Point 1... Attempting to curb spending by cutting taxes is the most idiotic thing ever. Why? It doesn't work. Captitalism allows you to mortgage your future via debt so people will just borrow more.
Actually, one of the ways we might avoid the cost of a national single-payer health system is that the money isn't there for it. Look at what Dick Gephart is pushing in his campaign if you don't believe me. The fact is that the deficit stalking horse gives cover to moderate democrats to run from their party brethren on social spending.
The alternative, of course, is cutting spending by cutting spending. Politically, it just doesn't work. Public choice theory (James Q. Wilson, et al) tells us this pretty conclusively.
I don't want to even go into point #2... I just love how economists, who are mostly capitalists, ignore govt income and love to concentrate on GDP.
You are confusing capitalism with representative democracy. Therein lies the source of your confusion. Government spending is not so much a function of capitalism as it is of the political will of the majority of voters and corporate contributors. Let your cynicism dictate your views on who has the most influence, of course.
At the end of the day, GDP is not what is going to pay the debt--it will be govt income.
Wrong. At the end of the day, the debt will be paid off by dollars. This may or may not have any relation to GDP at that time.
To illustrate my point, consider this hypothetical example. Let's say the govt shrinks and becomes very small (ie. lower spending, less taxes, etc but LOWER income).
Government will never shrink. It may grow less quickly than the economy as long as there is a good, fat deficit in place (because of tax cuts). This may make it smaller as a percentage of GDP, but I am pretty comfortable out on my limb stating that in absolute, real dollar terms, government will never shrink barring a significant political sea change.
Is the govt better off from a debt point of view?
Yes. Debt service as a percentage of dollar GDP is a significant statistic.
Since the govt income is significantly lower, it will have a hard time paying off its massive debt. BUT if you measure it as a percentage of GDP, you would think everything is still the same.
1. Who cares if the debt is ever paid off? 2. The US debt is largely owed to social security anyway. 3. I would be highly uncomfortable having the US government own private assets, such as stock shares, as it would politicize private enterprise and ultimately amount to nationalization of industry. I would much rather that the feds invest in government debt. If there is a problem down the road with matching benefits to expenses, that might result in a significant enough crisis to cause meaningful reform of transfer payments, such as social security. 4. If GDP grows and the debt does not grow as fast as GDP, there will never be a public debt problem in the US, regardless of what happens with the deficits. You are conflating the idea that government income shrinking has something to do with GDP. Govt revenues may shrink as a percentage of GDP but be more than adequate to cover debt service. Shrinking as a percentage of GDP and being sufficient to service debt obligations may have some correlation, but they are not the same thing by a longshot.
Nowadays, people use GDP figures adjusted for purchasing parity.
My personal favorite is the Big Mac index.
I wonder when they will actually start looking at government income...
I look at it every year. It's in the back of the instructions for the 1040. What's the problem? What's not being measured? I just don't follow you here, and I think it's because you aren't making any sense.
The only thing that can legitmately reduce the tax burden is a cut in spending. Trust me, you'll end up paying that Bush deficit eventually, no matter how sweet a nice fat refund check is now.
Not necessarily true. The tax burden can be minimized by a deficit. Here's how:
1) If there is no deficit, spending temptations explode, and expensive spending proposals will be pushed. If there is a deficit, it is less likely that spending programs will be passed, because there is a legitimate cover in "We can't feed the poor children, because we'll leave them with a big national debt." The GOP realized long ago that public choice theory and the federal budget process makes it impossible to cut spending directly, so by cutting taxes and creating a deficit, they have helped to curb spending in the only feasible manner.
If you look at the difference ($500 - 175, or $325/year), you have a deficit that is minimal as a percentage of GDP and one that is much smaller in real terms than anything that happened in the late eighties or early nineties. No, I won't end up paying the "Bush deficit". And no, you do not need to cut spending to reduce the tax burden. You can reduce it over time by applying downward pressure on spending by keeping a nice little pet deficit bogeyman in the closet to scare the public.
"We came home and found our son lying dead on his bed from a gunshot wound. He had his headphones on and there was an Ozzy record on the turntable[1]. So we called our lawyer."
GF.
[1] An archaic device used to create an analog sound stream from an arm with a small device that amplified the sound made by a needle rubbing a vinyl platter etched with a spiral groove starting on the outside and slowly going toward the center. The vinyl platters were called "records" and were interchangeable. The "record player" rotated the disk in a circular motion while the arm tracked the groove as it moved from the outside to the inside of the "record"[2].
[2] In the southern hemisphere, the "record" spun in the opposite direction.
Oh, you know those kernel developer types. They are probably off on their yachts in the south of France sipping Cristal and snorting coke off of a stripper's ass.
Dude...I've got some great code that I'd like to have included in the kernel...........
# Woohoo! I'm sniffing coke off a stripper's ass!..........
Please contact me immediately about working on the kernel.
no, but this is big for everyone. I use Microsoft goods at home and I cannot stand it. I am tired of the issues at home.
So switch to OOO, Mozilla, etc.
I am tired of fixing my friends computers because the latest worm hit them.
I got tired of this, too. I still have a win 98 box, and I haven't upgraded an MS OS for years. I tell my friends now (and it is true) that they know more about XP than I do, and that I can't fix their computers. Then I start talking about BSD and GNU/Linux, and their eyes glaze over and they go away.
The point is you use what is familiar to you. We are working to implement linux as our sole solution here at the office. We have run into minor problems because of our financial system.
I have switched all our backend stuff away from Windows to Linux. Nobody noticed, and everything works better now (uptime 46 days and counting since the changeover). Really, it just comes down to "does X system work?" in my office. If it does, nobody asks questions. (It's a small office, admittedly, and I have tremendous latitude to do things like this -- the decision making process on IT stuff is essentially "What do you think is best" I tell them and then I do it, so what we've done is less subversive than it might seem.)
I've switched to OOO and Mozilla on my windows box at work, and nobody has noticed. The only thing keeping me from switching to a linux desktop at work is that I have a couple of applications from vendors that are written only for windows. Admittedly, I have not tried running these under WINE, but I may in a few weeks.
As things switch more and more to web-based applications, I expect that legacy Windows apps may be less and less important. It looks like other businesses may be coming to similar conclusions. Some of the remaining issues that I have in switching completely to Linux may be resolved with the passage of time. Also, as applications we buy come up for review, you can bet that one of my criteria will be platform independence.
GF.
Once it became expensive, Linux got accepted...
on
Ford To Move To Linux
·
· Score: 1
You know, Ford wouldn't have considered such a move if it didn't cost $699 per seat for linux licenses. Thanks to SCO for giving linux the corporate credibility it needs. Damn GNU people -- if they had just charged for it from the beginning, corporate America would have loved it.
I can't even begin to think how many people have said (in redneck voice) "Free? How kin it be any good iffn it's free? Microsoft rules!! W0000t!"
I guess that competition wasn't that big a deal when it was just textile, steel, and auto workers. People kept right on buying foreign cars and cheap Now that it's you, SOMETHING must be done.
Go to Homestead sometime and tell your sob story. The children and widows of guys that jumped into blast furnaces to get workers comp for their families will rip you a new asshole when you get done crying about how we must protect our domestic jobs. Where were people like you thirty years ago when all Pittsburgh had was the Steelers and an unemployment check?
Quit crying, get off/., and work harder. Justify your high wages, and maybe they'll keep you. I doubt it, but maybe you'll be the lucky one.
If you read between the lines, it's not about the money.
No...it's about the money. Business doesn't care about you. Business cares about business.
It's about business busting the balls of skilled workers.
No...it's about the money.
We were scarce, expensive, and worth our weight in gold. We had them over the back of a barrel, and they knew it.
And they took steps to reduce their dependence upon variable and ongoing costs by exchanging fixed costs and seeking alternative, cheaper supplies of variable costs. Welcome to the Rust Belt, circa 1970.
All of this outsourcing is a thinly veiled attempted to commodidize not just IT, but IT services.
Welcome to the world of competition. The more commoditized the product, the easier to shop components of it to various vendors.
Why don't you ask the steel workers in Pennsylvania or the textile workers in the northeast (and then the south) what it is like to have cheaper labor come in and do the same or better job? Why are you so shocked that this is happening? Why is IT supposed to be free of the influences that have impacted and devastated lives of workers all over the US?
Look at every stinking product coming down the pipeline. It's all designed for a chimpanzee to use. Sure it can't do half of what the previous version did, but it uses MicroSoft's backend, costs 3 times as much, and we can hire a teenager to feed it.
Let's see: the product we need costs us either (1) $10,000 up front and $50,000/year to administer or (2) $30,000 up front and $25,000/year to administer plus $10,000 per year in ongoing license fees. Hmmm. Wonder which I'd choose.
Forget all of this -- you live in a free agent society. Nobody will take care of you except yourself. You are competing against people from everywhere in the world, and you'd better get used to it instead of crying about it. If you want high wages, you'd damn well better be able to prove that you are worth it each and every day. The day you can't pull your weight, you'll be jettisoned.
I don't like the harshness of the world, but that's the way it is today.
Employees of SCO are not a protected class under any iteration of federal or state civil rights legislation of which I am aware. Discrimination in hiring is not illegal. In fact, it is encouraged. Generally, you want to discriminate against the stupid, lazy, and dishonest. Discriminating against members of protected classes while hiring is illegal, however.
Typically impermissible grounds for making hiring decisions include: -sex -race -religion -age
Sexual orientation is a close fifth behind those four biggies. Previous status as an employee of a certain organization may not be impermissible, unless it is seen as a covert method of excluding members of a particular group.
For instance, stating that you will not hire someone who is a member of the NAACP would probably be impermissible because it smells like subterfuge for keeping out blacks, even though you need not be black to be in the NAACP. Stating that you won't hire members of the NRA, or less policitally, members of Mensa, would probably be ok, although it might seem bizarre.
In this case, stating that you won't hire SCO employees is probably quite defensible, and perhaps the company in question thinks that it will make them distinguishable from other companies in the market for labor (more "street cred" with GNU/Linux geeks, I guess).
IMHO, most GNU/Linux geeks recognize that the problem isn't the guys in the cubes -- it's the guys at the top, so not much street cred is to be had here, in all likelihood. It just looks sort of juvenile. Besides, don't we want to encourage any and all talent to leave SCO?
In any case, it got their "help wanted" site some free pub, which was probably the idea in the first place.
Yet, coffee typically is served scalding hot. Unfit for consumption? No, coffee-drinkers prefer to buy it this way. They also preferred the nicely-hot McDonald's coffee before the frivolous lawsuit than after when it was cooled down for no reason at all.
Then I guess that Mr. Coffee et al don't know thing one about their target market. I guess that the competitors of McDonalds were slitting their throats competitively by serving a drink that would not actually burn customers. McDonalds alone regularly served coffee at the temperatures where it could cause extensive third degree burns. McDonalds admitted that it had received over 700 complaints from customers about the coffee being too hot, and it is safe to assume that many consumers simply did not complain.
I've heard this "they gave the customers what they wanted" garbage for a long time when people whine about the results in this case, but the fact is that McDonalds failed to change their dangerous practices despite being on notice of potential problems for years. I have little sympathy that they got hit with a verdict. I don't think that 79 year old ladies deserve to have third degree burns on their genitals because McDonalds has a desire to cater to masochists. You may be inclined to disagree.
It is impossible to receive 3rd degree burns from hot water. 3rd degree burns imply that the skin is burnt away with charred and blackened tissue. What she got was a 1st or 2nd degree burn.
You are completely wrong. See an actual definition of third-degree burns.
Coffee is also supposed to be that hot. Hotter, in fact. 204-208F is ideal. In gourmet restaurants you'd lose your job over serving coffee as cold as what McDonald's did.
Coffee served at home is generally 135-140 F. McDonald's served theirs at 200 F, which was approximately 20 F higher than the industry standard.
If you drink correctly served coffee, you will scald your mouth. This is supposed to be common knowledge, and if it isn't (apparently you didn't know either), attack your parents or the school system that doesn't teach you even a minimum of culture.
Food served for immediate consumption is unfit if it is served that hot. It is simply a matter of public safety.
half of the cost of any US product is costs for lawyers and insurance against them
Nice assertion. Got a citation for that?
In a more civilised society than ours, the customer in question would have been able to go to a public consumer protection agency, who would have had the power to judge whether register.com were breaking advertising laws, and warn them or slap them with a fine if they did. In the US, the only recourse that doesn't require the company's cooperation is - tada - litigation.
The problem is that consumer protection agencies are so weak-willed and pussified that they accomplish nothing. I suspect that this is the result of corporate takeovers of public affairs in the US, but that is only my surmise. In any case, consumer protection agencies usually accomplish nothing because of (1) weak laws and (2) case overloads. When they do make something happen, it is usually the result of a settlement in which the corporate wrong-doer is minimally fined.
I've had broadband for 4 years. I've paid, dutifully, each month, for broadband which I thought I needed. And last month, I killed my cable modem.
I do some updating of servers and I recently had a massive project involving shifting some huge amounts of data between two boxes, but that is done now. Right now, if I were actually paying for my connection myself (instead of getting reimbursed), I would dump it for a dial-up connection. I'm in agreement -- when you're just doing email and basic surfing, you don't need broadband with the accompanying hassles (security is a greater problem) and the cost.
As far as getting distros goes, I just bought three sets of discs (free bsd, GNU Win, and Knoppix) from Linuxcentral.com today (2.95 each) because I didn't want to fuck around with downloading it and burning them myself, and I don't need them today.
The primary uses for broadband that I have are (1) telecommuting and (2) downloading applications (not warez). I don't do either a great deal, and I could easily take a USB drive into work to bring home most of the stuff I need for telecommuting nowadays. Beyond those two things, I agree with you on the content issue. I'm not bothered by getting pr0n from a local adult materials purveyor if I have a desire for such stuff, so that's not an issue. I buy my CDs used from Amazon instead of downloading stuff from Kazaa. Unless it's a movie trailer or something, I just don't really need broadband that much.
I guess that ultimately my feelings about broadband are mixed -- I don't mind having it and I like having a choice to have it or not, but I wouldn't die without it and I can easily see myself going back to dial-up. It's really not that big a deal to me.
Not a flame, but merely a comment. I never really looked into BSD much, as linux was mostly my focus for getting out of NT. If I can get the same degree of functionality without the FUD from BSD, heck, why not do it? Right now I don't have a whole server farm to manage, I just have a couple of boxes. It'll be nice to look at the SCO thing and go "up yours, cunts" to SCO, but still have nothing to worry about even if SCO ends up winning the legal battle.
I still may file a declaratory judgment action against SCO, though.
For home and non-commercial users, just switch to AVG Antivirus. See Grisoft (the publisher) for the free download. It is free and it has free updates. Again, only home and non-commerical users can use it for free.
Shouldn't it be more like a win/loss chart for relative evil/good?(1) (I'm sure that my chart is internally inconsistent somewhere, so bugger off). Read the company name at the left to see whether it is more or less evil than the companies at the top. ---------Opposing company Company: MSFT RHAT NVID IBM ATI SCO ----MSFT--X----E----E----E----E----G ----RHA T--G----X----G----G----G----G ----NVID--G----E--- -X----E----G----G ----IBM---G----E----G----X----G ----G ----ATI---G----E----E----E----X----G ----S CO---E----E----E----E----E----EE
Legend: X = competing vs. self G = "Good" E = "Evil" EE = "Evil^2"
Alternatively, a BINGO-style chart might be good for/. Bingo:
A random set of items could be generated on the user page containing a matrix of company names and "good" or "evil" acts (decided based on reported stories and a "good" or "evil" mod point system). Example card:
MS = Microsoft NV = nVidia AT = ATI IB = IBM CS = Cisco RH = Red Hat DB = Debian RM = RMS LT = Linus Torvalds BG = Bill Gates MB = Steve Ballmer (2) vi = vi
First person to get five in a row shouts "BINGO!" and wins something.
GF. (1) Admittedly, this is highly derivative of your most excellent and funny post, but here goes... (2) MB = Monkey Boy
Slashdot Mirror
It is probably a good time to post this:
Bush covers up climate research (again)
Shhh! It's supposed to be covered up! Duh!
GF.
Aren't you guys editors?
effectiveness can vary widly from machine to machine.
Widely?
Wildly?
GF.
Point 1... Attempting to curb spending by cutting taxes is the most idiotic thing ever. Why? It doesn't work. Captitalism allows you to mortgage your future via debt so people will just borrow more.
Actually, one of the ways we might avoid the cost of a national single-payer health system is that the money isn't there for it. Look at what Dick Gephart is pushing in his campaign if you don't believe me. The fact is that the deficit stalking horse gives cover to moderate democrats to run from their party brethren on social spending.
The alternative, of course, is cutting spending by cutting spending. Politically, it just doesn't work. Public choice theory (James Q. Wilson, et al) tells us this pretty conclusively.
I don't want to even go into point #2... I just love how economists, who are mostly capitalists, ignore govt income and love to concentrate on GDP.
You are confusing capitalism with representative democracy. Therein lies the source of your confusion. Government spending is not so much a function of capitalism as it is of the political will of the majority of voters and corporate contributors. Let your cynicism dictate your views on who has the most influence, of course.
At the end of the day, GDP is not what is going to pay the debt--it will be govt income.
Wrong. At the end of the day, the debt will be paid off by dollars. This may or may not have any relation to GDP at that time.
To illustrate my point, consider this hypothetical example. Let's say the govt shrinks and becomes very small (ie. lower spending, less taxes, etc but LOWER income).
Government will never shrink. It may grow less quickly than the economy as long as there is a good, fat deficit in place (because of tax cuts). This may make it smaller as a percentage of GDP, but I am pretty comfortable out on my limb stating that in absolute, real dollar terms, government will never shrink barring a significant political sea change.
Is the govt better off from a debt point of view?
Yes. Debt service as a percentage of dollar GDP is a significant statistic.
Since the govt income is significantly lower, it will have a hard time paying off its massive debt. BUT if you measure it as a percentage of GDP, you would think everything is still the same.
1. Who cares if the debt is ever paid off?
2. The US debt is largely owed to social security anyway.
3. I would be highly uncomfortable having the US government own private assets, such as stock shares, as it would politicize private enterprise and ultimately amount to nationalization of industry. I would much rather that the feds invest in government debt. If there is a problem down the road with matching benefits to expenses, that might result in a significant enough crisis to cause meaningful reform of transfer payments, such as social security.
4. If GDP grows and the debt does not grow as fast as GDP, there will never be a public debt problem in the US, regardless of what happens with the deficits. You are conflating the idea that government income shrinking has something to do with GDP. Govt revenues may shrink as a percentage of GDP but be more than adequate to cover debt service. Shrinking as a percentage of GDP and being sufficient to service debt obligations may have some correlation, but they are not the same thing by a longshot.
Nowadays, people use GDP figures adjusted for purchasing parity.
My personal favorite is the Big Mac index.
I wonder when they will actually start looking at government income...
I look at it every year. It's in the back of the instructions for the 1040. What's the problem? What's not being measured? I just don't follow you here, and I think it's because you aren't making any sense.
GF.
The only thing that can legitmately reduce the tax burden is a cut in spending. Trust me, you'll end up paying that Bush deficit eventually, no matter how sweet a nice fat refund check is now.
Not necessarily true. The tax burden can be minimized by a deficit. Here's how:
1) If there is no deficit, spending temptations explode, and expensive spending proposals will be pushed. If there is a deficit, it is less likely that spending programs will be passed, because there is a legitimate cover in "We can't feed the poor children, because we'll leave them with a big national debt." The GOP realized long ago that public choice theory and the federal budget process makes it impossible to cut spending directly, so by cutting taxes and creating a deficit, they have helped to curb spending in the only feasible manner.
2. What about the deficit, you say? What deficit? Sure, there is a small one right now (say $500,000,000,000.00 per year), but this is insignificant. Why? Monetization of the federal debt. With an inflation rate of approximately 2.5% and a federal debt of approximately $7,000,000,000,000.00, the ongoing devaluation of the dollar over time decreases the real value of the national debt by $175,000,000,000.00 per year.
If you look at the difference ($500 - 175, or $325/year), you have a deficit that is minimal as a percentage of GDP and one that is much smaller in real terms than anything that happened in the late eighties or early nineties. No, I won't end up paying the "Bush deficit". And no, you do not need to cut spending to reduce the tax burden. You can reduce it over time by applying downward pressure on spending by keeping a nice little pet deficit bogeyman in the closet to scare the public.
GF.
Can you remember the last time that Congress actually prohibited a form of taxation?
Poll tax. The Twenty Fourth Amendment was passed by Congress on August 27, 1962, and it was ratified by the several States in early 1964.
GF.
That is quite the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.
No, I've heard more ridiculous things. Just the other day, SCO was saying that they wanted Linux users to...oh...wait. Wrong topic.
Christ, have you not heard of the concept of free will?
Free will is a useful illusion. Really. I was just compelled to write that. And that. And...
No-one forced these kids to do what they did.
Good thing we aren't letting kids read the Bible. Then, they'd be getting slave, concubines, and stoning people for having mildew in their houses.
Really, if it wasn't for the fact that America is the only superpower these sort of legal cases would be the laughing stock of the world -
"only superpower" and "laughing stock of the world" are not mutually exclusive, you know.
GF.
"We came home and found our son lying dead on his bed from a gunshot wound. He had his headphones on and there was an Ozzy record on the turntable[1]. So we called our lawyer."
GF.
[1] An archaic device used to create an analog sound stream from an arm with a small device that amplified the sound made by a needle rubbing a vinyl platter etched with a spiral groove starting on the outside and slowly going toward the center. The vinyl platters were called "records" and were interchangeable. The "record player" rotated the disk in a circular motion while the arm tracked the groove as it moved from the outside to the inside of the "record"[2].
[2] In the southern hemisphere, the "record" spun in the opposite direction.
Oh, you know those kernel developer types. They are probably off on their yachts in the south of France sipping Cristal and snorting coke off of a stripper's ass.
..........
..........
Dude...I've got some great code that I'd like to have included in the kernel.
# Woohoo! I'm sniffing coke off a stripper's ass!
Please contact me immediately about working on the kernel.
GF.
no, but this is big for everyone. I use Microsoft goods at home and I cannot stand it. I am tired of the issues at home.
So switch to OOO, Mozilla, etc.
I am tired of fixing my friends computers because the latest worm hit them.
I got tired of this, too. I still have a win 98 box, and I haven't upgraded an MS OS for years. I tell my friends now (and it is true) that they know more about XP than I do, and that I can't fix their computers. Then I start talking about BSD and GNU/Linux, and their eyes glaze over and they go away.
The point is you use what is familiar to you. We are working to implement linux as our sole solution here at the office. We have run into minor problems because of our financial system.
I have switched all our backend stuff away from Windows to Linux. Nobody noticed, and everything works better now (uptime 46 days and counting since the changeover). Really, it just comes down to "does X system work?" in my office. If it does, nobody asks questions. (It's a small office, admittedly, and I have tremendous latitude to do things like this -- the decision making process on IT stuff is essentially "What do you think is best" I tell them and then I do it, so what we've done is less subversive than it might seem.)
I've switched to OOO and Mozilla on my windows box at work, and nobody has noticed. The only thing keeping me from switching to a linux desktop at work is that I have a couple of applications from vendors that are written only for windows. Admittedly, I have not tried running these under WINE, but I may in a few weeks.
As things switch more and more to web-based applications, I expect that legacy Windows apps may be less and less important. It looks like other businesses may be coming to similar conclusions. Some of the remaining issues that I have in switching completely to Linux may be resolved with the passage of time. Also, as applications we buy come up for review, you can bet that one of my criteria will be platform independence.
GF.
You know, Ford wouldn't have considered such a move if it didn't cost $699 per seat for linux licenses. Thanks to SCO for giving linux the corporate credibility it needs. Damn GNU people -- if they had just charged for it from the beginning, corporate America would have loved it.
I can't even begin to think how many people have said (in redneck voice) "Free? How kin it be any good iffn it's free? Microsoft rules!! W0000t!"
GF.
Linux...First On Race Day
or:
Linux....Fix Or Repair Daily
Hmmmmm.
GF.
I guess that competition wasn't that big a deal when it was just textile, steel, and auto workers. People kept right on buying foreign cars and cheap Now that it's you, SOMETHING must be done.
/., and work harder. Justify your high wages, and maybe they'll keep you. I doubt it, but maybe you'll be the lucky one.
Go to Homestead sometime and tell your sob story. The children and widows of guys that jumped into blast furnaces to get workers comp for their families will rip you a new asshole when you get done crying about how we must protect our domestic jobs. Where were people like you thirty years ago when all Pittsburgh had was the Steelers and an unemployment check?
Quit crying, get off
If you read between the lines, it's not about the money.
No...it's about the money. Business doesn't care about you. Business cares about business.
It's about business busting the balls of skilled workers.
No...it's about the money.
We were scarce, expensive, and worth our weight in gold. We had them over the back of a barrel, and they knew it.
And they took steps to reduce their dependence upon variable and ongoing costs by exchanging fixed costs and seeking alternative, cheaper supplies of variable costs. Welcome to the Rust Belt, circa 1970.
All of this outsourcing is a thinly veiled attempted to commodidize not just IT, but IT services.
Welcome to the world of competition. The more commoditized the product, the easier to shop components of it to various vendors.
Why don't you ask the steel workers in Pennsylvania or the textile workers in the northeast (and then the south) what it is like to have cheaper labor come in and do the same or better job? Why are you so shocked that this is happening? Why is IT supposed to be free of the influences that have impacted and devastated lives of workers all over the US?
Look at every stinking product coming down the pipeline. It's all designed for a chimpanzee to use. Sure it can't do half of what the previous version did, but it uses MicroSoft's backend, costs 3 times as much, and we can hire a teenager to feed it.
Let's see: the product we need costs us either (1) $10,000 up front and $50,000/year to administer or (2) $30,000 up front and $25,000/year to administer plus $10,000 per year in ongoing license fees. Hmmm. Wonder which I'd choose.
Forget all of this -- you live in a free agent society. Nobody will take care of you except yourself. You are competing against people from everywhere in the world, and you'd better get used to it instead of crying about it. If you want high wages, you'd damn well better be able to prove that you are worth it each and every day. The day you can't pull your weight, you'll be jettisoned.
I don't like the harshness of the world, but that's the way it is today.
GF.
I left out disability too. Guh.
I believe this practice may be illegal.
Employees of SCO are not a protected class under any iteration of federal or state civil rights legislation of which I am aware. Discrimination in hiring is not illegal. In fact, it is encouraged. Generally, you want to discriminate against the stupid, lazy, and dishonest. Discriminating against members of protected classes while hiring is illegal, however.
Typically impermissible grounds for making hiring decisions include:
-sex
-race
-religion
-age
Sexual orientation is a close fifth behind those four biggies. Previous status as an employee of a certain organization may not be impermissible, unless it is seen as a covert method of excluding members of a particular group.
For instance, stating that you will not hire someone who is a member of the NAACP would probably be impermissible because it smells like subterfuge for keeping out blacks, even though you need not be black to be in the NAACP. Stating that you won't hire members of the NRA, or less policitally, members of Mensa, would probably be ok, although it might seem bizarre.
In this case, stating that you won't hire SCO employees is probably quite defensible, and perhaps the company in question thinks that it will make them distinguishable from other companies in the market for labor (more "street cred" with GNU/Linux geeks, I guess).
IMHO, most GNU/Linux geeks recognize that the problem isn't the guys in the cubes -- it's the guys at the top, so not much street cred is to be had here, in all likelihood. It just looks sort of juvenile. Besides, don't we want to encourage any and all talent to leave SCO?
In any case, it got their "help wanted" site some free pub, which was probably the idea in the first place.
GF.
Yet, coffee typically is served scalding hot. Unfit for consumption? No, coffee-drinkers prefer to buy it this way. They also preferred the nicely-hot McDonald's coffee before the frivolous lawsuit than after when it was cooled down for no reason at all.
Then I guess that Mr. Coffee et al don't know thing one about their target market. I guess that the competitors of McDonalds were slitting their throats competitively by serving a drink that would not actually burn customers. McDonalds alone regularly served coffee at the temperatures where it could cause extensive third degree burns. McDonalds admitted that it had received over 700 complaints from customers about the coffee being too hot, and it is safe to assume that many consumers simply did not complain.
I've heard this "they gave the customers what they wanted" garbage for a long time when people whine about the results in this case, but the fact is that McDonalds failed to change their dangerous practices despite being on notice of potential problems for years. I have little sympathy that they got hit with a verdict. I don't think that 79 year old ladies deserve to have third degree burns on their genitals because McDonalds has a desire to cater to masochists. You may be inclined to disagree.
GF.
It is impossible to receive 3rd degree burns from hot water. 3rd degree burns imply that the skin is burnt away with charred and blackened tissue. What she got was a 1st or 2nd degree burn.
You are completely wrong. See an actual definition of third-degree burns.
Coffee is also supposed to be that hot. Hotter, in fact. 204-208F is ideal. In gourmet restaurants you'd lose your job over serving coffee as cold as what McDonald's did.
Coffee served at home is generally 135-140 F. McDonald's served theirs at 200 F, which was approximately 20 F higher than the industry standard.
If you drink correctly served coffee, you will scald your mouth. This is supposed to be common knowledge, and if it isn't (apparently you didn't know either), attack your parents or the school system that doesn't teach you even a minimum of culture.
Food served for immediate consumption is unfit if it is served that hot. It is simply a matter of public safety.
half of the cost of any US product is costs for lawyers and insurance against them
Nice assertion. Got a citation for that?
In a more civilised society than ours, the customer in question would have been able to go to a public consumer protection agency, who would have had the power to judge whether register.com were breaking advertising laws, and warn them or slap them with a fine if they did. In the US, the only recourse that doesn't require the company's cooperation is - tada - litigation.
The problem is that consumer protection agencies are so weak-willed and pussified that they accomplish nothing. I suspect that this is the result of corporate takeovers of public affairs in the US, but that is only my surmise. In any case, consumer protection agencies usually accomplish nothing because of (1) weak laws and (2) case overloads. When they do make something happen, it is usually the result of a settlement in which the corporate wrong-doer is minimally fined.
GF.
I've had broadband for 4 years. I've paid, dutifully, each month, for broadband which I thought I needed. And last month, I killed my cable modem.
I do some updating of servers and I recently had a massive project involving shifting some huge amounts of data between two boxes, but that is done now. Right now, if I were actually paying for my connection myself (instead of getting reimbursed), I would dump it for a dial-up connection. I'm in agreement -- when you're just doing email and basic surfing, you don't need broadband with the accompanying hassles (security is a greater problem) and the cost.
As far as getting distros goes, I just bought three sets of discs (free bsd, GNU Win, and Knoppix) from Linuxcentral.com today (2.95 each) because I didn't want to fuck around with downloading it and burning them myself, and I don't need them today.
The primary uses for broadband that I have are (1) telecommuting and (2) downloading applications (not warez). I don't do either a great deal, and I could easily take a USB drive into work to bring home most of the stuff I need for telecommuting nowadays. Beyond those two things, I agree with you on the content issue. I'm not bothered by getting pr0n from a local adult materials purveyor if I have a desire for such stuff, so that's not an issue. I buy my CDs used from Amazon instead of downloading stuff from Kazaa. Unless it's a movie trailer or something, I just don't really need broadband that much.
I guess that ultimately my feelings about broadband are mixed -- I don't mind having it and I like having a choice to have it or not, but I wouldn't die without it and I can easily see myself going back to dial-up. It's really not that big a deal to me.
Among other things from my linuxcentral.com order today:
No. Item: Item No. Price Total
1 FreeBSD 5.1 Install L000-164 $2.95 $2.95
Not a flame, but merely a comment. I never really looked into BSD much, as linux was mostly my focus for getting out of NT. If I can get the same degree of functionality without the FUD from BSD, heck, why not do it? Right now I don't have a whole server farm to manage, I just have a couple of boxes. It'll be nice to look at the SCO thing and go "up yours, cunts" to SCO, but still have nothing to worry about even if SCO ends up winning the legal battle.
I still may file a declaratory judgment action against SCO, though.
GF.
Only $699 right now! If you wait a few months, it'll be $1199 (or whatever) per hat!
GF.
For home and non-commercial users, just switch to AVG Antivirus. See Grisoft (the publisher) for the free download. It is free and it has free updates. Again, only home and non-commerical users can use it for free.
GF.
some stuff
Radio collars.
Then we can see if Igor can migrate home safely after being orphaned.
Shouldn't it be more like a win/loss chart for relative evil/good?(1) (I'm sure that my chart is internally inconsistent somewhere, so bugger off). Read the company name at the left to see whether it is more or less evil than the companies at the top.
A T--G----X----G----G----G----G- -X----E----G----GG ----GS CO---E----E----E----E----E----EE
/. Bingo:
---------Opposing company
Company: MSFT RHAT NVID IBM ATI SCO
----MSFT--X----E----E----E----E----G
----RH
----NVID--G----E--
----IBM---G----E----G----X----
----ATI---G----E----E----E----X----G
----
Legend:
X = competing vs. self
G = "Good"
E = "Evil"
EE = "Evil^2"
Alternatively, a BINGO-style chart might be good for
A random set of items could be generated on the user page containing a matrix of company names and "good" or "evil" acts (decided based on reported stories and a "good" or "evil" mod point system).
Example card:
MS-G NV-E NV-G RH-E SC-E
CS-E AT-G DB-G NV-G IB-G
IB-E MB-G LT-E RM-E SC-G
RM-G RH-G CS-G AT-B LT-G
NV-G BG-G RM-G vi-E SC-G
MS = Microsoft
NV = nVidia
AT = ATI
IB = IBM
CS = Cisco
RH = Red Hat
DB = Debian
RM = RMS
LT = Linus Torvalds
BG = Bill Gates
MB = Steve Ballmer (2)
vi = vi
First person to get five in a row shouts "BINGO!" and wins something.
GF.
(1) Admittedly, this is highly derivative of your most excellent and funny post, but here goes...
(2) MB = Monkey Boy
Since she is kind of cute and in the interest of slashdotting, I submit to you the following links for your viewing pleasure:
more rabbit girl
more rabbit girl
more rabbit girl
more rabbit girl
more rabbit girl
more rabbit girl
more rabbit girl
GF.