1 - I don't disagree with the content of movies rather I disagree that seeing those references is a necessity. While I can't claim to have a huge list of employers over my lifetime, I have never encountered a situation where not seeing a movie or knowing a particular cultural reference impacted employment. I have seen where one can feel "outside" a conversation with friends, but that hardly justifies copyright infringement.
2 - Since it wasn't your intent initially, I apologize for taking it that way to start.
3 - Somehow I don't see a judge throwing out a copyright infringement based on your moral imperative, at least not without a long expensive fight. I agree with you on some points, but that doesn't give you a free pass to ignore the law, unless you intend to challenge the copyright law. I may be reading your earlier statements incorrectly, but I gather that you aren't exactly in an economic situation to take on this type of fight yourself. I'd encourage joining or supporting an organization that is challenging the law to change it.
4 - The review sites that I've used in the past generally allow looking at a reviewers history. While no system is perfect, you can often find someone with similar taste and weigh their review more than others.
5 - First Sale Doctrine - "buyers of retail DVDs in the United States are free to sell or exchange them, and rent and lend them to others."
8 - I don't believe income level factors into ability to obtain a library card. My in-laws are on a very limited income (disabled) and they qualify.
9 - You still come off sounding like you are trying to justify your actions, now by claiming a moral justification since movie distributors "eat gold coated ice cream". If you truly disagree with the system, work to change it legally. Using the excuse that the system is corrupt (or whatever other word you want to use) doesn't change the current legality of your actions.
Of course they don't have to, but this is the modern world. If you lack knowledge of popular memes because you can't afford movies, good luck connecting with employers and understanding bizarre aspects of our culture
I have yet to go through an interview process where missing a particular movie lost me a chance at a position.
Also, I didn't say it was a requirement
I read your statement with "had to" as implying that they needed to download it rather than a wanted to download it. Given your follow up trying to say a person would be able to connect with employers, I think I interpreted your intent correctly.
Plus, the current business model is broken.
I agree with you on that. Agreeing doesn't imply that I think it is OK though to illegally download the content though. Just because we think something is wrong, doesn't give us the right to violate current laws, rather we need to work to change them.
Nobody wants to pay 10-20 bucks for a dvd or 50 for a blue-ray of a movie that has a VERY good chance at being worth jack shit. On the other hand, I have bought a number of movie that I once downloaded in high quality so that I can enjoy them in a resolution greater than 800x640. And if I had the money I would see good looking movies in the theater. I managed to see inglorious bastards in the theater and it was worth every penny. Not so much on a 15" screen.
Most movies get numerous reviews, both from professional critics and average viewers. If you aren't sure about the quality of the video, do a little homework. I have purchased a few bad videos myself, but I can either turn around and sell it second hand or just eat the loss and blame myself for not looking at several reviews. Inglorious Bastards was a good movie in my opinion too.
The problem is these companies screw over all of the talent, and give almost all of the profit, at least 95% to some white guy wearing a nice suit that weights 350 pounds and has four mistrisses, a wife and a dozen kids and goes to church every sunday.
Might be true, but is that your problem or the problem of the actors? Does your illegal download change their situation in any way or are you simply trying to make yourself feel better about it?
And the matter of fact is that all I have to do if I want something is get on the webs and borrow a copy of it. The real question is, just because I got something for free, does that mean other people have a right to fuck me up the ass with a mega-dildo made of rusty iron? I don't fucking think so.
Not sure if your local library has videos, but mine does. While they may not be your local NetFlix/Blockbuster, they do have a pretty good selection of current content. If they don't, have you considered a NetFlix subscription? For $7.99, you can stream content or for $9.99 you can get the DVDs mailed. If either of those are too expensive, you may have other budget cuts more worthwhile (like broadband service?).
So get off your self righteous ass, learn english, get out of other peoples business, and stop playing the "poor people deserve nothing but boredom and suffering" bullshit that you think you have a right to pull just because you have the funds to toss around.
Maybe you need to quit playing the victim to justify your actions. While I don't like the current business model any more than you or many here, that doesn't mean you can ignore what is or isn't illegal based on your economic situation.
Really, this is a case of business people profiteering off of the work of others, and making their living solely by destroying lives of people who were too poor to afford a movie and had to download it to watch it, and then threatening to take away what little they have and put them in debt forever, if not in prison.
Nobody "had" to watch a movie or play a song. Lack of ability to pay doesn't grant you a right to something for free.
I had the opportunity to visit Stonehenge a few years ago while on a business trip to the UK. Not entirely sure what I expected from my visit to Stonehenge, but I was fairly disappointed with the content of the audio tour. The implementation wasn't bad with the multi-language support via numeric codes at the points along the walk paths, but I don't feel the content offered all that much on the site. I guess I'm glad to have seen it, but I know that I wouldn't have a reason to go back to it. I'd get just as much value out of a virtual visit along with a historical book.
My wife worked as a nurse at a county detention center. I don't know about how police actions have been the last 40 years, but my wife saw a good number of admissions where the person had injuries related to "resisting arrest". Some were severe enough that my wife refused to let the officers "drop and go". She'd inform them that the person wasn't stable enough (usually head injuries) and that they needed to first get clearance from the hospital before they could be admitted.
Depends what the research covers as to the volume of data. Imagine if you were studying land use over a few years and had aerial, satellite imagery, or numerous vector datasets? You can quickly exceed the 40GB with source and derived data.
Works on my Undulated Triggerfish too. While entertaining a cat with a laser and moving across the fish tank, my fish started attacking the red dot as it moved through the tank.
I'm going to guess that most people are complaining about the RealID implementation for the forums rather than the in game RealID implementation.
Game RealID (Opt In) - After exchanging email addresses with a friend, you can request to add a friend and they'll need to confirm the request. If you don't make or accept request, you won't show up under RealID.
Forum RealID (Required - Not implemented based on negative reaction from the community) - Any forum post made (after the system would have been implemented) would reveal the users RealID.
One feature of the RealID that is a little annoying is that you can see the names of friends of a friend you have. As an example, if I right click my son's RealID entry on the social interface, I can see who his friends are. I only see their name (not the email), but the name is what most of us worry about.
For the forum RealID, I think part of what Blizzard wanted to accomplish was eliminating the "trolling" character post. Blizzard could easily solve that by adding an option to "show characters" link for any posting character. This would only show the character names/realms, not the user login or name, making it easier to figure out who is trolling the forums.
I'm originally from Pennsylvania and I do agree with what you posted. Unfortunately not much that I could do about it when the officer and the insurance say that they can't determine fault.
The other driver didn't "rear end" my vehicle rather they clipped it from the side. Unfortunately they told their insurance they were in the left lane and I hit their vehicle while transitioning from the right lane into the left. The insurance company has no way of knowing which of us was telling the truth. As much as I know I didn't do anything wrong, I couldn't prove it. Ended up paying my deductible and fortunately my insurance rates didn't go up because of it.
Parents obtain cell phones and plan for entire family
Kids are around friends and see "cool new app"
Kids ask parents to get the application and parents say "no" (for whatever reason).
Kids pirate the application
While a couple dollar application isn't going to break the bank, letting my kids install whatever application happens to be popular at the moment eventually adds up. My kids know to check with us before installing any applications. For some families, especially in this economy, they may be stretching the budget to afford the phones/plan and the kids may resort to pirating the application.
Mmm, no! If you do nothing wrong, they other guy pays for the accident, the insurance is for when _you_ do something wrong.
I realize each state may be different, but in Maryland, you can have situations where both drivers end up having their own insurance pay for the claim. I had another driver "merge" their car into mine (their lane ended and the driver merged and hit the back quarter panel of my vehicle) and both of us had to submit claims to our own insurance. The police officer couldn't determine who was at fault and the other driver wasn't about to admit it as his so we both ended up paying for our own repairs. From the insurance company perspective, nobody did anything wrong, at least nothing that could be proven.
I can't understand why returning it on time is such an issue.
Not sure that it was ever a huge issue to me. The few times the videos were late though were because my wife and I would decide to rent it, then the next morning, we'd both think the other would get a chance to return it after work. If you happened to get out of work a little late and rushed to get the kids off to whatever sport/school event/scouts/etc..., you can easily forget to return the rental on time.
Seem to recall a problem with Nissan, a computer website. The owner's name is Nissan, but had to fight the automobile company over the site for Trademark Infringement, Trademark Dilution and Cyber-Squatting.
My mother is still hanging on to (yeah, she's a pack rat) most of the toys I grew up with. I noticed the Air Jammers my brother and I had growing up on one of my more recent visits. I may need give them a bit more power...lol.
My college summer job was working in an ice house. We made the cube and some block ice, but only resold dry ice. Occasionally we'd make the dry ice bombs with two liter bottles and they'd make a really big noise and we'd find small fragments of the bottle/cap. Definitely something dangerous if you don't take precautions. The kid in the video you linked is definitely lucky. Given the distance I've seen fragments fly, he could have easily had them blind him. I'm not sure it would kill him, but it could permanently injure him.
I haven't kept up on the technology recently but a former co-worker had pointed me to this when his previous employer became involved with Shot Spotter. The technology simply provided police with the time and location of the gunshots so they could respond. In neighborhoods where the residents live in fear of those committing the violence, police were not getting any reports of gun activity due to that fear. Police were then able to get to the scene in a reasonable time so they had a higher chance of helping residents without the residents worrying about becoming targets for reporting a crime.
Turbofire Wired Controller, while looking similar externally, would not be mistaken as a Microsoft product. If you have seen the XBox 360 controllers, I don't think you would confuse this with being the same. I'd expect competing controllers to look similar in layout since games are documented to use that sort of layout. As for the contours of the control and the internal components, I wouldn't expect them to be the same (other than basics that just about all controllers use for detecting a press of a button/stick).
In Massachusetts (if I remember correctly) benefits are 50% of your weekly income in your previous job, up to $300/week. And this only lasts for a few months. I'm not sure what states have better unemployment insurance than MA, but my guess is very few. So I call shenanigans on the grandparent.
The weekly benefit amount (WBA) is the amount of money you may receive and is based on the amount that you were paid by all employers for whom you worked during the base period. The higher your earnings, the higher your weekly benefit amount up to the maximum allowed by law. The current weekly benefit amount provided by the Maryland Unemployment Insurance Law ranges from a minimum of $25 to a maximum of $410.
Given differing policies between states, it might be possible to see higher amounts. If I read the Pennsylvania information correctly, they appear to have $564 for a maximum amount.
Might want to read a little on No Bid Contracts. I'm not saying they are a good thing but there are times where it is necessary. Do you have any specifics to back up your claim that they could have found a lower cost provider in the time frame?
My employer has a web based time reporting system that is only functional in IE. I used to be able to make it work with Firefox but they've modified it to only work with IE now. If I want paid, I need to use IE for that. Some of the training courses are also IE only, but for everything else, Firefox is my default browser.
is this the other 10% exception to what I was talking about? Because I get the feeling to get to that part, you are doing the carrot and stick the other 90% of the time.
Depends how much you play and how you play. If you limit your playing to the leveling part of the game and don't play much at level 80 (or the new top level when the expansion comes out), then yes, 90% of your time could be chasing that carrot. If you make it to level 80 then spend most of your time in instances raiding with friends taking on challenges of the game (speed kills, attempting hard modes, etc...), then the 10% you refer to could become a larger portion of the time toward playing the game. Blizzard has done a bit to speed up the leveling process, but it does still take some amount of time. If you are a new player, it may seem to take forever, but once you get one character to 80, you generally know other people that can help you get there faster (power leveling through instances for example and help with harder quest). You'll also have special gear that you can send to your low level characters that will increase leveling so you aren't finding yourself killing the same X monsters to deliver to Y NPC for long.
The 1-2 people were overlapping schedules after the year I left. The one guy doubled as the ice box (the machines outside of a convenience store) body shop guy when the two of them overlapped schedules. If one was sick, the boxes in to be refinished were just delayed a day or two, no big loss since there were always a few extras for emergency replacement to go out. As for expanding, in that particular market, expanding is not always easy. The two remaining employees were not college students and worked year round (most of the factory maintenance (painting, delivery truck work, breakdown of old pallets, etc...) occurs in the cooler weather when ice demand is lower). As for expanding, it really depends on the owners motivation to expand. The owner was getting up there in age and I'm guessing he has probably sold out to one of the larger distributors in the area. I haven't visited the company in many years since my visits home to family are mostly spent with family or friends, not going back to former work places.
Now, after faithfully giving 15-20 years of their life to bettering your company you would just cut them off to go start over somewhere else?
Depending on many factors (size of employer, industry, position type, etc...), retraining may not always be available. For example, my summer jobs while in college were with an ice factory. I was a laborer and did basic task like bagging ice (machine, but required operator intervention), stacking onto pallets (manual labor), stacking pallets (via fork lift), ensuring smooth ice flow through the system (shovel to assist ice to flow through shoots and into the auger system), and customer sales. First summer working there, we had about 6 employees and struggled to get things done. Second summer (most of us being college students), we figured out ways to improve on the process and got it to a point where 3 of us could cover the work of 6 and still have time to do odd yard work for the owner. What do you do with the 3 extra employees at that point? The third summer, the owner bought an automated system to get it down to a single operator (basically monitor the system and pull the auto-stack pallet to the freezer. So now down to 1-2 employees sharing a 7 day schedule and not enough work, what does a company do? Granted these examples were for an industry that primarily deals with summer help, but I hope you can see them applying to other industries. Don't get me wrong by thinking I want to harshly kick an employee out. Most of the employers I've had (post college) have some form of severance package and generally try to find other opportunities when a position ends. My current employer does this very well, but then they are a bigger company. My brother works for a smaller company of about 50 employees and likely wouldn't have the flexibility that my employer has for shifting employees to new task.
Most likely with a family to feed, a mortgage doctors bills to take care of their now older body, etc...
As married man with two kids, I always found it unfair the way some of my employers gave me benefits over some of my single co-workers. If I asked to have a day off to go on a field trip with my kids, I'd get approval without little trouble. A single person asking to have a Friday off since friends were coming into town would generally get a refusal. The point of this is that a company shouldn't care (in fact it is really the managers that care since the company is not capable of caring). From the way you are posting, I have to wonder if you want reverse age discrimination in favor of older workers.
Slashdot Mirror
Responses:
1 - I don't disagree with the content of movies rather I disagree that seeing those references is a necessity. While I can't claim to have a huge list of employers over my lifetime, I have never encountered a situation where not seeing a movie or knowing a particular cultural reference impacted employment. I have seen where one can feel "outside" a conversation with friends, but that hardly justifies copyright infringement.
2 - Since it wasn't your intent initially, I apologize for taking it that way to start.
3 - Somehow I don't see a judge throwing out a copyright infringement based on your moral imperative, at least not without a long expensive fight. I agree with you on some points, but that doesn't give you a free pass to ignore the law, unless you intend to challenge the copyright law. I may be reading your earlier statements incorrectly, but I gather that you aren't exactly in an economic situation to take on this type of fight yourself. I'd encourage joining or supporting an organization that is challenging the law to change it.
4 - The review sites that I've used in the past generally allow looking at a reviewers history. While no system is perfect, you can often find someone with similar taste and weigh their review more than others.
5 - First Sale Doctrine - "buyers of retail DVDs in the United States are free to sell or exchange them, and rent and lend them to others."
8 - I don't believe income level factors into ability to obtain a library card. My in-laws are on a very limited income (disabled) and they qualify.
9 - You still come off sounding like you are trying to justify your actions, now by claiming a moral justification since movie distributors "eat gold coated ice cream". If you truly disagree with the system, work to change it legally. Using the excuse that the system is corrupt (or whatever other word you want to use) doesn't change the current legality of your actions.
I have yet to go through an interview process where missing a particular movie lost me a chance at a position.
I read your statement with "had to" as implying that they needed to download it rather than a wanted to download it. Given your follow up trying to say a person would be able to connect with employers, I think I interpreted your intent correctly.
I agree with you on that. Agreeing doesn't imply that I think it is OK though to illegally download the content though. Just because we think something is wrong, doesn't give us the right to violate current laws, rather we need to work to change them.
Most movies get numerous reviews, both from professional critics and average viewers. If you aren't sure about the quality of the video, do a little homework. I have purchased a few bad videos myself, but I can either turn around and sell it second hand or just eat the loss and blame myself for not looking at several reviews. Inglorious Bastards was a good movie in my opinion too.
Might be true, but is that your problem or the problem of the actors? Does your illegal download change their situation in any way or are you simply trying to make yourself feel better about it?
Not sure if your local library has videos, but mine does. While they may not be your local NetFlix/Blockbuster, they do have a pretty good selection of current content. If they don't, have you considered a NetFlix subscription? For $7.99, you can stream content or for $9.99 you can get the DVDs mailed. If either of those are too expensive, you may have other budget cuts more worthwhile (like broadband service?).
Maybe you need to quit playing the victim to justify your actions. While I don't like the current business model any more than you or many here, that doesn't mean you can ignore what is or isn't illegal based on your economic situation.
Nobody "had" to watch a movie or play a song. Lack of ability to pay doesn't grant you a right to something for free.
I had the opportunity to visit Stonehenge a few years ago while on a business trip to the UK. Not entirely sure what I expected from my visit to Stonehenge, but I was fairly disappointed with the content of the audio tour. The implementation wasn't bad with the multi-language support via numeric codes at the points along the walk paths, but I don't feel the content offered all that much on the site. I guess I'm glad to have seen it, but I know that I wouldn't have a reason to go back to it. I'd get just as much value out of a virtual visit along with a historical book.
My wife worked as a nurse at a county detention center. I don't know about how police actions have been the last 40 years, but my wife saw a good number of admissions where the person had injuries related to "resisting arrest". Some were severe enough that my wife refused to let the officers "drop and go". She'd inform them that the person wasn't stable enough (usually head injuries) and that they needed to first get clearance from the hospital before they could be admitted.
Depends what the research covers as to the volume of data. Imagine if you were studying land use over a few years and had aerial, satellite imagery, or numerous vector datasets? You can quickly exceed the 40GB with source and derived data.
Works on my Undulated Triggerfish too. While entertaining a cat with a laser and moving across the fish tank, my fish started attacking the red dot as it moved through the tank.
I'm going to guess that most people are complaining about the RealID implementation for the forums rather than the in game RealID implementation.
Game RealID (Opt In) - After exchanging email addresses with a friend, you can request to add a friend and they'll need to confirm the request. If you don't make or accept request, you won't show up under RealID.
Forum RealID (Required - Not implemented based on negative reaction from the community) - Any forum post made (after the system would have been implemented) would reveal the users RealID.
One feature of the RealID that is a little annoying is that you can see the names of friends of a friend you have. As an example, if I right click my son's RealID entry on the social interface, I can see who his friends are. I only see their name (not the email), but the name is what most of us worry about.
For the forum RealID, I think part of what Blizzard wanted to accomplish was eliminating the "trolling" character post. Blizzard could easily solve that by adding an option to "show characters" link for any posting character. This would only show the character names/realms, not the user login or name, making it easier to figure out who is trolling the forums.
I'm originally from Pennsylvania and I do agree with what you posted. Unfortunately not much that I could do about it when the officer and the insurance say that they can't determine fault.
The other driver didn't "rear end" my vehicle rather they clipped it from the side. Unfortunately they told their insurance they were in the left lane and I hit their vehicle while transitioning from the right lane into the left. The insurance company has no way of knowing which of us was telling the truth. As much as I know I didn't do anything wrong, I couldn't prove it. Ended up paying my deductible and fortunately my insurance rates didn't go up because of it.
While a couple dollar application isn't going to break the bank, letting my kids install whatever application happens to be popular at the moment eventually adds up. My kids know to check with us before installing any applications. For some families, especially in this economy, they may be stretching the budget to afford the phones/plan and the kids may resort to pirating the application.
I realize each state may be different, but in Maryland, you can have situations where both drivers end up having their own insurance pay for the claim. I had another driver "merge" their car into mine (their lane ended and the driver merged and hit the back quarter panel of my vehicle) and both of us had to submit claims to our own insurance. The police officer couldn't determine who was at fault and the other driver wasn't about to admit it as his so we both ended up paying for our own repairs. From the insurance company perspective, nobody did anything wrong, at least nothing that could be proven.
Not sure that it was ever a huge issue to me. The few times the videos were late though were because my wife and I would decide to rent it, then the next morning, we'd both think the other would get a chance to return it after work. If you happened to get out of work a little late and rushed to get the kids off to whatever sport/school event/scouts/etc..., you can easily forget to return the rental on time.
Seem to recall a problem with Nissan, a computer website. The owner's name is Nissan, but had to fight the automobile company over the site for Trademark Infringement, Trademark Dilution and Cyber-Squatting.
My mother is still hanging on to (yeah, she's a pack rat) most of the toys I grew up with. I noticed the Air Jammers my brother and I had growing up on one of my more recent visits. I may need give them a bit more power...lol. My college summer job was working in an ice house. We made the cube and some block ice, but only resold dry ice. Occasionally we'd make the dry ice bombs with two liter bottles and they'd make a really big noise and we'd find small fragments of the bottle/cap. Definitely something dangerous if you don't take precautions. The kid in the video you linked is definitely lucky. Given the distance I've seen fragments fly, he could have easily had them blind him. I'm not sure it would kill him, but it could permanently injure him.
As long as he doesn't go out wearing a red shirt, we should occasionally see him still. Never wear the red shirt.
I haven't kept up on the technology recently but a former co-worker had pointed me to this when his previous employer became involved with Shot Spotter. The technology simply provided police with the time and location of the gunshots so they could respond. In neighborhoods where the residents live in fear of those committing the violence, police were not getting any reports of gun activity due to that fear. Police were then able to get to the scene in a reasonable time so they had a higher chance of helping residents without the residents worrying about becoming targets for reporting a crime.
Turbofire Wired Controller, while looking similar externally, would not be mistaken as a Microsoft product. If you have seen the XBox 360 controllers, I don't think you would confuse this with being the same. I'd expect competing controllers to look similar in layout since games are documented to use that sort of layout. As for the contours of the control and the internal components, I wouldn't expect them to be the same (other than basics that just about all controllers use for detecting a press of a button/stick).
From Maryland Weekly Benefit Amount:
The weekly benefit amount (WBA) is the amount of money you may receive and is based on the amount that you were paid by all employers for whom you worked during the base period. The higher your earnings, the higher your weekly benefit amount up to the maximum allowed by law. The current weekly benefit amount provided by the Maryland Unemployment Insurance Law ranges from a minimum of $25 to a maximum of $410.
Given differing policies between states, it might be possible to see higher amounts. If I read the Pennsylvania information correctly, they appear to have $564 for a maximum amount.
Might want to read a little on No Bid Contracts. I'm not saying they are a good thing but there are times where it is necessary. Do you have any specifics to back up your claim that they could have found a lower cost provider in the time frame?
My employer has a web based time reporting system that is only functional in IE. I used to be able to make it work with Firefox but they've modified it to only work with IE now. If I want paid, I need to use IE for that. Some of the training courses are also IE only, but for everything else, Firefox is my default browser.
is this the other 10% exception to what I was talking about? Because I get the feeling to get to that part, you are doing the carrot and stick the other 90% of the time.
Depends how much you play and how you play. If you limit your playing to the leveling part of the game and don't play much at level 80 (or the new top level when the expansion comes out), then yes, 90% of your time could be chasing that carrot. If you make it to level 80 then spend most of your time in instances raiding with friends taking on challenges of the game (speed kills, attempting hard modes, etc...), then the 10% you refer to could become a larger portion of the time toward playing the game. Blizzard has done a bit to speed up the leveling process, but it does still take some amount of time. If you are a new player, it may seem to take forever, but once you get one character to 80, you generally know other people that can help you get there faster (power leveling through instances for example and help with harder quest). You'll also have special gear that you can send to your low level characters that will increase leveling so you aren't finding yourself killing the same X monsters to deliver to Y NPC for long.
The 1-2 people were overlapping schedules after the year I left. The one guy doubled as the ice box (the machines outside of a convenience store) body shop guy when the two of them overlapped schedules. If one was sick, the boxes in to be refinished were just delayed a day or two, no big loss since there were always a few extras for emergency replacement to go out. As for expanding, in that particular market, expanding is not always easy. The two remaining employees were not college students and worked year round (most of the factory maintenance (painting, delivery truck work, breakdown of old pallets, etc...) occurs in the cooler weather when ice demand is lower). As for expanding, it really depends on the owners motivation to expand. The owner was getting up there in age and I'm guessing he has probably sold out to one of the larger distributors in the area. I haven't visited the company in many years since my visits home to family are mostly spent with family or friends, not going back to former work places.
Depending on many factors (size of employer, industry, position type, etc...), retraining may not always be available. For example, my summer jobs while in college were with an ice factory. I was a laborer and did basic task like bagging ice (machine, but required operator intervention), stacking onto pallets (manual labor), stacking pallets (via fork lift), ensuring smooth ice flow through the system (shovel to assist ice to flow through shoots and into the auger system), and customer sales. First summer working there, we had about 6 employees and struggled to get things done. Second summer (most of us being college students), we figured out ways to improve on the process and got it to a point where 3 of us could cover the work of 6 and still have time to do odd yard work for the owner. What do you do with the 3 extra employees at that point? The third summer, the owner bought an automated system to get it down to a single operator (basically monitor the system and pull the auto-stack pallet to the freezer. So now down to 1-2 employees sharing a 7 day schedule and not enough work, what does a company do? Granted these examples were for an industry that primarily deals with summer help, but I hope you can see them applying to other industries. Don't get me wrong by thinking I want to harshly kick an employee out. Most of the employers I've had (post college) have some form of severance package and generally try to find other opportunities when a position ends. My current employer does this very well, but then they are a bigger company. My brother works for a smaller company of about 50 employees and likely wouldn't have the flexibility that my employer has for shifting employees to new task.
As married man with two kids, I always found it unfair the way some of my employers gave me benefits over some of my single co-workers. If I asked to have a day off to go on a field trip with my kids, I'd get approval without little trouble. A single person asking to have a Friday off since friends were coming into town would generally get a refusal. The point of this is that a company shouldn't care (in fact it is really the managers that care since the company is not capable of caring). From the way you are posting, I have to wonder if you want reverse age discrimination in favor of older workers.