After Tiananmen Square I stopped buying Chinese. In the last few years it has been almost impossible. If the main thing isn't made in China, components are, and that goes for almost everything. I am sure my shoes are made from the finest Falun Gong hides. In terms of a laptop, I don't any that would have most of the parts made in China. Not much has changed in terms of Chinese regard for human rights, but no one seems to care much as long as they can get what they want cheap, regardless of the treatment of the labour that produces them and the regime that allows it.
We used to liberate people, now we liberate markets.
Actually, if you don't want your money spent on those things - tough darts. Taxes and government spending have never worked that way. In theory, taxes are about citizens paying money into a common pot for the communal good of us all. Some of which you will agree with and some you will not. The vast majority of Canadians like universal health care. Can it be improved, sure, any system can be improved. But, even the conservatives in Canada know that to try and dick with it is political suicide. Harper ran on improving the universal health care system, conservatives went into retirement homes to tell people that it was safe with them. While the system is neither as rosy as Sicko paints it, nor is it as bad as the American insurance lobby paints it, and Canadians want it, far more than don't and that's why we have it. If you don't like it, move because it isn't changing anytime soon.
There are a lot of things I support the government spending on, and a lot I don't. I don't get to withhold taxes because if it anymore than Americans who don't like Bush can withhold pay taxes because the taxes pay his salary.
Actually, we can do all those things you do, negotiate etc, and as for extra vacation, it's called unpaid leave. I can even work extra time, and get that time off if I wish. That said, I get five weeks paid a year (after 15 years service), and I somehow manage with that. What we have though, is minimum requirements and standards for the treatment of people. Good luck explaining to your employer if you ever have to take a drug test that you feel you don't need to do it.
Work harder, health care worse than your dog? Don't know where you get that shit. I put in 8 hours a day in a lovely environment and our health care is fine, regardless of what the AMA and insurance companies down there want you to believe. At least we don't dump the poor on the street in skid row.
As for the maple leaf, no, they don't give it to you at birth, but if they did, I would wear it proudly. I am glad you are happy.
I'm glad you're happy, but just to clear up a few misconceptions you seem to have... North American leadership in the world still exists, however, those leaders have exported barrels of jobs overseas because they get larger profits because the workers in those countries don't have anywhere near the standard of living and protection that we have on this continent, people fought for those protections. That's why Labour Day exists. While it is true unions got greedy in the 60's and 70's, by and large most unions function responsibly and ethically. If there is a loss of North American leadership, it is because the leaders are selling their respective countries down the river.
Also, neither the US nor Canada were "founded" as you say on innovation and hard work. They were "discovered" by explorers sent out by sponsors looking for sources of money. The explorers were in turn followed by undesirables pushed out of their respective countries and by the poor run off their land and into the new world so they could create wealth for the ruling class. I will let Americans tell you about their founding fathers and their intentions towards democracy and the common citizen, as they would know better. As a Canadian, I suggest you read up on the early years of Canada especially, the family compacts.
The innovation of which you speak, didn't come for the most part until the 20th century which is when the ordinary citizens began to flex their muscle and demand a fairer share for their labours. With fair reward in their pocket, things began to happen.
By the way, by all means if you don't like where you work, get a different job, but that so-called crap medical system we have (which I would take hands down every day over the American system), means you don't have to stay at that crap job just because it has medical benefits. Don't push Cobra at me, it's all fine if you can pay medical premiums on your own when you're unemployed, but I suspect many can't, and so they stay in their "crap" jobs, essentially as wage slaves.
As an interesting point, the woman who ultimately caused the new Manitoban legislation to come into play didn't quit. She fought in the courts and won all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. The legislation came because the fall-out from similar lawsuits would have crushed companies with punitive damages. In the end, the legislation protects the companies as much as the workers, if not more.
As for your lazy ass cousin, there are bums in every society.
The notion down in the US seems to favour the company far more than the worker as opposed to where I am (Manitoba Canada). Here in Manitoba, the only exemptions to paying overtime involve management, which is specifically defined as having the power to hire and fire, control your own work and discipline others as well as control your own hours. For everyone else, including salaried employees, the exemption where you don't get paid occurs only if you make more than 2-1/2 times the industrial average in the jurisdiction.
The introduction of these laws came after a worker successfully sued their employer over unpaid overtime and the terms under which she was hired. The terms being vague, essentially meant that because she was salaried, she could be compelled theoretically to work 24/7 with no compensation for the extra hours. The court found this unacceptable. Further review by the province found that the number of people in similar situations was huge and this was remedied this spring through legislation.
I find it interesting that in the US, there is not even a legal requirement to pay vacation for full time workers. I find it more interesting that many individuals in these replies seem to support the work until you drop mentality. I also find it interesting that apparently down in the US, your employer can walk up to a desk clerk and force them to pee in a bottle for them. Talk about intrusive. Weird, people don't seem to care about that, but are wound up over google taking picures of people in the street who no one will ever likely recognize or know.
I would think there should be some fairness in how companies treat workers.
I have to say I have used many OS's and really have never had a security problem with any of them. That includes Windows in most iterations. Most of the security stories I have heard have been from other people on the net. The odd time I have attended to a friend or relative's machine, it has almost always been because of something they themselves have done. I still maintain that the main source of computer (including security) problems is with the users themselves. Not saying the others are liars but if the expectation is that you can protect users from themselves, then that is an unrealistic expectation.
I know how restictive the agreements are (I work in aerospace), but in the field, you do what you have to do to make your equipment work, as the Aussie did. The Germans may have blew their stack, and officially the Aussies may have made a public show of the guy to appease them, but you can bet the guy's chances for promotion didn't suffer. All military hardware has been modified by the buyers. It goes back a long way. For example, the Israeli Kfir was a Mirage 5 at one time. To purchase a weapons system and not have it work to your specifications and needs is dumb. Ditto, not being able to make indigenous fixes and improvements, not withstanding objections of the seller. Even the US Navy and Air Force have tweaked their aircraft from the original specifications.
Armies buy weapons because they may have to use them. They also hope to win. They are not going to send troops into battle with knowingly faulty equipment because a businessman has a contractual obligation to a service arrangement. One reason the sellers go along with it, to an extent, is because the militaries are the only market for their wares and spend a lot of money. The other is that like the Aussie, a lot of these systems have been tweaked by some very talented people, and that information often trickles back to the manufacturer giving them design improvements (which they incorporate and charge extra for in future versions) without directly paying for them.
Though this information has only been released 20 years later, you can bet that any country buying export aircraft from another is going to have their people make adjustments to both the airframe and electronics (including software) to suit their pupose. No one is going to pay a barrel of money for aircraft and not adapt them for their needs. They are also not going to say what they did (for a long while) as that info will no doubt be classified. Ditto the originating country's aircraft will have features that are not exported for the same reasons.
Influencing the market by throwing money at legislation and standards bodies instead of improving your product and becoming more competitive has become a standard way of doing business for years. In the 70's, rather than improve their product at the time, car manufacturer's in the US successfully lobbied for and got quotas on Japanese cars which were pound for pound far superior at the time.
spin it as piracy all they want, it's no where near as rampant as they claim (which has been proven time and again as a simple search on Slashdot will tell you). They've been saturating the market with canned music for a lot of years and shouldn't be wondering why sales have slowed. As has been pointed out recently, you can only sell people so much repetition.
What the industry associations are frankly most pissed off about is that their lobbying efforts have failed in Canada, and they aren't going to make any ground in the long run so their only choice is to cut prices. The free market died a long time ago and was replaced by lobbying to restrict competition and consumer activism. Rather than adapt and improve their delivery models they would try to buy legislation to retain the level of their profits. If you look at the successful on-line stores like iTunes, they have all had derision heaped on them by the RIAA and their ilk. Oh Steve Jobs, you sell our music too cheap!!!
What happened for example in Mexico with tortilla prices http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6319093.stm and the threat to tequila production as well(!!), I wonder about the wisdom of converting our food supply to slake our thirst for energy. I would far better like to see alternative energy products like hydrogen fuel cells and the like rather than turning over arable land to energy production.
These batteries may have the potential to be good, but the impact on people, especially in the third world where food prices are a large obstacle has the potential to be nasty.
that vista is rapidly becoming the OS that nobody wants. Not consumers, nor business is adopting it at the rate MS was hoping and these types of things don't help their cause.
With any luck, maybe, just maybe MS might fix some of these problems with their service packs. If not, vista has all the earmarks of becoming the new ME.
now that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have the studios pretty much split between them, they guarantee that the best selling players are going to be the dual format players. If you consider that most people don't have an HDTV, by the time they do such players will be plentiful. Who wouldn't buy one under those conditions? Executives at Paramount and other studios can look forward to many bidding wars for exclusives on the releases of blockbusters. All they have to do is not sell total studio commitment to a format and just do it piecemeal via movie.
I can imagine that an awful lot of people rebooted and logged back into the service crashing their servers. It seems to me that this type of thing should be built into surge capacity so that if the servers started getting hammered, they would just bounce the users that they could not handle while sending back a message saying the server was busy and to try again later. Other services do this. And it's not like patch Tuesday isn't well known.
It sounds like bad planning on their part. A large scale power outage in a region could do as much damage.
I see it as a sign of the wins consumers have had in court against spurious pactices by companies. Rather than try to produce a better service or product, a number of companies have started to try to protect themselves from their customers. It also shows up in attempts through influence peddling at a legislative level to slant things in the direction of business and away from the consumer. Why is the department of homeland security involved in file-sharing at all? The companies all know that all consumers have to do is stop buying from them, so they are trying to make contracts like this standard (as someone has pointed out that comcast is also doing this for example) across industries or in a block through government.
If you consider that some of the wins against manufacturers have lead to some collossal settlements, it is no wonder they are trying anything they can, including trying to force consumers to waive their rights. I expect this to get worse, not better.
That contributes to this is the growing demonization of the gifted, and in fact anyone who doesn't fit the mould that the educational system has decided is the "norm". Poor funding of public education has lead to a dumbing down of schools and weaker curricula by necessity. I have watched as my kids have brought home work sheets riddled with errors and passing grades given to those who plainly need more instruction. As for the common cry of who will pay for it? We all will, in about 20 years.
Ditto, the everyone is a winner train of thought.
If you accept the status quo, I would say quit bitchin' when an immigrant takes your job or seat at university. Don't even get me started on the media's portayal of smart people and the message it sends.
They are saying they own their patents, and they won't go after you as a Linux user. What more do you really want? They may be able to make money off the patents in other ways. They are a business after all.
Holding the MS deal against them for eternity is dumb as well.
detected during the testing? And if it was, why was the test not scrapped? This is dumb, when you do testing to certify, calibrate or evaluate something you make sure that the unit is functioning 100% before you begin. At least that's the way it's been everywhere I've ever worked.
like a phone call, yeah, it can drive you bats. The thing about e-mail is that you can read it and leave it until/if you want to compose an answer. A problem some people have is they feel they have to answer each e-mail as if the person was right in front of them. If something begs an answer I usually give it to them. If it is important, I phone. In a lot of offices, e-mail has replaced memos which rarely required an answer, immediate or otherwise.
Myself, if the e-mail has no subject, I delete it, it is is just a statement without a question, I delete it. After that, judge accordingly. People make their own stress. It's almost like a drug.
The problem with such discussions is that everyone is more or less right. Music quality is such a subjective thing. Some people can't tell the difference between two garbage lids clanged together and cymbals and they like it that way. Other cry like babies at a minor tonal imperfection. Some are snobs and some are true die hards. In the end, the mp3 player is the modern equivalent of the transistor radio. It's a tote-around to provide a pleasant distraction while doing something else. It does its job admirably.
Do mp3s through ear buds sound as good as music played on high end or even mid range equipment, no, not at all. Anyone who expects that is fooling themselves. Especially when you can get a two gig player for under $100.00
you like Linus, he is right that the hate for hate's sake between some (and I stress some) Linux and MS users helps nothing. Beyond that, as he is the creator of the kernel, I see him as a parent watching his kid grow up to be something he didn't envision or desire for it. He needs to learn to let go, Linux now belongs to the community.
Slashdot Mirror
After Tiananmen Square I stopped buying Chinese. In the last few years it has been almost impossible. If the main thing isn't made in China, components are, and that goes for almost everything. I am sure my shoes are made from the finest Falun Gong hides. In terms of a laptop, I don't any that would have most of the parts made in China. Not much has changed in terms of Chinese regard for human rights, but no one seems to care much as long as they can get what they want cheap, regardless of the treatment of the labour that produces them and the regime that allows it.
We used to liberate people, now we liberate markets.
Actually, if you don't want your money spent on those things - tough darts. Taxes and government spending have never worked that way. In theory, taxes are about citizens paying money into a common pot for the communal good of us all. Some of which you will agree with and some you will not. The vast majority of Canadians like universal health care. Can it be improved, sure, any system can be improved. But, even the conservatives in Canada know that to try and dick with it is political suicide. Harper ran on improving the universal health care system, conservatives went into retirement homes to tell people that it was safe with them. While the system is neither as rosy as Sicko paints it, nor is it as bad as the American insurance lobby paints it, and Canadians want it, far more than don't and that's why we have it. If you don't like it, move because it isn't changing anytime soon.
There are a lot of things I support the government spending on, and a lot I don't. I don't get to withhold taxes because if it anymore than Americans who don't like Bush can withhold pay taxes because the taxes pay his salary.
Actually, we can do all those things you do, negotiate etc, and as for extra vacation, it's called unpaid leave. I can even work extra time, and get that time off if I wish. That said, I get five weeks paid a year (after 15 years service), and I somehow manage with that. What we have though, is minimum requirements and standards for the treatment of people. Good luck explaining to your employer if you ever have to take a drug test that you feel you don't need to do it.
Work harder, health care worse than your dog? Don't know where you get that shit. I put in 8 hours a day in a lovely environment and our health care is fine, regardless of what the AMA and insurance companies down there want you to believe. At least we don't dump the poor on the street in skid row.
As for the maple leaf, no, they don't give it to you at birth, but if they did, I would wear it proudly. I am glad you are happy.
I'm glad you're happy, but just to clear up a few misconceptions you seem to have... North American leadership in the world still exists, however, those leaders have exported barrels of jobs overseas because they get larger profits because the workers in those countries don't have anywhere near the standard of living and protection that we have on this continent, people fought for those protections. That's why Labour Day exists. While it is true unions got greedy in the 60's and 70's, by and large most unions function responsibly and ethically. If there is a loss of North American leadership, it is because the leaders are selling their respective countries down the river.
Also, neither the US nor Canada were "founded" as you say on innovation and hard work. They were "discovered" by explorers sent out by sponsors looking for sources of money. The explorers were in turn followed by undesirables pushed out of their respective countries and by the poor run off their land and into the new world so they could create wealth for the ruling class. I will let Americans tell you about their founding fathers and their intentions towards democracy and the common citizen, as they would know better. As a Canadian, I suggest you read up on the early years of Canada especially, the family compacts.
The innovation of which you speak, didn't come for the most part until the 20th century which is when the ordinary citizens began to flex their muscle and demand a fairer share for their labours. With fair reward in their pocket, things began to happen.
By the way, by all means if you don't like where you work, get a different job, but that so-called crap medical system we have (which I would take hands down every day over the American system), means you don't have to stay at that crap job just because it has medical benefits. Don't push Cobra at me, it's all fine if you can pay medical premiums on your own when you're unemployed, but I suspect many can't, and so they stay in their "crap" jobs, essentially as wage slaves.
As an interesting point, the woman who ultimately caused the new Manitoban legislation to come into play didn't quit. She fought in the courts and won all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. The legislation came because the fall-out from similar lawsuits would have crushed companies with punitive damages. In the end, the legislation protects the companies as much as the workers, if not more.
As for your lazy ass cousin, there are bums in every society.
The notion down in the US seems to favour the company far more than the worker as opposed to where I am (Manitoba Canada). Here in Manitoba, the only exemptions to paying overtime involve management, which is specifically defined as having the power to hire and fire, control your own work and discipline others as well as control your own hours. For everyone else, including salaried employees, the exemption where you don't get paid occurs only if you make more than 2-1/2 times the industrial average in the jurisdiction.
The introduction of these laws came after a worker successfully sued their employer over unpaid overtime and the terms under which she was hired. The terms being vague, essentially meant that because she was salaried, she could be compelled theoretically to work 24/7 with no compensation for the extra hours. The court found this unacceptable. Further review by the province found that the number of people in similar situations was huge and this was remedied this spring through legislation.
I find it interesting that in the US, there is not even a legal requirement to pay vacation for full time workers. I find it more interesting that many individuals in these replies seem to support the work until you drop mentality. I also find it interesting that apparently down in the US, your employer can walk up to a desk clerk and force them to pee in a bottle for them. Talk about intrusive. Weird, people don't seem to care about that, but are wound up over google taking picures of people in the street who no one will ever likely recognize or know.
I would think there should be some fairness in how companies treat workers.
I have to say I have used many OS's and really have never had a security problem with any of them. That includes Windows in most iterations. Most of the security stories I have heard have been from other people on the net. The odd time I have attended to a friend or relative's machine, it has almost always been because of something they themselves have done. I still maintain that the main source of computer (including security) problems is with the users themselves. Not saying the others are liars but if the expectation is that you can protect users from themselves, then that is an unrealistic expectation.
I know how restictive the agreements are (I work in aerospace), but in the field, you do what you have to do to make your equipment work, as the Aussie did. The Germans may have blew their stack, and officially the Aussies may have made a public show of the guy to appease them, but you can bet the guy's chances for promotion didn't suffer. All military hardware has been modified by the buyers. It goes back a long way. For example, the Israeli Kfir was a Mirage 5 at one time. To purchase a weapons system and not have it work to your specifications and needs is dumb. Ditto, not being able to make indigenous fixes and improvements, not withstanding objections of the seller. Even the US Navy and Air Force have tweaked their aircraft from the original specifications.
Armies buy weapons because they may have to use them. They also hope to win. They are not going to send troops into battle with knowingly faulty equipment because a businessman has a contractual obligation to a service arrangement. One reason the sellers go along with it, to an extent, is because the militaries are the only market for their wares and spend a lot of money. The other is that like the Aussie, a lot of these systems have been tweaked by some very talented people, and that information often trickles back to the manufacturer giving them design improvements (which they incorporate and charge extra for in future versions) without directly paying for them.
believe that Bush is running your country into the ground?
Though this information has only been released 20 years later, you can bet that any country buying export aircraft from another is going to have their people make adjustments to both the airframe and electronics (including software) to suit their pupose. No one is going to pay a barrel of money for aircraft and not adapt them for their needs. They are also not going to say what they did (for a long while) as that info will no doubt be classified. Ditto the originating country's aircraft will have features that are not exported for the same reasons.
Influencing the market by throwing money at legislation and standards bodies instead of improving your product and becoming more competitive has become a standard way of doing business for years. In the 70's, rather than improve their product at the time, car manufacturer's in the US successfully lobbied for and got quotas on Japanese cars which were pound for pound far superior at the time.
spin it as piracy all they want, it's no where near as rampant as they claim (which has been proven time and again as a simple search on Slashdot will tell you). They've been saturating the market with canned music for a lot of years and shouldn't be wondering why sales have slowed. As has been pointed out recently, you can only sell people so much repetition. What the industry associations are frankly most pissed off about is that their lobbying efforts have failed in Canada, and they aren't going to make any ground in the long run so their only choice is to cut prices. The free market died a long time ago and was replaced by lobbying to restrict competition and consumer activism. Rather than adapt and improve their delivery models they would try to buy legislation to retain the level of their profits. If you look at the successful on-line stores like iTunes, they have all had derision heaped on them by the RIAA and their ilk. Oh Steve Jobs, you sell our music too cheap!!!
Presidential pardon at 11:00...
Does anyone seriously think he will ever testify at congressional hearings of any kind?
What happened for example in Mexico with tortilla prices http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6319093.stm and the threat to tequila production as well(!!), I wonder about the wisdom of converting our food supply to slake our thirst for energy. I would far better like to see alternative energy products like hydrogen fuel cells and the like rather than turning over arable land to energy production.
These batteries may have the potential to be good, but the impact on people, especially in the third world where food prices are a large obstacle has the potential to be nasty.
that vista is rapidly becoming the OS that nobody wants. Not consumers, nor business is adopting it at the rate MS was hoping and these types of things don't help their cause.
With any luck, maybe, just maybe MS might fix some of these problems with their service packs. If not, vista has all the earmarks of becoming the new ME.
now that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have the studios pretty much split between them, they guarantee that the best selling players are going to be the dual format players. If you consider that most people don't have an HDTV, by the time they do such players will be plentiful. Who wouldn't buy one under those conditions? Executives at Paramount and other studios can look forward to many bidding wars for exclusives on the releases of blockbusters. All they have to do is not sell total studio commitment to a format and just do it piecemeal via movie.
I can imagine that an awful lot of people rebooted and logged back into the service crashing their servers. It seems to me that this type of thing should be built into surge capacity so that if the servers started getting hammered, they would just bounce the users that they could not handle while sending back a message saying the server was busy and to try again later. Other services do this. And it's not like patch Tuesday isn't well known.
It sounds like bad planning on their part. A large scale power outage in a region could do as much damage.
I see it as a sign of the wins consumers have had in court against spurious pactices by companies. Rather than try to produce a better service or product, a number of companies have started to try to protect themselves from their customers. It also shows up in attempts through influence peddling at a legislative level to slant things in the direction of business and away from the consumer. Why is the department of homeland security involved in file-sharing at all? The companies all know that all consumers have to do is stop buying from them, so they are trying to make contracts like this standard (as someone has pointed out that comcast is also doing this for example) across industries or in a block through government.
If you consider that some of the wins against manufacturers have lead to some collossal settlements, it is no wonder they are trying anything they can, including trying to force consumers to waive their rights. I expect this to get worse, not better.
That contributes to this is the growing demonization of the gifted, and in fact anyone who doesn't fit the mould that the educational system has decided is the "norm". Poor funding of public education has lead to a dumbing down of schools and weaker curricula by necessity. I have watched as my kids have brought home work sheets riddled with errors and passing grades given to those who plainly need more instruction. As for the common cry of who will pay for it? We all will, in about 20 years.
Ditto, the everyone is a winner train of thought.
If you accept the status quo, I would say quit bitchin' when an immigrant takes your job or seat at university. Don't even get me started on the media's portayal of smart people and the message it sends.
"Mario killed the video star, Mario killed the video star"...
If anyone can make a more bloated, resource-hogging, and system buggering piece of software than MS, it's Adobe.
Could be the best thing to ever happen to open office!
They are saying they own their patents, and they won't go after you as a Linux user. What more do you really want? They may be able to make money off the patents in other ways. They are a business after all. Holding the MS deal against them for eternity is dumb as well.
detected during the testing? And if it was, why was the test not scrapped? This is dumb, when you do testing to certify, calibrate or evaluate something you make sure that the unit is functioning 100% before you begin. At least that's the way it's been everywhere I've ever worked.
like a phone call, yeah, it can drive you bats. The thing about e-mail is that you can read it and leave it until/if you want to compose an answer. A problem some people have is they feel they have to answer each e-mail as if the person was right in front of them. If something begs an answer I usually give it to them. If it is important, I phone. In a lot of offices, e-mail has replaced memos which rarely required an answer, immediate or otherwise.
Myself, if the e-mail has no subject, I delete it, it is is just a statement without a question, I delete it. After that, judge accordingly. People make their own stress. It's almost like a drug.
The problem with such discussions is that everyone is more or less right. Music quality is such a subjective thing. Some people can't tell the difference between two garbage lids clanged together and cymbals and they like it that way. Other cry like babies at a minor tonal imperfection. Some are snobs and some are true die hards. In the end, the mp3 player is the modern equivalent of the transistor radio. It's a tote-around to provide a pleasant distraction while doing something else. It does its job admirably.
Do mp3s through ear buds sound as good as music played on high end or even mid range equipment, no, not at all. Anyone who expects that is fooling themselves. Especially when you can get a two gig player for under $100.00
you like Linus, he is right that the hate for hate's sake between some (and I stress some) Linux and MS users helps nothing. Beyond that, as he is the creator of the kernel, I see him as a parent watching his kid grow up to be something he didn't envision or desire for it. He needs to learn to let go, Linux now belongs to the community.