lay off the McDonald's case already, it's been said over and over. The woman got severe burns (3rd degree?) from the spilt coffee. We are not talking about discomfort, or a little ouchie. She had to have skin grafts because her legs and groin were so badly burned. She originally sued McDonalds for the the cost of the skin grafts. Certainly that is not unreasonable.
In addition, destroying your own property is not considered arson unless you intend to defraud someone -- if the court had already decided that the insurance company had to pay for the cigars, then it couldn't be arson.
that's exactly what he intended to do silly, defraud the insurance company.
"This man obviously did not study the laws or care enough to find them. This is no different than a used car dealer telling you that a car has never been in a wreck, you find out it's been in 3 front end collisions, and the dealer says that he just didn't know. These are things that the dealer should have known before the car made it to the lot (if he's not lying). "
That situation is not the same. The car dealer is lying. We are talking about a guy who started his own web hosting business not knowing all the details of the law. This man was not a lawyer and should not expected to act as one. His business is web hosting.
Not to say that he shouldn't have stood up and told the fbi to produce something more substantial, he should have.
How can you be required to submit fafsa over the web? There are paper forms readily available. This is flat out wrong. You are filling out the forms for the federal government not your school. You can fill out paper if you want to.
The competition makes for better products argument is a result of free enterprise. When a company's goal is to generate money by selling as much of a product as possible, competition with other companies trying to do the same makes all the difference.
This is probably one of the biggest selling points of capitalism. Greed on the part of the companies benefits the consumer because the companies compete against one another for the customer's dollars, thereby doing what is necessary to get the customer's dollars. note: this is where the bad side of capitalism enters the equation. Companies try to force proprietary standards on consumers to lock in market share.
With open source projects the motivation is different than the big corporation. While market share may play a role in their motivation, it's hard for me to imagine it playing as big of a role as market share for the big corporation.
If I were going to start an open source project, my motivation would be: 1. to create a cool product 2. to challenge myself 3. to learn to program better (just have a couple computer courses on C, yay! I can make a linked list!!!!) 4. hopefully produce something usefull and beneficial to the community
As it turns out there are lots of similarities between acting like a moron in the real world and on the internet. Similar actions have a similar effect. I just can't believe that people went after this guy's customers. That is irresponsilbe and just plain vindictive.
It seems when children are raised in the future we will have to teach them that courtesy in the real world is to be applied to the net, because all the adults today have thrown common sense out the window.
There are good reasons to dislike marketing departments, but they exist for a reason. They exist to sell products, because technology is not enough.
Technology is complicated, expecially cutting edge computer technology. When the majority of consumers don't understand how your product works or even what it does, the marketing department fills the gap with bullshit. There is a pretty big divide between those who understand and those who don't understand computers (and many shades of grey also).
Instead of those of us who know belittling those who don't or bitching about the way the world works, perhaps a more productive attitude should be taken. I'm not addressing you personally, but sometimes geeks tend to have condescending attitudes towards those who don't know and that only furthers the divide and makes more room for marketing bullshit.
Absolutely, you can't assume that person is being paid to say something good. However, it doesn't change the fact that the company is still damaging their reputation and more importantly their crediblity.
Is it just me or is denying someone use of a computer for 3 years some sort of infringement on the individual's rights? Yes he committed a crime. He is being punished for this already. I'm a bit confused as to how it is legal for a judge to forbid someone from using a computer.
Is someone who steals from a convenience store forbidden from shopping in a store after they get out from prison?
Are there other examples where someone who commits a crime can be denied freedoms after they serve a prison sentence?
Exactly, all mass media seems to be like that. They admit the truth in fine print, but don't actually make an effort to get it out to the readers. Of course to be fair, When newspapers are competing for eyeballs i guess the headlines can't be "we f'ed up yesterday."
"Actually, an _equivalently clocked_ PPC G4 outperforms an Alpha."
This seems like a good argument, but all processors cannot just be manufactured at the same clock speed. The design of the microprocessor not only affects how much work you can get done in a clock cycle, it also affects how high you can clock a processor. Alpha's are highly pipelined which if I understand correctly actually decreases (sometimes? always?) the work done per clock cycle, and the length of each clock cycle, resulting in higher Mhz.
This is pure SWAG (scientific wild assed guessing), but decreasing capacitence would be a good thing. As capacitance decreases, the time to charge that capacitor would decrease also. For memory circuits this would decrease the time to write and read bits. I believe in CPU's there are problems with stray capacitance, which if it were reduced, seems like it would allow the chip to be operated at a higher frequency.
It seems like the difference between your examples and UPS is that UPS is selling insurance to customers. The article also stated that selling insurance without a license violated the Corrupt Activities Act in Ohio. Although from the customers point of view this was all basically irrelevant.
I know at least one friend who did in fact play hardcore sims as a child. That doesn't change much though. Very very few kids are going to sit down and spend hours reading about radar systems, control systems, infrared cameras. How many children are going to read a chapter about the nuances of lift in the Apache Longbow helicopter. That is what is required to really play a Jane's simulation. Kids aren't even close to the target audience of Jane's games. Have you ever played a Jane's game? Playing legos or reading or programming computers are done by children because they enjoy it and it is stimulating. I really don't believe that many of those kids are willing to take on the learning curve of a Jane's games. It is a very steep learning curve.
That's not to say no child would be willing to do it and be successful. I would argue that s/he should be encouraged if s/he were interested.
Anyway, Jane's sims are hardly a bad influence on children, but they are hardly directed at children either.
Janes does not make games for kids. They do not market their games for kids.
Furthermore, what kid would want to play a Jane's simulation? A buddy of mine is a huge sim fan. He's gotten me to try a couple of Jane's games. They require a long attention span and lots of attention to detail. What kid is going to play that kind of video game? How many kids would sit down and read through a manual that is over a hundred(!) pages long? This is just plain stupidity. Truthfully we shouldn't even care, I doubt Janes does. Janes doesn't make sims for kids.
forgive me if this is stupid, but isn't this how IRC works? A bunch of servers that send info back and forth to each other in real time. So one person logged into one server can see a message posted by another person on another server?
This sounds like it would be a Good Thing for instant messaging.
On another note I basically agree that AOL servers should only be able to be accessed by AOL's members, but essentially wasn't this what Microsoft was trying to do? AOL's beef is that they want their software used, not microsoft's. That is perfectly reasonable for AOL to want that, but as a consumer I don't really want that.
Slashdot Mirror
lay off the McDonald's case already, it's been said over and over. The woman got severe burns (3rd degree?) from the spilt coffee. We are not talking about discomfort, or a little ouchie. She had to have skin grafts because her legs and groin were so badly burned. She originally sued McDonalds for the the cost of the skin grafts. Certainly that is not unreasonable.
In addition, destroying your own property is not considered arson unless you intend to defraud someone -- if the court had already decided that the insurance company had to pay for the cigars, then it couldn't be arson.
that's exactly what he intended to do silly, defraud the insurance company.
Perhaps he is just trying to prove a point...
"This man obviously did not study the laws or care enough to find them. This is no different than a used car dealer telling you that a car has never been in a wreck, you find out it's been in 3 front end collisions, and the dealer says that he just didn't know. These are things that the dealer should have known before the car made it to the lot (if he's not lying). "
That situation is not the same. The car dealer is lying. We are talking about a guy who started his own web hosting business not knowing all the details of the law. This man was not a lawyer and should not expected to act as one. His business is web hosting.
Not to say that he shouldn't have stood up and told the fbi to produce something more substantial, he should have.
How can you be required to submit fafsa over the web? There are paper forms readily available. This is flat out wrong. You are filling out the forms for the federal government not your school. You can fill out paper if you want to.
Police being kept in check by the courts? sounds like the United States.
The logic is that people jumped to conclusions without learning all the facts or even trying to.
The competition makes for better products argument is a result of free enterprise. When a company's goal is to generate money by selling as much of a product as possible, competition with other companies trying to do the same makes all the difference.
This is probably one of the biggest selling points of capitalism. Greed on the part of the companies benefits the consumer because the companies compete against one another for the customer's dollars, thereby doing what is necessary to get the customer's dollars. note: this is where the bad side of capitalism enters the equation. Companies try to force proprietary standards on consumers to lock in market share.
With open source projects the motivation is different than the big corporation. While market share may play a role in their motivation, it's hard for me to imagine it playing as big of a role as market share for the big corporation.
If I were going to start an open source project, my motivation would be:
1. to create a cool product
2. to challenge myself
3. to learn to program better (just have a couple computer courses on C, yay! I can make a linked list!!!!)
4. hopefully produce something usefull and beneficial to the community
As it turns out there are lots of similarities between acting like a moron in the real world and on the internet. Similar actions have a similar effect. I just can't believe that people went after this guy's customers. That is irresponsilbe and just plain vindictive.
It seems when children are raised in the future we will have to teach them that courtesy in the real world is to be applied to the net, because all the adults today have thrown common sense out the window.
I remember when I was studying US history here at school thinking how paranoid the men who founded our country were. It worked.
The point is that if we, collectively, all reject any and all breaches of privacy, then we stand a fighting chance in the future.
It's always nice to hear personal and "real world" experience.
Thanks sgml4kids
Trying...Trying...Trying not to respond..damn here it goes.
"Those who reject God have, in so doing, rejected the only valid basis for morality in the world."
I'm just curious why you think that those who reject your basis for morality must have no morality?
I'm also curious as to what words were spoken by Jesus Christ encouraging his followers to murder those who rejected him or his teachings?
I agree, my main point was that marketing bs works because the consumer doesn't know better.
There are good reasons to dislike marketing departments, but they exist for a reason. They exist to sell products, because technology is not enough.
Technology is complicated, expecially cutting edge computer technology. When the majority of consumers don't understand how your product works or even what it does, the marketing department fills the gap with bullshit. There is a pretty big divide between those who understand and those who don't understand computers (and many shades of grey also).
Instead of those of us who know belittling those who don't or bitching about the way the world works, perhaps a more productive attitude should be taken. I'm not addressing you personally, but sometimes geeks tend to have condescending attitudes towards those who don't know and that only furthers the divide and makes more room for marketing bullshit.
Absolutely, you can't assume that person is being paid to say something good. However, it doesn't change the fact that the company is still damaging their reputation and more importantly their crediblity.
Is it just me or is denying someone use of a computer for 3 years some sort of infringement on the individual's rights? Yes he committed a crime. He is being punished for this already. I'm a bit confused as to how it is legal for a judge to forbid someone from using a computer.
Is someone who steals from a convenience store forbidden from shopping in a store after they get out from prison?
Are there other examples where someone who commits a crime can be denied freedoms after they serve a prison sentence?
Exactly, all mass media seems to be like that. They admit the truth in fine print, but don't actually make an effort to get it out to the readers. Of course to be fair, When newspapers are competing for eyeballs i guess the headlines can't be "we f'ed up yesterday."
Why would a written gaurantee to the consumer be required?
"Actually, an _equivalently clocked_ PPC G4 outperforms an Alpha."
This seems like a good argument, but all processors cannot just be manufactured at the same clock speed. The design of the microprocessor not only affects how much work you can get done in a clock cycle, it also affects how high you can clock a processor. Alpha's are highly pipelined which if I understand correctly actually decreases (sometimes? always?) the work done per clock cycle, and the length of each clock cycle, resulting in higher Mhz.
This is pure SWAG (scientific wild assed guessing), but decreasing capacitence would be a good thing. As capacitance decreases, the time to charge that capacitor would decrease also. For memory circuits this would decrease the time to write and read bits. I believe in CPU's there are problems with stray capacitance, which if it were reduced, seems like it would allow the chip to be operated at a higher frequency.
how would you be able to walk in an arbitrary direction though?
It seems like the difference between your examples and UPS is that UPS is selling insurance to customers. The article also stated that selling insurance without a license violated the Corrupt Activities Act in Ohio. Although from the customers point of view this was all basically irrelevant.
I know at least one friend who did in fact play hardcore sims as a child. That doesn't change much though. Very very few kids are going to sit down and spend hours reading about radar systems, control systems, infrared cameras. How many children are going to read a chapter about the nuances of lift in the Apache Longbow helicopter. That is what is required to really play a Jane's simulation. Kids aren't even close to the target audience of Jane's games.
Have you ever played a Jane's game? Playing legos or reading or programming computers are done by children because they enjoy it and it is stimulating. I really don't believe that many of those kids are willing to take on the learning curve of a Jane's games. It is a very steep learning curve.
That's not to say no child would be willing to do it and be successful. I would argue that s/he should be encouraged if s/he were interested.
Anyway, Jane's sims are hardly a bad influence on children, but they are hardly directed at children either.
Janes does not make games for kids. They do not market their games for kids.
Furthermore, what kid would want to play a Jane's simulation? A buddy of mine is a huge sim fan. He's gotten me to try a couple of Jane's games. They require a long attention span and lots of attention to detail. What kid is going to play that kind of video game? How many kids would sit down and read through a manual that is over a hundred(!) pages long? This is just plain stupidity. Truthfully we shouldn't even care, I doubt Janes does. Janes doesn't make sims for kids.
forgive me if this is stupid, but isn't this how IRC works? A bunch of servers that send info back and forth to each other in real time. So one person logged into one server can see a message posted by another person on another server?
This sounds like it would be a Good Thing for instant messaging.
On another note I basically agree that AOL servers should only be able to be accessed by AOL's members, but essentially wasn't this what Microsoft was trying to do? AOL's beef is that they want their software used, not microsoft's. That is perfectly reasonable for AOL to want that, but as a consumer I don't really want that.