How can giving more weight to the votes of individuals possibly lead to fascism, unless by fascism you mean to imply any governmental system you dislike and which isn't blatantly communist(both fascist and communist have both been way too overused in the last 50 or so years).
It's what's called the Tyranny of the Majority - Germany, IIRC, had a purely popular vote in the early thirties. If you have a purely popular vote, you only need to convince the majority of actual voters that they are being disinfranchised by group X, or that party Y is somehow corrupt, to start losing some of what we have.
There's nothing special about being a democracy with a popular vote - they've been around for a long time. They generally fail, though, as soon as people realize that they can vote themselves stuff at other peoples' expense. You could argue that we're already in that situation now, but I think a purely popular vote would make it worse.
I agree with the comments in spirit - here's the argument that kind-of makes sense against allowing non-telecoms to compete in telecommunications. Telecommunications are basically socialized in the US, with subscribers in urban areas subsidizing subscribers in rural areas. People in Hawaii and Alaska don't pay anywhere near what their service costs, while people in the suburbs get soaked. If you let the communities pay only what it actually costs to serve them, then the economics change. Official telecommunications companies have regulations that can make them provide service that would otherwise be against their interest.
This is the same problem that the Postal Service has with UPS and FedEx - they have charges that are related to actual costs, and tend to get used more for people in urban areas than rural areas because of that. In doing so, they take away the customers that the Postal Service counts on to subsidize the rural routes. The result is that they lose money.
Is this trade-off worth the loss of competition that it brings, in exchange for allowing people in Montana to have phones? I'll leave that to the combined wisdom of Slashdot.
IANAL, and I'm not sure about the specifics with regards to WAPs. However, the fact that the students entered into a legal contract doesn't necessarily make it binding with regards to networking devices. To take an only partially related idea - most people in the area where I live (Northern Virginia) are under Home Owner Association contracts or Apartment contracts that prohibit satellite dishes. The US government ruled those unenforceable in most cases as of a few years back. Hence, a lot of us who get sick of Comcast/Media General/Adelphia have satellite dishes instead, and there's nothing that the landlords can do about it.
Does this apply here? Probably not, at least not right now. The Satellite Dish rules were a very specific case. But, just assuming that the contract is enough to make them lose is going too far.
According to the Register, the number dialing out of the game Mosquitos isn't a trojan using the game, it is the game. Some brilliant developer thought this was a good way to punish people who pirate the game, and they built it in as a feature.
Don't forget the Slander of Title action against Novell - which is just barely hanging on, since as I understand it from yesterday's Forbes.com article, they've alleged that the "Special Damages" are their court costs in all of the other cases.
A non-religious argument won't contain such claims that embryos have human souls or spirits or that they're rebirthed or whatever, but these are the only types of arguments you ever see against stem cell research.
Well, there's the other argument -- embryonic stem cell research hasn't made any progress, even in countries that allow it. Remember, right now, only public funds aren't being spent on stem cell research even in the US. If you think it's a great thing, go ahead and invest your money in it.
A few years ago, it was possible here in VA to get a state tax credit as an employer if you gave these services to your people, and it saved them a commute. As far as I know, these credits went away along with the state's budget surplus, so around here, at least, there are less employers willing to offer paid broadband at home.
Regarding the basic premise of the question -- I think there's been one year in the last eight that I haven't had a cell-phone/pager that I expected might be called, so I guess I'm used to it. Most of the organizations I've been with have expected that people who made their careers a priority wouldn't complain. That assumption has been baked into the compensation plans, vacation time, etc. - I could have chosen jobs that didn't assume unpaid overtime and unlimited access, but I would have given up pay or other benefits in exchange.
Other sites are also covering this -- without needing to use acrobat reader.
I can't read the original, but according to the link I'm including, they're not just talking railguns - they're also talking free electron lasers and masers. Now, if only they'd provision a banana-fana-fo-faser, we'd be set.
For short-term lists I tend to agree - I keep the day's to-do list on a daytimer.
For lists over the course of a few days, I personally prefer a much more high-tech approach. I keep tasks in a comma-separated text file, which I can import into any app I need to, report off of with perl, and generally depend on.
Agreed, but how much of that "high-end Solaris" is under SCO license restrictions? (None, or it would be in SCO's products.)
You haven't been following the case, have you? Their latest argument is that everything in every OS derived from UNIX is theirs. If you add a new file system to UNIX, even if it doesn't use a line of their code, they own it. (That's their argument as I understand it - IANAL!)
There would probably be a transition - people who've already signed their lives away to the labels would be stuck, while independent musicians would get everything. Some folks would probably still be happy to give 95% to the labels - mostly those with no real talent, who rely on the label's marketing machines. Others might strike other deals.
IBM's already suing SCO for violating section 4 (and a few other sections, as well). The owner of NMAP's copyrights could sue in addition, and so could anyone who's contributed to Caldera linux, IMHO, though IANAL. (Yay, alphabet bingo!) I doubt that they'll be willing to spend the millions of dollars on lawyers that IBM is spending, though, so its not likely that it will be any more of a test.
As for the FSF and a GPL test - read Eben Moglen's speech transcript on Groklaw. He's not looking for a test, because he doesn't think they need one.
Google indexes it Slashdot, so if the prof uses Google, that's all that's needed, assuming he uses any phrases verbatim. I've occassionally found someone plagerizing from Slashdot, and I'm not sure whether to fail them for copying or give them a pass for at least copying for something better than the local paper.
I just figured it out -- you're recruiting for the home for the obsolete. You're hoping you'll catch a few geezers here who can actually remember a time before windows,.Net, and bloatware, so you can have us dragged off to the old programmers home. Not that I can remember any of those, of course.
Well, since I've been working in computers the whole time, computers themselves haven't made my life any less stressful. But some of the advances have helped.
For example, back in college, I supported a computer lab that didn't have a LAN or any hard drives. All of the original PCs had boot disks, and invariably, some student would take the boot disk, remove the little piece of tape off the write protect tab, and save their term paper to the boot disk. Then, they'd wonder why they couldn't find it a week later, on a different computer. Nowadays, those people are all in management at major software companies, mostly in the American southwest, but they can keep their files on shared drives, so they don't lose them, except when they click on attachments in Outlook.
The main technology that has made things less stressful has been quality search engines. It used to be really hard to figure out if a student had plagerized a paper - now, I know they all have. But seriously, now I can just type a few words in a search engine and figure out where they got their ideas.
A counter example: cell phones. Back when they were expensive, had short battery lives, and lousy coverage, I could actually go to a movie, a park, or a religious service without being called. Sure, its nice to be able to sit on hold with AAA if my car dies on the highway, but I could do with being a little less accessible the rest of the time.
since so much source code was leaked out. I bet they can no longer make the claim that exploits are not released until after the patch.
They're actually not claiming this (that they release the exploits after the patch). They're just claiming that they release the exploits at the same time as the patches.
:)
[tinfoilhat on]
So, about the same time this comes out, the BBC publishes a whitewash of Microsoft's security problems (also available here on Slashdot.)
Is this a coincidence? Or are they hoping to make everyone feel better about their support for Microsoft?
A few weeks ago, we were treated to the BBC claiming that the Linux community was behind MyDoom, even after it had become clear to everyone else in the world that it was written by Spammers. This article isn't any better/worse - its another thinly-disguised and apparently unresearched document, with no supporting statistics. Is there a reason to read this trash anymore, or should we switch to something more reliable, like the tabloids?
Of course, in that case, they could lawfully fire him on the spot with no compensation since the employment agreement was almost definitely contingent on his signing of the NDA. Sounds like a risky proposition to me...
IANAL, I'm just another Slashdotter... Don't depend on anything I say without checking it with counsel first. If you are a lawyer, and I'm wrong, please set me straight.
Here in the US, states are divided into "at-will" and non-"at-will" states. If you work in an "at-will" state, then unless you have a fixed term contract, they can pretty much fire you any time they want. In fact, they have better rights if they fire you for no reason, then if they fire you for cause.
If they fire you for no reason, you can't fight it on the grounds that they were wrong, like they can if they fire you for allegedly screwing up. The only cost to them is that they may not be able to collect back your starting or relocation bonus, if you get one. They may also have to pay a higher unemployment premium in some states. (For example, here in Virginia, unemployment tax can get as high as 9.5% of the first x dollars of payroll each year, where I forget x).
As far as whether or not you've done anything contingent on the NDA that could get you in extra trouble, that depends on when they spring it on you. I've had only one job that gave me the NDA before I'd accepted their offer and started the job. When I've added things to the NDA, they could feel free to fire me -- but they wouldn't have been able to do it for cause, since it wasn't part of the original agreement, and I hadn't violated any terms I'd seen when I accepted the contract. I'd be out a job, they'd be out more in taxes plus my starting bonus.
Just the same, I'd be careful about this. Many employee manuals or policy statements make blanket statements about complying with all other rules and policies, sort of like how MS EULAs say that you can only use them with other licensed software. You may find that you've agreed to the NDA indirectly, by virtue of signing an inoccuous statement on receipt of your employee handbook.
While you're talking about formulaic plots... Don't forget the humanist thing. It seems like about every other episode, you encounter a race that has one or two religions for the entire race (unlike humans, who have all become athiests) and are insane about it.
2. My local carrier says I can have unlimited time on the phone for a flat rate so I don't monitor the usage. That isn't really true (at least in my area) While you don't generally think about local calls costing you more than a flat rate, you might want to look a little closer at your bill. It probably says you are on something like a 'Call 400' plan (the standard unless you ask for a different on around here) which means that you get 400 local calls per month at a flat rate, but each additional call costs you a small fee.
Depends on where you are. For example, here in the suburbs of DC, you'll generally get offered a number of different plans, some of which are capped, others of which aren't. I'm on ulimited local calling. Inside the city, though, as with most large cities, they are likely to cap local calling...just in case you're actually a business or something.
I agree that Speakeasy is great...when I was using them, I was also impressed that they gave free national dial-up along with the DSL, so I could dial in from the road. They were positive about Linux, unlike most of the other folks.
Of course, that assumes that you're close enough to the telco to get it. I had six months of bliss with Speakeasy before I moved outside the city and into Comcast country, 22,500' from a central office. Now, I just stick with a modem, since I'm not going to help support Comcast or any of the satellite folks.
Now that there are a few Ogg Vorbis players, I'd like one. For those who haven't followed the umpteen stories on this over the last year... The iRiver 550 is one of the CD/MP3 variety, and it comes with Ogg support. They're also updating the firmware for most of the others in the series.
Other than that? Peace on earth and goodwill towards men, and a winnebago with a burgandy interior.
Slashdot Mirror
How can giving more weight to the votes of individuals possibly lead to fascism, unless by fascism you mean to imply any governmental system you dislike and which isn't blatantly communist(both fascist and communist have both been way too overused in the last 50 or so years).
It's what's called the Tyranny of the Majority - Germany, IIRC, had a purely popular vote in the early thirties. If you have a purely popular vote, you only need to convince the majority of actual voters that they are being disinfranchised by group X, or that party Y is somehow corrupt, to start losing some of what we have.
There's nothing special about being a democracy with a popular vote - they've been around for a long time. They generally fail, though, as soon as people realize that they can vote themselves stuff at other peoples' expense. You could argue that we're already in that situation now, but I think a purely popular vote would make it worse.
I agree with the comments in spirit - here's the argument that kind-of makes sense against allowing non-telecoms to compete in telecommunications. Telecommunications are basically socialized in the US, with subscribers in urban areas subsidizing subscribers in rural areas. People in Hawaii and Alaska don't pay anywhere near what their service costs, while people in the suburbs get soaked. If you let the communities pay only what it actually costs to serve them, then the economics change. Official telecommunications companies have regulations that can make them provide service that would otherwise be against their interest.
This is the same problem that the Postal Service has with UPS and FedEx - they have charges that are related to actual costs, and tend to get used more for people in urban areas than rural areas because of that. In doing so, they take away the customers that the Postal Service counts on to subsidize the rural routes. The result is that they lose money.
Is this trade-off worth the loss of competition that it brings, in exchange for allowing people in Montana to have phones? I'll leave that to the combined wisdom of Slashdot.
IANAL, and I'm not sure about the specifics with regards to WAPs. However, the fact that the students entered into a legal contract doesn't necessarily make it binding with regards to networking devices. To take an only partially related idea - most people in the area where I live (Northern Virginia) are under Home Owner Association contracts or Apartment contracts that prohibit satellite dishes. The US government ruled those unenforceable in most cases as of a few years back. Hence, a lot of us who get sick of Comcast/Media General/Adelphia have satellite dishes instead, and there's nothing that the landlords can do about it.
Does this apply here? Probably not, at least not right now. The Satellite Dish rules were a very specific case. But, just assuming that the contract is enough to make them lose is going too far.
According to the Register, the number dialing out of the game Mosquitos isn't a trojan using the game, it is the game. Some brilliant developer thought this was a good way to punish people who pirate the game, and they built it in as a feature.
Don't forget the Slander of Title action against Novell - which is just barely hanging on, since as I understand it from yesterday's Forbes.com article, they've alleged that the "Special Damages" are their court costs in all of the other cases.
A non-religious argument won't contain such claims that embryos have human souls or spirits or that they're rebirthed or whatever, but these are the only types of arguments you ever see against stem cell research.
Well, there's the other argument -- embryonic stem cell research hasn't made any progress, even in countries that allow it. Remember, right now, only public funds aren't being spent on stem cell research even in the US. If you think it's a great thing, go ahead and invest your money in it.
A few years ago, it was possible here in VA to get a state tax credit as an employer if you gave these services to your people, and it saved them a commute. As far as I know, these credits went away along with the state's budget surplus, so around here, at least, there are less employers willing to offer paid broadband at home.
Regarding the basic premise of the question -- I think there's been one year in the last eight that I haven't had a cell-phone/pager that I expected might be called, so I guess I'm used to it. Most of the organizations I've been with have expected that people who made their careers a priority wouldn't complain. That assumption has been baked into the compensation plans, vacation time, etc. - I could have chosen jobs that didn't assume unpaid overtime and unlimited access, but I would have given up pay or other benefits in exchange.
Doh! I looked at the second link, not the first.
Here are some actual other sources. DD(x) Frigate info
Cost of the DD(x) frigate, and rollout schedule
Other sites are also covering this -- without needing to use acrobat reader.
I can't read the original, but according to the link I'm including, they're not just talking railguns - they're also talking free electron lasers and masers. Now, if only they'd provision a banana-fana-fo-faser, we'd be set.
For short-term lists I tend to agree - I keep the day's to-do list on a daytimer.
For lists over the course of a few days, I personally prefer a much more high-tech approach. I keep tasks in a comma-separated text file, which I can import into any app I need to, report off of with perl, and generally depend on.
You haven't been following the case, have you? Their latest argument is that everything in every OS derived from UNIX is theirs. If you add a new file system to UNIX, even if it doesn't use a line of their code, they own it. (That's their argument as I understand it - IANAL!)
There would probably be a transition - people who've already signed their lives away to the labels would be stuck, while independent musicians would get everything. Some folks would probably still be happy to give 95% to the labels - mostly those with no real talent, who rely on the label's marketing machines. Others might strike other deals.
IBM's already suing SCO for violating section 4 (and a few other sections, as well). The owner of NMAP's copyrights could sue in addition, and so could anyone who's contributed to Caldera linux, IMHO, though IANAL. (Yay, alphabet bingo!) I doubt that they'll be willing to spend the millions of dollars on lawyers that IBM is spending, though, so its not likely that it will be any more of a test.
As for the FSF and a GPL test - read Eben Moglen's speech transcript on Groklaw. He's not looking for a test, because he doesn't think they need one.
Google indexes it Slashdot, so if the prof uses Google, that's all that's needed, assuming he uses any phrases verbatim. I've occassionally found someone plagerizing from Slashdot, and I'm not sure whether to fail them for copying or give them a pass for at least copying for something better than the local paper.
I just figured it out -- you're recruiting for the home for the obsolete. You're hoping you'll catch a few geezers here who can actually remember a time before windows, .Net, and bloatware, so you can have us dragged off to the old programmers home. Not that I can remember any of those, of course.
Well, since I've been working in computers the whole time, computers themselves haven't made my life any less stressful. But some of the advances have helped.
For example, back in college, I supported a computer lab that didn't have a LAN or any hard drives. All of the original PCs had boot disks, and invariably, some student would take the boot disk, remove the little piece of tape off the write protect tab, and save their term paper to the boot disk. Then, they'd wonder why they couldn't find it a week later, on a different computer. Nowadays, those people are all in management at major software companies, mostly in the American southwest, but they can keep their files on shared drives, so they don't lose them, except when they click on attachments in Outlook.
The main technology that has made things less stressful has been quality search engines. It used to be really hard to figure out if a student had plagerized a paper - now, I know they all have. But seriously, now I can just type a few words in a search engine and figure out where they got their ideas.
A counter example: cell phones. Back when they were expensive, had short battery lives, and lousy coverage, I could actually go to a movie, a park, or a religious service without being called. Sure, its nice to be able to sit on hold with AAA if my car dies on the highway, but I could do with being a little less accessible the rest of the time.
since so much source code was leaked out. I bet they can no longer make the claim that exploits are not released until after the patch.
:)
They're actually not claiming this (that they release the exploits after the patch). They're just claiming that they release the exploits at the same time as the patches.
This is fine for the VM, but the libraries really ought to be LGPL, otherwise IIRC only GPL applications could be developed with the free license.
True as far as it goes, but they could dual license it. That is, they could offer a less gratis license for people who want something less libre.
[tinfoilhat on]
So, about the same time this comes out, the BBC publishes a whitewash of Microsoft's security problems (also available here on Slashdot.)
Is this a coincidence? Or are they hoping to make everyone feel better about their support for Microsoft?
A few weeks ago, we were treated to the BBC claiming that the Linux community was behind MyDoom, even after it had become clear to everyone else in the world that it was written by Spammers. This article isn't any better/worse - its another thinly-disguised and apparently unresearched document, with no supporting statistics. Is there a reason to read this trash anymore, or should we switch to something more reliable, like the tabloids?
Of course, in that case, they could lawfully fire him on the spot with no compensation since the employment agreement was almost definitely contingent on his signing of the NDA. Sounds like a risky proposition to me...
IANAL, I'm just another Slashdotter... Don't depend on anything I say without checking it with counsel first. If you are a lawyer, and I'm wrong, please set me straight.
Here in the US, states are divided into "at-will" and non-"at-will" states. If you work in an "at-will" state, then unless you have a fixed term contract, they can pretty much fire you any time they want. In fact, they have better rights if they fire you for no reason, then if they fire you for cause.
If they fire you for no reason, you can't fight it on the grounds that they were wrong, like they can if they fire you for allegedly screwing up. The only cost to them is that they may not be able to collect back your starting or relocation bonus, if you get one. They may also have to pay a higher unemployment premium in some states. (For example, here in Virginia, unemployment tax can get as high as 9.5% of the first x dollars of payroll each year, where I forget x).
As far as whether or not you've done anything contingent on the NDA that could get you in extra trouble, that depends on when they spring it on you. I've had only one job that gave me the NDA before I'd accepted their offer and started the job. When I've added things to the NDA, they could feel free to fire me -- but they wouldn't have been able to do it for cause, since it wasn't part of the original agreement, and I hadn't violated any terms I'd seen when I accepted the contract. I'd be out a job, they'd be out more in taxes plus my starting bonus.
Just the same, I'd be careful about this. Many employee manuals or policy statements make blanket statements about complying with all other rules and policies, sort of like how MS EULAs say that you can only use them with other licensed software. You may find that you've agreed to the NDA indirectly, by virtue of signing an inoccuous statement on receipt of your employee handbook.
While you're talking about formulaic plots... Don't forget the humanist thing. It seems like about every other episode, you encounter a race that has one or two religions for the entire race (unlike humans, who have all become athiests) and are insane about it.
Depends on where you are. For example, here in the suburbs of DC, you'll generally get offered a number of different plans, some of which are capped, others of which aren't. I'm on ulimited local calling. Inside the city, though, as with most large cities, they are likely to cap local calling...just in case you're actually a business or something.
I agree that Speakeasy is great...when I was using them, I was also impressed that they gave free national dial-up along with the DSL, so I could dial in from the road. They were positive about Linux, unlike most of the other folks.
Of course, that assumes that you're close enough to the telco to get it. I had six months of bliss with Speakeasy before I moved outside the city and into Comcast country, 22,500' from a central office. Now, I just stick with a modem, since I'm not going to help support Comcast or any of the satellite folks.
Now that there are a few Ogg Vorbis players, I'd like one. For those who haven't followed the umpteen stories on this over the last year... The iRiver 550 is one of the CD/MP3 variety, and it comes with Ogg support. They're also updating the firmware for most of the others in the series. Other than that? Peace on earth and goodwill towards men, and a winnebago with a burgandy interior.