Paul Villangca

Hi Paulo,

Originally posted by Paulo Aquino:

...after two years you are no longer certified on the language and you need to retake the exam just for the purpose of renewing your certificate?

After two years, Java tech wil have changed so much the cert you hold now will be of little value by that time.

Too bad,i plan to take the exam before the year ends and my contract in my current company will expire in two years.
...
I thought i could use this certificate as a good basis of my knowledge in java when i go job hunting after two years...

You could always say 'Java Certified 2002-2004' or something like that, if you don't wanna retake the exam... Just say the company didn't want to shoulder the cost of the retake.

Hi all,
I think it's easier if we draw a tree showing which method is more 'specific.'
m(A,A) | -----+----- | | m(A,B) m(B,A) | | | --- ----+---- | | m(A,C) m(B,B)
Methods lower in the tree are more specific than those above it. Btw, sorry if it doesn't look that good, I'm no ASCII artist.
Anyway, from the tree, you can't tell which of the two methods ( m(A,C) or m(B,B) ) is more specific, so the compiler won't know which method to call in method(C,C).
If you add the method m(B,C) to class C, then no compiler error will result, since m(B,C) is more specific than either m(A,C) and m(B,B).

Hi Abdula,
I think what Paul meant was your 'all-knowing' attitude, chiding everybody for being 'childish' and 'personal', while at the same time not contributing anything meaningful to the topic at hand, and attacking people personally yourself.
You think this topic isn't worth discussing. I find it very interesting, though. In fact, I've never even heard of this H-1B business till I snooped around here at Jobs Discussion (and maybe MD), and I've read every single post of this thread, even though its only relevance to me is that it's just another option for me to get work in the US (not anymore though, my ego won't let me.)
Instead of flaming others, why don't you use the 'economic theory' you've learned and say something relevant to the topic at hand?

Lol, seems to me there are some pretty big egos clashing around here. now, back to the topic...
About outsourcing software jobs overseas, I can say that it's probably not as small as Mr. Matloff says it is. I'm living proof. The company I work for has a contract with a top US company, I don't know the specifics, sorry. We're a fairly sized bunch, around 100 people. We are also competing with an Indian company in the same line of work as us. About wages, well, it's what you would expect for an entry-level job around here (I'd be placed in the lower middle class), but waaay short of what I'd get in a similar job in the US (even taking cost of living into account.)
On the other hand, I find it hard to understand how kicking the H-1Bs out would actually hurt the US economy as a whole, since even though Americans prolly won't get 100% of the jobs vacated by the H-1Bs (due to outsourcing etc.), they're sure to get at least some of them, which means less unemployed peeps.
I guess I find this topic interesting because I also wanna get a job in the US (in the Third World, who doesn't?). But if I do, it will be through an MS, not through H-1B. Now if I could only get a scholarship...

Airways
(ultimate in spamination indeed... )

Old fogeys can't tell the difference between electronic gambling and video games, so they pull something like this.
Solitaire and Minesweeper are illegal. So are cellphone games (Snake, etc.) Internet cafes get busted if their clients have a quick round of CS, or even if they login to Yahoo! Games.
Like Gregg said, 'Thank God I don't live in Greece!"
Paul V.

Plucked from jiris.com:

Question 1 on this mock exam seems to address a bug in the jdk. The explanation shows what is output from running the code but it does not seem logical that this is what should happen. Comments?

I agree that that seems to be an inconsistency or a bug on the JDK. System.out.println(t1.toString()) should be the same as System.out.println(t1) as I understand the automatic typecast/method call in that situation. I've verified it on 1.3.1 on Windows, and on 1.4 Beta 2 on Windows. Very odd.

In other words, it's a bug with the implicit toString() method called by the println() method.

...The only winners are the big corporations.

That's precisely why the program's still around. And they have the money/power to keep it that way, too. Your friendly neighborhood politicos can sacrifice a few votes just to get more cash in their campaign coffers. The way things are right now, there will always be a 'skill shortage' and there will always be a need for H-1Bs.
About the proposed solution (found in the very first post), will writing letters make a difference in this situation? Has there been any success?

Hi all,
Knowing the ASCII/Unicode equivalent of '\u005' isn't required to be able to answer the question. All you need to know is that both '\u0005' and 0x0005 have the integer equivalent of 5, and therefore are equal.
Hope that helps,
Paul

Hi Richard,

Saying "the enforcement agencies have their hands tied" is not an acceptable attitude.
...
In the end, they all need to be prosecuted.

And how do you propose to do that? Under the existing rules, you don't have a case if no one will complain, and few H-1Bs are gonna risk their greencard application for something that may very well come back at them in the end (restarting the whole application process, or even deportation.)

Your comment of this being "offshoot of 'capitalism' and 'free-market forces'" is a sad but true commentary.
...
According to your statement, that is acceptable to you.

I never said that. Just as the US and other developed countries force Third World countries to lower their trade barriers in the name of 'free trade', the industry is using its clout to hire cheap labor under the pretense of this 'labor shortage'. The ones who lose out are those who can't afford to be more competitive, be it price or salary.
Sorry if this seems a bit blunt, but why do you care if the H-1Bs are paid below the 'prevailing wage'? It's not like they're getting paid in pennies, it's still way more than what they would've gotten in their home country (for 3rd World, anyway.) Also, H-1Bs getting their just wages won't help your cause any.
Paul

Hi Steven,
From the all-knowing API:
public Object next()
Returns the next element in the iteration.
public void remove()
Removes from the underlying collection the last element returned by the iterator (optional operation).
You can traverse the collection with next(), and remove elements with remove().
Fail-fast just means you can't modify the collection outside of the iterator (i.e., modifying the collection directly) during iteration, you can still traverse/remove elements through the iterator.

From http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html:

The July 5, 1999 issue of Information Week presented a striking illustration of the problems which older programmers face:
It seems safe to say that experience may not be the most valued commodity, according to a survey of 200 IT managers nationwide conducted by InformationWeek Research in May. Though age wasn't specified in the question, only 2% of the managers said they would most likely hire a worker with 10 or more years' experience...

Is this really true? I mean, should you get out of IT before 40?
Paul

Hi all,

It is the blatant abuse of the H1-B laws by a variety of companies.

I actually read Rufus' link yesterday - quite interesting reading... Anyway, it can't be denied that there are abuses, and the enforcement agencies have their hands tied. Nevertheless, it's not that hard to understand why this is happening in the first place. In fact, one can say that this is just an offshoot of 'capitalism' and 'free-market forces'. Competition is so cut-throat that companies are cutting costs whenever thay can, and H-1B labor is as cheap as it gets.
Also, I don't think it's fair to compare the plight of these H-1Bs to labor camps and illegal immigrants. H-1Bs have it easy compared to people who are fighting for their very survival.

And about the slave thing i mentioned above , that was sarcasm intended.

Sarcasm or not, people will be offended by these kinds of remarks. Stereotyping an entire country/race/people will only invite trouble.

Hi all,

Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:
You Indian boys ought to read about life in America as a defacto-slave.

I really don't think trying to deter H-1B applicants (from India, or any other Third World country) from applying will have any effect. You might see $20,000/yr as 'peanuts' or 'part-time', but for most (if not all) H-1Bs, it's a windfall, wages they could And that's at the lower end of the spectrum - $40k+ is a ticket to the (really!) good life. Five years of below-prevailing wage is nothing compared to what they would've earned had they stayed in their country. Also, the promise of the coveted green card (American Dream?) afterwards is more than enough reason for enduring second-class citizen treatment.
I personally don't know where I stand on this H-1B issue (I've never even heard of it until I came to this forum), but I don't think blaming people for wanting a better life helps the situation any.

Also, it's a good idea to differentiate between errors and exceptions. Errors are events that, in general, are caused be problems beyond the control of the programmer, and can't be controlled (for example, bad sectors or some other unfortunate occurrence.) Exceptions, on the other hand, are (in general) problems in the code itself (like accessing array[array.length]), or eventualities that the compiler forces you to handle(i.e. IOException.)