Besides, how ridiculous would it be for the UN to be hosted by the only broadly-recognized nation in the world that wasn't a member (which is what the US would be if it pulled out)?
Not that ridiculous. Its European headquarters is in Switzerland, which for a very long time was not itself part of the EU.
And frankly, I'm ok with them pulling out of the US altogether. Diplomatic immunity from speeding and parking tickets my ass.
We're liable - by federal law - for a maximum of $50 if our cards get misused. So it's not a terribly big deal in that sense.
More troubling are the difficulties you have to go through to undo identity theft, but that has little to do with the credit card payment system you're referring to.
The "confession" tax is based on the religion you claim. One valid choice is "no religion", in which case you don't pay any such tax. I know; I've never paid the church tax, but I've worked in Switzerland for 3 years. Admittedly, it takes a couple of extra pieces of paper for a Swiss person to get rid of the tax than for a foreigner, but it's easy enough to do.
Further, the "ignominious history" you referred to is bullshit. The US ignored the problems in Europe almost entirely for years, providing relatively little aid to stop Hitler, until we were drawn into the war against our will. That strikes me as just as bad.
Quit being a monkey; evolve a little bit, would you?
When people bring their kids in to get some gravol for their viral gastroenteritis, I tell them that it has been shown to be no better than placebo, so I don't offer it.
Have you considered that, although it's no better than placebo, it might be better than nothing? Saying it's no better than placebo doesn't actually mean that they won't see a difference if you don't prescribe anything. It's why they use placebos in trials.
But perhaps his view is a little more long-term; the more often you prescribe a placebo, the more you you indoctrinate the patient into the way of thinking that "the doctor always has the answer and will always give me something to make it better", which may cause far more headaches down the road.
Sometimes it's better to educate people than to make them feel better.
Ignorance is not solely an American problem; it's simply our prevalence on the world stage that leads you to believe that. Living in Europe for the last 3 years, I've found it's not particularly different here.
I'm going to go WAY over the top in a comparison here: if you're a soldier ordered to, oh, shoot some civilians who are refusing to leave a building where the enemy soldiers are, do you shoot them? What if you're ordered to shoot prisoners?
Whether this is a moral or legal matter can indeed be debated; however, at no point in time should we as free-thinking human beings ever hide behind the curtain of "authorization". To do so is to implicitly reject the notion of freedom and its inherent responsibilities.
BTW, speaking of copyright lawyers, where's Ray Beckerman been lately? I'll be he could answer these questions better than about anybody else here.
Which is probably why he doesn't; I imagine that, as a lawyer, he'd be sticking his neck out if he offered free legal advice without a whole bunch of caveats.:P
One could (and I would) argue the ethics of allowing someone else to decide whether an immoral or illegal act should continue. "Passing the buck" is for cowards, no matter the direction; I think this fella is doing the right thing in trying to solve the problem.
Besides which, proof that the directors of a company want something to happen is not absolution of your complicity. Suppose you know someone was cooking the books; do you suppose an email from the directors saying "it's ok" would be enough to absolve you when the IRS came in?
For the record, you can be subject to both the laws of the country where you live and where you were born simultaneously, even if the two are not the same.;P
Oh, you're referring to my way out of date geocities page, which I'm too lazy [...]
Yup, great. "too lazy" to update a website but wanting a 75k salary?:-)
Ok, fine, the page is out of date, but employers WILL google you. It's a fact of life. You can't decide what information about you an employer will use in his or her decision to hire, aside from a couple of protected categories such as age or race. Especially as an IT person, you need to keep all facets of your online information up-to-date.
Then again, as an IT person, I'd be extremely hesitant to hire anyone who ever had a Geocities page.;)
(Although I do agree that these people need to be getting some sort of trial before they are held indefinitely. However, if they are not American citizens, they are not subject to the bill of rights.)
Two words: Fuck you.
People like you are the reason why I won't travel to the united states, and why I've personally advised many friends against travelling there too. I reckon I've stopped more than a dozen tourists from heading there, and I'm proud of it. There are thousands or more of other people like me around the globe, and we are doing our best on this matter. Your fucking arrogant elitist attitude of "they are not citizens, they do not deserve rights" begets nothing else.
Actually, I didn't read the GP, but what you quoted and what you stated are two different things.
"Not subject to the bill of rights" does not translate to "does not have/deserve human rights." Rather, it means that foreigners are not subject to American law.
Whether that's true or not, of course, is up for debate. After all, foreign countries extradite their garbage to us upon our request often enough, and vice versa, so obviously in some cases foreigners are subject to our law. However, your aggressive, unfriendly, and frankly idiotic response to the comment does you (and your cause) no favors.
Frankly, while I like the idea of my country getting your money, I don't like the idea of another fired-up foreigner who's looking to pick a fight coming into my country. So please, keep you and your friends and your imaginary "thousands of others" in your own country, wherever that may be.
All our countries have things to improve. As it happens, I'm currently living in Europe, and the people here have their own share of faults. It would shock many Americans, for example, to learn that in much of central Europe it's illegal to deny the holocaust happened, and is in fact an imprisonable offense. What about free speech? Takes second seat to ensuring that such an incident doesn't happen again. Ok, I buy that; but I don't get up in arms and telling people "fuck you!" because they think that one of my absolutely most precious liberties, free speech, isn't valued as highly as something else. Nor do I boycott travelling to these countries.
But then, I'm apparently not as temperamental as you.
I don't normally jump on spelling and grammar mistakes, especially in a post that's fairly well thought-out (sadly, not the norm around here) but I really think that "ostrichsize" is my favorite new verb of the year. Careful - don't make a big bird out of em!
I just about died laughing when I read it. Just so that my post has something the tiniest bit constructive in it, the word you meant was ostracize. Thanks, though, for the laugh.:)
It also PULLED the I am rich app, sticking to their policy of deciding what's appropriate and what's not. Don't forget to leave out that little detail; you might not like them taking that responsibility/power upon themselves, but they DO do it rather consistently. They're not perfect, clearly, which is why the app made it to the store at all.
It's really no different elsewhere in the world. Here in Switzerland, for example, speed traps are tied to license plates and the tickets are sent automatically. I've never even heard of a car chase happening here, or someone being "pulled over" for speeding, as it all happens by what we call "iron cops": speed cameras placed in metal boxes along the roads.
And you can easily lose your license here by speeding past an iron cop. If it wasn't you driving, you still own the car, so it's your obligation to prove someone else was driving (such as, informing the police that you lent your car to person X that day, or showing the police report indicating that it was stolen).
What we need is a real-life implementation of the Hitchhiker's Guide. It should be far less careful than Wikipedia (and likely should be a superset of Wikipedia with all of those fun lists like "Things Gregory House has written on his whiteboard on House M.D.")
Isn't that exactly what the web is? All kinds of information about anything with no limit on the content; making a single site to hold all that information seems kind of redundant.:-)
Yeah, but he's dead. Slashdotters prefer dead people - they're less likely to be offended by the stench of living in mom's basement and the general lack of hygiene-related habits...
Who's the dumbshit that was allowing institutions to hand out loans to people without even checking their income level?
Actually, Bill Clinton signed an executive order mandating that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae reduce the stringency of lending requirements, allowing higher-risk individuals to qualify for loans.
Fast forward ten years, and those high-risk individuals are defaulting. Go figure.
So, you want less intelligent and less driven people, who still have the same greed, (i.e. government employees) to regulate the system? How does that help? You think that simply because people are in government they have your best interests in mind? They'll just make dumber policies that help their own interests, such as climbing the promotion/appointment ladder.
News flash: people (often, not always) work in government because they can't hack the private sector, not because they are the right people to control our lives.
Opportunity cost when a competitor gets ahold your intellectual property?
Remediation/repair cost? (nowhere near as significant as the first 2)
Believe me, this shit ain't free, and execs know that. TubeSteak pointed out in another post that IT-Sec is not a mature field, whereas physical security has been evolving for millenia. This lack of maturity, this lack of pervasive knowledge on best security practices, is probably why vulnerabilities in their networks still exist. A few mistakes by those of us on the line, and bam, there are holes available for exploitation.
Throwing money at a problem doesn't fix it, sadly, and execs are smart enough to know that. There's a lot of complex issues at work that need to be changed everywhere within the company. Given the amount of money major financial institutions spend on this stuff, I can assure you, they don't just say "Whoops!" and send everything along the way.
You need to realize that those "advantages" are only advantages from your point of view.
1) I don't care, as long as I get service. Of course, here in Switzerland, 2 telcos are providing service. 2) Again, so what? I'm not buying the OS, I'm buying the phone. Your second point here is one that most iPhone users wouldn't even understand. 3) Ok, this could be valid... but at 200 bucks, the iPhone is WELL below my pain threshold, and not something I'm likely to consider. 4) Are you kidding? Most of us iPhone users are overwhelmed by the number of apps available. Sure, developers are going to be upset by the apple software rejections, but most "normal" people have never even heard of such a thing, or would see the reason for outrage if they had.
Believe me when I say that the Slashdot demographic does not come anywhere close to representing the entire cell phone customer base...
Slashdot Mirror
Funny thing is that most of us "countries with veto rights" could very well ignore UN resolutions anyway, even if we didn't veto them.
So the organization is really rather pointless.
Besides, how ridiculous would it be for the UN to be hosted by the only broadly-recognized nation in the world that wasn't a member (which is what the US would be if it pulled out)?
Not that ridiculous. Its European headquarters is in Switzerland, which for a very long time was not itself part of the EU.
And frankly, I'm ok with them pulling out of the US altogether. Diplomatic immunity from speeding and parking tickets my ass.
We're liable - by federal law - for a maximum of $50 if our cards get misused. So it's not a terribly big deal in that sense.
More troubling are the difficulties you have to go through to undo identity theft, but that has little to do with the credit card payment system you're referring to.
If that's the case, your friend is an idiot.
The "confession" tax is based on the religion you claim. One valid choice is "no religion", in which case you don't pay any such tax. I know; I've never paid the church tax, but I've worked in Switzerland for 3 years. Admittedly, it takes a couple of extra pieces of paper for a Swiss person to get rid of the tax than for a foreigner, but it's easy enough to do.
Further, the "ignominious history" you referred to is bullshit. The US ignored the problems in Europe almost entirely for years, providing relatively little aid to stop Hitler, until we were drawn into the war against our will. That strikes me as just as bad.
Quit being a monkey; evolve a little bit, would you?
Like it or not, if you live/work in a country, you need to pay taxes there.
And as Americans, we get to pay taxes even if we don't live or work in the country too! Hooray!
Yet I have an application on mine called, go figure, Adblock, and it does just what I want to do.
Are you sure you've searched the app store?
When people bring their kids in to get some gravol for their viral gastroenteritis, I tell them that it has been shown to be no better than placebo, so I don't offer it.
Have you considered that, although it's no better than placebo, it might be better than nothing? Saying it's no better than placebo doesn't actually mean that they won't see a difference if you don't prescribe anything. It's why they use placebos in trials.
But perhaps his view is a little more long-term; the more often you prescribe a placebo, the more you you indoctrinate the patient into the way of thinking that "the doctor always has the answer and will always give me something to make it better", which may cause far more headaches down the road.
Sometimes it's better to educate people than to make them feel better.
The issue is that this ignorant view may be perpetuated in America. I have never heard anyone in Europe utter such crap.
You've obviously never lived in Europe.
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Swiss_drag_knuckles_accepting_evolution.html?siteSect=201&sid=7141596&cKey=1160562740000&ty=st
Ignorance is not solely an American problem; it's simply our prevalence on the world stage that leads you to believe that. Living in Europe for the last 3 years, I've found it's not particularly different here.
I'm going to go WAY over the top in a comparison here: if you're a soldier ordered to, oh, shoot some civilians who are refusing to leave a building where the enemy soldiers are, do you shoot them? What if you're ordered to shoot prisoners?
Whether this is a moral or legal matter can indeed be debated; however, at no point in time should we as free-thinking human beings ever hide behind the curtain of "authorization". To do so is to implicitly reject the notion of freedom and its inherent responsibilities.
BTW, speaking of copyright lawyers, where's Ray Beckerman been lately? I'll be he could answer these questions better than about anybody else here.
Which is probably why he doesn't; I imagine that, as a lawyer, he'd be sticking his neck out if he offered free legal advice without a whole bunch of caveats. :P
One could (and I would) argue the ethics of allowing someone else to decide whether an immoral or illegal act should continue. "Passing the buck" is for cowards, no matter the direction; I think this fella is doing the right thing in trying to solve the problem.
Besides which, proof that the directors of a company want something to happen is not absolution of your complicity. Suppose you know someone was cooking the books; do you suppose an email from the directors saying "it's ok" would be enough to absolve you when the IRS came in?
My 2 cents, at any rate.
For the record, you can be subject to both the laws of the country where you live and where you were born simultaneously, even if the two are not the same. ;P
American paedophilia and tax laws come to mind...
Oh, you're referring to my way out of date geocities page, which I'm too lazy [...]
Yup, great. "too lazy" to update a website but wanting a 75k salary? :-)
Ok, fine, the page is out of date, but employers WILL google you. It's a fact of life. You can't decide what information about you an employer will use in his or her decision to hire, aside from a couple of protected categories such as age or race. Especially as an IT person, you need to keep all facets of your online information up-to-date.
Then again, as an IT person, I'd be extremely hesitant to hire anyone who ever had a Geocities page. ;)
(Although I do agree that these people need to be getting some sort of trial before they are held indefinitely. However, if they are not American citizens, they are not subject to the bill of rights.)
Two words: Fuck you.
People like you are the reason why I won't travel to the united states, and why I've personally advised many friends against travelling there too. I reckon I've stopped more than a dozen tourists from heading there, and I'm proud of it. There are thousands or more of other people like me around the globe, and we are doing our best on this matter. Your fucking arrogant elitist attitude of "they are not citizens, they do not deserve rights" begets nothing else.
Actually, I didn't read the GP, but what you quoted and what you stated are two different things.
"Not subject to the bill of rights" does not translate to "does not have/deserve human rights." Rather, it means that foreigners are not subject to American law.
Whether that's true or not, of course, is up for debate. After all, foreign countries extradite their garbage to us upon our request often enough, and vice versa, so obviously in some cases foreigners are subject to our law. However, your aggressive, unfriendly, and frankly idiotic response to the comment does you (and your cause) no favors.
Frankly, while I like the idea of my country getting your money, I don't like the idea of another fired-up foreigner who's looking to pick a fight coming into my country. So please, keep you and your friends and your imaginary "thousands of others" in your own country, wherever that may be.
All our countries have things to improve. As it happens, I'm currently living in Europe, and the people here have their own share of faults. It would shock many Americans, for example, to learn that in much of central Europe it's illegal to deny the holocaust happened, and is in fact an imprisonable offense. What about free speech? Takes second seat to ensuring that such an incident doesn't happen again. Ok, I buy that; but I don't get up in arms and telling people "fuck you!" because they think that one of my absolutely most precious liberties, free speech, isn't valued as highly as something else. Nor do I boycott travelling to these countries.
But then, I'm apparently not as temperamental as you.
Who said it was an iPhone killer?
Read the headlines much? ;)
I don't normally jump on spelling and grammar mistakes, especially in a post that's fairly well thought-out (sadly, not the norm around here) but I really think that "ostrichsize" is my favorite new verb of the year. Careful - don't make a big bird out of em!
I just about died laughing when I read it. Just so that my post has something the tiniest bit constructive in it, the word you meant was ostracize. Thanks, though, for the laugh. :)
It also PULLED the I am rich app, sticking to their policy of deciding what's appropriate and what's not. Don't forget to leave out that little detail; you might not like them taking that responsibility/power upon themselves, but they DO do it rather consistently. They're not perfect, clearly, which is why the app made it to the store at all.
It's really no different elsewhere in the world. Here in Switzerland, for example, speed traps are tied to license plates and the tickets are sent automatically. I've never even heard of a car chase happening here, or someone being "pulled over" for speeding, as it all happens by what we call "iron cops": speed cameras placed in metal boxes along the roads.
And you can easily lose your license here by speeding past an iron cop. If it wasn't you driving, you still own the car, so it's your obligation to prove someone else was driving (such as, informing the police that you lent your car to person X that day, or showing the police report indicating that it was stolen).
What we need is a real-life implementation of the Hitchhiker's Guide. It should be far less careful than Wikipedia (and likely should be a superset of Wikipedia with all of those fun lists like "Things Gregory House has written on his whiteboard on House M.D.")
Isn't that exactly what the web is? All kinds of information about anything with no limit on the content; making a single site to hold all that information seems kind of redundant. :-)
It's soulskill. Guy's an idiot.
Yeah, but he's dead. Slashdotters prefer dead people - they're less likely to be offended by the stench of living in mom's basement and the general lack of hygiene-related habits...
Who's the dumbshit that was allowing institutions to hand out loans to people without even checking their income level?
Actually, Bill Clinton signed an executive order mandating that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae reduce the stringency of lending requirements, allowing higher-risk individuals to qualify for loans.
Fast forward ten years, and those high-risk individuals are defaulting. Go figure.
So, you want less intelligent and less driven people, who still have the same greed, (i.e. government employees) to regulate the system? How does that help? You think that simply because people are in government they have your best interests in mind? They'll just make dumber policies that help their own interests, such as climbing the promotion/appointment ladder.
News flash: people (often, not always) work in government because they can't hack the private sector, not because they are the right people to control our lives.
Reputation cost?
Opportunity cost when a competitor gets ahold your intellectual property?
Remediation/repair cost? (nowhere near as significant as the first 2)
Believe me, this shit ain't free, and execs know that. TubeSteak pointed out in another post that IT-Sec is not a mature field, whereas physical security has been evolving for millenia. This lack of maturity, this lack of pervasive knowledge on best security practices, is probably why vulnerabilities in their networks still exist. A few mistakes by those of us on the line, and bam, there are holes available for exploitation.
Throwing money at a problem doesn't fix it, sadly, and execs are smart enough to know that. There's a lot of complex issues at work that need to be changed everywhere within the company. Given the amount of money major financial institutions spend on this stuff, I can assure you, they don't just say "Whoops!" and send everything along the way.
You need to realize that those "advantages" are only advantages from your point of view.
1) I don't care, as long as I get service. Of course, here in Switzerland, 2 telcos are providing service.
2) Again, so what? I'm not buying the OS, I'm buying the phone. Your second point here is one that most iPhone users wouldn't even understand.
3) Ok, this could be valid... but at 200 bucks, the iPhone is WELL below my pain threshold, and not something I'm likely to consider.
4) Are you kidding? Most of us iPhone users are overwhelmed by the number of apps available. Sure, developers are going to be upset by the apple software rejections, but most "normal" people have never even heard of such a thing, or would see the reason for outrage if they had.
Believe me when I say that the Slashdot demographic does not come anywhere close to representing the entire cell phone customer base...