You are assuming the evidence is being used against you. As it turns out, if the cops illegally search you, and find evidence of wrongdoing on the part of someone else, that other person has no grounds to appeal the illegality of the search. Nor, unsurprisingly, do you have grounds to object to the search - the recourse for an illegal search is that the results cannot be used against you. Thus, you have no recourse if they're going after someone else.
Note that this is a double-edged blade; if they find something searching someone else's stuff on you, you have no recourse. Before this legislation the evidence could be thrown out because the telecom tap was illegal. Now, it's not.
Actually, Microsoft is not making this change for any reason other than for their target audience; business users. They probably couldn't care less if home users went one way or the other; home users don't hire out people to set up their stuff.
On the other hand, Microsoft has a huge amount of money invested in a network of people to train and support users on their software. They want to make it easy for businesses to buy 'the complete solution' from them. They want the revenue stream over many years from these businesses. Further, they want that subscription to push a constant upgrade cycle. Business users are fine with this because they don't have to pay for additional support staff.
This isn't about home users. It's about business customers and how Microsoft can best monetize them.
The second amendment was put in for a very good reason; to grant the citizens the power to overthrow a corrupt government. However, as with a number of things in the Constitution, culture and technology has outpaced the implementation of that reason. Guns cannot currently overthrow the government.
Rather, the government is propped up by two things; it's ability to arbitrarily hide information about what it's doing (severely weakening the idea of 'for, of and by the people'), and massive economic support of corporations who have insane control over people's lives, and who similarly have the power to hide what they're doing.
In the modern age, one or ideally both of these things need to change to protect the individual, and thus the People. The easiest to change is the governmental ability to hide stuff. Any law that reduces the amount of oversight or government transparency is something that works directly against the best interest of the people.
If I could have a single constitutional amendment, it would be forcing the government to have a balanced budget. If I could have a second, it would be 100% transparency, the torpedoes be damned. I don't care if the 'terrorists' know what we're doing, I think our country's better angels would prevail if we could see what was going on: simply because we could overthrow anything that worked against our interests - and that's the spirit of the 2nd anyway.
I think you're correct; most good judges wouldn't deign to listen to an illegal directive. However, the federal courts are being stacked with cronies - people who are going to listen to the directive and know that there is no one that can second-guess that decision.
My biggest fear is that despite seeing the obvious corruption in the system, few people realize the extent to which the neo-conservative (fascist) movement has infiltrated the mechanics of our system. They're breaking down the matrix of checks and balances in a systematic way, and it's going to cost us in the long term.
(Hell, the short term, too, if you consider what this war has done to our economy.)
I fear that arguing practicality is never something that is worthwhile engaging in when talking about emerging technologies. Chances are that only the very inventive or the very expert will be able to either, respectively, find the way to make it cost-effective or declare something actually infeasible.
To some degree, it's just a matter of numbers. If I have SuperDuperCrete, a concrete alternative that converts vibration to electricity but in all other ways is exactly like concrete, including cost - well, chances are I'll use SuperDuperCrete. Of a thousand possible technologies, probably only one or two of them pan out - but I think that the source of energy they're looking to capture is legitimate enough to think it's cool that they're pursuing it. Of course, I base that entirely on thinking about walking on hardwood (which has some give/bounce), versus walking on sod (which has significant give but little bounce). Personally, I'd trade hardwood for sod in most situations.
The floor moves up and down regardless. Different surfaces will move different amounts based on the type of surface. If you stand on a bamboo pole floor, for instance, you can expect it to flex a lot. If you stand on a concrete floor, it will flex only a tiny amount. It still flexes, though, still moves; that's what causes concrete to crack over time.
Now, for strong surfaces this movement might translate to a very low-level vibration - unnoticeable to you. But it's absence will be unnoticeable to, so there is really no harm in taking out the energy of the vibration and using it for something else.
Your fallacy is thinking that you are going to now need to put in more energy into the system, rather than having a system that takes some of your 'waste' energy and moves it somewhere else instead. In this case, yes, there is no free lunch. But, then, you're already paying for lunch and not eating it.
Note that the Earth's sun is a Population One star, and more primitive stars that formed earlier in the life of the universe than our sun did have a much lower concentration of metals and other heavier elements - arguably those elements needed for life to form.
I think, given the science we have researched, it is very likely that our sun may be amongst the first stars formed even capable of supporting life. Given that, there is no reason to suspect that other civilizations haven't already started, and are on par or ahead of us - especially given that if there is no proximal solution to faster-than-light travel (ie, a solution discoverable in the first 50,000 years of recorded history). In such a case, civilizations, no matter how advanced, would still be limited by their observational capabilities. Only once we as an aware civilization were old enough to be observing the universe for a period of time it took for light from the majority of the galaxy to reach us could we reasonably say that we were unique.
On point; if your rough estimate of 'half' the age of the galaxy is off, your conclusions could be way off. Note that the oldest Population I stars (10 Billion years old, compared to the Sun's 4.5 Billion) have only a tenth of the metallic contact of our system. The youngest stars, only a hundred million years old, have up to 2.5 times the metallic content of our system. It's reasonable to think that we are the forefront of stars capable of supporting life. Certainly, the niche-filling capacity of biologics suggests that it doesn't wait around much.
Given that, there could be a great deal of civilized life out there. The questions we should be looking at are less about what are the probabilities of life existing elsewhere at what frequency, assuming some large number of unknowns, but what is the maximum theoretical visibility of our own civilization? How far out, with our theoretical knowledge, would we be able to detect ourselves? With that bit of data we can tell the upper bound of the frequency of civilizations, and as time goes on we will push it down until we find the actual frequency.
As it stands, though, I don't think our ability to see other civilizations is very advanced; and on that basis, we should not be too surprised if we can't see anyone else.
"You want to magically hand-wave away the profound cost to society of such an approach to justice."
The profound cost to society for actually pursuing grievances? Are you for real? The profound cost to society, the one that should be avoided at all cost is, sir, yourself; the sort of person who advocates for people not getting their day in court, in not raising a fuss or a seeking redress when they've been wronged. Corporations aren't real people. And they're not being punished if cases are not won against them. And if they are won, then that says a great deal. You would rather, though, that they are never challenged - and I think you should introspect that notion a great deal, if you are at all capable of that.
As to the other, I can only hope your hysteria comes from having been shown, point by point, why the US is in fact obligated to recognize the UHDR. I'll leave the consequences of it not living up to it's obligations out of it, and instead suggest that you work on your defensiveness. In the meantime, a definition for you to contemplate:
"an uncontrollable outburst of emotion or fear, often characterized by irrationality, laughter, weeping, etc."
Alright... so let me get this straight. You're for the seeking justice being hard? Because to do the opposite would somehow magically conjure (negative, I assume?) unintended consequences? Whereas if you refuse to support individual rights, it's all going to be magically ok?
I'd be a lot more sympathetic to your case if you had any sort of actual basis to believe that protecting the corporations here is the smart governmental move. But I'm not seeing it. Much like I'm not seeing how you seem to object to my earlier statements, namely, "I very much recognize that the UDHR is not particularly enforceable at present. But the United States is bound by treaty to at least recognize it, and even that aside, there are laws against retaliation in the United States." I've laid out the legal reasons the US is bound by treaty to recognize it... and your response is to get hysterical. Which is probably a good sign that this isn't going to go anywhere, mm?
I give you The UN Charter, a treaty signed by the United States in 1945.
As for your difficulty in interpreting statements, try this; even if an infinite number of suits are brought by one entirely abstract entity against another, more influential entity, it would be within the duty of the government to advocate for the less influential - regardless of the success rate of those suits. Perhaps you're running to the idea that they would be suits without cause - perfectly understandable, really. However, I tend to exclude those, as they're thrown out pretty easily. More to the point, though, you're not going to get a large number of people bringing arbitrary suits against the same entity for the same thing unless there is a culture of adversity. If Walmart is treating it's employees poorly, those employees should have every right to appeal to the courts, how many ever times it takes. And the courts should not be hard of hearing; to be so would, effectively, be to say that it's alright to misbehave, so long as you misbehave vaguely enough to enough people that it's hard for them to get justice. You should not have a system that encourages behavior that makes seeking justice difficult; rather the opposite. The system should support justice.
It's perhaps a subtle idea, and I am perhaps not making it clearly, but I don't retract it. It's not barratry. It would be barratry if I suggested the government bring these suits, or any singular entity bring them in a repeated fashion. Quite differently, I support the idea that the government not be adverse to the suits, even given their difficultly. That should not be the government's role. And that is a far cry from stirring up the suit.
I think your basic misconception is that the amount you are compensated for a job should be a direct function of the work and skill it requires. This is basically untrue; you may not wish to pay wait staff for the luxury of them serving you, but the fact is that that task is valued in our economy. If it were not, it would not be paid for. It then simply becomes a matter for how you pay for it.
Further, you seek to obfuscate this by niggling over peripheral issues. If you're actually concerned with waitstaff avoiding the IRS - or your strippers - you should pay with a card, and tip on that card. Regardless, the service economy has traditionally been paid less than what would otherwise be legal as a result of tipping. It must be predicated in any such discussion that they're paid a fair wage before you can even begin to talk about whether or not you want it paid through tips or another means. You seem more concerned about your 10%-20%.
I'm afraid, though, that further discussion on the matter is unlikely to lead to more clarity. When I last got my performance review at work, no where on it did they rate my smashing good looks, and increment my pay accordingly. As such, I'm forced to believe two things: one, that if my appearance is affecting my pay, it is on an indirect basis. After all, there is no function that describes how much I will get paid based solely on the percent of my paycheck I spend on my haircut. There simply is no direct causation, even if the two influence each other. There IS indirect causation; namely that the people in charge of deciding my pay may in fact take into account what they think of me, and that my appearance might affect that. Still, it's a factor that is mutable by a lot more than my appearance, and if you're not familiar enough with scientific analysis of that nature to grok the basic difference - well, I'm afraid I can't help.
Two, that you're unable to back away from what you're saying long enough to be precise about your language use. I don't hold that against you; lots of people fail to, myself included. Still, you're unable to grasp basic tautologies; ugly people are, well, not attractive. Regardless of haircut. Haircuts may shift the degree of attractiveness, but utilizing 'appearance' and 'haircut' to mean equivalent things is clearly an error. I think if you look up 'equivalent' and 'precise' you'll have an idea as to where I'm going here; namely that you're hiding your argument behind vagueness of words.
Flat out, though, it's rude to not tip. There are strong societal reasons to tip, and for tipping to exist. You try to write them off, but the only result that you seem to accept is not having to pay for the service. You're unable to accept that the service has a price, and it's a service that is attendant to eating out. (Which, by the way, is not the way to achieve a healthy meal for yourself or your family.) In order to prove your argument you have to show that wait staff is either unnecessary or can be achieved for a cheaper price. And for that latter you have to accept that they're human, and that they may not want to serve you or your contemptuous attitude towards them for the pittance you seem to think they're worth. It really makes no never mind to me, but that is the heart of why the 'nix tipping' movement will never gain any traction. It totally fails to take into account what how rational individuals react, seeming instead to only care about entirely abstract, entirely imagined task difficulties and prices.
I refer you to the Constitution. In Article 6 we find; "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
While you may ascribe zero meaning to it, you'd be wrong.
"You are advocating for justice through barratry. In effect, the presumption of guilt."
I am advocating no such thing. Rather, I am advocating that as per the aforementioned legal document everyone has right to bring suit for grievances against them. The government should encourage and support this right, not discourage it through inaction and fear of failure. There is no presumption of guilt, but there is the presumption of oversight. The larger and more influential and entity gets, the more it needs to be inspected. Walmart falls into that category; it is just and right that it is under scrutiny because of the profound impact it has and can have. When you take away or put barriers in front of that scrutiny - that is where you start to develop problems.
I very much recognize that the UDHR is not particularly enforceable at present. But the United States is bound by treaty to at least recognize it, and even that aside, there are laws against retaliation in the United States. While they are difficult to prove, I don't think that difficulty is an excuse for not pursuing an injustice. If the government cannot manage to enforce it's laws, then it's not doing it's job - and that undermines the whole system.
I think that in particular, when you have a large company persecuting dissenting employees, the government has a duty to advocate for the people. Even if that advocacy never results in 'won' cases, it increases the friction, the energy cost, of doing business in a people-adverse way. If the government absconds from that duty, then it is, as I mentioned earlier, probably diseased.
"You seem like a smart person so I have no doubt you'll be able to figure out where the huge holes are at."
By the by, this is the worst sort of contemptuous rhetoric. If you can't cite a specific hole in the argument, don't pretend like it's there and everyone around you is too stupid to see it. I think everyone on Slashdot - myself included - could do to remember this better.
"Worse, proving it is problematic and time consuming so the IRS would rather chase other people."
Yes. As they should. No one is benefited by the IRS going after pocket change from lots of people. In fact, given that that money is going to people who are not hoarding it, but rather turning around and spending into the system again, one might argue that the downsides are twofold. This what they classify as a 'little' problem.
With two parents working the typical case these days, eating out in many house holds is not a luxury.
Bullshit. Eating out is not a necessity, it is a choice. There are many, many easy methods of cheaply prepping your own food, many of which do not require dishes or any other of the attendant needs of normal food prep. I don't recommend them, but then I don't recommend eating out on a regular basis if you can't afford it - or the appropriate tip.
"I'm saying the compensation should be commensurate to the value added"
Yes. It should. And further, what you consider to be no value added is not the general consensus. The general consensus is that wait staff add a lot of value. If you don't think they do, eat at home. What is it about dining out that you want, if not the wait staff?
"If one can accept his position as anything other than idiotic, then truly skilled laborers are **drastically** underpaid."
I totally agree with you here. The position is both not idiotic, and truly skilled laborers are underpaid. You wonder why your house is built like crap? Or why the roads are always filling with potholes? Or why your car costs so much to repair? The ironic thing to observe about each of these systems is that none of them use tipping - they rely on you paying a central authority who doles out the money as they see fit. Typically, that causes the skilled worker to become interchangeable, because no given worker is going to be motivated to do anything but a mediocre job. The software industry is heading this direction as well, as less and less of the income is tied to actual performance.
And, for the record, I do think it is entirely ungracious to resent people for demanding a fair market value. But, then, I don't own a car because I am unwilling to pay that price. When I am willing to pay that price - balanced against other things I want to spend money on - then I will choose to own a car. This is a choice I'm capable of making, just like I'm capable of saying that if I don't want to compensate my wait staff what they're worth, to me, then I won't go out to eat. It's just a sign of poor character and disregard for others.
"And don't cringe when you pay a fixed percent of your income to have your hair cut."
Here you have jumped a logical divide. No one pays a fixed percent of their income to have their hair cut. Nor do they pay a fixed percent of their income on tips, or on a car. None of these services are tied to (as in derived from) the consumer's income. I certainly don't tell my barber how much I make so he knows how much to charge me. If you do, let me know where you live because I would be fascinated to visit and observe such a place.
"After all, appearance is directly related to your income."
No, it is indirectly related. The difference between "directly" and "indirectly" is that if it were directly related, looking better would net you more money. This is easily disproven, as Bill Gates has never won "Sexiest Man of the Year".
It's been said that appearance can create a wage gap by as much as 20%-40%. You willing to pay that 20%-40%/yr to have your hair cut?
Orly? By whom? Do you have any numbers to back that up?
I hesitate to get into your logical fallacies here, but they are rife. "Haircut" is not equivalent to "appearance". Not even the best haircut in the world will save someone who is legitimately ugly. That said, it makes no sense to pay for any thing that is going to cost you as much as it earns you; at t
"The primary problem with tipping is that value is not proportionate the the service. Not even close."
How do you figure? A $20 meal with a 20% tip is $4. Assuming a meal length of 45 minutes, I have to ask, would you serve someone for less than $6 an hour?
But that is actually beside the point; if the general populace is willing to pay $6/hr, $30/hr or $300/hr for personal service, that is the going price. That is what the service is worth because that is what people are willing to pay for it. The removal of tipping would simply see this price go into the price of the meal - and you can't argue that it's already there. The $2.50/hr that wait staff have to be paid is there, yes, but no one takes a wait staff on the assumption that their base pay is all that they're taking home. They want to be paid a certain amount, and will often quit if the tips are insufficient to reach that nebulous amount.
Moving that cost to a mechanism that routes through the restaurant really doesn't solve anything. The cost is still there; I have to believe that wait staff would ask for more in the way of wages, but I recognize that they might accept less and be unhappier about it. Personally, I'd rather they were equitably compensated, and I find that difficult to ensure if I'm relying on the business owner.
"Waiters and topless dancers represent the largest group of tax evaders in the US."
"We did an informal office survey by looking at the total tax footprint versus the total income. I earned 46 million and paid a tax rate of 17.5%. My rate was the lowest, the average was 33%, and my cleaning lady paid 40%. The system is tilted towards the rich."... "Even though the per capita GDP is $47,000, 20% of the population makes less than $20,000."
Given that, given that wait staff and strippers are not making a bazillion dollars, are we really so upset to give people in that classification of income more money? They're not the people who are ripping you off. Car companies, cell phone companies, HMOs; these people rip you off. They know you need the service, so they can inflate the price. On the other hand, wait staff is a luxury you're choosing to paying for. It hardly seems mannerly to resent them for it.
"Just like" the popularity of Windows may be an overstatement; tipping has been around for millenia, after all, whereas the Windows OS has most certainly not. A better analogy might be taxes; sure, it might be, in some respects, better if all the various land and property owners paid for their own services - allowing them to vote with dollars which are more important. But the needs of the overall society are not exactly served. Taxes are an imperfect but workable solution.
That said, I'm not sure you're sufficiently showing it's not a binary system. Assuming, fundamentally, that you're paying for people to serve you the only question remains is how - through tipping or through the price on the menu; that is, the price you pay the restaurant.
I suppose, with modern technology, you could avoid wait staff altogether - but I both don't think it's feasible as a societal movement, nor do I think it's pertinent to the discussion. Naturally, if the task is removed you don't have to pay for it - I think we're basically just discussing services that utilize the staff.
I did think of a third possibility, though; personal wait staff. That is, you hire someone to be your wait staff on a retainer basis - rather than relying on the restaurant to provide you with staff. Feasibility seems low on first pass.
In short; Walmart is exploitative of it's workers. Greed keeps it that way, and supporting Walmart supports that same sin.
As to the rest of it; I know everyone dislikes Unions, but I'm always taken aback when people rail against them. Unions protect you as much as they do everyone else; the cost is some inefficiency, yes. But I, for one, would rather work in an inefficient world than one in which people are regularly used, abused, and even killed in order to be paid a pittance. Do you really want to go back to when they had kids crawling through deadly machines, or locked women in buildings to get their work done? Unions provide a necessary push-back against the corporation. This balance of forces is necessary for an economy that focuses on the benefits of everyone, rather than the few at the top.
Could unions be better? Of course! Name me one thing that couldn't, though. The real question is; are we better off with them or without them? And that takes a cold hard look at what the tradeoffs are. Happily, there is historical evidence!
As I see it, there are two possible systems. In the one you seem to support, you pay a higher meal fee - as determined by the restaurant - and that restaurant compensates the wait staff accordingly. Presumably, ethically, this also means that the wait staff has an at-least-equal-to-minimum-wage salary, rather than the commonly held less-than-minimum-wage salary legal by law because tips are assumed.
In the second system, the one we are under now, the restaurant has lower prices but it is, essentially, off-loading part of the cost to you, the customer, for it's wait staff - in the form of tips.
Now, I find this an ironic stance, given that in this very thread people are ranting against unions - yet the former model suggests a very union-like structure; given that there is no immediate customer->manager feedback in *most* situations, wait staff cannot expect compensation to result from improved performance. With little such incentive, one can hardly expect (though may still receive) superb service.
In the latter case, however, you have a number of distinct benefits that the former, what I shall go ahead and call 'impersonal' system - for the fact that the consumer can abscond from having any responsibility for an overall equitable interaction - does not have. In particular, tipping provides a very useful social experience. In my three favorite restaurants I'm treated like family whenever I come in, and am often lavished with free food, drink, other presents, and most importantly superb service simply because I've fostered a good relationship with the wait staff and proprietors. A large part of this is tipping well, as it sends a signal that says, "Hey, I respect you and your service."
Further, I have to imagine that restaurant owners prefer it. Apart from the staff having an independent source of motivation, there are certainly fiscal benefits - and my understanding is that the restaurant business is quite harsh, where the margins are not large most of the time. Being able to outsource a major expense (labor, the most major expense) to independently motivated agents is a very good thing.
Finally, though, let me note that it seems to me as though everyone who is against tipping is somehow under the impression that a tipping-free system would obviate the need to pay that money. The fact of the matter is that the market dictates that there is a certain value to being served at a restaurant. It may seem to you like it is a trivial thing; the statement "transporting a single peice of paper 100ft in one direction and a couple of plates in the other direction is waaay overpaid" certainly suggests that. There is a host of complementary skills and tasks, however, and I think anything other than a cursory look at the matter would reveal it. Wait staff often have to memorize a changing menu, be able to recall it accurately, often make suggestions. They have to be able to remember orders accurately, and balance attention between tables. Speaking of which, they have to be constantly aware of the people looking for attention. They have to carry food, deal with customers who are less than gracious, often in hot or less-than-comfortable environments. And, finally, they are giving up their time to serve you food. Simply because food is a basic need does not mean you're entitled to it, with full service, for basically no money.
And even if you disagree with any specific task and it's appropriateness, you have to admit that no one is going to be wait staff without some degree of compensation. Given that tips often replace equitable wage, benefits, and normal working hours (oh, wait, did I forget that? That most wait staff are working when most people prefer not to be? That does carry a price...) to include it as a normal wage would still have a price tag. That price shows up on the menu.
So, my feeling is this; embrace the tipping system - which at least lets you trade your self-respect, consideration for the work of others and good reputation for a cheaper meal.
It's not too hard to call CSS a scripting language to control browsers. It's rather limited as far as scripting languages are concerned, but powerful within it's context.
"The web is not programmed. It is scripted. Get over yourself if you think you are "programming" anything when you write a "web application". It would be worthless without some language interpreter on one end or the other of the transaction."
*sigh* Do you really think this? I mean, come on. The web does not exist as some magical land of script-only madness that somehow works. It *is* programmed, even if there is a much higher percentage of scripts running out there than honest-to-goodness applications. But note that the real applications are the ones that are doing well.
But that aside, there is a good reason scripts exist; and they exist everywhere. A real programmer would be foolish to decide that they are somehow meaningless child's play alone.
I realize a lot of people look down their nose at Java, but give it up! It's not a scripting language - it's a full fledged computer language and most people recognize that. The differences from C are minimal in terms of structure of the language - and if you're calling C a scripting language, well, then, there is nothing that can be done for you.
Javascript is a scripting language, but it's relation to Java is superficial. JSP, ASP, CSS; all of these are scripting languages - but they are actually quite distinct from compiled programmed languages.
There is a huge difference in size, yes. That is exactly the point. NASA is not amongst the most greatly funded US agencies - asking it to pull miracles out of a hat is a ridiculous proposition. You would expect the Air Force to be able to do fairly sophisticated tasks without a hitch, quickly, because it is so well funded. NASA is not so well funded - asking it to do such tasks is far more difficult. And that is assuming that their base difficulty were remotely similar - it's not. Operating within the terrestrial atmosphere is far easier than having most of your operations outside of it.
But that aside, look at what you're really saying; we ask a lot of the Air Force, and give it resources commensurate (we hope) with those tasks. We don't expect NASA to put up a cell phone network on the moon quickly - it's just not that valuable to us. So it's going to take a lot longer, because the budget is limited.
As I pointed out elsewhere, I'm not comparing the Air Force and NASA for any reason other than the two are both government agencies vaguely relate-able, and one is allowed to ask for a great deal of money where as the other is not. In terms of your analogy; it would be as silly to expect a city-wide fire department on a race car budget as it would to be to expect more than a handful of race cars.
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You are assuming the evidence is being used against you. As it turns out, if the cops illegally search you, and find evidence of wrongdoing on the part of someone else, that other person has no grounds to appeal the illegality of the search. Nor, unsurprisingly, do you have grounds to object to the search - the recourse for an illegal search is that the results cannot be used against you. Thus, you have no recourse if they're going after someone else.
Note that this is a double-edged blade; if they find something searching someone else's stuff on you, you have no recourse. Before this legislation the evidence could be thrown out because the telecom tap was illegal. Now, it's not.
Actually, Microsoft is not making this change for any reason other than for their target audience; business users. They probably couldn't care less if home users went one way or the other; home users don't hire out people to set up their stuff.
On the other hand, Microsoft has a huge amount of money invested in a network of people to train and support users on their software. They want to make it easy for businesses to buy 'the complete solution' from them. They want the revenue stream over many years from these businesses. Further, they want that subscription to push a constant upgrade cycle. Business users are fine with this because they don't have to pay for additional support staff.
This isn't about home users. It's about business customers and how Microsoft can best monetize them.
The second amendment was put in for a very good reason; to grant the citizens the power to overthrow a corrupt government. However, as with a number of things in the Constitution, culture and technology has outpaced the implementation of that reason. Guns cannot currently overthrow the government.
Rather, the government is propped up by two things; it's ability to arbitrarily hide information about what it's doing (severely weakening the idea of 'for, of and by the people'), and massive economic support of corporations who have insane control over people's lives, and who similarly have the power to hide what they're doing.
In the modern age, one or ideally both of these things need to change to protect the individual, and thus the People. The easiest to change is the governmental ability to hide stuff. Any law that reduces the amount of oversight or government transparency is something that works directly against the best interest of the people.
If I could have a single constitutional amendment, it would be forcing the government to have a balanced budget. If I could have a second, it would be 100% transparency, the torpedoes be damned. I don't care if the 'terrorists' know what we're doing, I think our country's better angels would prevail if we could see what was going on: simply because we could overthrow anything that worked against our interests - and that's the spirit of the 2nd anyway.
I think you're correct; most good judges wouldn't deign to listen to an illegal directive. However, the federal courts are being stacked with cronies - people who are going to listen to the directive and know that there is no one that can second-guess that decision.
My biggest fear is that despite seeing the obvious corruption in the system, few people realize the extent to which the neo-conservative (fascist) movement has infiltrated the mechanics of our system. They're breaking down the matrix of checks and balances in a systematic way, and it's going to cost us in the long term.
(Hell, the short term, too, if you consider what this war has done to our economy.)
I fear that arguing practicality is never something that is worthwhile engaging in when talking about emerging technologies. Chances are that only the very inventive or the very expert will be able to either, respectively, find the way to make it cost-effective or declare something actually infeasible.
To some degree, it's just a matter of numbers. If I have SuperDuperCrete, a concrete alternative that converts vibration to electricity but in all other ways is exactly like concrete, including cost - well, chances are I'll use SuperDuperCrete. Of a thousand possible technologies, probably only one or two of them pan out - but I think that the source of energy they're looking to capture is legitimate enough to think it's cool that they're pursuing it. Of course, I base that entirely on thinking about walking on hardwood (which has some give/bounce), versus walking on sod (which has significant give but little bounce). Personally, I'd trade hardwood for sod in most situations.
You're entirely wrong, I suspect.
The floor moves up and down regardless. Different surfaces will move different amounts based on the type of surface. If you stand on a bamboo pole floor, for instance, you can expect it to flex a lot. If you stand on a concrete floor, it will flex only a tiny amount. It still flexes, though, still moves; that's what causes concrete to crack over time.
Now, for strong surfaces this movement might translate to a very low-level vibration - unnoticeable to you. But it's absence will be unnoticeable to, so there is really no harm in taking out the energy of the vibration and using it for something else.
Your fallacy is thinking that you are going to now need to put in more energy into the system, rather than having a system that takes some of your 'waste' energy and moves it somewhere else instead. In this case, yes, there is no free lunch. But, then, you're already paying for lunch and not eating it.
Note that the Earth's sun is a Population One star, and more primitive stars that formed earlier in the life of the universe than our sun did have a much lower concentration of metals and other heavier elements - arguably those elements needed for life to form.
I think, given the science we have researched, it is very likely that our sun may be amongst the first stars formed even capable of supporting life. Given that, there is no reason to suspect that other civilizations haven't already started, and are on par or ahead of us - especially given that if there is no proximal solution to faster-than-light travel (ie, a solution discoverable in the first 50,000 years of recorded history). In such a case, civilizations, no matter how advanced, would still be limited by their observational capabilities. Only once we as an aware civilization were old enough to be observing the universe for a period of time it took for light from the majority of the galaxy to reach us could we reasonably say that we were unique.
On point; if your rough estimate of 'half' the age of the galaxy is off, your conclusions could be way off. Note that the oldest Population I stars (10 Billion years old, compared to the Sun's 4.5 Billion) have only a tenth of the metallic contact of our system. The youngest stars, only a hundred million years old, have up to 2.5 times the metallic content of our system. It's reasonable to think that we are the forefront of stars capable of supporting life. Certainly, the niche-filling capacity of biologics suggests that it doesn't wait around much.
Given that, there could be a great deal of civilized life out there. The questions we should be looking at are less about what are the probabilities of life existing elsewhere at what frequency, assuming some large number of unknowns, but what is the maximum theoretical visibility of our own civilization? How far out, with our theoretical knowledge, would we be able to detect ourselves? With that bit of data we can tell the upper bound of the frequency of civilizations, and as time goes on we will push it down until we find the actual frequency.
As it stands, though, I don't think our ability to see other civilizations is very advanced; and on that basis, we should not be too surprised if we can't see anyone else.
I assume that is what you were getting at; after all that is pretty much how DNA works, only without needing an infinite track.
"You want to magically hand-wave away the profound cost to society of such an approach to justice."
The profound cost to society for actually pursuing grievances? Are you for real? The profound cost to society, the one that should be avoided at all cost is, sir, yourself; the sort of person who advocates for people not getting their day in court, in not raising a fuss or a seeking redress when they've been wronged. Corporations aren't real people. And they're not being punished if cases are not won against them. And if they are won, then that says a great deal. You would rather, though, that they are never challenged - and I think you should introspect that notion a great deal, if you are at all capable of that.
As to the other, I can only hope your hysteria comes from having been shown, point by point, why the US is in fact obligated to recognize the UHDR. I'll leave the consequences of it not living up to it's obligations out of it, and instead suggest that you work on your defensiveness. In the meantime, a definition for you to contemplate:
"an uncontrollable outburst of emotion or fear, often characterized by irrationality, laughter, weeping, etc."
Alright... so let me get this straight. You're for the seeking justice being hard? Because to do the opposite would somehow magically conjure (negative, I assume?) unintended consequences? Whereas if you refuse to support individual rights, it's all going to be magically ok?
I'd be a lot more sympathetic to your case if you had any sort of actual basis to believe that protecting the corporations here is the smart governmental move. But I'm not seeing it. Much like I'm not seeing how you seem to object to my earlier statements, namely, "I very much recognize that the UDHR is not particularly enforceable at present. But the United States is bound by treaty to at least recognize it, and even that aside, there are laws against retaliation in the United States." I've laid out the legal reasons the US is bound by treaty to recognize it... and your response is to get hysterical. Which is probably a good sign that this isn't going to go anywhere, mm?
I give you The UN Charter, a treaty signed by the United States in 1945.
As for your difficulty in interpreting statements, try this; even if an infinite number of suits are brought by one entirely abstract entity against another, more influential entity, it would be within the duty of the government to advocate for the less influential - regardless of the success rate of those suits. Perhaps you're running to the idea that they would be suits without cause - perfectly understandable, really. However, I tend to exclude those, as they're thrown out pretty easily. More to the point, though, you're not going to get a large number of people bringing arbitrary suits against the same entity for the same thing unless there is a culture of adversity. If Walmart is treating it's employees poorly, those employees should have every right to appeal to the courts, how many ever times it takes. And the courts should not be hard of hearing; to be so would, effectively, be to say that it's alright to misbehave, so long as you misbehave vaguely enough to enough people that it's hard for them to get justice. You should not have a system that encourages behavior that makes seeking justice difficult; rather the opposite. The system should support justice.
It's perhaps a subtle idea, and I am perhaps not making it clearly, but I don't retract it. It's not barratry. It would be barratry if I suggested the government bring these suits, or any singular entity bring them in a repeated fashion. Quite differently, I support the idea that the government not be adverse to the suits, even given their difficultly. That should not be the government's role. And that is a far cry from stirring up the suit.
I think your basic misconception is that the amount you are compensated for a job should be a direct function of the work and skill it requires. This is basically untrue; you may not wish to pay wait staff for the luxury of them serving you, but the fact is that that task is valued in our economy. If it were not, it would not be paid for. It then simply becomes a matter for how you pay for it.
Further, you seek to obfuscate this by niggling over peripheral issues. If you're actually concerned with waitstaff avoiding the IRS - or your strippers - you should pay with a card, and tip on that card. Regardless, the service economy has traditionally been paid less than what would otherwise be legal as a result of tipping. It must be predicated in any such discussion that they're paid a fair wage before you can even begin to talk about whether or not you want it paid through tips or another means. You seem more concerned about your 10%-20%.
I'm afraid, though, that further discussion on the matter is unlikely to lead to more clarity. When I last got my performance review at work, no where on it did they rate my smashing good looks, and increment my pay accordingly. As such, I'm forced to believe two things: one, that if my appearance is affecting my pay, it is on an indirect basis. After all, there is no function that describes how much I will get paid based solely on the percent of my paycheck I spend on my haircut. There simply is no direct causation, even if the two influence each other. There IS indirect causation; namely that the people in charge of deciding my pay may in fact take into account what they think of me, and that my appearance might affect that. Still, it's a factor that is mutable by a lot more than my appearance, and if you're not familiar enough with scientific analysis of that nature to grok the basic difference - well, I'm afraid I can't help.
Two, that you're unable to back away from what you're saying long enough to be precise about your language use. I don't hold that against you; lots of people fail to, myself included. Still, you're unable to grasp basic tautologies; ugly people are, well, not attractive. Regardless of haircut. Haircuts may shift the degree of attractiveness, but utilizing 'appearance' and 'haircut' to mean equivalent things is clearly an error. I think if you look up 'equivalent' and 'precise' you'll have an idea as to where I'm going here; namely that you're hiding your argument behind vagueness of words.
Flat out, though, it's rude to not tip. There are strong societal reasons to tip, and for tipping to exist. You try to write them off, but the only result that you seem to accept is not having to pay for the service. You're unable to accept that the service has a price, and it's a service that is attendant to eating out. (Which, by the way, is not the way to achieve a healthy meal for yourself or your family.) In order to prove your argument you have to show that wait staff is either unnecessary or can be achieved for a cheaper price. And for that latter you have to accept that they're human, and that they may not want to serve you or your contemptuous attitude towards them for the pittance you seem to think they're worth. It really makes no never mind to me, but that is the heart of why the 'nix tipping' movement will never gain any traction. It totally fails to take into account what how rational individuals react, seeming instead to only care about entirely abstract, entirely imagined task difficulties and prices.
So yeah, it's been delightful.
"Which has zero meaning."
I refer you to the Constitution. In Article 6 we find;
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
While you may ascribe zero meaning to it, you'd be wrong.
"You are advocating for justice through barratry. In effect, the presumption of guilt."
I am advocating no such thing. Rather, I am advocating that as per the aforementioned legal document everyone has right to bring suit for grievances against them. The government should encourage and support this right, not discourage it through inaction and fear of failure. There is no presumption of guilt, but there is the presumption of oversight. The larger and more influential and entity gets, the more it needs to be inspected. Walmart falls into that category; it is just and right that it is under scrutiny because of the profound impact it has and can have. When you take away or put barriers in front of that scrutiny - that is where you start to develop problems.
I very much recognize that the UDHR is not particularly enforceable at present. But the United States is bound by treaty to at least recognize it, and even that aside, there are laws against retaliation in the United States. While they are difficult to prove, I don't think that difficulty is an excuse for not pursuing an injustice. If the government cannot manage to enforce it's laws, then it's not doing it's job - and that undermines the whole system.
I think that in particular, when you have a large company persecuting dissenting employees, the government has a duty to advocate for the people. Even if that advocacy never results in 'won' cases, it increases the friction, the energy cost, of doing business in a people-adverse way. If the government absconds from that duty, then it is, as I mentioned earlier, probably diseased.
"You seem like a smart person so I have no doubt you'll be able to figure out where the huge holes are at."
By the by, this is the worst sort of contemptuous rhetoric. If you can't cite a specific hole in the argument, don't pretend like it's there and everyone around you is too stupid to see it. I think everyone on Slashdot - myself included - could do to remember this better.
"Worse, proving it is problematic and time consuming so the IRS would rather chase other people."
Yes. As they should. No one is benefited by the IRS going after pocket change from lots of people. In fact, given that that money is going to people who are not hoarding it, but rather turning around and spending into the system again, one might argue that the downsides are twofold. This what they classify as a 'little' problem.
With two parents working the typical case these days, eating out in many house holds is not a luxury.
Bullshit. Eating out is not a necessity, it is a choice. There are many, many easy methods of cheaply prepping your own food, many of which do not require dishes or any other of the attendant needs of normal food prep. I don't recommend them, but then I don't recommend eating out on a regular basis if you can't afford it - or the appropriate tip.
"I'm saying the compensation should be commensurate to the value added"
Yes. It should. And further, what you consider to be no value added is not the general consensus. The general consensus is that wait staff add a lot of value. If you don't think they do, eat at home. What is it about dining out that you want, if not the wait staff?
"If one can accept his position as anything other than idiotic, then truly skilled laborers are **drastically** underpaid."
I totally agree with you here. The position is both not idiotic, and truly skilled laborers are underpaid. You wonder why your house is built like crap? Or why the roads are always filling with potholes? Or why your car costs so much to repair? The ironic thing to observe about each of these systems is that none of them use tipping - they rely on you paying a central authority who doles out the money as they see fit. Typically, that causes the skilled worker to become interchangeable, because no given worker is going to be motivated to do anything but a mediocre job. The software industry is heading this direction as well, as less and less of the income is tied to actual performance.
And, for the record, I do think it is entirely ungracious to resent people for demanding a fair market value. But, then, I don't own a car because I am unwilling to pay that price. When I am willing to pay that price - balanced against other things I want to spend money on - then I will choose to own a car. This is a choice I'm capable of making, just like I'm capable of saying that if I don't want to compensate my wait staff what they're worth, to me, then I won't go out to eat. It's just a sign of poor character and disregard for others.
"And don't cringe when you pay a fixed percent of your income to have your hair cut."
Here you have jumped a logical divide. No one pays a fixed percent of their income to have their hair cut. Nor do they pay a fixed percent of their income on tips, or on a car. None of these services are tied to (as in derived from) the consumer's income. I certainly don't tell my barber how much I make so he knows how much to charge me. If you do, let me know where you live because I would be fascinated to visit and observe such a place.
"After all, appearance is directly related to your income."
No, it is indirectly related. The difference between "directly" and "indirectly" is that if it were directly related, looking better would net you more money. This is easily disproven, as Bill Gates has never won "Sexiest Man of the Year".
It's been said that appearance can create a wage gap by as much as 20%-40%. You willing to pay that 20%-40%/yr to have your hair cut?
Orly? By whom? Do you have any numbers to back that up?
I hesitate to get into your logical fallacies here, but they are rife. "Haircut" is not equivalent to "appearance". Not even the best haircut in the world will save someone who is legitimately ugly. That said, it makes no sense to pay for any thing that is going to cost you as much as it earns you; at t
"The primary problem with tipping is that value is not proportionate the the service. Not even close."
How do you figure? A $20 meal with a 20% tip is $4. Assuming a meal length of 45 minutes, I have to ask, would you serve someone for less than $6 an hour?
But that is actually beside the point; if the general populace is willing to pay $6/hr, $30/hr or $300/hr for personal service, that is the going price. That is what the service is worth because that is what people are willing to pay for it. The removal of tipping would simply see this price go into the price of the meal - and you can't argue that it's already there. The $2.50/hr that wait staff have to be paid is there, yes, but no one takes a wait staff on the assumption that their base pay is all that they're taking home. They want to be paid a certain amount, and will often quit if the tips are insufficient to reach that nebulous amount.
Moving that cost to a mechanism that routes through the restaurant really doesn't solve anything. The cost is still there; I have to believe that wait staff would ask for more in the way of wages, but I recognize that they might accept less and be unhappier about it. Personally, I'd rather they were equitably compensated, and I find that difficult to ensure if I'm relying on the business owner.
"Waiters and topless dancers represent the largest group of tax evaders in the US."
In terms of numbers of people or dollars?
Warren buffet had the following to say recently:
Given that, given that wait staff and strippers are not making a bazillion dollars, are we really so upset to give people in that classification of income more money? They're not the people who are ripping you off. Car companies, cell phone companies, HMOs; these people rip you off. They know you need the service, so they can inflate the price. On the other hand, wait staff is a luxury you're choosing to paying for. It hardly seems mannerly to resent them for it.
"Just like" the popularity of Windows may be an overstatement; tipping has been around for millenia, after all, whereas the Windows OS has most certainly not. A better analogy might be taxes; sure, it might be, in some respects, better if all the various land and property owners paid for their own services - allowing them to vote with dollars which are more important. But the needs of the overall society are not exactly served. Taxes are an imperfect but workable solution.
That said, I'm not sure you're sufficiently showing it's not a binary system. Assuming, fundamentally, that you're paying for people to serve you the only question remains is how - through tipping or through the price on the menu; that is, the price you pay the restaurant.
I suppose, with modern technology, you could avoid wait staff altogether - but I both don't think it's feasible as a societal movement, nor do I think it's pertinent to the discussion. Naturally, if the task is removed you don't have to pay for it - I think we're basically just discussing services that utilize the staff.
I did think of a third possibility, though; personal wait staff. That is, you hire someone to be your wait staff on a retainer basis - rather than relying on the restaurant to provide you with staff. Feasibility seems low on first pass.
"At first I agreed. But now I don't. And it is because of retaliation."
Note that according to Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that is a human rights abuse and should be prosecuted as such; it's the sign of a sick governmental body that can't manage it.
"Why is everybody so much against Wal-Mart?"
I give you these:
Article describing the impact of Walmart on local economies and the 'cost' of raising their floor wage to $10/hr
Book describing what it's like living on minimum wage in America
In short; Walmart is exploitative of it's workers. Greed keeps it that way, and supporting Walmart supports that same sin.
As to the rest of it; I know everyone dislikes Unions, but I'm always taken aback when people rail against them. Unions protect you as much as they do everyone else; the cost is some inefficiency, yes. But I, for one, would rather work in an inefficient world than one in which people are regularly used, abused, and even killed in order to be paid a pittance. Do you really want to go back to when they had kids crawling through deadly machines, or locked women in buildings to get their work done? Unions provide a necessary push-back against the corporation. This balance of forces is necessary for an economy that focuses on the benefits of everyone, rather than the few at the top.
Could unions be better? Of course! Name me one thing that couldn't, though. The real question is; are we better off with them or without them? And that takes a cold hard look at what the tradeoffs are. Happily, there is historical evidence!
History of Unions!
As I see it, there are two possible systems. In the one you seem to support, you pay a higher meal fee - as determined by the restaurant - and that restaurant compensates the wait staff accordingly. Presumably, ethically, this also means that the wait staff has an at-least-equal-to-minimum-wage salary, rather than the commonly held less-than-minimum-wage salary legal by law because tips are assumed.
In the second system, the one we are under now, the restaurant has lower prices but it is, essentially, off-loading part of the cost to you, the customer, for it's wait staff - in the form of tips.
Now, I find this an ironic stance, given that in this very thread people are ranting against unions - yet the former model suggests a very union-like structure; given that there is no immediate customer->manager feedback in *most* situations, wait staff cannot expect compensation to result from improved performance. With little such incentive, one can hardly expect (though may still receive) superb service.
In the latter case, however, you have a number of distinct benefits that the former, what I shall go ahead and call 'impersonal' system - for the fact that the consumer can abscond from having any responsibility for an overall equitable interaction - does not have. In particular, tipping provides a very useful social experience. In my three favorite restaurants I'm treated like family whenever I come in, and am often lavished with free food, drink, other presents, and most importantly superb service simply because I've fostered a good relationship with the wait staff and proprietors. A large part of this is tipping well, as it sends a signal that says, "Hey, I respect you and your service."
Further, I have to imagine that restaurant owners prefer it. Apart from the staff having an independent source of motivation, there are certainly fiscal benefits - and my understanding is that the restaurant business is quite harsh, where the margins are not large most of the time. Being able to outsource a major expense (labor, the most major expense) to independently motivated agents is a very good thing.
Finally, though, let me note that it seems to me as though everyone who is against tipping is somehow under the impression that a tipping-free system would obviate the need to pay that money. The fact of the matter is that the market dictates that there is a certain value to being served at a restaurant. It may seem to you like it is a trivial thing; the statement "transporting a single peice of paper 100ft in one direction and a couple of plates in the other direction is waaay overpaid" certainly suggests that. There is a host of complementary skills and tasks, however, and I think anything other than a cursory look at the matter would reveal it. Wait staff often have to memorize a changing menu, be able to recall it accurately, often make suggestions. They have to be able to remember orders accurately, and balance attention between tables. Speaking of which, they have to be constantly aware of the people looking for attention. They have to carry food, deal with customers who are less than gracious, often in hot or less-than-comfortable environments. And, finally, they are giving up their time to serve you food. Simply because food is a basic need does not mean you're entitled to it, with full service, for basically no money.
And even if you disagree with any specific task and it's appropriateness, you have to admit that no one is going to be wait staff without some degree of compensation. Given that tips often replace equitable wage, benefits, and normal working hours (oh, wait, did I forget that? That most wait staff are working when most people prefer not to be? That does carry a price...) to include it as a normal wage would still have a price tag. That price shows up on the menu.
So, my feeling is this; embrace the tipping system - which at least lets you trade your self-respect, consideration for the work of others and good reputation for a cheaper meal.
It's not too hard to call CSS a scripting language to control browsers. It's rather limited as far as scripting languages are concerned, but powerful within it's context.
"The web is not programmed. It is scripted. Get over yourself if you think you are "programming" anything when you write a "web application". It would be worthless without some language interpreter on one end or the other of the transaction."
*sigh* Do you really think this? I mean, come on. The web does not exist as some magical land of script-only madness that somehow works. It *is* programmed, even if there is a much higher percentage of scripts running out there than honest-to-goodness applications. But note that the real applications are the ones that are doing well.
But that aside, there is a good reason scripts exist; and they exist everywhere. A real programmer would be foolish to decide that they are somehow meaningless child's play alone.
I realize a lot of people look down their nose at Java, but give it up! It's not a scripting language - it's a full fledged computer language and most people recognize that. The differences from C are minimal in terms of structure of the language - and if you're calling C a scripting language, well, then, there is nothing that can be done for you.
Javascript is a scripting language, but it's relation to Java is superficial. JSP, ASP, CSS; all of these are scripting languages - but they are actually quite distinct from compiled programmed languages.
There is a huge difference in size, yes. That is exactly the point. NASA is not amongst the most greatly funded US agencies - asking it to pull miracles out of a hat is a ridiculous proposition. You would expect the Air Force to be able to do fairly sophisticated tasks without a hitch, quickly, because it is so well funded. NASA is not so well funded - asking it to do such tasks is far more difficult. And that is assuming that their base difficulty were remotely similar - it's not. Operating within the terrestrial atmosphere is far easier than having most of your operations outside of it.
But that aside, look at what you're really saying; we ask a lot of the Air Force, and give it resources commensurate (we hope) with those tasks. We don't expect NASA to put up a cell phone network on the moon quickly - it's just not that valuable to us. So it's going to take a lot longer, because the budget is limited.
As I pointed out elsewhere, I'm not comparing the Air Force and NASA for any reason other than the two are both government agencies vaguely relate-able, and one is allowed to ask for a great deal of money where as the other is not. In terms of your analogy; it would be as silly to expect a city-wide fire department on a race car budget as it would to be to expect more than a handful of race cars.