First, Luxury handbags are usually designed by hand by expert artisans.
FTFY
Making is easy, it's the designing part you are paying for. That and the materials which you can't fake since quality leather/wool/cotton/gold etc comes at a cost.
Some people still believe the myth that they are made by the same people that make the real ones no matter how many times it is debunked,
Interesting. My Aunty was a seamstress for a branded manufacturer many years ago before China took over the world. She didn't make anything counterfeit, but she did make both high-end $100+ shirts along with $10 shirts.
The high quality knockoff handbags are now all handmade as well as the money for quality fakes is huge. It takes a trained eye to be able to spot the fakes. In Bali my wife was in one of the handbag shops and even when I told her they were fakes she was unable to spot any real signs of it on 2 of the chanel bags. (FYI the reason you can tell they are fakes is they were selling at 25% of actual retail price, before bartering)
Really?
I've been to Bali a few times, as well most other parts of Asia where counterfeiting is rife and I find them still rather crude. I specifically look the the best fakes I can get for cheesy gifts, but struggle to find anything that isn't blatantly obvious.
Basically, we are more like plumbers than doctors.
We really should unionize.
I disagree. We are neither plumbers or doctors, but a 'blue collar' job was one with very little skill, or a skill learnt once after high school then used for the rest of your life (plumbing, mechanic, sparky etc) Under such fixed conditions, exploitation is easier so unions serve a useful protection mechanism.
But because IT moves so fast (most products I learnt at Uni were obsolete by the time I left), the game is self sustaining (ie smarter people tend to succeed) so don't need the same protection.
In this environment, protection of a union would merely hold people back.
The Cloud is your enemy. Fire anyone who offers a "cloud" solution before offering an in-house solution, because I can guarantee you that "cloud" services are only half as efficient as running the hardware in-house.
Like electricity generation, water purification and sewerage....
The hard truth is that a lot of "IT people" make stupid comments like this then wonder why no-one in the business respects their opinion.
Were your cashiers totally incompetent idiots that couldn't do quick basic math?
I don't have cashiers, what are you talking about?
Should I jump to the conclusion that you're an incompetent idiot that can't do basic English? I know this is the internet and getting angry and throwing insults at the first thing you don't understand is considered the norm, but Slashdot is trying to be a little different. You need to engage your brain if you want a decent response.
but if you took 5% and actually invested it in almost anything (CD's, bonds, some mutual fund) you'd have more money when you retired.
Our system is exactly that. The govt only mandates the figure to be invested, what you do with it is up to you. eg I can chose to put it an index fund, or commercial fund such as Blackrock etc. It's mine, I control it, the only catch is I can't withdraw until retirement.
But, alas, that's how government works when it does this socialism thing. You pay through the nose and get horrible returns because the government is absolutely the least efficient and least cost effective way to do anything.
You seem to be confusing socialism with corruption. We are relatively socialist and our system works quite well.
You can dream that China is all eco-hippies. Truth is, they're doing their best to avoid dependence on foreign resources and foreign technology or at the very least control it through direct ownership
And.... shouldn't we be doing the same?
That's how you get ahead, by pushing forward. Not by building walls, and blaming everyone else for the situation you're in.
Don't the charts in the article really say that the U.S. has nearly double the deployment of electric vehicles and solar on a per-capita basis?
I'd be interested know how they count electric vehicles. China has literally millions and millions of those little electric scooter/bike/monowheel/hoverboard things which I bet aren't in the count.
The main motivation for Chinese to want to go abroad is to escape the hot smoggy climate, and move somewhere cool and green. They love the UK for this reason. When they can't see the skies for the pollution, the government has no option to act.
The rub with this is, that being a one party system they can act and act quickly if required. The Chinese industrial revolution compressed what Europe did in 200 years into 20. There's nothing to suggest that they can't compress our last 100 years into the next 20 if the desire is strong enough.
So, you don't think the Unions had a duty to my parents and their retirements to demand a fully funded pension fund? I do..
Don't know how it works there, but in my socialist hell, the law requires ~10% of your gross pay to be paid to an authorised superannuation fund which you own, but can't touch until you are 65. No Union required...
Not really. The surface area of all the human beings on earth is microscopic compared to the surface area of the earth (land and water). That also makes for statistically insignificant chance of anyone getting hurt by this. It doesn't matter that the re-entry cannot be predicted.
Risk management is probability vs consequences. You have only considered the first of those.
The precise trajectory may not be known now, but someone should at least be able to reduce the possibilities from 'all of earth' to 'a few states/countries' in order to work out the second.
Every time I buy Chinese made tech, I start out with high hopes for it. Then 2 years later everything starts breaking and I have to give up and scrap it and buy something good.
The problem is not with credit cards, but incompetent cashiers and owners who cannot handle changing situations.
I used to work in retail IT. We had a DR plan for CC transactions using the manual click clack machine but it never got used. The training, accounting and reconciliation was considered too burdensome, it was easier to ride any any outages which tend to last minutes rather than hours or days and just absorb any loss
I know it's fun to discuss doomsday prepping, but the simple fact is that is simply not a skill that is worth wasting energy on.
Always found this to be an illogical and frankly dumb point of view, because somehow you think that in a world where the society has collapsed enough to worry about "someone with more guns and henchmen", you are somehow safer without a weapon.
The weapon will make very little difference, because in a truly apocalypse this will only last until you run out of bullets. Ultimately you're going to need to join a gang or an army that has the structure to support many guns with lots of ammo to survive long term. In this instance you most valuable asset will be ability to make friends and get on with people in difficult circumstances, which let's face it, no-one in this forum has...
And a well-preserved shotgun shell will let you defend your cans of beans, assuming you have a shotgun to shoot it out of.
Won't help when you're alseep. So you need a can of beans, a shotgun, shotgun shells, and a dog. But then the dog needs food, and worm tablets. And... let's face it. Surviving the apocalypse will require more than just one thing...
Nah. If you're planning for the collapse of civilisation - even temporary - bottled water, canned food, gasoline etc, are king. When the lights go out, gold will suffer just as much from superinflation as anything, but a can of beans will always be worth a day's food.
Interestingly my teenage daughter just got back from a ski camp where the entire year were based at the top of a mountain for an entire week. Due to the unexpected isolation from the local mall, she said the most valued commodity on the whole trip was two noodles. Every wanted them and no-one could get them, so a 50c packet was trading for about $5.
I was pleasantly surprised that a ski trip turned into an economics lesson;)
Word is that the President of Ecuador is getting pretty tired of this guy and is thinking about ejecting him from the London embassy.
We've been hearing that since 2 minutes after he entered the Ecuadorian embassy. Unless you are the President of Ecuador, or one of his aides, I suggest you stop believing the headlines...
No, i don't approach issues, including this one, as if it's never been done before, or it's me, deserving a first fix. But I do seek to understand the root problem, root cause, and I try to make an informed decision based on the facts, which sometimes leads me to realize there is, in
fact , no solution. Which may be the case in this instance. But each of us easily considers our intentions as better than others', and our understanding as more nuanced and more informed. Sometimes agreement is acceptable when when it's not quite what you want.
Ok so let's dig a little deeper and see if we can find a 'solution'.
First up is that any solution doesn't have to be perfect. Solutions are generally about improvement, usually preferring long term improvement over short term
So let's break down your statement and I'll explain why I have a problem with it (nothing personal, the context is problem/solution)
my first concern with prostitution is the inherent risk of abuse
Ok so there's risk. Like fighting fires or lifting heavy objects, there are measures that be used to minimise these risks, and those measure are almost always implemented and enforced by the government. And they work.
Removing the stigma is, or should be, out of scope for government intervention
Why? The purpose of a government is to provide a net improvement to the quality of life those people it governs. Is there some religious reason you think the government can only get invovled some times?
but when it is used to dictate or shape society or culture, it is no longer freedom,
And here we have found the root cause of the issue. I heard a couple of phrases the other day when analysing the Las Vegas massacre that I think are relevant here. "Freedom fundamentalism" and "free settler mythology".
So firstly fundamentalism, who are you to say what "freedom" is? We have this word thrown about all the time like Jihadis and Allahu Akbar. True Freedom is a jungle where everyone and everything does whatever it likes with no rules. In this environment people suffer. Is this the solution you propose?
Secondly the free settler mythology which you implied with the comment:
and our nation has become something it was not intended to be
Again says who? And why? I believe the Founding Fathers wanted a better way. And that's it. If you want things to be better, then the primary goal should not be about Jihad or Freedom or 72 virgins, it should be about improvement ie. Problem/Solution
Now, the question of whether prostitution is a moral or ethical profession is one to be left to the culture and society. resolving that could make the work safer.
And who governs that culture and society?
The simple fact that the government has enacted laws has already influence society and culture. I'd be interested to know how this fits into the Freedom ideology?
As a self-identified right-winger, my first concern with prostitution is the inherent risk of...
And this is the main problem I see with right wing or conservative attitudes. You speak as if it has never been done before, and it's all unknown and scary.
I live in a place where sex work has been legal for decades. The risks are no greater than a security guard or construction worker and for most part it's just a regular job.
As this example shows a lot of right wing and conservative opinion* seems to be based on fear, uncertainty and doubt. That is no way to live...
* For the record, Political Compass tells me that my political bias is centre-right, so please don't pass this off as some lefty-pinko conservative bashing. I just find the FUD generated by the extreme right to be purely that.
Slashdot Mirror
Two things.
First, Luxury handbags are usually designed by hand by expert artisans.
FTFY
Making is easy, it's the designing part you are paying for. That and the materials which you can't fake since quality leather/wool/cotton/gold etc comes at a cost.
We recently purchased a knock-off Cisco kit from Amazon, that was Prime.
It blew my mind when Cisco told me this part was fake, it looked identical to the original.
A piece of tin with a Cisco badge looked exactly like a piece of tin with a Cisco badge? Mind blown...
Some people still believe the myth that they are made by the same people that make the real ones no matter how many times it is debunked,
Interesting. My Aunty was a seamstress for a branded manufacturer many years ago before China took over the world. She didn't make anything counterfeit, but she did make both high-end $100+ shirts along with $10 shirts.
The high quality knockoff handbags are now all handmade as well as the money for quality fakes is huge. It takes a trained eye to be able to spot the fakes. In Bali my wife was in one of the handbag shops and even when I told her they were fakes she was unable to spot any real signs of it on 2 of the chanel bags. (FYI the reason you can tell they are fakes is they were selling at 25% of actual retail price, before bartering)
Really?
I've been to Bali a few times, as well most other parts of Asia where counterfeiting is rife and I find them still rather crude. I specifically look the the best fakes I can get for cheesy gifts, but struggle to find anything that isn't blatantly obvious.
Basically, we are more like plumbers than doctors.
We really should unionize.
I disagree. We are neither plumbers or doctors, but a 'blue collar' job was one with very little skill, or a skill learnt once after high school then used for the rest of your life (plumbing, mechanic, sparky etc) Under such fixed conditions, exploitation is easier so unions serve a useful protection mechanism.
But because IT moves so fast (most products I learnt at Uni were obsolete by the time I left), the game is self sustaining (ie smarter people tend to succeed) so don't need the same protection.
In this environment, protection of a union would merely hold people back.
Then don't fix it. Seriously if something has been working fine for years, don't meddle with it.
Like steam trains. They still work, so why bother with cars and planes etc...
The Cloud is your enemy. Fire anyone who offers a "cloud" solution before offering an in-house solution, because I can guarantee you that "cloud" services are only half as efficient as running the hardware in-house.
Like electricity generation, water purification and sewerage....
The hard truth is that a lot of "IT people" make stupid comments like this then wonder why no-one in the business respects their opinion.
And my black friends are Gorillas. And these people want to provide the AI for automated cars?
Were your cashiers totally incompetent idiots that couldn't do quick basic math?
I don't have cashiers, what are you talking about? Should I jump to the conclusion that you're an incompetent idiot that can't do basic English? I know this is the internet and getting angry and throwing insults at the first thing you don't understand is considered the norm, but Slashdot is trying to be a little different. You need to engage your brain if you want a decent response.
but if you took 5% and actually invested it in almost anything (CD's, bonds, some mutual fund) you'd have more money when you retired.
Our system is exactly that. The govt only mandates the figure to be invested, what you do with it is up to you. eg I can chose to put it an index fund, or commercial fund such as Blackrock etc. It's mine, I control it, the only catch is I can't withdraw until retirement.
But, alas, that's how government works when it does this socialism thing. You pay through the nose and get horrible returns because the government is absolutely the least efficient and least cost effective way to do anything.
You seem to be confusing socialism with corruption. We are relatively socialist and our system works quite well.
China is coal powered and the coal use is not declining.
Facts say otherwise...http://www.wri.org/blog/2017/01/china%E2%80%99s-decline-coal-consumption-drives-global-slowdown-emissions
You can dream that China is all eco-hippies. Truth is, they're doing their best to avoid dependence on foreign resources and foreign technology or at the very least control it through direct ownership
And.... shouldn't we be doing the same?
That's how you get ahead, by pushing forward. Not by building walls, and blaming everyone else for the situation you're in.
Don't the charts in the article really say that the U.S. has nearly double the deployment of electric vehicles and solar on a per-capita basis?
I'd be interested know how they count electric vehicles. China has literally millions and millions of those little electric scooter/bike/monowheel/hoverboard things which I bet aren't in the count.
The main motivation for Chinese to want to go abroad is to escape the hot smoggy climate, and move somewhere cool and green. They love the UK for this reason. When they can't see the skies for the pollution, the government has no option to act.
The rub with this is, that being a one party system they can act and act quickly if required. The Chinese industrial revolution compressed what Europe did in 200 years into 20. There's nothing to suggest that they can't compress our last 100 years into the next 20 if the desire is strong enough.
So, you don't think the Unions had a duty to my parents and their retirements to demand a fully funded pension fund? I do..
Don't know how it works there, but in my socialist hell, the law requires ~10% of your gross pay to be paid to an authorised superannuation fund which you own, but can't touch until you are 65. No Union required...
Not really. The surface area of all the human beings on earth is microscopic compared to the surface area of the earth (land and water). That also makes for statistically insignificant chance of anyone getting hurt by this. It doesn't matter that the re-entry cannot be predicted.
Risk management is probability vs consequences. You have only considered the first of those.
The precise trajectory may not be known now, but someone should at least be able to reduce the possibilities from 'all of earth' to 'a few states/countries' in order to work out the second.
Every time I buy Chinese made tech, I start out with high hopes for it. Then 2 years later everything starts breaking and I have to give up and scrap it and buy something good.
Which is also made in China...
The problem is not with credit cards, but incompetent cashiers and owners who cannot handle changing situations.
I used to work in retail IT. We had a DR plan for CC transactions using the manual click clack machine but it never got used. The training, accounting and reconciliation was considered too burdensome, it was easier to ride any any outages which tend to last minutes rather than hours or days and just absorb any loss
I know it's fun to discuss doomsday prepping, but the simple fact is that is simply not a skill that is worth wasting energy on.
Always found this to be an illogical and frankly dumb point of view, because somehow you think that in a world where the society has collapsed enough to worry about "someone with more guns and henchmen", you are somehow safer without a weapon.
The weapon will make very little difference, because in a truly apocalypse this will only last until you run out of bullets. Ultimately you're going to need to join a gang or an army that has the structure to support many guns with lots of ammo to survive long term. In this instance you most valuable asset will be ability to make friends and get on with people in difficult circumstances, which let's face it, no-one in this forum has...
And a well-preserved shotgun shell will let you defend your cans of beans, assuming you have a shotgun to shoot it out of.
Won't help when you're alseep. So you need a can of beans, a shotgun, shotgun shells, and a dog. But then the dog needs food, and worm tablets. And... let's face it. Surviving the apocalypse will require more than just one thing...
Nah. If you're planning for the collapse of civilisation - even temporary - bottled water, canned food, gasoline etc, are king. When the lights go out, gold will suffer just as much from superinflation as anything, but a can of beans will always be worth a day's food.
Interestingly my teenage daughter just got back from a ski camp where the entire year were based at the top of a mountain for an entire week. Due to the unexpected isolation from the local mall, she said the most valued commodity on the whole trip was two noodles. Every wanted them and no-one could get them, so a 50c packet was trading for about $5. ;)
I was pleasantly surprised that a ski trip turned into an economics lesson
The second you lose power, you're fucked. This is why cash is king, always has been, always will be.
I've been through a few power outages in my time. Cash didn't help either...
Word is that the President of Ecuador is getting pretty tired of this guy and is thinking about ejecting him from the London embassy.
We've been hearing that since 2 minutes after he entered the Ecuadorian embassy. Unless you are the President of Ecuador, or one of his aides, I suggest you stop believing the headlines...
No, i don't approach issues, including this one, as if it's never been done before, or it's me, deserving a first fix. But I do seek to understand the root problem, root cause, and I try to make an informed decision based on the facts, which sometimes leads me to realize there is, in fact , no solution. Which may be the case in this instance. But each of us easily considers our intentions as better than others', and our understanding as more nuanced and more informed. Sometimes agreement is acceptable when when it's not quite what you want.
Ok so let's dig a little deeper and see if we can find a 'solution'. First up is that any solution doesn't have to be perfect. Solutions are generally about improvement, usually preferring long term improvement over short term
So let's break down your statement and I'll explain why I have a problem with it (nothing personal, the context is problem/solution)
my first concern with prostitution is the inherent risk of abuse
Ok so there's risk. Like fighting fires or lifting heavy objects, there are measures that be used to minimise these risks, and those measure are almost always implemented and enforced by the government. And they work.
Removing the stigma is, or should be, out of scope for government intervention
Why? The purpose of a government is to provide a net improvement to the quality of life those people it governs. Is there some religious reason you think the government can only get invovled some times?
but when it is used to dictate or shape society or culture, it is no longer freedom,
And here we have found the root cause of the issue. I heard a couple of phrases the other day when analysing the Las Vegas massacre that I think are relevant here. "Freedom fundamentalism" and "free settler mythology".
So firstly fundamentalism, who are you to say what "freedom" is? We have this word thrown about all the time like Jihadis and Allahu Akbar. True Freedom is a jungle where everyone and everything does whatever it likes with no rules. In this environment people suffer. Is this the solution you propose?
Secondly the free settler mythology which you implied with the comment:
and our nation has become something it was not intended to be
Again says who? And why? I believe the Founding Fathers wanted a better way. And that's it. If you want things to be better, then the primary goal should not be about Jihad or Freedom or 72 virgins, it should be about improvement ie. Problem/Solution
Now, the question of whether prostitution is a moral or ethical profession is one to be left to the culture and society. resolving that could make the work safer.
And who governs that culture and society?
The simple fact that the government has enacted laws has already influence society and culture. I'd be interested to know how this fits into the Freedom ideology?
Kind of.
As a self-identified right-winger, my first concern with prostitution is the inherent risk of...
And this is the main problem I see with right wing or conservative attitudes. You speak as if it has never been done before, and it's all unknown and scary.
I live in a place where sex work has been legal for decades. The risks are no greater than a security guard or construction worker and for most part it's just a regular job.
As this example shows a lot of right wing and conservative opinion* seems to be based on fear, uncertainty and doubt. That is no way to live...
* For the record, Political Compass tells me that my political bias is centre-right, so please don't pass this off as some lefty-pinko conservative bashing. I just find the FUD generated by the extreme right to be purely that.