Well, maybe all those qualified engineers will go on to find jobs that are more productive, and build better things for society.
Unfortunately, successful companies have a bad habit of hiring people to do new projects 'because they can'. The money is there to hire more people, so, they hire more people. The more successful the company is, the less scrutiny is applied to how likely the new proect is t result in actual new revenue for the company.
After enough of this, the company finds itself burdened with a lot of labor working on things that are not really relevant o the company's main business, which negatively impacts the company's performance, and ultimately forces a layoff.
It would be better, of course, if sucessful companies could avoid the temptation in the first place and give that money to shareholders.
All users can edit semi-protected pages!
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It irks me everytime someone says some users can't edit semi-protected pages. That's not true. All users can edit; some of them just have to wait 4 days.
There is a big difference between 'can't edit' and 'can't edit now', just like there is a big difference between 'can't make changes' and 'can't make immediately viewable changes'.
There's nothing un-wiki about changes not being immediately viewable.
Society is better off with as few guns as possible.
Soceity is ALSO better off with les violence, but that's another conversation. I still meant to say that society is better off with as few guns as possible, which is both true and attainable.
But, guns do not have a practical purpose for your average citizen. Oh, sure, they are succesfully used in self defense some of the time, but they successfully kill children some of the time too, and arguing that they have a practical purpose is like arguing that an airplane that gets you to your destination half the time and crashes half the time has a practical purpose.
Society is better off without guns. There are plenty of people who don't want to believe this, and the reason for that is the same psychology that leads 90% of people to classify themselves as good drivers. Many people who 'believe' in guns assume that their gun will only be used in the way they want it to be used and will function exactly as they want it to function. They have a mental image of an intruder breaking into their house, they get their gun, and they ward off the intruder with it.
But that's not reality. The reality is that it's more likely that they never realize the intruder is there, the intruder kills them before they wake up, the intruder finds the gun before they do, the intruder takes the gun away from you and shoots you with it, or your 5-year-old finds your gun and shoots themselves or the neighbor. But people who think owning a gun is going to improve their lives don't think about those things.
Same deal with people who support concealed carry laws - they think they're going to be walking down the street, get mugged, pull their gun, and ward off the attacker. The thing is, that's the LEAST likely outcome. Is the attacker even going to be far enough away from you that your firearm will be effective? Probably not. Are you going to be able to draw your firearm and fire it before your attacker turns the situation into a struggle where who ends up shot is pretty random? Probably not. Are you going to not accidentally shoot someone else in the area?
*I* don't own a gun. I doubt I will ever own a gun. And the reason I will likely never buy a gun is I *KNOW* that the number of cases where I'm going to be able to effectively use a gun to do anything are small, and the number of cases where owning a gun leads to negative consequences is larger.
But most people don't realize that they don't control the universe. They think they do, but just because they WANT their gun to keep them safe, and not be used to hurt themselves or others, doesn't mean it will.
Nobody expects the guy to NOT look at violent porn. He's sick. He can't help himself. He *HAS* to look at it.
So, if you make it illegal, the people who are not sick will stop looking at it. Then anybody still looking at it must be a sick person, so you know to arrest them, and you arrest them BEFORE they kill anyone, thus saving lives.
Same philosphy behind gun control - pro-gun lobby often responds to gun control with the argument that "If oyu make guns illegal, only criminals will have guns!" Which is exactly the point - if guns are legal, you can't tell teh difference between a law-abiding firearm owner and a criminal with a gun. If guns are illegal, you just have to arrest everyone with a gun and you get most of the criminals in prison before they manage to commit more serious crime.
And I see I have read the chart backwards - Alaska is actually #2 for MOST federal benefits received per dollar in taxes paid. So Stevens is doing a very good job getting federal dollars for Alaska.
The problem with Pork is for any given piece of pork, there's a politician whose district wants that pork. We may all think that $223 million on a bridge to nowhere is a waste of money, but Alaska voters, the guys who keep putting Stevens back in office, think it's not an altogether horrible way to work down Alaska's federal tax deficit (more money paid in federal taxes than received in federal benefits).
In a sense, getting pork for his constituents is your representative's JOB. Would be nice if they got $223 million for, say, better teacher pay or something though.
Unions cost money. They take money out of worker's paychecks to run the Union infractructure and pay the Union leadership. Like any other organization, the Union's #1 goal is to extend it's existence, including trying to attract as many members as possible.
Is the price of having a union worth it? The answer, like all things, is SOMETIMES! If your working conditions suck, joining a union may be worthwhile. If your working conditions are pretty good, joining a union may just increase the costs of labor to the company without increasing any benefits to you since the increase just ends up in union coffers. That puts the company YOU work for at a disadvantage to another company without a union, ultimately making it more likely your company goes out of business or moves your job to China to avoid going out of business.
Remember, the Union does not care if you need help. It only cares if you are paying membership dues, and will do whatever is necessary to make sure you pay membership dues. That includes offering help, but it also includes the same tricks any other megabusiness uses: Distorted marketing, false promises, etc.
Employers will use the same tactics to discourage unions forming at their companies. There is nothing good about a Union for an employer. Just like the Union is going to tell you you need them whether you actually need them or not, the employer is going to tell you that you don't need a union, whether you need them or not.
Sometimes the Union is right, and sometimes the employer is right. But anyone who says something like "The company is anti-union, so they must be evil!" is either a union shill or a union brainwashing victim. It is quite possible that unionizing is NOT in the best interest of employees. It is quite possible that when a union engages in a media blitz to slandder a company that doesn't want their employees unionized that the workers are actually fine - the Unions problem is just that the union employees arn't paying dues to be fine.
It's a sad fact that a universal constant on buses, trains, tubes, and metros the world over is everyone travelling in deathly silence from the moment they board until the moment they alight at their destination.
Pfft, that's the universal condition. The universal condition is violated under one of three conditions:
No, I didn't forget sex. That falls under one of the above. In incredibly rare situations, the universal condition may be violated in the pursuit of sport, absent one of the other three.
But, other than that, people don't talk to each other. It's a waste of effort.
This is the way it has to be. To use the extreme example, if I'm charged with murder, and I can get away with it by destroying evidence, then the penalty for destorying the evidence that would have proved I was guilty should be a guilty verdict for murder. Otherwise it makes no sense NOT to destroy the evidence and take the lighter penalty for evidence destruction.
The crimes for destruction of evidence etc. are meant to be in addition to the crime you're being tried for when the offender is the party on trial, and separate crimes when the evidence destruction is carried out by 3rd parties.
Or, on the flip side, if the plaintiff willfully destroys evidence, the defendent gets default judgement as well. Fair is fair.
One data point isn't going to make a difference - it's infinitely small. IF this person does two more studies, though, they'll have a data TRIANGLE, and then we'll really be in trouble.
When you pay Amazon $X for shipping and handling, Amazon only pays the seller ($X-Y)-($X*commission). You're paying more for shipping than the seller is getting for shipping, and the seller isn't getting enough to pay what shipping actually costs. The seller end up paying some of the shipping costs out of the price of the item. This is especially true for expidited+ shipping.
Now, on eBay, the shipping prices are definitely 'higher', but the difference is that on eBay, the SELLER sets the shipping price, while on Amazon, AMAZON sets the shipping price. So on eBay you're not really paying higher shipping, you're really just paying a higher price - the extra money the seller makes on shipping is just making up for the lower price you're paying for the item.
Basically, shipping fees on Amazon are set up to make Amazon money at the expense of the seller. Shipping fees on eBay are set by the seller to dodge some of the auction commissions.
There are certainly a lot more people who WANT jobs than there are jobs available.
But there are often a lot FEWER QUALIFIED candidates than there are jobs. You might post an opening and get 100 applications of which only 2 people are possibly qualified. Now, those two people are in high demand, and given the choice between working for a company that blocks their internet and working for one that doesn't, they may choose to work for one that doesn't. Worse yet, what about existing employees? Do you want someone who has 5 years of experience in your company having extra incentive to leave because you try and control them like a 12 year old? Do you want that to happen in the middle of a key project?
The other thing that people are missing here is internet policy isn't just internet policy, it's a reflection of the 'psychology' of the organization as a whole. I would hesitate to work for a company that has a blanket, restrictive internet policy because I personally think it's a shitty policy. It's an attempt to fix with an inflexible rule what should be enforced with a good objective and review process controlled by strong management. If you need a policy that says 'Can't use the internet at all', that's a symptom of the company probably not being a good place to work for, at least not for me. I wouldn't want to work for management who thought that was a good policy and I wouldn't want to work with coworkers who management thinks won't get anything done if their internet is connected.
Ebay needs a 'list auctions by seller rating' or some such. Or any other method to make it easier to find what you're actually looking for. Maybe even add a UPC field to auction listings - so if you find one auction for an item you want, you can search by UPC for *ALL* of the auctions for EXACTLY that item.
Amazon is good because it's easy to find exactly what you want, and lots of things similar to exactly what you want. You can really drill down categories.
Ebay is tough to find what you want, but, cheaper to buy it and cheaper to sell it. EBay doesn't rape you on shipping charges (to BOTH buyer and seller) like Amazon does, and the % of price that goes to EBay is much lower than the % of price that goes to Amazon.
The biggest reason I rarely buy off of eBay anymore, though, is that I rarely find anything on there that is priced low enough to make the risk/hassle of doing an auction purchase worth it. Usually costs the same or only a little bit more to buy directly from a specialized online retailer, which is easy enough to find with google (or froogle).
I wish there were more of them. Once you've 'made' a bot, it's going to be a pretty consistent stream of income for you.
The thing to remember about bots is, they are programs. The actions of the bot are the output, and the input to the bot consists of the cards it has, the cards on the table, and your behavior. Since you have complete control over your behavior, and you know what cards are on the table, you've got some pretty damned good control over the bot's output (what it does).
Actually, poker is pretty much the same with real players, using your behavior to control what your opponents do, but bots are easier to play since their behavior is much more consistent.
The reason there are terrorists is there's never anything good on TV in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, etc. All it would take is a lot of widescreen TV's and some MTV and Iraqi Idol and roadside bombs would be eliminated. Can't have a terrorist army if your entire populace has had their attention span reduced to 12 seconds!
Slashdot Mirror
Buy nice 5.1 surround headphones?
Great sound AND it includes the wifemuting feature.
Well, maybe all those qualified engineers will go on to find jobs that are more productive, and build better things for society.
Unfortunately, successful companies have a bad habit of hiring people to do new projects 'because they can'. The money is there to hire more people, so, they hire more people. The more successful the company is, the less scrutiny is applied to how likely the new proect is t result in actual new revenue for the company.
After enough of this, the company finds itself burdened with a lot of labor working on things that are not really relevant o the company's main business, which negatively impacts the company's performance, and ultimately forces a layoff.
It would be better, of course, if sucessful companies could avoid the temptation in the first place and give that money to shareholders.
It irks me everytime someone says some users can't edit semi-protected pages. That's not true. All users can edit; some of them just have to wait 4 days.
There is a big difference between 'can't edit' and 'can't edit now', just like there is a big difference between 'can't make changes' and 'can't make immediately viewable changes'.
There's nothing un-wiki about changes not being immediately viewable.
Society is better off with as few guns as possible.
Soceity is ALSO better off with les violence, but that's another conversation. I still meant to say that society is better off with as few guns as possible, which is both true and attainable.
When I was 12 we were learning the basics of how to write an essay, look up stuff in the library, and how to organize a paper.
Guess you're never going to be a manager then.
Well, I certainly don't find the logic valid.
But, guns do not have a practical purpose for your average citizen. Oh, sure, they are succesfully used in self defense some of the time, but they successfully kill children some of the time too, and arguing that they have a practical purpose is like arguing that an airplane that gets you to your destination half the time and crashes half the time has a practical purpose.
Society is better off without guns. There are plenty of people who don't want to believe this, and the reason for that is the same psychology that leads 90% of people to classify themselves as good drivers. Many people who 'believe' in guns assume that their gun will only be used in the way they want it to be used and will function exactly as they want it to function. They have a mental image of an intruder breaking into their house, they get their gun, and they ward off the intruder with it.
But that's not reality. The reality is that it's more likely that they never realize the intruder is there, the intruder kills them before they wake up, the intruder finds the gun before they do, the intruder takes the gun away from you and shoots you with it, or your 5-year-old finds your gun and shoots themselves or the neighbor. But people who think owning a gun is going to improve their lives don't think about those things.
Same deal with people who support concealed carry laws - they think they're going to be walking down the street, get mugged, pull their gun, and ward off the attacker. The thing is, that's the LEAST likely outcome. Is the attacker even going to be far enough away from you that your firearm will be effective? Probably not. Are you going to be able to draw your firearm and fire it before your attacker turns the situation into a struggle where who ends up shot is pretty random? Probably not. Are you going to not accidentally shoot someone else in the area?
*I* don't own a gun. I doubt I will ever own a gun. And the reason I will likely never buy a gun is I *KNOW* that the number of cases where I'm going to be able to effectively use a gun to do anything are small, and the number of cases where owning a gun leads to negative consequences is larger.
But most people don't realize that they don't control the universe. They think they do, but just because they WANT their gun to keep them safe, and not be used to hurt themselves or others, doesn't mean it will.
Nobody expects the guy to NOT look at violent porn. He's sick. He can't help himself. He *HAS* to look at it.
So, if you make it illegal, the people who are not sick will stop looking at it. Then anybody still looking at it must be a sick person, so you know to arrest them, and you arrest them BEFORE they kill anyone, thus saving lives.
Same philosphy behind gun control - pro-gun lobby often responds to gun control with the argument that "If oyu make guns illegal, only criminals will have guns!" Which is exactly the point - if guns are legal, you can't tell teh difference between a law-abiding firearm owner and a criminal with a gun. If guns are illegal, you just have to arrest everyone with a gun and you get most of the criminals in prison before they manage to commit more serious crime.
At least, that's the way it's supposed to work.
And I see I have read the chart backwards - Alaska is actually #2 for MOST federal benefits received per dollar in taxes paid. So Stevens is doing a very good job getting federal dollars for Alaska.
The problem with Pork is for any given piece of pork, there's a politician whose district wants that pork. We may all think that $223 million on a bridge to nowhere is a waste of money, but Alaska voters, the guys who keep putting Stevens back in office, think it's not an altogether horrible way to work down Alaska's federal tax deficit (more money paid in federal taxes than received in federal benefits).
In a sense, getting pork for his constituents is your representative's JOB. Would be nice if they got $223 million for, say, better teacher pay or something though.
Personally I expect govt contractors do this kind of stuff five times before they even get to breakfast every day.
Time before breakfast is spent getting the children out of the cages and into the fryers. You only screw the taxpayers on a full stomach.
There were less than 5 errors in that post. If you scored him against native english speakers, he'd be in the 99th percentile.
Unions cost money. They take money out of worker's paychecks to run the Union infractructure and pay the Union leadership. Like any other organization, the Union's #1 goal is to extend it's existence, including trying to attract as many members as possible.
Is the price of having a union worth it? The answer, like all things, is SOMETIMES! If your working conditions suck, joining a union may be worthwhile. If your working conditions are pretty good, joining a union may just increase the costs of labor to the company without increasing any benefits to you since the increase just ends up in union coffers. That puts the company YOU work for at a disadvantage to another company without a union, ultimately making it more likely your company goes out of business or moves your job to China to avoid going out of business.
Remember, the Union does not care if you need help. It only cares if you are paying membership dues, and will do whatever is necessary to make sure you pay membership dues. That includes offering help, but it also includes the same tricks any other megabusiness uses: Distorted marketing, false promises, etc.
Employers will use the same tactics to discourage unions forming at their companies. There is nothing good about a Union for an employer. Just like the Union is going to tell you you need them whether you actually need them or not, the employer is going to tell you that you don't need a union, whether you need them or not.
Sometimes the Union is right, and sometimes the employer is right. But anyone who says something like "The company is anti-union, so they must be evil!" is either a union shill or a union brainwashing victim. It is quite possible that unionizing is NOT in the best interest of employees. It is quite possible that when a union engages in a media blitz to slandder a company that doesn't want their employees unionized that the workers are actually fine - the Unions problem is just that the union employees arn't paying dues to be fine.
I don't know what kind of ancient 'music' you're listening to mister, but everybody knows good songs arn't longer than 3 minutes.
As I read that, I thought it was going to end with, "...throwing chairs at silhouetted dancers with white headphones."
Geez, who throws chairs while doing a monkey dance? Everybody knows you're supposed to throw your own feces.
It's a sad fact that a universal constant on buses, trains, tubes, and metros the world over is everyone travelling in deathly silence from the moment they board until the moment they alight at their destination.
Pfft, that's the universal condition. The universal condition is violated under one of three conditions:
- Money (incl. employment/trade)
- Drugs (incl. Alcohol)
- Religion
No, I didn't forget sex. That falls under one of the above. In incredibly rare situations, the universal condition may be violated in the pursuit of sport, absent one of the other three.
But, other than that, people don't talk to each other. It's a waste of effort.
But if I could make an exact duplicate copy of any of them, and the original was still intact, then damn straight I would!
Then who would pay the $1 billion for the FIRST car?
This is the way it has to be. To use the extreme example, if I'm charged with murder, and I can get away with it by destroying evidence, then the penalty for destorying the evidence that would have proved I was guilty should be a guilty verdict for murder. Otherwise it makes no sense NOT to destroy the evidence and take the lighter penalty for evidence destruction.
The crimes for destruction of evidence etc. are meant to be in addition to the crime you're being tried for when the offender is the party on trial, and separate crimes when the evidence destruction is carried out by 3rd parties.
Or, on the flip side, if the plaintiff willfully destroys evidence, the defendent gets default judgement as well. Fair is fair.
is going to be only one data point
One data point isn't going to make a difference - it's infinitely small. IF this person does two more studies, though, they'll have a data TRIANGLE, and then we'll really be in trouble.
That's not the way it works though.
When you pay Amazon $X for shipping and handling, Amazon only pays the seller ($X-Y)-($X*commission). You're paying more for shipping than the seller is getting for shipping, and the seller isn't getting enough to pay what shipping actually costs. The seller end up paying some of the shipping costs out of the price of the item. This is especially true for expidited+ shipping.
Now, on eBay, the shipping prices are definitely 'higher', but the difference is that on eBay, the SELLER sets the shipping price, while on Amazon, AMAZON sets the shipping price. So on eBay you're not really paying higher shipping, you're really just paying a higher price - the extra money the seller makes on shipping is just making up for the lower price you're paying for the item.
Basically, shipping fees on Amazon are set up to make Amazon money at the expense of the seller. Shipping fees on eBay are set by the seller to dodge some of the auction commissions.
There are certainly a lot more people who WANT jobs than there are jobs available.
But there are often a lot FEWER QUALIFIED candidates than there are jobs. You might post an opening and get 100 applications of which only 2 people are possibly qualified. Now, those two people are in high demand, and given the choice between working for a company that blocks their internet and working for one that doesn't, they may choose to work for one that doesn't. Worse yet, what about existing employees? Do you want someone who has 5 years of experience in your company having extra incentive to leave because you try and control them like a 12 year old? Do you want that to happen in the middle of a key project?
The other thing that people are missing here is internet policy isn't just internet policy, it's a reflection of the 'psychology' of the organization as a whole. I would hesitate to work for a company that has a blanket, restrictive internet policy because I personally think it's a shitty policy. It's an attempt to fix with an inflexible rule what should be enforced with a good objective and review process controlled by strong management. If you need a policy that says 'Can't use the internet at all', that's a symptom of the company probably not being a good place to work for, at least not for me. I wouldn't want to work for management who thought that was a good policy and I wouldn't want to work with coworkers who management thinks won't get anything done if their internet is connected.
Protecting business investments is the purpose of trademarks.
Protecting the consumer's ability to identify the source of goods and services is the purpose of trademarks.
Ebay needs a 'list auctions by seller rating' or some such. Or any other method to make it easier to find what you're actually looking for. Maybe even add a UPC field to auction listings - so if you find one auction for an item you want, you can search by UPC for *ALL* of the auctions for EXACTLY that item.
Amazon is good because it's easy to find exactly what you want, and lots of things similar to exactly what you want. You can really drill down categories.
Ebay is tough to find what you want, but, cheaper to buy it and cheaper to sell it. EBay doesn't rape you on shipping charges (to BOTH buyer and seller) like Amazon does, and the % of price that goes to EBay is much lower than the % of price that goes to Amazon.
The biggest reason I rarely buy off of eBay anymore, though, is that I rarely find anything on there that is priced low enough to make the risk/hassle of doing an auction purchase worth it. Usually costs the same or only a little bit more to buy directly from a specialized online retailer, which is easy enough to find with google (or froogle).
I wish there were more of them. Once you've 'made' a bot, it's going to be a pretty consistent stream of income for you.
The thing to remember about bots is, they are programs. The actions of the bot are the output, and the input to the bot consists of the cards it has, the cards on the table, and your behavior. Since you have complete control over your behavior, and you know what cards are on the table, you've got some pretty damned good control over the bot's output (what it does).
Actually, poker is pretty much the same with real players, using your behavior to control what your opponents do, but bots are easier to play since their behavior is much more consistent.
The reason there are terrorists is there's never anything good on TV in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, etc. All it would take is a lot of widescreen TV's and some MTV and Iraqi Idol and roadside bombs would be eliminated. Can't have a terrorist army if your entire populace has had their attention span reduced to 12 seconds!
The staining of that dress was the deaths of man MILLIONS of (potential) people.