That's great. I'm not saying that unions haven't done good things for the labor force in the US. They have. Muchas gracias.
HOWEVER, a great deal of the protections that organized labor used to provide are now provided BY LAW. This makes the labor unions somewhat superfluous.
Also, in many unions, cronyism is rampant. As has been mentioned elsewhere. You fall afoul of the crony brigade, with something as simple as someone not liking you, and you are FUCKED.
My grandfather was a nice, amiable guy. Good union man. Had a couple small black marks during a time he was struggling with alcohol. But the union stood by him. By the time the unions had major strikes, all his kids were out of the house and the house was paid off, so he didn't really lose anything when the union went on strike. So he voted to strike.
My father, also a nice, amiable guy. A good union man. No black marks on his record, ever. Had nothing BUT problems because during two strike votes, he voted not to strike. Why? He had three young kids and a wife who was currently out of work and monthly house payments. He couldn't AFFORD the strikes. Well, one of the guys (single and childless) who later became a union supervisor didn't take kindly to that. Every time this guy was put in charge of an area my father worked in, less than a month later my father was laid off, being told there was no work. Never mind that there is enough work in our metro area, PAID FOR AND PENDING, to keep literally every man in the local hall employed for several years.
The last time, he was replaced a week later buy the guy's nephew who was brand new to the union. And the union heads wouldn't do a damn thing about it. This essentially forced him into retirement five years early. Yet again, he and my mother just BARELY managed to squeak by financially.
Oh, did I mention both my father and my grandfather belong to the same union?
You think I'm going to pay "dues" to a group of self-appointed middlemen who sit back and do nothing positive for me while they smile at me and screw me over because one of them just "doesn't like" me? Regardless of my skill? Regardless of a spotless work record and work ethic?
Honestly. Fab problems when pushing technology forward has been a hallmark of AMD's business for nearly a decade now. Why should this surprise anyone?
Yeah. The new series of graphics controllers may be the bees' knees, and may make nVidia cry for mommy, but until people can...y'know...OBTAIN THEM, it's all just smoke and mirrors.
In the US you can sue someone for pretty much ANY reason. Or no reason at all. It doesn't mean you'll WIN. But with the court system, unless you have a very clear-cut case, them with the deepest pockets win.
TDS told them to FOAD. Then sued them when they did it themselves.
The government was only involved in early planning, passing the referendum and acquiring the money. They contracted with a private corporation (Hiawatha Broadband) to provision them and oversee the build-out. The employees of the company created aren't government employees. The only government involvement is a citizen's oversight group that was elected into place.
There WAS a monopoly in place. TDS. Now there's competition since the douchebags at TDS finally implemented their own fibernet.
Now I'm not COMPLETELY certain about Washington, but if I'm not mistaken, filing for legal action is NOT a free process. The state charges fees for this (at least they did when I sued a guy here in Illinois).
This is simply another baseless bitch about how Microsoft is "getting over" in an attempt to simply grab MORE money from Microsoft. If you think Microsoft is getting off scott-free in Washington, you're NUTS. On top of that, exactly how much is Microsoft pumping into the local economy through their employees?
If you want to be anti-corporate, fine. If you want to be envious of a person or corporate entity that has more money than you, fine. Just be up-front about your motivations in the first place, with yourself especially.
The Cubs could win a world series -- but there's only one group of people who could make it happen. That's the Cubs fans.
Yeah. But only if the baseball season is being replicated on a gaming console. IRL, the Cubs make more money as lovable losers than they ever would as champions (and then former champions).
It's a prime example of vertical marketing at it's finest.
No dedicated servers means no player mods, no player maps, no organized competitive play, no clan servers, etc., and strips away what makes PC gaming different from console gaming.
Q2/3 had no dedicated servers. Yet you could put a machine up full-time online and have it act as a server. You could distribute player-made mods and maps. And there was DEFINITELY organized competitive play and clan servers.
Methinks you've spent too much time having things just handed to you. The tools to community-build are still available to you. The people putting out CoD are simply relying on a non-lazy player-base.
It's been known for a while that numbers on stuff like their CRM and Sharepoint aren't based on actual USER base. Merely how many licenses are out in the wild including guestimates of pirate copies.. This means, if you have an Action Pack subscription, you're counted. If you're on MSDN, you're counted. If you're a warez hound pirating this stuff in south-central Spotlsylvania, yup, you're counted too-ski.
So it comes as exactly zero surprise that the numbers are so baked that someone's considering an intervention.
Yes Bob. Today, the mayor of the island of Krakatoa held a city council meeting in the caldera of the volcano to draw attention to the fact that the island will, eventually, blow up again and to urge the world to find some way to stop plate tectonics and cool the core down until such a thing isn't possible anymore.
Unfortunately, they forgot one thing Bob.
THEY WERE IN THE CALDERA OF A VOLCANO!
Needless to day, the loss of life was total, save for three councilmen who boycotted the meeting in protest.
As of this hour, an emergency vote is taking place to replace the dumbass...err deceased (always get those mixed up) politicians'.
Also, there's some sort of festival going on. The natives tell me the name translates into "We have cleansed the gene pool, THANK GOD!".
Hopefully, once they get a couple releases under their belts, they'll have more costume options. Right now there's a lot of option areas, but not a lot of options in each. And a somewhat unhealthy percentage are beast/animal options. Were I a furry with delusions of heroism, I'd be in heaven. But...
That's unfortunate, because the ESRB's intimate relationship with the game industry could provide it with a unique vantage point from which to evaluate aspects of online games that are beyond the purview of other would-be raters
What? Essentially you're going to do...WHAT? Be a complete asshat in a game you're evaluating, testing the censor list, being rude to people, trying to get around the censor list using 'leetspeak, try to break the game, and generally engage in any and every behavior that could possibly get you kicked offline.
DURING THE GAME'S EVALUATION PERIOD...when it's tightly controlled as to what is in the game and who makes up the population?
Seriously. How can these people claim to actually be thinking? Their heads are shoved someplace dark and poopy-smelling on this.
This is like people who claim they can idiot-proof something their developing. Too late! One is already in charge of the project!
You simply CANNOT, EVER, make reasonable assumptions about how the entirety of a player-base is going to utilize a product.
If someone claims they can, check their hands for the telltale of a manure shovel.
Most of the stuff out there now is cheap plastic crap for "personal size" printers. You get 18-24 months of moderate use out of them before they die, and ALL of them are proprietary drivers. If you want more flexibility and longer lifespan, you pretty much HAVE to go up to workgroup printers.
As to a specific model, again, I'm not someone who goes through printers that often. I'm fairly happy with my LaserJet 3005x though.
Washington can TRY to close this loophole. They can legislate whatever they want of course. But, they're going to have to try to fight it out in the Nevada court system. And Nevada is notable in being unfriendly to entities that mess with their business licensing revenues.
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That's great. I'm not saying that unions haven't done good things for the labor force in the US. They have. Muchas gracias.
HOWEVER, a great deal of the protections that organized labor used to provide are now provided BY LAW. This makes the labor unions somewhat superfluous.
Also, in many unions, cronyism is rampant. As has been mentioned elsewhere. You fall afoul of the crony brigade, with something as simple as someone not liking you, and you are FUCKED.
My grandfather was a nice, amiable guy. Good union man. Had a couple small black marks during a time he was struggling with alcohol. But the union stood by him. By the time the unions had major strikes, all his kids were out of the house and the house was paid off, so he didn't really lose anything when the union went on strike. So he voted to strike.
My father, also a nice, amiable guy. A good union man. No black marks on his record, ever. Had nothing BUT problems because during two strike votes, he voted not to strike. Why? He had three young kids and a wife who was currently out of work and monthly house payments. He couldn't AFFORD the strikes. Well, one of the guys (single and childless) who later became a union supervisor didn't take kindly to that. Every time this guy was put in charge of an area my father worked in, less than a month later my father was laid off, being told there was no work. Never mind that there is enough work in our metro area, PAID FOR AND PENDING, to keep literally every man in the local hall employed for several years.
The last time, he was replaced a week later buy the guy's nephew who was brand new to the union. And the union heads wouldn't do a damn thing about it. This essentially forced him into retirement five years early. Yet again, he and my mother just BARELY managed to squeak by financially.
Oh, did I mention both my father and my grandfather belong to the same union?
You think I'm going to pay "dues" to a group of self-appointed middlemen who sit back and do nothing positive for me while they smile at me and screw me over because one of them just "doesn't like" me? Regardless of my skill? Regardless of a spotless work record and work ethic?
FUCK THAT NOISE!
Take it away brother. I got nothin'!
Seriously, at least on the web-based video front, this is practically the same as Flash BEGGING to be ousted in favor of HTML5.
Honestly. Fab problems when pushing technology forward has been a hallmark of AMD's business for nearly a decade now. Why should this surprise anyone?
Yeah. The new series of graphics controllers may be the bees' knees, and may make nVidia cry for mommy, but until people can...y'know...OBTAIN THEM, it's all just smoke and mirrors.
It'll be a cold day in hell before they see any utilization by any of the companies I work for or service.
They could be the last financial institution on the planet. I and some of the people I work for would revert to a barter economy first.
This being some variant of (as Daffy Duck said) "Don't EVER push the wed one!"
Sounds more like Elmer Fudd to me.
Man, this is a "well fucking DUH!" moment.
The minute they do, their scheme of tighly controlled software on tightly controlled hardware goes out the window.
At that point, people buying OS X will see that it's no more or less stable on the gamut of hardware in the x86 sandbox than Windows is.
Additionally, the need to actually set up a full-time hardware testing lab (a'la WHQL) would eat, dramatically, into their famous profit margins).
In the US you can sue someone for pretty much ANY reason. Or no reason at all.
It doesn't mean you'll WIN. But with the court system, unless you have a very clear-cut case, them with the deepest pockets win.
Chicago actually has one. The Skyway.
They DID contact private corporations.
TDS told them to FOAD. Then sued them when they did it themselves.
The government was only involved in early planning, passing the referendum and acquiring the money.
They contracted with a private corporation (Hiawatha Broadband) to provision them and oversee the build-out.
The employees of the company created aren't government employees.
The only government involvement is a citizen's oversight group that was elected into place.
There WAS a monopoly in place. TDS.
Now there's competition since the douchebags at TDS finally implemented their own fibernet.
Microsoft needed to make one choice
No. No they don't.
Now I'm not COMPLETELY certain about Washington, but if I'm not mistaken, filing for legal action is NOT a free process. The state charges fees for this (at least they did when I sued a guy here in Illinois).
This is simply another baseless bitch about how Microsoft is "getting over" in an attempt to simply grab MORE money from Microsoft. If you think Microsoft is getting off scott-free in Washington, you're NUTS. On top of that, exactly how much is Microsoft pumping into the local economy through their employees?
If you want to be anti-corporate, fine. If you want to be envious of a person or corporate entity that has more money than you, fine. Just be up-front about your motivations in the first place, with yourself especially.
Yeah. But only if the baseball season is being replicated on a gaming console. IRL, the Cubs make more money as lovable losers than they ever would as champions (and then former champions).
It's a prime example of vertical marketing at it's finest.
Dedicated server means "The company itself runs the server or pays someone to run a server network".
Simply supplying the software to run in server mode is not a "dedicated server".
No dedicated servers means no player mods, no player maps, no organized competitive play, no clan servers, etc., and strips away what makes PC gaming different from console gaming.
Q2/3 had no dedicated servers. Yet you could put a machine up full-time online and have it act as a server. You could distribute player-made mods and maps. And there was DEFINITELY organized competitive play and clan servers.
Methinks you've spent too much time having things just handed to you. The tools to community-build are still available to you. The people putting out CoD are simply relying on a non-lazy player-base.
*Jumps around like someone given an LD50 of caffeine and spring-shoes.*
It's been known for a while that numbers on stuff like their CRM and Sharepoint aren't based on actual USER base. Merely how many licenses are out in the wild including guestimates of pirate copies.. This means, if you have an Action Pack subscription, you're counted. If you're on MSDN, you're counted. If you're a warez hound pirating this stuff in south-central Spotlsylvania, yup, you're counted too-ski.
So it comes as exactly zero surprise that the numbers are so baked that someone's considering an intervention.
Yes Bob. Today, the mayor of the island of Krakatoa held a city council meeting in the caldera of the volcano to draw attention to the fact that the island will, eventually, blow up again and to urge the world to find some way to stop plate tectonics and cool the core down until such a thing isn't possible anymore.
Unfortunately, they forgot one thing Bob.
THEY WERE IN THE CALDERA OF A VOLCANO!
Needless to day, the loss of life was total, save for three councilmen who boycotted the meeting in protest.
As of this hour, an emergency vote is taking place to replace the dumbass...err deceased (always get those mixed up) politicians'.
Also, there's some sort of festival going on. The natives tell me the name translates into "We have cleansed the gene pool, THANK GOD!".
Hopefully, once they get a couple releases under their belts, they'll have more costume options. Right now there's a lot of option areas, but not a lot of options in each. And a somewhat unhealthy percentage are beast/animal options. Were I a furry with delusions of heroism, I'd be in heaven. But...
That's like saying that each of 4 hotdog vendors outside of a baseball game "consume" 25% of the hotdogs served.
They're fulfilling requests by outside agencies (users) made INTO their services.
The users are the ones "consuming" the traffic.
This kind of stupidity in language use just makes the desk so much more attractive to my forehead.
*SCHLORP*SCHLORP*SCHLORP* "Is that how you wanted it sucked Mr. Ballmer?"
That's unfortunate, because the ESRB's intimate relationship with the game industry could provide it with a unique vantage point from which to evaluate aspects of online games that are beyond the purview of other would-be raters
What? Essentially you're going to do...WHAT? Be a complete asshat in a game you're evaluating, testing the censor list, being rude to people, trying to get around the censor list using 'leetspeak, try to break the game, and generally engage in any and every behavior that could possibly get you kicked offline.
DURING THE GAME'S EVALUATION PERIOD ...when it's tightly controlled as to what is in the game and who makes up the population?
Seriously. How can these people claim to actually be thinking? Their heads are shoved someplace dark and poopy-smelling on this.
This is like people who claim they can idiot-proof something their developing. Too late! One is already in charge of the project!
You simply CANNOT, EVER, make reasonable assumptions about how the entirety of a player-base is going to utilize a product.
If someone claims they can, check their hands for the telltale of a manure shovel.
Most of the stuff out there now is cheap plastic crap for "personal size" printers.
You get 18-24 months of moderate use out of them before they die, and ALL of them are proprietary drivers.
If you want more flexibility and longer lifespan, you pretty much HAVE to go up to workgroup printers.
As to a specific model, again, I'm not someone who goes through printers that often. I'm fairly happy with my LaserJet 3005x though.
Then they wouldn't mind being killed a little more would they?
That's like saying the Earth's massive (relative to the volume of a single human) atmosphere encourages hyperventilation of hydrogen.
Washington can TRY to close this loophole.
They can legislate whatever they want of course.
But, they're going to have to try to fight it out in the Nevada court system.
And Nevada is notable in being unfriendly to entities that mess with their business licensing revenues.