A company should never be about "A" person. None of us are eternal.
Story goes that Charles de Gaulle, who was often referred to as France's "indispensable man" due to his huge influence in setting that nation's course after the Nazi conquest, was asked what he thought of that title.
His response: "The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
Steve Jobs won't be there. Look at Apple's history. That makes all the difference in the world.
Jobs has had more than a decade with which to root out the nonperformers at Apple and replace them with performers. Performers can carry on in the boss' absence. Nonperformers cannot.
If over all that time he did nothing to replace the people who couldn't run Apple with people who could, he's not as good a CEO as we all thought.
The government has to be the entity that says we are in a recession after 2 consecutive quarters of economic shrinkage. There is nothing for the media to report if the gov't economists don't say anything.
Actually the group that makes that call is the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private think-tank. It's not related to any government agency.
If you're really interested, the best place to start is probably the Communications Workers of America (CWA). They represent more than 600,000 workers (many of whom are in IT and related disciplines) both directly and through WashTech, an independent group they helped tech workers in Washington State organize to advocate for them. Here's information on how to organize your workplace.
the Alex de Tocqueville institute is forgotten, as is Dan Lyons...
Lyons actually went on to create the mega-popular Fake Steve Jobs blog, which he spun into a book deal. So it's a bit of a reach to call him "forgotten".
It would seem that the market wonders that too; GOOG has lost 51% of its value over the last 12 months. Compare to Microsoft (MSFT), which even with the Vista debacle was down by less (41%) over the same time period.
In a couple thousand years, are people going to have to respect the beliefs of a Pastafarian? Or will they still be allowed to grin and chuckle?
If the Flying Spaghetti Monster provides enough people over enough time with enough solace/comfort/inspiration to still be around 2,000 years from now, surely that would be worthy of some kind of respect. There's not many ideas that survive for 20 years, much less 2,000.
If you view the lifecycle of ideas as a Darwinian "survival of the fittest" process of useful ideas propagating and not-useful ideas dying out a la Dawkins' memetics, then any idea that survives and even thrives over 2,000 years becomes something worth studying.
(Pre-emptive response to the inevitable flames: I didn't say "correct" ideas. I said "useful".)
I feel bad for the employees at the company that were effectively jobless days after christmas, with no warning of their impending 'layoff'. I find their letter justifying why the couldn't give 60 days notice unsettling. They're admitting they screwed up, and i'm sure their former employees are comforted by this fact, right? I hope they ban together and demand those 60 days paid, as is required by law.
A day after dozens of protesting workers walked out of the Republic Windows & Doors plant with their demands met, they said they hope their triumph will inspire others nationwide to take similar stands against employers if need be.
"Sometimes people are scared to say something to big companies," said Ricardo Caceres, who spent his first night in his own bed after sleeping on a flatbed truck in the plant during the six day sit-in. "But we stood up - opened everyone's eyes."...
About 200 of the 240 laid-off workers occupied the doors and windows manufacturer last week, demanding severance and accrued vacation pay after Republic gave them just three days notice before closing the plant down...
Wednesday's agreement means the laid-off workers will each get about $7,000 in accrued vacation pay and eight weeks of salary. Each will also get two months paid health care.
As an Intel employee, I have to say that if you're choosing to work at Intel for the view or the cafeteria, you have made an incredibly poor life choice.
Anybody who says "Democrat representatives" rather than the grammatically correct "Democratic representatives" is a right-winger pushing an agenda, and their assertions should be taken with a grain of salt.
"Will not forbid reintroduction of" is a long, long way from "Will reintroduce". She's not saying in that quote that she's going to actually do anything to reinstate the fairness doctrine. What she IS saying is that if some fringe player like Dennis Kucinich decides to grandstand on the issue and introduce a bill that everyone knows will fail, she's not going to waste time and political capital trying to stop him.
Pelosi's personal preferences aren't particularly interesting. There's a big difference between "things Nancy Pelosi would like to see" and "things Nancy Pelosi thinks she can get 218 House votes, 60 Senate votes, and the endorsement of the President for." If she doesn't think an issue rises to the latter level, she's not going to push it - why attach your name to something you know would be defeated?
The Illinois senator's top aide said the issue continues to be used as a distraction from more pressing media business.
"Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters," press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to [Broadcasting & Cable magazine] late Wednesday.
"He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible," Ortiz added. "That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets."
So even if hundreds of members of Congress suddenly did a 180 and decided that the Fairness Doctrine deserved to come back, without the President's signature all that's kind of moot. And Obama's not interested in signing, which makes it even less likely that such a bill would ever be introduced in the first place.
All of which reinforces my original point -- that there is no actual effort underway by the Democrats to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine in the next Congress, except in the fevered imaginations of talk radio hosts casting about for something to hate the Democrats for.
Today, the doctrine has almost no support from media-reform advocates. According to Mark Lloyd, co-author of the CAP report, "I don't think there's any movement [to restore the fairness doctrine] at all.... We don't support it. " Craig Aaron of the media-reform group FreePress says, "[I]n reality, the fairness doctrine as it existed is never ever coming back."
Responses from the offices of most of the Democrats who have been pegged as fairness-doctrine proponents--Schumer, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, and others--have ranged from a firm denial that the issue is a priority at all to disbelief at finding themselves at the center of a manufactured controversy. "Somebody plucked this out of the clear blue sky," says the press secretary for New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat who was questioned about the issue by a conservative radio-show host a few weeks ago. "This is a completely made- up issue."
The only people fulminating about the Fairness Doctrine are right-wing talk radio blowhards, and that's because they need something to fulminate about, even if that something doesn't really exist.
The average GM assembly-line worker makes about $28 per hour in wages, and I can assure you that GM is not paying $42 an hour in health insurance and pension plan contributions. Rather, the $70 per hour figure (or $73 an hour, or whatever) is a ridiculous number obtained by adding up GM's total labor, health, and pension costs, and then dividing by the total number of hours worked. In other words, it includes all the healthcare and retirement costs of retired workers.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably somebody who knows how to spell "sheriff".
Story goes that Charles de Gaulle, who was often referred to as France's "indispensable man" due to his huge influence in setting that nation's course after the Nazi conquest, was asked what he thought of that title.
His response: "The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
Jobs has had more than a decade with which to root out the nonperformers at Apple and replace them with performers. Performers can carry on in the boss' absence. Nonperformers cannot.
If over all that time he did nothing to replace the people who couldn't run Apple with people who could, he's not as good a CEO as we all thought.
Actually the group that makes that call is the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private think-tank. It's not related to any government agency.
If you're really interested, the best place to start is probably the Communications Workers of America (CWA). They represent more than 600,000 workers (many of whom are in IT and related disciplines) both directly and through WashTech, an independent group they helped tech workers in Washington State organize to advocate for them. Here's information on how to organize your workplace.
News flash: you're going to die someday too.
Lyons actually went on to create the mega-popular Fake Steve Jobs blog, which he spun into a book deal. So it's a bit of a reach to call him "forgotten".
It would seem that the market wonders that too; GOOG has lost 51% of its value over the last 12 months. Compare to Microsoft (MSFT), which even with the Vista debacle was down by less (41%) over the same time period.
Only if your last name is 'Riker'.
Now I can play Oregon Trail the way it was MEANT to be played: by throwing my controller at deer as they run by.
(btw, if anyone knows where I can get a good deal on a new flat-panel TV, lemme know)
If the Flying Spaghetti Monster provides enough people over enough time with enough solace/comfort/inspiration to still be around 2,000 years from now, surely that would be worthy of some kind of respect. There's not many ideas that survive for 20 years, much less 2,000.
If you view the lifecycle of ideas as a Darwinian "survival of the fittest" process of useful ideas propagating and not-useful ideas dying out a la Dawkins' memetics, then any idea that survives and even thrives over 2,000 years becomes something worth studying.
(Pre-emptive response to the inevitable flames: I didn't say "correct" ideas. I said "useful".)
Indeed, and now there is even a template now on how to do just that:
No, CSC is this world's CSC ;-)
The Model T's nickname was " Tin Lizzy".
Alan Cox in two weeks?
"The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed." -- William Gibson
So even if hundreds of members of Congress suddenly did a 180 and decided that the Fairness Doctrine deserved to come back, without the President's signature all that's kind of moot. And Obama's not interested in signing, which makes it even less likely that such a bill would ever be introduced in the first place.
All of which reinforces my original point -- that there is no actual effort underway by the Democrats to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine in the next Congress, except in the fevered imaginations of talk radio hosts casting about for something to hate the Democrats for.
Despite what you may have heard on your favorite talk radio outlet, there has been no "recent push for the reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine".
The only people fulminating about the Fairness Doctrine are right-wing talk radio blowhards, and that's because they need something to fulminate about, even if that something doesn't really exist.
Try Faux Columns.
Don't.
Here you go:
Replace your receptionist with a Nabaztag.
Upside: receptionist now wiggles ears whenever CPU load pegs.
Downside: receptionist won't flirt with you anymore.
Upside: you're reading Slashdot, the human receptionist probably didn't flirt with you anyway.
Yahoo Pipes.
You can get the same thing in Firefox with the Prism for Firefox extension.
Don't forget Archon, another Reiche classic... I shudder to think how many hours of my life he cost me in the C64 era :-D