By telling you "voice communication will not be allowed".
wouldn't it all be packets at that point?
Not at the point where you talk into the microphone. It's pretty easy to detect, and given just how annoying it is to sit next to a person talking into their cell phone... it wouldn't take long for your seat neighbour would complain to the stewardess.
Good point - IMHO this, the need for snap judgements is really the problem which the US has. Instead of trying to understand complex problems and arguing the relative benefits of various solutions, every political discussion is dumbed down to soundbyte-level. This bill wants to reserve money for some tasks, while not giving any to other tasks. Is that a good decision? Maybe, maybe not. It would take a lot of work to evaluate this properly, but it would be interesting. Claiming that all politicians are stupid is not interesting, it just causes even more of them to decide purely on populist considerations, since obviously nobody is interested in complex arguments.
I think you need to try and get the best value for the students. Even old software can be of use, if it allows them to learn the underlying usage concepts, or to learn the basic functionality. If in the new version these concepts are no longer in use, and if the basic functions are mainly accessed differently, then you are not providing much value anymore. In these cases you'd definately provide more value if you use newer OSS applications. If the OSS applications share the same underlying usage concepts, and/or allows you to access basic functionality in the same way, then it could also be worth using them. In case the comparison is even (OSS and old version of commerical software are similarly close to the new version) there could still be a case to be made for OSS: your students can easily get hold of the software and use it at home.
However you should not neglect the factor that your students may need the buzzword factor - it may be more helpful to them to have the right tools listed in their resume. Of course if the commercial application is not suitable for practical use anyway (feature set too small, unstable....), then the OSS version would win out again. The priority must be your students needs. I think you need to evaluate all factors carefully for each application.
They are running a huge ad campaign in Germany, currently. So I'd say they'll be successful in convincing people that it's a status symbol, and there are certainly enough people in Germany who can afford (and want) to buy status symbols.
That's the price you offer an iPhone for, if you don't really want to sell unlocked iPhones, but are compelled to due to some court ruling... It was the true cost in the sense that: truly - this is what you needed to pay.
I think the point of this may be a legal one - might make it easier to take the visa away later, if they find out that you lied on the visa application. IANAL, though.
They're entitled to protect their advertising income by enforcing their TOS so they don't get advertisers dropping them because they don't want their corporate image sullied with violent images or whatever.
And we are entitled to complain about it - we are entitled to publically state that what they are doing is immoral - we are entitled to think much less of the companies involved - we are entitled to ask them for an explanation - we are entitled to use other services.
What you appear to suggest is "don't complain, just use someone else". You seem to think that complaining has no effect. That's not true, though - clever companies listen to complaints even before the users abandon their services. They change their behaviour not only when it's already costing them money, but also when it appears likely that it might do so. Apart from that - raising the issue gets other people interested, and that puts even more pressure on the company involved.
Voicing our opinions is one of our fundamental rights. Exercising this right may occasionally have negative consequences for companies doing immoral things. Tough cookies if their shareholders don't like it.
It's hard to poke holes in this proposal - there are so many possibilities it's difficult to chose. However one thing you should have learned by now: it's hard to force an entire people to do your bidding. How do you force the Iraqis to participate in this? How do you convince someone who e.g. wants you to leave his country and wants to take revenge for the killing of his daughter that he should get to know some random American? And regarding this "it's hard to fight a war against people you know" - did you notice that there is in fact a civil war going on in Iraq - i.e. many of the people who fight there already know each other? I appreciate your good intentions, but I don't see a good plan there.
Well if he states stuff like "Your law firm has actively and knowingly facilitated by various means the criminal distribution of sexual material to minors." He shouldn't be surprised if that firm defends complains about him. On top of that, he is trying to take away some of our freedoms, so I understand why he is not getting any sympathy.
Should he lose his right to practice his profession?
I don't know - it's up to the bar association to decide that. Lawyers are in a powerful position - there need to be checks so that they don't abuse that position to reduce the freedom of their fellow citizens. I don't have the impression this works particularly well in the US, so I appreciate if the bar association tries to uphold some standards. I hope they do it in a fair and equal manner, and if that's the case I'm ok with whatever he gets.
In February 2007, the Florida Bar filed disbarment proceedings against Thompson over allegations of professional misconduct. The action was the result of separate grievances filed by people claiming that Thompson made defamatory, false statements and attempted to humiliate, embarrass, harass or intimidate them.[115] According to the complaint, Thompson accused attorney Cardenas of "distribution of pornography to children," claimed that the Alabama judge presiding over the Devin Moore case "breaks the rules, even the Alabama State Bar Rules, because he thinks that the rules don't apply to him," and sent a letter to Blank Rome's managing partner, saying, "Your law firm has actively and knowingly facilitated by various means the criminal distribution of sexual material to minors." Thompson claims that the complaints violate state religious protections because his advocacy is motivated by his Christian faith.
Well, that may be a case techie-blindness - I don't have the restriction either since I watch DVDs via MythTV. However I've seen DVD-Players which don't skip, and I don't have the impression people base their buying decision on whether they do or do not skip. Did you research these players regarding this before you bought them, or did you have the experience that all of them skip the "non-skipable" sections anyway?
The correct terminology is never used there - I tried to summarize how the arguments might go.
You want a low to stop me having admin rights on my own computer [...]
No I don't. I don't want a DMCA either, or a restriction on fair use rights.
DVD costs as much as the market will bear
People will buy what costs the least, and they will not give much thought to the freedom they lose. You are right, there is no reason not to hike up the price after people have gotten used to the restrictions.
Why are you sure it would fail? People already put up with non-skipable sections of their DVDs, why wouldn't they swallow this, too? You may try to avoid the company which shows the ad, but you don't matter - you are a part of a tiny group who cares about this issue.
[...] it would be pretty simple to set up the local network in a way that redirects all download attempts to a local server which just gives out 0-second spots or something.
Which is easy to prevent by further limitations of your rights - if you have administrator access to your own network, and want to control the hardware you bought, you must have something criminal in mind, right? By preventing the company from shoving misinformation down your throat, you are breaking the license agreement of the movie you are watching - in other words, you are stealing from the company. Based on that it shouldn't be too hard to lobby for a law which takes your adminstrator access away. Think people will care? Remember: the DVD is cheaper this way.
i am making the case that the number of lives using a taser instead of a gun has saved outweighs the situations where someone died who didn't need any force at all
Sorry, but no you don't make the case - you make a claim. This is important precisely because of the mixture of negative and positive effects you mention. If you do make a case you need to try and measure these effects and weigh them. Blindly assuming that the positive effects outweigh the negative ones is just as useless as the opposite.
I'm sure the bleeding-heart crowd would rather that we not cause any pain what-so-ever, when a meth-addict charges a cop with a knife.
You may be sure, but apart from your claim, there is nothing to support this strawman. Maybe rather than invent absurd oponents you could actually respond to things which have been said?
That's true - but why would you compare the US against dictatorships like in Burma, or struggling third-world countries? To me the relevant comparison would be against wealthy stable democracies: are those doing better in some areas than the US? If so why? What kind of actions might be possible to improve the situation in the US in these areas? Is there something which has been proven to work in other countries which could also be used in the US?
These seem like interesting questions to me - the answers could potentially be very useful for the US.
On the other hand - the comparison with a violent dictatorship - what benefits could that yield? It seems rather boring to find out that things are not as bad as in a failed state. It does help to give people a warm and fuzzy feeling and make them complacent, though.
Several items about this study are quite notable if you read the whole thing
The actual study is actually only a link in the article (would have made more sense to link to it, rather than the poor summary of it) - here it is: http://www.usercentric.com/news.asp?ID=391 I'm not sure if your comments refer to that or the article linked by slashdot.
So to answer your concerns regarding reporting of the speeds: iPhone and Hard-Key QWERTY Texting Was Equally Rapid, but iPhone Owners Made More Errors. Regarding your next point (why allow error correction?) it says iPhone owners made more errors during text entry and also left significantly more errors in the completed messages. Finally regarding the training period of only 1 month - I agree that's not very long. On the other hand they've seen zero improvement after a month, that doesn't exactly point to training helping much.
Well according to the article (yes I know....) Surprisingly, the study found that iPhone texters don't improve with experience. [...] novice iPhone users made mistakes at the same rate as people who have owned iPhones for at least one month [...]
Actually many of the points you raised could have been answered by reading the article. Just saying.:-)
It's also seems fishy that much sensitive information (of relevance to a foreign government) could be obtained from randomly putting trojans on hard drives... Isn't it possible that this was an unintentional infection from some disk-handling or testing machine along the line?
It's kinda hard to tell - presidential elections are on in Taiwan, and it's a highly charged contest between the former dictatorial KMT (the Chinese national party) and the freedom-fighter pro-independence DPP. It's not unheard of for each side to make wild accussations, and of course a plot by China (which keeps threatening Taiwan, and which they are still at war with) would motivate DPP voters. Then again, it's quite possible that China would pull something like that - it wouldn't be the first time.
How can you say it is fraud when the company doing the purchasing still knows what they are getting for their purchase?
They don't know that - they've hired someone to evaluate that and he's defrauding them.
How can you say it is fraud when the company doing the purchasing still knows what they are getting for their purchase? The one taking the bribe is the one to blame, not the briber.
Make up you mind - if the person taking the bribe is to blame, then it's fraud. If there is no fraud, there is no point in putting blame on anyone.
You're accusing me of entitlement?
Yes, and if you'd take the time to respond and understand my argument, rather then blaming someone else, you might actually get it.
There is no functional difference between a bribe and a discount.
The difference is in who is getting the money. The same difference if you pay a thief to steal something for you, or if you pay the owner to get it.
In both cases, the company is paying less money for services offered by the briber than would normally be paid.
No they don't. It would be a rather special case that the company bribing the agent would be the cheapest - the opposite is a lot more common. In what kind of fantasy world do you live?
And it's still a voluntary contract.
The company did not voluntarily select the highest bidder - they hired someone to select the best suited supplier. They were defrauded. Now if you want to argue that this isn't equivalent to theft, then the agent didn't commit a crime either
Doesn't seem like a good deal to me.
Well then Mr Entitlement - try living somewhere else. Try living somewhere where the government is weak. And as for the low quality of government - people like you who think paying taxes is such a hard burden have a lot to do with that, and your absurd scheme to promote corruption is yet another contribution to it.
He is not offering a discount to the purchaser, he's bribing his agent. What he's doing is to the detriment of the customer he's selling to. That's the opposite of a discount, he's helping someone to steal the customer's money and he's taking a cut.
Why should that be illegal
Because that's just as immoral as the guy taking the bribe. Why should it be immoral to take the bribe? It brings an advantage to the person taking the bribe, and if you are not happy with the performance of your agent you can just hire someone better, right? Let the market decide. Why should it be illegal to steal? If you don't like having your property stolen you can just hire someone to protect it.
the state is completely immoral in the first place
Everybody is doing something immoral, so I can too. Sorry, but that's not even an argument. Even if it was it would just make the whole discussion pointless.
They are the ones who are doing us wrong.
Says someone who lives in a country which allows him to hold private property, who was able to get a good education, has access to clean water, drives on pulic streets, who doesn't have to be afraid that a neighbouring country invades and sells him into slavery. Visit Africa sometime, or have a chat with someone who lived through the Chinese cultural revolution, and then smack yourself up the head for being such a whiner. Seriously, man!
Slashdot Mirror
By telling you "voice communication will not be allowed".
wouldn't it all be packets at that point?
Not at the point where you talk into the microphone. It's pretty easy to detect, and given just how annoying it is to sit next to a person talking into their cell phone ... it wouldn't take long for your seat neighbour would complain to the stewardess.
Good point - IMHO this, the need for snap judgements is really the problem which the US has. Instead of trying to understand complex problems and arguing the relative benefits of various solutions, every political discussion is dumbed down to soundbyte-level. This bill wants to reserve money for some tasks, while not giving any to other tasks. Is that a good decision? Maybe, maybe not. It would take a lot of work to evaluate this properly, but it would be interesting. Claiming that all politicians are stupid is not interesting, it just causes even more of them to decide purely on populist considerations, since obviously nobody is interested in complex arguments.
However you should not neglect the factor that your students may need the buzzword factor - it may be more helpful to them to have the right tools listed in their resume. Of course if the commercial application is not suitable for practical use anyway (feature set too small, unstable ....), then the OSS version would win out again. The priority must be your students needs. I think you need to evaluate all factors carefully for each application.
They are running a huge ad campaign in Germany, currently. So I'd say they'll be successful in convincing people that it's a status symbol, and there are certainly enough people in Germany who can afford (and want) to buy status symbols.
That's the price you offer an iPhone for, if you don't really want to sell unlocked iPhones, but are compelled to due to some court ruling... It was the true cost in the sense that: truly - this is what you needed to pay.
I think the point of this may be a legal one - might make it easier to take the visa away later, if they find out that you lied on the visa application. IANAL, though.
Well companies care about their reputation, because being thought of as evil can have a negative impact on business.
And we are entitled to complain about it - we are entitled to publically state that what they are doing is immoral - we are entitled to think much less of the companies involved - we are entitled to ask them for an explanation - we are entitled to use other services.
What you appear to suggest is "don't complain, just use someone else". You seem to think that complaining has no effect. That's not true, though - clever companies listen to complaints even before the users abandon their services. They change their behaviour not only when it's already costing them money, but also when it appears likely that it might do so. Apart from that - raising the issue gets other people interested, and that puts even more pressure on the company involved.
Voicing our opinions is one of our fundamental rights. Exercising this right may occasionally have negative consequences for companies doing immoral things. Tough cookies if their shareholders don't like it.
It's hard to poke holes in this proposal - there are so many possibilities it's difficult to chose. However one thing you should have learned by now: it's hard to force an entire people to do your bidding. How do you force the Iraqis to participate in this? How do you convince someone who e.g. wants you to leave his country and wants to take revenge for the killing of his daughter that he should get to know some random American? And regarding this "it's hard to fight a war against people you know" - did you notice that there is in fact a civil war going on in Iraq - i.e. many of the people who fight there already know each other? I appreciate your good intentions, but I don't see a good plan there.
Should he lose his right to practice his profession?
I don't know - it's up to the bar association to decide that. Lawyers are in a powerful position - there need to be checks so that they don't abuse that position to reduce the freedom of their fellow citizens. I don't have the impression this works particularly well in the US, so I appreciate if the bar association tries to uphold some standards. I hope they do it in a fair and equal manner, and if that's the case I'm ok with whatever he gets.
In February 2007, the Florida Bar filed disbarment proceedings against Thompson over allegations of professional misconduct. The action was the result of separate grievances filed by people claiming that Thompson made defamatory, false statements and attempted to humiliate, embarrass, harass or intimidate them.[115] According to the complaint, Thompson accused attorney Cardenas of "distribution of pornography to children," claimed that the Alabama judge presiding over the Devin Moore case "breaks the rules, even the Alabama State Bar Rules, because he thinks that the rules don't apply to him," and sent a letter to Blank Rome's managing partner, saying, "Your law firm has actively and knowingly facilitated by various means the criminal distribution of sexual material to minors." Thompson claims that the complaints violate state religious protections because his advocacy is motivated by his Christian faith.
There is a lot of technical info (including where they attach the kite) available here: http://www.skysails.info/fileadmin/user_upload/Pressedownload/Dokumente/SkySailsTechnologie_en.pdf One particularly interesting point is that they include a system which helps you plan the optimal route according to the weather forecast.
Works if you don't actually have a sizable number of MS licenses, too.
Well, that may be a case techie-blindness - I don't have the restriction either since I watch DVDs via MythTV. However I've seen DVD-Players which don't skip, and I don't have the impression people base their buying decision on whether they do or do not skip. Did you research these players regarding this before you bought them, or did you have the experience that all of them skip the "non-skipable" sections anyway?
The correct terminology is never used there - I tried to summarize how the arguments might go.
You want a low to stop me having admin rights on my own computer [...]
No I don't. I don't want a DMCA either, or a restriction on fair use rights.
DVD costs as much as the market will bear
People will buy what costs the least, and they will not give much thought to the freedom they lose. You are right, there is no reason not to hike up the price after people have gotten used to the restrictions.
[...] it would be pretty simple to set up the local network in a way that redirects all download attempts to a local server which just gives out 0-second spots or something.
Which is easy to prevent by further limitations of your rights - if you have administrator access to your own network, and want to control the hardware you bought, you must have something criminal in mind, right? By preventing the company from shoving misinformation down your throat, you are breaking the license agreement of the movie you are watching - in other words, you are stealing from the company. Based on that it shouldn't be too hard to lobby for a law which takes your adminstrator access away. Think people will care? Remember: the DVD is cheaper this way.
Sorry, but no you don't make the case - you make a claim. This is important precisely because of the mixture of negative and positive effects you mention. If you do make a case you need to try and measure these effects and weigh them. Blindly assuming that the positive effects outweigh the negative ones is just as useless as the opposite.
You may be sure, but apart from your claim, there is nothing to support this strawman. Maybe rather than invent absurd oponents you could actually respond to things which have been said?
These seem like interesting questions to me - the answers could potentially be very useful for the US.
On the other hand - the comparison with a violent dictatorship - what benefits could that yield? It seems rather boring to find out that things are not as bad as in a failed state. It does help to give people a warm and fuzzy feeling and make them complacent, though.
The actual study is actually only a link in the article (would have made more sense to link to it, rather than the poor summary of it) - here it is: http://www.usercentric.com/news.asp?ID=391 I'm not sure if your comments refer to that or the article linked by slashdot.
So to answer your concerns regarding reporting of the speeds: iPhone and Hard-Key QWERTY Texting Was Equally Rapid, but iPhone Owners Made More Errors. Regarding your next point (why allow error correction?) it says iPhone owners made more errors during text entry and also left significantly more errors in the completed messages. Finally regarding the training period of only 1 month - I agree that's not very long. On the other hand they've seen zero improvement after a month, that doesn't exactly point to training helping much.
Actually many of the points you raised could have been answered by reading the article. Just saying. :-)
It's kinda hard to tell - presidential elections are on in Taiwan, and it's a highly charged contest between the former dictatorial KMT (the Chinese national party) and the freedom-fighter pro-independence DPP. It's not unheard of for each side to make wild accussations, and of course a plot by China (which keeps threatening Taiwan, and which they are still at war with) would motivate DPP voters. Then again, it's quite possible that China would pull something like that - it wouldn't be the first time.
They don't know that - they've hired someone to evaluate that and he's defrauding them.
How can you say it is fraud when the company doing the purchasing still knows what they are getting for their purchase? The one taking the bribe is the one to blame, not the briber.
Make up you mind - if the person taking the bribe is to blame, then it's fraud. If there is no fraud, there is no point in putting blame on anyone.
You're accusing me of entitlement?
Yes, and if you'd take the time to respond and understand my argument, rather then blaming someone else, you might actually get it.
The difference is in who is getting the money. The same difference if you pay a thief to steal something for you, or if you pay the owner to get it.
In both cases, the company is paying less money for services offered by the briber than would normally be paid.
No they don't. It would be a rather special case that the company bribing the agent would be the cheapest - the opposite is a lot more common. In what kind of fantasy world do you live?
And it's still a voluntary contract.
The company did not voluntarily select the highest bidder - they hired someone to select the best suited supplier. They were defrauded. Now if you want to argue that this isn't equivalent to theft, then the agent didn't commit a crime either
Doesn't seem like a good deal to me.
Well then Mr Entitlement - try living somewhere else. Try living somewhere where the government is weak. And as for the low quality of government - people like you who think paying taxes is such a hard burden have a lot to do with that, and your absurd scheme to promote corruption is yet another contribution to it.
Because that's just as immoral as the guy taking the bribe. Why should it be immoral to take the bribe? It brings an advantage to the person taking the bribe, and if you are not happy with the performance of your agent you can just hire someone better, right? Let the market decide. Why should it be illegal to steal? If you don't like having your property stolen you can just hire someone to protect it.
the state is completely immoral in the first place
Everybody is doing something immoral, so I can too. Sorry, but that's not even an argument. Even if it was it would just make the whole discussion pointless.
They are the ones who are doing us wrong.
Says someone who lives in a country which allows him to hold private property, who was able to get a good education, has access to clean water, drives on pulic streets, who doesn't have to be afraid that a neighbouring country invades and sells him into slavery. Visit Africa sometime, or have a chat with someone who lived through the Chinese cultural revolution, and then smack yourself up the head for being such a whiner. Seriously, man!