An employer has a limited amount of money with which to compensate employees.
But an employee who stays in the office for 80 hours, is not twice as productive as an employee who stays 40 hours. In many cases it's probably the other way round - especially if that's been going on long enough. There are too many incompetent managers who force way too much overtime - if this becomes a cost factor it will be noticed on the balance sheet. This may well help to reduce the useless overtime, and there is way too much of that now.
This works both ways - if the company is focussed only on costs, they'll outsource as much as they possibly can already. Programmers in India are already cheaper, whether you count overtime or not. So if they haven't outsourced your job yet, that must mean that doing so does not work out to be for the companies benefit. Maybe they can't get the expertise, maybe they need someone local, maybe they are too small - whatever the reason is. So if this means you'll get more money for a while - great, take it and save or invest it, then you have some security should you get layed off later. You can try and ask for less money now, and hope the company rewards it with job security - I think that's a sucker's bet, though.
Is there any legitimate reason to let companies make political donations? Companies do not represent their shareholders politically - if those shareholders want to contribute they can make this individually.
There is a significant chance of that happening, though. This site has a look at 164 crashes with fatalities in the US from 1978 to 1995: http://www.airsafe.com/ten_faq.htm
In 68 cases all passengers died, in 15 cases >90% of passengers died and in 37 cases 10% of passengers died. So given that a lot of crashes are survivable, it's relevant that people don't get knocked out by poisonous fumes when leaving the wreck.
I've flown a lot, and am in general not afraid of flying, except when I step onto an Airbus. Then I get a bit nervous...
Why? Apart from the low accident rates on airplanes in the first place, you are flying a specific model - some models from Airbus (e.g. A340) have way better records than some from Boeing (e.g. 747), and vice versa. (Source: http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm )
Apart from airplane models, crew and maintenance play a big role, too. It would make more sense to look at the records for airlines, since those by necessity combine all of three factors.
Well in theory the voting machines should work correctly all the time, and that means the paper and the electronic total should always be the same. If that's not the case though - then you know you have a problem. You are correct in saying that you don't know what the problem is, but at least you know you have one. If this problem occurs several times you know you have the wrong machine.
They are not a company, just a lobby group. They publish whatever report they are asked to publish - check their page, with one exception they have no technology background. They have not the slightest idea what they are talking about.
The board and the staff, too. I thought it would be of interest to have a look at the educational background of this "foundation":
Board:
Cal Dooley - Masters degree in Management
Jennifer Dunn - BA
Dr. Robert D. Atkinson - Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning
Rhett B. Dawson - undergrad law degree
David Hart - Professor of Public policy
Staff:
Dr. Robert D. Atkinson - Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning
Julie A. Hedlund - M.A. degree
Daniel D. Castro - M.S. in Information Security Technology and Management
Daniel K. Correa - degree in American political history
So in the entire "foundation" there seems to be just one person who has gone through the trouble of getting a relevant degree.
It's not generically about America - the US does well in providing modern devices in other high-tech markets, but not for cell phones. So the problem the article submitter is looking for needs to be something which specifically occurs in the market for cell phones, it can not be something which occurs in every single market.
You guys all miss the point that these could save lives.
I don't think it can help with tracking swimmers - on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID I find "... passive tags have practical read distances ranging from about 10 cm (4 in.) (ISO 14443) up to a few meters...".
It would have to be a special tag to allow the usage you envision, and I didn't find that mentioned in the article.
if you don't charge admission, you have to charge taxes.
True, but taxes are more efficient. The amount of overhead you create by charging per user is enormous - you need to put a payment system in place, need to distribute the tags, need to pay people to monitor the system isn't bypassed, etc. It's the same thing as with paying the same postage rate, no matter whether your letter travels a short distance (e.g. within NYC) or a long one (e.g. from Austin to Washington). Paying a flat rate is less fair, but removes overhead.
There is a tradeoff, and I think it's at least worth a serious look whether it makes sense to put yet another inconvenient payment system in place, or whether a flatrate works out better overall.
You may not use beaches, but I'm sure you use other public goods - chances are that things level out for most people. I'd prefer an efficient system which might be slightly unfair rather than nickel and dime everything until it's fair and costs 2 times as much.
If you change the rules and say: from now on new works will have an extended period of copyright - ok those are new rules. If you extend copyright on already existing works, that's a different matter. It means you take something which currently belongs to the public, and give it to some private entity.
For someone to lobby parliament to assign them ownership of a public good for free, I think they should at least show that they are either: extremely poor, or: a worthy cause. I think it's disgusting when super rich people ask for handouts.
I read articles in the New York Times and other major newspapers with a warm and fuzzy notion that the journalist that wrote the piece - even if not totally unbiased - has done some honest, well-funded research and has some authority on the topic at hand.
Given the NYT's performance on Iraq, I don't see what that warm and fuzzy notion is coming from? I'm sure many blogs are lacking journalistic standards, but so is the mainstream media. It's certainly naive to believe everything written on some guy's blog - but mainstream media does - unfortunately - not deserve any more credit. They suffer too much from being controlled by a handful of conglomerates and advertising revenue.
It's not terribly clear to me why that should be inappropriate at all. It seems their services company (TomorrowNet) would download patches from Oracle servers for Oracle customers. So if I understand this correctly, the customer (e.g. Merck) would call TomorrowNet (who they have a support contract with) and ask them to help them with some problem on their Oracle installation (which they bought and have the right to receive patches for). So now the TomorrowNet employee using Merck's login downloads the patch for them and (using the documentation which comes with the patch) explain to the Merck employee what they have to do to get the patch installed.
I presume somewhere in the contract between Oracle and Merck there is something which says "only your employess may use this account", and there is probably a notice on the website which states that you can only access the account with your own login. The whole setup would be used to prevent other companies from supporting Oracle installations, I guess.
It's all about preventing competition and replacing innovation with lawsuits, in my opinion.
This sounds nice, but how do you fix corruption and incompetence without blaming someone? I mean it would be nice if it weren't necessary, but if someone is incompetent or corrupt you need to point out what he did wrong, and get him removed from office to prevent further damage, and to allow a better person to be chosen.
It might not be so bad - this could still receive some attention in legal circles, and any lawyer who would have to defend someone against the RIAA could bring this up in court.
It's pretty clearly not about Bush - he's poking fun at the RIAA. The RIAA pushes towards more punishing copyright, so it would be good to show to politicians: "this is the fine your daughter would have to pay if you let the RIAA have their way".
The biggest two issues I see for the next election period are climate change and Iraq. On climate change she doesn't convince me that she'd address the issue, and on Iraq she is part of the problem. Apart from winning elections I'm not aware of any major political accomplishments, and I don't like political dynasties. So I guess I don't hate her, I'm just puzzled why she should be on the short list.
Also I think what I do hate, is that the media decided that the race for the nomination should be between Obama and Clinton. I don't think the public was involved in that decision, and that sucks.
So anyway what is the point of downloading software that you can't install? Or maybe you can install Defender on unlicensed copy of Windows? Can you? And if you can - how is piracy good anyway?
Could be useful for people like my dad - he uses Linux for the internet stuff (and gimp) but boots in Windows (no internet connection for that) to use Excel etc. He doesn't want to expent the effort to keep Windows secure, but he might still want an update for a driver or something like that.
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But an employee who stays in the office for 80 hours, is not twice as productive as an employee who stays 40 hours. In many cases it's probably the other way round - especially if that's been going on long enough. There are too many incompetent managers who force way too much overtime - if this becomes a cost factor it will be noticed on the balance sheet. This may well help to reduce the useless overtime, and there is way too much of that now.
This works both ways - if the company is focussed only on costs, they'll outsource as much as they possibly can already. Programmers in India are already cheaper, whether you count overtime or not. So if they haven't outsourced your job yet, that must mean that doing so does not work out to be for the companies benefit. Maybe they can't get the expertise, maybe they need someone local, maybe they are too small - whatever the reason is. So if this means you'll get more money for a while - great, take it and save or invest it, then you have some security should you get layed off later. You can try and ask for less money now, and hope the company rewards it with job security - I think that's a sucker's bet, though.
Is there any legitimate reason to let companies make political donations? Companies do not represent their shareholders politically - if those shareholders want to contribute they can make this individually.
Has anything really changed? Don't we all expect to get fucked by the lobbyists?
Yes, but it's much easier to inconsequentially rant about armed revolution than to actually get registered as a voter.
Good point AC - anecdotal data always trumps statistics.
There is a significant chance of that happening, though. This site has a look at 164 crashes with fatalities in the US from 1978 to 1995: http://www.airsafe.com/ten_faq.htm
In 68 cases all passengers died, in 15 cases >90% of passengers died and in 37 cases 10% of passengers died. So given that a lot of crashes are survivable, it's relevant that people don't get knocked out by poisonous fumes when leaving the wreck.
Why? Apart from the low accident rates on airplanes in the first place, you are flying a specific model - some models from Airbus (e.g. A340) have way better records than some from Boeing (e.g. 747), and vice versa. (Source: http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm )
Apart from airplane models, crew and maintenance play a big role, too. It would make more sense to look at the records for airlines, since those by necessity combine all of three factors.
Well in theory the voting machines should work correctly all the time, and that means the paper and the electronic total should always be the same. If that's not the case though - then you know you have a problem. You are correct in saying that you don't know what the problem is, but at least you know you have one. If this problem occurs several times you know you have the wrong machine.
They are not a company, just a lobby group. They publish whatever report they are asked to publish - check their page, with one exception they have no technology background. They have not the slightest idea what they are talking about.
Board:
Cal Dooley - Masters degree in Management
Jennifer Dunn - BA
Dr. Robert D. Atkinson - Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning
Rhett B. Dawson - undergrad law degree
David Hart - Professor of Public policy
Staff:
Dr. Robert D. Atkinson - Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning
Julie A. Hedlund - M.A. degree
Daniel D. Castro - M.S. in Information Security Technology and Management
Daniel K. Correa - degree in American political history
So in the entire "foundation" there seems to be just one person who has gone through the trouble of getting a relevant degree.
So since you are already paying for overhead, you might as well pay twice for overhead?
Taxes=bad, no thinking required.
It's not generically about America - the US does well in providing modern devices in other high-tech markets, but not for cell phones. So the problem the article submitter is looking for needs to be something which specifically occurs in the market for cell phones, it can not be something which occurs in every single market.
I don't think it can help with tracking swimmers - on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID I find "... passive tags have practical read distances ranging from about 10 cm (4 in.) (ISO 14443) up to a few meters ...".
It would have to be a special tag to allow the usage you envision, and I didn't find that mentioned in the article.
True, but taxes are more efficient. The amount of overhead you create by charging per user is enormous - you need to put a payment system in place, need to distribute the tags, need to pay people to monitor the system isn't bypassed, etc. It's the same thing as with paying the same postage rate, no matter whether your letter travels a short distance (e.g. within NYC) or a long one (e.g. from Austin to Washington). Paying a flat rate is less fair, but removes overhead. There is a tradeoff, and I think it's at least worth a serious look whether it makes sense to put yet another inconvenient payment system in place, or whether a flatrate works out better overall.
You may not use beaches, but I'm sure you use other public goods - chances are that things level out for most people. I'd prefer an efficient system which might be slightly unfair rather than nickel and dime everything until it's fair and costs 2 times as much.
For someone to lobby parliament to assign them ownership of a public good for free, I think they should at least show that they are either: extremely poor, or: a worthy cause. I think it's disgusting when super rich people ask for handouts.
Given the NYT's performance on Iraq, I don't see what that warm and fuzzy notion is coming from? I'm sure many blogs are lacking journalistic standards, but so is the mainstream media. It's certainly naive to believe everything written on some guy's blog - but mainstream media does - unfortunately - not deserve any more credit. They suffer too much from being controlled by a handful of conglomerates and advertising revenue.
I presume somewhere in the contract between Oracle and Merck there is something which says "only your employess may use this account", and there is probably a notice on the website which states that you can only access the account with your own login. The whole setup would be used to prevent other companies from supporting Oracle installations, I guess.
It's all about preventing competition and replacing innovation with lawsuits, in my opinion.
This sounds nice, but how do you fix corruption and incompetence without blaming someone? I mean it would be nice if it weren't necessary, but if someone is incompetent or corrupt you need to point out what he did wrong, and get him removed from office to prevent further damage, and to allow a better person to be chosen.
It might not be so bad - this could still receive some attention in legal circles, and any lawyer who would have to defend someone against the RIAA could bring this up in court.
It's pretty clearly not about Bush - he's poking fun at the RIAA. The RIAA pushes towards more punishing copyright, so it would be good to show to politicians: "this is the fine your daughter would have to pay if you let the RIAA have their way".
Actually it's a win-win. If the RIAA sues Bush, and he then fights back - the approval rates of both sides will go up!
Also I think what I do hate, is that the media decided that the race for the nomination should be between Obama and Clinton. I don't think the public was involved in that decision, and that sucks.
Could be useful for people like my dad - he uses Linux for the internet stuff (and gimp) but boots in Windows (no internet connection for that) to use Excel etc. He doesn't want to expent the effort to keep Windows secure, but he might still want an update for a driver or something like that.