Comment Re:Read about the case. (Score 1) 89
I didn't forget...but I also didn't preview.
i put it in angle brackets or something, and slashdot ate it.
I didn't forget...but I also didn't preview.
i put it in angle brackets or something, and slashdot ate it.
"When someone requests a quote at my job, if they reply with a thumbs up emoji, I absolutely will not assume that they want to purchase it, merely that they're acknowledging receipt of said quote."
Which is fair, and why there is even more context here; specifically the historical relationship with previous contracts, and the casual agreements made in the past.
For example,
If I ask a restaurant how much to reserve a table for 20 in a private room would cost, and they send me a number, thumbs up is "quote received"
But if I book a table at this restaurant once a month for various group sizes in private rooms, and am on a first name basis with the host, sommelier, and chef going years, and for the last six months the "negotiations" had shortened to text message exchanges like...
me: private room for 10 people, friday the 3rd at 7pm to close?
them: 8pm earliest availability, i can reserve you a table in the lounge until the room opens up, 2000$ booking/minimum spend, 20% gratuity will be added to total
me: book it
And then on our most recent exchange:
me: room for 25 people, wednesday, 3rd 6pm to close?
them: time is fine, it'll be be the room at the back with the fireplace, 3000$ booking/minimum spend, 20% gratuity
me:
Anybody reasonable would think i had booked the room, and was on the hook for the booking fee with that history in place. And that's what the courts are saying in this case - there was an ongoing relationship, and a history of casual acceptance, and the deals were practically 'routine'.
It would be unreasonable to argue that the thumbs up just mean, "hey thanks for the quote, ill consider it and maybe get back to you" with this history.
"I can hardly remember any serious errors like that though that may have been teachers carefully selecting questions to avoid the ones with errors."
I've got errata pages, and booklets even, for textbooks from the 60/70/80s. They made plenty of mistakes back then too.
"I've no idea where you get your definitions from but yes it is precise enough."
To be honest, I thought you were right with cuboid too which is why i never said anything initially. Then i happened to look at the wikipedia page for cuboid. My mistake. Check it for yourself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
But after your wolfram alpha link, a pretty credible source, i dug deeper to check the wiki citations... the '84 textbook I can't find online, and don't have the inclination to arrange to obtain it. But the 2018 one, is available, and disagrees with wikipedia, and agrees with you (and my own initial belief).
https://archive.org/details/el...
p53 under the Definitions, Def 4.
If the three sections are rectangles, all the faces are rectangles, and all the dihedral angles are right angles, and all the corners are right corners [...] The figure is then a cuboid.1
(The footnote just refers to a previous terminology the author used.)
It seems wikipedia is in disagreement with its own citation. I'm surprised to see that for such a simple solid. I'm curious enough to follow up and see if I can get wikipedia's little fiefdom owners over the page to either come up with better citations, or correct it -- if its as wrong as it seems, the whole page needs a rewrite.
Lastly, circling back to where we started -- your link from wolfram alpha also says:
The cuboid is also a right prism, a special case of the parallelepiped, and corresponds to what in everyday parlance is known as a (rectangular) "box."
https://mathworld.wolfram.com/...
What do you know, It's a "box" after all!
"Yes, there are, particularly in North America, now a lot of utterly crap textbooks for physics..."
[and]
"Well if you knew my opinion on the quality of a lot of the Khan Academy material..."
Ok, I agree, so you were probably assigned questions from some of these 'awful textbooks/problems' along the way. I sure was, my kids sure were. I find it pretty implausible that you managed to make it to physics prof without ever doing one.
It's good to be critical of the quality of those questions and to point out their flaws but they are not unusual. And millions of people are presented with such questions daily. And they largely manage to solve them.
"Plus, 3.375 is the wrong answer because the correct answer is 3.375 m^3. Units are important in physics and if you actually have gone to grad school you really should know that."
Touche; although if you'd looked at the khan academy link I provided determining the units wasn't actually part of the question that was asked. It was given that the answer was in m^3.
But since we're nit-picking, I realize 'cuboid' isn't precise enough to describe the canonical 'box' either. It really should be 'rectangular cuboid', otherwise our mystery box could still be, for example, a parallelepiped; so your correction to the question was still "wrong" . If you were actually a physics professor you really should know that... I hope you don't write test questions!
More relevantly, 'rectangular cuboid' is not a term I've seen in grade school homework, maybe high school (?), but I've seen "block" and "box" a lot in those problems, and the kids know they're supposed to assume a rectangular cuboid -- although most probably wouldn't even know them by that name.
"Indeed, your answer is wrong because at no point are you told that the box is cuboid"
You needed to be told a box is cuboid? Have you seen a box? When working on word problems, understanding the most likely meaning of the question is part of the solution. Word problems are always ambiguous at some level. So, while yes there are certainly plenty of non-cuboid boxes in the world, unless you were told it was a heart shaped box, or something else, then cuboid is the default shape for a 'box'.
"You see we were always told to be very careful in science about making unwarranted assumptions like the one you just made about the shape of the box"
I made an assumption, but it was hardly 'unwarranted'. And even then, if it concerned you so much, the correction should be to simply state the assumption, not declare it unsolveable.
A) Assuming the box is a cuboid, V = 180w, where V is the volume (in cubic meters), and w is the width of the box (in meters).
" I have never been asked to solve such a badly written question like that"
Really? Then you are not in math nor science. Because questions much worse than that are in every text book I've ever seen from grade school to grad school.
Hell here is one from Khan Academy...literally the first one i found on google
https://www.khanacademy.org/ma...
A candy store called "Sugar" built a giant hollow sugar cube out of wood to hang above the entrance to their store. It took 13.5 square meters of material to build the cube. What is the volume inside the giant sugar cube?
Give an exact answer (do not round).
Do they want the total volume the cube occupies, or do they want the available volume inside the cube? It sounds like they want the volume inside, but we don't know the thickness of the wood! Did they actually close all 6 faces of the cube - I'd assume so, but I must never assume!! Not to mention that any attempt to build something out of wood requires more material than the final product, and we don't know how much waste there was! This is an impossible joke of a question.
Oh... sqrt(13.5/6)^3 = 3.375 is the exact answer they were looking for? Well its wrong, the question is unsolveable.
Really, you've never been asked to solve a question like:
Q) What is the volume of a box where the length of a side is 15m and the depth is 12m?
A) V = 180w, where V is the volume (in cubic meters), and w is the width of the box (in meters).
This is pretty standard form of a question in math, physics, and chemistry too for that matter.
It means he has a 'disk' and when he wants to use it he looks at his xbox and it has a 'slot' in it that he puts it in. So that's what he calls them, and clearly someone must make them.
Seriously though, a more accurate term for 'slot' would be 'slot loading optical media drive'. It's not entirely ridiculous to shorthand that down to 'slot'.
"They certainly do initially but, if membership of the union is compelled, then union leaders no longer have to pay much attention to their members and start to get a lot more interested in serving themselves rather than the membership"
Sure, but the tricky bit is that this lets the corporation actively play employees against their own union; weakening the union which is to the ultimate benefit of the corporation. That's not really the win you think it is.
"We need unions but we also need membership in a union to be voluntary because that's the only way to keep union leaders squarely focused on providing value for money to all their members."
Too bad that doesn't work for government. Or do you think if people could simply stop paying taxes (but continue working and living in the country) if they didn't feel they were getting good value from the government that everything would work out ok? And politicians would then be squarely focused on providing value for money to all citizens?
Clearly that wouldn't work, and it won't work for unions for similar reasons really. You'll need to find a another way to ensure leadership is focused on its members.
I'd counter that a better solution than dropping compelled membership in "the union" is simply compelled membership in "a union". Then if the union representing labor at your company is not doing its job, you and your fellow employees at a company can collectively join another one, or form a new one that does represent you.
And if you think about it, that's pretty analogous to political parties and voters switching our their representatives. Its far from a perfect system, but if you can find a better one I'm actively listening.
"Unions are nothing but collusion in the labor market place. You can't support anti-trust and turn around and support big labor."
Yes, unions are collusion in the labor market, in that groups of employees get together to represent themselves collectively as an entity.
Which seems pretty reasonable since corporations are just groups of capitalists (shareholders) that are incorporated to do business collectively as an entity.
Unions just level the field.
It seems pretty fucking bizarre to claim that its ok for SH to incorporate a collective group to do business using their collective assets and stability that comes from being a large corporate entity that would be impossible for an individual... and then turn around and say unions shouldn't exist. They're the same fucking thing. Both end up being effectively large corporations trading goods and services.
"The real issue is government simply needs to protect the domestic labor from forces like illegal immigration "
That's only a "real" issue in your fantasies. Illegal immigration is a genuine border/security issue.
But illegal immigration is not really a real problem for the labor market whatsoever. They make up like 3% of the labor market, nearly all of it unskilled work, particularly farm work, and most illegal immigrants are working jobs american's don't want. And if you managed to deport them all the shocks to the labor market would actually be profoundly negative -- prices of the goods/services they provide would shoot up and availability would drop.
As with many people, you also appear to be conflating legal immigration (H1B visa and various other programs) with illegal immigration.
"and set a tariff schedule that to neutralize any advantages in labor cost savings abroad the final price of goods."
Tariffs are effectively a regressive tax on the low income and middle classes. They don't "punish companies" for imports. Companies inevitably just pass the cost of tarrifs onto consumers.
Longer term tariffs can artificially create an environment where certain goods can be competitively produced locally -- creating local jobs, but the entire time its a structurally inefficient market propped up by the tariffs and consumers will pay higher prices for the goods than they would otherwise regardless of where the goods are produced. Tariffs and protectionism in general may make sense in some cases where it is in a national security / interest in having certain industries local in the event of global war and trade issues -- where you effectively choose to deliberately have the taxpayer pay extra to subsidize the local industry just so that it exists locally if you ever need it locally. This can makes sense for the production of war materiel, and to ensure some local production levels of some key staples of food and energy.
To repeat myself, tariffs make sense when its worth it to the nation to deliberately prop up an inefficient market place at taxpayer expense to have local production for national security reasons -- that's IT.
By and large tariffs as you seem to envision working them are counter productive and harm precisely the people you think you are trying to help.
The big thing with any of these cases where it could be useful in some niche high tech industrial use case, is the question whether Apple's shiny-toy-company is the company you want to create a such your technical dependency on?
Can you rely on Apple to actually support the devices in a meaningful way especially with respect to industrial users?
Apple is often criticized for being exceptionally capricious with respect to backwards compatibility, forcing upgrades or obsolescence on their schedule, offering poor support for parts/repairs, etc.
I've seen clients with businesses built around using macs give up on apple as Apple just decided one day to stop making or supporting the hardware they depended on, and the new version was simply incompatible and unsuitable. And even with unlimited budget - stepping into a mac pro or something didn't make much sense. Their server hardware got disco'd with really no path forward for example. The hostility to virtualization is an ongoing issue today. Sure people have tried to 'rack' minis but those are pretty under powered.
I'd be leery of approving spending a pile of money building a niche industry ecosystem around experimental Apple hardware. (Not that I think google or facebook/meta are better partners here.)
Apple has a pretty dismal track record in the business world.
"You stated twice the same opinion and called them different side of the spectrum"
Your inability (or refusal??) to comprehend that the current political establishment of the state of Israel is separate from Judaism and its followers IS the problem.
"Cry me a river. You used an unauthorized program [...]"
Are your fascist jackboots laced up tight enough?
"You've just described literally every person who believes in the idea of taxing based on net worth (aka wealth tax.) "
aka property tax.
I assure you it's real.
Now you'd be right of course, that property tax is not the same thing as wealth tax... except for the middle class, where it pretty is much is exactly the same thing, as the large majority of their net worth is their home. So they are (effectively) paying a tax on the majority of their net worth.
And renters aren't doing any better, part of the rent they pay covers landlords property taxes on the property they rent. So they're paying the wealth tax on someone else' wealth. Nice!
Its kind of ironic really.
As usual the people with the most wealth pay the least tax on it. Because once you've got enough wealth that you own your house outright, and have millions of dollars in 'investments', well.. you only pay wealth tax on the small fraction of your net worth you live in.
"And yet look at the state of the world during and after Trump. Ukraine and Middle east, specifically."
Much of what a president has they inherit from the previous one, and much of what a president does is inherited by the next one. And I credit Trump on either issue you mention about the same amount as I blame Trump for causing COVID-19 -- That is: Zero.
Why? Putin has been taking bites off Ukraine for a while now, annexing Crimea, propping up separatists in Donetsk etc. This has been telgraphed for decades. And you think he wouldn't have invaded under Trump? Why on earth do you think that? Putin WANTS Trump president. The MAGA crowds lack of support for NATO, for miltary interventionalism in general, for Ukraine specifically, all plays right into Putin's hands here.
Perhaps the former had something to do with Victoria Nuland, top neocon Robert Kagan's also neocon wife, who lead the $5bn-US-funded support for overthrowing Ukraine's democratically elected pro-Russian president, being back at the helm as Biden's undersecretary of state.
Even if we indulge your conspiracy theories; what of it. With pro-Russian government in place, perhaps Putin's invasion of Ukraine would simply have succeeded? And he'd have gotten his victory parade in Kyiv within days of crossing the border? And then what? World Peace forever? Don't be a fool. Instead of the west in proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, perhaps a civil war there instead, while Russia nibbles on the next former soviet republic, while Trump helpfully keeps the US commitment to even NATO allies subject to the whims of his digestive tract?
Trump's "WhatsApp diplomacy" got Jews and Arabs together for the first time in years if not decades.
He diverts storms too, with the stroke of a marker, right? And his healthcare plan to replace obamacare has been a huge success? And Jared Kushners peace plan in the middle east? Yeah, it seemed like a step forward briefly --although if you recall Palestine pretty much rejected even participating in the talks entirely because they were so one sided against them -- why one could even argue that Trump's peace plan is what set this last year's whole shit-show in motion.
It didn't fall apart BECAUSE of Biden, it would have happened if Trump had been re-elected too. The signs were there from the start, and the collapse was already in motion BEFORE the 2020 election. I'm not really going to blame Trump for it though, despite my earlier comment, the situation in Israel / Palestine / Middle East was fucked up long before Trump came along, and sooner or later it was inevitable it was going to boil over again, no matter who was in charge at the White House and no matter what they did.
Seems like precisely the sort of thing the public should use the force of government for -- to tilt things back in the public's interest.
Digital platforms and digital marketplaces have complemented physical ones, and there are very good reasons to have conversations about what is in the public interest on them, and how they should be regulated.
You write:
" This entire situation is the product of entitled and arrogant fools who think that the government should be used to force a company to make its products work the way they think they should."
Yes. Precisely. Except there is nothing entitled or arrogant or foolish to use the government to regulate commercial activity in the public interest. That is what it is for.
Never forget that corporations should only even be permitted to exist if they serve the public interest. Not the other way around.
I'm sure you'll pound your first and demand that the corporate elite should be allowed to do whatever they want within the law or something along that line?
But This position only works if the law is already ideal and perfect to handle every situation, which is so laughable on its face that even you won't say it. Yet it is the foundational premise of your position.
But if someone suggests the law needs to be adjusted... well...you go off on them as entitled arrogant fools.
You wanted irony?
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
