Feminist hypocrites? First time for everything I suppose.

We all know prison rapes don't count. After all, only evil people are in prison to begin with.

Not all sexual assaults are rape. Way to move the goalposts. You work for the FBI?

/golfclap

Nobody expects the....

Wait. Wrong meme.

Looking for tools? Slashdot is the right place.

The rent is too damned high!

Probably. I must be getting too old for slashdot, because I'd rather concede the point instead of arguing until my dying breath over slight nuances of words and corporate governance.

No doubt it was a different time. In addition to few external competitors, the entire world was rebuilding due to WWII and recovering from a decade of pent up desire from the Great Depression.

No. They're more like Ford/Mazda, wherein Ford owned a big chunk (49%) of Mazda. Hyundai owns ~40% of Kia. Not the same company.

And that said, I'm still fucking pissed that my state labor regulator basically told me I wasn't a contractor and had no right to negotiate a contract like that, and basically scared me into not being able to help them in the future.

When the state steps in on contractor-vs-employee issues, they have no authority to do anything to you-the-contractor. They can only punish the company by making them retroactively pay your portion of payroll taxes. "Labor regulator" doesn't actually mean they regulate the laborers, it means they regulate employers. You can negotiate any contract you damned well want - Whether the employer can get away with it? Not your problem, so sleep well, friend! Worst case, you end up owing 10k less in taxes. How awful, right?

If you really want to worry about it, you can either work through a contracting agency (aka "give them a cut"), or just make sure you having more than one client at a time, and the whole issue becomes moot. This only comes up when you contract directly with a single client for long stretches. FWIW, my employer actually has a standing agreement with a local outsourcing agency for exactly this purpose - If we need someone back for a few weeks, they sign up with the token shell-temp-agency and get "placed" with us. I honestly don't know how well that arrangement would hold up in court, but again, who cares - not the contractors who have the potential to get screwed here.

None of that relates to the present situation, however - Microsoft's layoff memo spells it out pretty clearly: "We expect to focus phone production mainly in Hanoi, with some production to continue in Beijing and Dongguan. We plan to shift other Microsoft manufacturing and repair operations to Manaus and Reynosa respectively, and start a phased exit from Komaron, Hungary". Microsoft has too many highly paid Western workers, and needs more 3rd-world slaves. Simple as that, really.

If the merger is squelched, then maybe Murdoch would decide to form his own ISP to compete with TW, giving us more competition. After all, if you cannot buy X, you have the option of becoming X's competitor. That's what the system should encourage. When you have a fat wallet it's too easy to buy a near monopoly instead of compete head on.

Foxconn named one of their factory buildings "Giant Leap" after some employees decided to skip the elevator.

Pink-slips are so pretty waving in the bright sun!

can die a slow painful death and rid us of their filth forever

Hold on, as much as Microsoft has ticked me off for 3+ decades, I don't want to see Google with a monopoly either. MS kind of keeps them in check.

So let's compromise, and watch MS get punched in the face a few times, okay 50 times, but not knocked out, just wobbly.