I don't think temporary unions are the solution though, I think a better solution would be a one-plant(or company)/one union model, where union membership is not based on craft, but location. So your auto plant (for example) has a union composed of the line workers, engineers, marketing, etc, who bargain together with management for wages/health care/safety measures and whatnot. They would have no members who are not also workers in the plant (which is one of the greatest problems with craft unions, as far as I'm concerned), but they would still have strike power at the plant to force change should change be necessary. It would also force better communication between departments, who would have to present a united front to management on demands or risk being the victim of divide and conquer tactics.
Anyway, just a thought. I don't think it's a good thing for society to do without unions altogether, but I agree that past a certain size, unions are as prone to corruption as any other organization.
Now if only someone could design a laptop battery that is removable without opening the case. I know, I know, this is WAY too futuristic in this day and age, even for a company like Apple with the appropriate vision.
You mean, like the battery on the bottom of my macbook, that pops out with the turn of a coin? Apple is more than capab^w^w^w^w has already designed laptops with removable batteries. If they didn't on the new macbook pros, then they made that choice for a reason. You may not like that reason, but that's fine.
I, for one, am glad I didn't wait for the new macbooks to come out before I bought mine.
Logical, but in the rules of English, not strictly necessary, or even desirable. A human language isn't a programming language, it's not meant to conform to the dictates of logic. Languages are, as part of their role as communication tools, meant to express community and belonging, cultural identity, artistic expression, and so forth. On that basis, I shall continue to spell the word as I was taught, and as my community expects me to spell it:
Metal standards have value because human beings, for whatever reason, are instinctively attracted to shiny things.
This is true, but if those humans all decide that they prefer cowrie shells rather than gold, the market in gold would collapse.
More realistically, the value of gold currency is not tied to the real value of your economy, but instead tied to the value of your reserves of gold. A foreign power may destroy those reserves with a well-placed missile or 10, or a foreign power like Britain (who of course used a Silver standard in the past) could hoard and dump gold with the intention of controlling the gold market, and thus your currency.
A piece of paper has no wealth, especially when the government decides to print 1500 billion piece of it, thereby devaluing all the other pieces.
This is true, and is a valid criticism of the current fiat regime, I don't dispute that. Of course, it's a problem that can be solved with policy, specifically by making sure that governments don't simply print off more money, willy-nilly, without some kind of regulation. Of course I understand that in the US, many of you don't trust your government to do the Right Thing with regard to fiscal policy, and in fact the nation as a whole is divided roughly 50/50 as to what the Right Thing is, but that's a problem with your Republic and your voters, not with fiat currency itself. Countries exist that do manage to elect governments who regulate the money supply properly, so it can be done.
Interest rates are also a problem, insofar as they serve to enrich people who otherwise do not contribute to the economy (interest rates as inflation controls may on the other hand be a useful tool). There are however, parallel problems with a gold standard. Gold has to be stored, and it has to be guarded, and this costs money. Gold is not amenable to serialization, so thefts and counterfeits are harder to track.
And if the government collapses, the paper is worthless. Case in point: The Confederate States' paper dollar. A gold piece with CSA stamped on it, still holds its value even today. The paper does not.
The value it holds, insofar as it's based on the market value of gold, is vulnerable to manipulations, as in my first point above. Paper money as promulgated by the current Fed in the US and central banks elsewhere, is not vulnerable to those kinds of manipulations (though it is vulnerable to others).
Anyway, my intention wasn't to indicate that fiat currency was in any way a great good thing, if that's what you took from my post. But gold standard currency is not the magic bullet people think it is, to solve the world's problems.
Personally I think I'd prefer to see a currency that was more closely tied to the output of the economy and/or a value for labour. But I'm not an economist, so really I have no idea how you'd do that without introducing as many problems as one solves. And in fact, it may turn out to be the case that you can't ever find the "right" currency system, only competing systems with different effects and vulnerabilities.
This still doesn't address the "why should I want Vista?" problem, which is that after 5+ years of service packs and patches, XP runs just fine for most people, and they don't feel the need to re-learn how to use an operating system (and get on the patch/sp/patch treadmill again) just because MS tells them they need a new one.
If your Engineering department is tasked to work on "Suckage prevention and remediation" instead of "Product improvement and useful feature additions," your company is going to be in the unenviable position of having to compete with previous versions of your own product, which is exactly where Microsoft is now.
Marketing can bang the drum and say "look how much better Win7 is than Vista!" But if Win7 isn't any better than WinXP, the market (or at least that section of it that has a choice) is simply going to ignore the new product and hang on to the old one.
I worked for a law firm up until recently, and it was only in the last year or so that they'd even begun to upgrade the machines to ones running Windows XP from Windows 2000. I would bet that they're still not finished that upgrade process. The in-house IT guy there has already said that they'd be upgrading to Vista over his cooling corpse. He's not likely to willingly upgrade to Win7 unless he's forced to by the boss, who is more likely to fight for a switch to macs than upgrade to a new version of windows. Granted, my tale is anecdotal and subject to the usual caveats, but I don't think I'm too far off base.
It's common opinion on slashdot that people will do as Emperor Ballmer commands, because they don't know any better, but that's not really true any more. Joe Enduser is leading the charge in the anti-Vista crusades, and Joe sees that the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Joe is not going to just swallow MS's marketing line, Joe has gotten skeptical, and with Jester Jobs' own marketing team telling him how much better his computing experience could be, Joe is considering his options, and they most likely don't include polished turds.
You may find jokes about genocide funny. I don't. I don't find jokes about killing off an entire profession funny either. Especially a profession that's busy trying to maintain and run a system that's meant to, among other things, preserve your freedoms. I'm sure the lawyers in Pakistan, the ones who got beaten by the police and thrown in jails, the ones who fought for the rule of law there, would appreciate your humour.
Ironically, up until the financial mess this fall anyway, Intertan was the only part of CC making any money. Maybe they're doing something right TFA mentioned that the Intertan stores were remaining open. I imagine they'll sell off Intertan and recover some money that way.
...after reading to the end of the fa I linked to above, I see that time zones were really invented by this guy, but he didn't tell enough people about it.
To be fair to Sawyer, he has dealt with alternate universes and aliens in his work. I would expect that he'd continue with that, intermixing the more fantastic elements with the prosaic.
There are actually two elements of unconscionability: Procedural and substantive.
Point taken, and yes, you're right on both counts, there isn't much of an argument about unconscionability to make. I didn't mean that it was a good argument, just a possible argument.
No, the principle is that there are more renters than apartment owners, and therefore politicians pander to the tyranny of the majority (and those who feel sorry for them) while trampling on the property rights of the minority.
I'm not going to just buy this one, sorry. If you're a renter and you don't have any protection from your landlord, you are totally at her mercy. That was the entire basis for the feudal system, remember? Class and rank based on whether you owned the land (or held it in stewardship for someone who did). Politicians should damn well pander to voters, that's the whole point of a democracy, remember?
Dude, first off, stop trying to sound like a lawyer - it's like when a white guy tries to speak urban lingo - he just sounds lame. "A remedy in tort" - LOL.
Of course I sound like a pompous lawyer, I'm a law student. I won't start to write like a normal human again for a few years after I get my call to the bar.
Secondly, obviously the biggest ISP in the world has an indemnity clause in its TOS. More importantly, AOL is based in Virginia - a UCITA state - and its choice of forum and law clauses dictate all disputes are to be litigated there under VA law. So even without an indemnity clause, it's unlikely end users would win a lot of court cases in VA.
I'm not studying in the US, so of course I have no idea what VA is like as a venue, and will bow to your superior knowledge there. And yes, they likely have an indemnity clause. And it probably is well-worded and covers situations like this, but maybe it doesn't. I haven't read the TOS for AOL, and I'm not making assumptions about it.
IAALBNYLATINLA (I Am A Lawyer But Not Your Lawyer And This Is Not Legal Advice). And I have taught business law for ten years, so I am not totally talking out of my arse.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think temporary unions are the solution though, I think a better solution would be a one-plant(or company)/one union model, where union membership is not based on craft, but location. So your auto plant (for example) has a union composed of the line workers, engineers, marketing, etc, who bargain together with management for wages/health care/safety measures and whatnot. They would have no members who are not also workers in the plant (which is one of the greatest problems with craft unions, as far as I'm concerned), but they would still have strike power at the plant to force change should change be necessary. It would also force better communication between departments, who would have to present a united front to management on demands or risk being the victim of divide and conquer tactics.
Anyway, just a thought. I don't think it's a good thing for society to do without unions altogether, but I agree that past a certain size, unions are as prone to corruption as any other organization.
nt
Now if only someone could design a laptop battery that is removable without opening the case. I know, I know, this is WAY too futuristic in this day and age, even for a company like Apple with the appropriate vision.
You mean, like the battery on the bottom of my macbook, that pops out with the turn of a coin? Apple is more than capab^w^w^w^w has already designed laptops with removable batteries. If they didn't on the new macbook pros, then they made that choice for a reason. You may not like that reason, but that's fine.
I, for one, am glad I didn't wait for the new macbooks to come out before I bought mine.
What, having no clue, or admitting to having no clue?
Or both?
Logical, but in the rules of English, not strictly necessary, or even desirable. A human language isn't a programming language, it's not meant to conform to the dictates of logic. Languages are, as part of their role as communication tools, meant to express community and belonging, cultural identity, artistic expression, and so forth. On that basis, I shall continue to spell the word as I was taught, and as my community expects me to spell it:
"labour."
We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
Metal standards have value because human beings, for whatever reason, are instinctively attracted to shiny things.
This is true, but if those humans all decide that they prefer cowrie shells rather than gold, the market in gold would collapse.
More realistically, the value of gold currency is not tied to the real value of your economy, but instead tied to the value of your reserves of gold. A foreign power may destroy those reserves with a well-placed missile or 10, or a foreign power like Britain (who of course used a Silver standard in the past) could hoard and dump gold with the intention of controlling the gold market, and thus your currency.
A piece of paper has no wealth, especially when the government decides to print 1500 billion piece of it, thereby devaluing all the other pieces.
This is true, and is a valid criticism of the current fiat regime, I don't dispute that. Of course, it's a problem that can be solved with policy, specifically by making sure that governments don't simply print off more money, willy-nilly, without some kind of regulation. Of course I understand that in the US, many of you don't trust your government to do the Right Thing with regard to fiscal policy, and in fact the nation as a whole is divided roughly 50/50 as to what the Right Thing is, but that's a problem with your Republic and your voters, not with fiat currency itself. Countries exist that do manage to elect governments who regulate the money supply properly, so it can be done.
Interest rates are also a problem, insofar as they serve to enrich people who otherwise do not contribute to the economy (interest rates as inflation controls may on the other hand be a useful tool). There are however, parallel problems with a gold standard. Gold has to be stored, and it has to be guarded, and this costs money. Gold is not amenable to serialization, so thefts and counterfeits are harder to track.
And if the government collapses, the paper is worthless. Case in point: The Confederate States' paper dollar. A gold piece with CSA stamped on it, still holds its value even today. The paper does not.
The value it holds, insofar as it's based on the market value of gold, is vulnerable to manipulations, as in my first point above. Paper money as promulgated by the current Fed in the US and central banks elsewhere, is not vulnerable to those kinds of manipulations (though it is vulnerable to others).
Anyway, my intention wasn't to indicate that fiat currency was in any way a great good thing, if that's what you took from my post. But gold standard currency is not the magic bullet people think it is, to solve the world's problems.
Personally I think I'd prefer to see a currency that was more closely tied to the output of the economy and/or a value for labour. But I'm not an economist, so really I have no idea how you'd do that without introducing as many problems as one solves. And in fact, it may turn out to be the case that you can't ever find the "right" currency system, only competing systems with different effects and vulnerabilities.
Metal standards are no less arbitrary than fiat currency, and have problems of their own.
Aside: Why is there a "u" in labour? The original Latin word is "labor".
Because we are communicating in English, and not in Latin. For many of us, "labour" is the correct spelling.
I knew I shouldn't have posted in this thread! I knew it! I knew I'd want to use a mod point!
Fair enough. I'm feeling pretty snarky this morning.
By the way.. is any of what has been mentioned actually innovative? It all seems terribly familiar to me...
When has that ever stopped the USPTO from handing out a patent? /sarcasm
This still doesn't address the "why should I want Vista?" problem, which is that after 5+ years of service packs and patches, XP runs just fine for most people, and they don't feel the need to re-learn how to use an operating system (and get on the patch/sp/patch treadmill again) just because MS tells them they need a new one.
If your Engineering department is tasked to work on "Suckage prevention and remediation" instead of "Product improvement and useful feature additions," your company is going to be in the unenviable position of having to compete with previous versions of your own product, which is exactly where Microsoft is now.
Marketing can bang the drum and say "look how much better Win7 is than Vista!" But if Win7 isn't any better than WinXP, the market (or at least that section of it that has a choice) is simply going to ignore the new product and hang on to the old one.
I worked for a law firm up until recently, and it was only in the last year or so that they'd even begun to upgrade the machines to ones running Windows XP from Windows 2000. I would bet that they're still not finished that upgrade process. The in-house IT guy there has already said that they'd be upgrading to Vista over his cooling corpse. He's not likely to willingly upgrade to Win7 unless he's forced to by the boss, who is more likely to fight for a switch to macs than upgrade to a new version of windows. Granted, my tale is anecdotal and subject to the usual caveats, but I don't think I'm too far off base.
It's common opinion on slashdot that people will do as Emperor Ballmer commands, because they don't know any better, but that's not really true any more. Joe Enduser is leading the charge in the anti-Vista crusades, and Joe sees that the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Joe is not going to just swallow MS's marketing line, Joe has gotten skeptical, and with Jester Jobs' own marketing team telling him how much better his computing experience could be, Joe is considering his options, and they most likely don't include polished turds.
Or both.
Parent tl;dr: Poor people are evil, and despite being powerless are ruining the world. Hurf durf.
Anecdote != flamebait
Law student, actually.
You may find jokes about genocide funny. I don't. I don't find jokes about killing off an entire profession funny either. Especially a profession that's busy trying to maintain and run a system that's meant to, among other things, preserve your freedoms. I'm sure the lawyers in Pakistan, the ones who got beaten by the police and thrown in jails, the ones who fought for the rule of law there, would appreciate your humour.
Everyone hates lawyers, until they need one.
Well hopefully, the GP wouldn't put gay porn in his motions material.
- and the genocide of lawyers will begin. I just had to throw that last part in. ;)
Haha. Funny, that's generally what dictators say when they rise to power.
Ironically, up until the financial mess this fall anyway, Intertan was the only part of CC making any money. Maybe they're doing something right TFA mentioned that the Intertan stores were remaining open. I imagine they'll sell off Intertan and recover some money that way.
...after reading to the end of the fa I linked to above, I see that time zones were really invented by this guy, but he didn't tell enough people about it.
The guy who invented time zones is this guy.
To be fair to Sawyer, he has dealt with alternate universes and aliens in his work. I would expect that he'd continue with that, intermixing the more fantastic elements with the prosaic.
Why not? It's worked for Blizzard....
Isn't there an Emacs Key combo that does that?
There are actually two elements of unconscionability: Procedural and substantive.
Point taken, and yes, you're right on both counts, there isn't much of an argument about unconscionability to make. I didn't mean that it was a good argument, just a possible argument.
No, the principle is that there are more renters than apartment owners, and therefore politicians pander to the tyranny of the majority (and those who feel sorry for them) while trampling on the property rights of the minority.
I'm not going to just buy this one, sorry. If you're a renter and you don't have any protection from your landlord, you are totally at her mercy. That was the entire basis for the feudal system, remember? Class and rank based on whether you owned the land (or held it in stewardship for someone who did). Politicians should damn well pander to voters, that's the whole point of a democracy, remember?
Dude, first off, stop trying to sound like a lawyer - it's like when a white guy tries to speak urban lingo - he just sounds lame. "A remedy in tort" - LOL.
Of course I sound like a pompous lawyer, I'm a law student. I won't start to write like a normal human again for a few years after I get my call to the bar.
Secondly, obviously the biggest ISP in the world has an indemnity clause in its TOS. More importantly, AOL is based in Virginia - a UCITA state - and its choice of forum and law clauses dictate all disputes are to be litigated there under VA law. So even without an indemnity clause, it's unlikely end users would win a lot of court cases in VA.
I'm not studying in the US, so of course I have no idea what VA is like as a venue, and will bow to your superior knowledge there. And yes, they likely have an indemnity clause. And it probably is well-worded and covers situations like this, but maybe it doesn't. I haven't read the TOS for AOL, and I'm not making assumptions about it.
IAALBNYLATINLA (I Am A Lawyer But Not Your Lawyer And This Is Not Legal Advice). And I have taught business law for ten years, so I am not totally talking out of my arse.
Point taken.