All this talk about "what the people want." Of course people have intrinsic desires and drives but how many billions of dollars are spent on advertising in order to change the way people think? To make them want what the existing corporations want to sell them, whether software, hardware or anything else. The big boys don't want informed capable users, they want helpless infants who will pay whatever is demanded of them.
I know we all get frustrated with how dumb people can be at times, but people are bombarded and manipulated by thousands of ad messages a day trying to make them insecure, superficial and helpless. That's why the average user doesn't care about the same things that free software types do. Perhaps this is idealistic, but I refuse to believe that humanity has overcome so much and progressed so far just so that 95% of us can get turned into zombies by our dumbed down computers and tv.
All this talk about market share... market share--markets are an economics term, and economics is the study of how scarcity is managed. Free Software is all about destroying markets because the scarcity of software is highly imposed, i.e. it can be copied and distrubuted to all for virtually no cost. Anyone who cares about market share, and I suspect ESR does, has nothing whatsoever to contribute to the world--might as well go work for MS.
1. If it's generating a password based on soley on the site information(domain name, etc?) and the user supplied '@@' password then nothing will prevent phishers from using PwdHash to figure out what someone's real password is. The white paper you cited says that a private salt is OPTIONAL. You're just obfuscating things abit...security through obscurity.
2. You can only use this where you have the extension installed.
3. If you use the optional private salt then you have to carry this around with you(or never use any computer but your own).
Therefore this is functionally no different than an extension that remembers passwords for you and then stores them in encrypted form except that if they were encrypted they would be much more difficult to guess since people will probably revert to using simple alphabetic passwords like "football" or "racecar" instead of more complicated ones since they are so dazzled by this *cryptographically secure hashing function written by someone at a big university*. the hashing thing and the '@@' is just fluff. I would think as well that people will probably start using the same password for every site since they have this illusion of security(or is that the premise? that now everyone can go back to being an idiot and using the same password everywhere?) So nothing new here and I would argue it would be less secure unless hardly anyone uses it and phishers never bother to try manipulating the passwords this way. The best method would be to have long randomly generated passwords, different for each site, stored in an encrypted format accessible by using a password(a la gnupg). You still have to carry this chunk of data around with you, but there's no point in someone tricking you into giving up your password since it will still require having the encrypted password file. IF someone used the optional salt then perhaps that could be guessed if their RNG isn't good. Also, Yes, a salt is smaller than an encrypted password list but these days who cares?
Bottom line, hash functions still allow information to leak through.
Sometimes these university guys come up with some dumb shit.
I'm not one of those "rah rah U-S-A" guys but let's look at the FACTS for a moment.
world GDP is ~$60 trillion. The US's GDP is ~$12 trillion. So I'd say the rest of the world's production capacity is only 4x that of the US's, not 10x.
The US spends at least $460 billion/yr on it's military whereas the rest of the world spends $500 billion/yr. So the US is fairly on par, though it's military spending is heavily weighted towards high tech, capital intensive combat systems.
Sounds like the makings of a good fight. But the rest of the world doesn't have integrated command and control, and the US DOES. So it would take awhile...the US would have to convert all it's production into making bombs and would have to conscript all it's males and then go after the other countries one by one, but it could be done. Central governments are easy to destroy with bombs. The difficult part would be in actually holding the territory if any people remain alive. To save money and time it would be logical to make some judicious use of nukes, then carpet most of the rest of the planet with chemical and biological weapons, as the United States has the most advanced CBW program on the planet and converting our chemical and pharmaceutical industry to making them would be easy.
So my vote is "yes the US could destroy all the other governments but without killing all the other people it could not hold the territory." The US does clausewitzian warfare better than anyone else but when it comes to counter-insurgency it sucks...as the occupation of Iraq shows us.
And anyway this all belies the point the US through a balance of military and economic force controls the entire planet besides a few hot spots and China....maybe Russia.
Get an electric scooter first to see what it's like. It's also easier to have one since they are highly efficient, unlike cars which are really just motorized wagons.
"When animals agree to a set of minimum behavioral norms that define a civil society, then they'll have rights. Until then, it's the law of the jungle that defines the lives and fortunes of animals."
Most children(heck, most adults) have no clue what a "civil society" is, yet they still have rights. Are you expecting a delegation from the united macaque congress to sign a treaty with humans?
But really whether they have rights or not isn't the issue... it's just a basic issue about whether it's okay to inflict unnecessary pain on something else just because they are too weak to defend themselves. primates don't speak english... but I, you, and everyone else KNOWS that that screaming and wailing means that another sentient life form, one quite similiar to us, is in pain and wants whatever someone is doing to it to stop. And that's the point of all this "civil society" crap, to reduce suffering.
You win the prize for the most well thought out, yet still blatantly idiotic comment I have ever read on here. You've accomplished an amazing balancing act there. congrats!
The United States has a greater percentage of it's citizens in prison than the PRC does. Now who doesn't care about human rights? Oh yeah.. I forgot, our government is always right.
That's a nice little sentiment. But unless you're a quaker or a mennonite or another TRULY pacifistic person then you are most likely talking out of your ass. If someone was trying to kill you, would you not use violence to defend yourself? And if you were rendered incapable of defending yourself would you not want someone who was witnessing this to help you? please tell me...
I love how people can self-righteously talk about how ANY violence is wrong when it doesn't affect them but when they are being harmed they quickly reach for the phone to call the cops or reach for a weapon.
Most sane people consider it morally justifiable to use small amounts of violence to prevent greater violence. This guy was killing 30 primates a year. so he got a little shaken up? big deal. not that I'm advocating what these people did, because frankly, it's a losing battle. and most people don't care one bit about other animals being harmed(human or otherwise) but was it an immoral act? no.
I imagine this exchange between him and his kids: "Daddy? why are they mad at us?"
"because at daddy's work he cuts monkeys brains open then kills them"
"monkeys? I like monkeys! like the ones we saw at the zoo? "
It's not a political end to aid another SENTIENT life form who is being tortured. It's a moral end.
I'm not missing any point. IF you were locked in a cage and were being experimented on would you not want someone to aid you?
"What a fascinating analogy. When macaque monkeys start firebombing houses, please notify me."
So it's immoral for one SENTIENT being to aid another SENTIENT being? Aiding those weaker than us when they are under attack is the basis of our entire legal and moral system. Could you please tell the police that when they stop someone from being attacked by another human that they are doing something wrong?
Face it, YOU are not against violence. If you or anyone around you was being attacked you would use violence in a heart beat to stop it. You just don't care about these macaques because it doesn't affect you. In short, you lack empathy. Empathy, it's what makes humans great. However, we are not so great that it is okay for us to sacrifice other primates for our petty scientific goals.
Ringach DL, Hawken MJ, Shapley R (2003) Dynamics of orientation tuning in macaque V1: the role of global and tuned suppression. J Neurophysiol 90(1): 342-52.
I'm sure that the macaque is just fine with his "orientation tuning" and doesn't give a shit how or why it works. If you care so much about the "dynamics of orientation tuning" then by all means go find a scientist and have them cut YOUR brain open. Don't force other primates to do something you are unwilling to do.
"Bah... these are the real terrorists... You don't agree with what someone is doing, then sue them... that's the american way... and if that fails, then try and get a law passed to make it illegal... starting your own personal war based on your morals is no different than the actions of those the US is currently calling terrorists. But hey, this is in the country who's government doesn't believe in teaching evolution anymore...
Times like these I'm happy to live in a country where the worst thing activists do is slow down traffic, and hold marches."
Though that was not the primary cause, there was a massive war that killed over a million people before America gave up enslaving human primates. wikipedia "american civil war" No, suing is NOT the American way.
I suppose that those slaves and the abolitionists should have just had some marches and rallies...
If you believe that his quest for knowledge is so important then why don't you volunteer to be part of these primate studies? They use OTHER primates because they are similiar to human primates, but a human is the PERFECT test subject. So you think that his knowledge gain is important, you could give him even MORE by using yourself. Are you going to? If you do then you have a right to say something against these "terrorists," if not you're a hypocrite.
How is preventing people from torturing animals a political goal? It's a basic moral goal. If you're walking down the street and see someone beating a cat or dog would you not stop them?
What is the moral difference, then between conducting medical experiments on unwilling humans and on unwilling chimpanzees or other primates?
Would it be wrong to kidnap humans to do experiments on? Why is this not okay but it's okay to capture other primates to experiment on? Is the lack of ability to speak mean that it's okay to cage a primate and perform experiments on them?
If there is nothing wrong with experimenting on other primates against their will then there is nothing wrong with experimenting on humans against their will.
If you were locked in a cage and having your brain cut open and prodded and shocked would you not want someone, anyone, to try to do something to stop it?
Were the slave revolts through out history wrong? Should the former slaves not taken any kind of violent action towards their masters?
I challenge anyone that thinks that experimenting on primates is okay to watch one of these videos:
"I work at a government research lab - home to many unix geeks and hackers. Three years ago, virtually everyone had a pc laptop w/ Linux installed. Today, out of 24 people in my group, only two are running Linux on their laptops - everyone else has a Mac. And if Apple made a laptop w/ more than one stupid mouse button built in, those last two Linux machines would disappear."
Is this the same government that blew up two shuttles and ran up a 8.5 trillion dollar debt? Now we know why...
The real problem is that people like Eric Raymond are too cowardly to break a few laws. Don't we all download music and movies? So what's the big deal about downloading a non-apple approved application that interfaces with an ipod?
Ok, I'll pardon your ignorance. Go to google. Type in "openoffice".
No one wants MS to release anything for linux...certainly not Office. Ok, sure, I want to be able to look at pr0n.wmvs on my linux desktop, but it's MS that has forced their codec down everyones throat, not that people are clamoring to run MS crap.
If Eric Raymond wants to give up some of his own money for this then fine. But I, and I hope few others, don't really care if a bunch of ipod using dopes run linux or not. Linux isn't going to save the world, it's just an OS.
You missed the point. When he says "4 minutes ago" the "in this frame of reference" is implied.
Anyway, choosing your own frame of reference as the most relevant frame of reference is not arbitrary. furthermore, you shouldn't put an assumption like "there is no correct reference frame" in all caps...how do you know there is no correct reference frame? scientists HOPE there is no correct reference frame just like they hope that the universe works the same way in all locations. we have just a drop of good data about the universe and have never left our planet's gravity yet we've got it nearly all figured out, huh?
You don't need "universal real time" in order to say something already happened. For example, I already read your post. How else could I be responding to it now?
When things affect each other you have to correlate the order that events happen in. That's time... You can play games with words and numbers but clearly things happen in certain orders.
If doctors put so much effort and time into becoming doctors why can't they remember not to leave foreign objects inside patients? That people are having to resort to using RFID to prevent this doesn't say very much for the medical profession. Aren't doctors smart enough to use a checklist?
"Ultimately, it boils down to the individual being responsible for ones own actions, having both the ability to succeed (like Bill Gates) and the possiblity of failure. You can't have one without the other. In a Union (at a factory level) or socialism/communism (a national level), a safety net is erected to prevent failure. The same mechanism also stunts success."
So are you saying that "yes it is un-american to have 40 hour work weeks, healh benefits and a safe workplace?" You're completely ignorant of, or choosing to ignore, the immense benefits to the american people that have come from unions. Also, the idea that this american capitalism, that you speak so glowingly of, doesn't erect safety nets is wrong. to paraphrase Chomsky. "There is a massive state sector in the US economy. It's called 'the military.'" The power of government is invariably used to bail out and protect those with wealth. It's government policy to take all measures to retain the extreme pyramid shaped social hierarchy. The reason that some people work long hours for little pay and some work little hours for pay that is orders of magnitude greater is not because this is the natural order of things. It's because the workers have no choice, they have been put into a situation by their bosses where they either do what they are told or they will die. Modern workers, particularly in the US, are slaves to corporations.
Unions are the way people organize. Corporations are the way capital organizes. Until corporate charters are revoked from corporations which do not support the public interest(that is why they are granted their rights and privileges in the first place) there will be a need for unions.
If you became a "college professor" in order to make money then you're an idiot.
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with a janitor making a decent salary and if YOU are not being paid enough that's a problem between YOU and your EMPLOYER. Don't blame someone in a union for your own poor situation-- you should be in a union too. You're probably just an AP somewhere so you could use one.
Slashdot Mirror
All this talk about "what the people want." Of course people have intrinsic desires and drives but how many billions of dollars are spent on advertising in order to change the way people think? To make them want what the existing corporations want to sell them, whether software, hardware or anything else. The big boys don't want informed capable users, they want helpless infants who will pay whatever is demanded of them.
I know we all get frustrated with how dumb people can be at times, but people are bombarded and manipulated by thousands of ad messages a day trying to make them insecure, superficial and helpless. That's why the average user doesn't care about the same things that free software types do. Perhaps this is idealistic, but I refuse to believe that humanity has overcome so much and progressed so far just so that 95% of us can get turned into zombies by our dumbed down computers and tv.
All this talk about market share... market share--markets are an economics term, and economics is the study of how scarcity is managed. Free Software is all about destroying markets because the scarcity of software is highly imposed, i.e. it can be copied and distrubuted to all for virtually no cost. Anyone who cares about market share, and I suspect ESR does, has nothing whatsoever to contribute to the world--might as well go work for MS.
1. If it's generating a password based on soley on the site information(domain name, etc?) and the user supplied '@@' password then nothing will prevent phishers from using PwdHash to figure out what someone's real password is. The white paper you cited says that a private salt is OPTIONAL. You're just obfuscating things abit...security through obscurity.
2. You can only use this where you have the extension installed.
3. If you use the optional private salt then you have to carry this around with you(or never use any computer but your own).
Therefore this is functionally no different than an extension that remembers passwords for you and then stores them in encrypted form except that if they were encrypted they would be much more difficult to guess since people will probably revert to using simple alphabetic passwords like "football" or "racecar" instead of more complicated ones since they are so dazzled by this *cryptographically secure hashing function written by someone at a big university*. the hashing thing and the '@@' is just fluff. I would think as well that people will probably start using the same password for every site since they have this illusion of security(or is that the premise? that now everyone can go back to being an idiot and using the same password everywhere?) So nothing new here and I would argue it would be less secure unless hardly anyone uses it and phishers never bother to try manipulating the passwords this way. The best method would be to have long randomly generated passwords, different for each site, stored in an encrypted format accessible by using a password(a la gnupg). You still have to carry this chunk of data around with you, but there's no point in someone tricking you into giving up your password since it will still require having the encrypted password file. IF someone used the optional salt then perhaps that could be guessed if their RNG isn't good. Also, Yes, a salt is smaller than an encrypted password list but these days who cares?
Bottom line, hash functions still allow information to leak through.
Sometimes these university guys come up with some dumb shit.
I'm not one of those "rah rah U-S-A" guys but let's look at the FACTS for a moment.
k order/2001rank.html
d ing.htm
world GDP is ~$60 trillion. The US's GDP is ~$12 trillion. So I'd say the rest of the world's production capacity is only 4x that of the US's, not 10x.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ran
The US spends at least $460 billion/yr on it's military whereas the rest of the world spends $500 billion/yr. So the US is fairly on par, though it's military spending is heavily weighted towards high tech, capital intensive combat systems.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spen
Sounds like the makings of a good fight. But the rest of the world doesn't have integrated command and control, and the US DOES. So it would take awhile...the US would have to convert all it's production into making bombs and would have to conscript all it's males and then go after the other countries one by one, but it could be done. Central governments are easy to destroy with bombs. The difficult part would be in actually holding the territory if any people remain alive. To save money and time it would be logical to make some judicious use of nukes, then carpet most of the rest of the planet with chemical and biological weapons, as the United States has the most advanced CBW program on the planet and converting our chemical and pharmaceutical industry to making them would be easy.
So my vote is "yes the US could destroy all the other governments but without killing all the other people it could not hold the territory." The US does clausewitzian warfare better than anyone else but when it comes to counter-insurgency it sucks...as the occupation of Iraq shows us.
And anyway this all belies the point the US through a balance of military and economic force controls the entire planet besides a few hot spots and China....maybe Russia.
Get an electric scooter first to see what it's like. It's also easier to have one since they are highly efficient, unlike cars which are really just motorized wagons.
"When animals agree to a set of minimum behavioral norms that define a civil society, then they'll have rights. Until then, it's the law of the jungle that defines the lives and fortunes of animals."
Most children(heck, most adults) have no clue what a "civil society" is, yet they still have rights. Are you expecting a delegation from the united macaque congress to sign a treaty with humans?
But really whether they have rights or not isn't the issue... it's just a basic issue about whether it's okay to inflict unnecessary pain on something else just because they are too weak to defend themselves. primates don't speak english... but I, you, and everyone else KNOWS that that screaming and wailing means that another sentient life form, one quite similiar to us, is in pain and wants whatever someone is doing to it to stop. And that's the point of all this "civil society" crap, to reduce suffering.
You win the prize for the most well thought out, yet still blatantly idiotic comment I have ever read on here. You've accomplished an amazing balancing act there. congrats!
The United States has a greater percentage of it's citizens in prison than the PRC does. Now who doesn't care about human rights? Oh yeah.. I forgot, our government is always right.
That's a nice little sentiment. But unless you're a quaker or a mennonite or another TRULY pacifistic person then you are most likely talking out of your ass. If someone was trying to kill you, would you not use violence to defend yourself? And if you were rendered incapable of defending yourself would you not want someone who was witnessing this to help you? please tell me...
I love how people can self-righteously talk about how ANY violence is wrong when it doesn't affect them but when they are being harmed they quickly reach for the phone to call the cops or reach for a weapon.
Most sane people consider it morally justifiable to use small amounts of violence to prevent greater violence. This guy was killing 30 primates a year. so he got a little shaken up? big deal. not that I'm advocating what these people did, because frankly, it's a losing battle. and most people don't care one bit about other animals being harmed(human or otherwise) but was it an immoral act? no.
I imagine this exchange between him and his kids:
"Daddy? why are they mad at us?"
"because at daddy's work he cuts monkeys brains open then kills them"
"monkeys? I like monkeys! like the ones we saw at the zoo? "
"don't worry, honey, it's for science."
It's not a political end to aid another SENTIENT life form who is being tortured. It's a moral end.
I'm not missing any point. IF you were locked in a cage and were being experimented on would you not want someone to aid you?
"What a fascinating analogy. When macaque monkeys start firebombing houses, please notify me."
So it's immoral for one SENTIENT being to aid another SENTIENT being? Aiding those weaker than us when they are under attack is the basis of our entire legal and moral system. Could you please tell the police that when they stop someone from being attacked by another human that they are doing something wrong?
Face it, YOU are not against violence. If you or anyone around you was being attacked you would use violence in a heart beat to stop it. You just don't care about these macaques because it doesn't affect you. In short, you lack empathy. Empathy, it's what makes humans great. However, we are not so great that it is okay for us to sacrifice other primates for our petty scientific goals.
Ringach DL, Hawken MJ, Shapley R (2003) Dynamics of orientation tuning in macaque V1: the role of global and tuned suppression. J Neurophysiol 90(1): 342-52.
I'm sure that the macaque is just fine with his "orientation tuning" and doesn't give a shit how or why it works. If you care so much about the "dynamics of orientation tuning" then by all means go find a scientist and have them cut YOUR brain open. Don't force other primates to do something you are unwilling to do.
"Bah... these are the real terrorists... You don't agree with what someone is doing, then sue them... that's the american way... and if that fails, then try and get a law passed to make it illegal... starting your own personal war based on your morals is no different than the actions of those the US is currently calling terrorists. But hey, this is in the country who's government doesn't believe in teaching evolution anymore...
Times like these I'm happy to live in a country where the worst thing activists do is slow down traffic, and hold marches."
Though that was not the primary cause, there was a massive war that killed over a million people before America gave up enslaving human primates. wikipedia "american civil war" No, suing is NOT the American way.
I suppose that those slaves and the abolitionists should have just had some marches and rallies...
If you believe that his quest for knowledge is so important then why don't you volunteer to be part of these primate studies? They use OTHER primates because they are similiar to human primates, but a human is the PERFECT test subject. So you think that his knowledge gain is important, you could give him even MORE by using yourself. Are you going to? If you do then you have a right to say something against these "terrorists," if not you're a hypocrite.
How is preventing people from torturing animals a political goal? It's a basic moral goal. If you're walking down the street and see someone beating a cat or dog would you not stop them?
Humans, homo sapiens, are primates.
u mbia_primates
What is the moral difference, then between conducting medical experiments on unwilling humans and on unwilling chimpanzees or other primates?
Would it be wrong to kidnap humans to do experiments on? Why is this not okay but it's okay to capture other primates to experiment on? Is the lack of ability to speak mean that it's okay to cage a primate and perform experiments on them?
If there is nothing wrong with experimenting on other primates against their will then there is nothing wrong with experimenting on humans against their will.
If you were locked in a cage and having your brain cut open and prodded and shocked would you not want someone, anyone, to try to do something to stop it?
Were the slave revolts through out history wrong? Should the former slaves not taken any kind of violent action towards their masters?
I challenge anyone that thinks that experimenting on primates is okay to watch one of these videos:
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=col
http://www.petatv.com/viv.html
"I work at a government research lab - home to many unix geeks and hackers. Three years ago, virtually everyone had a pc laptop w/ Linux installed. Today, out of 24 people in my group, only two are running Linux on their laptops - everyone else has a Mac. And if Apple made a laptop w/ more than one stupid mouse button built in, those last two Linux machines would disappear."
Is this the same government that blew up two shuttles and ran up a 8.5 trillion dollar debt? Now we know why...
Maybe one day your child will ask you, "Daddy, how do computers work?" and you'll say, "magic" because you won't have any clue.
You mean you still buy movies? I watch lots of movies w/ linux for free.
The real problem is that people like Eric Raymond are too cowardly to break a few laws. Don't we all download music and movies? So what's the big deal about downloading a non-apple approved application that interfaces with an ipod?
Ok, I'll pardon your ignorance. Go to google. Type in "openoffice".
.wmvs on my linux desktop, but it's MS that has forced their codec down everyones throat, not that people are clamoring to run MS crap.
No one wants MS to release anything for linux...certainly not Office. Ok, sure, I want to be able to look at pr0n
If Eric Raymond wants to give up some of his own money for this then fine. But I, and I hope few others, don't really care if a bunch of ipod using dopes run linux or not. Linux isn't going to save the world, it's just an OS.
You missed the point. When he says "4 minutes ago" the "in this frame of reference" is implied.
Anyway, choosing your own frame of reference as the most relevant frame of reference is not arbitrary. furthermore, you shouldn't put an assumption like "there is no correct reference frame" in all caps...how do you know there is no correct reference frame? scientists HOPE there is no correct reference frame just like they hope that the universe works the same way in all locations. we have just a drop of good data about the universe and have never left our planet's gravity yet we've got it nearly all figured out, huh?
You don't need "universal real time" in order to say something already happened. For example, I already read your post. How else could I be responding to it now?
When things affect each other you have to correlate the order that events happen in. That's time... You can play games with words and numbers but clearly things happen in certain orders.
If doctors put so much effort and time into becoming doctors why can't they remember not to leave foreign objects inside patients? That people are having to resort to using RFID to prevent this doesn't say very much for the medical profession. Aren't doctors smart enough to use a checklist?
"If there's significant controversey, it'll usually get its own section on a page."
How will you know if there has been controversey if the controversey has been deleted?
"Ultimately, it boils down to the individual being responsible for ones own actions, having both the ability to succeed (like Bill Gates) and the possiblity of failure. You can't have one without the other. In a Union (at a factory level) or socialism/communism (a national level), a safety net is erected to prevent failure. The same mechanism also stunts success."
So are you saying that "yes it is un-american to have 40 hour work weeks, healh benefits and a safe workplace?" You're completely ignorant of, or choosing to ignore, the immense benefits to the american people that have come from unions. Also, the idea that this american capitalism, that you speak so glowingly of, doesn't erect safety nets is wrong. to paraphrase Chomsky. "There is a massive state sector in the US economy. It's called 'the military.'" The power of government is invariably used to bail out and protect those with wealth. It's government policy to take all measures to retain the extreme pyramid shaped social hierarchy. The reason that some people work long hours for little pay and some work little hours for pay that is orders of magnitude greater is not because this is the natural order of things. It's because the workers have no choice, they have been put into a situation by their bosses where they either do what they are told or they will die. Modern workers, particularly in the US, are slaves to corporations.
Unions are the way people organize. Corporations are the way capital organizes. Until corporate charters are revoked from corporations which do not support the public interest(that is why they are granted their rights and privileges in the first place) there will be a need for unions.
If you became a "college professor" in order to make money then you're an idiot.
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with a janitor making a decent salary and if YOU are not being paid enough that's a problem between YOU and your EMPLOYER. Don't blame someone in a union for your own poor situation-- you should be in a union too. You're probably just an AP somewhere so you could use one.