His argument was that he was surprised from the standpoint that he had said what the paper said in public many times before, and the company never had a problem with that.
The exact quote was "People say that if he was surprised [by being fired], he's an idiot. Well, I was surprised in this sense: I do this kind of thing all the time".
Well, sure, he's said it before, but to say that publishing the paper is just more of the same is like saying that an arsonist striking a match is the same as burning down a house. It's the difference between getting popped in the chops by that skinny nerd down the street or getting hit by Joe Louis (in his prime).
And he also noted that a company as big as Microsoft didn't nessicarily have to pick up the phone to have an effect on his employment.
I think that I said pretty much the same thing. This sort of thing happens a lot. Somebody, yes, even an executive, in a company says something disparaging about one of the company's biggest customers and ends up out on his ass. Greer had to have known that.
And like I said, he's going to come out of this just fine. So he gets his paper published, confirms, with details, what we already knew in general and ends up with a new job. What's so bad about that?
I still think that Greer is overplaying this surprise thing, but in the end, I'm not sure if anyone really deserves a rasberry over this. Maybe @stake. Maybe.
There is something to be said for voting for the major parties in a close race.
Even though I tend to support one of the major parties (the one that would lose under your scenario), I agree with your strategy. It does make sense.
....but please educate yourself, then VOTE!
To that I would put in the word "think" before "then Vote". Voting for a third party in a national election is really a protest vote, but if the election is close, then a little personal strategy goes a long way.
Anyhow - I don't just program - learn how to do something else. I've been learning how to rebuild engines - not the oil change stuff, the jack the engine out of the car variety. I've already had people approach me wondering if I can do work for them, and I've made a few bucks on the side. Anyone who can fix a computer or program can fix a car - hell, there's even programming involved.
That's an excellent point. I'm an EE too, not because it's where the jobs were, but because I enjoy the field. I've managed to keep my job, but I also keep my eyes open and plan for the worst. I've saved money and make some on the side building and refinishing furniture. I do that because I enjoy it - it's not tech-related and it give me an opportunity to wind down from my "real" job.
For those of us still gainfully employed, I would take your suggestion a step further. Learn to do something else that is unrelated to what you are doing now. If you're a programmer, learn to do something that has nothing to do with computers (it's possible...I don't have any computer-controlled woodworking tools). Do it because you want to do it, because it's fun. Get good at it. Hopefully you'll never have to fall back on it, but maybe it will be the backstop that keeps the mortgage paid or the lights on.
Actually, Al Gore won the popular vote. He and Ralph Nader has something like 56% versus W. who only had about 42%. The other 2% was for Pat Buchanan(sp), etc.
George W. Bush: 47.9% 271 Electoral Votes Al Gore: 48.4% 266 Electoral Votes Ralph Nader: 2.7% 0 Electoral Votes Pat Buchanan: 0% 0 Electoral Votes
The margin of victory for Gore was well within the margin of error of the polling equipment. Alas, the race was really a tie.
Given the resistance that he received from academics to co-authoring the paper, I think that Greer's assertion that his firing surprised him is disingenuous. His position in @stake and in the industry makes it doubly so. You cannot have the sort of career that Greer has had and not realize that some political hot potatoes are hotter than others.
I also don't believe that Microsoft had a hand in firing Greer. I seriously doubt that anybody from Redmond called anyone at @stake and said that Greer had to go...or that there was even any indirect pressure. But given the publicity that his paper received, I can certainly believe that the management of @stake looked at the paper and looked at their relationship with Microsoft and decided that one was more important to them than the other.
Who knows...maybe Greer did know that he had a high probability of being fired for publishing the paper. He's not going to be standing in the unemployment line. He'll have a new job very soon. But that line of reasoning is just as unfair to Greer as suggesting that there was some kind of unspoken conspiracy between Microsoft and @stake.
In the end, I think that an individual who holds a prominent position within a company and who also takes a philosophical position against one of that company's largest customers knows (or should know) that there may be unpleasant fallout from that stance. Whether or not Greer knew, it seems to me that he is handling the situation reasonably well by keeping the issue alive and above the noise level in the news.
And ultimately, that will probably serve him well and keep attention focused on the issues that he raised in his paper.
Neuros ogg support is nominal at best. It'll play the files, but you can't create playlists, sync in Windows without using a third party tool (NDBM), or order your tracks arbitrarily.
So what's the big deal about having to use NDBM? DI supports free software and NDBM is the result. In many respects, it is superior to the Windows-based sync tool that DI provided. With firmware 1.40 and NDBM 1.10, ogg support is quite good. I've used it under Windows, Linux and Solaris with no problems at all.
The Neuros players support WAV, MP3, WMA and OGG. One of them has a 20GB drive. They all work with Linux (actually, with anything that will support Java and USB). FM tuner, microphone, stereo recording via line in, an FM transmitter to listen on a radio.
Neuros has posted a social contract that decries DRM and supports Free Software via the BSD license.
Yeah, it has some drawbacks - the big one being that it's still a USB 1.1 device. Also, you can't get one outside of North America because it seems that the US and Canada are two of a very small number of countries that don't get in a snarl over micro-powered FM transmitters. Also, it doesn't support FLAC, but I'm not sure that's a drawback...after all, none of these players can really present itself as an audiophile device.
The 20GB model costs $199 in the US. I've got one and I like it. It's not an iPod killer, but I get the impression that it wasn't meant to be.
From the New York Times(no reg required): "another federal judge issued a ruling that would prevent the government from carrying out the do-not-call registry, citing First Amendment grounds."
According to this, the FCC has no more right to enforce it than the FTC.
The judge ruled that the FTC could not enforce the do not call registry. He didn't say that the FCC couldn't enforce it. I guess what that means is that one of the telemarketers (or an organization) will then have to get another ruling regarding the FCC.
Regardless, I'm sure that the Supreme Court will end up with this one. And I suspect that they will say something along the lines that this is not a speech issue, but a commerce issue and that the FTC can enforce the list.
Try putting new batteries in it. I noticed that my 48GX was starting to get slow - kind of stuttering occasionally, at least that's the best way I can describe it. Fresh Duracells fixed the problem.
That's what happened here in Idaho and we ended up with a do not call list that stood up to court challenges. I signed up and I haven't had a telemarketing call, other than charities and political fundraisers, for over a year.
I admire the FTC for creating the list, but I also agree with the judge's opinion that the agency overstepped its authority in creating it. Fortunately, several states' attornies general have worked together to create do not call lists that can stand up to court tests.
While I'd like to see this as a federal government project (I can hardly believe that I just wrote that) because it involves interstate communications, it seems like any single federal agency that tries to implement one is going to end up stepping (in a legal sense) on some other agency's toes, something that the telemarketing industry will certainly exploit. But at least it seems to work pretty darned well on a state level.
Really? I thought the difference in votes was something like 500,000. you really think the margin of error is that big?
The difference between the two candidates was 201,178, with the total number of votes cast in the election being 101,739,818. The margin of victory was less than 0.2%.
Now, here's something interesting - in the 1960 campaign between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, Kennedy won, of course. His margin of victory was 303 electoral votes to Nixon's 219 (Robert Byrd collected 15). Compare that with George Bush's 271 electoral votes to Al Gore's 260. JFK scored a much more decisive win over Nixon.
OK, that wasn't so interesting...but this is. Kennedy's margin of victory in the popular vote was only 0.174% of the total number of votes!
Anyway, entertaining historical political statistics aside, Gore polled about 0.2% votes more than Bush, but the errors inherent in the voting system really say that the election was a tie. I just don't see any way, even with electronic voting, that an election so evenly divided could be called with any certainty, based on popular vote.
Also, as far as I could find out, Bush's margin of victory in Florida was only about 0.009% - a mere 537 (although that number moved up and down in the weeks following the election, it wasn't by much).
I would say that it was a dead heat.
To illustrate this, imagine that every voter votes completely at random. For 100M voters and two candidates that gives an average result of 50% each +- sqrt (50M) = 7070. The probability of a difference of 500 000 votes or more even in a completely random election is negligable. Even allowing for some non-random effects like different voting machines in areas where there are more democrats/republicans this result is extremely significant.
The problem with this analogy is that voting is not a random process. I agree, if I was flipping a fair coin a hundred million times, there should be a rather small margin of error. However, if I am flipping a coin using some device, I then have to take into account the effect(s) that such a device might introduce into my test. And that is where the rub comes in. Your back of the napkin calculation holds up very well in a purely random binary test. It generates roughly a.014% range of error. But we know, based on empirical studies of balloting machines, that the error rate of these machines ranges from 2% to almost 5%.
Even if the difference in votes was as much as 500,000 (a number that I won't dispute...it seems to still be a moving target!), that's still a margin of victory of only about 0.4%...not very big at all, and, given the error of the voting machines, still tells me that the election ended in a tie. And, to be honest, I'm not sure that anything that we could (reasonably) do would give us any better granularity.
could you elaborate on this? I was under the impression punch-cards were to blame...
I think that his point is that the margin of error inherent in pen-and-paper balloting is greater than the margin of error that was found in the Florida balloting. At least, that's what I hope he meant!
Of course, the margin of error of all voting methods is greater than the difference in nationwide popular vote between the two presidential candidates in 2000. Statistically, it was a tie. I recall that in either New Mexico or Arizona, in case of a tie, the two candidates play a game of poker. Hmm...
Back to your topic, I live in a town with about 30,000 people. Our city-wide elections are done with xeroxed copies of the ballot. You find your candidate and put an X in the box next to the name. It works, the error rate is very low (the last time a recount was done, there was less than a 1% difference in votes), but in city elections, the turnout is generally less than 1,000 people. In city elections, there is only one polling place. Naturally, the counting goes quickly.
Only on slashdot can you have a "book review" that's actually only a review of the first 7% of the book.
Well, perhaps I was being too hard on the reviewer, but the exerpt that she described regarding the prism seller and the myriad synonyms for "Jew" happened very early in the book. The rest of the review was almost a restatement of the dust jacket summary.
On the other hand, the dust jacket summary was a pretty good one.
I don't want to wait for the official release; I'll be on my plane already! So, how did you get the advance copy for a review? Since it's 900 pages, I presume you received it some time ago. Or read -really- fast.
I got mine courtesy of my local Barnes and Noble - my wife works there and they had a small pile of advance copies of odds and ends. She called me around the beginning of September and asked if I had heard of this "Neal Stephenson" guy and if I was interested in this new book for free. It came with a CD that has a couple of interviews with Stephenson on it.
But I have to say that the review presented here pretty much covers about the first 60 pages of the book.
My review? If you liked Cryptonomicon, you'll like Quicksilver. And the next two books are due out in April and October.
The Fifth Meeting of the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group (CPSG) was held May 12-13, 2003, at the New York offices of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Attending were representatives from 12 international standards bodies including Alan Bryden, Secretary-General of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
The CPSG was created by the ISO Council in 2000, and serves as an advisory body to the Secretary-General; rather than a policy-setting body, the group offers recommendations to be forwarded to Council at the Secretary-General's discretion.
Among topics of discussion was the proposed development of a new business plan for working with the Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC-1) and ways to build awareness and increase distribution of JTC-1 standards.
The CPSG also discussed the ISO 3166 country codes, ISO 4217 currency codes, and ISO 639 language codes and proposed clarifications for their distribution.
Noting the necessity for a number of ISO standards to be published as databases, the CPSG asked that the Secretary-General recommend a consideration of the publication of some ISO standards as such, and promoted studying related pricing, delivery, and maintenance issues.
The group also addressed the changing needs of customers in varied electronic environment, and looked at revising some distribution methods to better meet ISO customer needs.
The relevant paragraph:
Noting the necessity for a number of ISO standards to be published as databases, the CPSG asked that the Secretary-General recommend a consideration of the publication of some ISO standards as such, and promoted studying related pricing, delivery, and maintenance issues.
Perhaps I've misunderstood this, but this doesn't seem to be the ISO saying that they want to charge royalties on language and country codes. It is the CPSG saying that they want to study pricing issues related to publishing ISO standards as databases. It seems to me that studying the issues would include such things as taking comment on them.
It also seems to me that the whole/. article is a little inflammatory, fairly inaccurate and that pretty much nobody has read the CPSG's statement.
Even so, I'm with Tim Berners-Lee's position that collecting royalties on a commonly used standards seems self-defeating.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. It seems you are saying that because it's possible to squeek out from under the weight of an extraordinarily messed up system, that people who complain about it being messed up are whining. --That any attempts to fix it or even point out its faults should be shouted down because it still sort of works. (Well, until the day when it collapses.)
OK, you're wrong. Attempts to fix it ought to be made. Faults of the system should be shouted down. But saying that you cannot succeed because of the system are wrong. That flies in the face of the evidence that people can and do succeed.
I also find it rather interesting that you believe a military career is a 'way out', but that you don't seem to think that there is any manipulation going on. --The military has been designed to be not just a way out, but the only way for many, like the tens of thousands of Mexican illegals who have been offered citizezship in return for becoming the next wave of American front-line murderers. The system was designed this way for a reason! Blood for money, Jack. That's sick, and that's the root of the problem with America. --Rape Iraq for it's oil and lucrative infrastructure re-building contracts, rape Afghanistan for oil pipe-line land from the Caspian sea. --And of course, to get heroin production back up to the highest it's ever been after the fundamentalists got control of things and burned all the poppys, devastating one of Wall Streets biggest money-makers. I'm sorry if it sounds callous, and I don't mean to upset you, but your father's paychecks were coming at the expense of entire countries being de-stabalized by American corporate/military might, specifically to make money and to make sure America stays on top of the money/power game.
I'm not going to be baited into an off-tangent argument over illegal immigration. And, as you so aptly pointed out, I proposed the military as an option. For those who, for whatever reason, feel the way that you do, there are other options for improving their lot. But I will point out that the US has gained nothing monetarily from Afghanistan nor Iraq - they have been substantial money pits for this country. On the other hand, both countries are now rid of horrendously despotic tyrants who most certainly did not rule with the will of their people. As to the heroin claim, I'm afraid that you've subscribed to a widely debunked conspiracy theory. I'm certainly not upset by your comments...I've heard them before, always from individuals who have bought into the military/industrial complex scheme, and, with as much enthusiasm for that particular bit of tripe have just as little understanding of the American socio-economic system.
Anyway, discussion of the US government's rationale for invasions of other countries is for another day. Today we're discussing something else.
Just think. . . In my country, (Canada), there isn't regular gunfire in any neighborhood. There are better ways to run a society, and it has been demonstrated. Hard work is a good thing, certainly, but there is boundless room for improvement in America. And to begin that improvement, the people need to recognize the many, many ways in which industry and the wealthy elite actively try to keep the common people locked in violent, poverty-stricken, ignorant patterns. I doubt very much that this will happen in time.
I can't comment on whether or not there is any regular gunfire in any neighborhood in Canada...I'll have to take your word for it. And I agree that there is plenty of room for improvement in this country. But to seriously speak of some wealthy, industrial conspiracy to keep the common people "locked in violent, poverty-stricken, ignorent patters" smacks of a combination of ignorance and paranoia.
You mention peer pressure as being one of the active sources of stress among ghetto youth. This is true, but peer pressure doesn't just happen. It's
Yes, and in a system such as the one they had in England over 200 years ago, the King is able to do pretty much anything. That doesn't make it right.
That's why the US is not a monarchy. We don't have a king.
That still doesn't make it right or OK that the few incredibly rich and powerful have sway over nations, or that they can get around laws and regulations to get even more rich and powerful, etc.
I agree that wealth should not imply the means to avoid the law. I also contend that wealth, in fact, does not imply the means to get around the law. I don't contend that it hasn't been attempted, but even the wealthy have their day in court. Don't confuse attempting to get around the law with actually getting around the law. It doesn't happen all that often.
I won't contest that in many countries the rich do hold sway. But in this country, the rich do not wield the power that you seem to claim. Certainly money gains access, but even high powered, high dollar lobbiests say that money doesn't get control. In the end, a politician has to be elected by the people, by the masses, and every politician is extraordinarily aware of that. Access is not control - the president isn't going to do something because some rich guy gave his campaign a lot of money - the rich guy gave the president's campaign a lot of money because he knows what the president will do. That is not a subtle difference...it's tremendous, and one that many, many people simply don't understand.
The rich may hold sway over nations that have closed systems of government, but they cannot hold sway over an open, republican government. If the government does not do the people's will, then the people will throw them out.
This has nothing to do with my own goals. Rather, I would say "The rich few have got everybody down, and it's not right, so I will work against it."
It has everything to do with your own goals. If, as you contend, the rich few have everyone down, then they must have you down. But nobody has presented anything other than enflamed rhetoric about how bad the rich are. If the rich have you down, then they are keeping you from attaining your goals. How? What are the rich doing to prevent you from attaining your goals? What rich person has stopped you from doing what you want to do?
Yes, when one learns that there is indeed a system which is full of traps, (all leading to slavery), then one can begin to avoid them and even start to climb up the mountain towards wealth and prosperity. --Although, it is much, much less likely to happen to those who don't start with certain advantages. (Bill's rich uncle has been mentioned already by others.)
I don't think that you understand the meaning of the word "slavery". I am a solidly middle class individual and I came from a solidly middle class family. My parents, however, both had an absolutely dirt poor upbringing. Only one of my grandparents finished high school. My father was fortunate enough to be able to rely on friends for basic things like clothes, as did my mother. Yet they both managed to go to college and do pretty well for themselves. They did it because they both realized that they weren't going to get what they wanted handed to them - they would have to work for it, and harder than somebody whose families already had the advantages that they didn't have. So my father joined the Navy when he was 17 and went to school on the GI bill. My mom got a scholarship. Neither went to a top tier school, but they both studied hard and worked hard. They were my inspiration to do the same.
And while it is still potentially possible for even an under-educated, mal-nourished black kid from the 'hood with crack-head parents to make it big without putting out a Rap album. . , (just as it is possible for that infinite number of monkeys to type out some Shakespear), it all leaves out one big, ugly point:
Being willing to act like a psychopath is the number #1 best method for getting ahead in the US, and holding slaves is and always will be, dark and nasty, no matter how you dress it up.
What do you mean about "making it big"? Do you mean having millions of dollars, an Escalade and an entourage? Who cares about that? What about simply achieving the goals that you have in life? Sure, maybe money is one of them, but there are other things that provide fulfillment. It doesn't take a gazillionaire to achieve them.
You suggest that psychopathic behavior is the way to get ahead, but I counter that by saying that psychopathic behavior is the way to get attention. Again, if that is your definition of getting ahead, then you're right, but I'll point out that for every "psychopath" in the news, there are countless other success stories don't get attention because they don't need it.
You also sling the word "slavery" around, but I don't think that you really know what it means. Even "an under-educated, mal-nourished black kid from the 'hood with crack-head parents" has choices. Is it easy to break out? No, it's not. Is it fair that they should have it harder than the white kid in the suburbs? No, it's not. Are they slaves? No, they're not. Is peer pressure driving these kids' decisions? Hell yes! And that's the hardest thing to overcome. Some billionaire sitting in his mansion isn't keeping that kid in the ghetto - that kid's friends are helping him to take the easy way out. And so are you. How can that kid get out? Here's one of many ways: graduate from high school or get a GED. Join the military for two years. Get money for college. Go to an inexpensive school. Does it work? Yes, that's how I got my degree.
You claim that Bill Gates has no moral compass, but I also contend that you are wrong. Here is a guy with money who also gives a lot away. To schools. For medical research. For direct, medical aid to the poorest of people in the world. He's the guy who supports rolling back the tax break for the rich. For keeping the estate tax. And he's the guy who has stated over and over again that when he dies, he's giving almost all of it away.
Locking yourself into a debt-ridden grind is a prison of your own making. I decided quite a while ago that it doesn't take a new car every two years or a big house or lots
The American Dream is about freedom to pursue your own life, it's not about getting rich. Any given newborn in America has probably a better chance of winning their state lottery (when they're of age to participate of course) than of getting rich and/or famous through any of the means you mentioned.
And if pursuing your own life means that you happen to get rich in the process, what gives us the right to take it away?
Why are the most ostentatiously rich people in this country rich? Because they took a risk and it paid off. They are rich, not because they get some egregiously large paycheck, but because, over time, the companies that they founded and of which they own a significant portion have done well and appreciated in value.
The post to which you are responding pointed out people like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Sam Walton. These are guys who took a fairly small amount of money and turned it into something huge. In some cases, it's a matter of being in the right place at the right time. In others, it's a matter of perserverence and work.
Bear in mind that the billions of dollars of wealth that these people control is not just money sitting around in a big pile. It's money that ends up being invested in other companies, money that pays other people's wages and salaries, money that is paid to the government in taxes, money that is donated to charities. But it is not money that is locked away, unavailable to anyone but some greedy, cold hearted bastard.
You propose an interesting idea that has been tried many times over the past century. Why not limit how much a person can make? Say that there is a cap on salaries for the super-rich. Say, you can't make more than a million bucks a year. But why stop there? Why not put a cap on assets? Say, you can't have more than five million bucks in assets. Or make the number arbitrarily lower. Why not just pay everybody the same? Whether you're a doctor, lawyer, bricklayer, software tycoon or computer programmer, you make the same amount. And you might as well let the government run the whole show, so that we we'll know that the people are being served and nobody is stealing from them. It sounds like a grand idea.
I'm sure that it's probably redundant to point out that there wouldn't be much impetus to pursue a career that required such a huge investment of time and effort (doctor, lawyer, heck, even software programmer) over being, say, a cashier in the government-owned store.
Now, I'm nowhere close to being super rich. Heck, I'm not even micro rich. But I'm also not agitated over the fact that these people are out there because I recognize that in a system such as ours, there will be pockets of concentrated wealth. But, compared nationwide, the wealth of these few ultra-billionaires is a drop in the bucket. Wealth is much less concentrated today than it was, say, 100 years ago, or maybe even 50 years ago. There are a few remarkably rich people in this country, but because of the size of our economy and the success of most Americans, you'll find that there is plenty to go around.
My advice? Quit grousing about the success of others. If money is your goal, pursue it. If you have some other measure of happiness, pursue it with as much gusto as you can muster. But don't use the canard of "the rich man's got me down" to rationalize your inability to achieve your goals. It simply won't wash.
Meanwhile, Windows XP on my laptop boots in less than fifteen seconds from BIOS to logon screen. Especially when I hibernate it.
Hibernation aside, the reason that your laptop appears to boot so fast is because it's still starting services even after you've logged in. You may notice, for example, that your network is not available for a bit of time. Or, perhaps, that you keep seeing icons popping up in the tray? That's part of the boot process...it's just that Microsoft started the GUI before the system was done booting. Linux boots, then starts the GUI.
I find that my two desktop systems, one running XP, the other RH9, take about the same amount of time...the Linux system is, maybe, 5 or 8 seconds slower to boot. That's counting the extra time that Windows takes to finish the boot process after the GUI comes up.
Comparing booting a hibernating system to a complete boot is apples and oranges. You might as well complain to Microsoft that it takes longer to boot XP from a cold start than from hibernating.
I must respectfully say that you are not correct. There are no federal laws that state that a private company cannot use your social security number as an identifier. There are laws, however, that require certain types of businesses (as you deliniated earlier) to collect social security numbers, generally for financial reporting purposes.
I don't argue that there are state laws prohibiting SSN use as identification, but we were talking about federal laws.
The Social Security Act of 1935 introduced the numbers and said that they were intended for use by the social security program. However, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9397 which broadened the use of them within the Federal government in 1943. The Privacy Act of 1974 placed restrictions and provided guidelines on the government's use of them. The Tax Reform Act of 1976 extended the use of social security numbers to certain state and local governments specifically for identification purposes.
There are plenty of private companies that don't use them because of the potential for abuse. But the reason is most definitely not because of any law. There simply is no federal law that says that a private company cannot use one.
Oh, and as for SSN being a universal identifier. It is against Federal Law to require the SSN in anything expect payroll transactions and banking transactions. When people ask for it, inform them that it is against the law to ask for it and make them give you another option.
That is not correct. The law places restrictions on how government agencies can use your social security number, but private companies are generally not covered by such laws.
The Privacy Act of 1974 requires government agencies to declare why they have the authority to request it, whether it is voluntary or manditory to disclose it, what they will do to it and what happens if you don't provide it. Also, the Act requires that those agencies that request your social security number, but do not require it, must provide a mechanism for alternative identification number. But, and this is important, the law applies to government agencies only. Also, if the agency was using social security numbers as identifiers prior to 1975, they may continue to use them.
The business about the SSN not being some sort of universal identification number springs from the notification on the card that it is not for use for identification purposes. You'll find, though, that there is no law forbidding its use as an identification number.
And, incidentally, the Privacy Act of 1974 carries no penalties for its violation.
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The exact quote was "People say that if he was surprised [by being fired], he's an idiot. Well, I was surprised in this sense: I do this kind of thing all the time".
Well, sure, he's said it before, but to say that publishing the paper is just more of the same is like saying that an arsonist striking a match is the same as burning down a house. It's the difference between getting popped in the chops by that skinny nerd down the street or getting hit by Joe Louis (in his prime).
And he also noted that a company as big as Microsoft didn't nessicarily have to pick up the phone to have an effect on his employment.
I think that I said pretty much the same thing. This sort of thing happens a lot. Somebody, yes, even an executive, in a company says something disparaging about one of the company's biggest customers and ends up out on his ass. Greer had to have known that.
And like I said, he's going to come out of this just fine. So he gets his paper published, confirms, with details, what we already knew in general and ends up with a new job. What's so bad about that?
I still think that Greer is overplaying this surprise thing, but in the end, I'm not sure if anyone really deserves a rasberry over this. Maybe @stake. Maybe.
-h-
Even though I tend to support one of the major parties (the one that would lose under your scenario), I agree with your strategy. It does make sense.
To that I would put in the word "think" before "then Vote". Voting for a third party in a national election is really a protest vote, but if the election is close, then a little personal strategy goes a long way.
-h-
That's an excellent point. I'm an EE too, not because it's where the jobs were, but because I enjoy the field. I've managed to keep my job, but I also keep my eyes open and plan for the worst. I've saved money and make some on the side building and refinishing furniture. I do that because I enjoy it - it's not tech-related and it give me an opportunity to wind down from my "real" job.
For those of us still gainfully employed, I would take your suggestion a step further. Learn to do something else that is unrelated to what you are doing now. If you're a programmer, learn to do something that has nothing to do with computers (it's possible...I don't have any computer-controlled woodworking tools). Do it because you want to do it, because it's fun. Get good at it. Hopefully you'll never have to fall back on it, but maybe it will be the backstop that keeps the mortgage paid or the lights on.
-h-
George W. Bush: 47.9% 271 Electoral Votes
Al Gore: 48.4% 266 Electoral Votes
Ralph Nader: 2.7% 0 Electoral Votes
Pat Buchanan: 0% 0 Electoral Votes
The margin of victory for Gore was well within the margin of error of the polling equipment. Alas, the race was really a tie.
-h-
I also don't believe that Microsoft had a hand in firing Greer. I seriously doubt that anybody from Redmond called anyone at @stake and said that Greer had to go...or that there was even any indirect pressure. But given the publicity that his paper received, I can certainly believe that the management of @stake looked at the paper and looked at their relationship with Microsoft and decided that one was more important to them than the other.
Who knows...maybe Greer did know that he had a high probability of being fired for publishing the paper. He's not going to be standing in the unemployment line. He'll have a new job very soon. But that line of reasoning is just as unfair to Greer as suggesting that there was some kind of unspoken conspiracy between Microsoft and @stake.
In the end, I think that an individual who holds a prominent position within a company and who also takes a philosophical position against one of that company's largest customers knows (or should know) that there may be unpleasant fallout from that stance. Whether or not Greer knew, it seems to me that he is handling the situation reasonably well by keeping the issue alive and above the noise level in the news.
And ultimately, that will probably serve him well and keep attention focused on the issues that he raised in his paper.
-h-
So what's the big deal about having to use NDBM? DI supports free software and NDBM is the result. In many respects, it is superior to the Windows-based sync tool that DI provided. With firmware 1.40 and NDBM 1.10, ogg support is quite good. I've used it under Windows, Linux and Solaris with no problems at all.
-h-
Neuros has posted a social contract that decries DRM and supports Free Software via the BSD license.
Yeah, it has some drawbacks - the big one being that it's still a USB 1.1 device. Also, you can't get one outside of North America because it seems that the US and Canada are two of a very small number of countries that don't get in a snarl over micro-powered FM transmitters. Also, it doesn't support FLAC, but I'm not sure that's a drawback...after all, none of these players can really present itself as an audiophile device.
The 20GB model costs $199 in the US. I've got one and I like it. It's not an iPod killer, but I get the impression that it wasn't meant to be.
-h-
"another federal judge issued a ruling that would prevent the government from carrying out the do-not-call registry, citing First Amendment grounds."
According to this, the FCC has no more right to enforce it than the FTC.
The judge ruled that the FTC could not enforce the do not call registry. He didn't say that the FCC couldn't enforce it. I guess what that means is that one of the telemarketers (or an organization) will then have to get another ruling regarding the FCC.
Regardless, I'm sure that the Supreme Court will end up with this one. And I suspect that they will say something along the lines that this is not a speech issue, but a commerce issue and that the FTC can enforce the list.
-h-
-h-
I admire the FTC for creating the list, but I also agree with the judge's opinion that the agency overstepped its authority in creating it. Fortunately, several states' attornies general have worked together to create do not call lists that can stand up to court tests.
While I'd like to see this as a federal government project (I can hardly believe that I just wrote that) because it involves interstate communications, it seems like any single federal agency that tries to implement one is going to end up stepping (in a legal sense) on some other agency's toes, something that the telemarketing industry will certainly exploit. But at least it seems to work pretty darned well on a state level.
-h-
The difference between the two candidates was 201,178, with the total number of votes cast in the election being 101,739,818. The margin of victory was less than 0.2%.
Now, here's something interesting - in the 1960 campaign between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, Kennedy won, of course. His margin of victory was 303 electoral votes to Nixon's 219 (Robert Byrd collected 15). Compare that with George Bush's 271 electoral votes to Al Gore's 260. JFK scored a much more decisive win over Nixon.
OK, that wasn't so interesting...but this is. Kennedy's margin of victory in the popular vote was only 0.174% of the total number of votes!
Anyway, entertaining historical political statistics aside, Gore polled about 0.2% votes more than Bush, but the errors inherent in the voting system really say that the election was a tie. I just don't see any way, even with electronic voting, that an election so evenly divided could be called with any certainty, based on popular vote.
Also, as far as I could find out, Bush's margin of victory in Florida was only about 0.009% - a mere 537 (although that number moved up and down in the weeks following the election, it wasn't by much).
I would say that it was a dead heat.
To illustrate this, imagine that every voter votes completely at random. For 100M voters and two candidates that gives an average result of 50% each +- sqrt (50M) = 7070. The probability of a difference of 500 000 votes or more even in a completely random election is negligable. Even allowing for some non-random effects like different voting machines in areas where there are more democrats/republicans this result is extremely significant.
The problem with this analogy is that voting is not a random process. I agree, if I was flipping a fair coin a hundred million times, there should be a rather small margin of error. However, if I am flipping a coin using some device, I then have to take into account the effect(s) that such a device might introduce into my test. And that is where the rub comes in. Your back of the napkin calculation holds up very well in a purely random binary test. It generates roughly a
Even if the difference in votes was as much as 500,000 (a number that I won't dispute...it seems to still be a moving target!), that's still a margin of victory of only about 0.4%...not very big at all, and, given the error of the voting machines, still tells me that the election ended in a tie. And, to be honest, I'm not sure that anything that we could (reasonably) do would give us any better granularity.
That's my $.02.
-h-
I think that his point is that the margin of error inherent in pen-and-paper balloting is greater than the margin of error that was found in the Florida balloting. At least, that's what I hope he meant!
Of course, the margin of error of all voting methods is greater than the difference in nationwide popular vote between the two presidential candidates in 2000. Statistically, it was a tie. I recall that in either New Mexico or Arizona, in case of a tie, the two candidates play a game of poker. Hmm...
Back to your topic, I live in a town with about 30,000 people. Our city-wide elections are done with xeroxed copies of the ballot. You find your candidate and put an X in the box next to the name. It works, the error rate is very low (the last time a recount was done, there was less than a 1% difference in votes), but in city elections, the turnout is generally less than 1,000 people. In city elections, there is only one polling place. Naturally, the counting goes quickly.
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Only on slashdot can you have a "book review" that's actually only a review of the first 7% of the book.
Well, perhaps I was being too hard on the reviewer, but the exerpt that she described regarding the prism seller and the myriad synonyms for "Jew" happened very early in the book. The rest of the review was almost a restatement of the dust jacket summary.
On the other hand, the dust jacket summary was a pretty good one.
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I don't want to wait for the official release; I'll be on my plane already! So, how did you get the advance copy for a review? Since it's 900 pages, I presume you received it some time ago. Or read -really- fast.
I got mine courtesy of my local Barnes and Noble - my wife works there and they had a small pile of advance copies of odds and ends. She called me around the beginning of September and asked if I had heard of this "Neal Stephenson" guy and if I was interested in this new book for free. It came with a CD that has a couple of interviews with Stephenson on it.
But I have to say that the review presented here pretty much covers about the first 60 pages of the book.
My review? If you liked Cryptonomicon, you'll like Quicksilver. And the next two books are due out in April and October.
-h-
The Fifth Meeting of the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group (CPSG) was held May 12-13, 2003, at the New York offices of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Attending were representatives from 12 international standards bodies including Alan Bryden, Secretary-General of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
/. article is a little inflammatory, fairly inaccurate and that pretty much nobody has read the CPSG's statement.
The CPSG was created by the ISO Council in 2000, and serves as an advisory body to the Secretary-General; rather than a policy-setting body, the group offers recommendations to be forwarded to Council at the Secretary-General's discretion.
Among topics of discussion was the proposed development of a new business plan for working with the Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC-1) and ways to build awareness and increase distribution of JTC-1 standards.
The CPSG also discussed the ISO 3166 country codes, ISO 4217 currency codes, and ISO 639 language codes and proposed clarifications for their distribution.
Noting the necessity for a number of ISO standards to be published as databases, the CPSG asked that the Secretary-General recommend a consideration of the publication of some ISO standards as such, and promoted studying related pricing, delivery, and maintenance issues.
The group also addressed the changing needs of customers in varied electronic environment, and looked at revising some distribution methods to better meet ISO customer needs.
The relevant paragraph:
Noting the necessity for a number of ISO standards to be published as databases, the CPSG asked that the Secretary-General recommend a consideration of the publication of some ISO standards as such, and promoted studying related pricing, delivery, and maintenance issues.
Perhaps I've misunderstood this, but this doesn't seem to be the ISO saying that they want to charge royalties on language and country codes. It is the CPSG saying that they want to study pricing issues related to publishing ISO standards as databases. It seems to me that studying the issues would include such things as taking comment on them.
It also seems to me that the whole
Even so, I'm with Tim Berners-Lee's position that collecting royalties on a commonly used standards seems self-defeating.
OK, you're wrong. Attempts to fix it ought to be made. Faults of the system should be shouted down. But saying that you cannot succeed because of the system are wrong. That flies in the face of the evidence that people can and do succeed.
I also find it rather interesting that you believe a military career is a 'way out', but that you don't seem to think that there is any manipulation going on. --The military has been designed to be not just a way out, but the only way for many, like the tens of thousands of Mexican illegals who have been offered citizezship in return for becoming the next wave of American front-line murderers. The system was designed this way for a reason! Blood for money, Jack. That's sick, and that's the root of the problem with America. --Rape Iraq for it's oil and lucrative infrastructure re-building contracts, rape Afghanistan for oil pipe-line land from the Caspian sea. --And of course, to get heroin production back up to the highest it's ever been after the fundamentalists got control of things and burned all the poppys, devastating one of Wall Streets biggest money-makers. I'm sorry if it sounds callous, and I don't mean to upset you, but your father's paychecks were coming at the expense of entire countries being de-stabalized by American corporate/military might, specifically to make money and to make sure America stays on top of the money/power game.
I'm not going to be baited into an off-tangent argument over illegal immigration. And, as you so aptly pointed out, I proposed the military as an option. For those who, for whatever reason, feel the way that you do, there are other options for improving their lot. But I will point out that the US has gained nothing monetarily from Afghanistan nor Iraq - they have been substantial money pits for this country. On the other hand, both countries are now rid of horrendously despotic tyrants who most certainly did not rule with the will of their people. As to the heroin claim, I'm afraid that you've subscribed to a widely debunked conspiracy theory. I'm certainly not upset by your comments...I've heard them before, always from individuals who have bought into the military/industrial complex scheme, and, with as much enthusiasm for that particular bit of tripe have just as little understanding of the American socio-economic system.
Anyway, discussion of the US government's rationale for invasions of other countries is for another day. Today we're discussing something else.
Just think. . . In my country, (Canada), there isn't regular gunfire in any neighborhood. There are better ways to run a society, and it has been demonstrated. Hard work is a good thing, certainly, but there is boundless room for improvement in America. And to begin that improvement, the people need to recognize the many, many ways in which industry and the wealthy elite actively try to keep the common people locked in violent, poverty-stricken, ignorant patterns. I doubt very much that this will happen in time.
I can't comment on whether or not there is any regular gunfire in any neighborhood in Canada...I'll have to take your word for it. And I agree that there is plenty of room for improvement in this country. But to seriously speak of some wealthy, industrial conspiracy to keep the common people "locked in violent, poverty-stricken, ignorent patters" smacks of a combination of ignorance and paranoia.
You mention peer pressure as being one of the active sources of stress among ghetto youth. This is true, but peer pressure doesn't just happen. It's
That's why the US is not a monarchy. We don't have a king.
That still doesn't make it right or OK that the few incredibly rich and powerful have sway over nations, or that they can get around laws and regulations to get even more rich and powerful, etc.
I agree that wealth should not imply the means to avoid the law. I also contend that wealth, in fact, does not imply the means to get around the law. I don't contend that it hasn't been attempted, but even the wealthy have their day in court. Don't confuse attempting to get around the law with actually getting around the law. It doesn't happen all that often.
I won't contest that in many countries the rich do hold sway. But in this country, the rich do not wield the power that you seem to claim. Certainly money gains access, but even high powered, high dollar lobbiests say that money doesn't get control. In the end, a politician has to be elected by the people, by the masses, and every politician is extraordinarily aware of that. Access is not control - the president isn't going to do something because some rich guy gave his campaign a lot of money - the rich guy gave the president's campaign a lot of money because he knows what the president will do. That is not a subtle difference...it's tremendous, and one that many, many people simply don't understand.
The rich may hold sway over nations that have closed systems of government, but they cannot hold sway over an open, republican government. If the government does not do the people's will, then the people will throw them out.
This has nothing to do with my own goals. Rather, I would say "The rich few have got everybody down, and it's not right, so I will work against it."
It has everything to do with your own goals. If, as you contend, the rich few have everyone down, then they must have you down. But nobody has presented anything other than enflamed rhetoric about how bad the rich are. If the rich have you down, then they are keeping you from attaining your goals. How? What are the rich doing to prevent you from attaining your goals? What rich person has stopped you from doing what you want to do?
-h-
I don't think that you understand the meaning of the word "slavery". I am a solidly middle class individual and I came from a solidly middle class family. My parents, however, both had an absolutely dirt poor upbringing. Only one of my grandparents finished high school. My father was fortunate enough to be able to rely on friends for basic things like clothes, as did my mother. Yet they both managed to go to college and do pretty well for themselves. They did it because they both realized that they weren't going to get what they wanted handed to them - they would have to work for it, and harder than somebody whose families already had the advantages that they didn't have. So my father joined the Navy when he was 17 and went to school on the GI bill. My mom got a scholarship. Neither went to a top tier school, but they both studied hard and worked hard. They were my inspiration to do the same.
And while it is still potentially possible for even an under-educated, mal-nourished black kid from the 'hood with crack-head parents to make it big without putting out a Rap album. . , (just as it is possible for that infinite number of monkeys to type out some Shakespear), it all leaves out one big, ugly point:
Being willing to act like a psychopath is the number #1 best method for getting ahead in the US, and holding slaves is and always will be, dark and nasty, no matter how you dress it up.
What do you mean about "making it big"? Do you mean having millions of dollars, an Escalade and an entourage? Who cares about that? What about simply achieving the goals that you have in life? Sure, maybe money is one of them, but there are other things that provide fulfillment. It doesn't take a gazillionaire to achieve them.
You suggest that psychopathic behavior is the way to get ahead, but I counter that by saying that psychopathic behavior is the way to get attention. Again, if that is your definition of getting ahead, then you're right, but I'll point out that for every "psychopath" in the news, there are countless other success stories don't get attention because they don't need it.
You also sling the word "slavery" around, but I don't think that you really know what it means. Even "an under-educated, mal-nourished black kid from the 'hood with crack-head parents" has choices. Is it easy to break out? No, it's not. Is it fair that they should have it harder than the white kid in the suburbs? No, it's not. Are they slaves? No, they're not. Is peer pressure driving these kids' decisions? Hell yes! And that's the hardest thing to overcome. Some billionaire sitting in his mansion isn't keeping that kid in the ghetto - that kid's friends are helping him to take the easy way out. And so are you. How can that kid get out? Here's one of many ways: graduate from high school or get a GED. Join the military for two years. Get money for college. Go to an inexpensive school. Does it work? Yes, that's how I got my degree.
You claim that Bill Gates has no moral compass, but I also contend that you are wrong. Here is a guy with money who also gives a lot away. To schools. For medical research. For direct, medical aid to the poorest of people in the world. He's the guy who supports rolling back the tax break for the rich. For keeping the estate tax. And he's the guy who has stated over and over again that when he dies, he's giving almost all of it away.
Locking yourself into a debt-ridden grind is a prison of your own making. I decided quite a while ago that it doesn't take a new car every two years or a big house or lots
And if pursuing your own life means that you happen to get rich in the process, what gives us the right to take it away?
Why are the most ostentatiously rich people in this country rich? Because they took a risk and it paid off. They are rich, not because they get some egregiously large paycheck, but because, over time, the companies that they founded and of which they own a significant portion have done well and appreciated in value.
The post to which you are responding pointed out people like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Sam Walton. These are guys who took a fairly small amount of money and turned it into something huge. In some cases, it's a matter of being in the right place at the right time. In others, it's a matter of perserverence and work.
Bear in mind that the billions of dollars of wealth that these people control is not just money sitting around in a big pile. It's money that ends up being invested in other companies, money that pays other people's wages and salaries, money that is paid to the government in taxes, money that is donated to charities. But it is not money that is locked away, unavailable to anyone but some greedy, cold hearted bastard.
You propose an interesting idea that has been tried many times over the past century. Why not limit how much a person can make? Say that there is a cap on salaries for the super-rich. Say, you can't make more than a million bucks a year. But why stop there? Why not put a cap on assets? Say, you can't have more than five million bucks in assets. Or make the number arbitrarily lower. Why not just pay everybody the same? Whether you're a doctor, lawyer, bricklayer, software tycoon or computer programmer, you make the same amount. And you might as well let the government run the whole show, so that we we'll know that the people are being served and nobody is stealing from them. It sounds like a grand idea.
I'm sure that it's probably redundant to point out that there wouldn't be much impetus to pursue a career that required such a huge investment of time and effort (doctor, lawyer, heck, even software programmer) over being, say, a cashier in the government-owned store.
Now, I'm nowhere close to being super rich. Heck, I'm not even micro rich. But I'm also not agitated over the fact that these people are out there because I recognize that in a system such as ours, there will be pockets of concentrated wealth. But, compared nationwide, the wealth of these few ultra-billionaires is a drop in the bucket. Wealth is much less concentrated today than it was, say, 100 years ago, or maybe even 50 years ago. There are a few remarkably rich people in this country, but because of the size of our economy and the success of most Americans, you'll find that there is plenty to go around.
My advice? Quit grousing about the success of others. If money is your goal, pursue it. If you have some other measure of happiness, pursue it with as much gusto as you can muster. But don't use the canard of "the rich man's got me down" to rationalize your inability to achieve your goals. It simply won't wash.
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Hibernation aside, the reason that your laptop appears to boot so fast is because it's still starting services even after you've logged in. You may notice, for example, that your network is not available for a bit of time. Or, perhaps, that you keep seeing icons popping up in the tray? That's part of the boot process...it's just that Microsoft started the GUI before the system was done booting. Linux boots, then starts the GUI.
I find that my two desktop systems, one running XP, the other RH9, take about the same amount of time...the Linux system is, maybe, 5 or 8 seconds slower to boot. That's counting the extra time that Windows takes to finish the boot process after the GUI comes up.
Comparing booting a hibernating system to a complete boot is apples and oranges. You might as well complain to Microsoft that it takes longer to boot XP from a cold start than from hibernating.
-h-
From the verisign-grs.com WHOIS:
Administrative Contract:
VERISIGN GLOBAL REGISTRY SERVICES rcc@verisign.com
21345 Ridgetop Circle
Dulles, VA 20166
US
703-742-0400 fax: 703-421-6703
Dunno how correct it is...god forbid that Verisign should put incorrect info in the whois database.
Dammit! I was going to see that movie!!!!
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I don't argue that there are state laws prohibiting SSN use as identification, but we were talking about federal laws.
The Social Security Act of 1935 introduced the numbers and said that they were intended for use by the social security program. However, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9397 which broadened the use of them within the Federal government in 1943. The Privacy Act of 1974 placed restrictions and provided guidelines on the government's use of them. The Tax Reform Act of 1976 extended the use of social security numbers to certain state and local governments specifically for identification purposes.
There are plenty of private companies that don't use them because of the potential for abuse. But the reason is most definitely not because of any law. There simply is no federal law that says that a private company cannot use one.
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That is not correct. The law places restrictions on how government agencies can use your social security number, but private companies are generally not covered by such laws.
The Privacy Act of 1974 requires government agencies to declare why they have the authority to request it, whether it is voluntary or manditory to disclose it, what they will do to it and what happens if you don't provide it. Also, the Act requires that those agencies that request your social security number, but do not require it, must provide a mechanism for alternative identification number. But, and this is important, the law applies to government agencies only. Also, if the agency was using social security numbers as identifiers prior to 1975, they may continue to use them.
The business about the SSN not being some sort of universal identification number springs from the notification on the card that it is not for use for identification purposes. You'll find, though, that there is no law forbidding its use as an identification number.
And, incidentally, the Privacy Act of 1974 carries no penalties for its violation.
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