almost no effort on streamlining the path from temporary to permanent. The reason isn't so difficult to see, temporary visas (6-years) are great for employers, not only do they bring in invaluable skills, but they also ensure those skills are tied to the company. They're not so great for either the temporary workers or other potential competitors in the labor market, because they are tied until the sponsoring employer *may at its discretion* apply for permanent residence status. Note in this case success is by no means assured, and may take up to two years. Personally I think the current H-1B quota is more than adequate if it were not used so heavily by a small number of companies, who account for the vast majority of applications. The most urgently needed reform is to not only streamline the permanent residence process, but to also give more agency to H-1B workers, to for instance self-petition for permanent residence status based on a number of factors. This will reduce the natural 'pull' to employers for temporary workers, and even the playing field between temporary and permanent residents.

Comment Business case (Score 1) 481

Obviously from the users point of view this is a total PITA. The defense is that it makes business sense. Streaming is the future and DVD by mail is going to die. This my or may not be true, but its unlikely that netflix is going to dominate the streaming business in the future, and that's where they're making a big mistake by divesting the dvd business. This is because 1) Licensing costs. They lucked out with the Starz relicensing deal. It allowed them to get a bunch of content for well below it's economic value because back then Starz didn't realise its potential. The deal is due to expire in February at which point licensing costs will balloon (they already have actually, hence the rate hike). Moreover the content producers can quite simply refuse to license content and market their own platform. Compare this with the DVDs,- no licensing required other than buying the actual discs. 2) Barrier to entry. This is much lower with streaming, as you can tell with the number of competitors emerging (e.g. HBO). Ultimately the streaming platforms will become commoditized and the money will be made by the content producers. Which given his "apology" is quite gratifying.

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