Greetings and Salutations....
Some interesting thoughts here...and the sort of ethical debates that can keep a group of college students up ALL night with pizza and beer, wrestling with the issues. let's look at them, though....
Right, and its also theft every-time I go into wal-mart take a look at HDTVs and don't buy one. Its also theft every-time I go to the book store and read a book. Etc.
No, sarcasm aside, in the first case it would only be theft if you talked an associate into loading one of those HDTVs into your car without paying for it. but then...I suspect you understand that (*smile*). As for reading the book in the bookstore....I suppose a lawyer could argue either side there, and end up with a new Mercedes no matter WHO won. My feeling is that it is NOT, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, unless you can read the entire book in one sitting, you run the risk of coming back to find all the copies sold out. The only way to avoid this is to buy the book. Secondly, it has been my observation that a vast majority of folks that read books in the bookstore are sampling them to decide IF they want to invest in them or not. While there is a certain population of folks that may do exactly what you say, it is such a small percentage of folks that look at a given book that it is lost in the noise. If it were a serious problem, the publishers would pressure the booksellers to keep that reading from happening.
Why is theft wrong? Theft is wrong because it deprives the person of an object. For example, if someone steals a car, the problem isn't that someone got a free car, the problem is that I don't have my car. If someone had a duplicator and wanted my car to duplicate, I'd let them because I wouldn't be deprived of property.
Well, in short, my answer to the question is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". However, your following point is also quite well put and accurate too. Things start going a bit sketchy after that though, alas. Let us consider the case of a BiG copier that could duplicate your car. You might well be willing to allow that duplication to happen, because, by your estimation, it costs you nothing. However, you are not the only person affected by that event. YOU bought that car from someone, after all, and gave them real property - cash - for it. If your friend copies your car, and ends up with a vehicle that they can drive around town just like the original, they HAVE deprived some seller of real property - the cash that would have been handed over if the copy had been purchased. This may well have no immediate effect on you, and, so seems unimportant to you. As many other folks have said too, it's only one copy..that is not important... However, what if the sale was through the manufacturer....suddenly their cash flow drops, and perhaps they go out of business. One day you need a spare part for that car, and, you find that it is not available, or, is painfully expensive because it is being manufactured by a third party. Or...while we are spinning scenarios....what if the seller is desperate for money in these hard times, and the car you allowed to be duplicated for free replaced a sale that would have brought the seller cash to keep his starving family alive, or pay for a life-saving operation? It could be argued that, while you feel that you have suffered no loss, as a matter of fact, you HAVE deprived those two sellers of real property - the cash from the sale that your duplicate replaced - and so are directly responsible for the failure of the manufacturer in the former case, or th death of the seller or his family in the latter case.
Theft is depriving someone of a physical, guaranteed good. Copyright infringement is not theft.
As noted above, unless one is willing to say that the cash from a sale is NOT physical goods, it is quite possible to argue
Greetings and Salutations.
Well, the questions and thoughts that spring to my mind are: Have there been any problems with photographers damaging the booms or causing breaches? While 65 feet may not seem like much, it can easily make it very hard to get clear pictures of the booms as they bob up and down in the ocean waters. THAT makes it harder to keep track of how well they are working to block the oil, or, adsorb the crude and keep it from moving on. Is this the REAL reason for the limit? Also, why would the limit be 300 feet first...then get cut down to 65 feet? That sounds more like spin control than security to me.
Regards
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations..
How about this....What if your son had lent the physical CD to the friends he wanted to listen to the content? Or....held a party where the point was for the group of his friends to listen to the CD?
There are a number of perfectly legal ways to share recorded content with other folks that have been around for as long as transcribing performances has existed. The issue, as I see it, is that computers have made it TOO easy to copy a recording - and that has cheapened the value of the recording in the eyes of the consumer to the point that they can convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with giving away a copy of it.
Frankly, though, considering the attention span of the typical 10 year old, I question whether it was actual disappointment on the part of your son at the producer's decision, or (more likely) him getting distracted by the NEXT cool, shiny thing that came along. Shucks, I know adults who have the same problem, so it is not exactly specific to 10 year old boys....although it is rather more likely in that age group. regards dave mundt
Greetings and salutations...
Not to make too fine a point of it, but, another factor in this is that the broadband providers ONLY offer "best effort" speeds. That 12Mbps connection would be available IF there are no problems or bottlenecks between your system and the source of the data you are downloading. Often, though, there are. So...while 4T might be the THEORETICAL maximum that could be downloaded, the actual number of bits any of us can pull in is far less than that. It is quite possible that the difference between the theoretical maximum of data that could be acquired, and the smaller number simply reflects the reality that a consumer-grade connection can not and will not run at full bore and efficiency all the time.
When I see a plan advertised as "unlimited" bandwidth, I do not immediately think that I can pull down a snapshot of the Internet. Rather I interpret it to mean that, given the average transfer speed available, I will NOT hit some arbitrary limit and start getting charged a surcharge of $XX/megabyte by the ISP. Anything ELSE and I would agree with you completely about the dishonesty of calling it "unlimited".
regards
dave mundt
Greetings and salutations...
An earlier poster raised a very important point in this debate...did the woman have a separate contract? That has yet to be answered. It is quite possible that they had a family plan, with a couple of phones and a shared pool of minutes. If so...it is quite possible that it WAS her husband that was the primary account holder. If that was the case, then, that contract SHOULD have become null and void when the husband died...and there likely SHOULD be no termination fee. The original article linked does not address this question at all.
If she had a separate contract, and, she was moving to a place that Verizon did not provide service, I suspect that a testy note from a lawyer to them, stating that their client would be more than happy to continue paying the subscription, but, that Verizon would be required to provide service in her area, would be sufficient to eliminate the termination fee. The idea that ANY company should be allowed to continue to bill for services when their subscriber is in an area that they do not cover is more of an example of unbridled corporate greed than any idea of rational business practices.
And, since I wander just a little bit at times....This business of the Cell phone companies "giving" their subscriber an overpriced phone that has little to recommend it except that it is the latest and greatest "cool technology" in return for locking them into a 2 year contract seems a bit sketchy to me. Either the phone is a LOT cheaper than its claimed cost, or, the cost of cell service is a LOT lower than the providers claim. Either way, it seems like they are pulling in a right fair amount of money by hoodwinking the consumer.
of course, I also realize that, as a publicly traded company, their job is NOT to provide the best service for the lowest cost, but, rather to suck as much cash out of the pockets of their subscribers as possible, and, funnel as much of that cash into the pockets of their share-holders.
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
One question that has been bubbling around in my mind ever since the interview with the CEO of Verizon where he was ranting about "unlimited" users and how they were abusing the network, is this: What percentage of Verizon's network resources ARE being burned by "abusers"? Is it a case where 3% of the users are burning 60% of the network capacity? I have yet to see any hard numbers on that. At one time, I thought my usage of about 30 gig a month was pretty big. However, I have seen other postings where people report that they use 7-10x that amount per month! makes me look like a piker!
regards
dave mundt
management- be careful what you ask for...
on
Employee Monitoring
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Greetings and Salutations....
A few years ago, one my my clients asked me to generate lists of the websites their employees had been on, and, how long they had spent on the sites. Since I run an in-house DNS server, not that hard to get. Well, I ran the reports for a few months, then, the project was quietly dropped. Why? It turned out that the only folks that spent significant amounts of time on porn sites and other non-business sites were the President of the company (who had ordered the reports) and his wife, the CFO of the company. And THEY were burning a LOT of time on non-business related entertainment and shopping!
What was really amusing to me about this was that these two folks had the attitude that they were the only ones doing anything positive for the company, and, the employees were the enemy - and were spending all their time trying to steal time and resources away from the company, cutting down on profit margin!
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations...
Haw! I KNEW that when I wrote that line, I was going to get a response like this. Please note that my point was VERY NARROWLY focused on the controls of the backhoe...not the job as a whole. I have a great deal of respect for the skilled trades-person, as they can be craftsmen of the first order. I have seen (and happily paid) heavy equipment operators who have been able to manipulate their machines with the delicacy and accuracy of a surgeon's scalpel. And, since I have a fair number of hours on a backhoe myself, I am VERY aware of the challenges of that sort of task.
However...to my broader point...how did those artists GET to that point? Partly from a natural gift, I am sure...but MOSTLY through years of seat time manipulating those levers and moving that earth. I am also QUITE sure that every one of those artists will have a story or two of when they were a newbe, and, how they produced some pretty impressive disasters by digging in the wrong place, or mis-judging the stability of their tool. We are all there at one time....and it takes time to get that level of skill.
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and salutations...
While this is a great exposition of the way management thinks, it also shows how truly short-sighted and unwise management can be. Lord knows, I have seen this sort of room-temperature IQ in companies MANY times over the years.
The fact of the matter is that these are high-tech jobs that require a great deal of skill and knowledge. Also, EVERY setup like this is unique. it is not like hiring a new backhoe operator, where pretty much every backhoe works the same!
now....let us say you put off the employee with pretty promises that you have no intentions of following through on. IT folks tend to be pretty bright, and, will catch on fairly quickly to this. Unless there are some rewards showing up, then, productivity will suffer, or, the quality of work will degrade. Without adequate rewards, you are, essentially, treating your employee as a slave, and, NO slave is very productive.
Say, you DO give the employee a big raise, with the intentions of dumping them after the project is "done". Again...this works once, at best, and if your IT person has any experience under their belt, that has probably already happened to them once. They will recognize this and, again...productivity and quality will suffer.
Do you want to know what the "tell" is in this scenario? The fact that the employee has been loaded with tons of extra work and responsibility, and has had to ASK for more money. The smart manager, who is truly interested in getting the project knocked out, getting a quality product, and keeping a valuable resource for the company will walk in and say something on the order of "we have these extra tasks to add to your job description, and, since we realize this is an expansion of our requirements, here are some perks/cash/etc we are adding to your pay package".
It is true that ANY employee can be replaced. However, how much is the company willing at absorb in terms of lost productivity, training, and general delays from the normal startup time that it takes for a new hire to get an understanding of the setup to the point that they are NOT dangerous? management tends to forget that....
regards
dave mundt
Greetings and salutations.
A big "thumbs up" in agreement here. I have had complaints over the years because I have gone into the "START" menu and sorted the programs and other entries alphabetically! Also, a client just upgraded Quickbooks, and, I heard some grumbling because the default icon for the program had changed!
Another issue for me, as a support person, is that I ALWAYS seem to end up with a mix of OS and applications programs, so, the "Properties" menu item (for example) could be hidden in any one of SEVERAL places in the version of the program I am looking at. In some cases I can see why a given tool would be moved from one place to another. However, in a vast majority of cases, it seems more as if some GUI person randomly decided that THEY did not like how things were laid out, and, swapped tools around to fit the way THEIR mind worked.
Re:Any concept of what's involved in migration?
on
Time To Dump XP?
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· Score: 1
Greetings and Salutations....
the poster makes a good point. it has been my experience that EVERY version of Windows requires at least a 20% power upgrade to the hardware to keep responsiveness at the previous level. So...over the past decade or so, my biggest clients have "upgraded" by hanging onto the last version of the OS until very near the end of life, then, replacing all the computers in the company with NEW systems, with the NEW OS on them.
Since this works out to about a 4 year cycle, it seems to be the least painful way of upgrading Windows.
Greetings and Salutations;
While I sense a certain amount of repressed anger in this post, my recent experience of spending four days in hospital tend to re-enforce the overall view of the ER doctors. While I have no complaints about the technical competency of the doctor who sealed off the seven ulcers in my esophagus, trying to get him to discuss my illness and ways that I could deal with it was like trying to pull up a manhole on the road with a screwdriver! I was left with the impression that he considered talking to me to be a waste of time, both because I was obviously too old and stupid to understand anything he said about the state of my body, and, that it would be a waste of time to discuss long-term treatment with me.
I will say, though, that the nurses and technicians that I interacted with over that four day period were top notch. They provided excellent care, and, interacted with me as if I was actually a valuable human, and, dealt with the terribly chaotic schedule of an intensive care wing with good humor and a positive attitude. Actually, the only problem I had was that I have terrible veins in my hands and arms (small, buried deep, and, with a huge tendency to slither away or go flat when a needle gets near them), so, the techs that came in to get blood samples had QUITE a challenge. I was fairly sure that after the first day, they were down there drawing straws, to see who got the short one and had to come poke me.
Greetings and salutations..
Well, here in Tennessee, a vast majority of the road creation and maintenance is paid for by a $0.30/gallon (or so) fuel tax collected by the STATE, and, licensing fees collected from the commercial haulers. There are some federal subsidies, but, most of the federal money goes to the Interstate system...So...unless one has a Tesla, there is no way to avoid paying for the roads.
Regards
Dave mundt
greetings and salutations!
Why yes...that should be EXACTLY the sort of rational response that society should have to this heinous crime! And...do not forget...there is apparently a pusher in the school too, so, the administration should do a lock down and strip search every student until the foul perverter of our children is found and clapped in federal detention for decades! Think Of The Children!!!
pleasant dreams.
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations.....
"games workshop"...now that is a name I have not heard in a long time...
A big thumbs up to this post, as it clearly and concisely summarizes the history of GW. I ran an AD&D Campaign for 19 years, starting back in about 1978, when it was only "D&D", and consisted of a couple of roughly printed paperback books, and the promise of more. Of course, I subscribed to "Dragon" magazine, and, would pick up copies of "White Dwarf" whenever possible. WD was especially useful to me because of its broad examination of many different roleplaying and wargaming rule systems and the scenarios created for them. I was able to add depth and interesting twists to my campaign, and greatly increase the enjoyment of my players by taking ideas from their publication. It was a sad day for me when GW took over the magazine, and, as noted above, turned it into an expensive catalog for Warhammer products. It was shortly after this change that I stopped buying the magazine, as it ceased to have any creative spark for me.
In Nature (the big room with the blue ceiling), monoculture is always a bad thing, as it leads to a community that is vulnerable to more disease and disaster than a diverse ecosystem. Perhaps we are seeing the same issues with GW.
I will say in passing, too, that I do not blame GW completely for this evolution. We need to remember that, at the time, the whole gaming industry was starting to make enough money and get big enough that the sharks in suits were circling in. TSR got really focused in on sending the lawyers out after anyone that appeared to (a) be infringing their IP and (b) had money. I am quite sure that this was one reason that the gaming magazine industry became so Balkanized, focusing only on the product of ONE gamesystem.
It is a sad thing, because it drove a lot of old-time gamers away, and so cut down on the numbers of younger gamers that would have been drawn into the genre by these experienced players.
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations...
You apparently have no clue how the welfare system works these days. Perhaps you should find a DHS worker and ask them about it.
regards
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations...
It would be more useful for you to write "...it's still a crappy movie because...." and list a few reasons to support your claim.
Citizen Kane has been one of my favorite movies for decades for several reasons. First off, there is the artistry of it. Orson Welles had an amazing understanding and control of the parameters of perspective, angle and the use of a mono-chromatic medium. His subtile use of these added a huge amount to the impact of various scenes, without screaming "look at me! I am a special effect!" as is often the case in current movies.
Then, there are the philosophical themes explored, of how obsession can destroy not only the person in its clutches, but, the people around them, and, often causes the obsessed person to become isolated and alone in the world, as they lose the ability to understand that opposition to a policy or action is not a personal attack.
With a little work, it is easy to produce a lengthy essay discussing the film and its levels of meaning - Far more than one could post here. Perhaps that is the definition of a "classic" piece of art....that it DOES have level after level of meaning that can be examined...
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations....
There is a difference between following the shortest path between two points and, essentially, being sent to "Time out" for being complaining and rebellious. My understanding of the texts is that the people of Israel were grumpy and undisciplined after being freed from slavery under the Egyptians, so, this 40 year walk was a learning experience and a way to build a cohesive community.
Regards
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
The fact of the matter is that there is a lot of ANY countries infrastructure that can be easily disrupted if one can get access to them, either through physical access or through a network. There is little that can be done to prevent this, short of draconian measures that would be unacceptable to most Americans. Instead of creating an expensive bureaucracy that, very quickly, will graduate from protecting the country to perpetuating itself and growing without end (yes, like a cancer), perhaps it would be wiser to look at the infrastructure and find ways to upgrade it to make it more fault-tolerant. Right now, for example, the power grid is like a row of dominoes. Hit the right one at the right time, and, failure will cascade through the system, spreading darkness across the land. It seems that adding some way of breaking up the grid into smaller sections would allow for quicker control of such failure, and keeping the disruption to a minimum.
Having said this, I should also point out that this is a GREAT use of alternative energy sources. Instead of having one huge network, perhaps we could evolve to a number of smaller, self-contained grids powered by locally generated electricity.
Of course, changing America's interactions with the world to stop treating them in such a way that we generate large numbers of people who believe that we as such an enemy that the best course of action is to blow themselves up to kill us...
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations....
I fully support this concept, and, would go on to require that it be the DEFAULT for all mail messages that are addressed to more than one or two people at a time. Since a vast majority of the multiple-receiver emails I get are mindless twaddle, this would go a long way towards cutting the excess loads on the InterTubes.
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and salutations...
Research is a good thing... http://www.foitimes.com/
http://www.gaic.info/
One of the reasons that you MIGHT well not know about this is that the interned German-Americans were required to sign an Official Secrets form, that obligated them to NEVER speak of their experiences on pain of being deported. If YOU were in the situation where government agents swooped in, without warning, bundled you off to a prison camp for years and let you go ONLY if you would sign this paper, would you say anything about your experiences? Especially if you had a family that would be caught up in the sweep and deported with you? I suspect not.
Greetings and Salutations,.
You must be very, very young. I say this because youth is mostly self-centered, and, uncaring about history, family, etc. However, to answer your question, genealogy IS very worthwhile. As a following post points out, for anything from genetic questions to inheritance questions. Beyond that, and, perhaps more importantly, it can give a person a clearer perspective on their place in history, and how that might influence their lives today. That can be important in improving one's attitude towards reality today, and, perhaps, motivating them to change their actions. Also, it is very interesting to see family connections, and, to gather stories of our ancestors. As an example, a search of the family history of my Tai Chi instructor found that one of the folks in the current class was a cousin that he did not know about. While not the most important thing in the world, perhaps, it has provided many moments of amusement and positive energy since this came out.
As another small example, a friend of mine discovered that her family tree in America goes back to well before the revolutionary war; that one of her ancestors had stood on the side of the Americans against the British and was named a "True Patriot" for that brave act. Because of this connection, she is qualified for a membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. Is this important? Perhaps not world-shaking, but, it has brought some positive vibes and some increased pride to a very good person who is struggling very hard to survive in this challenging economy we are burdened with today.
Perhaps now, your family tree is unimportant to you, but, , do not blithely dismiss it as being worthless for everyone. And remember...there is a good chance that one day YOU will be struck with the question "where DID my great, great, grandparents come from?" Without the vast resources of data provided by the Census, this question is a LOT harder to answer.
Greetings and Salutations.
I am able to remember when one was able to go to a doctor, pay a reasonable fee, and get actual attention, diagnosis, and a good path to follow to deal with the issue at hand. However, as this fairly well written article from Slate points out, in the late 70s and early 80s, this started to change rapidly: http://www.slate.com/id/2161736/
However, alas, the problem was not Medicare/Medicaid and government intervention. Rather, it was a combination of the health care industry getting all these cool, new toys to play with, and their desire to use them, in spite of the minimal benefits and huge costs; and...the fact that the insurance companies started evolving away from being non-profit to for-profit. it has been my observation that any time a company goes public, and "for profit", their focus immediately shifts away from the concept of providing a well-done service or excellent product, towards cheapening their output to the lowest quality that will keep it being purchased by the consumers, and, raising their pricing as high as they possibly can, all in a search to produce quarterly profits that grow by some mythical expectation created out of the pipe dreams of economists and stock brokers running the Wall Street Money Machine.
I completely agree, though, with your point about the huge amount of paperwork that all this has generated, and, the painfully large extra costs that it imposes directly on the health care provider, and, by extension the patients. It is outrageous that the amount of paperwork has grown to the point that it requires more that 1/10 the total staff of a facility to keep track of it, and, that increasing expense is part of the terrible cost of health care in America.
Now...while you have done such a good job of pointing out some of the elephants crushing the chances of the average American from getting affordable health care, my question is this: What would you propose to do to FIX the problem? If you "do consulting for a large medical clinic", then, you have a perfect seat to observe the places where expenses, inefficiencies and artificial pumps to costs happen, so it would seem to me that you MUST have an idea as to how to correct the problem.
One thing that worries me a bit, though is your comment about how "the government will now force everyone to buy insurance even if they are young and strong and don't need it". Perhaps my understanding of the concept of a shared-risk insurance pool is faulty. My understanding is that a company sells insurance to a group of people...say...just for argument's sake, consisting of 1000 folks (and this assumes both a non-profit organization and and "ideal" company). The company collects a premium on a regular basis from each of the members of the group. It then takes that money and invests it in OTHER enterprises, to help the available pool of cash grow. The insurance company is betting that, out of those 1000 people that some number...say...200, will pay in premiums their entire life, and NEVER make a claim; Also that some small number, say, 100, will have a catastrophic problem that will drain every penny they have put in, and, then some; Finally, that the remainder, about 700, will have some health issues that will require payment out, but, that the net amount that this large pool pulls out will be rather less than the amount they pay into the fund in premiums, plus the profits earned by the company's investments.
Even a non-profit wants to minimize the chance that their numbers are flaky, and, 900 of the pool will have a catastrophic illness, and only 100 will never pull anything out. That is why, from day one, the insurance companies have been fanatical about gathering statistics on health issues with
Greetings and Salutations...
Yea, this was about the first thing that came to my mind when I read the story. While in Gov. his salary might have been fixed, if he annoyed the wrong folks by complaining too much, there is a long history of building a portfolio of reasons that he should be terminated. It is quite possible that they will leave the position "pending", too, which would ensure that the cash they were handing over to him would stay in the treasury.
In a more general rant, it has annoyed me for years that IT tends to get cut first in many organizations. Since what we do as admins means that problems do not come up, and, our work product is not something that can be stacked on the corner of a desk, it seems that management thinks that all we do is sit around surfing porn sites, and, twiddling our thumbs. And if we do our jobs well, they COULD get along without an admin for a bit before things start to crack and fall apart....
Getting off my soap box.....
Slashdot Mirror
Greetings and Salutations....
Some interesting thoughts here...and the sort of ethical debates that can keep a group of college students up ALL night with pizza and beer, wrestling with the issues. let's look at them, though....
Right, and its also theft every-time I go into wal-mart take a look at HDTVs and don't buy one. Its also theft every-time I go to the book store and read a book. Etc.
No, sarcasm aside, in the first case it would only be theft if you talked an associate into loading one of those HDTVs into your car without paying for it. but then...I suspect you understand that (*smile*). As for reading the book in the bookstore....I suppose a lawyer could argue either side there, and end up with a new Mercedes no matter WHO won. My feeling is that it is NOT, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, unless you can read the entire book in one sitting, you run the risk of coming back to find all the copies sold out. The only way to avoid this is to buy the book. Secondly, it has been my observation that a vast majority of folks that read books in the bookstore are sampling them to decide IF they want to invest in them or not. While there is a certain population of folks that may do exactly what you say, it is such a small percentage of folks that look at a given book that it is lost in the noise. If it were a serious problem, the publishers would pressure the booksellers to keep that reading from happening.
Why is theft wrong? Theft is wrong because it deprives the person of an object. For example, if someone steals a car, the problem isn't that someone got a free car, the problem is that I don't have my car. If someone had a duplicator and wanted my car to duplicate, I'd let them because I wouldn't be deprived of property.
Well, in short, my answer to the question is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". However, your following point is also quite well put and accurate too. Things start going a bit sketchy after that though, alas. Let us consider the case of a BiG copier that could duplicate your car. You might well be willing to allow that duplication to happen, because, by your estimation, it costs you nothing. However, you are not the only person affected by that event. YOU bought that car from someone, after all, and gave them real property - cash - for it. If your friend copies your car, and ends up with a vehicle that they can drive around town just like the original, they HAVE deprived some seller of real property - the cash that would have been handed over if the copy had been purchased. This may well have no immediate effect on you, and, so seems unimportant to you. As many other folks have said too, it's only one copy..that is not important... However, what if the sale was through the manufacturer....suddenly their cash flow drops, and perhaps they go out of business. One day you need a spare part for that car, and, you find that it is not available, or, is painfully expensive because it is being manufactured by a third party. Or...while we are spinning scenarios....what if the seller is desperate for money in these hard times, and the car you allowed to be duplicated for free replaced a sale that would have brought the seller cash to keep his starving family alive, or pay for a life-saving operation?
It could be argued that, while you feel that you have suffered no loss, as a matter of fact, you HAVE deprived those two sellers of real property - the cash from the sale that your duplicate replaced - and so are directly responsible for the failure of the manufacturer in the former case, or th death of the seller or his family in the latter case.
Theft is depriving someone of a physical, guaranteed good. Copyright infringement is not theft.
As noted above, unless one is willing to say that the cash from a sale is NOT physical goods, it is quite possible to argue
Greetings and Salutations.
Well, the questions and thoughts that spring to my mind are: Have there been any problems with photographers damaging the booms or causing breaches? While 65 feet may not seem like much, it can easily make it very hard to get clear pictures of the booms as they bob up and down in the ocean waters. THAT makes it harder to keep track of how well they are working to block the oil, or, adsorb the crude and keep it from moving on. Is this the REAL reason for the limit? Also, why would the limit be 300 feet first...then get cut down to 65 feet? That sounds more like spin control than security to me.
Regards
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations..
How about this....What if your son had lent the physical CD to the friends he wanted to listen to the content? Or....held a party where the point was for the group of his friends to listen to the CD?
There are a number of perfectly legal ways to share recorded content with other folks that have been around for as long as transcribing performances has existed. The issue, as I see it, is that computers have made it TOO easy to copy a recording - and that has cheapened the value of the recording in the eyes of the consumer to the point that they can convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with giving away a copy of it.
Frankly, though, considering the attention span of the typical 10 year old, I question whether it was actual disappointment on the part of your son at the producer's decision, or (more likely) him getting distracted by the NEXT cool, shiny thing that came along. Shucks, I know adults who have the same problem, so it is not exactly specific to 10 year old boys....although it is rather more likely in that age group.
regards
dave mundt
Greetings and salutations...
Not to make too fine a point of it, but, another factor in this is that the broadband providers ONLY offer "best effort" speeds. That 12Mbps connection would be available IF there are no problems or bottlenecks between your system and the source of the data you are downloading. Often, though, there are. So...while 4T might be the THEORETICAL maximum that could be downloaded, the actual number of bits any of us can pull in is far less than that. It is quite possible that the difference between the theoretical maximum of data that could be acquired, and the smaller number simply reflects the reality that a consumer-grade connection can not and will not run at full bore and efficiency all the time.
When I see a plan advertised as "unlimited" bandwidth, I do not immediately think that I can pull down a snapshot of the Internet. Rather I interpret it to mean that, given the average transfer speed available, I will NOT hit some arbitrary limit and start getting charged a surcharge of $XX/megabyte by the ISP. Anything ELSE and I would agree with you completely about the dishonesty of calling it "unlimited".
regards
dave mundt
Greetings and salutations...
An earlier poster raised a very important point in this debate...did the woman have a separate contract? That has yet to be answered. It is quite possible that they had a family plan, with a couple of phones and a shared pool of minutes. If so...it is quite possible that it WAS her husband that was the primary account holder. If that was the case, then, that contract SHOULD have become null and void when the husband died...and there likely SHOULD be no termination fee. The original article linked does not address this question at all.
If she had a separate contract, and, she was moving to a place that Verizon did not provide service, I suspect that a testy note from a lawyer to them, stating that their
client would be more than happy to continue paying the subscription, but, that Verizon would be required to provide service in her area, would be sufficient to eliminate the termination fee. The idea that ANY company should be allowed to continue to bill for services when their subscriber is in an area that they do not cover is more of an example of unbridled corporate greed than any idea of rational business practices.
And, since I wander just a little bit at times....This business of the Cell phone companies "giving" their subscriber an overpriced phone that has little to recommend it except that it is the latest and greatest "cool technology" in return for locking them into a 2 year contract seems a bit sketchy to me. Either the phone is a LOT cheaper than its claimed cost, or, the cost of cell service is a LOT lower than the providers claim. Either way, it seems like they are pulling in a right fair amount of money by hoodwinking the consumer.
of course, I also realize that, as a publicly traded company, their job is NOT to provide the best service for the lowest cost, but, rather to suck as much cash out of the pockets of their subscribers as possible, and, funnel as much of that cash into the pockets of their share-holders.
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
One question that has been bubbling around in my mind ever since the interview with the CEO of Verizon where he was ranting about "unlimited" users and how they were abusing the network, is this: What percentage of Verizon's network resources ARE being burned by "abusers"? Is it a case where 3% of the users are burning 60% of the network capacity? I have yet to see any hard numbers on that. At one time, I thought my usage of about 30 gig a month was pretty big. However, I have seen other postings where people report that they use 7-10x that amount per month! makes me look like a piker!
regards
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations....
A few years ago, one my my clients asked me to generate lists of the websites their employees had been on, and, how long they had spent on the sites. Since I run an in-house DNS server, not that hard to get. Well, I ran the reports for a few months, then, the project was quietly dropped. Why? It turned out that the only folks that spent significant amounts of time on porn sites and other non-business sites were the President of the company (who had ordered the reports) and his wife, the CFO of the company.
And THEY were burning a LOT of time on non-business related entertainment and shopping!
What was really amusing to me about this was that these two folks had the attitude that they were the only ones doing anything positive for the company, and, the employees were the enemy - and were spending all their time trying to steal time and resources away from the company, cutting down on profit margin!
Regards
Dave Mundt
There are batteries within batteries? Cool.
No...there are CELLS in BATTERIES (by definition). In this case, a 9V batter consists of six 1.5V, AAAA form factor cells.
Greetings and Salutations...
Haw! I KNEW that when I wrote that line, I was going to get a response like this. Please note that my point was VERY NARROWLY focused on the controls of the backhoe...not the job as a whole. I have a great deal of respect for the skilled trades-person, as they can be craftsmen of the first order. I have seen (and happily paid) heavy equipment operators who have been able to manipulate their machines with the delicacy and accuracy of a surgeon's scalpel. And, since I have a fair number of hours on a backhoe myself, I am VERY aware of the challenges of that sort of task.
However...to my broader point...how did those artists GET to that point? Partly from a natural gift, I am sure...but MOSTLY through years of seat time manipulating those levers and moving that earth. I am also QUITE sure that every one of those artists will have a story or two of when they were a newbe, and, how they produced some pretty impressive disasters by digging in the wrong place, or mis-judging the stability of their tool. We are all there at one time....and it takes time to get that level of skill.
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and salutations...
While this is a great exposition of the way management thinks, it also shows how truly short-sighted and unwise management can be. Lord knows, I have seen this sort of room-temperature IQ in companies MANY times over the years.
The fact of the matter is that these are high-tech jobs that require a great deal of skill and knowledge. Also, EVERY setup like this is unique. it is not like hiring a new backhoe operator, where pretty much every backhoe works the same!
now....let us say you put off the employee with pretty promises that you have no intentions of following through on. IT folks tend to be pretty bright, and, will catch on fairly quickly to this. Unless there are some rewards showing up, then, productivity will suffer, or, the quality of work will degrade. Without adequate rewards, you are, essentially, treating your employee as a slave, and, NO slave is very productive.
Say, you DO give the employee a big raise, with the intentions of dumping them after the project is "done". Again...this works once, at best, and if your IT person has any experience under their belt, that has probably already happened to them once. They will recognize this and, again...productivity and quality will suffer.
Do you want to know what the "tell" is in this scenario? The fact that the employee has been loaded with tons of extra work and responsibility, and has had to ASK for more money. The smart manager, who is truly interested in getting the project knocked out, getting a quality product, and keeping a valuable resource for the company will walk in and say something on the order of "we have these extra tasks to add to your job description, and, since we realize this is an expansion of our requirements, here are some perks/cash/etc we are adding to your pay package".
It is true that ANY employee can be replaced. However, how much is the company willing at absorb in terms of lost productivity, training, and general delays from the normal startup time that it takes for a new hire to get an understanding of the setup to the point that they are NOT dangerous? management tends to forget that....
regards
dave mundt
Greetings and salutations.
A big "thumbs up" in agreement here. I have had complaints over the years because I have gone into the "START" menu and sorted the programs and other entries alphabetically! Also, a client just upgraded Quickbooks, and, I heard some grumbling because the default icon for the program had changed!
Another issue for me, as a support person, is that I ALWAYS seem to end up with a mix of OS and applications programs, so, the "Properties" menu item (for example) could be hidden in any one of SEVERAL places in the version of the program I am looking at. In some cases I can see why a given tool would be moved from one place to another. However, in a vast majority of cases, it seems more as if some GUI person randomly decided that THEY did not like how things were laid out, and, swapped tools around to fit the way THEIR mind worked.
Greetings and Salutations....
the poster makes a good point. it has been my experience that EVERY version of Windows requires at least a 20% power upgrade to the hardware to keep responsiveness at the previous level. So...over the past decade or so, my biggest clients have "upgraded" by hanging onto the last version of the OS until very near the end of life, then, replacing all the computers in the company with NEW systems, with the NEW OS on them.
Since this works out to about a 4 year cycle, it seems to be the least painful way of upgrading Windows.
Greetings and Salutations;
While I sense a certain amount of repressed anger in this post, my recent experience of spending four days in hospital tend to re-enforce the overall view of the ER doctors. While I have no complaints about the technical competency of the doctor who sealed off the seven ulcers in my esophagus, trying to get him to discuss my illness and ways that I could deal with it was like trying to pull up a manhole on the road with a screwdriver! I was left with the impression that he considered talking to me to be a waste of time, both because I was obviously too old and stupid to understand anything he said about the state of my body, and, that it would be a waste of time to discuss long-term treatment with me.
I will say, though, that the nurses and technicians that I interacted with over that four day period were top notch. They provided excellent care, and, interacted with me as if I was actually a valuable human, and, dealt with the terribly chaotic schedule of an intensive care wing with good humor and a positive attitude. Actually, the only problem I had was that I have terrible veins in my hands and arms (small, buried deep, and, with a huge tendency to slither away or go flat when a needle gets near them), so, the techs that came in to get blood samples had QUITE a challenge. I was fairly sure that after the first day, they were down there drawing straws, to see who got the short one and had to come poke me.
Greetings and salutations..
Well, here in Tennessee, a vast majority of the road creation and maintenance is paid for by a $0.30/gallon (or so) fuel tax collected by the STATE, and, licensing fees collected from the commercial haulers. There are some federal subsidies, but, most of the federal money goes to the Interstate system...So...unless one has a Tesla, there is no way to avoid paying for the roads.
Regards
Dave mundt
greetings and salutations!
Why yes...that should be EXACTLY the sort of rational response that society should have to this heinous crime! And...do not forget...there is apparently a pusher in the school too, so, the administration should do a lock down and strip search every student until the foul perverter of our children is found and clapped in federal detention for decades! Think Of The Children!!!
pleasant dreams.
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations.....
"games workshop"...now that is a name I have not heard in a long time...
A big thumbs up to this post, as it clearly and concisely summarizes the history of GW. I ran an AD&D Campaign for 19 years, starting back in about 1978, when it was only "D&D", and consisted of a couple of roughly printed paperback books, and the promise of more. Of course, I subscribed to "Dragon" magazine, and, would pick up copies of "White Dwarf" whenever possible. WD was especially useful to me because of its broad examination of many different roleplaying and wargaming rule systems and the scenarios created for them. I was able to add depth and interesting twists to my campaign, and greatly
increase the enjoyment of my players by taking ideas from their publication. It was a sad day for me when GW took over the magazine, and, as noted above, turned it into an expensive catalog for Warhammer products. It was shortly after this change that I stopped buying the magazine, as it ceased to have any creative spark for me.
In Nature (the big room with the blue ceiling), monoculture is always a bad thing, as it leads to a community that is vulnerable to more disease and disaster than a diverse ecosystem. Perhaps we are seeing the same issues with GW.
I will say in passing, too, that I do not blame GW completely for this evolution. We need to remember that, at the time, the whole gaming industry was starting to make enough money and get big enough that the sharks in suits were circling in. TSR got really focused in on sending the lawyers out after anyone that appeared to (a) be infringing their IP and (b) had money. I am quite sure that this was one reason that the gaming magazine industry became so Balkanized, focusing only on the product of ONE gamesystem.
It is a sad thing, because it drove a lot of old-time gamers away, and so cut down on the numbers of younger gamers that would have been drawn into the genre by these experienced players.
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations...
You apparently have no clue how the welfare system works these days. Perhaps you should find a DHS worker and ask them about it.
regards
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations...
It would be more useful for you to write "...it's still a crappy movie because...." and list a few reasons to support your claim.
Citizen Kane has been one of my favorite movies for decades for several reasons. First off, there is the artistry of it. Orson Welles had an amazing understanding and control of the parameters of perspective, angle and the use of a mono-chromatic medium. His subtile use of these added a huge amount to the impact of various scenes, without screaming "look at me! I am a special effect!" as is often the case in current movies.
Then, there are the philosophical themes explored, of how obsession can destroy not only the person in its clutches, but, the people around them, and, often causes the obsessed person to become isolated and alone in the world, as they lose the ability to understand that opposition to a policy or action is not a personal attack.
With a little work, it is easy to produce a lengthy essay discussing the film and its levels of meaning - Far more than one could post here. Perhaps that is the definition of a "classic" piece of art....that it DOES have level after level of meaning that can be examined...
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations....
There is a difference between following the shortest path between two points and, essentially, being sent to "Time out" for being complaining and rebellious. My understanding of the texts is that the people of Israel were grumpy and undisciplined after being freed from slavery under the Egyptians, so, this 40 year walk was a learning experience and a way to build a cohesive community.
Regards
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations.
The fact of the matter is that there is a lot of ANY countries infrastructure that can be easily disrupted if one can get access to them, either through physical access or through a network. There is little that can be done to prevent this, short of draconian measures that would be unacceptable to most Americans. Instead of creating an expensive bureaucracy that, very quickly, will graduate from protecting the country to perpetuating itself and growing without end (yes, like a cancer), perhaps it would be wiser to look at the infrastructure and find ways to upgrade it to make it more fault-tolerant. Right now, for example, the power grid is like a row of dominoes. Hit the right one at the right time, and, failure will cascade through the system, spreading darkness across the land. It seems that adding some way of breaking up the grid into smaller sections would allow for quicker control of such failure, and keeping the disruption to a minimum.
Having said this, I should also point out that this is a GREAT use of alternative energy sources. Instead of having one huge network, perhaps we could evolve to a number of smaller, self-contained grids powered by locally generated electricity.
Of course, changing America's interactions with the world to stop treating them in such a way that we generate large numbers of people who believe that we as such an enemy that the best course of action is to blow themselves up to kill us...
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations....
I fully support this concept, and, would go on to require that it be the DEFAULT for all mail messages that are addressed to more than one or two people at a time.
Since a vast majority of the multiple-receiver emails I get are mindless twaddle, this would go a long way towards cutting the excess loads on the InterTubes.
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and salutations...
Research is a good thing...
http://www.foitimes.com/
http://www.gaic.info/
One of the reasons that you MIGHT well not know about this is that the interned German-Americans were required to sign an Official Secrets form, that obligated them to NEVER speak of their experiences on pain of being deported. If YOU were in the situation where government agents swooped in, without warning, bundled you off to a prison camp for years and let you go ONLY if you would sign this paper, would you say anything about your experiences? Especially if you had a family that would be caught up in the sweep and deported with you? I suspect not.
Greetings and Salutations,.
You must be very, very young. I say this because youth is mostly self-centered, and, uncaring about history, family, etc. However, to answer your question, genealogy IS very worthwhile. As a following post points out, for anything from genetic questions to inheritance questions. Beyond that, and, perhaps more importantly, it can give a person a clearer perspective on their place in history, and how that might influence their lives today. That can be important in improving one's attitude towards reality today, and, perhaps, motivating them to change their actions. Also, it is very interesting to see family connections, and, to gather stories of our ancestors. As an example, a search of the family history of my Tai Chi instructor found that one of the folks in the current class was a cousin that he did not know about. While not the most important thing in the world, perhaps, it has provided many moments of amusement and positive energy since this came out.
As another small example, a friend of mine discovered that her family tree in America goes back to well before the revolutionary war; that one of her ancestors had stood on the side of the Americans against the British and was named a "True Patriot" for that brave act. Because of this connection, she is qualified for a membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. Is this important? Perhaps not world-shaking, but, it has brought some positive vibes and some increased pride to a very good person who is struggling very hard to survive in this challenging economy we are burdened with today.
Perhaps now, your family tree is unimportant to you, but, , do not blithely dismiss it as being worthless for everyone. And remember...there is a good chance that one day YOU will be struck with the question "where DID my great, great, grandparents come from?" Without the vast resources of data provided by the Census, this question is a LOT harder to answer.
Greetings and Salutations.
I am able to remember when one was able to go to a doctor, pay a reasonable fee, and get actual attention, diagnosis, and a good path to follow to deal with the issue at hand. However, as this fairly well written article from Slate points out, in the late 70s and early 80s, this started to change rapidly:
http://www.slate.com/id/2161736/
However, alas, the problem was not Medicare/Medicaid and government intervention. Rather, it was a combination of the health care industry getting all these cool, new toys to play with, and their desire to use them, in spite of the minimal benefits and huge costs; and...the fact that the insurance companies started evolving away from being non-profit to for-profit. it has been my observation that any time a company goes public, and "for profit", their focus immediately shifts away from the concept of providing a well-done service or excellent product, towards cheapening their output to the lowest quality that will keep it being purchased by the consumers, and, raising their pricing as high as they possibly can, all in a search to produce quarterly profits that grow by some mythical expectation created out of the pipe dreams of economists and stock brokers running the Wall Street Money Machine.
I completely agree, though, with your point about the huge amount of paperwork that all this has generated, and, the painfully large extra costs that it imposes directly on the health care provider, and, by extension the patients. It is outrageous that the amount of paperwork has grown to the point that it requires more that 1/10 the total staff of a facility to keep track of it, and, that increasing expense is part of the terrible cost of health care in America.
Now...while you have done such a good job of pointing out some of the elephants crushing the chances of the average American from getting affordable health care, my question is this: What would you propose to do to FIX the problem? If you "do consulting for a large medical clinic", then, you have a perfect seat to observe the places where expenses, inefficiencies and artificial pumps to costs happen, so it would seem to me that you MUST have an idea as to how to correct the problem.
One thing that worries me a bit, though is your comment about how "the government will now force everyone to buy insurance even if they are young and strong and don't need it". Perhaps my understanding of the concept of a shared-risk insurance pool is faulty. My understanding is that a company sells insurance to a group of people...say...just for argument's sake, consisting of 1000 folks (and this assumes both a non-profit organization and and "ideal" company). The company collects a premium on a regular basis from each of the members of the group. It then takes that money and invests it in OTHER enterprises, to help the available pool of cash grow. The insurance company is betting that, out of those 1000 people that some number...say...200, will pay in premiums their entire life, and NEVER make a claim; Also that some small number, say, 100, will have a catastrophic problem that will drain every penny they have put in, and, then some; Finally, that the remainder, about 700, will have some health issues that will require payment out, but, that the net amount that this large pool pulls out will be rather less than the amount they pay into the fund in premiums, plus the profits earned by the company's investments.
Even a non-profit wants to minimize the chance that their numbers are flaky, and, 900 of the pool will have a catastrophic illness, and only 100 will never pull anything out. That is why, from day one, the insurance companies have been fanatical about gathering statistics on health issues with
Greetings and Salutations...
Yea, this was about the first thing that came to my mind when I read the story. While in Gov. his salary might have been fixed, if he annoyed the wrong folks by complaining too much, there is a long history of building a portfolio of reasons that he should be terminated. It is quite possible that they will leave the position "pending", too, which would ensure that the cash they were handing over to him would stay in the treasury.
In a more general rant, it has annoyed me for years that IT tends to get cut first in many organizations. Since what we do as admins means that problems do not come up, and, our work product is not something that can be stacked on the corner of a desk, it seems that management thinks that all we do is sit around surfing porn sites, and, twiddling our thumbs. And if we do our jobs well, they COULD get along without an admin for a bit before things start to crack and fall apart....
Getting off my soap box.....