In which sense does Japan's constitution mirror the US constitution? There head of state (though he is mainly a figurehead) is a hereditary monarch. Also the government is determined by the parliament, not in separate elections. To my limited knowledge it seems to be more similar to the British "Crown in Parliament" system, than the American one.
Well, I'm not American, but cut them some slack: no army can be expected to win any and all engagements they get placed in. The whole point of these exercises is to train soldiers, right?
As for the story with the CS - I guess I don't see the point of that. If the purpose of the training is to operate without CS, then why blame the soldiers for doing the exercise as they were asked to? Ok, in real-life you don't know whether the other side would use CS, but then in real-life you wouldn't be told it was an exercise without CS. So is that really important?
Looking at the performance of the US military you can't really claim that they don't know how to fight. Quite apparently they are up to the job when it comes to real life. Their main deficits (as I see it) is in policing - they perform well in conquering a place, but poorly in holding it. That's sufficient if the main purpose of your military is defence, but it's a disadvantage if you want to conquer/bring peace/build an empire (pick according to political view).
I don't think that's true anymore. It was the original intent, and it was true for some time, but it does not reflect current procedure. The people, not the states decide which set of electors are picked, and they don't vote for electors they vote for candidates who want to become president. It's not the elector's name on the ballot, it's not the elector campainging "I'm qualified to participate in the process of chosing the president".
It was put together by a surprisingly talented bunch of men, with a distinct perspective on the world and the behavior of mankind.
Agreed.
So far, their system has mostly worked.
Yes, and no - the current system of electing the president is not the original one. It has been modified dramatically. I don't think it's fair to say that the current system is working as the founding fathers intended - it almost bears no relationship to it anymore.
The reason the electors are good is because they act as a failsafe. [...] If a majority of the electors felt that someone would be a Bad Choice, they could bolt...or abstain...or something.
The exact opposite could happen, too: The people might (narrowly) decide for the good guy and then the electors might overturn it and bring the bad guy in. There is nothing in the current process of elector selection which would ensure that they are more qualified to elect the president than the general public.
They don't check there because they haven't been invited to check there by the US. The US however has invited them to observe the elections in Florida. (Which doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a good idea to investigate all areas where there is doubt about correct handling of voting.)
I think the parent post was not so much about concrete complains but rather giving examples of things citizens can complain about no matter how an election turns out. It's not so much the merit of the complaint as it is about the right to make complaints. We don't need to win an election in order to critize a politician. In a free and democratic society critizing politicians is a right, even a necessity. So what can we complain about if Bush gets fairly reelected? Anything and everything we disagree with or are unhappy about. Which is pretty cool, really.
When Google censors their news - without telling the user - they do something worse than just not showing all, they give the user the impression he is seeing everything while he only sees a part of the story. So that's not just providing a limited service, it's actually lying.
China quite apparently wants people to have access to google, it's an economic benefit. Sure someone will always make their search engine available, but it might not be the company with the best search engine. So there is at least a chance the chinese government might accept links to sites which are blocked by them, or they might accept a warning message that sites which are blocked by the government could not be included.
A major point of Google's business model is to be seen as being ethical, being in good standing will make people more likely to use their services. So there is a sound economical reason for maintaining their reputation. Misleading their Chinese users is not ethical, I hope they'll realize that and correct their mistake.
The idea is simple: there are people who can only use one mouse button, for reasons of disability or what have you. Coding for one mouse button allows you to avoid having to program especially for these people, while allowing those who want a second mouse button to use it however they like.
I don't think that's a particularly good argument. I mean there are people who can't use mice at all, since they don't have hands, so everything could be coded for speech recognition, and people with hands could configure their mouse appropriately. Or there are people who are blind, so everything should be coded for keyboard use and without graphics. People who can see could configure their mouse to do cut&paste.
I can imagine that there could be good reasons for using one-button mice, but I don't think this is one of them.
Well given that this is Slashdot, it's also fair to ask: how many Slashdot users add PCI cards to their machines? Not that I know the answer to this either, but I imagine it's well above the majority.
but most people just want a computer that WORKS and does its job over the course of its life.
No, no, no - that's what most people SAY they want.:-) In reality though it won't take long after the owner of a new computer wants it to do more stuff. "This is a nice computer which let's me browse the internet - but I'd also like to write dual-sided DVDs now." "I'd like it to have a TV card." "I'd like it to interface to my camera." "I'd like it to interface to my iPod." (Not that an Apple wouldn't be able to accomodate most of that.)
People want a machine which just works. They also want the same machine to be upgradeable. I know that this doesn't go together, but people still want both.:-)
No, I'm German, and I know the German government sometimes extradites people to the US government on these conditions.:-)
There were some disagreements about these procedures regarding terrorist suspects in recent years. You might have heard about it, if you were following the news.:-)
Cluelessness is not a crime, and you don't need much knowledge to run a simple website. Many people go with the cheapest option. Similarly you do find people in seedy neighborhoods trying to make a honest living, and most of the time the police does respect their rights.
The employees themselves were involved. How could you trust them? How could you leave the machines running?
Ummm - isn't that what I've been saying? That I think it's very hard deciding what to confiscate and what to keep running?:-)
Check my post again, really I do appreciate that this is difficult.:-)
Often the extradition will still happen, if the US agrees not to enforce the death penalty on the extradited person. This sort of deal seems to happen quite regularly.
Might I make the suggestion that if you were hosting anything with a company that has the reputation that Foonet had that you should have seen this coming and deserve what you got? Hell, let's take it a step further -- would you host any mission critical data with an "IRC hosting provider"?
But don't you think there might have been some not very clueful but honest customers?
Would you run your business out of an apartment building filled with meth labs and crack houses? That would be the equivalent to hosting with these people. Think about it for a minute.
I don't want to stretch the anology too much, but the police would not extend there search/seizures in that manner, even if that were the case.
On the other hand, it *is* just an awkward analogy. I'm not sure how the police can proceed in a case like that. Let's say they don't disconnect the network. What if the evidence was on the very machine which hosts some honest business? The employees might have a means of logging in on just that machine. So unless you have very detailed knowledge of the location of the evidence, you might have a hard time deciding what to confiscate and what to keep running.
Also I think in many cases it's not so much a problem of capitalism but of making wrong business decisions due to bad data.
The problem is the way the costs are measured. It's relatively easy to measure the costs of internal sys admins and tech support. Then you compare that to the amount an outside company charges, as it's less money you go for that. However typically the problem is, that as soon as you outsource many support and admin tasks are no longer taken care of - they don't fall under whatever contract the oursource company has (1). Instead these tasks are picked up by more or less knowledgable staff who are hired for different tasks. Often these are less efficient and more expensive (per hour) than the guys who used to do handle the job full time.
Additional costs can occur due to less efficiently administered networks, machines which run slower because they aren't properly set up etc.
(1) In one case I was on a contract for a company which hadn't organized a workstation for me yet (ok, that's stupid enough in itself). I could do nothing for them at all. So I brought in a laptop - cool, but the sysadmin (3rd party) refused to hook it up on the intranet. Not because of security concerns (which would be understandable to an extent) but because of his company's contract which said "support for customer machines only". Our customer faced paying $105/hour for 3 days of me sitting there, being unable to contribute much. So another engineer with root access hooked me up. Of course neither his work, nor the time I had to wait ever made it into "admin costs" which could be measured.
Spam works for spammers, because the costs are low, and even if the percentage of people who react favourably to the spam is very low, they still get business.
It's different for politics though - if the number of people who react negatively to your spam is much larger then the number of people who react positively - in all likelyhood you'll lose votes.
Just because doing something is legal doesn't mean you'll benefit from doing it.
Maybe not suicidal, but radical and fanatical is quite possible. Remember Sheik Yassin, the old guy in the wheelchair?
Also an old radical might decide he has nothing to lose anymore, too. I'm not saying it's particularly likely, but I can't see it to be impossible either.
I met an airport security chief some time ago (at a BBQ) - he told me about some of the security measures. Apparently one of the things they confiscate now are toy guns. (Ok, I can understand those could be used to threaten someone if they look realistic enough.)
However when issuing that policy about toy guns, nobody thought about specifying size. So as a result airport security was now confiscating the guns from little boy's GI Joe dolls.
You'd think everybody would have enough common sense to realize that this policy couldn't possibly be intended for action figures...
Problem is, that the hijacker may not be as worried about piercing the hull of the airplane than the passengers. If you fire a shot at him, the chances are high that you'll die, too.
Or assume he is using some little girl as a shield - you probably wouldn't want to try shooting him, either. (Remember: historically airplane hijackings were very rarely about killing everybody on board, and it should already be possible to shoot down an airplane which has been taken over.)
Add to that the risk of drunks in a confined space, equipped with weapons. How often do you see people get into violent arguments about nothing special, just because they are drunk? There is also the danger of people mishandling their guns and accidentially firing a shot while pulling on their carry-on etc.
The risk of a plane getting hijacked is so low, it doesn't justify measures which are that dangerous.
You shouldn't be surprised that so many react defensively on a story like this. It's a common trend to blame men, whenever women appear to be "bad" at something. (In this case that's just an imbalance - it's not clear at all whether women are making the "wrong" choice, here.)
Anyway, I think the field offers some advantages to interested women - which are perhaps not widely known. Often women are interested in jobs which allow them to combine professional work with child rearing - CS is not a bad choice for that, often the hours are very flexible, and telecommuting opportunities are frequent, too. Also as you say, there are CS jobs which provide more interaction with people than pure programming tasks. Especially marketing and application engineering can be interesting - technically qualified people are in demand in these fields, and the pay can be good.
Regardless: these days you got to wonder whether attracting someone to CS is a fair move. It's not clear at all whether there'll be jobs at the end of a rather difficult degree.
The German constitution grants free speech rights to it's citizens - however it grants those solely to natural persons, i.e. not to companies. Consequently people can fill their own websites with as many nonsensical meta tags as they want - however company websites face the constraints described in the article. (The court ruling restricted itself specifically to commercial sites.)
No, but just like the US and many other nations, Germany signed the UN declaration of human rights. (article 19) Germany is therefore legally bound to guarantee free speech to it's citizens. Additionally the German constitution contains free speech and free press rights.
You are right that there are other forms of self-interest, however this here is not true:
RMS doesn't care that you have access to his source. He wants access to yours.
What he wants is that everybody should have access to the source. That includes him, but is not restricted to him.
I'm not a big fan of RMS, but the way you describe his motives is a bit unfair.
You have many hundreds of transmitters next to each other in the space of just a few square milimeters. Their transmission power needs to be so low that they don't interfere with their neighbours. The mix of signals which radiate off from that arrangement should be close to impossible to decode.
In any case, in conventional devices the pins will also work as (very low-power) transmitters, too. So once you've found a method of decoding this signal mix, you can probably get at the information on conventional chips, too.
I agree with you - there shouldn't be any software patents in the EU yet. That there are some regardless, shows that the patent offices can not be entrusted with further SW patent possibilities.
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In which sense does Japan's constitution mirror the US constitution? There head of state (though he is mainly a figurehead) is a hereditary monarch. Also the government is determined by the parliament, not in separate elections. To my limited knowledge it seems to be more similar to the British "Crown in Parliament" system, than the American one.
As for the story with the CS - I guess I don't see the point of that. If the purpose of the training is to operate without CS, then why blame the soldiers for doing the exercise as they were asked to? Ok, in real-life you don't know whether the other side would use CS, but then in real-life you wouldn't be told it was an exercise without CS. So is that really important?
Looking at the performance of the US military you can't really claim that they don't know how to fight. Quite apparently they are up to the job when it comes to real life. Their main deficits (as I see it) is in policing - they perform well in conquering a place, but poorly in holding it. That's sufficient if the main purpose of your military is defence, but it's a disadvantage if you want to conquer/bring peace/build an empire (pick according to political view).
I don't think that's true anymore. It was the original intent, and it was true for some time, but it does not reflect current procedure. The people, not the states decide which set of electors are picked, and they don't vote for electors they vote for candidates who want to become president. It's not the elector's name on the ballot, it's not the elector campainging "I'm qualified to participate in the process of chosing the president".
It was put together by a surprisingly talented bunch of men, with a distinct perspective on the world and the behavior of mankind.
Agreed.
So far, their system has mostly worked.
Yes, and no - the current system of electing the president is not the original one. It has been modified dramatically. I don't think it's fair to say that the current system is working as the founding fathers intended - it almost bears no relationship to it anymore.
The reason the electors are good is because they act as a failsafe. [...] If a majority of the electors felt that someone would be a Bad Choice, they could bolt...or abstain...or something.
The exact opposite could happen, too: The people might (narrowly) decide for the good guy and then the electors might overturn it and bring the bad guy in. There is nothing in the current process of elector selection which would ensure that they are more qualified to elect the president than the general public.
They don't check there because they haven't been invited to check there by the US. The US however has invited them to observe the elections in Florida. (Which doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a good idea to investigate all areas where there is doubt about correct handling of voting.)
I think the parent post was not so much about concrete complains but rather giving examples of things citizens can complain about no matter how an election turns out. It's not so much the merit of the complaint as it is about the right to make complaints. We don't need to win an election in order to critize a politician. In a free and democratic society critizing politicians is a right, even a necessity. So what can we complain about if Bush gets fairly reelected? Anything and everything we disagree with or are unhappy about. Which is pretty cool, really.
China quite apparently wants people to have access to google, it's an economic benefit. Sure someone will always make their search engine available, but it might not be the company with the best search engine. So there is at least a chance the chinese government might accept links to sites which are blocked by them, or they might accept a warning message that sites which are blocked by the government could not be included.
A major point of Google's business model is to be seen as being ethical, being in good standing will make people more likely to use their services. So there is a sound economical reason for maintaining their reputation. Misleading their Chinese users is not ethical, I hope they'll realize that and correct their mistake.
I don't think that's a particularly good argument. I mean there are people who can't use mice at all, since they don't have hands, so everything could be coded for speech recognition, and people with hands could configure their mouse appropriately. Or there are people who are blind, so everything should be coded for keyboard use and without graphics. People who can see could configure their mouse to do cut&paste.
I can imagine that there could be good reasons for using one-button mice, but I don't think this is one of them.
but most people just want a computer that WORKS and does its job over the course of its life.
No, no, no - that's what most people SAY they want. :-) In reality though it won't take long after the owner of a new computer wants it to do more stuff. "This is a nice computer which let's me browse the internet - but I'd also like to write dual-sided DVDs now." "I'd like it to have a TV card." "I'd like it to interface to my camera." "I'd like it to interface to my iPod." (Not that an Apple wouldn't be able to accomodate most of that.)
People want a machine which just works. They also want the same machine to be upgradeable. I know that this doesn't go together, but people still want both. :-)
Not particularly important, but that part of Motorola is called Freescale now. (Motorola split off their semiconductor business.)
There were some disagreements about these procedures regarding terrorist suspects in recent years. You might have heard about it, if you were following the news. :-)
The employees themselves were involved. How could you trust them? How could you leave the machines running?
Ummm - isn't that what I've been saying? That I think it's very hard deciding what to confiscate and what to keep running? :-)
Check my post again, really I do appreciate that this is difficult. :-)
Often the extradition will still happen, if the US agrees not to enforce the death penalty on the extradited person. This sort of deal seems to happen quite regularly.
But don't you think there might have been some not very clueful but honest customers?
Would you run your business out of an apartment building filled with meth labs and crack houses? That would be the equivalent to hosting with these people. Think about it for a minute.
I don't want to stretch the anology too much, but the police would not extend there search/seizures in that manner, even if that were the case.
On the other hand, it *is* just an awkward analogy. I'm not sure how the police can proceed in a case like that. Let's say they don't disconnect the network. What if the evidence was on the very machine which hosts some honest business? The employees might have a means of logging in on just that machine. So unless you have very detailed knowledge of the location of the evidence, you might have a hard time deciding what to confiscate and what to keep running.
The problem is the way the costs are measured. It's relatively easy to measure the costs of internal sys admins and tech support. Then you compare that to the amount an outside company charges, as it's less money you go for that. However typically the problem is, that as soon as you outsource many support and admin tasks are no longer taken care of - they don't fall under whatever contract the oursource company has (1). Instead these tasks are picked up by more or less knowledgable staff who are hired for different tasks. Often these are less efficient and more expensive (per hour) than the guys who used to do handle the job full time.
Additional costs can occur due to less efficiently administered networks, machines which run slower because they aren't properly set up etc.
(1) In one case I was on a contract for a company which hadn't organized a workstation for me yet (ok, that's stupid enough in itself). I could do nothing for them at all. So I brought in a laptop - cool, but the sysadmin (3rd party) refused to hook it up on the intranet. Not because of security concerns (which would be understandable to an extent) but because of his company's contract which said "support for customer machines only". Our customer faced paying $105/hour for 3 days of me sitting there, being unable to contribute much. So another engineer with root access hooked me up. Of course neither his work, nor the time I had to wait ever made it into "admin costs" which could be measured.
It's different for politics though - if the number of people who react negatively to your spam is much larger then the number of people who react positively - in all likelyhood you'll lose votes.
Just because doing something is legal doesn't mean you'll benefit from doing it.
Also an old radical might decide he has nothing to lose anymore, too. I'm not saying it's particularly likely, but I can't see it to be impossible either.
Get the point across to whom? The supplier of the OS should make sure the Firewall is on by default.
You'd think everybody would have enough common sense to realize that this policy couldn't possibly be intended for action figures...
Or assume he is using some little girl as a shield - you probably wouldn't want to try shooting him, either. (Remember: historically airplane hijackings were very rarely about killing everybody on board, and it should already be possible to shoot down an airplane which has been taken over.)
Add to that the risk of drunks in a confined space, equipped with weapons. How often do you see people get into violent arguments about nothing special, just because they are drunk? There is also the danger of people mishandling their guns and accidentially firing a shot while pulling on their carry-on etc.
The risk of a plane getting hijacked is so low, it doesn't justify measures which are that dangerous.
Anyway, I think the field offers some advantages to interested women - which are perhaps not widely known. Often women are interested in jobs which allow them to combine professional work with child rearing - CS is not a bad choice for that, often the hours are very flexible, and telecommuting opportunities are frequent, too. Also as you say, there are CS jobs which provide more interaction with people than pure programming tasks. Especially marketing and application engineering can be interesting - technically qualified people are in demand in these fields, and the pay can be good.
Regardless: these days you got to wonder whether attracting someone to CS is a fair move. It's not clear at all whether there'll be jobs at the end of a rather difficult degree.
The German constitution grants free speech rights to it's citizens - however it grants those solely to natural persons, i.e. not to companies. Consequently people can fill their own websites with as many nonsensical meta tags as they want - however company websites face the constraints described in the article. (The court ruling restricted itself specifically to commercial sites.)
No, but just like the US and many other nations, Germany signed the UN declaration of human rights. (article 19) Germany is therefore legally bound to guarantee free speech to it's citizens. Additionally the German constitution contains free speech and free press rights.
RMS doesn't care that you have access to his source. He wants access to yours.
What he wants is that everybody should have access to the source. That includes him, but is not restricted to him. I'm not a big fan of RMS, but the way you describe his motives is a bit unfair.
In any case, in conventional devices the pins will also work as (very low-power) transmitters, too. So once you've found a method of decoding this signal mix, you can probably get at the information on conventional chips, too.
I agree with you - there shouldn't be any software patents in the EU yet. That there are some regardless, shows that the patent offices can not be entrusted with further SW patent possibilities.