Yep, they self insure, which costs everyone money. The employer is responsible for properly screening their employees to insure that they do not hire nutjobs. However, it is in no way their fault if they take proper measures, and someone still goes nuts on them. If they do not take proper measures, then they should not be paying out $$$'s, they should be getting prison time. If this "poor victim" was really only out for justice, he should be making criminal charges, not looking for a quick buck. These people are interested in justice, they're interested in early retirement on our shoulders.
Companies have no way of knowing if someone is a nutjob. Believe it or not, I don't want to have nutjobs working under me, so when it comes time to hire a new tech, you can bet I won't be hiring any nutjobs. You're acting like the company "wants" to hire nutjobs, or has some policy saying the must hire nutjobs.
"He should have been fired." Ever hear of "innocent until proven guilty?" How would you like it if some jerk decided to claim you did something you didn't in order to get you fired? One of our collection people where I work was talking to a customer one day, and I heard the customer raising a **** fit. Later that day, when the same customer came in, he claimed that the collection fellow had been cursing him out -- little did he know I was there the whole time listening in.
If the man is guilty, then sue the employee. Once the employee is now branded a criminal, then sue Verizon if they don't fire said criminal. In this system though, it's not fair to fire people over accusations -- which is all this guy has. Now, if you can show me where this guy was convicted (not charged, charged does not mean guilty) then you have a point.
As is, we have someone who was charged, but not convicted. It's tricky ground, but if anyone needs to be held accountable it should be the justice system that dismissed the case. The employer takes a risk if they fire someone over accusations.
Not to mention, we get huge lawsuits like this all over the place. Sure, it can be spread out, but cases like this hurt all of us. If you think this is honestly a case of a company not caring about risking customer's lives, then there should be a criminal suit. Why money? Why isn't he trying to get people jailed? That's not what he wants, he wants (b$_$)b vacation plans.
Want to know why medical costs are so high? Because hospitals pay out their ass for malpractice suits. Sure, it's sad you lost your leg, but you wouldn't have made ten million in ten life times. If the think the doctor made a mistake, settle for something reasonable, don't make the rest of us pay for the mistake. Verizon tech? I don't believe Verizon company policy involves punching customers. Why is Verizon paying for a stupid employee's action? Guess what, your cell phone bill isn't going to go down thanks to this lawsuit. The man who attacked should be being slapped with a suit, the person suing is just after a quick buck.
This isn't about justice, it's about getting cash. Twits like this cost us hundreds of dollars a year in medical costs, repair bills, etc. Guess what -- your appliance tech gets to pay for insurance for in case a customer sues his pants off. A doctor gets to pay literally tens of thousands for insurance per year. Yeah, this guy got his face smashed, but now the rest of us will be paying for it. So, let me tip my hat and say: I hope your ****ing nose is crooked for the rest of your life, greedy twit.
Phone numbers aren't static, though. How do we tell the difference between a customer who got a new cell phone number and a customer who just has the same name? One thing that is guaranteed to never change is SSN -- and since we're legally required to get an SSN anyway, I decided to hijack it for a new purpose. The problem is that I never thought about *retaining* the SSN being a problem.
Imagine a miniature watch. Complete with miniature gears, and belts... and hands. But we can't build it, because it's too small. Oh well, we'll never ever have a watch, because it absolutely must be tiny tiny tiny to keep the time good.
Instead of going small, why don't we go giant? My x86 processor is about an inch across, why not make it a foot? Do we really need *smaller,* why can't *bigger* be faster? Imagine our sleek Quantum Computing chip, and then blow it up macro size to a foot version. Why do we take a speed hit for not being microscopic? Why does being a "big processor" make it slower than a "small processor." Why can't we make jumbo versions of Quantum Computers? (I'm not familiar with logic gate circuitry, enlighten me please.)
Saying that big trucks must use the left lane is traffic shaping. Saying that these upload packets must go slower than these is also traffic shaping. However, they are "using" traffic shaping to control something else (e.g. "Trucks must go 10mph..." is obviously intended to make trucks avoid that road, but it's via traffic shaping.)
Are you sure you're not talking about Indian code farms...?
Re:Wake me when they have something in production.
on
New Nano-Laser Created
·
· Score: 1
That'd be none then, zero, zilch, nowt, nothing.
I know, that was the point. "Three out of three never go anywhere..." Of course, there are those rare breakthroughs that actually do something. Sure, it's nice to see Scientific tinkering, but I'm really most interested in stuff that is practical.
Wake me when they have something in production.
on
New Nano-Laser Created
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I see about three revolutionary breakthroughs per day, three of which never go anywhere because of cost or something. This reminds me of those "water on mars," articles -- we've been "getting new compelling evidence for water on mars" for decades. So, really, I've started to lose interest. I'll be excited when it finally goes somewhere. Really, what gets my blood pumping is what I can see coming down the pipe -- 128gb flash drives, C++0xA, etc.
"A computer system for the manipulation of the architecture and content of a document having a plurality of metacodes and content by producing a first map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content [...]
Current practice suffers from inflexibility. Documents combining structure and content are inflexible because they tie together structure and content into a single unit which must be modified together. The content is locked into one structure embodied by the embedded codes. Changes to either the structure or the content of the document require a complete new copy of the document. To make changes to the original document structure a new copy of the document must be created. This new copy can either be saved independently resulting in two versions of the document, or it can be saved over the original--effectively destroying it. This is true even if the content does not differ in any way from the original. Similarly if the structure remains identical but the content changes slightly.
[....]
Yet further, there is a difficulty of resolving the markup codes from the structure. Markup codes have to be differentiated from the content stream they are a part of. This involves designating `special` characters or sequences of characters which should be identified and acted upon. This complicates the task of any routine which must work on the document. Any program or procedure which needs to format or understand the document must know all of the special codes and be able to correctly separate them from the content. All routines which work with the document must have exactly the same model of how the embedded codes are formatted or placed. If any operation misinterprets the code sequence even slightly, or mistakes content for formatting, the document or a part thereof will be reduced to meaninglessness.
[....]
Thus, in sharp contrast to the prior art the present invention is based on the practice of separating encoding conventions from the content of a document. The invention does not use embedded metacoding to differentiate the content of the document, but rather, the metacodes of the document are separated from the content and held in distinct storage in a structure called a metacode map, whereas document content is held in a mapped content area. Raw content is an extreme example of mapped content wherein the latter is totally unstructured and has no embedded metacodes in the data stream.
"
You'll have to excuse me, I'm a programmer, not a legal expert. I skimmed the patent a few days ago, but all of that jazz sounds exactly like my summary, only more verbose. Mind elaborating?
While at first this struck me as an interesting idea, it took me a moment to realize that this is just dynamic (err... at server runtime) outsourcing. So, really, this isn't very amazing. Still, I think this is a good idea for us consumers: it means electricity usages for certain areas can shrink, which could potentially help lower rates for the rest of us. For once, outsourcing might be good for the economy.
I find it ironic that product is designed to work with Word. I can see why they would want to sue though, seeing as how MS just bundled in software that removes the need for their add on. From what I've read, the patent is on something which strips the raw text from the surrounding tags -- meaning I can call "open" on a file stream in C++, read in the data as a string, all without worrying about the tags (because the tags are logically separated already in a different location.) Eitherway, I'm not a fan of copyright, no matter who's getting f'd'n'the'a. (Though, for the record, this is Slashdot -- everyone hates MS. But they hate patent trolls more, hence the response.)
No, customers have IDs, and contracts have IDs, SSNs are only a quick way to tie customers to their old information via information that is already being collected. The problem is that when you demand to remove the SSN (which we already must collect, per Patriot crap) the system will think you're a new customer.
Now before you start blathering, I did think this through before I made it work this way. Firstly, this is designed to handle closed installment retail contracts, meaning a single customer will have multiple contracts. Customers are each issued a customer ID (which is always unique.) However, if the same customer comes back to add a new contract, the user would need to find the old customer ID.
Now, looking up an old ID isn't that big of a deal, but when we run a search on a name to find what ID they had, we might have multiple people with the same name -- which isn't impossible to figure out (you just need to ask what they've bought before.)
That's fine, but when you realize we legally need their SSN -already-, I decided to hijack the SSN for a new purpose: identifying people with the same name. This way, when creating a contract, the system can automatically tie the customer to their old information, all without burning extra time.
This works *perfectly* if we assume people aren't going to go nuts over us using their SSN.
So images made in Adobe Photoshop are considered derived works? So "legally speaking," if a free image designer suite has (we own all ur bases) in the fine print, they could sue you for using the images you created using the software?
Some (financial) Point Of Sale software I designed uses SSNs to tell the difference between customers with identical names. If I change the SSN... it thinks you're a new customer. Well... this is something to think about.
If software companies can copyright software, or images, or 3D models, then I should be able to copyright a game character. Just because one was designed in a 3D Object Designer software, and the other via a game system, does not make one more copyrightable than the other. Of course, I make that as a case-and-point to say that modern copyright needs an overhaul.
Microsoft at least has one thing it knows: cross language APIs/SDKs are a good thing. I wanted to perform some data mining on an Excel Spread sheet, I just popped open Python file and imported COM support -- tah-dah, Excel access in the language of my choice, with as many supporting features as the Java/C#/C++/PHP/Ruby approaches.
Because, they behaved so good!
"Well Mr. Peppers, you've been in prison for five years now, and you haven't raped even one little girl! What self control! Five years, not one raped little girl. We think you're ready to re-integrate with society."
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, they self insure, which costs everyone money. The employer is responsible for properly screening their employees to insure that they do not hire nutjobs. However, it is in no way their fault if they take proper measures, and someone still goes nuts on them. If they do not take proper measures, then they should not be paying out $$$'s, they should be getting prison time. If this "poor victim" was really only out for justice, he should be making criminal charges, not looking for a quick buck. These people are interested in justice, they're interested in early retirement on our shoulders.
Companies have no way of knowing if someone is a nutjob. Believe it or not, I don't want to have nutjobs working under me, so when it comes time to hire a new tech, you can bet I won't be hiring any nutjobs. You're acting like the company "wants" to hire nutjobs, or has some policy saying the must hire nutjobs.
"He should have been fired." Ever hear of "innocent until proven guilty?" How would you like it if some jerk decided to claim you did something you didn't in order to get you fired? One of our collection people where I work was talking to a customer one day, and I heard the customer raising a **** fit. Later that day, when the same customer came in, he claimed that the collection fellow had been cursing him out -- little did he know I was there the whole time listening in.
If the man is guilty, then sue the employee. Once the employee is now branded a criminal, then sue Verizon if they don't fire said criminal. In this system though, it's not fair to fire people over accusations -- which is all this guy has. Now, if you can show me where this guy was convicted (not charged, charged does not mean guilty) then you have a point.
As is, we have someone who was charged, but not convicted. It's tricky ground, but if anyone needs to be held accountable it should be the justice system that dismissed the case. The employer takes a risk if they fire someone over accusations.
Doctors Insurance:
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080313/OPINION/803130304
Not to mention, we get huge lawsuits like this all over the place. Sure, it can be spread out, but cases like this hurt all of us. If you think this is honestly a case of a company not caring about risking customer's lives, then there should be a criminal suit. Why money? Why isn't he trying to get people jailed? That's not what he wants, he wants (b$_$)b vacation plans.
Want to know why medical costs are so high? Because hospitals pay out their ass for malpractice suits. Sure, it's sad you lost your leg, but you wouldn't have made ten million in ten life times. If the think the doctor made a mistake, settle for something reasonable, don't make the rest of us pay for the mistake. Verizon tech? I don't believe Verizon company policy involves punching customers. Why is Verizon paying for a stupid employee's action? Guess what, your cell phone bill isn't going to go down thanks to this lawsuit. The man who attacked should be being slapped with a suit, the person suing is just after a quick buck.
This isn't about justice, it's about getting cash. Twits like this cost us hundreds of dollars a year in medical costs, repair bills, etc. Guess what -- your appliance tech gets to pay for insurance for in case a customer sues his pants off. A doctor gets to pay literally tens of thousands for insurance per year. Yeah, this guy got his face smashed, but now the rest of us will be paying for it. So, let me tip my hat and say: I hope your ****ing nose is crooked for the rest of your life, greedy twit.
Phone numbers aren't static, though. How do we tell the difference between a customer who got a new cell phone number and a customer who just has the same name? One thing that is guaranteed to never change is SSN -- and since we're legally required to get an SSN anyway, I decided to hijack it for a new purpose. The problem is that I never thought about *retaining* the SSN being a problem.
Imagine a miniature watch. Complete with miniature gears, and belts... and hands. But we can't build it, because it's too small. Oh well, we'll never ever have a watch, because it absolutely must be tiny tiny tiny to keep the time good.
Instead of going small, why don't we go giant? My x86 processor is about an inch across, why not make it a foot? Do we really need *smaller,* why can't *bigger* be faster? Imagine our sleek Quantum Computing chip, and then blow it up macro size to a foot version. Why do we take a speed hit for not being microscopic? Why does being a "big processor" make it slower than a "small processor." Why can't we make jumbo versions of Quantum Computers? (I'm not familiar with logic gate circuitry, enlighten me please.)
Saying that big trucks must use the left lane is traffic shaping. Saying that these upload packets must go slower than these is also traffic shaping. However, they are "using" traffic shaping to control something else (e.g. "Trucks must go 10mph..." is obviously intended to make trucks avoid that road, but it's via traffic shaping.)
Are you sure you're not talking about Indian code farms...?
That'd be none then, zero, zilch, nowt, nothing.
I know, that was the point. "Three out of three never go anywhere..." Of course, there are those rare breakthroughs that actually do something. Sure, it's nice to see Scientific tinkering, but I'm really most interested in stuff that is practical.
I see about three revolutionary breakthroughs per day, three of which never go anywhere because of cost or something. This reminds me of those "water on mars," articles -- we've been "getting new compelling evidence for water on mars" for decades. So, really, I've started to lose interest. I'll be excited when it finally goes somewhere. Really, what gets my blood pumping is what I can see coming down the pipe -- 128gb flash drives, C++0xA, etc.
If it also blocks transmission, then students can keep their cell phone on them without worrying about disrupting class or losing their phone.
It'll be just like that movie where the moon exploded and blew up the Earthlings.
I did read it. Tell me what I'm misreading:
"A computer system for the manipulation of the architecture and content of a document having a plurality of metacodes and content by producing a first map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content
[...]
Current practice suffers from inflexibility. Documents combining structure and content are inflexible because they tie together structure and content into a single unit which must be modified together. The content is locked into one structure embodied by the embedded codes. Changes to either the structure or the content of the document require a complete new copy of the document. To make changes to the original document structure a new copy of the document must be created. This new copy can either be saved independently resulting in two versions of the document, or it can be saved over the original--effectively destroying it. This is true even if the content does not differ in any way from the original. Similarly if the structure remains identical but the content changes slightly.
[....]
Yet further, there is a difficulty of resolving the markup codes from the structure. Markup codes have to be differentiated from the content stream they are a part of. This involves designating `special` characters or sequences of characters which should be identified and acted upon. This complicates the task of any routine which must work on the document. Any program or procedure which needs to format or understand the document must know all of the special codes and be able to correctly separate them from the content. All routines which work with the document must have exactly the same model of how the embedded codes are formatted or placed. If any operation misinterprets the code sequence even slightly, or mistakes content for formatting, the document or a part thereof will be reduced to meaninglessness.
[....]
Thus, in sharp contrast to the prior art the present invention is based on the practice of separating encoding conventions from the content of a document. The invention does not use embedded metacoding to differentiate the content of the document, but rather, the metacodes of the document are separated from the content and held in distinct storage in a structure called a metacode map, whereas document content is held in a mapped content area. Raw content is an extreme example of mapped content wherein the latter is totally unstructured and has no embedded metacodes in the data stream. "
You'll have to excuse me, I'm a programmer, not a legal expert. I skimmed the patent a few days ago, but all of that jazz sounds exactly like my summary, only more verbose. Mind elaborating?
While at first this struck me as an interesting idea, it took me a moment to realize that this is just dynamic (err... at server runtime) outsourcing. So, really, this isn't very amazing. Still, I think this is a good idea for us consumers: it means electricity usages for certain areas can shrink, which could potentially help lower rates for the rest of us. For once, outsourcing might be good for the economy.
I find it ironic that product is designed to work with Word. I can see why they would want to sue though, seeing as how MS just bundled in software that removes the need for their add on. From what I've read, the patent is on something which strips the raw text from the surrounding tags -- meaning I can call "open" on a file stream in C++, read in the data as a string, all without worrying about the tags (because the tags are logically separated already in a different location.) Eitherway, I'm not a fan of copyright, no matter who's getting f'd'n'the'a. (Though, for the record, this is Slashdot -- everyone hates MS. But they hate patent trolls more, hence the response.)
No, customers have IDs, and contracts have IDs, SSNs are only a quick way to tie customers to their old information via information that is already being collected. The problem is that when you demand to remove the SSN (which we already must collect, per Patriot crap) the system will think you're a new customer.
Now before you start blathering, I did think this through before I made it work this way. Firstly, this is designed to handle closed installment retail contracts, meaning a single customer will have multiple contracts. Customers are each issued a customer ID (which is always unique.) However, if the same customer comes back to add a new contract, the user would need to find the old customer ID.
Now, looking up an old ID isn't that big of a deal, but when we run a search on a name to find what ID they had, we might have multiple people with the same name -- which isn't impossible to figure out (you just need to ask what they've bought before.)
That's fine, but when you realize we legally need their SSN -already-, I decided to hijack the SSN for a new purpose: identifying people with the same name. This way, when creating a contract, the system can automatically tie the customer to their old information, all without burning extra time.
This works *perfectly* if we assume people aren't going to go nuts over us using their SSN.
So images made in Adobe Photoshop are considered derived works? So "legally speaking," if a free image designer suite has (we own all ur bases) in the fine print, they could sue you for using the images you created using the software?
Some (financial) Point Of Sale software I designed uses SSNs to tell the difference between customers with identical names. If I change the SSN... it thinks you're a new customer. Well... this is something to think about.
If software companies can copyright software, or images, or 3D models, then I should be able to copyright a game character. Just because one was designed in a 3D Object Designer software, and the other via a game system, does not make one more copyrightable than the other. Of course, I make that as a case-and-point to say that modern copyright needs an overhaul.
Vitamin C? More like... Vitamin Objective C++ Sharp!
Microsoft at least has one thing it knows: cross language APIs/SDKs are a good thing. I wanted to perform some data mining on an Excel Spread sheet, I just popped open Python file and imported COM support -- tah-dah, Excel access in the language of my choice, with as many supporting features as the Java/C#/C++/PHP/Ruby approaches.
Because, they behaved so good!
"Well Mr. Peppers, you've been in prison for five years now, and you haven't raped even one little girl! What self control! Five years, not one raped little girl. We think you're ready to re-integrate with society."
Oh, well if you're taking that definition of security reputation, I fully agree; My mistake.
Wow, that's kinda scary. Shoulda used NetBSD. ;p