Up here in Canuckistan we're generally not allowed to probe too deeply into prospective employees' personal lives, but when I'm doing an interview, I ask the question "Is there anything that would interfere with you performing the duties detailed in the job description?" If there are time-sensitive elements, such as needing to be at work during certain hours, then those are in the job description. At that point, if a new hire, as it turns out, has not honestly answered the questions, then that is an opening for us to look at the suitability of the employee for the position. But there's usually room to be reasonable, and considering the optics of firing someone whose spouse is in late-stage cancer, I doubt I would seriously consider termination, even if I thought I could demonstrate just cause.
The only example I have of encountering anything like this was my first management job, and part of my duties was overseeing the company's answering service. We had hired a very lovely lady whose references checked out, and since it was a low skill position (answer phone, take message, forward on to the appropriate customer), she seemed perfect for the position, particularly as she could work any hours. After a few weeks our customers and other staff started complaining about garbled messages, wrong phone numbers, and so forth. I went through the standard three warnings with her over the next few months, and without any real change, and finally decided to let her go (it was the first time I ever fired anybody, and I remember I couldn't sleep the night before because I felt like such an asshole). It was at the meeting where I informed her she was terminated that she broke down in tears and informed me that she was hard of hearing. My jaw dropped through the floor, since we had at that time what was a pretty advanced phone system which we could have purchased some additional equipment to assist those with hearing problems. I actually broke with the script (a big no-no as I was later informed) and asked her why she didn't tell us that at the beginning, and of course, the answer was she was afraid she wouldn't have got the position.
The real irony here is that treating employees like crap actually leads to more sick time, lower productivity, higher turnover and thus ultimately can actually cost a company money.
This is why sociopaths should be banned from any position of authority over anyone else. I don't even think they should be allowed to be a crew manager at a fast food joint. They should be prohibited from any position where they can make a decision about another human being, period.
If you have a pre-existing condition, prior to ACA, you couldn't afford the premiums at all. That was the whole point of the personal mandate, and even the Republicans recognize this, though they're trying to incentivize buying insurance through the threat of the insurance company forcing huge premiums on you if you don't keep an insurance policy going at all times. But there are lots of reasons why one can't afford premiums that have nothing to do with being irresponsible.
Oh Christ, save us from AC's with claims that they're supersavers and anecdotal stories of people blowing their wages.
How does one save for anything with a low paying job, with rent and utilities and the need for basic nutrition? Either you're living with your parents, or your heavily distorting your income claims. But the real problem is that you're just some anonymous coward on the Internet making anecdotal claims that are wholly unrepresentative.
The real problem here is that refusing to pay up front for medical costs leads to a whole host of social ills further down the line, that often cost much more. When someone gets a medical intervention that they cannot afford, they will inevitably become insolvent, either through bankruptcy or through simply abandoning the debt. In the end either someone else (the taxpayers) has to pay the bill or it gets written off as a bad debt, but in the meantime the person who has gone into some sort of insolvency is in a much worse state, either having lost almost everything through bankruptcy, or exists in a debt netherworld where wages are garnisheed or they end up simply working under the table. There are significant social costs to this; spousal and child abuse, mental health and suicide.
The narrow view taken by people that "I dont' want to pay for it" ignores the fact that you do end up paying for it in many other ways. Refusing to cover peoples' health just kicks the can further down the road, and costing everyone a lot more money.
I'm not sure what a microwave would report back. "Hmmm, he heated something at high for two minutes. Ah ha, now we know he made popcorn!"
Well, now that Spicer is basically abandoning the whole claim that Obama ordered Trump spied on, I guess I can walk away from this too, other than to say that Trump's penchant for saying absurd and obviously false things very loudly is killing his credibility, and while the Republicans, at least for now, need him around to guarantee his signature on some key bills, these are not people comfortable with being made a fool of by a President who allegedly wears the same team colors.
Hey listen, moderator, I didn't make that claim up. A representative of the President went on TV and suggested Trump was spied on by his TV or microwave, largely because the claim said President made about Obama ordering his phones be tapped was, to put it bluntly, a stinking steaming pile of bullshit based on claims that a radio shock jock invented, and Breitbart, that paragon on journalism, picked up.
There are too many competing interests to ever hope to do that, and really, a lot of the actual encryption theory is decades old, so that cat has been out of the bag for a very long time.
One can be reasonably certain that by the end of this century, a great many jobs, white collar and blue collar, will be partially or fully automated. You can moan all you want about the madness of idle people, but really, if that is true, we are fucked.
But I don't think that's true at all. Just because people may not need to work to live doesn't mean they won't find other positive ways to occupy their time. Maybe Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future where people are free to pursue whatever they please may be a tad overly optimistic, but that's the way it is going. So we'd best start thinking about what society is going to look like in 20, 30, 50 and 100 years, and what kind of foundation we need to lay right now.
Which is why the real solution is higher corporate taxes and/or higher capital gains taxes. Taxing robots would be utterly complex if it was anything other than some sort of poll tax, and while that might be easy to calculate and administer, it would be unbelievably unfair.
Sociopaths should be barred from going to law school or getting MBAs. I, might, just might trust a sociopath to pick up trash or clean washrooms, but that's about as much of a career they should be permitted.
They're all just as bad; IBM, Oracle, Accenture, Deloitte, HP. It's almost irrelevant which one you pick, so punishing one simply forwards the next contract on to the other, who will do just the same thing.
Up here in British Columbia, the Provincial government for decades had a pretty effective in-house IT team, but in seeking savings the government has steadily in-house expertise in favor of private contractors. While not all the contractors I've seen are inept, when it comes to rolling out the big systems, you end up with one of the Big IT firms, and the expected inevitably occurs.
So, in other words, once it has grabbed up large amounts of memory to hold the libraries in, it's really fast. Well, okay, but that would apply to any environment with a cache. And that represents the significant philosophical divide between Microsoft and *nix. Powershell needs to load vast portions of the.NET libraries just to run, while *nix is built upon a minimalist model of only loading what you need. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but I prefer discrete tools with a shell as a sort glue, and I readily admit that comes from 25 years of working in *nix environments.
The one thing PS is not is fast. Christ almighty, it's so fucking slow to load, and then the first command you run, or hell sometimes even the first keypress can take several seconds, and even execution is pretty gawdawful. It may be powerful, and it is certainly the best automation toolset Windows is ever likely to have, but being based on.NET makes it as slow as molasses.
Slashdot Mirror
Up here in Canuckistan we're generally not allowed to probe too deeply into prospective employees' personal lives, but when I'm doing an interview, I ask the question "Is there anything that would interfere with you performing the duties detailed in the job description?" If there are time-sensitive elements, such as needing to be at work during certain hours, then those are in the job description. At that point, if a new hire, as it turns out, has not honestly answered the questions, then that is an opening for us to look at the suitability of the employee for the position. But there's usually room to be reasonable, and considering the optics of firing someone whose spouse is in late-stage cancer, I doubt I would seriously consider termination, even if I thought I could demonstrate just cause.
The only example I have of encountering anything like this was my first management job, and part of my duties was overseeing the company's answering service. We had hired a very lovely lady whose references checked out, and since it was a low skill position (answer phone, take message, forward on to the appropriate customer), she seemed perfect for the position, particularly as she could work any hours. After a few weeks our customers and other staff started complaining about garbled messages, wrong phone numbers, and so forth. I went through the standard three warnings with her over the next few months, and without any real change, and finally decided to let her go (it was the first time I ever fired anybody, and I remember I couldn't sleep the night before because I felt like such an asshole). It was at the meeting where I informed her she was terminated that she broke down in tears and informed me that she was hard of hearing. My jaw dropped through the floor, since we had at that time what was a pretty advanced phone system which we could have purchased some additional equipment to assist those with hearing problems. I actually broke with the script (a big no-no as I was later informed) and asked her why she didn't tell us that at the beginning, and of course, the answer was she was afraid she wouldn't have got the position.
The real irony here is that treating employees like crap actually leads to more sick time, lower productivity, higher turnover and thus ultimately can actually cost a company money.
This is why sociopaths should be banned from any position of authority over anyone else. I don't even think they should be allowed to be a crew manager at a fast food joint. They should be prohibited from any position where they can make a decision about another human being, period.
We are indeed at that stage of civilization where "played one on TV" is counted as related experience.
Hire Sean Spicer to explain them away.
If you have a pre-existing condition, prior to ACA, you couldn't afford the premiums at all. That was the whole point of the personal mandate, and even the Republicans recognize this, though they're trying to incentivize buying insurance through the threat of the insurance company forcing huge premiums on you if you don't keep an insurance policy going at all times. But there are lots of reasons why one can't afford premiums that have nothing to do with being irresponsible.
Oh Christ, save us from AC's with claims that they're supersavers and anecdotal stories of people blowing their wages.
How does one save for anything with a low paying job, with rent and utilities and the need for basic nutrition? Either you're living with your parents, or your heavily distorting your income claims. But the real problem is that you're just some anonymous coward on the Internet making anecdotal claims that are wholly unrepresentative.
The real problem here is that refusing to pay up front for medical costs leads to a whole host of social ills further down the line, that often cost much more. When someone gets a medical intervention that they cannot afford, they will inevitably become insolvent, either through bankruptcy or through simply abandoning the debt. In the end either someone else (the taxpayers) has to pay the bill or it gets written off as a bad debt, but in the meantime the person who has gone into some sort of insolvency is in a much worse state, either having lost almost everything through bankruptcy, or exists in a debt netherworld where wages are garnisheed or they end up simply working under the table. There are significant social costs to this; spousal and child abuse, mental health and suicide.
The narrow view taken by people that "I dont' want to pay for it" ignores the fact that you do end up paying for it in many other ways. Refusing to cover peoples' health just kicks the can further down the road, and costing everyone a lot more money.
I'm not sure what a microwave would report back. "Hmmm, he heated something at high for two minutes. Ah ha, now we know he made popcorn!"
Well, now that Spicer is basically abandoning the whole claim that Obama ordered Trump spied on, I guess I can walk away from this too, other than to say that Trump's penchant for saying absurd and obviously false things very loudly is killing his credibility, and while the Republicans, at least for now, need him around to guarantee his signature on some key bills, these are not people comfortable with being made a fool of by a President who allegedly wears the same team colors.
Hey listen, moderator, I didn't make that claim up. A representative of the President went on TV and suggested Trump was spied on by his TV or microwave, largely because the claim said President made about Obama ordering his phones be tapped was, to put it bluntly, a stinking steaming pile of bullshit based on claims that a radio shock jock invented, and Breitbart, that paragon on journalism, picked up.
But don't you know they're listening to us through our microwaves!!!!!!!!
There are too many competing interests to ever hope to do that, and really, a lot of the actual encryption theory is decades old, so that cat has been out of the bag for a very long time.
I think the GP is just being an ass, but something pretty goddamned odd happened with TrueCrypt.
You can't ban mathematics.
If robots are producing, why would money be all gone?
So what is your solution when everything from waitresses to secretaries to truck drivers to mining, to hell, even a lot of health care, is automated?
Let me guess, forced population decimation enters the equation somewhere.
One can be reasonably certain that by the end of this century, a great many jobs, white collar and blue collar, will be partially or fully automated. You can moan all you want about the madness of idle people, but really, if that is true, we are fucked.
But I don't think that's true at all. Just because people may not need to work to live doesn't mean they won't find other positive ways to occupy their time. Maybe Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future where people are free to pursue whatever they please may be a tad overly optimistic, but that's the way it is going. So we'd best start thinking about what society is going to look like in 20, 30, 50 and 100 years, and what kind of foundation we need to lay right now.
Which is why the real solution is higher corporate taxes and/or higher capital gains taxes. Taxing robots would be utterly complex if it was anything other than some sort of poll tax, and while that might be easy to calculate and administer, it would be unbelievably unfair.
Well, we could also talk about the poor people who have to breath in the pretty toxic stew of emissions gasses that come out of a diesel engine.
Translation: I'm a sociopath
Sociopaths should be barred from going to law school or getting MBAs. I, might, just might trust a sociopath to pick up trash or clean washrooms, but that's about as much of a career they should be permitted.
They're all just as bad; IBM, Oracle, Accenture, Deloitte, HP. It's almost irrelevant which one you pick, so punishing one simply forwards the next contract on to the other, who will do just the same thing.
Up here in British Columbia, the Provincial government for decades had a pretty effective in-house IT team, but in seeking savings the government has steadily in-house expertise in favor of private contractors. While not all the contractors I've seen are inept, when it comes to rolling out the big systems, you end up with one of the Big IT firms, and the expected inevitably occurs.
So, in other words, once it has grabbed up large amounts of memory to hold the libraries in, it's really fast. Well, okay, but that would apply to any environment with a cache. And that represents the significant philosophical divide between Microsoft and *nix. Powershell needs to load vast portions of the .NET libraries just to run, while *nix is built upon a minimalist model of only loading what you need. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but I prefer discrete tools with a shell as a sort glue, and I readily admit that comes from 25 years of working in *nix environments.
The one thing PS is not is fast. Christ almighty, it's so fucking slow to load, and then the first command you run, or hell sometimes even the first keypress can take several seconds, and even execution is pretty gawdawful. It may be powerful, and it is certainly the best automation toolset Windows is ever likely to have, but being based on .NET makes it as slow as molasses.
Of course Intel paid attention to the low power market, which is where the Atom came from. And where is the Atom now????
Intel cuts Atom chips