Savvy people know the previews are FOS. In fact, generally the better a movie looks in preview the more likely that it is going to truly, deeply suck. Many movies give up the best three scenes in the whole movie in the preview. Then you go watch the movie and find that everything else in the movie sucks.
Its probably better for everyone to have people p2p the movie and watch it small screen. I usulaly don't watch p2p movies, and am more inclined to buy a dvd than rent or watch a movie in the theatre (now that many dvd's are $5, why put up with the hassle of renting?). I will watch a movie in the theatre if it has aspects which will show better on a gigantic screen (case in point: LOTR with its massive battle scenes). Otherwise, it is not worth the money to watch it once when I can buy the dvd and watch it over and over with commentary.
Regardless of the situation, I do not think p2p will make me not buy a movie I would have anyway. I frequently buy dvd's of movies I have watched at friend's houses or borrowed previously. P2P is essentially the same deal. Besides, watching movies on the computer sucks ass. A good viewing environment for movies is ultimately very important to me.
Underpants Gnome episode.. Step 1: Steal Underpants Step 2: ???? Step 3: Profit Its a joke YOU didnt get.
Aren't you being a little anal about the Underpants Gnome joke? It made sense the way the poster said it to me.. Besides, at this rate, profit cannot be in 3dRealms plan since they seem to be working on the daikatana model.
Yeah, It's not like they ever print stories of interest to/. readers so why should we try to support them in even a meager way.
What's stupidest about this is that not only is there free (as in beer) registration, but several nice slashdotters have set up logins over the years that everyone on slashdot could use (they published the login name and password). The coolest thing is no one ever changed the passwords on these accounts.
If you really want to karma whore, you could always create a new user and publish its name and password. Honestly, i do not know why submitters do not just link to the archive version of the nytimes story, whcih never requires a login to see.
Every time a nytimes story is used on/. I see the same 100 goddamn posts. Whining about registration, suggesting registration, suggesting archive urls, giving usernames to use to login... it's all a binch of malarky. Everyone who reads slashdot knows the deal with nytimes. Why they don't link the archive version to at least preempt the whining is beyond me.
I believe they've also ruled that such a "copy" can be given (not sold) to a friend legally. I don't know if this could be stretched to cover "giving" it to a friend through the Internet, because you're not actually "giving" it to your friend; you're allowing your friend to make a perfect digital copy of the digital copy you made (directly or indirectly) of the show when it was broadcast.
This is where your argument falls down. Giving the recording away is distribution and has never been explicitly protected. In fact, it has been explicitly outlawed. My point was that no matter what you are downloading rather than recording (movies, software, music, or tv shows) it is all the same and is treated the same. You can record these things when they are broadcast to you; if you buy a copy you can make archival copies, but you cannot distrbute them to others and you cannot obtain them legally through unauthorized distribution. If it were decided to make exceptions for any of these forms of IP, all would have to fall under the same rules.
It sounds like you are going to be voting for Ahnold this year. Not that there's anything worng with that.:) Speaking of which I was happy to see one of the Democratic spokesmen (on Oreilly Factor or Hannity and Colmes, I forget) and he pointed out that Mr. Schwartzenegger in fact pronounces "California" properly, unlike Mr. Davis.
I've heard the rate at which people who commit identity theft get caught is around 1 in 7000.
So you have a much better than 99.9% chance to just do it to your heart's content and walk away with the money. That's pretty freakin' scary. A crime where you never have to see your victims, never have to face any consequences, and make tons of money. Can you imagine what would happen if a misguided Robin Hood decided to popularize the techniques and teach them to America's poor? Would the entire banking industry collapse at once? With a million people doing it simultaneously you would obviously overload the already overloaded investigative ability of the gov't and probably change the ration to 1 in 100,000 getting caught.
This is because the police refuse to even investigate these crimes. Most of the id thieves we hear about getting caught were actually caught committing some other crime (or pursued therefore). In one of the previous slashdot articles, they had a police officer in charge of ID theft investigations who essentially admitted he sat on his butt all day and answered the phone telling people they were SOL. He said that they even told him who or where the thief was and that did not get him out of his chair.
The big misconception is that ID theft is all the victim's fault, much like the oft-repeated myth that you can only get worms/viruses by clicking on attachments. The claim is that id theft only happens when people are carelesswith their trash. That is the old way, but it is easier than that now. As Cringely points out, you can get all the info you need for massive id theft for a minimal fee, like $20, or free.
Of course the most amusing part of all this is that Al Qaeda has been using id theft techniques for decades. If I were a terrorist, that would be the first thing on my list besides cashing in on nigerian spam scams. After all, what terrorist would not want billions of untraceable dollars, untraceable connections to the internet and cellular networks, and a free ride on the passport train to paradise? Yet our illustrious leaders are still keystone kopping it through life instead of actually doing something to fight these threats.
Selinux is the NSA's linux distro, with extra security features like acls based on US security clearances and such. Pretty cool, though I have not tried it personally.
A person downloading a DVD rip of a show, not the 'off-air' recording would have ZERO ground to stand on regardless of 'market'.. Only in the case of downloading a 'off-air' recording of a show that was in their market area would one have even a chance with the judge, but that's only personal feeling, it was not a statement of legality of it. I also don't plan on taking that to the test, considering that common sense doesnt apply in the court system anylonger.
I don't see how this is any different, especially if the dvd and the broadcast are the same show. Even with movies, they are broadcast. likewise, the content of mp3's is broadcast and can be recorded.
Why is the downloading of an mpg of an old TV show that was recorded different from the downloading of a mpg of a dvd rip of the same show or a download of an mp3?
Non-elected? That's not baiting. We have the electoral college, the election was fair. As they say in the hood, don't hate the player. Hate the game.
The electoral college did not elect Bush. The Supreme Court elected Bush. As for the fairness of the election, there was quite a bit of election interference in the 200 election, including having armed police officers waiting to drag away black voters as felons even though they were not, to drag away anyone who had unpaid traffic tickets or could not show proof of insurance for an automobile. That is only the beginning, and it is clearly not fair.
Also, any count of the votes which includes all votes cast in FL gives the election to Gore. Not that I am a big Gore fan, but is don't believe a president who tries to prevent the counting of votes in an election (before he is even president!) is acting in support of democracy or his oath to the Constitution.
"In point of fact, those articles are quite clearly right in the middle."
Define middle. Every article was critical of the US establishment. I bet more than 50% of the US populace would consider them very liberal. By definition, that's left of center.
I am sure Rush Limbaugh will be happy to hear he is a liberal. Oh, wait, Democratic presidents don't count as the establishment?
Unless you consider Democrats AND Repulblicans, for whom 95+% of Americans vote, to be right of center, then you're off your rocker. And at that point, I'd say your definition of center is egocentric, because it contains only you.
I have a news flash for you. Democrats in the US are not "left of center," either. They pretend to be less rightist than republicans, but are perfectly happy trashing the constitution, getting rid of civil rights, etc, etc. These are not liberal positions by any normal definition of the term.
Wow, Al Franken posts on these boards? LOL you're a riot.
"there isn't a major media organization in this country that has the slightest hint of a liberal leaning in at least 20 years." Holy Mother of God, I didn't realize/. reached that far. (I mean, to make a statement like this, you CAN'T be from this planet.)
To say things like "the whole gay marriage issue doesn't exist on the political spectrum" - maybe you need a little more oxygen?
We certainly are from this planet, and it is right. Consider the following:
1) Name one major media outlet that opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
2) Name one major media outlet that did not immediately start begging to have our civil rights taken away please God so we can be protected on 9/11/01
It was never clearer than it was then. The major media outlets are against civil rights, promote war, and promote blind faith in the government on a regular basis. All "conservative" viewpoints.
Gay marriage does not have anything to do with the government. Amendment 1 of the constitution says congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. IMHO that translates to no laws made on purely moral bases, no laws simply made because some religion wants them, no laws establishing what constitutes a sanctioned religion. People who support anti-gay legislation are against the constitution of the United States, because they want to force their religion on everyone by law and also to deprive citizens of their rights (read Amendment 14 and see what it has to say on that score).
This is, of course, why the amendment was proposed. The complete disregard fo rthe constitution and rule of law is also why after the supreme court said laws against homosexuality were unconstitutional, state prosecutors said they were going to try and prosecute people anyway and pass more anti-gay laws. And don't get me started about Ashcroft, the damned criminal traitor.
Then how the heck did the 18th Amendment get voted in under those conditions??
It's called the Temperence Movement. Perhaps you should read about it. It was very strong among women, who demonized alcohol as a destroyer of families and a causation of spousal abuse. There is a lot to be said for their point of view, as well. Any cop on the street will tell you the most dangerous drug on the market today is alcohol. It keeps them busier than anything else.
Anyway, there was a popular movement to ban alcohol, and politicians votd to ban it to get elected. Pretty simple, really.
Only for problems I can't treat myself. I am not a person to go to a doctor for every ailment, real or imagined, to beg for magical prescription treatments whose placebo effect is more effective than the medications themselves.
How old are you now? 19? 22? Good to hear you are in good health. Check back with us when you are 68 and let's see how often you need to see the doctor for a prescription. In case you did not know, even after people have been diagnosed with an illness and prescribed medicine for that illness, they are required to return to the doctor regularly to re-up that prescription. That gets pretty expensive after awhile. Then there is the cost of medicine to be contended with, which is overly inflated for no good reason.
As people get older, they tend to need to see a doctor more often; it is a spiral because they have to go regularly for the prescriptions they already have, plus things keep breaking so they have to keep going back for that, too. All at a time in life when they generally have no income and by law can be prohibited from earning one.
Regardless, my point was that with a full-blown tax-supported national healthcare system, my ability to choose private healthcare and not pay taxes towards the national plan will be stripped from me. It's already bad enough to be forced to give money to so many social programs I disagree with, when excersizing a choice to not give money to them literally results in a prison sentence. Only the government can extort money from people without fear of retribution. Does that make you feel all warm and fuzzy?
If you disagree with healthcare, support candidates who are against it. It is nice you can afford insurance now, but that may not be true forever. Meanwhile most americans have no insurance and most of those who do only have it so long as they have the same job, the one we are shipping off to India. And more of the population is getting old as well.
IMHO, part of the cure, regardless of national insurance, is getting rid of the malpractice cold war and taking away the free ride the pharmaceutical industry is having these days. They take government funded research and then patent it themselves and get monopolies, then extend it by making modified versions of drugs which are less effective and pushing them on doctors. That's only the beginning of their evil. If we cleaned house in the healthcare department, we woudl have cheaper healthcare. Socialized medicine is another matter, but I think some level of guaranteed care is a good thing for society, so we don't have crzy bag ladies that could be productive citizens if they were just given their damn medicine, or grandparents who die because they and their family are too poor to pay for decent healthcare.
I was meaning that recording them myself is legal.
I realize there are some legal issues with downloading the same episodes i can record myself, but in a case like that, i really dont care what the law says.
But you are wrong. The RIAA/MPAA say it is illegal to download the music even if you bought the cd or could record it off the radio, and illegal to download tv shows even if you could have recorded them yourself. The way they see it, if you could record it yourself, you should record it. They would prefer, in fact, that you could not even do that.
And so far, the courts are agreeing with them that even if all you do is download what you could record, you are breaking the law because you are distributing unauthorized copies.
A different article I read this week said a study had concluded that most of the millions of manufacturing jobs that have been lost in the last 2 years are not going to come back when the economy recovers. Those jobs didn't just temporarily subside because of reduced demand, they moved to another country. After NAFTA was passed, many manufacturing jobs moved to Mexico. Now those jobs have left Mexico and gone to China where they are done even cheaper.
Actually, its not just manufacturing. And more IT jobs will be going offshore. worse than that, CNN has been getting us used to the idea lately. That usually means this is what we can expect te corporates and the government to endorse, the view that these jobs are gone forever and more to be lost even as the profits source in corporations and the economy is already recovered.
The worst part was the assertion that since US workers are the most productive in the world, and our productivity is more than ever before, this will be the rationale for not hiring more workers. It is like the scene in Animal Farm where the pigs boast of having their workers work twice as much for half the food, except that they are actually fucking broadcasting this crowing on TV.
I don't understand, personally why this has to be. I understand if you can make product A with 50 workers instead of 100 you make more profit. That is grade school math. BUt I thought these assholes (the CEOs, etc) went to college. If you have 50 workers that can produce X amount of product A, 100 workers who are just as productive can produce twice as much or more. Or they can make it possible to make product B.
I also don't think any of these people are doing the right math anyway. They are looking at straight savings in salaries and not the big picture, which is performance per dollar. Again, the US worker gives more performance per dollar. But these shortsighted fools refuse to pay for quality.
That may be the law in most places, but it sure isn't in the U.S. In the U.S. it's perfectly legal to lay off a U.S. citizen and replace him with an imported "guest worker". Only in America. No other country on earth would tolerate this. Where is the WTO? All the other countries of the world scream that the U.S. is protectionist, but where is the WTO telling India to open its labor markets to AMerican programmers? Oh, and by the way, it wasn't a bunch of U.S lawyers that convinced congress to do this to the U.S. it was NASCOM - the Indian IT lobby.
Actually, it is against Federal law to hire foreign workers to displace US workers or to pay them less than the prevailing wage. Outsourcing is legal, but the recent shenanighans with the H1B et al are not. Unfortunately Mr. Ashcroft is too busy rousting American citizens from mosques and putting doctors in jail for prescribing medicine which is legal in CA but illegal in Ashcroft's asshole where his head is to enforce the law in this country.
" But as the article showed, it is *illegal* to hire Americans in India."
The article showed no such thing. I doubt that it's illegal.
RTFA.
He still gets occasional interviews, but he feels that they are just for show and that the companies will send the job overseas. Soong recently decided to send his rZsumZ to India, to see if he could get work there.
"It would be really interesting to work in Bangalore," he says. "But I was told, 'Daniel, it is against the law for you to work here. You can come here on vacation, but you can't work here.'"
Now, it may not be true. Just to be sure, I looked into the official websites. Unfortunately India's visa website is far less informative than many others. It is not clear whether an American can get an employment visa for hire in an Indian firm, or if s/he must be working for a company that happens to base its operations in India and is transferring him/her there. However, if they follow what most countries do, the Business Visa would be for transfers and the employment visa would be for employment.
Of course, even if that is true there is the chicken-and-egg problem of getting the job before getting the visa. Notice the only statement of requirements:
# EMPLOYMENT VISA Are issued to skilled and qualified professionals or persons who are engaged or appointed by companies, organisations, economic undertakings as technicians, technical experts, senior executives etc. Applicants are required to submit proof of contract/employment/engagement of of foreign nationals by the company or organisation.
I would be surprised if this were all there is to it. To be fair, the US requirements are similar, but in the case of the H1Bs people are worried about they are being sponsored by US companies who pay the visa fees and do all the paperwork for them. I would doubt there are a lot of Indian firms doing this for US workers as there is not much in it fo rthem, but there might be.
Anyway, you might find the following article interesting; it is prophetic, don't you think? Check the date.
While it is of concern that Tata Consulting have a racist policy against the country that they are employing people in, I think India's policy is pretty shit too!
It is especially stupid when you consider that Indian politicians have been crying about a "brain drain" in India for decades (e.g. anyone with brains gets the hell out in a hurry). To me immigration would be something one would encourage, especially when it is educated people from developed countries with proven skills.
Well, duh... As a dutchman it's also not possible for me to relocate to the USA. Unless I prove that there's no way my skills can be found in the States.
Informative, my ass. Funny, maybe. Yes, you can come here and work. The requirements of the work visas indeed are that no Americans can do the job and that the applicant gets paid the same as Americans. But that is not what is happening here. The whole point is that these laws have no effect because they are not enforced. RTFA, Americans are being replaced by foreign workers wo are being paid half or less what the Americans are. That is why we are complaining.
Whereas you can come here, buy land, get a job, and become a citizen it is impossible for Americans to do that in pretty much any country. In fact these kinds of things are unheard of in many countries.
I am not against the opportunities the USA provides, I am in fact proud of it. But I think we need to start enforcing the law w/r/t immigration instead of winking and nodding when it translates into runaway profits for major corporations.
You have NO idea how happy I am to be working. I know people who are graduating IST/CS right now and have NOTHING but 50k-70k in loans. I can tell you right now that even the most moral of them will BEG for a job at SCO, right wrong be damned. You wouldn't be so sure about "doing the right thing" when your car got repoed and you filed for bancrupcy..
And they are absolute fools. Trust me, I have learned this the hard way. You do not want to take a bad job just so you can have one. It is bad for you, your career, and your self-esteem. It is never worth it. Yes, they feel like begging SCO for a job now, and I feel their pain. But they will thank themselves a couple years from now if they don't do it.
Besides, it is ridiculous to work at a job you hate, or for a company you cannot believe in, for any reason. I have generally chosen companies based on agreeing with their moral stance and their product, and this has turned out best for me. YMMV, but realize that if you hate your job you will not do a good job, and not doing a good job will not help your career at all. Working at a job you hate, for a company you hate, is not good for your health, self-esteem, or career. It is the stupidest thing you can do, regardless of the rationalizations you try to make for it.
And you're right - expecting people to walk out on jobs for moral reasons is naive and foolish. Of course, Damage Studios doesn't appear to be that big a force in any industry so I'm pretty apathetic about it. And I would also say that this type of behavior and poor business saavy, does not bode well for the future of Damage Studios. Advocating employees walking out when the suits start doing something that is wrong will not make your company run well. Most companies have acts that aren't condoned by all the staff. If McDonalds slaughters cows in an inhumane manner, should the fry cook walk out?
But if they are applying for a job elsewhere, they are already walking away. I think the more important thing here is that damage studios is trying to protect themselves from the IP poison spread by SCO employees. They have been poisoning the well in the UNIX world and now we are seeing the result. There is no reason to give them another chance.
That is truly childish. The real assholes at SCO are the suits and money-grubbing lawyers responsible for this charade. A code monkey in the trenches who needs a job to pay the bills isn't necessarily an enemy of open source.
Sorry, but it is not childish at all, IMHO. It is proper due diligence which anyone who is hiring for a programming job had better do for their own good. It sucks that the SCO employees get caught up in this, but the fact of the matter is that this company has already been suing people on the basis of code employees of their company contributed while and after being employees. If you hire a SCO employee and let them write code for you, you are opening yourself up to a lawsuit, pure and simple.
Actually, the Joe McCarthy line "are you now or have you ever been..." is entirely applicable here. I would certainly consider it if I was accepting code for any project, especially Free Software, but I would include non-free in this as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever heard of previews?
Savvy people know the previews are FOS. In fact, generally the better a movie looks in preview the more likely that it is going to truly, deeply suck. Many movies give up the best three scenes in the whole movie in the preview. Then you go watch the movie and find that everything else in the movie sucks.
Its probably better for everyone to have people p2p the movie and watch it small screen. I usulaly don't watch p2p movies, and am more inclined to buy a dvd than rent or watch a movie in the theatre (now that many dvd's are $5, why put up with the hassle of renting?). I will watch a movie in the theatre if it has aspects which will show better on a gigantic screen (case in point: LOTR with its massive battle scenes). Otherwise, it is not worth the money to watch it once when I can buy the dvd and watch it over and over with commentary.
Regardless of the situation, I do not think p2p will make me not buy a movie I would have anyway. I frequently buy dvd's of movies I have watched at friend's houses or borrowed previously. P2P is essentially the same deal. Besides, watching movies on the computer sucks ass. A good viewing environment for movies is ultimately very important to me.
Q:Whaddaya call Cox cable subsribers?
A: ahhh, you all know the answer!
I dunno aout you, but I would call them CoxSuckers. :)
Underpants Gnome episode.. Step 1: Steal Underpants Step 2: ???? Step 3: Profit Its a joke YOU didnt get.
Aren't you being a little anal about the Underpants Gnome joke? It made sense the way the poster said it to me.. Besides, at this rate, profit cannot be in 3dRealms plan since they seem to be working on the daikatana model.
Don't subscribe to NYTimes?
Yeah, It's not like they ever print stories of interest to /. readers so why should we try to support them in even a meager way.
What's stupidest about this is that not only is there free (as in beer) registration, but several nice slashdotters have set up logins over the years that everyone on slashdot could use (they published the login name and password). The coolest thing is no one ever changed the passwords on these accounts.
If you really want to karma whore, you could always create a new user and publish its name and password. Honestly, i do not know why submitters do not just link to the archive version of the nytimes story, whcih never requires a login to see.
Every time a nytimes story is used on /. I see the same 100 goddamn posts. Whining about registration, suggesting registration, suggesting archive urls, giving usernames to use to login... it's all a binch of malarky. Everyone who reads slashdot knows the deal with nytimes. Why they don't link the archive version to at least preempt the whining is beyond me.
I believe they've also ruled that such a "copy" can be given (not sold) to a friend legally. I don't know if this could be stretched to cover "giving" it to a friend through the Internet, because you're not actually "giving" it to your friend; you're allowing your friend to make a perfect digital copy of the digital copy you made (directly or indirectly) of the show when it was broadcast.
This is where your argument falls down. Giving the recording away is distribution and has never been explicitly protected. In fact, it has been explicitly outlawed. My point was that no matter what you are downloading rather than recording (movies, software, music, or tv shows) it is all the same and is treated the same. You can record these things when they are broadcast to you; if you buy a copy you can make archival copies, but you cannot distrbute them to others and you cannot obtain them legally through unauthorized distribution. If it were decided to make exceptions for any of these forms of IP, all would have to fall under the same rules.
It sounds like you are going to be voting for Ahnold this year. Not that there's anything worng with that. :) Speaking of which I was happy to see one of the Democratic spokesmen (on Oreilly Factor or Hannity and Colmes, I forget) and he pointed out that Mr. Schwartzenegger in fact pronounces "California" properly, unlike Mr. Davis.
Let the "fun" begin. Why do I think this webserver is going to become complaint central for all things MS?
If by "this webserver" you mean the one at http://slashdot.org, I think you are absolutely right :).
I've heard the rate at which people who commit identity theft get caught is around 1 in 7000.
So you have a much better than 99.9% chance to just do it to your heart's content and walk away with the money. That's pretty freakin' scary. A crime where you never have to see your victims, never have to face any consequences, and make tons of money. Can you imagine what would happen if a misguided Robin Hood decided to popularize the techniques and teach them to America's poor? Would the entire banking industry collapse at once? With a million people doing it simultaneously you would obviously overload the already overloaded investigative ability of the gov't and probably change the ration to 1 in 100,000 getting caught.
This is because the police refuse to even investigate these crimes. Most of the id thieves we hear about getting caught were actually caught committing some other crime (or pursued therefore). In one of the previous slashdot articles, they had a police officer in charge of ID theft investigations who essentially admitted he sat on his butt all day and answered the phone telling people they were SOL. He said that they even told him who or where the thief was and that did not get him out of his chair.
The big misconception is that ID theft is all the victim's fault, much like the oft-repeated myth that you can only get worms/viruses by clicking on attachments. The claim is that id theft only happens when people are carelesswith their trash. That is the old way, but it is easier than that now. As Cringely points out, you can get all the info you need for massive id theft for a minimal fee, like $20, or free.
Of course the most amusing part of all this is that Al Qaeda has been using id theft techniques for decades. If I were a terrorist, that would be the first thing on my list besides cashing in on nigerian spam scams. After all, what terrorist would not want billions of untraceable dollars, untraceable connections to the internet and cellular networks, and a free ride on the passport train to paradise? Yet our illustrious leaders are still keystone kopping it through life instead of actually doing something to fight these threats.
SELinux? If you describe a useful tool, please link as well for those of thus who may be interested...
Ask and ye shall receive.
Selinux is the NSA's linux distro, with extra security features like acls based on US security clearances and such. Pretty cool, though I have not tried it personally.
A person downloading a DVD rip of a show, not the 'off-air' recording would have ZERO ground to stand on regardless of 'market'.. Only in the case of downloading a 'off-air' recording of a show that was in their market area would one have even a chance with the judge, but that's only personal feeling, it was not a statement of legality of it. I also don't plan on taking that to the test, considering that common sense doesnt apply in the court system anylonger.
I don't see how this is any different, especially if the dvd and the broadcast are the same show. Even with movies, they are broadcast. likewise, the content of mp3's is broadcast and can be recorded.
Why is the downloading of an mpg of an old TV show that was recorded different from the downloading of a mpg of a dvd rip of the same show or a download of an mp3?
Again, the US worker gives more performance per dollar
Ahahahaha, you are funny.
Well how about providing a rebuttal, chief. These were the economic figures reported on cnn. Perhaps you have a better source?
Non-elected? That's not baiting. We have the electoral college, the election was fair. As they say in the hood, don't hate the player. Hate the game.
The electoral college did not elect Bush. The Supreme Court elected Bush. As for the fairness of the election, there was quite a bit of election interference in the 200 election, including having armed police officers waiting to drag away black voters as felons even though they were not, to drag away anyone who had unpaid traffic tickets or could not show proof of insurance for an automobile. That is only the beginning, and it is clearly not fair.
Also, any count of the votes which includes all votes cast in FL gives the election to Gore. Not that I am a big Gore fan, but is don't believe a president who tries to prevent the counting of votes in an election (before he is even president!) is acting in support of democracy or his oath to the Constitution.
"In point of fact, those articles are quite clearly right in the middle."
Define middle. Every article was critical of the US establishment. I bet more than 50% of the US populace would consider them very liberal. By definition, that's left of center.
I am sure Rush Limbaugh will be happy to hear he is a liberal. Oh, wait, Democratic presidents don't count as the establishment?
Unless you consider Democrats AND Repulblicans, for whom 95+% of Americans vote, to be right of center, then you're off your rocker. And at that point, I'd say your definition of center is egocentric, because it contains only you.
I have a news flash for you. Democrats in the US are not "left of center," either. They pretend to be less rightist than republicans, but are perfectly happy trashing the constitution, getting rid of civil rights, etc, etc. These are not liberal positions by any normal definition of the term.
Wow, Al Franken posts on these boards?
LOL you're a riot.
"there isn't a major media organization in this country that has the slightest hint of a liberal leaning in at least 20 years." /. reached that far. (I mean, to make a statement like this, you CAN'T be from this planet.)
Holy Mother of God, I didn't realize
To say things like "the whole gay marriage issue doesn't exist on the political spectrum" - maybe you need a little more oxygen?
We certainly are from this planet, and it is right. Consider the following:
1) Name one major media outlet that opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
2) Name one major media outlet that did not immediately start begging to have our civil rights taken away please God so we can be protected on 9/11/01
It was never clearer than it was then. The major media outlets are against civil rights, promote war, and promote blind faith in the government on a regular basis. All "conservative" viewpoints.
Gay marriage does not have anything to do with the government. Amendment 1 of the constitution says congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. IMHO that translates to no laws made on purely moral bases, no laws simply made because some religion wants them, no laws establishing what constitutes a sanctioned religion. People who support anti-gay legislation are against the constitution of the United States, because they want to force their religion on everyone by law and also to deprive citizens of their rights (read Amendment 14 and see what it has to say on that score).
This is, of course, why the amendment was proposed. The complete disregard fo rthe constitution and rule of law is also why after the supreme court said laws against homosexuality were unconstitutional, state prosecutors said they were going to try and prosecute people anyway and pass more anti-gay laws. And don't get me started about Ashcroft, the damned criminal traitor.
Then how the heck did the 18th Amendment get voted in under those conditions??
It's called the Temperence Movement. Perhaps you should read about it. It was very strong among women, who demonized alcohol as a destroyer of families and a causation of spousal abuse. There is a lot to be said for their point of view, as well. Any cop on the street will tell you the most dangerous drug on the market today is alcohol. It keeps them busier than anything else.
Anyway, there was a popular movement to ban alcohol, and politicians votd to ban it to get elected. Pretty simple, really.
Only for problems I can't treat myself. I am not a person to go to a doctor for every ailment, real or imagined, to beg for magical prescription treatments whose placebo effect is more effective than the medications themselves.
How old are you now? 19? 22? Good to hear you are in good health. Check back with us when you are 68 and let's see how often you need to see the doctor for a prescription. In case you did not know, even after people have been diagnosed with an illness and prescribed medicine for that illness, they are required to return to the doctor regularly to re-up that prescription. That gets pretty expensive after awhile. Then there is the cost of medicine to be contended with, which is overly inflated for no good reason.
As people get older, they tend to need to see a doctor more often; it is a spiral because they have to go regularly for the prescriptions they already have, plus things keep breaking so they have to keep going back for that, too. All at a time in life when they generally have no income and by law can be prohibited from earning one.
Regardless, my point was that with a full-blown tax-supported national healthcare system, my ability to choose private healthcare and not pay taxes towards the national plan will be stripped from me. It's already bad enough to be forced to give money to so many social programs I disagree with, when excersizing a choice to not give money to them literally results in a prison sentence. Only the government can extort money from people without fear of retribution. Does that make you feel all warm and fuzzy?
If you disagree with healthcare, support candidates who are against it. It is nice you can afford insurance now, but that may not be true forever. Meanwhile most americans have no insurance and most of those who do only have it so long as they have the same job, the one we are shipping off to India. And more of the population is getting old as well.
IMHO, part of the cure, regardless of national insurance, is getting rid of the malpractice cold war and taking away the free ride the pharmaceutical industry is having these days. They take government funded research and then patent it themselves and get monopolies, then extend it by making modified versions of drugs which are less effective and pushing them on doctors. That's only the beginning of their evil. If we cleaned house in the healthcare department, we woudl have cheaper healthcare. Socialized medicine is another matter, but I think some level of guaranteed care is a good thing for society, so we don't have crzy bag ladies that could be productive citizens if they were just given their damn medicine, or grandparents who die because they and their family are too poor to pay for decent healthcare.
I was meaning that recording them myself is legal.
I realize there are some legal issues with downloading the same episodes i can record myself, but in a case like that, i really dont care what the law says.
But you are wrong. The RIAA/MPAA say it is illegal to download the music even if you bought the cd or could record it off the radio, and illegal to download tv shows even if you could have recorded them yourself. The way they see it, if you could record it yourself, you should record it. They would prefer, in fact, that you could not even do that.
And so far, the courts are agreeing with them that even if all you do is download what you could record, you are breaking the law because you are distributing unauthorized copies.
A different article I read this week said a study had concluded that most of the millions of manufacturing jobs that have been lost in the last 2 years are not going to come back when the economy recovers. Those jobs didn't just temporarily subside because of reduced demand, they moved to another country. After NAFTA was passed, many manufacturing jobs moved to Mexico. Now those jobs have left Mexico and gone to China where they are done even cheaper.
Actually, its not just manufacturing. And more IT jobs will be going offshore. worse than that, CNN has been getting us used to the idea lately. That usually means this is what we can expect te corporates and the government to endorse, the view that these jobs are gone forever and more to be lost even as the profits source in corporations and the economy is already recovered.
The worst part was the assertion that since US workers are the most productive in the world, and our productivity is more than ever before, this will be the rationale for not hiring more workers. It is like the scene in Animal Farm where the pigs boast of having their workers work twice as much for half the food, except that they are actually fucking broadcasting this crowing on TV.
I don't understand, personally why this has to be. I understand if you can make product A with 50 workers instead of 100 you make more profit. That is grade school math. BUt I thought these assholes (the CEOs, etc) went to college. If you have 50 workers that can produce X amount of product A, 100 workers who are just as productive can produce twice as much or more. Or they can make it possible to make product B.
I also don't think any of these people are doing the right math anyway. They are looking at straight savings in salaries and not the big picture, which is performance per dollar. Again, the US worker gives more performance per dollar. But these shortsighted fools refuse to pay for quality.
That may be the law in most places, but it sure isn't in the U.S. In the U.S. it's perfectly legal to lay off a U.S. citizen and replace him with an imported "guest worker". Only in America. No other country on earth would tolerate this. Where is the WTO? All the other countries of the world scream that the U.S. is protectionist, but where is the WTO telling India to open its labor markets to AMerican programmers? Oh, and by the way, it wasn't a bunch of U.S lawyers that convinced congress to do this to the U.S. it was NASCOM - the Indian IT lobby.
Actually, it is against Federal law to hire foreign workers to displace US workers or to pay them less than the prevailing wage. Outsourcing is legal, but the recent shenanighans with the H1B et al are not. Unfortunately Mr. Ashcroft is too busy rousting American citizens from mosques and putting doctors in jail for prescribing medicine which is legal in CA but illegal in Ashcroft's asshole where his head is to enforce the law in this country.
" But as the article showed, it is *illegal* to hire Americans in India."
The article showed no such thing. I doubt that it's illegal.
RTFA.
He still gets occasional interviews, but he feels that they are just for show and that the companies will send the job overseas. Soong recently decided to send his rZsumZ to India, to see if he could get work there.
"It would be really interesting to work in Bangalore," he says. "But I was told, 'Daniel, it is against the law for you to work here. You can come here on vacation, but you can't work here.'"
Now, it may not be true. Just to be sure, I looked into the official websites. Unfortunately India's visa website is far less informative than many others. It is not clear whether an American can get an employment visa for hire in an Indian firm, or if s/he must be working for a company that happens to base its operations in India and is transferring him/her there. However, if they follow what most countries do, the Business Visa would be for transfers and the employment visa would be for employment.
Of course, even if that is true there is the chicken-and-egg problem of getting the job before getting the visa. Notice the only statement of requirements:
# EMPLOYMENT VISA
Are issued to skilled and qualified professionals or persons who are engaged or appointed by companies, organisations, economic undertakings as technicians, technical experts, senior executives etc. Applicants are required to submit proof of contract/employment/engagement of of foreign nationals by the company or organisation.
I would be surprised if this were all there is to it. To be fair, the US requirements are similar, but in the case of the H1Bs people are worried about they are being sponsored by US companies who pay the visa fees and do all the paperwork for them. I would doubt there are a lot of Indian firms doing this for US workers as there is not much in it fo rthem, but there might be.
Anyway, you might find the following article interesting; it is prophetic, don't you think? Check the date.
While it is of concern that Tata Consulting have a racist policy against the country that they are employing people in, I think India's policy is pretty shit too!
It is especially stupid when you consider that Indian politicians have been crying about a "brain drain" in India for decades (e.g. anyone with brains gets the hell out in a hurry). To me immigration would be something one would encourage, especially when it is educated people from developed countries with proven skills.
Well, duh... As a dutchman it's also not possible for me to relocate to the USA. Unless I prove that there's no way my skills can be found in the States.
Informative, my ass. Funny, maybe. Yes, you can come here and work. The requirements of the work visas indeed are that no Americans can do the job and that the applicant gets paid the same as Americans. But that is not what is happening here. The whole point is that these laws have no effect because they are not enforced. RTFA, Americans are being replaced by foreign workers wo are being paid half or less what the Americans are. That is why we are complaining.
Whereas you can come here, buy land, get a job, and become a citizen it is impossible for Americans to do that in pretty much any country. In fact these kinds of things are unheard of in many countries.
I am not against the opportunities the USA provides, I am in fact proud of it. But I think we need to start enforcing the law w/r/t immigration instead of winking and nodding when it translates into runaway profits for major corporations.
You have NO idea how happy I am to be working. I know people who are graduating IST/CS right now and have NOTHING but 50k-70k in loans. I can tell you right now that even the most moral of them will BEG for a job at SCO, right wrong be damned. You wouldn't be so sure about "doing the right thing" when your car got repoed and you filed for bancrupcy..
And they are absolute fools. Trust me, I have learned this the hard way. You do not want to take a bad job just so you can have one. It is bad for you, your career, and your self-esteem. It is never worth it. Yes, they feel like begging SCO for a job now, and I feel their pain. But they will thank themselves a couple years from now if they don't do it.
Besides, it is ridiculous to work at a job you hate, or for a company you cannot believe in, for any reason. I have generally chosen companies based on agreeing with their moral stance and their product, and this has turned out best for me. YMMV, but realize that if you hate your job you will not do a good job, and not doing a good job will not help your career at all. Working at a job you hate, for a company you hate, is not good for your health, self-esteem, or career. It is the stupidest thing you can do, regardless of the rationalizations you try to make for it.
And you're right - expecting people to walk out on jobs for moral reasons is naive and foolish. Of course, Damage Studios doesn't appear to be that big a force in any industry so I'm pretty apathetic about it. And I would also say that this type of behavior and poor business saavy, does not bode well for the future of Damage Studios. Advocating employees walking out when the suits start doing something that is wrong will not make your company run well. Most companies have acts that aren't condoned by all the staff. If McDonalds slaughters cows in an inhumane manner, should the fry cook walk out?
But if they are applying for a job elsewhere, they are already walking away. I think the more important thing here is that damage studios is trying to protect themselves from the IP poison spread by SCO employees. They have been poisoning the well in the UNIX world and now we are seeing the result. There is no reason to give them another chance.
That is truly childish. The real assholes at SCO are the suits and money-grubbing lawyers responsible for this charade. A code monkey in the trenches who needs a job to pay the bills isn't necessarily an enemy of open source.
Sorry, but it is not childish at all, IMHO. It is proper due diligence which anyone who is hiring for a programming job had better do for their own good. It sucks that the SCO employees get caught up in this, but the fact of the matter is that this company has already been suing people on the basis of code employees of their company contributed while and after being employees. If you hire a SCO employee and let them write code for you, you are opening yourself up to a lawsuit, pure and simple.
Actually, the Joe McCarthy line "are you now or have you ever been ..." is entirely applicable here. I would certainly consider it if I was accepting code for any project, especially Free Software, but I would include non-free in this as well.