I had the opposite experience. I did a few searches on Bing that I had done yesterday on Google, and both took the same amount of time to find what I was looking for. I had to look closely just to make sure I was using Bing, the pages were so similar, down to the advertisement placements.
So I tried the one thing I use Google most for... maps. Same route, but I can't manipulate the route as easily on MS.
So.. YAWN.... back to Google. At least it remembers my prior searches.
As I put forth, those are the reasons the COMPANY choose not to use it. I didn't say I don't choose to use it. In fact, my current employer loves open source and contributes bug reports and fixes for the products we use.
Mr. Greve's whining about name calling and it's impact on open source is minor compared to the PERCEPTIONS of support and quality that are out there. Fix the perceptions and deal with the reality that there is a ton of open source crap out there in addition to the good stuff.
Except no on hears the name calling other than people like Greve. I don't hear it, because I'm not involved in it.
And since the large majority of people that use open source are also not involved in it, fixing it won't necessarily translate into additional users.
The two main reasons that companies I have worked in don't use open source software is either because they want a paid technician on the other end of the phone, or it was felt the quality wasn't as good.
I suggest Mr. Greve expend his energy on overcoming those two issues if he wants to expand the acceptance of open source software. One only has to wade through the mountains of crap on SourceForge to question whether it is worth the effort to search for the good stuff that surpasses commercial options, or just go buy something.
It sounds like they were not accepting patients that couldn't make it to another hospital. Since they were accepting walk-ins, it's very likely an ambulance with a critical patient would have been accepted. If that was true, no one was being denied healthcare. Here in Phoenix, it's hard to go 5 miles without seeing another hospital. I was recently in a motorcycle crash and was not taken to the closest hospital because of the type of injury I had and the reputation the hospital had to handle orthopedic type injuries. I was not in a life threatening situation, just a simple fracture of my fibula, and didn't even go into surgery for 24 hours. I could have ridden several hours to another hospital and still have been just fine.
Hospitals are businesses and have to make money. If they don't get accurate records, they can't bill the insurance companies. While this is an indication of issues with a specific hospital's computer and backup systems and a possible risk with other hospitals, I see no cause for alarm.
I recently had to go to emergency for severe stomach pains and ended up having my gall bladder taken out. I had to wait 5 hours for a room because they were 'code purple'. All beds in hospital and emergency were full. I hope they were turning away non-critical patients also. I wouldn't be surprised if this happens far more often than what the news story reported.
And everyone is free to build their own printing press. Thanks for proving the parent poster's point....the US got there first, but nothing prevents anyone else from creating their own.
I can create my own DNS root server and domain and start using it today. No one will be able to use it because no one will be able to find it, but that's only because all current DNS servers point to the main root servers.
So UK, France, Germany, the UN, et. al. can build it themselves, and create the necessary cooperation within their domains to get other people to point to it. Shouldn't cost much, most of the software is free. It's mostly just the timing of the implementation that has to be worked on.
But instead they will continually demand the US to 'just hand it over'.The UN could never get nations to cooperate on much of anything, I can understand why they won't take on the work.
Funny thing, less than 10% of the population of this world lives in the US. If the UN just got off their ass, they could make ICAN irrelevant without having to be diplomatic about it at all. They could create a system where everyone HAS to point to their servers to access anything outside of the US.
Let me toss in a couple of anecdotal stories that might explain some of this. My wife used to work for a construction company. White, middle class boys would come into get a job and quit after the first week because it was harder than they thought it would be. One guy left at noon his first day for that very reason. My son refused to work at McDonald's because he felt it was beneath him. And I don't see any white boys standing on the corner looking for landscaping work. My step-son is unemployed, yet he refuses to do it.
Maybe the reason those foreigners are taking those local jobs is because many Americans don't want them. Some have gotten too elitist to do a day's worth of manual labor.
Yes.. the pay is poor. It always has been. No one ever got rich working as a landscaper, unless they got really, really good at it and could charge a premium and started their own business.
Someone in IT who is taking home a really good salary needs to make sure they are worth it. Not just in terms of what everyone else is making, but in terms of giving more in value back to the company than what they are being paid. I remember a young fresh-out-of-college job applicant telling me she wanted to make 80K a year 'because that's how much she can make in Boston.' I said we don't pay that much in Portland, Maine. She got visibly offended that I would even think of paying her less than what 'she was worth'.
She was wrong, I didn't even think of paying her less. I didn't hire her at all because she wasn't worth even $40K to me and I needed someone with more experience.
Everybody has to graduate from high school because some dick bureaucrat says it is better for people that don't want to be there to waste two years of their life sitting in a class they aren't paying any attention to than to be out working for a living. And has convinced everyone that without those last two years people are morons.
I'm not advocating not going to school. But if it's not meaningful, why bother.
On the other end, I was talked into being college prep because 'you have so much potential'. So in my junior year, I switched to college prep, although I did take two shop classes and learned welding and metal working.
So.. off to college I went. And dropped out after the first semester because I hated it. Instead, I discovered a TRS-80 at Radio Shack and discovered I had a gift for computers, something my guidance councilor didn't know. So I bought Fortran and BASIC books, became a computer operator, and then a programmer.
30 years later I have a 6 figure income writing code AND know how to weld, braze, and retap threads. And make more money than some of my friends that went to college.
We need to provide a base education (civics, math, science, language skills, history) to everyone, but also make sure that we can truly identify the skills someone has and provide students the tools to discover what potentials they wish to grow.
And exposing students to a myriad of different skills is the best way. Take a semester of basic shop, cooking, auto mechanics. Offer courses in basic home repair, teach bicycle repair. These are all basic mechanical skills that are not only useful later in life, but can ignite a spark of interest and help someone find the job the want to do, instead of the one a guidance councilor thinks they will be best at.
I'm considering that when I retire, I just might work at a local pool company because I enjoy it. Those mechanical skills I learned when I was young have grown through the years to the point where I can do pool plumbing and electrical work without having had any formal education. And I enjoy tinkering around the pool, so why not doing 20-30 hours a week.
Happiness isn't having everything you want, it's learning to enjoy what you have.
They aren't playing police, he is not going to jail. Don't be so dramtic.
If I sign a contract in the US and am accused of doing something in violation of that contract, the other party can break the contract. I have a right to take it to civil court to fight the decision. I have a right to ask for a stay against any penalties until it is resolved. I even have a right to sue and receive judgments for my having to spend money to fight the suit and to punish the person breaking the suit.
It appears the person in the article has decided to roll over instead of exercising his rights. Sucks to be him. 'Oh.. he's a poor student and doesn't have any money'. The law gives citizens rights, not abilities. Still sucks to be him.
As for deserving a right to defend myself, I can sue for libel if I think accusations are false and damage my reputation. I can use my right of free speech to post something on Slashdot and whine about my situation.
He goes to a university, they kicked him out. The only due process he is allowed is whatever they granted him when he agreed to go there in exchange for him paying them money.
I have no sympathy for him. He knew it was wrong to download it without paying for it. Instead of whining here, he should be addressing the issue with whatever governing boards are at his school.
Or look into transferring his credits to another school and getting on with his life.
It's only carbon neutral if the energy used to charge it is from a carbon neutral source. Less than 50% of the electrical power generated in the US is carbon neutral (solar/wind/nuclear/etc). The article says it would be beneficial for solar/wind storage, but since those are traditionally fixed placement sites if they are of any size, it sounds like it might be more of a cost savings than being any better for the environment. Smaller usually equates to less resources needed, but that is only an assumption without comparing the resources needed and their total carbon footprint to create comparable devices.
It appears the major benefit to this is it's smaller and lighter, which is a benefit to portable applications. It would make cars lighter, further improving efficiency which probably means using less energy.
It sounds like it will still require the same amount of energy to charge it as does any other current battery. Which is an assumption, since neither article really goes into that detail. If that assumption is valid, the environmental impact from this battery is reduced resource usage and lighter cars requiring less energy to run.
I usually don't answer phone calls when I'm driving because I don't have a hands free set and find that most are calls that can wait to be responded to. If it's important, they will leave a voice mail and I can use the speakerphone to listen to it. Then find a place to pull over and call them back.
He needed an investor to market and develop his asset. He would be left with an asset that he couldn't use (unless he found another investor) and an empty wallet. If he could have found another investor, then the original investor would have sold instead of shutting down.
He keeps in touch with the original investor, I'm sure if an opportunity presents itself he will pursue it.
It's not illegal for me to follow someone around if I'm on public property.
It's only illegal after they have told me to stop it and show emotional distress or physical threats as a reason.
As the court said, the use would be legal as long as the same information could have been gathered using normal observational techniques. There are plenty of opinions regarding this type of public activity, and there will be plenty more.
The Constitution provides only guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure. There has to be a balance between protecting against fishing expeditions and letting people with a preponderance of evidence get away because of delays in getting warrants. A police officer can walk past a car and look into it and if he see's a dead body, he can open the car and search it. If he sees a what could be drugs, he may have to go get a search warrant. One is a reasonable search, there is a body with pools of blood in the back seat. The other is not, the white powder could be sugar.
Police have always been able to 'tail' suspects. I feel this is no different. If police start attaching GPS devices to cars of people not accused of any crimes 'just to see where he goes' and then arresting them for speeding, I'm sure the courts will toss those out using exactly the same type of finding.
I'll try that next time I'm driving down the road and my wife calls. I'll wait for my text voice mail to come up and read that instead of pressing and holding 1 (because I have buttons on my phone and don't have to feel for it), pressing select (because on my phone as soon as you call selecting toggles speakerphone) and listening to what she wants; AT&T automatically plays unheard messages. I don't worry about deleting them because when I hang up, the voice mail is saved for several days and then automatically deleted.
I do use both voice-to-text voicemail. I use Vonage at home and like getting text translations of my voice mails and having them forwarded to both my cell and office email. (I keep Vonage because that's the number I give all businesses, I only give out my cell phone number to people I want calling me on my cell phone.) But since I always have my cell, the above doesn't need any effort, if I can't talk on the phone I'm free to do other things while listening to see if it was important.
As long as both are available, I'll use them where appropriate.
Make sure the cash is enough you won't need a job for a year or two at least, above and beyond what you just want to blow right now. You should be prepared that in less than six months, you won't want to work there and arrange your finances accordingly.
Personally, I would work out some kind of ongoing royalty situation in addition to the buy out just in case it takes off. Stock options are useless unless it is already a public company and you can exercise them within 6 months.
A friend of mine had a great idea. Got some investors, created a company to develop the hardware and software, started getting customers. Then the economy went south, the investor got scared, and no more money. So no more company.
Oh.. and now the investor owns all rights to the product so other than the originator having a high-paying job for a couple of years he got... zip.
People spend large sums of money on audio and video equipment, cars, trucks, boats, motorcycles, lawnmowers, and tons of other items in the quest to have the biggest/fastest/showiest/best quality, spending amounts that far exceed any percent gain in relation to the dollars spent. Some do it for bragging rights, others suffer from the 'just because I can' syndrome. Some do it because they really can tell the difference in quality and can't stand cheaper alternatives. I used to take plenty of pictures with a cheap point and shoot camera. I have a dSLR now with an assortment of lenses and can't stand to use a cheap camera anymore.
Some choose to spend money on the beefiest system they can while others choose to purchase designer clothes or eat at expensive restaurants or take vacations to exotic locals or play golf at expensive courses. They are all choices that seem reasonable to anyone with similar preferences, but will always seem outrageous or extravagant to everyone else.
I use neither to base my decision on whether to hire someone or not. I base it on whether they are smart and have knowledge about what they are going to be tasked with. I don't give a shit whether they learned it in college, high school, online, or by buying books and teaching themselves.
My first online class in C++ was done at home and I didn't have any problems picking up the language. People who think you need college to network or go to a lab are missing the point, you need to network or get hands on no matter what the source. I got my first job in IT because I was in an astronomy club and one of the other members was an IT manager at a local bank. I transferred our clubs mimeograph mailing labels to a TRS-80 and saved us money by writing a zip-code presort routine. So a year later when I went looking for a job as a programmer, guess who I called??
Here I am, 30 years later making a six figure income and having only taken classes as I needed to learn something specific. I haven't had to use a recruiter since the late '80s, networking has been my only resource when job hunting.
Bright, motivated people have never needed a college education. Most college degrees are for average people who need the discipline and hand holding to learn things. Or for bright, motivated people who just like goofing off for four years while watching the rest struggle to get by.
I prefer my sad little office cubicle also. Both my home and work computers are similar, but I like my tiny little cubicle with no distractions. (I was recently asked if I wanted to move to a larger cubicle and said no, the extra space just mean more room to pile crap.) I can tolerate some of the low level voices I guess because I've worked in this type of environment for so long. I can't really deal with headphones on all day.
However.. many years ago (25??) my favorite place to debug was Pizza Hut. I would take a couple stacks of green-bar memory dumps, order up a pizza and pitcher of Pepsi, and sit for hours pouring over them with a highlighter, pencil, and steel ruler. The place would let me take over a booth and filled the pitcher when it ran out. The waitresses were always attentive because I always left a good tip and was polite.
Maybe if it's cheaper and as fast as flying. Or more convenient. Last time I looked into it, the trains were as expensive as flying and took as long as the bus.
When trains travel 500mph non-stop between major cities and have several departures a day, I'll consider it. Being stuck in a plane for 6-8 hours is bad enough for cross-United States flights, as long as I can afford it I won't be stuck in a train for a longer period.
Now.. if there was a train from Phoenix to San Diego/LA/Vegas/Albuquerque/Denver/Flagstaff the time frame wouldn't be as bad. But then again, if more than a couple of people are going it's almost as fast and usually cheaper to drive. That 1 hour flight to Vegas really takes 4-5 anyway and you run the risk of delays and cancellations and having to sit next to a fat smelly person. I've driven to San Diego many times over the last few years and always seem to keep to my schedule.
You're just a US State now. You will never be independant of the US, and you don't *want* to be, as you'd last about a month without the federal infrastructure.
Imagine, if we will, that we flipped the amount of income tax we paid the federal government and state government. We could come OUT from under the blackmail that is the Federal Government denial of funding if we don't do as we are told. For example, the Consitution does not grant the federal government any say in education. BUT... since they tax the crap out of us, they get a say by taking our tax dollars and refusing to give them back unless we are good little states and do as we are told. The same is true of the majority of federal programs.
The only real power the federal government was granted by the US constitution and its amendments was the right to handle foreign affairs, national defense, levy taxes, and interstate commerce. By creating a tax system that returns money to ALL states and using the bludgeon that is interstate commerce, they have effectively created states that are little more than living off the welfare of the US teat.
The real tax reform should be a slow and methodical reduction in federal taxes and federal funding programs while states increase their taxes to take up the burden and get the federal government out of the business of telling states how to conduct theirs. I'm not against 'spreading the wealth around' a little bit to make sure poor states have adequate roads, education, and basic necessities, but it shouldn't be based on what the federal government is charged with by the constitution and its amendments, not by being our nanny.
What BS. They only do this to make money. They think (and probably rightly so) that by opening the floodgates they can make a crapload of money. Either now or later when Google buys them out.
I hope it works, but don't try to scam me into thinking it's for the good of the community.
Until "it" can be "proven" otherwise, those "figures" are only cause for "thinking", without "evidence" to back "them" up.
I think the men and women that go overseas are some of the bravest and most honorable people around, and that while a few may be gung-ho and shoot everything in sight, most do their best to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.
At least, I don't recall reading of any pits with thousands of bodies in them, or our GIs beheading "insurgents" on live television for everyone to watch. Instead, I read of our GIs helping rebuild hospitals and helping to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed during the initial fighting.
Go ahead and live in your dream world where you read only about our guys being the bad guys, and those who think nothing of purposefully attacking civilians with suicide bombers are just victims.
First, one example does not a rule make. Just as my anecdotal evidence does not.
But in this case, finding a new job was probably a good thing to do. I never understood why people want to stay at jobs that suck. I was stuck at a job as a COBOL developer for 7 years for a company with a terrible manager. I got laid off one Monday (with 9 weeks severance pay) and two weeks later had a much better job with a better boss and more opportunity. In fact, getting laid off was the best thing to happen to me as my salary had been very flat for many years before that (the old "you make too much, if we gave you a raise then other people wouldn't get one"), and became a hockey stick for many years after that.
I've had this attitude now for many years and it has served me very well, both in workplace environment and salary. It may not be for everyone, but I have a lot less stress than the schemers and screamers out there.
Slashdot Mirror
I had the opposite experience. I did a few searches on Bing that I had done yesterday on Google, and both took the same amount of time to find what I was looking for. I had to look closely just to make sure I was using Bing, the pages were so similar, down to the advertisement placements.
... maps. Same route, but I can't manipulate the route as easily on MS.
.. YAWN .... back to Google. At least it remembers my prior searches.
So I tried the one thing I use Google most for
So
As I put forth, those are the reasons the COMPANY choose not to use it. I didn't say I don't choose to use it. In fact, my current employer loves open source and contributes bug reports and fixes for the products we use.
Mr. Greve's whining about name calling and it's impact on open source is minor compared to the PERCEPTIONS of support and quality that are out there. Fix the perceptions and deal with the reality that there is a ton of open source crap out there in addition to the good stuff.
Except no on hears the name calling other than people like Greve. I don't hear it, because I'm not involved in it.
And since the large majority of people that use open source are also not involved in it, fixing it won't necessarily translate into additional users.
The two main reasons that companies I have worked in don't use open source software is either because they want a paid technician on the other end of the phone, or it was felt the quality wasn't as good.
I suggest Mr. Greve expend his energy on overcoming those two issues if he wants to expand the acceptance of open source software. One only has to wade through the mountains of crap on SourceForge to question whether it is worth the effort to search for the good stuff that surpasses commercial options, or just go buy something.
It sounds like they were not accepting patients that couldn't make it to another hospital. Since they were accepting walk-ins, it's very likely an ambulance with a critical patient would have been accepted. If that was true, no one was being denied healthcare. Here in Phoenix, it's hard to go 5 miles without seeing another hospital. I was recently in a motorcycle crash and was not taken to the closest hospital because of the type of injury I had and the reputation the hospital had to handle orthopedic type injuries. I was not in a life threatening situation, just a simple fracture of my fibula, and didn't even go into surgery for 24 hours. I could have ridden several hours to another hospital and still have been just fine.
Hospitals are businesses and have to make money. If they don't get accurate records, they can't bill the insurance companies. While this is an indication of issues with a specific hospital's computer and backup systems and a possible risk with other hospitals, I see no cause for alarm.
I recently had to go to emergency for severe stomach pains and ended up having my gall bladder taken out. I had to wait 5 hours for a room because they were 'code purple'. All beds in hospital and emergency were full. I hope they were turning away non-critical patients also. I wouldn't be surprised if this happens far more often than what the news story reported.
And everyone is free to build their own printing press. Thanks for proving the parent poster's point....the US got there first, but nothing prevents anyone else from creating their own.
I can create my own DNS root server and domain and start using it today. No one will be able to use it because no one will be able to find it, but that's only because all current DNS servers point to the main root servers.
So UK, France, Germany, the UN, et. al. can build it themselves, and create the necessary cooperation within their domains to get other people to point to it. Shouldn't cost much, most of the software is free. It's mostly just the timing of the implementation that has to be worked on.
But instead they will continually demand the US to 'just hand it over'.The UN could never get nations to cooperate on much of anything, I can understand why they won't take on the work.
Funny thing, less than 10% of the population of this world lives in the US. If the UN just got off their ass, they could make ICAN irrelevant without having to be diplomatic about it at all. They could create a system where everyone HAS to point to their servers to access anything outside of the US.
Correlation is not causation.
.. the pay is poor. It always has been. No one ever got rich working as a landscaper, unless they got really, really good at it and could charge a premium and started their own business.
Let me toss in a couple of anecdotal stories that might explain some of this. My wife used to work for a construction company. White, middle class boys would come into get a job and quit after the first week because it was harder than they thought it would be. One guy left at noon his first day for that very reason. My son refused to work at McDonald's because he felt it was beneath him. And I don't see any white boys standing on the corner looking for landscaping work. My step-son is unemployed, yet he refuses to do it.
Maybe the reason those foreigners are taking those local jobs is because many Americans don't want them. Some have gotten too elitist to do a day's worth of manual labor.
Yes
Someone in IT who is taking home a really good salary needs to make sure they are worth it. Not just in terms of what everyone else is making, but in terms of giving more in value back to the company than what they are being paid. I remember a young fresh-out-of-college job applicant telling me she wanted to make 80K a year 'because that's how much she can make in Boston.' I said we don't pay that much in Portland, Maine. She got visibly offended that I would even think of paying her less than what 'she was worth'.
She was wrong, I didn't even think of paying her less. I didn't hire her at all because she wasn't worth even $40K to me and I needed someone with more experience.
Everybody has to graduate from high school because some dick bureaucrat says it is better for people that don't want to be there to waste two years of their life sitting in a class they aren't paying any attention to than to be out working for a living. And has convinced everyone that without those last two years people are morons.
.. off to college I went. And dropped out after the first semester because I hated it. Instead, I discovered a TRS-80 at Radio Shack and discovered I had a gift for computers, something my guidance councilor didn't know. So I bought Fortran and BASIC books, became a computer operator, and then a programmer.
I'm not advocating not going to school. But if it's not meaningful, why bother.
On the other end, I was talked into being college prep because 'you have so much potential'. So in my junior year, I switched to college prep, although I did take two shop classes and learned welding and metal working.
So
30 years later I have a 6 figure income writing code AND know how to weld, braze, and retap threads. And make more money than some of my friends that went to college.
We need to provide a base education (civics, math, science, language skills, history) to everyone, but also make sure that we can truly identify the skills someone has and provide students the tools to discover what potentials they wish to grow.
And exposing students to a myriad of different skills is the best way. Take a semester of basic shop, cooking, auto mechanics. Offer courses in basic home repair, teach bicycle repair. These are all basic mechanical skills that are not only useful later in life, but can ignite a spark of interest and help someone find the job the want to do, instead of the one a guidance councilor thinks they will be best at.
I'm considering that when I retire, I just might work at a local pool company because I enjoy it. Those mechanical skills I learned when I was young have grown through the years to the point where I can do pool plumbing and electrical work without having had any formal education. And I enjoy tinkering around the pool, so why not doing 20-30 hours a week.
Happiness isn't having everything you want, it's learning to enjoy what you have.
They aren't playing police, he is not going to jail. Don't be so dramtic.
.. he's a poor student and doesn't have any money'. The law gives citizens rights, not abilities. Still sucks to be him.
If I sign a contract in the US and am accused of doing something in violation of that contract, the other party can break the contract. I have a right to take it to civil court to fight the decision. I have a right to ask for a stay against any penalties until it is resolved. I even have a right to sue and receive judgments for my having to spend money to fight the suit and to punish the person breaking the suit.
It appears the person in the article has decided to roll over instead of exercising his rights. Sucks to be him. 'Oh
As for deserving a right to defend myself, I can sue for libel if I think accusations are false and damage my reputation. I can use my right of free speech to post something on Slashdot and whine about my situation.
Notice that even in the case of an actual criminal activity, police will take many variables in context before to punish.
Cops can use discretion on whether or not to arrest, it's up to judges to issue punishment.
He goes to a university, they kicked him out. The only due process he is allowed is whatever they granted him when he agreed to go there in exchange for him paying them money.
I have no sympathy for him. He knew it was wrong to download it without paying for it. Instead of whining here, he should be addressing the issue with whatever governing boards are at his school.
Or look into transferring his credits to another school and getting on with his life.
It's only carbon neutral if the energy used to charge it is from a carbon neutral source. Less than 50% of the electrical power generated in the US is carbon neutral (solar/wind/nuclear/etc). The article says it would be beneficial for solar/wind storage, but since those are traditionally fixed placement sites if they are of any size, it sounds like it might be more of a cost savings than being any better for the environment. Smaller usually equates to less resources needed, but that is only an assumption without comparing the resources needed and their total carbon footprint to create comparable devices.
It appears the major benefit to this is it's smaller and lighter, which is a benefit to portable applications. It would make cars lighter, further improving efficiency which probably means using less energy.
It sounds like it will still require the same amount of energy to charge it as does any other current battery. Which is an assumption, since neither article really goes into that detail. If that assumption is valid, the environmental impact from this battery is reduced resource usage and lighter cars requiring less energy to run.
Just add some bells and a freezer and it can further add to Google revenue!!!
I usually don't answer phone calls when I'm driving because I don't have a hands free set and find that most are calls that can wait to be responded to. If it's important, they will leave a voice mail and I can use the speakerphone to listen to it. Then find a place to pull over and call them back.
He needed an investor to market and develop his asset. He would be left with an asset that he couldn't use (unless he found another investor) and an empty wallet. If he could have found another investor, then the original investor would have sold instead of shutting down.
He keeps in touch with the original investor, I'm sure if an opportunity presents itself he will pursue it.
It's not illegal for me to follow someone around if I'm on public property.
It's only illegal after they have told me to stop it and show emotional distress or physical threats as a reason.
As the court said, the use would be legal as long as the same information could have been gathered using normal observational techniques. There are plenty of opinions regarding this type of public activity, and there will be plenty more.
The Constitution provides only guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure. There has to be a balance between protecting against fishing expeditions and letting people with a preponderance of evidence get away because of delays in getting warrants. A police officer can walk past a car and look into it and if he see's a dead body, he can open the car and search it. If he sees a what could be drugs, he may have to go get a search warrant. One is a reasonable search, there is a body with pools of blood in the back seat. The other is not, the white powder could be sugar.
Police have always been able to 'tail' suspects. I feel this is no different. If police start attaching GPS devices to cars of people not accused of any crimes 'just to see where he goes' and then arresting them for speeding, I'm sure the courts will toss those out using exactly the same type of finding.
I'll try that next time I'm driving down the road and my wife calls. I'll wait for my text voice mail to come up and read that instead of pressing and holding 1 (because I have buttons on my phone and don't have to feel for it), pressing select (because on my phone as soon as you call selecting toggles speakerphone) and listening to what she wants; AT&T automatically plays unheard messages. I don't worry about deleting them because when I hang up, the voice mail is saved for several days and then automatically deleted.
I do use both voice-to-text voicemail. I use Vonage at home and like getting text translations of my voice mails and having them forwarded to both my cell and office email. (I keep Vonage because that's the number I give all businesses, I only give out my cell phone number to people I want calling me on my cell phone.) But since I always have my cell, the above doesn't need any effort, if I can't talk on the phone I'm free to do other things while listening to see if it was important.
As long as both are available, I'll use them where appropriate.
Make sure the cash is enough you won't need a job for a year or two at least, above and beyond what you just want to blow right now. You should be prepared that in less than six months, you won't want to work there and arrange your finances accordingly.
.. and now the investor owns all rights to the product so other than the originator having a high-paying job for a couple of years he got ... zip.
Personally, I would work out some kind of ongoing royalty situation in addition to the buy out just in case it takes off. Stock options are useless unless it is already a public company and you can exercise them within 6 months.
A friend of mine had a great idea. Got some investors, created a company to develop the hardware and software, started getting customers. Then the economy went south, the investor got scared, and no more money. So no more company.
Oh
People spend large sums of money on audio and video equipment, cars, trucks, boats, motorcycles, lawnmowers, and tons of other items in the quest to have the biggest/fastest/showiest/best quality, spending amounts that far exceed any percent gain in relation to the dollars spent. Some do it for bragging rights, others suffer from the 'just because I can' syndrome. Some do it because they really can tell the difference in quality and can't stand cheaper alternatives. I used to take plenty of pictures with a cheap point and shoot camera. I have a dSLR now with an assortment of lenses and can't stand to use a cheap camera anymore.
Some choose to spend money on the beefiest system they can while others choose to purchase designer clothes or eat at expensive restaurants or take vacations to exotic locals or play golf at expensive courses. They are all choices that seem reasonable to anyone with similar preferences, but will always seem outrageous or extravagant to everyone else.
I use neither to base my decision on whether to hire someone or not. I base it on whether they are smart and have knowledge about what they are going to be tasked with. I don't give a shit whether they learned it in college, high school, online, or by buying books and teaching themselves.
My first online class in C++ was done at home and I didn't have any problems picking up the language. People who think you need college to network or go to a lab are missing the point, you need to network or get hands on no matter what the source. I got my first job in IT because I was in an astronomy club and one of the other members was an IT manager at a local bank. I transferred our clubs mimeograph mailing labels to a TRS-80 and saved us money by writing a zip-code presort routine. So a year later when I went looking for a job as a programmer, guess who I called??
Here I am, 30 years later making a six figure income and having only taken classes as I needed to learn something specific. I haven't had to use a recruiter since the late '80s, networking has been my only resource when job hunting.
Bright, motivated people have never needed a college education. Most college degrees are for average people who need the discipline and hand holding to learn things. Or for bright, motivated people who just like goofing off for four years while watching the rest struggle to get by.
I prefer my sad little office cubicle also. Both my home and work computers are similar, but I like my tiny little cubicle with no distractions. (I was recently asked if I wanted to move to a larger cubicle and said no, the extra space just mean more room to pile crap.) I can tolerate some of the low level voices I guess because I've worked in this type of environment for so long. I can't really deal with headphones on all day.
.. many years ago (25??) my favorite place to debug was Pizza Hut. I would take a couple stacks of green-bar memory dumps, order up a pizza and pitcher of Pepsi, and sit for hours pouring over them with a highlighter, pencil, and steel ruler. The place would let me take over a booth and filled the pitcher when it ran out. The waitresses were always attentive because I always left a good tip and was polite.
However
Ahhh....the good ole days.
Maybe ....
.. if there was a train from Phoenix to San Diego/LA/Vegas/Albuquerque/Denver/Flagstaff the time frame wouldn't be as bad. But then again, if more than a couple of people are going it's almost as fast and usually cheaper to drive. That 1 hour flight to Vegas really takes 4-5 anyway and you run the risk of delays and cancellations and having to sit next to a fat smelly person. I've driven to San Diego many times over the last few years and always seem to keep to my schedule.
Maybe if it's cheaper and as fast as flying. Or more convenient. Last time I looked into it, the trains were as expensive as flying and took as long as the bus.
When trains travel 500mph non-stop between major cities and have several departures a day, I'll consider it. Being stuck in a plane for 6-8 hours is bad enough for cross-United States flights, as long as I can afford it I won't be stuck in a train for a longer period.
Now
You're just a US State now. You will never be independant of the US, and you don't *want* to be, as you'd last about a month without the federal infrastructure.
Imagine, if we will, that we flipped the amount of income tax we paid the federal government and state government. We could come OUT from under the blackmail that is the Federal Government denial of funding if we don't do as we are told. For example, the Consitution does not grant the federal government any say in education. BUT ... since they tax the crap out of us, they get a say by taking our tax dollars and refusing to give them back unless we are good little states and do as we are told. The same is true of the majority of federal programs.
The only real power the federal government was granted by the US constitution and its amendments was the right to handle foreign affairs, national defense, levy taxes, and interstate commerce. By creating a tax system that returns money to ALL states and using the bludgeon that is interstate commerce, they have effectively created states that are little more than living off the welfare of the US teat.
The real tax reform should be a slow and methodical reduction in federal taxes and federal funding programs while states increase their taxes to take up the burden and get the federal government out of the business of telling states how to conduct theirs. I'm not against 'spreading the wealth around' a little bit to make sure poor states have adequate roads, education, and basic necessities, but it shouldn't be based on what the federal government is charged with by the constitution and its amendments, not by being our nanny.
What BS. They only do this to make money. They think (and probably rightly so) that by opening the floodgates they can make a crapload of money. Either now or later when Google buys them out.
I hope it works, but don't try to scam me into thinking it's for the good of the community.
Until "it" can be "proven" otherwise, those "figures" are only cause for "thinking", without "evidence" to back "them" up.
I think the men and women that go overseas are some of the bravest and most honorable people around, and that while a few may be gung-ho and shoot everything in sight, most do their best to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.
At least, I don't recall reading of any pits with thousands of bodies in them, or our GIs beheading "insurgents" on live television for everyone to watch. Instead, I read of our GIs helping rebuild hospitals and helping to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed during the initial fighting.
Go ahead and live in your dream world where you read only about our guys being the bad guys, and those who think nothing of purposefully attacking civilians with suicide bombers are just victims.
And I'll live in mine.
First, one example does not a rule make. Just as my anecdotal evidence does not.
But in this case, finding a new job was probably a good thing to do. I never understood why people want to stay at jobs that suck. I was stuck at a job as a COBOL developer for 7 years for a company with a terrible manager. I got laid off one Monday (with 9 weeks severance pay) and two weeks later had a much better job with a better boss and more opportunity. In fact, getting laid off was the best thing to happen to me as my salary had been very flat for many years before that (the old "you make too much, if we gave you a raise then other people wouldn't get one"), and became a hockey stick for many years after that.
I've had this attitude now for many years and it has served me very well, both in workplace environment and salary. It may not be for everyone, but I have a lot less stress than the schemers and screamers out there.