Your mass murderer is someone else's freedom fighter. Certainly a number of countries would feel that way about George Washington for example.
There's no global morality. Chile certainly disagreed about morality of extraditing Pinochet - that makes it not "global". What's the rule for "global" then, 50%? 75%? What if all Islamic countries decide that since usury is *very* clearly immoral, all US bankers should be extradited there for a trial?
I hope the irony isn't lost on/. crowd of the fact that Garzon attempted to extradite Pinochet asserting "universal jurisdiction" for crimes that weren't prosecuted in Pinochet's home country. It isn't all that much of a stretch from Pinochet to Kim Dotcom or Assange.
My point is, let's be consistent. If Pinochet case was a good precedent, then Dotcom and Assange are in trouble. Otherwise, Garzon is talking with both sides of his mouth.
This is becoming more and more media circus. Garzon has no credibility, as he acted as political activist, not a judge. But, perhaps, the best defense attorney for a mediawhore is another mediawhore - see also, fighting bullshit with bullshit, Michael Moore style.
In US, closest equivalent to Garzon would be Kenneth Starr or Spiro Agnew, or Lynne Stewart.
I completely agree that number of cops initially deployed was unreasonable compared to number of protesters. However, cops had to work with 20-50k estimate that was provided by organizers - in which case, number of cops would have been right.
Police presence was reduced the next day, but it is still, in my opinion, excessive - there is no need to have a cop every 20 feet, however, it was reduced from 'ridiculous' to 'excessive'. I'll grant the NYPD the benefit of the doubt - the only harm from having too many cops is paying for their overtime.
Just to clarify, I I only wrote down things that I personally observed - that's the "eyewitness evidence" that was requested. If you notice, other/. posters who live/work in the area have generally agreed with me.
From the publicly available videos of pepper-spray use during Union Sq protest, it is very clear that a cop used excessive force against a protester - which is unprofessional at best and assault at worst. Cops aren't perfect - but neither are protesters.
1) Sorry, I did see claim of 20k as an actual number in at least one [clearly misinformed] report. The "projection" was 20-50k. Actual number on Sep 17 was ~2k, including all tourists in the area.
2) I think that having organized video team would be helpful - and educating them on how to stay out of the way of cops being taped.
3) Absolutely, I said so myself. Most protesters are calm and want no trouble.
4) Sorry - thanks for clarification. I wasn't listing the actual rules, I was just pointing out that there *are* rules, cops enforce them, and protesters are not always aware of them.
5) Actually, its not Midtown, its Downtown. And, 150-1000 people protesting here are not *that* unusual - unions routinely bring more, Wall St is their favorite place to protest.
*) There are no "Wall St" firms on Wall St anymore (nor anywhere close). NYSE trading floor is not that important in grand scheme of things. The neighbourhood became residential about 15 years ago, and now there's 20,000 residents like me.
*) When the protest started (two weeks ago), there were minimal number of protesters (1000) despite the protesters claims to have 20k people.
*) There's "OVER 9000" cops downtown, and it makes getting around quite annoying since I have to navigate police barriers (not a big deal, but just annoying). There's definitely more cops than protesters at any given area. At the beginning of protest, they had a 2-cop shoulder-to-shoulder line blocking Wall St. The only protesters were 6 people dressed in white robes (could pass for either Star Wars freaks or priests), cops were quite bored.
*) Cops are polite and keep to their business (that is, stand there and look serious). I can't say same about the protesters.
*) Protesters themselves...oy. Whatever it is they are protesting, they are an embarassment to their cause. I've chatted to a few, and had a few come over for drinks, and uh...Well, it's exactly what you'd expect, well-meaning but clueless younger people who are looking for attention and "feeling of doing something".
*) They protest evil corporations. Nevertheless, most of them have latest iphone4 (just look at the videos - they are ones taping). It doesn't bother them that Apple is largest corporation in the world who isn't very nice to its users.
*) There's a huge number of DSLRs at the protest - combined with iphone4, means nobody there is really starving.
*) I started speaking to one of protesters about bitcoin. He was very interested in it and buying some if they are likely to appreciate. He was *shocked* when I pointed out that's exactly what "evil bankers" do.
*) Cops don't really give a damn about protesters. They are charged with enforcing certain rules - such as, no "permanent structures". So, every so often, a cop walks through the protest site checking things out. Each time a cop does so, there's 10 people with cameras surrounding said cop to make sure any "brutality" gets videotaped. It gets quite silly since these kids don't really understand they need to move away for a cop to walk through (and since they are looking into their viewfinder, they don't realize that the cop is a foot away, resulting in a cop having to push the photographer out of the way - "omg brutality").
*) Protesters are completely disorganized - there's nobody who is "in charge", which leads to interactions with cops that could go much smoother, if a single person was designated to be liaison to cops. Protesters also can't/won't police their own - so if someone does something illegal, its becomes up to cops to enforce (vs, protesters saying "this is not cool, please do not do it" and avoiding police involvement).
*) When cops walk by, most protesters just ignore them, continuing with conversations etc. However, there are a few who get "in your face" to cops and start shouting/etc - and yes, I'd say that the protesters are trying to provoke conflict, whether they intend to or not.
*) As far as professionalism goes, I'd say cops are generally acting professional, if bored and annoyed at having to deal with hippies who hate their guts.
*) There is serious "victim mentality" among protesters - such as "media is suppressing coverage" (no, its just not important enough - the protest is much smaller than an average union rally).
What you are looking for is generally called 'treasury accounts' - it is expected for bank in that case to provide some kind of electronic access with full details (in/out wires, etc). Most big banks do offer that.
Try Chase - it's not cheap but not unreasonable either (something like 100$ per month plus some per-user fees etc). I have that and it's fine. Plus you get SecurID token to authenticate outgoing wires, etc.
Unfortunately, you kind of have to write a screen scraper to get to the CSV reports, but the data is there.
The article a little bit skimps on details, bunching VMware and other things in same category.
VMware, plex86 and bochs are in one category: Real virtualization solutions, allowing you to run any operating system. The level of security these tools provide is very high (guest OS shares nothing with host OS. All access is controlled by virtualization software).
Vmware works (surprisingly) pretty damn good, I haven't had an issue with it behaving any differently from a real OS running on same hardware. Of course, its a commercial solution with associated problems (no source, can't embed, pricey, etc). Its very fast, and reasonable on resources.
Plex86 is same idea as vmware, only Free.
Right now, though, plex86 is in state of disrepair, because lead developer has been laid off from Mandrake, and codebase is in flux. You'll have much more luck with Jan-1-2001 snapshots if you want to actually boot up any OS. Don't know how fast it is, never got it to boot up enough to run tests stably.;)
Bochs is even lower-level approach to virtualization: it can emulate x86 on any processor. Of course, its dog slow and eats lots of memory (Expect 100x hit on performance).
Other solutions (swsoft, ensim, linux virtual server(LVS)) are a lot closer to jail() system call of FreeBSD. With these, you are running one kernel for all "environments". Security is provided by other means ("root" in the jail has a lot of restrictions on it, such as use of IP addresses, etc).
With many of these solutions, you will run in certain incompatibility problems (root not able to things which it should be able to do, but restricted in jail). Transparency is an issue: for example, even though you don't see other jail's processes, there's still a single PID space, and you can tell which PIDs are running by forking 60000 times and recording which PIDS you get and which ones you don't. Also, user doesn't have full control over its environment, for ex, you can't have your own inittab, etc.
However, these solutions don't have any overhead, very resource-nonintensive (you can run 50 jails on one host with almost no performance impact).
Level of security these solutions provide is very questionable: if there's a jail check missing _anywhere_ in kernel where root access is verified, it will lead to a host compromise.
Note: Of the above mentioned solutions, I only worked with LVS (www.linuxvirtualserver.org), and its the only one that is GPL'd.
User-mode-linux (UML) occupies space in between: It doesn't virtualize the processor, but it has a separate kernel running for each VM, for excellent transparency, and reduced risk: As UML itself runs as non-root, even if a bug in UML implementation is found that would allow to make system call to host kernel, it would still at worst result in single-user compromise on the host. (Unlike LVS/jail where it would lead to root host compromise).
The way it works is following: UML is essentially a "port" of linux to linux. (I.E. linux that doesn't run on bare metal, but uses host's services to implement linux). It traps system calls by application and executes them itself.
Currently performance of UML is spotty (each syscall by application results in 3 context switches on host), but its being worked on at amazing pace. (Thanks Jeff)
Summary:
a) if you need to be able to run 10+ 'guest' environments on a host, look at LVS or jail.
b) if you need to run non-windows guest environments, vmware is your answer.
c) If you need to run 1-10 guest environments, with good security and you have memory to spare, look at UML. Its performance is likely to improve soon.
I plan on providing a "virtual colo" service based on UML for linux-oriented people and vmware for people who want to run Windows on their 'machine'. The idea is to provide service to people who outgrew traditional virtual hosting environments, but not quite ready yet (or don't want to pay) to have their own dedicated server. Pricing will be around 30$/mo.
Option #1 might be a bit more complicated, but believe me, in the long run, you'll benefit from it. But read to the bottom of this.:)
The main thing is the fact that according to US Tax law, the things you can deduct as "Employee Business Expenses" are very limited. As a corporation, you are able to deduct anything that is "reasonable and necessary" (subject to some exclusions), both of those things are relatively easy to prove.
Example: You go to a hacker conference (at your own expense). You won't be able to deduct these expenses if you are just an employee.
There of course are some downsides: As employee you are covered by labor law, and generally you have a lot more rights (fair termination, timely pay, etc). Corporation doesn't have any more rights than specified in the contract, and you have to collect payments yourself, and sometimes clients are very slow in paying. Generally, the bigger the client is, the slower they pay. Big Wall Street companies sometimes take 90+ days to pay up. On other hand, they won't go bankrupt...At any case, it does good if you specify in contract terms like "2% discount if payment is within 2 weeks", sometimes that gets accounts payable moving quicker.
You will have to buy your own health insurance, and individual health insurance is quite expensive (50% more expensive than group quote at times), so do include that in your total costs for #1.
Some clients insist on liability insurance policies for your company before they can do business with you. These can run from 500 to 1500$/year, depending on what client requires.
Also, yes, its a lot more paperwork, and you MUST have an accountant to do your taxes, payroll, etc. Without it, you are a sitting duck for IRS.
There are alternative solutions, trying to combine best benefits of #1 without all the hassles: There are "fair" consulting companies that take care of all paperwork, your client's credit risk, health insurance, payroll taxes etc, while still allowing you flexibility to buy certain things tax-free and enjoy other benefits of being incorporated.
"Fair" here refers to the fact that such company charges for its services a small percentage (2-10%) of your total income, while in general, consulting companies rip you off (sometimes taking 66% of your client's fee!).
The way it works is this: Assuming you already have a client and an agreed rate, you come to such a company, and after a few sanity checks, you become an employee of this consulting company, and consulting company signs the contract with your client at an agreed rate.
Then, whenever you need to spend money on something is tax-deductible, you pay for it with company's credit card. This money will be deducted directly from your next payroll check "above the line" (i.e. before the taxes are computed).
I do that for bunch of my friends for free, and I'll certainly consider doing it for others (with minimal fee, to cover my costs), so just let me know if someone is interested in this arrangement. Alternatively, search the web, there are a few companies whose business is explicitly what I described.
You need to break down taxes withheld by particular subaccount (Fed/state/city withholding, FSA plans (sec 129), UI, Disability Insurance, and 5 other things).
If you outsource this to the bank, you need to either enter all these things by hand, or have an interface to download all that from the bank. I don't know any bank that does this.
If you don't break down taxes by category, you'll run into problems later on.
Slashdot Mirror
These are not tech conferences. Two of those are activism conferences, and Collision is near-tech.
I remember when Mozilla was about writing code, not about writing petitions...
While no US airlines operate 747, you don't have to go abroad. Airlines such as Qantas operate within-US segments on 747. Example, QF11 (LAX-JFK)
All you need to know about C++17 is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"if you have are not paying for it, you are not the customer - you are the product being sold". (source unknown)
Your mass murderer is someone else's freedom fighter. Certainly a number of countries would feel that way about George Washington for example.
There's no global morality. Chile certainly disagreed about morality of extraditing Pinochet - that makes it not "global". What's the rule for "global" then, 50%? 75%? What if all Islamic countries decide that since usury is *very* clearly immoral, all US bankers should be extradited there for a trial?
I'm referring to Pinochet case, obviously.
I hope the irony isn't lost on /. crowd of the fact that Garzon attempted to extradite Pinochet asserting "universal jurisdiction" for crimes that weren't prosecuted in Pinochet's home country. It isn't all that much of a stretch from Pinochet to Kim Dotcom or Assange.
My point is, let's be consistent. If Pinochet case was a good precedent, then Dotcom and Assange are in trouble. Otherwise, Garzon is talking with both sides of his mouth.
well, it is what it is. all of the above believed that 'the end justifies the means' without regard to justice.
This is becoming more and more media circus. Garzon has no credibility, as he acted as political activist, not a judge. But, perhaps, the best defense attorney for a mediawhore is another mediawhore - see also, fighting bullshit with bullshit, Michael Moore style.
In US, closest equivalent to Garzon would be Kenneth Starr or Spiro Agnew, or Lynne Stewart.
Yeah, oops. :)
I meant, Astrolabe can claim it doesn't apply.
So, it appears that ACS is trying to claim copyright on the timezone historical data that they've compiled - and that's used in the TZ database.
Under Feist v Rural, information which has no "creative expression" is not copyright-able - but in this case, Olson can easily claim it doesn't apply.
This will be interesting.
I've pulled the complaint from PACER and uploaded it to docstoc:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/98231225/ACS-Atlas
I completely agree that number of cops initially deployed was unreasonable compared to number of protesters. However, cops had to work with 20-50k estimate that was provided by organizers - in which case, number of cops would have been right.
Police presence was reduced the next day, but it is still, in my opinion, excessive - there is no need to have a cop every 20 feet, however, it was reduced from 'ridiculous' to 'excessive'. I'll grant the NYPD the benefit of the doubt - the only harm from having too many cops is paying for their overtime.
Just to clarify, I I only wrote down things that I personally observed - that's the "eyewitness evidence" that was requested. If you notice, other /. posters who live/work in the area have generally agreed with me.
From the publicly available videos of pepper-spray use during Union Sq protest, it is very clear that a cop used excessive force against a protester - which is unprofessional at best and assault at worst. Cops aren't perfect - but neither are protesters.
1) Sorry, I did see claim of 20k as an actual number in at least one [clearly misinformed] report. The "projection" was 20-50k. Actual number on Sep 17 was ~2k, including all tourists in the area.
2) I think that having organized video team would be helpful - and educating them on how to stay out of the way of cops being taped.
3) Absolutely, I said so myself. Most protesters are calm and want no trouble.
4) Sorry - thanks for clarification. I wasn't listing the actual rules, I was just pointing out that there *are* rules, cops enforce them, and protesters are not always aware of them.
5) Actually, its not Midtown, its Downtown. And, 150-1000 people protesting here are not *that* unusual - unions routinely bring more, Wall St is their favorite place to protest.
Here's the gist:
*) There are no "Wall St" firms on Wall St anymore (nor anywhere close). NYSE trading floor is not that important in grand scheme of things. The neighbourhood became residential about 15 years ago, and now there's 20,000 residents like me.
*) When the protest started (two weeks ago), there were minimal number of protesters (1000) despite the protesters claims to have 20k people.
*) There's "OVER 9000" cops downtown, and it makes getting around quite annoying since I have to navigate police barriers (not a big deal, but just annoying). There's definitely more cops than protesters at any given area. At the beginning of protest, they had a 2-cop shoulder-to-shoulder line blocking Wall St. The only protesters were 6 people dressed in white robes (could pass for either Star Wars freaks or priests), cops were quite bored.
*) Cops are polite and keep to their business (that is, stand there and look serious). I can't say same about the protesters.
*) Protesters themselves...oy. Whatever it is they are protesting, they are an embarassment to their cause. I've chatted to a few, and had a few come over for drinks, and uh...Well, it's exactly what you'd expect, well-meaning but clueless younger people who are looking for attention and "feeling of doing something".
*) They protest evil corporations. Nevertheless, most of them have latest iphone4 (just look at the videos - they are ones taping). It doesn't bother them that Apple is largest corporation in the world who isn't very nice to its users.
*) There's a huge number of DSLRs at the protest - combined with iphone4, means nobody there is really starving.
*) I started speaking to one of protesters about bitcoin. He was very interested in it and buying some if they are likely to appreciate. He was *shocked* when I pointed out that's exactly what "evil bankers" do.
*) Cops don't really give a damn about protesters. They are charged with enforcing certain rules - such as, no "permanent structures". So, every so often, a cop walks through the protest site checking things out. Each time a cop does so, there's 10 people with cameras surrounding said cop to make sure any "brutality" gets videotaped. It gets quite silly since these kids don't really understand they need to move away for a cop to walk through (and since they are looking into their viewfinder, they don't realize that the cop is a foot away, resulting in a cop having to push the photographer out of the way - "omg brutality").
*) Protesters are completely disorganized - there's nobody who is "in charge", which leads to interactions with cops that could go much smoother, if a single person was designated to be liaison to cops. Protesters also can't/won't police their own - so if someone does something illegal, its becomes up to cops to enforce (vs, protesters saying "this is not cool, please do not do it" and avoiding police involvement).
*) When cops walk by, most protesters just ignore them, continuing with conversations etc. However, there are a few who get "in your face" to cops and start shouting/etc - and yes, I'd say that the protesters are trying to provoke conflict, whether they intend to or not.
*) As far as professionalism goes, I'd say cops are generally acting professional, if bored and annoyed at having to deal with hippies who hate their guts.
*) There is serious "victim mentality" among protesters - such as "media is suppressing coverage" (no, its just not important enough - the protest is much smaller than an average union rally).
Oracle needs to take their anti-google stance up a notch - change their motto to "BE EVIL".
What you are looking for is generally called 'treasury accounts' - it is expected for bank in that case to provide some kind of electronic access with full details (in/out wires, etc). Most big banks do offer that.
Try Chase - it's not cheap but not unreasonable either (something like 100$ per month plus some per-user fees etc). I have that and it's fine. Plus you get SecurID token to authenticate outgoing wires, etc.
Unfortunately, you kind of have to write a screen scraper to get to the CSV reports, but the data is there.
This is at least 1.5 years old, probably more.
I've been buying n-series in 2005.
Now I can replace my entire datacenter facility breaker/PDU/rectifier bank with a single 6509 and PoE blades! Plus, it'll also route packets!
Note the *requested* not *required*.
The above clause is strictly optional and does not conflict with GPL in any way.
The article a little bit skimps on details, bunching VMware and other things in same category.
;)
VMware, plex86 and bochs are in one category: Real virtualization solutions, allowing you to run any operating system. The level of security these tools provide is very high (guest OS shares nothing with host OS. All access is controlled by virtualization software).
Vmware works (surprisingly) pretty damn good, I haven't had an issue with it behaving any differently from a real OS running on same hardware. Of course, its a commercial solution with associated problems (no source, can't embed, pricey, etc). Its very fast, and reasonable on resources.
Plex86 is same idea as vmware, only Free.
Right now, though, plex86 is in state of disrepair, because lead developer has been laid off from Mandrake, and codebase is in flux. You'll have much more luck with Jan-1-2001 snapshots if you want to actually boot up any OS. Don't know how fast it is, never got it to boot up enough to run tests stably.
Bochs is even lower-level approach to virtualization: it can emulate x86 on any processor. Of course, its dog slow and eats lots of memory (Expect 100x hit on performance).
Other solutions (swsoft, ensim, linux virtual server(LVS)) are a lot closer to jail() system call of FreeBSD. With these, you are running one kernel for all "environments". Security is provided by other means ("root" in the jail has a lot of restrictions on it, such as use of IP addresses, etc).
With many of these solutions, you will run in certain incompatibility problems (root not able to things which it should be able to do, but restricted in jail). Transparency is an issue: for example, even though you don't see other jail's processes, there's still a single PID space, and you can tell which PIDs are running by forking 60000 times and recording which PIDS you get and which ones you don't. Also, user doesn't have full control over its environment, for ex, you can't have your own inittab, etc.
However, these solutions don't have any overhead, very resource-nonintensive (you can run 50 jails on one host with almost no performance impact).
Level of security these solutions provide is very questionable: if there's a jail check missing _anywhere_ in kernel where root access is verified, it will lead to a host compromise.
Note: Of the above mentioned solutions, I only worked with LVS (www.linuxvirtualserver.org), and its the only one that is GPL'd.
User-mode-linux (UML) occupies space in between: It doesn't virtualize the processor, but it has a separate kernel running for each VM, for excellent transparency, and reduced risk: As UML itself runs as non-root, even if a bug in UML implementation is found that would allow to make system call to host kernel, it would still at worst result in single-user compromise on the host. (Unlike LVS/jail where it would lead to root host compromise).
The way it works is following: UML is essentially a "port" of linux to linux. (I.E. linux that doesn't run on bare metal, but uses host's services to implement linux). It traps system calls by application and executes them itself.
Currently performance of UML is spotty (each syscall by application results in 3 context switches on host), but its being worked on at amazing pace. (Thanks Jeff)
Summary:
a) if you need to be able to run 10+ 'guest' environments on a host, look at LVS or jail.
b) if you need to run non-windows guest environments, vmware is your answer.
c) If you need to run 1-10 guest environments, with good security and you have memory to spare, look at UML. Its performance is likely to improve soon.
I plan on providing a "virtual colo" service based on UML for linux-oriented people and vmware for people who want to run Windows on their 'machine'. The idea is to provide service to people who outgrew traditional virtual hosting environments, but not quite ready yet (or don't want to pay) to have their own dedicated server. Pricing will be around 30$/mo.
I plan to provide "Virtual colocation" based on
UML and (alternatively for people who don't want Linux) VMware for 30$/mo in February.
Physical hardware will be dual 1.6Ghz Athlon MP.
If you are interested in being a beta customer, please contact me.
-alex
Option #1 might be a bit more complicated, but believe me, in the long run, you'll benefit from it. But read to the bottom of this. :)
The main thing is the fact that according to US Tax law, the things you can deduct as "Employee Business Expenses" are very limited. As a corporation, you are able to deduct anything that is "reasonable and necessary" (subject to some exclusions), both of those things are relatively easy to prove.
Example: You go to a hacker conference (at your own expense). You won't be able to deduct these expenses if you are just an employee.
There of course are some downsides: As employee you are covered by labor law, and generally you have a lot more rights (fair termination, timely pay, etc). Corporation doesn't have any more rights than specified in the contract, and you have to collect payments yourself, and sometimes clients are very slow in paying. Generally, the bigger the client is, the slower they pay. Big Wall Street companies sometimes take 90+ days to pay up. On other hand, they won't go bankrupt...At any case, it does good if you specify in contract terms like "2% discount if payment is within 2 weeks", sometimes that gets accounts payable moving quicker.
You will have to buy your own health insurance, and individual health insurance is quite expensive (50% more expensive than group quote at times), so do include that in your total costs for #1.
Some clients insist on liability insurance policies for your company before they can do business with you. These can run from 500 to 1500$/year, depending on what client requires.
Also, yes, its a lot more paperwork, and you MUST have an accountant to do your taxes, payroll, etc. Without it, you are a sitting duck for IRS.
There are alternative solutions, trying to combine best benefits of #1 without all the hassles: There are "fair" consulting companies that take care of all paperwork, your client's credit risk, health insurance, payroll taxes etc, while still allowing you flexibility to buy certain things tax-free and enjoy other benefits of being incorporated.
"Fair" here refers to the fact that such company charges for its services a small percentage (2-10%) of your total income, while in general, consulting companies rip you off (sometimes taking 66% of your client's fee!).
The way it works is this: Assuming you already have a client and an agreed rate, you come to such a company, and after a few sanity checks, you become an employee of this consulting company, and consulting company signs the contract with your client at an agreed rate.
Then, whenever you need to spend money on something is tax-deductible, you pay for it with company's credit card. This money will be deducted directly from your next payroll check "above the line" (i.e. before the taxes are computed).
I do that for bunch of my friends for free, and I'll certainly consider doing it for others (with minimal fee, to cover my costs), so just let me know if someone is interested in this arrangement. Alternatively, search the web, there are a few companies whose business is explicitly what I described.
Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work like that.
You need to break down taxes withheld by particular subaccount (Fed/state/city withholding, FSA plans (sec 129), UI, Disability Insurance, and 5 other things).
If you outsource this to the bank, you need to either enter all these things by hand, or have an interface to download all that from the bank. I don't know any bank that does this.
If you don't break down taxes by category, you'll run into problems later on.