In a closed shop, you're right that you have to be part of the union in order to work there. That was the bit about "access to some employment opportunities you might not otherwise have".
My point is that nobody puts a gun to your head and says "join the union". (In other times and places, people did put guns to workers heads and say "don't join the union".) If you want to work as an electrician, you're going to end up as part of the IBEW, but nobody is forcing you to be an electrician.
The big exception is successful startups. Emphasis on the word "successful", because there are a lot of unsuccessful startups out there. And even then, you need to get in early.
One of the major flaws of corporate capitalism is that people who make a product are generally seen as less important (and thus less paid) than those who sell the product or tell other people to make or sell the product. It's exceedingly rare these days for someone to move from the proverbial factory floor to anything higher on the totem pole than the equivalent of senior foreman. In geek-land, those translate to techies' career path frequently blocked by de facto policy from getting past something like Senior Software Architect in a lot of corporations.
Precisely my point, and the reason for the scare quotes: so-called" moderates" in Congress and mainstream media consider that to be the reasonable centrist position, so the politicians who represent that view are taken seriously. Both Kucinich and Paul, by contrast, represent what the American people actually want, but are dismissed as whackjobs.
So by the media definitions, no, most Americans are not moderates.
I'm not saying in any way, shape, or form that the genocide of the American Indians was morally justifiable. What I am saying is that the problem was (and is) much bigger than the actions of Andrew Jackson.
It's the difference between genocide as a relatively quick and atypical affair (e.g. the Rwandan Genocide) and genocide as a longstanding act of national policy.
Except that your browser won't have to upgrade at all. Unless you run a really really old operating system, IPv6 will work with your system as is. There may be some configuration work to do, but that's it.
Well, to be fair, Jackson's policies towards American Indians (I'm using that term because that's what American Indian leaders in my area have told me to use) was in many ways just part of a continuing genocide committed by the British colonies and later the United States from 1650 or so to 1900 or so.
That said, Andrew Jackson's removal of the Cherokee was a demonstration that American Indians couldn't avoid their fate by attempting to assimilate into white society. Many of the Cherokee had adopted white lifestyles, with white-style homes, converting to Christianity, and participating in US business. It didn't help them, just like it didn't help to negotiate with the US government.
When an organization has been publicly demonized by a government, it's hard to avoid thinking that if it falls apart, it's due to the actions of that government.
One piece of why this explanation may be BS: If these volunteers wanted to continue working for the cause Wikileaks represents, but without Assange, they could fairly easily set up their own servers, see if Assange is interested in releasing the Wikileaks data to them, and even if not set up a forked project. If they're worried that it's become too autocratic, their forked project could be formally more democratic. These volunteers probably have the skills, experience, and cajones to make this sort of thing work. So not doing anything like this suggests that this is similar to a politician wanting to spend more time with his family.
At the same time, I've run voluntary organizations before. Volunteers come and go all the time, sometimes over policy disagreements. That's just the way it is.
My point here is that Kucinich and Paul agree on some things that are very different from what the so-called "moderates" believe in. For instance, both of them thought the US had no business attacking Iraq or Afghanistan, and now favor getting the heck out of there. But the "moderate" position is to keep 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely to prevent foreign interference (seriously, that's the stated purpose of those troops).
The downside for those of us who live and work near the most likely target, the village of Linndale, OH, is that they're already patrolling their few thousand feet worth of city streets like crazy looking for anyone they can ticket for any minor infraction.
Professional politicians ONLY serve the Almighty State, not the people.
Bullshit. Professional politicians typically only serve themselves. If that happens to help out the Almighty State, then great, but for the most part they're happy so long as the bribes keep flowing.
The problem is, relative to the average American, both of those guys are principled *whackjobs*.
Here's the thing: When you compare the public's stated positions on various issues, you generally get a cross between Kucinich and Paul. Seriously. Ask 'em about health care, they'll say that they'd really like a choice of a publicly run option, which is exactly what Kucinich has been proposing for years. Ask 'em about military spending, and Paul and Kucinich and the public all have something in common. Ask 'em about government regulation of private use of land, and you'll get something not dissimilar to Paul's stance on that issue.
But whether they're whackjobs or not, they're regularly portrayed as whackjobs. The example I regularly go back to: The only significant airtime Kucinich got in most of the Democratic presidential debates was getting asked whether he saw a UFO.
Well, to get a proper explanation of 'white holes', we really need to go to the experts:
Cat: So, what is it? Kryten: I've never seen one before - no one has - but I'm guessing it's a white hole. Rimmer: A *white* hole? Kryten: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A black hole sucks time and matter out of the Universe; a white hole returns it. Lister: So, that thing's spewing time... back into the Universe? Kryten: Precisely. That's why we're experiencing these curious time phenomena on board. Cat: So, what is it? Kryten: I've never seen one before - no one has - but I'm guessing it's a white hole. Rimmer: A *white* hole? Kryten: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A black hole sucks time and matter out of the Universe; a white hole returns it. Lister: So, that thing's spewing time... back into the Universe? Kryten: Precisely. That's why we're experiencing these curious time phenomena on board. Lister: What time phenomena? Kryten: Like just then, when time repeated itself. Cat: So, what is it? [Kryten, Rimmer, and Lister stare at Cat] Cat: Only joking.
Actually, they probably aren't after American citizens specifically, just anybody who reports information that's inconvenient to the US government. For example, Wikileaks.
The good news is that civil liberties groups (including the ACLU and EPIC) continue to go after the Obama administration for doing the same things the Bush administration did. The bad news is that they're having about the same level of success.
They'll have a tough time proving that "pod" is a valid trademark when it's been a part of the English language for several centuries before the existance of anything remotely resembling a portable recorded music player. They'll also have a tough time arguing that "pod" is seen as equivalent to "iPod", regardless of the context. And lastly, they'll need to explain why if "pod" is a trademark they haven't gone after all those obviously infringing gardening suppliers with their seed pods, or the PODS moving equipment company, or the Pipeline Open Data Standard (code for managing oil and gas lines), or the gazillions of other uses of the word that they've failed to defend.
My guess is there's another reason for this suit, perhaps that the defendant refused to sell an invention of his to Apple.
Whether "the citizen" gets squashed here depends a lot on which citizens you're talking about.
Union members choose whether or not to be in the union. There are benefits and costs to being in the union. The benefit is that you get the collective bargaining agreement of the union, access to some employment opportunities you might not otherwise have, and an organization that will stick up for you if management starts to abuse you. The cost is the dues, the need to follow the union contract on your end, and the cost of following the union's directives to prevent management from abusing you or another member of the union. In many but not all cases, being unionized is very good for the members of the union.
Now, you may think that the extra costs associated with hiring union workers drive up the price of whatever those union workers make. However, smaller productions that don't use union workers generally don't end up with prices (via tickets, DVDs, etc) significantly different than the unionized Hollywood productions. So the customer doesn't really get squashed either.
The only people who get squashed, then, are the managements of companies that form the MPAA. I'm ok with that.
Well, let's say you're a woman working as a software developer, and you've put in some long hours and built a really good library that will make your software system much more solid, and when you go to show it off to your coworkers it's obvious that what they're thinking about (or worse, saying) is "nice rack", not "nice code". Can you see why that might be seen as more than a bit demeaning? And yes, many women experience that sort of thing every day.
In addition, by being judged on appearance, women are in a battle against time that they know they will lose eventually. Even the beautiful 20-somethings know that they will end up a frumpy 50-something. Men, on the other hand, tend to get judged much more on wealth and power, and as such are generally judged better over time, rather than worse.
I for one am wary of any coworker, regardless of gender, who has not demonstrated an ability to do their job. Male or female or something else doesn't matter: that person's failings can and will screw up my life by either forcing me to take up the slack or pinning the blame on me for their problems. And as a male geek, pandering to me doesn't get you off the hook.
And you're right that a fair number of companies are fine with people who are incompetent at their jobs. Read The Peter Principle, which has a lot on the subject of why they tolerate stupidity and failure.
One workshop that tried to help genders understand each other better did these exercises: - First, they got all the men in the room to line up and had the women rate them on their appearance, to teach guys that women feel constantly judged by how they look no matter what the context and give them a chance to see what that feels like. - Second, they got the women in the room to go up to a stranger and ask them out, to get a feeling for what men go through every time they initiate a relationship.
What's particularly sad is the number of women who've been taught by their moms or Cosmopolitan and the like that when they like a man they shouldn't ask him out, but should somehow signal to him that they want him to ask her out. This leaves the women frustrated because the men didn't pick up their signals, and leaves the men frustrated because they can't figure out when a woman wants to make something happen.
Slashdot Mirror
In a closed shop, you're right that you have to be part of the union in order to work there. That was the bit about "access to some employment opportunities you might not otherwise have".
My point is that nobody puts a gun to your head and says "join the union". (In other times and places, people did put guns to workers heads and say "don't join the union".) If you want to work as an electrician, you're going to end up as part of the IBEW, but nobody is forcing you to be an electrician.
The big exception is successful startups. Emphasis on the word "successful", because there are a lot of unsuccessful startups out there. And even then, you need to get in early.
One of the major flaws of corporate capitalism is that people who make a product are generally seen as less important (and thus less paid) than those who sell the product or tell other people to make or sell the product. It's exceedingly rare these days for someone to move from the proverbial factory floor to anything higher on the totem pole than the equivalent of senior foreman. In geek-land, those translate to techies' career path frequently blocked by de facto policy from getting past something like Senior Software Architect in a lot of corporations.
That sounds like it would be worthy of at least an honorable mention for a Darwin Award.
Precisely my point, and the reason for the scare quotes: so-called" moderates" in Congress and mainstream media consider that to be the reasonable centrist position, so the politicians who represent that view are taken seriously. Both Kucinich and Paul, by contrast, represent what the American people actually want, but are dismissed as whackjobs.
So by the media definitions, no, most Americans are not moderates.
I'm not saying in any way, shape, or form that the genocide of the American Indians was morally justifiable. What I am saying is that the problem was (and is) much bigger than the actions of Andrew Jackson.
It's the difference between genocide as a relatively quick and atypical affair (e.g. the Rwandan Genocide) and genocide as a longstanding act of national policy.
Except that your browser won't have to upgrade at all. Unless you run a really really old operating system, IPv6 will work with your system as is. There may be some configuration work to do, but that's it.
Well, to be fair, Jackson's policies towards American Indians (I'm using that term because that's what American Indian leaders in my area have told me to use) was in many ways just part of a continuing genocide committed by the British colonies and later the United States from 1650 or so to 1900 or so.
That said, Andrew Jackson's removal of the Cherokee was a demonstration that American Indians couldn't avoid their fate by attempting to assimilate into white society. Many of the Cherokee had adopted white lifestyles, with white-style homes, converting to Christianity, and participating in US business. It didn't help them, just like it didn't help to negotiate with the US government.
If that principle is important to you, consider PostGres, which is much less tied to specific companies.
Why don't they put up a giant sign labeled "Rob This Machine"?
When an organization has been publicly demonized by a government, it's hard to avoid thinking that if it falls apart, it's due to the actions of that government.
One piece of why this explanation may be BS: If these volunteers wanted to continue working for the cause Wikileaks represents, but without Assange, they could fairly easily set up their own servers, see if Assange is interested in releasing the Wikileaks data to them, and even if not set up a forked project. If they're worried that it's become too autocratic, their forked project could be formally more democratic. These volunteers probably have the skills, experience, and cajones to make this sort of thing work. So not doing anything like this suggests that this is similar to a politician wanting to spend more time with his family.
At the same time, I've run voluntary organizations before. Volunteers come and go all the time, sometimes over policy disagreements. That's just the way it is.
My point here is that Kucinich and Paul agree on some things that are very different from what the so-called "moderates" believe in. For instance, both of them thought the US had no business attacking Iraq or Afghanistan, and now favor getting the heck out of there. But the "moderate" position is to keep 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely to prevent foreign interference (seriously, that's the stated purpose of those troops).
No, Scalia wouldn't write something that boneheaded. This opinion would be assigned to Clarence Thomas.
Not only that, it should be pointed out that the public nature of a criminal trial is enshrined in Sixth Amendment.
The downside for those of us who live and work near the most likely target, the village of Linndale, OH, is that they're already patrolling their few thousand feet worth of city streets like crazy looking for anyone they can ticket for any minor infraction.
Professional politicians ONLY serve the Almighty State, not the people.
Bullshit. Professional politicians typically only serve themselves. If that happens to help out the Almighty State, then great, but for the most part they're happy so long as the bribes keep flowing.
The problem is, relative to the average American, both of those guys are principled *whackjobs*.
Here's the thing: When you compare the public's stated positions on various issues, you generally get a cross between Kucinich and Paul. Seriously. Ask 'em about health care, they'll say that they'd really like a choice of a publicly run option, which is exactly what Kucinich has been proposing for years. Ask 'em about military spending, and Paul and Kucinich and the public all have something in common. Ask 'em about government regulation of private use of land, and you'll get something not dissimilar to Paul's stance on that issue.
But whether they're whackjobs or not, they're regularly portrayed as whackjobs. The example I regularly go back to: The only significant airtime Kucinich got in most of the Democratic presidential debates was getting asked whether he saw a UFO.
either he doesn't know what he's saying (very possible), or he's lost his mind.
Option number 3, put forward by Jesse Ventura of all people: Obama's not calling the shots when it comes to issues around the three-letter agencies.
Well, to get a proper explanation of 'white holes', we really need to go to the experts:
Cat: So, what is it? ... back into the Universe? ... back into the Universe?
Kryten: I've never seen one before - no one has - but I'm guessing it's a white hole.
Rimmer: A *white* hole?
Kryten: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A black hole sucks time and matter out of the Universe; a white hole returns it.
Lister: So, that thing's spewing time
Kryten: Precisely. That's why we're experiencing these curious time phenomena on board.
Cat: So, what is it?
Kryten: I've never seen one before - no one has - but I'm guessing it's a white hole.
Rimmer: A *white* hole?
Kryten: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A black hole sucks time and matter out of the Universe; a white hole returns it.
Lister: So, that thing's spewing time
Kryten: Precisely. That's why we're experiencing these curious time phenomena on board.
Lister: What time phenomena?
Kryten: Like just then, when time repeated itself.
Cat: So, what is it?
[Kryten, Rimmer, and Lister stare at Cat]
Cat: Only joking.
Actually, they probably aren't after American citizens specifically, just anybody who reports information that's inconvenient to the US government. For example, Wikileaks.
The good news is that civil liberties groups (including the ACLU and EPIC) continue to go after the Obama administration for doing the same things the Bush administration did. The bad news is that they're having about the same level of success.
I'll give them Mac, but what does that mean for Shakespeare's Macbeth?
Lay off, Macduff, I've had enough!
They'll have a tough time proving that "pod" is a valid trademark when it's been a part of the English language for several centuries before the existance of anything remotely resembling a portable recorded music player. They'll also have a tough time arguing that "pod" is seen as equivalent to "iPod", regardless of the context. And lastly, they'll need to explain why if "pod" is a trademark they haven't gone after all those obviously infringing gardening suppliers with their seed pods, or the PODS moving equipment company, or the Pipeline Open Data Standard (code for managing oil and gas lines), or the gazillions of other uses of the word that they've failed to defend.
My guess is there's another reason for this suit, perhaps that the defendant refused to sell an invention of his to Apple.
Whether "the citizen" gets squashed here depends a lot on which citizens you're talking about.
Union members choose whether or not to be in the union. There are benefits and costs to being in the union. The benefit is that you get the collective bargaining agreement of the union, access to some employment opportunities you might not otherwise have, and an organization that will stick up for you if management starts to abuse you. The cost is the dues, the need to follow the union contract on your end, and the cost of following the union's directives to prevent management from abusing you or another member of the union. In many but not all cases, being unionized is very good for the members of the union.
Now, you may think that the extra costs associated with hiring union workers drive up the price of whatever those union workers make. However, smaller productions that don't use union workers generally don't end up with prices (via tickets, DVDs, etc) significantly different than the unionized Hollywood productions. So the customer doesn't really get squashed either.
The only people who get squashed, then, are the managements of companies that form the MPAA. I'm ok with that.
So what?
Well, let's say you're a woman working as a software developer, and you've put in some long hours and built a really good library that will make your software system much more solid, and when you go to show it off to your coworkers it's obvious that what they're thinking about (or worse, saying) is "nice rack", not "nice code". Can you see why that might be seen as more than a bit demeaning? And yes, many women experience that sort of thing every day.
In addition, by being judged on appearance, women are in a battle against time that they know they will lose eventually. Even the beautiful 20-somethings know that they will end up a frumpy 50-something. Men, on the other hand, tend to get judged much more on wealth and power, and as such are generally judged better over time, rather than worse.
I for one am wary of any coworker, regardless of gender, who has not demonstrated an ability to do their job. Male or female or something else doesn't matter: that person's failings can and will screw up my life by either forcing me to take up the slack or pinning the blame on me for their problems. And as a male geek, pandering to me doesn't get you off the hook.
And you're right that a fair number of companies are fine with people who are incompetent at their jobs. Read The Peter Principle, which has a lot on the subject of why they tolerate stupidity and failure.
There are downsides to both gender roles.
One workshop that tried to help genders understand each other better did these exercises:
- First, they got all the men in the room to line up and had the women rate them on their appearance, to teach guys that women feel constantly judged by how they look no matter what the context and give them a chance to see what that feels like.
- Second, they got the women in the room to go up to a stranger and ask them out, to get a feeling for what men go through every time they initiate a relationship.
What's particularly sad is the number of women who've been taught by their moms or Cosmopolitan and the like that when they like a man they shouldn't ask him out, but should somehow signal to him that they want him to ask her out. This leaves the women frustrated because the men didn't pick up their signals, and leaves the men frustrated because they can't figure out when a woman wants to make something happen.