Up to a point, but it's not worth selling one box with a thousand dollar profit margin if that stops you from selling ten thousand boxes with a hundred dollar profit margin.
There are so many companies on Earth that cater to the one box/thousand dollar profit margin and don't ever care to sell ten thousand boxes. Yes they are niche markets, but markets none-the-less. If you turn it around, wouldn't it be easier to sell one box with a $5,000 profit margin then to sell 5,000 boxes with a $1 profit margin?
I wonder if the numbers are skewed in HD-DVD's favor because people talking about "High Definition" DVD players such as Blu-Ray just call it HD. "I wanna go get me one of them new fangled Blu-Ray HD DVD players". See how the name of one format (HD-dvd) can easily be confused and used in place of the other? Do we always use band-aid brand bandaids? I think the HD-DVD people might have thought about that before this war even started.
Perhaps you missed my intent. I'm not denying that, in this Internet day and age, our personal data is out there, and in that sense we are some sort of public figures. What I'm saying is that my boss can't treat me like a public figure if I'm not one in the sense of the law.
Funny, in my 20 years of purchasing TVs, not one has ever come with content;-)
But I agree, content is king...just the tv is only a conduit. And the rest of your examples expose that the bell curve determines features, not quality. Some of us, however, are concerned more with quality, and we have lots of money, so it would be stupid to discount our opinions.
Well being obese and having current, measurable, self-induced health problems is different than the "chance" of getting hurt in a sky-diving accident. But your point is valid. My example was a pretty poorly formed "slippery slope" scenario. My point, until you perfectly smashed it, for example, was that we shouldn't be able to discriminate against Type 1 diabetics, because it is genetic, but Type 2 diabetics can get back to human weight levels and the diabetes goes away (I think this is true?), and thus can be held liable for their poor health. (Unless, of course, there is some OTHER non-controllable medical condition causing the obesity or type 2).
Unethical??? So video game companies shouldn't make PS3, Xbox360, AND PC versions of their games? Could you explain how reaching out to as many customers as possible is unethical?
you should have the same standards for your online account that is linked to you as you would in real life.
That's the problem with this story. If I post a picture of me drinking a beer at one of my bands' gigs (well no IF about it), that is fully in line with the standards I hold for real life. I play live music, have a legal beverage or eight from time-to-time, and I'm not ashamed enough about it that I feel the need to hide it from work conversation.
The reason this story is so deplorable is that the people doing the firing disapprove of standards that fall so ridiculously smack in the middle of the bell curve (college student drinking alcohol). Not to mention, there is absolutely zero relevance to this student's off-work behavior and on-job duties.
Please tell me what company, so I do not accidentaly send a jobaplication to you.
Better yet, tell us so we don't ever accidentally do business with this guy. (to the first post:) Just because you pay people doesn't mean you own them, dude. If everyone's personal life is such a threat to your business, why not just do it all yourself since you know yourself better than anyone else?
If you can't communicate with the people you're supposed to communicate with as part of your job, it is going to come back to you.
And if the person I'm trying to communicate with has a hang up with my religion, then I'd say let it come back to me, because I'm protected by federal laws.
Show me a smoker who can refrain from smoking while at work and I'd accept your premise. Likewise, show me an obese person with a littany of weight-related health problems that opts to pay for their OWN insurance. In otherwords, self-destructive and (mostly) controllable behaviors that directly affect the workplace are fair game. Voting for Hilary Clinton, listening to NPR, being an atheist, or driving a Hybrid, are not. One issue is a public-health issue (smoking, or obesity, for example) that directly affects those around it, and the other is just stupid insecure group-think conservatism being pushed on everyone.
provided they don't try to shove it in the faces of everyone around them (which I consider tacky) or try to convert people (which I consider downright rude).
Doesn't a business have a right to hire employees that it believes will be good for the business?...What you're doing and how you appear off-hours may be personal, but it becomes business if that starts affecting the business.
Yes, but a publically funded entity, like a school district, doesn't have the right to deem "stripper teachers" bad for business and fire the teacher.
but I can certainly see situations where terminating someone for off-site behavior is completely appropriate.
Yeah, that situation would be if the off-site behavior is illegal. Otherwise it's just unlawful discrimination.
Just because you are paying somebody, doesn't mean you own them. I would hope that somebody doing something completely legal (like consuming alcohol) would rail against you and resign before you had the chance to fire them. Or better yet, instead of worrying about stockholders suing you, I'd hope you'd be sued by a wrongfully terminated employee.
AHHHH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!! I spent a good 2 minutes formulating that thought until I saw bit below the asterisks...good one...man, totally pwned...I suck.
The problem with your otherwise excellent post is that most of us are not public figures, yet our companies are holding us to the standards of public figures. Even if we do put our name/face on the web, that hardly makes us famous, nor do I feel the need to conduct myself as being famous. I design boring-ass click-the-slides Flash training in the relative anonymity of my cubicle. The fact that I play drums in hard rock bands and drink lots of beer on the weekends is rather insignificant, given my position with my company.
If I were running for President, I'd remove all my party pics and my off-colored jokes, but I'm not, so I won't.
But if you're going to perform watersports on a dog, while licking ice cream off an asian prostitute, while sodomizing a bum, at least put it under an alias.
Is this really the same thing as a college girl drinking, *gasp*, alcohol (supposedly) at a, *gasp*, party? Also, is it ok to use my real name if the dog is performing watersports on me, instead of the other way around?
So you have no problem with the girl losing her job because she posted a picture of her at a party that merely said "drunken pirate"? Or maybe I just read that article on my own and it isn't linked in this story?
To me, this is a HUGE story, unfortunately. It is wrong for any manager or company to hold my personal beliefs and values against me, ESPECIALLY when I'm not at work. I work with a bunch of mindless Rush Limbaugh lovin', bible thumpin' flag waivers, and if they had the slightest clue they had a slightly liberal employee amongst them, I'm sure I'd be discriminated against at promotion/bonus time. This is the danger of this kind of background snooping. People who would stoop to this level don't have the intellectual honesty to accept that people are different and have different value systems AWAY from work and nobody, not even employers, should have the right to hold that against you.
Ahh, one of the unadvertised advantages of the iPhone...turn off corporate WiFi, check Fantasy Football (or MySpace/YouTube, whatever) with (albeit crappy) EDGE network.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but the main point of this article is that they are snooping on what you do ON YOUR OWN TIME OUTSIDE OF WORK, not that you are visiting the wrong websites from work.
Slashdot Mirror
Does three hours really count as "prolongued exposure", as the abstract explains?
I wonder if the numbers are skewed in HD-DVD's favor because people talking about "High Definition" DVD players such as Blu-Ray just call it HD. "I wanna go get me one of them new fangled Blu-Ray HD DVD players". See how the name of one format (HD-dvd) can easily be confused and used in place of the other? Do we always use band-aid brand bandaids? I think the HD-DVD people might have thought about that before this war even started.
Perhaps you missed my intent. I'm not denying that, in this Internet day and age, our personal data is out there, and in that sense we are some sort of public figures. What I'm saying is that my boss can't treat me like a public figure if I'm not one in the sense of the law.
But I agree, content is king...just the tv is only a conduit. And the rest of your examples expose that the bell curve determines features, not quality. Some of us, however, are concerned more with quality, and we have lots of money, so it would be stupid to discount our opinions.
Well being obese and having current, measurable, self-induced health problems is different than the "chance" of getting hurt in a sky-diving accident. But your point is valid. My example was a pretty poorly formed "slippery slope" scenario. My point, until you perfectly smashed it, for example, was that we shouldn't be able to discriminate against Type 1 diabetics, because it is genetic, but Type 2 diabetics can get back to human weight levels and the diabetes goes away (I think this is true?), and thus can be held liable for their poor health. (Unless, of course, there is some OTHER non-controllable medical condition causing the obesity or type 2).
Unethical??? So video game companies shouldn't make PS3, Xbox360, AND PC versions of their games? Could you explain how reaching out to as many customers as possible is unethical?
The reason this story is so deplorable is that the people doing the firing disapprove of standards that fall so ridiculously smack in the middle of the bell curve (college student drinking alcohol). Not to mention, there is absolutely zero relevance to this student's off-work behavior and on-job duties.
Hm. Didn't think so.
Show me a smoker who can refrain from smoking while at work and I'd accept your premise. Likewise, show me an obese person with a littany of weight-related health problems that opts to pay for their OWN insurance. In otherwords, self-destructive and (mostly) controllable behaviors that directly affect the workplace are fair game. Voting for Hilary Clinton, listening to NPR, being an atheist, or driving a Hybrid, are not. One issue is a public-health issue (smoking, or obesity, for example) that directly affects those around it, and the other is just stupid insecure group-think conservatism being pushed on everyone.
AHHHH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!! I spent a good 2 minutes formulating that thought until I saw bit below the asterisks...good one...man, totally pwned...I suck.
If I were running for President, I'd remove all my party pics and my off-colored jokes, but I'm not, so I won't.
So because I'm black, gay, and/or a Scientologist, I can be fired "at will"? Something tells me this logic is very flawed.
To me, this is a HUGE story, unfortunately. It is wrong for any manager or company to hold my personal beliefs and values against me, ESPECIALLY when I'm not at work. I work with a bunch of mindless Rush Limbaugh lovin', bible thumpin' flag waivers, and if they had the slightest clue they had a slightly liberal employee amongst them, I'm sure I'd be discriminated against at promotion/bonus time. This is the danger of this kind of background snooping. People who would stoop to this level don't have the intellectual honesty to accept that people are different and have different value systems AWAY from work and nobody, not even employers, should have the right to hold that against you.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but the main point of this article is that they are snooping on what you do ON YOUR OWN TIME OUTSIDE OF WORK, not that you are visiting the wrong websites from work.
I'm gonna buy two. That way I can look in my garage and say, "sweet tatas!".
Wait. I thought Rush was a Canadian band? I'm I confusing them with Air Supply or something?