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posted by
Dopefish
on Monday February 24 2014, @09:00PM
from the don't-click-ok-to-accept-the-eula dept.
from the don't-click-ok-to-accept-the-eula dept.
andrew writes:
"Alternet.org reports recent updates to terms of conditions for Bank of Americas cell phone app and Capital Ones new credit card contract have given banks unsettling new abilities. These privileges include the authority to access to your phone microphone and camera or even showing up at your workplace and home unannounced at any time.
From the the article:
We're witnessing a new era of fascism, where corporations are creating intrusive and over-bearing terms and conditions that customers click to agree to without even reading.
As a result, corporations in America have acquired king-like power, while we're the poor serfs that must abide by their every rule or else."
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Have Terms of Service Become Totalitarian Tools?
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Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.
-- Groucho Marx's last words
(Score: 0) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday February 25 2014, @12:56AM
Rent-Seeking Behavior in the Global Technology Economy
Did you get your job, or if you are a hiring manager, did you go through a third-party recruiting agency?
Someone like Manpower Professional, Kelly IT, or Oxford Global Resources?
You will be happy to know that Yahoo Finance quite clearly shows that the vast majority of the business expenses of the publicly-traded "body shops" is due to sales.
That is, if you hired me through Manpower Professional, then at the going rate - sometimes it is more - if I'm still on the job after three months, you will pay Manpower Professional thirty percent of my first year's salary. If I'm a contract programmer, then you will pay Manpower Professional thirty percent of my hourly pay, FOR THE ENTIRE TIME I WORK FOR YOU!
Manpower Professional will then blow most of that money on cold-calling other hiring managers, as well as looking for online resumes just like mine [warplife.com] that are available free of charge, gratis, no commission required, at but the touch of an "I'm Feeling Lucky Button". If the recruiter does find a resume like mine, they will proceed to spam me mercilessly with such gems as the following, which I received not twenty minutes ago:
WUT?
I am not fucking kidding.
Because the candidate and the client are contractually forbidden from discussing headhunter commissions with each other, quite frequently those commissions are quite a lot more than the alleged "going rate" of thirty percent. Such was the case with some poor fuck, who reported to alt.computer.consultants.moderated his dismay at discovering that while he was paid what he felt was a reasonable thirty dollars an hour, his agency was billing the client ninety dollars per hour, then keeping the difference of sixty!
I am quite determined to put the entire, world-wide recruiting industry completely out of work. The way I'm going to do it is based on the method I used to come up with Find A Computer Job In Santa Cruz [warplife.com].
That is a HUGELY popular page, and has been since 1997. One time a complete stranger mailed me a gift certificate for $100.00, for my favorite restaurant, as that page helped him find a job.
I realized recently that there are very few recruiting agencies in Santa Cruz, and that the few that are there, such as Armada Software or the former SurfSoft, are quite a lot more ethical than the rest.
So I now have a placeholder [warplife.com] that I will fill in with every software employer on the whole fucking planet.
However it is quite obvious I need to develop an automated way of researching the links. I am working on that even as we speak.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:11AM
I want to see the temporary "services" shut down. I'll give you an additional reason to do so:
ILLEGAL ALIEN WORKERS are farmed out through the Manpower office here where I live. The staff at Manpower is exclusively Mexican. Mexicans are given preferential treatment in job placement. The company that I work for has employed mostly Mexicans for the past two decades. Manpower actively assists the illegals in working around documentation requirements. My bosses cooperate fully with those efforts, by changing names, SSN, and other personal information for illegal employees.
Phone calls, snail mail, and emails to INS, then to ICE, have resulted in no action.
Due to incompetent management, the company has recently gone bankrupt, and the plant has been bought up by an international mega-corporation. The illegals no longer have a home here. Drug testing and strict accountability for documentation has run off about 2/3 of the workforce.
Funny thing is - those jobs that Americans are to lazy to do? There are Americans doing them today.
Shut down the temporary services, and one HELL of a lot of illegals will be weeded out of the work force!
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday February 25 2014, @07:47AM
It is quite common for recruiter inquiry emails not to ask me if I am a US Citizen or permanent resident, but instead to ask my visa status. So they are just assuming I'm on an H1-B or some other temporary work permit.
Go have a peek at the slashdot article from this afternoon, about the widespread fraud in india, that is preying on Indian citizens by selling them fraudulent visas.
After a lot of consideration, I've decided I'm completely cool with outsourcing coding work to India. I should know, I've been hungry, broke and homeless. It just has to suck to be a dalit, but even untouchables can get computer science degrees. More power to 'em.
But building a software industry in india will ultimately be to america's benefit. Not so bring in an H1-B under fraudulent pretenses, when you could have hired a US citizen.
My own observation is that H1-Bs are employed not so much to save money, but to enable wage slavery. I have a real good friend, a top quality coder, who is a UK citizen. When he and I worked at the same company, I was treated like royalty, but he was kicked in the teeth on a daily basis. However he was paid the same as I was.
It's just that he did not have the option of resigning. He would not have been deported exactly, but he would have been obligated to leave the US until he obtained another work permit.
You could really help a brother out, where you to dig up the links to as many legitimate software employers as you possibly can, then mail them to me at mdcrawford@gmail.com I've been researching them myself. Just tonight I came up with a better way to research them, but it will be a week or two before I can code it up.
I plan to create something like Find a Computer Job in Santa Cruz [warplife.com], but for the whole fucking planet.
I observed about a year ago, that recruiting firms have never done very well in santa cruz since I put that page up back in 1997. At one time there were several of them, but now I only know of Armada Software, which is actually quite cool as headhunters go. Very ethical. Most aren't.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]