The problem has been stated. The problem is that the only reason that corporations exist is for shareholder profit.
So Greenpeace or the United Auto Workers labor union exists only for shareholder profit?
UAW is not, as far as I can determine, a corporation.
Non profit entities such as Greenpeace certainly can exist for the general good but in many cases even non profit entities are used by the wealthy to shelter income from income, property and estate taxes. Ikea is my favorite example of this: http://www.economist.com/node/...
So yes, the occasional exception exists but it remains the exception, not the rule.
Let's start World War III over a piece of land in the middle east we all gave fuck-all about five years ago.
Didn't we elect someone to get us the hell out of some sandy region where everyone hates everyone else, and the only people they hate more is anyone who shows up to help? Are we really going to do this all over again with the advisers and the airstrikes and then another Iraq/Libya/Egypt clusterfuck?
This clusterfuck was arguably triggered by America leaving a power vacuum after the invasion of Iraq and subsequent failure to support (for good or bad, I'm not judging here) the dictators previously installed by the US to keep the region calm.
On top of that, those stepping into that power vacuum are not friends of the US, to say the least, and will attack any American (et al) interest that they can reach - in the middle east, in Europe or in the US.
So if you don't want IS to continue to grow in power you'll suck it up and be part of the solution instead of whining about being involved somewhere that you personally don't give a shit about.
If corporations didn't make profit, they wouldn't have been created and they wouldn't continue to exist because no one would invest in them to start with.
That or there would be more not-for-profit public benefit corporations, whose earnings stay in the company's foundation. You might remember one that was created out of the BUCK FETA scandal on Slashdot: SoylentNews.
Possibly, although such can still be misused as many 'not for profit' organizations are used by the wealthy to shelter income and avoid death taxes. http://www.economist.com/node/...
Because the sole reason for corporations to exist is to maximize profits for the owners.
False. Corporations exist to provide a product or service. Profits are a byproduct which allows the business to continue to provide the product or service.
Yeah, sorry wrong. If it were consumers creating the companies so that they could have products and services that statement might actually be logical.
I know that's what you've been fed in school, because it is what I was fed in school, but the reality is that the only reason they exist is to make the most profit possible by realizing 'economies of scale' and applying the knowledge resource to achieve the greatest reduction of costs such as taxes and human resources.
If corporations didn't make profit, they wouldn't have been created and they wouldn't continue to exist because no one would invest in them to start with.
Everything other than profit like products, services and jobs are byproducts or at the very least, a means to an end (the end being the profit).
Shouldn't you have to show that there's a problem first before demanding a change?
The problem has been stated. The problem is that the only reason that corporations exist is for shareholder profit.
The symptoms include but are not limited to doing anything possible to avoid paying taxes in the US even to the point of 'relocating' the company outside of the US and reduction of the American workforce in favor of foreign workers using a mechanism that exists only for the purpose of cutting labor costs.
Note, of course, that the "owners" are anyone who owns Disney stock. Which includes a large chunk of the 401k's and IRA's in the country. Certainly it includes mine...
That may be the case but it does not change or invalidate what I said.
So why try to save a few bucks outsourcing? I don't get it, the money saved is literally insignificant to them.
Because the sole reason for corporations to exist is to maximize profits for the owners. There is no such thing as 'insignificant' when it comes to profit and greed.
You could sue for a realistic damages figure. If its about principle and not money than wining a case like this should be enough in itself. I can understand why he might want to get the school to admit wrong doing or have a finding against them that they did wrong.
How exactly was he harmed to the tune of $15 Million? I mean seriously if nothing else thanks to Obummer deciding to make a political football out of him he gained from it.
Now if they family said he now needs therapy for anxiety or something, and does not want to go back to that school, and sued for oh I don't know $300 - 400k and an apology for the cost of private school, therapy and pain suffered; I'd say well lets see what comes out in court or if the district settles.
$15 Million on the other hand is a naked cash grab. 15 Million isn't about fair compensation.
Actually given all that clock boy has benefited from this event he should be thanking the school and paying them a percentage of all the benefits that he's received as a result.
I'm half joking. Of course the school and the local police are idiots but this kid is coming out of the whole thing much better off than he went into it.
If by "science" you mean creationism/intelligent design, Pi=3, genetics is wrong, evolution is a sin, and scientific theories are just "crazy ideas someguy once had that can't be proven"
You do realize that lots of religious schools, even in Texas, teach evolution even with respect to humans, teach the big bang theory, teach that the discoveries of science are not in conflict with religion, that science and religion search for answers in orthogonal fields.
FYI, genetic science and the big bang theory began with members of the clergy.
On a site that frequently ridicules the short-sighted behavior of eliminating experienced employees to bring in fresh (cheap) college graduates, it seems out of place to have a positive outlook on pervasive outsourcing.
If everyone is a contract worker doing works-for-hire, then nobody has extensive institutional knowledge. You are constantly explaining and re-explaining how your business works, and bugs are repeatedly entering codebases because the developer hasn't spent years understanding the business and its workflows. It doesn't matter how well documented your business is, developers will make mistakes when they are unfamiliar with your processes. When they can't look at a workflow or data structure and go 'that's not right' because they have spent years at the company learning how things work.
Experience has value; not just experience coding, but experience with the company understanding how it works. Systems are rarely generic... they are embedded directly into the business logic unique to each company, and the less you need to learn and relearn the requirements of every system the more productive you can be.
You're making a few assumptions.
1. That contractors should be classed the same as outsourcing jobs overseas and H1B visa holders 2. That contractors don't make up a significant portion of the people on this site 3. That contractors don't know your business - which is no doubt true to some degree but contractors can bring other benefits to the table - experience and vision of how it's being done elsewhere that could be of benefit to the company
Having been screwed over every time I accepted a perm job I have no desire to be an employee for anyone else ever again.
I have control over my health benefits. I have control over which contracts I take and which I don't. I have control over my own training schedule. I have control over my own vacation schedule (which tends to be in between contracts but I can control the length of time I take).
If I am of benefit to the company, they'll keep me on. If they treat me well, I will stay on.
Frankly I think that people who lock themselves in to being employees for companies that don't generally give a shit about them are giving themselves the short end of the stick.
Meanwhile, in the United States our own "glorified dowsing rods" the TSA continues to rake in somewhere around $8 Billion dollars a year in direct costs alone (likely tens of billions when you factor in economic losses, increased road deaths and secondary costs) and is 95% ineffective at finding lighters and knives. And chances are no one responsible for that debacle is ever going to see a fine let alone a prison sentence.
The difference here being that the actual risk in the US is negligible whereas the risk where these bomb dowsers are being used is substantial.
If you lived somewhere that there were real chances of a bomb being used you would want something that worked as well as possible, even if it was imperfect.
Whereby McCormick gets to detect which one out of six bombs is not a bomb and is then forced to detonate it.
As an aside, really!?, a ten year sentence? Either this whole story is total bullshit or someone has no concept of proportionality - doesn't taking the name of a media-multinational in vain result a longer sentence than this?
Russian roulette would actually be safer as the weight of the bullet pulls the cylinder down on the spin.
>"The company may see this as a way to differentiate themselves from the competition."
Um, yeah- "Buy our phones! They are better because we allow the government to spy on you!" What a great selling feature to differentiate yourself from your competition. I bet consumers will flock to that ?!!?!?!!
Government at all levels, as a consumer, may support this - and they buy rather a lot of phones.
I'd be more impressed if he was offering the same benefit to his employees.
So be impressed. You could even have read the summary which stated "At Facebook we offer our U.S. employees up to 4 months of paid maternity or paternity leave which they can take throughout the year."
As the 'up to' could mean that the claim is actually bullshit, I googled for a few seconds and found this: "A Facebook spokesman, Slater Tow, said in an e-mail that the company offers four months of paid leave to both mothers and fathers, including same-sex couples, as long as they are full-time employees. The policy also covers the adoption of a child. Plus, new parents get $4,000 in “baby cash” for each child born to them or adopted." http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com...
For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, fathers never took time off when their kids were born. One can also make the case that the fathers of the "Greatest Generation" (both the parents and the children of that generation) never took time off and yet they were the greatest generation. By the same token, one can make the case that this current crop of breeders are total pu$$ies.
For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, we had no real medicine and thought that a good stink was good for keeping the demons away. No doubt those people would think that we who bathe regularly are total pussies too.
Just because it was done in the past doesn't mean that it was a good thing.
Our system isn't as generous as yours (Iceland), but it's still worlds beyond what America offers (no paid leave, and only rather limited unpaid leave to mothers).
I'm of mixed feelings. On one hand, I think it's a great thing to do for parents and for the kids. On the other hand, as someone who's infertile, it's kind of frustrating. I never complain to anyone in person, absolutely not. But I see all of my coworkers in their 20s and 30s having one child after the next and spending a large chunk of their time on the job... off the job.... often taking their leave in vacation homes or overseas.... I mean, I understand why the time is given, I totally sympathize... but underneath it sort of feels unfair to people who can't have children, to have such a massive benefit for those who can.
Perhaps the solution would be to make things more fair, not necessarily by taking away parental benefits but by granting you and others benefits due to your personal circumstances.
Actually, I think there's an opposite effect going on. I'd say the children born to wealthy parents, but not unbelieveably so, have the best chances. Being the child of Zuckerberg or Gates means you're growing up in a very unique position which isn't necessarily good for a child's development. It becomes hard to have "normal" social interactions, you have a completely out of whack understanding and relationship with money, etc. This goes even more so as a teenager, where the other teens will know who your parents are, which will heavily color their interactions with you. Plus, many of those parents tend to be extremely busy and it's very well known that parental presence is one of the most important factors in a child's development.
It all depends on what 'normal means. I'm sure there are plenty of other rich or rich enough brats in this child's future social circle that 'normal' will just have a different meaning - as our 'normal' is different than the 'normal' of those born on the streets of, for example, Somalia.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem has been stated. The problem is that the only reason that corporations exist is for shareholder profit.
So Greenpeace or the United Auto Workers labor union exists only for shareholder profit?
UAW is not, as far as I can determine, a corporation.
Non profit entities such as Greenpeace certainly can exist for the general good but in many cases even non profit entities are used by the wealthy to shelter income from income, property and estate taxes. Ikea is my favorite example of this: http://www.economist.com/node/...
So yes, the occasional exception exists but it remains the exception, not the rule.
One never knows...
Let's start World War III over a piece of land in the middle east we all gave fuck-all about five years ago.
Didn't we elect someone to get us the hell out of some sandy region where everyone hates everyone else, and the only people they hate more is anyone who shows up to help? Are we really going to do this all over again with the advisers and the airstrikes and then another Iraq/Libya/Egypt clusterfuck?
This clusterfuck was arguably triggered by America leaving a power vacuum after the invasion of Iraq and subsequent failure to support (for good or bad, I'm not judging here) the dictators previously installed by the US to keep the region calm.
On top of that, those stepping into that power vacuum are not friends of the US, to say the least, and will attack any American (et al) interest that they can reach - in the middle east, in Europe or in the US.
So if you don't want IS to continue to grow in power you'll suck it up and be part of the solution instead of whining about being involved somewhere that you personally don't give a shit about.
If corporations didn't make profit, they wouldn't have been created and they wouldn't continue to exist because no one would invest in them to start with.
That or there would be more not-for-profit public benefit corporations, whose earnings stay in the company's foundation. You might remember one that was created out of the BUCK FETA scandal on Slashdot: SoylentNews.
Possibly, although such can still be misused as many 'not for profit' organizations are used by the wealthy to shelter income and avoid death taxes.
http://www.economist.com/node/...
Snopes has a good write-up of the state of things around this:
http://www.snopes.com/2015/11/...
Because the sole reason for corporations to exist is to maximize profits for the owners.
False. Corporations exist to provide a product or service. Profits are a byproduct which allows the business to continue to provide the product or service.
Yeah, sorry wrong. If it were consumers creating the companies so that they could have products and services that statement might actually be logical.
I know that's what you've been fed in school, because it is what I was fed in school, but the reality is that the only reason they exist is to make the most profit possible by realizing 'economies of scale' and applying the knowledge resource to achieve the greatest reduction of costs such as taxes and human resources.
If corporations didn't make profit, they wouldn't have been created and they wouldn't continue to exist because no one would invest in them to start with.
Everything other than profit like products, services and jobs are byproducts or at the very least, a means to an end (the end being the profit).
Shouldn't you have to show that there's a problem first before demanding a change?
The problem has been stated. The problem is that the only reason that corporations exist is for shareholder profit.
The symptoms include but are not limited to doing anything possible to avoid paying taxes in the US even to the point of 'relocating' the company outside of the US and reduction of the American workforce in favor of foreign workers using a mechanism that exists only for the purpose of cutting labor costs.
Did they use linux to do it?
Why is this story on /.?
Note, of course, that the "owners" are anyone who owns Disney stock. Which includes a large chunk of the 401k's and IRA's in the country. Certainly it includes mine...
That may be the case but it does not change or invalidate what I said.
So why try to save a few bucks outsourcing? I don't get it, the money saved is literally insignificant to them.
Because the sole reason for corporations to exist is to maximize profits for the owners. There is no such thing as 'insignificant' when it comes to profit and greed.
You gotta fight
for your right
to wooooooork
because IBM's trackpoint hits the right spot absolutely positively every f****g time.
You make it sound like a G-Spot for laptops
You could sue for a realistic damages figure. If its about principle and not money than wining a case like this should be enough in itself. I can understand why he might want to get the school to admit wrong doing or have a finding against them that they did wrong.
How exactly was he harmed to the tune of $15 Million? I mean seriously if nothing else thanks to Obummer deciding to make a political football out of him he gained from it.
Now if they family said he now needs therapy for anxiety or something, and does not want to go back to that school, and sued for oh I don't know $300 - 400k and an apology for the cost of private school, therapy and pain suffered; I'd say well lets see what comes out in court or if the district settles.
$15 Million on the other hand is a naked cash grab. 15 Million isn't about fair compensation.
Actually given all that clock boy has benefited from this event he should be thanking the school and paying them a percentage of all the benefits that he's received as a result.
I'm half joking. Of course the school and the local police are idiots but this kid is coming out of the whole thing much better off than he went into it.
I've heard of him. Like the terrorists in France, he was the son of immigrants. Proof that sealing the borders is the *only* option.
Um...you are being ironic right?
If by "science" you mean creationism/intelligent design, Pi=3, genetics is wrong, evolution is a sin, and scientific theories are just "crazy ideas someguy once had that can't be proven"
You do realize that lots of religious schools, even in Texas, teach evolution even with respect to humans, teach the big bang theory, teach that the discoveries of science are not in conflict with religion, that science and religion search for answers in orthogonal fields.
FYI, genetic science and the big bang theory began with members of the clergy.
You could add 'revisionist history' to what is taught in Texas, even in public schools.
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/...
On a site that frequently ridicules the short-sighted behavior of eliminating experienced employees to bring in fresh (cheap) college graduates, it seems out of place to have a positive outlook on pervasive outsourcing.
If everyone is a contract worker doing works-for-hire, then nobody has extensive institutional knowledge. You are constantly explaining and re-explaining how your business works, and bugs are repeatedly entering codebases because the developer hasn't spent years understanding the business and its workflows. It doesn't matter how well documented your business is, developers will make mistakes when they are unfamiliar with your processes. When they can't look at a workflow or data structure and go 'that's not right' because they have spent years at the company learning how things work.
Experience has value; not just experience coding, but experience with the company understanding how it works. Systems are rarely generic... they are embedded directly into the business logic unique to each company, and the less you need to learn and relearn the requirements of every system the more productive you can be.
You're making a few assumptions.
1. That contractors should be classed the same as outsourcing jobs overseas and H1B visa holders
2. That contractors don't make up a significant portion of the people on this site
3. That contractors don't know your business - which is no doubt true to some degree but contractors can bring other benefits to the table - experience and vision of how it's being done elsewhere that could be of benefit to the company
Having been screwed over every time I accepted a perm job I have no desire to be an employee for anyone else ever again.
I have control over my health benefits.
I have control over which contracts I take and which I don't.
I have control over my own training schedule.
I have control over my own vacation schedule (which tends to be in between contracts but I can control the length of time I take).
If I am of benefit to the company, they'll keep me on.
If they treat me well, I will stay on.
Frankly I think that people who lock themselves in to being employees for companies that don't generally give a shit about them are giving themselves the short end of the stick.
What you do _not_ do is let them control negotiations and play their game. You will lose sir.
Except that they own politicians and we do not. So no, they will not lose.
Meanwhile, in the United States our own "glorified dowsing rods" the TSA continues to rake in somewhere around $8 Billion dollars a year in direct costs alone (likely tens of billions when you factor in economic losses, increased road deaths and secondary costs) and is 95% ineffective at finding lighters and knives. And chances are no one responsible for that debacle is ever going to see a fine let alone a prison sentence.
The difference here being that the actual risk in the US is negligible whereas the risk where these bomb dowsers are being used is substantial.
If you lived somewhere that there were real chances of a bomb being used you would want something that worked as well as possible, even if it was imperfect.
A fraud which has contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of people should be punished with way more than 10 years.
Manslaughter for each person killed due to the fraud sounds about right.
Whereby McCormick gets to detect which one out of six bombs is not a bomb and is then forced to detonate it.
As an aside, really!?, a ten year sentence? Either this whole story is total bullshit or someone has no concept of proportionality - doesn't taking the name of a media-multinational in vain result a longer sentence than this?
Russian roulette would actually be safer as the weight of the bullet pulls the cylinder down on the spin.
>"The company may see this as a way to differentiate themselves from the competition."
Um, yeah- "Buy our phones! They are better because we allow the government to spy on you!" What a great selling feature to differentiate yourself from your competition. I bet consumers will flock to that ?!!?!?!!
Government at all levels, as a consumer, may support this - and they buy rather a lot of phones.
I'd be more impressed if he was offering the same benefit to his employees.
So be impressed. You could even have read the summary which stated "At Facebook we offer our U.S. employees up to 4 months of paid maternity or paternity leave which they can take throughout the year."
As the 'up to' could mean that the claim is actually bullshit, I googled for a few seconds and found this:
"A Facebook spokesman, Slater Tow, said in an e-mail that the company offers four months of paid leave to both mothers and fathers, including same-sex couples, as long as they are full-time employees. The policy also covers the adoption of a child. Plus, new parents get $4,000 in “baby cash” for each child born to them or adopted."
http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com...
For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, fathers never took time off when their kids were born. One can also make the case that the fathers of the "Greatest Generation" (both the parents and the children of that generation) never took time off and yet they were the greatest generation. By the same token, one can make the case that this current crop of breeders are total pu$$ies.
For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, we had no real medicine and thought that a good stink was good for keeping the demons away. No doubt those people would think that we who bathe regularly are total pussies too.
Just because it was done in the past doesn't mean that it was a good thing.
Our system isn't as generous as yours (Iceland), but it's still worlds beyond what America offers (no paid leave, and only rather limited unpaid leave to mothers).
I'm of mixed feelings. On one hand, I think it's a great thing to do for parents and for the kids. On the other hand, as someone who's infertile, it's kind of frustrating. I never complain to anyone in person, absolutely not. But I see all of my coworkers in their 20s and 30s having one child after the next and spending a large chunk of their time on the job... off the job.... often taking their leave in vacation homes or overseas.... I mean, I understand why the time is given, I totally sympathize... but underneath it sort of feels unfair to people who can't have children, to have such a massive benefit for those who can.
Perhaps the solution would be to make things more fair, not necessarily by taking away parental benefits but by granting you and others benefits due to your personal circumstances.
Actually, I think there's an opposite effect going on. I'd say the children born to wealthy parents, but not unbelieveably so, have the best chances. Being the child of Zuckerberg or Gates means you're growing up in a very unique position which isn't necessarily good for a child's development. It becomes hard to have "normal" social interactions, you have a completely out of whack understanding and relationship with money, etc. This goes even more so as a teenager, where the other teens will know who your parents are, which will heavily color their interactions with you. Plus, many of those parents tend to be extremely busy and it's very well known that parental presence is one of the most important factors in a child's development.
It all depends on what 'normal means. I'm sure there are plenty of other rich or rich enough brats in this child's future social circle that 'normal' will just have a different meaning - as our 'normal' is different than the 'normal' of those born on the streets of, for example, Somalia.