Yeah, seriously. This is a) nothing new, and b) an example of newer technology making the idea more feasible. It has nothing to do with "freaking out".
Yes, asking the question of "How can we teach our sales people about tech?" is strongly indicative that the submitter and/or his company don't understand that sales people don't get tech stuff. Obviously.
Yes, the lack of reading ability is a poor sign, but not necessarily proof that the parents are slacking. My sister can read very well, but it took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears from my mom to get her there (my siblings and I were home schooled, obviously). If you had looked at her development at 9 or 10, you might have reached the same conclusion (parents are incompetent and/or don't care)... but neither were true. It just took a lot of time and effort with her, more than it did with my brother and more than it would take for most children her age. That skews results.
Your logic as to why the parents are doing it for religious reasons is also highly suspect. Even if the parents are incompetent, there's no reason to assume that they would recognize that (or that they wouldn't think the school system more incompetent even if they did recognize it). The parents believing they can do better is still absolutely a reasonable possibility, given what we know.
I work in IT. I have no problem disclosing my salary to someone else, and the only reason I wouldn't ask someone else is because they might prefer that information be private. But in general, there's no reason to avoid discussing compensation from the employee's perspective. It is a culture employers encourage because it gives them a massive advantage, but there's not actually anything wrong or impolite about it.
There's nothing unethical about that at all. A contract is a two way agreement. They have to agree and so do I. So long as both parties agree, what's the issue?
The issue is that it is an attempt to control the flow of information so that they can treat people unfairly. The only reason you would ever need such a provision is if you were already or were planning to pay people below their value, and wanted to keep them from finding out. So at best, it's an unnecessary provision. More likely, it is there to enable unfair treatment and is unethical.
Furthermore, when one party has almost all the bargaining power (as is the case in most employment agreements), they can abuse it to make demands they couldn't otherwise get away with. While that may not be your case, most people certainly wouldn't agree to such a provision if they had a real choice in the matter. It not only does not benefit them, it indirectly hurts them by making it difficult for workers in the marketplace to get information about what the market value of their skills is.
And they didn't demand, they negotiated.
Regardless of the level of politeness they used, it is a perfectly reasonable use of the term to say they demanded that of you. You're splitting hairs.
It should bother you, as it's completely unethical (and hopefully illegal, but obviously that depends on laws where you live) to put such a stipulation in and reflects extremely poorly on the character of those in charge at your employer. If you choose not to share your wages/salary with anyone else, that is your prerogative. Your employer still has no right to demand that you not share that information.
I wouldn't call this a viable option, exactly. The vast majority of games will still be Windows-only, and you will still need a Windows install unless you're happy with the subset of games that run on Linux. Look at OS X. Steam has been available there for some time, but most games still don't support OS X.
Mind you, I think it's good that Steam will be on Linux. People just need to control their expectations, is all. This does not herald a Windows-free gaming utopia.
You are welcome to conduct war like a savage if you want. The rest of us will conduct war in as civilized a fashion as possible. War is already bad enough, there's no reason to make it worse.
There is no meaningful difference. Both Republicans and Democrats massively violate our civil liberties. All other concerns are secondary to this. The fact that both parties (on average; there are good members of both parties as well, but few and far between) are guilty of this kind of behavior means that it is not a reasonable choice to vote for either one. The number one purpose of our government is to safeguard our freedoms, and as both parties fail at this, neither is a viable choice whatever other differences of opinion they may have.
Obama does not represent the people who voted for him because his policies go the opposite way from his candidate promises.
And anyone who pays a shred of attention knew this before he was elected president, because he violated his promise to not vote to give the telecoms immunity for their participation in wiretapping the people.... while he was still campaigning. If anyone thought that he was going to keep campaign promises after that, they were seriously drinking the kool-aid.
The man is too stupid to realize there isn't enough gold in the U.S. or the world to return to that.
Nothing about "gold standard" means that it has to be the exact same standard as before. We can declare that a dollar is backed by as much or as little gold as we choose, it's still a gold standard. So if you have a more specific argument, trot it out. If you don't, then you're wrong, as the situation you describe would only exist if there were more dollars in circulation than atoms of gold in existence (which there aren't).
No. This would be true if the Republican or Democrat party was acceptable, but both are highly unacceptable. When your two evils are vomit and diarrhea, choosing the lesser of two evils only hurts you. It doesn't help a damn thing.
This is patently false. A business can get by just fine while not treating people like dirt (and many do). Contrary to what you seem to believe, "business" does not mean "do whatever it takes to make an extra buck". If that were true, we'd have a clause built into every law: "unless you can make more money by doing this".
I don't even necessarily want that. I expect fair treatment. Someone being salaried isn't an excuse to have your people working 80 hour weeks all the time, and to refuse to hire more staff to get the work done. I have no problem being salaried and not getting paid for my overtime if that time is the exception, rather than the rule.
No, this isn't about equal opportunity. It's about people feeling uncomfortable with things other people are saying/doing. And they have that right; what they do not have is a right to force others to change because they are uncomfortable.
If you've done any work in epistemology over the last fifty years you'd be well aware that the biggest problem with bias is that we're not always aware of it, and even when we are we don't always know what to do with it.
That is not even close to the same thing as "everyone has bias, whether they know it or not", which is what you implied originally.
Not true at all. Laws aren't some ultimate authority. They can change, and part of the process of that change is having a discussion about "should this be a certain way?". It may never change, but that doesn't mean we should accept the way it is as just and inevitable.
Slashdot Mirror
You're on crack. Enterprise isn't better than anything, everyone knows this.
That wouldn't be a bad idea, actually. Despite what they think, kids not having a phone to dick around on during school won't hurt them.
Yeah, seriously. This is a) nothing new, and b) an example of newer technology making the idea more feasible. It has nothing to do with "freaking out".
Yes, asking the question of "How can we teach our sales people about tech?" is strongly indicative that the submitter and/or his company don't understand that sales people don't get tech stuff. Obviously.
</sarcasm>
Yes, the lack of reading ability is a poor sign, but not necessarily proof that the parents are slacking. My sister can read very well, but it took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears from my mom to get her there (my siblings and I were home schooled, obviously). If you had looked at her development at 9 or 10, you might have reached the same conclusion (parents are incompetent and/or don't care)... but neither were true. It just took a lot of time and effort with her, more than it did with my brother and more than it would take for most children her age. That skews results.
Your logic as to why the parents are doing it for religious reasons is also highly suspect. Even if the parents are incompetent, there's no reason to assume that they would recognize that (or that they wouldn't think the school system more incompetent even if they did recognize it). The parents believing they can do better is still absolutely a reasonable possibility, given what we know.
I'm not the submitter, but thank you for actually thoughtfully answering the question instead of posting uninformed rants about home schooling.
I work in IT. I have no problem disclosing my salary to someone else, and the only reason I wouldn't ask someone else is because they might prefer that information be private. But in general, there's no reason to avoid discussing compensation from the employee's perspective. It is a culture employers encourage because it gives them a massive advantage, but there's not actually anything wrong or impolite about it.
Uh, yeah. Actually, I would call all those things demands too. Again, this is not some unreasonable or unprecedented use of the term.
There's nothing unethical about that at all. A contract is a two way agreement. They have to agree and so do I. So long as both parties agree, what's the issue?
The issue is that it is an attempt to control the flow of information so that they can treat people unfairly. The only reason you would ever need such a provision is if you were already or were planning to pay people below their value, and wanted to keep them from finding out. So at best, it's an unnecessary provision. More likely, it is there to enable unfair treatment and is unethical.
Furthermore, when one party has almost all the bargaining power (as is the case in most employment agreements), they can abuse it to make demands they couldn't otherwise get away with. While that may not be your case, most people certainly wouldn't agree to such a provision if they had a real choice in the matter. It not only does not benefit them, it indirectly hurts them by making it difficult for workers in the marketplace to get information about what the market value of their skills is.
And they didn't demand, they negotiated.
Regardless of the level of politeness they used, it is a perfectly reasonable use of the term to say they demanded that of you. You're splitting hairs.
It should bother you, as it's completely unethical (and hopefully illegal, but obviously that depends on laws where you live) to put such a stipulation in and reflects extremely poorly on the character of those in charge at your employer. If you choose not to share your wages/salary with anyone else, that is your prerogative. Your employer still has no right to demand that you not share that information.
I wouldn't call this a viable option, exactly. The vast majority of games will still be Windows-only, and you will still need a Windows install unless you're happy with the subset of games that run on Linux. Look at OS X. Steam has been available there for some time, but most games still don't support OS X.
Mind you, I think it's good that Steam will be on Linux. People just need to control their expectations, is all. This does not herald a Windows-free gaming utopia.
this may be the Year of the Linux Desktop... at least for me, and I'm guessing there are others like me.
Very few people will switch to Linux because Windows 8 is a mess. They will simply keep using Windows 7.
You are welcome to conduct war like a savage if you want. The rest of us will conduct war in as civilized a fashion as possible. War is already bad enough, there's no reason to make it worse.
Nah. People only take notice if you throw away something worthwhile as a form of protest.
Sending out sensitive hyper-visor source code
How on earth is the source code for a hypervisor "sensitive"?
There is no meaningful difference. Both Republicans and Democrats massively violate our civil liberties. All other concerns are secondary to this. The fact that both parties (on average; there are good members of both parties as well, but few and far between) are guilty of this kind of behavior means that it is not a reasonable choice to vote for either one. The number one purpose of our government is to safeguard our freedoms, and as both parties fail at this, neither is a viable choice whatever other differences of opinion they may have.
Obama does not represent the people who voted for him because his policies go the opposite way from his candidate promises.
And anyone who pays a shred of attention knew this before he was elected president, because he violated his promise to not vote to give the telecoms immunity for their participation in wiretapping the people.... while he was still campaigning. If anyone thought that he was going to keep campaign promises after that, they were seriously drinking the kool-aid.
The man is too stupid to realize there isn't enough gold in the U.S. or the world to return to that.
Nothing about "gold standard" means that it has to be the exact same standard as before. We can declare that a dollar is backed by as much or as little gold as we choose, it's still a gold standard. So if you have a more specific argument, trot it out. If you don't, then you're wrong, as the situation you describe would only exist if there were more dollars in circulation than atoms of gold in existence (which there aren't).
No. This would be true if the Republican or Democrat party was acceptable, but both are highly unacceptable. When your two evils are vomit and diarrhea, choosing the lesser of two evils only hurts you. It doesn't help a damn thing.
Then you're an asshat. Plain and simple.
"Decency" has no place in the business world.
This is patently false. A business can get by just fine while not treating people like dirt (and many do). Contrary to what you seem to believe, "business" does not mean "do whatever it takes to make an extra buck". If that were true, we'd have a clause built into every law: "unless you can make more money by doing this".
I don't even necessarily want that. I expect fair treatment. Someone being salaried isn't an excuse to have your people working 80 hour weeks all the time, and to refuse to hire more staff to get the work done. I have no problem being salaried and not getting paid for my overtime if that time is the exception, rather than the rule.
No, this isn't about equal opportunity. It's about people feeling uncomfortable with things other people are saying/doing. And they have that right; what they do not have is a right to force others to change because they are uncomfortable.
If you've done any work in epistemology over the last fifty years you'd be well aware that the biggest problem with bias is that we're not always aware of it, and even when we are we don't always know what to do with it.
That is not even close to the same thing as "everyone has bias, whether they know it or not", which is what you implied originally.
Not true at all. Laws aren't some ultimate authority. They can change, and part of the process of that change is having a discussion about "should this be a certain way?". It may never change, but that doesn't mean we should accept the way it is as just and inevitable.