Welcome back to the Compuserve model - where it's only metered if you don't bribe the ISP to put you on their whitelist. It is a model that was buried ages ago and needs to stay buried even with the pressure to bring it back.
The only sane solution is flat rate(read:no caps or metering) data and make the differentiation be the speed. Metering only makes things worse when you make it a public utility; see Australia's Telstra for an example of why not to do metering on a public utility (or to meter at all).
Then again, your argument would be to marginalize and otherwise hope that an ISP dumps people that support my argument.
The N9 truly is a great device for novices, power-users and hardcode hackers.
Only if you don't account for all the good parts of the N900 being Elopped off(Hardware keyboard) or locked away(Aegis with warranty flags). A slide-on/USB passthrough keyboard that works with the N9 would be, at best, a way to mitigate the keyboard issues while removing Aegis is the one that would make it much like the predecessor that most of us have, the N900.
The Linux based (!=Android) N9 outsells the Windows phones despite being geographically hobbled. Microsoft's Elop is just in the way of letting it happen.
That, and despite having Aegis, the N9 is far more open out of the box. You can do all the "cool things" that the operator is thinking about as well as the things that the operator doesn't want you doing - unlike the more easily boxed-in Android platform.
"The New York Times has the sad story of Jack B. Palmer, an employee of Infosys, the giant Indian outsourcing firm. 17 months ago, Mr. Palmer made a quiet internal complaint that Infosys was committing visa fraud by bringing 'in Indian workers on short-term visitor visas, known as B-1, instead of longer-term temporary visas, known as H-1B, which are more costly and time-consuming to obtain.'
Hopefully this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to more of these kinds of things.
Since making his complaint, Mr. Palmer 'has been harassed by superiors and co-workers, sidelined with no work assignment, shut out of the company's computers, denied bonuses and hounded by death threats.'"
Isn't that something called retaliation? People that have a vested interest in moving work offshore really hate it when there is evidence that you're doing it based on fraud - especially fraud that exposes them for being against US citizens.
If Infosys willing to do everything against this guy, he sure must have something damning enough to warrant death threats.
If I am asked that question, I'd say the following:
While I am aware of your concerns with my personal conduct, giving my credentials would signify a breach of trust. If I were to do the same in the workplace, it would add liability and likely result in my termination. Is there another way that I can supply this kind of information, such as additional references to my personal character, while retaining the trust that I have built with people that I know personally and professionally?
This might be a bit long(and can be shortened a bit), but it would properly answer both the shoulder surfing and password requests in a courteous manner.
RTW only exists to kill unions, not provide choice to join one. Unless there is a law that prohibits indirect/contingent labor as any condition or form of employment, which is the employers' version of the labor union, RTW makes things worse. The only way you can get a population to accept it, is to use regional sensitivities to make it acceptable to "know your place" and not get too "uppity".
More dishonest or closer to the public? It is business that shields a politician from the majority of their own constituents.
The largest reason staffing agencies exist, is to provide a worker-hostile regulatory firewall. It allows business to do to workers what business would oppose for unions. To restore consistency, a Right To Directly Work law must be established - such that it discourages staffing agencies in the same manner that Right To Work discourages unions.
As for offshoring, it is only a distortion on the US labor market. Absent offshoring, or at least the absence of its ability to distort labor markets, businesses would have to respond to the people around them versus being able to use some foreign despotic regime as leverage.
If you understand that staffing agencies are the employer-side equivalent of the labor union, the rest should follow logically. Until offshoring ceases to work against US citizens in any visible or invisible manner, I cannot support it.
When you speak of leveling out, you have affirmed that at least a functionally zero-sum situation exists, which takes from the developed nation to give to a freedom-lacking nation without the consent of the developed nation. A legislative measure is more efficient and serves the citizens in a favorable & direct manner. In addition, this transfer can be considered theft, for there is no consent by the First World country.
As for Detroit, I side with Detroit, Michigan, and the rest of the worker-friendly (read: no RTW) North. Restore regulatory parity, and there is no advantage to the worker-hostile South.
Ironclad regulation would restore work by eliminating the avenues for which businesses could avoid citizens.
The reason why those things aren't made here anymore is because of comparative advantage. We can still manufacture those things as good or better as China, but we do other things even better. And because we focus on those other things, and because we can't do everything at once, those manufacturing jobs moved overseas.
Comparative advantage is a stack of fallacies:
* That we can't do everything at once * That there is something better that we can do * That everyone is suited to the new task
The US has the people and the resources to do all the manufacturing required and to modern-day standards. The problem rests with business - for they are the cause of sub-par conditions via their preference for slavery.
We should buy cheap parts from China, and the Air Force should buy their tankers from Airbus. Why? Because those countries foolishly subsidize those products; China with the blood and sweat of their population; Europe with hard currency. So its basically a hand-out for us. We'd be fools not to buy those things, and in the tanker case we actually are being supremely foolish. All this hand waving about patriotism and security will just end up lining the pockets of defense contractors, without any proven improvements in security.
While you hand the enemy sensitive plans to defense products and compromise national security. The product is made worse for it being unduly internationalized.
Buying from a proven enemy such as China has no good for civilian or military goods.
You are right about government meddling having a lot to do with that.
The only entity that is meddling with anything, is the business. Businesses are using their position of influence to effect force, which is constructed out of the ability to remove choice.
The administrative cost of an employee to a business owner beyond what an employee immediately sees in many businesses is due to regulations and requirements that prevents companies from hiring more people. In turn they simply demand more of the people they do have. This is part of the reason staffing firms are so popular, they put the burden of the employment paperwork and benefits on someone else and remove much of the legal liability that can be associated with firing someone.
That is the very reason why staffing agencies need to die a sudden, painful death. This can be done via requiring cost/liability parity for all forms of labor, in any function or form, making it illegal to perform such liability/benefit circumvention, or a full ban on non-FTE labor for anything. In addition, kill offshoring while removing all forms of non-citizenship residency.
They simply tell the staffing firm they don't need this person anymore and the staffing firm is free to lay someone off with the justification their position is gone, even if they're replacing that person with someone else.
Since businesses and staffing firms have conducted themselves in this manner, they cannot be trusted to act in good faith.
The only valid action is for the government to make this dishonesty impossible, amongst the other forms of dishonesty that exist. Such dishonesty is why providers of indirect or non FTE labor have no place.
Business is choosing to offshore, not government - thus business is at fault for such choice. Cut off the means to go offshore and the problem disappears; businesses learn to adapt to receiving the pain that they formerly gave through offshoring.
While you might have 1 billion people, the longterm cost is that you get industrial espionage.
The better thing is to abandon China through large tariffs and develop from the US and western EU. Then do something to silence the inevitable and incorrect "but you're attacking yourself" responses.
Work at Microsoft however, and you will get paid very handsomely if you make great contributions to the bottom line. Sorry, but I only am the messenger here. The.com days are over and its time to move on. Go work in an I.T. company or even a contracting company doing consulting if you have your experience and you will be paid well. Otherwise you are a cost there to make sure nothing breaks. Unless you can think of a magical way companies can increase their sales or cut their cost from your ideas? Have any?
Contract/consulting only makes the problem worse, since they pit the providers of indirect labor & the requesting company against the worker. Such an arrangement is largely for the mistrust of the person doing the work, such that it distorts the wages below their actual costs. The solution is to make anything but FTE a very expensive option, not the other way around.
You don't need magic, just regulations that keep business from being screwy with workers.
The problem is that the cost is paid by the First World, especially the US, and the citizens of those nations. As deep as it has become a problem, the only way to fix it is to kill globalization until citizens of the First World are not penalized for their citizenship as they are now.
There is no problem if the benefits were direct and dislocation was non-existent. However, it would not allow businesses to enslave people.
While some might dream of a return to "America First" and "Made In Canada" policies and tarrifs, I can't imagine us ever returning to such systems.... And the same goes for all the other big multinationals. The only thing keeping their head offices in the US or Canada is tradition. Globalization has become an unstoppable behemoth; no one with real influence over the government through lobbyists would tolerate stepping back from globalization.
England would gladly like to inform you otherwise - for it once sent back . It can be stopped with enough force, just that you end up with a ton of dead lobbyists and a country more capable to deal with threats like China's industrial espionage.
That, and the US has a large enough internal market that can withstand pressures from outside well. Include the rest of the NATO-defined First World where workers are treated favorably, and you have a way to lock-out the vagaries of the Third World.
First and foremost, the consumer won't stand for it. The consumer now expects computers at under $1000 instead of the $2000 plus it used to cost to manufacture them onshore.
The prototypical "consumer" is only a construct that is used to defend the devolution of the First World into the standards of the Third. It is portrayed as a voracious, treasonous beast that is used to marginalize people that object to the anti-First World measures.
A recent article I read pegged the "Made in America" price of an iPad at roughly $1400 -- more than double the market price. At such prices, people simply would stop buying them, because it's pretty damned hard to justify toys over $1000 in most people's minds.
I'd highly suspect those numbers, given that they're more likely to be closer to $800 than the $1400 given the efficiencies that would be used in the US.
I don't think it's a good situation for the "First World" at all, but I can't see any of the companies involved in offshoring being willing to return to North American manufacturing and assembly when it would make their products completely uncompetitive in the rest of the world markets. Quite frankly, companies like Apple make far more from their foreign sales than they do from North American sales. As a result, if you returned to a nationalistic policy on manufacturing, they'd simply pull up the remainder of their North American roots, officially become a foreign company, and keep on with business as usual. With the US one jewel less in the globalization crown.
The problem with that is the various divisions of the US military along with the intelligence divisions would make that painfully impossible. If they pull up their roots, they find themselves with their assets seized and executives looking as horizontal as OBL for committing treason & terrorism.
Shame that the NSA hasn't used this to kill the offshoring lobby given how influential the NSA's information can be. They'd be actually doing their job and repelling countries like China as well.
When you are dealing with such a subject of industrial espionage, the first obligation is to defend the country. While you might be able to use some random site's recommendations to make a case against it, national security will trump them every time. Whether it is some offshoring lobby, industrial espionage, or some other group that wants to attack the US, the author is correct to say how bad it is.
But don't let facts get in the way of your anti-American beliefs.
This is what we get when we get too friendly with nations that are still despotic in nature, reserving freedom for the few businesses and not the many. They are used to take away freedom from people under the canard of "competitiveness", something that is only used to wash the blood from indefensible actions.
Shame we can't have a national security directive to kill offshoring - since it is about the only thing that can kill this for good. It may not be the cleanest answer, but it is the one that cuts the lobbyists out of the equation. If we want offshoring, it cannot be in the current form - a form that is only used as retribution for successes and security gained by First World citizens. It must be in a form that clearly prioritizes citizens of all skill levels first for hiring and training (to get rid of the skill-level complaints) for long-term & direct hire jobs (to obliterate the permatemp culture); it cannot be simply a way to exact concessions in the name of Ricardian economics.
Slashdot Mirror
They wont post US headcount, but they're more than happy to boast about foreign headcount.
Welcome back to the Compuserve model - where it's only metered if you don't bribe the ISP to put you on their whitelist. It is a model that was buried ages ago and needs to stay buried even with the pressure to bring it back.
The only sane solution is flat rate(read:no caps or metering) data and make the differentiation be the speed. Metering only makes things worse when you make it a public utility; see Australia's Telstra for an example of why not to do metering on a public utility (or to meter at all).
Then again, your argument would be to marginalize and otherwise hope that an ISP dumps people that support my argument.
I do know. That's partially why I still have an N900 despite all the push to de-support it.
As it has done with Lenovo and the other manufacturers, the quality will decline.
The N9 truly is a great device for novices, power-users and hardcode hackers.
Only if you don't account for all the good parts of the N900 being Elopped off(Hardware keyboard) or locked away(Aegis with warranty flags). A slide-on/USB passthrough keyboard that works with the N9 would be, at best, a way to mitigate the keyboard issues while removing Aegis is the one that would make it much like the predecessor that most of us have, the N900.
The Linux based (!=Android) N9 outsells the Windows phones despite being geographically hobbled. Microsoft's Elop is just in the way of letting it happen.
That, and despite having Aegis, the N9 is far more open out of the box. You can do all the "cool things" that the operator is thinking about as well as the things that the operator doesn't want you doing - unlike the more easily boxed-in Android platform.
Perhaps he thought they were above-board and honest in their proceedings.
Either way, we win when there is exposed evidence of fraud.
"The New York Times has the sad story of Jack B. Palmer, an employee of Infosys, the giant Indian outsourcing firm. 17 months ago, Mr. Palmer made a quiet internal complaint that Infosys was committing visa fraud by bringing 'in Indian workers on short-term visitor visas, known as B-1, instead of longer-term temporary visas, known as H-1B, which are more costly and time-consuming to obtain.'
Hopefully this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to more of these kinds of things.
Since making his complaint, Mr. Palmer 'has been harassed by superiors and co-workers, sidelined with no work assignment, shut out of the company's computers, denied bonuses and hounded by death threats.'"
Isn't that something called retaliation? People that have a vested interest in moving work offshore really hate it when there is evidence that you're doing it based on fraud - especially fraud that exposes them for being against US citizens.
If Infosys willing to do everything against this guy, he sure must have something damning enough to warrant death threats.
If I am asked that question, I'd say the following:
While I am aware of your concerns with my personal conduct, giving my credentials would signify a breach of trust. If I were to do the same in the workplace, it would add liability and likely result in my termination. Is there another way that I can supply this kind of information, such as additional references to my personal character, while retaining the trust that I have built with people that I know personally and professionally?
This might be a bit long(and can be shortened a bit), but it would properly answer both the shoulder surfing and password requests in a courteous manner.
RTW only exists to kill unions, not provide choice to join one. Unless there is a law that prohibits indirect/contingent labor as any condition or form of employment, which is the employers' version of the labor union, RTW makes things worse. The only way you can get a population to accept it, is to use regional sensitivities to make it acceptable to "know your place" and not get too "uppity".
Is it required to break a legal contract with one entity to maintain employment with another?
More dishonest or closer to the public? It is business that shields a politician from the majority of their own constituents.
The largest reason staffing agencies exist, is to provide a worker-hostile regulatory firewall. It allows business to do to workers what business would oppose for unions. To restore consistency, a Right To Directly Work law must be established - such that it discourages staffing agencies in the same manner that Right To Work discourages unions.
As for offshoring, it is only a distortion on the US labor market. Absent offshoring, or at least the absence of its ability to distort labor markets, businesses would have to respond to the people around them versus being able to use some foreign despotic regime as leverage.
If you understand that staffing agencies are the employer-side equivalent of the labor union, the rest should follow logically. Until offshoring ceases to work against US citizens in any visible or invisible manner, I cannot support it.
When you speak of leveling out, you have affirmed that at least a functionally zero-sum situation exists, which takes from the developed nation to give to a freedom-lacking nation without the consent of the developed nation. A legislative measure is more efficient and serves the citizens in a favorable & direct manner. In addition, this transfer can be considered theft, for there is no consent by the First World country.
As for Detroit, I side with Detroit, Michigan, and the rest of the worker-friendly (read: no RTW) North. Restore regulatory parity, and there is no advantage to the worker-hostile South.
Businesses just hate it when they can't use dirty pool against workers.
You want all those jobs back from China?
Ironclad regulation would restore work by eliminating the avenues for which businesses could avoid citizens.
The reason why those things aren't made here anymore is because of comparative advantage. We can still manufacture those things as good or better as China, but we do other things even better. And because we focus on those other things, and because we can't do everything at once, those manufacturing jobs moved overseas.
Comparative advantage is a stack of fallacies:
* That we can't do everything at once
* That there is something better that we can do
* That everyone is suited to the new task
The US has the people and the resources to do all the manufacturing required and to modern-day standards. The problem rests with business - for they are the cause of sub-par conditions via their preference for slavery.
We should buy cheap parts from China, and the Air Force should buy their tankers from Airbus. Why? Because those countries foolishly subsidize those products; China with the blood and sweat of their population; Europe with hard currency. So its basically a hand-out for us. We'd be fools not to buy those things, and in the tanker case we actually are being supremely foolish. All this hand waving about patriotism and security will just end up lining the pockets of defense contractors, without any proven improvements in security.
While you hand the enemy sensitive plans to defense products and compromise national security. The product is made worse for it being unduly internationalized.
Buying from a proven enemy such as China has no good for civilian or military goods.
You are right about government meddling having a lot to do with that.
The only entity that is meddling with anything, is the business. Businesses are using their position of influence to effect force, which is constructed out of the ability to remove choice.
The administrative cost of an employee to a business owner beyond what an employee immediately sees in many businesses is due to regulations and requirements that prevents companies from hiring more people. In turn they simply demand more of the people they do have. This is part of the reason staffing firms are so popular, they put the burden of the employment paperwork and benefits on someone else and remove much of the legal liability that can be associated with firing someone.
That is the very reason why staffing agencies need to die a sudden, painful death. This can be done via requiring cost/liability parity for all forms of labor, in any function or form, making it illegal to perform such liability/benefit circumvention, or a full ban on non-FTE labor for anything. In addition, kill offshoring while removing all forms of non-citizenship residency.
They simply tell the staffing firm they don't need this person anymore and the staffing firm is free to lay someone off with the justification their position is gone, even if they're replacing that person with someone else.
Since businesses and staffing firms have conducted themselves in this manner, they cannot be trusted to act in good faith.
The only valid action is for the government to make this dishonesty impossible, amongst the other forms of dishonesty that exist. Such dishonesty is why providers of indirect or non FTE labor have no place.
Business is choosing to offshore, not government - thus business is at fault for such choice. Cut off the means to go offshore and the problem disappears; businesses learn to adapt to receiving the pain that they formerly gave through offshoring.
As China did so amongst themselves a while ago(heavy bags of rice where cannons should be), they do to others today.
While you might have 1 billion people, the longterm cost is that you get industrial espionage.
The better thing is to abandon China through large tariffs and develop from the US and western EU. Then do something to silence the inevitable and incorrect "but you're attacking yourself" responses.
Work at Microsoft however, and you will get paid very handsomely if you make great contributions to the bottom line. Sorry, but I only am the messenger here. The .com days are over and its time to move on. Go work in an I.T. company or even a contracting company doing consulting if you have your experience and you will be paid well. Otherwise you are a cost there to make sure nothing breaks. Unless you can think of a magical way companies can increase their sales or cut their cost from your ideas? Have any?
Contract/consulting only makes the problem worse, since they pit the providers of indirect labor & the requesting company against the worker. Such an arrangement is largely for the mistrust of the person doing the work, such that it distorts the wages below their actual costs. The solution is to make anything but FTE a very expensive option, not the other way around.
You don't need magic, just regulations that keep business from being screwy with workers.
The problem is that the cost is paid by the First World, especially the US, and the citizens of those nations. As deep as it has become a problem, the only way to fix it is to kill globalization until citizens of the First World are not penalized for their citizenship as they are now.
There is no problem if the benefits were direct and dislocation was non-existent. However, it would not allow businesses to enslave people.
While some might dream of a return to "America First" and "Made In Canada" policies and tarrifs, I can't imagine us ever returning to such systems. ...
And the same goes for all the other big multinationals. The only thing keeping their head offices in the US or Canada is tradition. Globalization has become an unstoppable behemoth; no one with real influence over the government through lobbyists would tolerate stepping back from globalization.
England would gladly like to inform you otherwise - for it once sent back . It can be stopped with enough force, just that you end up with a ton of dead lobbyists and a country more capable to deal with threats like China's industrial espionage.
That, and the US has a large enough internal market that can withstand pressures from outside well. Include the rest of the NATO-defined First World where workers are treated favorably, and you have a way to lock-out the vagaries of the Third World.
First and foremost, the consumer won't stand for it. The consumer now expects computers at under $1000 instead of the $2000 plus it used to cost to manufacture them onshore.
The prototypical "consumer" is only a construct that is used to defend the devolution of the First World into the standards of the Third. It is portrayed as a voracious, treasonous beast that is used to marginalize people that object to the anti-First World measures.
A recent article I read pegged the "Made in America" price of an iPad at roughly $1400 -- more than double the market price. At such prices, people simply would stop buying them, because it's pretty damned hard to justify toys over $1000 in most people's minds.
I'd highly suspect those numbers, given that they're more likely to be closer to $800 than the $1400 given the efficiencies that would be used in the US.
I don't think it's a good situation for the "First World" at all, but I can't see any of the companies involved in offshoring being willing to return to North American manufacturing and assembly when it would make their products completely uncompetitive in the rest of the world markets. Quite frankly, companies like Apple make far more from their foreign sales than they do from North American sales. As a result, if you returned to a nationalistic policy on manufacturing, they'd simply pull up the remainder of their North American roots, officially become a foreign company, and keep on with business as usual. With the US one jewel less in the globalization crown.
The problem with that is the various divisions of the US military along with the intelligence divisions would make that painfully impossible. If they pull up their roots, they find themselves with their assets seized and executives looking as horizontal as OBL for committing treason & terrorism.
Shame that the NSA hasn't used this to kill the offshoring lobby given how influential the NSA's information can be. They'd be actually doing their job and repelling countries like China as well.
When you are dealing with such a subject of industrial espionage, the first obligation is to defend the country. While you might be able to use some random site's recommendations to make a case against it, national security will trump them every time. Whether it is some offshoring lobby, industrial espionage, or some other group that wants to attack the US, the author is correct to say how bad it is.
But don't let facts get in the way of your anti-American beliefs.
This is what we get when we get too friendly with nations that are still despotic in nature, reserving freedom for the few businesses and not the many. They are used to take away freedom from people under the canard of "competitiveness", something that is only used to wash the blood from indefensible actions.
Shame we can't have a national security directive to kill offshoring - since it is about the only thing that can kill this for good. It may not be the cleanest answer, but it is the one that cuts the lobbyists out of the equation. If we want offshoring, it cannot be in the current form - a form that is only used as retribution for successes and security gained by First World citizens. It must be in a form that clearly prioritizes citizens of all skill levels first for hiring and training (to get rid of the skill-level complaints) for long-term & direct hire jobs (to obliterate the permatemp culture); it cannot be simply a way to exact concessions in the name of Ricardian economics.