Yeah, I do find this case ridiculous. One police force decided not to take any action but another one did. I would think that, if the case ever comes to court, it'll get thrown out immediately by the judge - our judiciary might not always be everyone's cup of tea but I do credit them with having enough intelligence not to penalise a member of the emergency services (ie, the ambulance driver) for doing his job.
It's not like ambulance crews get a checklist of what does and doesn't qualify as emergency work with rushing to an accident on one list and delivering vital transplant organs on the other.
I'd like to hear the Chief Superintendant of the force concerned tell a court, in his professional, medical opinion what difference there is between moving a patient between one hospital and another to have heart transplant surgery and moving the organ between one hospital and another for use in that very same patient.
A transplant organ isn't a bag of shopping. The difference between delivering it quickly and delivering it leisurely can be the difference between life and death. Hopefully, the courts will reinforce that and decide accordingly.
If you think that these cameras are the beginning of the end of society, just what do you make of the state of the US since September 11th? Do you enjoy some of the totalitarian measures introduced by your own government? Are you proud of the human rights abuses at Camp X-Ray and elsewhere?
If your own government won't come out and flatly deny that human rights abuses are going on in Camp X-Ray what does that suggest to you? If the detainees there are being treated humanely, why aren't observers from Amnesty International or other civil rights groups even allowed to observe the conditions in which their being kept? Why don't the detainees have the right to independant legal counsel?
And, perhaps most damning at all, why are children, some as young as 12, being held there?
Somehow, you trust the US government to be open and honest about its military operations. Is that why nobody's being investigated for any of the multitude of incidents in which US military personnel opened fire upon Iraqi civilians in this latest war? Or why friendly fire incidents aren't properly investigated, the offending personnel aren't even named let alone publicly asked to account for their actions and related camera footage from their aircraft gets "lost"?
Open your eyes man. Look further than Fox News and CNN. Do some research of your own. Find out exactly what's going on in your name.
And one more thing -- expect the taxes to be really complicated if you work for a company in a different country. And expect both countries to be completely unhelpful when you're trying to figure anything out -- at least that's my experience. Just yesterday I had someone from the Centre for Non-Residents (e.g., UK expats) tell me they probably knew the answers to my questions, but wouldn't talk to me b/c I'm resident in the UK.
Bureaucrats have a stupidity level above and beyond everyone else's - it's either a job requirement or a badge of honour. (I swear, if they were an AD&D character class, Intelligence and Wisdom scores under 6 would be prime requisites, and being a pain in the ass would get them a 10 percent experience bonus.)
Next time you have to deal with that department, withhold your number when you call (dial 141 then the number as you normally would, if I remember correctly) and just pretend that you're calling from abroad. If anyone questions why you're phone conversation has no time delay on it, tell them you're calling from your holiday home in Ireland or France. And if being in another EU country doesn't count, then tell them that you're calling from Norway. (If they ask you for a contact telephone number, just give your mobile - with international roaming a standard option on all UK mobiles, they won't be able to refute your "overseas" location.)
As far as camp x-ray goes, I did a little google on it before I answered your first post and blindfold was the worst I saw. Until I see evidence of torture I have no reason to believe it is happening.
How else do you think that the US is extracting information from the detainees? Asking nicely?
If you really do believe that human rights aren't being abused at Camp X-Ray then you're either pretty naive, pretty stupid or both. There are no so blind as those that will not see.
You know, I think we basically agree. I'm not suggesting that the large multinational drugs companies shouldn't be allowed to make any profit, only that they should look beyond profits when necessary.
How many patients in the developing world would be able to pay the kind of price that the large multinationals charge in the developed world? Next to none.
So how exactly are they hurt when generic drugs manufacturers in India provide them with those medicines at a fraction of the cost? It's not like the generic drugs are being sold in competition with the patented versions is it?
The generic drugs manufacturers aren't trying to muscle into the developed world - they don't try and sell their generic variants in those markets where the large multinationals prosper.
Q: Why do the large multinationals go after the generic drugs manufacturers if they aren't hurting them? A: Because they can.
And, that is what I call evil. Perhaps you disagree, but that's the way I see it.
First of all, look at what the original poster said and then look at my reply. Try to take what I said in context, not out of it.
The US should abandon nuclear weapons and ICBMs.
And I suppose everyone else will follow suit?
The original poster suggested that India should unilaterally disarm. Why doesn't he suggest that the US should do the same?
The US should stop tolerating pograms (sic) against minorities.
What the hell is a pogram? If you mean program I'd ask what minorities you are talking about. Perhaps the minority of people who are from contries who are typically indoctrinated to believe that we should all die? I think they bear a little watching. If you're talking about some other program, you're sadly mistaken. Racism doesn't fly here anymore... at least not government sponsered racism.
The spelling "pograms" was there in the original post. I suggest you look up what "sic" means. Seriously, go do that.
Racism doesn't fly in the US anymore? Really? Is that why Native Americans are still having to fight for some of the basic rights that they've been promised?
Ever heard of the Washington Redskins? Isn't Redskin a racist term? Are NFL teams exempt from being racist? If so, why don't we see any NFL franchises called the Niggers, the Dagos or the Wops?
No racism in American society? Yeah, right.
The US should address their grievous oppression of "lower castes" (i.e. people from poorer backgrounds).
It's a capitalist society. If you're poor, you're poor. It's not oppression. Show me the country that has no poor.
In most western societies, being poor isn't as crippling a disadvantage as it is in the US. Being poor in the US means that you can practically kiss your chances of getting a decent education out of the window, and that your chances of getting anything but basic health care is near zero.
From a poor background but want to go to university? Or need a heart transplant? Well, you better hope that you don't live in the US, because if you do then you're shit out of luck.
(You may not call this oppression, but I'm guessing that you're not poor, so how would you know if people at the bottom of society feel oppressed or not? Besides, the original poster talked about caste systems, as if they were condoned by the Indian government rather than being illegal, and my point was meant to illustrate that the US has its own caste system, albeit one that's not as visible to some people.)
The US should respect the Geneva Convention and other human rights in Camp X-Ray as specified by most of the world.
It's a prison. It's not a resort. In a regular prison if you act up you get thrown in the hole(solitary). In x-ray you get a blindfold. So what? I'd rather have the blindfold.
Seriously, do you think that a blindfold is as heavy as it gets at Camp X-Ray? Don't you think that people are being tortured there?
Let's not forget the hundreds of others across the US who have been imprisoned without charge, legal representation or even the right to call their families, since September 11th. Why is it OK to do this without presenting any evidence of wrongdoing? If you won't stand up for their rights, who do you suppose will stand up for yours when they knock on your door?
You are so fucking stupid it is scary.. According to you,one simply cannot judge anything or anyone. If you don't fucking see a difference between some of the regimes out there and US then you are fucking sick and need to get out more. Seriously.
There's a reason why you and the original poster have posted as Anonymous Cowards. It's because you are cowards, because you don't have the guts to stand up and say "this is me, this is my opinion, this is what I truly believe in".
And, please, try and get it right. I'm not saying that you can't judge others. I'm saying that if you're going to judge others then you should be prepared to be judged yourself.
The difference between the Indian "regime" and the US? Well, for starters, India hasn't invaded another country under the pretence of eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction, only to turn around after the invasion and say that finding those WMDs (if they truly exist) isn't that important after all.
It amazes me when people can't see hypocrisy when it's staring them in the face every fucking day.
Expose on US fascism. They may not be Muslim fanatics, but they are religious fanatics.
The US should abandon nuclear weapons and ICBMs. The US should stop tolerating pograms (sic) against minorities. The US should address their grievous repression of "lower castes" (ie, people from poorer backgrounds). The US should respect the Geneva Convention and other human rights in Camp X-Ray, as specified by most of the world.
Maybe if they addressed these, we could take US policy seriously.
It works both ways doesn't it?
Seriously, before you start deciding which governments around the world are OK and which aren't, perhaps you should pay more attention to your own goverment and your own society.
If the Founding Fathers were alive today, they'd be appalled at how their vision of a free and egalitarian society has been corrupted.
Take the pharmaceutical industry at the moment, India has big companies manufacturing generic medicines.
Unfortunately, this is one industry that will soon cease to exist, at least if the current US-sponsored World Trade Organisation initiatives to force India to recognise drug patents is successful.
Right now, there are literally millions of people in India, the rest of Asia and elsewhere in the developing world who benefit from cheap pharmaceuticals that have been produced in India by generic drugs manufacturers. These people, 99.99 percent of which would never be able to afford the non-generic variants of their medicines, are totally reliant on the inexpensive medicines that the generic drugs manufacturers currently supply. Cut off the source, and those millions will suffer greatly, and many of them will die.
Obviously, the WTO and the large, western drugs companies are well aware of the consequences of shutting down the Indian pharmaceutical industry. They care more about their lost profits (as if someone who lives in the developing world would ever be able to pay their inflated prices) then they do about human suffering.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the large multinational drugs companies (eg, Glaxo, Monsanto, Novartis, etc) are a plague: they continually put profits before people.
Standards allow innovators to communicate their ideas effectively, and to build upon the established status quo. To paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton, standards allow innovators to stand upon the shoulders of giants.
Here are a few of the standards that I'm using right now (and that you're using with me) that are letting us have this discussion:
The English language QWERTY keyboard layout PC architecture (made up of countless standards) HTTP ADSL and other connectivity technologies
That's not an exhaustive list, but it is one that clearly illustrates how standards help us every day. And if I'm designing a new PC bus (or a new HTTP-like protocol, broadband connection mechanism, foolproof method for making apple pie, etc), then I can draw on the design, user experiences, et al of the existing solutions to help me make my uber idea a reality.
Standards are our friend. Sure, sometimes new innovations don't build upon existing ones, but even knowing when to tear up the old rule book and write a new one requires knowledge of what was wrong with the old one.
I might not have ever invented anything of any major significance (yet) but I'm humble enough to realise that, if I ever do, it'll be because, like Newton, I've been fortunate to have the endeavours of others to either build upon or dismiss.
Microsoft isn't giving away money, it's giving these charities a limited number of free licenses for its software.
No doubt, this donated software has strings attached, just as similar Microsoft donation have had in the past. Only last year, on this very website, I remember reading about the company "donating" copies of Office to a charity in a poverty-ridden African nation on the condition that the same number of copies of Windows were bought to run it on.* And I can recall other examples before that one too.
Almost without exception, Microsoft's donations are targetted to meet Microsoft's long-term goals. A few licenses here, a few there buys Microsoft lots of positive PR ("hey, look at how nice we are to the little kiddies") but anyone who thinks that the company's motives are purely philanthropic is living in cloud-cockoo land.
Microsoft is a company that has billions in the bank. The amount of good it could do with even a fraction of that wealth is unimaginable. Calling the giving away of its own software charity is a joke. Using some of its significant cash reserves to wipe out a large chunk of Third-World debt - now that would be real charity.
(*It seemed to be oblivious to the relevant marketing/public affairs people at Microsoft that a cash-strapped charity in a Third-World country didn't have the kind of resources to afford one copy of Windows to install on the recycled machines that it had luckily procured, let alone ten or twenty. Sometimes, people who think nothing of paying $2 for a cup of coffee seem to be really thick when it comes to visualising how the other half lives.)
Full text of article (kinda), in case of /.ing
on
Information Obesity
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
Well, I would post the full article here in case of slashdotting but, as you're going to ignore 70 percent of it, here's the first 30 percent:
Spinning around
By David Adams May 20 2003 Next
Another day in the office, which, according to one recent study, consists of handling 46 phone calls, 25 emails, 16 voicemails, 23 items of post, eight inter-office memos, 16 faxes and nine mobile phone calls. While that sounds scary, its even more alarming to think that those figures - taken from a 2000 survey of companies employing between 100 and 499 staff conducted by Pitney Bowes in partnership with the US-based forecaster the Institute for the Future - are likely to have risen.
Enough to send you barmy? You may be right. Experts say information overload is a serious problem in many companies, adding to stress levels and resulting in a downturn in productivity (a report from Proudfoot Consulting last year found IT-related problems - such as information overload - were responsible for 8 per cent of lost time).
Irish website content management author and public speaker Gerry McGovern believes the problem known as information overload stems from the fact that since the founding of civilisation man has been operating on the premise that more is better. "(It's) the-more-the-merrier kind of concept... if we create more, we create more value," McGovern says.
"But we have begun to shift into a digital-type of economy and society and I think the rules that operate within a digital economy are different from those which operate within the physical economy. Part of that is there is essentially no scarcity or there is very little scarcity in a digital economy. The constant movement is towards cheaper, faster processes, infinitely cheaper storage devices that can store vastly (greater) quantities of content or data."
McGovern says this impulse to do more and create more has resulted in a "glut situation".
"Information overload is a reflection of that almost genetic historic desire to do more," he says.
Brooklyn-based author David Shenk, who has written several books and articles on the issue including Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut (1997), uses the term "information obesity", saying that where once we lived in a world where food was scarce and people struggled to get enough calories to keep them alive, today the industrialised world has the opposite problem.
"Information is the same way," he says. "We need information and contact and stimulus but we're now in a situation where the challenge is not so much to get hold of it as it is to be discriminate about what we expose ourselves to. Most everyone in the industrialised world can get their hands on a silo full of data and stimulus in a matter of minutes. The challenge is to get the most relevant, meaningful, contextualised information so that we can turn that into useful knowledge and wisdom."
Information at your fingertips is good
on
Information Obesity
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
OK, so most people don't read every last word on every website that they visit. Big deal.
I don't read every last word in my morning paper and I certainly don't watch everything on TV.
But I do appreciate having the choice of being able to read what I want in my paper, or watching TV when I want. Similarly, I do appreciate being able to go to a website and pull information that's useful to me, when it's useful to me, regardless of how often it's been accessed in the past.
For example, I recently was putting an older hard disk drive in a PC, simply to see if it still worked reliably. If it did then I was going to keep it around for emergencies or perhaps donate it to someone else, if it didn't then I was going to recycle it.
Unfortunately, this drive didn't have its master/slave jumper settings, or even acceptable CHS (cylinder, heads and sectors) values on it, and the accompanying documentation had long since disappeared.
All I had to do to get the information that I needed was drill down to the relevant page of the manufacturer's website and, voila, I had the drive up and running within minutes.
Now, I can't imagine that there are many people who've looked at the same web page in the last year or two (after all, this was "only" a 540MB hard disk drive), but having that web page there where the information could easily be found made sense both for the manufacturer and for me.
The manufacturer spent next to nothing putting that information there where it could be found (and no doubt saved a lot of money that it would otherwise have spent on technical support calls) and I got what I wanted too, almost instantaneously. A win-win situation all around.
Now, why would the manufacturer care about how often the page has been accessed? It it somehow hurting it's bottom line to have that page sitting on a server somewhere? I don't think so.
Much as I loathe the phrase "information wants to be free", sometimes it does.
Am I supposed to be ashamed that monetary gain isn't my overwhelming priority in life?
All I'm saying is that if I had $10 million in the bank, let alone $10 billion, then I would spend as much of my time experiencing life to the fullest as I could.
I appreciate that there's a catch 22 situation here; that getting to that point in life where you can appreciate everything it has to offer often means sacrificing a lot. I understand that the people who've got billions in the bank have shown a lot of commitment to their careers, and who've been dedicated above and beyond the call of duty, but let's not pretend that commitment and dedication automatically lead to success - for every Gates or Ballmer out there there are thousands of others who've worked just as hard but without accumilating as much wealth.
Bottom line: working your butt off to earn the big bucks isn't a bad thing but when you're richer than your wildest dreams why not stop and smell the roses?
Ballmer is a family man. He has kids. If you were in his shoes, wouldn't you want to spend more time with them?
Or, having experienced the highs of corporate management, wouldn't you want to experience life to the fullest? Learn how to scuba dive, paraglide, fly a helicopter, race a Formula One car, trek across the Andes, climb Mount Everest or swim with dolphins?
There is life after Microsoft, many of the company's earliest employees have experienced it, but why not Ballmer? OK, he's obviously driven and loves his work, but what's the point of having billions if all you have to show for it is the number of zeroes on your bank statement?
Life isn't a trial run. You only get one shot. This is a guy who could do almost anything. So, why isn't he?
I know if I had even a thousandth of his net worth you'd never see me in an office ever again. I'm sure all but a handful of sane people would say the same.
I agree with you that there's nothing for conspiracy theorists to worry themselves (and others) here.
But I will leave you with one thought: Steve Ballmer is the richest employee ever. Never in all recorded history has anyone else hired by a company been paid so much.
(And, for the benefit of the few who don't understand the difference, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, etc were founders of their respective companies. Nobody hired them to do a job.)
Now, given that he's earnt several billion, you have to ask, why the hell does he still work? Why not quit and enjoy what he's got? Why be sat in an office in cloudly Redmond worrying about anything when you could be kicking it on your own private Carribean island worrying about nothing?
Leicester Square (London's movie-going heartland) cinema : £10.50 per person.
Local (London suburb) cinema : £6.50 per person.
Multiply these figures by 1.5 to get rough US dollar prices. Basically, that's over $15 or $10 to see a movie in the evening on first run. Matinee prices are available, but normally only for the first showing of the day, and even then only at a discount of around £2-3 per ticket.
Yeah, a complete rip-off but what we have to pay over here.
...Slashdot was to host a BitTorrent of this and similar files for faster, cooperative downloading?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: doing this would be a win-win situation. It's a pity that the editorial team are too busy playing with MAME/whatever to actually do something of real benefit to the wider community.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, you do realize you have just suggested fascism, right? If only we didn't have to deal with those stupid voters.
You mean like in Florida?
Yeah, I do find this case ridiculous. One police force decided not to take any action but another one did. I would think that, if the case ever comes to court, it'll get thrown out immediately by the judge - our judiciary might not always be everyone's cup of tea but I do credit them with having enough intelligence not to penalise a member of the emergency services (ie, the ambulance driver) for doing his job.
It's not like ambulance crews get a checklist of what does and doesn't qualify as emergency work with rushing to an accident on one list and delivering vital transplant organs on the other.
I'd like to hear the Chief Superintendant of the force concerned tell a court, in his professional, medical opinion what difference there is between moving a patient between one hospital and another to have heart transplant surgery and moving the organ between one hospital and another for use in that very same patient.
A transplant organ isn't a bag of shopping. The difference between delivering it quickly and delivering it leisurely can be the difference between life and death. Hopefully, the courts will reinforce that and decide accordingly.
I'm assuming that you're American.
If you think that these cameras are the beginning of the end of society, just what do you make of the state of the US since September 11th? Do you enjoy some of the totalitarian measures introduced by your own government? Are you proud of the human rights abuses at Camp X-Ray and elsewhere?
Hello Mr Pot, I'm Mr Kettle. Gee, you look awfully black.
US PATRIOT Act and Camp X-Ray anyone?
It seems Aldous Huxley is becoming to US society what you would suggest that George Orwell is to its British counterpart.
New World to Brave New World in just over 500 years. Congratulations.
If your own government won't come out and flatly deny that human rights abuses are going on in Camp X-Ray what does that suggest to you? If the detainees there are being treated humanely, why aren't observers from Amnesty International or other civil rights groups even allowed to observe the conditions in which their being kept? Why don't the detainees have the right to independant legal counsel?
And, perhaps most damning at all, why are children, some as young as 12, being held there?
Somehow, you trust the US government to be open and honest about its military operations. Is that why nobody's being investigated for any of the multitude of incidents in which US military personnel opened fire upon Iraqi civilians in this latest war? Or why friendly fire incidents aren't properly investigated, the offending personnel aren't even named let alone publicly asked to account for their actions and related camera footage from their aircraft gets "lost"?
Open your eyes man. Look further than Fox News and CNN. Do some research of your own. Find out exactly what's going on in your name.
And one more thing -- expect the taxes to be really complicated if you work for a company in a different country. And expect both countries to be completely unhelpful when you're trying to figure anything out -- at least that's my experience. Just yesterday I had someone from the Centre for Non-Residents (e.g., UK expats) tell me they probably knew the answers to my questions, but wouldn't talk to me b/c I'm resident in the UK.
Bureaucrats have a stupidity level above and beyond everyone else's - it's either a job requirement or a badge of honour. (I swear, if they were an AD&D character class, Intelligence and Wisdom scores under 6 would be prime requisites, and being a pain in the ass would get them a 10 percent experience bonus.)
Next time you have to deal with that department, withhold your number when you call (dial 141 then the number as you normally would, if I remember correctly) and just pretend that you're calling from abroad. If anyone questions why you're phone conversation has no time delay on it, tell them you're calling from your holiday home in Ireland or France. And if being in another EU country doesn't count, then tell them that you're calling from Norway. (If they ask you for a contact telephone number, just give your mobile - with international roaming a standard option on all UK mobiles, they won't be able to refute your "overseas" location.)
As far as camp x-ray goes, I did a little google on it before I answered your first post and blindfold was the worst I saw. Until I see evidence of torture I have no reason to believe it is happening.
How else do you think that the US is extracting information from the detainees? Asking nicely?
If you really do believe that human rights aren't being abused at Camp X-Ray then you're either pretty naive, pretty stupid or both. There are no so blind as those that will not see.
Anyone else think that this is Kip Durron running around with the Sun Crusher?
You know, I think we basically agree. I'm not suggesting that the large multinational drugs companies shouldn't be allowed to make any profit, only that they should look beyond profits when necessary.
How many patients in the developing world would be able to pay the kind of price that the large multinationals charge in the developed world? Next to none.
So how exactly are they hurt when generic drugs manufacturers in India provide them with those medicines at a fraction of the cost? It's not like the generic drugs are being sold in competition with the patented versions is it?
The generic drugs manufacturers aren't trying to muscle into the developed world - they don't try and sell their generic variants in those markets where the large multinationals prosper.
Q: Why do the large multinationals go after the generic drugs manufacturers if they aren't hurting them? A: Because they can.
And, that is what I call evil. Perhaps you disagree, but that's the way I see it.
First of all, look at what the original poster said and then look at my reply. Try to take what I said in context, not out of it.
The US should abandon nuclear weapons and ICBMs.
And I suppose everyone else will follow suit?
The original poster suggested that India should unilaterally disarm. Why doesn't he suggest that the US should do the same?
The US should stop tolerating pograms (sic) against minorities.
What the hell is a pogram? If you mean program I'd ask what minorities you are talking about. Perhaps the minority of people who are from contries who are typically indoctrinated to believe that we should all die? I think they bear a little watching. If you're talking about some other program, you're sadly mistaken. Racism doesn't fly here anymore... at least not government sponsered racism.
The spelling "pograms" was there in the original post. I suggest you look up what "sic" means. Seriously, go do that.
Racism doesn't fly in the US anymore? Really? Is that why Native Americans are still having to fight for some of the basic rights that they've been promised?
Ever heard of the Washington Redskins? Isn't Redskin a racist term? Are NFL teams exempt from being racist? If so, why don't we see any NFL franchises called the Niggers, the Dagos or the Wops?
No racism in American society? Yeah, right.
The US should address their grievous oppression of "lower castes" (i.e. people from poorer backgrounds).
It's a capitalist society. If you're poor, you're poor. It's not oppression. Show me the country that has no poor.
In most western societies, being poor isn't as crippling a disadvantage as it is in the US. Being poor in the US means that you can practically kiss your chances of getting a decent education out of the window, and that your chances of getting anything but basic health care is near zero.
From a poor background but want to go to university? Or need a heart transplant? Well, you better hope that you don't live in the US, because if you do then you're shit out of luck.
(You may not call this oppression, but I'm guessing that you're not poor, so how would you know if people at the bottom of society feel oppressed or not? Besides, the original poster talked about caste systems, as if they were condoned by the Indian government rather than being illegal, and my point was meant to illustrate that the US has its own caste system, albeit one that's not as visible to some people.)
The US should respect the Geneva Convention and other human rights in Camp X-Ray as specified by most of the world.
It's a prison. It's not a resort. In a regular prison if you act up you get thrown in the hole(solitary). In x-ray you get a blindfold. So what? I'd rather have the blindfold.
Seriously, do you think that a blindfold is as heavy as it gets at Camp X-Ray? Don't you think that people are being tortured there?
Let's not forget the hundreds of others across the US who have been imprisoned without charge, legal representation or even the right to call their families, since September 11th. Why is it OK to do this without presenting any evidence of wrongdoing? If you won't stand up for their rights, who do you suppose will stand up for yours when they knock on your door?
Need anything else clarified?
You are so fucking stupid it is scary .. ,one simply cannot judge anything or anyone.
According to you
If you don't fucking see a difference between some of the regimes out there and US then you are fucking sick and need to get out more.
Seriously.
There's a reason why you and the original poster have posted as Anonymous Cowards. It's because you are cowards, because you don't have the guts to stand up and say "this is me, this is my opinion, this is what I truly believe in".
And, please, try and get it right. I'm not saying that you can't judge others. I'm saying that if you're going to judge others then you should be prepared to be judged yourself.
The difference between the Indian "regime" and the US? Well, for starters, India hasn't invaded another country under the pretence of eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction, only to turn around after the invasion and say that finding those WMDs (if they truly exist) isn't that important after all.
It amazes me when people can't see hypocrisy when it's staring them in the face every fucking day.
Expose on US fascism. They may not be Muslim fanatics, but they are religious fanatics.
The US should abandon nuclear weapons and ICBMs.
The US should stop tolerating pograms (sic) against minorities.
The US should address their grievous repression of "lower castes" (ie, people from poorer backgrounds).
The US should respect the Geneva Convention and other human rights in Camp X-Ray, as specified by most of the world.
Maybe if they addressed these, we could take US policy seriously.
It works both ways doesn't it?
Seriously, before you start deciding which governments around the world are OK and which aren't, perhaps you should pay more attention to your own goverment and your own society.
If the Founding Fathers were alive today, they'd be appalled at how their vision of a free and egalitarian society has been corrupted.
Take the pharmaceutical industry at the moment, India has big companies manufacturing generic medicines.
Unfortunately, this is one industry that will soon cease to exist, at least if the current US-sponsored World Trade Organisation initiatives to force India to recognise drug patents is successful.
Right now, there are literally millions of people in India, the rest of Asia and elsewhere in the developing world who benefit from cheap pharmaceuticals that have been produced in India by generic drugs manufacturers. These people, 99.99 percent of which would never be able to afford the non-generic variants of their medicines, are totally reliant on the inexpensive medicines that the generic drugs manufacturers currently supply. Cut off the source, and those millions will suffer greatly, and many of them will die.
Obviously, the WTO and the large, western drugs companies are well aware of the consequences of shutting down the Indian pharmaceutical industry. They care more about their lost profits (as if someone who lives in the developing world would ever be able to pay their inflated prices) then they do about human suffering.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the large multinational drugs companies (eg, Glaxo, Monsanto, Novartis, etc) are a plague: they continually put profits before people.
It's this kind of shit that's gonna bring this situation to a head.
Standards allow innovators to communicate their ideas effectively, and to build upon the established status quo. To paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton, standards allow innovators to stand upon the shoulders of giants.
Here are a few of the standards that I'm using right now (and that you're using with me) that are letting us have this discussion:
The English language
QWERTY keyboard layout
PC architecture (made up of countless standards)
HTTP
ADSL and other connectivity technologies
That's not an exhaustive list, but it is one that clearly illustrates how standards help us every day. And if I'm designing a new PC bus (or a new HTTP-like protocol, broadband connection mechanism, foolproof method for making apple pie, etc), then I can draw on the design, user experiences, et al of the existing solutions to help me make my uber idea a reality.
Standards are our friend. Sure, sometimes new innovations don't build upon existing ones, but even knowing when to tear up the old rule book and write a new one requires knowledge of what was wrong with the old one.
I might not have ever invented anything of any major significance (yet) but I'm humble enough to realise that, if I ever do, it'll be because, like Newton, I've been fortunate to have the endeavours of others to either build upon or dismiss.
Microsoft isn't giving away money, it's giving these charities a limited number of free licenses for its software.
No doubt, this donated software has strings attached, just as similar Microsoft donation have had in the past. Only last year, on this very website, I remember reading about the company "donating" copies of Office to a charity in a poverty-ridden African nation on the condition that the same number of copies of Windows were bought to run it on.* And I can recall other examples before that one too.
Almost without exception, Microsoft's donations are targetted to meet Microsoft's long-term goals. A few licenses here, a few there buys Microsoft lots of positive PR ("hey, look at how nice we are to the little kiddies") but anyone who thinks that the company's motives are purely philanthropic is living in cloud-cockoo land.
Microsoft is a company that has billions in the bank. The amount of good it could do with even a fraction of that wealth is unimaginable. Calling the giving away of its own software charity is a joke. Using some of its significant cash reserves to wipe out a large chunk of Third-World debt - now that would be real charity.
(*It seemed to be oblivious to the relevant marketing/public affairs people at Microsoft that a cash-strapped charity in a Third-World country didn't have the kind of resources to afford one copy of Windows to install on the recycled machines that it had luckily procured, let alone ten or twenty. Sometimes, people who think nothing of paying $2 for a cup of coffee seem to be really thick when it comes to visualising how the other half lives.)
Well, I would post the full article here in case of slashdotting but, as you're going to ignore 70 percent of it, here's the first 30 percent:
... if we create more, we create more value," McGovern says.
Spinning around
By David Adams
May 20 2003
Next
Another day in the office, which, according to one recent study, consists of handling 46 phone calls, 25 emails, 16 voicemails, 23 items of post, eight inter-office memos, 16 faxes and nine mobile phone calls. While that sounds scary, its even more alarming to think that those figures - taken from a 2000 survey of companies employing between 100 and 499 staff conducted by Pitney Bowes in partnership with the US-based forecaster the Institute for the Future - are likely to have risen.
Enough to send you barmy? You may be right. Experts say information overload is a serious problem in many companies, adding to stress levels and resulting in a downturn in productivity (a report from Proudfoot Consulting last year found IT-related problems - such as information overload - were responsible for 8 per cent of lost time).
Irish website content management author and public speaker Gerry McGovern believes the problem known as information overload stems from the fact that since the founding of civilisation man has been operating on the premise that more is better. "(It's) the-more-the-merrier kind of concept
"But we have begun to shift into a digital-type of economy and society and I think the rules that operate within a digital economy are different from those which operate within the physical economy. Part of that is there is essentially no scarcity or there is very little scarcity in a digital economy. The constant movement is towards cheaper, faster processes, infinitely cheaper storage devices that can store vastly (greater) quantities of content or data."
McGovern says this impulse to do more and create more has resulted in a "glut situation".
"Information overload is a reflection of that almost genetic historic desire to do more," he says.
Brooklyn-based author David Shenk, who has written several books and articles on the issue including Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut (1997), uses the term "information obesity", saying that where once we lived in a world where food was scarce and people struggled to get enough calories to keep them alive, today the industrialised world has the opposite problem.
"Information is the same way," he says. "We need information and contact and stimulus but we're now in a situation where the challenge is not so much to get hold of it as it is to be discriminate about what we expose ourselves to. Most everyone in the industrialised world can get their hands on a silo full of data and stimulus in a matter of minutes. The challenge is to get the most relevant, meaningful, contextualised information so that we can turn that into useful knowledge and wisdom."
OK, so most people don't read every last word on every website that they visit. Big deal.
I don't read every last word in my morning paper and I certainly don't watch everything on TV.
But I do appreciate having the choice of being able to read what I want in my paper, or watching TV when I want. Similarly, I do appreciate being able to go to a website and pull information that's useful to me, when it's useful to me, regardless of how often it's been accessed in the past.
For example, I recently was putting an older hard disk drive in a PC, simply to see if it still worked reliably. If it did then I was going to keep it around for emergencies or perhaps donate it to someone else, if it didn't then I was going to recycle it.
Unfortunately, this drive didn't have its master/slave jumper settings, or even acceptable CHS (cylinder, heads and sectors) values on it, and the accompanying documentation had long since disappeared.
All I had to do to get the information that I needed was drill down to the relevant page of the manufacturer's website and, voila, I had the drive up and running within minutes.
Now, I can't imagine that there are many people who've looked at the same web page in the last year or two (after all, this was "only" a 540MB hard disk drive), but having that web page there where the information could easily be found made sense both for the manufacturer and for me.
The manufacturer spent next to nothing putting that information there where it could be found (and no doubt saved a lot of money that it would otherwise have spent on technical support calls) and I got what I wanted too, almost instantaneously. A win-win situation all around.
Now, why would the manufacturer care about how often the page has been accessed? It it somehow hurting it's bottom line to have that page sitting on a server somewhere? I don't think so.
Much as I loathe the phrase "information wants to be free", sometimes it does.
Am I supposed to be ashamed that monetary gain isn't my overwhelming priority in life?
All I'm saying is that if I had $10 million in the bank, let alone $10 billion, then I would spend as much of my time experiencing life to the fullest as I could.
I appreciate that there's a catch 22 situation here; that getting to that point in life where you can appreciate everything it has to offer often means sacrificing a lot. I understand that the people who've got billions in the bank have shown a lot of commitment to their careers, and who've been dedicated above and beyond the call of duty, but let's not pretend that commitment and dedication automatically lead to success - for every Gates or Ballmer out there there are thousands of others who've worked just as hard but without accumilating as much wealth.
Bottom line: working your butt off to earn the big bucks isn't a bad thing but when you're richer than your wildest dreams why not stop and smell the roses?
I wasn't trolling. It was a serious question.
Ballmer is a family man. He has kids. If you were in his shoes, wouldn't you want to spend more time with them?
Or, having experienced the highs of corporate management, wouldn't you want to experience life to the fullest? Learn how to scuba dive, paraglide, fly a helicopter, race a Formula One car, trek across the Andes, climb Mount Everest or swim with dolphins?
There is life after Microsoft, many of the company's earliest employees have experienced it, but why not Ballmer? OK, he's obviously driven and loves his work, but what's the point of having billions if all you have to show for it is the number of zeroes on your bank statement?
Life isn't a trial run. You only get one shot. This is a guy who could do almost anything. So, why isn't he?
I know if I had even a thousandth of his net worth you'd never see me in an office ever again. I'm sure all but a handful of sane people would say the same.
Oh well, to each his own.
I agree with you that there's nothing for conspiracy theorists to worry themselves (and others) here.
But I will leave you with one thought: Steve Ballmer is the richest employee ever. Never in all recorded history has anyone else hired by a company been paid so much.
(And, for the benefit of the few who don't understand the difference, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, etc were founders of their respective companies. Nobody hired them to do a job.)
Now, given that he's earnt several billion, you have to ask, why the hell does he still work? Why not quit and enjoy what he's got? Why be sat in an office in cloudly Redmond worrying about anything when you could be kicking it on your own private Carribean island worrying about nothing?
Leicester Square (London's movie-going heartland) cinema : £10.50 per person.
Local (London suburb) cinema : £6.50 per person.
Multiply these figures by 1.5 to get rough US dollar prices. Basically, that's over $15 or $10 to see a movie in the evening on first run. Matinee prices are available, but normally only for the first showing of the day, and even then only at a discount of around £2-3 per ticket.
Yeah, a complete rip-off but what we have to pay over here.
...Slashdot was to host a BitTorrent of this and similar files for faster, cooperative downloading?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: doing this would be a win-win situation. It's a pity that the editorial team are too busy playing with MAME/whatever to actually do something of real benefit to the wider community.
Yeah, I must be. It's been at least seven days since the second movie's been released and I haven't seen it yet.
Yep, I sure am a Matrix junkie. Not.
Can you spell irony?