Clinton was not under trial over Paula Jones, he was under investigation.
You know, the Special Prosecutor who was appointed to investigate a real estate deal called Whitewater that turned out to be nothing....which turned into investigating travel payments authorized by the White House that turned out to be nothing....which turned into sexual harassment issues with Jennifer Flowers which turned out to be nothing....which turned into sexual harassment issues with Paula Jones which turned out to be nothing....which turned into Monica Lewinski, which really should have been a private issue between Bill, Hillary, and Monica.
No, this wasn't a witch hunt, this was good, focused government investigation.
Now if you want a witch hunt......try investigating the Attorney General's office for turning the Justice (Just-Us) Department into a political wing of the White House....try investigating the authorization and use of torture by US officials....try investigating the authorization and use of domestic surveillance without warrants by US officials.
Please get your fact straight. The dress was blue, not black.
You were wrong on this detail, therefore everything you say is wrong.
This is known as the "Michael Moore Effect". Clearly the fact that he messed up on a few minor facts, combined with the fact that his delivery can be a little heavy-handed, inexorably leads to the obvious conclusion that everything he says is wrong.
If these images are going to exist, it's better that we ALL have access to them, than that it be only some select few.
Maybe it would be better if such images didn't exist. Maybe it would be better if there were some way of knowing that the people with access really were the right people. Maybe it would be better if we knew such information was being used under checks and balances, and only for the right reasons.
But given that none of those conditions can be verified as true, access for ALL is better.
Besides, as others have mentioned, Google images are nowhere near the caliber of spy satellites, but that doesn't affect the basic logic.
Re:You need to clarify your question
on
Ethics In IT
·
· Score: 1
I would argue that "Company A" is represented by GM and Ford, and "Company B" is represented by the likes of Toyota and Honda.
Read things like Consumer Reports, and for the long term they recommend cars from Company B.
These days, Company A just ain't doing so hot, and Company B is moving up. I would argue that Company A has lost its roots, and needs to remember that it's a Car Company. Of course a while back, I heard that Company A actually made more money from playing financial games than it did from cars. In the short term, that says to de-emphasize the cars and play more financial games. In the long term, it means that either there may not be a long term, or that they're on their way to becoming a bank, which appears to be the direction of far too many American businesses, in which case the banking sector will become overcrowded.
Re:All being equal? The cheapest one.
on
Ethics In IT
·
· Score: 1
Government regulation is a difficult thing, in that the types of people you lament usually manage to twist things around to make those regulations do the exact opposite of what you intend. I have no doubt that that would be the case, if we tried as you propose. So what would I propose instead?
For instance, there now appear to be regulations on the books that actually favor sending American jobs offshore, and give companies benefits for doing so. I would repeal stuff like that, leaving nothing in its place. If touching things seems to do the wrong thing, then don't touch them.
Beyond that, I would shoot for information disclosure. The basis of a free market is the informed customer, so make sure the information is flowing. Perhaps in this case, the information that needs to flow is something relating executive compensation compared to company performance, and that information needs to flow to stockholders and prospective stockholders. Another piece of information that should become apparent is whether company profits are growing through revenue growth or cost-cutting, and whether that company growth is through market growth, or "selling the company" or selling the company's crown jewels. Those pieces of information would help stockholders make long-term decisions. Another area that may need some work is gag orders on court settlements. I can accept that some of this information needs to be kept secret, but other information may well be impairing the ability of customers to make informed product decisions, for instance based on safety.
Finally, we have some societal problems. The real problem is that our rapacious CEOs need scorn, not envy. It needs to become socially unacceptable to earn a bonus by axing American jobs.
Re:You need to clarify your question
on
Ethics In IT
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Once upon a time, the CEO of a very successful company had a simple 3-step recipe:
1: Take care of your customers. 2: Take care of your employees. 3: PROFIT!!
Actually, Step 3 was really, "The profits will take care of themselves." But it's worth noting that this was Step 3, not Step 4 with some sort of "???" for Step 3. It was also a long-term attitude, in that you were building the foundations of long-term success, and perhaps sacrificing higher short-term profits in exchange for that long term.
This too, has passed. But then again, that company isn't now considered as successful as it was when it was run by those 3 steps.
IMHO, the "maximize profits" attitude in US corporations is a fundamental problem. Let's phrase it this way... You want to buy a car, and you have to choose between Car Company A and Car Company B.
Car Company A's guiding principles are to "maximize profits" and "maximize shareholder return", and they happen to make cars.
Car Company B's guiding principles are to make the best cars that they can, and so far by selling those cars at a competitive price they have remained profitable and in business.
The moment it becomes a company policy issue, the whole matter becomes between the government and a US Corporation, for whom they have a heckuva lot more respect than they do for you or me. The moment companies put in place policies, and as soon as you show the company policy letter with your laptop, and the moment it's BIG companies (Boeing, GE, GM, etc) doing it, things will moderate.
There have been enough high-profile thefts of laptops lately compromising personal data to drive the counter-argument that could be used to overturn this ruling.
"When sensitive data is present on a laptop, the possessor is failing due diligence to NOT use encryption to protect that data."
Nor does that mean to simply hand over the keys to DHS at the border. That sensitive data is the property of my employer, the owner of the laptop. The keys to that data should only be turned over in accordance with company policy. If company policy says to always hand over the keys to DHS officials, so be it. But the moment there is a company policy, the company is responsible for the consequences of that policy, and you are merely responsible for carrying it out. In addition, the company is responsible for the legality of that policy.
> If 5% of subscribers use 50% of the network's bandwidth, then those 5% should > be pay 50% of the costs. > > The other 95% who, by comparison, use very little should also be charged > proportionally less. To use completely arbitrary numbers:
You're not thinking like today's ISPs. The 5% of the subscribers using 50% of the bandwidth should be paying 50% of the cost. The other 95% should be paying 95% of the cost. A simple, effective plan to get the revenue to 135%. Let's not mix cost and revenue here, I'm just saying the by letting the other 95% get off with only paying 50%, you've left 35% of the potential revenue laying on the floor. Sticking with this attitude further reinforces the idea that the 5% heavy users are really stealing bandwidth.
More seriously, I'd like to see some sort of time-of-day factored into all of this, like they used to have for on-peak/off-peak electricity billing. I could certainly move some of my bandwidth consumption off-peak with a cron job. (Being a Gentoo user, I suspect a lot of my heavy usage is source code - about the easiest thing to move.)
So then the loophole becomes people who declare "wrapper corporations" around their lives. Sure they're still private citizens, but their assets and financial dealings would be held by the corporation - tax free. Then they live on the corporations facilities - for a privately negotiated price, and accept a pittance of a stipend that they pay taxes on.
I don't "believe in" evolution. Nor do I "believe in" Creation Science. Nor the FSM.
Let's put it this way: I accept the theoretical basis, well proven by facts, for evolution. To me, it is not a religion to be "believed in."
Getting people to "believe in" scientific issues is downright oxymoronic, and a perversion of the basic issue. Science isn't about believing, science is about accepting theories based on tests of evidence.
Heck, if this powerplant were a weapons system and the cost overrun was only 80%, it would be considered a bargain. Naah, it would be canceled because it was too cheap. No doubt there was no money in the budget to grease the right palms.
Come back in 10 years and let's see how "open" Mono/C#/OOXML really are/were.
Most of us are betting that the landscape will be littered with corpses, and the MS Lawyers will be wiping their swords.
Beyond that, where have you been with OOXML? It's not complete! Since when does a *standard* read crap like "Do this the way Word95 does"? If you want a real standard, and if that real standard must accept Word95 has what has been de-Facto, then you need to adequately describe exactly what it is Word95 does. Then instead of "the way Word95 does" insert the real description. (And even with that shorthand, it's over 6000 pages?)
Heck, we've got MythTV set to record the Super Bowl tomorrow, complete with commercial flagging.
Monday night, we're going to use the commercial flagging in reverse - to skip the game and watch the commercials. Of course that's the once-a-year that the commercials are more worth watching than the event they're sponsoring. Come to think of it, most of the time both are about equally valueless.
I certainly won't deny what you've said, that everyone grabs power. But it's also not reasonable to defend Bush by saying, "all of the other leaders are doing it, too." I'm not saying that that's what you're doing, but others have. I will further say that Bush has taken the power grab to new heights.
Enough of this chiseling around. Someone should introduce a bill making GWB above the law, and law as well as in fact. We should spell out the super-capabilities of the Executive, essentially pointing out that we have an elected, term-limited King.
We've just been pussy-footing around for the past 7 years. GWB is very nearly a King already, between Signing Statements and Executive Privilege. The mechanisms of tyranny are in place. The checks and balances of government are broken. So the question becomes, "Do you trust GWB?" as well as, "Do you trust the next President?"
Name a spade a spade, and maybe people will finally wake up to the slippery slope we've been sliding down.
> Well, most people in this country say they're religious. That much is true. > Yet they have no problem with the money lenders in the temple. > The Number One religion in the US is Orthodox Consumerism.
To use religio-speak, it's called "whoring after gold," and the most surprising/distressing thing about it is that it's the so-called "religious right" that is leading us down this path. At the same time, their moral element consists of crying out about the sins of others. Also at the same time, they "adjust the tax code to favor an ownership society," which has the additional effect of impoverishing the non-wealthy.
But then again, isn't that basically the behavior of the Pharisees and Sadducees in the time of Christ? As I remember from my reading, that behavior was also pretty much Number 1 on His hit-list. I seem to remember His call was to "reform YOUR life," not play busybody over everyone else's, and claim that your fortunate lot in life was granted by God.
From everything I've heard, Linux is still only catching up to Windows in terms of power consumption. It's fun because we hear all of the details, and until someone builds some nifty package, we script all of the dial-tweaks ourselves. Part of the fun is knowing the dials and what they do, but I guess that's not fun for everyone, some want it to just work, and we're getting there. As long as I can still see the dials, understand them, and tweak them, good automated default power management is good, too.
But from a methodology viewpoint, does anyone understand the road Windows has trod, and how they have gotten to where they are? For instance, things like the tickless kernel are pretty fundamental. Is the Windows kernel tickless, or how do they get their power down if it isn't?
I find the idea interesting. It focuses on parties who neither invented nor manufactured. My suggestion wasn't well liked, maybe yours would be better received. Of course the worlds problems will be solved, here.
Last I checked, I held 19 patents, so I'm not simply an uninterested party foisting problems off on someone else. The system is currently broken, though as others have suggested, there are new improvements in the prior art process that may help. I was just coming up with another idea, aimed at the trolls.
Why not limit the number of times patent rights can be reassigned?
As set forth in the US Constitution, the purpose of patents is twofold: 1: The temporary monopoly on the invention gives the inventor recompense for the investment made in the invention. In other words, it keeps him/her inventing instead of waiting tables. 2: The limited term of the patent brings the invention into the public domain, to be used as fodder for future inventions.
The whole idea of assignment of your invention rights is simply another way of getting recompense. It's a good idea, because it means you don't have to be a manufacturer and marketer, as well as an inventor. Assignment of rights lets you focus on inventing and not on those other things, if that's your bent.
And maybe reassignment by the first assignee might make sense, too. But by the time patent rights have been sold multiple times, the link back to one of the original functions - to keep the inventors inventing - is so diffuse that it has been lost, IMHO.
The Constitution never intended the patent as a revenue source beyond spurring invention. (Same with copyrights)
Slashdot Mirror
Because they saw how the impeachment attempt backfired on the Republicans a few years before.
Bush still has solid base support, or at least solid base resistance against attack by Democrats.
Clinton was not under trial over Paula Jones, he was under investigation.
...which turned into investigating travel payments authorized by the White House that turned out to be nothing. ...which turned into sexual harassment issues with Jennifer Flowers which turned out to be nothing. ...which turned into sexual harassment issues with Paula Jones which turned out to be nothing. ...which turned into Monica Lewinski, which really should have been a private issue between Bill, Hillary, and Monica.
...try investigating the Attorney General's office for turning the Justice (Just-Us) Department into a political wing of the White House. ...try investigating the authorization and use of torture by US officials. ...try investigating the authorization and use of domestic surveillance without warrants by US officials.
You know, the Special Prosecutor who was appointed to investigate a real estate deal called Whitewater that turned out to be nothing.
No, this wasn't a witch hunt, this was good, focused government investigation.
Now if you want a witch hunt...
Those are diffuse, meandering witch hunts!
Please get your fact straight. The dress was blue, not black.
You were wrong on this detail, therefore everything you say is wrong.
This is known as the "Michael Moore Effect". Clearly the fact that he messed up on a few minor facts, combined with the fact that his delivery can be a little heavy-handed, inexorably leads to the obvious conclusion that everything he says is wrong.
Yes!
If these images are going to exist, it's better that we ALL have access to them, than that it be only some select few.
Maybe it would be better if such images didn't exist.
Maybe it would be better if there were some way of knowing that the people with access really were the right people.
Maybe it would be better if we knew such information was being used under checks and balances, and only for the right reasons.
But given that none of those conditions can be verified as true, access for ALL is better.
Besides, as others have mentioned, Google images are nowhere near the caliber of spy satellites, but that doesn't affect the basic logic.
I would argue that "Company A" is represented by GM and Ford, and "Company B" is represented by the likes of Toyota and Honda.
Read things like Consumer Reports, and for the long term they recommend cars from Company B.
These days, Company A just ain't doing so hot, and Company B is moving up. I would argue that Company A has lost its roots, and needs to remember that it's a Car Company. Of course a while back, I heard that Company A actually made more money from playing financial games than it did from cars. In the short term, that says to de-emphasize the cars and play more financial games. In the long term, it means that either there may not be a long term, or that they're on their way to becoming a bank, which appears to be the direction of far too many American businesses, in which case the banking sector will become overcrowded.
Government regulation is a difficult thing, in that the types of people you lament usually manage to twist things around to make those regulations do the exact opposite of what you intend. I have no doubt that that would be the case, if we tried as you propose. So what would I propose instead?
For instance, there now appear to be regulations on the books that actually favor sending American jobs offshore, and give companies benefits for doing so. I would repeal stuff like that, leaving nothing in its place. If touching things seems to do the wrong thing, then don't touch them.
Beyond that, I would shoot for information disclosure. The basis of a free market is the informed customer, so make sure the information is flowing. Perhaps in this case, the information that needs to flow is something relating executive compensation compared to company performance, and that information needs to flow to stockholders and prospective stockholders. Another piece of information that should become apparent is whether company profits are growing through revenue growth or cost-cutting, and whether that company growth is through market growth, or "selling the company" or selling the company's crown jewels. Those pieces of information would help stockholders make long-term decisions. Another area that may need some work is gag orders on court settlements. I can accept that some of this information needs to be kept secret, but other information may well be impairing the ability of customers to make informed product decisions, for instance based on safety.
Finally, we have some societal problems. The real problem is that our rapacious CEOs need scorn, not envy. It needs to become socially unacceptable to earn a bonus by axing American jobs.
Once upon a time, the CEO of a very successful company had a simple 3-step recipe:
1: Take care of your customers.
2: Take care of your employees.
3: PROFIT!!
Actually, Step 3 was really, "The profits will take care of themselves." But it's worth noting that this was Step 3, not Step 4 with some sort of "???" for Step 3. It was also a long-term attitude, in that you were building the foundations of long-term success, and perhaps sacrificing higher short-term profits in exchange for that long term.
This too, has passed.
But then again, that company isn't now considered as successful as it was when it was run by those 3 steps.
IMHO, the "maximize profits" attitude in US corporations is a fundamental problem. Let's phrase it this way... You want to buy a car, and you have to choose between Car Company A and Car Company B.
Car Company A's guiding principles are to "maximize profits" and "maximize shareholder return", and they happen to make cars.
Car Company B's guiding principles are to make the best cars that they can, and so far by selling those cars at a competitive price they have remained profitable and in business.
Who would you want to buy your car from?
The moment it becomes a company policy issue, the whole matter becomes between the government and a US Corporation, for whom they have a heckuva lot more respect than they do for you or me. The moment companies put in place policies, and as soon as you show the company policy letter with your laptop, and the moment it's BIG companies (Boeing, GE, GM, etc) doing it, things will moderate.
Some rulings are meant to be overturned...
There have been enough high-profile thefts of laptops lately compromising personal data to drive the counter-argument that could be used to overturn this ruling.
"When sensitive data is present on a laptop, the possessor is failing due diligence to NOT use encryption to protect that data."
Nor does that mean to simply hand over the keys to DHS at the border. That sensitive data is the property of my employer, the owner of the laptop. The keys to that data should only be turned over in accordance with company policy. If company policy says to always hand over the keys to DHS officials, so be it. But the moment there is a company policy, the company is responsible for the consequences of that policy, and you are merely responsible for carrying it out. In addition, the company is responsible for the legality of that policy.
That's right up there with, "We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here."
So it seems that SOMEBODY in the administration has the "Top Secret Terrorists Procedural Manual" and has found where it states:
1: Terrorists may only open one front at a time, so if Iraq is busy there will be no attacks on the US.
2: Terrorists either can't or won't track US spy satellites themselves, so if US hobbyists don't do it, it won't get done.
I'm sure the administration has the rest of the rules, but of course they're secret.
> If 5% of subscribers use 50% of the network's bandwidth, then those 5% should
> be pay 50% of the costs.
>
> The other 95% who, by comparison, use very little should also be charged
> proportionally less. To use completely arbitrary numbers:
You're not thinking like today's ISPs. The 5% of the subscribers using 50% of the bandwidth should be paying 50% of the cost. The other 95% should be paying 95% of the cost. A simple, effective plan to get the revenue to 135%. Let's not mix cost and revenue here, I'm just saying the by letting the other 95% get off with only paying 50%, you've left 35% of the potential revenue laying on the floor. Sticking with this attitude further reinforces the idea that the 5% heavy users are really stealing bandwidth.
More seriously, I'd like to see some sort of time-of-day factored into all of this, like they used to have for on-peak/off-peak electricity billing. I could certainly move some of my bandwidth consumption off-peak with a cron job. (Being a Gentoo user, I suspect a lot of my heavy usage is source code - about the easiest thing to move.)
So then the loophole becomes people who declare "wrapper corporations" around their lives. Sure they're still private citizens, but their assets and financial dealings would be held by the corporation - tax free. Then they live on the corporations facilities - for a privately negotiated price, and accept a pittance of a stipend that they pay taxes on.
Loopholes are loopholes, from whatever direction.
It just hit me, on this question...
I don't "believe in" evolution. Nor do I "believe in" Creation Science. Nor the FSM.
Let's put it this way: I accept the theoretical basis, well proven by facts, for evolution. To me, it is not a religion to be "believed in."
Getting people to "believe in" scientific issues is downright oxymoronic, and a perversion of the basic issue. Science isn't about believing, science is about accepting theories based on tests of evidence.
Heck, if this powerplant were a weapons system and the cost overrun was only 80%, it would be considered a bargain. Naah, it would be canceled because it was too cheap. No doubt there was no money in the budget to grease the right palms.
Come back in 10 years and let's see how "open" Mono/C#/OOXML really are/were.
Most of us are betting that the landscape will be littered with corpses, and the MS Lawyers will be wiping their swords.
Beyond that, where have you been with OOXML? It's not complete! Since when does a *standard* read crap like "Do this the way Word95 does"? If you want a real standard, and if that real standard must accept Word95 has what has been de-Facto, then you need to adequately describe exactly what it is Word95 does. Then instead of "the way Word95 does" insert the real description. (And even with that shorthand, it's over 6000 pages?)
Heck, we've got MythTV set to record the Super Bowl tomorrow, complete with commercial flagging.
Monday night, we're going to use the commercial flagging in reverse - to skip the game and watch the commercials. Of course that's the once-a-year that the commercials are more worth watching than the event they're sponsoring. Come to think of it, most of the time both are about equally valueless.
It's not lost, it's just distracted.
Oooooh, SHINY!
Didja hear about Britney going to the hospital?
(Plus there's the fact the P.T. Barnum was a piker compared to today's media.)
They came for the xxx, and I said nothing, because I was not xxx.
Then they came for the yyy, and I said nothing, because I was not yyy.
etc, etc, etc
Then they came for the home networkers, and I couldn't complain, because there was no route available...
How many subnets in your home does it take to qualify?
I certainly won't deny what you've said, that everyone grabs power. But it's also not reasonable to defend Bush by saying, "all of the other leaders are doing it, too." I'm not saying that that's what you're doing, but others have. I will further say that Bush has taken the power grab to new heights.
Enough of this chiseling around. Someone should introduce a bill making GWB above the law, and law as well as in fact. We should spell out the super-capabilities of the Executive, essentially pointing out that we have an elected, term-limited King.
We've just been pussy-footing around for the past 7 years. GWB is very nearly a King already, between Signing Statements and Executive Privilege. The mechanisms of tyranny are in place. The checks and balances of government are broken. So the question becomes, "Do you trust GWB?" as well as, "Do you trust the next President?"
Name a spade a spade, and maybe people will finally wake up to the slippery slope we've been sliding down.
> Well, most people in this country say they're religious. That much is true.
> Yet they have no problem with the money lenders in the temple.
> The Number One religion in the US is Orthodox Consumerism.
To use religio-speak, it's called "whoring after gold," and the most surprising/distressing thing about it is that it's the so-called "religious right" that is leading us down this path. At the same time, their moral element consists of crying out about the sins of others. Also at the same time, they "adjust the tax code to favor an ownership society," which has the additional effect of impoverishing the non-wealthy.
But then again, isn't that basically the behavior of the Pharisees and Sadducees in the time of Christ? As I remember from my reading, that behavior was also pretty much Number 1 on His hit-list. I seem to remember His call was to "reform YOUR life," not play busybody over everyone else's, and claim that your fortunate lot in life was granted by God.
From everything I've heard, Linux is still only catching up to Windows in terms of power consumption. It's fun because we hear all of the details, and until someone builds some nifty package, we script all of the dial-tweaks ourselves. Part of the fun is knowing the dials and what they do, but I guess that's not fun for everyone, some want it to just work, and we're getting there. As long as I can still see the dials, understand them, and tweak them, good automated default power management is good, too.
But from a methodology viewpoint, does anyone understand the road Windows has trod, and how they have gotten to where they are? For instance, things like the tickless kernel are pretty fundamental. Is the Windows kernel tickless, or how do they get their power down if it isn't?
I find the idea interesting. It focuses on parties who neither invented nor manufactured. My suggestion wasn't well liked, maybe yours would be better received. Of course the worlds problems will be solved, here.
Last I checked, I held 19 patents, so I'm not simply an uninterested party foisting problems off on someone else. The system is currently broken, though as others have suggested, there are new improvements in the prior art process that may help. I was just coming up with another idea, aimed at the trolls.
Why not limit the number of times patent rights can be reassigned?
As set forth in the US Constitution, the purpose of patents is twofold:
1: The temporary monopoly on the invention gives the inventor recompense for the investment made in the invention. In other words, it keeps him/her inventing instead of waiting tables.
2: The limited term of the patent brings the invention into the public domain, to be used as fodder for future inventions.
The whole idea of assignment of your invention rights is simply another way of getting recompense. It's a good idea, because it means you don't have to be a manufacturer and marketer, as well as an inventor. Assignment of rights lets you focus on inventing and not on those other things, if that's your bent.
And maybe reassignment by the first assignee might make sense, too. But by the time patent rights have been sold multiple times, the link back to one of the original functions - to keep the inventors inventing - is so diffuse that it has been lost, IMHO.
The Constitution never intended the patent as a revenue source beyond spurring invention. (Same with copyrights)