While it is and should always be one's right to ignore whosoever they please, I would be amiss if I would agree that failure to hold a civil tongue disqualifies one from holding a valid opinion.
We are human beings, and not machines. As such, we are handicapped (or helped, depending on who you ask) by our inherent nature as emotional creatures.
I empathize with someone who feels the need to use profanity to express outrage at what I agree is an outrageous situation. I believe Bush was one of the most incompetent presidents in the history of America. I would have chosen better words myself.
Lack of civility does make a decent *heuristic* for evaluating credibility of a statement as a whole, however sometimes what one lacks in politeness one makes up for in intelligence. Lacking any semblance of deductive logic, it cannot be conclusive.
Failure to use civility when discussing a subject only *proves* lack of understanding regarding protocol among human beings. While it can suggest incompetence in general, it doesn't prove it. And while having one's opinion punitively disregarded forthwith as a sanction against rudeness can be effective in deterring such misconduct in the future, or making a deterrent example against anyone who would be tempted to do the same, it does nothing for reasoning itself.
And my opinion, is that anyone who disqualifies an opinion merely because of a lack of civility by the one who gave it, is allowing themselves to be driven by emotion and passion, instead of fact and reasoning.
Not that I condone foulness in general, as whatever effect it may or may not have on veracity, it is definitely anti-social in nature, and is not productive in society at large. And sometimes, disqualifying an opinion wholesale is the most effective deterrent to foulness as it damages the ego of the one who offered the opinion that, valid as it may have been, was polluted with foulness.
I believe this is one reason, in fact, that involuntary dismissal is a sanction in CFR available against litigants that behave inappropriately, and operates as an adjudication on the merits that has the same legal weight as a truly meritorious adjudication backed by evidence and testimony, notwithstanding the fact that the facts of the case may well have little or nothing to do with the conduct of the parties in question.
When hiring is at will, they don't have to give you an excuse for not hiring you.
Unless you can prove discrimination, you'll just have to accept that US companies are bags of sleaze that will happily screw you over to save their own pockets.
If the beta is properly disclosed as such, and is given the standard pack of disclaimers and warnings against premature use, then what business does it have getting bad publicity?
I think the issue is that, unlike Facebook, Google was probably an incompetent boob that simply fucked up.
Facebook we are quick to castigate because they have a record of instant updates to their TOS that let them have the right to screw over your privacy at any time.
Google, however, rarely does this. In fact a lot of the time they go out of their way to Not Be Evil, as is their company motto.
The phrase about malice and incompetence applies well here, especially with a company that doesn't have a soiled reputation.
Reputation actually makes a good heuristic for predicting future behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
Forget about obviousness, butter isn't even novel (prior art).
While it is and should always be one's right to ignore whosoever they please, I would be amiss if I would agree that failure to hold a civil tongue disqualifies one from holding a valid opinion.
We are human beings, and not machines. As such, we are handicapped (or helped, depending on who you ask) by our inherent nature as emotional creatures.
I empathize with someone who feels the need to use profanity to express outrage at what I agree is an outrageous situation. I believe Bush was one of the most incompetent presidents in the history of America. I would have chosen better words myself.
Lack of civility does make a decent *heuristic* for evaluating credibility of a statement as a whole, however sometimes what one lacks in politeness one makes up for in intelligence. Lacking any semblance of deductive logic, it cannot be conclusive.
Failure to use civility when discussing a subject only *proves* lack of understanding regarding protocol among human beings. While it can suggest incompetence in general, it doesn't prove it. And while having one's opinion punitively disregarded forthwith as a sanction against rudeness can be effective in deterring such misconduct in the future, or making a deterrent example against anyone who would be tempted to do the same, it does nothing for reasoning itself.
And my opinion, is that anyone who disqualifies an opinion merely because of a lack of civility by the one who gave it, is allowing themselves to be driven by emotion and passion, instead of fact and reasoning.
Not that I condone foulness in general, as whatever effect it may or may not have on veracity, it is definitely anti-social in nature, and is not productive in society at large. And sometimes, disqualifying an opinion wholesale is the most effective deterrent to foulness as it damages the ego of the one who offered the opinion that, valid as it may have been, was polluted with foulness.
I believe this is one reason, in fact, that involuntary dismissal is a sanction in CFR available against litigants that behave inappropriately, and operates as an adjudication on the merits that has the same legal weight as a truly meritorious adjudication backed by evidence and testimony, notwithstanding the fact that the facts of the case may well have little or nothing to do with the conduct of the parties in question.
Simple.
That silly piece of paper is proof that you've paid your dues and gone through the discipline of going to college.
It doesn't matter if the degree is any good or not, if your prospective boss uses it to thin the herd of candidates, then it matters.
Colleges probably know that too, hence them charging an arm and a leg for it.
Degrees have little to do with book smarts, and a lot to do with employer perception.
When hiring is at will, they don't have to give you an excuse for not hiring you.
Unless you can prove discrimination, you'll just have to accept that US companies are bags of sleaze that will happily screw you over to save their own pockets.
Which is exactly why *lowering* the standards looks like someone got paid off.
It's such a batshit insane move that not even the feds could be incompetent enough to pull it off by accident.
And considering all the fuckups the feds have already managed to pull, that's really saying something.
The courts are already too backlogged with everything else to have time to get ticked at patents specifically.
Face it, our *entire* government has been bought and paid for.
Call me crazy but I smell someone getting paid off at the USPTO to fill someone's IP war chest.
So let me get this straight...
USPTO is already rubber stamping stupid patents a mile a minute, and now they're making it easier for even MORE crap to come out?
Or are they just making it *harder* for that crap to be shot down in court?
It could be that Oracle smelled blood and decided to go for the kill.
Interesting that soon after acquiring them, they sue Google over patents.
These guys can be real dicks.
Precisely.
Personally I think that a graphics integrated with the CPU is a good thing.
The "video card" is an essential component of a system, and having a last resort GPU built into the CPU is a nice backup measure.
What would piss me off is if the chip then blocked access to external video card ports.
What matters isn't the fact that it's been copyrighted or not.
What matters is that the company that took it is bigger and badder than the individual it was stolen from.
You're right, they can't.
Because they really aren't the ones running the show.
Who controls their voters? Who controls their campaigning budgets?
And paying down debt is a bad thing?
Might not be such a bad idea.
It's something I would heartily encourage our own government to start doing.
If the beta is properly disclosed as such, and is given the standard pack of disclaimers and warnings against premature use, then what business does it have getting bad publicity?
I think it's high time to just forget about the feds, and look at who REALLY runs the country.
He doesn't have to win anyone over anymore.
He already did when he was elected.
Now that the only people that can damage his career are congress critters in bed with the same folks as him, he can sit back and relax.
Nice guys get their throats cut and their backs stab.
They aren't even finishing last.
I think the issue is that, unlike Facebook, Google was probably an incompetent boob that simply fucked up.
Facebook we are quick to castigate because they have a record of instant updates to their TOS that let them have the right to screw over your privacy at any time.
Google, however, rarely does this. In fact a lot of the time they go out of their way to Not Be Evil, as is their company motto.
The phrase about malice and incompetence applies well here, especially with a company that doesn't have a soiled reputation.
Reputation actually makes a good heuristic for predicting future behavior.
I can't
I'm iMpotent.
You mean traffic jam.
Also, if we do it that way, everyone else will start doing the same and it'll turn into a pissing contest to see who is stronger.
Depends on if that 10 percent loss is made up for in being spared from lawsuits.
"nice revenue you have...shame if anything happened to it."
followed by
"Tell youse what...you take care of our problem, and we'll let you do your business."
It's like a fly randomly buzzing while hovering next to a sheet of flypaper to its left.
Once it hits the fly paper, it's stuck for good.
Just like you can't keep gambling once you're broke.
In a fair game, you'd have just as much chance of getting and staying rich if you quit while you were ahead.
I even ran a simulation on this. Eventually I got a streak of losses so bad that it overflowed the exponent on double precision floats.