How can you change the guidelines to justify removing any app you want if everybody knows what the guidelines are?
Duh.
The only reason they are doing this now is because they've gotten too much pressure not too.
Any reasonable company would have released them from the very beginning. Most companies tell you what their criteria are for rejection specifically so you can avoid and correct any potential issues.
There are mistakes, and then there is an attitude that the whole world should bow to their wishes. It's only when they realize they don't have quite that much clout that Apple backs down.
A good company that did not believe customers owed their happiness to the company, developers owed their very existence to the company, would not have locked down the tools in the first place.
Apple treats its customers as though it's only because of Apple's great kindness that those customers get to use Apple products. They treat their developers like a necessary evil, and it's only by Apple's grace and mercy that developers are permitted to write code for Apple products.
That's how you get things like the ridiculous hoops needed to write apps for the App store, or the ridiculous policy of no flash when flash is ubiquitous on the internet. That's a "you get what we give you" attitude if there ever was one. The only reason Apple is backpedaling now is because they pushed it too far and received some backlash. That's it. And they are only going to change the policy far enough to reduce the backlash to an acceptable level - they are not going to change their attitude, and if they see an opportunity to lock things down again they will jump on it.
1 is highly unlikely. Mars is losing its atmosphere at a rapid pace, and has no protection from bio-killing cosmic and solar radiation due to it's lack of a magnetic field. It has no magnetic field because the iron core solidified aeons ago - Mars is much smaller than Earth, and the thing simply cooled down faster.
It is far more likely that the failing magnetic field would have triggered the death of all Martian life (and it definitely would have, solar radiation in particular is very nasty), and would explain why there is no life today if there ever was once life on Mars.
2 only makes sense if 1 is true. On Earth we find life literally everywhere. Even in the most apparently barren places we have found life. They've found life in underground lakes in Antarctica that have been locked away by ice for thousands of years for god's sake! Even volcanic vents harbor life, it is literally everywhere on the planet. If Mars once had a thriving ecosystem, evidence of life should be everywhere as well. It really should not be difficult to find traces of it.
You'd have to be an idiot to think a tactical nuke is the way to go.
For one thing, it's never been done under water.
For another thing, it only worked three out of the five times the Russians tried it.
Do you really want to try something that is definitely going to cause severe damage to the environment (nuclear radiation in the Gulf Stream - that sounds great!) for something that only has a 60% success rate in ideal conditions?
As for the environmental damage, it's pretty hard to find any information about any damage related to the spill. Aside from a few tarballs and a handful of coated animals, there is been nothing. In fact, not a single piece of seafood from the gulf has shown any sort of contamination, and this is five months after the fact. About 350 acres of wetlands have been damaged, but you compare that to the 15,000 acres of wetlands Louisiana loses every year and you realize it's almost nothing.
In fact, the only articles I can find after May/Jun suggest the environmental damage has been exaggerated. To avoid citing Fox News, which is so reviled here but also happens to be the only news agency with an article on the environmental impacts of the spill in the last month, here's an excerpt from a June 29 Times article:
Marine scientist Ivor van Heerden, another former LSU prof, who's working for a spill-response contractor, says, "There's just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster. I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about the size of the spill — but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts." Van Heerden, like just about everyone else working in the Gulf these days, is being paid from BP's spill-response funds. "There's a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it."
Yeah, I'm very glad we didn't listen to idiots like you.
I can't understand how the company who operated the rig that failed and the company that installed and maintained the failed blowout preventer could not be to blame for the spill.
What, were BP guys going around loosening screws behind Trans-Ocean and Haliburton's backs?
I recognize that it was BP's responsibility to be sure that Trans-Ocean and Haliburton were doing their jobs correctly, and that BP failed miserably (possibly even criminally), but that doesn't change the fact that it was Trans-Ocean's job to run the rig safely and Haliburton's job to ensure the safety equipment was properly installed and properly maintained. It's what BP paid them for.
How could they not be the ones to blame? BP can still be responsible for the damage that people they hired caused. Doubly so if BP's own actions encouraged the behaviors that caused the damage. There is no incongruity there. BP may have helped them do it, but it was TO and Haliburton who actually did it. They should be held accountable for that.
Every accident is complex, yet every accident is preventable.
It's also worth noting that this was, in fact, an accident. Nobody involved did it on purpose. They may have done stupid things, made compromises where they should not have, cut corners, etc., but nobody wanted this to happen.
Go find the video for the Texas City oil refinery accident - it's another BP fuckup (this one they were entirely to blame for from start to finish).
The brief rundown is as follows:
Sensors on a particular tank were not adequate for the purposes of that tank. Basically two sensors were used to measure the fluid level, but as the fluid was never supposed to exceed a certain level sensors were never placed above that level. In other words once the fluid went above the allowed level there was no way to tell what the fluid level actually was. Start-up was a bit of an exception, and fluid levels regularly rose above the sensor level, but before too long returned to normal levels. As a result the instruments regularly went into alarm due to high-levels at start-up. Rather than fix the instruments, it became standard procedure to ignore the high level alarms during start-up.
The operator room was supposed to be staffed by two operators, but because of recent schedule/employment changes there was only one operator on duty per shift. Also, because it was start-up (shut-down and start-up are a very big deal in any major processing facility) the operators had been working longer hours than normal, and were generally fatigued. This caused poor notes to be passed between the night shift operator and the day shift operator, and the day shift operator re-started or continued a procedure that should have been finished by the time he was on shift, and the fact that it was not was a major warning sign and should have resulted in an immediate shut-down. This confusion allowed fluid levels in the tank to rise 5-10 times safe levels, but because it was standard operating procedure to ignore the alarm, and because the sensors did not give a full picture of the situation, the operators continued unaware there was a problem. Eventually the fluid overflowed, after which there was nothing the operator could have done to fix the problem even if he was aware of it.
The final piece of the puzzle, the mechanical safety system that triggered after the tank over-flowed, was a retrofit and as such was simply inadequate to handle the amount of fluid coming through, and the emergency vent let out a giant plume of gas, which turned to vapor and grew until it reached a truck that had been left running in the parking lot. The truck backfired due to the extra gas in the air and ignited the plume. The resulting explosion basically killed anything within 100 feet of the plant, which included a set of temporary offices and 20-30 people who had absolutely no business being anywhere near the refinery.
The cause of the explosion was primarily the sensors on the tank, followed by over-worked and too few operators, followed by an inadequate safety system, followed by employees not following established procedures (leaving the truck running in the parking lot was against company policy). The reason so many people died was because of idiotic decisions - like putting temporary office trailers right next to a potentially dangerous phase of the refining process, which was also against company policy.
I imagine something similar happened on DWH, except there are three or four companies involved instead of just one. It is the same kind of thing, people who should know better maintaining the status quo instead of raising hell. In the Texas City incident, the operators should have been raising hell about the inadequate sensors. The operators and their managers should have been raising hell about being over-worked and understaffed. The safety personnel should have been raising hell about the inadequate safety relief system. Plant management and the operators both should have been raising hell about the office trailers right outside a potentially dangerous area. Everyone should have been raising hell about the common but frowned upon practice of leaving vehicles running in the parking lot.
Yet nobody did, and many people died because of it. It took a lot of things to go wrong, but wrong they went. This is how major industrial accidents happen almost every time.
How is "nu-uh, they're just trying make it look like it isn't their fault" an explanation?
He didn't explain anything. He didn't give any examples from the report. It is not based on any fact he can produce.
All cgenman is doing is a circumstantial ad hominem attack. It has absolutely no merit whatsoever.
Hence DerekLyons' "Two Minutes Hate", which is exactly what it is. BP is evil, therefore everything they do must be evil. I don't think cgenman would be satisfied with a report from BP unless it results in BP being 100% to blame for every action that occurred.
Only a blind fool would think everything is BP's fault here.
Good god man, do you hold nobody else responsible?
Trans-Ocean was running the friggin rig, what about them? Frankly, I'd personally put a lot more of the blame on them. They were running the rig, they were supposed to be the experts who knew what they were doing. If a BP monkey wanted them to do something stupid, it was their job to tell them "no, this is they way it needs to be done, and this is how we are doing it". Chances are TO's corporate culture did not allow the safe running of the rig, but that's still TO's fault. They were the ones in a position to see these problems and correct them, and they did not do it.
Failures in equipment TO certainly aren't responsible for, but frankly, neither is BP. Shit happens, there are systems in place to deal with it. Just about everything else on that rig, though, is TO's responsibility. Those systems happen to point directly at TO operators. For god's sake the instruments showed rising hydrocarbons in the pipe 40 minutes before a TO operator bothered to do anything about it. When you've just cemented a well, any hydrocarbon rise in the pipe is a glaring red flag that something has gone very, very wrong. If the operator did not recognize that as a problem, or did not know what to do about it, he should not have been operating the rig. Period.
You say BP is trying to make themselves look good, I say they were being pretty magnanimous. The sole purpose of the operator is to ensure the rig is functioning correctly. To suggest that they should not bear a significant portion of the blame when they fail to properly run the rig is ludicrous.
You know, the American company that owns 25% stake in Deepwater but has mysteriously never (at least that I've seen) been mentioned in the media. Anadarko was involved in all major financial decisions for the site, and more than likely they had people on the rig as well, and yet you hear not a peep about them
BP went above and beyond their legal obligation with regards to the spill - which is capped at about $100 million (I think it's actually only $75mil) - and still everyone reamed them. Granted they had significant motivation beyond simply altruism, but still they should get a lot of credit for their response. Anadarko, on the other hand, hasn't pledged a single cent above their legal obligation (25% of the legal cap), and yet you hear not a word.
Forget the lack of Trans-Ocean attacks (you know, the guys actually running the friggin rig), that one pissed me off the most. If BP is responsible, is not Anadarko as well? Is it right to expect BP to shoulder 99.99% of the cleanup costs, when they only bear 75% of the responsibility?
How would eliminating government subsidies to businesses eliminate the right to form corporations? There are many reasons to form corporations, most of them legal. Eliminating tax breaks for corporations will not change those reasons, it simply removes one of the reasons for forming a corporation. It also in no way eliminates the ability to create a corporation.
Government subsidies are not essential for the creation of a corporation, nor does creating a corporation necessitate a government subsidy.
Do you even understand what a subsidy and a corporation are?
It just happens that you get the worst of both worlds when you introduce regulation as the government selects "qualified" individuals, such as former CEO's of industry leaders, to give regulatory power to in their given field.
Which is exactly how regulators are chosen today.
If the people writing the laws (congress generally gets these people to write the laws, then the congressmen enact them) and enforcing the laws are former corporate executives, who but corporations do you expect to benefit from regulation?
If I'm TO and going to be responsible for whatever happens on the rig, my contracts are going to change to: you tell me where to drill, and I'll tell you what it will cost, then you get the fuck off my rig.
I think you severely over-estimate TO's position of power in this situation. BP can quite easily go with another deep sea drilling company. There are only a handful of them, but there are enough that BP need never use TO again. If that happens, TO will be hurt significantly financially in the long run, because BP is one of the largest oil companies in the world, and therefor a major source of income in a competitive market will be cut off from them.
Hopefully the result is that TO will practice much stricter Cover-Your-Ass policies, things like not accepting responsibility for a system if tests are inconsistent, ensuring only authorized personnel are in control areas, ensuring equipment is checked and rechecked, etc. This is the way things should be run anyway.
The bottom line is Trans-Ocean was responsible for what happened on that rig, and they did not take that responsibility seriously enough.
All parties involved, from the Government, to BP, to Haliburton, to Trans-Ocean, could have prevented this accident. Trans-Ocean, however, was in the best position to recognize the problem and sound the alarm before it was too late. They were the experts brought in to run the rig. They should have known how things should have been in spite of others (like BP) wanting them to be something else. It was their job to make sure the well was drilled safely. They did not do this, so in my opinion it is Trans-Ocean who should bear the lion's share of the blame for the accident.
You're just ignorant about Linux and security - that's the only way you can seriously make that statement.
Yes, Linux has always defaulted to slightly better security policies than Windows, but to think that somehow means it cannot be compromised is idiotic.
What's the point in writing an exploit that will give access to a Linux desktop when you could write the exploit for Windows and target about fifteen times the number of potential victims?
Hold on, since when does Linux have 6% market share? Try 30-60 times the number of potential victims if you go after Windows.
Frankly, unless you have a grudge against Linux, you'd have to be an idiot to attack anything other than Windows. Macs are an ok second choice, but even if 80% of Windows users were well informed in computer security, there would still be more ignorant Windows users than there are total Mac users, so even that is a stupid choice. And you can be sure that 80% of users are not well informed about computer security.
Based on numbers alone, Windows is the only OS worth attacking, whether you're in it for money, fame, or just to hurt as many people as possible. For every class of malware, Windows is the only OS worth breaking, regardless of how secure it is or isn't.
Its actually quite black and white: to the extent a contract restrains someone from work in a lawful trade or profession, that contract is void. Other than the exceptions for owners transferring their interest in a business.
And trade secrets - read the law all the way to the end. HP's claim is that it is literally impossible for Hurd to do his job at Oracle without violating HP's trade secrets.
I don't see how that can be possible, but HP is making a stab at it.
It was a little more than that, HP was failing hard before Hurd. They were on the verge of selling off assets and such, even before the recession hit, and Hurd was able to avoid that even with the recession.
Part of what he did involved leveraging the employees, so yeah, you're right about how he did it. There was simply a hell of a lot more to it than just increasing the shareholders' profits. Most of his job was to save the company before they had to sell it. It was pretty bad at HP before Hurd came along. That's also why he got his face on all the financial magazines when HP finally started making money again.
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How can you change the guidelines to justify removing any app you want if everybody knows what the guidelines are?
Duh.
The only reason they are doing this now is because they've gotten too much pressure not too.
Any reasonable company would have released them from the very beginning. Most companies tell you what their criteria are for rejection specifically so you can avoid and correct any potential issues.
Google wrote an iPhone app for it, and Apple approved, then rejected it.
As you said, GV is not VOIP, so why the hell would Apple reject it?
Are you serious?
Wow man, you are a true fanboy.
There are mistakes, and then there is an attitude that the whole world should bow to their wishes. It's only when they realize they don't have quite that much clout that Apple backs down.
A good company that did not believe customers owed their happiness to the company, developers owed their very existence to the company, would not have locked down the tools in the first place.
Apple treats its customers as though it's only because of Apple's great kindness that those customers get to use Apple products. They treat their developers like a necessary evil, and it's only by Apple's grace and mercy that developers are permitted to write code for Apple products.
That's how you get things like the ridiculous hoops needed to write apps for the App store, or the ridiculous policy of no flash when flash is ubiquitous on the internet. That's a "you get what we give you" attitude if there ever was one. The only reason Apple is backpedaling now is because they pushed it too far and received some backlash. That's it. And they are only going to change the policy far enough to reduce the backlash to an acceptable level - they are not going to change their attitude, and if they see an opportunity to lock things down again they will jump on it.
Wow.
Reminds me of the guy a few weeks ago who thought "monetize" was a made up buzz-word.
Yeah, it was made up. A hundred-thirty years ago. And derived from Latin.
1 is highly unlikely. Mars is losing its atmosphere at a rapid pace, and has no protection from bio-killing cosmic and solar radiation due to it's lack of a magnetic field. It has no magnetic field because the iron core solidified aeons ago - Mars is much smaller than Earth, and the thing simply cooled down faster.
It is far more likely that the failing magnetic field would have triggered the death of all Martian life (and it definitely would have, solar radiation in particular is very nasty), and would explain why there is no life today if there ever was once life on Mars.
2 only makes sense if 1 is true. On Earth we find life literally everywhere. Even in the most apparently barren places we have found life. They've found life in underground lakes in Antarctica that have been locked away by ice for thousands of years for god's sake! Even volcanic vents harbor life, it is literally everywhere on the planet. If Mars once had a thriving ecosystem, evidence of life should be everywhere as well. It really should not be difficult to find traces of it.
Worse than that, Sagan said it decades ago.
Lefty, the guy who's supposed to know how to operate a chain saw safely.
Duh.
Are you really making this asinine argument?
You'd have to be an idiot to think a tactical nuke is the way to go.
For one thing, it's never been done under water.
For another thing, it only worked three out of the five times the Russians tried it.
Do you really want to try something that is definitely going to cause severe damage to the environment (nuclear radiation in the Gulf Stream - that sounds great!) for something that only has a 60% success rate in ideal conditions?
As for the environmental damage, it's pretty hard to find any information about any damage related to the spill. Aside from a few tarballs and a handful of coated animals, there is been nothing. In fact, not a single piece of seafood from the gulf has shown any sort of contamination, and this is five months after the fact. About 350 acres of wetlands have been damaged, but you compare that to the 15,000 acres of wetlands Louisiana loses every year and you realize it's almost nothing.
In fact, the only articles I can find after May/Jun suggest the environmental damage has been exaggerated. To avoid citing Fox News, which is so reviled here but also happens to be the only news agency with an article on the environmental impacts of the spill in the last month, here's an excerpt from a June 29 Times article:
Marine scientist Ivor van Heerden, another former LSU prof, who's working for a spill-response contractor, says, "There's just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster. I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about the size of the spill — but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts." Van Heerden, like just about everyone else working in the Gulf these days, is being paid from BP's spill-response funds. "There's a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it."
Yeah, I'm very glad we didn't listen to idiots like you.
I can't understand how the company who operated the rig that failed and the company that installed and maintained the failed blowout preventer could not be to blame for the spill.
What, were BP guys going around loosening screws behind Trans-Ocean and Haliburton's backs?
I recognize that it was BP's responsibility to be sure that Trans-Ocean and Haliburton were doing their jobs correctly, and that BP failed miserably (possibly even criminally), but that doesn't change the fact that it was Trans-Ocean's job to run the rig safely and Haliburton's job to ensure the safety equipment was properly installed and properly maintained. It's what BP paid them for.
How could they not be the ones to blame? BP can still be responsible for the damage that people they hired caused. Doubly so if BP's own actions encouraged the behaviors that caused the damage. There is no incongruity there. BP may have helped them do it, but it was TO and Haliburton who actually did it. They should be held accountable for that.
The rig was owned and operated by Trans-Ocean.
BP owned the rights to the oil, and hired Trans-Ocean to do the drilling.
And of course, the US Govt. signed off on all the inspections (whether or not they actually happened).
Me too, since I'm not southern I have to modify the song a bit to:
Who died in an oil spill 'cause of BP.
Oyl vs oy-il vs oy-yul.
Every accident is complex, yet every accident is preventable.
It's also worth noting that this was, in fact, an accident. Nobody involved did it on purpose. They may have done stupid things, made compromises where they should not have, cut corners, etc., but nobody wanted this to happen.
I think people forget that sometimes.
Go find the video for the Texas City oil refinery accident - it's another BP fuckup (this one they were entirely to blame for from start to finish).
The brief rundown is as follows:
Sensors on a particular tank were not adequate for the purposes of that tank. Basically two sensors were used to measure the fluid level, but as the fluid was never supposed to exceed a certain level sensors were never placed above that level. In other words once the fluid went above the allowed level there was no way to tell what the fluid level actually was. Start-up was a bit of an exception, and fluid levels regularly rose above the sensor level, but before too long returned to normal levels. As a result the instruments regularly went into alarm due to high-levels at start-up. Rather than fix the instruments, it became standard procedure to ignore the high level alarms during start-up.
The operator room was supposed to be staffed by two operators, but because of recent schedule/employment changes there was only one operator on duty per shift. Also, because it was start-up (shut-down and start-up are a very big deal in any major processing facility) the operators had been working longer hours than normal, and were generally fatigued. This caused poor notes to be passed between the night shift operator and the day shift operator, and the day shift operator re-started or continued a procedure that should have been finished by the time he was on shift, and the fact that it was not was a major warning sign and should have resulted in an immediate shut-down. This confusion allowed fluid levels in the tank to rise 5-10 times safe levels, but because it was standard operating procedure to ignore the alarm, and because the sensors did not give a full picture of the situation, the operators continued unaware there was a problem. Eventually the fluid overflowed, after which there was nothing the operator could have done to fix the problem even if he was aware of it.
The final piece of the puzzle, the mechanical safety system that triggered after the tank over-flowed, was a retrofit and as such was simply inadequate to handle the amount of fluid coming through, and the emergency vent let out a giant plume of gas, which turned to vapor and grew until it reached a truck that had been left running in the parking lot. The truck backfired due to the extra gas in the air and ignited the plume. The resulting explosion basically killed anything within 100 feet of the plant, which included a set of temporary offices and 20-30 people who had absolutely no business being anywhere near the refinery.
The cause of the explosion was primarily the sensors on the tank, followed by over-worked and too few operators, followed by an inadequate safety system, followed by employees not following established procedures (leaving the truck running in the parking lot was against company policy). The reason so many people died was because of idiotic decisions - like putting temporary office trailers right next to a potentially dangerous phase of the refining process, which was also against company policy.
I imagine something similar happened on DWH, except there are three or four companies involved instead of just one. It is the same kind of thing, people who should know better maintaining the status quo instead of raising hell. In the Texas City incident, the operators should have been raising hell about the inadequate sensors. The operators and their managers should have been raising hell about being over-worked and understaffed. The safety personnel should have been raising hell about the inadequate safety relief system. Plant management and the operators both should have been raising hell about the office trailers right outside a potentially dangerous area. Everyone should have been raising hell about the common but frowned upon practice of leaving vehicles running in the parking lot.
Yet nobody did, and many people died because of it. It took a lot of things to go wrong, but wrong they went. This is how major industrial accidents happen almost every time.
How is "nu-uh, they're just trying make it look like it isn't their fault" an explanation?
He didn't explain anything. He didn't give any examples from the report. It is not based on any fact he can produce.
All cgenman is doing is a circumstantial ad hominem attack. It has absolutely no merit whatsoever.
Hence DerekLyons' "Two Minutes Hate", which is exactly what it is. BP is evil, therefore everything they do must be evil. I don't think cgenman would be satisfied with a report from BP unless it results in BP being 100% to blame for every action that occurred.
Only a blind fool would think everything is BP's fault here.
Good god man, do you hold nobody else responsible?
Trans-Ocean was running the friggin rig, what about them? Frankly, I'd personally put a lot more of the blame on them. They were running the rig, they were supposed to be the experts who knew what they were doing. If a BP monkey wanted them to do something stupid, it was their job to tell them "no, this is they way it needs to be done, and this is how we are doing it". Chances are TO's corporate culture did not allow the safe running of the rig, but that's still TO's fault. They were the ones in a position to see these problems and correct them, and they did not do it.
Failures in equipment TO certainly aren't responsible for, but frankly, neither is BP. Shit happens, there are systems in place to deal with it. Just about everything else on that rig, though, is TO's responsibility. Those systems happen to point directly at TO operators. For god's sake the instruments showed rising hydrocarbons in the pipe 40 minutes before a TO operator bothered to do anything about it. When you've just cemented a well, any hydrocarbon rise in the pipe is a glaring red flag that something has gone very, very wrong. If the operator did not recognize that as a problem, or did not know what to do about it, he should not have been operating the rig. Period.
You say BP is trying to make themselves look good, I say they were being pretty magnanimous. The sole purpose of the operator is to ensure the rig is functioning correctly. To suggest that they should not bear a significant portion of the blame when they fail to properly run the rig is ludicrous.
Don't you mean Anadarko?
You know, the American company that owns 25% stake in Deepwater but has mysteriously never (at least that I've seen) been mentioned in the media. Anadarko was involved in all major financial decisions for the site, and more than likely they had people on the rig as well, and yet you hear not a peep about them
BP went above and beyond their legal obligation with regards to the spill - which is capped at about $100 million (I think it's actually only $75mil) - and still everyone reamed them. Granted they had significant motivation beyond simply altruism, but still they should get a lot of credit for their response. Anadarko, on the other hand, hasn't pledged a single cent above their legal obligation (25% of the legal cap), and yet you hear not a word.
Forget the lack of Trans-Ocean attacks (you know, the guys actually running the friggin rig), that one pissed me off the most. If BP is responsible, is not Anadarko as well? Is it right to expect BP to shoulder 99.99% of the cleanup costs, when they only bear 75% of the responsibility?
Huh?
How would eliminating government subsidies to businesses eliminate the right to form corporations? There are many reasons to form corporations, most of them legal. Eliminating tax breaks for corporations will not change those reasons, it simply removes one of the reasons for forming a corporation. It also in no way eliminates the ability to create a corporation.
Government subsidies are not essential for the creation of a corporation, nor does creating a corporation necessitate a government subsidy.
Do you even understand what a subsidy and a corporation are?
You must have missed this part:
It just happens that you get the worst of both worlds when you introduce regulation as the government selects "qualified" individuals, such as former CEO's of industry leaders, to give regulatory power to in their given field.
Which is exactly how regulators are chosen today.
If the people writing the laws (congress generally gets these people to write the laws, then the congressmen enact them) and enforcing the laws are former corporate executives, who but corporations do you expect to benefit from regulation?
If I'm TO and going to be responsible for whatever happens on the rig, my contracts are going to change to: you tell me where to drill, and I'll tell you what it will cost, then you get the fuck off my rig.
I think you severely over-estimate TO's position of power in this situation. BP can quite easily go with another deep sea drilling company. There are only a handful of them, but there are enough that BP need never use TO again. If that happens, TO will be hurt significantly financially in the long run, because BP is one of the largest oil companies in the world, and therefor a major source of income in a competitive market will be cut off from them.
Hopefully the result is that TO will practice much stricter Cover-Your-Ass policies, things like not accepting responsibility for a system if tests are inconsistent, ensuring only authorized personnel are in control areas, ensuring equipment is checked and rechecked, etc. This is the way things should be run anyway.
The bottom line is Trans-Ocean was responsible for what happened on that rig, and they did not take that responsibility seriously enough.
All parties involved, from the Government, to BP, to Haliburton, to Trans-Ocean, could have prevented this accident. Trans-Ocean, however, was in the best position to recognize the problem and sound the alarm before it was too late. They were the experts brought in to run the rig. They should have known how things should have been in spite of others (like BP) wanting them to be something else. It was their job to make sure the well was drilled safely. They did not do this, so in my opinion it is Trans-Ocean who should bear the lion's share of the blame for the accident.
Not many people know this, but "Bing" is actually just a more marketable version of "Bazinga" a la Sheldon from Big Bang Theory.
Once again, you've fallen for one of their classic pranks!
You're just ignorant about Linux and security - that's the only way you can seriously make that statement.
Yes, Linux has always defaulted to slightly better security policies than Windows, but to think that somehow means it cannot be compromised is idiotic.
What's the point in writing an exploit that will give access to a Linux desktop when you could write the exploit for Windows and target about fifteen times the number of potential victims?
Hold on, since when does Linux have 6% market share? Try 30-60 times the number of potential victims if you go after Windows.
Frankly, unless you have a grudge against Linux, you'd have to be an idiot to attack anything other than Windows. Macs are an ok second choice, but even if 80% of Windows users were well informed in computer security, there would still be more ignorant Windows users than there are total Mac users, so even that is a stupid choice. And you can be sure that 80% of users are not well informed about computer security.
Based on numbers alone, Windows is the only OS worth attacking, whether you're in it for money, fame, or just to hurt as many people as possible. For every class of malware, Windows is the only OS worth breaking, regardless of how secure it is or isn't.
You should look up the word "vector". Maybe read up on a little biology. Pay particular attention to "viruses".
Usually when you argue a point you are obviously ignorant about, you look stupid.
Your post is no exception.
Its actually quite black and white: to the extent a contract restrains someone from work in a lawful trade or profession, that contract is void. Other than the exceptions for owners transferring their interest in a business.
And trade secrets - read the law all the way to the end. HP's claim is that it is literally impossible for Hurd to do his job at Oracle without violating HP's trade secrets.
I don't see how that can be possible, but HP is making a stab at it.
It was a little more than that, HP was failing hard before Hurd. They were on the verge of selling off assets and such, even before the recession hit, and Hurd was able to avoid that even with the recession.
Part of what he did involved leveraging the employees, so yeah, you're right about how he did it. There was simply a hell of a lot more to it than just increasing the shareholders' profits. Most of his job was to save the company before they had to sell it. It was pretty bad at HP before Hurd came along. That's also why he got his face on all the financial magazines when HP finally started making money again.