Government is a giant Costco where everybody pools their money together to buy shit for themselves, such as healthcare, military, trains, police, etc., for a lower wholesale price than if they bought it themselves.
This is one of the most retarded things I've read on/. .
Government spends more on any one thing than the private sector would: vested self interest and the profit motive see to that. Without governments, there would be no need for militaries, since militaries are tools governments use to attack each other.
Actually, claiming that the private sector is more efficient in all things is also ridiculous. Medicare/Medicaid has lower overhead costs than most insurance companies. It's actually run pretty efficiently, but the problems come from the Congress mismanaging the funding for it, and things like not adjusting for inflation. Private insurance costs are actually rising much faster than Medicare costs.
Health care is an area where having the largest insured population makes the most sense. We have already decided, as a country, that anyone in need of health care will get it. You won't be turned away if you show up to the ER with an injury or illness. We just couldn't possibly have come up with a more wasteful or expensive way to provide that care than the system we have now. The health care bill improves it a little, but doesn't go nearly far enough to bring down costs to something that is sustainable for us.
People, especially those on the right, complained about health care rationing throughout the whole health care debate, yet that's exactly what we see all over the place right now. It's absolutely rampant with insurance companies. If you're going to provide health care to everyone anyway, which we're already doing, it makes much more sense to design a proper universal health care system from the start. Yeah, it'll piss off anyone with a stake in the status quo, but we need to do what's right for the country, not what's right for insurance companies or what makes doctors the most cash. Yeah, they should be well-paid for what they do, but the current system is unsustainable.
Indeed, I'm he, I order 25 black shirts every couple of months and hence I always know what to wear, while my wife struggles each evening what to wear the next day.
Why does it matter? Blame it on whomever it makes you feel good to blame it on. Yay, those evil $OTHER_PARTY bastards did it, yay! The problem didn't go away. How can we fix it? Neither party as it stands today is even trying.
And the Tea Party people are just morons that will get yet another Republican elected. We're doomed.
The only power the tea party has is the vote. I think this is what is scaring so many people, the middle class has about had enough of deficit spending in Washington and is starting to organize.
That isn't what scares me. What scares me is that the Tea Partiers are so fucking stupid that they are voting for Republicans. One of the two parties (and really the worse of the two) that enabled the massive fraud that brought us to the brink of economic collapse. Who removed regulations in order to allow AIG sell insurance on bonds to people who didn't even own the bonds with no need to report the sales and no requirement for a capital reserve to cover that insurance? Republicans. Yet the Tea Partiers act like these guys are the ones that will save us. That or they let their social conservative interests blind them and start supporting insane people like Bachmann, or corrupt politicians like Perry, or lying nutjobs like Gingrich. How the hell are we going to change anything if we keep pulling from the same pool of assholes?
And he calls you foolish. Who goes into climate science if they think there is no climate change? Nobody? Stop being obtuse. The field itself is an example of institutional bias.
Ahh, yes. Reality's well-known liberal bias rears its head again...
Does a person go into a climate science career if is he is not already very convinced climate change exists? That's like going into Astronomy despite believing there are no planets or stars in space.
That makes no sense at all. I'm pretty sure everyone knows we have a climate. Whether you believe climate change exists or not, there is plenty to study, and many more answers to find. There's also the potential to find and correct flaws in our current understanding, and to further refine it.
Linking to some nutjob doesn't support your argument. The guy is just an activist, not a scientist. He's not basing his arguments on science either. You're not making any point here.
More accurately and appropriately, you'd have to approach it like an intro to world religions class. This is what people believe, without saying this is true, or this is a fairly tail. By an large, most universities do a pretty good job teaching it without requiring or prohibiting any belief from the students.
Yep, and I'm fine with that. It's only at the high school and lower grades that I don't think it should be introduced. At least not without the necessary foundations in history, language, literature, philosophy, logic, science, etc. Basically you're evaluating a whole mess of literature tied to belief systems. There are groups of people everywhere that actually believe that one or more of these various stories are absolutely true. Students need to be equipped to deal with that.
Considering that the impact on culture is huge, in fact the primary driver of our current civilization, I'd say there is plenty to teach.
I don't disagree with that, and most colleges/universities do have courses in these things. I don't find it terribly useful in primary schools, as they have so many more fundamental things to teach that it would be very difficult to approach this subject without requiring all sorts of other courses first. Not to mention, parents tend to get all worked up if their kid hears anything about religion other than their own particular brand of dogma. Once you get to college-level, it is more open, and the students should have at least a somewhat better foundation for it.
Oh... so... close to the truth it hurts... Everything except the bolded part is not political. Everything in the bolded section is, as its making a value judgement on religious beliefs who are protected under the constitution: a political document. Public schools *can* teach science. They cannot tell students which, if any religion is true or false.
I'll give you the word "outmoded", as it does represent a value judgement. I would substitute "ancient" instead probably. The statement is basically correct though, that religion shouldn't be taught in schools, unless it's specifically a study of such myths (aka fairy tales). There's no real evidence to support them as anything else, so aside from simple understanding of the stories, their literary value, or their impact on culture, there's not much to teach. You have the constitutional right to talk to whatever imaginary friends you like. You just don't get to advertise those friends in the schools.
Because it doesn't show that the government can do something and do it efficiently, it only shows that someone with a lot of money and a lot of computers spread across a geographical network can create a worldwide network.
It shows that government can do something unbelievably valuable, that others can't or won't invest in. We've all benefited immensely from it though.
Adam and Eve were created with perfect genetics (no bad genes at all, recessive or otherwise). Once they sinned, imperfection and entropy were introduced. Every time their genes were replicated after this, there were imperfections in the copying as a result of sin (I will repeat here, this is the logic of the Biblical account informed by modern genetics). There was no reason why incest was a problem for the children of Adam and Eve because there were not yet any common recessive genes between any two of them. Adam and Eve's genes were perfect, all imperfections happened when those genes replicated to produce ova or sperm. Each of their children who had bad genes would have had different bad genes. It is only after multiple generations when enough bad genes had accumulated that there would be significant risk from having children with a sibling that the prohibition against incest was introduced.
Yep, when you allow magic into the equation, the sky's the limit! Or wait, no it's not! No limits!
Read it in context. Preferably the whole book.
At this point, Paul has said that when God told us what he wanted from us (by means of the Old Testament Law), mankind as a whole rejected it and did our own thing. Paul's basically addressing exactly what the other poster said - if God can forgive our sin, why don't we just sin more so God can forgive more? He answers that by saying that when God forgives our sin, we are supposed to be different in the future. It would be wrong to take advantage of it.
If this doesn't help, hit me on XMPP at mcivor@jabber.org and I can try again.
I haven't read it cover to cover, but I've read more than enough of it over the years to know that aside from some common sense stuff and good old folksy wisdom, much of which predates the Bible anyway, most of the rest of it is just very boring or very crazy. That these things have been reinterpreted (read: spun) so much over the years that people get less of the crazy in sermons is probably a good thing. I'm not entirely convinced of that though, as it also allows them to have misunderstandings about their religion. Then again, religion is rather meaningless in the overall scheme of things, as it is only actions that matter. Most Christians haven't read the Bible cover to cover anyway. If they could make any sense of it, they'd probably be rather shocked by some of what they find.
There are about as many interpretations of the scripture as there are believers. People generally believe what they want. Of course these days it seems that these fringe groups are growing larger and embracing the crazy wholeheartedly. Look at Perry or Bachmann and the crazy stuff that they believe. Look at who was leading Perry's prayer event. These guys are truly nuts, and they're running for the most powerful position in the world.
I know you just meant that as a joke, but there's actually a verse about that in Romans.
"What then? Shall we go on sinning that grace might increase? By no means! If we have died to sin, how can we continue in it?"
I can't even parse that. I even looked up an explanation of it, and it still made no sense.
All the expertise cited in the article IS here. It is just relegated to small specialty shops that cater to small runs.
So the question becomes, "Can those industries be scaled up to the necessary size to handle large-scale production, and can it be done at a competitive price?" Seems to me that without some other variable changing, it won't happen. Something will have to either make it cost more to do overseas, or make it cheaper here, or both.
Depends on your definition of broken. The last couple of elections voter turnout has averaged in the low 60s. If such a system could boost voter participation by 10+% then I'd say it is definitely worth investigating. Part of the analysis should be which groups in society are underrepresented at the polls (who turns out the least) and ensure that it is these groups who are more likely to make use of online voting.
Wait, do we really want people who can't be bothered to take the time to vote being able to do so while they wait for some YouTube video to load? If people are so lazy they can't go out and vote, they're likely also too lazy to inform themselves in even the most basic ways about the issues. Seems like it's probably good that they don't vote.
The point is to denature the name from the voter. Go to the post office or local shopping center, and have your name crossed off the list. You get your voting token randomly chosen by yourself via a lucky dip. Then at vote time, use the hash number to cast your vote. If you trust your gubbermint enough, have them posted in the mail with the same level of denaturing.
If there's a way for you to verify your vote from a computer, there's a way for your boss, spouse, etc, to verify your vote simply by demanding that you do so in their presence. That's bad.
Yes, I read TFA. It wasn't very illuminating; the author essentially says that since the client side can alter the transactions, HTML5 has security problems.
That's kind of stupid; whose security are we talking about here, anyway? Clearly not the end user - and I'll feel free to use various add-ons to alter the web pages I visit to improve my security and privacy
Apparently you didn't get past number one in the article's list. I thought the article was pretty clear about who's security it was talking about. Namely the security of the app, and by extension, the security of the person or organization that writes their app using HTML5. I have no idea why you would think otherwise based on the topic of the article.
Then you're hopelessly dense, or you need to take the green lenses off your glasses. The fact that they wanted, at least to some degree, to crash the company's servers was self-evident when they continued the barrage after they were explicitly made aware of its effects.
Now who's being hopelessly dense? You just take whatever a company says as fact? They're supposed to cease their compaints because the company says a few of their executives' inboxes are full? Really? It's ridiculous to think that a company of that size couldn't handle that volume of email. Any free email server out there could do so easily. Let them bring the evidence to court then. If I were in the union's place, I would continue to fight there because the company seems utterly incompetent.
It goes to intent. Jamming their phones may not be illegal, but jamming their computers is.
I think I've already said that their intent was expressed pretty clearly, and that was to convey the outrage of their members. That this may clog their phone line is a side-effect as far as I can tell, but they were operating within the law. They had every reason to believe they were doing so with email as well. If anything, email is usually MUCH easier to handle in volume than phone calls.
I haven't seen anything otherwise. People are thinking only a couple thousand, but I showed the pool available. And union members are usually pretty good at doing what they're told.
So no evidence at all really, and we don't know where the articles got the estimate of "thousands" from, but that's all there is.
So you think your free speech includes causing physical damage? That's going too far. Even noise abatement ordinances are constitutionall acceptable.
Noise abatement is fine within reason. No loud music or equipment after 9pm and such. That's not really relevant here. They didn't cause physical damage. They apparently caused their email inboxes to fill up. That's the extent of the "damage". This is also apparently only based on the say-so of the company, as I've seen no actual evidence presented by them. If they had ridiculously small quotas set, and completely incompetent administration of their server, then I suppose it's possible. Of course it was the company's email server that was accepting all that email too. They could have quite easily told it not to. This doesn't seem to be any different than sending them so much snail mail that they have trouble receiving and finding the mail they actually want to read.
I agree there. And unions are still quite necessary. My main problem with unions these days is the extortion campaign many use in organizing. This incident has the classic look of the beginning of such a campaign. That is why I clearly believe the claim of intent to adversely affect their systems, which is a crime and a tort.
Versus the extortion campaign that companies use to prevent organization? We see that all the time too.
Even accepting that the union had an "established business relationship" (which is very debatable), they're still allowed to specify how the union may contact them. "No phone calls" means no phone calls. They're within their rights to demand that any communications be made in writing.
Didn't see anything of the sort in the law. Got a citation for that? If that was true, I could tell any bill collector, political campaign, etc to never call me again and they'd have to respect it. I don't believe that's remotely true.
Intent matters: they weren't exercising free speech; they were retaliating against the company. This was explicitly stated by the union, and is part of the basis on which the CoA reinstated the claim against the union:
Seems like they were retaliating by exercising free speech. I've seen no evidence that they explicitly stated that they wanted to crash the company's servers. I've seen that they said they wanted to fight back, which is certainly a function of free speech. Their members sent many emails expressing their outrage and grievances with the company. The company claims that this harmed them. I didn't see any actual evidence of that either, but that's what they said. I'm still less likely to believe that from a company of that size than to believe that those few execs just didn't like getting a bunch of emails attacking their decision to fire the employee.
The robocalls are part of a clear pattern of bahavior designed to DOS the company's ability to communicate.
The robocalls were part of a pattern of legal behavior you mean? I don't see how they can support the idea that they were doing something illegal if they were complying with the robocall laws.
There's an old saying, the right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Your right to speak your mind ends when it materially interferes with my business. In this case they weren't even speaking their mind, since a 600,000-strong membership was just clicking a "send" button over and over and over in order to flood emails. Automated by a programming loop, or by having over half a million clickers at your disposal. Same concept.
You keep throwing that 600K number out, but I've heard no evidence of how many members were actually involved, and no numbers for how many emails were sent, beyond the vague "thousands". So while you keep trying to imply that all 600K members were just clicking away as fast as possible, I haven't seen anything to support that.
Because of an old injury, loud noises cause me serious pain with the likelihood of further injury. You start yelling. It would not hurt most people, no damage done. I tell you it is causing me pain and injury. You refuse to stop. You are now purposely injuring me. But it's okay because it wouldn't hurt others? Am I obliged to put in ear plugs, or should I just call the police?
Actually, yes. You should be responsible for dealing with your issue in that case. It's not reasonable to limit everyone else's rights because of some issue specific to you. I hate to think what the world would be like if we all had to cater to every idiosyncratic issue that someone has. Now, would I stop yelling just to be polite? Sure. But I'd be a whole lot less inclined to comply with your wishes if you had just done something to insult or injure me, which is more the case in this situation.
I can't think of a case in law where the victim's inability to absorb an attack without injury absolved the attacker of responsibility for the injury.
Using the language of physical assault is really not relevant here. There are many cases where people's constitutional rights trump the inconveniences or harm to others. Some of these are codified in law, and others are simply precedent set by the courts.
This is a corporate case. One multi-million dollar corporation with fat cat executives against another multi-million dollar corporation with fat cat executives. One is in the business of building homes for profit, the other is in the business of unionizing workers for profit.
I wasn't the one that started drawing lines between the union and the company at issue. Drawing those lines seems to be a Republican thing. I have plenty of issues with the behavior of unions, but I also recognize that their very existence is due to the abuses of corporations. It's very much a balancing act. Unfortunately one that often results in the very same kinds of brinksmanship we see in the federal government now.
No, but it's hardly what you would expect from a company of this size, and it's quite understandable to be skeptical about their claim that this was a major hardship for them. Not having even a minimally competent email setup? In 2011? Really? I'd be more likely to believe that they just didn't want to hear the complaints.
Slashdot Mirror
Government is a giant Costco where everybody pools their money together to buy shit for themselves, such as healthcare, military, trains, police, etc., for a lower wholesale price than if they bought it themselves.
This is one of the most retarded things I've read on /. .
Government spends more on any one thing than the private sector would: vested self interest and the profit motive see to that. Without governments, there would be no need for militaries, since militaries are tools governments use to attack each other.
Actually, claiming that the private sector is more efficient in all things is also ridiculous. Medicare/Medicaid has lower overhead costs than most insurance companies. It's actually run pretty efficiently, but the problems come from the Congress mismanaging the funding for it, and things like not adjusting for inflation. Private insurance costs are actually rising much faster than Medicare costs.
Health care is an area where having the largest insured population makes the most sense. We have already decided, as a country, that anyone in need of health care will get it. You won't be turned away if you show up to the ER with an injury or illness. We just couldn't possibly have come up with a more wasteful or expensive way to provide that care than the system we have now. The health care bill improves it a little, but doesn't go nearly far enough to bring down costs to something that is sustainable for us.
People, especially those on the right, complained about health care rationing throughout the whole health care debate, yet that's exactly what we see all over the place right now. It's absolutely rampant with insurance companies. If you're going to provide health care to everyone anyway, which we're already doing, it makes much more sense to design a proper universal health care system from the start. Yeah, it'll piss off anyone with a stake in the status quo, but we need to do what's right for the country, not what's right for insurance companies or what makes doctors the most cash. Yeah, they should be well-paid for what they do, but the current system is unsustainable.
Indeed, I'm he, I order 25 black shirts every couple of months and hence I always know what to wear, while my wife struggles each evening what to wear the next day.
You don't really have a wife, do you?
Why does it matter? Blame it on whomever it makes you feel good to blame it on. Yay, those evil $OTHER_PARTY bastards did it, yay! The problem didn't go away. How can we fix it? Neither party as it stands today is even trying.
And the Tea Party people are just morons that will get yet another Republican elected. We're doomed.
The only power the tea party has is the vote. I think this is what is scaring so many people, the middle class has about had enough of deficit spending in Washington and is starting to organize.
That isn't what scares me. What scares me is that the Tea Partiers are so fucking stupid that they are voting for Republicans. One of the two parties (and really the worse of the two) that enabled the massive fraud that brought us to the brink of economic collapse. Who removed regulations in order to allow AIG sell insurance on bonds to people who didn't even own the bonds with no need to report the sales and no requirement for a capital reserve to cover that insurance? Republicans. Yet the Tea Partiers act like these guys are the ones that will save us. That or they let their social conservative interests blind them and start supporting insane people like Bachmann, or corrupt politicians like Perry, or lying nutjobs like Gingrich. How the hell are we going to change anything if we keep pulling from the same pool of assholes?
And he calls you foolish. Who goes into climate science if they think there is no climate change? Nobody? Stop being obtuse. The field itself is an example of institutional bias.
Ahh, yes. Reality's well-known liberal bias rears its head again...
Does a person go into a climate science career if is he is not already very convinced climate change exists? That's like going into Astronomy despite believing there are no planets or stars in space.
That makes no sense at all. I'm pretty sure everyone knows we have a climate. Whether you believe climate change exists or not, there is plenty to study, and many more answers to find. There's also the potential to find and correct flaws in our current understanding, and to further refine it.
Linking to some nutjob doesn't support your argument. The guy is just an activist, not a scientist. He's not basing his arguments on science either. You're not making any point here.
More accurately and appropriately, you'd have to approach it like an intro to world religions class. This is what people believe, without saying this is true, or this is a fairly tail. By an large, most universities do a pretty good job teaching it without requiring or prohibiting any belief from the students.
Yep, and I'm fine with that. It's only at the high school and lower grades that I don't think it should be introduced. At least not without the necessary foundations in history, language, literature, philosophy, logic, science, etc. Basically you're evaluating a whole mess of literature tied to belief systems. There are groups of people everywhere that actually believe that one or more of these various stories are absolutely true. Students need to be equipped to deal with that.
Considering that the impact on culture is huge, in fact the primary driver of our current civilization, I'd say there is plenty to teach.
I don't disagree with that, and most colleges/universities do have courses in these things. I don't find it terribly useful in primary schools, as they have so many more fundamental things to teach that it would be very difficult to approach this subject without requiring all sorts of other courses first. Not to mention, parents tend to get all worked up if their kid hears anything about religion other than their own particular brand of dogma. Once you get to college-level, it is more open, and the students should have at least a somewhat better foundation for it.
Oh... so ... close to the truth it hurts... Everything except the bolded part is not political. Everything in the bolded section is, as its making a value judgement on religious beliefs who are protected under the constitution: a political document. Public schools *can* teach science. They cannot tell students which, if any religion is true or false.
I'll give you the word "outmoded", as it does represent a value judgement. I would substitute "ancient" instead probably. The statement is basically correct though, that religion shouldn't be taught in schools, unless it's specifically a study of such myths (aka fairy tales). There's no real evidence to support them as anything else, so aside from simple understanding of the stories, their literary value, or their impact on culture, there's not much to teach. You have the constitutional right to talk to whatever imaginary friends you like. You just don't get to advertise those friends in the schools.
Two words: Muzzle Flares.
One word: Artillery.
Because it doesn't show that the government can do something and do it efficiently, it only shows that someone with a lot of money and a lot of computers spread across a geographical network can create a worldwide network.
It shows that government can do something unbelievably valuable, that others can't or won't invest in. We've all benefited immensely from it though.
I love how people fail to understand logic and then call people who believe differently than themselves illogical.
Which logic could you possibly be referring to?
Adam and Eve were created with perfect genetics (no bad genes at all, recessive or otherwise). Once they sinned, imperfection and entropy were introduced. Every time their genes were replicated after this, there were imperfections in the copying as a result of sin (I will repeat here, this is the logic of the Biblical account informed by modern genetics). There was no reason why incest was a problem for the children of Adam and Eve because there were not yet any common recessive genes between any two of them. Adam and Eve's genes were perfect, all imperfections happened when those genes replicated to produce ova or sperm. Each of their children who had bad genes would have had different bad genes. It is only after multiple generations when enough bad genes had accumulated that there would be significant risk from having children with a sibling that the prohibition against incest was introduced.
Yep, when you allow magic into the equation, the sky's the limit! Or wait, no it's not! No limits!
Read it in context. Preferably the whole book. At this point, Paul has said that when God told us what he wanted from us (by means of the Old Testament Law), mankind as a whole rejected it and did our own thing. Paul's basically addressing exactly what the other poster said - if God can forgive our sin, why don't we just sin more so God can forgive more? He answers that by saying that when God forgives our sin, we are supposed to be different in the future. It would be wrong to take advantage of it. If this doesn't help, hit me on XMPP at mcivor@jabber.org and I can try again.
I haven't read it cover to cover, but I've read more than enough of it over the years to know that aside from some common sense stuff and good old folksy wisdom, much of which predates the Bible anyway, most of the rest of it is just very boring or very crazy. That these things have been reinterpreted (read: spun) so much over the years that people get less of the crazy in sermons is probably a good thing. I'm not entirely convinced of that though, as it also allows them to have misunderstandings about their religion. Then again, religion is rather meaningless in the overall scheme of things, as it is only actions that matter. Most Christians haven't read the Bible cover to cover anyway. If they could make any sense of it, they'd probably be rather shocked by some of what they find.
There are about as many interpretations of the scripture as there are believers. People generally believe what they want. Of course these days it seems that these fringe groups are growing larger and embracing the crazy wholeheartedly. Look at Perry or Bachmann and the crazy stuff that they believe. Look at who was leading Perry's prayer event. These guys are truly nuts, and they're running for the most powerful position in the world.
I know you just meant that as a joke, but there's actually a verse about that in Romans. "What then? Shall we go on sinning that grace might increase? By no means! If we have died to sin, how can we continue in it?"
I can't even parse that. I even looked up an explanation of it, and it still made no sense.
All the expertise cited in the article IS here. It is just relegated to small specialty shops that cater to small runs.
So the question becomes, "Can those industries be scaled up to the necessary size to handle large-scale production, and can it be done at a competitive price?" Seems to me that without some other variable changing, it won't happen. Something will have to either make it cost more to do overseas, or make it cheaper here, or both.
Depends on your definition of broken. The last couple of elections voter turnout has averaged in the low 60s. If such a system could boost voter participation by 10+% then I'd say it is definitely worth investigating. Part of the analysis should be which groups in society are underrepresented at the polls (who turns out the least) and ensure that it is these groups who are more likely to make use of online voting.
Wait, do we really want people who can't be bothered to take the time to vote being able to do so while they wait for some YouTube video to load? If people are so lazy they can't go out and vote, they're likely also too lazy to inform themselves in even the most basic ways about the issues. Seems like it's probably good that they don't vote.
The point is to denature the name from the voter. Go to the post office or local shopping center, and have your name crossed off the list. You get your voting token randomly chosen by yourself via a lucky dip. Then at vote time, use the hash number to cast your vote. If you trust your gubbermint enough, have them posted in the mail with the same level of denaturing.
If there's a way for you to verify your vote from a computer, there's a way for your boss, spouse, etc, to verify your vote simply by demanding that you do so in their presence. That's bad.
Yes, I read TFA. It wasn't very illuminating; the author essentially says that since the client side can alter the transactions, HTML5 has security problems. That's kind of stupid; whose security are we talking about here, anyway? Clearly not the end user - and I'll feel free to use various add-ons to alter the web pages I visit to improve my security and privacy
Apparently you didn't get past number one in the article's list. I thought the article was pretty clear about who's security it was talking about. Namely the security of the app, and by extension, the security of the person or organization that writes their app using HTML5. I have no idea why you would think otherwise based on the topic of the article.
Then you're hopelessly dense, or you need to take the green lenses off your glasses. The fact that they wanted, at least to some degree, to crash the company's servers was self-evident when they continued the barrage after they were explicitly made aware of its effects.
Now who's being hopelessly dense? You just take whatever a company says as fact? They're supposed to cease their compaints because the company says a few of their executives' inboxes are full? Really? It's ridiculous to think that a company of that size couldn't handle that volume of email. Any free email server out there could do so easily. Let them bring the evidence to court then. If I were in the union's place, I would continue to fight there because the company seems utterly incompetent.
It goes to intent. Jamming their phones may not be illegal, but jamming their computers is.
I think I've already said that their intent was expressed pretty clearly, and that was to convey the outrage of their members. That this may clog their phone line is a side-effect as far as I can tell, but they were operating within the law. They had every reason to believe they were doing so with email as well. If anything, email is usually MUCH easier to handle in volume than phone calls.
I haven't seen anything otherwise. People are thinking only a couple thousand, but I showed the pool available. And union members are usually pretty good at doing what they're told.
So no evidence at all really, and we don't know where the articles got the estimate of "thousands" from, but that's all there is.
So you think your free speech includes causing physical damage? That's going too far. Even noise abatement ordinances are constitutionall acceptable.
Noise abatement is fine within reason. No loud music or equipment after 9pm and such. That's not really relevant here. They didn't cause physical damage. They apparently caused their email inboxes to fill up. That's the extent of the "damage". This is also apparently only based on the say-so of the company, as I've seen no actual evidence presented by them. If they had ridiculously small quotas set, and completely incompetent administration of their server, then I suppose it's possible. Of course it was the company's email server that was accepting all that email too. They could have quite easily told it not to. This doesn't seem to be any different than sending them so much snail mail that they have trouble receiving and finding the mail they actually want to read.
I agree there. And unions are still quite necessary. My main problem with unions these days is the extortion campaign many use in organizing. This incident has the classic look of the beginning of such a campaign. That is why I clearly believe the claim of intent to adversely affect their systems, which is a crime and a tort.
Versus the extortion campaign that companies use to prevent organization? We see that all the time too.
Even accepting that the union had an "established business relationship" (which is very debatable), they're still allowed to specify how the union may contact them. "No phone calls" means no phone calls. They're within their rights to demand that any communications be made in writing.
Didn't see anything of the sort in the law. Got a citation for that? If that was true, I could tell any bill collector, political campaign, etc to never call me again and they'd have to respect it. I don't believe that's remotely true.
Intent matters: they weren't exercising free speech; they were retaliating against the company. This was explicitly stated by the union, and is part of the basis on which the CoA reinstated the claim against the union:
Seems like they were retaliating by exercising free speech. I've seen no evidence that they explicitly stated that they wanted to crash the company's servers. I've seen that they said they wanted to fight back, which is certainly a function of free speech. Their members sent many emails expressing their outrage and grievances with the company. The company claims that this harmed them. I didn't see any actual evidence of that either, but that's what they said. I'm still less likely to believe that from a company of that size than to believe that those few execs just didn't like getting a bunch of emails attacking their decision to fire the employee.
The robocalls are part of a clear pattern of bahavior designed to DOS the company's ability to communicate.
The robocalls were part of a pattern of legal behavior you mean? I don't see how they can support the idea that they were doing something illegal if they were complying with the robocall laws.
There's an old saying, the right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Your right to speak your mind ends when it materially interferes with my business. In this case they weren't even speaking their mind, since a 600,000-strong membership was just clicking a "send" button over and over and over in order to flood emails. Automated by a programming loop, or by having over half a million clickers at your disposal. Same concept.
You keep throwing that 600K number out, but I've heard no evidence of how many members were actually involved, and no numbers for how many emails were sent, beyond the vague "thousands". So while you keep trying to imply that all 600K members were just clicking away as fast as possible, I haven't seen anything to support that.
Because of an old injury, loud noises cause me serious pain with the likelihood of further injury. You start yelling. It would not hurt most people, no damage done. I tell you it is causing me pain and injury. You refuse to stop. You are now purposely injuring me. But it's okay because it wouldn't hurt others? Am I obliged to put in ear plugs, or should I just call the police?
Actually, yes. You should be responsible for dealing with your issue in that case. It's not reasonable to limit everyone else's rights because of some issue specific to you. I hate to think what the world would be like if we all had to cater to every idiosyncratic issue that someone has. Now, would I stop yelling just to be polite? Sure. But I'd be a whole lot less inclined to comply with your wishes if you had just done something to insult or injure me, which is more the case in this situation.
I can't think of a case in law where the victim's inability to absorb an attack without injury absolved the attacker of responsibility for the injury.
Using the language of physical assault is really not relevant here. There are many cases where people's constitutional rights trump the inconveniences or harm to others. Some of these are codified in law, and others are simply precedent set by the courts.
This is a corporate case. One multi-million dollar corporation with fat cat executives against another multi-million dollar corporation with fat cat executives. One is in the business of building homes for profit, the other is in the business of unionizing workers for profit.
I wasn't the one that started drawing lines between the union and the company at issue. Drawing those lines seems to be a Republican thing. I have plenty of issues with the behavior of unions, but I also recognize that their very existence is due to the abuses of corporations. It's very much a balancing act. Unfortunately one that often results in the very same kinds of brinksmanship we see in the federal government now.
No, but it's hardly what you would expect from a company of this size, and it's quite understandable to be skeptical about their claim that this was a major hardship for them. Not having even a minimally competent email setup? In 2011? Really? I'd be more likely to believe that they just didn't want to hear the complaints.