I understand and agree with all of that, but my point was that if our main focus was not on equality, but on what is ultimately best for society and economy, then the arguments about the whys and hows and what is fair become irrelevant.
True. The problem with that is that basic freedom and also politically correct bullshit stand in the way of what is "good for society".
For instance, studies show that children raised by foster parents have a better than average chance of achieving success and financial security when they grow up, while children of single moms are massively over-represented in jail. And yet, single moms are treated like heroes in the mainstream media, and any politician who would promote adoption for children of single moms would be crucified in public.
I'm not taking a side in that issue, all I'm saying is that the "good of society" thing is too vague. I think some things are unavoidable - for instance, women give birth, not men - and those things should drive public policy, but even that is asking a lot. I mean, recently people had to choose between a reality TV star and a crooked evil witch for their next President; that's how fucked up society is. We can't expect common sense to prevail.
the entire google topic always saddens me. So much potential to make the world better and now completely undone by corporate cancerism, the American business philosophy that buried capitalism
Some companies never make the transition from the "make it or break it" attitude that make startups successful to the more resilient corporate structure that is a safe haven for all types of workers. That's why Google is struggling. The balls-to-the-wall, 80-hour a week culture means that only the Red Bull crowd will thrive in such organization. That leaves a lot of extremely competent people on the sidelines.
Some of the best techies I work with are pure 9-to-5 workers; you can set your watch by them, at 5 minutes past 5pm they're already out of the building so they can join their family or meet with friends. And yet, during the hours they work, they deliver amazing value to the organization. Those people will never work at Google, and that's Google's loss.
I'm going to agree with you that the wage gap is largely not a result of sexism, but of women having to choose between work and family.
It's more complicated than that. In companies like Google, you have to ask for raises and promotions. While ambition and desire fo better compensation are common across genders and races, the preferred way to get ahead vary.
Imagine you are at a restaurant and you want a second dessert. Would you feel more comfortable if you had to ask a waiter for it, or if you could simply go to the buffet and grab a second one without having to deal with the waiter? Or what about buying sex toys, do you prefer to shop online or do you want to go to the store and ask the sales clerk for that big pink dildo that they keep behind the counter? It's the same thing with raises and promotions; some people prefer to have opportunities presented to them, other are okay with asking.
In theory a good manager should look out for their direct reports and make sure that they are rewarded for productivity and offered promotions when opportunities are available, knowing that not everyone is comfortable asking. But in companies like Google this is not how things work, people who are more comfortable asking for what they want have an edge.
Sure, some women are comfortable asking for what they want and some men are not, but on average it's a behavior more common in males and that explains part of the discrepancy. It's wrong.
I see, you think it is 'evil' what Google is doing. I think it is evil what the government is doing, attacking businesses on any of it at all.
Google asked for it. When you sell services to the federal government, you invite this madness in your life.
I've been there before and while there are financial incentives to do business with the government, the bullshit, red tape and constant probe up your ass that come with it makes the whole thing a stinker. They have buildings full of people with nothing better to do than analyze this or that and make policies to justify their own job. And usually it's low-quality people with poor math skills and a serious lack of common sense.
That's why I never do contract work for the government. They can steal some of my money during tax season (if they can get it) and force me to stop at red lights in the middle of the night on an empty road, but they won't tell me how to run my business and won't even get a chance to misinterpret my numbers. Fuck them.
And fuck Google too, because while the numbers are probably wrong, it's true that the "diversity" programs in Silicon Valley do not lead to truly embrace the various identities, but rather to have all genders, races and sexual orientations behave like white males. Some genders and some cultures in general are not as comfortable with asking for things and perform better if rewards are based on objective performance, that doesn't make them less valuable.
More men are raped in the U.S. than woman, according to figures that include sexual abuse in prisons. In 2008, it was estimated 216,000 inmates were sexually assaulted while serving time, according to the Department of Justice figures. That is compared to 90,479 rape cases outside of prison.
On top of that, a large number of rape victims in prison are repeatedly raped over a long period of time, as opposed to most rape victims outside of prison.
The whole "rape culture" propaganda points a finger at men in general, ignoring that many men are also victims. For some reason it's politically correct to say that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, but at the same time "men" in general are guilty for the alleged rape culture, even though the rapists are a tiny proportion of the male population.
... how did taxi companies drop the ball on this one?
they are not subsidized by private investors willing to sink billions in creating a customer base in the hope that one day with autonomous cars the company will make money.
Ah, personal definitions. Why bother even commenting if you cannot communicate clearly? So with your personal definition there are only employable people (group A) and for some reason two groups of unemployable people (B and C)?
No, that's no my "personal definition", that's your flawed and/or dishonest interpretation. That's you modus operandi, you always come late to the discussion and add condescending comments that make no sense to anyone but you.
There's nothing new about "A players hire A players; B players hire C players", even Steve Jobs used to say that. It's hard to tell why in this case you've decided to be a cunt about it. Bored much?
Does it cost billions to run a few servers, hire a few programmers, sysadmins and marketeers?
No, but it's been well-documented that the bulk of their loss is caused by the money they're paying to drivers. Their business model will only work when they get autonomous cars.
Also what's wrong with a "B player" or "C player" if that's all the role requires?
There are no roles that require B or C players, except maybe for suicide bombers. It's not an org chart or skill hierarchy, it's a matter of excellence within a group of peers.
For instance if you own a big grocery store, you can have various kinds of people stocking the shelves. Some will do an excellent job and will keep an eye out for systemic issues (e.g. it would be possible to stock more shelves if the cleaning crew shift wasn't working at the same time as the shelves restocking team) and continuous improvement opportunities (e.g. what if we started with perishable products instead of cans). Meanwhile, the B and C players will at best do the minimum effort to not get fired, and given any opportunity they will cut corners and go smoke a reefer in the warehouse.
After reading the article and also listening to some of Eli the computer guy Youtube videos, I feel that I am slowly seeing the beginnings of a Google death.
Google bought the backend automation created by Twitter to power their cloud computing service. I think that says it all.
That's the world we live in. It's not even possible for one of the most revolutionary companies in recent history to get away with a simple statement adopted while it was still a startup without having people using that 15 years later to bitch about an issue with one of the 72,000 employees.
A players hire A players. B players hire C players.
For low-quality people, it's usually not about diversity (or lack of), it's always about control. They look out for their small kingdom instead of trying to find the best talent.
HR is typically there to protect the company. While it is often in their best interest to protect employees (i.e avoiding lawsuits) that really is secondary and when there is a conflict it's the employee that will lose.
HR people are often stuck in the middle. Senior management says they're protecting incompetent workers, workers say they're doing the dirty work of senior management. It's even worse in unionized environments.
A billion years is a long time. 600 years ago there was no printing press. 20 years ago there was no Wikipedia. Who knows what will happen in 10, 50, 100 years.
A civilization that existed a billion years ago would very likely have mastered space travel by now. Maybe they're here with us to see that flash. Maybe we are them.
> It is standard operating procedure to encourage continued funding.
Don't be saying that! Next thing you know, the conspiritards will say that climate change press releases are being hyped up in order to encourage funding!
Those press releases are a red herring designed to generate controversy and thwart any organized initiative to fight global warming. The end game is to raise the temperature to a point that will make the planet more comfortable for our reptilians overlord.
You're missing the point. The debate is not between two laws that would either force or prevent Netflix to pay Comcast. The debate is: should there be a law preventing Comcast from doing whatever the fuck they want with their business?
My take on this is: no. The second you start regulating service providers, you're killing the incentive to become one. Why do you think all those fiber projects and super-fast connected cities going down the drain?
It's best to bet on good ol' free market. Look at what's going on in Venezuela. They started regulating everything, even the price of big screen TV, and strangely the more they regulated, the more they drove their country into the ground as nobody had any incentive on doing business under these conditions. Why on earth would you want to follow their lead.
Is this the first of Slashdot's April Fools posts? It's getting harder to tell.
We live in a strange time. Donald Trump is the president, Facebook makes 2x more money than Ford, and that profit wouldn't be enough to cover Uber losses while it's decimating the taxi industry. So yeah, April Fools is all year round.
When you say that "it wasn't resolved until Netflix was able to stop paying those fees", you're the one being disingenuous because you're basically changing what "resolved" means. What happened is that in 2014, before those regulations, Netflix settled with Comcast. That qualifies as resolved.
But let's assume for a minute that net neutrality is a good thing. Did it make your ISP bill go down? What about the cost of a Netflix subscription, did it go down? Is there more competition in the ISP/cable industry, or less? In a nutshell, what are the tangible positive outcomes of these regulations? Who actually came out with a win?
The more I look into this, the more it seems that net neutrality is not at the benefit of the small guy. It reminds me of that tort reform that was presented as "fighting against frivolous lawsuits" but that ended up putting caps on damages paid by large corporations.
Slashdot owns SourceForge now. Since we took over in 2016 we've been improving. https://arstechnica.com/inform... No more bundled adware, all projects are scanned for malware, https downloads & hosting, & more. Big redesign coming soon too
Can't help but notice this reply was posted at exactly 2017-04-01 0:00.
The day we need a lynch mob we'll make sure to call you.
And the day we need someone to use strawman arguments, we'll call you. The poster didn't threaten anyone with harm. He asked why SuperKendall "always sided with stupidity".
The point is not about threats, the point is about jumping on a bandwagon of bashing someone without providing a reason
interesting quote from the Wikipedia entry on this issue:
A richly funded Web site, which delivers data faster than its competitors to the front porches of the Internet service providers, wants it delivered the rest of the way on an equal basis. This system, which Google calls broadband neutrality, actually preserves a more fundamental inequality
Show me any group other than an ISPs, cable broadband companies, or their shills that want to remove or cripple net neutrality. That is all you need to know.
That's an oversimplification. Why don't you explain instead how exactly Internet is so broken that it needs more regulations?
Slashdot Mirror
I understand and agree with all of that, but my point was that if our main focus was not on equality, but on what is ultimately best for society and economy, then the arguments about the whys and hows and what is fair become irrelevant.
True. The problem with that is that basic freedom and also politically correct bullshit stand in the way of what is "good for society".
For instance, studies show that children raised by foster parents have a better than average chance of achieving success and financial security when they grow up, while children of single moms are massively over-represented in jail. And yet, single moms are treated like heroes in the mainstream media, and any politician who would promote adoption for children of single moms would be crucified in public.
I'm not taking a side in that issue, all I'm saying is that the "good of society" thing is too vague. I think some things are unavoidable - for instance, women give birth, not men - and those things should drive public policy, but even that is asking a lot. I mean, recently people had to choose between a reality TV star and a crooked evil witch for their next President; that's how fucked up society is. We can't expect common sense to prevail.
the entire google topic always saddens me. So much potential to make the world better and now completely undone by corporate cancerism, the American business philosophy that buried capitalism
Some companies never make the transition from the "make it or break it" attitude that make startups successful to the more resilient corporate structure that is a safe haven for all types of workers. That's why Google is struggling. The balls-to-the-wall, 80-hour a week culture means that only the Red Bull crowd will thrive in such organization. That leaves a lot of extremely competent people on the sidelines.
Some of the best techies I work with are pure 9-to-5 workers; you can set your watch by them, at 5 minutes past 5pm they're already out of the building so they can join their family or meet with friends. And yet, during the hours they work, they deliver amazing value to the organization. Those people will never work at Google, and that's Google's loss.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
I'm going to agree with you that the wage gap is largely not a result of sexism, but of women having to choose between work and family.
It's more complicated than that. In companies like Google, you have to ask for raises and promotions. While ambition and desire fo better compensation are common across genders and races, the preferred way to get ahead vary.
Imagine you are at a restaurant and you want a second dessert. Would you feel more comfortable if you had to ask a waiter for it, or if you could simply go to the buffet and grab a second one without having to deal with the waiter? Or what about buying sex toys, do you prefer to shop online or do you want to go to the store and ask the sales clerk for that big pink dildo that they keep behind the counter? It's the same thing with raises and promotions; some people prefer to have opportunities presented to them, other are okay with asking.
In theory a good manager should look out for their direct reports and make sure that they are rewarded for productivity and offered promotions when opportunities are available, knowing that not everyone is comfortable asking. But in companies like Google this is not how things work, people who are more comfortable asking for what they want have an edge.
Sure, some women are comfortable asking for what they want and some men are not, but on average it's a behavior more common in males and that explains part of the discrepancy. It's wrong.
I see, you think it is 'evil' what Google is doing. I think it is evil what the government is doing, attacking businesses on any of it at all.
Google asked for it. When you sell services to the federal government, you invite this madness in your life.
I've been there before and while there are financial incentives to do business with the government, the bullshit, red tape and constant probe up your ass that come with it makes the whole thing a stinker. They have buildings full of people with nothing better to do than analyze this or that and make policies to justify their own job. And usually it's low-quality people with poor math skills and a serious lack of common sense.
That's why I never do contract work for the government. They can steal some of my money during tax season (if they can get it) and force me to stop at red lights in the middle of the night on an empty road, but they won't tell me how to run my business and won't even get a chance to misinterpret my numbers. Fuck them.
And fuck Google too, because while the numbers are probably wrong, it's true that the "diversity" programs in Silicon Valley do not lead to truly embrace the various identities, but rather to have all genders, races and sexual orientations behave like white males. Some genders and some cultures in general are not as comfortable with asking for things and perform better if rewards are based on objective performance, that doesn't make them less valuable.
See this one for instance
More men are raped in the U.S. than woman, according to figures that include sexual abuse in prisons.
In 2008, it was estimated 216,000 inmates were sexually assaulted while serving time, according to the Department of Justice figures.
That is compared to 90,479 rape cases outside of prison.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
On top of that, a large number of rape victims in prison are repeatedly raped over a long period of time, as opposed to most rape victims outside of prison.
The whole "rape culture" propaganda points a finger at men in general, ignoring that many men are also victims. For some reason it's politically correct to say that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, but at the same time "men" in general are guilty for the alleged rape culture, even though the rapists are a tiny proportion of the male population.
... how did taxi companies drop the ball on this one?
they are not subsidized by private investors willing to sink billions in creating a customer base in the hope that one day with autonomous cars the company will make money.
I don't condone rape, but how fucking stupid do you have to be to wear anything less than a burka?
According to gender-neutral rape statistics, the piece of clothing most likely to be worn by rape victims is a male prison uniform.
Ah, personal definitions.
Why bother even commenting if you cannot communicate clearly?
So with your personal definition there are only employable people (group A) and for some reason two groups of unemployable people (B and C)?
No, that's no my "personal definition", that's your flawed and/or dishonest interpretation. That's you modus operandi, you always come late to the discussion and add condescending comments that make no sense to anyone but you.
There's nothing new about "A players hire A players; B players hire C players", even Steve Jobs used to say that. It's hard to tell why in this case you've decided to be a cunt about it. Bored much?
Does it cost billions to run a few servers, hire a few programmers, sysadmins and marketeers?
No, but it's been well-documented that the bulk of their loss is caused by the money they're paying to drivers. Their business model will only work when they get autonomous cars.
Also what's wrong with a "B player" or "C player" if that's all the role requires?
There are no roles that require B or C players, except maybe for suicide bombers. It's not an org chart or skill hierarchy, it's a matter of excellence within a group of peers.
For instance if you own a big grocery store, you can have various kinds of people stocking the shelves. Some will do an excellent job and will keep an eye out for systemic issues (e.g. it would be possible to stock more shelves if the cleaning crew shift wasn't working at the same time as the shelves restocking team) and continuous improvement opportunities (e.g. what if we started with perishable products instead of cans). Meanwhile, the B and C players will at best do the minimum effort to not get fired, and given any opportunity they will cut corners and go smoke a reefer in the warehouse.
HR women are the most evil people you will ever meet.
I think one of the reasons HR people suck is because anyone can do their job so they assume everyone's job is easy.
After reading the article and also listening to some of Eli the computer guy Youtube videos, I feel that I am slowly seeing the beginnings of a Google death.
Google bought the backend automation created by Twitter to power their cloud computing service. I think that says it all.
Google: "Do No Evil."
That's the world we live in. It's not even possible for one of the most revolutionary companies in recent history to get away with a simple statement adopted while it was still a startup without having people using that 15 years later to bitch about an issue with one of the 72,000 employees.
A players hire A players. B players hire C players.
For low-quality people, it's usually not about diversity (or lack of), it's always about control. They look out for their small kingdom instead of trying to find the best talent.
HR is typically there to protect the company. While it is often in their best interest to protect employees (i.e avoiding lawsuits) that really is secondary and when there is a conflict it's the employee that will lose.
HR people are often stuck in the middle. Senior management says they're protecting incompetent workers, workers say they're doing the dirty work of senior management. It's even worse in unionized environments.
A billion years is a long time. 600 years ago there was no printing press. 20 years ago there was no Wikipedia. Who knows what will happen in 10, 50, 100 years.
A civilization that existed a billion years ago would very likely have mastered space travel by now. Maybe they're here with us to see that flash. Maybe we are them.
> It is standard operating procedure to encourage continued funding.
Don't be saying that! Next thing you know, the conspiritards will say that climate change press releases are being hyped up in order to encourage funding!
Those press releases are a red herring designed to generate controversy and thwart any organized initiative to fight global warming. The end game is to raise the temperature to a point that will make the planet more comfortable for our reptilians overlord.
You're missing the point. The debate is not between two laws that would either force or prevent Netflix to pay Comcast. The debate is: should there be a law preventing Comcast from doing whatever the fuck they want with their business?
My take on this is: no. The second you start regulating service providers, you're killing the incentive to become one. Why do you think all those fiber projects and super-fast connected cities going down the drain?
It's best to bet on good ol' free market. Look at what's going on in Venezuela. They started regulating everything, even the price of big screen TV, and strangely the more they regulated, the more they drove their country into the ground as nobody had any incentive on doing business under these conditions. Why on earth would you want to follow their lead.
Is this the first of Slashdot's April Fools posts? It's getting harder to tell.
We live in a strange time. Donald Trump is the president, Facebook makes 2x more money than Ford, and that profit wouldn't be enough to cover Uber losses while it's decimating the taxi industry. So yeah, April Fools is all year round.
When you say that "it wasn't resolved until Netflix was able to stop paying those fees", you're the one being disingenuous because you're basically changing what "resolved" means. What happened is that in 2014, before those regulations, Netflix settled with Comcast. That qualifies as resolved.
But let's assume for a minute that net neutrality is a good thing. Did it make your ISP bill go down? What about the cost of a Netflix subscription, did it go down? Is there more competition in the ISP/cable industry, or less? In a nutshell, what are the tangible positive outcomes of these regulations? Who actually came out with a win?
The more I look into this, the more it seems that net neutrality is not at the benefit of the small guy. It reminds me of that tort reform that was presented as "fighting against frivolous lawsuits" but that ended up putting caps on damages paid by large corporations.
Slashdot owns SourceForge now. Since we took over in 2016 we've been improving. https://arstechnica.com/inform... No more bundled adware, all projects are scanned for malware, https downloads & hosting, & more. Big redesign coming soon too
Can't help but notice this reply was posted at exactly 2017-04-01 0:00.
So what you are saying is that you have nothing to contribute to the statement or the validity of the argument?
No
The day we need a lynch mob we'll make sure to call you.
And the day we need someone to use strawman arguments, we'll call you. The poster didn't threaten anyone with harm. He asked why SuperKendall "always sided with stupidity".
The point is not about threats, the point is about jumping on a bandwagon of bashing someone without providing a reason
interesting quote from the Wikipedia entry on this issue:
A richly funded Web site, which delivers data faster than its competitors to the front porches of the Internet service providers, wants it delivered the rest of the way on an equal basis. This system, which Google calls broadband neutrality, actually preserves a more fundamental inequality
Show me any group other than an ISPs, cable broadband companies, or their shills that want to remove or cripple net neutrality. That is all you need to know.
That's an oversimplification. Why don't you explain instead how exactly Internet is so broken that it needs more regulations?