It's up to the legislative branch to make laws, and the executive branch to veto them when they're unreasonable.
The judicial branch just enforces them.
The problem here is that our legislators (and executive) are and have for some time been under the complete control of corporations.
The major parties throw around some contentious religious BS like abortion and gay marriage, and then do whatever the hell their sponsors pay them to do. The vote is determined by the nonsense issues, not by actual legislator performance on any real issues.
I know people who employ that strategy. They spend more on repairs and tow trucks/AAA than what a brand new car would cost per month. AND they have a shitty car that leaves them stranded frequently. There's value to reliability and comfort.
The sweet spot is probably somwehere around a $10,000 few-years-old car, most likely. Still has a lot of miles left in it, reliable, possibly still under warranty. Will last 10 years instead of 0.5-2 years.
IT workers might subconsciously be giving themselves more challenges by choosing to deal with difficult problems
Unfortunately the reality is that many IT workers choose to implement complex solutions to simple problems, rather than taking on more responsibility or approaching genuinely harder problems.
That be common practice for everyone, and policy at every company. At least half of the companies I've worked for had similar policies in place. Enforcement, however, is notoriously spotty.
One company "reminded" everyone (for the first time) after a potential client tested them. The client was able to gain access to the building just by walking in behind another employee. Needless to say, that security-conscious client was a lost sale.
There is nothing inherently benign about lying to gain access to a building or to information. Depending on the building and the information, it can be extremely serious!
Verifying authority on a cell phone is rarely going to take more time than you can spare. Especially if it's a smart phone where you can quickly look up the authoritative phone number to call, or even check on the webpage itself.
If you'll do anything someone tells you to just because they put "or you're going to die" at the end of their request, or preface it with "I'm in authority, trust me", you're going to get taken advantage of by scammers and "pranksters" like those in the article.
In life or death situations you'll have to make a judgement call based on what's being requested and what evidence there is around (like a fire truck) to support their claim of authority.
The more common situation is that you're at work and someone calls making some claim of authority and requesting information, or knocks on the door claiming to be an HVAC tech your boss requested. They most certainly can wait while you verify their claim. The problem is that it's rare for anyone outside of a security industry to make that basic effort to verify people's non-urgent claims to authority.
It's not really that easy in either direction. Trust in society is a good thing, blind trust is not.
The biggest difference between the two are verifying your sources. If a guy comes to your door claiming to be the police and asking to be let in, do you trust that he's the police and let him in?
Or do you ask to see his badge and call the department to verify it's really him?
Or at least do something in-between, like talk to him outside instead of letting him in (without a warrant)?
Most of us, myself included, would let him in just based on his clothes and acting like he belongs there. With the internet and smart phones though, is there any good reason NOT to verify unusual claims?
He probably wants to try to circumvent the Kindle and get these people to switch to subscribing directly with him (cutting amazon out entirely).
If amazon says "no" it'll be funny to see him pull the WSJ off the Kindle, very effectively killing off one of the few sets of people who actually WERE convinced to pay for digital news content.
I'm sure those people will be happy to find a competing newspaper to subscribe to or read for free online (on their kindle) in its place.
They're not going to release the game without the (apparently core) functionality that requires battle.net for SC2 online play.
Also I think the article is exaggerating a bit. They're already planning to do 3 SC2 games (or game + 2 expansions) because they have so much work to do. Just because some of the basic game tech is done doesn't mean the 3 campaigns of single player content are done. They definitely aren't.
No, it IS a valid point, but you're also correct. LAN parties in person are still fun whether you have bad internet or not. I still have LAN parties with friends.
You CAN still have LAN parties with Starcraft 2 though, so it's NOT a (entirely) valid point. The only difference is people have to own the game to play it. In the highly-networked world of today with roommates and entire dorm rooms being networked together on a LAN, not allowing for free LAN play is understandable.
I always thought the benefit to Blizzard of allowing LAN play was that it got people playing their game with their friends in restricted circumstances. Then they went and bought it to play at home. I'm sure Blizzard is still going to have some sort of demo for Starcraft 2, even if they don't open up their full game for "free play" on LANs.
When Google "took over" search they didn't have massively deep financial pockets or huge revenue. The other search providers (including Microsoft, of all people) very much DID have those things.
All it requires to take over search is a better search algorithm. People can switch search providers trivially. Microsoft is using their OS and browser monopoly to try to force everyone onto their search provider every time they get a new PC or download a new browser version. Every internet providers set your homepage to a non-google search portal.
The deck is stacked against Google. Nothing is forcing people to use Google search. People choose it because it's the best search experience out there.
(I don't know much about the advertising end of things however, except I know that just like search there is a lot of other internet advertising out there, so I can't imagine you could call them a monopoly)
the fate of all diseases and all parasites is equilibrium with its hosts. it does no good to kill off your host so quickly there's no retransmission.
That's very optimistic of you, but not at all how nature works. Yes, for a slow-enough action things will balance out. But there's nothing in nature to prevent a fast-spreading disease from wiping out an entire population.
The same is true of predators. A pack of wolves WILL eat the deer population to extinction in an area, and then go extinct itself if it can't find other meat. The wolves don't take a regular population tally and decide to cut back on meat and reproducing until the deer repopulate.
The best hope is that some deer manage to evade the wolves and repopulate while the wolves are starving to death and reproducing less.
Copyright only applies to *distribution* of copies....right? IANAL XD
I can backup a CD in my home or rip it to MP3s onto my iPod. There's nothing illegal going on until I start trying to sell or give away copies of the CD, or sharing the MP3s on a p2p network.
You hit on the reason yourself - digital copies are not "stolen goods", and none of the laws involved are the ones that apply to "stolen goods".
In fact, this is true even of paper copies, not just digital ones. Paper copies without permission violate copyright law, but were not in any way stolen from the copyright holder.
For example, it would be perfectly legal for a publisher to make 100,000 copies of 1984 and hold them in a warehouse until the copyright is up, and THEN sell those copies. It's only if they sell those copies before the content is in the public domain that they're violating the law.
Oddly enough, Amazon isn't even the one who sold it illegally, to be pedantic. AFAIK it was another publisher who was selling it *through* Amazon for the Kindle, and hence that publisher should have had full responsibility for compensating the real copyright holder.
Why in the world did Amazon do this instead of requiring the publisher who violated copyright law to pay their fines?
My guess is it had to do with contract negotiations between Amazon and one (or both) of these publishers.
Copyright violator threatened to pull all of their books off amazon/kindle if they had to pay the fine for the illegal copies
Or the real copyright holder threatened to pull all works off amazon/kindle if Amazon didn't use its tech (that they probably bragged about to encourage publishers to sell on the kindle) to delete the illegal copies.
Perhaps Amazon was even being proactive to "show" publishers how great the Kindle's DRM was, to encourage more publishers to join the Kindle club.
But at least Amazon fessed up that they shouldn't have done it. Now they can put their money where their mouth is and help this student set a precedent that such functionality should be entirely illegal.
Mod parent up, absolutely right. The only people who should be surprised when their DRMed media stop working should be the people who have no clue the media has DRM on it in the first place. And we should be educating those people and warning them not to buy DRM encumbered media.
Really, laws should have been passed several years back requiring much more explicit notification of restrictions. It's no OK to market DRM-encumbered music as a normal permanent copy of the media, when in fact it's being treated as a temporary single-device license.
It doesn't matter how smart you think you are, whether it's crunch time, or anything else -- if you're that rude at a real job, you should be fired.
Assholes like that give programmers a bad name. They're are also the reason that many companies have gotten in the habit of "hiding" their developers from the rest of the company and users.
There are both legitimate and illegitimate scenarios on both sides -- if you're in the passing lane with no one in front of you, you're a moron, and even worse if you "block" someone from passing.
But there are also plenty of scenarios where traffic is dense and the passing lane is already blocked. When a reckless driver is trying to weave in and out of very small gaps in traffic in this scenario, it's very dangerous. "Blocking" that driver may actually be the safest thing to do.
I'd go so far as to say that reckless drivers who tailgate are the ones that cause both traffic jams AND many accidents. If people weren't afraid of some jerk cutting them off to get 1 space ahead in already-dense traffic, people would not follow so close together that they trigger and prolong traffic jams.
Slashdot Mirror
It's up to the legislative branch to make laws, and the executive branch to veto them when they're unreasonable.
The judicial branch just enforces them.
The problem here is that our legislators (and executive) are and have for some time been under the complete control of corporations.
The major parties throw around some contentious religious BS like abortion and gay marriage, and then do whatever the hell their sponsors pay them to do. The vote is determined by the nonsense issues, not by actual legislator performance on any real issues.
I strongly disagree.
I know people who employ that strategy. They spend more on repairs and tow trucks/AAA than what a brand new car would cost per month. AND they have a shitty car that leaves them stranded frequently. There's value to reliability and comfort.
The sweet spot is probably somwehere around a $10,000 few-years-old car, most likely. Still has a lot of miles left in it, reliable, possibly still under warranty. Will last 10 years instead of 0.5-2 years.
1e6 != 1^6
1e6 = 1,000,000 = 1 million
Double checked on a scientific calculator.
IT workers might subconsciously be giving themselves more challenges by choosing to deal with difficult problems
Unfortunately the reality is that many IT workers choose to implement complex solutions to simple problems, rather than taking on more responsibility or approaching genuinely harder problems.
Ok, I'll bite. Why would Chrome ever be "required to support IE"?
I assume Microsoft would be capable of writing IE for Chrome if they felt like doing so.
I've gotten those in the USA too. I suspect banks may have more specific laws that require them to do so.
(because obviously no corporation would do this out of the kindness of their hearts, sadly)
I don't think we're disagreeing - my main point is that verifying authority should be more commonplace than it currently is in our society.
Basically the tips listed here:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0729091ocsheriffbull2.html
That be common practice for everyone, and policy at every company. At least half of the companies I've worked for had similar policies in place. Enforcement, however, is notoriously spotty.
One company "reminded" everyone (for the first time) after a potential client tested them. The client was able to gain access to the building just by walking in behind another employee. Needless to say, that security-conscious client was a lost sale.
There is nothing inherently benign about lying to gain access to a building or to information. Depending on the building and the information, it can be extremely serious!
Verifying authority on a cell phone is rarely going to take more time than you can spare. Especially if it's a smart phone where you can quickly look up the authoritative phone number to call, or even check on the webpage itself.
If you'll do anything someone tells you to just because they put "or you're going to die" at the end of their request, or preface it with "I'm in authority, trust me", you're going to get taken advantage of by scammers and "pranksters" like those in the article.
In life or death situations you'll have to make a judgement call based on what's being requested and what evidence there is around (like a fire truck) to support their claim of authority.
The more common situation is that you're at work and someone calls making some claim of authority and requesting information, or knocks on the door claiming to be an HVAC tech your boss requested. They most certainly can wait while you verify their claim. The problem is that it's rare for anyone outside of a security industry to make that basic effort to verify people's non-urgent claims to authority.
It's not really that easy in either direction. Trust in society is a good thing, blind trust is not.
The biggest difference between the two are verifying your sources. If a guy comes to your door claiming to be the police and asking to be let in, do you trust that he's the police and let him in?
Or do you ask to see his badge and call the department to verify it's really him?
Or at least do something in-between, like talk to him outside instead of letting him in (without a warrant)?
Most of us, myself included, would let him in just based on his clothes and acting like he belongs there. With the internet and smart phones though, is there any good reason NOT to verify unusual claims?
He probably wants to try to circumvent the Kindle and get these people to switch to subscribing directly with him (cutting amazon out entirely).
If amazon says "no" it'll be funny to see him pull the WSJ off the Kindle, very effectively killing off one of the few sets of people who actually WERE convinced to pay for digital news content.
I'm sure those people will be happy to find a competing newspaper to subscribe to or read for free online (on their kindle) in its place.
They're not going to release the game without the (apparently core) functionality that requires battle.net for SC2 online play.
Also I think the article is exaggerating a bit. They're already planning to do 3 SC2 games (or game + 2 expansions) because they have so much work to do. Just because some of the basic game tech is done doesn't mean the 3 campaigns of single player content are done. They definitely aren't.
A huge number of people in the military play WOW from Iraq, so I suspect the OP is lying anyway to try to make a point.
No, it IS a valid point, but you're also correct. LAN parties in person are still fun whether you have bad internet or not. I still have LAN parties with friends.
You CAN still have LAN parties with Starcraft 2 though, so it's NOT a (entirely) valid point. The only difference is people have to own the game to play it. In the highly-networked world of today with roommates and entire dorm rooms being networked together on a LAN, not allowing for free LAN play is understandable.
I always thought the benefit to Blizzard of allowing LAN play was that it got people playing their game with their friends in restricted circumstances. Then they went and bought it to play at home. I'm sure Blizzard is still going to have some sort of demo for Starcraft 2, even if they don't open up their full game for "free play" on LANs.
When Google "took over" search they didn't have massively deep financial pockets or huge revenue. The other search providers (including Microsoft, of all people) very much DID have those things.
All it requires to take over search is a better search algorithm. People can switch search providers trivially. Microsoft is using their OS and browser monopoly to try to force everyone onto their search provider every time they get a new PC or download a new browser version. Every internet providers set your homepage to a non-google search portal.
The deck is stacked against Google. Nothing is forcing people to use Google search. People choose it because it's the best search experience out there.
(I don't know much about the advertising end of things however, except I know that just like search there is a lot of other internet advertising out there, so I can't imagine you could call them a monopoly)
Where is it that Google has a monopoly again?
Are you saying they have a monopoly on search and used it to unfairly take over the online advertising market?
I'm not sure those two are linked in any way by Google, except that Google Search itself happens to use Google's own advertising.
Which is going to live longer, the Mars Rover or IE 6
>.
the fate of all diseases and all parasites is equilibrium with its hosts. it does no good to kill off your host so quickly there's no retransmission.
That's very optimistic of you, but not at all how nature works. Yes, for a slow-enough action things will balance out. But there's nothing in nature to prevent a fast-spreading disease from wiping out an entire population.
The same is true of predators. A pack of wolves WILL eat the deer population to extinction in an area, and then go extinct itself if it can't find other meat. The wolves don't take a regular population tally and decide to cut back on meat and reproducing until the deer repopulate.
The best hope is that some deer manage to evade the wolves and repopulate while the wolves are starving to death and reproducing less.
Copyright only applies to *distribution* of copies. ...right? IANAL XD
I can backup a CD in my home or rip it to MP3s onto my iPod. There's nothing illegal going on until I start trying to sell or give away copies of the CD, or sharing the MP3s on a p2p network.
You hit on the reason yourself - digital copies are not "stolen goods", and none of the laws involved are the ones that apply to "stolen goods".
In fact, this is true even of paper copies, not just digital ones. Paper copies without permission violate copyright law, but were not in any way stolen from the copyright holder.
For example, it would be perfectly legal for a publisher to make 100,000 copies of 1984 and hold them in a warehouse until the copyright is up, and THEN sell those copies. It's only if they sell those copies before the content is in the public domain that they're violating the law.
Oddly enough, Amazon isn't even the one who sold it illegally, to be pedantic. AFAIK it was another publisher who was selling it *through* Amazon for the Kindle, and hence that publisher should have had full responsibility for compensating the real copyright holder.
Why in the world did Amazon do this instead of requiring the publisher who violated copyright law to pay their fines?
My guess is it had to do with contract negotiations between Amazon and one (or both) of these publishers.
Copyright violator threatened to pull all of their books off amazon/kindle if they had to pay the fine for the illegal copies
Or the real copyright holder threatened to pull all works off amazon/kindle if Amazon didn't use its tech (that they probably bragged about to encourage publishers to sell on the kindle) to delete the illegal copies.
Perhaps Amazon was even being proactive to "show" publishers how great the Kindle's DRM was, to encourage more publishers to join the Kindle club.
But at least Amazon fessed up that they shouldn't have done it. Now they can put their money where their mouth is and help this student set a precedent that such functionality should be entirely illegal.
THIS
We gotta convince the content industry there's DRM on Mars
They foot the bill for space exploration, AND we get to kick them off the planet.
Mod parent up, absolutely right. The only people who should be surprised when their DRMed media stop working should be the people who have no clue the media has DRM on it in the first place. And we should be educating those people and warning them not to buy DRM encumbered media.
Really, laws should have been passed several years back requiring much more explicit notification of restrictions. It's no OK to market DRM-encumbered music as a normal permanent copy of the media, when in fact it's being treated as a temporary single-device license.
Absolutely not.
It doesn't matter how smart you think you are, whether it's crunch time, or anything else -- if you're that rude at a real job, you should be fired.
Assholes like that give programmers a bad name. They're are also the reason that many companies have gotten in the habit of "hiding" their developers from the rest of the company and users.
There are both legitimate and illegitimate scenarios on both sides -- if you're in the passing lane with no one in front of you, you're a moron, and even worse if you "block" someone from passing.
But there are also plenty of scenarios where traffic is dense and the passing lane is already blocked. When a reckless driver is trying to weave in and out of very small gaps in traffic in this scenario, it's very dangerous. "Blocking" that driver may actually be the safest thing to do.
I'd go so far as to say that reckless drivers who tailgate are the ones that cause both traffic jams AND many accidents. If people weren't afraid of some jerk cutting them off to get 1 space ahead in already-dense traffic, people would not follow so close together that they trigger and prolong traffic jams.