Unions are bad, mmmkay?
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The Jungle
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Let's go ahead and snip your ad hominem and not belabor the fact that your original post tried to show that socialism was less friendly to unions because communism didn't allow unions.
And on to:
I disagree. It's easy for us, the majority of which are single and highly skilled, to assume that the freedoms that apply to us apply to everyone. If I were married with children, my mobility would be hampered by a range of factors. If I were married, with children, and without the skills I have now, I'd have to accept most jobs in the locality I was offered.
But those very people are making choices about how they live. No one forces them to get married, have children, or remain skill-less. Americans are bombarded every day with opportunities for advancement, self improvement, etc. Have you watched American television in the last twenty years? Who is to blame if someone ignores all of those opportunities and settles for a simple life of simple means?
Why should I - as a person who has worked his whole life to work, improve, and succeed - embrace a system that caters to the lowest common denominator of the work force?
My argument was that in today's society, we all have an abundance of choices. If people are making the easy choices for themselves, why should those of us making the harder choices be penalized by systems that discourage ingenuity, hard work, and productivity - like unions most certainly do?
Re:Good, The New Workers need to unionise.
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The Jungle
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I know that many here on Slashdot consider unions to be beyond the pale, and be instruments of socialism,
And herein lies the irony. I've lived in Britain most of my life, and seen unions there and in the US, and was watching the world in the 80s when the eastern block and Russia
were still Communist. I've never come across a country, no matter how "socialist" in the eyes of the redneck slashdotter, that tolerates "real" Unions.
Wait, you jumped from socialism to communism rather quickly there. That's called a non-sequitur.
Most *socialist* countries, like those in Europe, have unions in most all fields of employment. Communism, although it shares a lot of philosophies with socialism, is a different enough animal that you can't just swap the two terms at will.
Unions feed off capitalism. Capitalism feeds off working people. Working people feed off unions. I can't see it working in any other context.
Unions were necessary a century or so ago, when we didn't have the tremendous opportunity of mobility and communication that we do in our present society. Today, unions are as anachronistic to a good economy as homeopathy is to good medicine.
Unions are such parasites
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The Jungle
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Amazon is struggling to even stay in business. Do the unions care at all about that? No. Those guys don't even stop to think about how they can help make Amazon a success. Instead, all they care about is themselves. They'll take the whole company down in order to make sure that they get what they want, even if it hurts a lot of hard-working people with families to support - hard working people who are doing good things for Amazon, rather than trying to spread the cancer of a union.
As a person who's started up companies before, I know that it takes a tremendous amount of cooperation and drive to make that company a success. If everyone isn't playing on the same team, even great prospects can quickly sour. Unions act only to divide the company up between "us" and "them".
Just take the primary subject of that article, Alan Barclay. He was planning things, talking with people, firing off emails, and generally focusing himself upon setting up a union. Hey, here's a tip, Alan: Maybe if you had spent all that energy on making Amazon more of a success, you wouldn't have gotten laid off. Odds are, you and a couple malcontents were starting to make yourselves dispensable. Next time, throw some of that energy into your job.
Especially in this day and age when anyone with technical skills is highly valued throughout the market, unions are evil parasites.
It's funny, just reading the first handful of messages. Most every one is filled with knee-jerk indignation. Sue... SUE! How dare they!
Face it, you guys have no idea what this ex-employee did or said. You have no idea what his employers did or said. Did the employee make up vicious lies that will damage the reputation of the employer? Is the employer unfairly targeting an employee for honestly expressing his side of the story? Did the employee sign any non-defamation agreements before leaving the company? Do those have a time limit? What does it mean that "they may speak to me"? Does that mean "sue"? What harm does it to speak to someone? What harm does it to relate facts to his current employer?
Without those facts, recommending action would seem to be naively premature and a reflection of more than a little bias.
On the other hand, easy scriptability is a game defect. If a game can be "mastered" by writing a script, then the game is uninteresting -- deterministic -- a solved problem, and
playing the game is going to get boring after a while.
Like chess, right? Basically, home computer "scripts" play chess better than most people, and the best computers play better than any person. Is chess boring?
Computer opponents in 3D action games play better than people as well. Play Unreal Tournament with the bots cranked all the way up, and you'll die very quickly.
Computers can beat us at the fast-twitch, and they can beat us at the methodical thought-process games. There's a little bit of wiggle room in the creative puzzle-type game, but that's not really the way the massively online games work.
It's a shame, since I like a good hack-n-slash mindless game sometimes. I like going out again and again killing monsters and looking for new weapons.
2) Designing the interface between the client and server so that the server implements the "laws of nature", and the client implements the "human intelligence."
Most definitely. Game designers learned this a while back, and have been pretty good about designing client-server games this way.
I can't believe the guy attributes the success of the Palm Pilot vs the PC as being due to the transparency of the former's OS.
Apples... oranges.
A palm pilot is a very specific device that is normally only used for several simple applications: taking notes, scheduling, and keeping contact info.
As soon as you start adding tons of varied applications to your Palm Pilot, you begin to find that its specialized interface & transparent OS are a hindrance. You begin to wish that you had a better way to organize your files or add hardware. If you could keep adding all of that functionality back in there, guess what you'd have... a PC.
Everyone is always looking to topple the PC with bullshit articles and arguments like Raskin's. They think that just complaining about it is going to inspire the industry to create something new and different that will change everything. For once, I'd like to see one of these pundits put forth a legitimate idea for the future of computing that might obsolete the PC - and no, web phones, PDA's, and Internet-saavy refrigerators don't count.
The PC is going to be with us a long time, no matter how soon guys like Raskin plead for its death.
A game worth mentioning in any discussion of Masters of Orion is Space Empires IV. It's only distributed online (to my knowledge), so you won't see it in any stores. It's not for those who like big luxurious cut scenes and beautiful graphics. The graphics are merely functional.
However, if you're interested in the strategy side of things, it's got a lot going for it.
I'm extremely offended, and can't believe that you'd joke about something as serious as that.
Lighten up, Francis.
The guy was just making a joke about its being a news item. Why does he have to be reprimanded? We've all had friends and family die, so we all know how it feels. Who are you to tell us how we should all feel about given deaths. I'm as offended by your presumption to tell the guy how he should behave on such an occasion as you are that he made a joke.
I regret the accident for the impact it had upon the space program more than anything. The almost-astronauts were taking a chance-in-a-lifetime opportunity that came with many dangers. I salute them, but I don't feel that the loss of them was any more important than the losses of friends and family in my own life.
Re:But... Monsanto gave away the rice genome
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Rice Genome Mapped
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Yikes, what an extraordinary piece of communist literature that is!
For anyone inclined to believe this statement:
Seems this wonderful technology is causing farmers to go bankrupt, commit suicide, sell off their kidneys to survive
I encourage you to follow the above link and read it. That level of hatred of capitalism and free markets thrives in this world, and it's scary. It's scary because the people with all that hatred exaggerate the extent of the problems and their causes. It's scary because the only solutions that these people offer are the dismantling of capitalism and free markets, and a dramatic shift toward communism.
Communism failed, people. Despite tremendous opportunities around the world, communism totally and utterly failed. Why oh why are people still making excuses for it and trying to sell it to us again in a new shiny box?
nobody should be able to patent any form of DNA, or even the methods used to analyze and modify genetic material
I'm not saying that the Patent Office always makes great decisions about what patents to hand out. They could really use an audit of all of their policies to bring them in line with the fast-paced technology-centric world we live in today.
However, to say that those out there spending billions of dollars making scientific discoveries shouldn't be allowed to recoup some profit (which is what patent elimination would do) is a drastic position. Company greed to make a buck off discovering things has fueled the explosion of scientific advances that we've made over the last century.
It's easy to snipe at things that we don't like about our society, and criticism of practices will make us stronger if we figure out superior ways of doing things - but unless you're prepared to offer a better and complete system of commerce and government, maybe you should avoid proposing to dismantle capitalism and its required protections (patents, copyrights) just yet.
Why does conception matter? Is it some kind of religious thing?
We already have extraordinarily similar identical twins running around, so two genetically identical people running around of different ages shouldn't be such a shocker.
Is it stupid and sick that I look a hell of a lot like my dad and I have a lot of his traits? It doesn't bother me, I like my dad. I wouldn't mind being more like him in the least.
What's stupid and sick is fearing any concept that's new and different for no other reason than it's new and differenct.
If you clone an adult, at least you can be assured that the clone won't have any genetic childhood diseases that randomly might affect your offspring.
You'd get a lot of comments, saying, "You look just like your dad!"
In this world, we already have a high degree of acceptance for what *could* be termed genetically defective people. Why would a clone of someone with good genes really be that much of a shocker?
In the long run, we'll learn a lot about how to create genetically modified human beings without the societally unacceptable "mistakes". Who wouldn't want to give their children better health, longer life, more intelligence, and better looks?
Sure there is... if a company violates its privacy policy you have every right to sue them.
Suing someone is a tremendous pain in the ass, and expecting private citizens to mount law suits against obvious lawbreakers is an unreasonable burden. Obviously illegal activities should be pursued by law enforcement agencies.
For example: When I was living in California a couple of years ago, I had a private dedicated fax line to my home. After a month or so, I was receiving several unsolicited faxes per day. Unsolicited faxes are illegal. So after a couple of months of tremendous paper and ink waste, I decided to look into my legal options. The FCC site recommended that I call my district attorney to alert them of the breach of law, which I did. It took a while to get someone actually on the phone, but when I did, they recommended that I go out and hire an attorney! An attorney! Why in the hell should I have to do anything more than report the crime and serve as a witness?
Privacy law should be written in such a way that minimal privacy measures are mandatory, and infractions of privacy policy are felonious offenses.
Despite constaint complaints that you read about the US in/., it's obvious from its successes and the corresponding successes of its people that it does a lot things "the right way" relative to the rest of the world.
Privacy is definitely not one of those things. The US needs to wake up about who owns information on private citizens. The citizens own it, and that should never be remotely questioned.
Unless you have been invited or are have a "reasonable" (non-commercial) expectation that I want to see you, do not come knocking on my front door.
Unless you have been given explicit permission to call me for business reasons, do not call my house.
Unless you have been given explicit permission to mail/email me for business reasons, do not send me mail/email.
My mailing address, phone number, and email address are all mine, damnit, and if I don't give you written or recorded verbal approval to use it, you cannot use it for marketing research or sales. You cannot sell my information. Unless you have a valid need (like for issuing safety recalls), you shouldn't even keep my information on file.
The sooner Americans latch on to the idea that corporations don't own our information, we do - the sooner that we'll remove these leeches from society.
Yes, I know, I'm usually pro-business, but this is about privacy, and I think that privacy interests supercede business interests
I have seen several friends on H1 Visas abused in the workplace. I would happily join a union that would address this - and other issues.
I guess it would all depend upon what you mean by "abused". I spent some time living in a decidedly third-world country, and knew some engineers who worked there and then ended up getting Visas over here. They were all profoundly happy to be able to have the opportunity to make so much money here. One of them had some problems with his employer who was holding his visa over his head and being a bit unfair, but he was able to get Netscape to sponsor him, so he switched jobs.
I suppose you'd really have to personally experience the differences in the living conditions in his home country and here to fully appreciate the enormous opportunity that being in the US entailed for him. Those opportunities are a direct result of the success of our non-unionized capitalistic market. Why would we want to screw that up?
* Tech companies expect un-sustainable levels of work from their employees.
Non-issue. There are plenty of great-paying jobs in tech companies that aren't very demanding. If you're stuck in one that requires too much from you, go out and get another. Probably, if you at least get an idea of your opportunities, you can go to your employer and negotiate a better arrangement. If you're anywhere near a decent employee and your employer has any business sense, they'll work with you to make your job more palatable. The number one complaint that I hear from employers these days is, "We just can't seem to find people for our job openings!"
* Tech companies will lay-off people without a second thought if it helps the bottom line.
See above. Tech companies don't make lay-off decisions lightly. It costs them a lot of money to pay severances and to ramp back up as soon as their restructuring is done. Without lay-offs, though, many great companies would go under. Do you think that Apple could have made a comeback when Jobs returned if they hadn't restructured and had massive layoffs? Probably not. Thanks to those layoffs years ago, Apple is still feeding a lot of families, sending a lot of employees' kids to college, and producing computers that I happen to like using.
* Tech companies will require unfair, new contracts to be signed by all employees, without any form of negotiation at all! (This is taken from real life experience - where a consulting firm completely revamped all employees stock option contract, without protection for wrongful termination / layoffs, and gave us no option but to sign or resign!)
This is when you talk to your coworkers and you gauge how others feel about it and how far they'd be willing protest the new contracts. You then go to management and let them know the general level of employee dissatisfaction, and try to negotiate changes. This kind of organization is far different from industry-wide unions with union bosses, seniority, and all that other union bullshit.
If all else fails, quit and go find another job.
One word of serious advice: Always buy your options. You may not have a great deal of confidence in the company after you leave, and you may not want to part with the money, but dollar for dollar, buying options in a startup company gives you much better odds than winning the lottery. A few years from now, you won't regret not having that option money. You will regret not having the stock if they go public or are sold. I could go on and on with stories of actual acquaintances who missed out on millions of dollars because they were pissed when they left a startup, so they didn't buy their options - but suffice it to say: Always buy your options.
It's so very sad. The United States is the undisputed IT industry leader of the world. We have more jobs paying higher wages creating more engineer millionaires than anywhere on the planet.
Even the crappiest just-out-of college student can find an extraordinarily well-paying job in the IT field here.
So what do the socialists want to do? They want to fuck it all up buy unionizing. I just don't understand how anyone with half a brain working in the IT field in the United States would want to invite the evils of unions into our industry.
Sure, if you're incompetent or a freeloader, you want to be in a union, but if you have even a minimum of self-respect for your ability to go out there and secure a job why on earth would you say, "Unions, Yes!"?
Why on earth are you people so intent upon killing the goose that lays the golden eggs?
In my experience working for a Silicon Valley startup, working at Apple, and starting my own company - a quarter to a third of tech employees are marginally useful at best, and wasteful malicious freeloaders at worst.
In a downturn, these people should be let go to protect those at the company who are doing the best work and to protect the shareholders.
It's so regrettable that in a/. discussion of this subject, it all seems to come down to a matter of "might makes right". I can take your signal and decode it, so I have a right to it. Ethical considerations don't even begin to enter the picture.
DirecTV had to maintain a team of engineers solely to protect its service from being stolen. What a pathetic waste of resources, right up there with having to waste money on theft insurance, burglar alarms, and firewalls. Think of the percentage of human output wasted on just defending ourselves from the unscrupulous.
As soon as "might makes right" is turned against your community then you'll be whining and crying for laws and regulations. When Carnivore or something like it is sniffing your private communications, when your next door neighbor is listening to your conversations with high-tech snooping devices, or when the MPAA/RIAA is squeezing you out of their arena with their astoundingly deep pockets... then the loudest whining on the net will be heard here on/.
Is this really the society that we want to build? Doesn't anyone else crave a society where you can leave your doors unlocked so you never have to carry keys? Wouldn't it be great to be able to leave your contact information out in the open so long-forgotten friends can contact you, without being inundated with junk mail, phone calls, and spam?
:) Okay, you got me. I got caught up with still cynical's tone.
Does it make sense to endorse a flawed solution on the hope that it will improve later?
Possibly. It depends upon whether or not you're satisfied with the net benefit. Personally, I'm okay with some errors on the side of overly-restrictive filters. If current filter technology blocks 95% of porn and 10% of legitimate sites, I'm okay with that as a start.
I like the idea of developing an open source solution, as mentioned by Stephen Samuel.
To say that filters "don't work" just isn't true. They do work. They aren't perfect, but they work well enough to stop circumvention by most casual users.
and block "legitimate" information along with what you consider "porn".
Fix this problem where possible, but running away screaming from filtering just isn't going to advance the technology at all - which is probably what you want.
Because filters block sites based on arbitrary criteria chosen by people with agendas.
I'll admit that I don't always agree with the decisions made, but to call them "arbitrary" denotes that you have an agenda as well by engaging in belittling and hyperbolic rhetoric against the ideas that you oppose.
Because we all pay for public libraries, not just those of you who want to decide what we all see and learn.
If you want the local library to get Pay Per View so you can watch Wrestlemania XXXXIV, you can go to hell. Pay for your own god damned casual entertainment. Public libraries are great institutions as repositories of knowledge available to those without the means to gain that knowledge on their own. If we subvert the legitimacy of the Public Library system by catering to every entertainment whim out there, we shall destroy society's need and support for the institutions, and we shall eventually destroy the institutions themselves.
And oh yeah, because it's unconstitutional. Deny it all you like, it's censorship based on content.
Last I looked, you can't get Hustler, Penthouse, or any other "adult" magazine at the local library. Why should available content via the Internet be any different?
For nearly every U.S. reader: this law will affect your local library. Go talk to them. Get involved.
Talk to them, why? Except to say, "Good job," that is.
I don't understand this knee-jerk/. reaction against filtering at public libraries. Normally, public libraries have extremely limited computing resources (like one or two computers), that should be used as a tool for research and education.
The last thing I want my tax dollars going to is for some dude to sit around all day surfing for porn. Screw that, I pay for my own porn just like everyone else should.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's go ahead and snip your ad hominem and not belabor the fact that your original post tried to show that socialism was less friendly to unions because communism didn't allow unions.
And on to:
I disagree. It's easy for us, the majority of which are single and highly skilled, to assume that the freedoms that apply to us apply to everyone. If I were married with children, my mobility would be hampered by a range of factors. If I were married, with children, and without the skills I have now, I'd have to accept most jobs in the locality I was offered.
But those very people are making choices about how they live. No one forces them to get married, have children, or remain skill-less. Americans are bombarded every day with opportunities for advancement, self improvement, etc. Have you watched American television in the last twenty years? Who is to blame if someone ignores all of those opportunities and settles for a simple life of simple means?
Why should I - as a person who has worked his whole life to work, improve, and succeed - embrace a system that caters to the lowest common denominator of the work force?
My argument was that in today's society, we all have an abundance of choices. If people are making the easy choices for themselves, why should those of us making the harder choices be penalized by systems that discourage ingenuity, hard work, and productivity - like unions most certainly do?
I know that many here on Slashdot consider unions to be beyond the pale, and be instruments of socialism,
And herein lies the irony. I've lived in Britain most of my life, and seen unions there and in the US, and was watching the world in the 80s when the eastern block and Russia were still Communist. I've never come across a country, no matter how "socialist" in the eyes of the redneck slashdotter, that tolerates "real" Unions.
Wait, you jumped from socialism to communism rather quickly there. That's called a non-sequitur.
Most *socialist* countries, like those in Europe, have unions in most all fields of employment. Communism, although it shares a lot of philosophies with socialism, is a different enough animal that you can't just swap the two terms at will.
Unions feed off capitalism. Capitalism feeds off working people. Working people feed off unions. I can't see it working in any other context.
Unions were necessary a century or so ago, when we didn't have the tremendous opportunity of mobility and communication that we do in our present society. Today, unions are as anachronistic to a good economy as homeopathy is to good medicine.
Amazon is struggling to even stay in business. Do the unions care at all about that? No. Those guys don't even stop to think about how they can help make Amazon a success. Instead, all they care about is themselves. They'll take the whole company down in order to make sure that they get what they want, even if it hurts a lot of hard-working people with families to support - hard working people who are doing good things for Amazon, rather than trying to spread the cancer of a union.
As a person who's started up companies before, I know that it takes a tremendous amount of cooperation and drive to make that company a success. If everyone isn't playing on the same team, even great prospects can quickly sour. Unions act only to divide the company up between "us" and "them".
Just take the primary subject of that article, Alan Barclay. He was planning things, talking with people, firing off emails, and generally focusing himself upon setting up a union. Hey, here's a tip, Alan: Maybe if you had spent all that energy on making Amazon more of a success, you wouldn't have gotten laid off. Odds are, you and a couple malcontents were starting to make yourselves dispensable. Next time, throw some of that energy into your job.
Especially in this day and age when anyone with technical skills is highly valued throughout the market, unions are evil parasites.
It's funny, just reading the first handful of messages. Most every one is filled with knee-jerk indignation. Sue... SUE! How dare they!
Face it, you guys have no idea what this ex-employee did or said. You have no idea what his employers did or said. Did the employee make up vicious lies that will damage the reputation of the employer? Is the employer unfairly targeting an employee for honestly expressing his side of the story? Did the employee sign any non-defamation agreements before leaving the company? Do those have a time limit? What does it mean that "they may speak to me"? Does that mean "sue"? What harm does it to speak to someone? What harm does it to relate facts to his current employer?
Without those facts, recommending action would seem to be naively premature and a reflection of more than a little bias.
On the other hand, easy scriptability is a game defect. If a game can be "mastered" by writing a script, then the game is uninteresting -- deterministic -- a solved problem, and playing the game is going to get boring after a while.
Like chess, right? Basically, home computer "scripts" play chess better than most people, and the best computers play better than any person. Is chess boring?
Computer opponents in 3D action games play better than people as well. Play Unreal Tournament with the bots cranked all the way up, and you'll die very quickly.
Computers can beat us at the fast-twitch, and they can beat us at the methodical thought-process games. There's a little bit of wiggle room in the creative puzzle-type game, but that's not really the way the massively online games work.
It's a shame, since I like a good hack-n-slash mindless game sometimes. I like going out again and again killing monsters and looking for new weapons.
2) Designing the interface between the client and server so that the server implements the "laws of nature", and the client implements the "human intelligence."
Most definitely. Game designers learned this a while back, and have been pretty good about designing client-server games this way.
I can't believe the guy attributes the success of the Palm Pilot vs the PC as being due to the transparency of the former's OS.
Apples... oranges.
A palm pilot is a very specific device that is normally only used for several simple applications: taking notes, scheduling, and keeping contact info.
As soon as you start adding tons of varied applications to your Palm Pilot, you begin to find that its specialized interface & transparent OS are a hindrance. You begin to wish that you had a better way to organize your files or add hardware. If you could keep adding all of that functionality back in there, guess what you'd have... a PC.
Everyone is always looking to topple the PC with bullshit articles and arguments like Raskin's. They think that just complaining about it is going to inspire the industry to create something new and different that will change everything. For once, I'd like to see one of these pundits put forth a legitimate idea for the future of computing that might obsolete the PC - and no, web phones, PDA's, and Internet-saavy refrigerators don't count.
The PC is going to be with us a long time, no matter how soon guys like Raskin plead for its death.
A game worth mentioning in any discussion of Masters of Orion is Space Empires IV. It's only distributed online (to my knowledge), so you won't see it in any stores. It's not for those who like big luxurious cut scenes and beautiful graphics. The graphics are merely functional.
However, if you're interested in the strategy side of things, it's got a lot going for it.
People leaving 802.11 networks completely unsecured would make a lot of problems on the Internet even worse.
Can you say "Drive by Spamming"? I thought you could.
I'm extremely offended, and can't believe that you'd joke about something as serious as that.
Lighten up, Francis.
The guy was just making a joke about its being a news item. Why does he have to be reprimanded? We've all had friends and family die, so we all know how it feels. Who are you to tell us how we should all feel about given deaths. I'm as offended by your presumption to tell the guy how he should behave on such an occasion as you are that he made a joke.
I regret the accident for the impact it had upon the space program more than anything. The almost-astronauts were taking a chance-in-a-lifetime opportunity that came with many dangers. I salute them, but I don't feel that the loss of them was any more important than the losses of friends and family in my own life.
Speaking of which: http://www.abc.net.au/specials/shiva/shiva.htm
Yikes, what an extraordinary piece of communist literature that is!
For anyone inclined to believe this statement:
Seems this wonderful technology is causing farmers to go bankrupt, commit suicide, sell off their kidneys to survive
I encourage you to follow the above link and read it. That level of hatred of capitalism and free markets thrives in this world, and it's scary. It's scary because the people with all that hatred exaggerate the extent of the problems and their causes. It's scary because the only solutions that these people offer are the dismantling of capitalism and free markets, and a dramatic shift toward communism.
Communism failed, people. Despite tremendous opportunities around the world, communism totally and utterly failed. Why oh why are people still making excuses for it and trying to sell it to us again in a new shiny box?
nobody should be able to patent any form of DNA, or even the methods used to analyze and modify genetic material
I'm not saying that the Patent Office always makes great decisions about what patents to hand out. They could really use an audit of all of their policies to bring them in line with the fast-paced technology-centric world we live in today.
However, to say that those out there spending billions of dollars making scientific discoveries shouldn't be allowed to recoup some profit (which is what patent elimination would do) is a drastic position. Company greed to make a buck off discovering things has fueled the explosion of scientific advances that we've made over the last century.
It's easy to snipe at things that we don't like about our society, and criticism of practices will make us stronger if we figure out superior ways of doing things - but unless you're prepared to offer a better and complete system of commerce and government, maybe you should avoid proposing to dismantle capitalism and its required protections (patents, copyrights) just yet.
Why does conception matter? Is it some kind of religious thing?
We already have extraordinarily similar identical twins running around, so two genetically identical people running around of different ages shouldn't be such a shocker.
Is it stupid and sick that I look a hell of a lot like my dad and I have a lot of his traits? It doesn't bother me, I like my dad. I wouldn't mind being more like him in the least.
What's stupid and sick is fearing any concept that's new and different for no other reason than it's new and differenct.
If you clone an adult, at least you can be assured that the clone won't have any genetic childhood diseases that randomly might affect your offspring.
You'd get a lot of comments, saying, "You look just like your dad!"
In this world, we already have a high degree of acceptance for what *could* be termed genetically defective people. Why would a clone of someone with good genes really be that much of a shocker?
In the long run, we'll learn a lot about how to create genetically modified human beings without the societally unacceptable "mistakes". Who wouldn't want to give their children better health, longer life, more intelligence, and better looks?
Hmm, the parent rags on the GOP, and is untouched by moderators.
I take an opposite stance on the same issue and am moderated down.
You guys really suck.
Sure there is... if a company violates its privacy policy you have every right to sue them.
Suing someone is a tremendous pain in the ass, and expecting private citizens to mount law suits against obvious lawbreakers is an unreasonable burden. Obviously illegal activities should be pursued by law enforcement agencies.
For example: When I was living in California a couple of years ago, I had a private dedicated fax line to my home. After a month or so, I was receiving several unsolicited faxes per day. Unsolicited faxes are illegal. So after a couple of months of tremendous paper and ink waste, I decided to look into my legal options. The FCC site recommended that I call my district attorney to alert them of the breach of law, which I did. It took a while to get someone actually on the phone, but when I did, they recommended that I go out and hire an attorney! An attorney! Why in the hell should I have to do anything more than report the crime and serve as a witness?
Privacy law should be written in such a way that minimal privacy measures are mandatory, and infractions of privacy policy are felonious offenses.
Privacy is definitely not one of those things. The US needs to wake up about who owns information on private citizens. The citizens own it, and that should never be remotely questioned.
- Unless you have been invited or are have a "reasonable" (non-commercial) expectation that I want to see you, do not come knocking on my front door.
- Unless you have been given explicit permission to call me for business reasons, do not call my house.
- Unless you have been given explicit permission to mail/email me for business reasons, do not send me mail/email.
My mailing address, phone number, and email address are all mine, damnit, and if I don't give you written or recorded verbal approval to use it, you cannot use it for marketing research or sales. You cannot sell my information. Unless you have a valid need (like for issuing safety recalls), you shouldn't even keep my information on file.The sooner Americans latch on to the idea that corporations don't own our information, we do - the sooner that we'll remove these leeches from society.
Yes, I know, I'm usually pro-business, but this is about privacy, and I think that privacy interests supercede business interests
I have seen several friends on H1 Visas abused in the workplace. I would happily join a union that would address this - and other issues.
I guess it would all depend upon what you mean by "abused". I spent some time living in a decidedly third-world country, and knew some engineers who worked there and then ended up getting Visas over here. They were all profoundly happy to be able to have the opportunity to make so much money here. One of them had some problems with his employer who was holding his visa over his head and being a bit unfair, but he was able to get Netscape to sponsor him, so he switched jobs.
I suppose you'd really have to personally experience the differences in the living conditions in his home country and here to fully appreciate the enormous opportunity that being in the US entailed for him. Those opportunities are a direct result of the success of our non-unionized capitalistic market. Why would we want to screw that up?
* Tech companies expect un-sustainable levels of work from their employees.
Non-issue. There are plenty of great-paying jobs in tech companies that aren't very demanding. If you're stuck in one that requires too much from you, go out and get another. Probably, if you at least get an idea of your opportunities, you can go to your employer and negotiate a better arrangement. If you're anywhere near a decent employee and your employer has any business sense, they'll work with you to make your job more palatable. The number one complaint that I hear from employers these days is, "We just can't seem to find people for our job openings!"
* Tech companies will lay-off people without a second thought if it helps the bottom line.
See above. Tech companies don't make lay-off decisions lightly. It costs them a lot of money to pay severances and to ramp back up as soon as their restructuring is done. Without lay-offs, though, many great companies would go under. Do you think that Apple could have made a comeback when Jobs returned if they hadn't restructured and had massive layoffs? Probably not. Thanks to those layoffs years ago, Apple is still feeding a lot of families, sending a lot of employees' kids to college, and producing computers that I happen to like using.
* Tech companies will require unfair, new contracts to be signed by all employees, without any form of negotiation at all! (This is taken from real life experience - where a consulting firm completely revamped all employees stock option contract, without protection for wrongful termination / layoffs, and gave us no option but to sign or resign!)
This is when you talk to your coworkers and you gauge how others feel about it and how far they'd be willing protest the new contracts. You then go to management and let them know the general level of employee dissatisfaction, and try to negotiate changes. This kind of organization is far different from industry-wide unions with union bosses, seniority, and all that other union bullshit.
If all else fails, quit and go find another job.
One word of serious advice: Always buy your options. You may not have a great deal of confidence in the company after you leave, and you may not want to part with the money, but dollar for dollar, buying options in a startup company gives you much better odds than winning the lottery. A few years from now, you won't regret not having that option money. You will regret not having the stock if they go public or are sold. I could go on and on with stories of actual acquaintances who missed out on millions of dollars because they were pissed when they left a startup, so they didn't buy their options - but suffice it to say: Always buy your options.
It's so very sad. The United States is the undisputed IT industry leader of the world. We have more jobs paying higher wages creating more engineer millionaires than anywhere on the planet.
Even the crappiest just-out-of college student can find an extraordinarily well-paying job in the IT field here.
So what do the socialists want to do? They want to fuck it all up buy unionizing. I just don't understand how anyone with half a brain working in the IT field in the United States would want to invite the evils of unions into our industry.
Sure, if you're incompetent or a freeloader, you want to be in a union, but if you have even a minimum of self-respect for your ability to go out there and secure a job why on earth would you say, "Unions, Yes!"?
Why on earth are you people so intent upon killing the goose that lays the golden eggs?
Complete Agreement.
In my experience working for a Silicon Valley startup, working at Apple, and starting my own company - a quarter to a third of tech employees are marginally useful at best, and wasteful malicious freeloaders at worst.
In a downturn, these people should be let go to protect those at the company who are doing the best work and to protect the shareholders.
It's so regrettable that in a /. discussion of this subject, it all seems to come down to a matter of "might makes right". I can take your signal and decode it, so I have a right to it. Ethical considerations don't even begin to enter the picture.
/.
DirecTV had to maintain a team of engineers solely to protect its service from being stolen. What a pathetic waste of resources, right up there with having to waste money on theft insurance, burglar alarms, and firewalls. Think of the percentage of human output wasted on just defending ourselves from the unscrupulous.
As soon as "might makes right" is turned against your community then you'll be whining and crying for laws and regulations. When Carnivore or something like it is sniffing your private communications, when your next door neighbor is listening to your conversations with high-tech snooping devices, or when the MPAA/RIAA is squeezing you out of their arena with their astoundingly deep pockets... then the loudest whining on the net will be heard here on
Is this really the society that we want to build? Doesn't anyone else crave a society where you can leave your doors unlocked so you never have to carry keys? Wouldn't it be great to be able to leave your contact information out in the open so long-forgotten friends can contact you, without being inundated with junk mail, phone calls, and spam?
(speaking of belittling and hyperbolic rhetoric)
:) Okay, you got me. I got caught up with still cynical's tone.
Does it make sense to endorse a flawed solution on the hope that it will improve later?
Possibly. It depends upon whether or not you're satisfied with the net benefit. Personally, I'm okay with some errors on the side of overly-restrictive filters. If current filter technology blocks 95% of porn and 10% of legitimate sites, I'm okay with that as a start.
I like the idea of developing an open source solution, as mentioned by Stephen Samuel.
Typical... /. glorifies removal of all censorship, yet the moderators moderate me down so that others won't see what I have to say. So typical.
/. moderators.
Way to go,
Because filters don't work,
To say that filters "don't work" just isn't true. They do work. They aren't perfect, but they work well enough to stop circumvention by most casual users.
and block "legitimate" information along with what you consider "porn".
Fix this problem where possible, but running away screaming from filtering just isn't going to advance the technology at all - which is probably what you want.
Because filters block sites based on arbitrary criteria chosen by people with agendas.
I'll admit that I don't always agree with the decisions made, but to call them "arbitrary" denotes that you have an agenda as well by engaging in belittling and hyperbolic rhetoric against the ideas that you oppose.
Because we all pay for public libraries, not just those of you who want to decide what we all see and learn.
If you want the local library to get Pay Per View so you can watch Wrestlemania XXXXIV, you can go to hell. Pay for your own god damned casual entertainment. Public libraries are great institutions as repositories of knowledge available to those without the means to gain that knowledge on their own. If we subvert the legitimacy of the Public Library system by catering to every entertainment whim out there, we shall destroy society's need and support for the institutions, and we shall eventually destroy the institutions themselves.
And oh yeah, because it's unconstitutional. Deny it all you like, it's censorship based on content.
Last I looked, you can't get Hustler, Penthouse, or any other "adult" magazine at the local library. Why should available content via the Internet be any different?
For nearly every U.S. reader: this law will affect your local library. Go talk to them. Get involved.
/. reaction against filtering at public libraries. Normally, public libraries have extremely limited computing resources (like one or two computers), that should be used as a tool for research and education.
Talk to them, why? Except to say, "Good job," that is.
I don't understand this knee-jerk
The last thing I want my tax dollars going to is for some dude to sit around all day surfing for porn. Screw that, I pay for my own porn just like everyone else should.
Ugh, you gave known spammers your business?
/. crowd would avoid helping spammers, even for selfish reasons.
Too bad, I always hope that members of the