What about the people who are willing to work, but unable to find work?
The unemployment rate isn't down to 3% yet (not even the white-washed one put out by the government that ignores discouraged workers and the underemployed), so these people are definitely out there. What about them?
Many will claim that when people really WANT to work, they'll figure out a way to make it happen, despite the fact that they themselves have not had to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" in recent years, and thus have no real understanding of how difficult things still are in many sectors of the economy.
The labor market is soft. With very few exceptions, most of those who ARE employed haven't seen a meaningful wage increase in many years.
"Free" or not, the market has failed many of those looking to trade their labor for income in recent years, and with automation taking the place of increasing numbers of human workers, society is going to need to figure out how its members are going to support themselves.
Variations of "I've got mine, so fuck you" may go over well at a Trump For President rally, but those words will provide scant protection when the torches and pitchforks come out....and without a solution to the decades-long spiral the labor market has seen in recent decades, the torches and pitchforks WILL eventually come out. It will be a catastrophe for everyone when they do.
Given that Zuck is constantly begging for most H1Bs, I strongly suspect that this is a ploy to open the "expendable imported labor" tap a little wider.
"Oh me! Oh my! My company lacks diversity! If only there were a place with millions and millions of 'minority' developers that we could hire (at below-market wages and working conditions, teehee) to balance things out!"
What I can't figure out is why MBA types assume software developers are too stupid to see right through bullshit like this. Just because we don't like to play the ass-kissing, office-politicking game doesn't mean we don't recognize all the moves...
What percentage of current-generation Android phones will be able to get the next 2-3 major releases of the OS?
5-10% ?
What percentage of current-generation iPhones will be able to get the next 2-3 major releases?
~100%.
The apple phone does everything I need it to, and because of OS fragmentation on the Android side, third party apps are typically better / more stable. (Exceptions always exist, of course.)
I'm quite happy to hear arguments to the contrary, but my broad-brush perspective is that while Apple's ecosystem is a walled garden, Android's ecosystem is the wild west.
I'm willing to accept a garden with walls if it means I don't have to constantly worry about what unpatched vulnerability is ripe for exploitation on my phone.
It's called COINTELPRO, guys. Until you have death-penalty level safeguards in place for misuse/abuse of information gained through mass surveillance, you don't get to do it.
A punch is not a bullet, and not all provocations are the same...
Is it wrong to shoot someone for their speech when they are not trying to provoke you personally?
Yes. No exceptions.
Is it wrong to punch someone for their speech when they are not trying to provoke you personally?
Yes. No exceptions.
Is it wrong to shoot someone for their speech when they ARE trying to provoke you personally?
Yes. (However, whether or not there are exceptions to this rule -- and what those exceptions might be -- would be a different (and fascinating) discussion all its own.)
Is it wrong to punch someone for their speech when they ARE trying to provoke you personally?
Highly, HIGHLY debatable, and probably not answerable by any objective standard, as every culture has its own definitions for what the "acceptable" provocations are.
Pope Francis' comment falls within the scope of the fourth question, not the first. Don't make the mistake of confusing the two.
For me, working in an office is about maximizing Communication.
Well, lucky ducky you.
For ME, the office is about getting the Assigned Task done in a reasonable amount of time.
Collaboration is sometimes necessary for that. In those cases, an Open Office is helpful, but certainly not necessary (they're called "legs").
However, most times, Collaboration is not necessary, in which case Open Office is about as helpful as a rabid badger being shoved down your pants.
People can make sanctimonious statements about filtering out environmental distractions being a "higher order" neurological activity, but those of us doing actual Grown-Up work often need to concentrate on the Assigned Task for extended periods of time without interruption, and Open Office sucks up mental bandwidth that would be INFINITELY better spent on the Assigned Task.
I wonder if it's any accident that this happened AFTER the mid-term elections, but well before the 2016 presidential election season really gets underway...
(You think Christmas comes early? Hah!)
Cuban exiles are a big voting block in a big battleground state, but obviously somebody decided to risk kicking this hornets' nest now in the hopes that the furor will die down by 2016.
So at times the Tesla was being driven at speeds up to 100 MPH, collided with three cars and two utility poles along the way, and eventually suffered an impact that split the car in two, immolating the front half and embedding the back half within a nearby building.
Can't people see how dangerous and unsafe these vehicles are?!?
If something as trivial as multiple high-speed impacts can lead to driver fatality, imagine what could happen in a REALLY serious accident!
If a foreign worker is important enough to the country that we'll give him or her a shortcut through our (admittedly ridiculous) immigration system, then it shouldn't matter WHICH company they're working for, as long as they're working for one of ours.
Locking them into one company only encourages the formation of sweatshops, and we're supposed to be better than that.
Well, how about every single soul ever convicted under "Turing's Law"?
Few other acts would express the appropriate level of "fuck you" to the mindset responsible for Turing's persecution, and reserving pardons for only the most notable implies that only the greatest have repaid their supposed "debt to society".
If uniformed police officers are pulling you off the road in marked cars with flashing lights, your participation is hardly voluntary.
What happens if you decline to answer the questions of the men in white coats a little too firmly? Well, an officer with badge and gun is right there to show you the error of your ways!
I'm amazed the local chapter of the ACLU is merely "watching the operation closely" (per the article).
If the article isn't worth your time, maybe consider skipping it?
For my part, when I saw an "I need a good pen" article with over 500 (!!) responses, I immediately assumed that a pen-themed holy war had erupted between/.'s more OCD-prone members, and thought I might learn something useful from the melee.
I always can use a better pen. (Currently using a 0.7 mm Pilot G2, which is better than most in that it doesn't completely suck.)
There are two iOS devices in our household - my iPod Touch, and the "family" iPad. The iPod has "my stuff" -- music and apps that only interest me. The latter is more geared towards the kids -- children's videos, songs, and games.
I maintain a separate iTunes library for each device, though both are tied to the same Apple ID, so that I can purchase content once, and load it onto each device as I see fit.
Apple's cloud service, however, forces me into two undesirable options:
1) Getting to buy everything once, but forcing me to keep copies of all content on all devices.
2) Setting up multiple Apple IDs, and having to buy multiple copies of anything I want to have on more than one device.
Neither of these appeal to me, so I have no interest in giving up PC-based syncing.
The article mentioned a couple things that have profoundly disturbing implications when considered together:
1) This expedited screening program is by invitation only.
2) The TSA agents staffing the expedited checkpoints are smiling and extra-friendly.
So now, air travel has a caste system. VIPs (everybody who might possibly have a chance to successfully reform/dismantle the TSA) get kid glove treatment, and the filthy plebes get the rude assholes who steal stuff from your luggage and molest your children with complete impunity.
These ousters are more interesting than they first appear...
Judging by this summary (now out of date) of the Yahoo board, 2 of the removed board members (Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson) were financial/investment guys (i.e. not technical people), 1 (Vyomesh Joshi) was a former "printer guy" from HP (whose technology credentials are highly suspect given his probable ties to Carly Fiorina), and 1 (Roy Bostock) was the current CEO.
Almost all of the people left on the board appear to have some decent technology credentials. If you wanted to "cut the fat" from the Yahoo board, you could do a lot worse than removing these four people.
I've heard of some EULA-upholding precedents (no time to Google for citations at the moment, sorry), so I doubt that they would get nuked across the board.
However, a narrowly-focused precedent barring/limiting "no refund" clauses would be quite welcome.
Such a precedent could also be used to mandate refunds for DRM-protected materials in the event that the parent company shuts down / goes bankrupt, which is one of the biggest problems with our increasing use of digital media (books, movies, etc).
I'm sure the SuperPoke EULA had provisions stating that all virtual currency purchased for use in-game was non-refundable, no matter what.
In light of that, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in court. If Google doesn't settle, and loses, we could possibly see an EULA-affecting precedent come out of this.
Even with a refund of the booth fee, the Pirate Party could still be out a significant chunk of change.
Exhibition-grade booth displays and paraphernalia cost thousands of dollars (even tens of thousands for large booths), and if the Pirate Party invested money on materials specifically for this show, they may have just flushed a significant portion of their yearly budget.
The paranoid might even think that this invite-then-ban manuever was done deliberately.
Starting a month or two ago, Slashdot is showing me very few postings when I read the discussions. It's not the rating filter; I've tried many different settings on that. I've tried both D1 and D2 discussion systems, and that doesn't help. I just want things to be the way they used to be.
I've had the same thing happen too, though I haven't tried using D1 system to get around it.
Best I can figure (I haven't spent much time investigating -- better things to do), the source of the problem is that/. quit allowing highly-scored replies to low-score parents from showing up.
I've been waiting for the/. crew to fix this for a few weeks, but no fix has happened yet. At this rate, I'm not sure there will BE a fix. *shrug*
Slashdot Mirror
What about the people who are willing to work, but unable to find work?
The unemployment rate isn't down to 3% yet (not even the white-washed one put out by the government that ignores discouraged workers and the underemployed), so these people are definitely out there. What about them?
Many will claim that when people really WANT to work, they'll figure out a way to make it happen, despite the fact that they themselves have not had to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" in recent years, and thus have no real understanding of how difficult things still are in many sectors of the economy.
The labor market is soft. With very few exceptions, most of those who ARE employed haven't seen a meaningful wage increase in many years.
"Free" or not, the market has failed many of those looking to trade their labor for income in recent years, and with automation taking the place of increasing numbers of human workers, society is going to need to figure out how its members are going to support themselves.
Variations of "I've got mine, so fuck you" may go over well at a Trump For President rally, but those words will provide scant protection when the torches and pitchforks come out. ...and without a solution to the decades-long spiral the labor market has seen in recent decades, the torches and pitchforks WILL eventually come out. It will be a catastrophe for everyone when they do.
Given that Zuck is constantly begging for most H1Bs, I strongly suspect that this is a ploy to open the "expendable imported labor" tap a little wider.
"Oh me! Oh my! My company lacks diversity! If only there were a place with millions and millions of 'minority' developers that we could hire (at below-market wages and working conditions, teehee) to balance things out!"
What I can't figure out is why MBA types assume software developers are too stupid to see right through bullshit like this. Just because we don't like to play the ass-kissing, office-politicking game doesn't mean we don't recognize all the moves...
Why? One big reason...
What percentage of current-generation Android phones will be able to get the next 2-3 major releases of the OS?
5-10% ?
What percentage of current-generation iPhones will be able to get the next 2-3 major releases?
~100%.
The apple phone does everything I need it to, and because of OS fragmentation on the Android side, third party apps are typically better / more stable. (Exceptions always exist, of course.)
I'm quite happy to hear arguments to the contrary, but my broad-brush perspective is that while Apple's ecosystem is a walled garden, Android's ecosystem is the wild west.
I'm willing to accept a garden with walls if it means I don't have to constantly worry about what unpatched vulnerability is ripe for exploitation on my phone.
Haven't heard that one before...
It's called COINTELPRO, guys. Until you have death-penalty level safeguards in place for misuse/abuse of information gained through mass surveillance, you don't get to do it.
Not with our permission, anyway.
A punch is not a bullet, and not all provocations are the same...
Is it wrong to shoot someone for their speech when they are not trying to provoke you personally?
Yes. No exceptions.
Is it wrong to punch someone for their speech when they are not trying to provoke you personally?
Yes. No exceptions.
Is it wrong to shoot someone for their speech when they ARE trying to provoke you personally?
Yes. (However, whether or not there are exceptions to this rule -- and what those exceptions might be -- would be a different (and fascinating) discussion all its own.)
Is it wrong to punch someone for their speech when they ARE trying to provoke you personally?
Highly, HIGHLY debatable, and probably not answerable by any objective standard, as every culture has its own definitions for what the "acceptable" provocations are.
Pope Francis' comment falls within the scope of the fourth question, not the first. Don't make the mistake of confusing the two.
For me, working in an office is about maximizing Communication.
Well, lucky ducky you.
For ME, the office is about getting the Assigned Task done in a reasonable amount of time.
Collaboration is sometimes necessary for that. In those cases, an Open Office is helpful, but certainly not necessary (they're called "legs").
However, most times, Collaboration is not necessary, in which case Open Office is about as helpful as a rabid badger being shoved down your pants.
People can make sanctimonious statements about filtering out environmental distractions being a "higher order" neurological activity, but those of us doing actual Grown-Up work often need to concentrate on the Assigned Task for extended periods of time without interruption, and Open Office sucks up mental bandwidth that would be INFINITELY better spent on the Assigned Task.
I wonder if it's any accident that this happened AFTER the mid-term elections, but well before the 2016 presidential election season really gets underway...
(You think Christmas comes early? Hah!)
Cuban exiles are a big voting block in a big battleground state, but obviously somebody decided to risk kicking this hornets' nest now in the hopes that the furor will die down by 2016.
I'm not going to spend time working on something that'll be rejected out of hand by the deletionist admins / basement-dwellers / other powers-that-be.
Life is short. No point in wasting it.
If the address was unread now, it must have been monitored originally.
What are the chances that the original recipients were RIFed at some point to goose the quarterly numbers?
So at times the Tesla was being driven at speeds up to 100 MPH, collided with three cars and two utility poles along the way, and eventually suffered an impact that split the car in two, immolating the front half and embedding the back half within a nearby building.
Can't people see how dangerous and unsafe these vehicles are?!?
If something as trivial as multiple high-speed impacts can lead to driver fatality, imagine what could happen in a REALLY serious accident!
Let. Them. Change. Companies.
If a foreign worker is important enough to the country that we'll give him or her a shortcut through our (admittedly ridiculous) immigration system, then it shouldn't matter WHICH company they're working for, as long as they're working for one of ours.
Locking them into one company only encourages the formation of sweatshops, and we're supposed to be better than that.
Issue more pardons.
How many more?
Well, how about every single soul ever convicted under "Turing's Law"?
Few other acts would express the appropriate level of "fuck you" to the mindset responsible for Turing's persecution, and reserving pardons for only the most notable implies that only the greatest have repaid their supposed "debt to society".
If uniformed police officers are pulling you off the road in marked cars with flashing lights, your participation is hardly voluntary.
What happens if you decline to answer the questions of the men in white coats a little too firmly? Well, an officer with badge and gun is right there to show you the error of your ways!
I'm amazed the local chapter of the ACLU is merely "watching the operation closely" (per the article).
Marathon was better.
It's a shame that Marathon was a Mac-only game for the most part, as a lot of PC gamers missed out on a great title.
Bungie later got their just desserts through the success of the Halo franchise, but said rewards were quite overdue by that point.
If the article isn't worth your time, maybe consider skipping it?
For my part, when I saw an "I need a good pen" article with over 500 (!!) responses, I immediately assumed that a pen-themed holy war had erupted between /.'s more OCD-prone members, and thought I might learn something useful from the melee.
I always can use a better pen. (Currently using a 0.7 mm Pilot G2, which is better than most in that it doesn't completely suck.)
Which technicians were cut?
The ones with the lowest technical aptitude, or the ones who pushed the least amount of unnecessary service on their customers?
So, how long before the Texas bar pulls the Jack Thompson trigger on Ms. Schwager for conduct unbecoming?
...and it's for a simple reason.
There are two iOS devices in our household - my iPod Touch, and the "family" iPad. The iPod has "my stuff" -- music and apps that only interest me. The latter is more geared towards the kids -- children's videos, songs, and games.
I maintain a separate iTunes library for each device, though both are tied to the same Apple ID, so that I can purchase content once, and load it onto each device as I see fit.
Apple's cloud service, however, forces me into two undesirable options:
1) Getting to buy everything once, but forcing me to keep copies of all content on all devices.
2) Setting up multiple Apple IDs, and having to buy multiple copies of anything I want to have on more than one device.
Neither of these appeal to me, so I have no interest in giving up PC-based syncing.
Keep trying, Apple...
The article mentioned a couple things that have profoundly disturbing implications when considered together:
1) This expedited screening program is by invitation only.
2) The TSA agents staffing the expedited checkpoints are smiling and extra-friendly.
So now, air travel has a caste system. VIPs (everybody who might possibly have a chance to successfully reform/dismantle the TSA) get kid glove treatment, and the filthy plebes get the rude assholes who steal stuff from your luggage and molest your children with complete impunity.
Joy.
These ousters are more interesting than they first appear...
Judging by this summary (now out of date) of the Yahoo board, 2 of the removed board members (Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson) were financial/investment guys (i.e. not technical people), 1 (Vyomesh Joshi) was a former "printer guy" from HP (whose technology credentials are highly suspect given his probable ties to Carly Fiorina), and 1 (Roy Bostock) was the current CEO.
Almost all of the people left on the board appear to have some decent technology credentials. If you wanted to "cut the fat" from the Yahoo board, you could do a lot worse than removing these four people.
I've heard of some EULA-upholding precedents (no time to Google for citations at the moment, sorry), so I doubt that they would get nuked across the board.
However, a narrowly-focused precedent barring/limiting "no refund" clauses would be quite welcome.
Such a precedent could also be used to mandate refunds for DRM-protected materials in the event that the parent company shuts down / goes bankrupt, which is one of the biggest problems with our increasing use of digital media (books, movies, etc).
I'm sure the SuperPoke EULA had provisions stating that all virtual currency purchased for use in-game was non-refundable, no matter what.
In light of that, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in court. If Google doesn't settle, and loses, we could possibly see an EULA-affecting precedent come out of this.
...pond scum doesn't usually care what you think about it.
If the backlash is big enough, it will.
See the recent case study of Paul Christoforo (Captain "I wwebsite as on the Internet"), for example.
Will they get their money back?
Even with a refund of the booth fee, the Pirate Party could still be out a significant chunk of change.
Exhibition-grade booth displays and paraphernalia cost thousands of dollars (even tens of thousands for large booths), and if the Pirate Party invested money on materials specifically for this show, they may have just flushed a significant portion of their yearly budget.
The paranoid might even think that this invite-then-ban manuever was done deliberately.
Starting a month or two ago, Slashdot is showing me very few postings when I read the discussions. It's not the rating filter; I've tried many different settings on that. I've tried both D1 and D2 discussion systems, and that doesn't help. I just want things to be the way they used to be.
I've had the same thing happen too, though I haven't tried using D1 system to get around it.
Best I can figure (I haven't spent much time investigating -- better things to do), the source of the problem is that /. quit allowing highly-scored replies to low-score parents from showing up.
I've been waiting for the /. crew to fix this for a few weeks, but no fix has happened yet. At this rate, I'm not sure there will BE a fix. *shrug*