I don't understand why you automatically think we can't reward the monkeys for this.
Now, they can't enter contracts, and can hardly walk into a store and buy things, but that just means we'd need to set up some sort of mandatory licensing. We could make every use of the photographs requires a payment of a certain amount into a fund, which is used to purchase things the monkey indicates they like, perhaps by pointing at pictures.
Monkeys are pretty smart, I'm sure we could explain things enough they'd understand that we're trading them this stuff for them taking pictures. We could have some copies of the pictures made, and posted on the wall, and every time someone licenses one, a person could walk in and take one off the wall and leave the stuff paid behind. I'm sure they'd understand it to some extent.
Of course, I'm not sure we want to incentive stealing someone else's camera and taking pictures. OTOH, if a human did that, we'd give them the copyright anyway, we've got no 'Made using stolen stuff' exception in copyright law, so it seems a bit unfair to do it with monkeys. The first thing the fund should pay for is a camera for them.
Disabling DHCP does nothing for your security at all. Anyone who break WPA2-PSK is going to have enough skill to be able to set their own fricking IP in your network.
And the same with MAC filtering, although that might actually help if every single device in your house is on. (Or, rather, every single device that is often on, is on. Obviously, they can't guess the MACs of devices that are never on in the first place.) Generally, no, that's equally pointless.
There are sometimes reasons to have multiple levels of security, but they have to go from least to most to make any sense at discouraging and stopping people. To break into your network, people have to first break WPA2, and at that point, anyone who manages that can certainly figure out the rest of the thing. (Not that I think anyone could manage that.)
You have put a dollar store padlock on a box that you're storing inside a safe. All you've done is make it more work for you.
Yes, because you can keep the password on a flash drive, and when guests come over, you can hand it to them and they can get online with almost no delay added. It's a copy and paste.
Meanwhile, if you filter MAC addresses, you have to have another computer already on the network handy, and log into the admin pages and add them.
Erm, I don't know what you mean by 'smart enough'. If a computer rerequests a IP, DHCP is supposed to respond to it and give them their IP.
Anyone trying to 'secure' something by making a DHCP server not do that until that IP's lease 'expired' would pretty much break everything. 'Oh, look, that dastardly computer crashed without turning in their lease, no IP for them when they reboot! And that one went to sleep mode and, upon waking, checked to make sure it still on the network by updating its leash, no IP for them either!'
No, having sex with a person and deliberately giving them HIV is assault (Just like deliberately giving any other infection), not 'rape'.
Rape is a specific crime. Failure to get tested for STD might be illegal, but is not rape. Failure to inform someone of STD status might be illegal, but is again not rape.
Rape is the specific crime of having sex without consent.
If you have County A where there are minimum wages, and child-labor laws, and safety standards, and worker's comp, and unemployment, and a security net, and workers expect health care, etc, etc, and Country B where none of that is true...hiring workers will, by definition, be cheaper in Country B. This is an unavoidable fact.
Thus, if somewhere allow goods made in either country to be freely sold in a location (Be the location they're being sold Country A, Country B, or even unrelated Country C), then companies will set up shop in Country B, all other things being equal. This is also an unavoidable fact.
So we, in Country A, have exactly two options, and only two options to make companies set up shop here:
1) We can either remove all the stuff that makes us different from Country B. Remove min wage laws, remove social security, remove safety stuff, etc. Or:
2) We can set up tariffs from goods produced in Country B, to make it more expensive for them to be produced there. (And hope we have enough of a customer base that companies won't just ignore us, which luckily we do. And if we don't, we should team up with Europe and Canada so we do.)
That's it. Those are the actual two options that we actually have. There are no other options, there is no debate possible, it's simply a fact.
And I agree with him completely. Those are our choices. I'm not entirely sure how you decided that he was in favor of the first choice, but I'm in favor of the second.
When the quality of life is raised up in enough in China that they can start selling stuff to themselves were pretty much doomed no matter what happens.
Uh, no, at that point they'll have to be paid enough to afford that, and hence Americans can compete with them for jobs.
Or, alternately, and I know it's crazy, we could have Americans making the stuff for us by then.
The problem isn't other countries competing for jobs. No one cares if Canada competes with the US for jobs. We might moan a little that they got a certain factory instead of us, but, in the end, we know we're going to get the next one. Because you have to pay them roughly what you pay us.
It's when uneven economies compete, when it's possible to pay someone 10 cents an hour to do something that requires $7 an hour here.
We need tariffs against countries with uneven pay scales. Canada, France, Germany, fine, we can compete on even footing with them. But not with economies with dirt poor workers.
Which, must be pointed out, are often because they operate essentially slave labor in dangerous work environments. Aka, like China does.
Guys, we already had the budget debt. Remember the whole 'tax cuts for the rich' Obama wasn't able to get removed? Remember that? Several months ago?
That was the fucking budget.
This is now the Federal government is attempting to operate with our democratically decided and constitutionally passed budget, and needing to borrow more money to do it. (As everyone knew they would.)
And now the right has decided to pretend it's time to make budget decisions again. The joke is, it actually almost is time again, for the 2012 budget. But not for how much we spend in 2011.
It's probably worth mentioning that we're basically the only country in the world where we actually have #5 as a separate process...most countries include, in #4, the authorization to borrow as much as needed to actually implement the budget.
Incidentally, people predicted this back during the budget fight, and that fucking idiot Obama just shrugged it off, because he can't get it through his head that the Republicans are goddamn assholes with no interest in actually running the country, and are, in fact, utterly willing to break it to tiny pieces to get reelected.
I wish people would stop confusing the 'debt limit' and the 'budget'.
If people want to play budgetary games over the budget, go ahead.
The debt limit, however, is just how much money we can borrow for our already existing budget.
Threatening to not raise that is like a group of people purchasing a big screen TV, and then some members of the group claiming the TV was too expensive so we need to remove the money out of the checking account before that check clears, so it will bounce.
Oh, and that means that all checks will start bouncing, not just the TV check.
That is not a fucking way to operate a country. You want to argue over how much money we fucking spend, argue it when we decide to spend it, not by saying 'Hey, I know we agreed to spend this money earlier, and already wrote the check, but we were just kidding.'
Marketing and sales have nothing to do with MBAs. MBAs are middle management. They have a degree in 'managing', not in any actual skill.
Marketing and sales are actual skills. Marketing is an artistic-based skill, and sales is a charisma-based skill. Both of those are actually important for a company to operate, and neither of them are trivial to learn.
I know in the 'geek universe' people tend to dismiss them, probably because they use skills that geeks generally don't consider important. But in actual fact, it's worth pointing out that they vastly outnumber development jobs, and something like 80% of companies do not develop things at all. They buy stuff, and sell it. They do not need people to invent things, or even build things.
Please do not conflate those two actual skillsets with MBAs, which is not indicative of an actual skill, and does not contribute anything to a company.
to add to that it is worth considering limiting the number of owners of a corporation and perhaps also setting a minimum period of ownership.
That's what I've been saying for quite some time, at least the minimum period of ownership.
I used to think the best way would be to have literally that, where you can only sell stock after six months...
...but I realized that was silly.
Companies (usually) have quarterly reports. What should happen is that, about a week after each quarterly report, is 'stock day'. People get a week to check out the report and think about it, then, on a specific day, everyone who wishes to sell their stock puts in a sell price, and everyone who wishes to buy their stock puts in a buy price, and all transactions go through at the exact same instant at the end of the day. (I.e., it's not a day of trading. It's one trade, resolved all at once.)
And the quarterly report is also when the company issues dividends for the previous quarter.
That is how we should run fucking publicly traded businesses. You want to own part of a corporation? Read their quarterly projections and put in a bid to own them for a quarter of the year. If you like your dividend at the end of it, you keep the stock, if not, put it up for sale.
None of this damn day trading, or millisecond price manipulation. I'm not sure it would fix everything, but it couldn't hurt.
Oh, and what I think we should also do is stop giving stock options to executives. Give them actual real stock, and don't let them sell it for three years. Stock options are absurd. 'Hey, look, we're going to reward with you with the ability to buy stock at this price if our stock goes up, but if you fuck up and the stock goes down, don't sweat it, you don't have to buy it.'
Companies need lawyers. Companies need accountants. Companies need sales people. Companies need marketing. And, obviously, companies need people who actually make the thing they're selling.
The lawyer department should be headed by a lawyer, the accounting department should be headed by an accountant, the sale department should headed by a salesman, the marketing department should be run by a marketeer (I hope that word catches on.), the 'build the stuff' department should be run by someone who knows how to build the stuff.
The entire company needs to be run by someone who roughly understands all that, or is willing to take advice about the stuff they don't understand. At the very least, they need to roughly understand the 'making stuff they sell' aspect.
And the MBA department should be...oh, wait, there's no such thing as the MBA department, because MBAs don't fucking accomplish anything except telling people how to do shit they don't know how to do themselves.
I'm not sure what 'within days' has to do with anything. I would hope the Secret Service is efficient enough to track down a blog 'within days' to its owner.
And it's the Secret Service because the Secret Service is in charge of certain types of frauds.
If it was a crime that was under the Secret Service's jurisdiction, I don't see why anyone would be surprised it was them that showed up, or that it only took them 'days'.
I just don't understand what sort of crime it was supposed to be. They appear to be claiming some sort of fraud, but that would seem to require he mislead someone at some point, and I don't see how he did that.
Was he stupid enough to walk up to someone and say 'I wish to use your display computers for a purpose that doesn't involve photographing people.' to get permission? I guess that might be fraud, if he were dumb enough to mislead people, instead of just keeping his mouth shut and walking up and using them without permission.
People have implicit authorization to use a computer unless there's some sort of obvious way that was revoked, like it requiring a password or in a non-public area or there being a sign.(1) And it was a fricking display model anyway, set out specifically to be used.
Perhaps they're trying to get him because he 'used' the computer when the store was closed, when he certainly didn't have permission to use it. I still don't understand how that's fraud, though. That just seems to be regular unauthorized computer access to me.(2)
1) Please be aware I will not argue this fact with anyone here unless they can produce evidence that they had an invite to visit this website, from the owners of the site, before they came here the first time. I'm sick of idiots who read the law and think 'unauthorized' means 'without explicit authorization', which would, in fact, render the entire internet unworkable, as you'd need permission to visit any website before you did so. (No, the website TOS can't help you, unless you can magically see that somewhere without visiting the website.) Regardless of what the law appears to say, you can access any computer unless your implicit authorization has been revoked.
2) This legal theory is a bit goofy anyway. If you break into a place, or just trespass past some 'employee only' signs, and use a computer, sure, that's unauthorized access. But if you're standing there in public areas of the store while they close the store, lock it, put up the closed sign, and leave, utterly ignoring you...you're not trespassing, you didn't break and enter, and you are entirely authorized to keep using that computer. The permission to get there changed around you, but they do have to explicitly tell you, someone who's already 'gotten past' where the signs are. That seems to be the analogy to what happened here.
Asking a security guard if you can take pictures in a store is not even close to being the same as asking the store manager if you can install software on their display machines.
Indeed. This guy is an idiot. Permission to take pictures does not imply permission to install software on someone's computer to take photos.
However, while a lot of people are saying he didn't have 'permission' to install software, I don't see how 'installing stuff' is any different than using the computer any other way. If the computers were open to the public, then he has a perfect right to use them for any (legal) purpose. Nothing prohibits him from continuing to use them after he walks away. Unless there's some sort of sign that specifics he can't install stuff, he can do anything (which is otherwise legal) with the computer he wants..
A lot of people are saying he didn't have 'permission' to install things, but I don't see how 'installing stuff' is any different than using the computer any other way. Unauthorized use of a computer requires that he was barred from doing. Were there any signs stating what was not allowed for him to do on those computers? Were there rules stating what he could do, thus implicitly putting other behavior our of bounds? Was there a password he got around? Did he vandalism the computer by rendering it non-functional? If the answer to those was 'no', then he's pretty legal.
And before anyone asks the obvious question, yes, a keylogger would be illegal. Those often count as 'wiretaps' and under state law you usually cannot install them on computers without explicit permission...and if you have them to collect logins and passwords, that's illegal no matter what.
But that doesn't make all 'installing software' illegal.
This appears to be why, in fact, he wasn't changed with unauthorized use of a computer. Because he was authorized. I don't understand what he was charged with, though.
Also, he didn't need anyone's permission to take their photo. You can photograph anyone in public (Or even private, unless they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, so the fact this was private property doesn't change anything.), although there might be 'likeness rights' issues if you attempt to use them in an advertisement.
I didn't really mean as literally part of the breaker box. There's no way the manufacturers are changing those things, you're right, they're just metal boxes you can stick breakers in. (OTOH, I can see the suppressor people building in a breaker box as part of the suppressor.)
I meant in the same general location, on the wall next to it, as part of the standard wiring of a house. Wires into the suppressor, and then out right into the breaker. Perhaps even make it the same width as the breaker box, and put it right above it.
Instead, people are weirdly talking about installing them before the electric meter, which in my universe would be outside, and only the electric company would be able to get away with that. (If I were to start hooking things into the electricity before it reached the meter, I'd be arrested.) That's not really part of the 'house wiring', even if it comes pre-installed.
Go find some electronic device you might possibly want to buy. Attempt to purchase it.
When they assert that it fails all the time, or that their grandmother bought something like that (This is actually a script of theirs), and it broke, and you should buy an extended warranty...
...gasp, and say loudly, 'Well, if it's so shitty it breaks all the time, why are you selling it? I don't want it now, I'll buy one of those from stores that doesn't sell things that break!' and walk out without it.
I've always wanted to do this. Sadly for this plan, I refuse to set foot in Best Buy ever since we gained a Frys.
However you might enjoy it. Next time you're getting a DVD, grab an iPod or something. They will start making up shit at the checkout to get you to buy an extended warranty, and it's fun to act outraged or confused by this fact. (And if they don't, somehow, either don't buy it anyway, or just return it unopened. But they will.)
If the Best Buy was closer, I'd probably wander around in there doing this anyway and/or correcting sales people until they barred me from the store.
Get this - my girlfriend, who had never played any video games except "Purple Turtle" on the Commodore 64 (go look it up, be sure to bring a resuscitator in case you die laughing), is always switching it on and playing it and wants first go of all the "new games" we get and even browses through them on the shop shelves herself.
My mother bought a Wii. My mother had never played a video game in her life, unless you count Solitaire on the computer. She'd certainly never purchased one.
If I were Nintendo, I'd be going in the other direction, and trying to turn Wiis into the television equivalent of smartphones. Throw Youtube on there, for example. They have Netflix, so can clearly do it. If they were very clever, they could even have a 'network media player' on it...it has the power, and it's at a cost-point where it can compete with those systems!
And have everyone sign up for a 'store', like how iPhones work, so that people can instantly purchase things. (Last I checked, you had to buy 'points' and then spend them. That's how I bought Mario 3 and Zelda for my mother's Wii for me to play. It's possible this has changed.)
If Nintendo can occupy the 'like a smartphone, but on the TV and multiple-player' space, well...
I can't quite imagine why Nintendo thinks they want to reattract 'serious gamers', or what they're doing with this 'Wii U'. Forget 'serious gamers'. Serious gamers are whiny idiots, that market is already full, and Nintendo's been coasting on their name in their field for some time.
I know a lot of people who own Wiis, I know exceedingly few, none in fact, that game on them regularly. Those that do game regularly also own another console (or both other consoles) or a computer and game on them.
The thing that baffles me is how this is supposed to be a problem for Nintendo.
Yes, we know serious gamers don't play on the Wii. This is because Nintendo, instead, decided to sell to casual gamers, and went out went and sold the Wii to something like three times the entire console market. At a profit, it should be pointed out, unlike some other consoles.
I can't even imagine what Nintendo is talking about at this point. If they double the price of their console to support the graphics and stuff that 'core gamers' want, they'll end up removing it from casual gamers consideration...and trying to compete, with Sony and MS, over a market that's a fraction of the size of the one they already have!
If I were Nintendo, I'd be going the other direction. More casual stuff. Put a Hulu and YouTube interface in it. Try some Angry Birds if you can. Make it easier for people to buy games. Turn it in to the multi-player equivalent of a smartphone.
Nintendo made an epic decision to leave the 'We want a bajillion terahertz processor with 32x antialiasing and blah blah, and then we'll sell the $1000 boxes at a loss and try to make it back on game licensing' business. Screw that rat-race.
Hey, you! Yeah you! Single mother who's never played a video game. You want to play virtual tennis? Yes? And there are more of you then all game consoles ever sold to 'serious gamers' put together? Hrm...
The corporate shield is not a legal fiction, it is a legal FACT.
I didn't call the corporate shield a legal fiction, although I understand how you could have read it that way. That was unclear. I call the corporation itself a legal fiction.
I quote Ga law: Â 14-11-202: Each limited liability company formed in this state shall have the same powers as any person has to do all things necessary to carry out its purpose, business, and affairs.
That's pretty much a textbook 'legal fiction'...'instead of defining what a corporation can do, we're going to pretend that each corporation is a person, and let them do what people can do'.
Please note I am not complaining about this, it would be insane to have to pass every law twice, forbidding both people and corporations from murdering people, for example. I'm just pointing out it is a legal fiction.
It is common law going back thousands of years.
Corporate law has never been 'common law'. Ever. (And the US has no common law dating back thousands of years.)
At this point, there's surely some common law about corporations, but general, anyone-can-create-them corporations didn't even exist until 200 years ago at the earliest. Before then, all corporations were created by acts of legislature, and specific rules about them were carved out at that time.
The idea that in some jurisdiction without specific laws allowing incorporation, someone, when sued, said 'You can't sue me, I didn't do it, this imaginary thing I invented did, you have to sue it' and the courts let them get away with it to make some 'common law' is so insane I have to wonder if you know what 'common law' is.
Incorporation is not a 'entirely voluntary' act of a government.
And, once again, you don't seem to understand basic words, such as 'voluntary'. No one has a right to incorporation. Ergo, incorporation is something the government voluntarily allows.
Unlike, say, the right to say whatever they want, which the government is required to allow, at least in the US.
The government must be non-discriminatory in who it allows to create a corporation. Obviously the government couldn't allow some specific people to incorporate and other some not to, without some sort of due process to pick those people
It could, however, allow no one to do so. Or only allow certain types of corporations. Or whatever rules it wants as long as it wasn't trying to target specific people without due process.
The owners are stakeholders in the corporation if it is dissolved without due process the rights of the the owners to due process have been violated.
Yes, if the government proposed dissolving corporations that were harmful it would need to pass a law saying it could, and follow due process. And, of course, such laws are already on the books.
GA Â 14-2-1430. The superior court may dissolve a corporation: (1) In a proceeding by the Attorney General if it is established that: (A) The corporation obtained its articles of incorporation through fraud; or (B) The corporation has continued to exceed or abuse the authority conferred upon it by law;
Most state governments could already dissolve any specific corporations just because it found they 'abuses their authority', within due process. Of course, without due process, it could just undo the entire system of incorporation laws. Period.
The government cannot keep people out of a public park because it doesn't like them. It can't just pick someone and say 'Hey, you have to stay out'. It can, however, exclude people from the public park as part of a judicial decision, after a trial. Or it can bulldoze the damn park and keep everyone out, and, you know what? No one gets any restitution or 'due process' for that.
Due process only applies when someone specifically is targeted. It doesn't apply when the government simply stops offering something to everyone.
You are thinking like corporations are entities that exist on their own, independent of their owners.
They do, you twit. That's what a 'corporation' is.
If they want to use their rights as people, they can do that however they want.
What they cannot do is hide behind any sort of corporate shield, or legal fiction that allows people to not go after their personal assets with lawsuits.
And, perhaps more relevant here, they certainly wouldn't be able to spend the money to get any sort of legal telecom monopoly.
When you muck around with corporations in the manner you are proposing you are interfering with the rights of the corporation's owners, and in the following ways.
1. Free speech
No one has suggested stopping anyone's mouth from working, at all
2, Right to assemble
If they want to assemble and call themselves something, that's find. That doesn't mean they get magical limited liability, nor any sort of special joint ownership outside of normal contract law.
3. Right to due process
Corporations exist entirely at the will of the government, period. They have no 'rights' whatsoever.
4. Right to trial by jury in civil proceedings
Which might be reasonable if I was proposing seizing their assets. Which is why I explicitly said I didn't want that. Turn the assets over to the owners of the corporations, that's fine with me.
I was simply proposing undoing their incorporation. Allowing incorporation is an entirely voluntary act on the part of the government.
5. Right to petition
And that one doesn't even make sense.
What you have failed to grasp that corporation is a law. It is not any sort of 'right'. It is a specific law, that allows people to create specific legal entities.
Tomorrow that law, the entire fucking thing, could be repealed. No 'due process' concerns, no 'rights', no nothing at all. All assets would be turned back over the owners. Because the entire existence of every single corporation is something the government has invented.
And yet you stand there like an idiot and yammer that they have rights. No, entities that exist entirely due to government largess do not actually have any 'rights' the government cannot infringe.
The owners have rights themselves, but don't have any right to own an imaginary government-created entity, or to use an imaginary government-created entity that they own in a specific way. If the government wanted to demand that tomorrow AT&T was only allowed to sell pickles, it could. There is no damn constitutional issue, at least there would not be on in a society with a supreme court that wasn't owned by corporations.
At most the owners have some rights stopping the government from just seizing their assets out from under them, which is, again, why I said the government would have to give them pieces of their property back if it decides to take apart a corporation.
I'm not entirely certain it would have to, actually, but that's not worth arguing. In a sane society, that would be the constitutional question about 'corporate rights'...exactly how much the government has to reimburse the owners for blowing them up at will. Not how much fucking 'rights' they have.
In the end, it's there goddamn network and they can do whatever they want with it.
Other people have pointed out why this isn't true...but fuck that. They couldn't do whatever they wanted even if it was their network.
They are a fucking fictional creation of the government. They have no goddamn right to do anything whatsoever. They have no property ownership rights we didn't invent for them.
The people that own them arguably have some rights, but morally the government could walk into Comcast tomorrow and dissolve the entire fucking thing and sell every assets. As long as they then hand whatever cash remains to the stockholders. (You know, so it's not 'seizing' property.)
You can argue some sort of moral argument that lets human beings do whatever they want with their property. You can state it's some sort of natural law. Whatever, I'll go with that for now.
But corporations are imaginary. They are not human beings. They have no right to even exist if we, as society, don't want them to. We gave them permission to exist, and we can take that permission away if we want.
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I don't understand why you automatically think we can't reward the monkeys for this.
Now, they can't enter contracts, and can hardly walk into a store and buy things, but that just means we'd need to set up some sort of mandatory licensing. We could make every use of the photographs requires a payment of a certain amount into a fund, which is used to purchase things the monkey indicates they like, perhaps by pointing at pictures.
Monkeys are pretty smart, I'm sure we could explain things enough they'd understand that we're trading them this stuff for them taking pictures. We could have some copies of the pictures made, and posted on the wall, and every time someone licenses one, a person could walk in and take one off the wall and leave the stuff paid behind. I'm sure they'd understand it to some extent.
Of course, I'm not sure we want to incentive stealing someone else's camera and taking pictures. OTOH, if a human did that, we'd give them the copyright anyway, we've got no 'Made using stolen stuff' exception in copyright law, so it seems a bit unfair to do it with monkeys. The first thing the fund should pay for is a camera for them.
Disabling DHCP does nothing for your security at all. Anyone who break WPA2-PSK is going to have enough skill to be able to set their own fricking IP in your network.
And the same with MAC filtering, although that might actually help if every single device in your house is on. (Or, rather, every single device that is often on, is on. Obviously, they can't guess the MACs of devices that are never on in the first place.) Generally, no, that's equally pointless.
There are sometimes reasons to have multiple levels of security, but they have to go from least to most to make any sense at discouraging and stopping people. To break into your network, people have to first break WPA2, and at that point, anyone who manages that can certainly figure out the rest of the thing. (Not that I think anyone could manage that.)
You have put a dollar store padlock on a box that you're storing inside a safe. All you've done is make it more work for you.
Yes, because you can keep the password on a flash drive, and when guests come over, you can hand it to them and they can get online with almost no delay added. It's a copy and paste.
Meanwhile, if you filter MAC addresses, you have to have another computer already on the network handy, and log into the admin pages and add them.
Erm, I don't know what you mean by 'smart enough'. If a computer rerequests a IP, DHCP is supposed to respond to it and give them their IP.
Anyone trying to 'secure' something by making a DHCP server not do that until that IP's lease 'expired' would pretty much break everything. 'Oh, look, that dastardly computer crashed without turning in their lease, no IP for them when they reboot! And that one went to sleep mode and, upon waking, checked to make sure it still on the network by updating its leash, no IP for them either!'
No, having sex with a person and deliberately giving them HIV is assault (Just like deliberately giving any other infection), not 'rape'.
Rape is a specific crime. Failure to get tested for STD might be illegal, but is not rape. Failure to inform someone of STD status might be illegal, but is again not rape.
Rape is the specific crime of having sex without consent.
We need Blackwater so the superich can siphon out more money from the military industrial complex.
Uh, duh.
Uh, not raising the debt limit isn't 'not getting more debt'.
Not raising the debt limit is not paying the minimum balance due on your credit card.
Gee, I wonder why that would hurt your credit rating?
No, he's just stating a fact.
If you have County A where there are minimum wages, and child-labor laws, and safety standards, and worker's comp, and unemployment, and a security net, and workers expect health care, etc, etc, and Country B where none of that is true...hiring workers will, by definition, be cheaper in Country B. This is an unavoidable fact.
Thus, if somewhere allow goods made in either country to be freely sold in a location (Be the location they're being sold Country A, Country B, or even unrelated Country C), then companies will set up shop in Country B, all other things being equal. This is also an unavoidable fact.
So we, in Country A, have exactly two options, and only two options to make companies set up shop here:
1) We can either remove all the stuff that makes us different from Country B. Remove min wage laws, remove social security, remove safety stuff, etc. Or:
2) We can set up tariffs from goods produced in Country B, to make it more expensive for them to be produced there. (And hope we have enough of a customer base that companies won't just ignore us, which luckily we do. And if we don't, we should team up with Europe and Canada so we do.)
That's it. Those are the actual two options that we actually have. There are no other options, there is no debate possible, it's simply a fact.
And I agree with him completely. Those are our choices. I'm not entirely sure how you decided that he was in favor of the first choice, but I'm in favor of the second.
When the quality of life is raised up in enough in China that they can start selling stuff to themselves were pretty much doomed no matter what happens.
Uh, no, at that point they'll have to be paid enough to afford that, and hence Americans can compete with them for jobs.
Or, alternately, and I know it's crazy, we could have Americans making the stuff for us by then.
The problem isn't other countries competing for jobs. No one cares if Canada competes with the US for jobs. We might moan a little that they got a certain factory instead of us, but, in the end, we know we're going to get the next one. Because you have to pay them roughly what you pay us.
It's when uneven economies compete, when it's possible to pay someone 10 cents an hour to do something that requires $7 an hour here.
We need tariffs against countries with uneven pay scales. Canada, France, Germany, fine, we can compete on even footing with them. But not with economies with dirt poor workers.
Which, must be pointed out, are often because they operate essentially slave labor in dangerous work environments. Aka, like China does.
Yeah, no one seems to understand this.
Guys, we already had the budget debt. Remember the whole 'tax cuts for the rich' Obama wasn't able to get removed? Remember that? Several months ago?
That was the fucking budget.
This is now the Federal government is attempting to operate with our democratically decided and constitutionally passed budget, and needing to borrow more money to do it. (As everyone knew they would.)
And now the right has decided to pretend it's time to make budget decisions again. The joke is, it actually almost is time again, for the 2012 budget. But not for how much we spend in 2011.
It's probably worth mentioning that we're basically the only country in the world where we actually have #5 as a separate process...most countries include, in #4, the authorization to borrow as much as needed to actually implement the budget.
Incidentally, people predicted this back during the budget fight, and that fucking idiot Obama just shrugged it off, because he can't get it through his head that the Republicans are goddamn assholes with no interest in actually running the country, and are, in fact, utterly willing to break it to tiny pieces to get reelected.
I wish people would stop confusing the 'debt limit' and the 'budget'.
If people want to play budgetary games over the budget, go ahead.
The debt limit, however, is just how much money we can borrow for our already existing budget.
Threatening to not raise that is like a group of people purchasing a big screen TV, and then some members of the group claiming the TV was too expensive so we need to remove the money out of the checking account before that check clears, so it will bounce.
Oh, and that means that all checks will start bouncing, not just the TV check.
That is not a fucking way to operate a country. You want to argue over how much money we fucking spend, argue it when we decide to spend it, not by saying 'Hey, I know we agreed to spend this money earlier, and already wrote the check, but we were just kidding.'
Okay, a lot of people are confused here.
Marketing and sales have nothing to do with MBAs. MBAs are middle management. They have a degree in 'managing', not in any actual skill.
Marketing and sales are actual skills. Marketing is an artistic-based skill, and sales is a charisma-based skill. Both of those are actually important for a company to operate, and neither of them are trivial to learn.
I know in the 'geek universe' people tend to dismiss them, probably because they use skills that geeks generally don't consider important. But in actual fact, it's worth pointing out that they vastly outnumber development jobs, and something like 80% of companies do not develop things at all. They buy stuff, and sell it. They do not need people to invent things, or even build things.
Please do not conflate those two actual skillsets with MBAs, which is not indicative of an actual skill, and does not contribute anything to a company.
to add to that it is worth considering limiting the number of owners of a corporation and perhaps also setting a minimum period of ownership.
That's what I've been saying for quite some time, at least the minimum period of ownership.
I used to think the best way would be to have literally that, where you can only sell stock after six months...
Companies (usually) have quarterly reports. What should happen is that, about a week after each quarterly report, is 'stock day'. People get a week to check out the report and think about it, then, on a specific day, everyone who wishes to sell their stock puts in a sell price, and everyone who wishes to buy their stock puts in a buy price, and all transactions go through at the exact same instant at the end of the day. (I.e., it's not a day of trading. It's one trade, resolved all at once.)
And the quarterly report is also when the company issues dividends for the previous quarter.
That is how we should run fucking publicly traded businesses. You want to own part of a corporation? Read their quarterly projections and put in a bid to own them for a quarter of the year. If you like your dividend at the end of it, you keep the stock, if not, put it up for sale.
None of this damn day trading, or millisecond price manipulation. I'm not sure it would fix everything, but it couldn't hurt.
Oh, and what I think we should also do is stop giving stock options to executives. Give them actual real stock, and don't let them sell it for three years. Stock options are absurd. 'Hey, look, we're going to reward with you with the ability to buy stock at this price if our stock goes up, but if you fuck up and the stock goes down, don't sweat it, you don't have to buy it.'
Indeed.
Companies need lawyers. Companies need accountants. Companies need sales people. Companies need marketing. And, obviously, companies need people who actually make the thing they're selling.
The lawyer department should be headed by a lawyer, the accounting department should be headed by an accountant, the sale department should headed by a salesman, the marketing department should be run by a marketeer (I hope that word catches on.), the 'build the stuff' department should be run by someone who knows how to build the stuff.
The entire company needs to be run by someone who roughly understands all that, or is willing to take advice about the stuff they don't understand. At the very least, they need to roughly understand the 'making stuff they sell' aspect.
And the MBA department should be...oh, wait, there's no such thing as the MBA department, because MBAs don't fucking accomplish anything except telling people how to do shit they don't know how to do themselves.
I'm not sure what 'within days' has to do with anything. I would hope the Secret Service is efficient enough to track down a blog 'within days' to its owner.
And it's the Secret Service because the Secret Service is in charge of certain types of frauds.
If it was a crime that was under the Secret Service's jurisdiction, I don't see why anyone would be surprised it was them that showed up, or that it only took them 'days'.
I just don't understand what sort of crime it was supposed to be. They appear to be claiming some sort of fraud, but that would seem to require he mislead someone at some point, and I don't see how he did that.
Was he stupid enough to walk up to someone and say 'I wish to use your display computers for a purpose that doesn't involve photographing people.' to get permission? I guess that might be fraud, if he were dumb enough to mislead people, instead of just keeping his mouth shut and walking up and using them without permission.
People have implicit authorization to use a computer unless there's some sort of obvious way that was revoked, like it requiring a password or in a non-public area or there being a sign.(1) And it was a fricking display model anyway, set out specifically to be used.
Perhaps they're trying to get him because he 'used' the computer when the store was closed, when he certainly didn't have permission to use it. I still don't understand how that's fraud, though. That just seems to be regular unauthorized computer access to me.(2)
1) Please be aware I will not argue this fact with anyone here unless they can produce evidence that they had an invite to visit this website, from the owners of the site, before they came here the first time. I'm sick of idiots who read the law and think 'unauthorized' means 'without explicit authorization', which would, in fact, render the entire internet unworkable, as you'd need permission to visit any website before you did so. (No, the website TOS can't help you, unless you can magically see that somewhere without visiting the website.) Regardless of what the law appears to say, you can access any computer unless your implicit authorization has been revoked.
2) This legal theory is a bit goofy anyway. If you break into a place, or just trespass past some 'employee only' signs, and use a computer, sure, that's unauthorized access. But if you're standing there in public areas of the store while they close the store, lock it, put up the closed sign, and leave, utterly ignoring you...you're not trespassing, you didn't break and enter, and you are entirely authorized to keep using that computer. The permission to get there changed around you, but they do have to explicitly tell you, someone who's already 'gotten past' where the signs are. That seems to be the analogy to what happened here.
Asking a security guard if you can take pictures in a store is not even close to being the same as asking the store manager if you can install software on their display machines.
Indeed. This guy is an idiot. Permission to take pictures does not imply permission to install software on someone's computer to take photos.
However, while a lot of people are saying he didn't have 'permission' to install software, I don't see how 'installing stuff' is any different than using the computer any other way. If the computers were open to the public, then he has a perfect right to use them for any (legal) purpose. Nothing prohibits him from continuing to use them after he walks away. Unless there's some sort of sign that specifics he can't install stuff, he can do anything (which is otherwise legal) with the computer he wants..
A lot of people are saying he didn't have 'permission' to install things, but I don't see how 'installing stuff' is any different than using the computer any other way. Unauthorized use of a computer requires that he was barred from doing. Were there any signs stating what was not allowed for him to do on those computers? Were there rules stating what he could do, thus implicitly putting other behavior our of bounds? Was there a password he got around? Did he vandalism the computer by rendering it non-functional? If the answer to those was 'no', then he's pretty legal.
And before anyone asks the obvious question, yes, a keylogger would be illegal. Those often count as 'wiretaps' and under state law you usually cannot install them on computers without explicit permission...and if you have them to collect logins and passwords, that's illegal no matter what.
But that doesn't make all 'installing software' illegal.
This appears to be why, in fact, he wasn't changed with unauthorized use of a computer. Because he was authorized. I don't understand what he was charged with, though.
Also, he didn't need anyone's permission to take their photo. You can photograph anyone in public (Or even private, unless they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, so the fact this was private property doesn't change anything.), although there might be 'likeness rights' issues if you attempt to use them in an advertisement.
I didn't really mean as literally part of the breaker box. There's no way the manufacturers are changing those things, you're right, they're just metal boxes you can stick breakers in. (OTOH, I can see the suppressor people building in a breaker box as part of the suppressor.)
I meant in the same general location, on the wall next to it, as part of the standard wiring of a house. Wires into the suppressor, and then out right into the breaker. Perhaps even make it the same width as the breaker box, and put it right above it.
Instead, people are weirdly talking about installing them before the electric meter, which in my universe would be outside, and only the electric company would be able to get away with that. (If I were to start hooking things into the electricity before it reached the meter, I'd be arrested.) That's not really part of the 'house wiring', even if it comes pre-installed.
I'm a little baffled as to why they aren't installed as part of the breaker box. Do they have to be outside or something?
Fun thing to do at Best Buy:
Go find some electronic device you might possibly want to buy. Attempt to purchase it.
When they assert that it fails all the time, or that their grandmother bought something like that (This is actually a script of theirs), and it broke, and you should buy an extended warranty...
I've always wanted to do this. Sadly for this plan, I refuse to set foot in Best Buy ever since we gained a Frys.
However you might enjoy it. Next time you're getting a DVD, grab an iPod or something. They will start making up shit at the checkout to get you to buy an extended warranty, and it's fun to act outraged or confused by this fact. (And if they don't, somehow, either don't buy it anyway, or just return it unopened. But they will.)
If the Best Buy was closer, I'd probably wander around in there doing this anyway and/or correcting sales people until they barred me from the store.
s/ looking for a high-end camera//
Get this - my girlfriend, who had never played any video games except "Purple Turtle" on the Commodore 64 (go look it up, be sure to bring a resuscitator in case you die laughing), is always switching it on and playing it and wants first go of all the "new games" we get and even browses through them on the shop shelves herself.
My mother bought a Wii. My mother had never played a video game in her life, unless you count Solitaire on the computer. She'd certainly never purchased one.
If I were Nintendo, I'd be going in the other direction, and trying to turn Wiis into the television equivalent of smartphones. Throw Youtube on there, for example. They have Netflix, so can clearly do it. If they were very clever, they could even have a 'network media player' on it...it has the power, and it's at a cost-point where it can compete with those systems!
And have everyone sign up for a 'store', like how iPhones work, so that people can instantly purchase things. (Last I checked, you had to buy 'points' and then spend them. That's how I bought Mario 3 and Zelda for my mother's Wii for me to play. It's possible this has changed.)
If Nintendo can occupy the 'like a smartphone, but on the TV and multiple-player' space, well...
I can't quite imagine why Nintendo thinks they want to reattract 'serious gamers', or what they're doing with this 'Wii U'. Forget 'serious gamers'. Serious gamers are whiny idiots, that market is already full, and Nintendo's been coasting on their name in their field for some time.
I know a lot of people who own Wiis, I know exceedingly few, none in fact, that game on them regularly. Those that do game regularly also own another console (or both other consoles) or a computer and game on them.
The thing that baffles me is how this is supposed to be a problem for Nintendo.
Yes, we know serious gamers don't play on the Wii. This is because Nintendo, instead, decided to sell to casual gamers, and went out went and sold the Wii to something like three times the entire console market. At a profit, it should be pointed out, unlike some other consoles.
I can't even imagine what Nintendo is talking about at this point. If they double the price of their console to support the graphics and stuff that 'core gamers' want, they'll end up removing it from casual gamers consideration...and trying to compete, with Sony and MS, over a market that's a fraction of the size of the one they already have!
If I were Nintendo, I'd be going the other direction. More casual stuff. Put a Hulu and YouTube interface in it. Try some Angry Birds if you can. Make it easier for people to buy games. Turn it in to the multi-player equivalent of a smartphone.
Nintendo made an epic decision to leave the 'We want a bajillion terahertz processor with 32x antialiasing and blah blah, and then we'll sell the $1000 boxes at a loss and try to make it back on game licensing' business. Screw that rat-race.
Hey, you! Yeah you! Single mother who's never played a video game. You want to play virtual tennis? Yes? And there are more of you then all game consoles ever sold to 'serious gamers' put together? Hrm...
The corporate shield is not a legal fiction, it is a legal FACT.
I didn't call the corporate shield a legal fiction, although I understand how you could have read it that way. That was unclear. I call the corporation itself a legal fiction.
I quote Ga law: Â 14-11-202: Each limited liability company formed in this state shall have the same powers as any person has to do all things necessary to carry out its purpose, business, and affairs.
That's pretty much a textbook 'legal fiction'...'instead of defining what a corporation can do, we're going to pretend that each corporation is a person, and let them do what people can do'.
Please note I am not complaining about this, it would be insane to have to pass every law twice, forbidding both people and corporations from murdering people, for example. I'm just pointing out it is a legal fiction.
It is common law going back thousands of years.
Corporate law has never been 'common law'. Ever. (And the US has no common law dating back thousands of years.)
At this point, there's surely some common law about corporations, but general, anyone-can-create-them corporations didn't even exist until 200 years ago at the earliest. Before then, all corporations were created by acts of legislature, and specific rules about them were carved out at that time.
The idea that in some jurisdiction without specific laws allowing incorporation, someone, when sued, said 'You can't sue me, I didn't do it, this imaginary thing I invented did, you have to sue it' and the courts let them get away with it to make some 'common law' is so insane I have to wonder if you know what 'common law' is.
Incorporation is not a 'entirely voluntary' act of a government.
And, once again, you don't seem to understand basic words, such as 'voluntary'. No one has a right to incorporation. Ergo, incorporation is something the government voluntarily allows.
Unlike, say, the right to say whatever they want, which the government is required to allow, at least in the US.
The government must be non-discriminatory in who it allows to create a corporation. Obviously the government couldn't allow some specific people to incorporate and other some not to, without some sort of due process to pick those people
It could, however, allow no one to do so. Or only allow certain types of corporations. Or whatever rules it wants as long as it wasn't trying to target specific people without due process.
The owners are stakeholders in the corporation if it is dissolved without due process the rights of the the owners to due process have been violated.
Yes, if the government proposed dissolving corporations that were harmful it would need to pass a law saying it could, and follow due process. And, of course, such laws are already on the books.
GA Â 14-2-1430. The superior court may dissolve a corporation: (1) In a proceeding by the Attorney General if it is established that: (A) The corporation obtained its articles of incorporation through fraud; or (B) The corporation has continued to exceed or abuse the authority conferred upon it by law;
Most state governments could already dissolve any specific corporations just because it found they 'abuses their authority', within due process. Of course, without due process, it could just undo the entire system of incorporation laws. Period.
The government cannot keep people out of a public park because it doesn't like them. It can't just pick someone and say 'Hey, you have to stay out'. It can, however, exclude people from the public park as part of a judicial decision, after a trial. Or it can bulldoze the damn park and keep everyone out, and, you know what? No one gets any restitution or 'due process' for that.
Due process only applies when someone specifically is targeted. It doesn't apply when the government simply stops offering something to everyone.
You are thinking like corporations are entities that exist on their own, independent of their owners.
They do, you twit. That's what a 'corporation' is.
If they want to use their rights as people, they can do that however they want.
What they cannot do is hide behind any sort of corporate shield, or legal fiction that allows people to not go after their personal assets with lawsuits.
And, perhaps more relevant here, they certainly wouldn't be able to spend the money to get any sort of legal telecom monopoly.
When you muck around with corporations in the manner you are proposing you are interfering with the rights of the corporation's owners, and in the following ways.
1. Free speech
No one has suggested stopping anyone's mouth from working, at all
2, Right to assemble
If they want to assemble and call themselves something, that's find. That doesn't mean they get magical limited liability, nor any sort of special joint ownership outside of normal contract law.
3. Right to due process
Corporations exist entirely at the will of the government, period. They have no 'rights' whatsoever.
4. Right to trial by jury in civil proceedings
Which might be reasonable if I was proposing seizing their assets. Which is why I explicitly said I didn't want that. Turn the assets over to the owners of the corporations, that's fine with me.
I was simply proposing undoing their incorporation. Allowing incorporation is an entirely voluntary act on the part of the government.
5. Right to petition
And that one doesn't even make sense.
What you have failed to grasp that corporation is a law. It is not any sort of 'right'. It is a specific law, that allows people to create specific legal entities.
Tomorrow that law, the entire fucking thing, could be repealed. No 'due process' concerns, no 'rights', no nothing at all. All assets would be turned back over the owners. Because the entire existence of every single corporation is something the government has invented.
And yet you stand there like an idiot and yammer that they have rights. No, entities that exist entirely due to government largess do not actually have any 'rights' the government cannot infringe.
The owners have rights themselves, but don't have any right to own an imaginary government-created entity, or to use an imaginary government-created entity that they own in a specific way. If the government wanted to demand that tomorrow AT&T was only allowed to sell pickles, it could. There is no damn constitutional issue, at least there would not be on in a society with a supreme court that wasn't owned by corporations.
At most the owners have some rights stopping the government from just seizing their assets out from under them, which is, again, why I said the government would have to give them pieces of their property back if it decides to take apart a corporation.
I'm not entirely certain it would have to, actually, but that's not worth arguing. In a sane society, that would be the constitutional question about 'corporate rights'...exactly how much the government has to reimburse the owners for blowing them up at will. Not how much fucking 'rights' they have.
In the end, it's there goddamn network and they can do whatever they want with it.
Other people have pointed out why this isn't true...but fuck that. They couldn't do whatever they wanted even if it was their network.
They are a fucking fictional creation of the government. They have no goddamn right to do anything whatsoever. They have no property ownership rights we didn't invent for them.
The people that own them arguably have some rights, but morally the government could walk into Comcast tomorrow and dissolve the entire fucking thing and sell every assets. As long as they then hand whatever cash remains to the stockholders. (You know, so it's not 'seizing' property.)
You can argue some sort of moral argument that lets human beings do whatever they want with their property. You can state it's some sort of natural law. Whatever, I'll go with that for now.
But corporations are imaginary. They are not human beings. They have no right to even exist if we, as society, don't want them to. We gave them permission to exist, and we can take that permission away if we want.