The only stores I see outdo the big corporates are the premium stores.
The small stores that I see do well against the chains have one (or both) of the following qualities:
1. They deal in products that don't sell enough volume to be worth a chain's time (but have enough margin to make it work for a smaller store). That's your premium/boutique stores. Walmart/Target/Amazon don't want stuff that sells two units a week - they want stuff that sells two thousand units a week.
2. They add enough additional value (customer service, expertise, etc) that people are willing to pay a bit extra for the sake of loyalty. There's a couple stores I frequent that do cost more, but I can walk in and say "hi John, I need a present for my daughter", and he not only knows me (and my daughter), he knows exactly what he carries and what would be a good match. The extra cost of the box is easily justified for the personal service.
In otherwords, what "rights" do married people have that gay people do not?
Off the top of my head, being forbidden to marry means:
You are given fewer rights if one of you is hospitalized (you don't count as "immediate family", for instance)
Many health and government insurance benefits don't apply to you (or your SO, depending)
If children are involved, you face issues ranging from school enrollment to custody in case of untimely death (again, you might be her "mom", but you don't count as such when the social workers arrive)
Various tax credits and the like that only apply to "married" people.
And of course, this all stems from the simple fact that we're pointing at someone and saying "you can't marry THAT person."
Presuming that we're talking about a simple multi-person marriage (meaning: any two in the pair could legally marry and there's no coercion), I don't see how it's my business. It's not my preference, but if everyone's happy with the arrangement I don't see how it's my business.
From a practical standpoint, it's nothing that can't be done either outside of marriage (unless you're going to outlaw opposite-sex friends from moving in together and married couples from having roommates at all), or approximated via existing business arrangements (e.g. create a corporation, give each of the three a one-third interest. Assign all communal property to the corporation. Ta-da, a three-way "marriage").
Morally, I believe common-law is much more of an affront to marriage than polygamy or same-sex ever can be. The latter two are still consensual agreements to bond together, while common-law is the government pointing at roommates and saying "congrats, you're Auto-Married!"
They can support their employees without getting involved in politics and social engineering. It also sounds like Google was doing this internally ( which is fine ), but now they have big heads and want to manipulate society at large too.
( and for the record i support same-sex marriage, i just don't support corporations getting involved at this level )
I agree in that corporations shouldn't be involved in social policy at this level. But the sad fact is that the social crazies in the world *do* use their corporations to lobby, and until that changes I'm happy that there are progressive corporations willing to spend money to fight the crazes.
And to be completely cynical, I'll easily concede it's because Google has internal numbers showing that taking on this cause is a competitive advantage (and that they'll get more money/goodwill/recruitment than they'll spend fighting). But if it's become profitable to be socially progressive, then it's a good day anyway.
By the time you get to the "T" in "LGBT", you're pretty much too open-minded for that to be a concern. Or are you saying "I want employee registration forms where the gender field is a variable-length string instead of a one-bit value"?
Better question - why does your employer need to know your gender at all in this day and age?
This is not true for instance in Germany and many other european countries. There marriage is a legal procedure, performed by a municipal clerk. You can only go to your church, synagoge, mosque or whatever the sacred place is called in your religion to celebrate your marriage if you can show the official document sealing your marriage. Also the legal implications coming with marriage require the official procedure and the accompagnying paperwork.
It's also not true in North America, no matter what the right-wing would have you believe.
When I was married, the pastor was authorized to do the legal paperwork, but it was a separate part of the ceremony, and there's no requirement that the religious and legal aspects happen at the same time or by the same people. My sister-in-law was married last year and wanted the same pastor, but he had retired (and hadn't renewed his paperwork to do the legal marrying part). So they went to a Justice of the Peace for the marriage license the day before, and the pastor did the religious portion the day after. Sure, for most people they considered the service to be the "wedding", but legally they'd already been married a day.
Isn't it amazing that the so-called business leaders in a company can't compare the cost of a relatively small increase in salary to the cost of hiring a new employee with recruiting, hiring, and training?
Yes and no. The salary increase is usually larger than we think, simply because if you have three guys in a department, you can't give one a raise without giving all of them a raise. (Especially if it's a "hey, this job is worth $X" raise).
Long term, it really is a "you get what you pay for" issue, but a lot of companies don't think quite that far ahead (or try to duck it with "you can't talk about your salary" rules)
That thinking really only works when both sides are equal. In the employee/employer relationship, they are rarely equal.
Rarely at any given moment, but over time, I'd say it's in both parties best interest. (Because if you screw them now because you can, they are all the more inclined to screw you back when they get a chance.)
I don't know who the poster used, but when I had a similar talk, I used the stats from the various job-finder sites (Workopolis, Monster, etc). Took a reasonably wide sample from all three (enough to show that even if we want to haggle on the specifics, I'm *still* under the curve), and it moved the conversation neatly from the "are you sure you're underpaid" to "we can't afford to pay you more".;)
The hiring difficulties are entirely predictable and were , in fact, predicted. It's what happens when too many employers go offshore-crazy, eliminate entry level jobs entirely and start deliberately listing jobs with actually impossible requirements (10 years experience in something less than 5 years old, huh?).
I've heard two explanations for why companies post the impossible requirements, and both of them stink:
Option one is that before you can get approval to bring in those temporary workers, you have to demonstrate that you can't fill the positions in-country. One way to do that is to sabotage your own hiring process. Pay on the low side of the scale, ask for requirements that no-one is likely to have, and bam - you can "prove" that there are no qualified persons available.
Option two is that the company doesn't need the position filled immediately (but still wants to keep the "space" open for later). Post a position asking for "god" requirements - maybe you'll get lucky and find the perfect guy, but if you don't, no worries. Just keep doing interviews and trawling for applications, hoping your Prince Charming will come (and in the meantime saving money on the budget). And of course, never tell anyone they're *not* getting the job - the position hasn't been filled yet, of course...
I GUARANTEE that you haven't researched any of this, and that you haven't thought through any of what you said.
Agreed, with one caveat - the one situation I've seen where it's better to *not* take the job is when it's a temporary or part-time gig. UI (at least in Canada) tends to claw back very aggressively, so unless your job pays more than UI + traveling costs, it's actually a step down. Temporary gigs tend to mess up reapplying.
Stateside, it seems the lack of benefits is the big glitch - I know someone who's been actively looking, but can't find a job (in two states, now!) that pays better than UI when he accounts for the loss of healthcare.
More properly, neither side "owes" anything to the other - it's an employment *contract* for a reason.
It's fine for both sides to try and get as much as they can. It's when they start whining that no-one will take the short end of the stick that there's a problem.
Wait, this Trekky claims to have a girlfriend? Is it just me, because I don't buy this story at all.
Hell, I'll top that - I'll be celebrating my 12th wedding anniversary this fall, and my wife is just finishing up another re-watch of Babylon 5 (start to finish), and that followed a Firefly binge. (Sadly, she's not quite perfect - she doesn't properly appreciate Red Dwarf, and she insists on watching Twilight).
The Dark Days are over, friends - there are women who not only tolerate geeks, but are geeks themselves.
Go reread the part of the article again where it discusses how the IT startups devoured the carefully cultivated talent the old school companies had developed. If you didn't expect them to take the lesson from that beating as "stop paying to train your competitor's workers" then you aren't paying attention.
I think they learned the wrong lesson, though - the actual lesson is "a person with X experience is worth more than the Y dollars you've been paying them, because this new company is willing to pay Y+Z dollars."
Assuming you don't have offsite backup, then I'd focus on servers and desktops - anything with a hard drive. Hell with the monitors and switches and networking equipment - that's all replaceable. Take what you can't buy replacements for (read: YOUR DATA), everything else is bonus if time permits.
Bitcoin brokers aren't. They simply can't get insurance. They get robbed, and it's simply *gone.*
--
BMO
Bad comparison - the point of BitCoin is that there isn't a central bank. Better is someone broke in to this guy's house and stole his cash. In this case it was BitCoin cash instead of USD cash, but in either case you're darned unlikely to get reimbursed.
I honestly don't get why this is news. People are trading BitCoins for drugs - so what? People have been trading US Dollars for drugs for a lot longer.
They're trying to tug at hearstrings with the 'can't tell dad she loves him' nonsense.
They are tugging at the heartstrings, but I wouldn't call it nonsense. Look at how traumatic it is for adults when they lose speech or sight, and they understand what's going on. What's it going to be like for this kid, who won't understand why she can't talk any more, and won't even have the means to ask?
If I was the parents I'd be screaming mad as well.
But the better question - why are there not FLOSS apps for this? Seems to fit rather firmly in the "make the world better through technology" ethos...
Call me a socialist, but I think saving people, and working as a community to help people through troubled times is more important than catching them after they have committed crimes
And you think the police banging down your door is the best way to help people through troubled times?
But there's even a better argument against - IP spoofing isn't exactly hard, folks. How long before someone hacks your wi-fi (or better yet, hacks an Important Person's wi-fi) and starts searching for "how to overthrow the government"?
Those are meaningless threats. They are never followed through on the the better ISPs won't even bother forwarding them to the customer. Basically it's more propaganda.
Perhaps, but it will still do a good job of scaring people who don't know better. Remember, there's a reason so many people settle out of court on these things.
Slashdot Mirror
The only stores I see outdo the big corporates are the premium stores.
The small stores that I see do well against the chains have one (or both) of the following qualities:
1. They deal in products that don't sell enough volume to be worth a chain's time (but have enough margin to make it work for a smaller store). That's your premium/boutique stores. Walmart/Target/Amazon don't want stuff that sells two units a week - they want stuff that sells two thousand units a week.
2. They add enough additional value (customer service, expertise, etc) that people are willing to pay a bit extra for the sake of loyalty. There's a couple stores I frequent that do cost more, but I can walk in and say "hi John, I need a present for my daughter", and he not only knows me (and my daughter), he knows exactly what he carries and what would be a good match. The extra cost of the box is easily justified for the personal service.
But that whoosh has to be "silent."
Of course, they'll promptly be required to add noise in order to warn pedestrians.
In otherwords, what "rights" do married people have that gay people do not?
Off the top of my head, being forbidden to marry means:
And of course, this all stems from the simple fact that we're pointing at someone and saying "you can't marry THAT person."
How do you feel about polygamy?
Presuming that we're talking about a simple multi-person marriage (meaning: any two in the pair could legally marry and there's no coercion), I don't see how it's my business. It's not my preference, but if everyone's happy with the arrangement I don't see how it's my business.
From a practical standpoint, it's nothing that can't be done either outside of marriage (unless you're going to outlaw opposite-sex friends from moving in together and married couples from having roommates at all), or approximated via existing business arrangements (e.g. create a corporation, give each of the three a one-third interest. Assign all communal property to the corporation. Ta-da, a three-way "marriage").
Morally, I believe common-law is much more of an affront to marriage than polygamy or same-sex ever can be. The latter two are still consensual agreements to bond together, while common-law is the government pointing at roommates and saying "congrats, you're Auto-Married!"
They can support their employees without getting involved in politics and social engineering. It also sounds like Google was doing this internally ( which is fine ), but now they have big heads and want to manipulate society at large too.
( and for the record i support same-sex marriage, i just don't support corporations getting involved at this level )
I agree in that corporations shouldn't be involved in social policy at this level. But the sad fact is that the social crazies in the world *do* use their corporations to lobby, and until that changes I'm happy that there are progressive corporations willing to spend money to fight the crazes.
And to be completely cynical, I'll easily concede it's because Google has internal numbers showing that taking on this cause is a competitive advantage (and that they'll get more money/goodwill/recruitment than they'll spend fighting). But if it's become profitable to be socially progressive, then it's a good day anyway.
By the time you get to the "T" in "LGBT", you're pretty much too open-minded for that to be a concern. Or are you saying "I want employee registration forms where the gender field is a variable-length string instead of a one-bit value"?
Better question - why does your employer need to know your gender at all in this day and age?
Marriage is a religious rite [...]
This is not true for instance in Germany and many other european countries. There marriage is a legal procedure, performed by a municipal clerk. You can only go to your church, synagoge, mosque or whatever the sacred place is called in your religion to celebrate your marriage if you can show the official document sealing your marriage. Also the legal implications coming with marriage require the official procedure and the accompagnying paperwork.
It's also not true in North America, no matter what the right-wing would have you believe.
When I was married, the pastor was authorized to do the legal paperwork, but it was a separate part of the ceremony, and there's no requirement that the religious and legal aspects happen at the same time or by the same people. My sister-in-law was married last year and wanted the same pastor, but he had retired (and hadn't renewed his paperwork to do the legal marrying part). So they went to a Justice of the Peace for the marriage license the day before, and the pastor did the religious portion the day after. Sure, for most people they considered the service to be the "wedding", but legally they'd already been married a day.
Isn't it amazing that the so-called business leaders in a company can't compare the cost of a relatively small increase in salary to the cost of hiring a new employee with recruiting, hiring, and training?
Yes and no. The salary increase is usually larger than we think, simply because if you have three guys in a department, you can't give one a raise without giving all of them a raise. (Especially if it's a "hey, this job is worth $X" raise).
Long term, it really is a "you get what you pay for" issue, but a lot of companies don't think quite that far ahead (or try to duck it with "you can't talk about your salary" rules)
That thinking really only works when both sides are equal. In the employee/employer relationship, they are rarely equal.
Rarely at any given moment, but over time, I'd say it's in both parties best interest. (Because if you screw them now because you can, they are all the more inclined to screw you back when they get a chance.)
Out of curiousity - when you weigh the free tuition against the lost wages, do you come out ahead or behind?
I don't know who the poster used, but when I had a similar talk, I used the stats from the various job-finder sites (Workopolis, Monster, etc). Took a reasonably wide sample from all three (enough to show that even if we want to haggle on the specifics, I'm *still* under the curve), and it moved the conversation neatly from the "are you sure you're underpaid" to "we can't afford to pay you more". ;)
The hiring difficulties are entirely predictable and were , in fact, predicted. It's what happens when too many employers go offshore-crazy, eliminate entry level jobs entirely and start deliberately listing jobs with actually impossible requirements (10 years experience in something less than 5 years old, huh?).
I've heard two explanations for why companies post the impossible requirements, and both of them stink:
Option one is that before you can get approval to bring in those temporary workers, you have to demonstrate that you can't fill the positions in-country. One way to do that is to sabotage your own hiring process. Pay on the low side of the scale, ask for requirements that no-one is likely to have, and bam - you can "prove" that there are no qualified persons available.
Option two is that the company doesn't need the position filled immediately (but still wants to keep the "space" open for later). Post a position asking for "god" requirements - maybe you'll get lucky and find the perfect guy, but if you don't, no worries. Just keep doing interviews and trawling for applications, hoping your Prince Charming will come (and in the meantime saving money on the budget). And of course, never tell anyone they're *not* getting the job - the position hasn't been filled yet, of course...
2. The problem was almost entirely budgetary.
How so? TNG had a relatively large budget for it's time (IIRC, twice what WB gave Babylon 5)
I GUARANTEE that you haven't researched any of this, and that you haven't thought through any of what you said.
Agreed, with one caveat - the one situation I've seen where it's better to *not* take the job is when it's a temporary or part-time gig. UI (at least in Canada) tends to claw back very aggressively, so unless your job pays more than UI + traveling costs, it's actually a step down. Temporary gigs tend to mess up reapplying.
Stateside, it seems the lack of benefits is the big glitch - I know someone who's been actively looking, but can't find a job (in two states, now!) that pays better than UI when he accounts for the loss of healthcare.
More properly, neither side "owes" anything to the other - it's an employment *contract* for a reason.
It's fine for both sides to try and get as much as they can. It's when they start whining that no-one will take the short end of the stick that there's a problem.
Wait, this Trekky claims to have a girlfriend? Is it just me, because I don't buy this story at all.
Hell, I'll top that - I'll be celebrating my 12th wedding anniversary this fall, and my wife is just finishing up another re-watch of Babylon 5 (start to finish), and that followed a Firefly binge. (Sadly, she's not quite perfect - she doesn't properly appreciate Red Dwarf, and she insists on watching Twilight).
The Dark Days are over, friends - there are women who not only tolerate geeks, but are geeks themselves.
Go reread the part of the article again where it discusses how the IT startups devoured the carefully cultivated talent the old school companies had developed. If you didn't expect them to take the lesson from that beating as "stop paying to train your competitor's workers" then you aren't paying attention.
I think they learned the wrong lesson, though - the actual lesson is "a person with X experience is worth more than the Y dollars you've been paying them, because this new company is willing to pay Y+Z dollars."
According to his wife Majel he thought continuing stories alienated the viewers (because they would be lost).
Quickly proven right after seeing how terrible both DS9 and ENT were with their war story arcs.
Well, let's be fair - the problem with 3rd season Enterprise isn't the arc, it's the story.
Particularly if (a) *you* are the "people", and (b) you aren't the owner or shareholder of the data.
It's well and good to have "company loyalty", but I wouldn't risk my personal hide for it.
Assuming you don't have offsite backup, then I'd focus on servers and desktops - anything with a hard drive. Hell with the monitors and switches and networking equipment - that's all replaceable. Take what you can't buy replacements for (read: YOUR DATA), everything else is bonus if time permits.
>And no one has ever robbed a bank of course.
Banks are insured.
Bitcoin brokers aren't. They simply can't get insurance. They get robbed, and it's simply *gone.*
-- BMO
Bad comparison - the point of BitCoin is that there isn't a central bank. Better is someone broke in to this guy's house and stole his cash. In this case it was BitCoin cash instead of USD cash, but in either case you're darned unlikely to get reimbursed.
So yes, BitCoin is being used for drug trade.
I honestly don't get why this is news. People are trading BitCoins for drugs - so what? People have been trading US Dollars for drugs for a lot longer.
They're trying to tug at hearstrings with the 'can't tell dad she loves him' nonsense.
They are tugging at the heartstrings, but I wouldn't call it nonsense. Look at how traumatic it is for adults when they lose speech or sight, and they understand what's going on. What's it going to be like for this kid, who won't understand why she can't talk any more, and won't even have the means to ask?
If I was the parents I'd be screaming mad as well.
But the better question - why are there not FLOSS apps for this? Seems to fit rather firmly in the "make the world better through technology" ethos...
Call me a socialist, but I think saving people, and working as a community to help people through troubled times is more important than catching them after they have committed crimes
And you think the police banging down your door is the best way to help people through troubled times?
But there's even a better argument against - IP spoofing isn't exactly hard, folks. How long before someone hacks your wi-fi (or better yet, hacks an Important Person's wi-fi) and starts searching for "how to overthrow the government"?
Those are meaningless threats. They are never followed through on the the better ISPs won't even bother forwarding them to the customer. Basically it's more propaganda.
Perhaps, but it will still do a good job of scaring people who don't know better. Remember, there's a reason so many people settle out of court on these things.