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  • chintu25
    08-05 10:07 AM
    :DGuys ,
    The "mahaul"(environment) seems so Tense around the IV forums that I thought of making a thread to share some light humor / Jokes etc

    Here are some funny quotes to start with

    I don't think President fully understands this immigration thing.
    Like today, when they asked him about amnesty, he said it's horrible
    when anyone loses their memory." --Jay Leno

    "As you know, today was Don't Take Your Immigrant To Work Day
    here in Los Angeles. No, all across the nation they had a Day Without
    Immigrants, is what they call it. Or, as Native Americans call it, the
    good ol' days." --Jay Leno





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  • another one
    09-29 05:14 PM
    I have been here since 1997. An Obama win may just restore my faith (which was severely damaged after Bush relection) in the average intelligence of a voter.

    I know that chances of passing of a bill favorable to skilled immigrants are greater with Republicans, but there are other issues far more important to me. For e.g. with a Republican win, the chances of "collateral damage" (deaths of innocent abroad) increase tremendously. I do not want that to be funded through my tax money. Neither do i want my child to read about "creationism" in school (despite paying for all that private school fees!). These issues are more important to me than tax cuts or getting a green card sooner. just my two thoughts...


    I am an Electrical Engineer by training and I manage and lead an R&D group at an American semiconductor company. We design computer-chips that enable about 50% of the world cellular phones.

    I will definitely be moving out of the US when the Dems get elected as I do not think that they capable of making the politically tough but necessary decisions on immigration. They are beholden to too many populist groups and will make the immigration issue a class-based fight. I've had enough of paying taxes, creating $$ & jobs for US-based companies - I've been waiting since 1999.

    I am of course thankful to the US taxpayer who has paid for my graduate school tuition and board, to the US-companies that have given me opportunities that are equal to native-born Americans, and to my American friends for their friendship and hospitality. But prudence demands that I hedge my bets and I will have to relocate to friendlier shores.

    Thought I'd share my experience. Good Luck to All.





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  • NKR
    03-28 04:48 PM
    how is owning a house a simple pleasure ?? it is a complex pleasure when yr residential status itself is not guranteed.
    you can give more pleasure to yr family when you rent.

    the bubble that we saw and are seeing is once in a life time event - it will never happen in USA for a long long time (in most places). it will happen more in places like bombay (2 bubbles in last 2 decade).

    you just have to read financial websites to see the enormity of the problem. some are super worst scenarios and some are bad scenarios ..so I guess most likely outcome is somewhere in between(in terms of recession ) and RE market -- i.e. drop of 10 to 25 %. for 300K house that would be 30 thousand minimum.
    when u rent it gives you tons of mobility ..which people don't understand (especially house wives). being able to rent near my job and again move when my company sends me somewhere (or other similar situations) ..that std of living - I can never get by owning a million dollar house. and renting is not throwing money esp in these times (say $250 is prop tax, 200 extra due to commutes / yardwork / utilities, 200 more in HOA, insurance etc + maintenance etc etc)
    when you add couple $100 to the above you get a place to rent --without worrying much as to what yr kids draw on the walls. plus if u invest the diff in diversified funds ..you would get more peace of mind.
    In the end though it depends on personal situation ... but rushing to buy now on EAD is bad idea ..it is never good idea to catch a falling knife.
    ofcourse if you have tons and tons of money and don't mind taking a loss then sure ..Buy. not just here maybe buy another house in India / Bahamas etc ...

    Let me just ask you one question. Assume that the house prices start to rise again, everything comes back to normal and it is the right time to buy a house. Would you then buy a house if you still do not have a GC and you are on EAD.





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  • pmpforgc
    06-09 08:22 AM
    I had looked around Alpharetta, cumming, Suwanee, Duluth etc. for new as well as recent houses.

    I agree with Hiralal that prices have come down in all these area a lot compared to past.

    In alphareeta in 200-300K you can get any new house you want. But not much new construction in that area because of lack of space. You can even get in Johns creek in that price range, which most costliest area in the north. Lot of new construction in the cumming. Not much new in the Suwanee as well as Duluth too.

    You can hardly get a decent big and recent (relatively new) house below 200K in any of these area (not town home) unless it is foreclosure. I got in 175Kbecause it was foreclosure.

    PM me if you need to talk and you are in market to buy new home. I can share my experiences.

    thanks



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  • funny
    09-30 04:10 PM
    I think you are right - as soon as they see I140 revocation they are doing the easiest thing, that is to reject underlying I485. They can easily check the 180 days period; alternately they can actually issue NoticeOfIntenttoDeny (NOID) and give a chance to the candidate why I485 should not be rejected - this is also equally easy for them to do (just send a letter and give a 45 day or something similar time). I think they are simply rejecting so it reduces the total pending I485 cases. It might be possible for us to open MTR and resolve this but if working on EAD we will be in soup and also MTR's typically take longer to get resolved.

    I guess this discussion is going on in a different direction.. "AC21 is the focus here" while we are at it, I want to ask if someone has seen a denial, just because someone used AC21 and the I-140 was not revoked.





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  • perm2gc
    08-11 04:31 PM
    Born in Texas and raised in IDAHO speaks volumes about his stand towards immigration issues.

    perm2gc,

    I am curious why you bold everything. on usenet, writing in caps and bold is conisdered shouting and rude. I know this is not usenet but somehow I see that in most of your posts and wanted to know why you do that.
    i love bold words..nothing much



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  • Macaca
    12-26 08:38 AM
    Congressional Quarterly now conducts multiple voting studies and often does not count procedural votes. To get the most politically accurate result, the NRCC monitors only how often the freshmen vote with Pelosi, who as speaker usually votes only on the most important issues. Washingtonpost.com's party unity score is based on all votes.

    Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.), who has opposed more than half the journal votes, called his opposition "protest votes against little things I heard during the day" before.

    "I hope the people back home are monitoring all my votes," he said.





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  • hopefulgc
    07-13 10:06 PM
    abe khajoor log .. kutte ke jaise mat lado.. thanda lo
    (guys, stop fighting like dogs.. chill out)

    why did I write in hindi language...?
    because nobody seems to understand the same thing written in plain old english here.



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  • reddog
    07-14 03:33 PM
    Why do you write 'I know this mess is depressing for EB3 folks' ?
    Is IV not with Eb3 folks? Or are they not important.

    Let me clear somethings.
    Earning in higher 70Ks in the year 2003 and with over 5+ years of progressive experience, they still went ahead a filed my app under EB3. Was that a mistake? Not mine. My employer knew that Eb3 would be slower.

    What happened? cases like mine were eye openers and learning experiences for comrades who were going to file and they filed under EB2, I asked friends and relatives and classmates of mine to file under Eb2.
    Am i happy for them? No, I hate them. Of course, I am happy for them. Very very much.

    So, why would you not fight for us?

    If people like me and filers before me had not filed under EB3, and not shared our experiences, how would we have progressed?

    Suddenly, 'You Eb3 folks are depressed' from 'We folks are depressed'. lol for chauvinism.



    I commend the initiative. But I see a few issues with it:

    You are complaining to DOS about USCIS and DOL. That will not work. Every agency has a specific role

    You are complaining to the official who sets visa dates. He has no authority to give relief just because some applicant/s are asking for it. He has to follow the rule every month and his responsibility is only to set the dates based on the statistics received from USCIS. This official has a very specific and limited role.

    The reasons are not compelling enough. You cannot just say you are waiting long enough and thus your date should become current. Rules cannot be changed just for that reason.

    If economy was down in 2001- 2003 and you were asked to file in EB3 and people in Perm could file in EB2 is your strongest reason, it may not work in your favor. Because by law you can file again and convert to EB2 and port your date. DOL and USCIS does not stop you from doing that.

    If you are qualified for EB2 but your attorney and employer filed in EB3, then it is not a fault of USCIS/DOL/DOS. You must talk to the company and the lawyer for it. If the company or the lawyer has broken any rule or employer has exploited you, then the letter should be complain to the appropriate authority about them.

    Please also note that labor is filed based on the degree and experience requirement of the job. By law if the requirement is only undergraduate degree for the job, the employer cannot file in EB2 just because the applicant has a masters degree or more experience than needed. So you cannot really put this arguement here because it will be against the rules.

    So I personally do not think this idea will work.

    While this mess is depressing for EB3 folks, we need to have a more compelling argument, determined membership and effective plan to get things changed.
    The root cause of the problem is limited greencard quota for EB3. And the solution is to get recapture, get rid of country limits, STEM exemption. Any single relief itself will be huge for all of us. With 179 phone calls and $16656 collected in last 3 months, I do not see that happening. It will need a far more bigger and determined effort. Such amount can be spent on full scale lobbying in just one month. 179 phone calls are nothing if we have to make a compelling case for ourselves.





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  • USDream2Dust
    06-06 11:55 PM
    Whereas i agree with you that you can live good life anywhere, even with no house and no place to live you can live a good life.

    But just because your friend got Grilled, shouldn't prevent you from taking risk. It is like, if somebody got run down by bus while crossing street, you would never cross that street.

    That is not a good example. Like I said. everybody takes chances, some win and some don't.

    Chances of loosing right now, is very slim, since everything is lost and if you still have a good healthy job, chances are you would have it, and if you have backup like double income, you are running in no probability zone.

    After your i485 gets denied, I am assuming you can file MTR and wait for it. More senior members may throw light but I am guessing you would have 2-3 months time to leave the country.

    On a complete side note, who gives a damn of overstaying if your GC is denied after 10 years of legal staying in US. Stay another year or so and setlle down stuff before you go home. Even better, stay as illegal in this country and join millions other, and chances are that you would get GC before other IV members :).

    The above is not my theory but a very well known attorney in NYC told me and my wife, when my wife was little bit out of status. Strange but true.



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  • looivy
    07-13 07:40 PM
    One of the qualifying criteria for EB2 is 5 years of experience. Right????

    If your I-485 application is stuck since July 2003 or prior, you are automatically EB2 by that rule. Are you not? You have been working for 5 years atleast.

    The revised rule should be

    EB2 eligibile = Anybody with experience on labor > 5 years (this would not impact current EB2 folks) or whose labor is older than 5 years (this will make EB3 folks happier).

    Peace.





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  • sumanitha
    12-29 05:03 PM
    This thread didnt had activity for the past 4 days.

    Why did you bring it into limelight by asking it to delete? :D



    It has no relevance in an immigration related forum
    kris



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  • sledge_hammer
    06-05 05:17 PM
    Thanks for your comment!

    If your other investment is going to be a CD, then you are better off putting down 20%. That 20% would also exempt you from any PMI you will have to pay if you only made 10% down. I assume you are going to have to pay PMI w/ the 10% loan, wouldn't you?

    As for #8, "puddonhead" has rightly corrected me; it should not have been included under expense.

    I really am by no means competent to give financial advice. So please take my opinion with a grain of salt :D

    Your analysis is so spot on except for item #8 and item # 9. I have a question though.. The example you have given suits my scenario so well. I am planning to buy a house (310k ) very soon. The loan offers I have from my lender has interest rates pretty much the same for both 10% down payment and 20% down payment, 5.0 with 20% and 5.25 with 10% down payment. I can down pay 10% right away and the other 10% is also available in a risk free(can withdraw without penalty) cd which yield me a return of 3.5% . So which is better for me 10% or 20% down pay. thanks in advance.

    As for buying or renting..it is more of a personal choice - to me, buying a house has tangible benefits over renting.. like a sense of entitlement to call some place ur true home and most likely a good enviroment for raising the kids. Life has phases like education, marriage, kids, job, etc..Now that I am into my 30's, I would like to see
    what it feels like to have owned a home.





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  • skakodker
    12-31 10:58 AM
    India needs to look inwards for answers.

    We elect (those of us who actually vote) brigands, murderers and looters and expect leadership. They loot us, abuse our martyrs (re: the Kerala CM), and in turn, expect our mute subservience. Where is the interest in protecting the tax-paying citizen? Who cares? Look at how these vultures behave - Narayana Rane, Vilasrao Deshmukh, that ass-clown in Kerala. What a disgrace!

    Corruption has taken root in the administration and even some parts of our military services. Nothing gets done without someone's palms being greased first - openly and without shame. My friends in the IAS live like kings. When they visit New York, they live in the Waldorf Astoria! Meanwhile, our brave soldiers are called upon to give all they have in avoidable debacles like what we witnessed in Mumbai.

    One thinks twice before reporting a crime to the Police for fear of persecution. Journalists who catch Politicians accepting bribes on video camera are chastized. Many parts of India remain as backward and undeveloped as the day we kicked the British Raj out. Some might say they've regressed even further. I sometimes wonder if Churchill was right when he said that we'd only mess things up if they gave us Independence.

    Yet, since 50 milliion Indians are enjoying relative economic well-being, we believe that India is shining.

    Will attacking Pakistan really make India safer? Really? I have yet to see a single instance when violence was not met with more violence. Look at the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Iraq, Colombia, Peru - the list goes on and on and on.

    The fix is internal. Our freedom fighters came up against what was then thought to be an unmovable object and somehow moved it. There must be a way to leverage the tools they used with today's technology to help us bring change and conduct our affairs with dignity and courage. Attacking Pakistan will only bring to India the problems that overran them. They are pitiful.

    Peace to all.



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  • alterego
    10-03 04:03 PM
    Have you seen any other politician talk about the lengthy and expensive process of LEGAL immigrants? Obama has spoken about this in an interview. Now, I know here you will want to make the differential between EB and FB immigration and what he means. I am aware of this distinction, however never have I heard a single word from the Republican side about the grossly unfair situation of lengthy greencard backlogs. The fact is EB immigration will not be modified in a vacuum and the conservative republicans will always block any relief for us, no matter what.





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  • punjabi
    08-08 07:44 PM
    for this magnificent video!!



    a very nice video. Shows unity in a very nice perspective..

    http://www.vimeo.com/1211060

    The song is a Bengali poem written by Rabindranath Tagore.



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  • unitednations
    03-26 08:35 PM
    That whenever a company now applies for an H1 ( not that many companies are going to do in this climate) they have to put in as many locations/states as possible? By your suggestions if USCIS is deeming most h1b companies as 'Staffing' companies(and if it allows them to exist) then almost all H1 LCA should contain 4-5 states in which the H1B could work? How would prevailing wage calculation be done in that case? Or for that matter if each time an H1B candidate goes to work in a different location and the employer(staffing) company files 'Amend petition for location' does the prevailing wage factor come in to picture?

    your advise in this could help some people who are in consulting so that they can insist with their employers to file for 'amend' in case they are working elsewhere.

    - cheers
    kris


    First; it is very easy for me or anyone else to say "amend" and re-file the h-1b. It costs a lot of money to do so and USCIS can give rfe and deny any one of the amendments.

    If you look at the new i-129 petition instructions they have added a part of requesting an itinerary of definitive employment if you are an agent. You are supposed to give an itinerar of where you are going to work for the entire duration that you are requesting. You are supposed to give lca's for different locations for wherever you have the client letters.

    California service center is only approving h-1b's up until the end date of the purchse order you are submitting. If you have a purchase order for four months even if it says extension is possible; then are only approving it for four months.

    With regards to prevailing wage; On the h-1b petition you would always have to put the highest number of all the lca's that you are submitting.

    for example in the lca; if you are putting two locations; one is where your h-1b company is and second one is where your client locatin is where you are actually going to work; the lca won' be certified unless you put the offered wage to be the higher of the two.

    btw; I get too many PM's and I'd rather just post on the forums where I think people need some help or where I don't see people giving right or full picture advice.





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  • senthil1
    05-16 12:15 AM
    Law is giving them to right for their unfair practice. So congress is trying to fix the law. Most of them may be abiding law but using unfair practice which affects many people. So there is nothing wrong in fixing the law. Actually they should have applied H1b whenever they need. But they applied H1b for 1 or 2 years so that they will find a job later whereas companies which are having immediate requirement could not find H1b. Is this right practice though 100% legal

    The deal with india is its home to billion people on the planet. Most of these companies recruit from India for same reason why Walmart gets most of its products from China. Free markets and Globalization is not a one way street. If american companies are so good and so caring they dont outsource , they outsource to further their bottomlines. If American companies dont want to outsource all these consulting companies will go out of business overnight.

    As far as your comments about employees from India .. most of these companies are listed in NASDAQ and NYSE (INFY, SAY, WIT).. At least some americans are share holders/owners of these companies. Dont be surprised to know the fact that some americans are on the boards of these companies .Let me make one thing clear, I am not a big fan of these companies , Infact I used work for of these companies and I have first hand experience how these companies treat their employees.

    If any one violates any law he or she should be brought to justice. I am not quite sure what laws these companies have violated. In this country any one is innocent till proven guilty.

    I totally understand your frustration with your VISA situation and hope and pray that you win VISA in the "lottery" .





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  • delax
    07-14 10:54 AM
    Delax,

    please read my message you quoted. I wrote nothing in support of or aganst the letter. Nothing they (earlier posts) say is going to make the dates go back or forward. All the poor folks are trying to do is maybe vent out their frustration. What difference does this make to you? No action is going to be taken based on one letter. You are safe, please enjoy your current date status.

    I can see the writing on the wall about where IV would be once most of Eb2 get their GC. It would almost stop existing.

    You and other EB2 people dates are current. Enjoy your GC. Best of luck.

    I am not worried about my GC safety or lack thereof. Lets talk specifics - thats always been my position. I am also fully aware that nothing is going to happen in an arbitrary and knee jerk manner based on sympathetic letter requests.

    However for argument sake lets assume something happens based on these letters. If a number is taken from EB2 to be given to EB3, I am well within my rights to express my opposition to that just like EB3 is well within their rights to vent their frustration.

    Not mentioning EB2 in the letters is not going to result in numbers being created out of thin air. These numbers have to come from somewhere IF the total pie does not increase: read EB2.

    As to your comment about IV existing or not - time will tell, but I dont try to hide the fact that beyond attending the Sept. rally, I am only an arm chair participant.





    Macaca
    12-28 07:00 PM
    N.B.A. in India, in Search of Fans and Players (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/sports/basketball/28india.html) By JEREMY KAHN | New York Times

    The success of N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern�s 25-year crusade to globalize basketball is often summed up in two words: Yao Ming. After Yao, a 7-foot-6 center from Shanghai, was drafted by the Houston Rockets in 2002, the league attracted hundreds of millions of new fans in China. And though Yao is out for the season with a stress fracture that could end his professional career, the N.B.A.�s international march continues.

    This season, the league will play its first regular-season games in Europe, a two-game matchup in March between the Nets and the Toronto Raptors in London. And having conquered China, the N.B.A. has its sights fixed on Asia�s other big emerging market: India.

    Like China, India has a rapidly expanding middle class with newfound leisure time and disposable income, factors that Heidi Ueberroth, the president of N.B.A. International, says make the country ripe for new forms of entertainment.

    �There is a growing appetite for sports and entertainment and more options in India,� she said.

    In a nation where cricket is an obsession, other sports have struggled to find an audience. Cricket�s popularity has been reinforced by the Indian Premier League, which began in 2008. I.P.L. teams play Twenty20, a faster-paced game that has attracted younger fans and billions of dollars in corporate sponsorship.

    But in part because the I.P.L. has proved that city-based sports franchises can succeed in India, many sports are betting that they will be able to find new fans and corporate backers here.

    �The race is now on to become India�s second-most-popular sport,� said Sunder Aaron, the head of Pix, one of two Indian television channels that earlier this month signed a contract to broadcast live games and other N.B.A. programming.

    The list of international sports knocking on India�s door is a long one: Formula One is scheduled to hold its first race in India in 2011. The European Tour of professional golf has held tournaments here. English Premier League soccer, which has a growing following, held a promotional trophy tour in the country this month. And FIFA, soccer�s world governing body, has opened a marketing campaign to sell official merchandise here. Even Major League Baseball has attempted to recruit pitching talent in India.

    Ueberroth said that basketball�s popularity could grow rapidly in India because of the sport�s relative simplicity and the fact that a court can be created almost anywhere one can hang a hoop. This gives it an advantage over soccer and cricket, which require open fields. Basketball also requires little specialized equipment.

    A core part of the N.B.A.�s expansion strategy in India is increasing grass-roots participation, based on the belief that people who play basketball are also more likely to follow the N.B.A. The league also knows that the more Indians who play basketball, the more likely it is that one day an Indian player will be good enough to make the leap to the N.B.A. � an event that could vastly expand the league�s popularity in the world�s second-most-populous nation.

    The Basketball Federation of India, the sport�s governing body, estimates that 4.5 million Indians play the game. That is a fraction of the country�s 1.2 billion people, but Ueberroth said the N.B.A. suspected the real number was much higher because the federation�s statistics missed players who did not belong to a league.

    To try to accelerate basketball�s growth, the N.B.A. dispatched Troy Justice to India in February to serve as its first director of basketball operations in the country. Justice helps run the N.B.A. Mahindra Challenge, a series of youth leagues and tournaments in five Indian cities.

    Justice said the N.B.A. saw the young players as the vanguard of the N.B.A.�s efforts. The concept, he said, was to give the country�s teenagers more opportunities to play basketball in a formal setting throughout the year.

    �The kids here have the natural ability and the talent, but they are not given the opportunity to develop it,� he said.

    In addition to Justice, the league sent the Orlando Magic�s Dwight Howard and the Los Angeles Lakers� Pau Gasol on short ambassadorial missions to Mumbai and Delhi in the summer. It also sent two coaches to India to train the men�s and women�s national teams ahead of November�s Asian Games in China. It has created an India-specific portion of NBA.com, featuring postings by two Indian bloggers.

    Viewership for the N.B.A. in India has also been rising quickly, but from such a low base that it remains minuscule, said Atul Pande, the chief executive of Ten Sports, which has contracted to broadcast Eastern Conference games. Pande said he thought the audience for a live N.B.A. game would never exceed 200,000 households. The viewership for many I.P.L. cricket matches is in the tens of millions.

    �The problem is timing,� he said.

    Games played in the Eastern United States are broadcast at 5:30 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. in India.

    �It was hard at first to get up and watch the games,� said Karan Madhok, the communications director of India�s federation, who also runs an N.B.A.-related blog called Hoopistani, which is featured on the N.B.A. Web site.

    �I thought I was the only person in the country watching. But as I�ve started blogging about the N.B.A., I�ve been contacted more and more by other fans, and I realize there are a lot more fans who do it.�

    For the N.B.A. to reach critical mass among Indian sports fans, many say, will require what Madhok calls a Yao Ming moment. In other words, India is waiting to see a homegrown star make it in the N.B.A.

    N.B.A. officials dispute this assessment.

    �There are a number of countries where basketball is extremely popular without any players in the league,� Ueberroth said.

    Others note that the ranks of English Premier League soccer fans in India are growing rapidly even though there are no Indians playing in the league.

    Still, the N.B.A. is not turning a blind eye to the search for an Indian Yao. Among Justice�s jobs is scouting talent. And he has found a few prospects. Among the most promising is Satnam Singh Bhamara, 14, a 7-foot-2 player from a rural village in Punjab Province. Justice helped him land a spot at an IMG basketball academy in Bradenton, Fla.

    �He has a bright future,� Justice said. �We don�t know where he�ll end up, but he�s got a lot of natural � for a 14-year-old, 7-footer � a lot of natural basketball instincts.�

    Others point to the potential of two Canadian brothers of Indian descent, 15-year-old Sim and 17-year-old Tanveer Bhullar, who are more than 7 feet. Madhok said that if either made it to the N.B.A., it would inspire Indian fans and players.

    The lack of a native star had not dented enthusiasm for the N.B.A. among the young players who were competing in the Mahindra Challenge tournament here last Saturday. All the players on the Basketball Rocker Jazz, a team from Shalimar Bagh, a middle-class neighborhood in the northern reaches of this sprawling city, said they followed the league closely.

    Their favorite team?

    �The Lakers,� Raghav Mittal, 11, said without hesitation. �Most of the best players are there.�





    abracadabra102
    08-06 05:16 PM
    Thompson, Ritchie and Kernighan admit that Unix was a prank

    In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate prank kept alive for over 20 years. Speaking at the recent UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following:

    "In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/Honeywell/AT&T Multics project. Brian and I had started work with an early release of Pascal from Professor Niklaus Wirth's ETH Labs in Switzerland and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and power. Dennis had just finished reading 'Bored of the Rings', a National Lampoon parody of the Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics environment and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new OS to be as complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users' frustration levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more risque! allusions. We sold the terse command language to novitiates by telling them that it saved them typing.

    Then Dennis and Brian worked on a warped version of Pascal, called 'A'. 'A' looked a lot like Pascal, but elevated the notion of the direct memory address (which Wirth had banished) to the central concept of the "pointer" as an innocuous sounding name for a truly malevolent construct. Brian must be credited with the idea of having absolutely no standard I/O specification: this ensured that at least 50% of the typical commercial program would have to be re-coded when changing hardware platforms.

    Brian was also responsible for pitching this lack of I/O as a feature: it allowed us to describe the language as "truly portable". When we found others were actually creating real programs with A, we removed compulsory type-checking on function arguments. Later, we added a notion we called "casting": this allowed the programmer to treat an integer as though it were a 50kb user-defined structure. When we found that some programmers were simply not using pointers, we eliminated the ability to pass structures to functions, enforcing their use in even the simplest applications. We sold this, and many other features, as enhancements to the efficiency of the language. In this way, our prank evolved into B, BCPL, and finally C.

    We stopped when we got a clean compile on the following syntax: for(;P("\n"),R-;P("|"))for(e=C;e-;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2);

    At one time, we joked about selling this to the Soviets to set their computer science progress back 20 or more years.

    Unfortunately, AT&T and other US corporations actually began using Unix and C. We decided we'd better keep mum, assuming it was just a passing phase. In fact, it's taken US companies over 20 years to develop enough expertise to generate useful applications using this 1960's technological parody. We are impressed with the tenacity of the general Unix and C programmer. In fact, Brian, Dennis and I have never ourselves attempted to write a commercial application in this environment.

    We feel really guilty about the chaos, confusion and truly awesome programming projects that have resulted from our silly prank so long ago."

    Dennis Ritchie said: "What really tore it (just when ADA was catching on), was that Bjarne Stroustrup caught onto our joke. He extended it to further parody Smalltalk. Like us, he was caught by surprise when nobody laughed. So he added multiple inheritance, virtual base classes, and later ...templates. All to no avail. So we now have compilers that can compile 100,000 lines per second, but need to process header files for 25 minutes before they get to the meat of "Hello, World".

    Major Unix and C vendors and customers, including AT&T, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, GTE, NCR, and DEC have refused comment at this time.

    Borland International, a leading vendor of object-oriented tools, including the popular Turbo Pascal and Borland C++, stated they had suspected for Windows was originally written in C++. Philippe Kahn said: "After two and a half years programming, and massive programmer burn-outs, we re-coded the whole thing in Turbo Pascal in three months. I think it's fair to say that Turbo Pascal saved our bacon". Another Borland spokesman said that they would continue to enhance their Pascal products and halt further efforts to develop C/C++.

    Professor Wirth of the ETH Institute and father of the Pascal, Modula 2, and Oberon structured languages, cryptically said "P.T. Barnum was right." He had no further comments.



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