It is unethical and illegal to change the contract later to get a more fair to you outcome by changing the contract because you think that squeezing the stone a little harder can produce blood.
Unethical? This implies that the company's leadership gives a fuck about ethics past the point at which not having them costs them money, which is pretty much never. Illegal? At least in the USA, most job descriptions are suggestions, and not in any way binding. Your employer can assign you any task they see fit, on pain of termination. In the USA, "at-will" employment means you can be fired at any time for any reason, or for no stated reason. If you want to keep eating (and being able to see the doctor at a reasonable cost) you will do what they say. If you're classified as "exempt", they can even make you work 24/7 with no extra pay (as you are not required to pay them overtime).
You'll produce that blood when squeezed or you'll be replaced. Or, they'll just fire you and give all your work to one of the other employees (who is probably already doing at least 3 jobs.)
9/10s of the employees are just there to do what they are told and cannot be bothered to provide input on better way to do things.
Only after the first few times they're asked to provide that input. After having their input completely ignored (or, worse, they're reprimanded for making suggestions that upper management disagrees with), the employees learn that it's a waste of time and effort. Management is going to do whatever the fuck they want to do. The employees are there to make the stockholders money, not be happy or productive. The beatings will continue until morale improves.
"Do this HTTwhatever thingy." "It's a bad idea for *reasons*" "Blah blah blah do it." "I'm not comfortable doing that, it's unethical" "I don't give a fuck about your ethics, we pay you to code, not have ethics. Do what you've been assigned or get fired."
Sooner or later you will find a coder that wants to keep feeding his/her family and will do what's requested.
Shoot one hostage and the others start cooperating.
Generally, you're right, it's cheaper to settle and admit no wrongdoing, unless your employer wants to make an example out of you by burying you in legal fees related to discovery in the lawsuit. Employers usually have deeper pockets for this sort of thing. It's worth it to them, because it shows the other hostage.. I mean employees that they're in charge, they own you, and you cross them at your own peril. After a few months of enormous legal bills, PI harassment, and general hell, the suit gets dropped. The former employee loses everything, the employer gets to keep doing the shitty things that they do.
I think you might be under the impression that you would prevail in a court of law, or, indeed, that being in the right has any affect on a lawsuit's outcome. It doesn't matter who's wrong and who's right; the party with the better lawyers wins the case, regardless of how wrong they might be.
Even if you did eventually prevail in court, by the time you got there you'd be an unemployable pauper. No company would give you a job (you're obviously a malcontent and a troublemaker who works contrary to your employer's interests, namely fucking you over as hard as possible), and lawyers are expensive. You might win (or, more likely, be arm-twisted into a settlement) but you'd lose everything you own along the way.
An employer can't make you sign a contract that says "...and I will be your slave forever and will never work for another company."
Unless you're talking about discrimination against a protected class, they can indeed make you sign whatever they want, if you want to keep your job. You can sue if they fire you for it, but you'll lose. The burden of proof would be on you to show that your former employer fired you for not signing that contract, and that they acted improperly when they did so. With Apple's lawyers, you wouldn't have a prayer of prevailing in court.
You're seeing an agenda where none exists. Yes, most electrical devices found in the home today have the UL mark on them; I never said otherwise. My point is that currently that is inertia from a decades-old system. If you tried to implement a brand new UL-type company TODAY, you would never succeed. Anything that increases costs, even if it adds significant value, is seen as evil and "unnecessary regulation", and therefore to be avoided at all costs. Especially when the value added is something that the average consumer does not and does not care to understand.
Agreed. This attitude more than anything else, in my opinion, is the biggest challenge the current economic environment faces. How do you keep someone from sacrificing long-term growth and stability for short-term gains, when they have a financial incentive to build the latter? You don't. Not without a mandate from an outside authority.
If anyone tried to launch an UL-type business that independently audited the security of consumer networking products, 1) nobody would ever invest in it, because 2) no manufacturer of said products would ever work with them. The average consumer in the US has no fucking idea what that UL mark means, or that the Underwriters Laboratories is even a thing that exists. The UL has been around for decades; when it came into existence the market was a much different place. Back then you could justify the increased costs associated with getting the UL stamp of approval as a benefit to the consumer's safety. Today, if you tried this, you'd get absolutely buried. First, the market has no fucking idea what SSH is, or what information security is, or even what "networking" is. While someone doing the buying for Walmart and Target knows that the UL mark has value, and "that's how we've always done it", and because they can turn around and throw the UL under the bus when some of their cheap Chinese junk shorts out and burns down a daycare, they look for the mark. If your discount-bin consumer router has more holes in it than Ronald Reagan's memory, generally nobody dies, or sues, or even knows that there's something wrong. There is no market value in getting these products checked out by a UL-style enterprise. All that will do is increase costs, so with the razor-thin margins that Walmart and Target crow about, they will either 1) buy a cheaper brand, 2) demand that the manufacturer sell them a product that isn't certified (because it's cheaper), 3) raise the price to the consumer (not fucking likely, and even if they did, if the average mouth-breather sees one "internet thingy" for $50, and another "internet thingy" that's $55, they will buy the cheaper one.)
Maybe in 50 years when networking knowledge is more widespread (perhaps on the level of how to operate a car [obligatory car analogy]), then you'd be able to explain to Joe Sixpack why having their home router checked out by an expert is worth the extra money. Today? No fucking way.
1) "Gubmint Bad", or 2) General ignorance, or 3) Billions of lobbying dollars from the manufacturers ensuring that the cost of each unit doesn't go up $1, or 4)... 5) PROFIT
It is odd that PC manufacturers are willing to ruin their brands just to earn a few extra bucks.
Not really. Consider the following:
Over-promoted walking haircut (with "Executive" in his/her title somewhere) hears something about this "Superfish thingy". They get it in their hard-wired little business-school brains that "duuh Superfish = money = good", he/she grills someone with actual knowledge about it and selectively listens to how they can make money with it, and how it can be installed on every laptop they ship. (They deliberately ignore the person with actual knowledge when they try to tell the pointy-haired little twit how it's 'illegal' and 'unethical' and 'bad faith' etc etc etc.) So, exec orders people who do actual work to incorporate Superfish into the builds, despite how bad an idea it is. The builds start shipping, Superfish starts paying out, revenues are up, everyone's happy (except for the people doing actual work who know it's bullshit.) Quarterly profits go up, exec gets bonus, builds third summer house. Sooner or later someone notices what they're doing (see TFA) and calls them on it. Exec realizes this is bad, they're going to get held accountable for something, and as we all know that's the worst thing that can ever happen to some over-promoted suit. Exec pulls eject handle, lands softly with a golden parachute. Everyone left gets to clean up the mess and attempt to rehabilitate the brand. But it's ok, the executive got a bonus.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Nobody learned anything from the Sony rootkit thing, other than "Hey, we can make money doing this, and all we have to do is violate the trust of our customers! Fuck them, how did our money get in their pockets anyway?"
You got the warranty separate from what the manufacturer offers? Who did you get it through? I've also done that (5 years) but I hear that Squaretrade is pretty squirrely when you actually want them to pay a claim. What I've seen is that rather than fix your TV, they'd rather give you your money back for the warranty itself. Which makes sense from a business point of view; if your TV craps out in a way that is covered, they are on the hook to repair or replace it, which is far more expensive than just giving you your money back for the warranty.
Makes sense. But instead of a dongle gadget, I'm more likely to use the apps on my Xbox for streaming. That also has the advantage that I already own the 360:)
Unfortunately, you'd have to charge more for your product than the competition to make up for the lost revenue from advertising and strategic alliances. I'd pay it, but the great unwashed want cheap, not good.
No kidding. Ever seen Minority Report? The stuff that assaulted the characters from all sides when walking through a public space? That's what I remember from that movie, not the interface or the story.
Thanks for the info. Looks like I have some research to do.
I agree about the extended warranty. I buy 5 year plans on my TVs, and let me tell you, it bailed me the fuck out on my Sony when the picture engine went bad in my front projection TV. They finally just gave me a new TV because the old one would be more expensive to fix.
I don't use the smart features on the one I have, either. It's not just about being subjected to these ads myself, though. It's about using the only vote we really have: we can vote with our dollars. Samsung (and any other huge multinational) does not give a single fuck about pissing off its customers; they know that their customers will rarely be motivated enough to get off the couch and do anything about it. But, if their sales suffer as a result of this move, then they are more likely to not try to pull something like that again.
All that means, though, is that they go back to the drawing board and try to find another way to make money that isn't obnoxious enough to hurt sales, but is obnoxious enough to make them money. Ain't capitalism great!
That also crossed my mind. However, everyone there would have to be massively, forget-to-breathe, pants-on-head stupid to think that nobody would notice this. There is a possibility that this is the case; to me, EVERYONE's that stupid until I know otherwise..
Samsung is a big enough company to be able to ignore annoying things like "the law". And there's a long and storied history of companies pissing their customers off in the name of profits.
If that's the case (and keeping in mind that you shouldn't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence) then that's some pretty shitty QA that let that out the door. If it was just there for focus group testing, why the hell did that code make it into the release?
I suppose it's possible that Samsung outsourced the programming on this and is now reaping the benefits (shit code, bad maintainability, broken functionality, poor communication) of doing so. Saved on the up-front costs, I'm sure, but this is going to hurt their revenues more than they saved. Typical short-sighted corporate bullshit.
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Unethical? This implies that the company's leadership gives a fuck about ethics past the point at which not having them costs them money, which is pretty much never. Illegal? At least in the USA, most job descriptions are suggestions, and not in any way binding. Your employer can assign you any task they see fit, on pain of termination. In the USA, "at-will" employment means you can be fired at any time for any reason, or for no stated reason. If you want to keep eating (and being able to see the doctor at a reasonable cost) you will do what they say. If you're classified as "exempt", they can even make you work 24/7 with no extra pay (as you are not required to pay them overtime).
You'll produce that blood when squeezed or you'll be replaced. Or, they'll just fire you and give all your work to one of the other employees (who is probably already doing at least 3 jobs.)
Only after the first few times they're asked to provide that input. After having their input completely ignored (or, worse, they're reprimanded for making suggestions that upper management disagrees with), the employees learn that it's a waste of time and effort. Management is going to do whatever the fuck they want to do. The employees are there to make the stockholders money, not be happy or productive. The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Why do you hate America?
"Do this HTTwhatever thingy."
"It's a bad idea for *reasons*"
"Blah blah blah do it."
"I'm not comfortable doing that, it's unethical"
"I don't give a fuck about your ethics, we pay you to code, not have ethics. Do what you've been assigned or get fired."
Sooner or later you will find a coder that wants to keep feeding his/her family and will do what's requested.
Shoot one hostage and the others start cooperating.
Generally, you're right, it's cheaper to settle and admit no wrongdoing, unless your employer wants to make an example out of you by burying you in legal fees related to discovery in the lawsuit. Employers usually have deeper pockets for this sort of thing. It's worth it to them, because it shows the other hostage.. I mean employees that they're in charge, they own you, and you cross them at your own peril. After a few months of enormous legal bills, PI harassment, and general hell, the suit gets dropped. The former employee loses everything, the employer gets to keep doing the shitty things that they do.
I think you might be under the impression that you would prevail in a court of law, or, indeed, that being in the right has any affect on a lawsuit's outcome. It doesn't matter who's wrong and who's right; the party with the better lawyers wins the case, regardless of how wrong they might be.
Even if you did eventually prevail in court, by the time you got there you'd be an unemployable pauper. No company would give you a job (you're obviously a malcontent and a troublemaker who works contrary to your employer's interests, namely fucking you over as hard as possible), and lawyers are expensive. You might win (or, more likely, be arm-twisted into a settlement) but you'd lose everything you own along the way.
Unless you're talking about discrimination against a protected class, they can indeed make you sign whatever they want, if you want to keep your job. You can sue if they fire you for it, but you'll lose. The burden of proof would be on you to show that your former employer fired you for not signing that contract, and that they acted improperly when they did so. With Apple's lawyers, you wouldn't have a prayer of prevailing in court.
You're seeing an agenda where none exists. Yes, most electrical devices found in the home today have the UL mark on them; I never said otherwise. My point is that currently that is inertia from a decades-old system. If you tried to implement a brand new UL-type company TODAY, you would never succeed. Anything that increases costs, even if it adds significant value, is seen as evil and "unnecessary regulation", and therefore to be avoided at all costs. Especially when the value added is something that the average consumer does not and does not care to understand.
Agreed. This attitude more than anything else, in my opinion, is the biggest challenge the current economic environment faces. How do you keep someone from sacrificing long-term growth and stability for short-term gains, when they have a financial incentive to build the latter? You don't. Not without a mandate from an outside authority.
Yeah, yeah, gubmint bad, free market good, invisible hand, FREEEEEDOOOOOMMMM, etc.
If anyone tried to launch an UL-type business that independently audited the security of consumer networking products, 1) nobody would ever invest in it, because 2) no manufacturer of said products would ever work with them. The average consumer in the US has no fucking idea what that UL mark means, or that the Underwriters Laboratories is even a thing that exists. The UL has been around for decades; when it came into existence the market was a much different place. Back then you could justify the increased costs associated with getting the UL stamp of approval as a benefit to the consumer's safety. Today, if you tried this, you'd get absolutely buried. First, the market has no fucking idea what SSH is, or what information security is, or even what "networking" is. While someone doing the buying for Walmart and Target knows that the UL mark has value, and "that's how we've always done it", and because they can turn around and throw the UL under the bus when some of their cheap Chinese junk shorts out and burns down a daycare, they look for the mark. If your discount-bin consumer router has more holes in it than Ronald Reagan's memory, generally nobody dies, or sues, or even knows that there's something wrong. There is no market value in getting these products checked out by a UL-style enterprise. All that will do is increase costs, so with the razor-thin margins that Walmart and Target crow about, they will either 1) buy a cheaper brand, 2) demand that the manufacturer sell them a product that isn't certified (because it's cheaper), 3) raise the price to the consumer (not fucking likely, and even if they did, if the average mouth-breather sees one "internet thingy" for $50, and another "internet thingy" that's $55, they will buy the cheaper one.)
Maybe in 50 years when networking knowledge is more widespread (perhaps on the level of how to operate a car [obligatory car analogy]), then you'd be able to explain to Joe Sixpack why having their home router checked out by an expert is worth the extra money. Today? No fucking way.
A 36-year old going for a minimum wage job? Age discrimination? Legal aid? What planet are you from?
Nobody gives a fuck.
1) "Gubmint Bad", or ...
2) General ignorance, or
3) Billions of lobbying dollars from the manufacturers ensuring that the cost of each unit doesn't go up $1, or
4)
5) PROFIT
Not really. Consider the following:
Over-promoted walking haircut (with "Executive" in his/her title somewhere) hears something about this "Superfish thingy". They get it in their hard-wired little business-school brains that "duuh Superfish = money = good", he/she grills someone with actual knowledge about it and selectively listens to how they can make money with it, and how it can be installed on every laptop they ship. (They deliberately ignore the person with actual knowledge when they try to tell the pointy-haired little twit how it's 'illegal' and 'unethical' and 'bad faith' etc etc etc.) So, exec orders people who do actual work to incorporate Superfish into the builds, despite how bad an idea it is. The builds start shipping, Superfish starts paying out, revenues are up, everyone's happy (except for the people doing actual work who know it's bullshit.) Quarterly profits go up, exec gets bonus, builds third summer house. Sooner or later someone notices what they're doing (see TFA) and calls them on it. Exec realizes this is bad, they're going to get held accountable for something, and as we all know that's the worst thing that can ever happen to some over-promoted suit. Exec pulls eject handle, lands softly with a golden parachute. Everyone left gets to clean up the mess and attempt to rehabilitate the brand. But it's ok, the executive got a bonus.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Nobody learned anything from the Sony rootkit thing, other than "Hey, we can make money doing this, and all we have to do is violate the trust of our customers! Fuck them, how did our money get in their pockets anyway?"
You got the warranty separate from what the manufacturer offers? Who did you get it through? I've also done that (5 years) but I hear that Squaretrade is pretty squirrely when you actually want them to pay a claim. What I've seen is that rather than fix your TV, they'd rather give you your money back for the warranty itself. Which makes sense from a business point of view; if your TV craps out in a way that is covered, they are on the hook to repair or replace it, which is far more expensive than just giving you your money back for the warranty.
Makes sense. But instead of a dongle gadget, I'm more likely to use the apps on my Xbox for streaming. That also has the advantage that I already own the 360 :)
I agree in principle, but find me a 40-50 inch 4k TV that ISN'T a smart TV. Not much of a choice.
Unfortunately, you'd have to charge more for your product than the competition to make up for the lost revenue from advertising and strategic alliances. I'd pay it, but the great unwashed want cheap, not good.
No kidding. Ever seen Minority Report? The stuff that assaulted the characters from all sides when walking through a public space? That's what I remember from that movie, not the interface or the story.
Thanks for the info. Looks like I have some research to do.
I agree about the extended warranty. I buy 5 year plans on my TVs, and let me tell you, it bailed me the fuck out on my Sony when the picture engine went bad in my front projection TV. They finally just gave me a new TV because the old one would be more expensive to fix.
Who sells that? What kind of warranty?
I don't use the smart features on the one I have, either. It's not just about being subjected to these ads myself, though. It's about using the only vote we really have: we can vote with our dollars. Samsung (and any other huge multinational) does not give a single fuck about pissing off its customers; they know that their customers will rarely be motivated enough to get off the couch and do anything about it. But, if their sales suffer as a result of this move, then they are more likely to not try to pull something like that again.
All that means, though, is that they go back to the drawing board and try to find another way to make money that isn't obnoxious enough to hurt sales, but is obnoxious enough to make them money. Ain't capitalism great!
That also crossed my mind. However, everyone there would have to be massively, forget-to-breathe, pants-on-head stupid to think that nobody would notice this. There is a possibility that this is the case; to me, EVERYONE's that stupid until I know otherwise..
Samsung is a big enough company to be able to ignore annoying things like "the law". And there's a long and storied history of companies pissing their customers off in the name of profits.
If that's the case (and keeping in mind that you shouldn't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence) then that's some pretty shitty QA that let that out the door. If it was just there for focus group testing, why the hell did that code make it into the release?
I suppose it's possible that Samsung outsourced the programming on this and is now reaping the benefits (shit code, bad maintainability, broken functionality, poor communication) of doing so. Saved on the up-front costs, I'm sure, but this is going to hurt their revenues more than they saved. Typical short-sighted corporate bullshit.
IIRC Vizio is Best Buy's house brand. If I can't buy it from Crutchfield, I don't want it.