Why does it matter if a dozen people made all of those billions?
But they didn't. The US has over 8,000,000 millionaires as of 2016. Maybe you should stop eating what they are feeding you over at MSNBC and try to educate yourself about your positions. Facts are your friend.
And there are 7.4 million unemployed people, and that's not counting people who want full-time employment but only found part-time work.
I agree the economy is not great right now, but that is largely thanks to Obama, the ACA, and over regulation. You are free to think I am full of shit, but you have been enjoying Obama's economy for at least the last 6 years. Hide and watch for 12 months, I believe, as do most economists and the stock market, that the economy is going to come roaring back to life once Obama is gone, especially if Trump can get companies to bring $2.1T in off shore cash back and make the US competitive by bringing sanity back to regulations.
Yeah and Bush did a real great job...
Actually, he did a pretty damn good job. Not perfect, but good. He inherited a recession (dot com bubble) and rampant terrorism from Clinton (USS Cole/9-11), but rather than whine like a little bitch for 8 years, he rolled up his sleeves and kick started the economy by cutting taxes (I remember my rebate check, but then again, I actually work for a living) and cutting regulation, kicked some terrorist ass around the world etc. His first mistake was leaving the lending rules in place that Democrats passed (modifications to the Community Reinvestment Act by Clinton around 1994) that required banks to give loans to otherwise unqualified borrowers and allowed banks to securitize those loans which caused the crisis in the first place. His second mistake was assuming Obama was competent and handing him the solution to the housing crisis rather than just passing it into law (this happened in part because Obama had the house and senate as well. Obama completely pooched the fix for the housing crisis that was handed to him (let Fannie and Freddie take over houses under water and then rent back to owners/sell once markets recovered) and instead pissed away the trillion dollars on "stimulus" to his political connections like Solyndra, many of whom took the money and never paid it back... So yah, you may have hated Bush, but that is on you, overall he did a good job. Bush's worst flaw was that he didn't like public speaking and did not react when empty heads on TV attacked him. Trump does not seem to have that problem, so don't expect to trash him like you did with Bush without consequences.
Gotta love all the butt hurt progressives modding me down as troll. I guess that's their form of "tolerance".
I am an American, but from what I understand, Brexit was all about British sovereignty and money. The UK already has a budding non-integrated immigrant problem, not as bad as France or Germany, but they hardly want more "refuges" coming in at a time when it is well known that ISIS sleepers are infiltrating their ranks. As far as money goes, the UK was sending 13B pounds to the EU and only getting 4.5B back in benefits. Further, EU rules and regulations are stifling the European economy and prices on many basic commodities are jacked up by the EU above global levels in certain regions including the EU. Leaving the EU means the UK gets to control it's own destiny on regulations and subsidies.
This exactly. I am all for organ donation, but the problem is that it is a statistically proven fact that organ donors don't get worked on as long as non-donors with the exact same injury, especially those involved in violence, such as car accidents, gun shots and other traumatic injury. I used to be an organ donor on my drivers license, now I am not on my license. I have told my family that if I am really dead and the opportunity to donate is there, I would like them to do it, but I want the doctors focused on saving my life, not thinking about the potential of my harvest-able organs.
I think that a lot of people are like me especially after doing a bit of research, and the best way to get around this issue is to have medical/religious only opt out (i.e. AIDS etc), where doctors, nurses, EMTs etc can't pronounce without a second opinion. To pronounce you it takes one MD who has not worked on you to come in with fresh eyes and make sure you are actually dead with no chance of coming back, if there is any question his job is to tell them to keep working on you. Part of the organ donor system should also keep track of the number of donors vs patients vs time they try to save you vs criticality of injury on a per doctor and per hospital basis. Doctors that are shortcuting to get more donors instead of saving their patients can be screened for and dealt with. The benefits are two fold. First, with opt out, it reduces the strain by making a lot more donors available, and second, it reduces the strain on families having to try and guess if the doctor has actually done everything possible before coming out and asking for donation.
Computers/automation/robotics have been replacing workers of all stripes including white collar workers since the ATM was introduced in 1967. Every place I have ever worked has had internal and external software that replaces white collar workers (where you used to need 10 people now you need 2).
The reality is that the economy is limited by a scarcity of labor when government doesn't interfere (the economy is essentially the sum of every worker work multiplied by their efficiency as valued by the economy in dollars). As people are freed from jobs that are highly repetitive, there are always more complex, less repetitive jobs out there because the consumer is always looking for the next big thing to improve their lives/increase their free time/reduce their work load. Entire multi billion dollar industries have been created after the introduction of the ATM and will continue to be created. Competition will always push prices down to equilibrium with demand, and I predict now that when fast food restaurants are completely automated with one or two highly skilled technicians (who can make $45k a year btw) running things, prices will drop to levels near what you would pay to make the food at home, order accuracy will be higher, and food borne illness will be unheard of (48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die every year from food borne illness.) Food handling automation was inevitable, the minimum wage hike is just a catalyst to make it happen a little sooner. When driving is automated, traffic will be much lighter, people will not have to own their own cars to travel anywhere; pollution will go down due to the elimination of bad driving habits, ride sharing and reduced traffic. Traffic fatalities, one of the top causes of death in ages 18-25 (over 40,000 per year in total) will be a thing of the past. There will still be fatalities, but probably reduced by 100x or so in the first 10 years.
The biggest mistake we could make as a country is to go the way of the universal basic income. If we get to a point where there are 10x more job seekers than jobs, then we can revisit the issue, but right now there are about 5.5 million job openings in the US and there would probably be 4x that if the government wasn't actively chasing businesses to Asia. Current real unemployment is about 6% so 9.6 million. When US companies bring back $2.1T this year and the health insurance boondogle is fixed (universal annual HSAs, nationwide competition, standardization of policies; identical to what was done by Republicans to life insurance in the 1990s which reduced the costs by 60%), the job market will very likely explode. Economists understand this and that is part of why the DOW is up 1200 points since the election. The Obama economy was of his own making after the first 2 years due to the ACA and excessive regulation, and, like the Carter economy, it will be unleashed with the next administration.
That attitude is exactly what is wrong with the elites the world over. Stop calling names and try to educate yourself a little about the state that the world is in and what the other side is thinking. (Hint: they are neither idiots nor ill informed by and large, that is just the propaganda BS the progressives have been shoveling to help people like you sleep at night instead of having a real introspective moment).
Actually, in a tight labor market, this does often go to employees. Also, if you tax executive bonuses at 90%, they pretty much go away. When combined with a healthy labor market (i.e. growing economy without the flood of illegal or imported workers) wages naturally go up.
So what I have done in the past is to offer my training hourly rate (which is about 4x my regular hourly rate), as the knowledge and skillset to teach someone else and the value of the transfer to the incoming low wage employee is much greater than my regular working rate. Some companies go for that, others do not. On the companies that don't go for it, they are in for a bumpy ride, because on paper cheap employees look cheaper, but if they don't have a clue how to do the work that can get expensive quite fast. I have had about a 50% rate on employers take me up on training a replacement, and about half of those who turn it down come back later and ask for my help, either to teach the incompetent how to do my job, or to do it myself. This is working as an independent contractor in technology, not IT, so YMMV.
If I were this guy specifically, I would also remind this CEO that Trump is coming, so bend over if anything is the slightest bit off the letter of the law regarding H1B workers. By all accounts other than the koolaid drinking progressives, the abuse of the H1B program is ending on January 20.
I did and you could have just clicked accept on the new terms. The fact that you already had purchased games under a previous agreement meant that if you did at some point need to take Valve to court, you could do so under the previous EULA. The reality, in the US at least, is that for consumer purchased software, the EULA is not worth the paper it is written on if you have a real, justified lawsuit. The fact that you must accept something after a non-refundable transaction has occurred means that it is un-enforceable and is primarily viewed by industry and legal scholars as a way to head off some percentage of lawsuits. YMMV and IANAL.
Binding arbitration in and of it'self is not a bad thing, especially for lesser issues, it just needs to be reformed such that all companies that want to use it should pay into a blind pool that then pays randomly selected arbitrators from a professional organization. This would encourage true impartial arbitration. The current implementation skews influence in favor of the businesses.
Hahaha... Actually, you leftist progressive nutjobs skewed the political spectrum a while back because it was really hard to sound reasonable when you were arguing against conservative centrists as a left wing socialist progressive. The correct and original political spectrum looks like this:
- Left wing: totalitarian government involved in all aspects of daily life
Examples: Nazi (new socialists), socialists, fascists, progressive left, etc - Centrists: limited government to do what is needed for the common good (military, legal system, roads, etc.)
Example: conservatives (those advocating for minimal change from status quo) - Right wing: minimal or no government (Libertarians)
Extreme examples: anarchists
Nazi/fascist/socialists are all cut from the same cloth. They all want totalitarian governments that have massive power and control over your daily life. How someone marked the AC post above informative just shows how effective the propaganda and brainwashing of the main stream media and higher education together are.
The sad truth is that the Aussies and UK for example are both less free than they were 40 years ago, with a bigger nanny state. They both gave up their guns as one example, but violent crime increased dramatically, doubling in the UK from pre ban years. (The gun grabbing facists try to conflate and confuse by citing "gun crime" as down, which is true when all guns are confiscated, but as a citizen, do you care if you are robbed or murdered with a machete or a gun? no you care that you were assaulted, which is twice as likely after gun bans).
"They will never learn when the CORRUPT CEO IS STILL RUNNING THE COMPANY." Under Gates and Ballmer, MS may have screwed over potential competitors, but with Satya Nadella, they are screwing over the customers. Forcing a spyware loaded, system breaking, auto update "upgrade" on unsuspecting customers is straight up evil and they should be prosecuted for false advertising (abuse of common knowledge of what an update is and/or systems that were reviewed and labeled Windows 10 ready when they werent) and or vandalism (damaging/modifying another's property without their consent; you could have a street artist paint a beautiful mural on the front of your building, but it is still vandalism if he didn't have your permission). And don't give me that BS about giving windows update permission: users gave windows update permission to update their OS, not replace it with a new, different OS that behaved differently, had a different set of utilities and much lower level of privacy and control. MS customers want Nadella gone as a first step in the right direction.
Since I was actually gaming back then, I feel I should remind you that Pac-Man ran at 224x288 resolution. While eye candy certainly isn't everything, it is a factor. I am not a fanboy of any particular brand, but I stopped buying new Nintendo consoles after the Gamecube. Nintendo's choice to under power it's consoles and bundle expensive controller screens is fine for un-discerning grandparents and little kids, but there are many games available that are both fun and cutting edge in the graphics department. It is also true that many fun games, like Super Mario Brothers, don't need a high end console to run well. I still buy the Nintendo consoles and the 10-20 games that are worth owning, but I wait til the end of the generation. It is good that there are people at Nintendo that realize that gaming is at it's core still about fun, and you don't need bleeding edge graphics for that, but doubling down on the expensive, ass backwards WiiU is a mistake that will bite them. At the least, they should be selling their new product with an option to ditch the expensive screen and just play on your TV for $120 less than the base price of the screen console version. If I could pick up a Nintendo console for $120 to play newer 2d cartoon versions of Zelda, SMB, Metroid etc. I would, but at $300, everyone will be buying a PS4 or Xbone for the same price.
What Nintendo needs to do is sell a custom bluetooth case for the iPhone that essentially uses what the phone has (display/electronics etc) and adds what it is sorely lacking (real buttons, D pad/thumb stick, maybe speakers etc.) Sell this for cost at $20 directly through the any Nintendo app delivered to your door in 2 days like Amazon and you have a very powerful platform that is equivalent or better than the DS with millions of installed users.
Phones by themselves without real buttons are just too limited for real gaming, which is why I have a ton of games on my phone, but I have stopped buying them. The only winners that I regularly use are solitaire, Mahjong and the Fallout vault game. Everything else is either too simple to play for more than 20 minutes, too small or too difficult to control with a virtual controller. I know that there are bluetooth controllers out there, but if Nintendo were to do it, the quality and performance would actually be good enough to enjoy.
Setting aside the flame war around this post, the basic issue is thus: The government wants to require all autonomous vehicles to be certified before operating on public roadways. This absolutely makes sense if you are talking about Johnnycab, where the software is the only operator. Uber's position is that they are testing their driving software, but that there is a human driver with their hands on the wheel ready to take over immediately if they feel uncomfortable. Because of this, the Uber vehicles aren't really autonomous, but more like the adaptive driving of a Tesla, which does not require a special autonomous car permit from the state. Uber's position is actually quite tenable and they will probably win in court if the state pushes it that far. Technically the self driving systems are only augmenting the driver and not replacing them at this point. If and when Uber takes the human driver out of the vehicle, they will definitely need the autonomous license.
So make your pass code "I did it" and then it is testimonial and all the evidence is poisoned and gets thrown out on appeal because they forced you to confess, violating your 5th amendment rights;-)
So obviously in your parallel dimension all rich people are evil and cheated their way to their fortune? I hate to burst your bubble, but only liberal progressive democrats obtain riches exclusively in that manner. Many rich obtain their fortune through hard work, wise choices and vision. How easy is it to bribe a rich politician vs a middle income politician. The actual positions don't pay that well these days, making it more tempting if you are a politician struggling financially to bend the rules and enrich yourself on the taxpayers dime.
Obama's net worth went from $1.3M in 2007 to $7M today. I'm sure that's just a coincidence. Hillary's net worth went from flat broke in 1992 to over $30M today. Much of that income was in the $135M she and Bill made in speaking fees, paid in large part by colleges. This is nothing more than the modern form of payola where wealth is stolen from starving students with massive student loans and transferred to the elites to fund their opulent lifestyles.
This exactly. Either the IT guy is incompetent and said what he meant that it was a legit email or he is incompetent because he couldn't spend 5 seconds to proofread his response. Either way he is incompetent and should be flipping burgers the rest of his life.
There are a lot of states where damaging someone's property is a crime and makes you both criminally and civilly liable. Unfortunately all the normal ambulance chasers who would quite rightly file class action lawsuits are scared of the MS legal team and deep pockets. We badly need a software consumers bill of rights to cover all for profit software. In this day and age computers are a mature field where people spend much of their lives. It is about time that the government enact some legislation recognizing this and protecting the citizens from predatory and/or fraudulent software companies. Among those rights:
- Convert all software to be covered by copyright instead of patent law. - Limit software copyright to 20 years or 5 years after it is no longer for sale or the day and date when it is no longer supported, whichever is first. - Any software purchased by a consumer is covered by a standard set of rights that parallel ownership of a physical item where applicable or are spelled out in the bill of rights. EULAs are all illegal except between business entities. - Right of resale is retained by consumer for the physical copy or license key of the purchased software. - Consumer purchases allow unlimited installs by consumer on equipment they own or use. (Software must be removed from hardware prior to sale/donation). - Software must function offline unless that functionality requires an online connection. - Make it illegal for companies to remove functionality previously contained in software/hardware via update, except as a temporary security measure. - Developers are legally required to provide security and functionality patches to fix bugs and security holes discovered either internally or by security researchers for 5 years minimum after date of final sale without any strings attached. (Failure to do so implies that they intended to defraud the consumer by selling a broken/unfinished/dangerous product and could require refunding all customers and criminal fraud liability.) - Software updates should not be mandatory unless there is a clear, urgent reason for them to be. If a mandatory update causes the software to become unusable, the company must pay affected users $150/h spent dealing with the problem, cover cost of repairs, pay $60,000/year of lost documents (i.e. if it was 4 weeks since my last backup and all data since that backup is lost, developer is on the hook for $5000), and/or replace affected hardware, the combination of which is based on what it takes to get the system completely restored in a timely fashion. - Online software licenses/keys/virtual goods and the like have value to the customers who hold them and can be traded/bought/sold/transferred/inherited etc. If a consumer pays actual money either directly or indirectly for a virtual commodity, it can be handled in this way. - Source code for any and all software and back end servers for sale in the US must be provided to the library of congress in order to enjoy copyright protection. 5 years after that software is no longer for sale or the day that it is no longer supported, LOC should publish source code and the software becomes open domain.
Note this only affects consumer software. Businesses can still do all the licensing and other more flexible arrangements.
This is just basic common sense. The fact that Apple built an app around a basic concept like battery life without grasping the basics (they apparently couldn't figure out that computers have dynamic loads that can change battery life dramatically) is just silly and an indication of the lack of leadership at Apple. A good leader would call a meeting with his lead engineers and say: I want this. Then listen to his engineers as they explained why it wasn't a good idea. If the experts tell you it is not a good idea, it generally is not.
That may be how the current administration is letting it be abused, but the actual purpose of H1B/law is to allow companies to tap foreign talent if they CANT find it in the states. It has been abused, as in this case, to drive down wages, but if H1B actually starts getting enforced, and if it gets modified with some real teeth (fines in the order of 1% of the companies net profits from prior fiscal year per violation, or better yet, felony charges for perjury for lying on an H1B form, require CEOs to sign on all H1B forms), this shit will stop in a heart beat.
The flaw here is the H1B program needs to be completely eliminated for consulting/services companies (among other things, but this is the topic du jour). If you are a consulting/services company, you should be required to use only US employees in the US. The consulting company outsourcing is a circumvention technique for companies like Disney, who could never have gotten away with replacing all their IT people with H1B employees, but by "outsourcing" to a consulting company, they can legally lay off all of their employees and then benefit from the lower cost from the consulting company hiring a bunch of H1B slave labor. Same net effect, same savings to Disney, but totally legal currently.
Your system admins can obviously still edit posts, but notice that it is against company policy and a firing offense. That's maybe 5 employees? Outside of admins, all other employees, including the executives, shouldn't even have this ability in their login privileges.
It may have been dollars chasing pennies prior to this SNAFU. However, at this point, you truly have a risk of losing a large portion of your users, which is big dollars, not pennies. This could have been avoided altogether by professional behavior and company wide rules.
The problem isn't really the editing of a few posts, the problem is the fact that he can, unilaterally, go in and edit other people's posts. It is only a conspiracy theory until it is proven true. The fact that he did this shows that not only could it be done, but it was done, thus, no longer a conspiracy theory, it is proven fact. The motivation and trying to play it off as a joke because he got caught are also telling. The fact that he thought he could do this makes it likely that it was done in the past, but that he/they got away with it. It would be easy to destroy a person's online reputation in this manner. It is the online equivalent of identity theft.
At a minimum, to restore trust, they need to implement a policy where posts cannot and will not ever be edited by anyone other than the author, and any employee who does will be immediately terminated, regardless of rank. Also implement some software that only allows employees to delete posts, not edit them. Add a method for the software to verify that the post is being edited by the true user and not an employee and if an employee attempts an edit of a post, the original author gets an automated email as well as the entire company describing the infraction along with date, time, ip, user login, original and modified post, etc.
This exactly. If you fire someone like that, you better pay them a lot of severance and have an ironclad NDA. Pissing them off like this is a surefire way to get seriously screwed over.
Actually from what I understand, they were doing pretty well until they decided to take away the anonymous aspect of their anonymous localized chat rooms. Apparently that was the draw, and when it disappeared, so did their user base.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does it matter if a dozen people made all of those billions?
But they didn't. The US has over 8,000,000 millionaires as of 2016. Maybe you should stop eating what they are feeding you over at MSNBC and try to educate yourself about your positions. Facts are your friend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And there are 7.4 million unemployed people, and that's not counting people who want full-time employment but only found part-time work.
I agree the economy is not great right now, but that is largely thanks to Obama, the ACA, and over regulation. You are free to think I am full of shit, but you have been enjoying Obama's economy for at least the last 6 years. Hide and watch for 12 months, I believe, as do most economists and the stock market, that the economy is going to come roaring back to life once Obama is gone, especially if Trump can get companies to bring $2.1T in off shore cash back and make the US competitive by bringing sanity back to regulations.
Yeah and Bush did a real great job...
Actually, he did a pretty damn good job. Not perfect, but good. He inherited a recession (dot com bubble) and rampant terrorism from Clinton (USS Cole/9-11), but rather than whine like a little bitch for 8 years, he rolled up his sleeves and kick started the economy by cutting taxes (I remember my rebate check, but then again, I actually work for a living) and cutting regulation, kicked some terrorist ass around the world etc. His first mistake was leaving the lending rules in place that Democrats passed (modifications to the Community Reinvestment Act by Clinton around 1994) that required banks to give loans to otherwise unqualified borrowers and allowed banks to securitize those loans which caused the crisis in the first place. His second mistake was assuming Obama was competent and handing him the solution to the housing crisis rather than just passing it into law (this happened in part because Obama had the house and senate as well. Obama completely pooched the fix for the housing crisis that was handed to him (let Fannie and Freddie take over houses under water and then rent back to owners/sell once markets recovered) and instead pissed away the trillion dollars on "stimulus" to his political connections like Solyndra, many of whom took the money and never paid it back... So yah, you may have hated Bush, but that is on you, overall he did a good job. Bush's worst flaw was that he didn't like public speaking and did not react when empty heads on TV attacked him. Trump does not seem to have that problem, so don't expect to trash him like you did with Bush without consequences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...
http://www.ocregister.com/opin...
Gotta love all the butt hurt progressives modding me down as troll. I guess that's their form of "tolerance".
I am an American, but from what I understand, Brexit was all about British sovereignty and money. The UK already has a budding non-integrated immigrant problem, not as bad as France or Germany, but they hardly want more "refuges" coming in at a time when it is well known that ISIS sleepers are infiltrating their ranks. As far as money goes, the UK was sending 13B pounds to the EU and only getting 4.5B back in benefits. Further, EU rules and regulations are stifling the European economy and prices on many basic commodities are jacked up by the EU above global levels in certain regions including the EU. Leaving the EU means the UK gets to control it's own destiny on regulations and subsidies.
http://www.washingtontimes.com...
https://fullfact.org/europe/ou...
This exactly. I am all for organ donation, but the problem is that it is a statistically proven fact that organ donors don't get worked on as long as non-donors with the exact same injury, especially those involved in violence, such as car accidents, gun shots and other traumatic injury. I used to be an organ donor on my drivers license, now I am not on my license. I have told my family that if I am really dead and the opportunity to donate is there, I would like them to do it, but I want the doctors focused on saving my life, not thinking about the potential of my harvest-able organs.
I think that a lot of people are like me especially after doing a bit of research, and the best way to get around this issue is to have medical/religious only opt out (i.e. AIDS etc), where doctors, nurses, EMTs etc can't pronounce without a second opinion. To pronounce you it takes one MD who has not worked on you to come in with fresh eyes and make sure you are actually dead with no chance of coming back, if there is any question his job is to tell them to keep working on you. Part of the organ donor system should also keep track of the number of donors vs patients vs time they try to save you vs criticality of injury on a per doctor and per hospital basis. Doctors that are shortcuting to get more donors instead of saving their patients can be screened for and dealt with. The benefits are two fold. First, with opt out, it reduces the strain by making a lot more donors available, and second, it reduces the strain on families having to try and guess if the doctor has actually done everything possible before coming out and asking for donation.
Computers/automation/robotics have been replacing workers of all stripes including white collar workers since the ATM was introduced in 1967. Every place I have ever worked has had internal and external software that replaces white collar workers (where you used to need 10 people now you need 2).
The reality is that the economy is limited by a scarcity of labor when government doesn't interfere (the economy is essentially the sum of every worker work multiplied by their efficiency as valued by the economy in dollars). As people are freed from jobs that are highly repetitive, there are always more complex, less repetitive jobs out there because the consumer is always looking for the next big thing to improve their lives/increase their free time/reduce their work load. Entire multi billion dollar industries have been created after the introduction of the ATM and will continue to be created. Competition will always push prices down to equilibrium with demand, and I predict now that when fast food restaurants are completely automated with one or two highly skilled technicians (who can make $45k a year btw) running things, prices will drop to levels near what you would pay to make the food at home, order accuracy will be higher, and food borne illness will be unheard of (48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die every year from food borne illness.) Food handling automation was inevitable, the minimum wage hike is just a catalyst to make it happen a little sooner. When driving is automated, traffic will be much lighter, people will not have to own their own cars to travel anywhere; pollution will go down due to the elimination of bad driving habits, ride sharing and reduced traffic. Traffic fatalities, one of the top causes of death in ages 18-25 (over 40,000 per year in total) will be a thing of the past. There will still be fatalities, but probably reduced by 100x or so in the first 10 years.
https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneb...
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.g...
The biggest mistake we could make as a country is to go the way of the universal basic income. If we get to a point where there are 10x more job seekers than jobs, then we can revisit the issue, but right now there are about 5.5 million job openings in the US and there would probably be 4x that if the government wasn't actively chasing businesses to Asia. Current real unemployment is about 6% so 9.6 million. When US companies bring back $2.1T this year and the health insurance boondogle is fixed (universal annual HSAs, nationwide competition, standardization of policies; identical to what was done by Republicans to life insurance in the 1990s which reduced the costs by 60%), the job market will very likely explode. Economists understand this and that is part of why the DOW is up 1200 points since the election. The Obama economy was of his own making after the first 2 years due to the ACA and excessive regulation, and, like the Carter economy, it will be unleashed with the next administration.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/03...
https://www.bls.gov/news.relea...
That attitude is exactly what is wrong with the elites the world over. Stop calling names and try to educate yourself a little about the state that the world is in and what the other side is thinking. (Hint: they are neither idiots nor ill informed by and large, that is just the propaganda BS the progressives have been shoveling to help people like you sleep at night instead of having a real introspective moment).
Actually, in a tight labor market, this does often go to employees. Also, if you tax executive bonuses at 90%, they pretty much go away. When combined with a healthy labor market (i.e. growing economy without the flood of illegal or imported workers) wages naturally go up.
So what I have done in the past is to offer my training hourly rate (which is about 4x my regular hourly rate), as the knowledge and skillset to teach someone else and the value of the transfer to the incoming low wage employee is much greater than my regular working rate. Some companies go for that, others do not. On the companies that don't go for it, they are in for a bumpy ride, because on paper cheap employees look cheaper, but if they don't have a clue how to do the work that can get expensive quite fast. I have had about a 50% rate on employers take me up on training a replacement, and about half of those who turn it down come back later and ask for my help, either to teach the incompetent how to do my job, or to do it myself. This is working as an independent contractor in technology, not IT, so YMMV.
If I were this guy specifically, I would also remind this CEO that Trump is coming, so bend over if anything is the slightest bit off the letter of the law regarding H1B workers. By all accounts other than the koolaid drinking progressives, the abuse of the H1B program is ending on January 20.
I did and you could have just clicked accept on the new terms. The fact that you already had purchased games under a previous agreement meant that if you did at some point need to take Valve to court, you could do so under the previous EULA. The reality, in the US at least, is that for consumer purchased software, the EULA is not worth the paper it is written on if you have a real, justified lawsuit. The fact that you must accept something after a non-refundable transaction has occurred means that it is un-enforceable and is primarily viewed by industry and legal scholars as a way to head off some percentage of lawsuits. YMMV and IANAL.
Binding arbitration in and of it'self is not a bad thing, especially for lesser issues, it just needs to be reformed such that all companies that want to use it should pay into a blind pool that then pays randomly selected arbitrators from a professional organization. This would encourage true impartial arbitration. The current implementation skews influence in favor of the businesses.
Hahaha... Actually, you leftist progressive nutjobs skewed the political spectrum a while back because it was really hard to sound reasonable when you were arguing against conservative centrists as a left wing socialist progressive. The correct and original political spectrum looks like this:
- Left wing: totalitarian government involved in all aspects of daily life
Examples: Nazi (new socialists), socialists, fascists, progressive left, etc
- Centrists: limited government to do what is needed for the common good (military, legal system, roads, etc.)
Example: conservatives (those advocating for minimal change from status quo)
- Right wing: minimal or no government (Libertarians)
Extreme examples: anarchists
Nazi/fascist/socialists are all cut from the same cloth. They all want totalitarian governments that have massive power and control over your daily life. How someone marked the AC post above informative just shows how effective the propaganda and brainwashing of the main stream media and higher education together are.
The sad truth is that the Aussies and UK for example are both less free than they were 40 years ago, with a bigger nanny state. They both gave up their guns as one example, but violent crime increased dramatically, doubling in the UK from pre ban years. (The gun grabbing facists try to conflate and confuse by citing "gun crime" as down, which is true when all guns are confiscated, but as a citizen, do you care if you are robbed or murdered with a machete or a gun? no you care that you were assaulted, which is twice as likely after gun bans).
"They will never learn when the CORRUPT CEO IS STILL RUNNING THE COMPANY." Under Gates and Ballmer, MS may have screwed over potential competitors, but with Satya Nadella, they are screwing over the customers. Forcing a spyware loaded, system breaking, auto update "upgrade" on unsuspecting customers is straight up evil and they should be prosecuted for false advertising (abuse of common knowledge of what an update is and/or systems that were reviewed and labeled Windows 10 ready when they werent) and or vandalism (damaging/modifying another's property without their consent; you could have a street artist paint a beautiful mural on the front of your building, but it is still vandalism if he didn't have your permission). And don't give me that BS about giving windows update permission: users gave windows update permission to update their OS, not replace it with a new, different OS that behaved differently, had a different set of utilities and much lower level of privacy and control. MS customers want Nadella gone as a first step in the right direction.
Since I was actually gaming back then, I feel I should remind you that Pac-Man ran at 224x288 resolution. While eye candy certainly isn't everything, it is a factor. I am not a fanboy of any particular brand, but I stopped buying new Nintendo consoles after the Gamecube. Nintendo's choice to under power it's consoles and bundle expensive controller screens is fine for un-discerning grandparents and little kids, but there are many games available that are both fun and cutting edge in the graphics department. It is also true that many fun games, like Super Mario Brothers, don't need a high end console to run well. I still buy the Nintendo consoles and the 10-20 games that are worth owning, but I wait til the end of the generation. It is good that there are people at Nintendo that realize that gaming is at it's core still about fun, and you don't need bleeding edge graphics for that, but doubling down on the expensive, ass backwards WiiU is a mistake that will bite them. At the least, they should be selling their new product with an option to ditch the expensive screen and just play on your TV for $120 less than the base price of the screen console version. If I could pick up a Nintendo console for $120 to play newer 2d cartoon versions of Zelda, SMB, Metroid etc. I would, but at $300, everyone will be buying a PS4 or Xbone for the same price.
What Nintendo needs to do is sell a custom bluetooth case for the iPhone that essentially uses what the phone has (display/electronics etc) and adds what it is sorely lacking (real buttons, D pad/thumb stick, maybe speakers etc.) Sell this for cost at $20 directly through the any Nintendo app delivered to your door in 2 days like Amazon and you have a very powerful platform that is equivalent or better than the DS with millions of installed users.
Phones by themselves without real buttons are just too limited for real gaming, which is why I have a ton of games on my phone, but I have stopped buying them. The only winners that I regularly use are solitaire, Mahjong and the Fallout vault game. Everything else is either too simple to play for more than 20 minutes, too small or too difficult to control with a virtual controller. I know that there are bluetooth controllers out there, but if Nintendo were to do it, the quality and performance would actually be good enough to enjoy.
Setting aside the flame war around this post, the basic issue is thus: The government wants to require all autonomous vehicles to be certified before operating on public roadways. This absolutely makes sense if you are talking about Johnnycab, where the software is the only operator. Uber's position is that they are testing their driving software, but that there is a human driver with their hands on the wheel ready to take over immediately if they feel uncomfortable. Because of this, the Uber vehicles aren't really autonomous, but more like the adaptive driving of a Tesla, which does not require a special autonomous car permit from the state. Uber's position is actually quite tenable and they will probably win in court if the state pushes it that far. Technically the self driving systems are only augmenting the driver and not replacing them at this point. If and when Uber takes the human driver out of the vehicle, they will definitely need the autonomous license.
So make your pass code "I did it" and then it is testimonial and all the evidence is poisoned and gets thrown out on appeal because they forced you to confess, violating your 5th amendment rights ;-)
So obviously in your parallel dimension all rich people are evil and cheated their way to their fortune? I hate to burst your bubble, but only liberal progressive democrats obtain riches exclusively in that manner. Many rich obtain their fortune through hard work, wise choices and vision. How easy is it to bribe a rich politician vs a middle income politician. The actual positions don't pay that well these days, making it more tempting if you are a politician struggling financially to bend the rules and enrich yourself on the taxpayers dime.
Obama's net worth went from $1.3M in 2007 to $7M today. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
Hillary's net worth went from flat broke in 1992 to over $30M today. Much of that income was in the $135M she and Bill made in speaking fees, paid in large part by colleges. This is nothing more than the modern form of payola where wealth is stolen from starving students with massive student loans and transferred to the elites to fund their opulent lifestyles.
This exactly. Either the IT guy is incompetent and said what he meant that it was a legit email or he is incompetent because he couldn't spend 5 seconds to proofread his response. Either way he is incompetent and should be flipping burgers the rest of his life.
There are a lot of states where damaging someone's property is a crime and makes you both criminally and civilly liable. Unfortunately all the normal ambulance chasers who would quite rightly file class action lawsuits are scared of the MS legal team and deep pockets. We badly need a software consumers bill of rights to cover all for profit software. In this day and age computers are a mature field where people spend much of their lives. It is about time that the government enact some legislation recognizing this and protecting the citizens from predatory and/or fraudulent software companies. Among those rights:
- Convert all software to be covered by copyright instead of patent law.
- Limit software copyright to 20 years or 5 years after it is no longer for sale or the day and date when it is no longer supported, whichever is first.
- Any software purchased by a consumer is covered by a standard set of rights that parallel ownership of a physical item where applicable or are spelled out in the bill of rights. EULAs are all illegal except between business entities.
- Right of resale is retained by consumer for the physical copy or license key of the purchased software.
- Consumer purchases allow unlimited installs by consumer on equipment they own or use. (Software must be removed from hardware prior to sale/donation).
- Software must function offline unless that functionality requires an online connection.
- Make it illegal for companies to remove functionality previously contained in software/hardware via update, except as a temporary security measure.
- Developers are legally required to provide security and functionality patches to fix bugs and security holes discovered either internally or by security researchers for 5 years minimum after date of final sale without any strings attached. (Failure to do so implies that they intended to defraud the consumer by selling a broken/unfinished/dangerous product and could require refunding all customers and criminal fraud liability.)
- Software updates should not be mandatory unless there is a clear, urgent reason for them to be. If a mandatory update causes the software to become unusable, the company must pay affected users $150/h spent dealing with the problem, cover cost of repairs, pay $60,000/year of lost documents (i.e. if it was 4 weeks since my last backup and all data since that backup is lost, developer is on the hook for $5000), and/or replace affected hardware, the combination of which is based on what it takes to get the system completely restored in a timely fashion.
- Online software licenses/keys/virtual goods and the like have value to the customers who hold them and can be traded/bought/sold/transferred/inherited etc. If a consumer pays actual money either directly or indirectly for a virtual commodity, it can be handled in this way.
- Source code for any and all software and back end servers for sale in the US must be provided to the library of congress in order to enjoy copyright protection. 5 years after that software is no longer for sale or the day that it is no longer supported, LOC should publish source code and the software becomes open domain.
Note this only affects consumer software. Businesses can still do all the licensing and other more flexible arrangements.
This is just basic common sense. The fact that Apple built an app around a basic concept like battery life without grasping the basics (they apparently couldn't figure out that computers have dynamic loads that can change battery life dramatically) is just silly and an indication of the lack of leadership at Apple. A good leader would call a meeting with his lead engineers and say: I want this. Then listen to his engineers as they explained why it wasn't a good idea. If the experts tell you it is not a good idea, it generally is not.
That may be how the current administration is letting it be abused, but the actual purpose of H1B/law is to allow companies to tap foreign talent if they CANT find it in the states. It has been abused, as in this case, to drive down wages, but if H1B actually starts getting enforced, and if it gets modified with some real teeth (fines in the order of 1% of the companies net profits from prior fiscal year per violation, or better yet, felony charges for perjury for lying on an H1B form, require CEOs to sign on all H1B forms), this shit will stop in a heart beat.
The flaw here is the H1B program needs to be completely eliminated for consulting/services companies (among other things, but this is the topic du jour). If you are a consulting/services company, you should be required to use only US employees in the US. The consulting company outsourcing is a circumvention technique for companies like Disney, who could never have gotten away with replacing all their IT people with H1B employees, but by "outsourcing" to a consulting company, they can legally lay off all of their employees and then benefit from the lower cost from the consulting company hiring a bunch of H1B slave labor. Same net effect, same savings to Disney, but totally legal currently.
Your system admins can obviously still edit posts, but notice that it is against company policy and a firing offense. That's maybe 5 employees? Outside of admins, all other employees, including the executives, shouldn't even have this ability in their login privileges.
It may have been dollars chasing pennies prior to this SNAFU. However, at this point, you truly have a risk of losing a large portion of your users, which is big dollars, not pennies. This could have been avoided altogether by professional behavior and company wide rules.
The problem isn't really the editing of a few posts, the problem is the fact that he can, unilaterally, go in and edit other people's posts. It is only a conspiracy theory until it is proven true. The fact that he did this shows that not only could it be done, but it was done, thus, no longer a conspiracy theory, it is proven fact. The motivation and trying to play it off as a joke because he got caught are also telling. The fact that he thought he could do this makes it likely that it was done in the past, but that he/they got away with it. It would be easy to destroy a person's online reputation in this manner. It is the online equivalent of identity theft.
At a minimum, to restore trust, they need to implement a policy where posts cannot and will not ever be edited by anyone other than the author, and any employee who does will be immediately terminated, regardless of rank. Also implement some software that only allows employees to delete posts, not edit them. Add a method for the software to verify that the post is being edited by the true user and not an employee and if an employee attempts an edit of a post, the original author gets an automated email as well as the entire company describing the infraction along with date, time, ip, user login, original and modified post, etc.
This exactly. If you fire someone like that, you better pay them a lot of severance and have an ironclad NDA. Pissing them off like this is a surefire way to get seriously screwed over.
Actually from what I understand, they were doing pretty well until they decided to take away the anonymous aspect of their anonymous localized chat rooms. Apparently that was the draw, and when it disappeared, so did their user base.