Perhaps they should, you know, keep the critical employees happy! Employees are not fungible.
To many corporations, they don't know what is a critical employee, and many of them do consider employees to be fungible. Management is critical, everyone else is expendable.
Ever filled out one of those skills matrix things at work, and then had someone arbitrarily decide that since you have some of the words in the checkboxes you would be a good fit? Management by accountants is the model.
Many large organizations treat their employees as interchangeable cogs, and find that to be perfectly normal.
In this case, HP was going to lose the business, and I'm betting the employees decided they'd rather do the same thing for a new employer instead of waiting to see what HP had for them.
Then airline insurers would be driving the safety monitoring, instead of the government. I swear, it's like some people think that it has to be the government or nothing.
If you live in a world in which the insurers are going to enforce safety policy, you are screwed. They'll just cut their losses/maximize their profits and be done with it.
Someone needs to be there to ensure that the safety laws are enforced, and it is entirely the domain of government to enforce laws.
The vast majority of industries are incapable of self regulating, without inevitably leading to blatant consumer harm - the 'market' does not find an optimal solution to melamine in baby food, or ensuring the things like safety regulations.
It'd be like cyberpunk without all of the really cool tech.
Do you think pilots are going to get on board aircraft that are unsafe?
Do you think people don't get into aircraft every day around the world which are nowhere near what we would call safe?
Lack of government regulation and enforcement meant nobody is liable, the plane may or may not crash, and there is no market forces which cause someone to compete on the basis of being safer.
Seriously, think ValuJet or whatever they were... Self enforcement almost never works, because people always try to cheat or save money.
But, more seriously, I think the problem was when that treaty was signed, it took the resources of a nation-state to get someone into space. And now increasingly, it's private corporations doing this.
At some point, someone will actually land something on an asteroid or something and say "we own this now", so at some point, this really is going to be needed.
This life-ending Asteroid has been brought to you by Coca Cola.
If they had a greater than 50% success rate, it would actually meet the probable cause hurdle.
I would be terrified if they could do it that way. There's no probable cause that you personally may have done anything, but a big fishing expedition that says "if we stop everybody, sooner or later we'll find someone who is guilty". I should hope that sure as hell doesn't meet any legal test.
Hell, I'm going to throw out the wild, unsupportable figure that 25% of all cops are corrupt. So since we know that to be true, we need to heavily scrutinize all of the cops to determine which ones have money they can't account for. Of course, they'd whine and bitch that we're violating their constitutional rights.
At which point, why should their rights hold greater weight than ours?
"To ask you for your ID, I have to have a reason," he said. "Well, I've got statistical reasons that say I've got a lot of crime right now, which gives me probable cause to ask what you're doing out. Then when I add that people are scared...then that gives us even more [reason] to ask why are you here and what are you doing in this area."
Holy crap... so we're going to walk around with the big guns, and since we can't legally do anything without probably cause, we're taking statistics as probably cause on anybody.
"This fear is what's given us the reason to do this. Once I have stats and people saying they're scared, we can do this," he said. "It allows us to do what we're fixing to do."
Well, that pretty much sums up everything doesn't it?
So that's only 1, maybe 2 generations. The line should still be pretty long even after that wait.
Yeah, but it would turn into one of those things that those 1-2 generations would arrive and find subsequent generations and technology are already there waiting for them.:-P
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The people who wrote the constitution may not have conceived of warrantless tapping of cell phone towers, but I'm not convinced of the interpretations which say "well, they didn't say cell phone towers so it's OK".
In terms of what they knew about, I'd say this falls under "papers and effects". And then there's the need for probable cause.
If you want to be a drug dealer or engage in other criminal activity, don't broadcast your location to the rest of the world with your cellphone.
No, the moral of the story is that if you think you are covered by the 4th amendment, and that you're not living in a surveillance society... you're wrong.
Your government will spy on you without a warrant, whenever they like.
This is all of the stuff we used to joke about "papers please" where only the evil communist bastards would do such a thing. Only now, it's accepted as perfectly normal and legal.
10 years is a ridiculous amount of time to be in prison for something like this.
Well, he could have been facing a lot worse.
Chaney pleaded guilty in March, in a deal with prosecutors. He could have been jailed for up to 121 years if convicted on all 26 indictments he was originally charged with.
It's a steep sentence, but I have no sympathy for him -- nor more than I would for spammers, con-artists, or crooked politicians.
It's not like he could be under any illusion what he was doing was ever legal.
I am fairly certain no one had any legal grounds to deny payments to Wikileaks. How could they?
Well, the legal grounds amount to some nice men in dark suits told Visa that since wikileaks were terrorists, they could possibly run into some unspecified trouble if they paid that money.
Make no mistake about it, it was pressure applied to these companies to stop payment, and VISA may find themselves in the middle of two governments who differ in their interpretation of what is required here.
One side will say they were funding terrorism, and the money needs to be withheld (if not seized), and the other side will say there isn't sufficient legal basis to withhold.
It's easy to know what it's asking for, it's impossible to have any idea of why a game would need access to my personal contacts, be able to change the state of my wifi, and initiate phone calls.
The vast majority of things I've looked at to download for my Android phone leave me going "WTF do you need that for?". And so far in almost all cases, I've decided I don't need the app bad enough to grant it unlimited permissions.
The problem is the amount of things apps ask for is bordering on the ridiculous. I now download an app, put the phone into airplane mode, and see what happens when I launch it. In a lot of cases, it then gets immediately deleted -- sorry, but there's nothing about this game which can't operate offline, so you're not getting all of those perms.
Sure, we know what they mean, but still no idea of why. I have yet to see an app which doesn't want way more permissions than it really needs to work.
So, does anyone know of a good software package to replace my graphing calculator
Presumably, you are allowed to take your calculator to exams, but not your Linux box.
So, if you're going to end up needing the calculator for your exams, you might want to live with the suck to be sure you don't find yourself fumbling with a device you've not used in a while.
And, to complete the old man aspect of this comment... luxury, why in my day we used to dream of having a 4-5 second delay in drawing our graphs, we used to have to walk in chest deep snow, up-hill (both ways) to school and back, and do our graphing with rocks and twigs, and send them to the teacher with smoke signals. Of course, I had an onion on my belt, because that was the style in those days...
I have seen in many areas where city limits are extended for miles outside of any reasonable resemblence of a city just so the city can garner extra funds from speeding tickets.
Or, are those the actual city limits where the city has jurisdiction and people just got caught speeding?
A municipality doesn't just end because most of the houses run out. If they're still charging taxes out there, they get to enforce speed limits.
If the speeding took place outside of their jurisdiction, sure, they've overstepped their bounds. Otherwise, you've just mis-judged when you can start speeding and are complaining you got caught.
We have an article still on the front page in which Eric Schmidt of Google is saying we're going to have to compete with robots for our jobs.
Globalization is trying to move everything to the cheapest possible labor source, and robots and technology is next in line. Sure, your startup costs are high, but your robot won't need to take the day off because its kid is home sick.
Ah, Engineers... home of the perfectly spherical cow to make calculations easier.
Anything with a negative feedback loop fixes itself. If a store owner sets its prices too high, people stop buying there
Assuming people have alternatives or multiple actors aren't getting together to game the system (any form of price fixing cartel).
You can create systems which fall anywhere within the spectrum. Pretending systems on the negative side don't exist merely because it makes it easier to justify your political beliefs is intellectually dishonest.
You're talking about abstract mathematical concepts, which may or may not apply in real world situations. I'm not saying that you couldn't create such a system (though I'm skeptical), I'm saying there's so many other factors that tend to skew this.
Places where bribery and corruption allows companies to thwart market forces don't advance and develop as quickly. They fall behind competitively, and are eventually overwhelmed by the economies of the places with less corruption.
Unless they win out due to some other actor skewing things in their favor. Again, you're talking about idealized outcomes and assuming no other factors.
Lobbying of lawmakers by corporations with money to spend allows people to thwart market forces. Countries like China which skew the rules in their favor thwarts market forces. American policies which in the past set the pump price of gas to be independent of market values skewed market forces. Giving mortgages to people with no jobs skews the market (look up NINJA mortgage). Taking junk debt and turning them into AAA-rated credit vehicles skews the market.
There isn't a market which isn't skewed, broken, or otherwise manipulated so it's not acting as if it was a perfectly spherical cow where all of our assumptions hold true.
It's not a closed system, and it's not running over indefinite periods of time in isolation. Sure, in the abstract we can construct lovely elegant mathematical models in which everything works out as "it should".
And then there's reality. And in reality, companies will do whatever it takes, governments will fiddle with things for their own ends, and consumers will make stupid decisions with imperfect information based on irrational reasons.
Sorry, but your mathematical elegance doesn't give you a complete picture. Not even close.
REALLY? Rounded corners? Who are you kidding? There's no "maybe, maybe not" about it. Get real.
You get real... the fact is that, once the patent office granted someone a design patent, it's the same as any other patent, and enforceable.
Do I think it's a good or sensible patent? Absolutely not. Does that change the fact that it was granted? Not at all.
I think for the most part, patents don't work, are usually overly broad, and do very little to foster anything resembling real innovation.
From there all manner of stupidity ensues. If the patent office had said "Patent rounded corners? Are you insane?" and kicked out the patent, it would be a moot point. But, they didn't... and every bit of stupidity which comes thereafter is an entirely logical result from the starting conditions.
If people are going to be granted absurd, but legally enforceable patents, what do you think will happen?
As they say, don't hate the player, hate the game -- I generally don't care which company is doing stupid things with the patent system, because the brokenness lies in the patent and legal system. But the game has turned all of the players into idiots and asshats.
Slashdot Mirror
To many corporations, they don't know what is a critical employee, and many of them do consider employees to be fungible. Management is critical, everyone else is expendable.
Ever filled out one of those skills matrix things at work, and then had someone arbitrarily decide that since you have some of the words in the checkboxes you would be a good fit? Management by accountants is the model.
Many large organizations treat their employees as interchangeable cogs, and find that to be perfectly normal.
In this case, HP was going to lose the business, and I'm betting the employees decided they'd rather do the same thing for a new employer instead of waiting to see what HP had for them.
As Zuckerberg's own sister found out.
I think it's hilarious that something of hers went public.
If you live in a world in which the insurers are going to enforce safety policy, you are screwed. They'll just cut their losses/maximize their profits and be done with it.
Someone needs to be there to ensure that the safety laws are enforced, and it is entirely the domain of government to enforce laws.
The vast majority of industries are incapable of self regulating, without inevitably leading to blatant consumer harm - the 'market' does not find an optimal solution to melamine in baby food, or ensuring the things like safety regulations.
It'd be like cyberpunk without all of the really cool tech.
Do you think people don't get into aircraft every day around the world which are nowhere near what we would call safe?
Lack of government regulation and enforcement meant nobody is liable, the plane may or may not crash, and there is no market forces which cause someone to compete on the basis of being safer.
Seriously, think ValuJet or whatever they were ... Self enforcement almost never works, because people always try to cheat or save money.
Her refusal to have sex with you doesn't make her a lesbian. ;-)
A nice bottle of scotch or bourbon.
He can sip away at it while he noodles away with all of those gadgets.
It doesn't sound like he needs your help in finding technology.
Bring on the space pirates.
But, more seriously, I think the problem was when that treaty was signed, it took the resources of a nation-state to get someone into space. And now increasingly, it's private corporations doing this.
At some point, someone will actually land something on an asteroid or something and say "we own this now", so at some point, this really is going to be needed.
This life-ending Asteroid has been brought to you by Coca Cola.
I would be terrified if they could do it that way. There's no probable cause that you personally may have done anything, but a big fishing expedition that says "if we stop everybody, sooner or later we'll find someone who is guilty". I should hope that sure as hell doesn't meet any legal test.
Hell, I'm going to throw out the wild, unsupportable figure that 25% of all cops are corrupt. So since we know that to be true, we need to heavily scrutinize all of the cops to determine which ones have money they can't account for. Of course, they'd whine and bitch that we're violating their constitutional rights.
At which point, why should their rights hold greater weight than ours?
You'd be OK with armed police asking everybody who goes by to identify themselves and justify why they're in that area? Really?
If this isn't the culmination of "papers please" I don't know what is.
A free society isn't supposed to do that.
Holy crap ... so we're going to walk around with the big guns, and since we can't legally do anything without probably cause, we're taking statistics as probably cause on anybody.
Well, that pretty much sums up everything doesn't it?
Yeah, but it would turn into one of those things that those 1-2 generations would arrive and find subsequent generations and technology are already there waiting for them. :-P
Early adopters always get hosed.
The people who wrote the constitution may not have conceived of warrantless tapping of cell phone towers, but I'm not convinced of the interpretations which say "well, they didn't say cell phone towers so it's OK".
In terms of what they knew about, I'd say this falls under "papers and effects". And then there's the need for probable cause.
No, the moral of the story is that if you think you are covered by the 4th amendment, and that you're not living in a surveillance society ... you're wrong.
Your government will spy on you without a warrant, whenever they like.
This is all of the stuff we used to joke about "papers please" where only the evil communist bastards would do such a thing. Only now, it's accepted as perfectly normal and legal.
Well, he could have been facing a lot worse.
It's a steep sentence, but I have no sympathy for him -- nor more than I would for spammers, con-artists, or crooked politicians.
It's not like he could be under any illusion what he was doing was ever legal.
Well, he'll be going to a real prison with real criminals -- Slashdot's whinging about what is a hacker, a cracker, or a script kiddie is irrelevant.
He's hardly a criminal mastermind, but what he did was still illegal.
Well, the legal grounds amount to some nice men in dark suits told Visa that since wikileaks were terrorists, they could possibly run into some unspecified trouble if they paid that money.
Make no mistake about it, it was pressure applied to these companies to stop payment, and VISA may find themselves in the middle of two governments who differ in their interpretation of what is required here.
One side will say they were funding terrorism, and the money needs to be withheld (if not seized), and the other side will say there isn't sufficient legal basis to withhold.
Bring on the popcorn.
It also needs to find another phone to run on.
I'm calling it right now ... more cowbell!
It's never too early to make wild-assed guesses which may or may not come true. :-P
It's easy to know what it's asking for, it's impossible to have any idea of why a game would need access to my personal contacts, be able to change the state of my wifi, and initiate phone calls.
The vast majority of things I've looked at to download for my Android phone leave me going "WTF do you need that for?". And so far in almost all cases, I've decided I don't need the app bad enough to grant it unlimited permissions.
The problem is the amount of things apps ask for is bordering on the ridiculous. I now download an app, put the phone into airplane mode, and see what happens when I launch it. In a lot of cases, it then gets immediately deleted -- sorry, but there's nothing about this game which can't operate offline, so you're not getting all of those perms.
Sure, we know what they mean, but still no idea of why. I have yet to see an app which doesn't want way more permissions than it really needs to work.
Presumably, you are allowed to take your calculator to exams, but not your Linux box.
So, if you're going to end up needing the calculator for your exams, you might want to live with the suck to be sure you don't find yourself fumbling with a device you've not used in a while.
And, to complete the old man aspect of this comment ... luxury, why in my day we used to dream of having a 4-5 second delay in drawing our graphs, we used to have to walk in chest deep snow, up-hill (both ways) to school and back, and do our graphing with rocks and twigs, and send them to the teacher with smoke signals. Of course, I had an onion on my belt, because that was the style in those days ...
Anyway, good luck finding an alternative. :-P
Or, are those the actual city limits where the city has jurisdiction and people just got caught speeding?
A municipality doesn't just end because most of the houses run out. If they're still charging taxes out there, they get to enforce speed limits.
If the speeding took place outside of their jurisdiction, sure, they've overstepped their bounds. Otherwise, you've just mis-judged when you can start speeding and are complaining you got caught.
Assuming there's any difference between the cheaper and more expensive TV.
If that notional TV was a Sony, you might pay 3x the price for something which isn't better.
Cost doesn't always equate to quality nowadays. Just what people are willing to pay -- like Monster Cables.
We have an article still on the front page in which Eric Schmidt of Google is saying we're going to have to compete with robots for our jobs.
Globalization is trying to move everything to the cheapest possible labor source, and robots and technology is next in line. Sure, your startup costs are high, but your robot won't need to take the day off because its kid is home sick.
Ah, Engineers ... home of the perfectly spherical cow to make calculations easier.
Assuming people have alternatives or multiple actors aren't getting together to game the system (any form of price fixing cartel).
You're talking about abstract mathematical concepts, which may or may not apply in real world situations. I'm not saying that you couldn't create such a system (though I'm skeptical), I'm saying there's so many other factors that tend to skew this.
Unless they win out due to some other actor skewing things in their favor. Again, you're talking about idealized outcomes and assuming no other factors.
Lobbying of lawmakers by corporations with money to spend allows people to thwart market forces. Countries like China which skew the rules in their favor thwarts market forces. American policies which in the past set the pump price of gas to be independent of market values skewed market forces. Giving mortgages to people with no jobs skews the market (look up NINJA mortgage). Taking junk debt and turning them into AAA-rated credit vehicles skews the market.
There isn't a market which isn't skewed, broken, or otherwise manipulated so it's not acting as if it was a perfectly spherical cow where all of our assumptions hold true.
It's not a closed system, and it's not running over indefinite periods of time in isolation. Sure, in the abstract we can construct lovely elegant mathematical models in which everything works out as "it should".
And then there's reality. And in reality, companies will do whatever it takes, governments will fiddle with things for their own ends, and consumers will make stupid decisions with imperfect information based on irrational reasons.
Sorry, but your mathematical elegance doesn't give you a complete picture. Not even close.
You get real ... the fact is that, once the patent office granted someone a design patent, it's the same as any other patent, and enforceable.
Do I think it's a good or sensible patent? Absolutely not. Does that change the fact that it was granted? Not at all.
I think for the most part, patents don't work, are usually overly broad, and do very little to foster anything resembling real innovation.
From there all manner of stupidity ensues. If the patent office had said "Patent rounded corners? Are you insane?" and kicked out the patent, it would be a moot point. But, they didn't ... and every bit of stupidity which comes thereafter is an entirely logical result from the starting conditions.
If people are going to be granted absurd, but legally enforceable patents, what do you think will happen?
As they say, don't hate the player, hate the game -- I generally don't care which company is doing stupid things with the patent system, because the brokenness lies in the patent and legal system. But the game has turned all of the players into idiots and asshats.