Because Ronald (Get the Government Off the Backs of the People) Reagan is the one who presided over the passage of the laws that say that until you prove yourself innocent each and every time you apply for a job and get hired you're repeatedly assumed being guilty of being an illegal immigrant drug addict. Yes, there are jobs you can apply for that don't have the drug-test part, but most of the better-paying ones and pretty much all the government ones do. Except for congressthings. Who probably have a higher addiction rate than you'd find in the ghetto.
We got the drug tests because 2 idiots got stoned while driving an Amtrak train. I don't know precisely what triggered the proof-of-citizenship thing, but considering all the screaming we've done over the last decade or so about illegal immigrants, I don't think that that one's working.
I don't agree that Ron and Nancy Reagan's drug policies were racist, although statistically it's plain that enforcement has been.
in smaller countries being on permanent radio playlist basis can pay the upkeep for an artist(of course there's just so many minutes in a day, so that is going to be a handful of artists)
Then again, the same can be said of Top 40 stations in the USA.
They've been predicting this sort of thing for literally decades. Anyone here old enough to remember "4GLs"?
Software development is a creative art, much to the frustration of those in management that want it to be unskilled labor. Every time we get more powerful tools, all we do is come up with more powerful demands.
There are some areas where little new software development is being done, since we already have a glut of editors and accounting systems that work more or less well off-the-rack, but every business seems to have certain areas where only bespoke software will do for them. Either customizations on a standard product or a completely in-house designed product.
The time to worry is when one of those "instant app" systems comes out that actually CAN deal with stuff like that. The hallmark of all of the very long line of "silver bullet" programmers-will-become-obsolete systems is that they can do a real bang-up job as long as all you want is to write the same program over and over again. But they all (so far) start breaking down the minute the end users say "That's wonderful. But can you just make it do...?"
Actually, the smart customers can be the worst. There's a reason that they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Engineers work with customers. But if the customer want something unrealistic, the engineers push back. If what the customer wants is too far out of line, they don't merely advise, they refuse. Same with architects and physicians.
One of the hallmarks of being a professional is that the professional is expected to have experience and understanding and the autonomy to say "no". If you don't have that, you can't count yourself as a professional.
It's not the web designers' fault! I'm a small time self employed web designer. When it comes to designing a website, we don't do what we want! We don't even do what the customer needs. We end up doing what he asks. Most of the time what they ask for sucks, and that's what they/you get.
If you have so little input into the process as that, you're not a technical professional, you're a prostitute.
A lot of these addons have millions of downloads. Perhaps browser makers need to get the message and include popular functionality that people want.
Ah, you mean functions like not having the buttons and links bounce up and down because the browser keeps re-organizing the page as it loads new elements? Or refreshes and re-scrolls back to the top while you're halfway down reading something. Or suppressing the pushy ads that shove everything you're trying to look at out of the way?
In the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Ron Latz (DFL) had blocked the amendment, stating that he feels it is redundant.
Saying it's redundant implies there are already laws on the books that protect against unreasonable search and seizure of electronic communications -- yet those actions are being taken.
So which is it, Ron? Either this is not redundant, and therefore a good idea in the scheme of checks and balances, or LEOs are getting unlawful access to electronic communications. Either way, there's a problem here that needs to be addressed.
It's a way of resolving a conflict between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.
Most of us would expect that when a group of people get together and explicitly state that they should be "secure in their papers", that that would mean essentially any private documents and correspondence.
The current Federal approach, however, is to take the letter-of-the-law approach and since electronic documents aren't "paper", they consider them fair game. This not only allows them more power, it makes lawyers happy, since they hate people second-guessing the real reasons for laws, even when the reasons are fairly obvious.
Thus, Mr. Latz slams the door on the literalists at the expense of appearing redundant.
OK. I considered my reference date relative to the point (approximately) when it was more likely that you'd work in a factory than on a farm, hence the discrepancy.
The opposition to a 40-hour week was very public on the behalf of the Captains of Industry who boldly claimed that if the lesser classes (workers) were allowed weekends off, they'd waste the time in drinking and dissolute living. Very "white man's burden".
By the 1980s the world had discarded the conceit that the upper classes were genetically and inherently superior, but most workers figured they were OK with 40 hours. Management, however, knew that 40 hours was now more work than they were actually doing, hence the changeover to "perma-temp" jobs. Although some volunteered to reduced hours, the extra value (productivity) they were adding wasn't being reflected in their paychecks, so to earn 40 hours worth of salary, they had to "work" 40 hours or, alternatively, actually work 40 hours at the expense of some other employee being laid off entirely.
We could have adopted one of several different solutions.
1. We could have raised taxes and let the goddam socialist gubmint spread the benefits around.
2. The companies could have voluntarily raised employee compensation.
3. The companies could have paid out larger dividends to shareholders. Ideally with promoting some scheme whereby ordinary employees would be shareholders.
4. The companies could have re-invented themselves to be better, cleaner, and overall more admirable by spending on R&D, especially "green" R&D, more companies could have sponsored cultural efforts (creative works, as opposed to simply buying names on football stadiums), and so forth.
Instead we got:
5. The extra money was employed in heavy merger and acquisition activity. The M&A game is as often as not a cycle whereby a company buys another company, guts it, sends its unwanted executives away with golden parachutes and its line employees away with token severance payments (maybe), shrinks the available Free Market for its products (assuming one was present to begin with), and not infrequently ejects the digested remains a couple of years later to begin the cycle again. In the mean time, the brokers skim generously off the cash that's flying back and forth, doing relatively little work (maybe a couple of weeks of intensive number-crunching, as opposed to the years it takes to build a successful company).
AND the C-level executives sent their salaries into the stratosphere. Instead of 400 line-level employees producing products - and BUYING products, you can have 400 unemployed, 1 fat cat buying relatively little out of the mainstream economy (overpriced real estate isn't much of a job creator).
After 20-30 years of this last, ordinary folk find themselves growing more impoverished even as we can afford more luxuries, and the whole economic fabric is beginning to creak.
Something obviously will get done. What we have now was inconceivable back in the time of Richard the Lionhearted, and most likely what we'll end up with will be equally different. The question is: what?
I won't say that I disagree with you, but the push for a 40-hour week goes all the way back to the 19th Century.
I'd say that the actual need for a work week longer than 35 hours probably vanished somewhere around the 1980s, if the sudden rise in "disposable employees" back then is any indication.
and i can counter with just about that many MORE indirect jobs that the place employing say 25 people would generate (added to your list).
Food delivery folks Supplies delivery folks Clothing shops car dealers Entertainment venues Schools (wanna see if you can make a team of folks that DON"T have kids without doing something actionable??) Food shops
Versus how many people would be doing the above jobs if instead of a 25-person data facility, an old-time 1500-person factory was located there?
It's like the old trickle-down fallacy. If a CEO earns 400 times what the other employees do and lays them off, is he going to buy 400 times as much toilet paper?
We have education, science, space exploration, green technologies, and a host of other things that we has decided would be nice, but we simply don't have the manpower to do
Education. Already being automated. And offshored.
Space exploration. Automated.
Green technologies. The RNC wants to have words with you, you dirty commie!
Any free market will get corrupted. It's inevitable.
That's just as bad as "The Free Market Solves All Problems!"
Free Markets exist. It's just that in today's world, relatively few of them are major markets. Even if both corruption and government (there IS a small area where the twain are not one and the same) could be eliminated from the picture, markets often have other limitations and/or mechanisms that sooner or later convert them to non-free markets.
Likewise, it's just as unrealistic and simplistic to believe that just because all of the preceding revolutions in labor have led to job creation that the trend can continue ad infinitum. The real world is just not a simple place.
Once we've reduced the cost and labor for necessities, we focus on luxuries. Once we've got a glut of luxuries as well, where do we go next?
Or do we adopt the Huxley model, re-introduce gratuitous manual labor and for the more intelligent, designing ever more-complicated editions of Mechanical Bumble-Puppy?
I think the disconnect is in expecting evolution to produce optimal solutions. Biology is full of make-do solutions.
Actually, it sounds like the real disconnect is in expecting one-size-fits-all solutions. Too many people think that There Can Be Only One True Way. The Universe is bigger than that, Horatio.
Wilderness is of course quiet. If you're prey, you're quiet 'cause if you're noisy you get eaten. If you're predator, you're quiet because if your prey hears you you won't eat.
I live next to a undeveloped property and it's almost as noisy as the neighbors. Wind blows through the trees, limbs crack and fall off with a crash. All sorts of birds making a racket, frogs and gators - who can be one loud predator during mating season.
A wilderness where there's no animals and no wind may be quiet, but nowhere near here.
Kind of weak list, IMHO. For example, where is "overpopulation?"
I think it fell off the list when projections started indicating that world population is likely to stabilize somewhere around 2050.
In the mean time, it's a good time to buy property in Italy, as their population isn't growing enough. Russia and Japan have shrinking populations, although they're less likely to make immigrants feel welcome. The USA would have a shrinking population too if it wasn't for all those immigrants coming in and taking the jobs of the native-born Americans who aren't being born.
Slashdot Mirror
You aren't offering any citations, so it is safe to presume, you don't have any.
Companies vetting candidates via FaceBook, et. al.?
Because Ronald (Get the Government Off the Backs of the People) Reagan is the one who presided over the passage of the laws that say that until you prove yourself innocent each and every time you apply for a job and get hired you're repeatedly assumed being guilty of being an illegal immigrant drug addict. Yes, there are jobs you can apply for that don't have the drug-test part, but most of the better-paying ones and pretty much all the government ones do. Except for congressthings. Who probably have a higher addiction rate than you'd find in the ghetto.
We got the drug tests because 2 idiots got stoned while driving an Amtrak train. I don't know precisely what triggered the proof-of-citizenship thing, but considering all the screaming we've done over the last decade or so about illegal immigrants, I don't think that that one's working.
I don't agree that Ron and Nancy Reagan's drug policies were racist, although statistically it's plain that enforcement has been.
The same journal has a study showing pot-smoking teens are 60% less likely to finish high school than ones who don't.
I would suspect alcohol also has an undesirable effect on high school graduation rates.
Nonsense! Half my high school class went out and got drunk after graduation!
Lots of stuff isn't fact-based. Lots more is based on facts that people decided should be true, regardless of whether they were or not.
Practically speaking, the attempt to force people to be moral is futile, whether your law is an amendment to the US Constitution or Sharia.
If you want people to be "moral", show them why it's better to be "moral". Don't ram it down their throats. It just doesn't work.
Godwin's law...score !
It is nice to travel to places where it is legal or tolerated.
I don't know, I think Godwin's law is legal, if not tolerated, world-wide.
Yes. Who's going to protect us from Godwin's law abuse?
Think of the CHILDREN!!!
in smaller countries being on permanent radio playlist basis can pay the upkeep for an artist(of course there's just so many minutes in a day, so that is going to be a handful of artists)
Then again, the same can be said of Top 40 stations in the USA.
They've been predicting this sort of thing for literally decades. Anyone here old enough to remember "4GLs"?
Software development is a creative art, much to the frustration of those in management that want it to be unskilled labor. Every time we get more powerful tools, all we do is come up with more powerful demands.
There are some areas where little new software development is being done, since we already have a glut of editors and accounting systems that work more or less well off-the-rack, but every business seems to have certain areas where only bespoke software will do for them. Either customizations on a standard product or a completely in-house designed product.
The time to worry is when one of those "instant app" systems comes out that actually CAN deal with stuff like that. The hallmark of all of the very long line of "silver bullet" programmers-will-become-obsolete systems is that they can do a real bang-up job as long as all you want is to write the same program over and over again. But they all (so far) start breaking down the minute the end users say "That's wonderful. But can you just make it do...?"
Actually, the smart customers can be the worst. There's a reason that they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Engineers work with customers. But if the customer want something unrealistic, the engineers push back. If what the customer wants is too far out of line, they don't merely advise, they refuse. Same with architects and physicians.
One of the hallmarks of being a professional is that the professional is expected to have experience and understanding and the autonomy to say "no". If you don't have that, you can't count yourself as a professional.
Java = back end
JavaScript = front end
Need both to do useful things, no?
Actually, I believe that JavaScript started out as a backend concept and ended up on the front end.
Conversely, when Java first arrived, it was touted as a browser/os-independent way of making smart front ends.
Ironic, no?
And it appears I read his position backwards. Instead of slamming the door, he wants to keep it open.
Regardless of what Latz says one way or another, it should be redundant, but the courts and law enforcement have made it otherwise.
It's not the web designers' fault! I'm a small time self employed web designer. When it comes to designing a website, we don't do what we want! We don't even do what the customer needs. We end up doing what he asks. Most of the time what they ask for sucks, and that's what they/you get.
If you have so little input into the process as that, you're not a technical professional, you're a prostitute.
A lot of these addons have millions of downloads. Perhaps browser makers need to get the message and include popular functionality that people want.
Ah, you mean functions like not having the buttons and links bounce up and down because the browser keeps re-organizing the page as it loads new elements? Or refreshes and re-scrolls back to the top while you're halfway down reading something. Or suppressing the pushy ads that shove everything you're trying to look at out of the way?
Nah. Who'd want a plugin for that?
In the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Ron Latz (DFL) had blocked the amendment, stating that he feels it is redundant.
Saying it's redundant implies there are already laws on the books that protect against unreasonable search and seizure of electronic communications -- yet those actions are being taken.
So which is it, Ron? Either this is not redundant, and therefore a good idea in the scheme of checks and balances, or LEOs are getting unlawful access to electronic communications. Either way, there's a problem here that needs to be addressed.
It's a way of resolving a conflict between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.
Most of us would expect that when a group of people get together and explicitly state that they should be "secure in their papers", that that would mean essentially any private documents and correspondence.
The current Federal approach, however, is to take the letter-of-the-law approach and since electronic documents aren't "paper", they consider them fair game. This not only allows them more power, it makes lawyers happy, since they hate people second-guessing the real reasons for laws, even when the reasons are fairly obvious.
Thus, Mr. Latz slams the door on the literalists at the expense of appearing redundant.
OK. I considered my reference date relative to the point (approximately) when it was more likely that you'd work in a factory than on a farm, hence the discrepancy.
The opposition to a 40-hour week was very public on the behalf of the Captains of Industry who boldly claimed that if the lesser classes (workers) were allowed weekends off, they'd waste the time in drinking and dissolute living. Very "white man's burden".
By the 1980s the world had discarded the conceit that the upper classes were genetically and inherently superior, but most workers figured they were OK with 40 hours. Management, however, knew that 40 hours was now more work than they were actually doing, hence the changeover to "perma-temp" jobs. Although some volunteered to reduced hours, the extra value (productivity) they were adding wasn't being reflected in their paychecks, so to earn 40 hours worth of salary, they had to "work" 40 hours or, alternatively, actually work 40 hours at the expense of some other employee being laid off entirely.
We could have adopted one of several different solutions.
1. We could have raised taxes and let the goddam socialist gubmint spread the benefits around.
2. The companies could have voluntarily raised employee compensation.
3. The companies could have paid out larger dividends to shareholders. Ideally with promoting some scheme whereby ordinary employees would be shareholders.
4. The companies could have re-invented themselves to be better, cleaner, and overall more admirable by spending on R&D, especially "green" R&D, more companies could have sponsored cultural efforts (creative works, as opposed to simply buying names on football stadiums), and so forth.
Instead we got:
5. The extra money was employed in heavy merger and acquisition activity. The M&A game is as often as not a cycle whereby a company buys another company, guts it, sends its unwanted executives away with golden parachutes and its line employees away with token severance payments (maybe), shrinks the available Free Market for its products (assuming one was present to begin with), and not infrequently ejects the digested remains a couple of years later to begin the cycle again. In the mean time, the brokers skim generously off the cash that's flying back and forth, doing relatively little work (maybe a couple of weeks of intensive number-crunching, as opposed to the years it takes to build a successful company).
AND the C-level executives sent their salaries into the stratosphere. Instead of 400 line-level employees producing products - and BUYING products, you can have 400 unemployed, 1 fat cat buying relatively little out of the mainstream economy (overpriced real estate isn't much of a job creator).
After 20-30 years of this last, ordinary folk find themselves growing more impoverished even as we can afford more luxuries, and the whole economic fabric is beginning to creak.
Something obviously will get done. What we have now was inconceivable back in the time of Richard the Lionhearted, and most likely what we'll end up with will be equally different. The question is: what?
I won't say that I disagree with you, but the push for a 40-hour week goes all the way back to the 19th Century.
I'd say that the actual need for a work week longer than 35 hours probably vanished somewhere around the 1980s, if the sudden rise in "disposable employees" back then is any indication.
and i can counter with just about that many MORE indirect jobs that the place employing say 25 people would generate (added to your list).
Food delivery folks
Supplies delivery folks
Clothing shops
car dealers
Entertainment venues
Schools (wanna see if you can make a team of folks that DON"T have kids without doing something actionable??)
Food shops
Versus how many people would be doing the above jobs if instead of a 25-person data facility, an old-time 1500-person factory was located there?
It's like the old trickle-down fallacy. If a CEO earns 400 times what the other employees do and lays them off, is he going to buy 400 times as much toilet paper?
Free enough markets are typical.
Free markets are an ideal that can never be realized in detail.
I'm sorry. You are located in the wrong century. Only absolutes are accepted here.
Green technologies. The RNC wants to have words with you, you dirty commie!
Oh sorry. I forgot. The proper duck-response to that is "Green Technology kills Jobs!"
We have education, science, space exploration, green technologies, and a host of other things that we has decided would be nice, but we simply don't have the manpower to do
Education. Already being automated. And offshored.
Space exploration. Automated.
Green technologies. The RNC wants to have words with you, you dirty commie!
Host of other things. Such as????
Any free market will get corrupted. It's inevitable.
That's just as bad as "The Free Market Solves All Problems!"
Free Markets exist. It's just that in today's world, relatively few of them are major markets. Even if both corruption and government (there IS a small area where the twain are not one and the same) could be eliminated from the picture, markets often have other limitations and/or mechanisms that sooner or later convert them to non-free markets.
Likewise, it's just as unrealistic and simplistic to believe that just because all of the preceding revolutions in labor have led to job creation that the trend can continue ad infinitum. The real world is just not a simple place.
Once we've reduced the cost and labor for necessities, we focus on luxuries. Once we've got a glut of luxuries as well, where do we go next?
Or do we adopt the Huxley model, re-introduce gratuitous manual labor and for the more intelligent, designing ever more-complicated editions of Mechanical Bumble-Puppy?
I think the disconnect is in expecting evolution to produce optimal solutions. Biology is full of make-do solutions.
Actually, it sounds like the real disconnect is in expecting one-size-fits-all solutions. Too many people think that There Can Be Only One True Way. The Universe is bigger than that, Horatio.
Wilderness is of course quiet. If you're prey, you're quiet 'cause if you're noisy you get eaten. If you're predator, you're quiet because if your prey hears you you won't eat.
I live next to a undeveloped property and it's almost as noisy as the neighbors. Wind blows through the trees, limbs crack and fall off with a crash. All sorts of birds making a racket, frogs and gators - who can be one loud predator during mating season.
A wilderness where there's no animals and no wind may be quiet, but nowhere near here.
Not once but twice I've had a skunk face to face with me in my tent. You'd think I'd learn something from that, but no. ;)
It isn't when the face is aimed at you that you need to worry.
Just like in the US now! Well, except we tend to blame unions and illegal immigrants for it.
Meanwhile the thieves at the top keep on being more equal than others.
Equality is for Communists. Bow before your Masters, peasant!
Kind of weak list, IMHO. For example, where is "overpopulation?"
I think it fell off the list when projections started indicating that world population is likely to stabilize somewhere around 2050.
In the mean time, it's a good time to buy property in Italy, as their population isn't growing enough. Russia and Japan have shrinking populations, although they're less likely to make immigrants feel welcome. The USA would have a shrinking population too if it wasn't for all those immigrants coming in and taking the jobs of the native-born Americans who aren't being born.