I agree - and in fact, while smoking is a higher risk factor than skiing, the chances of smoking killing you before you retire or quit are probably lower than the chances for high risk sports, since incapacitation would be immediate. I am against employers being allowed to fire you for anything that happens outside the workplace, even (especially!) exercising your free speech rights on your own time.
Of course, the problem is the employer doesn't have to give a reason at all, and of course they can just say you are fired because you're incompetent, lazy, or because they can't afford to keep you around anymore.
The bottom line is, without a contract, you really don't have any sure fire remedy if you get fired no matter what the reason (even if you suspect it is because you're black or something obviously illegal). Even with a contract it will be an uphill battle, but at least then you have a legal instrument to fight back with.
Look at the case of Washingtonienne, who got fired as a government intern for publishing a blog that included semi-lurid details of anal sex and prostitution with people from her office. She didn't name anyone nor did she identify her office exactly, but she still got fired. More info here, or just google for washingtonienne.
The upside, of course, is that she lost her $25,000 a year intern job that she didn't like anyway, and with her new status as a horny intern with some literacy skills, she'll be pulling in much more than that just for the advance on her tell-all book. In fact, that gives me an idea -- perhaps I'll start talking smack about the people I work with.....
LOL... you're right... but those are responses to the person I'm responding to. The guy was expressing outrage at comments that didn't exist until after he expressed outrage!
Who is screaming about fascist laws? I don't see any posts saying what the student did was right or that he should escape punishment. I think the story was posted to begin with to highlight the invasive nature of this behavior against the teacher.
I forgot about that game! When I first got my powermac 7100/66 (upgrading from an old mac plus) wasted hours playing that. Now I'm going to do it again:)
As for the teacher getting fired, who really wants a job at a school where you're not allowed to encourage students to play happyweed anyway?
Every overhead projecter added to a classroom is another nail in the coffin of modern teaching. There is nothing added by adding a overhead projecter, but much is taken away.
overhead projecters ought to remain in "overhead projecter labs" and perhaps on the desks for specialized "overhead projecter classes", but they definitely don't belong anywhere else.
Creative usage of overhead projecters for teaching is a copout on the kids. By removing the teacher/student relationship and replacing it with an inanimate object, the kids lose out on a great deal of education. This is why home-schooled kids typically do better in college than "overhead projecter schooled" kids do.
Is it any surprise that the more technology becomes a part of these kids' educations, the more likely it is that the bad apples are going to find ways to exploit the system?
Like somebody is going to pay to read this pointless thing after that time is up? What garbage. Windows beats OSX because it has better help files? Did they consider which OS requires you to use help files less often? OSX is bad because there is no LiveCD? Why would you want one? OSX is bad because iChat only connects to AIM?? How is this relevant to the OS? Mandrake is bad because you have to install games separately? Windows help is better because "lots of people use it"?? No wonder I stopped RTFAs...
Damn - that sounds like a badass table!! Though I bet it has a very low WAF (Wife Approval Factor).... Have you tried installing yellow dog linux? I remember seeing stuff a while back about installing it on the ANS; it looked like the least painful way to go. Of course, there are copies of AIX available on ebay and such every so often, so you could always put that on them....
Those Apple Network Servers were sweet machines. Cool as hell looking; completely flying in the face of Apple's reputation (at the time) for making total wuss-o-rama machines that you basically just plug in and use. Awesome boxes with hotswappable hard drives, fans, and power supplies. If I had time to figure out such things I would love to get ahold of one of these boxes and stick a Mac mini in it.
I'm sure they didn't sell many of them, but a couple years later people figured out how to install linux and netbsd on them, so I imagine there are a few of them still humming along somewhere. Probably not too many of them still running AIX though:)
This is true, but not nearly to the extent Reagan funded them. But as I noted above, the Mujahedin deserve more credit than Reagan for bringing down the Soviets, and that's certainly true of Carter too. Brzezinski's claim to have engineered the whole thing before the Soviets even invaded notwithstanding. And, by the way, look at Steve Coll's book Ghost Wars which I think is authoritative on the history of US involvement in the Afghan jihad -- he discounts Brzezinski's boast quite persuasively.
Actually, he presented actual proof of no such thing. There was no meeting in Malaysia, at least not one that proves anything the troll above is claiming. The Bush admin has admitted that this claim was a mistake based on confusion over names they thought sounded similar. The poster above - or his blogger friend - likely is well aware of this, but continues to spread this falsity because it helps his argument, even though he knows it is false. Check out his blatant lie about riverbend (the Iraqi blogger) at the end of this post. This guy is a troll, which explains the moderation.
Show me the L.A. Times article that talks about riverbend being a 40 year old man from saudi arabia and I will not only eat my hat; I will say "I am teh suck" out loud while you "bwahaha" at me. It won't happen because it doesn't exist. Because, as noted earlier, you just made it the fuck up, because it's easier than coming up with actual arguments to refute what I was saying. Moron.
you're a troll. There isn't anything anywhere about riverbend being a forty year old man who lives in saudi arabia, and if you spent five minutes on the blog you'd see how ridiculous that sounds. you're full of shit. And you completely misinterpret half of what I say so you can argue with straw men. I'll leave you with your straw men then, while I go back to the real world.
Sistani is Iranian by birth, but he left that country for Iraq when he was a young man because he subscribed to a different interpretation of Shia Islam than the one followed in Iran. Also, he's not a fanatic. He's really quite moderate as Islamic mullahs go. Iranian Shia consider him an apostate, in fact. So do Wahabbists, but hell, Wahabbists consider everybody to be apostates, including other Wahabbists.
Sistani is not an Iraqi citizen - he can't even vote in the election. And as far as I'm concerned, he's a fanatic -- he wants Iraq to be an Islamic state. Yes, you're right, he'd be preferable to Moqtada al-Sadr or to Zarqawi's thugs, but he's still a fanatic. Read his website sometime.
Yes, I agree that it would have been better if the Iraqis had chosen a caucus system instead of a direct election.
That was never what I said. But now I see you're just distorting things and lying. I think we should have seen direct elections back in early 2004 -- when Bush wanted Chalabi or Bremer to be the new Saddam.
The Iraqi government picked the date of the election, not the US government.
Um. That would be Iyad Allawi, formerly a carbomber with the Baathists and then a murderer with the CIA, hand picked by the Bush people when it turned out that Chalabi was not only a criminal but also likely working for Iran. And Allawi's (puppet) government chose the date at the insistence of the Bush Administration that the end of january was the soonest we could do it. So, yes, I do see Bush's hand in that.
No, I call you hysterical. I can understand how you might be confused. The two words are infuriatingly similar in both spelling and pronunciation.
Thanks for the tip, Webster; care to make a real point or are we just degenerating into ad hominems and phony pedantry?
The "Iraqi" blogger known as "Riverbend" was debunked about four months ago, I think.
You think wrong. At least, I could find no mention of it on google. And riverbend is still blogging -- the post I quoted was from the past week or two. There are plenty of people speculating that she is secretly a fan of Saddam Hussein but I couldn't find anyone supporting the wild-ass conspiracy theory you claim. Sorry, but I think you're just lying.
I don't agree with speech codes either, but what the hell do they have to do with this discussion? The issue at hand is whether "politically correct" professors are "forcing" their politics on their students, not whether the universities have rules against shouting the "N-word".
Slashdot Mirror
then you lose the advantage of a 5-digit slashdot user id.
As his employer, you should have known better than to hire someone named "IO ERROR" in the first place. Please clean out your desk.
;)
Of course, the problem is the employer doesn't have to give a reason at all, and of course they can just say you are fired because you're incompetent, lazy, or because they can't afford to keep you around anymore.
The bottom line is, without a contract, you really don't have any sure fire remedy if you get fired no matter what the reason (even if you suspect it is because you're black or something obviously illegal). Even with a contract it will be an uphill battle, but at least then you have a legal instrument to fight back with.
The upside, of course, is that she lost her $25,000 a year intern job that she didn't like anyway, and with her new status as a horny intern with some literacy skills, she'll be pulling in much more than that just for the advance on her tell-all book. In fact, that gives me an idea -- perhaps I'll start talking smack about the people I work with.....
I'm outraged! :)
Who is screaming about fascist laws? I don't see any posts saying what the student did was right or that he should escape punishment. I think the story was posted to begin with to highlight the invasive nature of this behavior against the teacher.
As for the teacher getting fired, who really wants a job at a school where you're not allowed to encourage students to play happyweed anyway?
Every overhead projecter added to a classroom is another nail in the coffin of modern teaching. There is nothing added by adding a overhead projecter, but much is taken away. overhead projecters ought to remain in "overhead projecter labs" and perhaps on the desks for specialized "overhead projecter classes", but they definitely don't belong anywhere else. Creative usage of overhead projecters for teaching is a copout on the kids. By removing the teacher/student relationship and replacing it with an inanimate object, the kids lose out on a great deal of education. This is why home-schooled kids typically do better in college than "overhead projecter schooled" kids do. Is it any surprise that the more technology becomes a part of these kids' educations, the more likely it is that the bad apples are going to find ways to exploit the system?
Wouldn't that violate the DMCA?
I can't believe they're actually going to wrap this thing up. Why not just drive it over?
You might even say it's likely they are using it this way.
You mean they have a lot to not gain. They can't lose what they don't have.
Like somebody is going to pay to read this pointless thing after that time is up? What garbage. Windows beats OSX because it has better help files? Did they consider which OS requires you to use help files less often? OSX is bad because there is no LiveCD? Why would you want one? OSX is bad because iChat only connects to AIM?? How is this relevant to the OS? Mandrake is bad because you have to install games separately? Windows help is better because "lots of people use it"?? No wonder I stopped RTFAs...
How exactly will posting "fr1st p0st" and "imagine a beowulf cluster of those!" to al Qaeda websites help us fight terrorism?
So, in other words, you lose all of the advantages of the ANS. ;^)
Yer busted, Webmoth! Turn in your audiophile card!
You misspelled "iPod."
Damn - that sounds like a badass table!! Though I bet it has a very low WAF (Wife Approval Factor).... Have you tried installing yellow dog linux? I remember seeing stuff a while back about installing it on the ANS; it looked like the least painful way to go. Of course, there are copies of AIX available on ebay and such every so often, so you could always put that on them ....
I'm sure they didn't sell many of them, but a couple years later people figured out how to install linux and netbsd on them, so I imagine there are a few of them still humming along somewhere. Probably not too many of them still running AIX though :)
This is true, but not nearly to the extent Reagan funded them. But as I noted above, the Mujahedin deserve more credit than Reagan for bringing down the Soviets, and that's certainly true of Carter too. Brzezinski's claim to have engineered the whole thing before the Soviets even invaded notwithstanding. And, by the way, look at Steve Coll's book Ghost Wars which I think is authoritative on the history of US involvement in the Afghan jihad -- he discounts Brzezinski's boast quite persuasively.
Actually, he presented actual proof of no such thing. There was no meeting in Malaysia, at least not one that proves anything the troll above is claiming. The Bush admin has admitted that this claim was a mistake based on confusion over names they thought sounded similar. The poster above - or his blogger friend - likely is well aware of this, but continues to spread this falsity because it helps his argument, even though he knows it is false. Check out his blatant lie about riverbend (the Iraqi blogger) at the end of this post. This guy is a troll, which explains the moderation.
Show me the L.A. Times article that talks about riverbend being a 40 year old man from saudi arabia and I will not only eat my hat; I will say "I am teh suck" out loud while you "bwahaha" at me. It won't happen because it doesn't exist. Because, as noted earlier, you just made it the fuck up, because it's easier than coming up with actual arguments to refute what I was saying. Moron.
you're a troll. There isn't anything anywhere about riverbend being a forty year old man who lives in saudi arabia, and if you spent five minutes on the blog you'd see how ridiculous that sounds. you're full of shit. And you completely misinterpret half of what I say so you can argue with straw men. I'll leave you with your straw men then, while I go back to the real world.
Sistani is not an Iraqi citizen - he can't even vote in the election. And as far as I'm concerned, he's a fanatic -- he wants Iraq to be an Islamic state. Yes, you're right, he'd be preferable to Moqtada al-Sadr or to Zarqawi's thugs, but he's still a fanatic. Read his website sometime.
Yes, I agree that it would have been better if the Iraqis had chosen a caucus system instead of a direct election.
That was never what I said. But now I see you're just distorting things and lying. I think we should have seen direct elections back in early 2004 -- when Bush wanted Chalabi or Bremer to be the new Saddam.
The Iraqi government picked the date of the election, not the US government.
Um. That would be Iyad Allawi, formerly a carbomber with the Baathists and then a murderer with the CIA, hand picked by the Bush people when it turned out that Chalabi was not only a criminal but also likely working for Iran. And Allawi's (puppet) government chose the date at the insistence of the Bush Administration that the end of january was the soonest we could do it. So, yes, I do see Bush's hand in that.
No, I call you hysterical. I can understand how you might be confused. The two words are infuriatingly similar in both spelling and pronunciation.
Thanks for the tip, Webster; care to make a real point or are we just degenerating into ad hominems and phony pedantry?
The "Iraqi" blogger known as "Riverbend" was debunked about four months ago, I think.
You think wrong. At least, I could find no mention of it on google. And riverbend is still blogging -- the post I quoted was from the past week or two. There are plenty of people speculating that she is secretly a fan of Saddam Hussein but I couldn't find anyone supporting the wild-ass conspiracy theory you claim. Sorry, but I think you're just lying.
I don't agree with speech codes either, but what the hell do they have to do with this discussion? The issue at hand is whether "politically correct" professors are "forcing" their politics on their students, not whether the universities have rules against shouting the "N-word".