Agreed. The only things missing are ashtrays and cigarettes.
Even in the machine room, back then, save for the serious organizations. I scrubbed Selectric covers with straight ammonia back then to cut the nicotine. Imagine, IBM didn't make three shades of beige, that typewriter was WHITE!
Our team consists of four, with two specialized, one of which can easily substitute for either of the remaining two.
To be available for work, and to schedule us for 32 hours work a week, we would likely have to hire on another. And that ignores the one specialist who is needed for 40 hours a week, and would need to be supplemented with a trained individual working, again, those 32 hours.
In all this, the result would be a 25% increase in benefits cost for the same payroll. Clearly reducing the work week will not profit the employer.
How is this good? By spreading the available employment amongst the available population? Ask the French how this is working out.
What comes first, free market bullshit or government management?
Letting a government pretend to run an economy only guarantees failure - government is motivated, as is the free market, by self-interest. The market's interest is profit. Government's interest is domination.
When profit is not the objective, failure takes its place without a fight.
This is pure Economics 101. If they were able to dictate the terms of their employment, and derived sufficient income to satisfy themselves in less work, then indeed nothing is wrong here. I wonder, in that circumstance, if their employers required more work to be done than laborers were willing to do, that they sent further away and found workers in more need of pay.
Has no one read The Wealth of Nations? A simplistic, bu today's standards, but useful introduction to economics, and should whet your appetite for more current and detailed studies.
The company I work for has around 54,000 employees worldwide. By the end of the year I expect that to be down to 50,000.
Our CEO will have earned;
In 2007, around $50 million In 2008, around $40 million In 2009, around $16 million.
That's all compensation, salary, executive perks, stock options and grants.
He has not yet been paid for his performance in 2010, I think. He is bound by the directors to meet multiple goals, many of which are defined by multiple year performances.
It looks like he was paid around $21 million last year. That seems to be $420 per employee, if indeed the reductions I expect this year occur.
Or about $16.15 each paycheck.
So ask me if I feel that his leadership is worth $1.15 a day to me.
I'll save you the trouble, The answer is a resounding yes.
In 2008 the corporation I worked for then (and now) suffered greatly as the worldwide financial system nearly collapsed. We faced significantly diminished opportunities, liabilities exceeding our ability to pay, and bleak prospects for growth, Our CEO listened to his management team and took specific actions that not only minimized our losses, but placed us in a position of relative strength in our industry. He leveraged several unique and timely opportunities to improve our business processes, laid off 20% of the workforce (half full timers, half contractors and temps), reduced benefits, and indeed also cut his expenses just as he expected his work force to do. In a year, he restored benefits, but did not hire back those lost - we had a new normal.
We now face diminished expectations of global growth and prosperity, and so are reducing head count, limiting expenses, focusing on core business, and in six years or so, if our CEO continues, he will see a diminished paycheck.
It is my understanding that he is even subject to the Board changing his compensation based on the long-term success or failure in the intervening years between action and recompense.
And he is considered one of the higher-paid, and less deserving, of American CEOs.
I don't. I choose not to name him outright, but he is well respected in our corporation, at least among those I contact.
But yes, he is paid substantial sums to pilot our corporation. And I think he earns it. A less capable man would likely have us no better than two-thirds our size now, under irresistible pressure to merge or be acquired by a competitor, and likely being forced by majority stockholders to undertake more cost-cutting to ripen us up for harvest. Instead, we have good prospects, are too strong to be absorbed, and have well-considered plans for the future.
Feel free to offer your examples of CEOs that have failed to lead their corporations to success. I nominate any of several of General Motors' past CEOs. Any from around 1974-2000 would be good candidates. There are others. I wonder if any will name mine, the one I praise so readily.
when you stop using commercial, for-profit software,
then you will be part of your solution - to deny these corporations the profits you find objectionable.
Of course, you will possibly do business with other corporations, who you also believe are unjustly enriched by your patronage, but that's for you to solve.
Me?
I know that I should sit down and build a DVR that lets me capture the media I want without relying on the corporations I loathe so much, but until then I pay the bill because I have not yet taken the steps necessary to sever my relationships with them. My choice. I already make a multitude of choices based on, in part, the manufacturing choices, corporate ethics as I perceive them, and others. Being pretty or cool is not always a second or third criteria. I'm past favoring local business unless they treat me as special as they want me to treat them.
'Earned' means different things to different people, and sometimes they are just plain wrong.
Or, to put it even less delicately, how much of your income am I entitled to? Without concern for my needs or yours?
When we stop coveting someone's income because it is more than ours, we will find peace and justice increased. Otherwise, it will only further concentrate wealth and power to those who find themselves in charge of the distribution.
And be certain that the power to determine this distribution will not be given to or taken by those with gentle hearts, interested only in serving humanity It will be taken, and by those who first believe they deserve this power, and that they know better than anyone else who deserves to be enriched at the expense of others. Them first of course, for a variety of excuses.
The confusion, in America, is defining Conservatism as defending the state, when it has been defending the individual. The American Left has claimed serving the individual by classifying them into groups, and employing the state to vote them largesse.
Our current so - called right - wing has become indistinguishable from the left in practice, as right wing leadership has failed. No wonder it's confusing.
I recognize libertarianism as more of a third axis of governance, conservatism a philosophy closer to that than any other but still tied to the state. Most other philosophies require the state.
Probably most difficult is the reality that most people don't understand the motivation of their leaders.
To a liberal, all other political viewpoints are right-wing. They generally believe they are moderate. They also tend to believe outright Fascism is right-wing, hence the confusion.
Landmines are autonomous, durable, and persistent. Very dangerous. And easily forgotten by their employers.
Claymore mines ditto, though less appreciated for their durability, and found so much more quickly.
Technology has produced much more interesting autonomous weapons, mobile, with greater range, but if you're all worked up because they are being controlled by operators half a world way that high-five each other when they obliterate a wedding party, well, you've missed the old white men and women in a room full of screens showing blobs moving and some going cold...
And before that, old white men in subway tunnels moving little wooden icons around a map, listening to telephone reports, and lighting up a cigar to celebrate that they have, once more, survived the night.
War is more and more fought elsewhere. This may be offensive to your delicate sensibilities, but be thankful you are not shooting from your bathroom window. Or not. Just don't ask me to pretend you have any moral high ground. We must change things or accept the world as it becomes.
Offered by you, yours to validate. As if you wrote it yourself.
I know the initial analysis was intended to belittle scripture, not to illuminate it. The more the pity, when the only retort is to misquote and mislead.
Don;t forget that internal combustion engines are terribly inefficient, returning maybe 40% of the energy input in work output.
You only, for my car, need to fill with 16 gallons, so that 534+/-kW only results in 213+/-kW of useful work.
Note the Tesla Model S battery is rated at 85kW, and range is estimated at 265 miles. My Impala would seem to be half as efficient as a Model S. I can see that.
So a 40kW charger can recharge my car to full capacity in what, 5 hours? And that 16 gallon equivalent gets me at least 360 miles, as my car is terribly inefficient beyond even the IC engine limitations?
No, the limitation is the battery. It doubles the cost of the car in small, 'affordable' vehicles. The premium for higher-priced vehicles is tolerable even without subsidies.
Fix batteries, or more correctly the storage, and things make sense. If I could get 100 mile range for a 5 hour charge, and do so with a mechanism that is safe to use in hard rain, disconnects automatically, prevents theft, and is reliable in the 5 year term, I'm in. And that's my home charger. At work they could, maybe, build those covered spaces we love in Arizona and the tops are solar cells harvesting the fusion reactor (Sun) output we largely fail to leverage now.
Dorman is selling Prius packs for just shy of $3k ($1.9K-$900 core). I should be toting up the cost of a motor, drive train, controller, charger, and accessory drive, and buy an '04- Ralliart with a blown motor/trans and a good blend door. Or a Saab with a good convertible top, the subframe just screams for an electric conversion. Delete the exhaust, ECU wiring, fuel piping, etc, and this is pretty doable. Finding a spot for the battery pack
Conversions are possible. Even better platforms exist, though I'm not interested in a Metro or Echo.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. The only things missing are ashtrays and cigarettes.
Even in the machine room, back then, save for the serious organizations. I scrubbed Selectric covers with straight ammonia back then to cut the nicotine. Imagine, IBM didn't make three shades of beige, that typewriter was WHITE!
Nothing to do with lint and static electricity, of course.
Such a fabulous illusion.
Our team consists of four, with two specialized, one of which can easily substitute for either of the remaining two.
To be available for work, and to schedule us for 32 hours work a week, we would likely have to hire on another. And that ignores the one specialist who is needed for 40 hours a week, and would need to be supplemented with a trained individual working, again, those 32 hours.
In all this, the result would be a 25% increase in benefits cost for the same payroll. Clearly reducing the work week will not profit the employer.
How is this good? By spreading the available employment amongst the available population? Ask the French how this is working out.
If such AI is satisfied with perfection of the status quo, then we are doomed...
We had best not let that happen. Can we devise the Fourth Law of Robotics? For such AI will probably satisfy the qualities of a robot, or many.
We are illogical beings, largely. When circumstances force it, we do become more rational, and sometimes even act in an enlightened and proper manner.
Not that this is the worst feature of our existence.
What comes first, free market bullshit or government management?
Letting a government pretend to run an economy only guarantees failure - government is motivated, as is the free market, by self-interest. The market's interest is profit. Government's interest is domination.
When profit is not the objective, failure takes its place without a fight.
This is pure Economics 101. If they were able to dictate the terms of their employment, and derived sufficient income to satisfy themselves in less work, then indeed nothing is wrong here. I wonder, in that circumstance, if their employers required more work to be done than laborers were willing to do, that they sent further away and found workers in more need of pay.
Has no one read The Wealth of Nations? A simplistic, bu today's standards, but useful introduction to economics, and should whet your appetite for more current and detailed studies.
"And when people have nothing to do but have babies"
For some, this is already true. Judge the results for yourself.
The company I work for has around 54,000 employees worldwide. By the end of the year I expect that to be down to 50,000.
Our CEO will have earned;
In 2007, around $50 million
In 2008, around $40 million
In 2009, around $16 million.
That's all compensation, salary, executive perks, stock options and grants.
He has not yet been paid for his performance in 2010, I think. He is bound by the directors to meet multiple goals, many of which are defined by multiple year performances.
It looks like he was paid around $21 million last year. That seems to be $420 per employee, if indeed the reductions I expect this year occur.
Or about $16.15 each paycheck.
So ask me if I feel that his leadership is worth $1.15 a day to me.
I'll save you the trouble, The answer is a resounding yes.
In 2008 the corporation I worked for then (and now) suffered greatly as the worldwide financial system nearly collapsed. We faced significantly diminished opportunities, liabilities exceeding our ability to pay, and bleak prospects for growth, Our CEO listened to his management team and took specific actions that not only minimized our losses, but placed us in a position of relative strength in our industry. He leveraged several unique and timely opportunities to improve our business processes, laid off 20% of the workforce (half full timers, half contractors and temps), reduced benefits, and indeed also cut his expenses just as he expected his work force to do. In a year, he restored benefits, but did not hire back those lost - we had a new normal.
We now face diminished expectations of global growth and prosperity, and so are reducing head count, limiting expenses, focusing on core business, and in six years or so, if our CEO continues, he will see a diminished paycheck.
It is my understanding that he is even subject to the Board changing his compensation based on the long-term success or failure in the intervening years between action and recompense.
And he is considered one of the higher-paid, and less deserving, of American CEOs.
I don't. I choose not to name him outright, but he is well respected in our corporation, at least among those I contact.
But yes, he is paid substantial sums to pilot our corporation. And I think he earns it. A less capable man would likely have us no better than two-thirds our size now, under irresistible pressure to merge or be acquired by a competitor, and likely being forced by majority stockholders to undertake more cost-cutting to ripen us up for harvest. Instead, we have good prospects, are too strong to be absorbed, and have well-considered plans for the future.
Feel free to offer your examples of CEOs that have failed to lead their corporations to success. I nominate any of several of General Motors' past CEOs. Any from around 1974-2000 would be good candidates. There are others. I wonder if any will name mine, the one I praise so readily.
When you stop buying movie tickets,
when you stop using commercial, for-profit software,
then you will be part of your solution - to deny these corporations the profits you find objectionable.
Of course, you will possibly do business with other corporations, who you also believe are unjustly enriched by your patronage, but that's for you to solve.
Me?
I know that I should sit down and build a DVR that lets me capture the media I want without relying on the corporations I loathe so much, but until then I pay the bill because I have not yet taken the steps necessary to sever my relationships with them. My choice. I already make a multitude of choices based on, in part, the manufacturing choices, corporate ethics as I perceive them, and others. Being pretty or cool is not always a second or third criteria. I'm past favoring local business unless they treat me as special as they want me to treat them.
'Earned' means different things to different people, and sometimes they are just plain wrong.
"distributed and horded(sic)"
Um, EARNED and KEPT AS PROFIT.
Or, to put it even less delicately, how much of your income am I entitled to? Without concern for my needs or yours?
When we stop coveting someone's income because it is more than ours, we will find peace and justice increased. Otherwise, it will only further concentrate wealth and power to those who find themselves in charge of the distribution.
And be certain that the power to determine this distribution will not be given to or taken by those with gentle hearts, interested only in serving humanity It will be taken, and by those who first believe they deserve this power, and that they know better than anyone else who deserves to be enriched at the expense of others. Them first of course, for a variety of excuses.
Oh, and my advice to voters? Don't listen to what they say. Look at what they do, what they have done.
The confusion, in America, is defining Conservatism as defending the state, when it has been defending the individual. The American Left has claimed serving the individual by classifying them into groups, and employing the state to vote them largesse.
Our current so - called right - wing has become indistinguishable from the left in practice, as right wing leadership has failed. No wonder it's confusing.
Fascism is the state, fully expressed.
Conservatism tends to minimize the state.
Socialism tends to maximize the state.
Which is more left - wing?
It's a clever trick of the American Left to redefine Conservatism as fascist. It's wrong, but useful.
I recognize libertarianism as more of a third axis of governance, conservatism a philosophy closer to that than any other but still tied to the state. Most other philosophies require the state.
Probably most difficult is the reality that most people don't understand the motivation of their leaders.
"The black community is largely populated in dense urban environments ripe with gangs and notoriously bad schools"
The result of Democratic municipal rule. Blacks in the inner cities so rife with violence and failure are victims of this rule.
To a liberal, all other political viewpoints are right-wing. They generally believe they are moderate. They also tend to believe outright Fascism is right-wing, hence the confusion.
As mentioned elsewhere in this story and thread:
Landmines are autonomous, durable, and persistent. Very dangerous. And easily forgotten by their employers.
Claymore mines ditto, though less appreciated for their durability, and found so much more quickly.
Technology has produced much more interesting autonomous weapons, mobile, with greater range, but if you're all worked up because they are being controlled by operators half a world way that high-five each other when they obliterate a wedding party, well, you've missed the old white men and women in a room full of screens showing blobs moving and some going cold...
And before that, old white men in subway tunnels moving little wooden icons around a map, listening to telephone reports, and lighting up a cigar to celebrate that they have, once more, survived the night.
War is more and more fought elsewhere. This may be offensive to your delicate sensibilities, but be thankful you are not shooting from your bathroom window. Or not. Just don't ask me to pretend you have any moral high ground. We must change things or accept the world as it becomes.
Try pretending this is irc.
Wrong venue. You need remedial emojis to employ facetiousness.
"or if you can read."
Logic is not part of your repertoire.?
Offered by you, yours to validate. As if you wrote it yourself.
I know the initial analysis was intended to belittle scripture, not to illuminate it. The more the pity, when the only retort is to misquote and mislead.
And you misquoted that passage significantly. Idiot.
The misunderstanding of the parable is understandable.
/., where slightly more moronic is normal.
Don;t forget that internal combustion engines are terribly inefficient, returning maybe 40% of the energy input in work output.
You only, for my car, need to fill with 16 gallons, so that 534+/-kW only results in 213+/-kW of useful work.
Note the Tesla Model S battery is rated at 85kW, and range is estimated at 265 miles. My Impala would seem to be half as efficient as a Model S. I can see that.
So a 40kW charger can recharge my car to full capacity in what, 5 hours? And that 16 gallon equivalent gets me at least 360 miles, as my car is terribly inefficient beyond even the IC engine limitations?
No, the limitation is the battery. It doubles the cost of the car in small, 'affordable' vehicles. The premium for higher-priced vehicles is tolerable even without subsidies.
Fix batteries, or more correctly the storage, and things make sense. If I could get 100 mile range for a 5 hour charge, and do so with a mechanism that is safe to use in hard rain, disconnects automatically, prevents theft, and is reliable in the 5 year term, I'm in. And that's my home charger. At work they could, maybe, build those covered spaces we love in Arizona and the tops are solar cells harvesting the fusion reactor (Sun) output we largely fail to leverage now.
Dorman is selling Prius packs for just shy of $3k ($1.9K-$900 core). I should be toting up the cost of a motor, drive train, controller, charger, and accessory drive, and buy an '04- Ralliart with a blown motor/trans and a good blend door. Or a Saab with a good convertible top, the subframe just screams for an electric conversion. Delete the exhaust, ECU wiring, fuel piping, etc, and this is pretty doable. Finding a spot for the battery pack
Conversions are possible. Even better platforms exist, though I'm not interested in a Metro or Echo.