That's a little misleading. With any health-care insurance, if you don't use it your (Taxes/Dues) fund it, even if you don't use it. I pay a lot for private health care through my company and we rarely get sick. The only way out of this is to not have health insurance, which is something that needs to be nearly illegal (since my tax dollars are being paid to bail out idiots who don't have any but could have/can afford it, run to the hospital when something happens and vanish). If not illegal, then we need to be willing to let people die of stupidity, something that has traditionally not been acceptable to the masses.
If you fund this corporation with bonds (which they did), which are being repaid by subscriptions, then strictly speaking it's not taxpayer money. I agree it's not necessarily that clean, but generally the taxpayers dollars will ultimately not go towards funding this operation.
My neighbors here in TX would prohibit using the network for anything deemed "pornography", probably ask that it be shut down on Sunday morning for church, and probably would prevent anything that seemed like anonymity.
I might tolerate some of that for better service than what AT&T provides (which honestly, is just about anything)...but it's definitely not a utopia.
I don't know, I've been in closed beta for several products lately, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan and Tabula Rasa.
I submit bug reports out the wazoo (and believe me, all 3 of these have had a few bugs). I never see anything come of them, even the major ones. I try to view being in the beta as a privilege for which I owe good bug reports.
On the other hand, you are supposed to have fun. Any time I am not having fun, is just as much of a bug as when things don't work.
I've always got the feeling that the game was going to ship no matter what I found. I was just there to load the servers and stress the network so they could make the launch less hokey. I've found blatant exploits, item dupes, countless serious quest bugs, etc. I never saw any movement on any of those, nor was asked to clarify or repro. That kind of tells me a lot about how my input is being considered. It really is just a marketing thing that the developers have been able to put to small use. Beta's rarely start early enough, nor is there sufficient in-house support for beta testers for it to really be effective.
This only explains one reason for DRM, but doesn't explain why movies aren't available. Apple, for example, could implement this and maintain the market segmentation. Netflix as well.
This market segmentation deal is very bad for the US, we really need to make it go away anyhow. Part of the reason offshoring is so attractive is that our costs here are far more than elsewhere for movies, music and software. It's true that movies and music aren't essential to the business world, but it does mean than a lower paycheck over there will get you as much as your paycheck here. Meaning people will be happy working for less there.
Actually here in the US, anything that isn't 100% rabid capitalism or 100% ridiculous and ill-conceived regulation is evil.
I'm not sure we've ever tried being reasonable about it. The public may get angry enough that regulation becomes necessary, at which point private interests ensure that it is constructed to fail its goal, either by shifting the evil around, or by making it so incredibly inefficient and silly that it becomes an eyesore.
Political leaning is a stupid way of identifying yourself, thus I doubt VCs will care about the slant.
I think the silicon valley probably doesn't like seeing its jobs shipped overseas. VCs don't benefit much from offshoring, but the rest of Si Valley only gets murdered by it. VCs won't like being regulated, but they aren't profiting by so much of the tech industry being in jobs they're petrified of leaving either. They can't get people to take risks in small start ups in the present market.
I don't think either side of politicians in general understand the impacts of what they're doing. What's new.
I don't think if Amazon had intentionally done this, and had announced that they'd one it, that it would be that unpopular. California, of all places, couldn't agree on gay marriage. Imagine then the rest of the country.
On the other hand, since Amazon is a for profit company, they have absolutely no reason to alienate a fraction of their customers by implementing this policy silently. They're not attracting right wing sales, nor "think of the children" types of all mentalities...they'd just be pissing off a segment of the market.
So it seems like it's probably a hack, because if it isn't they'd be being uncharacteristically stupid in the only dimension they'd ever shown any real passion about.
Let's try to keep this in some perspective. He was forced to watch a movie that a lot of the rest of the world paid good money to see.
The man murdered people by the thousands. He was put to death by hanging. There's a a lot of injustice, immorality, pain and suffering in that range.
I refuse to accept flushing the Koran or being forced to watch a movie which ridicules you, fits the definition of torture. If that is, then K-12 is state enforced torture for children, because honestly it's far worse and far more personal and you don't even get the escape of sweet, sweet death (usually).
Thumbscrews, electrocution, iron maidens, anything involving fingernails...then we can talk.
Well in Round Rock/Austin, very few areas that are cheap enough to be affordable are HOA free, so I pretty much had no choice. But I was assured that most HOAs were really just a means to ensure neighbors paid for neighborhood upkeep...which I have no problem with, and I believe it positively influences property values, without unintended consequences.
However ours has become so bad that people are moving out (me included), and in this economy especially, that is driving our housing prices down.
In your case, a proper use of HOA authority (in my opinion) is a sufficient number of adjacent neighbors complain that the HOA takes action. This is different if it's just you who is unhappy, or if your HOA has a dedicated CC&R policeman writing up "tickets" as mine does.
In any event, the point is that any form of government, if not properly designed, will always be abused by the people who want the power, to control the people who are actually sustaining the community (but not paying attention). A quorum should always be required, and all rules and regulations should need to be renewed.
Ditto for HOA's. Many of us sign in to them thinking we pay a monthly fee to maintain common land and community facilities (pools, tennis courts, etc.) seeing the long list of boiler-plate rules believing they'd only be used against egregious offenders...but all it takes is one petty person in the neighborhood and suddenly the entire community is getting sent notices threatening eviction and your hard earned money is being used to pay for lawyers, litigation and enforcement.
The reality is most people just don't care, and want to be left alone and send their $$$ in to have something taken care of for them. The few that DO care, end up dominating the rest.
Yeah the one they built at the end of my block is made of cinder blocks. It wouldn't float if you put rockets on it. But the amount of traffic it generates preventing me from doing my weekend activities is proof enough that Satan's hand is at work.
I don't think advertising your bias works either. People who don't like your bias won't read your article, even if you did some excellent work.
What's missing is reading (and listening) with a grain of salt. Trusting news because it came from The Paper, or A Scientist, or A Doctor. Credentials are just there to stand out amidst the riff raff. They may still be complete idiots.
You may not like the DNC, and will obviously have a bias going in but presumably while you will have a critical eye you are going to be listening and asking questions. To the statements that sounds good, you will likely have doubts. To the statements that sounds bad...well you obviously have thought that part through.
Unless your livelihood depends on a certain candidate, like us you probably want to figure out who to vote for. You might have made a choice but harbor some doubts (likely he's just the lesser of evils). That's all we need. What we get, a lot, is corporate influence that needs a particular vote they can't outright buy. They heavily influence the outcome by blatant propaganda.
Nominally if you are operating a consumer electronics business you empower your hardware engineers to never allow a foreign factory to substitute parts in your product.
Your design includes the schematics, the gerbers AND the BOM, when you do your product testing you test ALL THREE. You provide your factory with what they need to manufacture (gerbers+parts) and force them to ask you for substitutions or deviations.
You always do a first article inspection, you always test the output of the factory before you go to market, and you never let them have a choice.
Unless you're in very high volume production, the amount of management you will need here in the US to maintain this, is insane. If you're doing high end, high margin products, you may as well use a US based manufacturer. They can be evil as well, but at least they speak english and are no more than a few timezones away.
I advocate keeping the hardware design in-house with your software. You can successfully outsource the mfg, you probably want to contract out the layout (drafting), but you want at least one hardware engineer who understands how to design and test PCBs on staff. A lot of them (me included) also know how to do device drivers, bootloaders, and programmable logic that you may need, and ought to be able to handle the signal processing discussions which will arise (CCDs aren't foolproof).
A lot of ageism in tech companies is not being willing to pay for the experience an older employee usually brings to the table; but he's fresh out of school, so that doesn't apply to him. It seems to me that the odds are he'll do ok. He'll also have to accept starting wages, of course
And this is a true problem in many large tech companies. The older you get...the more you make. The expectation is that as your wages increase you should be in some form of management (i.e. where engineers go to die).
If my parents had a rule in the house that I was not to carry ibuprofen, and I was suspected of breaking that rule, it may as well have been crystal meth. So yes, I think it is proper. This isn't about law and order, this is about school discipline.
As for judgement and how I would handle it. No, I would not strip search another persons child, especially a female. I would be instantly charged with pedophilia and thrown in jail. That aside, no, in most situations I would not. But neither would I accept the care of a thousand children on a daily basis. If I was going to do that, I would set up a system wherein I could effectively maintain discipline. I would of course reserve strip searches for "sure things" that I could make an example out of, and I would have my sword prepared...but I can understand the practice.
Assuming the article tells the whole truth, and isn't leaving some details out, then I agree that poor judgement and an overzealous application of policy was at play. I think actions do deserve to be taken against the administrators who pulled this stunt as well. But we're talking about the US supreme court, possibly coming up with a ruling that would apply across the board.
I was in school. I have seen things get smuggled in underwear, as far back in such conservative times as the mid 90s. I knew girls who used their bra's to conceal more than kleenex. Teenagers are old enough to know the game, but not old enough to know the score. I would rather the supreme court did not rule against this, that it were left to the school districts and parents to decide and take responsibility for.
Apathetic parents are the usual reason teachers don't bother to call home anymore. I know several school teachers and I know the parents they want to call never get involved.
Finally, to put it in perspective, yes this poor girl had to get stripped in front of a bunch of old women. It's embarassing, and I hope everyone's mom does get a lawyer each and every time this happens (and the school is wrong), and I hope each time they're right they make a big deal about it and kick the bastard out. I think parents and schools need to negotiate with each other about how discipline will be maintained, and what level of authority the schools can excersize (and what level of responsiveness is expected). Anything that draws parents out of the mode of sending their children to the babysitter is a good thing. Anything that makes it uncle sam's problem, or the taxpayers problem isn't helping at all.
Let's forget that it was ibuprofen, and throw the school out of it for a second.
If it were your child, and you suspected her of being in possession of an illegal drug, would you do the same? I might, although in the case of a 13yo daughter I might have my wife do it (if available). Might would turn to absofuckinglutely if I had caught her doing such things before.
Throw out what you consider to be good child rearing, because that isn't law. There's plenty of spare the rod, spoil the child parenting left, my parents were of that mindset, and honestly I think it works just fine. Your opinion may vary, but again, this is a discretionary area.
So you're left with an entity that has to act like parents, and does things parents might do. I suspect the officials involved absolutely believed her guilty. If she was guilty, should the evidence be admissable in criminal court? Absolutely not, this is the definition of civil liberties violations. Should it be used to expel/suspend/punish? You bet your ass.
I would rather live in a society where an insolent and untrustworthy child can be expelled from school on the whim of administration and left to her parents; school officials thus being relieved legally and practically from the duty and our legal system not taxed with the burden of determining constitutionality. But that's also not working out. Further I don't want to fund the lawsuits against schools by parents seeking damages for children who developed drug addictions or were injured by weapons in schools that "didn't do enough to ensure the safety of their children". I lose again.
So ignoring the details of this case, I don't think it's so clear cut. I'm curious why prescription strength ibuprofen is contraband, and the judgement which led to the girl getting strip searched, but that's not what the supreme court is being asked to review. They're in a quagmire of definiting what in loco parentis covers.
That would matter only if the dominant religion in Texas was CoE or Roman Catholic oriented. It's not, most of my coworkers here claim to be baptist, or use the generic term "bible based".
It's senseless to argue religion based on what others are doing or what empirical data suggests. People here really believe it was Adam and Eve all the way, there's really no arguing. Making a stink over it only encourages this idiocy will jump into yet another generation.
Taking it farther, people would only wish to be producing good A, until the point where the market for good A drops in price down to where good B and good A have roughly the same margins.
Treating people as commodities, you have the present situation in north america. Everyone is in a pile on to be "a leader" (by which I mean CEO), to get the top dollar. Very few people want to be the scientists, engineers, accountants, factory workers, janitors, nurses, etc. required to fund that CEO because the wages are low(er). People choose career paths that will lead them there, which often neglect the company fundamentals.
Because of this problem, we have a shortage of the types of labor we want, but to avoid the unpleasant solution (amongst decision-makers) of paying higher wages based on need, we have are providing an escape valve via globalization strategies. We can back fill exportable jobs via cheaper foreign labor by taking advantage of arbitrage. This further exacerbates the problem locally, by reinforcing the trend to CEO-type positions (and janitorial/nursing, should that prospect look dim).
In the long run, assuming no armed revolts, it will ultimately balance out. It's clear the time constant required for stability exceeds the lifetime of most of us here on slashdot. A better solution to achieve control sooner is to reduce the discrepancies in pay, and attempt to change our cultural values away from being "the" boss, to being a solid, reliable individual who is an expert in his chosen field.
We all know that if you have a company of 80k people, and the ceo goes from getting 100M in a year to 0 in a year, it won't make a huge impact to each employee if spread equally ($1.25k/yr), but it may make a huge impact in driving the labor market the way we need it to.
If CEOs are chosen based on the person with the best capability of leading organizations and making decisions, other factors removed, rather than the person who most wants to make a fortune... I think good things would happen to our labor market and our corporate governance.
This isn't quite a hippie commune mentality, wages will vary based on need and difficulty in producing qualified individuals. But it will be more stable than the rabid elitist method we currently use.
The question is how to produce this ideal when the people who have the money and/or authority who traditionally create and profit from a top-down model won't immediately benefit (or in fact would lose out). Since the investment for software projects is very low (particularly open source), it is interesting to see how ideas like these work and how they could be applied to other areas.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of us want to, but can't invest the time required to get anywhere near it.
That's hardcore.
That's a little misleading. With any health-care insurance, if you don't use it your (Taxes/Dues) fund it, even if you don't use it. I pay a lot for private health care through my company and we rarely get sick. The only way out of this is to not have health insurance, which is something that needs to be nearly illegal (since my tax dollars are being paid to bail out idiots who don't have any but could have/can afford it, run to the hospital when something happens and vanish). If not illegal, then we need to be willing to let people die of stupidity, something that has traditionally not been acceptable to the masses.
If you fund this corporation with bonds (which they did), which are being repaid by subscriptions, then strictly speaking it's not taxpayer money. I agree it's not necessarily that clean, but generally the taxpayers dollars will ultimately not go towards funding this operation.
My neighbors here in TX would prohibit using the network for anything deemed "pornography", probably ask that it be shut down on Sunday morning for church, and probably would prevent anything that seemed like anonymity.
I might tolerate some of that for better service than what AT&T provides (which honestly, is just about anything)...but it's definitely not a utopia.
I don't know, I've been in closed beta for several products lately, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan and Tabula Rasa.
I submit bug reports out the wazoo (and believe me, all 3 of these have had a few bugs). I never see anything come of them, even the major ones. I try to view being in the beta as a privilege for which I owe good bug reports.
On the other hand, you are supposed to have fun. Any time I am not having fun, is just as much of a bug as when things don't work.
I've always got the feeling that the game was going to ship no matter what I found. I was just there to load the servers and stress the network so they could make the launch less hokey. I've found blatant exploits, item dupes, countless serious quest bugs, etc. I never saw any movement on any of those, nor was asked to clarify or repro. That kind of tells me a lot about how my input is being considered. It really is just a marketing thing that the developers have been able to put to small use. Beta's rarely start early enough, nor is there sufficient in-house support for beta testers for it to really be effective.
Maybe also when attempting a criminal act, don't use your own machine, and don't use the same machine twice.
This only explains one reason for DRM, but doesn't explain why movies aren't available. Apple, for example, could implement this and maintain the market segmentation. Netflix as well.
This market segmentation deal is very bad for the US, we really need to make it go away anyhow. Part of the reason offshoring is so attractive is that our costs here are far more than elsewhere for movies, music and software. It's true that movies and music aren't essential to the business world, but it does mean than a lower paycheck over there will get you as much as your paycheck here. Meaning people will be happy working for less there.
This isn't a right or a left thing, both parties play this game, they just play different roles.
Actually here in the US, anything that isn't 100% rabid capitalism or 100% ridiculous and ill-conceived regulation is evil.
I'm not sure we've ever tried being reasonable about it. The public may get angry enough that regulation becomes necessary, at which point private interests ensure that it is constructed to fail its goal, either by shifting the evil around, or by making it so incredibly inefficient and silly that it becomes an eyesore.
Political leaning is a stupid way of identifying yourself, thus I doubt VCs will care about the slant.
I think the silicon valley probably doesn't like seeing its jobs shipped overseas. VCs don't benefit much from offshoring, but the rest of Si Valley only gets murdered by it. VCs won't like being regulated, but they aren't profiting by so much of the tech industry being in jobs they're petrified of leaving either. They can't get people to take risks in small start ups in the present market.
I don't think either side of politicians in general understand the impacts of what they're doing. What's new.
Listen to the man, he does more in 1 hour than most politicians do in 10 lifetimes!
I don't think if Amazon had intentionally done this, and had announced that they'd one it, that it would be that unpopular. California, of all places, couldn't agree on gay marriage. Imagine then the rest of the country.
On the other hand, since Amazon is a for profit company, they have absolutely no reason to alienate a fraction of their customers by implementing this policy silently. They're not attracting right wing sales, nor "think of the children" types of all mentalities...they'd just be pissing off a segment of the market.
So it seems like it's probably a hack, because if it isn't they'd be being uncharacteristically stupid in the only dimension they'd ever shown any real passion about.
Let's try to keep this in some perspective. He was forced to watch a movie that a lot of the rest of the world paid good money to see.
The man murdered people by the thousands. He was put to death by hanging. There's a a lot of injustice, immorality, pain and suffering in that range.
I refuse to accept flushing the Koran or being forced to watch a movie which ridicules you, fits the definition of torture. If that is, then K-12 is state enforced torture for children, because honestly it's far worse and far more personal and you don't even get the escape of sweet, sweet death (usually).
Thumbscrews, electrocution, iron maidens, anything involving fingernails...then we can talk.
Well in Round Rock/Austin, very few areas that are cheap enough to be affordable are HOA free, so I pretty much had no choice. But I was assured that most HOAs were really just a means to ensure neighbors paid for neighborhood upkeep...which I have no problem with, and I believe it positively influences property values, without unintended consequences.
However ours has become so bad that people are moving out (me included), and in this economy especially, that is driving our housing prices down.
In your case, a proper use of HOA authority (in my opinion) is a sufficient number of adjacent neighbors complain that the HOA takes action. This is different if it's just you who is unhappy, or if your HOA has a dedicated CC&R policeman writing up "tickets" as mine does.
In any event, the point is that any form of government, if not properly designed, will always be abused by the people who want the power, to control the people who are actually sustaining the community (but not paying attention). A quorum should always be required, and all rules and regulations should need to be renewed.
Ditto for HOA's. Many of us sign in to them thinking we pay a monthly fee to maintain common land and community facilities (pools, tennis courts, etc.) seeing the long list of boiler-plate rules believing they'd only be used against egregious offenders...but all it takes is one petty person in the neighborhood and suddenly the entire community is getting sent notices threatening eviction and your hard earned money is being used to pay for lawyers, litigation and enforcement.
The reality is most people just don't care, and want to be left alone and send their $$$ in to have something taken care of for them. The few that DO care, end up dominating the rest.
Slams the buzzer
What are colors not found in the standard Crayola box, Alex?
Yeah the one they built at the end of my block is made of cinder blocks. It wouldn't float if you put rockets on it. But the amount of traffic it generates preventing me from doing my weekend activities is proof enough that Satan's hand is at work.
I don't think advertising your bias works either. People who don't like your bias won't read your article, even if you did some excellent work.
What's missing is reading (and listening) with a grain of salt. Trusting news because it came from The Paper, or A Scientist, or A Doctor. Credentials are just there to stand out amidst the riff raff. They may still be complete idiots.
You may not like the DNC, and will obviously have a bias going in but presumably while you will have a critical eye you are going to be listening and asking questions. To the statements that sounds good, you will likely have doubts. To the statements that sounds bad...well you obviously have thought that part through.
Unless your livelihood depends on a certain candidate, like us you probably want to figure out who to vote for. You might have made a choice but harbor some doubts (likely he's just the lesser of evils). That's all we need. What we get, a lot, is corporate influence that needs a particular vote they can't outright buy. They heavily influence the outcome by blatant propaganda.
Nominally if you are operating a consumer electronics business you empower your hardware engineers to never allow a foreign factory to substitute parts in your product.
Your design includes the schematics, the gerbers AND the BOM, when you do your product testing you test ALL THREE. You provide your factory with what they need to manufacture (gerbers+parts) and force them to ask you for substitutions or deviations.
You always do a first article inspection, you always test the output of the factory before you go to market, and you never let them have a choice.
Unless you're in very high volume production, the amount of management you will need here in the US to maintain this, is insane. If you're doing high end, high margin products, you may as well use a US based manufacturer. They can be evil as well, but at least they speak english and are no more than a few timezones away.
I advocate keeping the hardware design in-house with your software. You can successfully outsource the mfg, you probably want to contract out the layout (drafting), but you want at least one hardware engineer who understands how to design and test PCBs on staff. A lot of them (me included) also know how to do device drivers, bootloaders, and programmable logic that you may need, and ought to be able to handle the signal processing discussions which will arise (CCDs aren't foolproof).
A lot of ageism in tech companies is not being willing to pay for the experience an older employee usually brings to the table; but he's fresh out of school, so that doesn't apply to him. It seems to me that the odds are he'll do ok. He'll also have to accept starting wages, of course
And this is a true problem in many large tech companies. The older you get...the more you make. The expectation is that as your wages increase you should be in some form of management (i.e. where engineers go to die).
If you're old and cheap you'll do just fine ;)
The idea behind 192GB across 8 cores (or 16 if you are marketing), is to run several virtual OSes at once.
Allegedly this is considered a good idea in the IT industry.
If my parents had a rule in the house that I was not to carry ibuprofen, and I was suspected of breaking that rule, it may as well have been crystal meth. So yes, I think it is proper. This isn't about law and order, this is about school discipline.
As for judgement and how I would handle it. No, I would not strip search another persons child, especially a female. I would be instantly charged with pedophilia and thrown in jail. That aside, no, in most situations I would not. But neither would I accept the care of a thousand children on a daily basis. If I was going to do that, I would set up a system wherein I could effectively maintain discipline. I would of course reserve strip searches for "sure things" that I could make an example out of, and I would have my sword prepared...but I can understand the practice.
Assuming the article tells the whole truth, and isn't leaving some details out, then I agree that poor judgement and an overzealous application of policy was at play. I think actions do deserve to be taken against the administrators who pulled this stunt as well. But we're talking about the US supreme court, possibly coming up with a ruling that would apply across the board.
I was in school. I have seen things get smuggled in underwear, as far back in such conservative times as the mid 90s. I knew girls who used their bra's to conceal more than kleenex. Teenagers are old enough to know the game, but not old enough to know the score. I would rather the supreme court did not rule against this, that it were left to the school districts and parents to decide and take responsibility for.
Apathetic parents are the usual reason teachers don't bother to call home anymore. I know several school teachers and I know the parents they want to call never get involved.
Finally, to put it in perspective, yes this poor girl had to get stripped in front of a bunch of old women. It's embarassing, and I hope everyone's mom does get a lawyer each and every time this happens (and the school is wrong), and I hope each time they're right they make a big deal about it and kick the bastard out. I think parents and schools need to negotiate with each other about how discipline will be maintained, and what level of authority the schools can excersize (and what level of responsiveness is expected). Anything that draws parents out of the mode of sending their children to the babysitter is a good thing. Anything that makes it uncle sam's problem, or the taxpayers problem isn't helping at all.
Let's forget that it was ibuprofen, and throw the school out of it for a second.
If it were your child, and you suspected her of being in possession of an illegal drug, would you do the same? I might, although in the case of a 13yo daughter I might have my wife do it (if available). Might would turn to absofuckinglutely if I had caught her doing such things before.
Throw out what you consider to be good child rearing, because that isn't law. There's plenty of spare the rod, spoil the child parenting left, my parents were of that mindset, and honestly I think it works just fine. Your opinion may vary, but again, this is a discretionary area.
So you're left with an entity that has to act like parents, and does things parents might do. I suspect the officials involved absolutely believed her guilty. If she was guilty, should the evidence be admissable in criminal court? Absolutely not, this is the definition of civil liberties violations. Should it be used to expel/suspend/punish? You bet your ass.
I would rather live in a society where an insolent and untrustworthy child can be expelled from school on the whim of administration and left to her parents; school officials thus being relieved legally and practically from the duty and our legal system not taxed with the burden of determining constitutionality. But that's also not working out. Further I don't want to fund the lawsuits against schools by parents seeking damages for children who developed drug addictions or were injured by weapons in schools that "didn't do enough to ensure the safety of their children". I lose again.
So ignoring the details of this case, I don't think it's so clear cut. I'm curious why prescription strength ibuprofen is contraband, and the judgement which led to the girl getting strip searched, but that's not what the supreme court is being asked to review. They're in a quagmire of definiting what in loco parentis covers.
That would matter only if the dominant religion in Texas was CoE or Roman Catholic oriented. It's not, most of my coworkers here claim to be baptist, or use the generic term "bible based".
It's senseless to argue religion based on what others are doing or what empirical data suggests. People here really believe it was Adam and Eve all the way, there's really no arguing. Making a stink over it only encourages this idiocy will jump into yet another generation.
Taking it farther, people would only wish to be producing good A, until the point where the market for good A drops in price down to where good B and good A have roughly the same margins.
Treating people as commodities, you have the present situation in north america. Everyone is in a pile on to be "a leader" (by which I mean CEO), to get the top dollar. Very few people want to be the scientists, engineers, accountants, factory workers, janitors, nurses, etc. required to fund that CEO because the wages are low(er). People choose career paths that will lead them there, which often neglect the company fundamentals.
Because of this problem, we have a shortage of the types of labor we want, but to avoid the unpleasant solution (amongst decision-makers) of paying higher wages based on need, we have are providing an escape valve via globalization strategies. We can back fill exportable jobs via cheaper foreign labor by taking advantage of arbitrage. This further exacerbates the problem locally, by reinforcing the trend to CEO-type positions (and janitorial/nursing, should that prospect look dim).
In the long run, assuming no armed revolts, it will ultimately balance out. It's clear the time constant required for stability exceeds the lifetime of most of us here on slashdot. A better solution to achieve control sooner is to reduce the discrepancies in pay, and attempt to change our cultural values away from being "the" boss, to being a solid, reliable individual who is an expert in his chosen field.
We all know that if you have a company of 80k people, and the ceo goes from getting 100M in a year to 0 in a year, it won't make a huge impact to each employee if spread equally ($1.25k/yr), but it may make a huge impact in driving the labor market the way we need it to.
If CEOs are chosen based on the person with the best capability of leading organizations and making decisions, other factors removed, rather than the person who most wants to make a fortune... I think good things would happen to our labor market and our corporate governance.
This isn't quite a hippie commune mentality, wages will vary based on need and difficulty in producing qualified individuals. But it will be more stable than the rabid elitist method we currently use.
The question is how to produce this ideal when the people who have the money and/or authority who traditionally create and profit from a top-down model won't immediately benefit (or in fact would lose out). Since the investment for software projects is very low (particularly open source), it is interesting to see how ideas like these work and how they could be applied to other areas.
Just put "IIS experience", and leave it ambiguous ;)