Trust me, not standing up gets you nowhere but more bullies. If they're smaller than you they're likely too chicken to actually start a fight. If they're bigger make sure you get them to start it, from that point on it's self defense. Because they were bigger than you you can now plausibly justify your actions following that by saying you felt you were in danger (within reason, don't kill them).
Fighting fair is for Hollywood, inflict as much pain as possible using any means possible that won't permanently maim or injure them. Make sure that they and anyone who witnesses or hears about the fight will think twice before going after you. The vast majority of bullies are cowards, they want easy targets, or at least targets that will fight fair so they can fight dirty and win. If they know you can at least somewhat handle yourself and have no mercy you will not be worth it, there's easier targets out there.
Unfortunately, I received the same punishment as the thug who hit me. This is not right. There is distinct disconnect in administration perception and the reality of the situation of what happens to the various social pariahs. The social pariahs are punished for fighting back and therefore the bullies are encouraged. Let me say this more clearly. Zero tolerance policies lead to bullying.
From my own experiences I agree with you. I remember first being told in high school that if someone starts a fight with you and you hit back you get suspended too. When I asked what we were supposed to do then the answer I recieved was literally "Curl into a defensive position and wait for a teacher to break up the fight." I was flabbergasted, they basically said curl up in a ball and let him kick you. I told them that was unacceptable, and sure enough later that year when the class moron (bully) started in for what felt like the millionth time he finally threw the first hit.
That suspension was well worth it, I got a few bruises, he definitely got the worse end of the deal, never bothered me again. After that my bullying problems stopped, ignoring the bullies and turning the other cheek is not the solution. Sometimes you need to fight back.
How can StemCells be granted a patent for this technique? It would seem that Salk Institute can prove that it is prior art (i.e. that they utilized this technique prior to any patent claims by StemCells), invalidating the patent claim by StemCells.
They got it because our patent system is horribly broken. It seems the USPTO can't be bothered to validate patents anymore, just look them over for the occasional amazingly obvious blunder then stamp them approved. Even worse, the actual inventor may not have the funds to go through the litigation needed to get the patent overturned or transferred to them leaving them with few options.
The original intent of patents was to encourage innovation by giving the inventor a few years to make some money off their invention before anyone else could copy it. The idea being that the public benefit from more innovation would offset the short term monopoly on the new invention. In the modern day patents seem to be more useful as weapons for companies to bludgeon each other over the head with than anything beneficial.
This exactly. It seems IBM has forgotten about the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. Engine start-stop systems add complexity as is but are the simplest way to accomplish this. The car knows it is stopped and it knows when the driver takes the foot off the brake, if something goes wrong one car is affected. With IBM's plan if something goes wrong every car at that intersection is affected and there is more to go wrong.
That sort of bizarre intellectual snobbery will hopefully blow back right in your face someday, when one of those oh-so-special college students ruins your career with the amusing stories you didn't mind sharing with them.
Not sure what your issue with college students is that riles you up enough to refer to this as "bizarre intellectual snobbery". There is a big difference between minding if the entire world sees something and minding if a group of people you are around every day sees something. With the privacy controls at the time you could easily restrict it to your college and it became a great way to stay in contact and see what was going on around campus.
I suppose if I had mentioned any other type of local community you would still call it "bizarre intellectual snobbery" as it would have been equally useful were it specific to another group?
You didn't mind when it seemed to have restrictive notions of where the data would go.
Now, maybe it has real conequences, and that sucks.
Little help, that's the business FB is in. They monetize the people you talk to, the things you show interest in, the way you spend money. They don't stop it, because that would stop money from finding them.
Which I've long since realized, my account now is only a skeleton of the necessary information and the whole thing will likely be deleted soon.
My point was more that at first there were enough privacy controls that you actually could control your information, and one of the things you could easily do was restrict things to your own college only.
"Van Valin works in a high technology field, and works from her home over her Internet-connected computer a substantial amount of time," the complaint read.
"In connection with her work and home life, Van Valin transmits and receives a substantial amount of data from and to her computer over her wireless network. A significant amount of the wireless data is also subject to her employer's non-disclosure and security regulations."
A.) She should know better than to leave her WiFi unencrypted if she works in a high technology field.
B.) She is subject to non-disclosure and security regulations and she is doing work over open WiFi?! Not only is this lawsuit ridiculous she should be fired! There is absolutely no excuse for not encrypting your wireless network when you're using it for sensitive work.
If they actually win this lawsuit I will lose any shred of faith I once had in the US legal system. Here in the US what Google did is not against the law, furthermore people in this country need to start taking some responsibility upon themselves and not try to blame everyone else when something goes wrong. If you don't understand how to configure the router (which is extremely simple with the wizard software provided with the router nowadays) then pay someone who does to configure it for you. Otherwise don't complain when others can access it.
For those who still don't get it, would you grab a CB radio and start yelling your bank information into it for anyone on the channel to hear? No? Didn't think so. This is the same idea.
Any evidence or studies you can cite suggesting this? In my own personal experience and observations of others around me a Schadenfreude reaction happens when you feel that person did not deserve their success in the first place. Corrupt politician exposed and dragged down? Schadenfreude. Wildly successful Olympic athlete injured? Definitely not.
My take on it is people hate undeserved success or success through corrupt means. Seeing people we hate suffer is what brings on that feeling.
I actually didn't mind sharing some things as much when it was only for college students. Then they opened up the floodgates and in my opinion it's been going downhill ever since. Not to mention the contents of your Facebook profile could prevent you from being hired for a job.
What business a company has prying into your personal life when deciding whether to hire you I don't know but Facebook did nothing to stop it.
But how many Slashdotters follow Slashdot on Facebook rather than going straight to slashdot.org?
I've stopped using my Facebook account for the most part, it has the minimal amount of information allowed on it and will probably get deleted soon unless I actually think Facebook has had a change of heart about privacy (about as likely as me buying the Brooklyn Bridge).
That is between you and your bank. Whatever amount you have in your account (for the sake of example we will say 300K AUD) is still worth 300K AUD regardless of how much the bank lets you pull out at once. It is widely known and agreed what the value of 1 AUD is, you will not have to argue with the store clerk how much it is actually worth before you can attempt to purchase something with it.
That is liquidity, without liquidity what that 300K AUD is actually worth could vary quite greatly depending when you're trying to spend it and who you're trying to spend it with. Liquidity is desired and it helps keep prices stable.
(Obviously the value of a currency can fluctuate but the fluctuations are typically small enough to go mostly unnoticed by the average consumer)
You think the cell phone carriers are bad over there try dealing with them in the US. I would love to see some of the European practices for cell phone and cell plan buying put in place over here.
What's sad is that they can legally add a disclaimer at the bottom to preclude "unlimited data" from being false advertising. In an ideal situation we could hold them to delivering what they promise and if they wanted to scream unlimited then they had better provide unlimited regardless of what the tiny text at the bottom says.
If you're smart about it and don't use tethering for downloading large files and torrents they won't catch you. It's excessive bandwidth usage that sets off the alarms. If it's even probable you could use that much data from the phone itself they generally have to assume that's the case.
I don't think you can make that comparison. If someone posts porn online and it is legal in the country where said porn is hosted the Muslim country in your example has no jurisdiction.
In this case he actively hacked into government servers on US soil. A closer example would be if you hacked into said Muslim country's servers and posted the porn there in which case you have committed a crime against them.
As I said I believe the consequences should fit the crime. In my opinion 10+ years does not fit the crime committed, that however is a failing of the courts, not of the extradition treaty.
In regards to point 3, one can still be responsible while staying up with the latest hardware. When I decide it's time to build a new PC my current one either goes to server or media duty, whatever gets replaced goes to my parents as it's still a decent upgrade for them and will last awhile for what they're going to use it for. Whichever PC they replace either goes to some of their friends or they donate it to a local charity that will make use of it.
There's nothing wrong with laws also giving fines for misusing the unsecured connections and sniffing the traffic in it.
And as it is, it's currently unlawful. You can say that proper security is needed (it is), but the fact is that Google broke laws.
Your home connection to your ISP is also mostly unsecured. Would it be ok for me to tap into that? After all, you weren't using encrypted VPN or encrypted connection to your ISP, so it's only your own fault, right? I didn't think so.
If that is the law then there is no arguing Google has broken the law. I disagree with how the law is trying to accomplish the desired result but that doesn't change the facts.
I do not consider you tapping into the wired connection between me and my ISP to be the same situation at all. You either have to trespass on my property or trespass on the utility company's property by climbing the pole to tap into that data. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy there considering the lines are not public property and you would have to break the law to get at the data to begin with.
By contrast the Google car was driving by on a public roadway receiving signals broadcast into public airspace which are not secured. No trespassing on private property was necessary and I do not believe Open WiFi carries any reasonable expectation of privacy when it extends beyond the bounds of your own property. If the general public believes otherwise I think time and effort would be better spent educating the public.
It's against the law in Germany to have unsecured wireless networks. Since Google has already collected all this information for the German government they simply want to start handing out fines based on it. "Google, helping any way we can (TM)"
It is not against the law to have an unsecured wireless network there so far as I know. You can however be fined if someone else uses your unsecured wireless to download copyrighted materials.
From the above:
A recent German court ruling states that if someone downloads illegal movies, music, or other media using an unprotected WiFi connection, the owner of the WiFi source could be fined up to 100 Euros (about $126)
Slashdot Mirror
Trust me, not standing up gets you nowhere but more bullies. If they're smaller than you they're likely too chicken to actually start a fight. If they're bigger make sure you get them to start it, from that point on it's self defense. Because they were bigger than you you can now plausibly justify your actions following that by saying you felt you were in danger (within reason, don't kill them).
Fighting fair is for Hollywood, inflict as much pain as possible using any means possible that won't permanently maim or injure them. Make sure that they and anyone who witnesses or hears about the fight will think twice before going after you. The vast majority of bullies are cowards, they want easy targets, or at least targets that will fight fair so they can fight dirty and win. If they know you can at least somewhat handle yourself and have no mercy you will not be worth it, there's easier targets out there.
Unfortunately, I received the same punishment as the thug who hit me. This is not right. There is distinct disconnect in administration perception and the reality of the situation of what happens to the various social pariahs. The social pariahs are punished for fighting back and therefore the bullies are encouraged. Let me say this more clearly. Zero tolerance policies lead to bullying.
From my own experiences I agree with you. I remember first being told in high school that if someone starts a fight with you and you hit back you get suspended too. When I asked what we were supposed to do then the answer I recieved was literally "Curl into a defensive position and wait for a teacher to break up the fight." I was flabbergasted, they basically said curl up in a ball and let him kick you. I told them that was unacceptable, and sure enough later that year when the class moron (bully) started in for what felt like the millionth time he finally threw the first hit.
That suspension was well worth it, I got a few bruises, he definitely got the worse end of the deal, never bothered me again. After that my bullying problems stopped, ignoring the bullies and turning the other cheek is not the solution. Sometimes you need to fight back.
How can StemCells be granted a patent for this technique? It would seem that Salk Institute can prove that it is prior art (i.e. that they utilized this technique prior to any patent claims by StemCells), invalidating the patent claim by StemCells.
They got it because our patent system is horribly broken. It seems the USPTO can't be bothered to validate patents anymore, just look them over for the occasional amazingly obvious blunder then stamp them approved. Even worse, the actual inventor may not have the funds to go through the litigation needed to get the patent overturned or transferred to them leaving them with few options.
The original intent of patents was to encourage innovation by giving the inventor a few years to make some money off their invention before anyone else could copy it. The idea being that the public benefit from more innovation would offset the short term monopoly on the new invention. In the modern day patents seem to be more useful as weapons for companies to bludgeon each other over the head with than anything beneficial.
This exactly. It seems IBM has forgotten about the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. Engine start-stop systems add complexity as is but are the simplest way to accomplish this. The car knows it is stopped and it knows when the driver takes the foot off the brake, if something goes wrong one car is affected. With IBM's plan if something goes wrong every car at that intersection is affected and there is more to go wrong.
Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass
Now with more realism! You can FEEL the collisions as if you were actually in them... oh wait.
That sort of bizarre intellectual snobbery will hopefully blow back right in your face someday, when one of those oh-so-special college students ruins your career with the amusing stories you didn't mind sharing with them.
Not sure what your issue with college students is that riles you up enough to refer to this as "bizarre intellectual snobbery". There is a big difference between minding if the entire world sees something and minding if a group of people you are around every day sees something. With the privacy controls at the time you could easily restrict it to your college and it became a great way to stay in contact and see what was going on around campus.
I suppose if I had mentioned any other type of local community you would still call it "bizarre intellectual snobbery" as it would have been equally useful were it specific to another group?
You didn't mind when it seemed to have restrictive notions of where the data would go.
Now, maybe it has real conequences, and that sucks.
Little help, that's the business FB is in. They monetize the people you talk to, the things you show interest in, the way you spend money. They don't stop it, because that would stop money from finding them.
Which I've long since realized, my account now is only a skeleton of the necessary information and the whole thing will likely be deleted soon. My point was more that at first there were enough privacy controls that you actually could control your information, and one of the things you could easily do was restrict things to your own college only.
"Van Valin works in a high technology field, and works from her home over her Internet-connected computer a substantial amount of time," the complaint read. "In connection with her work and home life, Van Valin transmits and receives a substantial amount of data from and to her computer over her wireless network. A significant amount of the wireless data is also subject to her employer's non-disclosure and security regulations."
A.) She should know better than to leave her WiFi unencrypted if she works in a high technology field.
B.) She is subject to non-disclosure and security regulations and she is doing work over open WiFi?! Not only is this lawsuit ridiculous she should be fired! There is absolutely no excuse for not encrypting your wireless network when you're using it for sensitive work.
If they actually win this lawsuit I will lose any shred of faith I once had in the US legal system. Here in the US what Google did is not against the law, furthermore people in this country need to start taking some responsibility upon themselves and not try to blame everyone else when something goes wrong. If you don't understand how to configure the router (which is extremely simple with the wizard software provided with the router nowadays) then pay someone who does to configure it for you. Otherwise don't complain when others can access it.
For those who still don't get it, would you grab a CB radio and start yelling your bank information into it for anyone on the channel to hear? No? Didn't think so. This is the same idea.
True but I'm a hardware nut, I can't stand seeing too many advancements go by without updating. My wallet hates me for it.
Any evidence or studies you can cite suggesting this? In my own personal experience and observations of others around me a Schadenfreude reaction happens when you feel that person did not deserve their success in the first place. Corrupt politician exposed and dragged down? Schadenfreude. Wildly successful Olympic athlete injured? Definitely not.
My take on it is people hate undeserved success or success through corrupt means. Seeing people we hate suffer is what brings on that feeling.
I actually didn't mind sharing some things as much when it was only for college students. Then they opened up the floodgates and in my opinion it's been going downhill ever since. Not to mention the contents of your Facebook profile could prevent you from being hired for a job.
What business a company has prying into your personal life when deciding whether to hire you I don't know but Facebook did nothing to stop it.
But how many Slashdotters follow Slashdot on Facebook rather than going straight to slashdot.org?
I've stopped using my Facebook account for the most part, it has the minimal amount of information allowed on it and will probably get deleted soon unless I actually think Facebook has had a change of heart about privacy (about as likely as me buying the Brooklyn Bridge).
Now that's taking the BSOD to its literal conclusion.
That is between you and your bank. Whatever amount you have in your account (for the sake of example we will say 300K AUD) is still worth 300K AUD regardless of how much the bank lets you pull out at once. It is widely known and agreed what the value of 1 AUD is, you will not have to argue with the store clerk how much it is actually worth before you can attempt to purchase something with it. That is liquidity, without liquidity what that 300K AUD is actually worth could vary quite greatly depending when you're trying to spend it and who you're trying to spend it with. Liquidity is desired and it helps keep prices stable. (Obviously the value of a currency can fluctuate but the fluctuations are typically small enough to go mostly unnoticed by the average consumer)
You think the cell phone carriers are bad over there try dealing with them in the US. I would love to see some of the European practices for cell phone and cell plan buying put in place over here.
There are lies, damned lies, and trolls. Parent has all 3 categories covered.
But is it really patent free?
From reading this analysis it doesn't seem like it is to me.
What's sad is that they can legally add a disclaimer at the bottom to preclude "unlimited data" from being false advertising. In an ideal situation we could hold them to delivering what they promise and if they wanted to scream unlimited then they had better provide unlimited regardless of what the tiny text at the bottom says.
If you're smart about it and don't use tethering for downloading large files and torrents they won't catch you. It's excessive bandwidth usage that sets off the alarms. If it's even probable you could use that much data from the phone itself they generally have to assume that's the case.
I don't think you can make that comparison. If someone posts porn online and it is legal in the country where said porn is hosted the Muslim country in your example has no jurisdiction.
In this case he actively hacked into government servers on US soil. A closer example would be if you hacked into said Muslim country's servers and posted the porn there in which case you have committed a crime against them.
As I said I believe the consequences should fit the crime. In my opinion 10+ years does not fit the crime committed, that however is a failing of the courts, not of the extradition treaty.
In regards to point 3, one can still be responsible while staying up with the latest hardware. When I decide it's time to build a new PC my current one either goes to server or media duty, whatever gets replaced goes to my parents as it's still a decent upgrade for them and will last awhile for what they're going to use it for. Whichever PC they replace either goes to some of their friends or they donate it to a local charity that will make use of it.
There's nothing wrong with laws also giving fines for misusing the unsecured connections and sniffing the traffic in it.
And as it is, it's currently unlawful. You can say that proper security is needed (it is), but the fact is that Google broke laws.
Your home connection to your ISP is also mostly unsecured. Would it be ok for me to tap into that? After all, you weren't using encrypted VPN or encrypted connection to your ISP, so it's only your own fault, right? I didn't think so.
If that is the law then there is no arguing Google has broken the law. I disagree with how the law is trying to accomplish the desired result but that doesn't change the facts.
I do not consider you tapping into the wired connection between me and my ISP to be the same situation at all. You either have to trespass on my property or trespass on the utility company's property by climbing the pole to tap into that data. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy there considering the lines are not public property and you would have to break the law to get at the data to begin with.
By contrast the Google car was driving by on a public roadway receiving signals broadcast into public airspace which are not secured. No trespassing on private property was necessary and I do not believe Open WiFi carries any reasonable expectation of privacy when it extends beyond the bounds of your own property. If the general public believes otherwise I think time and effort would be better spent educating the public.
It's against the law in Germany to have unsecured wireless networks. Since Google has already collected all this information for the German government they simply want to start handing out fines based on it. "Google, helping any way we can (TM)"
It is not against the law to have an unsecured wireless network there so far as I know. You can however be fined if someone else uses your unsecured wireless to download copyrighted materials.
From the above:
A recent German court ruling states that if someone downloads illegal movies, music, or other media using an unprotected WiFi connection, the owner of the WiFi source could be fined up to 100 Euros (about $126)