I would sooner spend my life in prison than type those entire phrases every time I turned on my computer.
Though that's another story - worrying about the government accessing my computer is for conspiracy theorists; I am fine with securing it from someone stealing my computer, which makes the whole "demand keys" argument irrelevant.
Fruit is a biological term, vegetable is a culinary term. Tomatoes can be both, why does everyone have such a hard time with this?
(ketchup, on the other hand... is awesomeness but yes, Congress is completely bought and sold by all lobbies, including the processed food and frozen pizza lobbies)
By "shut your borders" you are implying a nation would be the one delivering it... if so, there are a lot worse weapons in the arsenals of the top militaries than smallpox. Any attack of this sort (or, really any attack with a chemical, biological or nuclear WMD) is going to be done not by a military, but terrorists who just want to spread fear and aren't all conveniently located in one location that could subsequently be wiped off the planet by the victim...
What? Most US public elementary schools have recess, and all US public schools are required to have physical education.
Imagine high school PE without any "balls" allowed (soccer, softball, football, basketball, etc). And of course, that must imply getting rid of any other "dangerous" sports, so there goes all of the gymnastics equipment, floor hockey (the plastic puck might be ok, but letting kids carry 5' long sticks? The horror!), wrestling mats (it's like publicly sanctioned ultimate fighting!), and for those wealthier schools, water polo or swimming (better not teach kids how to swim, someone could drown!)
So it will basically become a bunch of kids running around a track, or on rainy/snowy days standing in a gym doing jumping jacks. On the bright side, it makes me glad I'm old, and not growing up in today's nanny state.
Actually, it's not really the same climate... just similar latitude. A lot of Mongolia is in the Gobi desert, so the temperature variation is more like -40 to 40+ (and commonly hits those extremes rather than being a rare event).
No. People say "pass a law prohibiting X" instead of "arrest people for X". It's a way to deceive yourself and others about what you're proposing.
Are you actually arguing we shouldn't pass any laws that might punish people!?
I would prefer people not be arrested or taxed or fined for making normal business decisions. I don't think it's a straw man. We arrest people all the time. There's a woman facing prison time in Washington state right now for importing lobsters in clear plastic rather than cardboard cartons. She's already been arrested and convicted for violating the Lacey Act. She is not a straw man.
Ironically, with her you have in fact created another straw man, as well as the fallacy of overgeneralization - "all trade laws are bad because I found one example that is bad".
Ok. But now you're arguing against doing "something" because not doing "something" is "justified".
What? I was arguing *for* doing something because it's justified. Not sure how you interpreted my statement as the opposite of what I really said.
And if they don't pay, arrest them, right?
If someone owes taxes and flat out refuses to pay, yes, they might be arrested. That's not a new concept, it's a basic tenet of pretty much all forms of government for as long as the concept has existed, from monarchies to democracies going back beyond the ancient Greeks.
And if I find a way to get around these duties and buy stuff for the real price rather than the government protection racket price, arrest me too, right?
If you knowingly broke a law doing it and that was the established punishment, sure. I agree there are a lot of stupid laws out there, but the solution is to fight to change them, not ignore them. If everyone were able to decide which laws they felt like following, what's the point of a legal system? That's called anarchy.
Because the alternative is not bailing out companies and not spending money we don't have on things everyone else in the world has already decided they can't afford.
Well, there's a point I agree with you on! Or at the very least the taxpayers should now own significant shares in some of the largest banks in the US - and getting income from *investing* in those once again hugely profitable banks rather than whatever meager taxes they haven't figured out how to avoid paying. And now we have come back to my original argument. Glad you agree with me;)
No one even remotely suggested "arresting" people over business decisions. I don't see why you would start your argument with such an absurd straw man.
- Stop giving companies a huge tax incentive to invest outside the US.
Which was exactly the kind of thing he was suggesting (though I'm not sure how "no one gets taxed" comes out of "stop giving tax breaks"). Anyway, I'm confused - you seem to agree with him that something needs to be done, why all of the hostility?
But anyway - taxes/duties/etc are not only a reasonable solution (to an extent) but they are actually justified. US corporations get a huge benefit from being US corporations in terms of US government military, economic, trade, and foreign policies, not to mention infrastructure, education, and other government expenses. Pretty sure the US government wouldn't have bailed out Toyota or Deutsche Bank if they had threatened bankruptcy.
If companies want these benefits, they should be paying for them with some of the profits they make because of them. If they want to keep their investments and profits overseas to avoid their responsibilities, they should be forced by penalties/duties/taxes to bring their fair share back into the US economy or move to another country (and quickly see what they were taking for granted).
Yeah, I read TFA as well - those employees both took a deal and got less than they were originally offered, which is what Zynga wanted anyway. IMO the ideal situation would be the employees refusing a settlement and saying "thanks, I now have this in writing and will ignore it - go ahead and fire me since you have given me proof you fired me for illegal cause, and I should be able to recoup all of the potential earnings you prevented me from getting."
Then again, as much as a sleazy douchebag as the Zynga CEO is, it sounds like he did focus on employees who were not earning their keep. They probably realized they were still getting way more than they had originally expected and decided to take the bird in the hand...
Seriously. Apple = #1 market cap in the world. Apple #1, Exxon #2. $350B+ and growing.
People can complain all they want about Apple's policies, UI, features, etc, in regards to their personal opinions or tastes (and I agree with many of those complaints, actually). But claiming they don't understand their customer is absolutely absurd. They build what people *want*, and they do that better than any corporation ever has in the history of corporations. It doesn't matter if it's engineering or marketing that gets that done, in the end. Though clearly in their case it's a (very effective) combination of the two...
Since the only thing Apple has done that has been successfully predicted over the last decade is make money hand over fist, I I think they are doing just fine. Much better than most militaries these days.
Yeah, that part is almost more amazing than the pure sleaziness - that they somehow think stealing shares granted to current employees will somehow help attract new ones...
No, you don't have the shares. That's what is especially sleazy about it (we can now name this "Zynga-sleazy"). They were asking for unvested shares back, not vested shares (there is nothing they can possibly do about vested shares). Once you leave the company (whether you quit or are fired), your shares stop vesting.
IANAL, but I have taken a class in the laws of hiring and management. Your point is exactly what the class teaches - CA (where Zynga is located) is an at will state, which means you can leave employment or be fired for no reason at all. The problem comes in when a company gives a reason, and that reason is not VERY solidly justified.
Firing an employee for being unproductive (with some documentation to prove it) is usually ok. Firing an employee for not returning stock contractually provided to them (even if you later claim the real reason was lack of productivity) is pretty much a guaranteed wrongful termination lawsuit, with VERY good chance of success...
Exactly! Why would one of the most profitable companies in the world want to change their insanely successful strategy and go low end to compete with a loss leader?
The reason Roku & AppleTV are so cheap is that they don't have a display, lithium battery, or enough flash to store content. You want high res display, capacitive touch screen, storage, and portability, you are not going to pay $200 any time soon.
Even the Kindle Fire is a loss leader. It will never be as flexible as an iPad because that way Amazon would never make their money back.
Another issue: I'd encrypt the data from the network source or XOR it with a pseudo RNG, because otherwise you might be leaking sensitive data through your "random" numbers.
I bet everyone was wondering why all of his music sounded like bad Internet porn videos lately...
/dev/random on most OS'ed these days uses an entropy pool generated from a bunch of different sources - timing of keystrokes, mouse movements, disk seeking - and yes, network information. Then it uses cryptographic hashes on those.
Your implementation basically uses one of those entropy sources, and then doesn't even hash it...
It just goes to show you what open source methodologies get you so often... a well engineered product for a fraction of the price of competitors that has no clue how to market it to the customer so no one will ever use it. Sigh. I know everyone hates marketing and sales but they do in fact serve a purpose...
Slashdot Mirror
I would sooner spend my life in prison than type those entire phrases every time I turned on my computer.
Though that's another story - worrying about the government accessing my computer is for conspiracy theorists; I am fine with securing it from someone stealing my computer, which makes the whole "demand keys" argument irrelevant.
Fruit is a biological term, vegetable is a culinary term. Tomatoes can be both, why does everyone have such a hard time with this?
(ketchup, on the other hand... is awesomeness but yes, Congress is completely bought and sold by all lobbies, including the processed food and frozen pizza lobbies)
Damn, second post and you already beat me to it! So then, to provide something useful to the thread, I give you:
THE THIRST MUTILATOR!
By "shut your borders" you are implying a nation would be the one delivering it... if so, there are a lot worse weapons in the arsenals of the top militaries than smallpox. Any attack of this sort (or, really any attack with a chemical, biological or nuclear WMD) is going to be done not by a military, but terrorists who just want to spread fear and aren't all conveniently located in one location that could subsequently be wiped off the planet by the victim...
What? Most US public elementary schools have recess, and all US public schools are required to have physical education.
Imagine high school PE without any "balls" allowed (soccer, softball, football, basketball, etc). And of course, that must imply getting rid of any other "dangerous" sports, so there goes all of the gymnastics equipment, floor hockey (the plastic puck might be ok, but letting kids carry 5' long sticks? The horror!), wrestling mats (it's like publicly sanctioned ultimate fighting!), and for those wealthier schools, water polo or swimming (better not teach kids how to swim, someone could drown!)
So it will basically become a bunch of kids running around a track, or on rainy/snowy days standing in a gym doing jumping jacks. On the bright side, it makes me glad I'm old, and not growing up in today's nanny state.
Only if you figure out how to shed 100lbs with a zipper.
Actually, it's not really the same climate... just similar latitude. A lot of Mongolia is in the Gobi desert, so the temperature variation is more like -40 to 40+ (and commonly hits those extremes rather than being a rare event).
Or are morbidly obese.
Only if he could actually prove the Gizmodo editors were there...
No. People say "pass a law prohibiting X" instead of "arrest people for X". It's a way to deceive yourself and others about what you're proposing.
Are you actually arguing we shouldn't pass any laws that might punish people!?
I would prefer people not be arrested or taxed or fined for making normal business decisions. I don't think it's a straw man. We arrest people all the time. There's a woman facing prison time in Washington state right now for importing lobsters in clear plastic rather than cardboard cartons. She's already been arrested and convicted for violating the Lacey Act. She is not a straw man.
Ironically, with her you have in fact created another straw man, as well as the fallacy of overgeneralization - "all trade laws are bad because I found one example that is bad".
Ok. But now you're arguing against doing "something" because not doing "something" is "justified".
What? I was arguing *for* doing something because it's justified. Not sure how you interpreted my statement as the opposite of what I really said.
And if they don't pay, arrest them, right?
If someone owes taxes and flat out refuses to pay, yes, they might be arrested. That's not a new concept, it's a basic tenet of pretty much all forms of government for as long as the concept has existed, from monarchies to democracies going back beyond the ancient Greeks.
And if I find a way to get around these duties and buy stuff for the real price rather than the government protection racket price, arrest me too, right?
If you knowingly broke a law doing it and that was the established punishment, sure. I agree there are a lot of stupid laws out there, but the solution is to fight to change them, not ignore them. If everyone were able to decide which laws they felt like following, what's the point of a legal system? That's called anarchy.
Because the alternative is not bailing out companies and not spending money we don't have on things everyone else in the world has already decided they can't afford.
Well, there's a point I agree with you on! Or at the very least the taxpayers should now own significant shares in some of the largest banks in the US - and getting income from *investing* in those once again hugely profitable banks rather than whatever meager taxes they haven't figured out how to avoid paying. And now we have come back to my original argument. Glad you agree with me ;)
No one even remotely suggested "arresting" people over business decisions. I don't see why you would start your argument with such an absurd straw man.
- Stop giving companies a huge tax incentive to invest outside the US.
Which was exactly the kind of thing he was suggesting (though I'm not sure how "no one gets taxed" comes out of "stop giving tax breaks"). Anyway, I'm confused - you seem to agree with him that something needs to be done, why all of the hostility?
But anyway - taxes/duties/etc are not only a reasonable solution (to an extent) but they are actually justified. US corporations get a huge benefit from being US corporations in terms of US government military, economic, trade, and foreign policies, not to mention infrastructure, education, and other government expenses. Pretty sure the US government wouldn't have bailed out Toyota or Deutsche Bank if they had threatened bankruptcy.
If companies want these benefits, they should be paying for them with some of the profits they make because of them. If they want to keep their investments and profits overseas to avoid their responsibilities, they should be forced by penalties/duties/taxes to bring their fair share back into the US economy or move to another country (and quickly see what they were taking for granted).
Yeah, I read TFA as well - those employees both took a deal and got less than they were originally offered, which is what Zynga wanted anyway. IMO the ideal situation would be the employees refusing a settlement and saying "thanks, I now have this in writing and will ignore it - go ahead and fire me since you have given me proof you fired me for illegal cause, and I should be able to recoup all of the potential earnings you prevented me from getting."
Then again, as much as a sleazy douchebag as the Zynga CEO is, it sounds like he did focus on employees who were not earning their keep. They probably realized they were still getting way more than they had originally expected and decided to take the bird in the hand...
Wow, burning mod points to trash a lame joke made to an AC. Guess aunt Flo is visiting everyone today...
Seriously. Apple = #1 market cap in the world. Apple #1, Exxon #2. $350B+ and growing.
People can complain all they want about Apple's policies, UI, features, etc, in regards to their personal opinions or tastes (and I agree with many of those complaints, actually). But claiming they don't understand their customer is absolutely absurd. They build what people *want*, and they do that better than any corporation ever has in the history of corporations. It doesn't matter if it's engineering or marketing that gets that done, in the end. Though clearly in their case it's a (very effective) combination of the two...
Since the only thing Apple has done that has been successfully predicted over the last decade is make money hand over fist, I I think they are doing just fine. Much better than most militaries these days.
Yeah, that part is almost more amazing than the pure sleaziness - that they somehow think stealing shares granted to current employees will somehow help attract new ones...
No, you don't have the shares. That's what is especially sleazy about it (we can now name this "Zynga-sleazy"). They were asking for unvested shares back, not vested shares (there is nothing they can possibly do about vested shares). Once you leave the company (whether you quit or are fired), your shares stop vesting.
IANAL, but I have taken a class in the laws of hiring and management. Your point is exactly what the class teaches - CA (where Zynga is located) is an at will state, which means you can leave employment or be fired for no reason at all. The problem comes in when a company gives a reason, and that reason is not VERY solidly justified.
Firing an employee for being unproductive (with some documentation to prove it) is usually ok. Firing an employee for not returning stock contractually provided to them (even if you later claim the real reason was lack of productivity) is pretty much a guaranteed wrongful termination lawsuit, with VERY good chance of success...
Except a maxi pad, apparently, because you are seriously PMSing today.
Exactly! Why would one of the most profitable companies in the world want to change their insanely successful strategy and go low end to compete with a loss leader?
The reason Roku & AppleTV are so cheap is that they don't have a display, lithium battery, or enough flash to store content. You want high res display, capacitive touch screen, storage, and portability, you are not going to pay $200 any time soon.
Even the Kindle Fire is a loss leader. It will never be as flexible as an iPad because that way Amazon would never make their money back.
Another issue: I'd encrypt the data from the network source or XOR it with a pseudo RNG, because otherwise you might be leaking sensitive data through your "random" numbers.
I bet everyone was wondering why all of his music sounded like bad Internet porn videos lately...
/dev/random on most OS'ed these days uses an entropy pool generated from a bunch of different sources - timing of keystrokes, mouse movements, disk seeking - and yes, network information. Then it uses cryptographic hashes on those.
Your implementation basically uses one of those entropy sources, and then doesn't even hash it...
In fact stereotypes are what marketing relies on, because most of the time they are in fact true! ;)
It just goes to show you what open source methodologies get you so often... a well engineered product for a fraction of the price of competitors that has no clue how to market it to the customer so no one will ever use it. Sigh. I know everyone hates marketing and sales but they do in fact serve a purpose...