No, you fucking idiot! Nazis were a far-right group from the outset...
You were misinformed. The Nazis were fascists, and fascism is neither left nor right. Fascist ideology takes from both the left and the right of the political spectrum. Fascism will do things like coop the workers and the industrialists, bringing both under their control and leveraging both as convenient.
Then came the ship with NT 4.0 that never worked correctly...
That is an urban myth. Application software allowed an invalid value, a zero, to be accepted and saved to a database. Controller software that read data from that database accepted an invalid value then performed a divide by zero and was halted by the operating system. This controller software was involved in engine operation. Application, database, controller,... the operating system was irrelevant, the same thing would happen under Linux.
Immediately after the failure a laid-off *nix engineer, who was not on the ship, speculated that NT was to blame and the Linux evangelists went with this and the myth was born. The people on the ship said it was userland software (application and controller) not operating system software that failed. The company writing that userland software admitted they were to blame for the incident.
Also, the ship was a test platform. They were testing, trying to break things, running debug software that didn't have the "watchdogs" that would restart the halted software. Zero was intentionally entered into a particular variable to see what would happen.
How is it any different for closed source software? What if that proprietary software haven't been updated in years? Surely if there is no update, there is no security risk, right?
Proprietary and Closed are two separate things. Some proprietary software may be sold under a binary-only license or a source code license. The source code license allows redistribution by the licensee so that the licensee can debug and update the code if necessary. In other words the source code license removes a big risk of "buying" rather than "building" software. From the licensee's perspective it is not terribly different than open source. It really only differs for the licensee's customers who have no access to the source code.
In the past the earth had much higher CO2 values, and more plant life.
And no humans
There were ancestral species not so different from us. We would likely survive. We are after all an intelligent adaptable species that learned to survive in nearly every climate zone on the planet with only quite primate technology. It would be a painful transition but likely survivable, we are not locked into one ecological niche like many species. And then there is modern technology.
Before anyone gets all apoplectic. I'm not advocating we go down that path. I like the earth as it is. I'd like to avoid the death of billions that the "transition" would likely cause. But lets not pretend the environment of 5-6 million years ago is not survivable by modern humans.
Actually, to find carbon dioxide levels higher than today you have to look back to the Miocene epoch, about 5.2 million years ago. There were not humans around then.
Its likely Homo Sapiens could survive as well. We are quite adaptable, as habitation in nearly every climate zone on the planet demonstrates. And now add modern technology.
Now I'm not arguing returning to the climate of that epoch is advisable but lets not pretend its some sort of death sentence for Homo Sapiens. It would be a painful transition given the rapid onset of the changes but quite survivable as an adaptable intelligent species that is not locked into a particular environment niche.
I live on the 45 floor and I don't know the people living on the exact same GPS spot in the lower floors.
Its not really the exact same GPS spot, GPS is three dimensional and includes a vertical component. That would be a serious bug to only consider lattitude and longitude.
"With Fuchsia, Google would not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL: the OS is licensed under a mix of BSD 3 clause, MIT, and Apache 2.0. Dumping Linux might come as a bit of a shock, but the Android ecosystem seems to have no desire to keep up with upstream Linux releases. Even the Google Pixel is still stuck on Linux Kernel 3.18, which was first released at the end of 2014."
No, they mean "desktop" period. Yes Linux is used behind the scenes in many appliances and servers where users never see or touch Linux. The point of "desktop Linux" is that users see it, use it, and choose it; unlike in appliances, which sort of includes phones.
Best example is Chromebooks
Agan, an appliance. Linux is not seen, used or chosen by the user. Not "desktop".
That's like pre-OS X, as in the 1980s style Mac OS (cooperative threading, no preemption, no protection, etc) PowerPC based (before the switch to Intel CPUs) Mac numbers. Congrats.
I think this time the pressure isn't from cost, rather the pressure for ethical clothing manufacture, which admittedly, has good intentions in trying to make manufacturers pay their workers more, but while that seems like a simple solution, to pay workers more, so is not employing people... Can't be exploiting your staff if you haven't got any...
So unintended consequences screws up good intentions, again. Using "unintended consequences" loosely, its not as if this sort of thing was "unforeseen" by those who had a microeconomics class. But hey, no foul, good intentions outweigh simplistic shallow solutions to extremely complex matters.
If this is true, it begs the question: why is the NSA looking for Satoshi?
Its a research project, you have to look for someone attempting anonymity. Satoshi would be a fun target. Also an anonymous person with a larger collection of public writing would be make the research easier.
They will fire founders who are failing and bring in professionals to actually deliver on the original idea.
I dont think they restrict themselves to the original idea. When they are booting the guy that couldnt deliver [X], they bring in someone that will make the best of whats left, and no longer give a shit if [X] comes out the other end or not.
True, sometimes there is a salvage operation, but sometimes there is just a change to more competent leadership. Sometime the problem was the team, not the original idea.
If I were a conman, I would hang around crowdfunding sites to harvest suckers.
When a bank or venture capitalists funds a product or company, they make money out of it if the product is successful - they take a risk with an upside. In a crowded funded product, the funders are fools who don't partake in the success of the product in the off chance that the product is successful.
VCs also own the project. They will fire founders who are failing and bring in professionals to actually deliver on the original idea. Crowdfunding contributors have no such control.
It's a well-known risk of crowdfunding and backers are warned about this risk a gazillion times.
Its a well known risk of any new startup regardless of where the funding is crowdsourced, friends and family, angel investors, venture capitalists, etc.
When things take longer than expected and they burn through all the money and have to shut down, does it matter where that money originally came from? Did many crowdfunding contributors even do any "due diligence" research beyond reading the project web page? I bet friends and family do better "due diligence".
FWIW... I've had VCs explain to me they want to see friends and family involved at very early stages. It speaks to a commitment one will have to the project due to the life long grief one will face for losing friend and family money. As opposed to VCs you don't give a crap about and will never have to see again. Crowdfunding contributors, you don't even have to face them in the real world. Just a post to a website, "sorry, it didn't work out".
I think Russian soldiers might want a word with you concerning the question who had to bear what burden of that victory... if dead people could talk.
Russian casualties had a large part to do with the incompetence of Russian generals, generals picked for loyalty to Stalin rather than military competence.
Russian soldiers were also able to endure and ultimately be victorious due to American supplies. Food for soldiers, high grade steel for the manufacture of T-34 tanks, aircraft for busting German armor and logistics.
The Russian soldiers also did not fight to liberate the continent of Europe. They fought to replace one mass murdering despot with a different mass murdering despot. They fought to claim a portion of eastern europe as vassal states to Russian. This includes allying with Hitler at the beginning of the war to split Poland between Germany and Russia, and to define agreed upon spheres of influence in eastern europe where Germany and Russia would have control. Russia was complicit with Germany in the start if the war, the invasion of Poland. The Russian alliance with the Nazis persisted until Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded Russia.
Yes the individual Russian soldier suffered greatly, both due to the Nazis and due to Stalin. While being forced into being the tools of Stalin for the above, their personal motivation were to defend their homeland and exact revenge on the Germans. Unlike the western allies whose soldiers also had motivations of restoring democracy to occupied nations.
Allen's 13-person expedition team [...] will conduct a live tour of the wreckage in the next few weeks. They are complying with U.S. law and respecting the sunken ship as a war grave, taking care not to disturb the site.
How do you do a live tour of the wreckage without disturbing it?
You don't enter the wreck, you stay outside. You do not remove anything from the site, you take photos/video.
As a European, I'm sick and tired of American aggression... I would like to indicate my displeasure for American military aggression by traveling to the United States and urinating on the graves of soldiers.
You don't have to travel to America, there are plenty of American soldiers buried on the continent of Europe. They died so that you have the right to make your childish, myopic and ill-informed "statement".
I find this recurring and interesting in and of itself. There are so many movements and ideas that "won" yet there are a lot of people that still hold on to some notion that it still needs to be solved or pushed despite it being the law of the land.
Those (union leadership) financially benefiting from the "battle" don't want to see their rewards end. In this regard unions are similar to the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us of. Again, not my idea, my 40+ IBEW union member grandfather's observation.
Be careful what you take in your mind. They are tying to convince you that Unions are the enemy and Unions must go. You took part of the bait. I'm glad you were lucky and had your grandfather to talk to you.
The theory of unions is just fine. The history of unions is important, their achievements great. However do not confuse these things with the state of unions *today*. Today many unions are corrupt and work for the interests of the union itself, not for the workers they represent. Today many do not uphold the standards of the industry, the craft, making sure members live up to the standards of quality of the industry. Do not confuse the unions of the "golden era" with those of today. They have little in common. Many of the rights and benefits workers receive today are due to law, not union membership or contract. Yes, laws brought about by the unions of that "golden era", but law never the less.
You have no idea of how hard Washington and Corporations want to kill unions. That way you will have absolutely no defence against what they pay you, treat you, or anything they want to do to you.
Other than the law of the land?
For instance: Take having "The right to work.in your State. The true statement is "The right to work for less pay". People find out about it later..much too late. What you said about Unions in the 70's is true. They got too greedy and made a lot of idiot mistakes. (So do politicians to this day). I think Unions realized their mistakes and have changed for the better. But today you can be part of a Union and not pay dues! This is their way of crippling Unions.
The first hand accounts I've heard from the late 1990s show little difference from the 1970s.
The United States Post Office is one of the biggest Unions to exist. Why do you think they wanted them to pay retirement benefits 75 years into the future?? They want to kill the post office and it's Union. They are also under the illusion that privatizing the post office will bring a profit to them. It will in the city, but be a huge loss in the rural areas.
Government employee unions are a separate topic, and a trouble idea to begin with.
"“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
That wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was George Meany -- the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O -- in 1955. Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once thought the idea absurd."
"The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”" https://www.nytimes.com/roomfo...
""All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," he wrote. "It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management."
Roosevelt didn’t stop there.
"The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations," he wrote.
When Walker claimed FDR said "the government is the people," he had Roosevelt’s next line in mind.
"The employer," Roosevelt’s letter added, "is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, pro
No, no, and no. Unions got you payed overtime for such things. You can still be expected to work on a weekend, on a holiday or more than 8 hours. Pre-union it might be part of your daily/weekly salary, you might not even be getting an hourly rate, not a penny extra.
Yes, yes, and yes - you're handwaving. Working retail you are likely to have to work on weekends -but then you have other days off during the week.
I'm handwaving? When most people are presented with the notion of working on the "weekend" they are presuming the typical scenario where they already worked the "work week". And you are now claiming that if your 5-day workweek includes the weekend, if your two days off are not on the weekend, we have a big issue? Seriously, that is your crisis? Sorry, the semantic games are being played by you. And yes, I have worked in retail and have worked weekends, holidays, etc. 1.5x overtime in excess of 8 hours in a day, in excess of 40 hours a week, 2x overtime on holidays. No union contract. Government regulations, except maybe the 2x holiday, not sure if gov reg require 2x compared to 1.5x.
As my 40-year IBEW member grandfather explained that was all true and unions were a godsend back in those early decades. However he said that in the 1960s-70s timeframe they became a useless bureaucracy working to perpetuate their own existence and the salaries and perks of the union staff/leadership, not the members.
Thus begins every warmed over piece of anti-union bullshit - my brother's wife's cousin's best friend says...
The point you failed to realize is that I didn't receive second-hand info, or is it third-hand, I received the info **directly** from a 40+ year International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union member who worked union jobs from the 1930s to the 1970s, taking off some time for WW2 where he worked for the Army (non union job). The conversation came about as I visited him on the picket line in the 1970s and I asked "why are you on strike". He said he'd answer later after dinner, then explained the the current disagreement was BS. Then followed the history of unions in America, how important they once were, and how they have devolved into fairly useless self-serving things in recent times.
... unions protect laaaazy people...
Not his argument at all. His observations had to do with union leadership, which essentially became a racket to enrich themselves and do little for the workers. That union leadership had more in common with company management than with the workers. Just another entitled privileged group taking their cut of things and not doing much beyond protecting their cut, certainly not protecting the workers beyond making nice speeches.
... If your grandfather was a real person, and that's what he actually said, he was a fucking idiot and a traitor to his class...
When your job history and experience approach 10% of his your opinion might have value, until then, who cares what you think. Until then enjoy your petty little rationalization if it makes you feel better.
... Unions will always be a necessary counterbalance to bosses, to capitalists, to greed.
Again, your deficiently simplistic model forgets government. Nearly all those great things early unions fought for are *not* delivered by union contracts todays. They are delivered by **government regulations**. Those old union demands are essentially the law of the land today. That is why unions are far less important today, they won the battle.
I see a lot of apathy for Unions. Very sad. They gave you: Weekends off, eight hour work day, Holidays off.
No, no, and no. Unions got you payed overtime for such things. You can still be expected to work on a weekend, on a holiday or more than 8 hours. Pre-union it might be part of your daily/weekly salary, you might not even be getting an hourly rate, not a penny extra. Post-union you got 1.5 to 2 times your normal hourly rate, in general.
And a safer workplace. People died in the fight to start unions for you. If you like working 60 hours a week on a regular basis; keep on disliking unions.
You got that half-right. As my 40-year IBEW member grandfather explained that was all true and unions were a godsend back in those early decades. However he said that in the 1960s-70s timeframe they became a useless bureaucracy working to perpetuate their own existence and the salaries and perks of the union staff/leadership, not the members. That all the important stuff (those fights you refer to) was not contract, but law. And that now the union fights over BS stuff and rarely does anything to help a worker against management. He said management and union had this working symbiotic relationship perpetuating their interests, neither of them thinking much about the workers interests. In summary, he said the unions were once important and greatly needed, but now they are just a racket doing little beyond skimming some percentage of the money, not unlike the mob.
A friend was an assistant manager at a small local manufacturer back in the 1990s. The owner was once a worker in a larger plant, went out on his own, grew a business. He was a pretty good boss, his shop was clean and safe and well equipped. When things were going really well and profits way up, he gave bonuses to everyone. Something comes up, someone needs the flexibility to take some time off without using vacation or sick time, sure we'll juggle some hours around. He was genuinely concerned about his workers and treated them like extended family. Then a union organizer came around with lots of promises. The employees voted in favor of unionizing, they didn't have any grievances but like the idea of more money in their pocket. When no more bonuses showed up, they asked why not. The reply, its not part of the union contract. When there was less scheduling flexibility... its not part of the union contract. When they said they are taking home less money... I warned you not to trust the union organizer. The workers were now eagerly looking forward to the passage of two years (?) so they could vote to leave the union. But it never got there, the owner decided to retire, sold the company to a larger company. About a year later they shut it down and moved it offshore.
Voting to unionize is not necessarily some panacea. In the distant past it might have been, but not any more.
You never know how long you'll be in a property; the next owner might not be a tech head and cable in every room might be a selling point. Unless you can get more selling it than it might be worth when you come to sell the property, leave it in the walls. If you want to get rid of the sockets, fine, but pulling cable out without having a way to easily replace it is a recipe for future sadness.
In short you are saying don't lower your home's value by getting it tagged as not wired for cable.
Also what makes you think tech heads are universally against cable TV or cable delivered internet? Yes the companies often suck but sometimes their tech is the better option. Personally I found cable to all the bedrooms useful. It gave me options for where to put my home office / game room. The modem being in the same room was convenient since I have the "work machines" behind a router / firewall on a different subnet from the wifi which is used for fun, family and guests. Locally the cable is a better deal than DSL which could accomplish the same thing since every room is wired for multiple phone lines.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you fucking idiot! Nazis were a far-right group from the outset ...
You were misinformed. The Nazis were fascists, and fascism is neither left nor right. Fascist ideology takes from both the left and the right of the political spectrum. Fascism will do things like coop the workers and the industrialists, bringing both under their control and leveraging both as convenient.
Then came the ship with NT 4.0 that never worked correctly ...
That is an urban myth. Application software allowed an invalid value, a zero, to be accepted and saved to a database. Controller software that read data from that database accepted an invalid value then performed a divide by zero and was halted by the operating system. This controller software was involved in engine operation. Application, database, controller, ... the operating system was irrelevant, the same thing would happen under Linux.
Immediately after the failure a laid-off *nix engineer, who was not on the ship, speculated that NT was to blame and the Linux evangelists went with this and the myth was born. The people on the ship said it was userland software (application and controller) not operating system software that failed. The company writing that userland software admitted they were to blame for the incident.
Also, the ship was a test platform. They were testing, trying to break things, running debug software that didn't have the "watchdogs" that would restart the halted software. Zero was intentionally entered into a particular variable to see what would happen.
How is it any different for closed source software? What if that proprietary software haven't been updated in years? Surely if there is no update, there is no security risk, right?
Proprietary and Closed are two separate things. Some proprietary software may be sold under a binary-only license or a source code license. The source code license allows redistribution by the licensee so that the licensee can debug and update the code if necessary. In other words the source code license removes a big risk of "buying" rather than "building" software. From the licensee's perspective it is not terribly different than open source. It really only differs for the licensee's customers who have no access to the source code.
I expect that "painful" would likely be measured in the billions of lives. Let's hope science and engineering beat Malthus once again.
In the past the earth had much higher CO2 values, and more plant life.
And no humans
There were ancestral species not so different from us. We would likely survive. We are after all an intelligent adaptable species that learned to survive in nearly every climate zone on the planet with only quite primate technology. It would be a painful transition but likely survivable, we are not locked into one ecological niche like many species. And then there is modern technology.
Before anyone gets all apoplectic. I'm not advocating we go down that path. I like the earth as it is. I'd like to avoid the death of billions that the "transition" would likely cause. But lets not pretend the environment of 5-6 million years ago is not survivable by modern humans.
Actually, to find carbon dioxide levels higher than today you have to look back to the Miocene epoch, about 5.2 million years ago. There were not humans around then.
Homo Sapiens had not evolved yet but our Orrorin Tugenensis ancestors were alive and well.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evi...
Its likely Homo Sapiens could survive as well. We are quite adaptable, as habitation in nearly every climate zone on the planet demonstrates. And now add modern technology.
Now I'm not arguing returning to the climate of that epoch is advisable but lets not pretend its some sort of death sentence for Homo Sapiens. It would be a painful transition given the rapid onset of the changes but quite survivable as an adaptable intelligent species that is not locked into a particular environment niche.
I live on the 45 floor and I don't know the people living on the exact same GPS spot in the lower floors.
Its not really the exact same GPS spot, GPS is three dimensional and includes a vertical component. That would be a serious bug to only consider lattitude and longitude.
FYI ... Google is abandoning both Linux and the GPL.
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
And Google is dropping Linux and the GPL.
"With Fuchsia, Google would not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL: the OS is licensed under a mix of BSD 3 clause, MIT, and Apache 2.0. Dumping Linux might come as a bit of a shock, but the Android ecosystem seems to have no desire to keep up with upstream Linux releases. Even the Google Pixel is still stuck on Linux Kernel 3.18, which was first released at the end of 2014."
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
It seems clear that the losses in MacOS have appeared over in Linux.
No. Both growing but at different rates results in the same sort of numbers.
You mean "traditional desktop computers".
No, they mean "desktop" period. Yes Linux is used behind the scenes in many appliances and servers where users never see or touch Linux. The point of "desktop Linux" is that users see it, use it, and choose it; unlike in appliances, which sort of includes phones.
Best example is Chromebooks
Agan, an appliance. Linux is not seen, used or chosen by the user. Not "desktop".
That's like pre-OS X, as in the 1980s style Mac OS (cooperative threading, no preemption, no protection, etc) PowerPC based (before the switch to Intel CPUs) Mac numbers. Congrats.
I think this time the pressure isn't from cost, rather the pressure for ethical clothing manufacture, which admittedly, has good intentions in trying to make manufacturers pay their workers more, but while that seems like a simple solution, to pay workers more, so is not employing people... Can't be exploiting your staff if you haven't got any...
So unintended consequences screws up good intentions, again. Using "unintended consequences" loosely, its not as if this sort of thing was "unforeseen" by those who had a microeconomics class. But hey, no foul, good intentions outweigh simplistic shallow solutions to extremely complex matters.
If this is true, it begs the question: why is the NSA looking for Satoshi?
Its a research project, you have to look for someone attempting anonymity. Satoshi would be a fun target. Also an anonymous person with a larger collection of public writing would be make the research easier.
They will fire founders who are failing and bring in professionals to actually deliver on the original idea.
I dont think they restrict themselves to the original idea. When they are booting the guy that couldnt deliver [X], they bring in someone that will make the best of whats left, and no longer give a shit if [X] comes out the other end or not.
True, sometimes there is a salvage operation, but sometimes there is just a change to more competent leadership. Sometime the problem was the team, not the original idea.
If I were a conman, I would hang around crowdfunding sites to harvest suckers.
When a bank or venture capitalists funds a product or company, they make money out of it if the product is successful - they take a risk with an upside. In a crowded funded product, the funders are fools who don't partake in the success of the product in the off chance that the product is successful.
VCs also own the project. They will fire founders who are failing and bring in professionals to actually deliver on the original idea. Crowdfunding contributors have no such control.
It's a well-known risk of crowdfunding and backers are warned about this risk a gazillion times.
Its a well known risk of any new startup regardless of where the funding is crowdsourced, friends and family, angel investors, venture capitalists, etc.
... I've had VCs explain to me they want to see friends and family involved at very early stages. It speaks to a commitment one will have to the project due to the life long grief one will face for losing friend and family money. As opposed to VCs you don't give a crap about and will never have to see again. Crowdfunding contributors, you don't even have to face them in the real world. Just a post to a website, "sorry, it didn't work out".
When things take longer than expected and they burn through all the money and have to shut down, does it matter where that money originally came from? Did many crowdfunding contributors even do any "due diligence" research beyond reading the project web page? I bet friends and family do better "due diligence".
FWIW
I think Russian soldiers might want a word with you concerning the question who had to bear what burden of that victory... if dead people could talk.
Russian casualties had a large part to do with the incompetence of Russian generals, generals picked for loyalty to Stalin rather than military competence.
Russian soldiers were also able to endure and ultimately be victorious due to American supplies. Food for soldiers, high grade steel for the manufacture of T-34 tanks, aircraft for busting German armor and logistics.
The Russian soldiers also did not fight to liberate the continent of Europe. They fought to replace one mass murdering despot with a different mass murdering despot. They fought to claim a portion of eastern europe as vassal states to Russian. This includes allying with Hitler at the beginning of the war to split Poland between Germany and Russia, and to define agreed upon spheres of influence in eastern europe where Germany and Russia would have control. Russia was complicit with Germany in the start if the war, the invasion of Poland. The Russian alliance with the Nazis persisted until Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded Russia.
Yes the individual Russian soldier suffered greatly, both due to the Nazis and due to Stalin. While being forced into being the tools of Stalin for the above, their personal motivation were to defend their homeland and exact revenge on the Germans. Unlike the western allies whose soldiers also had motivations of restoring democracy to occupied nations.
How do you do a live tour of the wreckage without disturbing it?
You don't enter the wreck, you stay outside. You do not remove anything from the site, you take photos/video.
As a European, I'm sick and tired of American aggression ... I would like to indicate my displeasure for American military aggression by traveling to the United States and urinating on the graves of soldiers.
You don't have to travel to America, there are plenty of American soldiers buried on the continent of Europe. They died so that you have the right to make your childish, myopic and ill-informed "statement".
they won the battle.
I find this recurring and interesting in and of itself. There are so many movements and ideas that "won" yet there are a lot of people that still hold on to some notion that it still needs to be solved or pushed despite it being the law of the land.
Those (union leadership) financially benefiting from the "battle" don't want to see their rewards end. In this regard unions are similar to the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us of. Again, not my idea, my 40+ IBEW union member grandfather's observation.
Be careful what you take in your mind. They are tying to convince you that Unions are the enemy and Unions must go. You took part of the bait. I'm glad you were lucky and had your grandfather to talk to you.
The theory of unions is just fine. The history of unions is important, their achievements great. However do not confuse these things with the state of unions *today*. Today many unions are corrupt and work for the interests of the union itself, not for the workers they represent. Today many do not uphold the standards of the industry, the craft, making sure members live up to the standards of quality of the industry. Do not confuse the unions of the "golden era" with those of today. They have little in common. Many of the rights and benefits workers receive today are due to law, not union membership or contract. Yes, laws brought about by the unions of that "golden era", but law never the less.
You have no idea of how hard Washington and Corporations want to kill unions. That way you will have absolutely no defence against what they pay you, treat you, or anything they want to do to you.
Other than the law of the land?
For instance: Take having "The right to work.in your State. The true statement is "The right to work for less pay". People find out about it later..much too late. What you said about Unions in the 70's is true. They got too greedy and made a lot of idiot mistakes. (So do politicians to this day). I think Unions realized their mistakes and have changed for the better. But today you can be part of a Union and not pay dues! This is their way of crippling Unions.
The first hand accounts I've heard from the late 1990s show little difference from the 1970s.
The United States Post Office is one of the biggest Unions to exist. Why do you think they wanted them to pay retirement benefits 75 years into the future?? They want to kill the post office and it's Union. They are also under the illusion that privatizing the post office will bring a profit to them. It will in the city, but be a huge loss in the rural areas.
Government employee unions are a separate topic, and a trouble idea to begin with.
"“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
That wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was George Meany -- the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O -- in 1955. Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once thought the idea absurd."
"The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfo...
""All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," he wrote. "It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management." Roosevelt didn’t stop there. "The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations," he wrote. When Walker claimed FDR said "the government is the people," he had Roosevelt’s next line in mind. "The employer," Roosevelt’s letter added, "is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, pro
Yes, yes, and yes - you're handwaving. Working retail you are likely to have to work on weekends -but then you have other days off during the week.
I'm handwaving? When most people are presented with the notion of working on the "weekend" they are presuming the typical scenario where they already worked the "work week". And you are now claiming that if your 5-day workweek includes the weekend, if your two days off are not on the weekend, we have a big issue? Seriously, that is your crisis? Sorry, the semantic games are being played by you. And yes, I have worked in retail and have worked weekends, holidays, etc. 1.5x overtime in excess of 8 hours in a day, in excess of 40 hours a week, 2x overtime on holidays. No union contract. Government regulations, except maybe the 2x holiday, not sure if gov reg require 2x compared to 1.5x.
Thus begins every warmed over piece of anti-union bullshit - my brother's wife's cousin's best friend says ...
The point you failed to realize is that I didn't receive second-hand info, or is it third-hand, I received the info **directly** from a 40+ year International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union member who worked union jobs from the 1930s to the 1970s, taking off some time for WW2 where he worked for the Army (non union job). The conversation came about as I visited him on the picket line in the 1970s and I asked "why are you on strike". He said he'd answer later after dinner, then explained the the current disagreement was BS. Then followed the history of unions in America, how important they once were, and how they have devolved into fairly useless self-serving things in recent times.
Not his argument at all. His observations had to do with union leadership, which essentially became a racket to enrich themselves and do little for the workers. That union leadership had more in common with company management than with the workers. Just another entitled privileged group taking their cut of things and not doing much beyond protecting their cut, certainly not protecting the workers beyond making nice speeches.
... If your grandfather was a real person, and that's what he actually said, he was a fucking idiot and a traitor to his class ...
When your job history and experience approach 10% of his your opinion might have value, until then, who cares what you think. Until then enjoy your petty little rationalization if it makes you feel better.
... Unions will always be a necessary counterbalance to bosses, to capitalists, to greed.
Again, your deficiently simplistic model forgets government. Nearly all those great things early unions fought for are *not* delivered by union contracts todays. They are delivered by **government regulations**. Those old union demands are essentially the law of the land today. That is why unions are far less important today, they won the battle.
I see a lot of apathy for Unions. Very sad. They gave you: Weekends off, eight hour work day, Holidays off.
No, no, and no. Unions got you payed overtime for such things. You can still be expected to work on a weekend, on a holiday or more than 8 hours. Pre-union it might be part of your daily/weekly salary, you might not even be getting an hourly rate, not a penny extra. Post-union you got 1.5 to 2 times your normal hourly rate, in general.
And a safer workplace. People died in the fight to start unions for you. If you like working 60 hours a week on a regular basis; keep on disliking unions.
You got that half-right. As my 40-year IBEW member grandfather explained that was all true and unions were a godsend back in those early decades. However he said that in the 1960s-70s timeframe they became a useless bureaucracy working to perpetuate their own existence and the salaries and perks of the union staff/leadership, not the members. That all the important stuff (those fights you refer to) was not contract, but law. And that now the union fights over BS stuff and rarely does anything to help a worker against management. He said management and union had this working symbiotic relationship perpetuating their interests, neither of them thinking much about the workers interests. In summary, he said the unions were once important and greatly needed, but now they are just a racket doing little beyond skimming some percentage of the money, not unlike the mob.
... its not part of the union contract. When they said they are taking home less money ... I warned you not to trust the union organizer. The workers were now eagerly looking forward to the passage of two years (?) so they could vote to leave the union. But it never got there, the owner decided to retire, sold the company to a larger company. About a year later they shut it down and moved it offshore.
A friend was an assistant manager at a small local manufacturer back in the 1990s. The owner was once a worker in a larger plant, went out on his own, grew a business. He was a pretty good boss, his shop was clean and safe and well equipped. When things were going really well and profits way up, he gave bonuses to everyone. Something comes up, someone needs the flexibility to take some time off without using vacation or sick time, sure we'll juggle some hours around. He was genuinely concerned about his workers and treated them like extended family. Then a union organizer came around with lots of promises. The employees voted in favor of unionizing, they didn't have any grievances but like the idea of more money in their pocket. When no more bonuses showed up, they asked why not. The reply, its not part of the union contract. When there was less scheduling flexibility
Voting to unionize is not necessarily some panacea. In the distant past it might have been, but not any more.
You never know how long you'll be in a property; the next owner might not be a tech head and cable in every room might be a selling point. Unless you can get more selling it than it might be worth when you come to sell the property, leave it in the walls. If you want to get rid of the sockets, fine, but pulling cable out without having a way to easily replace it is a recipe for future sadness.
In short you are saying don't lower your home's value by getting it tagged as not wired for cable.
Also what makes you think tech heads are universally against cable TV or cable delivered internet? Yes the companies often suck but sometimes their tech is the better option. Personally I found cable to all the bedrooms useful. It gave me options for where to put my home office / game room. The modem being in the same room was convenient since I have the "work machines" behind a router / firewall on a different subnet from the wifi which is used for fun, family and guests. Locally the cable is a better deal than DSL which could accomplish the same thing since every room is wired for multiple phone lines.