but that seems unlikely to change the fact that 'power we could use' turns into 'power we just did use' with unpleasant regularity
Their whole job is dealing with people who do crime and ask for forgiveness later. I don't condone what they are doing, but I can see how they could slip in that direction.
Which is why we have this thing called the United States Constitution, and why that constitution has an amendment (the 4th one, in fact) that deals with this sort of thing. That same constitution also has a concept of separation of powers, and defines what branch of government has what power. Law enforcement (under the executive branch) are only doing half of their job - they're sworn to uphold the law but the are ignoring the highest law, the constitution The judicial branch exists to prevent that, but they don't seem to be very good at doing the part of their job that involves upholding the constitution.
It is the utility company's responsibility to gain as much profit for their shareholders as they can. Since it's a monopoly, it's the government's responsibility to keep them in check. The problem is that the utility is succeeding at their responsibility to their shareholders, but the government is failing at its responsibility to its citizens. People always point out how evil the utility company is but fail to point out that the government who is supposed to be regulating them is who is truly evil.
Just because some of these so called "Americans" had a US passport doesn't mean they can take up arms against their country without consequences. I'm glad we can just blow these fuckers to smithereens and save taxpayer money on these enemy combatants. They should know not to fuck with US and should scare their buddies from thinking they can do the same.
Yeah, fuck due process, fuck the constitution! The United States Constitution is un-American!
lol, thanks for cobbling together one of the most tortured analogies I've seen on this. Was the Enigma machine intercepting communications of millions of civilians? I'm amazed I didn't realise that.
I think it's safe to say that during that time, there was not a single cell phone call made or email sent without government surveillance.
can't imagine a real lawyer being so stupid, then again I hear in usa anyone can pass for one.
Just because you can't imagine a reason other than stupidity doesn't mean there is one. I can thing of 3 possibilities (in order or probability) and I'm sure there's more: 1. They knew it would never hold up in court, which they are fine with. If they ever get sued, they can still use and even if it gets shot down, it still will cost the plaintiff a ton of money to fight it. General Mills most likely has much, much deeper pockets than any prospective plaintiff. It can then be used to either run the plaintiff out of money, or it'll help them in negotiation because the plaintiff's attorneys may consider it in how much it'll cost their client. 2. The lawyers bill hourly. The longer the EULA and the more time they spend on it, the more they get paid. They know it won't hold up but they don't care because General Mills gives them more money. If it does become a point to fight in court, even if they know they will lose that particular point, they're also billing hourly for that. 3. They really are stupid.
Obamacare exists because the poor can't be bothered to pay $90 for a doctors visit...losers that don't pay
Can't be bothered? If you have a medical issue that requires several $90 office visits, and the choice is between paying that or feeding your family (or possibly buying gas to get to your minimum wage job so you don't lose it), how is that "can't be bothered?" Oh, and then you call them losers. So which is it, they can afford to pay but can't be bothered, or they are losers who would rather sit on the sidewalk than get a job? It seems you only see those two options, which pretty much means you are completely unfamiliar, yet pass judgement on a part of our society that comprises a pretty significant portion of the US population.
It's $11 Billion. I know that sounds like a lot, but it's not really. Not on a Global scale. It might help stabilize North Korea a bit though. They're a poor enough nation to notice it.
To put it in perspective, that's 1/4 of the B-2 program cost, 1/6 of the F-22 program cost, 1/77 of the (projected) F-35 program cost, 1/545 the cost of the Iraq + Afghanistan wars, 1/39 of Exxon's market cap, or 1/7 Bill Gate's net worth.
Who benefits the most from this? Big, big breweries who feel probably threatened by people who brew good beer (as a Dutch colleague of me said, they make Heineken by pumping the Maas water into the bottles).
You're forgetting about a much bigger lobby. The lobby that brought you such things as ethanol in your gasoline, farm subsidies, and gene patents: corn! For every ton of brewers waste sold for feed, that's a ton less of corn that gets sold for feed ("grain fed" means corn fed, btw).
Nobody is arguing for that. His private emails are not "publicly funded academic research". Publicly funded researchers should be required to publish their data and research results. They should not have to give up their private lives.
Emails are only one part of it, according to TFA there are other research documents and data too. Emails are one thing, it is communication with an expectation of privacy (and the ruling of being proprietary shouldn't apply to that anyway), documentation and research data is another thing entirely. A fundamental concept of science is that documentation and research are meant to be shared.
Here is the Virginia Freedom of Information Act section at the crux of the case, one of the law’s exemptions from disclosure: “Data, records or information of a proprietary nature produced or collected by or for faculty or staff of public institutions of higher learningin the conduct of or as a result of study or research on medical, scientific, technical or scholarly issueswhere such data, records or information has not been publicly released, published, copyrighted or patented.”... In a decision written by Justice Donald W. Lemons, the court ruled that “the higher education research exemption’s desired effect is to avoid competitive harm not limited to financial matters.
And now here's the part that really bugs me:
Mann said after the ruling, “This is a victory for science...
No, it's not! Our high schools really need to do a better job teacher students what science is and not just memorizing the first 6 steps in the first week of class and then memorizing facts that were found using science (biology, chemistry etc). Just because in this case the other side who is trying to get your data has even less understanding of what science is (and will no doubt intentionally misconstrue your data) does not mean this is a victory for science. There is no concept of proprietary knowledge in science, quite the opposite in fact.
This is probably more than just shit-slinging. The more reasons they have to create more paperwork and more time in court for an individual plaintiff, the more money it costs on both sides in legal fees. How much would it cost in legal fees to fight the validity of just this point of the EULA? They don't care if they lose the individual battle, they have much deeper pockets for legal fees than an individual, or even a class in a class-action lawsuit, so delaying and/or running the plaintiff out of money means winning the war.
What does any of that have to do with why Snowden was granted asylum? In case you hadn't heard, this whole thing started because Snowden did his best to make everything public by giving it to multiple news outlets. Or do you really think that he held some valuable documents back from the press and is now giving them to Russia?
It is easy to point the finger at utility companies for 'overcharging' for connections to their grid...
But the $3k is in addition to a monthly fee for being connected to the grid, so they're double dipping. Really, they're just extorting extra profit because they are allowed to get away with it. Their profits are still increasing every year so they can't complain they are losing money over solar. They are a monopoly and as such are supposed to be regulated by the PUC. The PUC isn't doing their job, which can only be explained by either incompetence or corruption. If they were putting that money into infrastructure upgrades instead of lining their own pockets then the cost of those infrastructure upgrades could legitimately be considered by the PUC when the PUC sets the rates, but that's not the case.
If the BBC can do this... why aren't the police doing so ?
Because they don't care. In some cases it's apathy and in some it's incompetence. I had my wallet and iPhone stolen, and the thief actually used the phone and tried to use the credit card. I did all of the leg work so that all the police had to do was submit a law enforcement request (not even a court order) and would have got the name of the thief, but the detectives danced around outright saying it wasn't worth 5 minutes of their time. Of course, if they caught the thief it means hours of their time to make the arrest, paperwork, court, contacting the owners of all the other stolen goods they would likely find in their home, etc.
Is that the only problem? What about the children of the deluded anti-vaxx parents? If parents stupidly expose their children to risk of death (say, encouraging them to play in traffic on the freeway) that's usually considered some form of criminal child abuse. Please explain why this should be any different.
Not borderline. She should be charged with negligent homicide. She gave medical advice without a license and that resulted in deaths. A reasonable person putting so much time and effort as she is should have known the evidence is so strongly against a link between autism and vaccines. A reasonable person should have read about Wakefield's fraud and known she was wrong. Too bad DAs are politicians and not one of them will have the balls to charge her.
If solar and wind were so great, Hawaii would have shutdown its oil based thermal plants already. They have very expensive electricity, making renewables cheap, yet it doesn't quite work, cause it's just not that simple.
How ironic that you point out Hawaii. Hawaii exemplifies the political problems moving away from oil, not the technical problems. Our PUC is utterly impotent and lets our electric utility (HECO) get away with whatever they want. For example, if you want grid-tie solar HECO charges you $3,000 for an "interconnect study" which is complete and utter bullshit. They claim to the politicians that the grid can't handle more solar or wind with no technical basis whatsoever. Why? Because of the way they've got the PUC to structure they rates, they make more than double the profit from burning oil than from anything else, because they get to "pass-through" the cost of the oil, which amounts to more profit and the customer getting screwed.
Here's essentially how it works: Generation from oil costs them 6.5 cents/kWh, plus the cost of oil. They are allowed to charge 16-18 cents/kWh -ish (sorry, I don't remember the exact number offhand) PLUS the cost of the oil. They buy wind power for 13 cents/kWh.
Customer cost per kWh of oil generated power = 40 cents, consisting 18 cents allowed rate + 22 cents for fuel , of which 11.5 cents is profit (18cents allowed - 6.5 cost not including oil). Customer cost per kWh of wind power = 18 cents, of which 5 cents is profit (18cents allowed - 13 cents they buy it for) Customer cost per kWh of home grid tie solar = 0 cents / kWh, so they manage to charge $3,000 upfront for the privilege even though there's already a base monthly charge for being connected to the grid.
HELLO, of course they are going to lobby (or bribe or give blow jobs or whatever it takes) the politicians. The PUC has got to be so utterly corrupt, and HECO so entrenched with the legislators to allow this to happen, but that's exactly why this is a political problem and not a technical problem.
Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you on the nuke subject, just pointing out how you don't know wtf you're talking about with Hawaii and solar+wind power. What's ironic is that people here are so utterly scared of nuclear just saying the word is worse than saying the other 'N' word, yet they revere the Navy's presence here and apparently don't realize what "Nuclear Submarine" means...there's at least 15 nuclear reactors running around the islands right now.
Even if it's not an NSA feature...of course the knew about it! They would have to be even more incompetent than we think not to. They are HUGE, with something like 40,000 employees. At least of few of those employees must be dedicated to code review of OSS looking for vulnerabilities, and more in general looking for vulnerabilities in any widely used software. And if that's the case, then you'd think OpenSSL would be one of the first things they'd look at. The fact that they didn't tell anyone though shows that the S is NSA is bullshit. They cared more about being able to exploit the vulnerability themselves than making their country's computers more secure. If they cared one shit about their country's security then they'd have big teams dedicated to finding software vulnerabilities and working with vendors to fix them.
95% of the article has no substance and is clearly a bunch of marketspeak, though it's not clear who the marketspeak is targeted at. Users? They're not gonna care about any of it because it's gonna make sense or doesn't affect them. Shareholders? Maybe.
There's really only two bits that seem to mean anything:
No longer are there different kernels for Windows 8, Windows Phone or Windows RT it's now all just One Windows.
That's cool, and it actually means something. But do users care about this? Do investors care about this? How many Apple users know or care that Mac OS, iPhone, and Apple TV all share the same kernel? In general neither users nor investors know what a kernel is.
If you want to use a Microsoft app, you can find it on whatever platform or device you are using, not just on Windows.
That's means something too, but....are you freakin' kidding me? So if I'm making an Windows app, I'm required to design it to work well on a desktop, tablet, phone, and gaming console? What if it's an awesome app that sucks on a little phone screen? What if it's an awesome app that works well on a touchscreen but sucks with a mouse? What if it's awesome with a keyboard and mouse and sucks on a touchscreen? You get the idea...this is the whole thing they're trying to do with Windows 8 and surface and they're failing to hear users screaming at the top of their lungs DO NOT WANT.
If fact of donations will be confirmed, then Comcast lost in the court of public opinion.
Lost public opinion? Maybe on/. but not to most of the voting public. Do you think CNN/NBC/Fox News will feature a story about this? And even if they did, would most people care? The only court of public opinion that matters is political candidates. Giving money to them means more campaign advertising for their candidate, thus is a win in the court of public opinion.
I do agree with you about calling it bribery. Why even bother using the term campaign contribution anymore? "Bribe" is a convenient synonym with fewer syllables.
The objective of the war was to destroy Iraq's WMDs. The things you listed were made-up-after-the-fact justifications.
Prior to the war, we had three goals:
1. A united Iraq 2. A secular Iraq 3. An Iraq opposed to Iranian influence.
You have it backwards. Those were the bogus justifications. Prior and during the war, there were two goals: 1. Let GWB power trip by taking out the guy he didn't like and naively think the world would consider him a hero for doing so. 2. Make lots of money for campaign contributors.
Seems like it depends. If you're an Oracle DBA, then a non-compete won't really matter. Your unlikely to part of the development of something that unique in the industry your company is in. Signing a non-compete would be silly and pointless, but of course you probably have to sign one anyway because your company wants you to be more beholden to them. Depending on what area you live in it may or may not be easy to find a job at a company in a different industry.
But then let's say your specialty is real-time embedded OS kernel development, and your company's industry is real-time embedded OS. If you sign a non-compete, you're probably stuck with that company and so they are less likely to treat you as well to keep you so it pretty much screws over the employee. OTOH, if there is no noncompete, then what if that company comes up with a really innovative way of doing something, then you go to work at another company and start doing it that way, then it's the first company that gets screwed. This is why it's not so clear-cut whether or not they should be illegal.
It's really a political question whether you want to lean towards socialist, where the employee and startups/entrepreneurs benefit, or lean corporatist where campaign contributors, er, I mean job creators (I couldn't keep a straight face while I typed that) benefit.
Two primary reasons: 1. Most people don't care because they don't think it affects them, you know the whole "first they came for..." thing. If they think it doesn't affect them, then they're more interested in Justin Bieber than things that confuse them. 2. For most of the people who do care, they feel there's nothing more they can do but write comments on/. Did other protests affect change? How about the Occupy thing? If a million people gathered in front of the capital building to protest, do you think it would affect change? And how would you get enough people for a violent coup to take on the US military, even if they didn't know you were coming?
Slashdot Mirror
but that seems unlikely to change the fact that 'power we could use' turns into 'power we just did use' with unpleasant regularity
Their whole job is dealing with people who do crime and ask for forgiveness later. I don't condone what they are doing, but I can see how they could slip in that direction.
Which is why we have this thing called the United States Constitution, and why that constitution has an amendment (the 4th one, in fact) that deals with this sort of thing. That same constitution also has a concept of separation of powers, and defines what branch of government has what power. Law enforcement (under the executive branch) are only doing half of their job - they're sworn to uphold the law but the are ignoring the highest law, the constitution The judicial branch exists to prevent that, but they don't seem to be very good at doing the part of their job that involves upholding the constitution.
It is the utility company's responsibility to gain as much profit for their shareholders as they can. Since it's a monopoly, it's the government's responsibility to keep them in check. The problem is that the utility is succeeding at their responsibility to their shareholders, but the government is failing at its responsibility to its citizens. People always point out how evil the utility company is but fail to point out that the government who is supposed to be regulating them is who is truly evil.
Just because some of these so called "Americans" had a US passport doesn't mean they can take up arms against their country without consequences. I'm glad we can just blow these fuckers to smithereens and save taxpayer money on these enemy combatants. They should know not to fuck with US and should scare their buddies from thinking they can do the same.
Yeah, fuck due process, fuck the constitution! The United States Constitution is un-American!
lol, thanks for cobbling together one of the most tortured analogies I've seen on this. Was the Enigma machine intercepting communications of millions of civilians? I'm amazed I didn't realise that.
I think it's safe to say that during that time, there was not a single cell phone call made or email sent without government surveillance.
"We're truly concerned with the surveillance efforts of our Government, it's a pressing priority." - Said no Russian homosexual ever
Until they use that surveillance to prosecute homosexuals.
can't imagine a real lawyer being so stupid, then again I hear in usa anyone can pass for one.
Just because you can't imagine a reason other than stupidity doesn't mean there is one. I can thing of 3 possibilities (in order or probability) and I'm sure there's more:
1. They knew it would never hold up in court, which they are fine with. If they ever get sued, they can still use and even if it gets shot down, it still will cost the plaintiff a ton of money to fight it. General Mills most likely has much, much deeper pockets than any prospective plaintiff. It can then be used to either run the plaintiff out of money, or it'll help them in negotiation because the plaintiff's attorneys may consider it in how much it'll cost their client.
2. The lawyers bill hourly. The longer the EULA and the more time they spend on it, the more they get paid. They know it won't hold up but they don't care because General Mills gives them more money. If it does become a point to fight in court, even if they know they will lose that particular point, they're also billing hourly for that.
3. They really are stupid.
Obamacare exists because the poor can't be bothered to pay $90 for a doctors visit...losers that don't pay
Can't be bothered? If you have a medical issue that requires several $90 office visits, and the choice is between paying that or feeding your family (or possibly buying gas to get to your minimum wage job so you don't lose it), how is that "can't be bothered?" Oh, and then you call them losers. So which is it, they can afford to pay but can't be bothered, or they are losers who would rather sit on the sidewalk than get a job? It seems you only see those two options, which pretty much means you are completely unfamiliar, yet pass judgement on a part of our society that comprises a pretty significant portion of the US population.
It's $11 Billion. I know that sounds like a lot, but it's not really. Not on a Global scale. It might help stabilize North Korea a bit though. They're a poor enough nation to notice it.
To put it in perspective, that's 1/4 of the B-2 program cost, 1/6 of the F-22 program cost, 1/77 of the (projected) F-35 program cost, 1/545 the cost of the Iraq + Afghanistan wars, 1/39 of Exxon's market cap, or 1/7 Bill Gate's net worth.
Who benefits the most from this? Big, big breweries who feel probably threatened by people who brew good beer (as a Dutch colleague of me said, they make Heineken by pumping the Maas water into the bottles).
You're forgetting about a much bigger lobby. The lobby that brought you such things as ethanol in your gasoline, farm subsidies, and gene patents: corn! For every ton of brewers waste sold for feed, that's a ton less of corn that gets sold for feed ("grain fed" means corn fed, btw).
Nobody is arguing for that. His private emails are not "publicly funded academic research". Publicly funded researchers should be required to publish their data and research results. They should not have to give up their private lives.
Emails are only one part of it, according to TFA there are other research documents and data too. Emails are one thing, it is communication with an expectation of privacy (and the ruling of being proprietary shouldn't apply to that anyway), documentation and research data is another thing entirely. A fundamental concept of science is that documentation and research are meant to be shared.
Here is the Virginia Freedom of Information Act section at the crux of the case, one of the law’s exemptions from disclosure: ...
“Data, records or information of a proprietary nature produced or collected by or for faculty or staff of public institutions of higher learningin the conduct of or as a result of study or research on medical, scientific, technical or scholarly issueswhere such data, records or information has not been publicly released, published, copyrighted or patented.”
In a decision written by Justice Donald W. Lemons, the court ruled that “the higher education research exemption’s desired effect is to avoid competitive harm not limited to financial matters.
And now here's the part that really bugs me:
Mann said after the ruling, “This is a victory for science...
No, it's not! Our high schools really need to do a better job teacher students what science is and not just memorizing the first 6 steps in the first week of class and then memorizing facts that were found using science (biology, chemistry etc). Just because in this case the other side who is trying to get your data has even less understanding of what science is (and will no doubt intentionally misconstrue your data) does not mean this is a victory for science. There is no concept of proprietary knowledge in science, quite the opposite in fact.
This is probably more than just shit-slinging. The more reasons they have to create more paperwork and more time in court for an individual plaintiff, the more money it costs on both sides in legal fees. How much would it cost in legal fees to fight the validity of just this point of the EULA? They don't care if they lose the individual battle, they have much deeper pockets for legal fees than an individual, or even a class in a class-action lawsuit, so delaying and/or running the plaintiff out of money means winning the war.
What does any of that have to do with why Snowden was granted asylum? In case you hadn't heard, this whole thing started because Snowden did his best to make everything public by giving it to multiple news outlets. Or do you really think that he held some valuable documents back from the press and is now giving them to Russia?
The NSA can't do that
Bullshit. Why don't you think they can do that? Because it's "not allowed?" Since when does that stop them?
As adults most cops and most judges are the bullies.
FTFY.
It is easy to point the finger at utility companies for 'overcharging' for connections to their grid...
But the $3k is in addition to a monthly fee for being connected to the grid, so they're double dipping. Really, they're just extorting extra profit because they are allowed to get away with it. Their profits are still increasing every year so they can't complain they are losing money over solar. They are a monopoly and as such are supposed to be regulated by the PUC. The PUC isn't doing their job, which can only be explained by either incompetence or corruption. If they were putting that money into infrastructure upgrades instead of lining their own pockets then the cost of those infrastructure upgrades could legitimately be considered by the PUC when the PUC sets the rates, but that's not the case.
If the BBC can do this ... why aren't the police doing so ?
Because they don't care. In some cases it's apathy and in some it's incompetence. I had my wallet and iPhone stolen, and the thief actually used the phone and tried to use the credit card. I did all of the leg work so that all the police had to do was submit a law enforcement request (not even a court order) and would have got the name of the thief, but the detectives danced around outright saying it wasn't worth 5 minutes of their time. Of course, if they caught the thief it means hours of their time to make the arrest, paperwork, court, contacting the owners of all the other stolen goods they would likely find in their home, etc.
The problem is herd immunity.
Is that the only problem? What about the children of the deluded anti-vaxx parents? If parents stupidly expose their children to risk of death (say, encouraging them to play in traffic on the freeway) that's usually considered some form of criminal child abuse. Please explain why this should be any different.
I think her actions are borderline criminal.
Not borderline. She should be charged with negligent homicide. She gave medical advice without a license and that resulted in deaths. A reasonable person putting so much time and effort as she is should have known the evidence is so strongly against a link between autism and vaccines. A reasonable person should have read about Wakefield's fraud and known she was wrong. Too bad DAs are politicians and not one of them will have the balls to charge her.
If solar and wind were so great, Hawaii would have shutdown its oil based thermal plants already. They have very expensive electricity, making renewables cheap, yet it doesn't quite work, cause it's just not that simple.
How ironic that you point out Hawaii. Hawaii exemplifies the political problems moving away from oil, not the technical problems. Our PUC is utterly impotent and lets our electric utility (HECO) get away with whatever they want. For example, if you want grid-tie solar HECO charges you $3,000 for an "interconnect study" which is complete and utter bullshit. They claim to the politicians that the grid can't handle more solar or wind with no technical basis whatsoever. Why? Because of the way they've got the PUC to structure they rates, they make more than double the profit from burning oil than from anything else, because they get to "pass-through" the cost of the oil, which amounts to more profit and the customer getting screwed.
Here's essentially how it works:
Generation from oil costs them 6.5 cents/kWh, plus the cost of oil.
They are allowed to charge 16-18 cents/kWh -ish (sorry, I don't remember the exact number offhand) PLUS the cost of the oil.
They buy wind power for 13 cents/kWh.
Customer cost per kWh of oil generated power = 40 cents, consisting 18 cents allowed rate + 22 cents for fuel , of which 11.5 cents is profit (18cents allowed - 6.5 cost not including oil).
Customer cost per kWh of wind power = 18 cents, of which 5 cents is profit (18cents allowed - 13 cents they buy it for)
Customer cost per kWh of home grid tie solar = 0 cents / kWh, so they manage to charge $3,000 upfront for the privilege even though there's already a base monthly charge for being connected to the grid.
HELLO, of course they are going to lobby (or bribe or give blow jobs or whatever it takes) the politicians. The PUC has got to be so utterly corrupt, and HECO so entrenched with the legislators to allow this to happen, but that's exactly why this is a political problem and not a technical problem.
Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you on the nuke subject, just pointing out how you don't know wtf you're talking about with Hawaii and solar+wind power. What's ironic is that people here are so utterly scared of nuclear just saying the word is worse than saying the other 'N' word, yet they revere the Navy's presence here and apparently don't realize what "Nuclear Submarine" means...there's at least 15 nuclear reactors running around the islands right now.
it's a (NSA) feature...
Even if it's not an NSA feature...of course the knew about it! They would have to be even more incompetent than we think not to. They are HUGE, with something like 40,000 employees. At least of few of those employees must be dedicated to code review of OSS looking for vulnerabilities, and more in general looking for vulnerabilities in any widely used software. And if that's the case, then you'd think OpenSSL would be one of the first things they'd look at. The fact that they didn't tell anyone though shows that the S is NSA is bullshit. They cared more about being able to exploit the vulnerability themselves than making their country's computers more secure. If they cared one shit about their country's security then they'd have big teams dedicated to finding software vulnerabilities and working with vendors to fix them.
95% of the article has no substance and is clearly a bunch of marketspeak, though it's not clear who the marketspeak is targeted at. Users? They're not gonna care about any of it because it's gonna make sense or doesn't affect them. Shareholders? Maybe.
There's really only two bits that seem to mean anything:
No longer are there different kernels for Windows 8, Windows Phone or Windows RT it's now all just One Windows.
That's cool, and it actually means something. But do users care about this? Do investors care about this? How many Apple users know or care that Mac OS, iPhone, and Apple TV all share the same kernel? In general neither users nor investors know what a kernel is.
If you want to use a Microsoft app, you can find it on whatever platform or device you are using, not just on Windows.
That's means something too, but....are you freakin' kidding me? So if I'm making an Windows app, I'm required to design it to work well on a desktop, tablet, phone, and gaming console? What if it's an awesome app that sucks on a little phone screen? What if it's an awesome app that works well on a touchscreen but sucks with a mouse? What if it's awesome with a keyboard and mouse and sucks on a touchscreen? You get the idea...this is the whole thing they're trying to do with Windows 8 and surface and they're failing to hear users screaming at the top of their lungs DO NOT WANT.
If fact of donations will be confirmed, then Comcast lost in the court of public opinion.
Lost public opinion? Maybe on /. but not to most of the voting public. Do you think CNN/NBC/Fox News will feature a story about this? And even if they did, would most people care? The only court of public opinion that matters is political candidates. Giving money to them means more campaign advertising for their candidate, thus is a win in the court of public opinion.
I do agree with you about calling it bribery. Why even bother using the term campaign contribution anymore? "Bribe" is a convenient synonym with fewer syllables.
The objective of the war was to destroy Iraq's WMDs. The things you listed were made-up-after-the-fact justifications.
Prior to the war, we had three goals:
1. A united Iraq
2. A secular Iraq
3. An Iraq opposed to Iranian influence.
You have it backwards. Those were the bogus justifications. Prior and during the war, there were two goals:
1. Let GWB power trip by taking out the guy he didn't like and naively think the world would consider him a hero for doing so.
2. Make lots of money for campaign contributors.
Seems like it depends. If you're an Oracle DBA, then a non-compete won't really matter. Your unlikely to part of the development of something that unique in the industry your company is in. Signing a non-compete would be silly and pointless, but of course you probably have to sign one anyway because your company wants you to be more beholden to them. Depending on what area you live in it may or may not be easy to find a job at a company in a different industry.
But then let's say your specialty is real-time embedded OS kernel development, and your company's industry is real-time embedded OS. If you sign a non-compete, you're probably stuck with that company and so they are less likely to treat you as well to keep you so it pretty much screws over the employee. OTOH, if there is no noncompete, then what if that company comes up with a really innovative way of doing something, then you go to work at another company and start doing it that way, then it's the first company that gets screwed. This is why it's not so clear-cut whether or not they should be illegal.
It's really a political question whether you want to lean towards socialist, where the employee and startups/entrepreneurs benefit, or lean corporatist where campaign contributors, er, I mean job creators (I couldn't keep a straight face while I typed that) benefit.
Two primary reasons: /. Did other protests affect change? How about the Occupy thing? If a million people gathered in front of the capital building to protest, do you think it would affect change? And how would you get enough people for a violent coup to take on the US military, even if they didn't know you were coming?
1. Most people don't care because they don't think it affects them, you know the whole "first they came for..." thing. If they think it doesn't affect them, then they're more interested in Justin Bieber than things that confuse them.
2. For most of the people who do care, they feel there's nothing more they can do but write comments on