"It's not a matter handling multiple time zones across the country, it's keeping in sync with US markets - Montreal and Toronto working the same hours as New York and so forth."
What about London and Tokyo? Should they change to Eastern Time as well?
No, it isn't. Local Solar Time (sundials) is not Mean Solar Time (GMT), and neither of which are Atomic Time (TAI). UTC itself is a mixture of the three.
"You cannot change it."
Now now, just because you can't set your VCR...
"Countries like Canada may be forced to follow suit with the Americans because US tries to bulldog the the world conforming to their standards."
Not all the world follows the same time zone. Not all the US follows the same time zone. Hawaii and Arizona don't observe Daylight Saving time, the former is in the tropics where it makes litle sense (the closer you are to the "Equator," the more "equal" the amount of daylight in a day throughout the year), and Arizona is just being petulant. Indiana can't even agree whether or not to observe DST statewide.
Not even all the world follows the concept of dividing the world into integer time zones as the US does internally. Several of those oil-rich countries in the Middle East, the ones we apparently try the hardest to impose our will on, are a half-hour or even a quarter-hour off from their neighbors. And yet we still buy their oil just fine.
Not all Canadian provinces can agree on Daylight Saving Time today. The Mexican state of Sonora doesn't observe DST, but that's mostly because they border Arizona (but even there it seems Phoenix has more international influence than Washington).
Really, if we forced the rest of the world to conform to our "standards" (especially the ones we ourselves can't agree on), metric would be dead by now.
"Come to think about it, I think the USA had the 9/11 attacks coming to them. "
The terrorists can't stand our imperial DST ways? Can we say "tangent?"
"If you really gave a damn about Sega's games, you'd buy an Xbox."
PSO works just fine on my GameCube, thank you. It seems that the Xbox crowd panned their flavor of episodes I & II, and what fun is an MMOG when nobody else is playing it?
On the other hand, as for "mortal enemies," it seems like Phantasy Star Universe will be for the PC and PS2, but not for either Xbox or GameCube.
It all depends on how much access either U of TX or TAMU has to launch facilities. I'm guessing "not much," and hauling all the stuff up the Andes is likely cheaper/easier.
The State of Texas could set up a nice little operation, say, near Brownsville, but the states seem to be more content in wishing and hoping a federal facility gets built with federal money instead. For example, the State of Florida's launch facilities are just some old pads being borrowed/shared/leased/etc. from NASA and/or the DOD.
AFAIK, both schools are public universities. So instead of the United States Government being able to yank the plug, its in the hands of the State of Texas.
Not in my view. In order to take his job he had to swear an oath to support the constitution. Seeking to so flagrantly violate the Fourth Amendment seems to violate that oath of office. The House is supposed to have rules for punishing stuff like that.
"Let's see whether Windows 98 is more SECURE than XP.
With less services and less software, and with all patches to date applied, you bet it's more secure."
"Less service" and "less software" means things like "didn't include a firewall" and "login script can be bypassed with a click of the 'cancel' buton."
I'm no Microsoft fan, but I can't believe that anybody is actually saying that the old, retired Windows line is more secure than any (any) version of NT. It has no secure file system (only clumsy share permissions), it has no integrated OS login (only a bypassable network login script)... heck, it barely accounted for the possibility of multiple distinct users on the same machine. So long as you know the machine exists and where to find it, you can do whatever you want to it, up to and including "format c:."
I'd wager there are more exploits for XP than for 98 because you didn't need an exploit to hose 98.
"I would like to see you take modern v ersions of Firefox or KDE and the like and build/install it on a distribution from 1999/2000."
Yes, completely different from making it for a distro from 2001. What a difference a year makes! (20% difference, in this case).
We're not talking about a bleeding-edge nightly Windows build here. Either from an application standpoint or a client-side networking standpoint, there's little difference between NT 5.0 and NT 5.1. To my knowledge, this will be the first major Microsoft application that works on one but not the other. It would seem that this isn't a matter of programming difficulties, but a deliberate decision to lock out one but not the other for non-technical reasons.
"You are not paying just for a browser upgrade but an upgrade to all of the latest versions of everyting in the OS and you are paying for the security and bug fix updates for years and years."
Other than updates to applications that were ported into XP from Me, what exactly does XP SP 2 offer that 2k SP 4 doesn't?
"Part of the reasons MS's product releases take so long and are so complex is their obligation to be backwardly compatible with all previous versions."
They stopped supporting Windows 95 and NT 4.0 a while ago. 98 (both flavors) and Me will be cut from future support very soon now. At this point, the only "older OS" that IE7 could possibly be designed to run on is Windows 2000, and the differences between the 5.1 and 5.0 kernels are miniscule at best (most of the differences involve UI tweaks introduced from WinMe). I suspect the only change that will be made to IE7 that will make it incompatible with 2000 is a little programming block that begins with the statement "IF ver < 5.1"
"(I have software that was written in 1994 for Windows 3.1 and it still runs fine on XP.)"
Apples, oranges. We're talking about an application running on older OSes, not an OS running older applications.
"Your company doesn't pay late - ever? Some companies don't pay their vendors until legal action is threatened. Almost every company likes to collect quickly and pay slowly. Just because you personally don't get involved in doesn't mean you aren't a part of it."
GOTO first sentence, previous post. Debt collection isn't telemarketing.
"For the sake of example, say you eliminate 1% of the GNP by enacting a total ban on telemarketing. Do you think that's not going to impact your business on some level?"
Do you not think the people are allowed to decide if the exchange is worthwhile?
That's all you have to defend your stance? A single event from four years ago? No, war is when something like that happens every week. War is when something like that happens so regularly that it's barely even newsworthy. In war, 3000 lives is little more than a drop in the bucket.
Where is your response to Ex Parte Merryman? Where is your response to the constitutional definition of treason and the power of the federal courts to try such cases? Where is your resoponse to the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments? All you have is an attempt at scare-mongering that pales in comparison with historical example? You're comparing the destruction of a few blocks in a single borough and trying to equate it to the razing of Atlanta and trying to say the former justifies acts that were unacceptable even in the wake of the latter?
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
No, this is not a battlefield. Antietam was a battlefield (imagine a single day where nearly 0.1% of the people in this country are killed or wounded). And even in the case of open rebellion against the government of the United States, Congress had to specifically suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus before anything like this happened, so sayeth the Supreme Court.
There is war in Afghanistan and there is war in Iraq. However, the United States has not been invaded, Washington has not been burned. There is no rebellion, there are no soldiers in the streets, nobody is conducting door-to-door searches. The only people evacuating in this country are fleeing from hurricanes, not from hostile forces. If any of the Four Horsemen are visiting this country now or has visited at any time in the past 50 years, War is not it. If anything, calling the United States today a "battlefield" is an insult to those US soldiers currently in Afghanistan or Iraq that are in a real battlefield.
Until any of this happens, the United States Government has a constitutional obligation to grant him his trial.
And no, "threat of invasion/rebellion" (real or imagined) is not a valid reason to suspend habeas corpus (which is exactly what has happened here, in my opinion). That very situation was discussed in the constitution when the states were reserved the right to raise armies and prosecute wars without the prior consent of Congress. But there is no mention of exceptions being made for being "in such imminent Danger" when it comes to the rights and liberties of the citizenry.
"I see no issue holding an enemy combatant until the war is over."
You're misinterpreting. That "until the war is over," describes not when the prisoners are released, but repatriated. This man, however, is a citizen of the United States, he's already home. Instead, based on what he has been accused of, he should be charged with treason. If he is guilty, he will be held in a prison, probably for well beyond this "war" will be "over." Nothing would be lost.
"I don't want to hear your wild insane "Bush can knock down my door without a warrant" theories, I want to know how YOU have been negatively effected by the patriot act."
"And this is paranoia on crack... it assumes that people will ALWAYS do the wrong thing and will ALWAYS try and screw you about, and that customer profiling NEVER results in a better service."
It's not paranoia, it's cynicism. Paranoia is irrational because it's foundless. Cynicism is inherently based on past experiences.
"If you honestly think he'll be struggling to find a well paying job elsewhere you're deluding yourself."
True, but I find myself wondering how many lucrative offers he's turned down over the years in order to stay with HP, as well as what might have happened to any retirement benefits he might have had with HP.
Does anybody know any decent alternatives to Google? What they're doing in China has been giving me second thoughts about using them and I'd like to find a search engine that still isn't evil.
"I'm being intentionally vague so as not to potentially embarass my employer."
They should have nothing to fear. If they are willing to call non-customers and tell them in person that they are selling over the telephone, then if anything they should be grateful to receive the free advertising that your naming them on here would bring.
"In my industry, telemarketing is pretty much the only way you can combat this, "
No, you could either make a better product that would sell itself better or you would give up and sell a different product altogether. Ultimately these high-pressure sales tactics are a stop-gap measures (which you yourself admit by referring to it as "churn"). The reason you lose so many subscribers is that they didn't want the damned paper to begin with. Ultimately, you're trying to claim telemarketing justifies itself, and entropy will catch up to that cycle sooner or later. All these laws do is to push things towards "sooner."
"Get caller ID and Telezapper if you're bothered by somebody calling you. Use one of many available free e-mail accounts to do stuff if spam is a problem."
No, that puts the burden on the wrong end. I should not have to compensate for problems caused by your actions.
"Has the government has ever provided a cheap and effective solution to anything?"
And this justifies telemarketing how, exactly? Even if governmetn DNC programs are "inefficient," the fact that they exist and are subscribed to by phone owners should be taken as a hint to seek a new career.
"Yet, using taxpayers money to slow economic activity"
See, this is all you needed to say to my "How do you sleep at night?" question. You do it by willfully ignoring the very nature of this "economic activity," making yourself not look into just where the money is coming from and why. The only difference between telemarketing and your average drug pusher is the product for sale. The tactics are the same.
And trying to defend yourself on relative terms doesn't help much when you're doing something that is bad on absolute terms (which is why we have these laws to begin with).
Slashdot Mirror
"It's not a matter handling multiple time zones across the country, it's keeping in sync with US markets - Montreal and Toronto working the same hours as New York and so forth."
What about London and Tokyo? Should they change to Eastern Time as well?
Replace "USSR" with "PRC," "Moscow" with "Beijing," and change the verb tenses to the present and you'd be right.
Less, actually. DST puts us one hour closer to your time zone, so that folks in New York only get up 5 hours before you instead of 6.
"Time is Time."
No, it isn't. Local Solar Time (sundials) is not Mean Solar Time (GMT), and neither of which are Atomic Time (TAI). UTC itself is a mixture of the three.
"You cannot change it."
Now now, just because you can't set your VCR...
"Countries like Canada may be forced to follow suit with the Americans because US tries to bulldog the the world conforming to their standards."
Not all the world follows the same time zone. Not all the US follows the same time zone. Hawaii and Arizona don't observe Daylight Saving time, the former is in the tropics where it makes litle sense (the closer you are to the "Equator," the more "equal" the amount of daylight in a day throughout the year), and Arizona is just being petulant. Indiana can't even agree whether or not to observe DST statewide.
Not even all the world follows the concept of dividing the world into integer time zones as the US does internally. Several of those oil-rich countries in the Middle East, the ones we apparently try the hardest to impose our will on, are a half-hour or even a quarter-hour off from their neighbors. And yet we still buy their oil just fine.
Not all Canadian provinces can agree on Daylight Saving Time today. The Mexican state of Sonora doesn't observe DST, but that's mostly because they border Arizona (but even there it seems Phoenix has more international influence than Washington).
Really, if we forced the rest of the world to conform to our "standards" (especially the ones we ourselves can't agree on), metric would be dead by now.
"Come to think about it, I think the USA had the 9/11 attacks coming to them. "
The terrorists can't stand our imperial DST ways? Can we say "tangent?"
"If you really gave a damn about Sega's games, you'd buy an Xbox."
PSO works just fine on my GameCube, thank you. It seems that the Xbox crowd panned their flavor of episodes I & II, and what fun is an MMOG when nobody else is playing it?
On the other hand, as for "mortal enemies," it seems like Phantasy Star Universe will be for the PC and PS2, but not for either Xbox or GameCube.
If you can handle spanning multiple time zones already, I think you can handle this. After all, how many Canadians don't have the same time as Ottawa?
I mean, you're not exactly China.
It all depends on how much access either U of TX or TAMU has to launch facilities. I'm guessing "not much," and hauling all the stuff up the Andes is likely cheaper/easier.
The State of Texas could set up a nice little operation, say, near Brownsville, but the states seem to be more content in wishing and hoping a federal facility gets built with federal money instead. For example, the State of Florida's launch facilities are just some old pads being borrowed/shared/leased/etc. from NASA and/or the DOD.
AFAIK, both schools are public universities. So instead of the United States Government being able to yank the plug, its in the hands of the State of Texas.
Sadly, that still might be advantageous.
" He can "seek" anything he wants,"
Not in my view. In order to take his job he had to swear an oath to support the constitution. Seeking to so flagrantly violate the Fourth Amendment seems to violate that oath of office. The House is supposed to have rules for punishing stuff like that.
"Let's see whether Windows 98 is more SECURE than XP.
With less services and less software, and with all patches to date applied, you bet it's more secure."
"Less service" and "less software" means things like "didn't include a firewall" and "login script can be bypassed with a click of the 'cancel' buton."
I'm no Microsoft fan, but I can't believe that anybody is actually saying that the old, retired Windows line is more secure than any (any) version of NT. It has no secure file system (only clumsy share permissions), it has no integrated OS login (only a bypassable network login script)... heck, it barely accounted for the possibility of multiple distinct users on the same machine. So long as you know the machine exists and where to find it, you can do whatever you want to it, up to and including "format c:."
I'd wager there are more exploits for XP than for 98 because you didn't need an exploit to hose 98.
I'd trust NT 3.1 before I trusted 98.
"I would like to see you take modern v ersions of Firefox or KDE and the like and build/install it on a distribution from 1999/2000."
Yes, completely different from making it for a distro from 2001. What a difference a year makes! (20% difference, in this case).
We're not talking about a bleeding-edge nightly Windows build here. Either from an application standpoint or a client-side networking standpoint, there's little difference between NT 5.0 and NT 5.1. To my knowledge, this will be the first major Microsoft application that works on one but not the other. It would seem that this isn't a matter of programming difficulties, but a deliberate decision to lock out one but not the other for non-technical reasons.
"You are not paying just for a browser upgrade but an upgrade to all of the latest versions of everyting in the OS and you are paying for the security and bug fix updates for years and years."
Other than updates to applications that were ported into XP from Me, what exactly does XP SP 2 offer that 2k SP 4 doesn't?
" I've always wondered why people throw a fit about a 5 year old operating system losing support."
Because the latest version of that operating system is only about one year younger.
"Part of the reasons MS's product releases take so long and are so complex is their obligation to be backwardly compatible with all previous versions."
They stopped supporting Windows 95 and NT 4.0 a while ago. 98 (both flavors) and Me will be cut from future support very soon now. At this point, the only "older OS" that IE7 could possibly be designed to run on is Windows 2000, and the differences between the 5.1 and 5.0 kernels are miniscule at best (most of the differences involve UI tweaks introduced from WinMe). I suspect the only change that will be made to IE7 that will make it incompatible with 2000 is a little programming block that begins with the statement "IF ver < 5.1"
"(I have software that was written in 1994 for Windows 3.1 and it still runs fine on XP.)"
Apples, oranges. We're talking about an application running on older OSes, not an OS running older applications.
Yes, we wil be reintroducing man to its natural environment. It's one of the Bush administration's big environmental initiatives.
"At this rate kids won't be able to play Mario because Princess Peach is dressed too slutty."
Her skirts are getting shorter...
"Your company doesn't pay late - ever? Some companies don't pay their vendors until legal action is threatened. Almost every company likes to collect quickly and pay slowly. Just because you personally don't get involved in doesn't mean you aren't a part of it."
GOTO first sentence, previous post. Debt collection isn't telemarketing.
"For the sake of example, say you eliminate 1% of the GNP by enacting a total ban on telemarketing. Do you think that's not going to impact your business on some level?"
Do you not think the people are allowed to decide if the exchange is worthwhile?
"Tell that to lower Manhattan."
That's all you have to defend your stance? A single event from four years ago? No, war is when something like that happens every week. War is when something like that happens so regularly that it's barely even newsworthy. In war, 3000 lives is little more than a drop in the bucket.
Where is your response to Ex Parte Merryman? Where is your response to the constitutional definition of treason and the power of the federal courts to try such cases? Where is your resoponse to the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments? All you have is an attempt at scare-mongering that pales in comparison with historical example? You're comparing the destruction of a few blocks in a single borough and trying to equate it to the razing of Atlanta and trying to say the former justifies acts that were unacceptable even in the wake of the latter?
There is war in Afghanistan and there is war in Iraq. However, the United States has not been invaded, Washington has not been burned. There is no rebellion, there are no soldiers in the streets, nobody is conducting door-to-door searches. The only people evacuating in this country are fleeing from hurricanes, not from hostile forces. If any of the Four Horsemen are visiting this country now or has visited at any time in the past 50 years, War is not it. If anything, calling the United States today a "battlefield" is an insult to those US soldiers currently in Afghanistan or Iraq that are in a real battlefield.
Until any of this happens, the United States Government has a constitutional obligation to grant him his trial.
And no, "threat of invasion/rebellion" (real or imagined) is not a valid reason to suspend habeas corpus (which is exactly what has happened here, in my opinion). That very situation was discussed in the constitution when the states were reserved the right to raise armies and prosecute wars without the prior consent of Congress. But there is no mention of exceptions being made for being "in such imminent Danger" when it comes to the rights and liberties of the citizenry.
"I see no issue holding an enemy combatant until the war is over."
You're misinterpreting. That "until the war is over," describes not when the prisoners are released, but repatriated. This man, however, is a citizen of the United States, he's already home. Instead, based on what he has been accused of, he should be charged with treason. If he is guilty, he will be held in a prison, probably for well beyond this "war" will be "over." Nothing would be lost.
"I don't want to hear your wild insane "Bush can knock down my door without a warrant" theories, I want to know how YOU have been negatively effected by the patriot act."
My money is funding it.
"And this is paranoia on crack... it assumes that people will ALWAYS do the wrong thing and will ALWAYS try and screw you about, and that customer profiling NEVER results in a better service."
It's not paranoia, it's cynicism. Paranoia is irrational because it's foundless. Cynicism is inherently based on past experiences.
"If you honestly think he'll be struggling to find a well paying job elsewhere you're deluding yourself."
True, but I find myself wondering how many lucrative offers he's turned down over the years in order to stay with HP, as well as what might have happened to any retirement benefits he might have had with HP.
Does anybody know any decent alternatives to Google? What they're doing in China has been giving me second thoughts about using them and I'd like to find a search engine that still isn't evil.
"I'm being intentionally vague so as not to potentially embarass my employer."
They should have nothing to fear. If they are willing to call non-customers and tell them in person that they are selling over the telephone, then if anything they should be grateful to receive the free advertising that your naming them on here would bring.
"In my industry, telemarketing is pretty much the only way you can combat this, "
No, you could either make a better product that would sell itself better or you would give up and sell a different product altogether. Ultimately these high-pressure sales tactics are a stop-gap measures (which you yourself admit by referring to it as "churn"). The reason you lose so many subscribers is that they didn't want the damned paper to begin with. Ultimately, you're trying to claim telemarketing justifies itself, and entropy will catch up to that cycle sooner or later. All these laws do is to push things towards "sooner."
"Get caller ID and Telezapper if you're bothered by somebody calling you. Use one of many available free e-mail accounts to do stuff if spam is a problem."
No, that puts the burden on the wrong end. I should not have to compensate for problems caused by your actions.
"Has the government has ever provided a cheap and effective solution to anything?"
And this justifies telemarketing how, exactly? Even if governmetn DNC programs are "inefficient," the fact that they exist and are subscribed to by phone owners should be taken as a hint to seek a new career.
"Yet, using taxpayers money to slow economic activity"
See, this is all you needed to say to my "How do you sleep at night?" question. You do it by willfully ignoring the very nature of this "economic activity," making yourself not look into just where the money is coming from and why. The only difference between telemarketing and your average drug pusher is the product for sale. The tactics are the same.
Debt collection isn't telemarketing. Keep trying, though, you're getting closer.
And trying to defend yourself on relative terms doesn't help much when you're doing something that is bad on absolute terms (which is why we have these laws to begin with).