One of the major problems facing pro-privacy activists today is a certain type of corporate spin. Major advertisers in the U.S. have created a PR campaign whose goal is convincing people that notice about how your privacy is being violated (typically buried in a dozen pages of fine legal print) is more important than actually having privacy. The PR campaign is designed to push the idea that a privacy policy is what is really needed, not actual privacy.
If the company is honest about what they intend to do with my data, I have no complaints. If I don't like it, I'll simply take my business elsewhere. I imagine, given the litiguous climate in the US, that consumers could easily sue in response to a violation of a stated privacy policy.
What does bother me is when the government forceably gathers information from me. Businesses I can choose to avoid, but the government has guns.
Money is power. Employers have it, you don't. Unless you're an employer.
Maybe at McDonalds, that's true, but things are very different in the tech industry. What developers are selling (knowledge and skills) is extremely valuable, and good companies know this.
At the place I was working this summer, if the two most senior developers had walked, the company would have folded. Management could come and go, the market could change, but these developers were the company. The knowledge in their heads was irreplaceable, and management knew it.
That's power.
An intelligent employer will pay employees what they're worth and do everything possible to keep the good ones around. Unions make that harder, because now Joe Slacker has to be paid as much as Jane Ubercoder, just because he's been around as long. When you fuck with the free market, things almost always get worse.
They're skills are unique and a finite number of people can do their job at all, therefore, like executives, they should be generously compensated (obviously less so than senior managment - but the point is that both groups are critical).[snip] However, techies, like blue-collar folk, tend to be isolated from management and most likely to be subjected to unfair treatment (I don't know any Marketdroids who worked 70 hrs/wk for two weeks to meet a deadline only to get laid off the next morning when the project got done on time). This is where some form of representation comes in.
This is sorting itself out on its own, without union help. All the dot-coms that try to get by through slave-driving without a plan are going under. The companies that don't reward their workers are begging on the streets for more VC, and they're not getting it. The companies that do get it will weather this downswing, and come out doing just fine.
There's plenty of documented cases of employers abusing the H1-B system.
I agree with you that the H1-B system is screwed up. The problem lies in its implementation, not the fundamental concept of encouraging immigrant tech workers, though (which is what you had originally seemed to be saying). Once again, I'll make a blatant plug for Canada and point out that our immigration system is generally less screwed up than yours. We don't ship people back after 5 years or any of that crap.
If and when all software is made by Apple-Microsoft-Intel-NBC or IBM-Redhat-Sun-AOL-TimeWarner and three other companies, leverage would shift substantially away from the workforce to the employers.
If that came to pass, yes, it would be time for unions. I don't see it happening any time soon, though. Until it does, I think unions would be more a burden than a benefit.
That gets hard if everyone is colluding to screw you. It's true that some software isn't made by a couple oligopolies like cars are - yet. Despite this fact, anti-consumer initiatives like SDMI, CSS, etc. have managed to get universal support.
These examples are quite different from employee treatment. Employees are generally a lot more informed about their companies than consumers are, for one...
Counterexample: Pepsi workers where I live had shitty wages, pension plans, disability pay, etc. The union came up with a proposal that would have compensated Pepsi workers slightly less than local Coke workers with equivalent jobs. The company made a ridiculously low offer and then refused to negotiate "on principle."
If it was the tech industry, all the Pepsi people could have just left for the nearest Coke plant. Then Pepsi would have been up shit creek without a paddle when they discovered nobody had been commenting their code...
Rank and file union members have set up websites criticizing bad union leadership and company management alike
For now, I think that level of organization is all that's needed--no formal unions necessary. The company I was working at this summer did some nasty bullshit to employees, mainly because of two idiot executives. If we had wanted to, we could have simply told the general manager that X had to change or all his developers would walk. That would have destroyed the company completely, since it would take 6 months for anyone else to figure out our flagship products. I nearly organized such a coup, but, as a lowly co-op student, I didn't quite have the pull needed. All that was really needed was a desire to change things on the part of employees--a union was simply unnecessary.
Just as Newton's laws stop working well as we approach.1 * c, the law of supply and demand stops working well when we move away from ideal free market conditions.
Yes, but, at least right now, the computer industry is very close to an ideal free market. There are many "sellers" (employees) and many "buyers" (employers), and no one entity or small group has excessive market power. If that were to change, there might be a need for unions... Until then, they're just dead weight.
The problem is that right now we're settling for less than what we should expect. There are some fabulously profitable companies out there. But all of that money was made by coders, who got a generous amount of money, but in all honesty deserve more.
This sounds suspiciously like communism and the labour theory of value. Just because somebody didn't type a line of code doesn't mean they didn't contribute. As much as I hate sales and marketing, I know that they are also essential to most companies. Companies live and die by their management--just compare a well-managed company to a poorly-managed one, and you'll realize how valuable management really is.
Maybe you don't think CEOs deserve their multi-million dollar salaries. The truth is that the good ones easily earn their paychecks and more. For instance, Apple would be dead and buried without Steve Jobs. In that light, no matter how much they're paying him, he's clearly been a net contributor to the company.
2. Tech companies haven't been above screwing employees. People get let go a couple weeks before their options come due, often for fabricated reasons. H1-B visas get rammed through Congress to drive down IT salaries. Imagine if the Big Three automakers tried to import tens of thousands of foreign workers and then pay them substandard wages!! It can only happen in IT.
This sounds racist to me. If other people are willing to do your job for less, and they're just as capable as you, why shouldn't they get the job? Because their skin is a different colour?
Marketing practices of today may become labor practices of tommorrow. If a company is willing to screw consumers with "content protection" do you really trust it not to screw its own employees?
If they screw you, you leave. With sites like F*ckedcompany.com around, it's not too hard to find out which companies suck before you apply. If it's true that marketing behaviour is indicative of employee treatment, then it should be really easy to avoid loser companies. You have nobody to blame but yourself if you don't do your research.
A lot of anti-union people scream "I'm too good for a union - unions are for idiot construction workers." But many industry that depend on highly skilled labor are highly - pilots, aviation mechanics, teachers, athletes, actors. It obviously works for other "knowledge industries".
Three of the five groups you mentioned have recently pulled or are pulling strikes about bullshit issues and making ridiculous demands. I'll focus on teachers' unions:the teachers' union in BC used parent volunteers as an issue in a recent strike. They told teachers, "Remember, parent volunteers are here to take your jobs." The union actually wanted to keep parents out of schools. This had absolutely nothing to do with helping kids, and would have destroyed many sports teams and other extracirricular activities. These unions force job advancement to be dependent on seniority instead of performance. That harms kids, and removes any incentive for teachers to do a good job. The good teachers ultimately become bitter and frustrated with the system as they watch bad teachers climb up the ranks because of their seniority. The result is the mess that the public school systems have become today.
Technology unions probably would be different than old-school unions...
Oh, sure, at first they would be. They'd be all dressed up as something new and shiny, and they'd try to make us think they'd reformed. Gradually, they would reveal themselves, taking larger and larger bites out of our paychecks so they could donate money to political candidates we didn't support. They'd misinform employees to make them hate management, so they would have a stronger hold over us (I've seen this very trick happen before). Unions are corrupt--don't kid yourself. Unlike corporations, they have nothing to gain from good employer-employee relations.
I know of *no* industry where unionization has decreased wages or really adversely affected employees.
It's a basic truth of economics that increased prices will result in decreased demand. In other words, if unions artificially jack up wages, the result will be lost jobs and an inefficient economy. It's not a coincidence that the computer industry is ununionized and has experienced so much growth.
I think it's interesting that your description of extortion, "either you give me this, or we [sic] wont work," is in fact a description of a market economy, which can be summarized as "either you give me a better price or I won't buy your gizmo."
You wouldn't know a market economy if it bit you in the ass. Markets work best when you have many sellers and many buyers, all operating independently. The tech industry has tens of thousands of competing companies and millions of employees, which is just the way things should be. The tech industry is damn close to an ideal free market.
Adam Smith, the idol of capitalists, would in fact have approved of unions, in my opinion
Do you know anything about Adam Smith? He would have viewed labour unions as market collusion, an evil that distorts prices and creates market inefficiencies. Your statement is about as ridiculous as claiming that Karl Marx would have favoured the AOL-Time Warner merger. Please, take an economics course.
With reasonable labour laws (such as those in Canada), there's really no need for unions in the tech industry. If you don't like your job, get another. When you leave a tech job, the company loses huge amounts of accumulated knowledge, and, whether the company knows it or not (the good ones do), it costs them big-time. This is more true in the tech industry than any other industry I can think of.
Nobody wants to pay you $75,000 for 8 hours a day with 6 weeks vacation? Maybe it's because you're not worth it. Ideal markets do a very good job of paying people what they're worth. Sometimes the truth hurts. If nobody wants to pay you $X, upgrade your skills, look around, and you'll probably get what you want.
Don't try to tell me it's hard to find a new job--it's easy if you don't suck. I'm only a co-op student, and I have no trouble. First co-op term, I had to turn down interviews because I was getting so many, and I got exactly the job I wanted. This time, I only applied to one place, and got the job without even an interview.
Yes, companies pull occasional bullshit like firing people without telling them, but that just means your labour laws need a bit of tweaking. If that happened here in Canada, you could sue their asses for wrongful dismissal.
Sure, unions increase wages in the short-run, but they ultimately harm workers by decreasing the supply of jobs or putting employers out of business or by taking huge chunks of your paycheck. It's simple economics--if you increase the price of something (higher wages), demand will fall (==less jobs). There's a few details (price elasticity of demand increases with time, etc.) that tell you that the reaction won't be immediate, but it will happen.
Historically, unions have been corrupt, anti-democratic organizations. I know this because, during the Cold War, my grandfather was an active member of the Communist Party in the US. He was ordered to infiltrate the UAW, which he successfully did. Maybe it's no longer the Communist party that has their fingers in the union pie--it could be the Mob--but they're not really about protecting workers. Corporations don't have a monopoly on evil...
I know what you're going to say "Aha! Those labour laws are there because of unions! So there!". Yes, very true. Unions did have a useful place in society. They're not needed in today's highly-educated, highly-skilled labour market, though.
Maybe you're thinking "but I deserve to be paid $XXX,000, and I should get 72 weeks of paid vacation a year". Why do you think you are somehow entitled to any of this? You're entitled to what you can negotiate in good faith with your employer, and you're entitled to have your employer honour your employment contract. Nowhere in the Consitution is flex-time, sick leave, or overtime pay guaranteed.
I'm not saying people don't have the right to organize unions--they do (and should) have that right. I'm just saying it would be stupid to do so in the tech industry.
Better yet, start writing to AltaVista's advertisers and tell them you're boycotting them because they advertise with AltaVista. Explain why. Explain that everyone on Slashdot (with X page views per day, blah blah) knows that AltaVista is evil, and probably isn't too happy with their advertisers.
Watch AltaVista's advertising dry up. Laugh. Watch them stop with this patent nonsense.
This is true hacker war at its best. The DirecTV hackers vs. the DirecTV programmers. I bet both sides had a great time, and enjoyed the game. The "GAME OVER" message was an especially nice touch.
Someone said that they're within their rights to "illegally" descramble DirecTV's content, because it's broadcast over public airwaves. True, but then, isn't DirecTV also entitled to broadcast whatever they want? If you just happen to be foolish/1337 enough to be running a hacked card, well, thanks for coming out, better luck next time. DirecTV didn't physically destroy the cards, so I don't think the hackers have any grievance in that respect...
Nicely done, on both sides. I think this deserves an entry into the hacker hall of fame.
[rant]As a BC resident, I say again, Fuck you, California. First, you drive our natural gas prices through the roof, causing our poor old ladies who can no longer afford their heating bills to freeze their little fannies off in our Canadian winter. Now, you buy tons of our power, and stiff us for it, all the while begging us not to stop giving more to you. Goddamn surfer-boy Golden State assholes.[/rant]
I've got news for you: our power comes from hydro dams, and it's been a dry year. Every megawatt-hour we sell you is one less we'll have in the summer. Not only have we been stiffed for over $200 million, but we may have to buy power or be facing brownouts this summer because we depleted our hydro reserves to save your asses. BC Hydro is a government-owned corporation, so that $200 million comes straight out of our pockets. You people are thieves on a state-wide scale.
Don't give me any bullshit about the money being owed to us by private companies instead of the entire state. You've made it effectively impossible to build power plants in your state (especially nuclear plants). Your half-assed deregulation forced those companies out of business, so the blame lies with the voters. How the hell did you think it would work to deregulate the wholesale supply of power, but not the sale of power to consumers? Has anyone there heard of economics?
Moderators: Yes, this is inflammatory, but it happens to be how I feel. It's also true, to the best of my knowledge. If you happen to be from California, I'd much rather hear your side of the story than just see a "-1: Inflammatory" or something.
One more message to everyone in California, especially L.A. Go out and rent "Trigger Effect" (assuming you still have power for your VCR). You'll understand when you watch it...
Don't watch TV. I don't. Once you break the addiction, you'll be amazed how much more time you have, how much more you get done, and how much happier you are. Read or play on the internet or get some exercise instead.
If you're feeling like you really need to do something, write to your local cable provider/broadcasters and everyone else behind Digital TV, and tell them why you decided to stop watching TV.
Writing your Congressman about important issues like copyright, 'net censorship, etc, is a good thing, but don't waste their time on TV. Not being able to tape Star Trek is not and should not be a Federal concern.
Worst case--only you and a few other people stop watching, and you discover how much more time you have. Best case--consumers start leaving TV en mass (already happening), and companies change their tune. Capitalism will work for you if people actually give two shits.
I agree that this is part of a larger, worrisome trend, but if TV is the issue that finally gets us off our collective asses, what does that say about us? Does it mean that we don't care about our basic liberties, but not being able tape Simpsons is a crisis? What a sad social commentary that would be.
How about human cloning? What, that's not in there either?I refer you to Amendments IX and X:
Amendment IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Basically, it's none of the Federal government's business, according to the constitution.
Then why do ignorant right wing nutcases, as epitomized by the Shrub in the White House, who claim the Constitution as their inspiration, outlaw it?
Bush hasn't outlawed it, he's just made it illegal to do human cloning/embryo research with Federal funding. You're free to do it on your own dime, but not on Uncle Sam's. That's quite constitutional.
I wasn't unconditionally defending Bush, I was just pointing out that appointing Justices who take a strict view of the Constitution is a Good Thing. Try not to fly off the handle next time...
Jon, while I know you're pretty gloomy about the prospects of 'net freedom under Bush, I think you're forgetting two things.
First, the ultimate protector of free speech (the first principle of 'net freedom) is the Supreme Court. Even if Congress passes stupid laws abridging freedom, the Supreme Court can strike them down.
Second, Bush has stated that he will appoint justices who take a strict, constructionist view of the Constitution. In other words, freedom of speech means freedom of speech. None of this "except when it might offend people" crap...
The Constitution and a Supreme Court willing to enforce it are all the 'net really needs.
Your reasoning is completely flawed, I have to say. Yes, computers cannot accurately predict short-term (1 to 5 etc.) weather trends, that is, they can't calculate how such and such ocean currents will affect meteorology.
However, in the long run these short-term events cancel out. Computers are capable, with a limited degree of accuracy, given chaos and the data available, to extrapolate on long-term trends. This is completely different than a 2-week or even 2-year weather forecast.
The climate is a chaotic system, meaning that the future becomes exponentially more difficult to predict the farther forward you look. While there are some trends that we can use to make predictions (i.e., it probably won't snow on July 4 in Texas), placing too much faith in these models is silly.
It's also worth noting that the models have, so far, been completely wrong in pretty much everything. For instance, predictions made in 1990 of warming by 2000 haven't happened. Aside from the El Nino blip, we haven't seen any warming. Check out this link.
I can partially confirm this data. All of this is from memory, so please forgive minor errors. My source is "The True State of the Planet", edited by Robert Bailey. Also, the book is old, so it only has data from 1979 to 1992.
Paraphrasing from the book:
Passive satellite-based microwave measurements (on the 53.74 GHz band) of thermal emissions of molecular oxygen in the lower and middle trophosphere
(could be stratosphere--memory fuzzy here) show a 0.13C cooling of global mean temperatures in the time period from 1979 to 1992. The measurements are considered accurate to within 0.01C.
It's amazing what kind of weird shit I remember. In any case, people should know that even the existence of global warming is disputed.
Many countries around the world signed the Montreal Protocol which was a ban on CFCs - the leading cause of ozone depletion as speculated by scientists and perhaps proven so with the recent evidence you've provided
Yes, good point. However, just because we had an effect on A does not automatically mean we have a significant effect on B. There are a lot of things which affect global climate, such as solar cycles, natural ecological change, etc. The ice ages were all natural, for instance... It's very difficult to isolate man-made environmental changes from natural ones.
I remember that a few years ago, the Wall Street Journal published a graph showing global mean temperatures, human CO2 emissions, and solar activity over the past 117 years or so. Solar activity correlated much better to temperature than did CO2 emissions. It sometimes strikes me as arrogant that we assume that humans have the power to destroy the planet. Remember, we're not the biggest polluters to inhabit Earth--that honor belongs to early photosynthetic bacteria that "polluted" the air with oxygen. That turned out real bad, didn't it?:-)
OK well thanks for at least being rational about this.
No problem. The occasional funny troll aside, rational discussion is so much more interesting than a lot of what happens on/. I appreciate you being civil, too.
Yes, there's all the NIMBY opposition to a good permanent storage facility. Somebody should just get it over with and force Nevada to let them build the proposed storage facility.
You can't use nuclear fission because no one has figured out what to do with the spent radioactive waste.
You could just bury it. The proposal to store waste in Nevada was killed for political reasons, not scientific ones.
And we haven't even touched on whether nuclear fission can be safely used to generate power. (Hints: Three Mile Island. Chernobel. How well we have dealt with less toxic materials & avoided environmental damage.)
[Blatant Plug for Canada]The Candu reactor design is pretty damn safe. If the core overheats, your moderator (heavy water) boils off, and the reaction stops.[/Blatant Plug] By comparison, the 440-VR reactors used at Chernobyl were physically unstable, in the sense that an increase in temperature could increase the reaction rate. The reactor relied on fallable control mechanisms to prevent this and maintain the state of the reactor. Bad design, operated by poorly trained people... The solution? Don't let Communists build your power plants.
Bottom line: you don't know what you're talking about.
Ad hominem attacks are often the last resort of those without a good argument. Try to be more civil, please.
Good points, but I was expecting that the "dust shield" would have to be continuously replenished. Expensive, yes, but cheaper than trying to meet the draconian restrictions proposed in the Kyoto Accord. I have no clue where you get your "10 cubic miles" figure from--this sounds way off-base to me. My own quick estimate, based on using particles with a 1-micrometer radius, is that around 7 x 10^6 cubic metres of particles would need to be used. That's around 14,000 tonnes, assuming a density twice that of water. Smaller particles would reduce the mass required... Yes, this is a lot, but it's not impossible, and it could be fuelled using nuclear or other clean energy sources... I do agree that our first priority should be replacing fossil fuel electricity plants with something cleaner (nuclear being my favourite candidate).
Ozone only contributes a small amount to the greenhouse effect. Other gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, play a much more significant role in the greenhouse effect. I am aware of this, which is why I said "largely unrelated..."
Again, I note evidence suggesting that the ozone hole is now closing. If global warming and the ozone hole were really closely related, you'd think that that would shut people up about global warming.
OK, first of all, the ozone hole and global warming are two separate, largely unrelated problems. Was it you or Carl Sagan who confused the two?
Second, saying "you can't do X. Read book Y for an argument I can't be bothered to summarize" is a lame debating tactic. I'd love to hear your (or Sagan's) explanation of why releasing particulate matter into the atmosphere won't work, so please post with more info if possible.
The real solution is to get our damn greenhouse emissions in order...
That would be the ideal solution, but it's just not going to happen. The negative economic impact would be too large, especially for developing countries that can't afford sophisticated pollution-control technologies. We have to look to solutions that can actually be realistically implemented.
I totally agree with you that nuclear is the way to go. I know some people will cry about Chernobyl, but that incident really just goes to show you the drawbacks of communism, not nuclear power. An intelligent reactor design (such as Candu) operated by well-trained individuals would never suffer such a catastrophe.
In the Candu design, if the reactor core starts to overheat, the heavy water moderator boils away, and the reaction stops. Simple physics prevents meltdowns. There are plenty of other good designs that avoid the Chernobyl problem, but people just freak out when they hear nuclear.
Another thing worth noting is that electric cars are a stupid idea if the electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Finally, your average coal plant puts out more radioactivity than your average nuclear plant (due to radioactive isotopes in the coal).
I just got over reading Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan and in it he talks in great depth about global warming. [snip]
2) If at sea level, wholly intact, the ozone layer is about 3 mm thick or just slightly thicker than one's finger nail.
Oh, not this again... Global warming and ozone depletion are two separate, largely unrelated problems. I hope it was just you and not Carl Sagan who got confused. Furthermore, the ozone hole has shown signs of closing.
1) Even if we stopped production and useage of all greenhouse-effect causing gases, these gases would remain in the upper atmosphere doing harm for a little over a century.
Let me point out that the only way to completely stop producing greenhouse gases is to kill yourself (remember, you breathe out carbon dioxide and fart methane), and, even then, your rotting carcass would release more greenhouse gases.
The amount of confusion between global warming and the ozone hole is really disheartening. If nobody even knows what they're talking about, how can we possibly expect to get anywhere?
Before people freak out completely, I'd like to make a few observations:
First of all, it's worth noting that this is a prediction based on a theory. Scientists are trying to explain why we haven't yet seen as much global warming as the models would suggest, and this is one possible explanation--not absolute fact. Remember, back in the '70s, global cooling was the environmental boogeyman. Second, the IPCC has done some shady things before, such as changing the executive summary of a report after it was peer reviewed (my source for this is a series of letters to the editor published in the Wall Street Journal several years ago). Finally, there is a significant amount of controversy in the scientific community surrounding global warming.
The point is, take the IPCC report with a large grain of salt. People on both sides of the issue have their continued grant funding depending on whether they find evidence for or against global warming, so the science has unfortunately become very distorted by politics.
That said, I'd like to suggest a simple technological solution to the potential global warming problem. Disperse sufficient fine particulate matter into the upper atmosphere to reflect about 1% of the sun's light. Volcanoes do this naturally, and there's plenty of data to show that it can cool the planet. The cost of doing this artificially, while expensive, is likely to be far, far cheaper than meeting the goals set out in the Kyoto Accord. I can't take credit for this idea--I heard it mentioned once somewhere else. Why, with all the concern about global warming, do you hear so little about using technology to directly fix the problem?
Britain recently made it legal for insurance companies to discriminate on the basis of the results of a genetic test for Parkinson's Disease. Presumably, permission to do so with other genetic diseases will soon follow. Couple this with a government-run DNA database, and you really have to wonder what the hell is going on. I know I posted that earlier message about how credit rating agencies aren't pure evil, but when the government gets in on it, and it's your DNA, it's time to be afraid.
How big a leap is it from this to "monitoring" people who have a genetic predisposition to violent or compulsive behaviours? Perhaps we'll see mandatory DNA sampling of those who get caught in the net of "geek profiling".
I'd like to make a few observations that may be offensive to people who hold certain political views. This is not a troll, but instead is a straightforward (blunt) statement of my opinions.
1. When you take a people's freedoms by force, there is some hope that they will rise up and reclaim them. When you convince them to give their freedom up willingly, those freedoms will never be restored.
2. Britain is (or soon will be) no longer a free country. Time to take it back or leave. Mayflower II, anyone?
3. This is why the Fourth Amendment is a good thing, along with the Second Amendment to guarantee that the people always have a last resort against a tyrannical government.
4. My genome is mine. The only people who have any sort of claim on it are my family members. If you want to record, patent, or copy my DNA without my permission, go fuck off and die.
In Canada the RCMP have the right to invade whatever private residence you are in, in order to forcibly extract a DNA sample from you. They do not need a warrant.
OK, this is a troll, and it's already been modded down, but I should really clear this up. The RCMP don't do this, and, to the best of my knowledge, can't do this. They'd need a warrant.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the major problems facing pro-privacy activists today is a certain type of corporate spin. Major advertisers in the U.S. have created a PR campaign whose goal is convincing people that notice about how your privacy is being violated (typically buried in a dozen pages of fine legal print) is more important than actually having privacy. The PR campaign is designed to push the idea that a privacy policy is what is really needed, not actual privacy.
If the company is honest about what they intend to do with my data, I have no complaints. If I don't like it, I'll simply take my business elsewhere. I imagine, given the litiguous climate in the US, that consumers could easily sue in response to a violation of a stated privacy policy.
What does bother me is when the government forceably gathers information from me. Businesses I can choose to avoid, but the government has guns.
Money is power. Employers have it, you don't. Unless you're an employer.
Maybe at McDonalds, that's true, but things are very different in the tech industry. What developers are selling (knowledge and skills) is extremely valuable, and good companies know this.
At the place I was working this summer, if the two most senior developers had walked, the company would have folded. Management could come and go, the market could change, but these developers were the company. The knowledge in their heads was irreplaceable, and management knew it.
That's power.
An intelligent employer will pay employees what they're worth and do everything possible to keep the good ones around. Unions make that harder, because now Joe Slacker has to be paid as much as Jane Ubercoder, just because he's been around as long. When you fuck with the free market, things almost always get worse.
They're skills are unique and a finite number of people can do their job at all, therefore, like executives, they should be generously compensated (obviously less so than senior managment - but the point is that both groups are critical).[snip] However, techies, like blue-collar folk, tend to be isolated from management and most likely to be subjected to unfair treatment (I don't know any Marketdroids who worked 70 hrs/wk for two weeks to meet a deadline only to get laid off the next morning when the project got done on time). This is where some form of representation comes in.
.1 * c, the law of supply and demand stops working well when we move away from ideal free market conditions.
This is sorting itself out on its own, without union help. All the dot-coms that try to get by through slave-driving without a plan are going under. The companies that don't reward their workers are begging on the streets for more VC, and they're not getting it. The companies that do get it will weather this downswing, and come out doing just fine.
There's plenty of documented cases of employers abusing the H1-B system.
I agree with you that the H1-B system is screwed up. The problem lies in its implementation, not the fundamental concept of encouraging immigrant tech workers, though (which is what you had originally seemed to be saying). Once again, I'll make a blatant plug for Canada and point out that our immigration system is generally less screwed up than yours. We don't ship people back after 5 years or any of that crap.
If and when all software is made by Apple-Microsoft-Intel-NBC or IBM-Redhat-Sun-AOL-TimeWarner and three other companies, leverage would shift substantially away from the workforce to the employers.
If that came to pass, yes, it would be time for unions. I don't see it happening any time soon, though. Until it does, I think unions would be more a burden than a benefit.
That gets hard if everyone is colluding to screw you. It's true that some software isn't made by a couple oligopolies like cars are - yet. Despite this fact, anti-consumer initiatives like SDMI, CSS, etc. have managed to get universal support.
These examples are quite different from employee treatment. Employees are generally a lot more informed about their companies than consumers are, for one...
Counterexample: Pepsi workers where I live had shitty wages, pension plans, disability pay, etc. The union came up with a proposal that would have compensated Pepsi workers slightly less than local Coke workers with equivalent jobs. The company made a ridiculously low offer and then refused to negotiate "on principle."
If it was the tech industry, all the Pepsi people could have just left for the nearest Coke plant. Then Pepsi would have been up shit creek without a paddle when they discovered nobody had been commenting their code...
Rank and file union members have set up websites criticizing bad union leadership and company management alike
For now, I think that level of organization is all that's needed--no formal unions necessary. The company I was working at this summer did some nasty bullshit to employees, mainly because of two idiot executives. If we had wanted to, we could have simply told the general manager that X had to change or all his developers would walk. That would have destroyed the company completely, since it would take 6 months for anyone else to figure out our flagship products. I nearly organized such a coup, but, as a lowly co-op student, I didn't quite have the pull needed. All that was really needed was a desire to change things on the part of employees--a union was simply unnecessary.
Just as Newton's laws stop working well as we approach
Yes, but, at least right now, the computer industry is very close to an ideal free market. There are many "sellers" (employees) and many "buyers" (employers), and no one entity or small group has excessive market power. If that were to change, there might be a need for unions... Until then, they're just dead weight.
The problem is that right now we're settling for less than what we should expect. There are some fabulously profitable companies out there. But all of that money was made by coders, who got a generous amount of money, but in all honesty deserve more.
This sounds suspiciously like communism and the labour theory of value. Just because somebody didn't type a line of code doesn't mean they didn't contribute. As much as I hate sales and marketing, I know that they are also essential to most companies. Companies live and die by their management--just compare a well-managed company to a poorly-managed one, and you'll realize how valuable management really is.
Maybe you don't think CEOs deserve their multi-million dollar salaries. The truth is that the good ones easily earn their paychecks and more. For instance, Apple would be dead and buried without Steve Jobs. In that light, no matter how much they're paying him, he's clearly been a net contributor to the company.
2. Tech companies haven't been above screwing employees. People get let go a couple weeks before their options come due, often for fabricated reasons. H1-B visas get rammed through Congress to drive down IT salaries. Imagine if the Big Three automakers tried to import tens of thousands of foreign workers and then pay them substandard wages!! It can only happen in IT.
This sounds racist to me. If other people are willing to do your job for less, and they're just as capable as you, why shouldn't they get the job? Because their skin is a different colour?
Marketing practices of today may become labor practices of tommorrow. If a company is willing to screw consumers with "content protection" do you really trust it not to screw its own employees?
If they screw you, you leave. With sites like F*ckedcompany.com around, it's not too hard to find out which companies suck before you apply. If it's true that marketing behaviour is indicative of employee treatment, then it should be really easy to avoid loser companies. You have nobody to blame but yourself if you don't do your research.
A lot of anti-union people scream "I'm too good for a union - unions are for idiot construction workers." But many industry that depend on highly skilled labor are highly - pilots, aviation mechanics, teachers, athletes, actors. It obviously works for other "knowledge industries".
Three of the five groups you mentioned have recently pulled or are pulling strikes about bullshit issues and making ridiculous demands. I'll focus on teachers' unions:the teachers' union in BC used parent volunteers as an issue in a recent strike. They told teachers, "Remember, parent volunteers are here to take your jobs." The union actually wanted to keep parents out of schools. This had absolutely nothing to do with helping kids, and would have destroyed many sports teams and other extracirricular activities. These unions force job advancement to be dependent on seniority instead of performance. That harms kids, and removes any incentive for teachers to do a good job. The good teachers ultimately become bitter and frustrated with the system as they watch bad teachers climb up the ranks because of their seniority. The result is the mess that the public school systems have become today.
Technology unions probably would be different than old-school unions...
Oh, sure, at first they would be. They'd be all dressed up as something new and shiny, and they'd try to make us think they'd reformed. Gradually, they would reveal themselves, taking larger and larger bites out of our paychecks so they could donate money to political candidates we didn't support. They'd misinform employees to make them hate management, so they would have a stronger hold over us (I've seen this very trick happen before). Unions are corrupt--don't kid yourself. Unlike corporations, they have nothing to gain from good employer-employee relations.
I know of *no* industry where unionization has decreased wages or really adversely affected employees.
It's a basic truth of economics that increased prices will result in decreased demand. In other words, if unions artificially jack up wages, the result will be lost jobs and an inefficient economy. It's not a coincidence that the computer industry is ununionized and has experienced so much growth.
I think it's interesting that your description of extortion, "either you give me this, or we [sic] wont work," is in fact a description of a market economy, which can be summarized as "either you give me a better price or I won't buy your gizmo."
You wouldn't know a market economy if it bit you in the ass. Markets work best when you have many sellers and many buyers, all operating independently. The tech industry has tens of thousands of competing companies and millions of employees, which is just the way things should be. The tech industry is damn close to an ideal free market.
Adam Smith, the idol of capitalists, would in fact have approved of unions, in my opinion
Do you know anything about Adam Smith? He would have viewed labour unions as market collusion, an evil that distorts prices and creates market inefficiencies. Your statement is about as ridiculous as claiming that Karl Marx would have favoured the AOL-Time Warner merger. Please, take an economics course.
With reasonable labour laws (such as those in Canada), there's really no need for unions in the tech industry. If you don't like your job, get another. When you leave a tech job, the company loses huge amounts of accumulated knowledge, and, whether the company knows it or not (the good ones do), it costs them big-time. This is more true in the tech industry than any other industry I can think of.
Nobody wants to pay you $75,000 for 8 hours a day with 6 weeks vacation? Maybe it's because you're not worth it. Ideal markets do a very good job of paying people what they're worth. Sometimes the truth hurts. If nobody wants to pay you $X, upgrade your skills, look around, and you'll probably get what you want.
Don't try to tell me it's hard to find a new job--it's easy if you don't suck. I'm only a co-op student, and I have no trouble. First co-op term, I had to turn down interviews because I was getting so many, and I got exactly the job I wanted. This time, I only applied to one place, and got the job without even an interview.
Yes, companies pull occasional bullshit like firing people without telling them, but that just means your labour laws need a bit of tweaking. If that happened here in Canada, you could sue their asses for wrongful dismissal.
Sure, unions increase wages in the short-run, but they ultimately harm workers by decreasing the supply of jobs or putting employers out of business or by taking huge chunks of your paycheck. It's simple economics--if you increase the price of something (higher wages), demand will fall (==less jobs). There's a few details (price elasticity of demand increases with time, etc.) that tell you that the reaction won't be immediate, but it will happen.
Historically, unions have been corrupt, anti-democratic organizations. I know this because, during the Cold War, my grandfather was an active member of the Communist Party in the US. He was ordered to infiltrate the UAW, which he successfully did. Maybe it's no longer the Communist party that has their fingers in the union pie--it could be the Mob--but they're not really about protecting workers. Corporations don't have a monopoly on evil...
I know what you're going to say "Aha! Those labour laws are there because of unions! So there!". Yes, very true. Unions did have a useful place in society. They're not needed in today's highly-educated, highly-skilled labour market, though.
Maybe you're thinking "but I deserve to be paid $XXX,000, and I should get 72 weeks of paid vacation a year". Why do you think you are somehow entitled to any of this? You're entitled to what you can negotiate in good faith with your employer, and you're entitled to have your employer honour your employment contract. Nowhere in the Consitution is flex-time, sick leave, or overtime pay guaranteed.
I'm not saying people don't have the right to organize unions--they do (and should) have that right. I'm just saying it would be stupid to do so in the tech industry.
Better yet, start writing to AltaVista's advertisers and tell them you're boycotting them because they advertise with AltaVista. Explain why. Explain that everyone on Slashdot (with X page views per day, blah blah) knows that AltaVista is evil, and probably isn't too happy with their advertisers.
Watch AltaVista's advertising dry up. Laugh. Watch them stop with this patent nonsense.
This is true hacker war at its best. The DirecTV hackers vs. the DirecTV programmers. I bet both sides had a great time, and enjoyed the game. The "GAME OVER" message was an especially nice touch.
Someone said that they're within their rights to "illegally" descramble DirecTV's content, because it's broadcast over public airwaves. True, but then, isn't DirecTV also entitled to broadcast whatever they want? If you just happen to be foolish/1337 enough to be running a hacked card, well, thanks for coming out, better luck next time. DirecTV didn't physically destroy the cards, so I don't think the hackers have any grievance in that respect...
Nicely done, on both sides. I think this deserves an entry into the hacker hall of fame.
[rant]As a BC resident, I say again, Fuck you, California. First, you drive our natural gas prices through the roof, causing our poor old ladies who can no longer afford their heating bills to freeze their little fannies off in our Canadian winter. Now, you buy tons of our power, and stiff us for it, all the while begging us not to stop giving more to you. Goddamn surfer-boy Golden State assholes.[/rant]
I've got news for you: our power comes from hydro dams, and it's been a dry year. Every megawatt-hour we sell you is one less we'll have in the summer. Not only have we been stiffed for over $200 million, but we may have to buy power or be facing brownouts this summer because we depleted our hydro reserves to save your asses. BC Hydro is a government-owned corporation, so that $200 million comes straight out of our pockets. You people are thieves on a state-wide scale.
Don't give me any bullshit about the money being owed to us by private companies instead of the entire state. You've made it effectively impossible to build power plants in your state (especially nuclear plants). Your half-assed deregulation forced those companies out of business, so the blame lies with the voters. How the hell did you think it would work to deregulate the wholesale supply of power, but not the sale of power to consumers? Has anyone there heard of economics?
Moderators: Yes, this is inflammatory, but it happens to be how I feel. It's also true, to the best of my knowledge. If you happen to be from California, I'd much rather hear your side of the story than just see a "-1: Inflammatory" or something.
One more message to everyone in California, especially L.A. Go out and rent "Trigger Effect" (assuming you still have power for your VCR). You'll understand when you watch it...
Don't watch TV. I don't. Once you break the addiction, you'll be amazed how much more time you have, how much more you get done, and how much happier you are. Read or play on the internet or get some exercise instead.
If you're feeling like you really need to do something, write to your local cable provider/broadcasters and everyone else behind Digital TV, and tell them why you decided to stop watching TV.
Writing your Congressman about important issues like copyright, 'net censorship, etc, is a good thing, but don't waste their time on TV. Not being able to tape Star Trek is not and should not be a Federal concern.
Worst case--only you and a few other people stop watching, and you discover how much more time you have. Best case--consumers start leaving TV en mass (already happening), and companies change their tune. Capitalism will work for you if people actually give two shits.
I agree that this is part of a larger, worrisome trend, but if TV is the issue that finally gets us off our collective asses, what does that say about us? Does it mean that we don't care about our basic liberties, but not being able tape Simpsons is a crisis? What a sad social commentary that would be.
They thought of it. Hell, Jefferson even used cryptography.
How about human cloning? What, that's not in there either?I refer you to Amendments IX and X:
Basically, it's none of the Federal government's business, according to the constitution.
Then why do ignorant right wing nutcases, as epitomized by the Shrub in the White House, who claim the Constitution as their inspiration, outlaw it?
Bush hasn't outlawed it, he's just made it illegal to do human cloning/embryo research with Federal funding. You're free to do it on your own dime, but not on Uncle Sam's. That's quite constitutional.
I wasn't unconditionally defending Bush, I was just pointing out that appointing Justices who take a strict view of the Constitution is a Good Thing. Try not to fly off the handle next time...
Yes, you're bang-on here.
If everyone would read the Constitution and learn a little economics, the world would be a much better place...
Jon, while I know you're pretty gloomy about the prospects of 'net freedom under Bush, I think you're forgetting two things.
First, the ultimate protector of free speech (the first principle of 'net freedom) is the Supreme Court. Even if Congress passes stupid laws abridging freedom, the Supreme Court can strike them down.
Second, Bush has stated that he will appoint justices who take a strict, constructionist view of the Constitution. In other words, freedom of speech means freedom of speech. None of this "except when it might offend people" crap...
The Constitution and a Supreme Court willing to enforce it are all the 'net really needs.
Your reasoning is completely flawed, I have to say. Yes, computers cannot accurately predict short-term (1 to 5 etc.) weather trends, that is, they can't calculate how such and such ocean currents will affect meteorology.
However, in the long run these short-term events cancel out. Computers are capable, with a limited degree of accuracy, given chaos and the data available, to extrapolate on long-term trends. This is completely different than a 2-week or even 2-year weather forecast.
The climate is a chaotic system, meaning that the future becomes exponentially more difficult to predict the farther forward you look. While there are some trends that we can use to make predictions (i.e., it probably won't snow on July 4 in Texas), placing too much faith in these models is silly.
It's also worth noting that the models have, so far, been completely wrong in pretty much everything. For instance, predictions made in 1990 of warming by 2000 haven't happened. Aside from the El Nino blip, we haven't seen any warming. Check out this link.
Paraphrasing from the book:
It's amazing what kind of weird shit I remember. In any case, people should know that even the existence of global warming is disputed.
Many countries around the world signed the Montreal Protocol which was a ban on CFCs - the leading cause of ozone depletion as speculated by scientists and perhaps proven so with the recent evidence you've provided
:-)
/. I appreciate you being civil, too.
Yes, good point. However, just because we had an effect on A does not automatically mean we have a significant effect on B. There are a lot of things which affect global climate, such as solar cycles, natural ecological change, etc. The ice ages were all natural, for instance... It's very difficult to isolate man-made environmental changes from natural ones.
I remember that a few years ago, the Wall Street Journal published a graph showing global mean temperatures, human CO2 emissions, and solar activity over the past 117 years or so. Solar activity correlated much better to temperature than did CO2 emissions. It sometimes strikes me as arrogant that we assume that humans have the power to destroy the planet. Remember, we're not the biggest polluters to inhabit Earth--that honor belongs to early photosynthetic bacteria that "polluted" the air with oxygen. That turned out real bad, didn't it?
OK well thanks for at least being rational about this.
No problem. The occasional funny troll aside, rational discussion is so much more interesting than a lot of what happens on
Yes, there's all the NIMBY opposition to a good permanent storage facility. Somebody should just get it over with and force Nevada to let them build the proposed storage facility.
Politics and science don't mix well...
You can't use nuclear fission because no one has figured out what to do with the spent radioactive waste.
You could just bury it. The proposal to store waste in Nevada was killed for political reasons, not scientific ones.
And we haven't even touched on whether nuclear fission can be safely used to generate power. (Hints: Three Mile Island. Chernobel. How well we have dealt with less toxic materials & avoided environmental damage.)
[Blatant Plug for Canada]The Candu reactor design is pretty damn safe. If the core overheats, your moderator (heavy water) boils off, and the reaction stops.[/Blatant Plug] By comparison, the 440-VR reactors used at Chernobyl were physically unstable, in the sense that an increase in temperature could increase the reaction rate. The reactor relied on fallable control mechanisms to prevent this and maintain the state of the reactor. Bad design, operated by poorly trained people... The solution? Don't let Communists build your power plants.
Bottom line: you don't know what you're talking about.
Ad hominem attacks are often the last resort of those without a good argument. Try to be more civil, please.
Good points, but I was expecting that the "dust shield" would have to be continuously replenished. Expensive, yes, but cheaper than trying to meet the draconian restrictions proposed in the Kyoto Accord. I have no clue where you get your "10 cubic miles" figure from--this sounds way off-base to me. My own quick estimate, based on using particles with a 1-micrometer radius, is that around 7 x 10^6 cubic metres of particles would need to be used. That's around 14,000 tonnes, assuming a density twice that of water. Smaller particles would reduce the mass required... Yes, this is a lot, but it's not impossible, and it could be fuelled using nuclear or other clean energy sources... I do agree that our first priority should be replacing fossil fuel electricity plants with something cleaner (nuclear being my favourite candidate).
Ozone only contributes a small amount to the greenhouse effect. Other gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, play a much more significant role in the greenhouse effect. I am aware of this, which is why I said "largely unrelated..."
Again, I note evidence suggesting that the ozone hole is now closing. If global warming and the ozone hole were really closely related, you'd think that that would shut people up about global warming.
OK, first of all, the ozone hole and global warming are two separate, largely unrelated problems. Was it you or Carl Sagan who confused the two?
Second, saying "you can't do X. Read book Y for an argument I can't be bothered to summarize" is a lame debating tactic. I'd love to hear your (or Sagan's) explanation of why releasing particulate matter into the atmosphere won't work, so please post with more info if possible.
The real solution is to get our damn greenhouse emissions in order...
That would be the ideal solution, but it's just not going to happen. The negative economic impact would be too large, especially for developing countries that can't afford sophisticated pollution-control technologies. We have to look to solutions that can actually be realistically implemented.
I totally agree with you that nuclear is the way to go. I know some people will cry about Chernobyl, but that incident really just goes to show you the drawbacks of communism, not nuclear power. An intelligent reactor design (such as Candu) operated by well-trained individuals would never suffer such a catastrophe.
In the Candu design, if the reactor core starts to overheat, the heavy water moderator boils away, and the reaction stops. Simple physics prevents meltdowns. There are plenty of other good designs that avoid the Chernobyl problem, but people just freak out when they hear nuclear.
Another thing worth noting is that electric cars are a stupid idea if the electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Finally, your average coal plant puts out more radioactivity than your average nuclear plant (due to radioactive isotopes in the coal).
I just got over reading Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan and in it he talks in great depth about global warming. [snip]
2) If at sea level, wholly intact, the ozone layer is about 3 mm thick or just slightly thicker than one's finger nail.
Oh, not this again... Global warming and ozone depletion are two separate, largely unrelated problems. I hope it was just you and not Carl Sagan who got confused. Furthermore, the ozone hole has shown signs of closing.
1) Even if we stopped production and useage of all greenhouse-effect causing gases, these gases would remain in the upper atmosphere doing harm for a little over a century.
Let me point out that the only way to completely stop producing greenhouse gases is to kill yourself (remember, you breathe out carbon dioxide and fart methane), and, even then, your rotting carcass would release more greenhouse gases.
The amount of confusion between global warming and the ozone hole is really disheartening. If nobody even knows what they're talking about, how can we possibly expect to get anywhere?
Before people freak out completely, I'd like to make a few observations:
First of all, it's worth noting that this is a prediction based on a theory. Scientists are trying to explain why we haven't yet seen as much global warming as the models would suggest, and this is one possible explanation--not absolute fact. Remember, back in the '70s, global cooling was the environmental boogeyman. Second, the IPCC has done some shady things before, such as changing the executive summary of a report after it was peer reviewed (my source for this is a series of letters to the editor published in the Wall Street Journal several years ago). Finally, there is a significant amount of controversy in the scientific community surrounding global warming.
The point is, take the IPCC report with a large grain of salt. People on both sides of the issue have their continued grant funding depending on whether they find evidence for or against global warming, so the science has unfortunately become very distorted by politics.
That said, I'd like to suggest a simple technological solution to the potential global warming problem. Disperse sufficient fine particulate matter into the upper atmosphere to reflect about 1% of the sun's light. Volcanoes do this naturally, and there's plenty of data to show that it can cool the planet. The cost of doing this artificially, while expensive, is likely to be far, far cheaper than meeting the goals set out in the Kyoto Accord. I can't take credit for this idea--I heard it mentioned once somewhere else. Why, with all the concern about global warming, do you hear so little about using technology to directly fix the problem?
Britain recently made it legal for insurance companies to discriminate on the basis of the results of a genetic test for Parkinson's Disease. Presumably, permission to do so with other genetic diseases will soon follow. Couple this with a government-run DNA database, and you really have to wonder what the hell is going on. I know I posted that earlier message about how credit rating agencies aren't pure evil, but when the government gets in on it, and it's your DNA, it's time to be afraid.
How big a leap is it from this to "monitoring" people who have a genetic predisposition to violent or compulsive behaviours? Perhaps we'll see mandatory DNA sampling of those who get caught in the net of "geek profiling".
I'd like to make a few observations that may be offensive to people who hold certain political views. This is not a troll, but instead is a straightforward (blunt) statement of my opinions.
1. When you take a people's freedoms by force, there is some hope that they will rise up and reclaim them. When you convince them to give their freedom up willingly, those freedoms will never be restored.
2. Britain is (or soon will be) no longer a free country. Time to take it back or leave. Mayflower II, anyone?
3. This is why the Fourth Amendment is a good thing, along with the Second Amendment to guarantee that the people always have a last resort against a tyrannical government.
4. My genome is mine. The only people who have any sort of claim on it are my family members. If you want to record, patent, or copy my DNA without my permission, go fuck off and die.
In Canada the RCMP have the right to invade whatever private residence you are in, in order to forcibly extract a DNA sample from you. They do not need a warrant.
OK, this is a troll, and it's already been modded down, but I should really clear this up. The RCMP don't do this, and, to the best of my knowledge, can't do this. They'd need a warrant.