If you own your roof it will lower your bill no matter how you do it (pay cash, lease, solar installer becomes your power company).
It may lower your monthly bill but that doesn't mean it's cheaper to you. I've done the math and for what it would cost me to cover my roof in solar panels I would break even in somewhere between 8-12 years. That's presuming that the panels still work at the same efficiency and require zero maintenance and that I'm still living there a decade from now, none of which is certain.
Don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of solar but the ROI for solar is anything but simple and certainly isn't quick. Its a big up front cash outlay with a (hopefully) long term payback that isn't always realized by the person spending the cash.
I can't imagine Home Depot still being in business 10 or 15 years from now.
Really? I can't imagine them not being around. Home Depot made $7 billion on $85 billion in sales last year. There is nothing on the market that is going to replace them soon. They're not really vulnerable to Amazon for much of what they sell (can't ship lumber UPS) and the local mom and pops are too specialized or too small to compete effectively.
Walking through Home Depot reminds me of every retail chain 6 months before filing for bankruptcy.
I'm in Home Depot's routinely and you have a very different impression from me. Sure it looks like a warehouse but that's actually on purpose. Their founder designed it that way. It's not supposed to look like an Apple Store. Their founder reportedly drove a forklift around their first store just before it opened trying to get scuff marks on the floor - on purpose.
Home Depot reminds me of Radio Shack circa 2010.
Umm, yeah... no. The two are nothing like each other.
He wasn't talking about Apple's position on encryption. He was saying the argument that the government should be allowed to force Apple to break the iPhone security.
RTFA yourself. That is a distinction without a difference. Security = Encryption in this case. The iPhone's security relies on encryption. To break the iPhone security means to circumvent the encryption. By breaking or circumventing the encryption you make the encryption (security) immediately worthless on every iPhone in the process. Arguing that the government has a right to force Apple to break this security means that ALL citizens are no longer entitled to first and fourth amendment rights and the privacy rights that flow from them. It also creates an unreasonable economic burden on Apple as a company. Furthermore the government is arguing a position that would fundamentally weaken the security of products the government uses itself.
Short version is that I completely disagree with his assertion that the government does (or should) has any constitutionally granted authority to force Apple to break the security of their own products.
the 2014 data breach that included the theft of data pertaining to about 56 million payment cards, as well as 53 million email addresses, Home Depot has reportedly agreed to pay $13 million to reimburse customers for their losses and $6.5 million to provide them with 18 months of identity protection services.
So they are paying $0.35 per affected customer. That my friends is the very definition of a slap on the wrist.
If, eventually, a computer can do whatever a human can do, and do it better, what is the point of human existence?
Some humans can do everything certain other humans can do and do it better. Does that make the existence of less capable humans pointless? I think not.
Anyway it's a moot question. You can argue that the point of human existence is to pass on their genes and robots cannot in any manner pass on human genes. So there is always at least one thing humans can do better than robots.
You can argue this on constitutional grounds. Does the government have the right to do this? Frankly, I think the government does have a right to do it.
I disagree. I think the government doesn't (or at least shouldn't) have the right to compel companies to break security protocols on behalf of the government when that would affect parties other than the one under legal scrutiny. Furthermore it seems clear to me that this creates an unreasonable burden on Apple (or any other company) to support the government. I'm not sure the court in this case fully appreciates what they are asking from Apple. By breaking the encryption on this device they materially devalue the product Apple is selling substantially. I think you can argue this on at minimum 1st and 4th amendment grounds.
it's a close but clear call that Apple's right on just raw security grounds.
"Close"? No it isn't. Apple is clearly correct that breaking security for one phone breaks them all. That's how it works. Anybody with even a basic understanding of cryptography on computers would know this. If we break it for the US government we break it for foreign governments, black-hats, paparazzi, etc. There is no way to restrict it to just one specific party. Apple is 100% correct to do what they are doing. I'm not always a fan of Apple but they are both morally and technologically correct in their position here.
I think you hugely underestimate how motivated people are to cheat and the lengths they will go to to get ahead.
Everything up to actually studying apparently.
Ironic isn't it? But the funny thing is that the even with all that work on cheating it's still less effort than actually doing the work to learn it in most cases.
I tend to think that if a device is actually needed for their health, they're not going to be too big on modding it to add more functionality at risk of damaging it.
I think you hugely underestimate how motivated people are to cheat and the lengths they will go to to get ahead.
I've been in industry for 20 years now. No one has asked me to perform long division on paper.
And did you think the purpose of doing it on paper was the end goal? If so you completely missed the point. The purpose was to help you actually learn what is happening in a fundamental way AND to practice arithmetic in the process. I learned long division in the third grade. Doing it by hand helped my brain develop and it taught me lots about math beyond simply a process to do division. The point is to learn to think and hopefully you learn some math along the way.
No one has asked me to solve a laplace transform without a calculator.
But if they had simply handed you a calculator with it programmed in then you would never have learned it in the first place. I see that routinely in students I have tutored. The ones that simply whip out the calculator immediately struggle to learn what is actually going on and they almost invariably do worse than those students who slog through it by hand and actually learn the material.
No one has asked me to sit in silence for 20 minutes reciting things from memory.
Really? I do a version of that every day in my job. I have all sorts of things I do from memory and I'm pretty sure you do too if you think about it.
No one has forced me to solve some kind of hard problem without the ability to go get some reference material.
What are you going to do when there is no reference material? If every problem you solve has a reference available for it then you are doing nothing but solving trivial problems.
if the answer is not in the book, or computer or neighbor... then your teacher is just a sadistic asshole.
Not at all. I've taken tests that were 100% open book BUT if you had to spend a lot of time looking stuff up you were going to fail the test due to time constraints. The point of open book tests is to avoid needlessly penalizing folks for forgetting some minor bit of trivia or a formula. It's not supposed to be a substitute for actually learning the material.
But here we have companies complaining that it is too expensive to retain employees.. What I was trying to suggest is, if a company cannot have enough left over to make the employees happy and therefore stay, then obviously there is something fundamentally flawed with their business plan.
You are making the mistake of assuming that low employee turnover and successful business plans are highly correlated. It's pretty easy to demonstrate that this is not necessarily true. Sometimes it is too expensive to retain employees and the economically sane thing to do is to let them go and hire new as business conditions dictate. For an extreme example McDonalds has an annual turnover rate in excess of 100%. That means they will turn over more employees in the next 12 months than they currently employ. And they do this every year. This is not a sign of a bad business model, it's simply the reality of their industry. Nobody would argue that McDonalds is not a wildly successful business. And all their fast food competitors are in roughly the same position. There is no realistic way they could make the work rewarding enough to retain all those employees. The work is often unpleasant, the pay is low and there is little McDonalds can do about much of that. Sure it's cheaper if they don't have to hire new employees but that doesn't mean they will be able to keep most of them. If they doubled pay they wouldn't get double the economic output so pay is effectively capped. High turnover is not an automatic indicator of a bad business model. In fact in some cases it can be vital to the viability of the business.
Then by the laws of capitalism they should not exist!
If they lose money long enough to deplete their assets then they won't. But many companies lose money on a routine basis and have to adjust manpower levels to compensate. Sometimes it's because their industry is cyclical. Sometimes it's due to unexpected business problems. Sometimes it's just bad management. But companies can survive periods of losing money. They cannot do so indefinitely and continuing to employ surplus labor in the face of economic losses is a great way to ensure the company doesn't survive.
Furthermore many business are roughly break even propositions. It's not hard to find companies that make enough to stay in business but profits are very thin indeed. This is especially common in small businesses.
Believe it or not, at one time, companies didn't lay people off at the drop of a hat.
And now we don't because in many (not all) cases that is economically irrational.
Because hiring them back again is expensive and hiring new people means that you not only have to train them to do the job the way your company needs it done, but they also have to learn where to go in the company to get things done.
Hiring new people is expensive but keeping people employed when you don't have work for them can easily be more expensive.
There was a certain noblesse oblige there. The company took care of you and you took care of the company.
I think you have rose colored glasses there. The labor movement happened because there WASN'T any noblesse-oblige. Working conditions 100 years ago were atrocious, safety terrible, pay was low and heaven forbid you actually spoke out about any of it. Things moved slower and labor was less mobile so it was easier to keep talent for longer because it was harder for labor to move. Increased labor mobility benefits both workers and companies but there is a cost to it.
That's the thing. You're completely ignoring the emotional element, dismissing it as something valueless. But it's not just about a pay packet.
Companies by definition cannot have emotions. So any emotional attachment by an employee towards a company is inherently irrational. Either it is a good situation and you can be happy about that or it isn't good for your particular needs/wants and you should consider other options. Either the company gives you a reason to feel good about working there or they don't but there has to be a cause.
I could be making a shit ton more money elsewhere, with my skill set. But I'm not leaving, cause the company I currently work for is one of the best places I've ever worked.
There is more to a compensation package than just the salary. Working conditions, colleagues, enjoyment of work, benefits, proximity, hours, etc all play a role. It's not just about money. You obviously value the environment highly. That's fine. So do I. Some others simply want the biggest paycheck possible and don't care about the rest. That's fine too. But at the end of the day you add all that stuff up and you decide if it provides enough value to you to start/continue to work there. If you can find greener pastures somewhere else (for whatever you value most) then you are a fool to stick around out of irrational emotional loyalty.
The relationship isn't equal financially in that they make financially a substantially larger amount of money than what they pay you - which isn't disclosed to you.
That is not necessarily true. Sometimes it is true and sometimes it very much is not. Believe it or not a lot of companies don't actually make much profit. Many actually lose money. People tend to have this peculiar notion that all companies are just raking in megabucks but for many of them that is very far from the truth. Furthermore in many cases the profit of the company is published. If I worked for Apple or Google I can look up exactly how much money they made during my tenure with the company. The financial relationship is fair in the sense that the company and the employee agreed on a value for the services provided to the company by the employee.
If you make $100k but they're making $700k off of you (even after expenses), who is getting the bad deal?
False dilemma. That situation could easily be a very good situation for both parties. If either side thinks it is unfair somehow both are free to seek a better situation any time they want. But there is a market rate for salaries and both sides can get a good or bad deal if they deviate far from it. If you are making $100K and the market rate for your work is really $50K then you are getting a spectacular deal even if the company makes a handsome multiple of profit on top of that.
A company can fire you an a moment's notice but when you leave they want 2 weeks from you.
You can leave any time you want. The company is REQUIRED BY LAW to pay you for any time you have worked. The 2 week notice thing is nothing more than a courtesy. They cannot withhold pay (legally) nor can they require anything further of you unless you agreed to it in an explicit contract. The company can ask for two weeks notice but you are under no obligation to give it to them.
My take on two weeks notice is that in two weeks they will notice I haven't been there in two weeks.
Or maybe if companies showed the same loyalty to their employees that they demand from them, this wouldn't be a problem.
That's very idealistic and I respect the intent but it's just not reality and probably not sensible for either party.
First off, it's a business transaction. The company needs work done and the worker needs money to do it. If the company no longer needs that work done or if the worker isn't doing it competently or efficiently it make no sense for the company to continue to employ that person. Paying someone to do no work or for bad quality work is idiotic. Conversely if the worker can do work elsewhere and get a better compensation package or a better situation then why on earth should he/she be expected to be "loyal" to company? Neither situation is a win/win. Loyalty between employees and companies only makes sense when both side benefit. That does happen sometimes but it shouldn't be a default expectation, especially in a competitive global economy.
Second, even if both sides want to be loyal to each other economic reality sometimes makes it impossible. I have about 20 people who work for me. I would LOVE to pay them more than I do. But the industry I am in (contract assembly) is very competitive on labor costs so if I raise salaries for everyone we would be out of work faster than I can say "Chapter 11 bankruptcy". I do what I can for them but if one of them finds a better job somewhere else I just have to wish them the best and hope I can replace them with someone else who is competent. Demanding loyalty to the company from employees in that situation would be ridiculous of me.
Code that is instructions to tell a computer what to do is not "communication.
ALL code tells a computer what to do. This argument fails right out of the gate. There is no such thing as computer code that doesn't tell a computer what to do.
There can be "communication" embedded within computer instructions, and that is certainly protected.
Not only can there be, there routinely is. The argument that code is not speech as a blanket assertion is demonstrably nonsense. If you want to argue that all code is instructions but not all code is speech then you'll have to dig a little deeper.
Should a car company be compelled into having to add government mandated components (air bag, seat belt, side mirrors, headlights, etc) to their designs which are eventually made into real and tangible objects?
I don't think there is any debate that the government can mandate companies follow regulations. I think the point here is that the government is attempting to mandate Apple perform an action that is arguably unconstitutional. You can make reasonable arguments against the FBI's actions under at least the 1st and 4th amendments. The FBI's actions would have all sorts of negative knock on effects if they get their way.
And I see EFF lawyers saying code is math and is not eligible for patent protection and sometimes not even eligible for copyright protection.
Some code cannot be copyrighted, though this is the exception rather than the rule. For example I can write a hello world program but I can't copyright it because it is too basic to be considered a creative work but I can write a word processor and I can copyright that. In principle no code should be eligible for patents because the code should be adequately protected by copyright. You shouldn't be able to patent math. Patents should only be for tangible goods. But there is a sufficient level of creativity in coding that allowing a copyright is reasonable. (presuming we think copyright itself is reasonable which is a separate discussion)
I don't think the EFF is being inconsistent at all in their stance on these issues.
Code is instructions to a computer to do something.
Agreed.
The computer cannot interpret code as an expression, because computers are not sentient. Code cannot therefore be considered expression, as it is not being written to convey ideas to other people.
Your argument goes off the rails here. I absolutely can convey ideas to other people through code. You are making the mistake of presuming the computer is the audience for the ideas being conveyed. That is incorrect. Other people are the audience, the computer is merely the means. Saying code cannot be used to convey ideas is as absurd as saying written music cannot convey ideas because you need a musical instrument to play it.
I was asking why the U.S. dollar is not fan based, is it because of faith and trust in the government? That would sound more like fandom to me.
Nobody really needs to be a fan of the US government to realize that a currency backed by the taxing authority of the country with the biggest economy and biggest military which is accepted in trade around the globe and a long record of stability is probably of practical value. Bitcoin on the other hand is thinly traded, volatile, digital only, and relies on technology of uncertain robustness. Those things matter a lot.
The majority of pragmatists using bitcoin seem to be people engaged in activities that are not exactly legal. I'm not judging but the evidence is clear that the most enthusiastic users of bitcoin appear to be people engaged in drug trafficking or other activities where money laundering and identity hiding are of practical value. Many of the rest of the users of bitcoin seem to be people who are ideologically inclined to dislike government and/or fiat currencies or who are of the opinion that some version of the gold standard should come back. These people like the idea of bitcoin and tend to be the loudest proponents of it, a bit like fan-fiction writers. Hence the (perhaps unfair) moniker.
As opposed to paper currencies which hold value precisely as long as people believe that they do (i.e. a fan currency).
ALL currencies only have value because people believe they have value. People who back the gold standard or similar schemes merely suffer from the delusion that gold is any different in this respect. People who support bitcoin are under the (I believe mistaken) belief that a digital mimic of the gold standard via cryptography somehow solves the problems that forced everyone away from the gold standard. But no matter what currency you use the only reason any of it has value is because people believe it has value.
Unless you plan on dying sometime soon, it will. It isn't? 12 years ago self driving cars were a pipe dream. Now they're here.
Not even remotely a relevant comparison. First off self driving vehicles have been around for a LOT longer than 12 years. We've had vehicles (usually military) that could navigate autonomously for decades. Think cruise missiles and autopilot on airplanes. We're just now getting to the point where we can put such technologies into cars (a harder problem) and even then we're still a fair ways off from hands off operation in a car you can buy from a dealer for daily use. (no matter what Elon Musk promises) Second, robotic surgery is FAR more complex than driving a car. It's not even close. And our state of the art in technology just isn't there yet. Hopefully one day it will be but it's going to be a bit of a wait. We're just in the infancy of that technology.
The number of luddites on Slashdot amazes me for a side for nerds.
"Luddites"? Really? You're on a site with people who are actually smart enough to actually understand the problems with proposed technologies and who often have direct experience with them. I think the idea of autonomous surgical robots is awesome. Hope we see it someday. I also have worked with robotic technology in my day job and have a fairly good appreciation of the state of the art. I'm not claiming it can never happen. What I am certain of is that we are a LOOOONG way away from autonomous robotic surgery being a real thing. I honestly think we'll see commercially viable nuclear fusion before we see autonomous robotic surgery. Going by actuarial tables I have about 40 years left in my life and I doubt we'll see commercially viable autonomous surgery before I die. I think we'll see a lot of progress towards it during my life but I don't think we'll see the full thing for a long time.
I'll take a highschool student vocationally trained in how to do an ACL surgery with an Xbox 360 controller over someone that had to spend 40 years of their life just to operate out on their own.
Then you'd be an idiot. You don't need a surgeon for routine procedures. Medical students can and often do perform parts of simple operations. You need a surgeon for when the shit hits the fan. For when unexpected things happen. When a patient codes on the table. When the operation is something new or difficult. THAT is when you need a surgeon. If your Xbox player runs into anything out of the ordinary you likely are going to die on the table. Might not be the best plan ever.
Maybe not ideally, but what if there's no other choice?
What do you mean "no other choice"? There is NO choice. There are no autonomous robots that can replace people for surgery and no reasonable likelihood we will see one in the next 30 years. It's science fiction and will remain so for a long time to come.
As for remote operation, the economics of it make it impossible even if the technology were currently feasible (which it isn't). You seriously think there is going to be a market for hugely expensive remote surgery devices in places were about 3 people live just in case something goes wrong? Even if they were available this sort of thing would be anything but cheap. Furthermore there would be all sorts of storage issues with things like anesthesia. Drugs have shelf lives and specific storage requirements without even getting into the challenges of administering them.
Situations like this are where autosurgeons will make inroads.
You are talking about it like it's a real thing. It isn't and it won't be any time soon. The state of the art in technology is no where close to the point where autonomous robotic surgery would be even remotely feasible.
Slashdot Mirror
If you own your roof it will lower your bill no matter how you do it (pay cash, lease, solar installer becomes your power company).
It may lower your monthly bill but that doesn't mean it's cheaper to you. I've done the math and for what it would cost me to cover my roof in solar panels I would break even in somewhere between 8-12 years. That's presuming that the panels still work at the same efficiency and require zero maintenance and that I'm still living there a decade from now, none of which is certain.
Don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of solar but the ROI for solar is anything but simple and certainly isn't quick. Its a big up front cash outlay with a (hopefully) long term payback that isn't always realized by the person spending the cash.
I can't imagine Home Depot still being in business 10 or 15 years from now.
Really? I can't imagine them not being around. Home Depot made $7 billion on $85 billion in sales last year. There is nothing on the market that is going to replace them soon. They're not really vulnerable to Amazon for much of what they sell (can't ship lumber UPS) and the local mom and pops are too specialized or too small to compete effectively.
Walking through Home Depot reminds me of every retail chain 6 months before filing for bankruptcy.
I'm in Home Depot's routinely and you have a very different impression from me. Sure it looks like a warehouse but that's actually on purpose. Their founder designed it that way. It's not supposed to look like an Apple Store. Their founder reportedly drove a forklift around their first store just before it opened trying to get scuff marks on the floor - on purpose.
Home Depot reminds me of Radio Shack circa 2010.
Umm, yeah... no. The two are nothing like each other.
He wasn't talking about Apple's position on encryption. He was saying the argument that the government should be allowed to force Apple to break the iPhone security.
RTFA yourself. That is a distinction without a difference. Security = Encryption in this case. The iPhone's security relies on encryption. To break the iPhone security means to circumvent the encryption. By breaking or circumventing the encryption you make the encryption (security) immediately worthless on every iPhone in the process. Arguing that the government has a right to force Apple to break this security means that ALL citizens are no longer entitled to first and fourth amendment rights and the privacy rights that flow from them. It also creates an unreasonable economic burden on Apple as a company. Furthermore the government is arguing a position that would fundamentally weaken the security of products the government uses itself.
Short version is that I completely disagree with his assertion that the government does (or should) has any constitutionally granted authority to force Apple to break the security of their own products.
the 2014 data breach that included the theft of data pertaining to about 56 million payment cards, as well as 53 million email addresses, Home Depot has reportedly agreed to pay $13 million to reimburse customers for their losses and $6.5 million to provide them with 18 months of identity protection services.
So they are paying $0.35 per affected customer. That my friends is the very definition of a slap on the wrist.
If, eventually, a computer can do whatever a human can do, and do it better, what is the point of human existence?
Some humans can do everything certain other humans can do and do it better. Does that make the existence of less capable humans pointless? I think not.
Anyway it's a moot question. You can argue that the point of human existence is to pass on their genes and robots cannot in any manner pass on human genes. So there is always at least one thing humans can do better than robots.
You can argue this on constitutional grounds. Does the government have the right to do this? Frankly, I think the government does have a right to do it.
I disagree. I think the government doesn't (or at least shouldn't) have the right to compel companies to break security protocols on behalf of the government when that would affect parties other than the one under legal scrutiny. Furthermore it seems clear to me that this creates an unreasonable burden on Apple (or any other company) to support the government. I'm not sure the court in this case fully appreciates what they are asking from Apple. By breaking the encryption on this device they materially devalue the product Apple is selling substantially. I think you can argue this on at minimum 1st and 4th amendment grounds.
it's a close but clear call that Apple's right on just raw security grounds.
"Close"? No it isn't. Apple is clearly correct that breaking security for one phone breaks them all. That's how it works. Anybody with even a basic understanding of cryptography on computers would know this. If we break it for the US government we break it for foreign governments, black-hats, paparazzi, etc. There is no way to restrict it to just one specific party. Apple is 100% correct to do what they are doing. I'm not always a fan of Apple but they are both morally and technologically correct in their position here.
I think you hugely underestimate how motivated people are to cheat and the lengths they will go to to get ahead.
Everything up to actually studying apparently.
Ironic isn't it? But the funny thing is that the even with all that work on cheating it's still less effort than actually doing the work to learn it in most cases.
I tend to think that if a device is actually needed for their health, they're not going to be too big on modding it to add more functionality at risk of damaging it.
I think you hugely underestimate how motivated people are to cheat and the lengths they will go to to get ahead.
I've been in industry for 20 years now. No one has asked me to perform long division on paper.
And did you think the purpose of doing it on paper was the end goal? If so you completely missed the point. The purpose was to help you actually learn what is happening in a fundamental way AND to practice arithmetic in the process. I learned long division in the third grade. Doing it by hand helped my brain develop and it taught me lots about math beyond simply a process to do division. The point is to learn to think and hopefully you learn some math along the way.
No one has asked me to solve a laplace transform without a calculator.
But if they had simply handed you a calculator with it programmed in then you would never have learned it in the first place. I see that routinely in students I have tutored. The ones that simply whip out the calculator immediately struggle to learn what is actually going on and they almost invariably do worse than those students who slog through it by hand and actually learn the material.
No one has asked me to sit in silence for 20 minutes reciting things from memory.
Really? I do a version of that every day in my job. I have all sorts of things I do from memory and I'm pretty sure you do too if you think about it.
No one has forced me to solve some kind of hard problem without the ability to go get some reference material.
What are you going to do when there is no reference material? If every problem you solve has a reference available for it then you are doing nothing but solving trivial problems.
if the answer is not in the book, or computer or neighbor... then your teacher is just a sadistic asshole.
Not at all. I've taken tests that were 100% open book BUT if you had to spend a lot of time looking stuff up you were going to fail the test due to time constraints. The point of open book tests is to avoid needlessly penalizing folks for forgetting some minor bit of trivia or a formula. It's not supposed to be a substitute for actually learning the material.
But here we have companies complaining that it is too expensive to retain employees.. What I was trying to suggest is, if a company cannot have enough left over to make the employees happy and therefore stay, then obviously there is something fundamentally flawed with their business plan.
You are making the mistake of assuming that low employee turnover and successful business plans are highly correlated. It's pretty easy to demonstrate that this is not necessarily true. Sometimes it is too expensive to retain employees and the economically sane thing to do is to let them go and hire new as business conditions dictate. For an extreme example McDonalds has an annual turnover rate in excess of 100%. That means they will turn over more employees in the next 12 months than they currently employ. And they do this every year. This is not a sign of a bad business model, it's simply the reality of their industry. Nobody would argue that McDonalds is not a wildly successful business. And all their fast food competitors are in roughly the same position. There is no realistic way they could make the work rewarding enough to retain all those employees. The work is often unpleasant, the pay is low and there is little McDonalds can do about much of that. Sure it's cheaper if they don't have to hire new employees but that doesn't mean they will be able to keep most of them. If they doubled pay they wouldn't get double the economic output so pay is effectively capped. High turnover is not an automatic indicator of a bad business model. In fact in some cases it can be vital to the viability of the business.
Then by the laws of capitalism they should not exist!
If they lose money long enough to deplete their assets then they won't. But many companies lose money on a routine basis and have to adjust manpower levels to compensate. Sometimes it's because their industry is cyclical. Sometimes it's due to unexpected business problems. Sometimes it's just bad management. But companies can survive periods of losing money. They cannot do so indefinitely and continuing to employ surplus labor in the face of economic losses is a great way to ensure the company doesn't survive.
Furthermore many business are roughly break even propositions. It's not hard to find companies that make enough to stay in business but profits are very thin indeed. This is especially common in small businesses.
Believe it or not, at one time, companies didn't lay people off at the drop of a hat.
And now we don't because in many (not all) cases that is economically irrational.
Because hiring them back again is expensive and hiring new people means that you not only have to train them to do the job the way your company needs it done, but they also have to learn where to go in the company to get things done.
Hiring new people is expensive but keeping people employed when you don't have work for them can easily be more expensive.
There was a certain noblesse oblige there. The company took care of you and you took care of the company.
I think you have rose colored glasses there. The labor movement happened because there WASN'T any noblesse-oblige. Working conditions 100 years ago were atrocious, safety terrible, pay was low and heaven forbid you actually spoke out about any of it. Things moved slower and labor was less mobile so it was easier to keep talent for longer because it was harder for labor to move. Increased labor mobility benefits both workers and companies but there is a cost to it.
That's the thing. You're completely ignoring the emotional element, dismissing it as something valueless. But it's not just about a pay packet.
Companies by definition cannot have emotions. So any emotional attachment by an employee towards a company is inherently irrational. Either it is a good situation and you can be happy about that or it isn't good for your particular needs/wants and you should consider other options. Either the company gives you a reason to feel good about working there or they don't but there has to be a cause.
I could be making a shit ton more money elsewhere, with my skill set. But I'm not leaving, cause the company I currently work for is one of the best places I've ever worked.
There is more to a compensation package than just the salary. Working conditions, colleagues, enjoyment of work, benefits, proximity, hours, etc all play a role. It's not just about money. You obviously value the environment highly. That's fine. So do I. Some others simply want the biggest paycheck possible and don't care about the rest. That's fine too. But at the end of the day you add all that stuff up and you decide if it provides enough value to you to start/continue to work there. If you can find greener pastures somewhere else (for whatever you value most) then you are a fool to stick around out of irrational emotional loyalty.
The relationship isn't equal financially in that they make financially a substantially larger amount of money than what they pay you - which isn't disclosed to you.
That is not necessarily true. Sometimes it is true and sometimes it very much is not. Believe it or not a lot of companies don't actually make much profit. Many actually lose money. People tend to have this peculiar notion that all companies are just raking in megabucks but for many of them that is very far from the truth. Furthermore in many cases the profit of the company is published. If I worked for Apple or Google I can look up exactly how much money they made during my tenure with the company. The financial relationship is fair in the sense that the company and the employee agreed on a value for the services provided to the company by the employee.
If you make $100k but they're making $700k off of you (even after expenses), who is getting the bad deal?
False dilemma. That situation could easily be a very good situation for both parties. If either side thinks it is unfair somehow both are free to seek a better situation any time they want. But there is a market rate for salaries and both sides can get a good or bad deal if they deviate far from it. If you are making $100K and the market rate for your work is really $50K then you are getting a spectacular deal even if the company makes a handsome multiple of profit on top of that.
A company can fire you an a moment's notice but when you leave they want 2 weeks from you.
You can leave any time you want. The company is REQUIRED BY LAW to pay you for any time you have worked. The 2 week notice thing is nothing more than a courtesy. They cannot withhold pay (legally) nor can they require anything further of you unless you agreed to it in an explicit contract. The company can ask for two weeks notice but you are under no obligation to give it to them.
My take on two weeks notice is that in two weeks they will notice I haven't been there in two weeks.
Or maybe if companies showed the same loyalty to their employees that they demand from them, this wouldn't be a problem.
That's very idealistic and I respect the intent but it's just not reality and probably not sensible for either party.
First off, it's a business transaction. The company needs work done and the worker needs money to do it. If the company no longer needs that work done or if the worker isn't doing it competently or efficiently it make no sense for the company to continue to employ that person. Paying someone to do no work or for bad quality work is idiotic. Conversely if the worker can do work elsewhere and get a better compensation package or a better situation then why on earth should he/she be expected to be "loyal" to company? Neither situation is a win/win. Loyalty between employees and companies only makes sense when both side benefit. That does happen sometimes but it shouldn't be a default expectation, especially in a competitive global economy.
Second, even if both sides want to be loyal to each other economic reality sometimes makes it impossible. I have about 20 people who work for me. I would LOVE to pay them more than I do. But the industry I am in (contract assembly) is very competitive on labor costs so if I raise salaries for everyone we would be out of work faster than I can say "Chapter 11 bankruptcy". I do what I can for them but if one of them finds a better job somewhere else I just have to wish them the best and hope I can replace them with someone else who is competent. Demanding loyalty to the company from employees in that situation would be ridiculous of me.
Code that is instructions to tell a computer what to do is not "communication.
ALL code tells a computer what to do. This argument fails right out of the gate. There is no such thing as computer code that doesn't tell a computer what to do.
There can be "communication" embedded within computer instructions, and that is certainly protected.
Not only can there be, there routinely is. The argument that code is not speech as a blanket assertion is demonstrably nonsense. If you want to argue that all code is instructions but not all code is speech then you'll have to dig a little deeper.
Should a car company be compelled into having to add government mandated components (air bag, seat belt, side mirrors, headlights, etc) to their designs which are eventually made into real and tangible objects?
I don't think there is any debate that the government can mandate companies follow regulations. I think the point here is that the government is attempting to mandate Apple perform an action that is arguably unconstitutional. You can make reasonable arguments against the FBI's actions under at least the 1st and 4th amendments. The FBI's actions would have all sorts of negative knock on effects if they get their way.
And I see EFF lawyers saying code is math and is not eligible for patent protection and sometimes not even eligible for copyright protection.
Some code cannot be copyrighted, though this is the exception rather than the rule. For example I can write a hello world program but I can't copyright it because it is too basic to be considered a creative work but I can write a word processor and I can copyright that. In principle no code should be eligible for patents because the code should be adequately protected by copyright. You shouldn't be able to patent math. Patents should only be for tangible goods. But there is a sufficient level of creativity in coding that allowing a copyright is reasonable. (presuming we think copyright itself is reasonable which is a separate discussion)
I don't think the EFF is being inconsistent at all in their stance on these issues.
Code is instructions to a computer to do something.
Agreed.
The computer cannot interpret code as an expression, because computers are not sentient. Code cannot therefore be considered expression, as it is not being written to convey ideas to other people.
Your argument goes off the rails here. I absolutely can convey ideas to other people through code. You are making the mistake of presuming the computer is the audience for the ideas being conveyed. That is incorrect. Other people are the audience, the computer is merely the means. Saying code cannot be used to convey ideas is as absurd as saying written music cannot convey ideas because you need a musical instrument to play it.
I was asking why the U.S. dollar is not fan based, is it because of faith and trust in the government? That would sound more like fandom to me.
Nobody really needs to be a fan of the US government to realize that a currency backed by the taxing authority of the country with the biggest economy and biggest military which is accepted in trade around the globe and a long record of stability is probably of practical value. Bitcoin on the other hand is thinly traded, volatile, digital only, and relies on technology of uncertain robustness. Those things matter a lot.
The majority of pragmatists using bitcoin seem to be people engaged in activities that are not exactly legal. I'm not judging but the evidence is clear that the most enthusiastic users of bitcoin appear to be people engaged in drug trafficking or other activities where money laundering and identity hiding are of practical value. Many of the rest of the users of bitcoin seem to be people who are ideologically inclined to dislike government and/or fiat currencies or who are of the opinion that some version of the gold standard should come back. These people like the idea of bitcoin and tend to be the loudest proponents of it, a bit like fan-fiction writers. Hence the (perhaps unfair) moniker.
As opposed to paper currencies which hold value precisely as long as people believe that they do (i.e. a fan currency).
ALL currencies only have value because people believe they have value. People who back the gold standard or similar schemes merely suffer from the delusion that gold is any different in this respect. People who support bitcoin are under the (I believe mistaken) belief that a digital mimic of the gold standard via cryptography somehow solves the problems that forced everyone away from the gold standard. But no matter what currency you use the only reason any of it has value is because people believe it has value.
Unless you plan on dying sometime soon, it will. It isn't? 12 years ago self driving cars were a pipe dream. Now they're here.
Not even remotely a relevant comparison. First off self driving vehicles have been around for a LOT longer than 12 years. We've had vehicles (usually military) that could navigate autonomously for decades. Think cruise missiles and autopilot on airplanes. We're just now getting to the point where we can put such technologies into cars (a harder problem) and even then we're still a fair ways off from hands off operation in a car you can buy from a dealer for daily use. (no matter what Elon Musk promises) Second, robotic surgery is FAR more complex than driving a car. It's not even close. And our state of the art in technology just isn't there yet. Hopefully one day it will be but it's going to be a bit of a wait. We're just in the infancy of that technology.
The number of luddites on Slashdot amazes me for a side for nerds.
"Luddites"? Really? You're on a site with people who are actually smart enough to actually understand the problems with proposed technologies and who often have direct experience with them. I think the idea of autonomous surgical robots is awesome. Hope we see it someday. I also have worked with robotic technology in my day job and have a fairly good appreciation of the state of the art. I'm not claiming it can never happen. What I am certain of is that we are a LOOOONG way away from autonomous robotic surgery being a real thing. I honestly think we'll see commercially viable nuclear fusion before we see autonomous robotic surgery. Going by actuarial tables I have about 40 years left in my life and I doubt we'll see commercially viable autonomous surgery before I die. I think we'll see a lot of progress towards it during my life but I don't think we'll see the full thing for a long time.
I'll take a highschool student vocationally trained in how to do an ACL surgery with an Xbox 360 controller over someone that had to spend 40 years of their life just to operate out on their own.
Then you'd be an idiot. You don't need a surgeon for routine procedures. Medical students can and often do perform parts of simple operations. You need a surgeon for when the shit hits the fan. For when unexpected things happen. When a patient codes on the table. When the operation is something new or difficult. THAT is when you need a surgeon. If your Xbox player runs into anything out of the ordinary you likely are going to die on the table. Might not be the best plan ever.
Maybe not ideally, but what if there's no other choice?
What do you mean "no other choice"? There is NO choice. There are no autonomous robots that can replace people for surgery and no reasonable likelihood we will see one in the next 30 years. It's science fiction and will remain so for a long time to come.
As for remote operation, the economics of it make it impossible even if the technology were currently feasible (which it isn't). You seriously think there is going to be a market for hugely expensive remote surgery devices in places were about 3 people live just in case something goes wrong? Even if they were available this sort of thing would be anything but cheap. Furthermore there would be all sorts of storage issues with things like anesthesia. Drugs have shelf lives and specific storage requirements without even getting into the challenges of administering them.
Situations like this are where autosurgeons will make inroads.
You are talking about it like it's a real thing. It isn't and it won't be any time soon. The state of the art in technology is no where close to the point where autonomous robotic surgery would be even remotely feasible.