It would probably be cheaper to AirBnB to just create and hand over a system to SF that automates the registration and payment process. For a tech company that would be trivial, compared to government bureaucracy. Offer SF a solution for online registration and payments and you can probably even get them to pay a small fee to have AirBnB administer the site for them. Happens all the time,.
Given the way business works (outsourcing, tax loopholes, abusive practices like non-competes" the thing to keep in mind is that companies will just find a way around this.
Manager 1: Fred's making 100k but we need to get rid of him. I don't want to pay Fred 50k next year to not work here. Manager 2: Well, just demote him and drop his salary to minimum wage and wait for him to quit next month. Manager 1: That's brilliant? Let's order another martini.
How to both have a little fun and show how over-inundated the ads are:
Go to your spouse's computer in say, July. Do a google search on Christmas decorations and click on 10 ads for Christmas stuff. Log off and walk away.
Your spouse will be flooded with Christmas ads for the rest of the month, on most sites that they visit.
I did this to my wife once as a joke and it was a good time. But it does show how deeply the tracking is inserted into everything.
I don't mind some tracking. I do mind others. I do not think that the answer is for everyone to refuse all ads entirely. We all consume too much content that is ad-supported to switch to "every site has a fee".
What we really need a an Adblock type package that had a dial on it. Ranging from "No ads, ever" to "let it all through" with settings for allowing tracking cookies or not, which ad networks to allow or not, etc, And let the populace have a say in what level of ad-abuse they are willing to accept to access their favorite sites.
However Adblock allowing some ads just because the vendor paid them.. yeah, I'll uninstall adblock before i see that become the norm. The market will supply a competing product when it is needed.
Rather than go after APK I'd like to see the moderation system actually expanded to influence posters.
Unlike some comments above, I do not want to see all posts. One of the core values of Slashdot is it's self moderating community. Don't take that away. I don't have time in my life to ferret out the good posts on every story. The self-moderation does a "better than most" job of controlling this and keeping the most valuable part of Slashdot (the intelligent comments) alive and well. This filter is valuable to people who love the site but who cannot live on the site.
What I'd rather see is that the moderation be expanded to apply a "starting score" to any posts. As an example, we all remember New York Country Lawyer. He has posted intelligent comments on issues that should earn him, from consistent community voting, a weighted "starts as a 5" post rating. Conversely, this same principal would start weighing down on the posts of APK such that they would fall outside of the filters for all.
Overall this expansion of self-governance could help steer the conversation to well thought out commentaries and questions instead of rants and abusive behavior.
Do you really want to incentivize the government to have offshore workers by making them profit centers for the government itself? How is that an incentive to avoid destroying domestic jobs?
I'd think more like saying "H1B hires cost 3x the prevail wage for a job as determined by industry". Anyone not willing to pay up triple the cost can hire back the same folks they are firing now to save a buck. Anyone claiming this is not about companies saving a buck is being disingenuous. If there is truly not a single domestic worker able to fill the role, then paying extra for it should not be a problem. Looking at employment rates, and layoff/offshoring announcements I think these problems would fix itself pretty quickly given the right financial incentive.
I'm with you on that. While I've never followed any Pope's activities before, his humble nature and the points he chooses to focus on have elevated my opinion of the man to nearly a point of reverence. The head of the church with a reasonable position on just about every issue he takes on? Remarkable This is a guy that I believe is truly seeking whats best for us all and sees the world as it is. Now if only more of us can follow his lead and release the entrenchment that has dominated for far too long.
Is for someone with a legal background and an axe to grind to start a case where their personal information is deemed confidential and personal property just as all corporate identities claim that their information is confidential and their property.
When corporations want to be treated like people it's deemed ok, so time to turn the tables.
Given the general behavior of the company, I'd more likely believe the following scenario:
Guy signs up for the $250 guarantee. AM employee signs onto a female account and messages guy, sets up a meet AM employee of course never shows. Guy demands a refund after 3 months. AM responds "Our logs clearly show that you had a hookup." Guy: She never showed up AM: We have no proof of that. You may file a lawsuit against us if you wish. Guy: Glances at the family portrait, hangs up the phone and pretends it never happened.
if you have land for wind power, why would you not want solar spread around it in the safety zone of the tower? Same lines can carry all of the power. Lower real estate cost. Why is it that I only ever see or hear about a solar farm or a wind farm and never an energy farm?
Maybe someone here more familiar with the topic can help me out, or tell me that it's being done and just not talked about much.
I'm curious how this would play out here in the states.
While Internet fraud is a crime, if the nation has an enemy we have declared war with or even a formal aggression stance such as a police action, etc, I wonder if scamming them wouldn't actually be a nationalist act and praised.
The whole thing as it stands is a farcical scenario of laws versus justice/morality. Something worthy of debate.
While it's really great that you feel that the first time you hear a phrase is the first time it was ever uttered, and I'm sure that makes you feel like the epicenter of the social universe, most phrase usage these days are recycling of old phrases which capture an idea perfectly well, so why recreate them right?
Just a tidbit for thought:
"Origin of the phrase
One of the earliest standalone uses of the phrase "New World Order" was the title of the 1920 book The New World Order by Frederick C Hicks,[2] but is usually misattributed to H.G. Wells' 1940 book of the same name. The phrase had previously been used by Nicholas Murray Butler in his 1917 book A World in Ferment.[3] "New World Order" was also used in a 1940 essay by occultist writer Alice Bailey which was included in her posthumously published 1957 compilation The Externalisation of the Hierarchy. To Hicks, Wells, and Bailey, the term meant a benevolent social democracy that would soon emerge, whilst Butler used the term to describe the First World War as it was being waged. Conspiracy theorists, however, believe the term goes back earlier: to Cecil Rhodes and Lionel Curtis circa 1909. "
I'm pretty sure WWF/WWE wasn't behind these efforts and movements, but hey. you never know;)
While the drone frame may be plastic, I would suspect that the motors and batteries are fairly dense materials. These striking a helicopter blade would seem to be a risky proposition.
I'm not sure the difference is the "luring" of more women into STEM. Whether it be via watered-down-socially-attractive versions of STEM to pretend it's the same thing, or special outreach programs to get women to join up.
It seems to me that if you want more women in STEM, and this is an important national issue, then start celebrating STEM. Move the national awareness of the value of STEM and make heroes of STEM leaders/workers. If you want parity in STEM, make STEM part of the national dialog and identity such that those inclined (of either gender) will be more encouraged to choose it.
Some of this is changing already, but I think the solution has to be general awareness and attractiveness for all, not specialty "carrots" to lure women into your windowless STEM van.
What interests me is why so many people find it so easy to believe this stuff. What fundamental factor is making people so ready to believe any sort of "it's all a lie, protect yourself by doing the opposite of whatever the government says to do" is at play here.
Really there can't be so many people foolish enough to not understand herd immunity and the studies showing the lack of any connection to autism. What makes them so paranoid that they will follow any bad idea just to stand by a "they are out to get me" principal?
Sometimes I ponder if this whole thing is the equivalent of a religion to these folks. Have they been indoctrinated so fully that nothing can ever been seen without perceiving it as an evil intent to kill them and steal their playstations?
The difference is that Stop Signs have a legal basis and if you fail to stop at them, you can be fined. You want the license to drive, then you agree to play by the rules that keeps everyone safer.
Same thing with the social contract that makes up your citizenship. You have to obey the rules that keep everyone safer if you want to take advantage of the benefits.
This part about group family home schooling is frightening for the children. Imagine taking a bunch of weak minded fools who can be sucked into this anti-vac thing with their "I read the internet, so I know better than scientists, doctors and everyone else" mentality and paranoia. Make them responsible for "educating" (see the quotes I put around that?) their kids and kids of other like-minded conspiracy theorists. I can only imagine the insanity that will ferment in these settings. What kinds of freaks will they be raising?
I haven't done any research on the clock, but what little I could find on wiki doesn't give any relative meaning to the setting. If it's set to 23:57, what does 00:01 represent? It all seems awfully arbitrary and set to an alarmist tone since anything with only 3 minutes left must be urgent! If you are being arbitrary with the setting then you could calculate the same date to equate to 02:30,. but then no one would talk about it as if it had meaning.
And what's a minute? Since it's clearly not a minute. Or do the mean each of the 1440 minutes to represent.07% of a percentile and being at 11:57 means we're 99.79% likely to end this year?
For a group of "scientists" (and yes I put that in quotes cause I'm not seeing any science), this certainly seems more like marketing hype.
Someone please chime in if there's a real meaning to all of this.
I haven't done any research on the clock, but what little I could find on wiki doesn't give any relative meaning to the setting. If it's set to 23:57, what does 00:01 represent? It all seems awfully arbitrary and set to an alarmist tone since anything with only 3 minutes left must be urgent! If you are being arbitrary with the setting then you could calculate the same date to equate to 02:30,. but then no one would talk about it as if it had meaning.
And what's a minute? Since it's clearly not a minute. Or do the mean each of the 1440 minutes to represent.07% of a percentile and being at 11:57 means we're 99.79% likely to end this year?
For a group of "scientists" (and yes I put that in quotes cause I'm not seeing any science), this certainly seems more like marketing hype.
Someone please chime in if there's a real meaning to all of this.
Anyone know a good petition site we could place a petition on? Maybe try and collect some opposition signatures, get some tech media coverage and -gulp- resist?
I'm curious. I have no knowledge of Intels' payroll policies, but I wonder if the $300 million could not have been better spent insuring that wages are fair across genders at Intel. Unless they already have a perfectly balanced gender neutral payroll balance, any company chasing this dream of more women programmers is just marketing fluff!
My assumption is that the companies backing this effort assume that they can hire the next generation of female developers for less money than their male counterparts and that is the real reason behind this initiative and why it's backed by tech companies.
I love Slashdot and Slashdotters. But in this case I'm kind of taken back by the responses.
Being married to an Author and knowing many, many authors, I can point out a few things:
Most authors, beyond the "super big names" struggle to make even a moderate living off of their books. When these folks try out a new system like the Amazon plan, and they find the are making less, we're not talking about folks who used to make 3 million, now only making 2.5 million. We're talking about someone who might be making for example 30k per yea,r making so much less that they are forced to cease writing as a vocation.. It's directly impactful, and the impact is not tied to quality of the book. Rather, the impact is books with catchy titles and sales pitches getting more downloads and making more money, regardless of quality. "hey, it's free, I'll click that since there's no downside to me for doing so." This leads to other books making less of the allotted bucket of funds. When spending money on books, folks tend to check reviews, read the sample download or use various criteria to filter down their selection to what they enjoy reading. So better books get rewarded. With the new plan, shotgun approaches become the norm.
Lets try it another way. Say tomorrow, there was one major store through which the majority of all software (personal, business, etc.) and all IT services (Ops, support, admin, etc, each treated as a service ticket item) were offered and the owners of that store decided "Forget what people pay today for software and services, we'll sell them anything and everything for $10 a month and just divvy up profits as we see fit, And we'll do it without reporting to anyone how the process works or what actual counts occurred, we'll just send them a check."
How would you feel about that when it was your app that you worked for a year and you usually make about $50k per year. But now when another app AngryBirds sells 30 million copies, your get a check for $5 for the month for your app despite people still downloading downloading it because statistically it's insignificant?
Or how about your IT job that you now get paid 1$ per service ticket because a billion other service tickets get processed as well? Did you enjoy working all day for $20?
While it's easy to assume that anything cheaper is better, remember to take into account that the cheaper may be coming at the actual workers pocket. I'd expected to see Slashdotters more upset at the middleman holding the actual workers over a barrel.
Slashdot Mirror
Protester fanbois protest site that aggregates reviews, screaming "Stop saying it's bad".
Net effect: An even larger audience reading articles about the petition realize it's a bad movie and don't go.
Way go to! /tumbsup
It would probably be cheaper to AirBnB to just create and hand over a system to SF that automates the registration and payment process. For a tech company that would be trivial, compared to government bureaucracy. Offer SF a solution for online registration and payments and you can probably even get them to pay a small fee to have AirBnB administer the site for them. Happens all the time,.
Given the way business works (outsourcing, tax loopholes, abusive practices like non-competes" the thing to keep in mind is that companies will just find a way around this.
Manager 1: Fred's making 100k but we need to get rid of him. I don't want to pay Fred 50k next year to not work here.
Manager 2: Well, just demote him and drop his salary to minimum wage and wait for him to quit next month.
Manager 1: That's brilliant? Let's order another martini.
How to both have a little fun and show how over-inundated the ads are:
Go to your spouse's computer in say, July. Do a google search on Christmas decorations and click on 10 ads for Christmas stuff. Log off and walk away.
Your spouse will be flooded with Christmas ads for the rest of the month, on most sites that they visit.
I did this to my wife once as a joke and it was a good time. But it does show how deeply the tracking is inserted into everything.
I don't mind some tracking. I do mind others. I do not think that the answer is for everyone to refuse all ads entirely. We all consume too much content that is ad-supported to switch to "every site has a fee".
What we really need a an Adblock type package that had a dial on it.
Ranging from "No ads, ever" to "let it all through" with settings for allowing tracking cookies or not, which ad networks to allow or not, etc, And let the populace have a say in what level of ad-abuse they are willing to accept to access their favorite sites.
However Adblock allowing some ads just because the vendor paid them.. yeah, I'll uninstall adblock before i see that become the norm. The market will supply a competing product when it is needed.
Ahh, thanks for the additional details.
Rather than go after APK I'd like to see the moderation system actually expanded to influence posters.
Unlike some comments above, I do not want to see all posts. One of the core values of Slashdot is it's self moderating community. Don't take that away. I don't have time in my life to ferret out the good posts on every story. The self-moderation does a "better than most" job of controlling this and keeping the most valuable part of Slashdot (the intelligent comments) alive and well. This filter is valuable to people who love the site but who cannot live on the site.
What I'd rather see is that the moderation be expanded to apply a "starting score" to any posts. As an example, we all remember New York Country Lawyer. He has posted intelligent comments on issues that should earn him, from consistent community voting, a weighted "starts as a 5" post rating. Conversely, this same principal would start weighing down on the posts of APK such that they would fall outside of the filters for all.
Overall this expansion of self-governance could help steer the conversation to well thought out commentaries and questions instead of rants and abusive behavior.
Flat fee issue:
Do you really want to incentivize the government to have offshore workers by making them profit centers for the government itself? How is that an incentive to avoid destroying domestic jobs?
I'd think more like saying "H1B hires cost 3x the prevail wage for a job as determined by industry". Anyone not willing to pay up triple the cost can hire back the same folks they are firing now to save a buck. Anyone claiming this is not about companies saving a buck is being disingenuous. If there is truly not a single domestic worker able to fill the role, then paying extra for it should not be a problem. Looking at employment rates, and layoff/offshoring announcements I think these problems would fix itself pretty quickly given the right financial incentive.
I'm with you on that. While I've never followed any Pope's activities before, his humble nature and the points he chooses to focus on have elevated my opinion of the man to nearly a point of reverence. The head of the church with a reasonable position on just about every issue he takes on? Remarkable This is a guy that I believe is truly seeking whats best for us all and sees the world as it is. Now if only more of us can follow his lead and release the entrenchment that has dominated for far too long.
Is for someone with a legal background and an axe to grind to start a case where their personal information is deemed confidential and personal property just as all corporate identities claim that their information is confidential and their property.
When corporations want to be treated like people it's deemed ok, so time to turn the tables.
Given the general behavior of the company, I'd more likely believe the following scenario:
Guy signs up for the $250 guarantee.
AM employee signs onto a female account and messages guy, sets up a meet
AM employee of course never shows.
Guy demands a refund after 3 months.
AM responds "Our logs clearly show that you had a hookup."
Guy: She never showed up
AM: We have no proof of that. You may file a lawsuit against us if you wish.
Guy: Glances at the family portrait, hangs up the phone and pretends it never happened.
There's something I've never understood here.
if you have land for wind power, why would you not want solar spread around it in the safety zone of the tower? Same lines can carry all of the power. Lower real estate cost. Why is it that I only ever see or hear about a solar farm or a wind farm and never an energy farm?
Maybe someone here more familiar with the topic can help me out, or tell me that it's being done and just not talked about much.
I'm curious how this would play out here in the states.
While Internet fraud is a crime, if the nation has an enemy we have declared war with or even a formal aggression stance such as a police action, etc, I wonder if scamming them wouldn't actually be a nationalist act and praised.
The whole thing as it stands is a farcical scenario of laws versus justice/morality. Something worthy of debate.
While it's really great that you feel that the first time you hear a phrase is the first time it was ever uttered, and I'm sure that makes you feel like the epicenter of the social universe, most phrase usage these days are recycling of old phrases which capture an idea perfectly well, so why recreate them right?
Just a tidbit for thought:
"Origin of the phrase
One of the earliest standalone uses of the phrase "New World Order" was the title of the 1920 book The New World Order by Frederick C Hicks,[2] but is usually misattributed to H.G. Wells' 1940 book of the same name. The phrase had previously been used by Nicholas Murray Butler in his 1917 book A World in Ferment.[3] "New World Order" was also used in a 1940 essay by occultist writer Alice Bailey which was included in her posthumously published 1957 compilation The Externalisation of the Hierarchy. To Hicks, Wells, and Bailey, the term meant a benevolent social democracy that would soon emerge, whilst Butler used the term to describe the First World War as it was being waged. Conspiracy theorists, however, believe the term goes back earlier: to Cecil Rhodes and Lionel Curtis circa 1909. "
I'm pretty sure WWF/WWE wasn't behind these efforts and movements, but hey. you never know ;)
While the drone frame may be plastic, I would suspect that the motors and batteries are fairly dense materials. These striking a helicopter blade would seem to be a risky proposition.
I'm not sure the difference is the "luring" of more women into STEM. Whether it be via watered-down-socially-attractive versions of STEM to pretend it's the same thing, or special outreach programs to get women to join up.
It seems to me that if you want more women in STEM, and this is an important national issue, then start celebrating STEM. Move the national awareness of the value of STEM and make heroes of STEM leaders/workers. If you want parity in STEM, make STEM part of the national dialog and identity such that those inclined (of either gender) will be more encouraged to choose it.
Some of this is changing already, but I think the solution has to be general awareness and attractiveness for all, not specialty "carrots" to lure women into your windowless STEM van.
What interests me is why so many people find it so easy to believe this stuff. What fundamental factor is making people so ready to believe any sort of "it's all a lie, protect yourself by doing the opposite of whatever the government says to do" is at play here.
Really there can't be so many people foolish enough to not understand herd immunity and the studies showing the lack of any connection to autism. What makes them so paranoid that they will follow any bad idea just to stand by a "they are out to get me" principal?
Sometimes I ponder if this whole thing is the equivalent of a religion to these folks. Have they been indoctrinated so fully that nothing can ever been seen without perceiving it as an evil intent to kill them and steal their playstations?
The difference is that Stop Signs have a legal basis and if you fail to stop at them, you can be fined. You want the license to drive, then you agree to play by the rules that keeps everyone safer.
Same thing with the social contract that makes up your citizenship. You have to obey the rules that keep everyone safer if you want to take advantage of the benefits.
This part about group family home schooling is frightening for the children. Imagine taking a bunch of weak minded fools who can be sucked into this anti-vac thing with their "I read the internet, so I know better than scientists, doctors and everyone else" mentality and paranoia. Make them responsible for "educating" (see the quotes I put around that?) their kids and kids of other like-minded conspiracy theorists. I can only imagine the insanity that will ferment in these settings. What kinds of freaks will they be raising?
I haven't done any research on the clock, but what little I could find on wiki doesn't give any relative meaning to the setting. If it's set to 23:57, what does 00:01 represent? It all seems awfully arbitrary and set to an alarmist tone since anything with only 3 minutes left must be urgent! If you are being arbitrary with the setting then you could calculate the same date to equate to 02:30,. but then no one would talk about it as if it had meaning.
And what's a minute? Since it's clearly not a minute. Or do the mean each of the 1440 minutes to represent .07% of a percentile and being at 11:57 means we're 99.79% likely to end this year?
For a group of "scientists" (and yes I put that in quotes cause I'm not seeing any science), this certainly seems more like marketing hype.
Someone please chime in if there's a real meaning to all of this.
I haven't done any research on the clock, but what little I could find on wiki doesn't give any relative meaning to the setting. If it's set to 23:57, what does 00:01 represent? It all seems awfully arbitrary and set to an alarmist tone since anything with only 3 minutes left must be urgent! If you are being arbitrary with the setting then you could calculate the same date to equate to 02:30,. but then no one would talk about it as if it had meaning.
And what's a minute? Since it's clearly not a minute. Or do the mean each of the 1440 minutes to represent .07% of a percentile and being at 11:57 means we're 99.79% likely to end this year?
For a group of "scientists" (and yes I put that in quotes cause I'm not seeing any science), this certainly seems more like marketing hype.
Someone please chime in if there's a real meaning to all of this.
I was referring to the Google attempt, before it gets approved.
Anyone know a good petition site we could place a petition on? Maybe try and collect some opposition signatures, get some tech media coverage and -gulp- resist?
I'm curious. I have no knowledge of Intels' payroll policies, but I wonder if the $300 million could not have been better spent insuring that wages are fair across genders at Intel. Unless they already have a perfectly balanced gender neutral payroll balance, any company chasing this dream of more women programmers is just marketing fluff!
My assumption is that the companies backing this effort assume that they can hire the next generation of female developers for less money than their male counterparts and that is the real reason behind this initiative and why it's backed by tech companies.
I love Slashdot and Slashdotters. But in this case I'm kind of taken back by the responses.
Being married to an Author and knowing many, many authors, I can point out a few things:
Most authors, beyond the "super big names" struggle to make even a moderate living off of their books. When these folks try out a new system like the Amazon plan, and they find the are making less, we're not talking about folks who used to make 3 million, now only making 2.5 million. We're talking about someone who might be making for example 30k per yea,r making so much less that they are forced to cease writing as a vocation.. It's directly impactful, and the impact is not tied to quality of the book. Rather, the impact is books with catchy titles and sales pitches getting more downloads and making more money, regardless of quality. "hey, it's free, I'll click that since there's no downside to me for doing so." This leads to other books making less of the allotted bucket of funds. When spending money on books, folks tend to check reviews, read the sample download or use various criteria to filter down their selection to what they enjoy reading. So better books get rewarded. With the new plan, shotgun approaches become the norm.
Lets try it another way. Say tomorrow, there was one major store through which the majority of all software (personal, business, etc.) and all IT services (Ops, support, admin, etc, each treated as a service ticket item) were offered and the owners of that store decided "Forget what people pay today for software and services, we'll sell them anything and everything for $10 a month and just divvy up profits as we see fit, And we'll do it without reporting to anyone how the process works or what actual counts occurred, we'll just send them a check."
How would you feel about that when it was your app that you worked for a year and you usually make about $50k per year. But now when another app AngryBirds sells 30 million copies, your get a check for $5 for the month for your app despite people still downloading downloading it because statistically it's insignificant?
Or how about your IT job that you now get paid 1$ per service ticket because a billion other service tickets get processed as well? Did you enjoy working all day for $20?
While it's easy to assume that anything cheaper is better, remember to take into account that the cheaper may be coming at the actual workers pocket. I'd expected to see Slashdotters more upset at the middleman holding the actual workers over a barrel.
I wasn't aware that iTunes offered an all-you-can-eat access to music.