12 thoughts on “Open Line Friday!”

1. The site was down last night, said it's "moving to a new data center." It seems a little better today. I hope you guys get these tech troubles figured out soon!

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   1. Noticed the faster load immediately.

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      1. Now it is back to being SLOW.

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2. Update about those wonderful people at the NSA. The ones Obama said are not abusing our constitutional rights:

   Remember when Obama said the NSA wasn’t “actually abusing” its powers? He was wrong.

   Gellman obtained an audit of the NSA’s compliance record from NSA leaker Snowden earlier this summer. The audit, dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months where the agency engaged in “unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications.” The audit only covered issues at NSA facilities in the D.C. and Fort Meade areas.

   …

   In another story broken by The Post today, the chief of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court admits he doesn’t actually have the capability to investigate the compliance record of NSA surveillance programs

   NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds

   In another case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has authority over some NSA operations, did not learn about a new collection method until it had been in operation for many months. The court ruled it unconstitutional.

   Lavabit.com owner: 'I could be arrested' for resisting surveillance order

   The court order that prompted the action is believed by legal observers to be a sealed subpoena or a national security letter requiring him to cooperate in surveillance related to the Snowden investigation. Recipients of such legal orders are barred from publicly comment on them. Levison said he believes this prohibition is a violation of his First Amendment rights while the underlying request violated the Fourth Amendment rights of his customers. "I'm fighting it in every way," said Levison, adding that he is challenging the government’s action in a federal appeals court.

   And I'd like to close with this thought – thank you Senator Udall for working to restore our constitutional rights. Please keep up the good fight.

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3. Apparently the Republicans fighting immigration are anti-business and anti-jobs.

   THE SHOCKING STATS ABOUT WHO'S REALLY STARTING COMPANIES IN AMERICA

   FULLY A THIRD OF VENTURE-BACKED COMPANIES THAT WENT PUBLIC BETWEEN 2006 AND 2012 HAD AT LEAST ONE IMMIGRANT FOUNDER AT THE HELM. ARIANNA HUFFINGTON AND OTHER PROMINENT ENTREPRENEURS ON WHY THE U.S. NEEDS TO GET CREATIVE ABOUT IMMIGRATION POLICY.

   What do Google’s Sergey Brin, eBay’s Pierre Omidyar, and Tesla Motors’s Elon Musk all have in common? Each of these serial entrepreneurs who founded companies that have market caps in the tens or hundreds of billions–employing tens of thousands of workers–were born outside the U.S. From Yahoo to Facebook and LinkedIn, each of these innovative companies that have played such a large role in the U.S. economy had at least one founder that was born abroad and then emigrated to the United States.

   We face this problem here at Windward. We want to bring 1 person in on an H1-B visa and we have to wait till April to apply and then October next year for him to come here. And what do we gain with him here? More sales which means increased hiring.

   Republicans really seem to be the anti-business party.

   ps – There is a giant problem with companies bringing in H1-B workers because they're cheaper and staffing I.T. consulting companies with them. But that can be addressed with simple additional rules such as each company can only use H1-B visas for less than 10% of their employees.

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   1. Just curious, wanting to know and not intending any criticism but is it really impossible to find one American citizen or legal resident for the position prior to October of next year? 

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      1. The individual is someone we have hired as a contractor so we know what he can do and he knows our code inside-out. He'll continue as a contractor until we bring him here. So this is a case of wanting to convert a specific person to a local employee.

         As to finding someone here – trust me we're trying. We've always got numerous open positions we're hiring for. The problem is there's very few people that are in the top 5% and almost none of them are looking for a new job.

         My rule of thumb is to only hire people better than the people I presently have as it's the only way to raise the average. It's not easy to find people that good.

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4. Why Windward is the best place to work in Colorado America.

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5. Please get rid of the spam post in the "recent posts" column. There's one that takes up all the column's room.

    

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   1. I never noticed any spam posts until the new format came along.  Not a techie so no suggestions on how to get rid of. But sure would appreciate it if this nonsense could be filtered out somehow.

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6. Yes Obama is orders of magnitude better than Romney would have been. But sucks less sure doesn't make one feel good. Add to the list Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

   Not only had the president succeeded in moving the goal posts on his spring scandals, he'd teamed up with the Republicans to perpetuate a long-standing deception about the education issue: that the student-loan controversy is now entirely about interest rates and/or access to school loans.

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7. Unbelievable, especially after seeing the fraudulence with the petitions in the Morse recall.

   http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_23877507/colorado-school-finance-initiative-hits-snag-way-ballot

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