Nope, with me...GIVE ME MONEY....plain and simple.
There is one and ONLY one reason I work....money.
If I were wealthy enough to never have to work a day in my life, I'd not work. If I won the powerball, and cleared let's say...$2.5-$3M after taxes, I figure I could live on interest alone for the rest of my days. If that happened, I don't actually know if I'd bother calling into work saying I'd not be back...I'd be too busy leaving skid marks out the door.
The only reason I work, is to support the lifestyle I like with the things I can buy, travel and do....
I contract...so, I negotiate my bill rate to cover my time I want to take off annually....so, no need for extra vacation. If you want me, PAY me...pay me for every single hour I work, none of this salary BS where you get 'free' work out of me, etc. If you want to impress me, give me more money.
Good for you. More power to you. Each person or household has a unique cash flow. Adapt your income and benefits ratio accordingly.
"We uncovered an opportunity to improve the way we reward people for their contributions," GE's head of executive development, Janice Semper said. "It will involve being flexible and re-thinking how we define rewards, "
Translation: We're always looking for new ways to screw our employees.
No. I thought so at first, but further digging, this makes a lot of sense and is something many companies and contractors have been doing for quite some time.
Typical negotiation with a potential employer (small/mid size company) goes like this. If the company cannot or does not want to give the salary being asked by the applicant, something can be negotiated, such as additional vacation time, or a larger 401K contribution.
I for one could be happier with an additional week of vacation over a 2-3% increase, every per year. Or additional personal holidays, or the ability to take every other Friday off (like the 9/80 programs many government contractors have.)
For single people I wouldn't recommend such a trade-off. You want to earn and save as much as you can when you do not have kids. Once you have kids (like myself), or have to travel abroad to see in-laws (again, like myself), or many other reasons, you might want to have additional vacation time.
Not everything has to be a nefarious plot, even in cut-throat corporate America.
But what happens with inflation. Sure I would love more PTO or a greater contribution to my 401K but if my salary remains the same while prices of goods and services rise even 1-2% a year I am loosing money and my salary will eventually "become unlivable"
At that point you look for a better job. That's what I've been doing for the last 25 years. Or what? Were you thinking about staying at a job for life?
When you do not get an increase, you look for other perks. Then you make a decision of how long you can stay there. That is your threshold, and you more or less calculate when it becomes a losing proposition (say, 5 years from now.)
So from then on, you start planning what your next job should be like, what salaries you expect to get, then you look for it and you jump.
At some point then it will be the same, no more increase. Then you look for perks. Then you jump. Rinse and repeat.
"We uncovered an opportunity to improve the way we reward people for their contributions," GE's head of executive development, Janice Semper said. "It will involve being flexible and re-thinking how we define rewards, "
Translation: We're always looking for new ways to screw our employees.
No. I thought so at first, but further digging, this makes a lot of sense and is something many companies and contractors have been doing for quite some time.
Typical negotiation with a potential employer (small/mid size company) goes like this. If the company cannot or does not want to give the salary being asked by the applicant, something can be negotiated, such as additional vacation time, or a larger 401K contribution.
I for one could be happier with an additional week of vacation over a 2-3% increase, every per year. Or additional personal holidays, or the ability to take every other Friday off (like the 9/80 programs many government contractors have.)
For single people I wouldn't recommend such a trade-off. You want to earn and save as much as you can when you do not have kids. Once you have kids (like myself), or have to travel abroad to see in-laws (again, like myself), or many other reasons, you might want to have additional vacation time.
Not everything has to be a nefarious plot, even in cut-throat corporate America.
The CEO of Endgame, Inc. is calling for an "offensive mindset" to defend enterprises from hackers.
In other words, this ignore the fact that most hacking incidents are the result of gross negligence and incompetence (most of that shit would be stopped on its track if people do their security homework and put the necessary money in IT and user training.)
Moreover, it tell us to go wild west hunting for hackers. How far would you take that? Hack others before they hack you? Block others that might be suspicious? Because if you take this shit to its logical conclusion, that is where we end up.
Look, just do your bloody homework when it comes to security.
Couldn't you just go to the library and get a desk and computer for free?
It's more than that. You get dedicated network services, and in some cases, a business number with a receptionist/secretary, PO boxes, etc. You can have a business presence on-demand, or a-la carte. This is more important when you have to meet with customers. You can book conference rooms, pay-as-you-go, to meet your customers while doing most of your work from home, let's say.
It is a balance. For some people it might be better just to lease an office. For others, shared workspace might be the way to go. It's all a matter of your specific accounting and cash flows needs.
In this economy, you're better off without a job than you would be with a lot of the jobs that are offered...
I know a few unemployed people who will be happy to tell you that you are just talking out of your ass. Seriously, who the hell could possibly believe such a blatant falsehood?
Employees say they are training overseas workers via web conferencing sessions. There are contractors in the office as well, some of whom may be working on temporary H-1B visas.
Unless you are living in a small town or city with few IT employment options, if you get caught in such a situation, you allowed yourself to be cornered into that kind of situation. This kind of shit does not happen all of the sudden. The writings are always on the wall for a long enough time for anyone to orchestrate a plan B or C.
Always have your bug-out bag ready, specially if you work in IT. That's your job security. Otherwise, you will always live in angst waiting for years for someone to give you the pink slip (and finally getting it with no options ready.)
Chose one:
[ ] Hillary - lying, cheating, corrupt politician who will deliver status quo, leaning left.
[ ] The Donald - Exaggerating bullshit artist bigot who will deliver status quo (after hiring help), leaning ? (talks right, does left)
[ ] A Circus - multiple 3rd party candidates all jump in the race and the election is a free-for-all, winner will deliver status quo...
There. Fixed that for you. And no, don't pretend he is not a bigot. He's a vulgarian version of George Wallace.
... who always followed the mantra that growing a business is more important than making it profitable. So in his world, there cannot possibly be limits of growth just because earth has limited surface/resources, and just because bringing things into space is extremely expensive (and usually costs more energy than that thing could harvest in space).
To any reasonable person, of course, his opinion is total bullshit.
Reasonable people do not build empires or dominating enterprises. Bezos/Amazon fit that description.
Do you have any idea on how much of a hubristic idiot one must be to even consider the possibility that one is able to predict the future this far ahead ?
He is not predicting. He is laying out a proposed plan and he wants to be part of the first building blocks. Whether the final product occurs in the next few centuries is not so much relevant as having a long-term investment plan for the next 2-3 decades under the assumption of continuous technological progress.
People like him have the means and ambitions to pursue it. If they fail, they fail. If they succeed, they succeed. The rest of us can simply play armchair coaches without any sort of ambition.
This guy doesn't realize he's talking about hundreds of megawatts here, entire power stations for single factories.
No. He realizes the challenges ahead, and he is talking from the point of view of projecting work in terms of decades, not just years. Add 5 decades of dedicated work, and these problems are solvable.
This is what critics are missing. Bezos (and people like him) are making a decades-long bet. They are not taking about this shit with the idea of cashing in the next calendar year or at the turn of the next quarter.
Within the span of 10 years, of course, the problems are impossibly expensive and technically daunting. Add 2-3 decades of continuous technological improvement (assuming we don't fuck ourselves back to the stone age), and it is very possible that these issues can be resolved.
It is a bet. And it is a bet Bezos et al are making.
Actually population growth freezes itself when you educate people. Look at Japan. Low immigration and low birthrate has lead to population decline.
Education is not the reason why Japan is experiencing a population growth freeze. Japanese means of production are incredibly female-unfriendly (I've been in Japan, I've seen it.) A woman gets the choice of either work or have babies. There is little infrastructure or services for affordable child care. Even with maternity leave, the system makes it impossible and costly for a married woman to go back to work.
This is very unlike other developed countries.
And what you seen then is that pretty much half of the work force in on the bench, with families supported by one source of income. Since child care is so expensive, the end result was inevitable: marry later, and wait into your late 30s to have one child (because, even though the majority of couples want to have two, they truly cannot afford to do so.)
This wasn't like that before. In the 60's and 70's, it was easy for a married woman to get a part-time job at a factory, and the cost of raising a child wasn't as much. But that is no longer true.
Education is not the reason (or at the very least one of the primary ones) for the population implosion. That is just a cultural projection being made. That is all.
in general i would agree, but the OP stated otherwise. that was my complaint
So, if instead of having said this:
Compared to a poor black kid, you did.
He should have said this?
Compared to a stereotypical poor black kid, chances are you might have.
Or
There was less probability of you facing the same challenges as the stereotypical poor black kid.
I'm not trying to be an asshole. I'm asking in earnest.
I can clearly see how the OP's statements could have offended you (and rightly so). But to me, I read them to imply the elaborate examples above because those probabilities are a certainty. I don't know man, sometimes the Internet makes it difficult to capture the subtleties of speech.
I think it's sad that you believe the examples you presented don't happen to caucasians too.
Ok, I'll bite. Per capita, do the different ethnic groups in this country experience the same level of racism?
Minorities do no have a monopoly on being treated poorly by others.
We are not talking about merely being treated poorly by others. We are talking about systemic abuse and roadblocks that some groups experience at a much greater frequency than others.
Furthermore, I provided specific examples the nature and frequency of which are backed by history. Unlike you, I did not just talk about people being treated badly. Bad treatment is something that affects all poor people regardless of race. But there is a very specific subset of mistreatment that occurs again and again, with some groups getting the brunt of it, which is part of this country's history.
I refer, again, to last year story about lending discrimination (link here.) A better article about this specific case can be found here.
I will also refer to you to the lawsuit brought against Toyota for discriminating against Blacks and Asians (link here.)
I will also refer to you to the recent case in Denver of six Black employees and one White whistleblower against a warehouse with a habit of calling blacks “lazy, stupid Africans” and punishing those who complained. Link here.)
Again, this is not about, as you put it, believing bad shit doesn't happen to Caucasians. This is beyond what we think of bad shit happening in life. This is methodical, hard-to-eradicate racism whose targets are very specific.
I believe everyone should get treated fair, and about all, equally. Unless you are saying that all groups are systematically getting the same levels bad treatment (and you can prove it), your argument has no leg to stand on.
How was the OP racist? Here we have one white dude replying to another white dude about what he thinks about privilege. He was not condescending or insulting. If he was racist, quote what he said. Call him out with specifics. Prove him wrong.
the only message poor white people hear from the left is... you have white privilege.
I grew up as a poor white kid. The only privilege I had was what I worked for.
Sure, now tell me I had privilege but I just didn't know it... you're right (about not knowing it). I saw no evidence of it in any part of my life.
I'm going to ask you to please read this twice, very carefully, before you decide to comment.
In this context, privilege is the fact you will most likely never suffer from loan discrimination practices (see link to recent story.)
Privilege is the fact that no one is ever going to tell you you are a quota hire (specially by people less qualified than you.)
Privilege is the fact that no lady is every going to hold her purse a little harder when you are next to her, even when you are wearing a business suit and carrying an expensive suit case.
Privilege is the fact that you can go house/condo hunting at an upscale zip code wearing shorts and sandals, and that you will never be forced to dress business casual just to get a sales person to make time for you (or to lie you that they do not have any new units left even though they do.)
Privilege is the fact no one is going to intercept you as you take your kids for a walk around your gated community to ask, to demand at point blank if you live here.
(*) All the things I listed, they have happened to me as a professional Hispanic of good financial means. African-Americans have it worse. I've personally witness people denying jobs to Black people TWICE freely stating that color was the factor. The things I've seen... SMH.
In this context, privilege is not about making your life easier, or giving you hand outs.
It's about being able to live like a human, without having a system bent over in tripping you as you try to live your life. It's living without being surrounded by ignorant assholes who 1) assume the worst of you, and 2) act upon those assumptions in such ways that 3) have actual, measurable negative effects in your life.
You struggled and succeeded. You deserve credit for that. Now, think of those struggles and imagine a system that, at every other struggle, it puts an asshole that tries to trip you, assault you and sometimes even lynch you.)
The word privilege in this context is not about you or whether your struggles were real, or whether you deserve praise for the fruits of you labor. It is not about blaming you, you specifically. It is about the fact we live in a nation that, even after 5 fucking decades after the civil rights acts, it is still plagued by systemic discrimination.
Privilege here stands for the fact that the fundamental right of being treated equally is still treated as a privilege that can be denied to a whole class of people whenever a hateful motherfucker feels like it.
Most foreign slashdoters, and even most local, have no clue how the U.S. government works. Most of them think of the President as a king or dictator. His word is law. That isn't the way it is. Outside the scope of his office the president has no more power than a normal citizen of the United States. Granted the power inside his office is vast but it is limited.
When it comes to shaping public policy the president can only really issue decrees called executive orders.
As a US citizen, I'll call bs on this assertion that a POTUS has limited power (as in minimal power.)
Yes, he is not king.
No, he can have enormous influences in governance, politics and law.
He nominates to the SCOTUS. And he has the power to issue executive orders that can have enormous implications both negative (ie. Internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII) and positives (de-segragation of public schools.)
Additionally, he has the power to direct departments to implement change with enormous implications (think Obama's new ruling regarding overtime pay.)
And if we were to assume the generalization that foreigners are so uneducated that they think the US POTUS as a king of sorts, let us not forget how many Americans operate under the same premise : Trump will single handedly, by pure sheer bravado will bring all those jobs back from China and, like in the old cotton farm days, he will whip the backs of those lowly Mexicans with his yuuuuuge dick until they build a wall (and no, I'm not exaggerating, some people truly believe this shit.)
The more people like him insult the people that support politicians like Trump, the more effort they'll put into making sure their candidate gets elected.
That is not reason enough to call such people for what they are: dumb, and in many cases (not all, but many) dangerously bigoted. If you, the generic you, think such people deserve criticism (or even scorn) then blast away. We don't appease to such people just because they might win.
I don't understand why Hawking's opinions about anything outside of physics is given publicity. Although one of the most brilliant minds of our time, in his field, he's not a politician nor a businessman.
Maybe because he is one of the most brilliant humans of our current times who, by his life works and words has made him both an intellectual and moral figure. I would venture to say that, although he is neither a politician, nor a businessman, he might have a better grasp at issues in those domains than the average Joe or Bubba.
Plus, he is not talking about specific (or complex/esoteric) political policies or business practices. He is talking from an ethical POV using history as a guide.
And therein lies the problem - Is it possible to demonstrate a proof through brute force?
For classes of problems whose solution space are finite, then yes, it is possible, and in many cases, desirable. If the solution space has properties similar to a finite subset of, say, the natural numbers, then you could prove by induction. Depending on the situation, some of these problems are easier to prove via induction, and other times, by simply iterating over the problem space.
Why is it that the shittyest ideas seem to catch on and become trends, and good ideas fall by the wayside? The single combined charge/USB/thunderbold port is a great example, but also making it 0.1mm thinner every year, getting rid of SD card slots (on both phones and laptops), soldered in SSDs and RAM, super glossy screens you can't read, glued in batteries, track pads with hidden buttons, webcams without hardware shutters/disable switches...
The removal of USB ports and sd card readers are, IMO, a strategic decision to push data storage to the cloud (read, a cloud provider associated to or owned by the manufacturer.) It's no longer customer capturing, but customer sequestration.
I do not like this trend one bit. And by that, I do not mean using cloud storage (I use it at a lot). It is the not-so-surreptitious removal of my storage and connectivity options that I do not like. And as things progress, the only option is *to not use such devices*. But that isn't that much of an option for most either.
You might want to adopt early to immediately assess the risk, to understand the nature of operations.
We call those pilots, and they're done on a small scale and considered a sub-optimal cost paid to gain organizational knowledge so as to improve the strategic decisions made later.
Not really. Without going into details, I've worked in projects (energy sector) where it was imperative to adopt new technology to immediately break into an emerging market (and we did it successfully). This was nothing like a pilot, but a massive, winner-takes-all overhaul.
a better educated workforce
Workforce development should be the responsibility of the businesses.
There is "should", and there is "is". I know for a fact that training used to be a business priority. Not anymore, not for the last 25 years. We can deliberate on whether businesses should or should not do workforce development. If that shit is not happening, then what? This is where the government comes. And it did before quite successfully (the GI Bill.)
and a simplified corporate tax code
Easier said than done.
I didn't say it was easy. I said that it is necessary. The ease or difficulty of doing something has little relation to its necessity or lack thereof. We either do it or we don't (and we live with the consequences thereafter.)
Your PC is accessing remote servers for license validation, you get upgrades over the internet. You do not own the OS, you own a license to use it. I am not saying what is right or wrong (I don't fall for is/ought fallacies). I'm simply stating the state of things. We can choose not to deal with these things by not using MS software (with all the pros and cons of such choices.) It is a matter of choices, not necessarily the choices you, the generic you, want, but the ones that exist.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, with me...GIVE ME MONEY....plain and simple.
There is one and ONLY one reason I work....money.
If I were wealthy enough to never have to work a day in my life, I'd not work. If I won the powerball, and cleared let's say...$2.5-$3M after taxes, I figure I could live on interest alone for the rest of my days. If that happened, I don't actually know if I'd bother calling into work saying I'd not be back...I'd be too busy leaving skid marks out the door.
The only reason I work, is to support the lifestyle I like with the things I can buy, travel and do....
I contract...so, I negotiate my bill rate to cover my time I want to take off annually....so, no need for extra vacation. If you want me, PAY me...pay me for every single hour I work, none of this salary BS where you get 'free' work out of me, etc. If you want to impress me, give me more money.
Good for you. More power to you. Each person or household has a unique cash flow. Adapt your income and benefits ratio accordingly.
"We uncovered an opportunity to improve the way we reward people for their contributions," GE's head of executive development, Janice Semper said. "It will involve being flexible and re-thinking how we define rewards, "
Translation: We're always looking for new ways to screw our employees.
No. I thought so at first, but further digging, this makes a lot of sense and is something many companies and contractors have been doing for quite some time.
Typical negotiation with a potential employer (small/mid size company) goes like this. If the company cannot or does not want to give the salary being asked by the applicant, something can be negotiated, such as additional vacation time, or a larger 401K contribution.
I for one could be happier with an additional week of vacation over a 2-3% increase, every per year. Or additional personal holidays, or the ability to take every other Friday off (like the 9/80 programs many government contractors have.)
For single people I wouldn't recommend such a trade-off. You want to earn and save as much as you can when you do not have kids. Once you have kids (like myself), or have to travel abroad to see in-laws (again, like myself), or many other reasons, you might want to have additional vacation time.
Not everything has to be a nefarious plot, even in cut-throat corporate America.
But what happens with inflation. Sure I would love more PTO or a greater contribution to my 401K but if my salary remains the same while prices of goods and services rise even 1-2% a year I am loosing money and my salary will eventually "become unlivable"
At that point you look for a better job. That's what I've been doing for the last 25 years. Or what? Were you thinking about staying at a job for life?
When you do not get an increase, you look for other perks. Then you make a decision of how long you can stay there. That is your threshold, and you more or less calculate when it becomes a losing proposition (say, 5 years from now.)
So from then on, you start planning what your next job should be like, what salaries you expect to get, then you look for it and you jump.
At some point then it will be the same, no more increase. Then you look for perks. Then you jump. Rinse and repeat.
"We uncovered an opportunity to improve the way we reward people for their contributions," GE's head of executive development, Janice Semper said. "It will involve being flexible and re-thinking how we define rewards, "
Translation: We're always looking for new ways to screw our employees.
No. I thought so at first, but further digging, this makes a lot of sense and is something many companies and contractors have been doing for quite some time.
Typical negotiation with a potential employer (small/mid size company) goes like this. If the company cannot or does not want to give the salary being asked by the applicant, something can be negotiated, such as additional vacation time, or a larger 401K contribution.
I for one could be happier with an additional week of vacation over a 2-3% increase, every per year. Or additional personal holidays, or the ability to take every other Friday off (like the 9/80 programs many government contractors have.)
For single people I wouldn't recommend such a trade-off. You want to earn and save as much as you can when you do not have kids. Once you have kids (like myself), or have to travel abroad to see in-laws (again, like myself), or many other reasons, you might want to have additional vacation time. Not everything has to be a nefarious plot, even in cut-throat corporate America.
The CEO of Endgame, Inc. is calling for an "offensive mindset" to defend enterprises from hackers.
In other words, this ignore the fact that most hacking incidents are the result of gross negligence and incompetence (most of that shit would be stopped on its track if people do their security homework and put the necessary money in IT and user training.)
Moreover, it tell us to go wild west hunting for hackers. How far would you take that? Hack others before they hack you? Block others that might be suspicious? Because if you take this shit to its logical conclusion, that is where we end up.
Look, just do your bloody homework when it comes to security.
which lets members rent desks in an open office
Couldn't you just go to the library and get a desk and computer for free?
It's more than that. You get dedicated network services, and in some cases, a business number with a receptionist/secretary, PO boxes, etc. You can have a business presence on-demand, or a-la carte. This is more important when you have to meet with customers. You can book conference rooms, pay-as-you-go, to meet your customers while doing most of your work from home, let's say.
It is a balance. For some people it might be better just to lease an office. For others, shared workspace might be the way to go. It's all a matter of your specific accounting and cash flows needs.
In this economy, you're better off without a job than you would be with a lot of the jobs that are offered...
I know a few unemployed people who will be happy to tell you that you are just talking out of your ass. Seriously, who the hell could possibly believe such a blatant falsehood?
Employees say they are training overseas workers via web conferencing sessions. There are contractors in the office as well, some of whom may be working on temporary H-1B visas.
Unless you are living in a small town or city with few IT employment options, if you get caught in such a situation, you allowed yourself to be cornered into that kind of situation. This kind of shit does not happen all of the sudden. The writings are always on the wall for a long enough time for anyone to orchestrate a plan B or C.
Always have your bug-out bag ready, specially if you work in IT. That's your job security. Otherwise, you will always live in angst waiting for years for someone to give you the pink slip (and finally getting it with no options ready.)
Chose one: [ ] Hillary - lying, cheating, corrupt politician who will deliver status quo, leaning left. [ ] The Donald - Exaggerating bullshit artist bigot who will deliver status quo (after hiring help), leaning ? (talks right, does left) [ ] A Circus - multiple 3rd party candidates all jump in the race and the election is a free-for-all, winner will deliver status quo...
There. Fixed that for you. And no, don't pretend he is not a bigot. He's a vulgarian version of George Wallace.
... who always followed the mantra that growing a business is more important than making it profitable. So in his world, there cannot possibly be limits of growth just because earth has limited surface/resources, and just because bringing things into space is extremely expensive (and usually costs more energy than that thing could harvest in space).
To any reasonable person, of course, his opinion is total bullshit.
Reasonable people do not build empires or dominating enterprises. Bezos/Amazon fit that description.
Do you have any idea on how much of a hubristic idiot one must be to even consider the possibility that one is able to predict the future this far ahead ?
He is not predicting. He is laying out a proposed plan and he wants to be part of the first building blocks. Whether the final product occurs in the next few centuries is not so much relevant as having a long-term investment plan for the next 2-3 decades under the assumption of continuous technological progress.
People like him have the means and ambitions to pursue it. If they fail, they fail. If they succeed, they succeed. The rest of us can simply play armchair coaches without any sort of ambition.
This guy doesn't realize he's talking about hundreds of megawatts here, entire power stations for single factories.
No. He realizes the challenges ahead, and he is talking from the point of view of projecting work in terms of decades, not just years. Add 5 decades of dedicated work, and these problems are solvable.
This is what critics are missing. Bezos (and people like him) are making a decades-long bet. They are not taking about this shit with the idea of cashing in the next calendar year or at the turn of the next quarter.
Within the span of 10 years, of course, the problems are impossibly expensive and technically daunting. Add 2-3 decades of continuous technological improvement (assuming we don't fuck ourselves back to the stone age), and it is very possible that these issues can be resolved.
It is a bet. And it is a bet Bezos et al are making.
Actually population growth freezes itself when you educate people. Look at Japan. Low immigration and low birthrate has lead to population decline.
Education is not the reason why Japan is experiencing a population growth freeze. Japanese means of production are incredibly female-unfriendly (I've been in Japan, I've seen it.) A woman gets the choice of either work or have babies. There is little infrastructure or services for affordable child care. Even with maternity leave, the system makes it impossible and costly for a married woman to go back to work.
This is very unlike other developed countries.
And what you seen then is that pretty much half of the work force in on the bench, with families supported by one source of income. Since child care is so expensive, the end result was inevitable: marry later, and wait into your late 30s to have one child (because, even though the majority of couples want to have two, they truly cannot afford to do so.)
This wasn't like that before. In the 60's and 70's, it was easy for a married woman to get a part-time job at a factory, and the cost of raising a child wasn't as much. But that is no longer true.
Education is not the reason (or at the very least one of the primary ones) for the population implosion. That is just a cultural projection being made. That is all.
in general i would agree, but the OP stated otherwise. that was my complaint
So, if instead of having said this:
Compared to a poor black kid, you did.
He should have said this?
Compared to a stereotypical poor black kid, chances are you might have.
Or
There was less probability of you facing the same challenges as the stereotypical poor black kid.
I'm not trying to be an asshole. I'm asking in earnest.
I can clearly see how the OP's statements could have offended you (and rightly so). But to me, I read them to imply the elaborate examples above because those probabilities are a certainty. I don't know man, sometimes the Internet makes it difficult to capture the subtleties of speech.
I think it's sad that you believe the examples you presented don't happen to caucasians too.
Ok, I'll bite. Per capita, do the different ethnic groups in this country experience the same level of racism?
Minorities do no have a monopoly on being treated poorly by others.
We are not talking about merely being treated poorly by others. We are talking about systemic abuse and roadblocks that some groups experience at a much greater frequency than others.
Furthermore, I provided specific examples the nature and frequency of which are backed by history. Unlike you, I did not just talk about people being treated badly. Bad treatment is something that affects all poor people regardless of race. But there is a very specific subset of mistreatment that occurs again and again, with some groups getting the brunt of it, which is part of this country's history.
I refer, again, to last year story about lending discrimination (link here.) A better article about this specific case can be found here .
I will also refer to you to the lawsuit brought against Toyota for discriminating against Blacks and Asians (link here.)
I will also refer to you to the recent case in Denver of six Black employees and one White whistleblower against a warehouse with a habit of calling blacks “lazy, stupid Africans” and punishing those who complained. Link here.)
Again, this is not about, as you put it, believing bad shit doesn't happen to Caucasians. This is beyond what we think of bad shit happening in life. This is methodical, hard-to-eradicate racism whose targets are very specific.
I believe everyone should get treated fair, and about all, equally. Unless you are saying that all groups are systematically getting the same levels bad treatment (and you can prove it), your argument has no leg to stand on.
this person has no clue what this kid grew up with or without yet is claiming that he had it better than others because of his race...thats racism
Is it racism to state a kid growing up poor and Black will, in general face greater obstacles than a kid growing up poor and non-Black?
Notwithstanding the obvious outliers, is this statement inaccurate?
your racism is showing. stop generalizing
Expound on this.
How was the OP racist? Here we have one white dude replying to another white dude about what he thinks about privilege. He was not condescending or insulting. If he was racist, quote what he said. Call him out with specifics. Prove him wrong.
the only message poor white people hear from the left is... you have white privilege.
I grew up as a poor white kid. The only privilege I had was what I worked for.
Sure, now tell me I had privilege but I just didn't know it ... you're right (about not knowing it). I saw no evidence of it in any part of my life.
I'm going to ask you to please read this twice, very carefully, before you decide to comment.
In this context, privilege is the fact you will most likely never suffer from loan discrimination practices (see link to recent story.)
Privilege is the fact that no one is ever going to tell you you are a quota hire (specially by people less qualified than you.)
Privilege is the fact that no lady is every going to hold her purse a little harder when you are next to her, even when you are wearing a business suit and carrying an expensive suit case.
Privilege is the fact that you can go house/condo hunting at an upscale zip code wearing shorts and sandals, and that you will never be forced to dress business casual just to get a sales person to make time for you (or to lie you that they do not have any new units left even though they do.)
Privilege is the fact no one is going to intercept you as you take your kids for a walk around your gated community to ask, to demand at point blank if you live here.
(*) All the things I listed, they have happened to me as a professional Hispanic of good financial means. African-Americans have it worse. I've personally witness people denying jobs to Black people TWICE freely stating that color was the factor. The things I've seen... SMH.
In this context, privilege is not about making your life easier, or giving you hand outs.
It's about being able to live like a human, without having a system bent over in tripping you as you try to live your life. It's living without being surrounded by ignorant assholes who 1) assume the worst of you, and 2) act upon those assumptions in such ways that 3) have actual, measurable negative effects in your life.
You struggled and succeeded. You deserve credit for that. Now, think of those struggles and imagine a system that, at every other struggle, it puts an asshole that tries to trip you, assault you and sometimes even lynch you.)
The word privilege in this context is not about you or whether your struggles were real, or whether you deserve praise for the fruits of you labor. It is not about blaming you, you specifically. It is about the fact we live in a nation that, even after 5 fucking decades after the civil rights acts, it is still plagued by systemic discrimination.
Privilege here stands for the fact that the fundamental right of being treated equally is still treated as a privilege that can be denied to a whole class of people whenever a hateful motherfucker feels like it.
Most foreign slashdoters, and even most local, have no clue how the U.S. government works. Most of them think of the President as a king or dictator. His word is law. That isn't the way it is. Outside the scope of his office the president has no more power than a normal citizen of the United States. Granted the power inside his office is vast but it is limited.
When it comes to shaping public policy the president can only really issue decrees called executive orders.
As a US citizen, I'll call bs on this assertion that a POTUS has limited power (as in minimal power.)
Yes, he is not king.
No, he can have enormous influences in governance, politics and law.
He nominates to the SCOTUS. And he has the power to issue executive orders that can have enormous implications both negative (ie. Internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII) and positives (de-segragation of public schools.)
Additionally, he has the power to direct departments to implement change with enormous implications (think Obama's new ruling regarding overtime pay.)
And if we were to assume the generalization that foreigners are so uneducated that they think the US POTUS as a king of sorts, let us not forget how many Americans operate under the same premise : Trump will single handedly, by pure sheer bravado will bring all those jobs back from China and, like in the old cotton farm days, he will whip the backs of those lowly Mexicans with his yuuuuuge dick until they build a wall (and no, I'm not exaggerating, some people truly believe this shit.)
The more people like him insult the people that support politicians like Trump, the more effort they'll put into making sure their candidate gets elected.
That is not reason enough to call such people for what they are: dumb, and in many cases (not all, but many) dangerously bigoted. If you, the generic you, think such people deserve criticism (or even scorn) then blast away. We don't appease to such people just because they might win.
I don't understand why Hawking's opinions about anything outside of physics is given publicity. Although one of the most brilliant minds of our time, in his field, he's not a politician nor a businessman.
Maybe because he is one of the most brilliant humans of our current times who, by his life works and words has made him both an intellectual and moral figure. I would venture to say that, although he is neither a politician, nor a businessman, he might have a better grasp at issues in those domains than the average Joe or Bubba.
Plus, he is not talking about specific (or complex/esoteric) political policies or business practices. He is talking from an ethical POV using history as a guide.
42... A very finite number indeed.
And therein lies the problem - Is it possible to demonstrate a proof through brute force?
For classes of problems whose solution space are finite, then yes, it is possible, and in many cases, desirable. If the solution space has properties similar to a finite subset of, say, the natural numbers, then you could prove by induction. Depending on the situation, some of these problems are easier to prove via induction, and other times, by simply iterating over the problem space.
Why is it that the shittyest ideas seem to catch on and become trends, and good ideas fall by the wayside? The single combined charge/USB/thunderbold port is a great example, but also making it 0.1mm thinner every year, getting rid of SD card slots (on both phones and laptops), soldered in SSDs and RAM, super glossy screens you can't read, glued in batteries, track pads with hidden buttons, webcams without hardware shutters/disable switches...
The removal of USB ports and sd card readers are, IMO, a strategic decision to push data storage to the cloud (read, a cloud provider associated to or owned by the manufacturer.) It's no longer customer capturing, but customer sequestration.
I do not like this trend one bit. And by that, I do not mean using cloud storage (I use it at a lot). It is the not-so-surreptitious removal of my storage and connectivity options that I do not like. And as things progress, the only option is *to not use such devices*. But that isn't that much of an option for most either.
You are not a true developer then
And this, ladies and gents, is what we call a "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
You might want to adopt early to immediately assess the risk, to understand the nature of operations.
We call those pilots, and they're done on a small scale and considered a sub-optimal cost paid to gain organizational knowledge so as to improve the strategic decisions made later.
Not really. Without going into details, I've worked in projects (energy sector) where it was imperative to adopt new technology to immediately break into an emerging market (and we did it successfully). This was nothing like a pilot, but a massive, winner-takes-all overhaul.
a better educated workforce
Workforce development should be the responsibility of the businesses.
There is "should", and there is "is". I know for a fact that training used to be a business priority. Not anymore, not for the last 25 years. We can deliberate on whether businesses should or should not do workforce development. If that shit is not happening, then what? This is where the government comes. And it did before quite successfully (the GI Bill.)
and a simplified corporate tax code
Easier said than done.
I didn't say it was easy. I said that it is necessary. The ease or difficulty of doing something has little relation to its necessity or lack thereof. We either do it or we don't (and we live with the consequences thereafter.)
Your PC is accessing remote servers for license validation, you get upgrades over the internet. You do not own the OS, you own a license to use it. I am not saying what is right or wrong (I don't fall for is/ought fallacies). I'm simply stating the state of things. We can choose not to deal with these things by not using MS software (with all the pros and cons of such choices.) It is a matter of choices, not necessarily the choices you, the generic you, want, but the ones that exist.