Why try to apply logic to a bureaucracy? They continue only through inertia, much like a totally off-topic thread on/...
From information gathered after reading other sources on this issue, it seems that Ms Snyder's issue stems from one of her advisers at the school where she did her student teaching had found the photo and reported it up to her student adviser at Millersville. The adviser at Conestoga Valley High School (where Stacey had apparently been described as "one of Millersville's finest graduates") called Stacey to tell her that there was an "issue" with the picture and Stacey's adviser at Millersville told her that she "might lose her teaching certificate" over the issue.
Millersville's mascot is a pirate. In modern pop culture, the "drunken pirate" is ubiquitous. Stacey's wearing of a pirate hat is not unexpected, due to her being a student at school where the mascot is, in fact, a pirate. Stacey is drinking from an opaque plastic cup whose contents cannot be discerned. If she was similarly dressed, drinking from the same cup, with the same caption, and the picture would have been of her DRIVING A SCHOOL BUS, then MAYBE there might be some validity to this knee-jerk reaction. Otherwise it's much ado about nothing. And that is EXACTLY the type of issue that those entrenched in a bureaucracy LOVE to champion; let's get behind a policy that sounds good on paper but is inherently flawed from the moment of it's inception. These guys have a bright future, if the college admin field doesn't pan out for them, then there is always the RIAA, the MPAA, or Microsoft. I'm sure there are quite a few more grandmothers out there to prosecute and persecute, more criminals to create.
I hope she sues these pretentious prigs into bankruptcy and expands her damage claim to include personally, the Dean of students at Millersville, her student adviser, J. Barry Girvin, and the adviser at Conestoga Valley High School. Further, if a single person in her graduating class accepts a degree from this so-called institution of higher learning then they are the worst kind of hypocrite, by demonstrating they actually know nothing of right and wrong and are too weak to make a stand based on conviction and reason.
This parent is just so full of wrongness I can't begin to elaborate.
BGP... It just doesn't compute in how you describe your network. I'm sure I just can't "get it" from the description.
Linux over Cisco? I'm a freakin' fanboy for Linux and even I don't buy that. Maybe you got a lemon on your last eBay purchase, maybe their policy of non-support on "grey market" hardware, maybe your operation falls within the SOHO realm. All of these scenarios are not Cisco's strong suit. For "enterprise" level hardware, I think whichever of the big vendors you are used to working with and who your business has an "agreement" with is who you'll get the best performance with. Because we in the networking business know that the 7-layer model has 9 levels, the top two being money and politics. And the biggest roadblocks are on those levels.
Nagios does not beat HP openview. There ARE applications where HPOV is overkill and Nagios fills in nicely, though, but Nagios to HP is like comparing apples to Thanksgiving dinner. YMMV
Then we track all purchases via national ID numbers (we just got an alert that a licensed driver purchased 4 drinks in an hour, and the master control programs reports his GPS phone is moving outside the public transportation grid, better dispatch a pursuit car)... Then we socialize medicine... Then we use the info from the purchases to determine if you get healthcare (cigarettes and fast food, no doctor for you my friend)... Then we see who are buying fast expensive new cars... Then we investigate them cause they're obviously not paying enough in taxes or insurance... Then we start tracking all gun and ammo purchases, cause anyone with a gun is obviously a terrorist...
The modern push for federal control in what is and should be states rights started in the modern day with the speed limit...at the time it seemed sensible, there was an energy crisis. Then helment laws, it only affected a small part of the population so what's the difference, next drinking age, it makes sense after all to protect the children. But the real starting point was in the mid-1800's and tarrifs on cash crops from the south...the northeastern states wanted the products but the overseas market was paying more. How to solve the dilemma? Get the House (populated by the densely concentrated north) to pass a tarrif that canceled out any profit.
Next we'll hear how cool it is to have an RFID implant that makes accessing your now national information so fast and easy...Not hard to do if you think about it...we require newborns basically to have a social security number now when they are YEARS from being on the tax roles...
My dad was in the UAW for a great number of years. Through those years he watch the union get thieves and drug dealers thier jobs secured, not to mention the common, clock-in-and-leave-the-plant types, people who slept their shift through, people who wouldn't show for the shift during the week but be there early to do nothing on time-and-a-half or double-time days. But with that said, when the average worker had some integrity, the unions made great strides to protect the little guy against the slave-labor types.
Sorry incrediably OT. On face value of the original post, the OP seems to be in a position to countersue for a ton. And damn, what were they thinking, Oh you're gonna SUE me into staying, Oh definately, it'll be a pleasure to work for you.
Makes you wonder how, in light of the big pipe connections the companies that are off-shoring the middle class from thier customer base use, long it will take for us to start paying more for the "cheap goods" this whole mess was supposed to provide. We're already more or less used to avoiding off-shored customer support and excusing botched work output because it's staffed with underqualifiedhttp://www.enterblog.com/20050609065 4.php/ unintelligiblehttp://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/emp loyment/0,39020648,39150648,00.htm/ workers, now let's pay more for it. It's good to see the Nirvana that the "one world market" types think India is, rife with the same inefficencies and greed of which us poor old corrupt "first world" governments are accused.
It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that once they got us in there and had a sizable investment that they would change the playing field.
The above posting is dead-on right. Given the opportunity, in times of a draft, any parent would do any- and everything in their power to keep their child out of harm's way. Given the fact that W's father was a bona-fide war hero should have not impact on the issue...in fact MOST people eligible for the draft at that time were the sons of veterans of a war or conflict, either Korea or WW2. We're now at a rather unique time in history, in that a good section of the voting eligible populous need to go back 3 or 4 generations to find a direct line (parent, grandparent, great grandparent etc) to someone who served their fellow countrymen in military service, much less as a volunteer.
It would be interesting to see how the demographics overlap...several generations of non-service and instance of perpetual or serial government assistance. I'd also like to see the demographic comparison of those with familial history of being incarcerated on other than direct drug-related charges, as a third subset. These days segments of US society see prison as an equal suitable substitute to higher education or military service.
At the height of Greek civilization, service to country was so honored that Greek mothers would tell their sons as they left for war to "come back with your shield, or on it." And in the glory days of Rome a senator warned "If you despise your military, you will soon have a despicable military."
BTW I'm a vet and I joined from a sense of duty, not for what I could get out of it, yet I reaped much more than I sowed in personal benefits, mostly intangible to the untrained eye.
This is simple...objectively, if you can afford to do nothing and still eat a diet sufficent to allow procreation, and have shelter, the welfare state is encouraging the behavior. Food and shelter are now taken care of, so, in Maslow's Heirachy of needs, the physiological and safety "layers" are met. Next in line are love and status...which in the twisted little minds of people satisfied to be impoverished baby machines are satisfied by squirting our more mewling ticks on society. Especially if you get a "raise" for each leech you generate.
It's worthless until converted into a tangible asset, freely traded. Look at it like the equity in your home. You bought your house for $100000 now 5 years later it's worth $125000. That money value isn't taxable until after sale, and then taxable only if you don't re-invest it in a similar property, meaning you buy a "bigger" home. Just because my GE stock is worth more now than I paid for it initially, I don't claim it as income until I convert it or I claim a dividend, which I claim as income from investment.
Now in context of the game, good for Mr/Ms Rask. Apparently it's much easier to run a scam to get ahead in a game where armed theft is totally legal! I mean I can blow up your ship and steal your goods for my own benefit, but someone gets antsy when I talk you into just giving me your money without firing a shot? Two things...no one happened to notice the FDIC protection warning when depositing with Rask did they? No because it's not insured. Secondly, if you get crazy profit "promised" from an investment, you can pretty much guarantee it's a scam.
I'd like to get the email addresses of Rask's "investors". I need some help moving some cash from a Nigerian bank....
Incomplete analogy. Sure a driver can drive, but at a minimum he has to know how to put gas in the car. The best operators realize that there are established guidelines for maintenance, and have at least a working knowledge of why these are necessary, in order to show due diligence in following them.
In my experience, to continue this analogy, there are three types...the mechanic's car, a rattle trap always one step ahead of the junkyard, the clueless driver's car, "I saw the check engine light but I thought there would be a bell or something if it was important", and the enthusiat's car, well maintained, clean, and allowed to run full out occasionally. I want the third but have often been saddled with the first two.
Agreed. But I could play those medias on any player suitable. My LPs weren't locked to a SPECIFIC turntable. And when I got tired of them I could give them to my little brother, or sell them at the swap shop.
The new paradigm is that you have access to this song until you change devices, quit paying our monthly charge, we go out of business or we decide that we are no longer going to support that media format. My LPs still play on my turntable or anyone elses, if I decide to dust them both off.
I had 4 iTunes tracks (free from some promotion) until I went from using my old G4 to using my new Mac mini as my primary desktop machine.
I round-filed them after they wanted me to jump through a bunch of hoops to migrate them. It was clear I didn't own them, I only had them on a weird lease-type arrangement.
How many CDs would the industry sell if you bought a CD, then it would only play on one or two of the CD players you own? Do I set it up to play in one of my 4 PCs or 2 Macs, my car, my truck, my girlfriends car, my beater camping/beach boombox, my home gym boombox, one of my DVD players...Sorry guy, you can't borrow my best of the 70's CD for your party, even though the tracks are 30 YEARS OLD, the RIAA has it so I can only play it in my bathroom CD player. It's ridiculous. I'll never buy from iTunes music store or Napster or any of that ilk for that reason.
I've not bought a new CD since the Napster decision. When I was downloading songs off Napster I was buying 3 or 4 CDs a week from artists I would have never heard of without Napster.
Now I just go to the used CD shop, buy a CD, rip it, archive it, and then sell it back to the used CD shop.
I gotta think that's eating into the profit margin somehow. The absolute dumbest thing the music industry ever did was to criminalize thier fanbase....
Open WAPs are open. You find them everywhere. From the coffee shop on the corner to the upstairs neighbor in your apartment building. Connecting to them is not a crime.
An open WAP is an invitation and the implicit authorization is given by process from the owner of the WAP, EVEN IF THEY DID NOTHING.
Ignorance is not an excuse. Laziness is not an excuse. The process is WAY too simple and documented for those arguments.
No way the guy in the UK should have lost his laptop OR 500 Euro or pounds or whatever it was. Worst case the AP owner should have told the guy to move it on down the street and FIXED HIS EQUIPMENT if it was a REAL issue.
This was simply a ploy to eventually allow the broadband ISPs to shut down "open access points", like in apartment buildings, on the "behalf" of "unsuspecting users".
Left it open by accident? There is no way to "leave it open by accident." Either they configured it or they didn't. If they didn't, then them must have meant to leave it open. The documentation included with the device TELLS you that.
This same mentality allows people to act surprised when coffee is hot, when "unloaded" guns go off, cars explode because someone left a milk jug of gas stored in the trunk and all other manner of dumbass mistakes. The owner was personally responsible for his or her own security, in this case. He or she chose to run the AP open, implicitly allowing all traffic.
You are still missing the point. The client (wardriver) does ask the server (AP owner) for permission. The owner responds by proxy. In this case the owner was standing his AP up as proxy. And set up promiscuously, the proxy always says yes. It's a real estate agency you hire putting an OPEN HOUSE sign in your yard and then you trying to shoot people for trespassing when they come on your property. If the literary standards of a WAP manual is over the head of the user, they probably shouldn't be on the Internet anyway, it's their machines that get rooted in two minutes and screw it up for the rest of us.
The communication is two way. If the AP owner wants to keep people off his network, it is simple enough to do. Apparently he did not. He said "welcome" to the world by setting up his AP promiscuously.
If the signal was strong enough (another setting on the AP can limit power output) to be seen off his property and on public use land (roadway park etc) then the access is fair.
As to the owners impaired use, when you open your access to every one, which the owner did, then you can expect a performance hit. Running an open AP means that you are allowing anyone to connect BY DEFINITION, it's the OPEN part. If the owners hit their download cap, dang I guess an OPEN AP was a bad idea.
We seem to disagree with the concept of permission. I maintain that the open AP is by definition granting permission, you disagree. But if it's NOT the owner's responsibility to secure the AP, how is it that the owners of cigarette vending machines are liable for purchases by minors, even if they clearly post a sign that says under 18 prohibited? The answer is that the owner is responsible for the security of that machine, and part of that security is to prohibit use by unauthorized people.
Sorry, but no. I find ridiciulous and without merit any notion that a wardriver or jaysurfer should be held harmless for accessing a private AP that was left open simply because the AP owner "didn't read the manual". (Besides, just because the AP says it's OK to connect does NOT mean that the AP's OWNER says it is.)
And I find it just as silly that US citizens can be deprived of due process based on tax law, which relatively NO one reads, but it's the case.
If it doesn't mean it's OK, it should. The AP is an extension of the owner. The conversation between client and server AUTHENTICATES via handshake. That is implicit authorization. Just because your authentication process is non-selective doesn't make it a crime. It's not analagous to an open door on your house. It's a broadcast in the public area. That frequency is public domain. It's closer akin to listening to the radio in the car next to you while you're stuck in traffic, then beating that person in dialing in to win the free concert tickets.
It's not stealing bandwidth either. Either the bandwidth is in use or it isn't, it's relatively in-exhaustable. You might could argue that it's stealing access, but the Internet is, or should be, less a public utility and more a public roadway. So the wardriver was depriving the AP owner of nothing, unless, by virtue of the configuration, the AP only allowed one IP address to be configured, and the wardriver would get it instead of the AP owner. As far as I know from the hundreds of AP's I've configured for the job and for friends, that's not a default setting. THat would imply a certain level of non-default settings and then, the SIMPLEST of protection schemes would imply a "locked door" scenario THEN it would be criminal to use it.
Sorry but an open access point is an invitation, SINCE IT'S WITHIN THE SCOPE OF OWNERSHIP to secure it. Sure it's slimy, but there are many many things that are totally slimy and quite legal.
If the AP owner left his AP open even after all the information in the manual indicated that this was probably a bad idea, then someone else using it after a proper handshake should be ok.
"didn't read the manual" is not a good defense. I didn't read the tax code either, but I'm liable if I don't pay taxes.
Further I think the owner of a open AP is liable under criminal facilitation if any unauthorized user breaks any laws (kiddy porn, filesharing) while using an open AP. The nature of the Internet is "open unless secured". Ignorance of this concept is no excuse.
If the wardriver was pulling things off the user's home server, then the user should have secured it. If the wardriver sniffer the traffic and got the user's credit card info, the user should have secured the AP. If the wardriver used the credit card information to order a new MAC from Apple, then the wardriver is guilty of fraud. Saying he hijacked the user's connection is like saying that you can't drive on the street because I'm driving on the street. If the Wardriver was pulling an IP address from the ISP and the user only got the one IP address then, yeah he hijacked the connection. as in this case the connection was "one at a time".
IMHO, using my neighbors un-secured wireless connection is fair game. I have as much right to the frequency band as they do. If I use that connection to sniff their traffic and get credit card information, logins, etc, all the better. If I use any of that information in a fraudulent manner, then I'm guilty of something. Snatching someone elses email off an unsecured network as they download it is akin to listening when someone reads thier mail aloud. Shut up if you don't want someone else knowing your business. But if you use someone elses login to access thier mail server then you are guilty of fraud, as you just represented yourself as them, even if it's only to a machine.
The water gets murky when you use someone elses wireless rig to commit a crime, like kiddy porn or GASP! the evil FILESHARING. The owner of the unsecured wireless should be as guilty of criminal facilitation as anyone who rents a warehouse to goodfellas to store stolen goods, perhaps moreso since they're just too lazy to learn how to secure the AP.
Cracking an encryption scheme or MAC spoofing are different balls of wax though. Even the most simplistic method is akin to a locked door, and breaking it is like breaking and entering.
Whoa Nelly...back up the wagon here. It's selfish for Joe Average to want to keep something that belongs to him, but not selfish to seize that land so that other Joe Averages who stupidly bought property with limited access can have a faster commute?
Sounds like you are confusing the good old USA with a system of government that says the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. That's not the case. If it was we could eliminate the vast majority of career welfare recipients overnight, since reducing taxes that pay for these services would benefit the many regular taxpayers while only impacting the relatively few social leeches. This system of government was initially set up to avoid that concept of mob rule.
To plug that into your scenario, it would mean that the average worker could work about a third less hours and earn the same money, reducing the traffic load in your mythical 2 lane highway, as these people would now commute less to and from work.
This application of the concept of eminent domain is actually much more misguided than the application that drove the Native Americans off their lands. In that case, those were not people protected by our Constitution, ergo more or less a conquered people, since they had no allegience to our system of government and refused to be bound by our laws; in this case, the person WAS protected by our Constitution and entitled to the same protections as everyone else, with the same net results, the loss of private property. And I think we can agree that Native Americans are pretty high up on the list of people that have been screwed over in the name of progress.
Among the several flaws in your argument, you seem to believe that a US based company cannot compete on a global scale, based largely on labor costs. While this does hold a bit of merit, you fail to see that if a company isn't competitive with US labor, it CAN get competitive with US labor, through any number of methods not the least of which is innovation.
Taking your India scenario and extrapolating, you see that the Indian government is offering up it's labor pool, like the madam of a whorehouse offers up her stable. Here they are, cheap and willing, and no pesky commitments after you're done. Why? to expand thier own tax base. Look at India as a nation...rampant disease, filth and poverty, but they can afford a nuclear weapons program. Our worst ghetto in the US is a paradise in relation to the inner city in New Dehli. How long do you think it will take once they realize they have the keys to the US infrastructure in thier hands, then see if you can guess how long it will take them to exploit that?
The one world group always brings up "globalization is good" but they usually leave off the last part they are thinking "good...unless it's a global United States of America."
So your argument is basically "suck it up" America and take your medicine. Take a back seat to whatever is the third world flavor of the month, it was bound to happen sooner or later and better sooner.
From IBM analogy, IBM wouldn't be IBM without a few decades of US government hand-holding to get them where they are, and in your scenario, that corporation owes no allegiance to, as we say where I'm from, "the one what brung them to the dance." The corporation shouldn't be allowed to siphon off wine and roses like that then be allowed to calmly waltz out, leaving a swath of locust like destruction behind them.
Also, no one can hold these people accountable legally for transgressions. No place is without crime, but it's a good bet that no one will burn down thier own barn if thier horse is still in it.
Once the first rock slides the avalanche is in progress, it just doesn't look that bad.
You've mentioned specialized labor on two separate occasions as a positive. It isn't...the pseudo-intellectuals that harp on Adam Smith as the be-all end-all authority on business often make this mistake.
Pure altruism (communism) doesn't work because it ignores self-interest and encourages freeloading. Pure self-interest (laissez-faire capitalism) doesn't work because it goes against the self-interest of the many by encouraging a dog-eat-dog world where only the unscrupulous get to the top. Finding the balance, finding the right mix, doing what works and what's best for the greatest number of taxpayers is what politics is all about. US companies "should" have this truism in sight, rather than the strict code of "make a buck today". It's why we have laws to prohibit the butcher from trying to cheat you, just because he can probably get away with it. Unfortuately in this "free trade" world, the other countries don't have this same encumberance, now.
Specialization breeds mediocrity by discouraging out-of-the-box thinking. The "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" theory. The guy who "specialized" in buggywhips ruled until the guy who knew something about buggywhips and something about transmissions said "Man this would make a cool gearshift."
By the way the trite canned college textbook answer of "A larger market. Cheaper consumer goods. More specialized labor. Better Economic Growth." is what the parent poster was asking to be clarified. A larger market for what? Larger than what? Labor specialized in what? Economic growth for whom? We already see cheaper goods, cheaper in both quality and in support.
I'm not going to apologize for the fact that what we Americans would consider poverty would seem middle class in the countries to which we are exporting our middle-class employment opportunities.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. Robert A Heinlein
See also Mithrandir86 's responses to other posts of the same ilk on the same subject.
By offshoring of jobs in the medical, insurance and banking fields, industries that will not expand based into the developing companies, except on a macro- or highest (read stockholder) level, we're effectively gutting the middle class's support of these industries.
If free trade is the argument, why do US (any parent country) companies routinely offer goods in these developing companies at a fraction of the cost to their US consumer counterparts in order to gain market share? How are these "loss leaders" paid for? By the US (any parent country) consumers.
By looking at the situation with rose-colored glasses and calling it free trade, you miss the underlying effects. The countries that are benefitting from the off-shoring don't reciprocate by exporting jobs, and overall don't usually utilize US (parent country) goods or services, instead the US (parent country) goods and services usually end up competing with government sponsored goods and services, which, by definition, must be below a competitive price point in order to be effectivly subsidized.
I agree that it is quite easy to move a "corporation" off-shore. But if a company has 15 executives and salesmen in the US and 1300 workers in another country, are they still a "US" company or should they be considered as such? Microsoft considers itself a US company, specifically a Washington state based company, but many of it's letters of incorporation are filed in Nevada, whereby they avoid over a $140 million in local Washington state taxes a year. They are "Redmond, Washington" in name only, and the land tax breaks that Washington gave them years ago in order to bring jobs to the area are being mitigated by Microsoft's increasing off-shoring of thier code work and slick legal wrangling. I can name several countries that will allow MS to relocate the corporation lock-stock-and letterhead to it's shores for a fraction of that. And based on US laws nothing precludes them from doing that, and still exploiting our market in such a monopolistic fashion....but it's free trade so that has to be good. Right?
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Why try to apply logic to a bureaucracy? They continue only through inertia, much like a totally off-topic thread on /...
From information gathered after reading other sources on this issue, it seems that Ms Snyder's issue stems from one of her advisers at the school where she did her student teaching had found the photo and reported it up to her student adviser at Millersville. The adviser at Conestoga Valley High School (where Stacey had apparently been described as "one of Millersville's finest graduates") called Stacey to tell her that there was an "issue" with the picture and Stacey's adviser at Millersville told her that she "might lose her teaching certificate" over the issue.
Millersville's mascot is a pirate. In modern pop culture, the "drunken pirate" is ubiquitous. Stacey's wearing of a pirate hat is not unexpected, due to her being a student at school where the mascot is, in fact, a pirate. Stacey is drinking from an opaque plastic cup whose contents cannot be discerned. If she was similarly dressed, drinking from the same cup, with the same caption, and the picture would have been of her DRIVING A SCHOOL BUS, then MAYBE there might be some validity to this knee-jerk reaction. Otherwise it's much ado about nothing. And that is EXACTLY the type of issue that those entrenched in a bureaucracy LOVE to champion; let's get behind a policy that sounds good on paper but is inherently flawed from the moment of it's inception. These guys have a bright future, if the college admin field doesn't pan out for them, then there is always the RIAA, the MPAA, or Microsoft. I'm sure there are quite a few more grandmothers out there to prosecute and persecute, more criminals to create.
I hope she sues these pretentious prigs into bankruptcy and expands her damage claim to include personally, the Dean of students at Millersville, her student adviser, J. Barry Girvin, and the adviser at Conestoga Valley High School. Further, if a single person in her graduating class accepts a degree from this so-called institution of higher learning then they are the worst kind of hypocrite, by demonstrating they actually know nothing of right and wrong and are too weak to make a stand based on conviction and reason.
Amen
... It just doesn't compute in how you describe your network. I'm sure I just can't "get it" from the description.
This parent is just so full of wrongness I can't begin to elaborate.
BGP
Linux over Cisco? I'm a freakin' fanboy for Linux and even I don't buy that. Maybe you got a lemon on your last eBay purchase, maybe their policy of non-support on "grey market" hardware, maybe your operation falls within the SOHO realm. All of these scenarios are not Cisco's strong suit. For "enterprise" level hardware, I think whichever of the big vendors you are used to working with and who your business has an "agreement" with is who you'll get the best performance with. Because we in the networking business know that the 7-layer model has 9 levels, the top two being money and politics. And the biggest roadblocks are on those levels.
Nagios does not beat HP openview. There ARE applications where HPOV is overkill and Nagios fills in nicely, though, but Nagios to HP is like comparing apples to Thanksgiving dinner. YMMV
Then we track all purchases via national ID numbers (we just got an alert that a licensed driver purchased 4 drinks in an hour, and the master control programs reports his GPS phone is moving outside the public transportation grid, better dispatch a pursuit car)...
Then we socialize medicine...
Then we use the info from the purchases to determine if you get healthcare (cigarettes and fast food, no doctor for you my friend)...
Then we see who are buying fast expensive new cars...
Then we investigate them cause they're obviously not paying enough in taxes or insurance...
Then we start tracking all gun and ammo purchases, cause anyone with a gun is obviously a terrorist...
The modern push for federal control in what is and should be states rights started in the modern day with the speed limit...at the time it seemed sensible, there was an energy crisis. Then helment laws, it only affected a small part of the population so what's the difference, next drinking age, it makes sense after all to protect the children. But the real starting point was in the mid-1800's and tarrifs on cash crops from the south...the northeastern states wanted the products but the overseas market was paying more. How to solve the dilemma? Get the House (populated by the densely concentrated north) to pass a tarrif that canceled out any profit.
Next we'll hear how cool it is to have an RFID implant that makes accessing your now national information so fast and easy...Not hard to do if you think about it...we require newborns basically to have a social security number now when they are YEARS from being on the tax roles...
My dad was in the UAW for a great number of years. Through those years he watch the union get thieves and drug dealers thier jobs secured, not to mention the common, clock-in-and-leave-the-plant types, people who slept their shift through, people who wouldn't show for the shift during the week but be there early to do nothing on time-and-a-half or double-time days. But with that said, when the average worker had some integrity, the unions made great strides to protect the little guy against the slave-labor types.
Sorry incrediably OT. On face value of the original post, the OP seems to be in a position to countersue for a ton. And damn, what were they thinking, Oh you're gonna SUE me into staying, Oh definately, it'll be a pleasure to work for you.
In Soviet Russia, the job works YOU.
It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that once they got us in there and had a sizable investment that they would change the playing field.
The above posting is dead-on right. Given the opportunity, in times of a draft, any parent would do any- and everything in their power to keep their child out of harm's way. Given the fact that W's father was a bona-fide war hero should have not impact on the issue...in fact MOST people eligible for the draft at that time were the sons of veterans of a war or conflict, either Korea or WW2. We're now at a rather unique time in history, in that a good section of the voting eligible populous need to go back 3 or 4 generations to find a direct line (parent, grandparent, great grandparent etc) to someone who served their fellow countrymen in military service, much less as a volunteer.
It would be interesting to see how the demographics overlap...several generations of non-service and instance of perpetual or serial government assistance. I'd also like to see the demographic comparison of those with familial history of being incarcerated on other than direct drug-related charges, as a third subset. These days segments of US society see prison as an equal suitable substitute to higher education or military service.
At the height of Greek civilization, service to country was so honored that Greek mothers would tell their sons as they left for war to "come back with your shield, or on it." And in the glory days of Rome a senator warned "If you despise your military, you will soon have a despicable military."
BTW I'm a vet and I joined from a sense of duty, not for what I could get out of it, yet I reaped much more than I sowed in personal benefits, mostly intangible to the untrained eye.
This is simple...objectively, if you can afford to do nothing and still eat a diet sufficent to allow procreation, and have shelter, the welfare state is encouraging the behavior. Food and shelter are now taken care of, so, in Maslow's Heirachy of needs, the physiological and safety "layers" are met. Next in line are love and status...which in the twisted little minds of people satisfied to be impoverished baby machines are satisfied by squirting our more mewling ticks on society. Especially if you get a "raise" for each leech you generate.
It's worthless until converted into a tangible asset, freely traded. Look at it like the equity in your home. You bought your house for $100000 now 5 years later it's worth $125000. That money value isn't taxable until after sale, and then taxable only if you don't re-invest it in a similar property, meaning you buy a "bigger" home. Just because my GE stock is worth more now than I paid for it initially, I don't claim it as income until I convert it or I claim a dividend, which I claim as income from investment.
Now in context of the game, good for Mr/Ms Rask. Apparently it's much easier to run a scam to get ahead in a game where armed theft is totally legal! I mean I can blow up your ship and steal your goods for my own benefit, but someone gets antsy when I talk you into just giving me your money without firing a shot? Two things...no one happened to notice the FDIC protection warning when depositing with Rask did they? No because it's not insured. Secondly, if you get crazy profit "promised" from an investment, you can pretty much guarantee it's a scam.
I'd like to get the email addresses of Rask's "investors". I need some help moving some cash from a Nigerian bank....
Funny how it's an EOL product and a down patched version of the "standard".
Sorry my conspiracy is showing...
Incomplete analogy. Sure a driver can drive, but at a minimum he has to know how to put gas in the car. The best operators realize that there are established guidelines for maintenance, and have at least a working knowledge of why these are necessary, in order to show due diligence in following them.
In my experience, to continue this analogy, there are three types...the mechanic's car, a rattle trap always one step ahead of the junkyard, the clueless driver's car, "I saw the check engine light but I thought there would be a bell or something if it was important", and the enthusiat's car, well maintained, clean, and allowed to run full out occasionally. I want the third but have often been saddled with the first two.
Jesus I want to mod this up but it's AC. This is the problem with AC.
Agreed. But I could play those medias on any player suitable. My LPs weren't locked to a SPECIFIC turntable. And when I got tired of them I could give them to my little brother, or sell them at the swap shop.
The new paradigm is that you have access to this song until you change devices, quit paying our monthly charge, we go out of business or we decide that we are no longer going to support that media format. My LPs still play on my turntable or anyone elses, if I decide to dust them both off.
I had 4 iTunes tracks (free from some promotion) until I went from using my old G4 to using my new Mac mini as my primary desktop machine.
I round-filed them after they wanted me to jump through a bunch of hoops to migrate them. It was clear I didn't own them, I only had them on a weird lease-type arrangement.
How many CDs would the industry sell if you bought a CD, then it would only play on one or two of the CD players you own? Do I set it up to play in one of my 4 PCs or 2 Macs, my car, my truck, my girlfriends car, my beater camping/beach boombox, my home gym boombox, one of my DVD players...Sorry guy, you can't borrow my best of the 70's CD for your party, even though the tracks are 30 YEARS OLD, the RIAA has it so I can only play it in my bathroom CD player. It's ridiculous. I'll never buy from iTunes music store or Napster or any of that ilk for that reason.
I've not bought a new CD since the Napster decision. When I was downloading songs off Napster I was buying 3 or 4 CDs a week from artists I would have never heard of without Napster.
Now I just go to the used CD shop, buy a CD, rip it, archive it, and then sell it back to the used CD shop.
I gotta think that's eating into the profit margin somehow. The absolute dumbest thing the music industry ever did was to criminalize thier fanbase....
My last words on the matter
Open WAPs are open. You find them everywhere. From the coffee shop on the corner to the upstairs neighbor in your apartment building. Connecting to them is not a crime.
An open WAP is an invitation and the implicit authorization is given by process from the owner of the WAP, EVEN IF THEY DID NOTHING.
Ignorance is not an excuse. Laziness is not an excuse. The process is WAY too simple and documented for those arguments.
No way the guy in the UK should have lost his laptop OR 500 Euro or pounds or whatever it was. Worst case the AP owner should have told the guy to move it on down the street and FIXED HIS EQUIPMENT if it was a REAL issue.
This was simply a ploy to eventually allow the broadband ISPs to shut down "open access points", like in apartment buildings, on the "behalf" of "unsuspecting users".
Left it open by accident? There is no way to "leave it open by accident." Either they configured it or they didn't. If they didn't, then them must have meant to leave it open. The documentation included with the device TELLS you that.
This same mentality allows people to act surprised when coffee is hot, when "unloaded" guns go off, cars explode because someone left a milk jug of gas stored in the trunk and all other manner of dumbass mistakes. The owner was personally responsible for his or her own security, in this case. He or she chose to run the AP open, implicitly allowing all traffic.
You are still missing the point. The client (wardriver) does ask the server (AP owner) for permission. The owner responds by proxy. In this case the owner was standing his AP up as proxy. And set up promiscuously, the proxy always says yes. It's a real estate agency you hire putting an OPEN HOUSE sign in your yard and then you trying to shoot people for trespassing when they come on your property. If the literary standards of a WAP manual is over the head of the user, they probably shouldn't be on the Internet anyway, it's their machines that get rooted in two minutes and screw it up for the rest of us.
The communication is two way. If the AP owner wants to keep people off his network, it is simple enough to do. Apparently he did not. He said "welcome" to the world by setting up his AP promiscuously.
If the signal was strong enough (another setting on the AP can limit power output) to be seen off his property and on public use land (roadway park etc) then the access is fair.
As to the owners impaired use, when you open your access to every one, which the owner did, then you can expect a performance hit. Running an open AP means that you are allowing anyone to connect BY DEFINITION, it's the OPEN part. If the owners hit their download cap, dang I guess an OPEN AP was a bad idea.
We seem to disagree with the concept of permission. I maintain that the open AP is by definition granting permission, you disagree. But if it's NOT the owner's responsibility to secure the AP, how is it that the owners of cigarette vending machines are liable for purchases by minors, even if they clearly post a sign that says under 18 prohibited? The answer is that the owner is responsible for the security of that machine, and part of that security is to prohibit use by unauthorized people.
Sorry, but no. I find ridiciulous and without merit any notion that a wardriver or jaysurfer should be held harmless for accessing a private AP that was left open simply because the AP owner "didn't read the manual". (Besides, just because the AP says it's OK to connect does NOT mean that the AP's OWNER says it is.)
And I find it just as silly that US citizens can be deprived of due process based on tax law, which relatively NO one reads, but it's the case.
If it doesn't mean it's OK, it should. The AP is an extension of the owner. The conversation between client and server AUTHENTICATES via handshake. That is implicit authorization. Just because your authentication process is non-selective doesn't make it a crime. It's not analagous to an open door on your house. It's a broadcast in the public area. That frequency is public domain. It's closer akin to listening to the radio in the car next to you while you're stuck in traffic, then beating that person in dialing in to win the free concert tickets.
It's not stealing bandwidth either. Either the bandwidth is in use or it isn't, it's relatively in-exhaustable. You might could argue that it's stealing access, but the Internet is, or should be, less a public utility and more a public roadway. So the wardriver was depriving the AP owner of nothing, unless, by virtue of the configuration, the AP only allowed one IP address to be configured, and the wardriver would get it instead of the AP owner. As far as I know from the hundreds of AP's I've configured for the job and for friends, that's not a default setting. THat would imply a certain level of non-default settings and then, the SIMPLEST of protection schemes would imply a "locked door" scenario THEN it would be criminal to use it.
Sorry but an open access point is an invitation, SINCE IT'S WITHIN THE SCOPE OF OWNERSHIP to secure it. Sure it's slimy, but there are many many things that are totally slimy and quite legal.
If the AP owner left his AP open even after all the information in the manual indicated that this was probably a bad idea, then someone else using it after a proper handshake should be ok.
"didn't read the manual" is not a good defense. I didn't read the tax code either, but I'm liable if I don't pay taxes.
Further I think the owner of a open AP is liable under criminal facilitation if any unauthorized user breaks any laws (kiddy porn, filesharing) while using an open AP. The nature of the Internet is "open unless secured". Ignorance of this concept is no excuse.
If the wardriver was pulling things off the user's home server, then the user should have secured it. If the wardriver sniffer the traffic and got the user's credit card info, the user should have secured the AP. If the wardriver used the credit card information to order a new MAC from Apple, then the wardriver is guilty of fraud. Saying he hijacked the user's connection is like saying that you can't drive on the street because I'm driving on the street. If the Wardriver was pulling an IP address from the ISP and the user only got the one IP address then, yeah he hijacked the connection. as in this case the connection was "one at a time".
IMHO, using my neighbors un-secured wireless connection is fair game. I have as much right to the frequency band as they do. If I use that connection to sniff their traffic and get credit card information, logins, etc, all the better. If I use any of that information in a fraudulent manner, then I'm guilty of something. Snatching someone elses email off an unsecured network as they download it is akin to listening when someone reads thier mail aloud. Shut up if you don't want someone else knowing your business. But if you use someone elses login to access thier mail server then you are guilty of fraud, as you just represented yourself as them, even if it's only to a machine.
The water gets murky when you use someone elses wireless rig to commit a crime, like kiddy porn or GASP! the evil FILESHARING. The owner of the unsecured wireless should be as guilty of criminal facilitation as anyone who rents a warehouse to goodfellas to store stolen goods, perhaps moreso since they're just too lazy to learn how to secure the AP.
Cracking an encryption scheme or MAC spoofing are different balls of wax though. Even the most simplistic method is akin to a locked door, and breaking it is like breaking and entering.
A misspelled word in a marketing device like a flyer or a poster. Makes you wonder how many levels of management this thing went through.
Instant messaging mistakes are pretty easily overlooked, email mistake are a little understandable, but advertising copy....never.
And if I see a misspelled word in a magazine, book or newspaper I want to scream. I mean these people use the language for a living!
Whoa Nelly...back up the wagon here. It's selfish for Joe Average to want to keep something that belongs to him, but not selfish to seize that land so that other Joe Averages who stupidly bought property with limited access can have a faster commute?
Sounds like you are confusing the good old USA with a system of government that says the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. That's not the case. If it was we could eliminate the vast majority of career welfare recipients overnight, since reducing taxes that pay for these services would benefit the many regular taxpayers while only impacting the relatively few social leeches. This system of government was initially set up to avoid that concept of mob rule.
To plug that into your scenario, it would mean that the average worker could work about a third less hours and earn the same money, reducing the traffic load in your mythical 2 lane highway, as these people would now commute less to and from work.
This application of the concept of eminent domain is actually much more misguided than the application that drove the Native Americans off their lands. In that case, those were not people protected by our Constitution, ergo more or less a conquered people, since they had no allegience to our system of government and refused to be bound by our laws; in this case, the person WAS protected by our Constitution and entitled to the same protections as everyone else, with the same net results, the loss of private property. And I think we can agree that Native Americans are pretty high up on the list of people that have been screwed over in the name of progress.
Among the several flaws in your argument, you seem to believe that a US based company cannot compete on a global scale, based largely on labor costs. While this does hold a bit of merit, you fail to see that if a company isn't competitive with US labor, it CAN get competitive with US labor, through any number of methods not the least of which is innovation.
Taking your India scenario and extrapolating, you see that the Indian government is offering up it's labor pool, like the madam of a whorehouse offers up her stable. Here they are, cheap and willing, and no pesky commitments after you're done. Why? to expand thier own tax base. Look at India as a nation...rampant disease, filth and poverty, but they can afford a nuclear weapons program. Our worst ghetto in the US is a paradise in relation to the inner city in New Dehli. How long do you think it will take once they realize they have the keys to the US infrastructure in thier hands, then see if you can guess how long it will take them to exploit that?
The one world group always brings up "globalization is good" but they usually leave off the last part they are thinking "good...unless it's a global United States of America."
So your argument is basically "suck it up" America and take your medicine. Take a back seat to whatever is the third world flavor of the month, it was bound to happen sooner or later and better sooner.
From IBM analogy, IBM wouldn't be IBM without a few decades of US government hand-holding to get them where they are, and in your scenario, that corporation owes no allegiance to, as we say where I'm from, "the one what brung them to the dance." The corporation shouldn't be allowed to siphon off wine and roses like that then be allowed to calmly waltz out, leaving a swath of locust like destruction behind them.
Also, no one can hold these people accountable legally for transgressions. No place is without crime, but it's a good bet that no one will burn down thier own barn if thier horse is still in it.
Once the first rock slides the avalanche is in progress, it just doesn't look that bad.
You've mentioned specialized labor on two separate occasions as a positive. It isn't...the pseudo-intellectuals that harp on Adam Smith as the be-all end-all authority on business often make this mistake.
Pure altruism (communism) doesn't work because it ignores self-interest and encourages freeloading. Pure self-interest (laissez-faire capitalism) doesn't work because it goes against the self-interest of the many by encouraging a dog-eat-dog world where only the unscrupulous get to the top. Finding the balance, finding the right mix, doing what works and what's best for the greatest number of taxpayers is what politics is all about. US companies "should" have this truism in sight, rather than the strict code of "make a buck today". It's why we have laws to prohibit the butcher from trying to cheat you, just because he can probably get away with it. Unfortuately in this "free trade" world, the other countries don't have this same encumberance, now.
Specialization breeds mediocrity by discouraging out-of-the-box thinking. The "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" theory. The guy who "specialized" in buggywhips ruled until the guy who knew something about buggywhips and something about transmissions said "Man this would make a cool gearshift."
By the way the trite canned college textbook answer of "A larger market. Cheaper consumer goods. More specialized labor. Better Economic Growth." is what the parent poster was asking to be clarified. A larger market for what? Larger than what? Labor specialized in what? Economic growth for whom? We already see cheaper goods, cheaper in both quality and in support.
I'm not going to apologize for the fact that what we Americans would consider poverty would seem middle class in the countries to which we are exporting our middle-class employment opportunities.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. Robert A Heinlein
See also Mithrandir86 's responses to other posts of the same ilk on the same subject.
By offshoring of jobs in the medical, insurance and banking fields, industries that will not expand based into the developing companies, except on a macro- or highest (read stockholder) level, we're effectively gutting the middle class's support of these industries.
If free trade is the argument, why do US (any parent country) companies routinely offer goods in these developing companies at a fraction of the cost to their US consumer counterparts in order to gain market share? How are these "loss leaders" paid for? By the US (any parent country) consumers.
By looking at the situation with rose-colored glasses and calling it free trade, you miss the underlying effects. The countries that are benefitting from the off-shoring don't reciprocate by exporting jobs, and overall don't usually utilize US (parent country) goods or services, instead the US (parent country) goods and services usually end up competing with government sponsored goods and services, which, by definition, must be below a competitive price point in order to be effectivly subsidized.
I agree that it is quite easy to move a "corporation" off-shore. But if a company has 15 executives and salesmen in the US and 1300 workers in another country, are they still a "US" company or should they be considered as such? Microsoft considers itself a US company, specifically a Washington state based company, but many of it's letters of incorporation are filed in Nevada, whereby they avoid over a $140 million in local Washington state taxes a year. They are "Redmond, Washington" in name only, and the land tax breaks that Washington gave them years ago in order to bring jobs to the area are being mitigated by Microsoft's increasing off-shoring of thier code work and slick legal wrangling. I can name several countries that will allow MS to relocate the corporation lock-stock-and letterhead to it's shores for a fraction of that. And based on US laws nothing precludes them from doing that, and still exploiting our market in such a monopolistic fashion....but it's free trade so that has to be good. Right?
Is mentioning Microsoft and monopoly in the same post the IT equivalent of Godwin's Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwin's_law?