Circuit Rider
by Jim Scheef
Version 4.10

DRM Dichotomy

Have you noticed the news on digital rights management (DRM)? Steve Jobs and Bill Gates agree that DRM has failed for music. Wow! When did they finally wake up? Well, it was about the time when one of them realized that there is money to be made from selling music without DRM. The articles I read on this all have no word from the RIAA. I believe you are now (or soon will be) able to buy songs on iTunes without DRM for $1.25 or for 99¢ with – not sure who gets the extra quarter.

The DH-1B Visa Crisis

The cover story on this week’s issue of InformationWeek (April 9, 2007) really caught my eye – “One Hundred Thirty-Three Thousand H1-B Visa Applications Submitted In Two Days – Sign of a tech talent shortage, a grab for cheap labor – or a cry for reform?” Can this be true? Applications for almost exactly twice the yearly limit of 65,000 visas were filed in just two days? Apparently so.

During gaps in the obsession over Don Imus, this story has actually seen some airtime. I listened to a call-in talk show on NPR last week about this very topic. I was shouting at the radio when an unemployed caller claiming to be a well-qualified 50+ year-old programmer who cannot find a job was labeled an isolated case! No one can deny that we need immigration reform. But when Bill Gates complains to Congress that we need more H-1B visas for our country to remain competitive in the global marketplace, I feel nauseous!

Space here does not permit describing how dysfunctional the process of awarding these visas has become. H-1B visas are a guest worker program for foreign workers to fill jobs that cannot be filled by Americans. However, many (some say a majority) of the visas go to Indian outsourcing companies who use the visas to train their workers and then take the jobs back to India. I wanted to call that talk show to tell them that this happened a few years ago to people right here in Danbury.

Supports of an increase in H-1B visas say that there are not enough Americans graduating from universities to fill the available jobs. It is true that few kids are graduating with computer science degrees. The reason is that these kids are not dummies – they know that IT salaries are not going up and are getting degrees in areas with better prospects. 

I have always believed that immigration is what made this country great and that we need to make our diversity our strength. If the H-1B program was intended to be a path to citizenship, it has failed. It needs more than just reform, Congress needs to start over and try to find something that works for everyone, those who truly want to immigrate and those of us who are here and need to work.

The Saga of Julie Amero

The sentencing hearing for Julie Amero was postponed until April 26th according to the Hartford Courant. Hopefully some sanity will come to this case between now and then. From everything I have read on this case, the conviction should be vacated with prejudice and everyone involved in the prosecution of the case including the Norwich police, school and city officials (school network administrators in particular) should be made to sit in front of a computer with pop-up software firmly in control for at least a week while they try to stop the pop-ups and the judge watches! If you don’t know what this is about, see my column from last month.