Being paid to donate blood, a renewable resource, isn't wrong in my opinion. It's a bona fide incentive to part with something you need, as well as spend time draining it out.
The point is that, as stupid as it may be, the owner of the machine SHOULD have omnipotent power over what happens, and is or is not allowed. Challenging IT's computer sovereignty is something only upper management has any business doing. Users who attempt to do so should get sanctioned, and rightly so.
Whether or not the admin is himself competent is another story.
The free market is the best method of deciding things, but it can't do the job by itself.
Externalities can skew things, and a public good, such as the environment, that everyone is free to pollute to the detriment of all without paying individually.
Representing the public good is properly the role of the government.
The only morals a corporation can have is to increase profits for the shareholders. It is presumed that maximizing profits is in the best interests of the shareholders, who are usually so disconnected from internal management that they accept this by default.
Mind you, those morals preclude breaking the law. A corporation cannot break the law and expect to earn a profit, at least not while upholding their fiduciary obligation to their shareholders.
I'm talking about the morals of the corporation itself. The people working for or investing in it are different story however.
Not if some accountant with an axe to grind at PayPal decides to slam you with a million NSF fees by resubmitting a withdrawal a million times.
Assuming they try a new withdrawal every day until they claw their money back, they'll probably be costing you around 75 bucks in bank fees every single day, which is roughly what you can gross working 40 hours a week at minimum wage.
Double that if they get to charge "bounced check" fees of their own.
The only morals are those of loyalty to shareholders.
It is the shareholders who are so morally bankrupt, greedy, and/or so detached from the company's front lines of cause and effect that bear the brunt of responsibility for what their corporation is up to. Stock gives them voting rights.
Of course, this leads to interesting results when you have a short circuit where a bunch of companies engage in an infinite ownership loop, leaving nothing but profit as an end result.
Supposing that in the greatly simplified case, you have corporations A, B, and C, each of which has half of the voting stock of the other two. You end up with an infinite profit loop, and the corporations are accountable to nobody at all.
That's still making the dubious assumption that your own life is worth less than the thousands of lives you are executing. It's selfishly bad math at its finest.
I'd only tolerate complete openness if the watchers could themselves be watched.
Thing is it's a prisoner's dilemma where the government has every reason, motive, and opportunity to defect and pass some bullshit law or simply classify something in the grand name of national security.
So unless the government plays ball, I'm not cooperating.
If they're doing it at the instigation of a government agency then it very much does become a first amendment issue, since the minute they start kissing government ass, they are acting as an agent, and become subject to the same restrictions on free speech as the principal already is by virtue of being the government.
No, you do not share your username and password with your boss, and your boss has no ****ing business even asking for it in the first place!
This sort of invasion of one's privacy is completely unacceptable. And any boss that asks for this stuff, let alone makes it a condition of employment, is either an oppressive snoop looking to play brain cop, totally clueless about technology and/or personal boundaries, or both.
This is the sort of information we hold a deathgrip on unless a warrant or subpoena pries it from our cold dead hands. There is no fucking WAY a boss in the private sector has any business even thinking about this.
Stand your ground, and if your boss tells you to take a hike after you refuse to cough it up, then move on and be glad you dodged a bullet.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows, in its literal meaning, implies a hole in the wall, often filled with glass, for the purpose of providing visual penetration or airflow.
Windows, in its secondary meaning, refers to an operating system written by Microsoft.
"App Store" has no secondary meaning as far as I can see, as its literal and "secondary" meanings are identical.
Now, losing a trademark on grounds of genericness, aka "being adopted by webster", is something else.
For examples, I see "xerox" and "google" in danger in this way.
I think that is indeed the unwritten rule.
Being paid to donate blood, a renewable resource, isn't wrong in my opinion. It's a bona fide incentive to part with something you need, as well as spend time draining it out.
At any rate, it's better than a blood tax.
If I could actually trust the powers that be not to abuse their discretion I wouldn't mind so much.
I love the 4th amendment mostly because it keeps screwed up cops from messing around with my life unless they have a damn good reason to.
Justice being a political bargaining chip sickens me to no end.
I'd hang the lot of them for aiding and abetting by using it for leverage instead of reporting it.
you mean queue, right?
That's beside the point.
The point is that, as stupid as it may be, the owner of the machine SHOULD have omnipotent power over what happens, and is or is not allowed. Challenging IT's computer sovereignty is something only upper management has any business doing. Users who attempt to do so should get sanctioned, and rightly so.
Whether or not the admin is himself competent is another story.
Your alternative isn't as simple as you'd like when you have many self interested clients playing zero sum competition over the router's bandwidth.
1. Does said router properly respect QoS when deciding what data gets "rushed"?
2. Does said client have to pay a premium when sending out packets with elevated QoS?
First they came for the...
yada yada yada.
Vicarious rage has its place.
The free market is the best method of deciding things, but it can't do the job by itself.
Externalities can skew things, and a public good, such as the environment, that everyone is free to pollute to the detriment of all without paying individually.
Representing the public good is properly the role of the government.
You missed my point.
The only morals a corporation can have is to increase profits for the shareholders. It is presumed that maximizing profits is in the best interests of the shareholders, who are usually so disconnected from internal management that they accept this by default.
Mind you, those morals preclude breaking the law. A corporation cannot break the law and expect to earn a profit, at least not while upholding their fiduciary obligation to their shareholders.
I'm talking about the morals of the corporation itself. The people working for or investing in it are different story however.
-1 Offtopic for derailing into a flame war.
Not if some accountant with an axe to grind at PayPal decides to slam you with a million NSF fees by resubmitting a withdrawal a million times.
Assuming they try a new withdrawal every day until they claw their money back, they'll probably be costing you around 75 bucks in bank fees every single day, which is roughly what you can gross working 40 hours a week at minimum wage.
Double that if they get to charge "bounced check" fees of their own.
The only morals are those of loyalty to shareholders.
It is the shareholders who are so morally bankrupt, greedy, and/or so detached from the company's front lines of cause and effect that bear the brunt of responsibility for what their corporation is up to. Stock gives them voting rights.
Of course, this leads to interesting results when you have a short circuit where a bunch of companies engage in an infinite ownership loop, leaving nothing but profit as an end result.
Supposing that in the greatly simplified case, you have corporations A, B, and C, each of which has half of the voting stock of the other two. You end up with an infinite profit loop, and the corporations are accountable to nobody at all.
Ebay and other important companies: Thou shalt not use any payment processor other than paypal or you will not do business with us.
I wonder if paypal has a united way-esque exclusivity clause in their agreement.
That's still making the dubious assumption that your own life is worth less than the thousands of lives you are executing. It's selfishly bad math at its finest.
I'd only tolerate complete openness if the watchers could themselves be watched.
Thing is it's a prisoner's dilemma where the government has every reason, motive, and opportunity to defect and pass some bullshit law or simply classify something in the grand name of national security.
So unless the government plays ball, I'm not cooperating.
Murder. The victim being a ref doesn't make the crime any different.
If they're doing it at the instigation of a government agency then it very much does become a first amendment issue, since the minute they start kissing government ass, they are acting as an agent, and become subject to the same restrictions on free speech as the principal already is by virtue of being the government.
No, but selectively enforcing said terms under the blanket backdoor of "sole and final discretion" may.
You have the right to refuse business with anyone (long as you're not violating someone's civil rights).
You do not, however, have the right to unilaterally breach a contract when you please.
If they swallow the money and refuse to cough it up then they're not just scum, they are thieves.
It borders dangerously close to fraud if they don't ever cough it up.
Does it count as a bounced check if they fail to withdraw?
I can see someone getting drowned in bank fees even if paypal doesn't clean them out.
Private passwords?
Hello?
No, you do not share your username and password with your boss, and your boss has no ****ing business even asking for it in the first place!
This sort of invasion of one's privacy is completely unacceptable. And any boss that asks for this stuff, let alone makes it a condition of employment, is either an oppressive snoop looking to play brain cop, totally clueless about technology and/or personal boundaries, or both.
This is the sort of information we hold a deathgrip on unless a warrant or subpoena pries it from our cold dead hands. There is no fucking WAY a boss in the private sector has any business even thinking about this.
Stand your ground, and if your boss tells you to take a hike after you refuse to cough it up, then move on and be glad you dodged a bullet.