Theocratic busybodies are no good at answering that question..
False premise: The religious argument is to assume that 'personhood' (for lack of a better term) is present from conception onward: this is not due to being 'busybodies', but out of an abundance of compassion mixed with caution (given the marked improvements in premature birth survival rates over the past few decades, in spite of them happening at smaller and smaller gestation periods? I'm rather inclined to agree with this sense of caution.)
Now at what point does a human first gain anything considered consciousness? That has yet to be proven, but most guesses put it at or around 15-20 weeks of gestation; around the same time the brain forms... but no one knows or can prove either way, and there's no way to tell for certain when the lower mental functions spring into being.
You see, your post is an example of *why* TFA is important... you all too easily ascribe to "theocratic busybodies", what is in reality a compassionate nod towards humanity not knowing enough to set a firm demarcation between clinical procedure, and the externally imposed death of a nascent human being.
But you know, politics and stuff demands mischaracterization, I guess.
Yes and No. (Disclosure: I used to work for Solarworld).
I partially agree because it was the introduction of *massive* tax/tariff subsidies from the EU member governments (most notably Germany) that drove a lot of development and growth, which led to the rise of solar-panel makers like Solarworld, Q-Cells, etc. (all based in Germany). I think only First Solar is the only big boy that's based in the US.
I disagree mostly because solar really didn't get cheap until the Chinese began to flood the market with panels, around 2010-2011 or so. Before China, solar panels cost around $2.50/Wp; after China started the flood, they could be had for as cheap as $0.75/Wp.
All that said, you get what you pay for... Solarworld for instance has the 25-year power output warranty, 17-18% conversion, and high wattage densities (255+ watts per panel), whereas the real low-end Chinese stuff is barely warrantied for a year, might get 10-12% conversion, and might get you 160-200-watt panels (in real-life testing; forget the label's claims).
Here in the US, Comcast does the exact same thing - if you're a Comcast customer, you can use any 'shared' router after you log in.
I left it alone on my router because I'm so far out in the countryside, someone would have to trespass onto my property just to get within range of it (in which case they'll have bigger problems). Meanwhile, I do wonder if there's a way to 'shotgun' my laptop so that I can use both channels at once...
That said, remember that even though the CIO (and/or directors, etc) are easily swooned by vendors, consider this: One expensive fuck-up at the strategic level can destroy a career in less time than it takes for the CFO (or someone similar) to lodge a complaint in the boardroom, the first massive security incident, the first major outage... (and if you think the CIO is taking the heat for it, you're insane... that's why he drags a director or two into the process.)
That's why you don't (usually) see some CxO tromping up to a podium to announce "We're putting all our shit on the cloudz and it will be the awesomes!" without a metric shit-ton of consultation with (and agreement from) the rest of the C-level types. Oh *hell* no... first, he's going to drag the beancounters into it, and make them take part in the decision (if only to share the blame). Then he's gonna pile on the justifications (vendors will supply a lot of it, but if there is insufficient in-house justification, it's usually no-go), and make sure there's enough names on that thing to share the blame (but not enough to bury his getting the credit for it.)
All that said... no IT honcho worth his salt is going to do any of this without at least some input from a trusted sysadmin/developer/etc or two... if you think he did such a thing arbitrarily, then he's either flamingly incompetent, or that trusted person is definitely not you (or you're probably not high enough in the food chain, haven't sufficiently proven yourself, etc.)
PS: Fun bit about the whole deadline thing once a decision is made. He told the C-level guys 18 months as an ETA, but told the director to get it done in 6 months. By the time it filters down to you a day later, you got 6 weeks to complete it, and no weekends or vacations until it's done.:/
Nobody is asking for governmental control... they're asking to perform an experiment. Geez.
In all seriousness, I like that they're just looking at the technology, and studiously avoiding any attempt to take a political side in any of this. There are practical applications for this in the macro sense that have approximately bupkis to do with the whole debate, after all.
Well, as soon as that "left" has a candidate that actually backs them, things could get mighty interesting.
Bernie handed over a speech to #blacklivesmatter, is(was?) a registered Socialist, both he and Hillary pay strong lip-service to single-issue nutjobs like NARAL, extreme feminism, Greenpeace, etc etc etc.
...here's the truth - both parties lavish love on their core constituents and their positions early in the primaries - then shift hard to look centrist as soon as someone wins the nomination.
Members of either party/ideology are too damned blind to see that.
The *only* way a Concorde could outrun either of these is if said Concorde had at least a 100-200 mile head start when the chase began, which was likely the case.
...and it damned sure couldn't outrun or out-maneuver a typical high-altitude SAM if it got close enough.;)
Please, please, PLEASE do not let this thing get morphed into Yet Another Certification Program.
Considering the expense and the mind-chewing bureaucratic colonoscopy that PCI (and similar) usually requires, I'd hate to see something similar have to happen to OSS dev projects - they can't afford that shit (either in time, attention, or money).
If you're truly going to do it? Advise, not dictate. Not all OSS projects have big-name sponsors and gobs of money, so make it a service to the smaller ones if you can.
From my understanding once the employee leaves infosys for another company then infosys does not have control anymore.
That's the thing - the H1-B would have to quit first (*if* another company is willing to take him on), which would be an escape. However, as noted, it is an added expense. Also, if the client company complains, the H1-B usually gets recalled to India for 'reassignment'. I cannot claim to know what happens after that, but unless that H1-B has a rare skill, I bet it isn't pretty. Note that this is technically illegal, but yet it's still there, as evidenced by the relationship between, say, Infosys and their client companies.
You claim it is a small part of the person's salary, but it still requires work from the new company's HR department, so unless they already have someone there set up to handle H1-B visas, they'll have to spend the time to do it (which in turn costs money) - and no, unlike your assertion, it is not a simple matter.
You know, maybe a cogent argument as to HuffPo's motives and/or possible motivations should have been used, instead of just spewing agitprop and wishful thinking?
That is incorrect. If the management thinks that they probably have not researched it properly. Once here on their H1-b can moe to any company willing to take over the H1-B.
Actually, you are not fully correct either. Well, ostensibly you are correct, but here's what really happens:
* The vast majority of H1-B workers are tied to Infosys, Tata, Wipro or some other India-HQ'd company as their sponsor, which means if the worker complains, said worker is recalled to India and quickly replaced. Huge corps like Nike *love* this kind of arrangement (this is a real-world example - Nike is a huge customer of Infosys). This in turn gives the client corporation (e.g. Nike) full control over their charges while their charges are in the US - one complaint from the corporation, and Infosys/Tata/Wipro does all the dirty work for them and provides a replacement within literal days.
* the second part of your sentence, "...any company willing to take over the H1-B" is the condition that undoes the rule. Kindly tell me how many companies are willingly going to take on someone under those conditions? Doing so w/o a company like Infosys/Tata/etc means expense and paperwork...
...and you get only $300 worth of quality and performance. If you buy a low-end econobox car, you'll get the same quality and performance as a low-end econobox car.
On the other hand, you have to dig extremely deep to know if your PC OEM laptop was built with top-shelf parts (vidcard, memory, HDD, etc) and not 'house-brand' versions (which Dell was especially prone to do.) I've lost track of how many people thought they had a great deal only to discover that their Best-Buy purchased 'gaming' laptop only had an Intel Graphics processor, or that the RAM was only DDR2 instead of DDR3 (or the clock-speed was throttled), that the max resolution was too low (or the screen was crap quality) etc.
If anything, the (very) wide configuration options a typical PC OEM provides to Joe Sixpack can screw him over way faster, though truth be told this is a hazard to anyone buying anything from anyone other than getting it brand-new from the OEM.
Funny part is that at least in one case, even the flops have turned into massive sellers later on - the Cube (I owned one) eventually became the Mac Mini (and I would argue that it also became the 'trash can' Mac Pro, given how everything is jammed in there).
Even their biggest flop, the Newton, had probably laid the misty design foundations for the iPod and iPhone...
That's the thing, though - they actually pay attention to design, almost to the point of religion. Most other OEMs might at most throw one or two designers at their upcoming wares, mostly with a mission of '...and make sure it looks like that thing Apple makes...'
Only the moderated ones stayed clear. The rest were slammed pretty damned hard with spam starting from 1996-1997 onwards.
By 1999 most newsgroups were rendered useless thanks to spam, crap-flooding (e.g. send a binary as 40,000 parts), dipshits and prankster script kiddies who discovered how to build and use a cancelbot, NNTP server ops that still hadn't figured out that maybe they should remove *.test, AOLers who hadn't figured out what a FAQ was (aka Eternal September), etc.
True, but consider that the reasons behind it are just as important.
In 1950's Soviet Russia, the trains always ran on time according to any press release that mentioned it... but the reason why is simple: Anyone who delayed a train run (or dared to say that they rarely ran on time) was labeled a 'counter-revolutionary' and either sent to a gulag or shot.
Tell me can you still get batteries for your 7 year old MBP?
That *was* a good question, but for giggles, I did a quickie search for a battery that fits a 2007 MBP on Amazon, and no problem - this is one of 211 results. It popped up almost instantly. It was one of like 98 results.
But let's really have fun here and pull one up for a Powerbook G4 - they stopped making those 10 years ago...
Try spending a quarter as much on the dell next time you compare.
I love this argument... but you forget, spending $500 on a dell laptop means you'll still fall short on specs. Like-for-like, a comparable Dell comes in at around 60-80% of a new MBP, depending on how close you want to match the specs (and where in Apple's roadmap/cycle you buy the Dell). So at the charitable 60%, you're still spending $1200 to match a brand new $2k MBP. But wait - your Dell will last maybe 3 years maximum, unless you're really careful. That MBP he mentioned has lasted 4 years and counting... most folks I know of with an MBP usually keep them for 6-8 years or so (my own is 2 years old and counting; I just barely chucked in a second HDD for mass storage, and ripped out my optical drive to make room for it since I never use the thing.)
In your cited case, I'm pretty sure that doesn't even count the lawsuits from the 1,000+ people who got sick off of the product... pretty sure that company is pretty much dead. All it would take is for one lawsuit to knock 'em down if the jury is in the right mood...
Everybody remember this the next time some libertarian pops off about the market deciding such things, or how there's no such thing as externalities.
...because everybody knows that the libertarian ideal is a Communist Kleptocracy with the absolute right to do whatever the hell said government wants, right?
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Theocratic busybodies are no good at answering that question..
False premise: The religious argument is to assume that 'personhood' (for lack of a better term) is present from conception onward: this is not due to being 'busybodies', but out of an abundance of compassion mixed with caution (given the marked improvements in premature birth survival rates over the past few decades, in spite of them happening at smaller and smaller gestation periods? I'm rather inclined to agree with this sense of caution.)
Now at what point does a human first gain anything considered consciousness? That has yet to be proven, but most guesses put it at or around 15-20 weeks of gestation; around the same time the brain forms... but no one knows or can prove either way, and there's no way to tell for certain when the lower mental functions spring into being.
You see, your post is an example of *why* TFA is important... you all too easily ascribe to "theocratic busybodies", what is in reality a compassionate nod towards humanity not knowing enough to set a firm demarcation between clinical procedure, and the externally imposed death of a nascent human being.
But you know, politics and stuff demands mischaracterization, I guess.
Yes and No.
(Disclosure: I used to work for Solarworld).
I partially agree because it was the introduction of *massive* tax/tariff subsidies from the EU member governments (most notably Germany) that drove a lot of development and growth, which led to the rise of solar-panel makers like Solarworld, Q-Cells, etc. (all based in Germany). I think only First Solar is the only big boy that's based in the US.
I disagree mostly because solar really didn't get cheap until the Chinese began to flood the market with panels, around 2010-2011 or so. Before China, solar panels cost around $2.50/Wp; after China started the flood, they could be had for as cheap as $0.75/Wp.
All that said, you get what you pay for... Solarworld for instance has the 25-year power output warranty, 17-18% conversion, and high wattage densities (255+ watts per panel), whereas the real low-end Chinese stuff is barely warrantied for a year, might get 10-12% conversion, and might get you 160-200-watt panels (in real-life testing; forget the label's claims).
Here in the US, Comcast does the exact same thing - if you're a Comcast customer, you can use any 'shared' router after you log in.
I left it alone on my router because I'm so far out in the countryside, someone would have to trespass onto my property just to get within range of it (in which case they'll have bigger problems). Meanwhile, I do wonder if there's a way to 'shotgun' my laptop so that I can use both channels at once...
True indeed... painfully true in many cases.
That said, remember that even though the CIO (and/or directors, etc) are easily swooned by vendors, consider this: One expensive fuck-up at the strategic level can destroy a career in less time than it takes for the CFO (or someone similar) to lodge a complaint in the boardroom, the first massive security incident, the first major outage... (and if you think the CIO is taking the heat for it, you're insane... that's why he drags a director or two into the process.)
That's why you don't (usually) see some CxO tromping up to a podium to announce "We're putting all our shit on the cloudz and it will be the awesomes!" without a metric shit-ton of consultation with (and agreement from) the rest of the C-level types. Oh *hell* no... first, he's going to drag the beancounters into it, and make them take part in the decision (if only to share the blame). Then he's gonna pile on the justifications (vendors will supply a lot of it, but if there is insufficient in-house justification, it's usually no-go), and make sure there's enough names on that thing to share the blame (but not enough to bury his getting the credit for it.)
All that said... no IT honcho worth his salt is going to do any of this without at least some input from a trusted sysadmin/developer/etc or two... if you think he did such a thing arbitrarily, then he's either flamingly incompetent, or that trusted person is definitely not you (or you're probably not high enough in the food chain, haven't sufficiently proven yourself, etc.)
PS: Fun bit about the whole deadline thing once a decision is made. He told the C-level guys 18 months as an ETA, but told the director to get it done in 6 months. By the time it filters down to you a day later, you got 6 weeks to complete it, and no weekends or vacations until it's done. :/
Nobody is asking for governmental control... they're asking to perform an experiment. Geez.
In all seriousness, I like that they're just looking at the technology, and studiously avoiding any attempt to take a political side in any of this. There are practical applications for this in the macro sense that have approximately bupkis to do with the whole debate, after all.
Trump will flame out sooner or later, he has too.
...you mean like that Obama guy was supposed to do in 2008?
Well, as soon as that "left" has a candidate that actually backs them, things could get mighty interesting.
Bernie handed over a speech to #blacklivesmatter, is(was?) a registered Socialist, both he and Hillary pay strong lip-service to single-issue nutjobs like NARAL, extreme feminism, Greenpeace, etc etc etc.
Members of either party/ideology are too damned blind to see that.
Well...
Concorde: Mach 2.02
F-14 Tomcat: Mach 2.34
F-15 Eagle: Mach 2.50
F-16 Falcon: Mach 2.05
The *only* way a Concorde could outrun either of these is if said Concorde had at least a 100-200 mile head start when the chase began, which was likely the case.
Please, please, PLEASE do not let this thing get morphed into Yet Another Certification Program.
Considering the expense and the mind-chewing bureaucratic colonoscopy that PCI (and similar) usually requires, I'd hate to see something similar have to happen to OSS dev projects - they can't afford that shit (either in time, attention, or money).
If you're truly going to do it? Advise, not dictate. Not all OSS projects have big-name sponsors and gobs of money, so make it a service to the smaller ones if you can.
From my understanding once the employee leaves infosys for another company then infosys does not have control anymore.
That's the thing - the H1-B would have to quit first (*if* another company is willing to take him on), which would be an escape. However, as noted, it is an added expense. Also, if the client company complains, the H1-B usually gets recalled to India for 'reassignment'. I cannot claim to know what happens after that, but unless that H1-B has a rare skill, I bet it isn't pretty. Note that this is technically illegal, but yet it's still there, as evidenced by the relationship between, say, Infosys and their client companies.
You claim it is a small part of the person's salary, but it still requires work from the new company's HR department, so unless they already have someone there set up to handle H1-B visas, they'll have to spend the time to do it (which in turn costs money) - and no, unlike your assertion, it is not a simple matter.
You know, maybe a cogent argument as to HuffPo's motives and/or possible motivations should have been used, instead of just spewing agitprop and wishful thinking?
Just a thought.
That is incorrect. If the management thinks that they probably have not researched it properly. Once here on their H1-b can moe to any company willing to take over the H1-B.
Actually, you are not fully correct either. Well, ostensibly you are correct, but here's what really happens:
* The vast majority of H1-B workers are tied to Infosys, Tata, Wipro or some other India-HQ'd company as their sponsor, which means if the worker complains, said worker is recalled to India and quickly replaced. Huge corps like Nike *love* this kind of arrangement (this is a real-world example - Nike is a huge customer of Infosys). This in turn gives the client corporation (e.g. Nike) full control over their charges while their charges are in the US - one complaint from the corporation, and Infosys/Tata/Wipro does all the dirty work for them and provides a replacement within literal days.
* the second part of your sentence, "...any company willing to take over the H1-B" is the condition that undoes the rule. Kindly tell me how many companies are willingly going to take on someone under those conditions? Doing so w/o a company like Infosys/Tata/etc means expense and paperwork...
QED, 'mano :)
You can buy a new PC for $300.
...and you get only $300 worth of quality and performance. If you buy a low-end econobox car, you'll get the same quality and performance as a low-end econobox car.
On the other hand, you have to dig extremely deep to know if your PC OEM laptop was built with top-shelf parts (vidcard, memory, HDD, etc) and not 'house-brand' versions (which Dell was especially prone to do.) I've lost track of how many people thought they had a great deal only to discover that their Best-Buy purchased 'gaming' laptop only had an Intel Graphics processor, or that the RAM was only DDR2 instead of DDR3 (or the clock-speed was throttled), that the max resolution was too low (or the screen was crap quality) etc.
If anything, the (very) wide configuration options a typical PC OEM provides to Joe Sixpack can screw him over way faster, though truth be told this is a hazard to anyone buying anything from anyone other than getting it brand-new from the OEM.
Funny part is that at least in one case, even the flops have turned into massive sellers later on - the Cube (I owned one) eventually became the Mac Mini (and I would argue that it also became the 'trash can' Mac Pro, given how everything is jammed in there).
Even their biggest flop, the Newton, had probably laid the misty design foundations for the iPod and iPhone...
That's the thing, though - they actually pay attention to design, almost to the point of religion. Most other OEMs might at most throw one or two designers at their upcoming wares, mostly with a mission of '...and make sure it looks like that thing Apple makes...'
Funny enough, an ancient Dual G5 PowerMac ( 2004-ish ) still goes for at least $150... not bad for an 11-year-old box.
where many newsgroups were virtually spam free
Only the moderated ones stayed clear. The rest were slammed pretty damned hard with spam starting from 1996-1997 onwards.
By 1999 most newsgroups were rendered useless thanks to spam, crap-flooding (e.g. send a binary as 40,000 parts), dipshits and prankster script kiddies who discovered how to build and use a cancelbot, NNTP server ops that still hadn't figured out that maybe they should remove *.test, AOLers who hadn't figured out what a FAQ was (aka Eternal September), etc.
True, but consider that the reasons behind it are just as important.
In 1950's Soviet Russia, the trains always ran on time according to any press release that mentioned it... but the reason why is simple: Anyone who delayed a train run (or dared to say that they rarely ran on time) was labeled a 'counter-revolutionary' and either sent to a gulag or shot.
grr - the 98 results was for the old Powerbook :)
Tell me can you still get batteries for your 7 year old MBP?
That *was* a good question, but for giggles, I did a quickie search for a battery that fits a 2007 MBP on Amazon, and no problem - this is one of 211 results. It popped up almost instantly. It was one of like 98 results.
But let's really have fun here and pull one up for a Powerbook G4 - they stopped making those 10 years ago...
Throw 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD into one of the new Dells, and I think you might find they outperform your MBP...
Depends on usage; a CG render engine eats CPU, which no amount of RAM or I/O speed will affect.
By the way, trying to match a new Dell what my 2012-model MBP has winds up costing a mint...)
Try spending a quarter as much on the dell next time you compare.
I love this argument... but you forget, spending $500 on a dell laptop means you'll still fall short on specs. Like-for-like, a comparable Dell comes in at around 60-80% of a new MBP, depending on how close you want to match the specs (and where in Apple's roadmap/cycle you buy the Dell). So at the charitable 60%, you're still spending $1200 to match a brand new $2k MBP. But wait - your Dell will last maybe 3 years maximum, unless you're really careful. That MBP he mentioned has lasted 4 years and counting... most folks I know of with an MBP usually keep them for 6-8 years or so (my own is 2 years old and counting; I just barely chucked in a second HDD for mass storage, and ripped out my optical drive to make room for it since I never use the thing.)
In your cited case, I'm pretty sure that doesn't even count the lawsuits from the 1,000+ people who got sick off of the product... pretty sure that company is pretty much dead. All it would take is for one lawsuit to knock 'em down if the jury is in the right mood...
Seattle is ruled by Republicans...
O RLY? Since when?
Everybody remember this the next time some libertarian pops off about the market deciding such things, or how there's no such thing as externalities.
...because everybody knows that the libertarian ideal is a Communist Kleptocracy with the absolute right to do whatever the hell said government wants, right?