Here are some pictures which I took when Joel Spolsky came to Seattle as part of his FogBugz Tour. He has written about the presentation in this blog entry.
It was a great presentation by Spolsky, who with his characteristic humor entertained the audience with lots of pokes at Microsoft. The presentation was well received by the 200 odd people who gathered. The croissant was tasty too 
.
With Democrats taking over control of Congress this year, tech harbored hopes of an increase in H-1B visas from the current 64,000 per year. The cap does not apply to petitions made on behalf of current H-1B holders or from applicants who hold advanced degrees from U.S. academic institutions, for whom an additional 20,000 visas are made available.
Yet while the bill was still in play, the U.S. Senate voted to increase the fees on H1-B visas while not raising the cap.
“What many of us have come to understand is that these H-1B visas are not being used to supplement the American work force where we have shortages but, rather, H1-B visas are being used to replace American workers with lower-cost foreign workers,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in his May 25 floor comments.
Under Sanders’ bill, H-1B visa fees would have jumped $1,500 per application to $5,000 from the current $3,500. The increased fees would be funneled to a scholarship fund for Americans seeking degrees in math, technology and health-related fields.
Bad news for H1-B aspirants.
Mr. Vijay Mukhi is intelligent enough to realize that terrorists wont be using their home machines, but does he think that they dont have an alternative ? Like a wi-fi hot spot ? Or tapping into somebody else’s connection ? Or just crack the monitoring software ?
“The question we need to ask ourselves is whether a breach of privacy is more important or the security of the nation. I do not think the above question needs an answer,” said Mukhi.
Mukhi won’t be so enthusiastic if his personal computer is monitored too.
“The police needs to install programs that will capture every key stroke at regular interval screen shots, which will be sent back to a server that will log all the data.
The police can then keep track of all communication between terrorists no matter, which part of the world they operate from.This is the only way to patrol the net and this is how the police informer is going to look in the e-age,” added Mukhi.
I just cringe.
From an article on ComputerWorld :
Although one out of every four international patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty are submitted by foreign nationals living in the United States, unless the federal government does something to make it easier for foreigners to obtain green cards or permanent residency, many of those inventors may leave the United States, causing a “reverse brain drain,” concludes a new study. The study, “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” written by researchers at Duke, Harvard, and New York universities, was led by Duke adjunct professor Vivek Wadhwa. Wadhwa says the United States is experiencing a brain drain similar to what countries such as India experienced when so many highly educated foreigners came to the U.S., except now they are leaving the country and returning to tech centers in their native countries. Wadhwa says some venture capitalists estimate that 100,000 skilled workers have returned to China and 50,000 have returned to India over the last few years. There are over a million skilled workers and their families waiting for permanent resident visas, but immigration policy mandates that only 8,400 green cards can be issued to China and 8,400 to India every year. Wadhwa suggests increasing the total number of permanent resident visas from 120,000 per year to either 250,000 or 300,000 and removing all per-country limitations until the backlog is cleared. Wadhwa says the H-1B visa creates more problems than it solves by distorting market forces and allowing companies to bring in workers who will work for lower salaries than American workers. He says it should be eliminated in favor of permanent resident visas. Although he also believes the country’s priority should be to encourage American children to study math and science and participate in technical fields, until the nation accomplishes this he says we must rely on foreign nationals to keep the United States competitive.