Re:Have to be careful here with music tastes
on
IT's Musical Habits
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You call it moral cowardice. I call it humility.
There is absolutely nothing forbidding me from expressing likes and dislikes for specific hobbies, interests, worldviews, etc., etc. Everyone has these preferences. But when you start elevating your own predilections into some sort of fundamental moral truth, by ascribing your own preferences to "The Will of God" or "Scientific Truth" or "The Will of the People" or whatever euphemism you prefer for turning preferences into fact, then you're not showing "moral courage." You're simply proving that you're human for having preferences, and egotistical enough to consider them binding on everyone else.
Given the barrage of nonsensical and contradictory moral absolutes that bombard us every day, irony sounds comparatively pleasant.
Please clarify what you mean by "lesser cities." Are we talking strictly objective metrics like population or total aggregation of wealth? If so, it's still a very Canadian-tweaking way of putting it, for which I applaud you.
Me, I live in Salt Lake. I'm momentarily carless. Mass transit seems to be working well enough. I don't know what the tango-dancing scene is like, but it's probably sufficient for most any hobbyist. The New Yorkian novelty known as the 'taxi cab' has become available here as well, if you're ever too drunk to operate a death machine of your own. We have some great symphonies and acting companies. I'm not sure I would be able to tell the difference between their performances and those of a "world class" place like New York (prettier buildings aside), but I'm positive my wallet could.
I'm curious about this tango dancing thing. Do you really tango nearly every night? Is there a really cool tango troupe based in NYC that you're a fan of? How much money would you say you spend on this hobby? Are you paying for the best instruction that New York can provide you? If you're really so dedicated to the art of the tango that nothing less than the New York scene can possibly satisfy you, that's cool. No, wait, it's that other thing. Bizarre. But to each their own.
You're not a moron, but I agree that you are a bit infatuated with NYC.
Yeah, that's the great thing about Windows. When my mom calls up and complains that her printer isn't working, I can just tell her to pop the Windows CD in and click "Repair Windows." Viola! The printer is working again! Not to mention all the spyware has been removed, and it sends out signals to blow up all the zombie spam relays in the world, while solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As someone who is trying to drag my parents kicking and screaming into the 1990's, I feel fully qualified to make the following statement: Windows is not simple to install, simple to use, or simple to administer.
Indeed. Tis a crappy, crippled browser that refuses to connect to any website critical of it. It sits there, pretending to load, but I know deep down that it's snickering at me.
From the day I opened port 80 on my Linux box, I've been receiving exploit attempts from all over the net, every one targeted towards one IIS exploit or another. For me, my httpd logs are sufficient proof that Apache is significantly more secure.
Here's a detailed report of the Debian hack. Baddie logs in with a sniffed password, then elevates his privileges using a root exploit that was fixed within a week of discovery.
I've already had my say on the "Linux was the most breached OS" story. I'm too lazy to repeat myself.
I do hate chain stores as a matter of principle. The way I see it, any local business is going to keep more money within a community than a chain store that sends a certain amount of its profits back to headquarters. It eventually makes its way to the shareholders. Shareholders could be literally anybody, but on the average, they're way better off than all but a few of the people the money would have gone to if it had stayed in the community.
Of course, there's no way to solve the TSP in a sane amount of time even for a relatively small graph. The problem is NP-complete. In this case, with points being added regularly and a messy definition of "distance"*, it's pretty much guaranteed that the answer is going to change faster than it can be computed.
On the other hand, if you don't actually care about getting *the* optimal answer, there are a lot of good algorithms that will get you a reasonably efficient path without a lot of computational expense.
* For example, do you measure the distance between two Starbuck's outlets by linear distance? By distance taking major roads? By travel time? By some combination of travel time and cost? For example, you could cut travel time greatly by renting a helicopter, but it wouldn't be worth it.
Interesting. If you want to be truly unique, you've got six billion ways to do it wrong.
The world would be a much better place if we would get beyond the idea that famous == important. When we make that mistake, we start believing that grabbing headlines means we're doing something right.
I think it was Ronald Reagan who said, "It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit."
I'm not using Microsoft's absurd profit stream as an ethical justification for piracy. It was your assertion that piracy is destroying the software industry. I was simply providing a counterexample. It seems that rampant piracy hasn't been enough to destroy them.
Yes, piracy hurts companies. But not as much as they claim, because they assume a false decision-making process. They assume that a person sits down and says, "Given that I want to obtain Photoshop Elements, I have to decide whether to purchase it legally or download a copy off the 'net." If we assume this decision making process, then yes, every download could be associated with potential revenue.
But some people never wanted it enough to obtain a full-price copy. From an ethical standpoint, I've always agreed that pirating software is wrong, especially if you're using it frequently, or in a commercial context, or can afford to pay for it. But I think the only people who fully buy the BSA party line, where software piracy really is causing $29B a year loss, are dishonest or delusional.
The reason is this: If piracy suddenly became truly impossible (no downloading off of Kazaa, no borrowing disks from friends), would the software industry suddenly start raking in $29B more every year? No. I would be surprised if it were a tenth that. Instead, the industry would have to start giving away^W^Wproviding deep "educational discounts, restructuring their price systems for the international market, and dropping their prices to continue remaining competitive with free alternatives. If the software "resellers" in Vietnam ceased to exist, and there was no way to put a Windows operating system on a computer without forking over $149, the entire country would move to Linux overnight.
Your newspaper analogy is pure trollishness. It just doesn't fit. Where is the functional equivalent of "legally available online" for Windows XP? Taking your analogy back to the software world, the only thing I can think of is me saying, "Well, Software X is easy to download off the Internet," and using that as an excuse to run into Best Buy and dash off with a boxed copy.
Do you actually have evidence that a larger percentage of car-owning teens today had their cars bought by their parents? No. If you did, would you seriously ponder a counter-argument that said maybe teens today *need* cars more than a generation or two ago? No, of course not.
You haven't demonstrated any sort of moral or ethical slide into the ol' Abyss of Anarchy. The Internet appeared, and a large number of people started using it to commit copyright violations that were impossible ten years ago. But you sit there, griping about them darned, no-good kids these days, with no proof of your own generation's moral superiority beyond the fact that wayyyyyyy back in your day, nobody pirated nothing off the Internet.
Nobody pirated Warcraft II off the Internet because nobody could find Warcraft II on the Internet. It was 1994 for gawds sake. Maybe you wouldn't have grabbed a copy if it was available, but as far as long term cultural trends, that proves jack.
All those pirate copies of Windows XP must be killing Microsoft. Why, I've heard that the entire company is making less than a billion dollars a month.
How do evil software pirates sleep at night?
People have been predicting that piracy would destroy the software industry since at least the mid-eighties when I started reading about it. You know what? It doesn't matter. Some people will pay for it, some people won't pay for it, and some people will pay for it only to get screwed by bad copy control mechanisms. It's the way it's always been.
You also seem to think that most software developers make their living selling the sort of general purpose, widely used software that tends to get pirated. Operating systems, popular applications, games, etc. But a great deal of development is for customized applications and software which solve problems that only the people who wrote the software actually needed solved. Ergo, it's effectively unpirateable. If you have the control code for an assembly-line machine, and there are only twenty like it in the world, you could put it up on Kazaa, but who would download it?
You claim, without proof, that "shareware is dead." Perhaps it is. But given the cheapness of distribution via the Internet, it takes a lot of freeloaders to cancel out the relative handful of people who actually pay money. If you're insulted that 95% of people will use your software without so much as a thank you, it's not the way for you to go. But if you can take a more mature attitude, and say, "I'm making a fair amount, and I'm happy that people like my software," then you stand a shot.
Without further proof of the deadness of shareware (as a business model. It's undeniable that there are still tons of shareware apps out there), I see no reason to believe you on that point.
Last thing: Business models. You are indeed correct. Taking something that is cheaply and easily copied and trying to sell it for far more than replication cost is a business model. Then again, so is picking leaves off your front porch, stuffing them in a paper bag, scrawling "delicious salad" on it in magic marker, and selling it on the street. Love it or loathe it, the effortless duplication of information is a fact, and it is far more sensible for companies to look for new revenue streams than to whine about the unfairness of it all, or to buy legislation outlawing general purpose tools that might be used to infringe.
Small children and computers go together like water and... well, computers.
One of my instructors in a networking course had a five year old son (We'll call him Sammy, even though I don't know his real name). The instructor had been playing around with a Linux distro, and left the CD in the drive when he powered it down. The next person to boot up was Sammy. Something unfamiliar appears on the screen, and he asks his mom what to do. Mom, not paying attention, says, "Just click OK!"
Whoops.
The kid ended up installing a new OS and wiping out all my instructor's data.
I appreciate the evenhandedness of your solution, but I am curious about how it would materially affect a student who was "browsing porn in front of everyone". If the student knows that the URLs cannot be traced back to him, what's his motivation for policing himself? Just knowing that the surfing isn't entirely anonymous?
I'm not singling you out in particular, but it seems like nobody has actually read the lawsuit[temporary mirror]. The defendant claims that NAC has been bullying him into selling them his web hosting business, and has been unilaterally messing with his contract, copying his services, using his customer list to advertise the copied services, and engaging in a laundry list of other misdeeds.
So he found a new facility, but appears to be having difficulty migrating between IP addresses while still providing "uninterrupted service" for his customers. He claims--of course I have no way of verifying this--that the costs to NAC of allowing him to use the old IPs at the new location will amount to $500/month, and he's eager to reimburse them for that.
I don't think it's time to panic yet. If the plaintiff's claims are correct, then the technical issues of migrating 3000 customers to a new IP space are greater than we think, and the technical issues of rerouting this block of address space are lower than we think. So long as this doesn't lead to an actual judgment claiming that IP addresses need to be portable, I don't think it would have a major impact.
Still, I wish the guy had just sued for a truckload of damages and more time to make the migration a reality. But like the rest of us, I'm not familiar enough with the case to know what's going on.
Re:For me, Grafitti is to Art...
on
Reverse Graffiti
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· Score: 4, Insightful
And the most provocative art of all is created when a set of keys is your brush and a car door is the canvas.
Condemning graffiti isn't making an artistic judgment; it's standing up against the malicious defacement of public and private property.
I'm curious as to why you politely dismiss the applicant then trashing his chances at future employment at your company, and then unleash the beasts of the apocalypse upon the headhunter as well. I've known a few headhunters in my time, and even the ones that specialize in placing techies are pretty easy to deceive regarding qualifications. Then there are recruiters who are desperate for a commission and willingly shove any warm body in front of an interviewer.
I guess what I'm asking is, given that you don't know whether the blame should be on the applicant for lying to the recruiter about her qualifications, or the recruiter for lying to the applicant about her chances for getting the job, is it really fair to just bring the hammer down on both of them?
Regarding your practice of spreading the word throughout the company, you make it sound more effective than it probably is. First, many applicants are looking for a job in a certain area, not with a certain company. So it doesn't matter if your company has fifty people or fifty thousand, if your company only employs fifty people in that location. Second, your mentioning of the applicant to other managers is likely a far cry from a true company-wide ban. It all depends on how many other managers actually keep track of your list.
So from an applicant's perspective, you're not doing much to shut him out of a location because you're just one of many potential employers. Nor are you shutting him out of the company if getting employed there is his goal, because he can apply for positions in other locations. It might be an effective weapon against headhunters, though.
I don't begrudge you your attitude towards those who don't respect the value of your time, or who would apply for a job they know they're unqualified for. But if I were willing to lie my way into an interview, I don't think your warning would do much to dissuade me from the strategy.
You know, I'm as brassed about this legislation as the average slashdotter. But why do people insist on justifying actions by rephrasing them in such a way as to deny them any context?
If you installed a hidden camera in the women's shower at the gym, or in your neighbor's bedroom, calling it a mere "collector of photons" does nothing to mitigate the privacy intrusion you've caused.
"Recording light" could get you a mile high stack of journalism awards in one situation (breaking news), the death penalty in another (recording a screen where the design plans for a nuclear weapon are being projected).
In the same general spirit, armed robbery could be redefined as "a series of vocal utterances coupled with the moving of a piece of metal (gun) through a three-dimensional space," computer fraud redefined as "passing a string of high and low voltage signals to a network connection", and so on ad nauseum. But what good does it do?
Let's focus on the realities here:
1) Motion picture companies have a right to decide who may and may not copy and publish their works. That's what "copyright" means.
1.5) There are limits to what sort of actions are allowable in the name of protecting that right.
2) There are arguments both for and against the idea that these bootlegged videos are actually causing financial harm.
3) Our elected officials have created, and live within, a system which rewards legislators who cowtow to large financial interests, by giving them the money they need to maintain their positions of influence. This leads to lots of bad, shortsighted legislation.
Discuss.
Re:Not my area of expertise (legal or IP)
on
P2P Bits
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The goal of this attack on consumers^W^W^W law is to close the very loophole you describe. In the Sony vs. Betamax case, the Supremes ruled that a device was legal so long as it had "substantial non-infringing uses." This law would overrule that decision by saying that anyone who created a technology that "induced" people to copyright infringement should be held responsible for the infringement.
I worry about Senator Hatch. He just doesn't seem to give a rat about whether the laws he proposes are sane, or constitutional.
Remember that Slashdot article about how Linux was the most-breached OS on the net? I sure do. A Slashdot editor even modified the headline so it said "Linux Most Attacked OS On Net" instead of "Most Breached" so it didn't look as bad.
I bothered to look up the original story, and the article it linked to. The phrase "most attacked" appears in the first paragraph of the Globe and Mail story, so I don't know where you're getting this accusation that the editors were monkeying with the title to protect Linux. If anything, if I were an editor I would be thinking that "most breached" would generate more page hits because it sounded worse.
My impression is that the story was much ado about nothing. The statistics only reported the total number of break-ins, without mentioning what percentage of hosts were running which OSes. Nor did they give sufficient data about how they collect their statistics. The "British security company" in question sounds like a bunch of nobodies trying to get publicity. One comment on their statistics was especially interesting to me.
But hey, the report headline shuts up the Linux zealots, so you may as well quote it, right?
How can a Supreme Courd decision only apply to the state of Nevada?
No, what happened here was that the Supremes rejected a challenge to the Nevada law. But that not only supports similar laws in twenty other states, but gives the other thirty a green light to write their own.
Slashdot Mirror
You call it moral cowardice. I call it humility.
There is absolutely nothing forbidding me from expressing likes and dislikes for specific hobbies, interests, worldviews, etc., etc. Everyone has these preferences. But when you start elevating your own predilections into some sort of fundamental moral truth, by ascribing your own preferences to "The Will of God" or "Scientific Truth" or "The Will of the People" or whatever euphemism you prefer for turning preferences into fact, then you're not showing "moral courage." You're simply proving that you're human for having preferences, and egotistical enough to consider them binding on everyone else.
Given the barrage of nonsensical and contradictory moral absolutes that bombard us every day, irony sounds comparatively pleasant.
Please clarify what you mean by "lesser cities." Are we talking strictly objective metrics like population or total aggregation of wealth? If so, it's still a very Canadian-tweaking way of putting it, for which I applaud you.
Me, I live in Salt Lake. I'm momentarily carless. Mass transit seems to be working well enough. I don't know what the tango-dancing scene is like, but it's probably sufficient for most any hobbyist. The New Yorkian novelty known as the 'taxi cab' has become available here as well, if you're ever too drunk to operate a death machine of your own. We have some great symphonies and acting companies. I'm not sure I would be able to tell the difference between their performances and those of a "world class" place like New York (prettier buildings aside), but I'm positive my wallet could.
I'm curious about this tango dancing thing. Do you really tango nearly every night? Is there a really cool tango troupe based in NYC that you're a fan of? How much money would you say you spend on this hobby? Are you paying for the best instruction that New York can provide you? If you're really so dedicated to the art of the tango that nothing less than the New York scene can possibly satisfy you, that's cool. No, wait, it's that other thing. Bizarre. But to each their own.
You're not a moron, but I agree that you are a bit infatuated with NYC.
Question: Does anyone know how this affects Netscape 7.1, and whether the ***PATCH*** will work on it as well?
Initiating sarcasm sequence.... now!
Yeah, that's the great thing about Windows. When my mom calls up and complains that her printer isn't working, I can just tell her to pop the Windows CD in and click "Repair Windows." Viola! The printer is working again! Not to mention all the spyware has been removed, and it sends out signals to blow up all the zombie spam relays in the world, while solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As someone who is trying to drag my parents kicking and screaming into the 1990's, I feel fully qualified to make the following statement: Windows is not simple to install, simple to use, or simple to administer.
Indeed. Tis a crappy, crippled browser that refuses to connect to any website critical of it. It sits there, pretending to load, but I know deep down that it's snickering at me.
Curse you, Firefox. Curse you.
From the day I opened port 80 on my Linux box, I've been receiving exploit attempts from all over the net, every one targeted towards one IIS exploit or another. For me, my httpd logs are sufficient proof that Apache is significantly more secure.
Here's a detailed report of the Debian hack. Baddie logs in with a sniffed password, then elevates his privileges using a root exploit that was fixed within a week of discovery.
I've already had my say on the "Linux was the most breached OS" story. I'm too lazy to repeat myself.
Man, I did this for seventeen minutes. Now I'll never know the love of a woman.
Bastard!
I do hate chain stores as a matter of principle. The way I see it, any local business is going to keep more money within a community than a chain store that sends a certain amount of its profits back to headquarters. It eventually makes its way to the shareholders. Shareholders could be literally anybody, but on the average, they're way better off than all but a few of the people the money would have gone to if it had stayed in the community.
Not "nothing". Depends on his strategy.
Of course, there's no way to solve the TSP in a sane amount of time even for a relatively small graph. The problem is NP-complete. In this case, with points being added regularly and a messy definition of "distance"*, it's pretty much guaranteed that the answer is going to change faster than it can be computed.
On the other hand, if you don't actually care about getting *the* optimal answer, there are a lot of good algorithms that will get you a reasonably efficient path without a lot of computational expense.
* For example, do you measure the distance between two Starbuck's outlets by linear distance? By distance taking major roads? By travel time? By some combination of travel time and cost? For example, you could cut travel time greatly by renting a helicopter, but it wouldn't be worth it.
Interesting. If you want to be truly unique, you've got six billion ways to do it wrong.
The world would be a much better place if we would get beyond the idea that famous == important. When we make that mistake, we start believing that grabbing headlines means we're doing something right.
I think it was Ronald Reagan who said, "It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit."
I'm not using Microsoft's absurd profit stream as an ethical justification for piracy. It was your assertion that piracy is destroying the software industry. I was simply providing a counterexample. It seems that rampant piracy hasn't been enough to destroy them.
Yes, piracy hurts companies. But not as much as they claim, because they assume a false decision-making process. They assume that a person sits down and says, "Given that I want to obtain Photoshop Elements, I have to decide whether to purchase it legally or download a copy off the 'net." If we assume this decision making process, then yes, every download could be associated with potential revenue.
But some people never wanted it enough to obtain a full-price copy. From an ethical standpoint, I've always agreed that pirating software is wrong, especially if you're using it frequently, or in a commercial context, or can afford to pay for it. But I think the only people who fully buy the BSA party line, where software piracy really is causing $29B a year loss, are dishonest or delusional.
The reason is this: If piracy suddenly became truly impossible (no downloading off of Kazaa, no borrowing disks from friends), would the software industry suddenly start raking in $29B more every year? No. I would be surprised if it were a tenth that. Instead, the industry would have to start giving away^W^Wproviding deep "educational discounts, restructuring their price systems for the international market, and dropping their prices to continue remaining competitive with free alternatives. If the software "resellers" in Vietnam ceased to exist, and there was no way to put a Windows operating system on a computer without forking over $149, the entire country would move to Linux overnight.
Your newspaper analogy is pure trollishness. It just doesn't fit. Where is the functional equivalent of "legally available online" for Windows XP? Taking your analogy back to the software world, the only thing I can think of is me saying, "Well, Software X is easy to download off the Internet," and using that as an excuse to run into Best Buy and dash off with a boxed copy.
Okay, "nobody" is overly broad. Sorry. I meant that it was very difficult for average people to find it online.
Er, you wouldn't happen to have obtained an "evaluation copy" yourself? Naaaaaah.
Do you actually have evidence that a larger percentage of car-owning teens today had their cars bought by their parents? No. If you did, would you seriously ponder a counter-argument that said maybe teens today *need* cars more than a generation or two ago? No, of course not.
You haven't demonstrated any sort of moral or ethical slide into the ol' Abyss of Anarchy. The Internet appeared, and a large number of people started using it to commit copyright violations that were impossible ten years ago. But you sit there, griping about them darned, no-good kids these days, with no proof of your own generation's moral superiority beyond the fact that wayyyyyyy back in your day, nobody pirated nothing off the Internet.
Nobody pirated Warcraft II off the Internet because nobody could find Warcraft II on the Internet. It was 1994 for gawds sake. Maybe you wouldn't have grabbed a copy if it was available, but as far as long term cultural trends, that proves jack.
All those pirate copies of Windows XP must be killing Microsoft. Why, I've heard that the entire company is making less than a billion dollars a month.
How do evil software pirates sleep at night?
People have been predicting that piracy would destroy the software industry since at least the mid-eighties when I started reading about it. You know what? It doesn't matter. Some people will pay for it, some people won't pay for it, and some people will pay for it only to get screwed by bad copy control mechanisms. It's the way it's always been.
You also seem to think that most software developers make their living selling the sort of general purpose, widely used software that tends to get pirated. Operating systems, popular applications, games, etc. But a great deal of development is for customized applications and software which solve problems that only the people who wrote the software actually needed solved. Ergo, it's effectively unpirateable. If you have the control code for an assembly-line machine, and there are only twenty like it in the world, you could put it up on Kazaa, but who would download it?
You claim, without proof, that "shareware is dead." Perhaps it is. But given the cheapness of distribution via the Internet, it takes a lot of freeloaders to cancel out the relative handful of people who actually pay money. If you're insulted that 95% of people will use your software without so much as a thank you, it's not the way for you to go. But if you can take a more mature attitude, and say, "I'm making a fair amount, and I'm happy that people like my software," then you stand a shot.
Without further proof of the deadness of shareware (as a business model. It's undeniable that there are still tons of shareware apps out there), I see no reason to believe you on that point.
Last thing: Business models. You are indeed correct. Taking something that is cheaply and easily copied and trying to sell it for far more than replication cost is a business model. Then again, so is picking leaves off your front porch, stuffing them in a paper bag, scrawling "delicious salad" on it in magic marker, and selling it on the street. Love it or loathe it, the effortless duplication of information is a fact, and it is far more sensible for companies to look for new revenue streams than to whine about the unfairness of it all, or to buy legislation outlawing general purpose tools that might be used to infringe.
Small children and computers go together like water and... well, computers.
One of my instructors in a networking course had a five year old son (We'll call him Sammy, even though I don't know his real name). The instructor had been playing around with a Linux distro, and left the CD in the drive when he powered it down. The next person to boot up was Sammy. Something unfamiliar appears on the screen, and he asks his mom what to do. Mom, not paying attention, says, "Just click OK!"
Whoops.
The kid ended up installing a new OS and wiping out all my instructor's data.
I appreciate the evenhandedness of your solution, but I am curious about how it would materially affect a student who was "browsing porn in front of everyone". If the student knows that the URLs cannot be traced back to him, what's his motivation for policing himself? Just knowing that the surfing isn't entirely anonymous?
Thank you for this wonderful opportunity, and a big shoutout to the editors for all their hard work! Now give me my money, dammit!
I'm not singling you out in particular, but it seems like nobody has actually read the lawsuit[temporary mirror]. The defendant claims that NAC has been bullying him into selling them his web hosting business, and has been unilaterally messing with his contract, copying his services, using his customer list to advertise the copied services, and engaging in a laundry list of other misdeeds.
So he found a new facility, but appears to be having difficulty migrating between IP addresses while still providing "uninterrupted service" for his customers. He claims--of course I have no way of verifying this--that the costs to NAC of allowing him to use the old IPs at the new location will amount to $500/month, and he's eager to reimburse them for that.
I don't think it's time to panic yet. If the plaintiff's claims are correct, then the technical issues of migrating 3000 customers to a new IP space are greater than we think, and the technical issues of rerouting this block of address space are lower than we think. So long as this doesn't lead to an actual judgment claiming that IP addresses need to be portable, I don't think it would have a major impact.
Still, I wish the guy had just sued for a truckload of damages and more time to make the migration a reality. But like the rest of us, I'm not familiar enough with the case to know what's going on.
And the most provocative art of all is created when a set of keys is your brush and a car door is the canvas.
Condemning graffiti isn't making an artistic judgment; it's standing up against the malicious defacement of public and private property.
I'm curious as to why you politely dismiss the applicant then trashing his chances at future employment at your company, and then unleash the beasts of the apocalypse upon the headhunter as well. I've known a few headhunters in my time, and even the ones that specialize in placing techies are pretty easy to deceive regarding qualifications. Then there are recruiters who are desperate for a commission and willingly shove any warm body in front of an interviewer.
I guess what I'm asking is, given that you don't know whether the blame should be on the applicant for lying to the recruiter about her qualifications, or the recruiter for lying to the applicant about her chances for getting the job, is it really fair to just bring the hammer down on both of them?
Regarding your practice of spreading the word throughout the company, you make it sound more effective than it probably is. First, many applicants are looking for a job in a certain area, not with a certain company. So it doesn't matter if your company has fifty people or fifty thousand, if your company only employs fifty people in that location. Second, your mentioning of the applicant to other managers is likely a far cry from a true company-wide ban. It all depends on how many other managers actually keep track of your list.
So from an applicant's perspective, you're not doing much to shut him out of a location because you're just one of many potential employers. Nor are you shutting him out of the company if getting employed there is his goal, because he can apply for positions in other locations. It might be an effective weapon against headhunters, though.
I don't begrudge you your attitude towards those who don't respect the value of your time, or who would apply for a job they know they're unqualified for. But if I were willing to lie my way into an interview, I don't think your warning would do much to dissuade me from the strategy.
You know, I'm as brassed about this legislation as the average slashdotter. But why do people insist on justifying actions by rephrasing them in such a way as to deny them any context?
If you installed a hidden camera in the women's shower at the gym, or in your neighbor's bedroom, calling it a mere "collector of photons" does nothing to mitigate the privacy intrusion you've caused.
"Recording light" could get you a mile high stack of journalism awards in one situation (breaking news), the death penalty in another (recording a screen where the design plans for a nuclear weapon are being projected).
In the same general spirit, armed robbery could be redefined as "a series of vocal utterances coupled with the moving of a piece of metal (gun) through a three-dimensional space," computer fraud redefined as "passing a string of high and low voltage signals to a network connection", and so on ad nauseum. But what good does it do?
Let's focus on the realities here:
1) Motion picture companies have a right to decide who may and may not copy and publish their works. That's what "copyright" means.
1.5) There are limits to what sort of actions are allowable in the name of protecting that right.
2) There are arguments both for and against the idea that these bootlegged videos are actually causing financial harm.
3) Our elected officials have created, and live within, a system which rewards legislators who cowtow to large financial interests, by giving them the money they need to maintain their positions of influence. This leads to lots of bad, shortsighted legislation.
Discuss.
The goal of this attack on consumers^W^W^W law is to close the very loophole you describe. In the Sony vs. Betamax case, the Supremes ruled that a device was legal so long as it had "substantial non-infringing uses." This law would overrule that decision by saying that anyone who created a technology that "induced" people to copyright infringement should be held responsible for the infringement.
I worry about Senator Hatch. He just doesn't seem to give a rat about whether the laws he proposes are sane, or constitutional.
My impression is that the story was much ado about nothing. The statistics only reported the total number of break-ins, without mentioning what percentage of hosts were running which OSes. Nor did they give sufficient data about how they collect their statistics. The "British security company" in question sounds like a bunch of nobodies trying to get publicity. One comment on their statistics was especially interesting to me.
But hey, the report headline shuts up the Linux zealots, so you may as well quote it, right?
How can a Supreme Courd decision only apply to the state of Nevada?
No, what happened here was that the Supremes rejected a challenge to the Nevada law. But that not only supports similar laws in twenty other states, but gives the other thirty a green light to write their own.