I have heard an axiom somewhere that each pissed off customer costs a company either 7 or 13 additional lost sales due to "word getting around."
My girlfriend recently bought a CD at a concert; the disc was copy-protected. In the process of ripping our entire collection to mp3 after I accidentally busted one of my albums in half (don't ask) I came across this travesty.
It took me all of 5 minutes to figure out that it was EAC and how to get around it (yes yes, I know, but I'd never dealt with it before). It took me 10 minutes to write a nastygram to the head of EMI Germany's copy protection consumer relations thingamabob that I would never buy another EMI product again, that I would recommend all my friends do the same, and that their "technology" doesn't work anyway.
I earn a reasonable amount of money, more than enough to not have to worry about clipping coupons, but on the other hand I dislike paying more than I have to on things.
That said, I am very often willing to pay a premium for convenience. So, I go to two kinds of shops, depending on mood, time available, need, etc.:
(1) the deep discount rock bottom type place; I expect no service or knowledgeable staff, I don't intend to return the product (as I know I'll probably get screwed); this applies for most PC-related stuff I buy.
(2) is the type of place I go to to buy suits, furniture, and consumer goods about which I know a reasonable amount, but where it's not just a quick in-out-finish. I want to be greeted with a smile, served coffee, and not given any bullshit, then thanked and shown the door.
I will not tolerate any crossing over--i.e. deep-discount places that try to actively fuck me over or act arrogant and above its station--there are plenty of others down the road. Nor will I suffer an expensive shop that's snooty and does not pay attention to me as a customer.
If I, at any point, get the feeling that I may be treated with suspicion, arrogance, or any other nasties like this, I just go elsewhere. If it's really bad, I let the manager know it and walk out. It costs me nothing but a tiny bit of time.
Ok, sorry--I was unclear. It was a lot faster than an equivalently priced Soekris board. Should probably have said cheaper OR faster. The only Soekris I have played with wasn't Geode-based, rather some sort of odd 133mhz cpu.
That said, coming from one vendor I talked to woh moved from Soekris to WRAP, they said that both Soren (Soekris) and Pascal (PCEngines) were incredibly strange guys:-)
M0n0's great--the guy who wrote it is a 21 year old Swiss kid named Manuel Kasper. He's an incredibly impressive guy, very humble and nice. I think he'll go pretty far. And the thing is really polished for an open source product that hasn't gotten that much PR so far.
Just for yuks, you might want to consider M0n0wall. I'm evaluating it for a client right now, and it's very impressive (BSD-based with a good PHP interface.) I'm running it on a PCEngines WRAP 1C-2 board (cheaper & faster than Soekris) and it works a charm (I ditched my cantankerous PC firewall for this a while ago.)
Re:American cliche's redux
on
Press freedom
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· Score: 1
I didn't think anyone ever hated us...we are warm and cuddly and just want to be loved!
Although to be sure, my pop's officer training manuals from the 1970s had Warsaw Pact & NATO ordnance listed side by side, I never figured what to make of that *-8)
One thing that I really appreciate (I'm actually a dual CH-US citizen) is that Europeans have grown a lot more differentiated in their views towards the US. I remember how, when Reagan was putting Pershing missiles in Germany, every pseudo-intellectual and his dog here would rant about "you Americans!" at the drop of a hat (my mom taught English at a secondary school here, so I got a lot of that shit from her loony colleagues). You rarely see that anymore, at least not outright loathing of Americans--just the occasional kneejerk reactions or "oh jeez what the hell were they thinking"...
Re:Reason why the Swiss are #1
on
Press freedom
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Idiot. Does the fact that Generali did this during WWII make Italians a bunch of prevaricating thugs?
Does the fact that German companies refused to honor a bunch of claims mean they haven't renounced their goose-stepping nazi ways as a nation?
Does the fact that certain slashdot users spout ignorant generalizations make them all a bunch of cretins? Hardly.
I'm Swiss, and I didn't collude to hide anything, certain banks in my country did, and they (a) paid for their actions and (b) did not have a lot of popular support here (some fairly demagoguerish lawsuits by one Ed Fagan whipping up ignorant Fox news viewers in the US didn't help things much.)
Soooooo, as I do not consider myself to be living in a glass house, I will continue to throw stones and hold others to the same high standards to which I hold myself and my compatriots.
Re:American cliche's redux
on
Press freedom
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· Score: 1
Well, a lot of the (not hatred but) general "bad vibes" came from Stuart Eizenstat's report, followed closely by some high-profile class action litigation from Ed Fagan.
The Swiss (I am one, so I get to say this) are not as good at standing up for themselves and claiming the moral high ground. For example, with the whole holocaust thing, our banks should have said "we fucked up, we're sorry, let us make good" and that would have been the end of it.
Likewise, we are currently under enormous pressure from the EU to join; a lot of people, including myself, believe that this is a dig at the enormous amounts of money bunkered in Swiss banks by people avoiding taxes in EU countries, and an attempt to get those moneys (a) taxed and (b) back into circulation. Once again, the government, people and banks are procrastinating, taking a "welll, maybe we can negotiate" approach when they should just stand by their guns.
Swiss people aren't taught to see things in black & white (believe it or not, often this is a very good thing about your typical American), and to stick by their principles no matter what. This means that we lose respect internationally, and often end up looking pretty pathetic when a simple strong word would have cut off discussion early.
Switzerland actually received a (very) clean bill of health from the US treasury a while ago regarding cooperation in tracking down and eliminating money laundering and terrorist funds, funny enough, but nobody here seems to be waving this as a major argument and saying "hey, looky here, we're pretty cool, actually."
What's currently unfortunate is that there is a tremendous amount of animosity towards the US government (thankfully, the abovementioned Swiss inability to think in an undifferentiated manner also means that you rarely have a blanket dislike of a country like the US, rather of its government) when, given US-EU tensions and Swiss-EU tensions, this should be one of the most valuable relationships for both countries on this issue...Oh well.
And by the way, newspapers here are either terriblly garish or murderously dull. I subscribe to the IHT:)
I have an old Packard-Bell (woo, brand name!) Pentium 120 standing around, since I replaced it as my firewall with a PCEngines box running M0n0wall. Runs FreeBSD beautifully, and you get not one, but three network cards with it.
Provided someone comes and picks it up, that is. This great product comes for the low low price of...nothing!
All this, and I'll even throw in a keyboard, mouse and 15" CRT monitor. And for a limited time only, I'll include a set of FreeBSD boot floppies. One caller only, special offer expires...as soon as someone takes the f'ing thing away.
Man, ratings (of anything) are annoying, having kept me out of countless educational films before I reached 18, but banning something based on a rating is just downright wrong.
I think I'll personally buy and ship a copy of HL2 to anyone in Australia braindead enough not to be able to order it abroad.
Yes, and in several of those "reasonable" parts of the world you're SOL when it comes to the most effective way of dealing with companies that follow dodgy business practices: vote with your feet and your wallet.
And yes, I do live in one of those "reasonable" parts of the world. We have a strong data protection law. On the other hand, if my rental agents commit horseshit, standard, legally defensible rental contracts here specify a 3 month notice period, 2 months deposit, and only two cancellation dates per year.
I won't argue whether solving these problems by having strong competition or strong legislation is better, but don't make the mistake of thinking that absence of one means absence of the other.
If, as I assume, by "sensible part of the world" you mean "Europe", there are profound cultural differences in how economic responsibility and individual ability to take action outside of recourse to government regulation are viewed.
And, funny enough, if you'd read that article, you'd find out that someone in America could and did vote for someone who DOESN'T support these stupid lame pro-big-corporation IP laws.
Whoever modded this offtopic is a cretin--he's right in the particular situation he refers to, but my initial analogy still holds.
And I like the "countermeasures" technique--unfortunately, any such concept applied to p2p networks will end up causing the same sort of shit as the RIAA flooding the airwaves with the eqiuvalent of "10--Like_a_virgin.mp3" that's nothing more than Madonna cussing out p1r8z (1)--i.e. dropping the SNR pretty substantially.
(1) the new, MPAA anti-pirate version has far more artistic merit than the original.
"Gee sorry, Mrs. Smith, but the officer who shot your dog made a human error. It happens; hey, everyone has a bad day occasionally."
What a crock of shit. IANAL and I haven't really thought through the consequences, but while "stealing" a song may or may not be wrong (let's not go into that argument), its net effect per incident on the "owner" is economically small. Conversely, hitting grandma with a $10k pay-up-sucka-or-we-sic-Joey-da-lawyer-on-you blackmail job, per inicident, has a relatively high economic impact on the target. Think speeding fines in Finland, commensurate with the level of your personal income and wealth.
When someone's committed a crime (once again, without going into whether this is really justifiable as such or not), punishment appropriate to the level of the crime is, well, appropriate. Speed, pay a fine. Kill, go to jail. Usually, even if it's "by mistake".
Governments, as enforcers of law & order authorized as such by the population of a commonwealth (yet again, please don't go into this argument, I think this is a fairly neutral way of putting it) will usually get away with making mistakes as a whole, even if the individual cop who shot Mrs. Smith's dog may suffer personal consequences. Restitution may be in order to the victim, but not consequences as such for the government as a whole.
Private entities have no such privilege of authority. I kill your dog, I probably must make some sort of amends to you personally, as well as suffer possible consequences to myself personally.
Soooo...taking this a step further, when someone's not done anything and is wrongly hit up for restitution for his supposed wrongdoing by a pack of malicious, thoughtless, greedy and unethical baboons (**AA for starts), they should be punished personally. As I would be if I nailed the Smith pooch, even by accident, and be forced to pay restitution appropriate to (a) the level of the wrongdoing committed, and (b) the relative level of nastiness of the wrongdoing.
In this situation, the corporate thuggery, racketeering, blackmail, bullying and generally being a slobbering pack of cunts (not a crime, although it should be) makes for a pretty awful bit of work.
In short, make the fuckers pay. Every time they "have a bad day". Through the nose. With criminal lawsuits and prison if possible.
Wrap it up reeeaaal tight and good, and slap a plaque on it with a couple of stick figures making 'peace' signs, an abstract representation of human DNA, and a model of the solar system, give it a good swift kick and voila. You have a poor man's Voyager!
Only problem would be if all that excreta and broken electronic junk somehow evolved, creating a bionic life form and coming back to haunt us a few hundred years from now as the Son of V'ger...
"Now that we have the capability to launch our 400 pound orbital death ray satellite and its one man crew into orbit, the nations of the world must give us....one...*hushed intake of breath*...million...*shocked stares*...dollars!"
I mean, c'mon, what good is technology if you can't use it for evil.
First, your opinions about the behavior of a state are irrelevant....
Hardly. My opinions may be functionally irrelevant, as are those of a customer of a large enough company which chooses to ignore consumer complaints about shitty service. However, we have enough examples throughout history of both companies and states/governments which failed because they choose to ignore the opinions of the masses of "dimestore philosophers."
Your generalizations show an assumption that I am a short-pantsed yob, with no clue about other cultures, including China and "Chinese society" (which part of it is it that you are referring to, out of random curiosity?) I will leave you with that hilarious bit of misinterpretation if it puts you at ease that the mind of the Chinee is forever closed to the honkey (maybe I am Chinese? You'll never know, will you.)
The right to freely express my opinion has been censored in many places (everywhere? Interesting approach.) This does not make it the right thing to do. Do you believe that this is either right or inevitable? It appears so. Once again, be my guest. That, in my personal opinion (and in that of enough others to lend me a certain credibility, I think), organizations, whether governmental or not, choose to think as you do at their own peril.
I won't bring anyone down on my own for denying me a voice, nor will a pack of, once again, dimestore philosophers. I'm not going to go preach in China, but I'm certainly not being censored where I live.
Charming dismissal of a sizeable portion of humanity's political and philosophical legacy, by the way--good luck ever running for political office with an attitude like that. You go ahead and feel free to believe as you do, and say as much--that's the beauty of free speech, innit?
To be honest, your response doesn't really merit more than an ad-hominem dismissal, but here you go. I'll say it again; while there _are_ limits, and humanity will always argue about where those limits lie, restriction of the freedom of expression is wrong and always will be more so, in China or anywhere else.
..."go away kid, ya bother me. Don't touch that, you'll break it.". That, and packet state driver flux capacitor dark matter engineering. About covers it.
Actually, it is wrong. Without getting into too much of a philosophical debate about the Hegelian imperative of the state or whatnot, the state/government does not justify its own existence out of general principle.
Thus, a state that seeks to repress its population on the basis of safeguarding its own existence, or that of its government, is wrong. I make some allowance for issues of national security and individual privacy, for China, the US, Bangladesh, whoever, and though I realize there is a very large range of interpretation, blanket censoring of Internet information out of political principle is evil and wrong.
I make no allowance for China in this regard whatsoever, as it is a repressive, corrupt regime that has proven its scorn for basic human rights over and over, and I make no allowance for _any_ (yes you read this right) company or government which panders to this. Especially one that claims to "do no evil" as one of its core principles.
Now whether this is actually true or not is another question, I don't know. But if it is, it's evil.
You're absolutely correct. However, I would assume that power operators would be amenable to the ideas of lowering the output on "dirty" plants according to the availability of power on the grid from other sources, like a bunch of self-sufficient power freeholds.
If you're not burning fuel to produce power, you're emitting fewer greenhouse gases or barrels full of radioactive crap, even if you do have to have plants prepared to pick up the slack at all times.
It's no more "restriction" or "harassment" for an agreement to exist between a union and an employer, than it is for an agreement to exist between two people.
You're correct, unless said agreement is made under unlawful pressure on other parties. I believe that a lot of countries have "open shop" laws; however, if you look at the very existence of the term "scab", you'll see what I'm getting at.
If I negotiate a deal for a union to be to my its sole supplier of labor, because they'll use strikes and pickets against me unless I agree to their terms, that's also a freely made contract.
Likewise, I am entitled to call on or use lawful force and pressure to break said strike.
An intelligent free individual realizes that some degree of voluntary co-operation and group action is useful in obtaining his or her goals.
Don't confuse lax enforcement with a poor concept.
This does not answer the above poster's point that I, as a free individual, should have the right to negotiate with a corporation as with another individual, free from any restriction or harassment by something like a union. It also assumes that I, as a free individual, am too stupid and un-resourceful to go out and make my own fortune, regardless of corporations.
Yes, there are certain fields where I as an individual will never be able to compete with a large contractual entity (such as a corporation, artificial as it may be)--mass-market cars, for example. But I am under no pressure or obligation to accede to such an entity's contractual demands, period. Whereas with the imposition of a union, you get the picture.
You do, and it would bug me tremendously. There are a lot of shows on German TV (which we unfortunately get here) using footage from surveillance cams, to show evil-doers getting their just rewards, and showing private security and police types making snide comments and basically abusing their powers. A tremendous percentage of the clips they show are from cams in the UK--you can tell from the license plates on cars.
The most blatant one (don't remember the exact title, I turned it off after about 5 minutes of disgusted fascination) was something along the lines of "look at all these people doing embarrassing things caught on CCTV", like having sex in cars by the roadside, etc.
If that sort of shit doesn't adequately sum up all that can potentially go wrong with CCTV coverage, I despair of finding a more serious argument against it.
Discretely pack up your things and save any documentation or files you want to take along, and write a polite letter giving two weeks (or however much you agreed on) notice.
Ask if "they" would like feedback, and write a list of what bugged you, what was good, and what could have been done better.
Finish what you were working on if you can, offer to take care of any handover work, as you firmly should state that you will not be available for it after you have left.
Don't burn bridges; it's not so much that these people might come back to haunt you someday, as that it's an adolescent thing to do.
Slashdot Mirror
This is awesome. Absolutely fantastic.
I have heard an axiom somewhere that each pissed off customer costs a company either 7 or 13 additional lost sales due to "word getting around."
My girlfriend recently bought a CD at a concert; the disc was copy-protected. In the process of ripping our entire collection to mp3 after I accidentally busted one of my albums in half (don't ask) I came across this travesty.
It took me all of 5 minutes to figure out that it was EAC and how to get around it (yes yes, I know, but I'd never dealt with it before). It took me 10 minutes to write a nastygram to the head of EMI Germany's copy protection consumer relations thingamabob that I would never buy another EMI product again, that I would recommend all my friends do the same, and that their "technology" doesn't work anyway.
Point made, customer lost.
I earn a reasonable amount of money, more than enough to not have to worry about clipping coupons, but on the other hand I dislike paying more than I have to on things.
That said, I am very often willing to pay a premium for convenience. So, I go to two kinds of shops, depending on mood, time available, need, etc.:
(1) the deep discount rock bottom type place; I expect no service or knowledgeable staff, I don't intend to return the product (as I know I'll probably get screwed); this applies for most PC-related stuff I buy.
(2) is the type of place I go to to buy suits, furniture, and consumer goods about which I know a reasonable amount, but where it's not just a quick in-out-finish. I want to be greeted with a smile, served coffee, and not given any bullshit, then thanked and shown the door.
I will not tolerate any crossing over--i.e. deep-discount places that try to actively fuck me over or act arrogant and above its station--there are plenty of others down the road. Nor will I suffer an expensive shop that's snooty and does not pay attention to me as a customer.
If I, at any point, get the feeling that I may be treated with suspicion, arrogance, or any other nasties like this, I just go elsewhere. If it's really bad, I let the manager know it and walk out. It costs me nothing but a tiny bit of time.
Ok, sorry--I was unclear. It was a lot faster than an equivalently priced Soekris board. Should probably have said cheaper OR faster. The only Soekris I have played with wasn't Geode-based, rather some sort of odd 133mhz cpu.
:-)
That said, coming from one vendor I talked to woh moved from Soekris to WRAP, they said that both Soren (Soekris) and Pascal (PCEngines) were incredibly strange guys
M0n0's great--the guy who wrote it is a 21 year old Swiss kid named Manuel Kasper. He's an incredibly impressive guy, very humble and nice. I think he'll go pretty far. And the thing is really polished for an open source product that hasn't gotten that much PR so far.
Nice post :-)
Just for yuks, you might want to consider M0n0wall. I'm evaluating it for a client right now, and it's very impressive (BSD-based with a good PHP interface.) I'm running it on a PCEngines WRAP 1C-2 board (cheaper & faster than Soekris) and it works a charm (I ditched my cantankerous PC firewall for this a while ago.)
I didn't think anyone ever hated us...we are warm and cuddly and just want to be loved!
Although to be sure, my pop's officer training manuals from the 1970s had Warsaw Pact & NATO ordnance listed side by side, I never figured what to make of that *-8)
One thing that I really appreciate (I'm actually a dual CH-US citizen) is that Europeans have grown a lot more differentiated in their views towards the US. I remember how, when Reagan was putting Pershing missiles in Germany, every pseudo-intellectual and his dog here would rant about "you Americans!" at the drop of a hat (my mom taught English at a secondary school here, so I got a lot of that shit from her loony colleagues). You rarely see that anymore, at least not outright loathing of Americans--just the occasional kneejerk reactions or "oh jeez what the hell were they thinking"...
Idiot. Does the fact that Generali did this during WWII make Italians a bunch of prevaricating thugs?
Does the fact that German companies refused to honor a bunch of claims mean they haven't renounced their goose-stepping nazi ways as a nation?
Does the fact that certain slashdot users spout ignorant generalizations make them all a bunch of cretins? Hardly.
I'm Swiss, and I didn't collude to hide anything, certain banks in my country did, and they (a) paid for their actions and (b) did not have a lot of popular support here (some fairly demagoguerish lawsuits by one Ed Fagan whipping up ignorant Fox news viewers in the US didn't help things much.)
Soooooo, as I do not consider myself to be living in a glass house, I will continue to throw stones and hold others to the same high standards to which I hold myself and my compatriots.
Well, a lot of the (not hatred but) general "bad vibes" came from Stuart Eizenstat's report, followed closely by some high-profile class action litigation from Ed Fagan.
:)
The Swiss (I am one, so I get to say this) are not as good at standing up for themselves and claiming the moral high ground. For example, with the whole holocaust thing, our banks should have said "we fucked up, we're sorry, let us make good" and that would have been the end of it.
Likewise, we are currently under enormous pressure from the EU to join; a lot of people, including myself, believe that this is a dig at the enormous amounts of money bunkered in Swiss banks by people avoiding taxes in EU countries, and an attempt to get those moneys (a) taxed and (b) back into circulation. Once again, the government, people and banks are procrastinating, taking a "welll, maybe we can negotiate" approach when they should just stand by their guns.
Swiss people aren't taught to see things in black & white (believe it or not, often this is a very good thing about your typical American), and to stick by their principles no matter what. This means that we lose respect internationally, and often end up looking pretty pathetic when a simple strong word would have cut off discussion early.
Switzerland actually received a (very) clean bill of health from the US treasury a while ago regarding cooperation in tracking down and eliminating money laundering and terrorist funds, funny enough, but nobody here seems to be waving this as a major argument and saying "hey, looky here, we're pretty cool, actually."
What's currently unfortunate is that there is a tremendous amount of animosity towards the US government (thankfully, the abovementioned Swiss inability to think in an undifferentiated manner also means that you rarely have a blanket dislike of a country like the US, rather of its government) when, given US-EU tensions and Swiss-EU tensions, this should be one of the most valuable relationships for both countries on this issue...Oh well.
And by the way, newspapers here are either terriblly garish or murderously dull. I subscribe to the IHT
I have an old Packard-Bell (woo, brand name!) Pentium 120 standing around, since I replaced it as my firewall with a PCEngines box running M0n0wall. Runs FreeBSD beautifully, and you get not one, but three network cards with it.
Provided someone comes and picks it up, that is. This great product comes for the low low price of...nothing!
All this, and I'll even throw in a keyboard, mouse and 15" CRT monitor. And for a limited time only, I'll include a set of FreeBSD boot floppies. One caller only, special offer expires...as soon as someone takes the f'ing thing away.
Man, ratings (of anything) are annoying, having kept me out of countless educational films before I reached 18, but banning something based on a rating is just downright wrong.
I think I'll personally buy and ship a copy of HL2 to anyone in Australia braindead enough not to be able to order it abroad.
Yes, and in several of those "reasonable" parts of the world you're SOL when it comes to the most effective way of dealing with companies that follow dodgy business practices: vote with your feet and your wallet.
And yes, I do live in one of those "reasonable" parts of the world. We have a strong data protection law. On the other hand, if my rental agents commit horseshit, standard, legally defensible rental contracts here specify a 3 month notice period, 2 months deposit, and only two cancellation dates per year.
I won't argue whether solving these problems by having strong competition or strong legislation is better, but don't make the mistake of thinking that absence of one means absence of the other.
If, as I assume, by "sensible part of the world" you mean "Europe", there are profound cultural differences in how economic responsibility and individual ability to take action outside of recourse to government regulation are viewed.
Yes.
And, funny enough, if you'd read that article, you'd find out that someone in America could and did vote for someone who DOESN'T support these stupid lame pro-big-corporation IP laws.
Whoever modded this offtopic is a cretin--he's right in the particular situation he refers to, but my initial analogy still holds.
And I like the "countermeasures" technique--unfortunately, any such concept applied to p2p networks will end up causing the same sort of shit as the RIAA flooding the airwaves with the eqiuvalent of "10--Like_a_virgin.mp3" that's nothing more than Madonna cussing out p1r8z (1)--i.e. dropping the SNR pretty substantially.
(1) the new, MPAA anti-pirate version has far more artistic merit than the original.
"Gee sorry, Mrs. Smith, but the officer who shot your dog made a human error. It happens; hey, everyone has a bad day occasionally."
What a crock of shit. IANAL and I haven't really thought through the consequences, but while "stealing" a song may or may not be wrong (let's not go into that argument), its net effect per incident on the "owner" is economically small. Conversely, hitting grandma with a $10k pay-up-sucka-or-we-sic-Joey-da-lawyer-on-you blackmail job, per inicident, has a relatively high economic impact on the target. Think speeding fines in Finland, commensurate with the level of your personal income and wealth.
When someone's committed a crime (once again, without going into whether this is really justifiable as such or not), punishment appropriate to the level of the crime is, well, appropriate. Speed, pay a fine. Kill, go to jail. Usually, even if it's "by mistake".
Governments, as enforcers of law & order authorized as such by the population of a commonwealth (yet again, please don't go into this argument, I think this is a fairly neutral way of putting it) will usually get away with making mistakes as a whole, even if the individual cop who shot Mrs. Smith's dog may suffer personal consequences. Restitution may be in order to the victim, but not consequences as such for the government as a whole.
Private entities have no such privilege of authority. I kill your dog, I probably must make some sort of amends to you personally, as well as suffer possible consequences to myself personally.
Soooo...taking this a step further, when someone's not done anything and is wrongly hit up for restitution for his supposed wrongdoing by a pack of malicious, thoughtless, greedy and unethical baboons (**AA for starts), they should be punished personally. As I would be if I nailed the Smith pooch, even by accident, and be forced to pay restitution appropriate to (a) the level of the wrongdoing committed, and (b) the relative level of nastiness of the wrongdoing.
In this situation, the corporate thuggery, racketeering, blackmail, bullying and generally being a slobbering pack of cunts (not a crime, although it should be) makes for a pretty awful bit of work.
In short, make the fuckers pay. Every time they "have a bad day". Through the nose. With criminal lawsuits and prison if possible.
Grr.
Wrap it up reeeaaal tight and good, and slap a plaque on it with a couple of stick figures making 'peace' signs, an abstract representation of human DNA, and a model of the solar system, give it a good swift kick and voila. You have a poor man's Voyager!
Only problem would be if all that excreta and broken electronic junk somehow evolved, creating a bionic life form and coming back to haunt us a few hundred years from now as the Son of V'ger...
There are much easier ways to make $10 million.
"Now that we have the capability to launch our 400 pound orbital death ray satellite and its one man crew into orbit, the nations of the world must give us....one...*hushed intake of breath*...million...*shocked stares*...dollars!"
I mean, c'mon, what good is technology if you can't use it for evil.
First, your opinions about the behavior of a state are irrelevant....
Hardly. My opinions may be functionally irrelevant, as are those of a customer of a large enough company which chooses to ignore consumer complaints about shitty service. However, we have enough examples throughout history of both companies and states/governments which failed because they choose to ignore the opinions of the masses of "dimestore philosophers."
Your generalizations show an assumption that I am a short-pantsed yob, with no clue about other cultures, including China and "Chinese society" (which part of it is it that you are referring to, out of random curiosity?) I will leave you with that hilarious bit of misinterpretation if it puts you at ease that the mind of the Chinee is forever closed to the honkey (maybe I am Chinese? You'll never know, will you.)
The right to freely express my opinion has been censored in many places (everywhere? Interesting approach.) This does not make it the right thing to do. Do you believe that this is either right or inevitable? It appears so. Once again, be my guest. That, in my personal opinion (and in that of enough others to lend me a certain credibility, I think), organizations, whether governmental or not, choose to think as you do at their own peril.
I won't bring anyone down on my own for denying me a voice, nor will a pack of, once again, dimestore philosophers. I'm not going to go preach in China, but I'm certainly not being censored where I live.
Charming dismissal of a sizeable portion of humanity's political and philosophical legacy, by the way--good luck ever running for political office with an attitude like that. You go ahead and feel free to believe as you do, and say as much--that's the beauty of free speech, innit?
To be honest, your response doesn't really merit more than an ad-hominem dismissal, but here you go. I'll say it again; while there _are_ limits, and humanity will always argue about where those limits lie, restriction of the freedom of expression is wrong and always will be more so, in China or anywhere else.
..."go away kid, ya bother me. Don't touch that, you'll break it.". That, and packet state driver flux capacitor dark matter engineering. About covers it.
Actually, it is wrong. Without getting into too much of a philosophical debate about the Hegelian imperative of the state or whatnot, the state/government does not justify its own existence out of general principle.
Thus, a state that seeks to repress its population on the basis of safeguarding its own existence, or that of its government, is wrong. I make some allowance for issues of national security and individual privacy, for China, the US, Bangladesh, whoever, and though I realize there is a very large range of interpretation, blanket censoring of Internet information out of political principle is evil and wrong.
I make no allowance for China in this regard whatsoever, as it is a repressive, corrupt regime that has proven its scorn for basic human rights over and over, and I make no allowance for _any_ (yes you read this right) company or government which panders to this. Especially one that claims to "do no evil" as one of its core principles.
Now whether this is actually true or not is another question, I don't know. But if it is, it's evil.
Man, imagine how many radium watchfaces you could make out of that thing!
You're absolutely correct. However, I would assume that power operators would be amenable to the ideas of lowering the output on "dirty" plants according to the availability of power on the grid from other sources, like a bunch of self-sufficient power freeholds.
If you're not burning fuel to produce power, you're emitting fewer greenhouse gases or barrels full of radioactive crap, even if you do have to have plants prepared to pick up the slack at all times.
It's no more "restriction" or "harassment" for an agreement to exist between a union and an employer, than it is for an agreement to exist between two people.
You're correct, unless said agreement is made under unlawful pressure on other parties. I believe that a lot of countries have "open shop" laws; however, if you look at the very existence of the term "scab", you'll see what I'm getting at.
If I negotiate a deal for a union to be to my its sole supplier of labor, because they'll use strikes and pickets against me unless I agree to their terms, that's also a freely made contract.
Likewise, I am entitled to call on or use lawful force and pressure to break said strike.
An intelligent free individual realizes that some degree of voluntary co-operation and group action is useful in obtaining his or her goals.
You said it. voluntary.
Don't confuse lax enforcement with a poor concept.
This does not answer the above poster's point that I, as a free individual, should have the right to negotiate with a corporation as with another individual, free from any restriction or harassment by something like a union. It also assumes that I, as a free individual, am too stupid and un-resourceful to go out and make my own fortune, regardless of corporations.
Yes, there are certain fields where I as an individual will never be able to compete with a large contractual entity (such as a corporation, artificial as it may be)--mass-market cars, for example. But I am under no pressure or obligation to accede to such an entity's contractual demands, period. Whereas with the imposition of a union, you get the picture.
You do, and it would bug me tremendously. There are a lot of shows on German TV (which we unfortunately get here) using footage from surveillance cams, to show evil-doers getting their just rewards, and showing private security and police types making snide comments and basically abusing their powers. A tremendous percentage of the clips they show are from cams in the UK--you can tell from the license plates on cars.
The most blatant one (don't remember the exact title, I turned it off after about 5 minutes of disgusted fascination) was something along the lines of "look at all these people doing embarrassing things caught on CCTV", like having sex in cars by the roadside, etc.
If that sort of shit doesn't adequately sum up all that can potentially go wrong with CCTV coverage, I despair of finding a more serious argument against it.
#2 John Doe submits FOIA request to government for image that the government paid extra money to ensure that it would be exculsive.
This would be perfectly correct if the government were anything but a PUBLICLY FUNDED ENTITY. "Competition" does not apply. It is your money, ffs.
Discretely pack up your things and save any documentation or files you want to take along, and write a polite letter giving two weeks (or however much you agreed on) notice.
Ask if "they" would like feedback, and write a list of what bugged you, what was good, and what could have been done better.
Finish what you were working on if you can, offer to take care of any handover work, as you firmly should state that you will not be available for it after you have left.
Don't burn bridges; it's not so much that these people might come back to haunt you someday, as that it's an adolescent thing to do.