So a working-man and a stay-at-home-mom enter such a contract. He gets paid and that income is taxed. Can he give money to his wife without it being taxed? Can she go to the store and buy groceries with his money without it being taxed as her income?
I mean, sure, they have a shared bank account, but they're seperate entities only being held together with a contract. Is his income taxed again when she spends it? It shouldn't be, they're married.
So two businessmen enter into a contract. They share a bank account. One makes some money, the other spends some money. Is that transfer of money taxed? It damn well should be.
Additionally, while it would complicate the paperwork to enter into an agreement (for some people, usually those with more than enough money to pay for a lawyer to do the work), it would drastically simplify the dissolution of such a union.
Oh, so do such contract state who owns the kids? I'm sure that everything stays perfectly the same from the time a young couple enter a contract to the time after they have children. And it's SO SIMPLE now that there's a contract absolving/forcing the daddy from having to pay child support. Because careers NEVER change over decades. Seriously, you think LIFELONG contracts are going to make things simpler?
ok ok, lemme explain it this way: When you marry someone you ARE entering into a lifelong contract. A premade, long-established contract that's similar to everyone elses' (save a few rich dicks with pre-nups), and it's been codified into law in a dozen different ways. It gives special privileges to a couple in the same way that parent/offspring relationships have special privileges. To keep slimy businessmen from abusing some of these privileges, you can't wantonly marry people just for a tax break.
Seriously, just let the gays marry.
We've been through this with inter-racial marriages, we really should have learned our lesson.
And in a couple of decades we'll go through all this again with robots. Mark my words.
What? no! It's funny, not insightful. It's a joke people. That's not supposed to be a roadmap. The link at the end makes it satire. Stop. Don't do it. Just... stop....
The only reason this is an issue is that the government is involved in marriage the first place. If there was no government sanction of marriage, then gay marriage would be a non-issue.
Ok, I'll bite.
So there are a lot of rules on the books about spouses. Like who gets your money by default after you die. Who is allowed to pull the plug. That whole "next of kin" thing. These are real issues that need a legally binding and practical answers. You can't just get rid of it. You need to replace it with something.
So what are you going to replace it with?
Spouse is now defined as anyone you've lived with for X+ years? If you put that value at less than 4, you've got a lot of college kids that are legally married by the time they graduate.
Limit it to genetics? There is no marriage, just your babies daddy? That strips a lot of rights from non-breeders.
Enforce everyone to write out a will, and state who acts like their spouse is? That's a lot of paperwork, cost, and is effectively the SAME DAMN THING.
Ellipses aren't "blanks" you can fill in. They cut out irrelevant text. That section specifically spells out what congress is allowed to regulate. In it is the "commerce clause". Look, it's right there:
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Because the cost of healthcare is so ludicrously out of control and it's a common source of life-shattering debts, it's become a political issue and congress is passing bills working on regulating the inter-state commerce that surrounds healthcare. And the economy is so interwoven that interstate commerce is national commerce.
But the constitution allows congress to try and fix the economy. How far that reaches varies on how fucked up everything is. And healthcare is pretty fucked up.
the current justification by the FDA is that removing this barrier and allowing those groups to donate blood would result in an increase in HIV-positive transfusions in.0000000016% of the blood supply. You be the judge there.
Ok.
There's a statistically higher number of gay men and africans with AIDS. There's a percentage of blood that slips through quality control and doesn't get tested. Globally around 85 million units of red blood cells are transfused in a given year.
Cite the 0.0000000016%, otherwise I believe you're pulling a number out of your ass.
Hey, did you know that, in the past and currently, there were complete asshats that did asshat-like things who were part of the gay community, the church, open-source movement, BSA, childsplay, England, AnimalAid, academia, and/or $YOURFAVORITEORGANIZATION?
Oh, sure sure, that's a judges order. Law of the land and all that.
And if I can convince a judge to order you to shove your head up your ass, I expect you to spend a lot of time in jail limbering up. It's just that the whole "convince a judge" bit is supposed to be difficult. They're really not supposed to just flippantly order people about. They're supposed to have reasons for such things.
Let me expand the original post: The part where you can convince a judge to order him to tell you the passwords seems a bit much. Kind of an abuse of power. Seems like a civil affair over property and all that. Having a court order in short notice and then throwing him in jail in less than a week doesn't seem like a power that the typical employer normally has. I didn't even know the judge was in your pocket.
oh come on! Think of the poor MPAA losing their shirt just because times change. And hey, if schools are having troubles right now, they're sitting on a MOTHERLOAD of a profitable resource: A captive and impressionable audience. I'm sure the MPAA would be willing to part with a few dollars to have a SIMPLE and PRODUCTIVE message sent to our youths.
And why stop there? I'm sure that ExxonMobile would be willing to donate to our children's future and supply a brief explanation of the benefits of fracking. Halliburton would be able to give an up-close and insightful description of political issues to bolster their social science awareness. Microsoft would be able to explain what all happens when you agree to those complicated EULAs. They could also comment on the importance of sharing, caring, and litigating anyone who dares do it with your toys. Monsanto would do wonders in the biology class.
Ok, the ender's game review was kinda geeky and vaguely newsworthy. It's a "classic" YA sci-fi. The author is a homophobic dick. I can kinda see why it's on Slashdot.
The "Hey, the movie of Starship Troopers wasn't so bad" post felt like it was desperately milking the after-effects of the last movie post.
But this? This has gone on too far. Slashdot is not a movie review site. This is not a place to comment on the geeky movie of the month. It's geeky and nerdy, sure, but it's just not news.
Wait, whoa, hold on. Let's look at that downside again:
If not managed properly, flooding the market with Iranian crude could carry its own negative consequences by suddenly making fracked oil in the US unprofitable.
So... coming at this as someone who drives a car, consumes oil, and general does business with other people who depend on oil production, the idea of the market being flooded with cheap oil sounds like a fantastic thing. It's a good thing for me and virtually everyone I do business with, even tangentially. It's good for consumers.
Ah! But I understand that markets and industries can be disrupted by volatility. This sort of thing takes out the small players, leaving only those with big pockets that can weather the storm, or conglomerates with diverse portfolios. But.... when you think of "small players" does the US oil industry come to mind? Are we worried about those poor starving orphans over at Chevron and Exxon? Are they mom&pop shops that are worried about their slim profit market being washed away as big players muck up their market?
I mean, competition is a good thing, and losing any players reduces competition... But we're the big players here. To be an ass about it, volatility kills competition to US dominance. If ever there was an industry that could weather a downturn, it's the oil and gas megacorps.
So Kerry is going to Iran to keep them from dropping the price of oil? Seriously?
It's adorable that you think personalities change when you switch languages.
Also, this is hilarious as the section that the homophobes usually cite is Leviticus 20:13
"If a man practices homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman,... If a man also shall lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have... their blood shall be upon them; be slain by stoning, as the above Targum.
True, true. And even when Google employees hack'n'slash the Microsoftites in a great cleansing it doesn't mean that they were adhering to the principles that makes Google such a great and benevolent entity. It doesn't matter that they were paid by Google HR, trained in Google HQ, and carrying out orders by the Google CEO, they weren't REEAAALLY adhering to the "way of Google", blessed be it's icon. Google simply wouldn't approve of that.
Dark matter and dark energy so far are inscrutable. It is hard to know if we will ever be able to really do anything with dark matter or dark energy. But to suggest we should not fund research for these and many other items is foolish. Since we do not know what may come from such research it is ultra important that we do not create a situation where a less than friendly nation just might find some really powerful ways to harness these items. In other words not knowing the potential of such research is the very urgent reason to do the research.
Hooooooly sheeeet boy. Listen, you're advocating science. YAY. But you just don't know what you're talking about. Dark matter and dark energy (probably) aren't physical actual things. It's not like a nefarious nation is going to unlock the secret of dark matter and use it to launch dark-matter bombs at us. Here we go: we've got two ways of measuring what's out in the universe and they don't agree about how much should be out there. One way is to measure the light we see, another way to is measure the gravitational pull we feel. We thought that most of the mass out there should be suns, giving off light. Hey, it turns out that there's a lot of gravity inducing mass out there that doesn't emit light. You know... like a black hole. Remember that dark matter was coined before black holes became a believable idea. Now, science has moved on, we've learned more, and there are new interesting questions. Dark energy is similar, related, and afaik unanswered dependency. I believe that galaxies are ACCELERATING away from each other, and we don't know why. But the worry that China or Russia will weaponize dark energy, or make a buck off of it, to our determent... It's just... That's... sigh...
I guess.... I guess if you're the sort that lives in fear of evil foreign boogiemen learning secrets of the universe and using it to lord over us... and that's motivating you to advance the sciences... then I should really just accept that and cheer you on. Something something, ends and means. But GOD DAMN is that hard to accept.
The whole "Savior of Humanity" is actually Peter. The aggressive sociopath. The one that ends up keeping the world from obliterating itself because people are power-thirsty idiots. Earth was never actually at risk from the bugs exterminating them. But hey, that's awfully complicated for a movie, so let's just leave that in the book.
Ender isn't a savior, he causes a genocide.
I think I have to agree that it's just kind of an anti-bullying revenge fantasy. The mental backflips that the story pulls you through to justify those killings is just kind of fluff. It can be extended to the whole humanity vs bug overplot as well. Taken that way, at least Ender feels bad about it in the end.
Actually, there ARE exceptions to the whole "self-propagating" thing. It's just that those religions/cults tend to die out and don't get much attention.
And a lot of religions have learned to play nice with their neighbors in various ways and flavors over the years. They still want to be top dog, but are willing to let other live under their tent. There's a BIG difference between waging holy wars and peacefully spreading the message.
The millions of women burned at the stake "in his name". An uncountable number of wars perpetrated "in his name". A litany of transgressions that "He" is going to smite us for.
Listen, your idealized mystical god can do whatever the hell you want him to do. But here in reality "god" is an aspect of "religions" filled with "real actual people" doing "real actual things". And a lot of them hate the gays. Including Orson Scott Card.
You should have told him not to worry "I know a guy who can help". And then given your black friend $100 to make up a trivial problem he needed fixed so he could pay your father the $100.
Well, alright, two perspectives. One from the movie, one from the book.
From what the movie showed, you're put into stasis during the "long jumps". I don't imagine it's good for the pilots' moral to wake them every 10 years, give them a light lunch, and have them phone home. From their perspective you launch to war and have an afternoon of snacks WHILE YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS ROT AWAY AGING 10 YEARS EVERY 30 MINUTES RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES, and then it's time to fight and die.
Wait a sec...
It's already been established that FTL does not exist in this universe
No it isn't. In the movie, NONE OF THIS is even remotely explained. Space travel is abstracted away. There's no mention of how fast anything can travel. In the movie, as far as you know, Ender jets off to a conquered alien outpost just next door to the invading fleet. The timing is even more confusing as "during the war" you see that hero guy flying an F-22 while the invading force is some sort of spaceship/drone fighter mix with lasers'n'shit. (Yeah, wtf, why are they drone fighters, what the fuck are those faceless guys even doing? Are there even any humans out there? NO TIME TO EXPLAIN, GRAB ONTO MY PLOT! ZOOM!)
Things are more spelled out in the book. And this was what kept me from enjoying the movie, I kept on contrasting the story I knew to the one I was watching (and getting whiplash from what they skipped over). But yeah, it's spelled out that the invading forces hitting the bug's home world are the ones that left immediately after the war, faced time dilation, and are the oldest and least advanced warships. (Apparently we don't give a shit about any of their expansions away from earth) It's also explained that while they have no way to beat the speed of light while traveling, they invented instant communication over any distance. Which is why they bothered training commanders on Earth in the first place. That hero is specifically sent on a fast ship to circle the cosmos, come right back, and face time dilation just so he'd live long enough to give Ender some pointers.
I don't believe the reason that they didn't let any of the secret invading forces phone home is ever spelled out in the book. But it's kind of one of those things that you don't let the troopers in the secret invading army do if you want to keep it a secret. Even against bugs with no known means of communication. Because you never know when they might be psychic and can reach out to the void and invade your dreams. Oh, whoops, *Spoilers*!
Hey man, that's great for you. You're a worker and you want to get paid. Nothing wrong with that. It's ok not to be a professional. A lot of important, and highly paid, people are not professionals. I guess I'm using the term "professional" in a specific way. I mean, if you get paid for it, whatever it is, you can call yourself a professional. But professionalism means a little more than that. And you're right, the article and ruling make that clear: sysadmins are not being treated as professionals anymore. You're expected to be workers that do as you're told, not professionals who do what's right.
Try this on for size: "The professional owes a higher duty to a client, often a privilege of confidentiality, as well as a duty not to abandon a genuine client just because he or she may not be able to pay or remunerate the professional. Often the professional is required to put the interest of the client ahead of his own interests."
That's similar to how they got to charge Kevin Mitnick with the construction cost of the building that housed the server he compromised. But go ahead, trump it up. Terry Childs impacted systems that were related to national defense too, I'm pretty sure some national guard reserve wouldn't get a phone call if it all fell down. Yeah man, he practically invited Russia to invade us. TRAITOR!
Now... Did any of those services shut down? Were any even interrupted? What, exactly, was the impact of two weeks without access to the routers of SanFan FiberWAN? You know, other than pissing away a shit-ton of money on lawyers and getting egg of their face from the media.
Around here, getting fired gets you an armed escort out the door, never to touch your computer again, never mind "hang around for your replacement"
That was my father's position. He kept the light on at the power utility company. He couldn't just up and leave as it would send a chunk of the midwest into darkness. The boss that would have theoretically fired him simply couldn't do his job. Now, critical things like hospitals and and server farms have generator backups, but it'd still be millions of dollars of loss. My job? I'm a code-monkey. Not critical at all. No one really cares when I show up at my desk. The software I write? Critical as all fucking get out. I code OBOGS, the avionics that let's fighter pilots breath.
If the boss wants to fuck something up, it is his call, it is up to you to document his decision.
Right, that's how it works "Around there". It's ok not to be a professional. A lot of very important people just simply aren't. And the cops aren't going to do anything when you complain that your boss wants to release life-critical software without testing it.
Right, right, and if you're mercenaries cackling over a burning network, that plan works great.
If you are a professional that doesn't want the entire city to fall off the grid, if you actually care about the customers, if you don't want the company to go broke, if you don't WANT the damn thing to burn in fire, then that's a pretty shitty plan, now isn't it?
I have done exactly that and laughed with Satanic glee as the employers ( a big coal company)proceeded to crash the entire network within 10 minutes.... The company filed for bankruptcy a few years later... Revenge is a dish best served cold.And it can be sweet --The Geek Hillbilly
Sigh..... remind me why Kentucky is full of poor people and can't attract any business? No, no.... I know you didn't cause the company to go bankrupt. It's more of a comment on the culture of the place. It's you AND EVERYONE ELSE there that made them go bankrupt.
Yeah, that's cool. The part where you throw him in jail afterwards until he hand them over seems a little much. Kind of an abuse of power that I didn't even know you had. Sentencing him to 4 years in jail and a million dollar fine after the fact seems ludicrous.
Yeah, I don't get this movement on Slashdot. There appears to be a group of people here who are doing their best to demonize the guy. I mean, there are a lot of different ways you can take this story: Rogue Sysadmin takes city hostage. Incopetent boss imprisons worker after refusing to endanger system. Incompetnent sysadmin does something stupid enough to make the news. Tyrannical owners set precidence that they own your thoughts.
I'm not entirely sure why slashdot would be on the side of demonizing the guy. I mean, some of us here are bosses, managers, and that sort. Those types want ultimate power in their orders. "We own you". They don't want their underlings to be professionals that countermand their order and do the right things. (Because it's massivly embarrasing, and it's hard to make that sort of call). I imagine some people here WANT sysadmins to be professionals and don't like Terry Childs simply because he got on the news and the whole thing looks like an embarrasment to their profession. Those people are falling for media spin.
Here's how I see it:
Listen, there's this sterotypical clusterfuck where an asshole non-tech boss establishes an antagonistic relationship with the lead technical guy. Push comes to shove and the boss fires the guy with his replacement standing right there in the room. The technical guy knows the replacement is the incompetent bootlicking friend of the boss. Yeah, so they don't get the keys to the system before firing him. I mentioned they're incompetent,right? They call him up asking for the keys and the guy laughs in their face. So they call the cops and throw him in jail. Yeah, go figure. The technical guy's then like "ok fine, I'll give the keys to YOUR boss". Then they sue him for the two weeks that took. The system ran fine in the meantime. Ah, but it made the news, and now it's a thing. After the trial, he's sentanced to FOUR YEARS and $1.9 million in fines.
Lesson: Sysadmins are no longer professionals. If the boss tells you to drive the network off a cliff sending the city's utilities into ruin, you do so.
Slashdot Mirror
So a working-man and a stay-at-home-mom enter such a contract. He gets paid and that income is taxed. Can he give money to his wife without it being taxed? Can she go to the store and buy groceries with his money without it being taxed as her income?
I mean, sure, they have a shared bank account, but they're seperate entities only being held together with a contract. Is his income taxed again when she spends it? It shouldn't be, they're married.
So two businessmen enter into a contract. They share a bank account. One makes some money, the other spends some money. Is that transfer of money taxed? It damn well should be.
Additionally, while it would complicate the paperwork to enter into an agreement (for some people, usually those with more than enough money to pay for a lawyer to do the work), it would drastically simplify the dissolution of such a union.
Oh, so do such contract state who owns the kids? I'm sure that everything stays perfectly the same from the time a young couple enter a contract to the time after they have children. And it's SO SIMPLE now that there's a contract absolving/forcing the daddy from having to pay child support. Because careers NEVER change over decades. Seriously, you think LIFELONG contracts are going to make things simpler?
ok ok, lemme explain it this way: When you marry someone you ARE entering into a lifelong contract. A premade, long-established contract that's similar to everyone elses' (save a few rich dicks with pre-nups), and it's been codified into law in a dozen different ways. It gives special privileges to a couple in the same way that parent/offspring relationships have special privileges. To keep slimy businessmen from abusing some of these privileges, you can't wantonly marry people just for a tax break.
Seriously, just let the gays marry.
We've been through this with inter-racial marriages, we really should have learned our lesson.
And in a couple of decades we'll go through all this again with robots. Mark my words.
What? no! It's funny, not insightful. It's a joke people. That's not supposed to be a roadmap. The link at the end makes it satire. Stop. Don't do it. Just... stop....
The only reason this is an issue is that the government is involved in marriage the first place. If there was no government sanction of marriage, then gay marriage would be a non-issue.
Ok, I'll bite.
So there are a lot of rules on the books about spouses. Like who gets your money by default after you die. Who is allowed to pull the plug. That whole "next of kin" thing. These are real issues that need a legally binding and practical answers. You can't just get rid of it. You need to replace it with something.
So what are you going to replace it with?
Spouse is now defined as anyone you've lived with for X+ years? If you put that value at less than 4, you've got a lot of college kids that are legally married by the time they graduate.
Limit it to genetics? There is no marriage, just your babies daddy? That strips a lot of rights from non-breeders.
Enforce everyone to write out a will, and state who acts like their spouse is? That's a lot of paperwork, cost, and is effectively the SAME DAMN THING.
Ellipses aren't "blanks" you can fill in. They cut out irrelevant text.
That section specifically spells out what congress is allowed to regulate.
In it is the "commerce clause". Look, it's right there:
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Because the cost of healthcare is so ludicrously out of control and it's a common source of life-shattering debts, it's become a political issue and congress is passing bills working on regulating the inter-state commerce that surrounds healthcare. And the economy is so interwoven that interstate commerce is national commerce.
But the constitution allows congress to try and fix the economy. How far that reaches varies on how fucked up everything is. And healthcare is pretty fucked up.
the current justification by the FDA is that removing this barrier and allowing those groups to donate blood would result in an increase in HIV-positive transfusions in .0000000016% of the blood supply. You be the judge there.
Ok.
There's a statistically higher number of gay men and africans with AIDS.
There's a percentage of blood that slips through quality control and doesn't get tested.
Globally around 85 million units of red blood cells are transfused in a given year.
Cite the 0.0000000016%, otherwise I believe you're pulling a number out of your ass.
Hey, did you know that, in the past and currently, there were complete asshats that did asshat-like things who were part of the gay community, the church, open-source movement, BSA, childsplay, England, AnimalAid, academia, and/or $YOURFAVORITEORGANIZATION?
Oh, sure sure, that's a judges order. Law of the land and all that.
And if I can convince a judge to order you to shove your head up your ass, I expect you to spend a lot of time in jail limbering up. It's just that the whole "convince a judge" bit is supposed to be difficult. They're really not supposed to just flippantly order people about. They're supposed to have reasons for such things.
Let me expand the original post:
The part where you can convince a judge to order him to tell you the passwords seems a bit much. Kind of an abuse of power. Seems like a civil affair over property and all that. Having a court order in short notice and then throwing him in jail in less than a week doesn't seem like a power that the typical employer normally has. I didn't even know the judge was in your pocket.
oh come on! Think of the poor MPAA losing their shirt just because times change. And hey, if schools are having troubles right now, they're sitting on a MOTHERLOAD of a profitable resource: A captive and impressionable audience. I'm sure the MPAA would be willing to part with a few dollars to have a SIMPLE and PRODUCTIVE message sent to our youths.
And why stop there? I'm sure that ExxonMobile would be willing to donate to our children's future and supply a brief explanation of the benefits of fracking. Halliburton would be able to give an up-close and insightful description of political issues to bolster their social science awareness. Microsoft would be able to explain what all happens when you agree to those complicated EULAs. They could also comment on the importance of sharing, caring, and litigating anyone who dares do it with your toys. Monsanto would do wonders in the biology class.
Just think of the possibilities.
Ok, the ender's game review was kinda geeky and vaguely newsworthy. It's a "classic" YA sci-fi. The author is a homophobic dick. I can kinda see why it's on Slashdot.
The "Hey, the movie of Starship Troopers wasn't so bad" post felt like it was desperately milking the after-effects of the last movie post.
But this? This has gone on too far. Slashdot is not a movie review site. This is not a place to comment on the geeky movie of the month. It's geeky and nerdy, sure, but it's just not news.
Wait, whoa, hold on. Let's look at that downside again:
If not managed properly, flooding the market with Iranian crude could carry its own negative consequences by suddenly making fracked oil in the US unprofitable.
So... coming at this as someone who drives a car, consumes oil, and general does business with other people who depend on oil production, the idea of the market being flooded with cheap oil sounds like a fantastic thing. It's a good thing for me and virtually everyone I do business with, even tangentially. It's good for consumers.
Ah! But I understand that markets and industries can be disrupted by volatility. This sort of thing takes out the small players, leaving only those with big pockets that can weather the storm, or conglomerates with diverse portfolios. But.... when you think of "small players" does the US oil industry come to mind? Are we worried about those poor starving orphans over at Chevron and Exxon? Are they mom&pop shops that are worried about their slim profit market being washed away as big players muck up their market?
I mean, competition is a good thing, and losing any players reduces competition... But we're the big players here. To be an ass about it, volatility kills competition to US dominance. If ever there was an industry that could weather a downturn, it's the oil and gas megacorps.
So Kerry is going to Iran to keep them from dropping the price of oil? Seriously?
It's adorable that you think personalities change when you switch languages.
Also, this is hilarious as the section that the homophobes usually cite is Leviticus 20:13
"If a man practices homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman, ... If a man also shall lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have ... their blood shall be upon them; be slain by stoning, as the above Targum.
Come on dude, know your own material.
I won't be happy until they get a whole cat to exist in superposition.
Then a lab assistant.
THEN THE WORLD!
True, true. And even when Google employees hack'n'slash the Microsoftites in a great cleansing it doesn't mean that they were adhering to the principles that makes Google such a great and benevolent entity. It doesn't matter that they were paid by Google HR, trained in Google HQ, and carrying out orders by the Google CEO, they weren't REEAAALLY adhering to the "way of Google", blessed be it's icon. Google simply wouldn't approve of that.
Whoops, you caught me in a hyperbole.
It was 10's of thousands or about 100,000. And yeah, this is in a time when the total population was ~80 million.
Dark matter and dark energy so far are inscrutable. It is hard to know if we will ever be able to really do anything with dark matter or dark energy. But to suggest we should not fund research for these and many other items is foolish. Since we do not know what may come from such research it is ultra important that we do not create a situation where a less than friendly nation just might find some really powerful ways to harness these items. In other words not knowing the potential of such research is the very urgent reason to do the research.
Hooooooly sheeeet boy.
Listen, you're advocating science. YAY.
But you just don't know what you're talking about. Dark matter and dark energy (probably) aren't physical actual things. It's not like a nefarious nation is going to unlock the secret of dark matter and use it to launch dark-matter bombs at us. Here we go: we've got two ways of measuring what's out in the universe and they don't agree about how much should be out there. One way is to measure the light we see, another way to is measure the gravitational pull we feel. We thought that most of the mass out there should be suns, giving off light. Hey, it turns out that there's a lot of gravity inducing mass out there that doesn't emit light. You know... like a black hole. Remember that dark matter was coined before black holes became a believable idea.
Now, science has moved on, we've learned more, and there are new interesting questions. Dark energy is similar, related, and afaik unanswered dependency. I believe that galaxies are ACCELERATING away from each other, and we don't know why. But the worry that China or Russia will weaponize dark energy, or make a buck off of it, to our determent... It's just... That's... sigh...
I guess.... I guess if you're the sort that lives in fear of evil foreign boogiemen learning secrets of the universe and using it to lord over us... and that's motivating you to advance the sciences... then I should really just accept that and cheer you on. Something something, ends and means. But GOD DAMN is that hard to accept.
The whole "Savior of Humanity" is actually Peter. The aggressive sociopath. The one that ends up keeping the world from obliterating itself because people are power-thirsty idiots. Earth was never actually at risk from the bugs exterminating them. But hey, that's awfully complicated for a movie, so let's just leave that in the book.
Ender isn't a savior, he causes a genocide.
I think I have to agree that it's just kind of an anti-bullying revenge fantasy. The mental backflips that the story pulls you through to justify those killings is just kind of fluff. It can be extended to the whole humanity vs bug overplot as well. Taken that way, at least Ender feels bad about it in the end.
Actually, there ARE exceptions to the whole "self-propagating" thing. It's just that those religions/cults tend to die out and don't get much attention.
And a lot of religions have learned to play nice with their neighbors in various ways and flavors over the years. They still want to be top dog, but are willing to let other live under their tent. There's a BIG difference between waging holy wars and peacefully spreading the message.
The millions of women burned at the stake "in his name". An uncountable number of wars perpetrated "in his name". A litany of transgressions that "He" is going to smite us for.
Listen, your idealized mystical god can do whatever the hell you want him to do. But here in reality "god" is an aspect of "religions" filled with "real actual people" doing "real actual things". And a lot of them hate the gays. Including Orson Scott Card.
You should have told him not to worry "I know a guy who can help". And then given your black friend $100 to make up a trivial problem he needed fixed so he could pay your father the $100.
Well, alright, two perspectives. One from the movie, one from the book.
From what the movie showed, you're put into stasis during the "long jumps". I don't imagine it's good for the pilots' moral to wake them every 10 years, give them a light lunch, and have them phone home. From their perspective you launch to war and have an afternoon of snacks WHILE YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS ROT AWAY AGING 10 YEARS EVERY 30 MINUTES RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES, and then it's time to fight and die.
Wait a sec...
It's already been established that FTL does not exist in this universe
No it isn't. In the movie, NONE OF THIS is even remotely explained. Space travel is abstracted away. There's no mention of how fast anything can travel. In the movie, as far as you know, Ender jets off to a conquered alien outpost just next door to the invading fleet. The timing is even more confusing as "during the war" you see that hero guy flying an F-22 while the invading force is some sort of spaceship/drone fighter mix with lasers'n'shit. (Yeah, wtf, why are they drone fighters, what the fuck are those faceless guys even doing? Are there even any humans out there? NO TIME TO EXPLAIN, GRAB ONTO MY PLOT! ZOOM!)
Things are more spelled out in the book. And this was what kept me from enjoying the movie, I kept on contrasting the story I knew to the one I was watching (and getting whiplash from what they skipped over). But yeah, it's spelled out that the invading forces hitting the bug's home world are the ones that left immediately after the war, faced time dilation, and are the oldest and least advanced warships. (Apparently we don't give a shit about any of their expansions away from earth) It's also explained that while they have no way to beat the speed of light while traveling, they invented instant communication over any distance. Which is why they bothered training commanders on Earth in the first place. That hero is specifically sent on a fast ship to circle the cosmos, come right back, and face time dilation just so he'd live long enough to give Ender some pointers.
I don't believe the reason that they didn't let any of the secret invading forces phone home is ever spelled out in the book. But it's kind of one of those things that you don't let the troopers in the secret invading army do if you want to keep it a secret. Even against bugs with no known means of communication. Because you never know when they might be psychic and can reach out to the void and invade your dreams. Oh, whoops, *Spoilers*!
Hey man, that's great for you. You're a worker and you want to get paid. Nothing wrong with that. It's ok not to be a professional. A lot of important, and highly paid, people are not professionals. I guess I'm using the term "professional" in a specific way. I mean, if you get paid for it, whatever it is, you can call yourself a professional. But professionalism means a little more than that. And you're right, the article and ruling make that clear: sysadmins are not being treated as professionals anymore. You're expected to be workers that do as you're told, not professionals who do what's right.
Try this on for size:
"The professional owes a higher duty to a client, often a privilege of confidentiality, as well as a duty not to abandon a genuine client just because he or she may not be able to pay or remunerate the professional. Often the professional is required to put the interest of the client ahead of his own interests."
for systems related to
Ah, what glorious weasel words.
That's similar to how they got to charge Kevin Mitnick with the construction cost of the building that housed the server he compromised. But go ahead, trump it up. Terry Childs impacted systems that were related to national defense too, I'm pretty sure some national guard reserve wouldn't get a phone call if it all fell down. Yeah man, he practically invited Russia to invade us. TRAITOR!
Now... Did any of those services shut down? Were any even interrupted? What, exactly, was the impact of two weeks without access to the routers of SanFan FiberWAN?
You know, other than pissing away a shit-ton of money on lawyers and getting egg of their face from the media.
Around here, getting fired gets you an armed escort out the door, never to touch your computer again, never mind "hang around for your replacement"
That was my father's position. He kept the light on at the power utility company. He couldn't just up and leave as it would send a chunk of the midwest into darkness. The boss that would have theoretically fired him simply couldn't do his job. Now, critical things like hospitals and and server farms have generator backups, but it'd still be millions of dollars of loss. My job? I'm a code-monkey. Not critical at all. No one really cares when I show up at my desk. The software I write? Critical as all fucking get out. I code OBOGS, the avionics that let's fighter pilots breath.
If the boss wants to fuck something up, it is his call, it is up to you to document his decision.
Right, that's how it works "Around there". It's ok not to be a professional. A lot of very important people just simply aren't. And the cops aren't going to do anything when you complain that your boss wants to release life-critical software without testing it.
Right, right, and if you're mercenaries cackling over a burning network, that plan works great.
If you are a professional that doesn't want the entire city to fall off the grid, if you actually care about the customers, if you don't want the company to go broke, if you don't WANT the damn thing to burn in fire, then that's a pretty shitty plan, now isn't it?
I have done exactly that and laughed with Satanic glee as the employers ( a big coal company)proceeded to crash the entire network within 10 minutes. ... ...
The company filed for bankruptcy a few years later
Revenge is a dish best served cold.And it can be sweet
--The Geek Hillbilly
Sigh..... remind me why Kentucky is full of poor people and can't attract any business?
No, no.... I know you didn't cause the company to go bankrupt. It's more of a comment on the culture of the place. It's you AND EVERYONE ELSE there that made them go bankrupt.
Yeah, that's cool.
The part where you throw him in jail afterwards until he hand them over seems a little much. Kind of an abuse of power that I didn't even know you had.
Sentencing him to 4 years in jail and a million dollar fine after the fact seems ludicrous.
Yeah, I don't get this movement on Slashdot. There appears to be a group of people here who are doing their best to demonize the guy.
I mean, there are a lot of different ways you can take this story:
Rogue Sysadmin takes city hostage.
Incopetent boss imprisons worker after refusing to endanger system.
Incompetnent sysadmin does something stupid enough to make the news.
Tyrannical owners set precidence that they own your thoughts.
I'm not entirely sure why slashdot would be on the side of demonizing the guy. I mean, some of us here are bosses, managers, and that sort. Those types want ultimate power in their orders. "We own you". They don't want their underlings to be professionals that countermand their order and do the right things. (Because it's massivly embarrasing, and it's hard to make that sort of call). I imagine some people here WANT sysadmins to be professionals and don't like Terry Childs simply because he got on the news and the whole thing looks like an embarrasment to their profession. Those people are falling for media spin.
Here's how I see it:
Listen, there's this sterotypical clusterfuck where an asshole non-tech boss establishes an antagonistic relationship with the lead technical guy. Push comes to shove and the boss fires the guy with his replacement standing right there in the room. The technical guy knows the replacement is the incompetent bootlicking friend of the boss. Yeah, so they don't get the keys to the system before firing him. I mentioned they're incompetent ,right? They call him up asking for the keys and the guy laughs in their face. So they call the cops and throw him in jail. Yeah, go figure. The technical guy's then like "ok fine, I'll give the keys to YOUR boss".
Then they sue him for the two weeks that took. The system ran fine in the meantime. Ah, but it made the news, and now it's a thing. After the trial, he's sentanced to FOUR YEARS and $1.9 million in fines.
Lesson: Sysadmins are no longer professionals. If the boss tells you to drive the network off a cliff sending the city's utilities into ruin, you do so.