I find it refreshing to see them creating new technology instead of just implementing standards.
Which came from espionage of a First World company, as Chinese "companies" are wont to do.
Plus it just confirms my comments yesterday about even engineering and design talent moving overseas; that no job is "safe" any more from the risk of being offshored. Given Huawei's market share in the telco industry, this particular bit of engineering should make anyone still working for the formerly big names in telecommunications some serious pause when they think about their job security.
The more reason to halt the move and reverse it, even if it takes force. With enough force, even the most "irreversible" things in economics can be made to reverse course back to the First World. Job security is something worth preserving in the First World, even if it comes at political costs.
It isn't that long ago that people thought a job with Northern Telecom would last a life time, and we know how that turned out for those who believed in that dream.
That can be restored with law. Given how badly Huawei implements things, their technology is only good for a political prop when countries rightfully reject it(Australia, US).
It would be nice if China's end to organ harvesting from executed prisoners was a believable measure, but there is too much saving of face in that country. Administrative costs and bribery in China, given that issue, would mean that 5 years leaves too much time and opportunity to cancel it(with political pressure) or time used to move it deeper away from public view.
If they're willing to pull all the stops to defend their own factories (a la Foxconn) to defend the indefensible, I'd imagine it'd not be something that is going to end.
When companies are required to be closely integrated with the government as they are with China, government involvement as claimed (and verified) cannot be escaped.
Between the military presence that is on site (in addition to the Huawei executives), the constant building of offices of Huawei near Symantec offices (when that was an issue), the various attempts to get inside First World infrastructure (like those of US/Australia), and various other stuff that isn't known but is a threat, make Huawei a valid target for any country-level ban.
Questions over the legality of the Government's move are already being raised.
...by people who support Huawei, most likely. Unfortunately for Huawei's defenders in Australia (and outside of Australia as evidenced by those), it puts them in the open as standing against their own country and having a greater allegiance for the PRC.
Stand strong Australia, and resist the urge to bend to the will of China. They will do everything to get you to back down - stop only when they give up and lose face.
If they want to make it pass, add the provisions from the bill that made long-term unemployed a protected class - like the identically named but worker-individual friendly predecessor.
Adding the crowdsourcing provision is only a distraction when the problem rests with businesses throwing every roadblock to hiring.
(Flamebait, Troll, Overrated mods) At least the way that this is done, the British err on the side of giving respect to the workers that end up down there instead of the Third World where it is reserved for the despots.
Apparently someone's offended that the British take the time to do something properly for all involved instead of a despot ordering something to happen and having it come at the unnecessary cost of people or bad long-term consequences.
I live in dongguan and my girlfriend knows several foxxcon workers. The biggest thing that gets lost in this whole controversy is that foxconn has i think 1 million workers. You have one million workers and you have to realize that this is the size of a small city. One accident that kills 2 people is really not that bad. 18 people committing suicide is not that bad either.
So, I'm from a city in the US that had its own version of Foxconn, but did something that Foxconn would not - actually treat their workers with some respect. Not like animals or prisoners, but like good friends or family.
The government has constantly been raising the minimum wage. The level of anti-intellectualism in america about this issue is stunning. If you were the Chinese government what would you do? These factory jobs are good jobs. And factories have to COMPETE to get workers to stay now. Working conditions are improving. Did anyone ever mention to you that in foxxcon they do your laundry for you? They have a cafeteria where the meals are provided? It is run like a military camp. If you think that is so bad, what does that tell you about the working conditions of our military?
You can have all the laws you want but your country won't enforce them on people that are on the wrong side of favor. If you have any doubt as to why folks like Bo Xilai were suddenly canned, it was due to him losing such favor since he actually took corrupt businesses that act like Foxconn to task.
If I was leading your government, Foxconn's top decision makers in China would be room temperature & lead-filled by the time Daisey's work reached the public. This would be a consequence for having to fail so badly that they had to hire a PR firm (Burston-Marsteller) to clean up the mess your government couldn't. Then the company would end up having its mainland presence erased completely from suppliers to the factory itself. At this scale, this would rival the 1989 massacres performed by rural-bound soldiers, at the order of the government of the time.
But don't let truth stand in the way if all you're going to do is just try to rehabilitate Foxconn's image.
"Foxconn Technology Group, Apple's largest supplier and the target of allegations of poor work conditions, welcomed a retraction of a This American Life radio program episode it said was based on lies. 'I am happy that the truth prevails, I am glad that Mike Daisey's lies were exposed,
No, but don't let the truth that Daisey did have overrule the opinion-guiding shills (known in China as 50 Maos) that you used to kill this story.
The only thing Daisey should have done was clarified it and kept the story with the truthful components. Then ask for an apology from Foxconn and Apple.
Louis Woo, a spokesman for Taipei-based Foxconn said. 'People will have the impression that Foxconn is a bad company,' Woo added, 'so I hope they will come and find out for themselves'. Foxconn also said that it has 'no plans to take legal action.'"
Holy Wars aside, teardowns are that much easier and getting parts/docs doesn't require you to be an authorized shop at any stage of the product's support.
Not only are they maintenance friendly from the start, there's documentation(Hardware Maintenance Manual) for replacing every component. On top of that, parts are generally available to all, even if they're in or out of warranty. Thanks to that, there are plenty of modifications that can be done (e.g. cross-model combinations of parts within the T40-43 series and within the T60/T61 series) to avoid design flaws (such as Nvidia's Bumpgate and GPU soldering flaws) or add uncommon/unlisted features (such as better displays).
At least the way that this is done, the British err on the side of giving respect to the workers that end up down there instead of the Third World where it is reserved for the despots.
By asserting your own arrogance to actively avoid hiring, you are part of the problem. Suggesting productivity isn't a magic thing you can invoke to dispel a proper measure, if only one that doesn't go fully to bring businesses to a humility not seen in a generation.
It is not an aberration to see workers and business be balanced unlike your suggestion; it is an aberration to see business operate with excessive favor as you advocate.
No, since that leads to the European model where nobody bothers to do any work since more benefits will get cut. Not good at all.
The better thing is to (largely) remove their ability to not do anything except hire in good faith, under FTE/benefit terms. That brings the long-termers back in the fold as productive citizens of their own choosing, thus making the sum of the parts productive. It would come through relieving the existing people as well as restoring a lost trust through legislative force.
That sounds like a state run economy. Not going to get into an argument about captialism vs socialism here though.
If you want anarchocapitalism, you're not going to find many places to practice it.
The point is, that if you're in this field and you can't even bother to keep yourself current with side projects/ open source, etc. you don't deserve to be working in it. I myself am entirely self-taught, and I started out doing it for the love of it.
You're a rare bird amongst many.
People used to have to work in the fields or hunt 12 hours a day and die at 35. If it's too much work for you to sit down at a computer a few hours a week and learn about fascinating shit, you deserve to be replaced by someone who does love this stuff.
You're implying that I'm in it for the money and only the money. Some people like yourself are fine with being nomadic, but plenty of others are not and do with the secure, conventional arrangement of regular FTE work. The fascination is there, but not to the exclusion of paying the bills.
My point is that if voluntary measures fail to establish a balance - legislation is necessary to restore it.
The only way this will get fixed is if the outsourcing/guest worker/temp worker option is legislatively taken off the table, along with forcing companies to do the right thing.
Make temporary work cost more for each level of indirection or difference from full-benefit FTE. Short work that would normally dodge costs, would end up costing everyone down the chain a ton except for the worker. Long-term work that takes in people of all skill levels, especially the the long-term unemployed, and produces more value down the road would be rewarded.
Once you take away all the ways a business can fuck with a worker, including outsourcing, the more likely they'll do the right thing and actually invest in the worker as a long-term asset. That's a value the US has held for quite a while, something that only is dying thanks to Contractor's Disease.
And no, outsourcing isn't "screwing over workers," it's helping a lot more people get a huge increase in standard of living.
At the cost of citizens in developed countries like the US & UK. It's not pulling their standard up to the US, it's a vengeful teardown of the developed world, in a manner consistent with reparations.
However, they're brown people so you don't care about them.
Except for the counter-point being that they're getting screwed even harder.
Phone support has always been a revolving door. Trust me, I know. Been there done that and got the t-shirt. That's because customer support is one of those low skill aggravating occupations that leads to one of the highest burn-out rates. It's so bad that it's a naturally re-occurring phenomenon that most like will never go away. So tell me, why would companies like Dell even bother taking them on as a full employee with benes?
This would come from valuing their employees enough to thwart contract-based employment sourced burnout.
If anything, it means that business must be made willing to retrain people into more permanent work, even if it means getting rid of their contingent labor trump card.
As mobile as that occupation is, you be lucky to even apply for the position state-side. Be thankful they're outsourcing this cheap, mobile, low skill, unstable work locally and not overseas.
Where they treat people badly enough to require onsite psychiatric care and enjoy BPO-specific exemptions that end up screwing with their workers? I'll be thankful when offshore outsourcing dies a painful, grisly, obscene death that nobody on this planet could look at.
As a unashamed US citizen, I stand by my words and stand my ground.
Some of the best times I ever had were doing contract work. Nice thing about contract work is I did not have to care at all about the companies I worked at. I came in, punched the clock, did my stuff, punched the clock, went home. There were many years after I left high school where i worked at jobs during college that had no benes at all. I think the first job I got with benes came 6 years after college.
Then you've had a lot of bad employers. Try having some employers that didn't make contract work look good and not reward the bad ones by allowing contract work to exist. They do exist, and generally do right by their own. I've even worked for a fairly large company that surprisingly has done well by their employees, as well as knowing others that live by the old ideal that happy (and directly hired) employees are productive ones.
For all the young folks coming up, don't expect benes in any job you get. Why? It costs the companies lots of money. Given the overprivileged spoiled attitude of most young folks today, why should a company bother giving them benes when the company knows the young folks feel no loyalty to that company. If a job opens up elsewhere that pays more money, the young folks leave. Like I said, no loyalty at all.
You and your misguided thinking are the reason for the eroding loyalty and burnout. Blaming it on some bromide of entitlement is wrong since the businesses had created the environment, made the choice to depart from good wisdom, and made the choice to suffer from worker disloyalty.
If loyalty and balance has to be restored through the legislative process, it reflects how far things have sunk from a balance between worker and business. Your path is worse than your claims of Communism, it follows the path of business-directed despotism.
It's a real tough job market out there today. I remember when I could jump from FTE job to FTE job just through a few phone calls and paperwork. Now it is difficult to find FTE jobs since most low-level and some mid-level office work is now overseas. Now I am glad that I stuck with the company I work for now. The pay increases a bit every year. The bonuses are nice, but I never could on getting those. The benes are decent, not gold-plated, but decent. My own work responsibilities have increased, mainly because the young folks coming in after me don't stick with it, or they just lousy work and deserve to be fired.
The more reason to hold business' feet to the fire. All that business has done is complain and try to avoid prosperity unless the political landscape is favorable to them. They make excuses about skill but refuse to do the training for the people that are available, avoid citizens in every way possible, or use things like contract labor to exact fear-based "savings" on the remaining citizens.
Get rid of contract employment, start encouraging loyalty from beginning to end, and paying attention to morale more closely. The more loyalty that there exists between a worker and his/her direct-hire company(no, not a staffing firm), the greater balance & understanding that exists between the two entities. Non-FTE employment (and all other non-permanent forms of employment) imply a distrust of & disloyalty for the person doing the work.
I think the real lesson is this: Good pay and good benes come with time at most Fortune 500 companies. Stop your whining and do your time.
The problem is that the GP poster said something about being a temporary employee forever, implying that they would never be able to do enough time.
Either treat people well voluntarily and with some loyalty, or have the government enforce it by law. I prefer the voluntary method, but I am willing to have the law restore a balance that business has tried to erode away by their own hand.
Not only did it get rid of a large cash-register company(NCR), Georgia did all it could to sneak everything out before people noticed that a 125 year old company was gone.
Safe to say Georgia is looked down upon by many for uprooting that company. Not so much blood feud, but any business association or government entity in Georgia is as welcome in Ohio as Art Modell is in Cleveland(for doing similar to the Cleveland Browns).
If you got rid of that by federal law or Constitutional amendment, you would single handedly make every "economic development" organization/department in the South go dead or idle. That part of the US doesnt develop, it just steals from the North and West.
Slashdot Mirror
If Google does the right thing, they'll find and cancel the scalped tickets - and do a second round.
I find it refreshing to see them creating new technology instead of just implementing standards.
Which came from espionage of a First World company, as Chinese "companies" are wont to do.
Plus it just confirms my comments yesterday about even engineering and design talent moving overseas; that no job is "safe" any more from the risk of being offshored. Given Huawei's market share in the telco industry, this particular bit of engineering should make anyone still working for the formerly big names in telecommunications some serious pause when they think about their job security.
The more reason to halt the move and reverse it, even if it takes force. With enough force, even the most "irreversible" things in economics can be made to reverse course back to the First World. Job security is something worth preserving in the First World, even if it comes at political costs.
It isn't that long ago that people thought a job with Northern Telecom would last a life time, and we know how that turned out for those who believed in that dream.
That can be restored with law. Given how badly Huawei implements things, their technology is only good for a political prop when countries rightfully reject it(Australia, US).
Not only can they not shake off the reputation of being too close to the Chinese government, their hardware is usually lower-tier.
It would be nice if China's end to organ harvesting from executed prisoners was a believable measure, but there is too much saving of face in that country. Administrative costs and bribery in China, given that issue, would mean that 5 years leaves too much time and opportunity to cancel it(with political pressure) or time used to move it deeper away from public view.
If they're willing to pull all the stops to defend their own factories (a la Foxconn) to defend the indefensible, I'd imagine it'd not be something that is going to end.
When companies are required to be closely integrated with the government as they are with China, government involvement as claimed (and verified) cannot be escaped.
Doubt it all you want at your peril.
Between the military presence that is on site (in addition to the Huawei executives), the constant building of offices of Huawei near Symantec offices (when that was an issue), the various attempts to get inside First World infrastructure (like those of US/Australia), and various other stuff that isn't known but is a threat, make Huawei a valid target for any country-level ban.
Put them all on the IMEI blacklist. Problem solved.
Questions over the legality of the Government's move are already being raised.
...by people who support Huawei, most likely. Unfortunately for Huawei's defenders in Australia (and outside of Australia as evidenced by those), it puts them in the open as standing against their own country and having a greater allegiance for the PRC.
Stand strong Australia, and resist the urge to bend to the will of China. They will do everything to get you to back down - stop only when they give up and lose face.
If they want to make it pass, add the provisions from the bill that made long-term unemployed a protected class - like the identically named but worker-individual friendly predecessor.
Adding the crowdsourcing provision is only a distraction when the problem rests with businesses throwing every roadblock to hiring.
(Flamebait, Troll, Overrated mods)
At least the way that this is done, the British err on the side of giving respect to the workers that end up down there instead of the Third World where it is reserved for the despots.
Apparently someone's offended that the British take the time to do something properly for all involved instead of a despot ordering something to happen and having it come at the unnecessary cost of people or bad long-term consequences.
I live in dongguan and my girlfriend knows several foxxcon workers. The biggest thing that gets lost in this whole controversy is that foxconn has i think 1 million workers. You have one million workers and you have to realize that this is the size of a small city. One accident that kills 2 people is really not that bad. 18 people committing suicide is not that bad either.
So, I'm from a city in the US that had its own version of Foxconn, but did something that Foxconn would not - actually treat their workers with some respect. Not like animals or prisoners, but like good friends or family.
The government has constantly been raising the minimum wage. The level of anti-intellectualism in america about this issue is stunning. If you were the Chinese government what would you do? These factory jobs are good jobs. And factories have to COMPETE to get workers to stay now. Working conditions are improving. Did anyone ever mention to you that in foxxcon they do your laundry for you? They have a cafeteria where the meals are provided? It is run like a military camp. If you think that is so bad, what does that tell you about the working conditions of our military?
You can have all the laws you want but your country won't enforce them on people that are on the wrong side of favor. If you have any doubt as to why folks like Bo Xilai were suddenly canned, it was due to him losing such favor since he actually took corrupt businesses that act like Foxconn to task.
If I was leading your government, Foxconn's top decision makers in China would be room temperature & lead-filled by the time Daisey's work reached the public. This would be a consequence for having to fail so badly that they had to hire a PR firm (Burston-Marsteller) to clean up the mess your government couldn't. Then the company would end up having its mainland presence erased completely from suppliers to the factory itself. At this scale, this would rival the 1989 massacres performed by rural-bound soldiers, at the order of the government of the time.
But don't let truth stand in the way if all you're going to do is just try to rehabilitate Foxconn's image.
"Foxconn Technology Group, Apple's largest supplier and the target of allegations of poor work conditions, welcomed a retraction of a This American Life radio program episode it said was based on lies. 'I am happy that the truth prevails, I am glad that Mike Daisey's lies were exposed,
No, but don't let the truth that Daisey did have overrule the opinion-guiding shills (known in China as 50 Maos) that you used to kill this story.
The only thing Daisey should have done was clarified it and kept the story with the truthful components. Then ask for an apology from Foxconn and Apple.
Louis Woo, a spokesman for Taipei-based Foxconn said. 'People will have the impression that Foxconn is a bad company,' Woo added, 'so I hope they will come and find out for themselves'. Foxconn also said that it has 'no plans to take legal action.'"
Where they give you a Potemkin Village tour.
Holy Wars aside, teardowns are that much easier and getting parts/docs doesn't require you to be an authorized shop at any stage of the product's support.
Not only are they maintenance friendly from the start, there's documentation(Hardware Maintenance Manual) for replacing every component. On top of that, parts are generally available to all, even if they're in or out of warranty. Thanks to that, there are plenty of modifications that can be done (e.g. cross-model combinations of parts within the T40-43 series and within the T60/T61 series) to avoid design flaws (such as Nvidia's Bumpgate and GPU soldering flaws) or add uncommon/unlisted features (such as better displays).
At least the way that this is done, the British err on the side of giving respect to the workers that end up down there instead of the Third World where it is reserved for the despots.
By asserting your own arrogance to actively avoid hiring, you are part of the problem. Suggesting productivity isn't a magic thing you can invoke to dispel a proper measure, if only one that doesn't go fully to bring businesses to a humility not seen in a generation.
It is not an aberration to see workers and business be balanced unlike your suggestion; it is an aberration to see business operate with excessive favor as you advocate.
No, since that leads to the European model where nobody bothers to do any work since more benefits will get cut. Not good at all.
The better thing is to (largely) remove their ability to not do anything except hire in good faith, under FTE/benefit terms. That brings the long-termers back in the fold as productive citizens of their own choosing, thus making the sum of the parts productive. It would come through relieving the existing people as well as restoring a lost trust through legislative force.
That sounds like a state run economy. Not going to get into an argument about captialism vs socialism here though.
If you want anarchocapitalism, you're not going to find many places to practice it.
The point is, that if you're in this field and you can't even bother to keep yourself current with side projects/ open source, etc. you don't deserve to be working in it. I myself am entirely self-taught, and I started out doing it for the love of it.
You're a rare bird amongst many.
People used to have to work in the fields or hunt 12 hours a day and die at 35. If it's too much work for you to sit down at a computer a few hours a week and learn about fascinating shit, you deserve to be replaced by someone who does love this stuff.
You're implying that I'm in it for the money and only the money. Some people like yourself are fine with being nomadic, but plenty of others are not and do with the secure, conventional arrangement of regular FTE work. The fascination is there, but not to the exclusion of paying the bills.
My point is that if voluntary measures fail to establish a balance - legislation is necessary to restore it.
So they've rediscovered the French population and its descendants.
The only way this will get fixed is if the outsourcing/guest worker/temp worker option is legislatively taken off the table, along with forcing companies to do the right thing.
Make temporary work cost more for each level of indirection or difference from full-benefit FTE. Short work that would normally dodge costs, would end up costing everyone down the chain a ton except for the worker. Long-term work that takes in people of all skill levels, especially the the long-term unemployed, and produces more value down the road would be rewarded.
Once you take away all the ways a business can fuck with a worker, including outsourcing, the more likely they'll do the right thing and actually invest in the worker as a long-term asset. That's a value the US has held for quite a while, something that only is dying thanks to Contractor's Disease.
And no, outsourcing isn't "screwing over workers," it's helping a lot more people get a huge increase in standard of living.
At the cost of citizens in developed countries like the US & UK. It's not pulling their standard up to the US, it's a vengeful teardown of the developed world, in a manner consistent with reparations.
However, they're brown people so you don't care about them.
Except for the counter-point being that they're getting screwed even harder.
No, since I actually want to work instead of pretending to work or doing some sort of regulatory compliance "work".
That, and it helps that I've seen businesses get it right.
Then why does "increased freedom" result in companies screwing over workers more as it has?
Phone support has always been a revolving door. Trust me, I know. Been there done that and got the t-shirt. That's because customer support is one of those low skill aggravating occupations that leads to one of the highest burn-out rates. It's so bad that it's a naturally re-occurring phenomenon that most like will never go away. So tell me, why would companies like Dell even bother taking them on as a full employee with benes?
This would come from valuing their employees enough to thwart contract-based employment sourced burnout.
If anything, it means that business must be made willing to retrain people into more permanent work, even if it means getting rid of their contingent labor trump card.
As mobile as that occupation is, you be lucky to even apply for the position state-side. Be thankful they're outsourcing this cheap, mobile, low skill, unstable work locally and not overseas.
Where they treat people badly enough to require onsite psychiatric care and enjoy BPO-specific exemptions that end up screwing with their workers?
I'll be thankful when offshore outsourcing dies a painful, grisly, obscene death that nobody on this planet could look at.
Go away communist...
As a unashamed US citizen, I stand by my words and stand my ground.
Some of the best times I ever had were doing contract work. Nice thing about contract work is I did not have to care at all about the companies I worked at. I came in, punched the clock, did my stuff, punched the clock, went home. There were many years after I left high school where i worked at jobs during college that had no benes at all. I think the first job I got with benes came 6 years after college.
Then you've had a lot of bad employers. Try having some employers that didn't make contract work look good and not reward the bad ones by allowing contract work to exist. They do exist, and generally do right by their own. I've even worked for a fairly large company that surprisingly has done well by their employees, as well as knowing others that live by the old ideal that happy (and directly hired) employees are productive ones.
For all the young folks coming up, don't expect benes in any job you get. Why? It costs the companies lots of money. Given the overprivileged spoiled attitude of most young folks today, why should a company bother giving them benes when the company knows the young folks feel no loyalty to that company. If a job opens up elsewhere that pays more money, the young folks leave. Like I said, no loyalty at all.
You and your misguided thinking are the reason for the eroding loyalty and burnout. Blaming it on some bromide of entitlement is wrong since the businesses had created the environment, made the choice to depart from good wisdom, and made the choice to suffer from worker disloyalty.
If loyalty and balance has to be restored through the legislative process, it reflects how far things have sunk from a balance between worker and business. Your path is worse than your claims of Communism, it follows the path of business-directed despotism.
It's a real tough job market out there today. I remember when I could jump from FTE job to FTE job just through a few phone calls and paperwork. Now it is difficult to find FTE jobs since most low-level and some mid-level office work is now overseas. Now I am glad that I stuck with the company I work for now. The pay increases a bit every year. The bonuses are nice, but I never could on getting those. The benes are decent, not gold-plated, but decent. My own work responsibilities have increased, mainly because the young folks coming in after me don't stick with it, or they just lousy work and deserve to be fired.
The more reason to hold business' feet to the fire. All that business has done is complain and try to avoid prosperity unless the political landscape is favorable to them. They make excuses about skill but refuse to do the training for the people that are available, avoid citizens in every way possible, or use things like contract labor to exact fear-based "savings" on the remaining citizens.
Get rid of contract employment, start encouraging loyalty from beginning to end, and paying attention to morale more closely. The more loyalty that there exists between a worker and his/her direct-hire company(no, not a staffing firm), the greater balance & understanding that exists between the two entities. Non-FTE employment (and all other non-permanent forms of employment) imply a distrust of & disloyalty for the person doing the work.
I think the real lesson is this: Good pay and good benes come with time at most Fortune 500 companies. Stop your whining and do your time.
The problem is that the GP poster said something about being a temporary employee forever, implying that they would never be able to do enough time.
Either treat people well voluntarily and with some loyalty, or have the government enforce it by law. I prefer the voluntary method, but I am willing to have the law restore a balance that business has tried to erode away by their own hand.
Not only did it get rid of a large cash-register company(NCR), Georgia did all it could to sneak everything out before people noticed that a 125 year old company was gone.
Safe to say Georgia is looked down upon by many for uprooting that company. Not so much blood feud, but any business association or government entity in Georgia is as welcome in Ohio as Art Modell is in Cleveland(for doing similar to the Cleveland Browns).
If you got rid of that by federal law or Constitutional amendment, you would single handedly make every "economic development" organization/department in the South go dead or idle. That part of the US doesnt develop, it just steals from the North and West.