Yes, in most low-level positions that is probably true. But those are the same jobs that are being outsourced to India because such job markets aren't about surpassing the next candidate, it's about underbidding the next applicant.
Who said anything about Ken Lay? Target, and most corporations similar to Target/Walmart/K-mart/etc. typically follow the same business model and have similar business practices. It's a known fact that a good portion of the goods sold by Target are made in sweatshops where workers are subjected to egregious conditions for minimal pay. And since the shareholders of Target are benefiting from the exploitation of these underpaid workers, yes, they are in fact responsible for what is happening in the sweatshops.
And you're right. It doesn't matter who you're stealing from; stealing is stealing. But if you actually read my previous post, you'd see that I wasn't trying to justify the act of theft in TFA.
And yes, I've done LSD and plenty of other drugs. But that is neither here nor there. Ad hominem attacks only weaken your argument.
I'm not picking an extreme example. I'm simply discussing scenarios which are relevant to TFA. Most forms of racism/prejudice comes from misdirected anger/frustration. People see another human being with different colored skin who does something they don't like, and they automatically place the blame on the color of their skin, or atleast correlate the problem with race. The article brings up the outsourcing problem in the context of the racial/cultural tensions it has created. This is directly linked to the misplacement of anger/frustration I am talking about. If you are saying "deal with it" to the Indians, then you are basically arguing that the abuses they put up with are justifiable.
Not really. I didn't say that theft is morally acceptible in this case, just pointing out that it's rather silly to get all high and mighty about someone stealing an iPod from a corporation such as Target when you don't find anything morally reprehensible about the people running these organizations. It might very well be that the forms of dishonesty are unethical in both cases, but I think the dishonesty of corporate CEOs is much more malicious/injurious to society.
Well, if programming is just a source of income for you, then the effort you put into it, and thus the quality of your code, probably won't be as good as the code produced by someone else, to whom programming is a hobby or a passion. In other words, if you actually enjoy programming, you will likely be a better programmer than someone who doesn't.
I thought the Blockbuster Movie Syndrome was the belief that adding multi-million dollar CGI, a popular cast of well known hollywood actors, and lots of explosions to a movie automatically makes the movie good/interesting. This kind of thinking leads to people watching tiresome movies with the same rehashed formulaic plots over and over again. When you automatically condemn anything unconventional/doesn't follow the hollywood blockbuster formula, then you leave no room for originality or creativity. This movie atleast doesn't try to follow that formula. It doesn't guarantee that the film will be good, but it atleast guarantees that it's something new--which, IMHO, is better than the typical junk being peddled to audiences by Hollywood.
Gee, I'm surprised you didn't go the extra length to compare his hypothetical statement to the holocaust--that would have been a much better hyperbole IMHO.
But you're right, stealing an iPod from Target store is truly a heinous crime. I can see it now--all those Target stockholders having to explain to their kids why they won't be celebrating Christmas this year because someone stole an iPod from one of the stores! And to think, people still concern themselves with petty issues like labor exploitation and poverty. It's truly sickening.
I dunno, I wouldn't feel too bad about stealing from a large Walmart-esque corporation. If the CEO's can't be expected to be ethical/honest then neither should the customers, whom are typically much less well-off.
You're right. Cussing out the customer service rep. because you are dissatisfied with the quality of the product you bought, though the customer service reps probably didn't have much say in the design or production of the product, isn't misplacing your anger at all--why did i ever question that.
By that logic, if bought a crappy car from company X, and I took the car to the dealership to be repaired and the auto mechanic happens to be Mexican, then I am completely justified in calling him a wetback and telling him to go back to his country. This kind of behavior will surely get company X to improve their quality control and does not make me an asshole whatsoever.
No, he's right; look at how IP laws rewarded BlackBerry for their innovation... oh wait.
Really, I don't see why monetary reward has to be the primary motivation behind everything. I mean, do you think Edison wouldn't have invented the lightbulb if there hadn't been IP laws in place back then? (I'm not sure if there were, but I highly doubt they would have made much of a difference either way) Likewise with Shakespeare's plays.
The same could be said about ANY international treaty. You can even apply it to state versus federal laws. With or without treaties we all live on the same planet, share the same environment, and we affect each other with our actions or inaction. Choosing to cooperate with each other to make the world more liveable for everyone is the only rational path. There are a lot of issues that can only be addressed through international laws and require an international court to enforce. The world has seen the need for such laws and treaties many times over, such as the Nuremberg Trials, the prosecution of other perpetrators of war crimes, the Geneva conventions, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, etc.
Your attitude simply demonstrates the problem with our society's ethnocentrism. We seem to think that our arbitrary geographic borders somehow instills greater moral judgement in all those enclosed by it. This conceit is also why Americans believe that being the conceited sociopathic brat of the international community is ok and somehow makes American citizens more free, or more autonomous. But reality has shown that we don't need other nations to impose oppressive regimes on us, we do it to ourselves. Rejecting international treaties regarding the environment or international laws or refusing to cooperate with the rest of the global community in regards to issues that affect the whole of humanity doesn't preserve a nation's sovreignty. Being egotistical and selfish/inconsiderate doesn't make one more free, just like being altruistic and cooperative doesn't make one any less autonomous.
If you want to talk about disregarding our constitution or undermining our established legal system, then look at what the religious right has done to the separation of church & state and all the ways they've subverted the Roe vs. Wade decision. Being amicable to our global neighbors is asking very little when compared to the benefits of living in a world where nations mutually respect each other and where we don't have to stockpile arms and dump money into "defense" in order to protect ourselves from hostilities. If we can find it worthwhile to funnel billions of dollars into Israel in "aid money" used to buy gunships to exact genocide on an impoverished people, an international treaty that allows us to participate in the preservation of justice in the realm of international law is more than worth the reasonable compromise.
Ummm... if they can gain complete control of.com and.net, what's to stop them from gain complete control of other TLD's? If ICANN can be persuaded to give exclusive control to the top most saught/revenue generating TLD's to a corporation with questionable business ethics, what's to stop them from auctioning off the other TLD's?
Which U.N. official took bribes from Saddam Hussein(who probably hasn't killed as many people as Bush, and whose human rights violations were a lot less severe than those of his neighboring nations--for example, Iran and Turkey)?
You need to get your news from more diverse sources than just MSNBC and Fox. Just cuz some talking head says it doesn't mean you ought to believe it.
Are you that dense? The whole scandal was about corporations and businesses bribing Saddam Hussein in order to get oil deals from him when the U.N. program restricted Iraq's oil exports to exchanges for humanitarian aid. The corporations and CEO's responsible for the scandal undermined the U.N.'s resolution. The key players who benefited from the scandal were Siemens, Daimler Chrysler, Volvo, atleast one Halliburton firm and more than 2000 other companies. It was a corporate scandal if anything.
"Companies buying oil at cut prices would funnel extra money to Iraq through "surcharges" while those receiving money from Iraq for humanitarian goods and services would return a portion in "kickbacks", the report found." -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4440804.stm>
Well, you make a valid point, unlike all the idiots who have replied with "Oil For Food" without having the slightest clue that the Oil For Food scandal simply illustrates how unethical private businesses can be.
But to respond to your point, currently ICANN has no one that it has to report/answer to. Also, while ICANN isn't a for-profit business itself, it's too similar to the World Bank or IMF, which are mainly representative of big business who also happen to help move people in and out of power in these type of organizations. So while they're declared not-for-profit, they are still run by for profit organizations which use these organizations to exert political power or to advance their financial interests in other ways.
No, that has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I'm saying that for-profit businesses are fundamentally different organizations from a non-profit organizations run by international volunteers whose job isn't to generate as much revenue as possible and would have no incentive to charge people more than its needed to cover their operational costs. And considering the nature of ICANN's responsibilities and the service they provide to the public, it would be more appropriate to put an international committee in its place--one which would lack the incentive to abuse the power as ICANN/Verisgn have. That is what I'm saying.
Do some research on the Oil For Food scandal. In particular, you should pay special attention to the players involved--who paid out the bribes, who was making money off of it, etc.
"Government-run programs are generally maintained by unionized public workers. These programs have little competition and often cost more than a private competitive market (note municipal water reclamation costs)."
When was the last time a unionized worker made as much money as a corporate CEO or any of the higher ups in any large corporation? Where do you think most of the revenue generated by a private corporation goes? I'll tell you one thing, it's not going to the labor force.
Few people working in the public sector make 7 digits a year or more from their government employment. If a public service is taken over by the government(not simply contracted out to the private sector) then it is more than likely that the cost of the service will decrease. If you think that for-profit businesses will charge less for a service than a not-for-profit organization would then you need your head checked out. Just look at all the countries where water has been privatized by private corporations who promptly raise the cost of water as soon as they gain control.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought that IQ tests had a margin of error of about 20 points. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/262.html
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=604
http://www.buyblue.org/node/4832
http://www.buyblue.org/node/3472
http://www.amnestyusa.org/business/fortune_letter
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
As you were saying?
Yes, in most low-level positions that is probably true. But those are the same jobs that are being outsourced to India because such job markets aren't about surpassing the next candidate, it's about underbidding the next applicant.
Who said anything about Ken Lay? Target, and most corporations similar to Target/Walmart/K-mart/etc. typically follow the same business model and have similar business practices. It's a known fact that a good portion of the goods sold by Target are made in sweatshops where workers are subjected to egregious conditions for minimal pay. And since the shareholders of Target are benefiting from the exploitation of these underpaid workers, yes, they are in fact responsible for what is happening in the sweatshops.
And you're right. It doesn't matter who you're stealing from; stealing is stealing. But if you actually read my previous post, you'd see that I wasn't trying to justify the act of theft in TFA.
And yes, I've done LSD and plenty of other drugs. But that is neither here nor there. Ad hominem attacks only weaken your argument.
I'm not picking an extreme example. I'm simply discussing scenarios which are relevant to TFA. Most forms of racism/prejudice comes from misdirected anger/frustration. People see another human being with different colored skin who does something they don't like, and they automatically place the blame on the color of their skin, or atleast correlate the problem with race. The article brings up the outsourcing problem in the context of the racial/cultural tensions it has created. This is directly linked to the misplacement of anger/frustration I am talking about. If you are saying "deal with it" to the Indians, then you are basically arguing that the abuses they put up with are justifiable.
Not really. I didn't say that theft is morally acceptible in this case, just pointing out that it's rather silly to get all high and mighty about someone stealing an iPod from a corporation such as Target when you don't find anything morally reprehensible about the people running these organizations. It might very well be that the forms of dishonesty are unethical in both cases, but I think the dishonesty of corporate CEOs is much more malicious/injurious to society.
Well, if programming is just a source of income for you, then the effort you put into it, and thus the quality of your code, probably won't be as good as the code produced by someone else, to whom programming is a hobby or a passion. In other words, if you actually enjoy programming, you will likely be a better programmer than someone who doesn't.
I thought the Blockbuster Movie Syndrome was the belief that adding multi-million dollar CGI, a popular cast of well known hollywood actors, and lots of explosions to a movie automatically makes the movie good/interesting. This kind of thinking leads to people watching tiresome movies with the same rehashed formulaic plots over and over again. When you automatically condemn anything unconventional/doesn't follow the hollywood blockbuster formula, then you leave no room for originality or creativity. This movie atleast doesn't try to follow that formula. It doesn't guarantee that the film will be good, but it atleast guarantees that it's something new--which, IMHO, is better than the typical junk being peddled to audiences by Hollywood.
Gee, I'm surprised you didn't go the extra length to compare his hypothetical statement to the holocaust--that would have been a much better hyperbole IMHO.
But you're right, stealing an iPod from Target store is truly a heinous crime. I can see it now--all those Target stockholders having to explain to their kids why they won't be celebrating Christmas this year because someone stole an iPod from one of the stores! And to think, people still concern themselves with petty issues like labor exploitation and poverty. It's truly sickening.
It's the spirit of Capitalism. God bless this country.
I dunno, I wouldn't feel too bad about stealing from a large Walmart-esque corporation. If the CEO's can't be expected to be ethical/honest then neither should the customers, whom are typically much less well-off.
You're right. Cussing out the customer service rep. because you are dissatisfied with the quality of the product you bought, though the customer service reps probably didn't have much say in the design or production of the product, isn't misplacing your anger at all--why did i ever question that.
By that logic, if bought a crappy car from company X, and I took the car to the dealership to be repaired and the auto mechanic happens to be Mexican, then I am completely justified in calling him a wetback and telling him to go back to his country. This kind of behavior will surely get company X to improve their quality control and does not make me an asshole whatsoever.
...and this somehow justifies the misplaced anger directed towards call center workers in India?
No, he's right; look at how IP laws rewarded BlackBerry for their innovation... oh wait.
Really, I don't see why monetary reward has to be the primary motivation behind everything. I mean, do you think Edison wouldn't have invented the lightbulb if there hadn't been IP laws in place back then? (I'm not sure if there were, but I highly doubt they would have made much of a difference either way) Likewise with Shakespeare's plays.
Then I supposed you could call gas/oil a form of solar energy since gas/oil comes from plant matter, and plants get energy from the sun.
Oops =P
The same could be said about ANY international treaty. You can even apply it to state versus federal laws. With or without treaties we all live on the same planet, share the same environment, and we affect each other with our actions or inaction. Choosing to cooperate with each other to make the world more liveable for everyone is the only rational path. There are a lot of issues that can only be addressed through international laws and require an international court to enforce. The world has seen the need for such laws and treaties many times over, such as the Nuremberg Trials, the prosecution of other perpetrators of war crimes, the Geneva conventions, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, etc.
Your attitude simply demonstrates the problem with our society's ethnocentrism. We seem to think that our arbitrary geographic borders somehow instills greater moral judgement in all those enclosed by it. This conceit is also why Americans believe that being the conceited sociopathic brat of the international community is ok and somehow makes American citizens more free, or more autonomous. But reality has shown that we don't need other nations to impose oppressive regimes on us, we do it to ourselves. Rejecting international treaties regarding the environment or international laws or refusing to cooperate with the rest of the global community in regards to issues that affect the whole of humanity doesn't preserve a nation's sovreignty. Being egotistical and selfish/inconsiderate doesn't make one more free, just like being altruistic and cooperative doesn't make one any less autonomous.
If you want to talk about disregarding our constitution or undermining our established legal system, then look at what the religious right has done to the separation of church & state and all the ways they've subverted the Roe vs. Wade decision. Being amicable to our global neighbors is asking very little when compared to the benefits of living in a world where nations mutually respect each other and where we don't have to stockpile arms and dump money into "defense" in order to protect ourselves from hostilities. If we can find it worthwhile to funnel billions of dollars into Israel in "aid money" used to buy gunships to exact genocide on an impoverished people, an international treaty that allows us to participate in the preservation of justice in the realm of international law is more than worth the reasonable compromise.
Ummm... if they can gain complete control of .com and .net, what's to stop them from gain complete control of other TLD's? If ICANN can be persuaded to give exclusive control to the top most saught/revenue generating TLD's to a corporation with questionable business ethics, what's to stop them from auctioning off the other TLD's?
Which U.N. official took bribes from Saddam Hussein(who probably hasn't killed as many people as Bush, and whose human rights violations were a lot less severe than those of his neighboring nations--for example, Iran and Turkey)?
You need to get your news from more diverse sources than just MSNBC and Fox. Just cuz some talking head says it doesn't mean you ought to believe it.
Are you that dense? The whole scandal was about corporations and businesses bribing Saddam Hussein in order to get oil deals from him when the U.N. program restricted Iraq's oil exports to exchanges for humanitarian aid. The corporations and CEO's responsible for the scandal undermined the U.N.'s resolution. The key players who benefited from the scandal were Siemens, Daimler Chrysler, Volvo, atleast one Halliburton firm and more than 2000 other companies. It was a corporate scandal if anything.
"Companies buying oil at cut prices would funnel extra money to Iraq through "surcharges" while those receiving money from Iraq for humanitarian goods and services would return a portion in "kickbacks", the report found." -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4440804.stm>
You can read more details here as well: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/27792/
Well, you make a valid point, unlike all the idiots who have replied with "Oil For Food" without having the slightest clue that the Oil For Food scandal simply illustrates how unethical private businesses can be.
But to respond to your point, currently ICANN has no one that it has to report/answer to. Also, while ICANN isn't a for-profit business itself, it's too similar to the World Bank or IMF, which are mainly representative of big business who also happen to help move people in and out of power in these type of organizations. So while they're declared not-for-profit, they are still run by for profit organizations which use these organizations to exert political power or to advance their financial interests in other ways.
No, that has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I'm saying that for-profit businesses are fundamentally different organizations from a non-profit organizations run by international volunteers whose job isn't to generate as much revenue as possible and would have no incentive to charge people more than its needed to cover their operational costs. And considering the nature of ICANN's responsibilities and the service they provide to the public, it would be more appropriate to put an international committee in its place--one which would lack the incentive to abuse the power as ICANN/Verisgn have. That is what I'm saying.
Do some research on the Oil For Food scandal. In particular, you should pay special attention to the players involved--who paid out the bribes, who was making money off of it, etc.
You should really try reading those articles you just linked to.
"Government-run programs are generally maintained by unionized public workers. These programs have little competition and often cost more than a private competitive market (note municipal water reclamation costs)."
When was the last time a unionized worker made as much money as a corporate CEO or any of the higher ups in any large corporation? Where do you think most of the revenue generated by a private corporation goes? I'll tell you one thing, it's not going to the labor force.
Few people working in the public sector make 7 digits a year or more from their government employment. If a public service is taken over by the government(not simply contracted out to the private sector) then it is more than likely that the cost of the service will decrease. If you think that for-profit businesses will charge less for a service than a not-for-profit organization would then you need your head checked out. Just look at all the countries where water has been privatized by private corporations who promptly raise the cost of water as soon as they gain control.