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Comment Re:Perhaps he sees the writing on the wall in Russ (Score 1) 671

I think if he had that in the hands of 3 to 8 trusted individuals the CIA would have agents surrounding him ready to take a bullet. He'd be safer than the president.

The more realistic scenario is that the individuals tasked with bringing him in or taking him (or any misguided "journalists") out would receive that kind of protection and more.

Perhaps some good citizens would be more than happy to call his bluff and ensure that national security gets taken seriously.

Comment Before condeming, that includes RTW as well (Score 1) 98

Staffing agencies and other forms of contingent employment operate in a manner not unlike labor unions. Unfortunately, it is still possible for a job to require you to sign with one instead of going direct, which RTW prevents with labor unions. With that in mind, applying labor laws to contingent employment, especially RTW, would replace the benefit-dodging incentive with a benefit-providing one.

Comment Exception, not rule. (Score 1) 98

I've only had good experience with staffing agencies.

That's a rarer bird than a good full-time job. Realistically, the only enitity that has any good experience is the agency itself.

Because it's easy for them to let you go, that means they're also more willing to take risks in hiring you. I was able to get a job really fast right out of college with one, which helped establish my new skill set. Few people want to permanently hire somebody with a degree and no experience because it's too easy to find somebody who is a dud, even if they have a 4.0 GPA like I did.

This is a bigger reason why staffing agencies should be subject to the same laws as labor unions - even if it means that joining a staffing agency isn't a condition for accepting work at a given organization. If it really is about "flexibility" and not benefit-dodging "disposability", then they would welcome the challenge of competing with better forms of work.

The IT/tech world doesn't take well to third party representation, whether it is a staffing agency or a labor union - for the same reasons.

Comment Re:Perhaps he sees the writing on the wall in Russ (Score 1) 671

Luck, and pumping information to the FSB are the only things keeping him alive, trophy status being a side effect. Illegal disclosures from beyond the grave would only hurt the people doing them.

Do not expect that these deeds will go unpunished by subsequent administrations or that the odds will be in his unending favor.

Comment Perhaps he sees the writing on the wall in Russia. (Score 1) 671

Russia's not the country of freedom that some think it would be, as freedom is conditional to having a large amount of assets and/or not showing any opposition whatsoever to the current leader. In the US, the thresholds for such activity are much higher.

Of course, a fair and impartial trial will also require him to accept a very high likeliness of losing the case, based on the current evidence against him.

Comment Re:Ah, the standard Southern argument. (Score 1) 301

As an industry, they don't need monopoly power. Their main competitor, labor unions, has less market share due to regulations that only apply to labor unions.

In addition, the staffing industry lives off the idea of regulatory evasion, which has a favorable side effect of increased disposability. Both of these negate the need to pursue specific monopoly power.

If there's freedom in RTW, it can be found by applying it to all forms of third-party/indirect representation.

Comment Re:On the contrary. (Score 1) 301

That kind of action is how labor unions ended up gaining power in the early 20th Century. If similar happens in the 21st, expect a similar swing.

It is also why Northern companies figured out that being reasonable to their own would get rid of 90% of such threats. By "winning the hearts and minds" of the population, it inoculates the company from many threats, without the financial or PR expenses of litigative hit-teams. Unfortunately, the lesson has been lost on the South.

The day that Google or Apple tries that stuff is when their competitors start winning significant market share from both.

Submission + - Google wants to rank websites based on facts not links (newscientist.com)

wabrandsma writes: From NewScientist:
Google research team is adapting that model to measure the trustworthiness of a page, rather than its reputation across the web. Instead of counting incoming links, the system – which is not yet live – counts the number of incorrect facts within a page. "A source that has few false facts is considered to be trustworthy," says the team (arxiv.org/abs/1502.03519v1). The score they compute for each page is its Knowledge-Based Trust score.

The software works by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings.

Submission + - IKEA Unveils Furniture That Charges Your Smartphone Wirelessly (wsj.com) 1

pbahra writes: Swedish furniture maker Ikea unveiled a new range of furniture that it says can wirelessly charge some mobile devices. The Swedish furniture giant made the announcement on Sunday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Ikea’s introduction of wireless charging functionality on some of its new furniture heats up the battle for a global wireless charging standard, of which there are currently three, all struggling to become the global leader.

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