This too, but one can't simply blame "parents". I've seen that happen before, and its not messy - specifically, I've seen teachers convince themselves that not only is nothing bad their fault and that they're responsible for everything good, but that they can't do anything about it. There's a whole lot of factors that contribute - the media, parents, teachers, politicians, other kids...
When it comes down to it, I think one of the problems is that we expect people to be robots, and punish them when they're not. So people think in the short-term, and follow the rules, and try not to stand out.
Well, I ment that Management makes decisions based on the short-term benefits without regard for long-term benefits/drawbacks. This is because that's what they're trained to do. And analysts only care about today's profit because... Analysts are, often, trained to be managers at some point.
The reason? Why turn away a morons first year tution?:P
The othe reason: beyond a certain point, its impossible to tell how well students will adjust to university. I know students who got straight-As in high school and failed out inside a month in university. I know students who were hovering in the C range in high school who jumped up to A-range in university becuase they finally felt motivated to apply themselves.
So they admit more people than "strictly" necessary and set up the first/second-year curriculum to filter out those who can't hack it. Though a lot of Computer Science programs skipped the "filter" step during the boom to get the graduation rate companies were demanding, and are paying for it now with departments loaded with total morons.
Note that, to avoid flames from the Manager-Apologist camp, one has to explicitly point out what the problem is. Management makes short-term decisions, which means they completely ignore the long-term. Thus, instead of spending money on basic research, or even any research at all, they spend it on marketing campaigns, creative accounting, and themselves.
Ah, good. Sanity prevails.;) That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure. After all, we did have Eldred VS Reno/Ashcroft, which was basically a lawsuit against the government over certain decisions.
Hm. Yes and no. Stockholders are indeed trying to make money, but the CEO's job is not to make them money. If the CEO does his job (running the company) right, they do indeed make money, but that's a side-effect, not the point of his job.
To respond to this, merely point out the publicized security breaches at Microsoft... And then ask, since you can't see the code, how do you know what other breaches have happened or what else has gone wrong? With open-source software, you at least can review the code yourself.
Then Mr. CIO isn't being very creative at all. After all, Free Software is customizable software. Not only can he hire his mates as consultants, he can hire MORE of his mates as consultants and use MORE tax money to pay them. Why? Its Free Software! Public good! Changes getting released back into the wild! Helping foster innovation and development in the Canadian software industry!
See #2. No-one's getting paid? Great! Hire some of your mates and get them to do it!
The downside to these responses to #2 and #3 are that the mates then have to be at least somewhat technically competent. As if they aren't, people are going to notice in short order.
Quark? The only place I recognize that name from is layout software, but that can't be right. Are you referring to some other product, or is there finally an open source layout system with a decent UI that's actaully USABLE?
A transfer that, it should be noted, is not sustainable. Those few are using a difference in wealth to concentrate the wealth. Unfortunately, the net result of this is that they're killing their own markets by reducing the number of people who can afford to buy their products. They're intentionally creating a bubble so they can crash it and wind up at the top of the heap and in control.
Yes they would show him to the door, because his job is to make money for the shareholders.
Incorrect. This is a stupid idea that's taken root since the "day trading" craze started, and is promoted by people who are clueless about real economics. The CEO's job is to ensure long-term viability of the company and direct its day-to-day operations. The shareholders make money in that they're invested in a stock that will, over time, yield high returns as the company grows and prospers.
Actually, he doesn't mean "good for our shareholders". He means "good for me". Modern business is all about producing good-looking next-quarter reports and lining the pockets of upper management at the expense of everything else, then using your golden parachute to bail out just before everyone realizes that your "wise moves" have left the company with no long-term future... And that its now the long-term, so it doesn't have a SHORT-TERM future either.
Um... Did you even bother to, you know, read my post?
They didn't add digits, they added another "layer" of counting-types. Our dating system can handle an infinite number of years without any problems. Theirs required that a new layer (like our weeks to months) be added on top each time. And in fact, they had no concept of adding digits to the front of numbers, or at the very least, never bothered to apply it to their years.
The digital representations of our years are, indeed, not infinite. But unless you're a total fuckwit, you'd know that that bears no relation to our actual calendar.
That would be another popular myth about the Mayan calendar, like the myth that the wrap point of the upper-level date is somehow mythologically significant. It isn't, and was never intended to be.
Indeed. Though the question of whether it will have any effect still remains. The judgement was so popular here in Canada that it might well be political suicide to go against it. Unfortunately, the Liberals already stepped off that cliff, though you can bet that the media sure as hell didn't report on it. The CA and the NDP haven't yet...
CAN Diebold appeal this? I know the Supreme Court currently (and Justice Bush-Is-God Scalia in particular) tends to be very business-friendly, states-hostile and... Liberal in their interpretation of the law. So if it does get to them, I have no doubt that they'll rule that CA cannot, in fact, use any voting machines other than Diebold's. But this was a direct order by the (Republican!) CA Secretary of State. I'm not sure Diebold can appeal that.
Or, at the very least, don't they have to work their way up? And thus, the 9th circuit court can refuse to hear the case...
Of course, you then have to prove that this slimebag's company was the one that sent the mail. Which gets to be a little more difficult. A much more productive method would be to use the discovery phase to grab their e-mail address database and search it for stuff like that. Oh, and nail every single means of gathering e-mail addresses they've got with a subpoena while you're at it.
Somehow, this CAN-SPAM law isn't quite what we wanted in an anti-spam law...
No, but its exactly what the spammers wanted.
Of course, the ideal tool would mine the opt-out info from the bottom of the mail, automatically generate an obviously random address to use for an opt-out request, and send it off. Then when that address starts getting spam, I believe you've got what you need to nail the spammer.
Indeed. Having done some digging on this, the Mayans apparently had an incredibly stupid calendar system. Instead of using the concept of "zero as a placeholder" to get infinite years (which I believe they had discovered), they just kept adding more "layers" (like our days/weeks/months/years) on top. The uppermost cycle is only the uppermost because their civilization collapsed before they got to wrap the counter and add another layer on top.
Exactly. The problem isn't that there's the option to install these things. The problem is that they insist on being installed, and try to sneak back in if you find some way to remove them. Or, even worse. provide you with the option but reset it as part of some other, innocuous-looking option later in the setup program. I don't think anyone would object to "spyware" if they really could choose to install it and it was open about what it did.
But the spyware scum rely on the user NOT knowing that its being installed, and not being able to say no.
An excellent point. I think that is, however, symptomatic of a host of other problems with modern corporate structure. Sales and management are seen as being all that matters - the purpose of the business, rather than something to further its goals. Why? Because they're what make the short-term company reports look good, which is what makes the short-term stock price good. And since that's all most companies care about...
But that's still private archival purposes, note. And since they were posted as desktop backgrounds, that's still reasonablely within the scope of the implicit license. Using them as stock footage for an advertisment isn't.
Even worse is that its literally impossible to prove your innocence. Any logs you have can be doctored just as easily as the RIAA can doctor their logs, and most courts are going to be a hell of a lot less likely to believe you. If, OTOH, the Judge places a reasonable burden of evidence on the RIAA, it becomes impossible for them to continue their case. (As was done in Canada, and which the Liberal Party has promised to change if they're re-elected.)
(As an aside, WTF was the kid yalking about reqarding his HDTV? I'm pretty sure he didn't create his own CRT or other display device, and all supporting electronics.. that's very difficult from a manufacturing perspective. I would guess that he "made" a HDTV decoder system by plugging in a PCI card from pchdtv.com)
Not the CRT, no. But he is, apparently, an engineering student. Which means that - guess what? - he knows how to do things that you don't. Among these would be assembling electrical hardware using pre-built components at a certain level (IE, not raw transistors) to follow a standard. In this case, the HDTV Broadcast Standard. This sounds, to me, like a fairly reasonable project for a high-level Engineering class.
And Valenti didn't skewer shit. So what if its irrelevant to 99.999% of the people. So are certain kinds of sexual acts. Should those be made illegal too? So are wheelchair ramps. Should those be made illegal? His point is utterly ludicrious, especially when you consider that the 100,000 people who would be interested in and able to make their own HDTV are most likely to be the ones that develop the Next Big Thing. And that, by preventing them from doing so, you're ensuring that the Next Big Thing sure as hell won't come from the United Corporations of America.
And you can bet that, like all the previous announcements about licensed Linux DVD players, its going to evaporate into thin air in a couple of weeks when no-one's looking anymore. In fact, I'm almost willing to bet that was the MPAA's response to this interview. License a Linux DVD player, then stall the rest of the licensing process indefinitely.
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This too, but one can't simply blame "parents". I've seen that happen before, and its not messy - specifically, I've seen teachers convince themselves that not only is nothing bad their fault and that they're responsible for everything good, but that they can't do anything about it. There's a whole lot of factors that contribute - the media, parents, teachers, politicians, other kids...
When it comes down to it, I think one of the problems is that we expect people to be robots, and punish them when they're not. So people think in the short-term, and follow the rules, and try not to stand out.
Well, I ment that Management makes decisions based on the short-term benefits without regard for long-term benefits/drawbacks. This is because that's what they're trained to do. And analysts only care about today's profit because... Analysts are, often, trained to be managers at some point.
The reason? Why turn away a morons first year tution? :P
The othe reason: beyond a certain point, its impossible to tell how well students will adjust to university. I know students who got straight-As in high school and failed out inside a month in university. I know students who were hovering in the C range in high school who jumped up to A-range in university becuase they finally felt motivated to apply themselves.
So they admit more people than "strictly" necessary and set up the first/second-year curriculum to filter out those who can't hack it. Though a lot of Computer Science programs skipped the "filter" step during the boom to get the graduation rate companies were demanding, and are paying for it now with departments loaded with total morons.
Note that, to avoid flames from the Manager-Apologist camp, one has to explicitly point out what the problem is. Management makes short-term decisions, which means they completely ignore the long-term. Thus, instead of spending money on basic research, or even any research at all, they spend it on marketing campaigns, creative accounting, and themselves.
Ah, good. Sanity prevails. ;) That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure. After all, we did have Eldred VS Reno/Ashcroft, which was basically a lawsuit against the government over certain decisions.
Hm. Yes and no. Stockholders are indeed trying to make money, but the CEO's job is not to make them money. If the CEO does his job (running the company) right, they do indeed make money, but that's a side-effect, not the point of his job.
The downside to these responses to #2 and #3 are that the mates then have to be at least somewhat technically competent. As if they aren't, people are going to notice in short order.
Quark? The only place I recognize that name from is layout software, but that can't be right. Are you referring to some other product, or is there finally an open source layout system with a decent UI that's actaully USABLE?
A transfer that, it should be noted, is not sustainable. Those few are using a difference in wealth to concentrate the wealth. Unfortunately, the net result of this is that they're killing their own markets by reducing the number of people who can afford to buy their products. They're intentionally creating a bubble so they can crash it and wind up at the top of the heap and in control.
Yes they would show him to the door, because his job is to make money for the shareholders.
Incorrect. This is a stupid idea that's taken root since the "day trading" craze started, and is promoted by people who are clueless about real economics. The CEO's job is to ensure long-term viability of the company and direct its day-to-day operations. The shareholders make money in that they're invested in a stock that will, over time, yield high returns as the company grows and prospers.
Actually, he doesn't mean "good for our shareholders". He means "good for me". Modern business is all about producing good-looking next-quarter reports and lining the pockets of upper management at the expense of everything else, then using your golden parachute to bail out just before everyone realizes that your "wise moves" have left the company with no long-term future... And that its now the long-term, so it doesn't have a SHORT-TERM future either.
Um... Did you even bother to, you know, read my post?
They didn't add digits, they added another "layer" of counting-types. Our dating system can handle an infinite number of years without any problems. Theirs required that a new layer (like our weeks to months) be added on top each time. And in fact, they had no concept of adding digits to the front of numbers, or at the very least, never bothered to apply it to their years.
The digital representations of our years are, indeed, not infinite. But unless you're a total fuckwit, you'd know that that bears no relation to our actual calendar.
That would be another popular myth about the Mayan calendar, like the myth that the wrap point of the upper-level date is somehow mythologically significant. It isn't, and was never intended to be.
Indeed. Though the question of whether it will have any effect still remains. The judgement was so popular here in Canada that it might well be political suicide to go against it. Unfortunately, the Liberals already stepped off that cliff, though you can bet that the media sure as hell didn't report on it. The CA and the NDP haven't yet...
CAN Diebold appeal this? I know the Supreme Court currently (and Justice Bush-Is-God Scalia in particular) tends to be very business-friendly, states-hostile and... Liberal in their interpretation of the law. So if it does get to them, I have no doubt that they'll rule that CA cannot, in fact, use any voting machines other than Diebold's. But this was a direct order by the (Republican!) CA Secretary of State. I'm not sure Diebold can appeal that.
Or, at the very least, don't they have to work their way up? And thus, the 9th circuit court can refuse to hear the case...
Of course, you then have to prove that this slimebag's company was the one that sent the mail. Which gets to be a little more difficult. A much more productive method would be to use the discovery phase to grab their e-mail address database and search it for stuff like that. Oh, and nail every single means of gathering e-mail addresses they've got with a subpoena while you're at it.
Somehow, this CAN-SPAM law isn't quite what we wanted in an anti-spam law...
No, but its exactly what the spammers wanted.
Of course, the ideal tool would mine the opt-out info from the bottom of the mail, automatically generate an obviously random address to use for an opt-out request, and send it off. Then when that address starts getting spam, I believe you've got what you need to nail the spammer.
Indeed. Having done some digging on this, the Mayans apparently had an incredibly stupid calendar system. Instead of using the concept of "zero as a placeholder" to get infinite years (which I believe they had discovered), they just kept adding more "layers" (like our days/weeks/months/years) on top. The uppermost cycle is only the uppermost because their civilization collapsed before they got to wrap the counter and add another layer on top.
Exactly. The problem isn't that there's the option to install these things. The problem is that they insist on being installed, and try to sneak back in if you find some way to remove them. Or, even worse. provide you with the option but reset it as part of some other, innocuous-looking option later in the setup program. I don't think anyone would object to "spyware" if they really could choose to install it and it was open about what it did.
But the spyware scum rely on the user NOT knowing that its being installed, and not being able to say no.
If you've read the Zahn books and seen the original Trilogy and the Clone Wars shorts, you've seen everything about the setting that matters.
An excellent point. I think that is, however, symptomatic of a host of other problems with modern corporate structure. Sales and management are seen as being all that matters - the purpose of the business, rather than something to further its goals. Why? Because they're what make the short-term company reports look good, which is what makes the short-term stock price good. And since that's all most companies care about...
But that's still private archival purposes, note. And since they were posted as desktop backgrounds, that's still reasonablely within the scope of the implicit license. Using them as stock footage for an advertisment isn't.
Even worse is that its literally impossible to prove your innocence. Any logs you have can be doctored just as easily as the RIAA can doctor their logs, and most courts are going to be a hell of a lot less likely to believe you. If, OTOH, the Judge places a reasonable burden of evidence on the RIAA, it becomes impossible for them to continue their case. (As was done in Canada, and which the Liberal Party has promised to change if they're re-elected.)
(As an aside, WTF was the kid yalking about reqarding his HDTV? I'm pretty sure he didn't create his own CRT or other display device, and all supporting electronics.. that's very difficult from a manufacturing perspective. I would guess that he "made" a HDTV decoder system by plugging in a PCI card from pchdtv.com)
Not the CRT, no. But he is, apparently, an engineering student. Which means that - guess what? - he knows how to do things that you don't. Among these would be assembling electrical hardware using pre-built components at a certain level (IE, not raw transistors) to follow a standard. In this case, the HDTV Broadcast Standard. This sounds, to me, like a fairly reasonable project for a high-level Engineering class.
And Valenti didn't skewer shit. So what if its irrelevant to 99.999% of the people. So are certain kinds of sexual acts. Should those be made illegal too? So are wheelchair ramps. Should those be made illegal? His point is utterly ludicrious, especially when you consider that the 100,000 people who would be interested in and able to make their own HDTV are most likely to be the ones that develop the Next Big Thing. And that, by preventing them from doing so, you're ensuring that the Next Big Thing sure as hell won't come from the United Corporations of America.
And you can bet that, like all the previous announcements about licensed Linux DVD players, its going to evaporate into thin air in a couple of weeks when no-one's looking anymore. In fact, I'm almost willing to bet that was the MPAA's response to this interview. License a Linux DVD player, then stall the rest of the licensing process indefinitely.