It's not "Countless". Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually - a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats. So if it's really migratory birds you're so worried about, you'd better ditch your cellphone. And/or kill your cat.
Weak-sauce FUD, bro.
The national power distribution grid (lines, etc.) kills far more, but we don't tend to see those as critters eat them up.
Local solar and wind power do not require massive distribution networks.
And you cat citation doesn't help your case. 10,000x more birds are killed by cats than by solar (?!?) and wind? Can you provide a citation for that? I'd like to use it in shutting-up idiots in the future (if true).
That is, respectfully and in no insult to you, a bullshit policy. Following that logic a Police department could hire contract security and then disclaim any liability for brutality they inflict.
I'm afraid I misspoke. I agree with you completely, but was vague RE type of "duty". I meant only the legal one, and really should have prefaced the Comment with "By the laws of the US,..." ("it was his duty to..."). My mistake. And it's not my policy; it's the Government's. All employees of the US Government must swear an oath of duty to protect the Nation, to uphold the Constitution, and so on."
Civic Duty? Moral Duty as a citizen of a society? Yes! Snowden (and co-workers) had moral and civic duties to blow the whistle, as several Replies have noted. Ed fulfilled those duties. I absolutely agree.
More clearly, my point was to highlight the distinction. Because Snowden didn't have to swear "The Oath" as a condition of employment, he was therefore not shielded by Federal Whistle-blower Protections, which apply to Federal employees, but not to Contractors. If a contractor rightly blows the whistle, he gets no special protections from retaliation by the malfeasors. Trust me––I've been there––no one cares––it's quite the opposite. (I know thanks to FOIA.) Snowden is a hero for what he did – and he is paying the price for it in his exile, rather than getting a Nobel Peace Prize.
(And yes, NSA folks were violating their Oath of duty as Federal Employees all over the place. Like, uh, when they were wire-tapping the personal cell phone of the leader of a close ally nation, Angele Merkel of Germany, and lied about this fact to their overseers in Congress. That caused a lot of damage to the nation when the news came out.)
Not bashing the ACA, but the pill popping medical culture that preceded the ACA. The ACA basically threw fuel (tax money) on that fire instead of fixing it to be more affordable.
A single-payer system, the solution to the problem you note, would have never made it through congress, unfortunately.
The U.S's continuing failure to provide affordable healthcare to a growing portion of it's population will turn our cities into breeding grounds for all manner of new and exciting infectious bacteria.
If "affordable" healthcare includes distributing antibiotics like tic-tacs to people whenever they whine about an infection, maybe we are avoiding the creation of new and exciting infectious bacteria by continuing to fail to provide access to anti-biotics...
It doesn't. It means access to the same health care providers that those insured through their workplace get.
And in any case, save your ACA-bashing for a week or two, which is when the widespread FUD attacks like yours will really come pouring out.
I signed the petition. An agency of my government was breaking the public trust, lying to legislators, and breaking the law. It was Mr. Snowden's duty to report this, and it is a travesty to take away his life for defending his country against itself.
It wasn't his duty, as he was a contractor. Contractors do not swear the Oath of Service to the US Government, although all of its direct employees are required to. That difference means that he is not shielded by whistle-blower laws.
But the numerous Federal employees in the know – I agree – had a duty to report on the illegal activities, but chose not to. None of them are in exile, nor hanging from the end of a rope, nor even had a finger shaken at them. Instead, they have been protected by their organization. Not a good precedent, but look at history and you'll see that it rhymes.
Yes, but note that Obama said, "... for the last time in my term as President...", when honoring Joe Biden for a lifetime of public service.
I'd be happy with just a pardon for Snowden, as he deserves it, and that would allow him freedom to travel home. Withholding a pardon only prevents him from returning to the country whose citizens he was trying to protect, and forces him to remain living in a "non-ally" foreign nation.
A pardon is the only logical resolution––a lifetime of exile could alter the allegiance of any human.
I kind of have to, using the CS6 Master Suite (about 1/2 of them – the heavies). I am stuck with my current-generation Mac, and will not upgrade past OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite.
Yes, Apple bought in to this forced upgrade cycle, and is in cahoots with Adobe to make everyone migrate to renting software, which I will not do.
A program is analogous to a recipe (for a computer). It is a set of instructions == a recipe. Come to my kitchen––I'll bake you some bread. Here, it will not cost me a membership fee to use the bread recipe I bought a copy of long ago. I paid for it already, and can use it forever without further charges. I have to use my kitchen, just like any program uses my computer to execute its instructions (recipe).
Best analogy describing software "subscriptions" that I've heard. AVOID.
Is this how far we've fallen? No more are we concerned with violations of an individual's privacy. Now we are more concerned with the rights of the violators.
Yes, we have fallen this far – especially judging from the responses to your Comment.
There are still droolers that don't get it, and they never will. Even if they are framed – through no fault of their own – for someone else's misdeeds. Nor even if they make a sarcastic remark that is misinterpreted by MS's spies (or the NSA) as somehow law-breaking, and they end up tangled in our lovely criminal court or even penal system.
"They "could literally view any customer's communications at any time.""
Wait. What?
It's always been that way. The deal is free email, etc. accounts for you, and in return the service provider spies on you, selling the details of your personal life to whoever it is that thinks they can profit from having or using it.
It's sold mostly to aggregators – who operate like the credit bureaus – but have few, if any, of those pesky regulations to rein them in when people apply their reports as if they were 100% accurate. You have no recourse if you find an error. Hundreds of companies have a "profile" on you. You have no means to discover who they are. . . or why you didn't get that job promotion that you were in line for. HR bought a copy of your profile from abcdwxyz.com, which is rife with errors, but HR people are stupid, and will read it as truth. Perhaps someone with a similar name has a felony, or worse the report incorrectly states it.
Why Microsoft does not make their spying abundantly clear will hopefully come back to bite them in the ass.
A memory chip is not a processor. The *summary of* the article didn't say what the article did. Nothing the summary says is close to what is true.
NO MEMORY UNIT WILL PERFORM CPU FUNCTIONS at less than 2 orders of magnitude worse (that's 1/100 performance/power) today.
There's no "discovery" here.
You're right. It was an ACHIEVEMENT, not a DISCOVERY.
Isn't this a 4-state memristor? Memristors can do computing, just as OR, NOR, and NOT gate circuits hard-wired can do computing. I am in the industry, but on the materials not device side, so feel free to correct me.
BTW, memristors were postulated in the 1950's. It completes the group of computing elements: resistor, capacitor, inductor, and then memristor. The last had not been demonstrated until a very few years ago.
The free market gives us a gift every once in a while.
Apple has supported Bluetooth keyboards (and I think even mice) on iOS for like, ever. And you can do Lightning to HDMI, or use AirPlay for the video out, if you have an AirPlay compatible Monitor/TV or an AppleTV box handy.
Yes, iPhones have supported Bluetooth input devices forever. Lightning to VGA or DVI have also been possible forever. iPhone 6 certainly. If I had the adapter ($10-15), I'd try it with my iPhone 4 or GF's 5.
iPhone 6 can already do that. Just plug in a lightning-to-VGA adapter, and you are on the monitor. Add a Bluetooth keyboard. For mousing, just use the iPhone (or a Bluetooth track-pad). Most work can be done eyes-up, even without a mouse-and-pointer. AirPrint or other can be used for printing.
You would be running iOS, but that runs Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and loads of others. Microsoft Office is available for the iPhone, but you must "subscribe" to the software. Skip that and use Apple's Pages, etc., which can File/Open and File/Save As... with no troubles. No formatting-loss or funkiness. Files are mutually stored in iCloud (or some other cloud), and thus are shared dynamically between computer and iPhone.
I don't know why Apple didn't advertise this ability more broadly. They did for iPads, but not for iPhones... Who knows why?
It's really useful for giving presentations at conferences.
They swallow them, but they don't break them down, which means that when the cell dies (which it will), the material goes on a second journey and so on.
Maybe, and maybe not. Dead cells' guts leave the body through the lymph system, among other routes. I don't think that the lymph ducts have an activee endothelial layer that will lead to up-take of rods from an apoptosed cell.
It is a good question to ask, and to consider. (Any biochemists out there that can shed some light on this?)
I seem to once remember hearing another example of nanostructures finding their way into cells easily, and it didn't go well for the cell, in the longer run. I certainly hope they're doing extended life testing with this.
Most nano-particles don't transfect into cells (go actively into the cytoplasm itself). Generally, if there is cellular uptake, the nano-particles end up "in jail," trapped inside endosomes, and not actively in the cell's guts proper.
There are some materials that make for nice, rounded and non-cytotoxic nano-particles that can be functionalized and transfected into the cytoplasm. Such materials are the "Holy Grails" of drug delivery, cancer treatment, and diagnostics. I work on one of them...
Slashdot readers are technical people but are usually trained in the computer and engineering sciences. I'm a biochemist and I've been here since the beginning but I certainly do not come here for biological quality. I perused the paper. It is in a good journal and it looks like some good work. Single application question: how does phagocytosis of silicon nanowires differ in any significant way from good old run of the mill asbestos? Answer: for those dreaming of a bioelectric interface I put forward that these silicon nanowires will cause cancer. The authors do not address this and do not provide any experiment that would overcome this hurdle.
More specifically, you mean Mesothelioma and its relatives. Most cases are caused by asbestos, but only because we used it industrially and in our homes so widely. Broadly speaking, any sub-micron particles that (1) are anisotropic (sharp), and (2) that lack bio-solubility, will cause mesothelioma. The nano-particles act like little daggers that stay in your body forever, cutting back-and-forth as you move. Scar tissue builds up around them. Breathe, or in-take enough by other means, and it will happen. They're too small for the body to recognize as foreign, and are never ejected.
[CITATION: See work on nano-diamonds, immuno-gold, or III-V nano-particles. Cells do not spit them out like they do chemo drugs. . . which is why conjugating such particles with chemo drugs is such an attractive proposition.]
The list of materials that can do this goes on and on, but many are so rare that they're not reported. Talc, carbon, silicon carbide, olivine, and any number of exotic "new" materials that fit the above two criteria––all will cause mesothelioma, or a similar condition in other tissues.
I don't get it: you open the post claiming bullshit, then spend the rest of the post vehemently agreeing.
You have a PhD and 20 years industry experience so you expect a more interesting job that fixing computers no matter how well it pays. If that's not an example of salary being a poor motivator, then I don't know what is.
OK, so I framed my post in the wrong way, and worded it poorly. Let me put the same response another way:
I do fix computer, for free, but only for family. The pay rate that I would demand to fix your computer would be so high – think lawyer-level rates – that you would be unwilling to pay it. The result: Your computer is not fixed.
There. Same outcome, and still about salary, but the decision rests on the you (the employer), not on me.
I don't get it: you open the post claiming bullshit, then spend the rest of the post vehemently agreeing.
You have a PhD and 20 years industry experience so you expect a more interesting job that fixing computers no matter how well it pays. If that's not an example of salary being a poor motivator, then I don't know what is.
OK, so I clearly did not phrase the post properly. How about this:
I do fix computers, for family and for free. But if you wanted me to fix your computer the hourly rate that I would demand –somewhere in lawyer-territory – would be so far out of the range that you (the employer) would be willing to pay, that effectively no pay rate that you would be willing to offer would be high enough to entice me.
It is the same retort, framed slightly differently. It puts the decision on the employer, not on the employee.
I used to work at the warehouse in the article. The car park is immediately outside the building. The shuttle bus is to the centre of town. You literally have to walk through the car park to get to the bus.
Yes, we should thank Amazon for allowing workers to sleep in tents.
Once an employee leaves Amazon's premises it is none of Amazon's damn business what they do or don't do. They have no right to "allow" or "prohibit" their employees from using, or not using, any sleeping arrangement.
Disclaimer: When I first moved to Silicon Valley, I lived in a van for two years.
That part about "leaving their premises" –– I think you missed something.
The Amazon shuttle to the Amazon-owned (or rented) parking lot where your car is charges a lot of money. Once their car leaves the Amazon parking lot, then that is where your condition kicks in.
Probably exactly the same given that it's repeatedly been demonstrated that beyond being comfortable, salary is a really terrible motivator for job performance or job satisfaction.
BS.
I could fix your computer no matter the make; no matter whether it's a software or hardware problem. But my PhD and 20 years of experience in Industry & Academia will compel me to say, "No", no matter what pay rate you might offer.
It's neither strawman nor bullshit. If individuals are permitted to control their costs by selecting the lowest-priced goods and services available to them then why would a corporation not be permitted to do the same?
Ask any Irish friend you have about the "Penny Walls" in Ireland, and you'll have your answer.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not "Countless". Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually - a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats. So if it's really migratory birds you're so worried about, you'd better ditch your cellphone. And/or kill your cat.
Weak-sauce FUD, bro.
The national power distribution grid (lines, etc.) kills far more, but we don't tend to see those as critters eat them up.
Local solar and wind power do not require massive distribution networks.
And you cat citation doesn't help your case. 10,000x more birds are killed by cats than by solar (?!?) and wind? Can you provide a citation for that? I'd like to use it in shutting-up idiots in the future (if true).
That is, respectfully and in no insult to you, a bullshit policy. Following that logic a Police department could hire contract security and then disclaim any liability for brutality they inflict.
I'm afraid I misspoke. I agree with you completely, but was vague RE type of "duty". I meant only the legal one, and really should have prefaced the Comment with "By the laws of the US, ..." ("it was his duty to..."). My mistake. And it's not my policy; it's the Government's. All employees of the US Government must swear an oath of duty to protect the Nation, to uphold the Constitution, and so on."
Civic Duty? Moral Duty as a citizen of a society? Yes! Snowden (and co-workers) had moral and civic duties to blow the whistle, as several Replies have noted. Ed fulfilled those duties. I absolutely agree.
More clearly, my point was to highlight the distinction. Because Snowden didn't have to swear "The Oath" as a condition of employment, he was therefore not shielded by Federal Whistle-blower Protections, which apply to Federal employees, but not to Contractors. If a contractor rightly blows the whistle, he gets no special protections from retaliation by the malfeasors. Trust me––I've been there––no one cares––it's quite the opposite. (I know thanks to FOIA.) Snowden is a hero for what he did – and he is paying the price for it in his exile, rather than getting a Nobel Peace Prize.
(And yes, NSA folks were violating their Oath of duty as Federal Employees all over the place. Like, uh, when they were wire-tapping the personal cell phone of the leader of a close ally nation, Angele Merkel of Germany, and lied about this fact to their overseers in Congress. That caused a lot of damage to the nation when the news came out.)
Not bashing the ACA, but the pill popping medical culture that preceded the ACA. The ACA basically threw fuel (tax money) on that fire instead of fixing it to be more affordable.
A single-payer system, the solution to the problem you note, would have never made it through congress, unfortunately.
The U.S's continuing failure to provide affordable healthcare to a growing portion of it's population will turn our cities into breeding grounds for all manner of new and exciting infectious bacteria.
If "affordable" healthcare includes distributing antibiotics like tic-tacs to people whenever they whine about an infection, maybe we are avoiding the creation of new and exciting infectious bacteria by continuing to fail to provide access to anti-biotics...
It doesn't. It means access to the same health care providers that those insured through their workplace get.
And in any case, save your ACA-bashing for a week or two, which is when the widespread FUD attacks like yours will really come pouring out.
I signed the petition. An agency of my government was breaking the public trust, lying to legislators, and breaking the law. It was Mr. Snowden's duty to report this, and it is a travesty to take away his life for defending his country against itself.
It wasn't his duty, as he was a contractor. Contractors do not swear the Oath of Service to the US Government, although all of its direct employees are required to. That difference means that he is not shielded by whistle-blower laws.
But the numerous Federal employees in the know – I agree – had a duty to report on the illegal activities, but chose not to. None of them are in exile, nor hanging from the end of a rope, nor even had a finger shaken at them. Instead, they have been protected by their organization. Not a good precedent, but look at history and you'll see that it rhymes.
The guy deserves an apology.
And the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Yes, but note that Obama said, "... for the last time in my term as President ...", when honoring Joe Biden for a lifetime of public service.
I'd be happy with just a pardon for Snowden, as he deserves it, and that would allow him freedom to travel home. Withholding a pardon only prevents him from returning to the country whose citizens he was trying to protect, and forces him to remain living in a "non-ally" foreign nation.
A pardon is the only logical resolution––a lifetime of exile could alter the allegiance of any human.
I don't use Adobe anymore, PERIOD.
I kind of have to, using the CS6 Master Suite (about 1/2 of them – the heavies). I am stuck with my current-generation Mac, and will not upgrade past OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite.
Yes, Apple bought in to this forced upgrade cycle, and is in cahoots with Adobe to make everyone migrate to renting software, which I will not do.
A program is analogous to a recipe (for a computer). It is a set of instructions == a recipe. Come to my kitchen––I'll bake you some bread. Here, it will not cost me a membership fee to use the bread recipe I bought a copy of long ago. I paid for it already, and can use it forever without further charges. I have to use my kitchen, just like any program uses my computer to execute its instructions (recipe).
Best analogy describing software "subscriptions" that I've heard. AVOID.
Is this how far we've fallen? No more are we concerned with violations of an individual's privacy. Now we are more concerned with the rights of the violators.
Yes, we have fallen this far – especially judging from the responses to your Comment.
There are still droolers that don't get it, and they never will. Even if they are framed – through no fault of their own – for someone else's misdeeds. Nor even if they make a sarcastic remark that is misinterpreted by MS's spies (or the NSA) as somehow law-breaking, and they end up tangled in our lovely criminal court or even penal system.
"They "could literally view any customer's communications at any time.""
Wait. What?
It's always been that way. The deal is free email, etc. accounts for you, and in return the service provider spies on you, selling the details of your personal life to whoever it is that thinks they can profit from having or using it.
It's sold mostly to aggregators – who operate like the credit bureaus – but have few, if any, of those pesky regulations to rein them in when people apply their reports as if they were 100% accurate. You have no recourse if you find an error. Hundreds of companies have a "profile" on you. You have no means to discover who they are. . . or why you didn't get that job promotion that you were in line for. HR bought a copy of your profile from abcdwxyz.com, which is rife with errors, but HR people are stupid, and will read it as truth. Perhaps someone with a similar name has a felony, or worse the report incorrectly states it.
Why Microsoft does not make their spying abundantly clear will hopefully come back to bite them in the ass.
A memory chip is not a processor.
The *summary of* the article didn't say what the article did.
Nothing the summary says is close to what is true.
NO MEMORY UNIT WILL PERFORM CPU FUNCTIONS at less than 2 orders of magnitude worse (that's 1/100 performance/power) today.
There's no "discovery" here.
You're right. It was an ACHIEVEMENT, not a DISCOVERY.
Isn't this a 4-state memristor? Memristors can do computing, just as OR, NOR, and NOT gate circuits hard-wired can do computing. I am in the industry, but on the materials not device side, so feel free to correct me.
BTW, memristors were postulated in the 1950's. It completes the group of computing elements: resistor, capacitor, inductor, and then memristor. The last had not been demonstrated until a very few years ago.
iPhone 6 can already do that.
iPhone 4 can do it, too. It came out in mid-2010 – a long time ago for a cell phone.
I just ordered a 30-pin to VGA (Apple-branded) adapter from Other World Computing for $3.50 plus shipping, for a grand total under $8.
The free market gives us a gift every once in a while.
Apple has supported Bluetooth keyboards (and I think even mice) on iOS for like, ever. And you can do Lightning to HDMI, or use AirPlay for the video out, if you have an AirPlay compatible Monitor/TV or an AppleTV box handy.
Yes, iPhones have supported Bluetooth input devices forever. Lightning to VGA or DVI have also been possible forever. iPhone 6 certainly. If I had the adapter ($10-15), I'd try it with my iPhone 4 or GF's 5.
iPhone 6 can already do that. Just plug in a lightning-to-VGA adapter, and you are on the monitor. Add a Bluetooth keyboard. For mousing, just use the iPhone (or a Bluetooth track-pad). Most work can be done eyes-up, even without a mouse-and-pointer. AirPrint or other can be used for printing.
You would be running iOS, but that runs Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and loads of others. Microsoft Office is available for the iPhone, but you must "subscribe" to the software. Skip that and use Apple's Pages, etc., which can File/Open and File/Save As... with no troubles. No formatting-loss or funkiness. Files are mutually stored in iCloud (or some other cloud), and thus are shared dynamically between computer and iPhone.
I don't know why Apple didn't advertise this ability more broadly. They did for iPads, but not for iPhones... Who knows why?
It's really useful for giving presentations at conferences.
They swallow them, but they don't break them down, which means that when the cell dies (which it will), the material goes on a second journey and so on.
Maybe, and maybe not. Dead cells' guts leave the body through the lymph system, among other routes. I don't think that the lymph ducts have an activee endothelial layer that will lead to up-take of rods from an apoptosed cell.
It is a good question to ask, and to consider. (Any biochemists out there that can shed some light on this?)
I seem to once remember hearing another example of nanostructures finding their way into cells easily, and it didn't go well for the cell, in the longer run. I certainly hope they're doing extended life testing with this.
Most nano-particles don't transfect into cells (go actively into the cytoplasm itself). Generally, if there is cellular uptake, the nano-particles end up "in jail," trapped inside endosomes, and not actively in the cell's guts proper.
There are some materials that make for nice, rounded and non-cytotoxic nano-particles that can be functionalized and transfected into the cytoplasm. Such materials are the "Holy Grails" of drug delivery, cancer treatment, and diagnostics. I work on one of them...
Slashdot readers are technical people but are usually trained in the computer and engineering sciences. I'm a biochemist and I've been here since the beginning but I certainly do not come here for biological quality.
I perused the paper. It is in a good journal and it looks like some good work.
Single application question: how does phagocytosis of silicon nanowires differ in any significant way from good old run of the mill asbestos?
Answer: for those dreaming of a bioelectric interface I put forward that these silicon nanowires will cause cancer.
The authors do not address this and do not provide any experiment that would overcome this hurdle.
More specifically, you mean Mesothelioma and its relatives. Most cases are caused by asbestos, but only because we used it industrially and in our homes so widely. Broadly speaking, any sub-micron particles that (1) are anisotropic (sharp), and (2) that lack bio-solubility, will cause mesothelioma. The nano-particles act like little daggers that stay in your body forever, cutting back-and-forth as you move. Scar tissue builds up around them. Breathe, or in-take enough by other means, and it will happen. They're too small for the body to recognize as foreign, and are never ejected.
[CITATION: See work on nano-diamonds, immuno-gold, or III-V nano-particles. Cells do not spit them out like they do chemo drugs. . . which is why conjugating such particles with chemo drugs is such an attractive proposition.]
The list of materials that can do this goes on and on, but many are so rare that they're not reported. Talc, carbon, silicon carbide, olivine, and any number of exotic "new" materials that fit the above two criteria––all will cause mesothelioma, or a similar condition in other tissues.
The guy simply is unwilling to pay me what I am worth.
By definition you aren't worth that much if no one will pay it. Trust me, you have proven beelsebob's point many times over.
Doesn't the market define "worth" (or "value")? It is not an absolute value, like pi, but varies with varying circumstances.
that effectively no pay rate that you would be willing to offer would be high enough to entice me
So.. beyond being comfortable, salary is not a good motivator. You are proving beelsebob's point.
Wrong again. The guy simply is unwilling to pay me what I am worth.
Not everything is supply-side, you know.
I don't get it: you open the post claiming bullshit, then spend the rest of the post vehemently agreeing.
You have a PhD and 20 years industry experience so you expect a more interesting job that fixing computers no matter how well it pays. If that's not an example of salary being a poor motivator, then I don't know what is.
OK, so I framed my post in the wrong way, and worded it poorly. Let me put the same response another way:
I do fix computer, for free, but only for family. The pay rate that I would demand to fix your computer would be so high – think lawyer-level rates – that you would be unwilling to pay it. The result: Your computer is not fixed.
There. Same outcome, and still about salary, but the decision rests on the you (the employer), not on me.
If you read the article you'd see that's exactly how they paid informants.
I missed that. Thanks.
I wonder, however, if it could have been a lucrative way to fence stolen items? What %-of-value do pawn shops usually offer?
I don't get it: you open the post claiming bullshit, then spend the rest of the post vehemently agreeing.
You have a PhD and 20 years industry experience so you expect a more interesting job that fixing computers no matter how well it pays. If that's not an example of salary being a poor motivator, then I don't know what is.
OK, so I clearly did not phrase the post properly. How about this:
I do fix computers, for family and for free. But if you wanted me to fix your computer the hourly rate that I would demand –somewhere in lawyer-territory – would be so far out of the range that you (the employer) would be willing to pay, that effectively no pay rate that you would be willing to offer would be high enough to entice me.
It is the same retort, framed slightly differently. It puts the decision on the employer, not on the employee.
I used to work at the warehouse in the article. The car park is immediately outside the building. The shuttle bus is to the centre of town. You literally have to walk through the car park to get to the bus.
Well, that does change things then. Completely.
Thanks.
Yes, we should thank Amazon for allowing workers to sleep in tents.
Once an employee leaves Amazon's premises it is none of Amazon's damn business what they do or don't do. They have no right to "allow" or "prohibit" their employees from using, or not using, any sleeping arrangement.
Disclaimer: When I first moved to Silicon Valley, I lived in a van for two years.
That part about "leaving their premises" –– I think you missed something.
The Amazon shuttle to the Amazon-owned (or rented) parking lot where your car is charges a lot of money. Once their car leaves the Amazon parking lot, then that is where your condition kicks in.
Probably exactly the same given that it's repeatedly been demonstrated that beyond being comfortable, salary is a really terrible motivator for job performance or job satisfaction.
BS.
I could fix your computer no matter the make; no matter whether it's a software or hardware problem. But my PhD and 20 years of experience in Industry & Academia will compel me to say, "No", no matter what pay rate you might offer.
It's neither strawman nor bullshit. If individuals are permitted to control their costs by selecting the lowest-priced goods and services available to them then why would a corporation not be permitted to do the same?
Ask any Irish friend you have about the "Penny Walls" in Ireland, and you'll have your answer.