Company Posting 'H-1B Only' Job Ads Fined $45K
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In the first half of 2006, the Programmers Guild, an IT worker interest group, filed 300 discrimination complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice against employers who had posted "H-1B visa holders only" ads on job boards. Two years later, it appears that in at least one case, the group's work has paid off. The Department of Justice announced May 1 that it has fined iGate Mastech, a Pittsburgh computer consulting company, $45,000 in civil penalties to settle allegations that it had discriminated against U.S. workers in its hiring practices, actively seeking to hire H-1B visa holders only. Three different iGate ads shared with eWEEK by the Programmer's Guild for Java developer openings--one 5/30/06 and two dated 6/13/06--stated that the company is "only looking for H-1B visas and should be willing to transfer." According to the DOJ, there were 30 more posted between May 9 and June 4, 2006, that "expressly favored H-1B visa holders to the exclusion of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents and other legal U.S. workers." Such preference constituted citizenship status discrimination and is prohibited by the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Programmers Guild says that this fine is "probably the most visible result of [our] campaign against companies that discriminate, and so far we've only paid attention to the flagrant violators." The Guild says that it is only scratching the surface of brazen companies such as iGate right now, and its list doesn't even include those that only hire H-1B workers but word their ads more carefully, as well as companies that use preferred vendor lists to ensure their contract hires only come from companies providing H-1B workers. |
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Comments (6)
Computer.... Male or Female?
As you are aware, ships have long been characterized as being female (e.g., "Steady as she goes" or "She's listing to starboard, Captain!").
Recently, a group of computer scientists (all males) announced that computers should also be referred to as being female. Their reasons for drawing this conclusion are the followings:
1. No one but the Creator understands their internal logic.
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
3. The message "Bad command or file name" is about as informative as, "If you don't know why I'm mad at you, then I'm certainly not going to tell you."
4. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.
5. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
However, another group of computer scientists (all female) think that computers should be referred to as if they were male. Their reasons are the followings:
1. They have a lot of data, but are still clueless.
2. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem.
3. As soon as you commit to one you realize that, if you had waited a little longer, you could have obtained a better model.
4. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.
5. Big power surges knock them out for the rest of the night.
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New criteria for restricting the scope of what the US Patent Office considers patent-worthy poses a threat to numerous software patents, including Google's famed PageRank.
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Editor's Note: Losing the PageRank patent could be troubling for Google, but the broader scope of patent reform-something Google has championed otherwise-is intended to protect innovators from the itchy trigger finger of an overly litigious society. What you you think? Good idea? Let us know in the comments section.
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Google climbed past a morass of ineffective search engines when it arrived on the Internet. Its devotion to the most relevant possible solution for a given query quickly made it the de facto search choice as millions of people shifted their browsing habits from walled garden content to the broader World Wide Web.
The essential and much-discussed PageRank technology holds a patent, a common legal protection sought by software developers small and large. Some have claimed software patents affect far too broad a scope of potential innovation, leading to lawsuits where a patent owner claims damages by multiple companies.
Those on the losing end of such suits end up paying for what they argue are obvious and non-original concepts. That could change with a shift in the way the USPTO looks at software patents, the Patently-O blog on patent law said.
A series of cases may remake the software industry, all the way to the top where Google and other companies reside:
In the most recent of these three (cases)—the currently pending en banc Bilski appeal—the Office takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they "result in a physical transformation of an article" or are "tied to a particular machine."
Patently-O sees Google's PageRank, the patent for which is owned by Stanford University, as failing the first part of the test, as generating scores isn't a physical transformation. The second part proves troubling given recent decisions made by the USPTO in a couple of other cases, not only for PageRank but other Google patents too.
"Google might have thought that the patent system would surely protect new technological developments that are highly creative and socially valuable. The PTO’s new position proves that view mistaken," Patently-O said.
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Posted by prihav | August 8, 2008 6:00 PM
Do any of you still chat in Yahoo Chat?
I stopped using yahoo chat over a year ago after it was completely over ran by spam bots and arabs. But out of curiousity I logged in the other day to see if it had gotten any better but of course it's worse than ever. I think there were probably 15 bots toevery 1 real person in there. I also noticed that they got rid of most of the adult rooms. It's nothing but a joke now, not even sure why they haven't just pulled it offline by now.
I did come accross a new chat site called Oohya.net Chat Rooms the other day. It seems pretty good, a lot like yahoo chat with webcams, voice, and profiles unlike most of the other cheesy chat sites out there, but I didn't see any bots at all. Only problem I saw was it just doesn't have the user base yahoo had. If it gets bigger I think it will be good.
I did try paltalk for a few days but after getting booted out of the rooms over and over by arrogant room mods I gave up on that pretty quick, plus they make you pay for all of the features. Anyone know of any other good free chat rooms?
Posted by exhitelah | September 26, 2008 8:21 AM