Let me guess. You took econ 101 and then returned to your literature, law or business major with the certainty that the dollar sign on the vertical axis of the supply and demand graph means people are solely motivated by money. The classification business/customer may be useful in some cases, but it does not describe the economy. The economy is built on mutually beneficial exchanges. Money may or may not be involved. Scribd exchanges hosting for content, content for eyeballs, eyeballs for money. All three of these types of transactions are critical to Scribd's business model. When they undermine the trust that some of their partners puts in them, they undermine their business model period. Your definition is a no-op.
It's not that the private sector automatically makes you more efficient. The big advantage of the private sector is that if your company does a bad job, you'll eventually be run out of business by somebody doing a better job. Of course, if the government then saves you because you're too big to fail, that won't work.
Also, it seems to me perfectly legitimate to say that if you don't like your job, you're welcome to not having it as a response to a complaint. Probably not the smartest answer, but sometimes, it does make sense.
As for the union rep having your back, I'm glad for you. There are people who the union rep don't like and who get fired just as fast as if the boss didn't like them. The union isn't pro-employee. It's just pro-some people who you may or may not end up being.
Well, I think your analysis makes a serious mistake. There is a difference between unions (organized groups of workers who seek to bargain collectively to gain greater market power) and union-laws that prohibit the hiring of non-unionized workers. On case is that of gaining market power through cooperation while the other gets government enforcement. That makes a huge difference in practice and in theory. A union still has to appeal to members and cannot be too unreasonable to the employers it bargains with because there are other options. They face a market. A mandated union has no need to please members, the employer or anyone. They effectively become a little government with no accountability whatsoever.
"Shields also contends that she should have been set free as soon as Seminole County Judge Carmine Bravo ordered her release around 2 p.m. She wasn't. She was handcuffed, led from the courtroom and held for another three to 3 1/2 hours.
Poulton said it takes several hours for jail employees to run through all their checks and process out an inmate. Shields, he said, was treated no differently than anyone else."
Sounds to me like that's the jail employee's problem. Don't see why their byzantine procedures should result in keeping someone in custody. For all it's flaws, when you are set free by a judge in France, you walk out without handcuffs or anything.
The whole basis of the adversarial system is that jurors are receiving information that one party or the other considers to be in their advantage. So for instance, the parties both give you their interpretation of what different legal terms are meant to express. So, if you look up a term, depending upon where you look it up the definition may give an advantage to one side or the other. Also, it's relatively easy to not give the jurors a dictionary.
I have to admit my first reaction was: "the real news is that somebody used Encarta"
But since everyone already beat me to it, I will just say that we probably should just lock jurors in a room with a cell jammer until we figure out a way to deal with this. Such as just allow jurors to use whatever info they want.
They act like mercenaries. Mercenary companies sell byou the services of soldiers to fight your battles. IV sells you patents for your litigation needs. They are despicable people.
I think what this example shows is that more open data can also have negative consequences. While I favor openness in general, there are probably some cases where opening data is in fact harmful. Let's not get religious here.
I think that while I would like to see google being more open on many things, I can see their points about search. Their ranking algorithm will always be nothing more than an approximation of the "perfect" ranking algorithm. As such, it will be possible to game it. So eventually, SEO guys will figure out how to game the secret algorithm, but my impression is google is constantly updating their algorithm, so you can't game the system for very long before an update obsoletes your cheat. On the other hand, they could open up things like gmail where that justification is absent.
Well, for drms on your computer yes. Emphatically yes. But I would honestly be wary of updating the firmware on an expensive DVD player or other external device. The risk of bricking it is very real.
Do you have some data showing that apps and walled gardens have stopped file sharing? I mean, at best, walled gardens let you stop file sharing on one platform. But computers aren't walled gardens yet and file sharing still happens.
Let me give a bit of background. In France, the Legislative branch is Constitutionally prohibited from passing regulatory rules as those fall under the purview of the Executive. So, instead, they basically create a framework and the Executive the passes a decree (some sort of executive order) that sets up the rules. So in this case, if I recall correctly, the HADOPI law said: we will reimburse the ISPs, let the executive use a decree to setup a reimbursement process. The executive decided that if they never setup the process for reimbursement, they would never have to pay a dime. (a common ploy actually) So that's what the administration did which does endanger the whole law until that decree comes out.
Don't claim victory too soon though. A case was decided I believe last month on a similar issue of censoring an unlicensed offshore gambling website. (I believe you posted on it) The government was playing the same trick of just not having setup the reimbursement process. The ISPs tried to claim that since the reimbursement was not in place, the whole law was void. That reasoning was struck down in court. The case is being appealed, but what will happen is anyone's guess.
More generally, it is a common thing in France to pass laws and then just never come out with the executive order that would make the law effective. And I'm not speaking of signing the law the way the US President does it. It's more like if Congress was to create a position of power/influence and the President just never nominated anyone to it.
While the Obama administration has been better than the Bush administration about transparency, it's not as though that's saying much. They use NSLs like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, they keep on fighting the release of various documents Obama promised to release. Really overall, anyone who voted for him because they thought he would follow through on his promises has been had. And the worst part is some don't even realize it. I campaigned for him with my eyes open, but you can't help but have a bit of the idealism rub off on you. Too bad it's a disappointment as usual. The next election, I'm staying home.
Well, the feds did bail out everyone else... Bear Sterns was a piece of crap. The Fed was kind enough to sift out the good parts, give those to JP Morgan and then eat the crappiest part of the crap. I can definitely understand the LB execs being a bit bitter about the whole thing. It's not like they were worst than the rest. It's just that Ben didn't like them as much. Honestly, I am disgusted by the fact that any of them got rescued.
I have been thinking for a while about starting a Righthaven competitor. We could use search engine-type techniques to find content that "infringes," buy the copyright to the original article and then threaten to sue (without actually ever suing) then rake in the doe. Then, donate some of the money to politicians who are willing to scale back copyright law. It could also fund my other insane project: hire a bunch of patent lawyers to create overly broad patents that cover where we see entertainment-related technology going. Then, sue the hell out of the players on the music scene who try to enforce copyright law for patent infringement.
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On the post: Professional Unions And The Labor Struggles Of The 21st Century
Re: Unions VS Non Union
Also, it seems to me perfectly legitimate to say that if you don't like your job, you're welcome to not having it as a response to a complaint. Probably not the smartest answer, but sometimes, it does make sense.
As for the union rep having your back, I'm glad for you. There are people who the union rep don't like and who get fired just as fast as if the boss didn't like them. The union isn't pro-employee. It's just pro-some people who you may or may not end up being.
On the post: Professional Unions And The Labor Struggles Of The 21st Century
On the post: Falsely Arrested Woman Told She Should Thank The Police For Realizing Their Error
Poulton said it takes several hours for jail employees to run through all their checks and process out an inmate. Shields, he said, was treated no differently than anyone else."
Sounds to me like that's the jail employee's problem. Don't see why their byzantine procedures should result in keeping someone in custody. For all it's flaws, when you are set free by a judge in France, you walk out without handcuffs or anything.
On the post: Juror Using iPhone To Look Up Definition Of 'Prudence' Leads To Mistrial
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On the post: Juror Using iPhone To Look Up Definition Of 'Prudence' Leads To Mistrial
But since everyone already beat me to it, I will just say that we probably should just lock jurors in a room with a cell jammer until we figure out a way to deal with this. Such as just allow jurors to use whatever info they want.
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Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...
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On the post: French ISPs Pushing Back Against Hadopi; Threaten To Ignore Requests
Don't claim victory too soon though. A case was decided I believe last month on a similar issue of censoring an unlicensed offshore gambling website. (I believe you posted on it) The government was playing the same trick of just not having setup the reimbursement process. The ISPs tried to claim that since the reimbursement was not in place, the whole law was void. That reasoning was struck down in court. The case is being appealed, but what will happen is anyone's guess.
More generally, it is a common thing in France to pass laws and then just never come out with the executive order that would make the law effective. And I'm not speaking of signing the law the way the US President does it. It's more like if Congress was to create a position of power/influence and the President just never nominated anyone to it.
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