Raising the minimum wage is usually stupid. Tell me where the money comes from and you'll see why.
Consider the typical business that pays min wage and to whom they pay it.
Take fast food for instance. If you raise prices to cover the increased costs you suddenly have you lose customers (who are NOT making more for the most part and thus won't PAY more) and thus make less money to pay wages with.
Your only other option is to get the same amount of work per $ spent.
Lowering profits is not much of option, not only are publicly traded companies REQUIRED to maximize profit, but in some cases the margin is small enough that a significant upswing in costs is killer.
What is really brain-dead is how my state did it, they created a feed-back loop, fortunately a loose open loop that other factors can swamp the feedback on.
I'd say big, mind numbingly huge, unbelievably large. That said relativity can help a bit. go fast enough and it only takes a short time from the perspective of the travelers.
And with a bussard ramjet the whole universe is a sea of fuel.
Actually many(most?) have laws that require electors to vote in accord with the majority vote of the state that sends them. IIRC at least one elector has gotten fined for not doing so in the past.
But yeah, most people seem to think it's a direct vote.
The electoral college is part of the 'representative' government, and in this case to represent the state, not the individuals. Remember that they are called states and not provinces or counties or some other name. The original thinking was of a confederation of mostly sovereign states. Much of this thinking still persisted when the articles had to be scrapped and replaced with a stronger central government embodied in the constitution.
It is the states' legislatures' jobs to select them. That the method most (not all) states have chosen is is based on who gets the most votes in the states is why most people think they're actually voting for the President.
So even with apparent disparities in popular vs electoral votes, you still have a more direct voice than originally intended.
The original intent was for the state's legislatures to pick some smart,honest people to go over the qualifications and such of the candidates and select someone for the office of president.
This must be a funny (once? always?, I lack data on Pak humor) as it's obvious even h. sap isn't clever enough in breeder stage to realize that H. Erectus derived Pak would be anticipated and eliminated by H. Sap Sap Pak.
Once a H. Sapiens derived Pak is posited the real purpose and reason for A.R.M. as well as it's indirect control mechanisms become blatantly obvious to any fully sentient entity. Indeed such an organization is required by the impetus inherent the genetic programing of a Pak in the political climate then existing as the best available mechanism for protecting the bloodline. Attempts to safely isolate would likely draw excess attention from the overly paranoid government intelligence agencies of the time and would have a dangerously low genetic pool after so few generation in any event.
Of course mere H. Sap. Sap lacks full sentience, but don't tell them it could spoil many funny always jokes.
That might explain the problems thier having locally. When I worked for Wendy's in the early 90's they MEANT old fashioned in the worst way sometimes.
I can still remember pulling everyone's time-card (yes, mechanically stamped time cards!) and calculating labor manually, manually figuring out food usuage based on LONG tape printouts from each register.
And if you wanted to figure these out with a calculator it wouldn't be with one the company provided (though GM's usually bought a few out of pocket for a buck each or so).
A microwave would be an odd sight in a wendy's to me. Indoor plumbing was probably only due to health regs.
Of course the upsides were things like fresh (never frozen) meat and simular food quality requirements. Looks like after the founder passed away things changed and not all for the good.
I believe this is also what happened to Wallmart, once Sam Walton died the company went to crap, just ask any employee who survived the transition.
It's not so much that they have the 'right' to profit from your expression, it's that bar congress excersizing it's right to limit that to you, you have no right to stop them.
Also one must consider the inherent conflict between the right to free expression and the limited(in theory at least) limited monopoly granted in copyright laws. Fair use likely results in part from this conflict.
The reason copyright is not on the same plane as property rights is because ideas and expressions are not naturally limited. If someone give you a car they no longer have that car, but they can give you an idea and yet still keep it for themselves. THIS is why so many are so vocal about copyright infringement NOT being theft.
Intell can afford to go lower, they have more $$ and can sustain smaller proffits or even losses for longer and the other benifits of being the larger company play in.
Also in part because the CPU has to go into a motherboard. If the chip is $60 less but the motherboard is $120 more the amd solution is cheaper perfomance wise. Once Intell gets supply up on the motherboards this factor fades fairly quick however.
Not really responding to anyone in specific, but this seemed a resonable place to bring this up.
You need a motherboard for these cpu's and really should consider the cost of that as well, much else can be retained from the system being upgraded, but not Mb's and in many cases the ram.
Last I heard Intell wasn't shipping to meet demand on MB's such that what you save in cpu cost you loose in MB cost.
This will probablly change for the better, but with the rate at which changes are comming down the pike it might just be best to wait a few months till things settle a bit and the various 'issues' are all discovered and the better boards and cpu's are more clearly identified.
Pretty much, IIRC he said he understood the reasons for the change and a few things about the difference in what was thought possible almost 4 decades ago (there's a good one for you, comic years vs real years).
Funny you juxtapose The Civil War with comics and obsesion. I got some of my first comics from a neighbor who got rid of them so he could have more room for his civil war collection.
Last I heard (about 10-15 years ago iirc) he was making a decent living as selling premade ammo for civil war era guns and remakes mail order and had done a bit in a pbs movie/documentary/whatever about some battle or some such. More than an extra, less than a true bit part.
I believe Niven wrote that before DC had it's big re-write history ("crises on infinite earths) party in the late eighties. Before then superman was strong enough to push the moon around, aftwards he's quite a bit weaker.
Also all his strength came from being a high-g evolved human and thus the baby would likely share the genes responsible (dunno if strength would be one parent or the other or mix for inheritance).
Of course the assumption is that since what shows to public looks like us then what we can't see is the same including genetics, etc.
Why is everything assumed to be a tradeoff, or subject to some sort of cosmic balance or fairness.
Sometimes the very rich are also happy, smart, beautifull, wonderfull people. Sometimes the poor are ugly idiot assholes who desrve worse than thier short miserable lives.
Life aint fair and sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too.
There is a considerable argument that part of a jury's job IS to judge the law. What is the point of jury elsewise? Especially a jury of one's peers.
Partly a jurry is to make shure no ones is being rail-roaded, but then any jury of random citizens could serve that function, but a jury of peers can see things in context of the defendant to better judge if even applying the law under consideration makes sense.
Remeber the system here (In the US) is about protecting the innocent first and formost, thus the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases, the strict rules that eliminate evidence for the slightest taint of impropriety, etc.
I don't really think I'm giving a proper explanation of the arguments involved for jury nullification here as It's not one my 'issues' of intrest, I suggest you do a bit of looking around on the net for much better explanations of why many feel the jury has a duty beyond aplying the law.
Actually if someone was planning on building a large (for some deffinitions of large) orbitall colony would probably pay a nice sum for your orbiting fertilizer.
In lateral agreement with you folks I would like to point out that almost all the things that currently get genes past on most successfully are NOT our favorite survival traits such as intelligence (not needed to pose scantilly clad or collect a welfare check) or great health or common sense or good child-rearing instincts. Think of everyone you know or know of with lots of children or who is highly desirable to the opposite sex.
Scarry isn't it. You get redneck drunks and professional welfare mothers and vapid pop stars and all sorts frightning 'people'.
Yep, polite usually works, especially if there's simply a mistake or misunderstanding. In fact even when the customer's problem is thier misunderstanding or thier only telling me to let management know and don't want anything I'll often do SOMETHING for the nice ones, even if it's bending the rules.
One of my basic rules is kiss the customer's ass as long as he isn't being one despite your best efforts calm him down.
I don't have a high endurance myself for bad customer service, but I handle it as politely as I can when I'm the victim.
When the poor service is caused by an employee of mine I found out why and eigther fix thier lack of understanding or on rare occasions thier poor choice in jobs.
Rude asshats come across to me as eigther trying to game the system for something free (occasioanlly rud bully behaviour gets the scammer somthing out a teen or early twenties person through intimidation). Or someone trying take a bad day out on me, or a complete idiot angry over THIER OWN failure to understand the written word or use common sense.
In that case I'm on your side. Customers (and I used that term loosly) that get rude and abusive when simple politeness and not expecting a 16 year old kid to make mangerial decisions on behalf of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate tick me off, but not as much people who screw over honest customers and at least try to provide decent customer service make me madder.
If you are nice and polite (NOT trying to imply otherwise) and just using polite words to wrap an attitude in then your odds of some teen age kid 'getting even' go way way down.
And don't think I condone the kid's that do this sort of thing, if I'm thier boss and catch them at it they are in trouble, or fired.
Actually you should have gotten ahold of someone in management there. And probably filled out the form. That's not just very bad service, he's almost certainly NOT allowed to provide YOU a ladder, that's a huge liability risk that I would be suprised wouldn't get him in deep trouble. So is just walking off and not providing you a cart of some sort.
If he'd done his job he'd have A)NOT chased off a potential customer who just told his story to HOW many people, and B)not risked you falling and worst case got BB slapped with a wrongfull death suit.
The cashier really couldn't have done anything significant about it except offer you the complaint form and or get a manager. Though it's almost always a good idea to go ahead and let the customer vent first.
When I was about 18 I worked at a dine in place that had a neat trick for dealing with people who would come in last minute.
The key was to always be polite as hell to them (make them like you and eager to keep you happy works both ways!).
They would also be seated at a window table that coincidently was under a neon open sign. They would get full polite service and attention, but as soon everything was pretty much cleaned up and we were just waiting for them to be done so we could finish thier server would go over and very politely excuse herself to reach past them to pull the cord that turned it off.
BIG CLUE HERE, nobody wants customers that are big assholes. An asshole that says "I'm never comming here again" gets a sigh of relief and a mental 'good riddence' rather than an appology.
Slashdot Mirror
Raising the minimum wage is usually stupid.
Tell me where the money comes from and you'll see why.
Consider the typical business that pays min wage and
to whom they pay it.
Take fast food for instance. If you raise prices to cover
the increased costs you suddenly have you lose customers
(who are NOT making more for the most part and thus won't PAY more)
and thus make less money to pay wages with.
Your only other option is to get the same amount of work per $
spent.
Lowering profits is not much of option, not only are publicly traded companies REQUIRED to maximize profit, but in some cases the margin is small enough that a significant upswing in costs is killer.
What is really brain-dead is how my state did it, they created a feed-back loop, fortunately a loose open loop that other factors can swamp the feedback on.
Mycroft
I'd say big, mind numbingly huge, unbelievably large.
That said relativity can help a bit. go fast enough and it only takes a short time from the perspective of the travelers.
And with a bussard ramjet the whole universe is a sea of fuel.
Mycroft
Actually many(most?) have laws that require electors to vote in accord with the majority vote of the state that sends them. IIRC at least one elector has gotten fined for not doing so in the past.
But yeah, most people seem to think it's a direct vote.
Mycroft
The electoral college is part of the 'representative' government, and in this case to represent the state, not the individuals. Remember that they are called states and not provinces or counties or some other name. The original thinking was of a confederation of mostly sovereign states. Much of this thinking still persisted when the articles had to be scrapped and replaced with a stronger central government embodied in the constitution.
It is the states' legislatures' jobs to select them. That the method most (not all) states have chosen is is based on who gets the most votes in the states is why most people think they're actually voting for the President.
So even with apparent disparities in popular vs electoral votes, you still have a more direct voice than originally intended.
The original intent was for the state's legislatures to pick some smart,honest people to go over the qualifications and such of the candidates and select someone for the office of president.
Mycroft
FWIW "Arms" in the second amendment refers to "...every sword of the soldier, however terrible." according to the writer.
Mycroft
This must be a funny (once? always?, I lack data on Pak humor) as it's obvious even h. sap isn't clever enough in breeder stage to realize that H. Erectus derived Pak would be anticipated and eliminated by H. Sap Sap Pak.
Once a H. Sapiens derived Pak is posited the real purpose and reason for A.R.M. as well as it's indirect control mechanisms become blatantly obvious to any fully sentient entity. Indeed such an organization is required by the impetus inherent the genetic programing of a Pak in the political climate then existing as the best available mechanism for protecting the bloodline. Attempts to safely isolate would likely draw excess attention from the overly paranoid government intelligence agencies of the time and would have a dangerously low genetic pool after so few generation in any event.
Of course mere H. Sap. Sap lacks full sentience, but don't tell them it could spoil many funny always jokes.
Mycroft
That might explain the problems thier having locally.
When I worked for Wendy's in the early 90's they MEANT old fashioned in the worst way sometimes.
I can still remember pulling everyone's time-card (yes, mechanically stamped time cards!) and calculating labor manually, manually figuring out food usuage based on LONG tape printouts from each register.
And if you wanted to figure these out with a calculator it wouldn't be with one the company provided (though GM's usually bought a few out of pocket for a buck each or so).
A microwave would be an odd sight in a wendy's to me. Indoor plumbing was probably only due to health regs.
Of course the upsides were things like fresh (never frozen) meat and simular food quality requirements. Looks like after the founder passed away things changed and not all for the good.
I believe this is also what happened to Wallmart, once Sam Walton died the company went to crap, just ask any employee who survived the transition.
Mycroft
It's not so much that they have the 'right' to profit from your expression, it's that bar congress excersizing it's right to limit that to you, you have no right to stop them.
Also one must consider the inherent conflict between the right to free expression and the limited(in theory at least) limited monopoly granted in copyright laws. Fair use likely results in part from this conflict.
The reason copyright is not on the same plane as property rights is because ideas and expressions are not naturally limited. If someone give you a car they no longer have that car, but they can give you an idea and yet still keep it for themselves. THIS is why so many are so vocal about copyright infringement NOT being theft.
Mycroft
Intell can afford to go lower, they have more $$ and can sustain smaller proffits or even losses for longer and the other benifits of being the larger company play in.
Also in part because the CPU has to go into a motherboard. If the chip is $60 less but the motherboard is $120 more the amd solution is cheaper perfomance wise. Once Intell gets supply up on the motherboards this factor fades fairly quick however.
Mycroft
Not really responding to anyone in specific, but this seemed a resonable place to bring this up.
You need a motherboard for these cpu's and really should consider the cost of that as well, much else can be retained from the system being upgraded, but not Mb's and in many cases the ram.
Last I heard Intell wasn't shipping to meet demand on MB's such that what you save in cpu cost you loose in MB cost.
This will probablly change for the better, but with the rate at which changes are comming down the pike it might just be best to wait a few months till things settle a bit and the various 'issues' are all discovered and the better boards and cpu's are more clearly identified.
Mycroft
Shouldn't that be:
Doctor Who, I'll explain earlier....
Or was the joke to subtle for me.
Mycroft
Pretty much, IIRC he said he understood the reasons for the change and a few things about the difference in what was thought possible almost 4 decades ago (there's a good one for you, comic years vs real years).
Mycroft
Funny you juxtapose The Civil War with comics and obsesion. I got some of my first comics from a neighbor who got rid of them so he could have more room for his civil war collection.
Last I heard (about 10-15 years ago iirc) he was making a decent living as selling premade ammo for civil war era guns and remakes mail order and had done a bit in a pbs movie/documentary/whatever about some battle or some such. More than an extra, less than a true bit part.
Mycroft
I believe Niven wrote that before DC had it's big re-write history ("crises on infinite earths) party in the late eighties. Before then superman was strong enough to push the moon around, aftwards he's quite a bit weaker.
Also all his strength came from being a high-g evolved human and thus the baby would likely share the genes responsible (dunno if strength would be one parent or the other or mix for inheritance).
Of course the assumption is that since what shows to public looks like us then what we can't see is the same including genetics, etc.
Mycroft
How about BOTH quality and quantity.
Why is everything assumed to be a tradeoff, or subject to some sort of cosmic balance or fairness.
Sometimes the very rich are also happy, smart, beautifull, wonderfull people.
Sometimes the poor are ugly idiot assholes who desrve worse than thier short miserable lives.
Life aint fair and sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too.
Mycroft
There is a considerable argument that part of a jury's job IS to judge the law.
What is the point of jury elsewise? Especially a jury of one's peers.
Partly a jurry is to make shure no ones is being rail-roaded, but then any jury of random citizens could serve that function, but a jury of peers can see things in context of the defendant to better judge if even applying the law under consideration makes sense.
Remeber the system here (In the US) is about protecting the innocent first and formost, thus the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases, the strict rules that eliminate evidence for the slightest taint of impropriety, etc.
I don't really think I'm giving a proper explanation of the arguments involved for jury nullification here as It's not one my 'issues' of intrest, I suggest you do a bit of looking around on the net for much better explanations of why many feel the jury has a duty beyond aplying the law.
Mycroft
Actually if someone was planning on building a large (for some deffinitions of large) orbitall colony would probably pay a nice sum for your orbiting fertilizer.
Mycroft
In lateral agreement with you folks I would like to point out that almost all the things that currently get genes past on most successfully are NOT our favorite survival traits such as intelligence (not needed to pose scantilly clad or collect a welfare check) or great health or common sense or good child-rearing instincts. Think of everyone you know or know of with lots of children or who is highly desirable to the opposite sex.
Scarry isn't it. You get redneck drunks and professional welfare mothers and vapid pop stars and all sorts frightning 'people'.
Mycroft
Yep, polite usually works, especially if there's simply a mistake or misunderstanding. In fact even when the customer's problem is thier misunderstanding or thier only telling me to let management know and don't want anything I'll often do SOMETHING for the nice ones, even if it's bending the rules.
One of my basic rules is kiss the customer's ass as long as he isn't being one despite your best efforts calm him down.
I don't have a high endurance myself for bad customer service, but I handle it as politely as I can when I'm the victim.
When the poor service is caused by an employee of mine I found out why and eigther fix thier lack of understanding or on rare occasions thier poor choice in jobs.
Rude asshats come across to me as eigther trying to game the system for something free (occasioanlly rud bully behaviour gets the scammer somthing out a teen or early twenties person through intimidation). Or someone trying take a bad day out on me, or a complete idiot angry over THIER OWN failure to understand the written word or use common sense.
Mycroft
Congrats you just invented the time-share! (they suck too by most acounts)
Mycroft
In that case I'm on your side.
Customers (and I used that term loosly) that get rude and abusive when simple politeness and not expecting a 16 year old kid to make mangerial decisions on behalf of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate tick me off, but not as much people who screw over honest customers and at least try to provide decent customer service make me madder.
Mycroft
If you are nice and polite (NOT trying to imply otherwise) and just using polite words to wrap an attitude in then your odds of some teen age kid 'getting even' go way way down.
And don't think I condone the kid's that do this sort of thing, if I'm thier boss and catch them at it they are in trouble, or fired.
Mycroft
Actually you should have gotten ahold of someone in management there. And probably filled out the form.
That's not just very bad service, he's almost certainly NOT allowed to provide YOU a ladder, that's a huge liability risk that I would be suprised wouldn't get him in deep trouble. So is just walking off and not providing you a cart of some sort.
If he'd done his job he'd have A)NOT chased off a potential customer who just told his story to HOW many people, and B)not risked you falling and worst case got BB slapped with a wrongfull death suit.
The cashier really couldn't have done anything significant about it except offer you the complaint form and or get a manager. Though it's almost always a good idea to go ahead and let the customer vent first.
Mycroft
When I was about 18 I worked at a dine in place that had a neat trick for dealing with people who would come in last minute.
The key was to always be polite as hell to them (make them like you and eager to keep you happy works both ways!).
They would also be seated at a window table that coincidently was under a neon open sign. They would get full polite service and attention, but as soon everything was pretty much cleaned up and we were just waiting for them to be done so we could finish thier server would go over and very politely excuse herself to reach past them to pull the cord that turned it off.
Mycroft
BIG CLUE HERE, nobody wants customers that are big assholes.
An asshole that says "I'm never comming here again" gets a sigh of relief and a mental 'good riddence' rather than an appology.
Mycroft