Umm. Most, if not all, network cards I've ever had you could change the MAC address. I used to change them to something easier to spot when I read my logs.
In part you're right. Altruism only pays off for the giver if other people respond by giving back. My experience has been that giving isn't enough to kindle reciprication the majority of the time but that many people will recipricate if you nudge them a little. Usually that is as little as some sort of reminder that "Hey, I just set an example here and you'd do well to learn from it if you appreciate the benefits." If you don't say something then a lot of times people just don't think about. Our society isn't yet used to thinking about it. It's really not the way we've been trained but as this article helpfully pointed out the concept isn't entirely foreign to us either which is why it can work so well.
The article did mention some business related stuff though.. such as the guy that helped people meet the right contacts so that their businesses could succeed and in turn do more business with him which ends up improving his business. Such a process isn't as fast as getting cash on the head but it can pay off big time in the long run. The old cliche that it's not what you know, it's who you know, really plays into this. People you do favors for are likely to trust you and remember you. That makes them more likely to spend money with you or do favors for you.
Other than building up trust and respect giving things away is also one hell of a form of advertising. Few things work so well to advertise your business as free stuff and free stuff that shows the quality of your actual product or services is the best. In most cases, especially when it comes to digital goods, giving stuff away is probably cheaper than most other forms of advertising anyway.
There have been a number of businesses that have been profitable based on what they give away. RedHat and Zend are two that come to mind but I'm sure you could find many if you actually looked. As with any business, not everyone will succeed but many can. A lot of it depends not on how much you give away but on how well you capitalize on what you give away. Remember that giving it away is advertising. Do you couple that with other forms of advertising in a way that compliments? Do you make the effort to nudge people to spend money with you? Do you have good sales people that know how to close a deal? All normal business questions that aren't greatly related to the fact that you give your work away.
To profit from giving you must think about the right way to give things away so that it encourages people to recipricate. Then you must give in such a way that doesn't seem to be false.. as the article points out people don't feel the need to recipricate if they feel you're only giving in order to get.
I never bother moving monitors anyway. It's mostly the harddrives I worry about. Sadly I've yet to see a laptop that can hold terabytes of data. That'd be really awesome though.:)
Usually when I move I don't bother taking much of anything besides computer stuff with me.. not even spare cloths. I guess that means I'm a geek. Yes, in a single move, I've traveled more than 1500 miles by bus with nothing but a mini-itx files erver with a terabyte of data stuffed into a backpack. You can't get much geekier a nomad than that.
I've had actual users. It's a pretty nifty little service to offer. It has a nice community portal feel to it. I think it has a lot of potential for something like a matchmaking site. It is, of course, a lot more fun to get a hookup with someone that lives a block away than someone that lives dozens or hundreds of miles away. And it's a way to swap files with much less chance of having anyone bust you. Things like that make it good.
Only an idiot wouldn't change their MAC address to something random for each attack. Or for that matter just steal somebody elses laptop for the duration of the attack. It's not like it's hard to lay hands on a computer without having any record of having done so. Just changing your MAC address is probably enough though.
I'm all for public access points but I do think that you should know what you're getting yourself into when you run a public AP. Most businesses especially should make sure they are covered.
A little off topic of the FBI but related to public APs.. Something I like to do is run a public AP that doesn't have access to the Internet. It just acts as something of a localized BBS system. Anyone within reach can message each other, trade files, participate in the forums, or check out the wiki. It's not hard to make it so that someone connecting will get you're entrace page anytime they try to connect to something other than your system. With a decent antenea you can reach a fairly large group of people in a crowded metro area. An interesting way to meet your neighbors.
A lot of the jobs I've seen there were between US$2-$5/hr which sucks until you've been downsized here in the US and you're unemployment runs out. You could work for $5.75/hr or whatever minimum wage is here and be unable to pay for a house and food or you could move to India and work for a similar wage and have a house and food given to you. My rent for a small one bedroom apartment in Las Vegas is $1000/month. Having a comparable place for free would make the rest of my money go a lot further.
I'd be curious is to the quality of housing and food they have. My apartment is expensive IMO but it really isn't very nice. The buildings are cheap and probably don't even meet the legal standards of saftey. There isn't much space. Short of dirt floors and lots of bugs I doubt that the free places in India could be much worse.
Maybe later I'll make a longer reply. I'm not up for an argument that could turn flamish today. I really hate flame wars. Anyhow I thought this was relevant and itneresting.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/29/paranoia. ht ml
Smart hackers never hack from an IP traceable to them anyway. That's why unprotected WiFi points are so useful. There is no way in heaven or hell to trace the connection back to the source. Of course there are lots of places you can jack in for a unlogged wired connection too. It's just to easy to keep from being traced.
Fortunately most hackers are dumb and lazy so they aren't that hard to trace.
True, I remove the region encoding anyway when I copy the DVDs. It's just the theory that to do such things legally there is a fair amount of hassle involved.
The same as that since I move a lot I try not to own many things which therefore gives me no credit or equity if I needed to take out a loan or something. When you try to get credit, a job, or really anything they usually want to know how long you've lived at your current address and why you move so often. Little hassles like that. In the US at least it is somewhat frowned upon to live a nomadic lifestyle. You can believe any crackpot religion you want to, sleep with anyone you want to, etc but if you move to a new city every year then people think there is something wrong with you.
Unfortunately various females have given me pets and while I would not have gotten pets for myself I do however like them. Of course I get around this limitation somewhat by leaving them, at times, with friends and family and just visiting them whenever I'm able. This isn't really ideal though because I can't afford to visit often. The same goes for actually visiting the friends and family I have.
Again I agree in theory. For years I owned hardly anything. Gradually I am starting to build up property though which would pain me to replace or give up. To some degree the digital property I have I can put online. This is probably illegal in the US but that is really besides the point. I can copy all my movies, software, and music onto a server and access those files from anywhere and not bother carrying the originals around. I've been making some effort to transfer my collection of books and magazines (technical) into a digital format too. Most of my crap I don't mind lossing. Furniture and off the shelf electronics is easy enough to replace. I hate to give up some of the computers I've built myself though as some are rather unique. In the least I always keep my harddrives when I move so that I have a copy of all my data I've ever produced. As a programmer and engineer I have lots of work on those drives. Having been online more than a decade I have much of my life on those drives also. I tend to also keep the before mentioned digital copies of media on my drives as actually finding server space where you can get terabytes of space affordably isn't that easy yet.:)
I think these problems would be lessened by moving in tribes. We could have community property such as servers that'd contain the entire tribes data. Files such as movies, music, and software could be kept as a single copy instead of everyone needing their own copies. Any family, friends, and even pets that belonged to the tribe could be brought with you into new countries. Really moving as tribes is the smart way for nomads to go.
I've thought about setting up some sort of geek tribe here in the US and then gradually moving outward. Buy some bits of land throughout the US and allow any geek and their family to move onto this tribal land (and back and forth across different locations) so long as they join the tribe and follow the rules. Something a bit communal but not entirely. I suppose a little like native Americans were once upon a time.
Not yet, but they're aggressively moving into the market. If they play things right they'll bootstrap their entire economy. This won't absolutely happen but it's obvious that they are making an effort to make it happen. It's definately something that the rest of the world should keep in mind when we're setting our policies.
Malaysia, India, China, etc are hungry and they're entering the technical industry at a point where they can cover more ground faster for not having all the baggage that most western powers have. Sometimes it's easier to start from a clean slate than to try to improve an already working system.
In some cases that might happen but what I think usually happens is very different.
Case A: company has programmers overqualified for what they need done. These employees cost far more than their coworkers. Solution: fire overqualified workers.
Case B: company needs highest qualified workers. These employees cost a lot. Equally qualified employees can be hired in India for 1/10th the cost. Company can force current employees to train their replacements. Solution: train new employees then fire existing employees.
Case C: company has morals and keeps all it's employees and pays them well. The competition hires cheap Indian labor. The competition's profits sore, they spend more money on marketing, and everyone and their dog starts buying the cheaper and better advertised products of the competition. Your company goes out of business. Solution: none - again you're unemployed
So unless you have a skill that just can't be replaced you're probably screwed by the economics of the situation. It might not happen today but unless things change it will happen eventually.
Very good points. The problem is that capitalism hasn't got any checks and balances. People, as a whole, are to short-sighted to realize what they are doing to themselves until it is to late.
Everyone wants cheaper stuff so companies find ways to make cheaper stuff which requires them either reduce the quality, reduce their own profit margins, or pay less to produce the same items. To some degree they do reduce the quality but that can only go so far before people don't want the items anymore. Those in charge can't reduce their profit margins because if they do they'll be removed from control of the company and someone else will be put in their place. That means they have to reduce the cost of producing the items. That means more automation and cutting back on the wages they are paying. So, to simplify, lower prices mean fewer jobs and lower wages. Sure, we can't all afford to buy a Porshe but you should think about the companies that make the products you buy when comparing products. The Walmart-economy will cut all our throats. You'll notice that they no longer mark everything at Walmart as 'Made in the USA.'. There is good reason for that. Demand more locally made products and demand that more of the companies you buy from pay fair wages to their employees. IMO it's okay if a product is made in India, if I can't get the same product made locally, but I want to know the people making that product are earning a comparable living wage to those that live in the US.
I think the US needs to boost it's education system too. Highschool degrees have become almost worthless because highschool graduates aren't required to know anything. We don't pay our teachers enough so we don't have enough teachers and many that we do have are not that well educated. Also I think that as long as highschool degrees are worthless for getting jobs that the government should make free public colleges for getting your Bachelors degree. There should be no extra paperwork or requirements - it should be as easy as signing up to highschool. We should make it easier for everyone to get advanced degrees also.
Without correcting those problems we're going to have our asses kicked by globalization. A lot of people think the US will always be a world power but that is just arrogance. It's all to easy to fall from greatness if you don't make an effort to maintain that position.
With an influx of smart westerners how long do you think India will stay a third world country? They're getting all the jobs from those western countries while the best workers from the western countries flee to India in order to have jobs. If India plays this right they could easily become a world power while the arrogant western countries slowly slide down the tubes.
I've always been a nomad so that is no problem for me. The problem is more in little things like not being able to take my pets if I move to a different country. Most countries have some sort of period you have to leave your pets in quaratine which is usually long enough to make it somewhat cruel IMO.
Also moving personal items can be a pain. All my DVDs are from the US, England, and Japan. That is enough to make life hard without a region free DVD player. If I moved to more countries and bought more DVDs in each country it'd just make the problem harder? Things like region codes definately seem anti-globalization to me. Then you get into the trouble of moving a dozen computers and getting power adapaters for them all and stuff like that.
So.. if you plan to be nomadic outside the boundries of your home country then try not to have pets or a lot of stuff that'd be a pain to move.
On the other hand it's my experience that it isn't hard to pick up girls and take them with you. "Hey, I'm going to Thailand, Malaysia, and India next week.. wanna go with me." is one hell of a pick-up line. Maybe that makes it worthwhile to give up my cat and my computers?
What I think we really need is a tribe of nomads that migrate from country to country together and can make deals for our services as a group. A little geek tribe. Maybe we could legally make it a corporation to make it easier to work out deals.
I probably should have gone to an attorney but my experience is that small claims are worthless anyway because you can't force them to pay. It would most likely have just been a waste of my time. Anything under $2000 or so you have no leverage to make them cough up the cash and unless they have stolen at least $1mil from you you definately can't get any major law enforcement agencies to help you out. Sadly my paychecks are nowhere near that high.
I've not heard of an SS-8 form but I might talk to an accountant and see what they suggest. Right now I can't even afford that as I can't get unemployment thanks to this guy. He did do the same nasty trick to pretty much all of us that worked for him and that might be some leverage. We pretty much all quit when he stopped paying us and we started our own company doing the same thing but without start-up capital it's been pretty rocky.
If they are already telling you lies do you really think they'll be a good employer? If you REALLY need the money then go ahead and take the job but keep your eye open for something else.
On the other hand many full-time jobs treat you as contract help. I've had several that as soon as a project was finished found some excuse to fire me. At least if they admit upfront that you'll only be there until the end of the project then you know to be looking for your next job.
My last employer hired me full-time but evidently never filed the paperwork. When we parted company (because he just stopped paying for my work) I tried to get unemployment only to find out that he'd never filed any paperwork on me and evidently hadn't been paying any of my taxes he was supposedly taking out of my paychecks. To top it off, to get my final paycheck he made me sign a document saying I had been a contract worker.. then he stiffed me for half my paycheck after I signed.
The moral of the story is to be careful. If your employer looks untrustworthy be careful not to trust them. Look for somebody else to work for.
It may be legally wrong but it's only morally wrong if you, as an individual, find it morally wrong. Everyone has different morals afterall. Personally, I find it morally wrong to try to keep people from using information to create new information. That includes trying to keep people from using your work without paying you.
You obviously have never grasped the concept of opensource. You can give something away for free and still make money off of it. Yes, a certain percentage of people will just take your work and not pay but you'll have to admit that that happens even if you don't give them your permission to use your work. All you're doing is wasting your time and money trying to keep people from nicking your work when you should be concentrating on those people willing to pay for your work.
Give your work away and make your money off donations and people that come to you for custom jobs. You probably won't get rich but you can make a decent living off of it. You probably wouldn't get rich off your work anyway right?
I, myself, am always looking for good graphics people I can work with. I do use other peoples graphics sometimes, usually only for in-house projects, but I buy a lot of work too. Usually I buy from the people whose work I nicked if I can figure out who made the originals. Which is why I think it's important to give credit when you nick artwork. By making nicking the art illegal the artists are less likely to get credit. Giving credit makes it easier for the artist to find out you've nicked his work.
My old one broke and after months of gradually replacing movies with DVD copies I decided it'd be cheaper to just buy a new VCR. I wasn't to happy to find out that they have doubled in price since I bought my last VCR and are now more expensive than many DVD players.
For those of us with hundreds of VHS tapes it'll take a while before we can afford to replace all those tapes with DVDs. Besides why own two copies of the same movie when you can spend your money on movies you don't already own?
I'd rather wait to replace my VHS tapes until the technology that replaces DVDs comes out. That way I can gradully replace half of my collection each time a new technology comes out rather than having to replace my entire collection of movies. When you own thousands of movies that can be a significant savings.
Lets change things again. I like to break my users down by/users/services,/users/domains, and/users/home. This way I can easily create accounts for services and domains I'm hosting without the frequent ugliness that happens when those things are smushed into/home. I think/users/home needs a better name./users/users seemed to sound funny. What'd be a better term for users who aren't special?/users/boring?;)
It's rude to nick the images and not give credit to the originatic site. It's not rude to nick them and provide a link back to the original site. Google certainly provides links back as much as it can and it only shows thumbnails from it's own site.
Back in the olden days it was considered polite to mirror pages and files if you were going to be showing them to a lot of people.. spread the load out and save everyone money. Sadly most companies aren't bright enough to understand that once it's digital it can be copied endlessly with little effort but that their own bandwidth costs money.
One more bit of evidence that copyright is an idea incompatible with the reality of modern computers and computer networks. The programmers have figured it out (giving us opensource).. when is the rest of the world going to stop whining and just deal with it. If you understand the reality and deal with it then you can make money off of it.
Thumbnailing is legal. Linking is legal. If some foreign site is stealing content and putting it on their own sites and Google links to that then it's not even a case of deep linking to the original site. Unfortunately for the original website they can't really do much about this. They should put their own URL in the pictures somewhere that it can't easily be removed and just go on with their business. Use the illegal copies as advertising for their site.
Creating thumbnails has been legally upheld in court as not being a copyright violation. Sorry, it's totally legal. That's why you see so many of those thumbnail gallery sites.
If they can give a human mind to an animal why can't they grow human bodies with animal brains? That'd be useful for everything from transplants and medical research to sex slaves.
I'd buy a pet that looked human but only had the mind of an animal. I guess I'm thinking of a beautiful woman that would act like my cat. Rush to see me when I got home, enjoys licking, touching, and rubbing, baths a lot, and always wants to sit on my lap. It could be something between a pet and a girlfriend. It'd be good for the pet too.. unlike a cat you could take it to resturants and stuff.
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Umm. Most, if not all, network cards I've ever had you could change the MAC address. I used to change them to something easier to spot when I read my logs.
In part you're right. Altruism only pays off for the giver if other people respond by giving back. My experience has been that giving isn't enough to kindle reciprication the majority of the time but that many people will recipricate if you nudge them a little. Usually that is as little as some sort of reminder that "Hey, I just set an example here and you'd do well to learn from it if you appreciate the benefits." If you don't say something then a lot of times people just don't think about. Our society isn't yet used to thinking about it. It's really not the way we've been trained but as this article helpfully pointed out the concept isn't entirely foreign to us either which is why it can work so well.
The article did mention some business related stuff though.. such as the guy that helped people meet the right contacts so that their businesses could succeed and in turn do more business with him which ends up improving his business. Such a process isn't as fast as getting cash on the head but it can pay off big time in the long run. The old cliche that it's not what you know, it's who you know, really plays into this. People you do favors for are likely to trust you and remember you. That makes them more likely to spend money with you or do favors for you.
Other than building up trust and respect giving things away is also one hell of a form of advertising. Few things work so well to advertise your business as free stuff and free stuff that shows the quality of your actual product or services is the best. In most cases, especially when it comes to digital goods, giving stuff away is probably cheaper than most other forms of advertising anyway.
There have been a number of businesses that have been profitable based on what they give away. RedHat and Zend are two that come to mind but I'm sure you could find many if you actually looked. As with any business, not everyone will succeed but many can. A lot of it depends not on how much you give away but on how well you capitalize on what you give away. Remember that giving it away is advertising. Do you couple that with other forms of advertising in a way that compliments? Do you make the effort to nudge people to spend money with you? Do you have good sales people that know how to close a deal? All normal business questions that aren't greatly related to the fact that you give your work away.
To profit from giving you must think about the right way to give things away so that it encourages people to recipricate. Then you must give in such a way that doesn't seem to be false.. as the article points out people don't feel the need to recipricate if they feel you're only giving in order to get.
I never bother moving monitors anyway. It's mostly the harddrives I worry about. Sadly I've yet to see a laptop that can hold terabytes of data. That'd be really awesome though. :)
Usually when I move I don't bother taking much of anything besides computer stuff with me.. not even spare cloths. I guess that means I'm a geek. Yes, in a single move, I've traveled more than 1500 miles by bus with nothing but a mini-itx files erver with a terabyte of data stuffed into a backpack. You can't get much geekier a nomad than that.
I've had actual users. It's a pretty nifty little service to offer. It has a nice community portal feel to it. I think it has a lot of potential for something like a matchmaking site. It is, of course, a lot more fun to get a hookup with someone that lives a block away than someone that lives dozens or hundreds of miles away. And it's a way to swap files with much less chance of having anyone bust you. Things like that make it good.
Only an idiot wouldn't change their MAC address to something random for each attack. Or for that matter just steal somebody elses laptop for the duration of the attack. It's not like it's hard to lay hands on a computer without having any record of having done so. Just changing your MAC address is probably enough though.
I'm all for public access points but I do think that you should know what you're getting yourself into when you run a public AP. Most businesses especially should make sure they are covered.
A little off topic of the FBI but related to public APs.. Something I like to do is run a public AP that doesn't have access to the Internet. It just acts as something of a localized BBS system. Anyone within reach can message each other, trade files, participate in the forums, or check out the wiki. It's not hard to make it so that someone connecting will get you're entrace page anytime they try to connect to something other than your system. With a decent antenea you can reach a fairly large group of people in a crowded metro area. An interesting way to meet your neighbors.
A lot of the jobs I've seen there were between US$2-$5/hr which sucks until you've been downsized here in the US and you're unemployment runs out. You could work for $5.75/hr or whatever minimum wage is here and be unable to pay for a house and food or you could move to India and work for a similar wage and have a house and food given to you. My rent for a small one bedroom apartment in Las Vegas is $1000/month. Having a comparable place for free would make the rest of my money go a lot further.
I'd be curious is to the quality of housing and food they have. My apartment is expensive IMO but it really isn't very nice. The buildings are cheap and probably don't even meet the legal standards of saftey. There isn't much space. Short of dirt floors and lots of bugs I doubt that the free places in India could be much worse.
Maybe later I'll make a longer reply. I'm not up for an argument that could turn flamish today. I really hate flame wars. Anyhow I thought this was relevant and itneresting.
. ht ml
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/29/paranoia
Smart hackers never hack from an IP traceable to them anyway. That's why unprotected WiFi points are so useful. There is no way in heaven or hell to trace the connection back to the source. Of course there are lots of places you can jack in for a unlogged wired connection too. It's just to easy to keep from being traced.
Fortunately most hackers are dumb and lazy so they aren't that hard to trace.
True, I remove the region encoding anyway when I copy the DVDs. It's just the theory that to do such things legally there is a fair amount of hassle involved.
The same as that since I move a lot I try not to own many things which therefore gives me no credit or equity if I needed to take out a loan or something. When you try to get credit, a job, or really anything they usually want to know how long you've lived at your current address and why you move so often. Little hassles like that. In the US at least it is somewhat frowned upon to live a nomadic lifestyle. You can believe any crackpot religion you want to, sleep with anyone you want to, etc but if you move to a new city every year then people think there is something wrong with you.
Unfortunately various females have given me pets and while I would not have gotten pets for myself I do however like them. Of course I get around this limitation somewhat by leaving them, at times, with friends and family and just visiting them whenever I'm able. This isn't really ideal though because I can't afford to visit often. The same goes for actually visiting the friends and family I have.
:)
Again I agree in theory. For years I owned hardly anything. Gradually I am starting to build up property though which would pain me to replace or give up. To some degree the digital property I have I can put online. This is probably illegal in the US but that is really besides the point. I can copy all my movies, software, and music onto a server and access those files from anywhere and not bother carrying the originals around. I've been making some effort to transfer my collection of books and magazines (technical) into a digital format too. Most of my crap I don't mind lossing. Furniture and off the shelf electronics is easy enough to replace. I hate to give up some of the computers I've built myself though as some are rather unique. In the least I always keep my harddrives when I move so that I have a copy of all my data I've ever produced. As a programmer and engineer I have lots of work on those drives. Having been online more than a decade I have much of my life on those drives also. I tend to also keep the before mentioned digital copies of media on my drives as actually finding server space where you can get terabytes of space affordably isn't that easy yet.
I think these problems would be lessened by moving in tribes. We could have community property such as servers that'd contain the entire tribes data. Files such as movies, music, and software could be kept as a single copy instead of everyone needing their own copies. Any family, friends, and even pets that belonged to the tribe could be brought with you into new countries. Really moving as tribes is the smart way for nomads to go.
I've thought about setting up some sort of geek tribe here in the US and then gradually moving outward. Buy some bits of land throughout the US and allow any geek and their family to move onto this tribal land (and back and forth across different locations) so long as they join the tribe and follow the rules. Something a bit communal but not entirely. I suppose a little like native Americans were once upon a time.
Not yet, but they're aggressively moving into the market. If they play things right they'll bootstrap their entire economy. This won't absolutely happen but it's obvious that they are making an effort to make it happen. It's definately something that the rest of the world should keep in mind when we're setting our policies.
Malaysia, India, China, etc are hungry and they're entering the technical industry at a point where they can cover more ground faster for not having all the baggage that most western powers have. Sometimes it's easier to start from a clean slate than to try to improve an already working system.
In some cases that might happen but what I think usually happens is very different.
Case A: company has programmers overqualified for what they need done. These employees cost far more than their coworkers.
Solution: fire overqualified workers.
Case B: company needs highest qualified workers. These employees cost a lot. Equally qualified employees can be hired in India for 1/10th the cost. Company can force current employees to train their replacements.
Solution: train new employees then fire existing employees.
Case C: company has morals and keeps all it's employees and pays them well. The competition hires cheap Indian labor. The competition's profits sore, they spend more money on marketing, and everyone and their dog starts buying the cheaper and better advertised products of the competition. Your company goes out of business.
Solution: none - again you're unemployed
So unless you have a skill that just can't be replaced you're probably screwed by the economics of the situation. It might not happen today but unless things change it will happen eventually.
Very good points. The problem is that capitalism hasn't got any checks and balances. People, as a whole, are to short-sighted to realize what they are doing to themselves until it is to late.
Everyone wants cheaper stuff so companies find ways to make cheaper stuff which requires them either reduce the quality, reduce their own profit margins, or pay less to produce the same items. To some degree they do reduce the quality but that can only go so far before people don't want the items anymore. Those in charge can't reduce their profit margins because if they do they'll be removed from control of the company and someone else will be put in their place. That means they have to reduce the cost of producing the items. That means more automation and cutting back on the wages they are paying. So, to simplify, lower prices mean fewer jobs and lower wages. Sure, we can't all afford to buy a Porshe but you should think about the companies that make the products you buy when comparing products. The Walmart-economy will cut all our throats. You'll notice that they no longer mark everything at Walmart as 'Made in the USA.'. There is good reason for that. Demand more locally made products and demand that more of the companies you buy from pay fair wages to their employees. IMO it's okay if a product is made in India, if I can't get the same product made locally, but I want to know the people making that product are earning a comparable living wage to those that live in the US.
I think the US needs to boost it's education system too. Highschool degrees have become almost worthless because highschool graduates aren't required to know anything. We don't pay our teachers enough so we don't have enough teachers and many that we do have are not that well educated. Also I think that as long as highschool degrees are worthless for getting jobs that the government should make free public colleges for getting your Bachelors degree. There should be no extra paperwork or requirements - it should be as easy as signing up to highschool. We should make it easier for everyone to get advanced degrees also.
Without correcting those problems we're going to have our asses kicked by globalization. A lot of people think the US will always be a world power but that is just arrogance. It's all to easy to fall from greatness if you don't make an effort to maintain that position.
With an influx of smart westerners how long do you think India will stay a third world country? They're getting all the jobs from those western countries while the best workers from the western countries flee to India in order to have jobs. If India plays this right they could easily become a world power while the arrogant western countries slowly slide down the tubes.
I've always been a nomad so that is no problem for me. The problem is more in little things like not being able to take my pets if I move to a different country. Most countries have some sort of period you have to leave your pets in quaratine which is usually long enough to make it somewhat cruel IMO.
Also moving personal items can be a pain. All my DVDs are from the US, England, and Japan. That is enough to make life hard without a region free DVD player. If I moved to more countries and bought more DVDs in each country it'd just make the problem harder? Things like region codes definately seem anti-globalization to me. Then you get into the trouble of moving a dozen computers and getting power adapaters for them all and stuff like that.
So.. if you plan to be nomadic outside the boundries of your home country then try not to have pets or a lot of stuff that'd be a pain to move.
On the other hand it's my experience that it isn't hard to pick up girls and take them with you. "Hey, I'm going to Thailand, Malaysia, and India next week.. wanna go with me." is one hell of a pick-up line. Maybe that makes it worthwhile to give up my cat and my computers?
What I think we really need is a tribe of nomads that migrate from country to country together and can make deals for our services as a group. A little geek tribe. Maybe we could legally make it a corporation to make it easier to work out deals.
I probably should have gone to an attorney but my experience is that small claims are worthless anyway because you can't force them to pay. It would most likely have just been a waste of my time. Anything under $2000 or so you have no leverage to make them cough up the cash and unless they have stolen at least $1mil from you you definately can't get any major law enforcement agencies to help you out. Sadly my paychecks are nowhere near that high.
I've not heard of an SS-8 form but I might talk to an accountant and see what they suggest. Right now I can't even afford that as I can't get unemployment thanks to this guy. He did do the same nasty trick to pretty much all of us that worked for him and that might be some leverage. We pretty much all quit when he stopped paying us and we started our own company doing the same thing but without start-up capital it's been pretty rocky.
If they are already telling you lies do you really think they'll be a good employer? If you REALLY need the money then go ahead and take the job but keep your eye open for something else.
On the other hand many full-time jobs treat you as contract help. I've had several that as soon as a project was finished found some excuse to fire me. At least if they admit upfront that you'll only be there until the end of the project then you know to be looking for your next job.
My last employer hired me full-time but evidently never filed the paperwork. When we parted company (because he just stopped paying for my work) I tried to get unemployment only to find out that he'd never filed any paperwork on me and evidently hadn't been paying any of my taxes he was supposedly taking out of my paychecks. To top it off, to get my final paycheck he made me sign a document saying I had been a contract worker.. then he stiffed me for half my paycheck after I signed.
The moral of the story is to be careful. If your employer looks untrustworthy be careful not to trust them. Look for somebody else to work for.
It may be legally wrong but it's only morally wrong if you, as an individual, find it morally wrong. Everyone has different morals afterall. Personally, I find it morally wrong to try to keep people from using information to create new information. That includes trying to keep people from using your work without paying you.
You obviously have never grasped the concept of opensource. You can give something away for free and still make money off of it. Yes, a certain percentage of people will just take your work and not pay but you'll have to admit that that happens even if you don't give them your permission to use your work. All you're doing is wasting your time and money trying to keep people from nicking your work when you should be concentrating on those people willing to pay for your work.
Give your work away and make your money off donations and people that come to you for custom jobs. You probably won't get rich but you can make a decent living off of it. You probably wouldn't get rich off your work anyway right?
I, myself, am always looking for good graphics people I can work with. I do use other peoples graphics sometimes, usually only for in-house projects, but I buy a lot of work too. Usually I buy from the people whose work I nicked if I can figure out who made the originals. Which is why I think it's important to give credit when you nick artwork. By making nicking the art illegal the artists are less likely to get credit. Giving credit makes it easier for the artist to find out you've nicked his work.
My old one broke and after months of gradually replacing movies with DVD copies I decided it'd be cheaper to just buy a new VCR. I wasn't to happy to find out that they have doubled in price since I bought my last VCR and are now more expensive than many DVD players.
For those of us with hundreds of VHS tapes it'll take a while before we can afford to replace all those tapes with DVDs. Besides why own two copies of the same movie when you can spend your money on movies you don't already own?
I'd rather wait to replace my VHS tapes until the technology that replaces DVDs comes out. That way I can gradully replace half of my collection each time a new technology comes out rather than having to replace my entire collection of movies. When you own thousands of movies that can be a significant savings.
Lets change things again. I like to break my users down by /users/services, /users/domains, and /users/home. This way I can easily create accounts for services and domains I'm hosting without the frequent ugliness that happens when those things are smushed into /home. I think /users/home needs a better name. /users/users seemed to sound funny. What'd be a better term for users who aren't special? /users/boring? ;)
It's rude to nick the images and not give credit to the originatic site. It's not rude to nick them and provide a link back to the original site. Google certainly provides links back as much as it can and it only shows thumbnails from it's own site.
Back in the olden days it was considered polite to mirror pages and files if you were going to be showing them to a lot of people.. spread the load out and save everyone money. Sadly most companies aren't bright enough to understand that once it's digital it can be copied endlessly with little effort but that their own bandwidth costs money.
One more bit of evidence that copyright is an idea incompatible with the reality of modern computers and computer networks. The programmers have figured it out (giving us opensource).. when is the rest of the world going to stop whining and just deal with it. If you understand the reality and deal with it then you can make money off of it.
Thumbnailing is legal. Linking is legal. If some foreign site is stealing content and putting it on their own sites and Google links to that then it's not even a case of deep linking to the original site. Unfortunately for the original website they can't really do much about this. They should put their own URL in the pictures somewhere that it can't easily be removed and just go on with their business. Use the illegal copies as advertising for their site.
Creating thumbnails has been legally upheld in court as not being a copyright violation. Sorry, it's totally legal. That's why you see so many of those thumbnail gallery sites.
If they can give a human mind to an animal why can't they grow human bodies with animal brains? That'd be useful for everything from transplants and medical research to sex slaves.
I'd buy a pet that looked human but only had the mind of an animal. I guess I'm thinking of a beautiful woman that would act like my cat. Rush to see me when I got home, enjoys licking, touching, and rubbing, baths a lot, and always wants to sit on my lap. It could be something between a pet and a girlfriend. It'd be good for the pet too.. unlike a cat you could take it to resturants and stuff.