Warren Buffett is a shrewd investor precisely because he knows the total impact of an economic policy-- not just on the monetary end, but the effects on a business over the long term. If he were the Fed chief, he would put Bernanke, let alone "let's let the rich get richer-- er, let the market work" Greenspan, to shame.
I know you're trolling, but in the off chance that this really happened:
portableapps.com
Download a package for her and her only, and she'll never have to see your history/bookmarks/etc. again. The only thing that might mess it up is the automated update feature (which doubtless you can turn off for her).
Of course, this is also your opportunity to strengthen your alleged relationship so you can get lucky with something other than your right hand.
It's hard to analyze political positions when you only consider "left/liberal" and "right/conservative". Stalin is generally considered to be far on the left, but so is Gandhi. The difference between them is Stalin would rule with an iron fist, while Gandhi would decidedly be more libertarian in a social sense.
The current (and hopefully fading) so-called "neoconservative" regime would try to pass themselves off as right-wing libertarians-- highly capitalistic and small-government. In reality:
U.S.neo-conservatives, with their commitment to high military spending and the global assertion of national values, tend to be more authoritarian than hard right. By contrast, neo-liberals, opposed to such moral leadership and, more especially, the ensuing demands on the tax payer, belong to a further right but less authoritarian region. Paradoxically, the "free market", in neo-con parlance, also allows for the large-scale subsidy of the military-industrial complex, a considerable degree of corporate welfare, and protectionism when deemed in the national interest. These are viewed by neo-libs as impediments to the unfettered market forces that they champion.
Ashcroft, for all of his prudish image, should never have resigned. He and Powell were probably the only big figures in the administration who had the respect for the Constitution that is essential to the well-being of the executive branch.
The first big mistake Bush made was hiring Karl Rove. The second was listening to him and bringing Dick Cheney on board. Once a "kitchen sink" political mastermind came together with a man itching for an imperial presidency since Nixon, there was no hope of anything but an Emperor instead of a President.
Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me with a straight face that President Clinton's administration didn't weed out conservatives from executive branch jobs?
Here's the easy counterexample (yes, we can say it's illegal until we're blue in the face, but fat lot of good it's done us for this administration): Clinton ultimately couldn't stop his DoJ from allowing the investigation on him to continue, because his DoJ was neutral and committed to the rule of law. If Janet Reno was a Clinton loyalist the way Alberto Gonzales was (and, disgustingly, still is) a Bush loyalist, she would've barred Kenneth Starr at every opportunity.
The only reason why there's no Independent Counsel on the Bush administration is because Congress is full of unpatriotic* cowards, and is complicit with the excesses and flagrant disregard for the law that the administration is now famous for.
* Where "patriotic" is in the Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, et al. sense, NOT the self-serving warmongery of the current self-styled "patriots".
He was reckless and stupid, yes, but that does not excuse the bullies in the US military for trying to imprison him for the rest of his life for their own incompetence. Furthermore, "blaming the victim" as you have done has the effect of forcing the victim to shoulder the entirety of responsibility.
This is nothing more than a bunch of arrogant old men trying to compensate for a bruised ego.
It's cases like these that obviate the need for a nonprofit that funds unpatentable drug therapy research (Yo, Gates! I'm lookin' at you!), or the need to eliminate drug patents altogether. Surely, there's another way to make millions off of medications without denying those who most need them.
The intent, if I read the site correctly, is a simple regimen to (re)introduce fitness training principles into one's life, and to build confidence. After struggling to lift water bottles at my office, I figured this would be a good way to start.
Emphasis on start, as neither I nor the site will claim that this will turn you into Conan-era Schwarzenegger, or Richard Simmons.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer; Mr. Beckerman is a fine lawyer with principles and courage.)
After reading the article, some observations about the content companies' counsel:
1. Misjoinder and other violations of procedure/precedent: Counsel has taken one cue too many from the Bush White House, and has decided to simply ignore anyone telling them to cease and desist from behaving badly. Contempt of court and other sanctions may apply, but due to the fast file-and-drop nature of the John Doe suits, they are rarely, if ever, exercised, reinforcing the end-run behavior of counsel and plaintiffs.
2. Counsel is consistent in its strategy of playing dirty, as evidenced by the aforementioned disregard of orders and procedures, filing in federal jurisdictions less "friendly" to the defendants, filing multiple times against the same defendant, using evidence that is at best disingenuous, stacking the deck in its favor in discovery, etc., etc.
3. Counsel bases ex parte discovery on two fallacious claims: that the evidence can only be brought forth in such a discovery, and that plaintiffs would suffer "irreparable harm" if ex parte discovery is denied. Counsel fails to both reasonably support either claim or show that this "irreparable harm" is in fact the inflated loss figures* concocted by the plaintiffs' marketing/finance/legal departments.
4. Counsel expunges its conscience and common sense, believing the plaintiffs' claims that there is no such thing as a legal download of copyrighted content, and that anyone even remotely implicated by its driftnet investigation should be pursued to the depths of poverty and hardship. Should they be brought before the bar association for misconduct, I believe they will invariably invoke the Nuremberg defense (if not the Chewbacca defense) for their zealous representation of their plaintiffs.
* They claim: 'Unauthorized' digital copy = lost sale = lost revenue. This is the basis for every ridiculous claim by the plaintiffs, e.g. "ripping a CD = unauthorized", because if you made a copy, it must be for some insidious purpose. IMO, Every MBA who insists that these are true does not deserve their degrees.
Here's hoping that enough district judges will gain enough wisdom to stop the MPAA from using these same tricks in its own litigation campaign.
"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
Thomas Paine, First Principles of Government, 1795
Let me guess: Your company's PHB management (and yes, taking away all Post-its, issuing a "naughty, naughty" warning, and offering no viable alternative is classic PHB behavior) decided to implement ISO 27001 in the strictest way possible, so they could boast to investors and customers that they care about information security. And the CEO is somehow the Information System Manager, even though he has the technical experience equivalent of a squid.
And since I can't make hyperlinks correctly on slashdot, I'll try again: thallium.
Nasty stuff, as its compounds are very easily absorbed through potassium uptake pathways in your body, but behave very, very differently from potassium. I seem to remember a chemist friend telling me that if you deal with thallium, you practically need an entirely separate lab for it.
If the customer is a company, the time to find out when they want the problem fixed is when you draw up the support contract. That way, even if the IT manager for the customer changes and tries to file a claim based on what he 'incorrectly' believes is appropriate timing for the fix, you bring out the contract and say, "Look, this is what we and your company decided. If you want to change it, you'll have to renegotiate." And if he's still mad? Well, tough cookies for him, because he generally isn't be able to decide company policy by himself.
If the customer is an individual, you'd want to fix it ASAP by default, and let them know before you start what you're going to attempt to fix.
Since your second-to-last paragraph touched some nerves, I'll add my $.02 to the pot:
Anyone who says "because it would cost money" is a moron.
Nice. Dismiss all of your critics with a preemptive ad hominem attack. Last time I heard someone use this tactic, he was making a stump speech (sans podium) as the Republican nominee for US President.
All of these formats have free implementations -- in fact, as far as I know, all of them have free, patent-free, royalty-free, and MIT license at worst, which means if iTunes is at all pluggable, it should take one engineer maybe two hours to add support for them, if that.
This dismisses as infinitesimal the time and resources spent in the hypothetical scenario where Apple accedes to your wishes and implements Vorbis, Theora, and FLAC. Later posts reveal that you think that your company's product development process is somehow superior to Apple's, even though your knowledge of Apple's process is no better than most of Slashdot-- that is, educated guesses. Where you work, your liability may be nil because you have the liberty to tell your customers "if it breaks, it ain't our fault". Apple might not be able to do that, because of licensing contracts, agreements, and other legally-binding things. Yes, it's not how your ideal world works, but that's reality; the business world is a very dirty place, and complaining that it should be clean doesn't make it so.
If you're suggesting a replacement of commercial codecs for open ones, then that's a non sequitur. SteveM wasn't asking how it would benefit Apple to replace commercial codecs with open codecs, he was asking how it would benefit Apple to add-in and support open codecs on the iPod and iPhone.
And, just so you know, changing one line in Firefox for Linux and committing it to SVN does not make you a software engineer, nor does it make you a developer for a company with the size and secrecy of Apple. If anything, your insistence that there are no real barriers for Apple to implement open codecs indicates that you are a coder with a severe case of WFM (Works For Me) syndrome.
I remember that story. After corporate asshattery of that magnitude, I was surprised she didn't channel scream flicks of the '80s and used a chainsaw or axe. A hammer means she's mad as hell, a heavier tool means you don't fuck with Grandma Mona.
Perhaps they had agreement/contract terms attached to the tickets that they didn't want to bind themselves with?
Well, more likely, they didn't want to give the guy an effective 'refund' for potential counterfeits, and blacklist him from MPAA events forever. Of course, this sounds even more stupid than the complaint they raised.
"Your Honor, we didn't want to give the guy any money, that's why we're suing him instead-- he needs to be punished for daring to think that his tickets were protected under First Sale!"
You'd have to find people who are parents and have attempted suicide, but were brought closer to the mind of the living. I'm guessing that reason no longer functions when facing the prospect of destroying yourself, so perhaps all bets are off when other people are in the room, particularly those who have close connections to the parent. Although many man-hours and piles of money were spent researching the mindset of a killer, I would hazard a guess that if we really understood what goes through their mind, or what motivates them to take someone's life, we could reform murderers or prevent people from being killed. But that's probably naive of me; knowing what happens in the mind is one thing, trying to get it to do something differently is another thing altogether.
Slashdot Mirror
Warren Buffett is a shrewd investor precisely because he knows the total impact of an economic policy-- not just on the monetary end, but the effects on a business over the long term. If he were the Fed chief, he would put Bernanke, let alone "let's let the rich get richer-- er, let the market work" Greenspan, to shame.
Is that a rhetorical question?
I know you're trolling, but in the off chance that this really happened:
portableapps.com
Download a package for her and her only, and she'll never have to see your history/bookmarks/etc. again. The only thing that might mess it up is the automated update feature (which doubtless you can turn off for her).
Of course, this is also your opportunity to strengthen your alleged relationship so you can get lucky with something other than your right hand.
And bring your Nerf bats for the inevitable (and hopefully friendly) beating Rik's about to endure!
If you brute-force a translation, "Foolishness and wisdom". Or "Let's fool them all."
But more likely, a national park.
Someone's using a laptop with only one Ctrl key. If you had a full keyboard, you could manage Ctrl-PgUp/Dn unless your hands were hooves.
It's hard to analyze political positions when you only consider "left/liberal" and "right/conservative". Stalin is generally considered to be far on the left, but so is Gandhi. The difference between them is Stalin would rule with an iron fist, while Gandhi would decidedly be more libertarian in a social sense.
The current (and hopefully fading) so-called "neoconservative" regime would try to pass themselves off as right-wing libertarians-- highly capitalistic and small-government. In reality:
Here is a link to a political compass.
Ashcroft, for all of his prudish image, should never have resigned. He and Powell were probably the only big figures in the administration who had the respect for the Constitution that is essential to the well-being of the executive branch.
The first big mistake Bush made was hiring Karl Rove. The second was listening to him and bringing Dick Cheney on board. Once a "kitchen sink" political mastermind came together with a man itching for an imperial presidency since Nixon, there was no hope of anything but an Emperor instead of a President.
Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me with a straight face that President Clinton's administration didn't weed out conservatives from executive branch jobs?
Here's the easy counterexample (yes, we can say it's illegal until we're blue in the face, but fat lot of good it's done us for this administration): Clinton ultimately couldn't stop his DoJ from allowing the investigation on him to continue, because his DoJ was neutral and committed to the rule of law. If Janet Reno was a Clinton loyalist the way Alberto Gonzales was (and, disgustingly, still is) a Bush loyalist, she would've barred Kenneth Starr at every opportunity.
The only reason why there's no Independent Counsel on the Bush administration is because Congress is full of unpatriotic* cowards, and is complicit with the excesses and flagrant disregard for the law that the administration is now famous for.
* Where "patriotic" is in the Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, et al. sense, NOT the self-serving warmongery of the current self-styled "patriots".
He was reckless and stupid, yes, but that does not excuse the bullies in the US military for trying to imprison him for the rest of his life for their own incompetence. Furthermore, "blaming the victim" as you have done has the effect of forcing the victim to shoulder the entirety of responsibility.
This is nothing more than a bunch of arrogant old men trying to compensate for a bruised ego.
I think I realize how The Onion gets their material. They publish local news from Britain in the US and national news from the US in Britain.
It's cases like these that obviate the need for a nonprofit that funds unpatentable drug therapy research (Yo, Gates! I'm lookin' at you!), or the need to eliminate drug patents altogether. Surely, there's another way to make millions off of medications without denying those who most need them.
Good suggestions from the comments, and I'll add one that I'm trying as a start:
A Hundred Push-ups
The intent, if I read the site correctly, is a simple regimen to (re)introduce fitness training principles into one's life, and to build confidence. After struggling to lift water bottles at my office, I figured this would be a good way to start.
Emphasis on start, as neither I nor the site will claim that this will turn you into Conan-era Schwarzenegger, or Richard Simmons.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer; Mr. Beckerman is a fine lawyer with principles and courage.)
After reading the article, some observations about the content companies' counsel:
1. Misjoinder and other violations of procedure/precedent: Counsel has taken one cue too many from the Bush White House, and has decided to simply ignore anyone telling them to cease and desist from behaving badly. Contempt of court and other sanctions may apply, but due to the fast file-and-drop nature of the John Doe suits, they are rarely, if ever, exercised, reinforcing the end-run behavior of counsel and plaintiffs.
2. Counsel is consistent in its strategy of playing dirty, as evidenced by the aforementioned disregard of orders and procedures, filing in federal jurisdictions less "friendly" to the defendants, filing multiple times against the same defendant, using evidence that is at best disingenuous, stacking the deck in its favor in discovery, etc., etc.
3. Counsel bases ex parte discovery on two fallacious claims: that the evidence can only be brought forth in such a discovery, and that plaintiffs would suffer "irreparable harm" if ex parte discovery is denied. Counsel fails to both reasonably support either claim or show that this "irreparable harm" is in fact the inflated loss figures* concocted by the plaintiffs' marketing/finance/legal departments.
4. Counsel expunges its conscience and common sense, believing the plaintiffs' claims that there is no such thing as a legal download of copyrighted content, and that anyone even remotely implicated by its driftnet investigation should be pursued to the depths of poverty and hardship. Should they be brought before the bar association for misconduct, I believe they will invariably invoke the Nuremberg defense (if not the Chewbacca defense) for their zealous representation of their plaintiffs.
* They claim: 'Unauthorized' digital copy = lost sale = lost revenue. This is the basis for every ridiculous claim by the plaintiffs, e.g. "ripping a CD = unauthorized", because if you made a copy, it must be for some insidious purpose. IMO, Every MBA who insists that these are true does not deserve their degrees.
Here's hoping that enough district judges will gain enough wisdom to stop the MPAA from using these same tricks in its own litigation campaign.
"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
Thomas Paine, First Principles of Government, 1795
"... a soul-less piece of shit that cares not a jot about destroying a family's livelihood..."
Here in America, we have this odd predilection of calling this guy "successful". Sad, but true.
Let me guess: Your company's PHB management (and yes, taking away all Post-its, issuing a "naughty, naughty" warning, and offering no viable alternative is classic PHB behavior) decided to implement ISO 27001 in the strictest way possible, so they could boast to investors and customers that they care about information security. And the CEO is somehow the Information System Manager, even though he has the technical experience equivalent of a squid.
And since I can't make hyperlinks correctly on slashdot, I'll try again: thallium.
Nasty stuff, as its compounds are very easily absorbed through potassium uptake pathways in your body, but behave very, very differently from potassium. I seem to remember a chemist friend telling me that if you deal with thallium, you practically need an entirely separate lab for it.
The new material contains thallium. Greenpeace will have a field day with this one.
If the customer is a company, the time to find out when they want the problem fixed is when you draw up the support contract. That way, even if the IT manager for the customer changes and tries to file a claim based on what he 'incorrectly' believes is appropriate timing for the fix, you bring out the contract and say, "Look, this is what we and your company decided. If you want to change it, you'll have to renegotiate." And if he's still mad? Well, tough cookies for him, because he generally isn't be able to decide company policy by himself.
If the customer is an individual, you'd want to fix it ASAP by default, and let them know before you start what you're going to attempt to fix.
Since your second-to-last paragraph touched some nerves, I'll add my $.02 to the pot:
Nice. Dismiss all of your critics with a preemptive ad hominem attack. Last time I heard someone use this tactic, he was making a stump speech (sans podium) as the Republican nominee for US President.
This dismisses as infinitesimal the time and resources spent in the hypothetical scenario where Apple accedes to your wishes and implements Vorbis, Theora, and FLAC. Later posts reveal that you think that your company's product development process is somehow superior to Apple's, even though your knowledge of Apple's process is no better than most of Slashdot-- that is, educated guesses. Where you work, your liability may be nil because you have the liberty to tell your customers "if it breaks, it ain't our fault". Apple might not be able to do that, because of licensing contracts, agreements, and other legally-binding things. Yes, it's not how your ideal world works, but that's reality; the business world is a very dirty place, and complaining that it should be clean doesn't make it so.
If you're suggesting a replacement of commercial codecs for open ones, then that's a non sequitur. SteveM wasn't asking how it would benefit Apple to replace commercial codecs with open codecs, he was asking how it would benefit Apple to add-in and support open codecs on the iPod and iPhone.
And, just so you know, changing one line in Firefox for Linux and committing it to SVN does not make you a software engineer, nor does it make you a developer for a company with the size and secrecy of Apple. If anything, your insistence that there are no real barriers for Apple to implement open codecs indicates that you are a coder with a severe case of WFM (Works For Me) syndrome.
I remember that story. After corporate asshattery of that magnitude, I was surprised she didn't channel scream flicks of the '80s and used a chainsaw or axe. A hammer means she's mad as hell, a heavier tool means you don't fuck with Grandma Mona.
Perhaps they had agreement/contract terms attached to the tickets that they didn't want to bind themselves with?
Well, more likely, they didn't want to give the guy an effective 'refund' for potential counterfeits, and blacklist him from MPAA events forever. Of course, this sounds even more stupid than the complaint they raised.
"Your Honor, we didn't want to give the guy any money, that's why we're suing him instead-- he needs to be punished for daring to think that his tickets were protected under First Sale!"
You'd have to find people who are parents and have attempted suicide, but were brought closer to the mind of the living. I'm guessing that reason no longer functions when facing the prospect of destroying yourself, so perhaps all bets are off when other people are in the room, particularly those who have close connections to the parent. Although many man-hours and piles of money were spent researching the mindset of a killer, I would hazard a guess that if we really understood what goes through their mind, or what motivates them to take someone's life, we could reform murderers or prevent people from being killed. But that's probably naive of me; knowing what happens in the mind is one thing, trying to get it to do something differently is another thing altogether.