Just imagine a Packers fan with a block of foam shaped like a wedge of Cheese on his head, freezing his ass off drinking a Lienenkugle and prattling on and on about how bad people from Chicago drive.
Now add this to his whining:
"Damn FIBs, they prolly started the Intranet down there, didn't they? Well, we shouldn't encourage more FIB bullshit from coming into our state. Let's tax the shit out of it and get back to watching football!"
That was probably how their governor got his bright idea. Pay it no mind.
hmm.. wonder what you can catch with that net. Chinese government certainly has some domestic enemies.
There's no shortage of porn sites around.. so, if you want to take down a political site, simply close down a 2k porn sites at the same time.. smart move by the Chinese Government.
The OMR is a music registry for copyleft or public domain music. It lists a couple hundred artists and many more songs, from many genre. Unfortunately, it recently went down. it was too expensive to host as a traditional web archive.
I've talked with its maintainer about running it, and I'll be re-openning it for the new year, only because I'm building it for use with bittorrent. I have a measly 33KB/s uplink and couldn't begin to host the site otherwise. But between me as the archive and a couple of friends who can keep a duplicate of many of the songs on bigger links, we ought to be able to provide decent D/L speeds and get this project going again. Without P2P -- popular, well used, well supported p2p -- we wouldn't have a good path forwards.
Thanks for the opportunity to chime in and say thanks for the technology!
Certainly there is a statistical risk that we'll be wiped out by asteroid or volcano, but.. PLEASE PROVIDE SOURCES so we can all evaluate your maths. It's called "science". It's loverly, really.
In case you haven't heard,
Microsoft (MSFT) has
been deeply
unprofitable since 1996, when it began to rely on holes in the
GAAP accounting standards that allowed it to report historic profits
in its NASDAQ filings. Large fund managers bought
into it to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, making MS at
its peak ($700B)
which for comparison made it the largest component of the S&P
500, the
equivalent of the 16th largest country or ~1.5% of the GDP of
Earth. Though billed (no pun intended) as a success story, when the bubble burst investors lost billions.
Who cares? The biggest funds involved were pension funds of
large social programs across the US, e.g. the California Teachers
Union, who automatically invest in S&P components at rates
proportional to the components' value. MS paid for its bottom line
with those peoples' money, so much so that pensioners are majority
owners of MS today. Too bad for them that the bottom fell out of MS
stock and their savings are worthless. But it did help create two
of the richest personal accounts on Earth.
You could argue that this was all legal and that they won the
king of the hill prize. Perhaps. But is it ethical to block GAAP
reforms via corporate
shills in Congress (e.g. Joe Lieberman) so your huge losses
won't be exposed? Enron
execs are being hung out to dry for being only slightly on the
other side of that thin line in the sand. No, it's likely MS knew
what it was up to. As Bill Parish, who broke the story, tells:
"Microsoft's perspective is best reflected by Bob Herbold, Chief
Operating Officer, to whom the CFO reports. Bob very sincerely
[explained the situation to Gates], "Bill, everyone is doing it.""
This is a great vindication for Bill Parish, and another step towards reigning in widespread corrupt accounting practices.
http://freality.org/~pablo/essays/microsoft.html
Testing the equality of hash codes is not a replacement for testing equality. It should be used as an optimization to limit the set of items for which equals need be applied. e.g.
Thing search(Thing thingToFind) {
thingList = hashSearch(hash(thingToFind));
for each thing in thingList
if (thing == myThing)// IMPORTANT!
return thing;
return null; }
It is strange, but I realize the Internet is my favorite part of modern human culture. I will use all means of dissent and resistance to keep it free. I have protested bad politics before, but that was nothing in comparison. I care about mainstream political issues, and war and trade.
But for the net, I will protest in the streets, in the office, in my community and online, with my vote, my word, my wallet, my prayers, my dreams and if I can in my teaching to my children and from the grave. I will not accept this.
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."
-- Frederick Douglass
The net is the canary in the coal mine. It signals the health of international free speech between peoples out from under the thumb of their rulers. If MY rulers try to mess with it in any way that oversteps norms of fair government, I will fight. We live in very dangerous *and* very promising times. Killing the freedom of the net is a great move towards the dangers and away from our chances for peaceful, understanding future.
This is where I will make my stand. I'm going to die anyways. I will live free or die fighting.
And look at the other robotics story on the front page:
"AFP is reporting that, starting today, "Japan's growing elderly population will be able to buy companionship in the form of a 45-centimeter (18-inch) robot" designed to help them avoid senility. The robot, named Snuggling Ifbot and developed by Dream Supply, will be able to respond to verbal commands. "If a person tells Snuggling Ifbot, "I'm bored today," the robot might respond, "Are you bored? What do you want to do?"". It retails for 576,000 yen (5,600 dollars) and there is no English version currently available but "its makers plan to program the robot in English -- not for export, but to teach the language to Japanese children.""
Reminds me how Japan's largest computer is used to model weather and the earth, and our largest computers are used to model nuclear explosions.
Well, I guess that's the difference between the conquered and the conqueror. If we conquer the world does that make every country more sane than us?
"A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker's shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Two hundred and fifty dollars? That will be quite a sun. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $250 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $250 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.
The question isn't What's wrong with it, it's What's right with it. Why is the Chinese government (allegedly) blocking a news source like Google? A) Because a freely informed Chinese citizenry is a threat to its autocratic rulers, B) Chinese citizens aren't demanding to exercise their right to free press:
"Article 35 [of Chinese Constitution]. Freedom of speech, press, assembly
Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."
http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/ch00000_.html
Now, even if it wasn't in your constitution, it would still be a right, should you choose to exercise it. Ironically, even if it's in your constitution and you don't choose to exercise it, it's as though you don't have it.
You list a dozen sights above. What happens when the next site posts news critical of the Chinese government? Blocked. Or if some lame ass ministry official reads this post and decides/. is bad for Chinese power? Blocked. "Oh, that's OK, I've got 100 others!", but then they start blocking sites by content, automatically and you have nothing left that is critical of the Chinese government.
Then you get to relearn the lesson that it's better to include dissent in a civil forum than exclude it to the underground, which, coupled with the inevitable corruption of government without public criticism, leads to bloody revolution. You'd have thought China had enough of that for a while.
Get your head out of your naive nationalistic ass, read some world history and use some common sense.
The Moral Entrez: "The Internet has become an important public space and to ensure the ability of our citizens to browse without being attacked by disgusting, vile content, it has become a necessity to actively prohibit webservers from abusing the Internet public space and must adopt fair, yet effective filtering for all websites reachable by our citizens."
The Liberal Conscience: "While we believe we must preserve the freedoms of the Internet we also think some kinds of content are too objectionable and too often make their way into the common browsing experience to allow public webservers to remain unregulated. So, we must adopt fair, yet effective filtering for all websites reachable by our citizens."
And then will come the licenses, and then the market for licenses, and then the consolidation of licenses, and then we will have to look for a new decentralized medium.
"To see what Wikipedia is like I chose a single article, the biography of Alexander Hamilton. I chose that topic because I happen to know that there is a problem with his birth date, and how a reference work deals with that problem tells me something about its standards. The problem is this: While the day and month of Hamilton's birth are known, there is some uncertainty as to the year, whether it be 1755 or 1757. Hamilton himself used, and most contemporary biographers prefer, the latter year; a reference work ought at least to note the issue.
The Wikipedia article on Hamilton (as of November 4, 2004) uses the 1755 date without comment. Unfortunately, a couple of references within the body of the article that mention his age in certain years are clearly derived from a source that used the 1757 date, creating an internal inconsistency that the reader has no means to resolve."
The first thing I thought was "Hey, it's open-source.. let's go fix it." But sure enough, it was fixed already. The notes to the page even state:
"While the day and month of Hamilton's birth are known, there is some uncertainty as to the year, whether it be 1755 or 1757. Hamilton himself used, and most contemporary biographers prefer, the latter year. (Source: Robert McHenry article about Wikipedia http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html)" LMFAO
This guy is a total luser. I'm sorry. His criticisms are food for thought, but his first critcism didn't even last the length of time it took to finish his article, and instead of bitching, he should have stepped up and fixed it.
He says wikipedia is like a public bathroom. Ha! Holy Ivory Tower Batman!
I'll take a free, open, public, dynamic Encyclopedia any day to an expensive, pwned, private, static, aristocratic-this-is-the-official-version-of-his-s tory any day. And, I'll be better informed on the vast majority of topics that little Britannica will never have the means to cover. Where's Britannica's entry on w00t, punk?
The (main) reason ISOs are going away is that companies now have to account for them as an expense in earnings reports, instead of including an optional footnote, which used to be the case.
Everyone who was anyone (e.g. Bill G, Warren B) has known for years that not expensing ISO options was, a, uh, scam, sham, hoodwink.. and just generally dishonest, but a great way to inflate earnings.
The situation was roughly this: A offers a worker $100k, while B offers $90k + $10k options.. B says "Gee, with A I'd have a higher salary, but with B, I might get rich!".
B then gets the worker and reports only $90k of expense. Better yet, they don't have to pay out on those options for years, and the tax implications are different (feel free to comment on the taxes if you know the details). Even better, since they have "lower operating expense", they have higher earnings.. and so the value of the options increases, and now the company can trade options for salary more effectively, by offering $80k + $10k options for that same employee. And this just keeps going, with companies like Microsoft hiring grade-A developers for ~$50k during the.com boom, until the bubble burst and all those options were worth jack, and institutional investors (largely pention funds, like the California Teacher's Union) lose their shorts too.
So in short, options are fine just so long as they're not abused! By groups of people who hold profit a higher value than anything else!
i.e. they're just another scam.
More details, including how Joe Lieberman ran point on the effort to keep the scam going, here:
The net is a virtual reality.. it certainly has real world effects, but let's not get over-zealous here.. I vote for an unruly cyber-mob over state-controlled media outlet.
so, since "lock out" mechanisms (like DVD copy locks) are of a necessary form and function, they are ideas and not non-functional expression, and so are the proper domain of patent, not copyright, and so the DMCA can't extend copyright protection to them. Wham-bam-thank-you-m'am.
Next question, where does this leave the same mechanism if it were protected by patent?
i was at the big one in the summer near the front. some "anarchists" had been dragging a flag on the ground during the protest and were being eyed by big guys with orange arm-bands on. when the protest started circling washington sq. park, the flag draggers turned into flag burners and the plain-clothed guys turned into anarchist-pummelers.. they put leather gloves on and started just beating the crap out of basically college-aged kids. There was a huge crowd of people around, some journalists, and photos started being snapped.. in the melee, it was hard to figure what was going on.. but i was standing near a guy with a very nice camera who got maced for taking pictures by one of the plain-clothers. I don't know why they singled him out. After things quieted down, i followed the plain-clothers for a bit to see where they ended up.. they walked over to the cordoned-off area and pulled out police badges (on necklaces) out from under their shirts and wore them out in the open.. now that they were next to their uniformed buddies with guns, they were big men. We went and found some reporters and told them.. Daily News and the New York Post. They started writing furiously.. but basically weren't believing us that plain-clothed new york cops beat protestors. Well, those same guys had been following us and were near us in the crowd listening to us talk to the reporters.. they were giving me the evil eye, so i told the reporters, "see, that guy right there!" and pointed at him (still had badge out).. and the reporters kind of looked at each other, decided not to back down, and started asking the cop if it was true.. he totally shrank away. The reporters apparently took that as a good sign and then got the full story from us. For no point though.. neither paper published anything significant about the event. The closest was (I don't remember which one said this) "there were reports of scuffles between police and protesters near the front of the parade at one point, but overall it was very peaceful." Yeah, riiiight. Just a few black eyes and kicks in the stomach for the "anarchists." Whatever you think about burning a flag, we have laws, and it's protected political speech. The technicality that would get the cops off in front of a complicit judge is that the protestors didn't have a fire permit. Ha! Just like Rodney King was resisting arrest. In a department full of cops who were generally reasonable for all of the protests of the last two years, those cops deserved to be identified and charged with crimes. But, no flashy vid, no sticky charges. Makes me sick.
To be eligible to receive any grant or other type of financial assistance made available under H.R. 10, The 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act, a State shall participate in the interstate compact regarding sharing of driver license data, known as the `Driver License Agreement', in order to provide electronic access by a State to information contained in the motor vehicle databases of all other States. [Requiring] (1) All data fields printed on drivers' licenses and identification cards issued by the State. (2) Motor vehicle drivers' histories, including motor vehicle violations, suspensions, and points on licenses."
and
"(b) MINIMUM DOCUMENT REQUIREMENTS- To meet the requirements of this section, a State shall include, at a minimum, the following information and features on each driver's license and identification card issued to a person by the State:
(1) The person's full legal name. (2) The person's date of birth. (3) The person's gender. (4) The person's driver license or identification card number. (5) A photograph of the person. (6) The person's address of principal residence. (7) The person's signature. (8) Physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes. (9) A common machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements."
Mmmmm, Big Brother is my Friend!
This from the same bill that is seeking to outsource torture:
"Section 3032 - (3) BURDEN OF PROOF- The revision shall also ensure that the burden of proof is on the applicant for withholding or deferral of removal under the Convention to establish by clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured if removed to the proposed country of removal."
Slashdot Mirror
Just imagine a Packers fan with a block of foam shaped like a wedge of Cheese on his head, freezing his ass off drinking a Lienenkugle and prattling on and on about how bad people from Chicago drive.
Now add this to his whining:
"Damn FIBs, they prolly started the Intranet down there, didn't they? Well, we shouldn't encourage more FIB bullshit from coming into our state. Let's tax the shit out of it and get back to watching football!"
That was probably how their governor got his bright idea. Pay it no mind.
Tell your State's House Representative to support larger budgets for NASA, with earmarks specifically for these programs:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
I've researched this a bit.. painted 30% efficient makes a world of difference! Here!
hmm.. wonder what you can catch with that net. Chinese government certainly has some domestic enemies.
There's no shortage of porn sites around.. so, if you want to take down a political site, simply close down a 2k porn sites at the same time.. smart move by the Chinese Government.
The OMR is a music registry for copyleft or public domain music. It lists a couple hundred artists and many more songs, from many genre. Unfortunately, it recently went down. it was too expensive to host as a traditional web archive.
I've talked with its maintainer about running it, and I'll be re-openning it for the new year, only because I'm building it for use with bittorrent. I have a measly 33KB/s uplink and couldn't begin to host the site otherwise. But between me as the archive and a couple of friends who can keep a duplicate of many of the songs on bigger links, we ought to be able to provide decent D/L speeds and get this project going again. Without P2P -- popular, well used, well supported p2p -- we wouldn't have a good path forwards.
Thanks for the opportunity to chime in and say thanks for the technology!
C'mon, don't you believe me? I'm an astronaut.
Certainly there is a statistical risk that we'll be wiped out by asteroid or volcano, but.. PLEASE PROVIDE SOURCES so we can all evaluate your maths. It's called "science". It's loverly, really.
In case you haven't heard, Microsoft (MSFT) has been deeply unprofitable since 1996, when it began to rely on holes in the GAAP accounting standards that allowed it to report historic profits in its NASDAQ filings. Large fund managers bought into it to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, making MS at its peak ($700B) which for comparison made it the largest component of the S&P 500, the equivalent of the 16th largest country or ~1.5% of the GDP of Earth. Though billed (no pun intended) as a success story, when the bubble burst investors lost billions.
Who cares? The biggest funds involved were pension funds of large social programs across the US, e.g. the California Teachers Union, who automatically invest in S&P components at rates proportional to the components' value. MS paid for its bottom line with those peoples' money, so much so that pensioners are majority owners of MS today. Too bad for them that the bottom fell out of MS stock and their savings are worthless. But it did help create two of the richest personal accounts on Earth.
You could argue that this was all legal and that they won the king of the hill prize. Perhaps. But is it ethical to block GAAP reforms via corporate shills in Congress (e.g. Joe Lieberman) so your huge losses won't be exposed? Enron execs are being hung out to dry for being only slightly on the other side of that thin line in the sand. No, it's likely MS knew what it was up to. As Bill Parish, who broke the story, tells:
"Microsoft's perspective is best reflected by Bob Herbold, Chief Operating Officer, to whom the CFO reports. Bob very sincerely [explained the situation to Gates], "Bill, everyone is doing it.""
This is a great vindication for Bill Parish, and another step towards reigning in widespread corrupt accounting practices. http://freality.org/~pablo/essays/microsoft.htmlhttp://www.solarbuzz.com/SolarPrices.htm
n/m
Testing the equality of hash codes is not a replacement for testing equality. It should be used as an optimization to limit the set of items for which equals need be applied. e.g.
// IMPORTANT!
Thing search(Thing thingToFind) {
thingList = hashSearch(hash(thingToFind));
for each thing in thingList
if (thing == myThing)
return thing;
return null;
}
This article is just one of many signs.
It is strange, but I realize the Internet is my favorite part of modern human culture. I will use all means of dissent and resistance to keep it free. I have protested bad politics before, but that was nothing in comparison. I care about mainstream political issues, and war and trade.
But for the net, I will protest in the streets, in the office, in my community and online, with my vote, my word, my wallet, my prayers, my dreams and if I can in my teaching to my children and from the grave. I will not accept this.
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."
-- Frederick Douglass
The net is the canary in the coal mine. It signals the health of international free speech between peoples out from under the thumb of their rulers. If MY rulers try to mess with it in any way that oversteps norms of fair government, I will fight. We live in very dangerous *and* very promising times. Killing the freedom of the net is a great move towards the dangers and away from our chances for peaceful, understanding future.
This is where I will make my stand. I'm going to die anyways. I will live free or die fighting.
That was the point, that's why I included the link.
:)
"People may say gee, this broken window is great.
But let's take another look..."
That's the intention
And look at the other robotics story on the front page:
"AFP is reporting that, starting today, "Japan's growing elderly population will be able to buy companionship in the form of a 45-centimeter (18-inch) robot" designed to help them avoid senility. The robot, named Snuggling Ifbot and developed by Dream Supply, will be able to respond to verbal commands. "If a person tells Snuggling Ifbot, "I'm bored today," the robot might respond, "Are you bored? What do you want to do?"". It retails for 576,000 yen (5,600 dollars) and there is no English version currently available but "its makers plan to program the robot in English -- not for export, but to teach the language to Japanese children.""
Reminds me how Japan's largest computer is used to model weather and the earth, and our largest computers are used to model nuclear explosions.
Well, I guess that's the difference between the conquered and the conqueror. If we conquer the world does that make every country more sane than us?
"A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker's shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Two hundred and fifty dollars? That will be quite a sun. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $250 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $250 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.
Now let us take another look...."
- Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson
http://freedomkeys.com/window.htm
"Article 35 [of Chinese Constitution]. Freedom of speech, press, assembly
Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."
http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/ch00000_.html
The question isn't What's wrong with it, it's What's right with it. Why is the Chinese government (allegedly) blocking a news source like Google? A) Because a freely informed Chinese citizenry is a threat to its autocratic rulers, B) Chinese citizens aren't demanding to exercise their right to free press:
/. is bad for Chinese power? Blocked. "Oh, that's OK, I've got 100 others!", but then they start blocking sites by content, automatically and you have nothing left that is critical of the Chinese government.
"Article 35 [of Chinese Constitution]. Freedom of speech, press, assembly
Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."
http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/ch00000_.html
Now, even if it wasn't in your constitution, it would still be a right, should you choose to exercise it. Ironically, even if it's in your constitution and you don't choose to exercise it, it's as though you don't have it.
You list a dozen sights above. What happens when the next site posts news critical of the Chinese government? Blocked. Or if some lame ass ministry official reads this post and decides
Then you get to relearn the lesson that it's better to include dissent in a civil forum than exclude it to the underground, which, coupled with the inevitable corruption of government without public criticism, leads to bloody revolution. You'd have thought China had enough of that for a while.
Get your head out of your naive nationalistic ass, read some world history and use some common sense.
That's the funniest retort I've seen on /. in quite a long time.
The Moral Entrez: "The Internet has become an important public space and to ensure the ability of our citizens to browse without being attacked by disgusting, vile content, it has become a necessity to actively prohibit webservers from abusing the Internet public space and must adopt fair, yet effective filtering for all websites reachable by our citizens."
The Liberal Conscience: "While we believe we must preserve the freedoms of the Internet we also think some kinds of content are too objectionable and too often make their way into the common browsing experience to allow public webservers to remain unregulated. So, we must adopt fair, yet effective filtering for all websites reachable by our citizens."
And then will come the licenses, and then the market for licenses, and then the consolidation of licenses, and then we will have to look for a new decentralized medium.
Ah well, nothing lasts forever.
Midway through the article, McHenry states:
s tory any day. And, I'll be better informed on the vast majority of topics that little Britannica will never have the means to cover. Where's Britannica's entry on w00t, punk?
"To see what Wikipedia is like I chose a single article, the biography of Alexander Hamilton. I chose that topic because I happen to know that there is a problem with his birth date, and how a reference work deals with that problem tells me something about its standards. The problem is this: While the day and month of Hamilton's birth are known, there is some uncertainty as to the year, whether it be 1755 or 1757. Hamilton himself used, and most contemporary biographers prefer, the latter year; a reference work ought at least to note the issue.
The Wikipedia article on Hamilton (as of November 4, 2004) uses the 1755 date without comment. Unfortunately, a couple of references within the body of the article that mention his age in certain years are clearly derived from a source that used the 1757 date, creating an internal inconsistency that the reader has no means to resolve."
The first thing I thought was "Hey, it's open-source.. let's go fix it." But sure enough, it was fixed already. The notes to the page even state:
"While the day and month of Hamilton's birth are known, there is some uncertainty as to the year, whether it be 1755 or 1757. Hamilton himself used, and most contemporary biographers prefer, the latter year. (Source: Robert McHenry article about Wikipedia http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html)"
LMFAO
This guy is a total luser. I'm sorry. His criticisms are food for thought, but his first critcism didn't even last the length of time it took to finish his article, and instead of bitching, he should have stepped up and fixed it.
He says wikipedia is like a public bathroom. Ha! Holy Ivory Tower Batman!
I'll take a free, open, public, dynamic Encyclopedia any day to an expensive, pwned, private, static, aristocratic-this-is-the-official-version-of-his-
Bah. Fella shoulda stepped up. Luser.
The (main) reason ISOs are going away is that companies now have to account for them as an expense in earnings reports, instead of including an optional footnote, which used to be the case.
.com boom, until the bubble burst and all those options were worth jack, and institutional investors (largely pention funds, like the California Teacher's Union) lose their shorts too.
l
Everyone who was anyone (e.g. Bill G, Warren B) has known for years that not expensing ISO options was, a, uh, scam, sham, hoodwink.. and just generally dishonest, but a great way to inflate earnings.
The situation was roughly this: A offers a worker $100k, while B offers $90k + $10k options.. B says "Gee, with A I'd have a higher salary, but with B, I might get rich!".
B then gets the worker and reports only $90k of expense. Better yet, they don't have to pay out on those options for years, and the tax implications are different (feel free to comment on the taxes if you know the details). Even better, since they have "lower operating expense", they have higher earnings.. and so the value of the options increases, and now the company can trade options for salary more effectively, by offering $80k + $10k options for that same employee. And this just keeps going, with companies like Microsoft hiring grade-A developers for ~$50k during the
So in short, options are fine just so long as they're not abused! By groups of people who hold profit a higher value than anything else!
i.e. they're just another scam.
More details, including how Joe Lieberman ran point on the effort to keep the scam going, here:
http://freality.org/~pablo/essays/microsoft.htm
LOL! That was funny..
Oh wait, they're serious?!
The net is a virtual reality.. it certainly has real world effects, but let's not get over-zealous here.. I vote for an unruly cyber-mob over state-controlled media outlet.
JUST SAY NO.
so, since "lock out" mechanisms (like DVD copy locks) are of a necessary form and function, they are ideas and not non-functional expression, and so are the proper domain of patent, not copyright, and so the DMCA can't extend copyright protection to them. Wham-bam-thank-you-m'am.
Next question, where does this leave the same mechanism if it were protected by patent?
http://www.reason.com/0410/fe.jb.john.shtml
i was at the big one in the summer near the front. some "anarchists" had been dragging a flag on the ground during the protest and were being eyed by big guys with orange arm-bands on. when the protest started circling washington sq. park, the flag draggers turned into flag burners and the plain-clothed guys turned into anarchist-pummelers.. they put leather gloves on and started just beating the crap out of basically college-aged kids. There was a huge crowd of people around, some journalists, and photos started being snapped.. in the melee, it was hard to figure what was going on.. but i was standing near a guy with a very nice camera who got maced for taking pictures by one of the plain-clothers. I don't know why they singled him out. After things quieted down, i followed the plain-clothers for a bit to see where they ended up.. they walked over to the cordoned-off area and pulled out police badges (on necklaces) out from under their shirts and wore them out in the open.. now that they were next to their uniformed buddies with guns, they were big men. We went and found some reporters and told them.. Daily News and the New York Post. They started writing furiously.. but basically weren't believing us that plain-clothed new york cops beat protestors. Well, those same guys had been following us and were near us in the crowd listening to us talk to the reporters.. they were giving me the evil eye, so i told the reporters, "see, that guy right there!" and pointed at him (still had badge out).. and the reporters kind of looked at each other, decided not to back down, and started asking the cop if it was true.. he totally shrank away. The reporters apparently took that as a good sign and then got the full story from us. For no point though.. neither paper published anything significant about the event. The closest was (I don't remember which one said this) "there were reports of scuffles between police and protesters near the front of the parade at one point, but overall it was very peaceful." Yeah, riiiight. Just a few black eyes and kicks in the stomach for the "anarchists." Whatever you think about burning a flag, we have laws, and it's protected political speech. The technicality that would get the cops off in front of a complicit judge is that the protestors didn't have a fire permit. Ha! Just like Rodney King was resisting arrest. In a department full of cops who were generally reasonable for all of the protests of the last two years, those cops deserved to be identified and charged with crimes. But, no flashy vid, no sticky charges. Makes me sick.
"Subtitle B, Sections 3052, 3053:
To be eligible to receive any grant or other type of financial assistance made available under H.R. 10, The 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act, a State shall participate in the interstate compact regarding sharing of driver license data, known as the `Driver License Agreement', in order to provide electronic access by a State to information contained in the motor vehicle databases of all other States. [Requiring] (1) All data fields printed on drivers' licenses and identification cards issued by the State. (2) Motor vehicle drivers' histories, including motor vehicle violations, suspensions, and points on licenses."
and
"(b) MINIMUM DOCUMENT REQUIREMENTS- To meet the requirements of this section, a State shall include, at a minimum, the following information and features on each driver's license and identification card issued to a person by the State:
(1) The person's full legal name.
(2) The person's date of birth.
(3) The person's gender.
(4) The person's driver license or identification card number.
(5) A photograph of the person.
(6) The person's address of principal residence.
(7) The person's signature.
(8) Physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes.
(9) A common machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements."
Mmmmm, Big Brother is my Friend!
This from the same bill that is seeking to outsource torture:
"Section 3032 - (3) BURDEN OF PROOF- The revision shall also ensure that the burden of proof is on the applicant for withholding or deferral of removal under the Convention to establish by clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured if removed to the proposed country of removal."
yeah, that sounds plausible.
Time to write your congressional reps folks!
http://www.house.gov/writerep/