Nope. Maybe you should take a look before opening your yap?
Kindly put down your ideological/political biases for a moment... as sibling mentioned, the site is a perfect analog for what Obama is proposing.
From what I see, I find it strange that the President would have his staff put out a website, instead of, you know, trying to talk to the Senate about putting something forward to rectify the patent mess. After all, his party does dominate the Senate side of Congress, and I bet it wouldn't be that hard to get folks from among the opposition to join in. What, you ask? Glad you asked: For instance, there was once a rule that you had to present a working physical model of your idea to the USPTO before it could be patented... so why not reinstate that?
Hell - he doesn't even need to involve Congress: Why not issue an executive order to have the USPTO define a patentable idea as something with a physical basis as a critical portion of the proposed patent. Why not have the USPTO put an automatic 18-24 month hold on all inbound software patents? Lots of options open to him... but a website that someone else has already implemented to do the same thing? Makes no sense, and has a danger of diluting the whole reason for having such a website in the first place.
This will perhaps finally break Android's staggering left-behind numbers, once someone writes malware to abuse such an unpatched issue in a way that effects people in a serious way (not just people installing illegal or otherwise wildly non-mainstream apps).
No, it will more likely drive the average consumer to buying iPhones (if they have the money) or WinMo devices (if they don't.)
You see, people aren't all that technically in-depth, and so they're not going to (rightly) blame the manufacturers or carriers for blocking patches/upgrade - they'll blame "Android", and avoid it like the plague, even if the newer versions are fully patched against it.
Can we PLEASE work on writing CORRECT code before adding ever more features?
Welcome to the consumer electronics industry! You must be new here, so I'll try to be helpful: these things are, in the industry's eyes, disposable. Bugs and vulns simply mean that the next phone models will get the fixes, and unless you shelled out enough money for yours? You most likely won't.
Not exactly QED: Most Android phones are unpatchable due to the carrier not giving a damn (for various reasons), the phone hardware being too old (or too low-end), and/or the manufactuer not giving a damn (they'd prefer you buy a new phone from them instead). There are of course jailbreaks, if your carrier doesn't cut you off for using it, and if there's one that works on your phone, and if you have the technical 'oomph to install it without bricking the thing.
To put it bluntly? Unless you paid at least $300 for your Android smartphone and it's less than 3 years old (if you're lucky), you're pretty much screwed.
(Before anyone gets butthurt about it, no, I don't own an iPhone. I have a cheap Android device, but as I bought it recently, it has 4.2 on it.)
if you utilized any of the online functions that any of the national banks offer, you'll find that most local credit unions lack this feature severely.
funny, but I have all of the basics - online billpay (via Checkfree, which most banks use), the works. The only thing I don't have is the bells and whistles - e.g. the ability to snap a photo of a check on the phone and have it auto-deposited, but honestly? I so rarely see a check these days it's not worth the bother.
I suspect that a simple change such as requiring a bank be contained to just the state their HQ is located (and break up or spin off the out-of-state assets/customers into separate companies) would be plenty enough to retract a lot of the damage that they've wreaked over the years... plus there would be no more "too big to fail!!!111OMGBBQ!one!" banks.
I find having a bank account very handy for handling my money. Banks do contribute to society.
I find that Credit Unions do a far better job of it, and without the rapacious fees, policies, and hassles. They also happen to have better rates (for what that's worth nowadays).
For awhile, I even experimented with using just a simple pre-paid debit card, where my paycheck was deposited into an account tied to the card. It cost me something like $7/mo flat-fee, and I could even have the one I used generate and mail certified checks if needed (I think some of them have online bill-pay services now on top of that.)
I guess I really don't understand what makes people want to use, say, BoA or Chase, when it seems that their sole purpose is to rake as much money out of you as possible.:/
I have a fun question: Why do media reporters complain about CEO pay, when many of the really big media journalists themselves pull in $20+ million a year in salary?
Applications that haven't been updated for Server Core won't run on Server Core. So do you ditch Server Core, or do you ditch incompatible applications?
Depends - how much $$$$$(!) did the corporation lay out to purchase that incompatible application, and how long until the CapEx is amortized on it? If we crawl up into Oracle, BI, ERP, or similar-sized app suite territory, you can bet your ass that if the OS won't run it, we simply won't use the OS.
If you can't figure out how to use Metro then I question your ability to do IT.
I've worked with Server 2012 in three languages so far (one of which was Japanese/Kanji - the other two were US English and German.) It's not a question of knowing how to use it, it's a question of it being a massive time-suck because some jagoff dev team in Redmond thought it would be really really cool to completely re-arrange the majority of the UI and all of the workflow - on a fucking server.
Meanwhile, in *nix-land I can run the Bourne shell universally. vi works universally. The vast majority of std. *nix commands work universally... hell, even OSX gives you the same kind of love viz their Terminal.app. In most cases, I can script once and run anywhere... except on Windows, where you're stuck with VB or PowerShell. Only Microsoft decided to be a total snowflake about it and force world+dog to completely shift gears, and then had the nerve to scramble how they do shit on the OS.
I did that once, years ago, on a hotel WiFi network while traveling - I found a wide-open shared directory (I was bored, so I sniffed around, and...) The folder had a lot of rather sensitive-looking stuff laying about in it, judging by the filenames. I left a small anonymous text file asking the owner to secure the laptop in the future, and wrote out step-by-step how to do it. The next morning, I was walking by the front lobby desk when I heard a hysterical woman demanding that the staff call the cops because she'd been "hacked".
First, last, and only time I'll ever be a good samaritan.:(
This is what happens when politics and religion ride in the same cart. The dictator gets to set what is morally "right and wrong", and declare every violation of the law as a "sin".
I suspect it would be more properly said that this is what happens when politics and ideology ride in the same cart. While religion can qualify as an ideology, it does not and cannot encompass such things as fascism or the writings of Karl Marx.
After all, the governments of China, Nazi Germany, North Korea, and what used to be the USSR recognized no god, but that never stopped them from setting "moral" standards, then enforcing them by way of law and police.
Dude, are you kidding? Win or lose, whatever lawyer represents him at any potential trial will stand to make a metric fuck-ton of money.
See also the lawyer (Jose Baez, I think?) that represented Casey Anthony in her little baby-killing trial. Hell, he probably did that one for free, because he knows full well that his name and number is now on the Rolodex of any defendant (potential or actual) in the region that happens to have an obscene amount of money in the bank.
As another more technical example, that dude David Boies made a shitload of dosh off of representing SCO, in spite of his crappy track record (ex: he represented Al Gore in that little election dust-up back in 2000), and in spite of losing all the SCO v. (//insert linux vendor) cases rather spectacularly.
Depends on what is being called a crime. In this case, they use the term "crime" as one would expect from some two-bit fascist commissar in a half-assed Junta. That is, the term "crime" is more easily translatable to "something that embarrassed the shit out of me, uncovered some bad doings, probably hampered my plans, and will require a lot of work on my part to get the sheep to ignore it."
Thugs have no authority. The are responsible for the crimes they commit and should be jailed immediately.
...unless they have guns and governmental backing. In this case, they're more properly classified as goons.:(
Usually, the best way to deal with a goon is by one of two methods, depending on governmental status:
1) publicity and shaming of their superiors. You do it hard and heavy enough to generate outrage, and force change to a positive direction (change in policies, fire the SOBs who performed the violations, etc.) When appropriate, a loud and messy lawsuit can provide the same results, and simultaneously enrich you a bit for your time and trouble.
2) subterfuge and quiet resistance. In the case when a government has begun its descent into fascism, your best bet is hide what you must hide, find workarounds to the obstacles, and quietly help remove the fascist elements of the government. As an addendum, carefully probe the possibility of bribery and other methods.
Sadly, we're fast becoming forced to go with #2 - in most of the EU and in the US. In the above case, I suggest that the lady in this story continue to scream bloody murder, and perhaps launch a lawsuit for any credible reason (she's a lawyer, it wouldn't be hard for her to figure out some reason) but meanwhile use the Chunnel next time, and then leave/arrive from a French (or possibly Spanish or German) airport.
*sigh*... if only the population at large would get their eyeballs off the TV and celebrity gossip for long enough to realize just how far down the shitter we're all heading...
There's been massive flooding in the UK in recent weeks. So if the government allocate a significant budget to deal with the problem, that means that there wasn't really any flooding, it's just that there's money available for people to shout "Flood!"
1) Nobody is claiming that climate doesn't change - the debate is over the source(s) of that change. 2) Flooding is a present problem that causes damage, and is quite demonstrable as to its immediacy and even its sources. AGW theory on the other hand promises problems later down the road... maybe, well, if their models are proven to be correct.
Most of our best candidates so far are well past 40.
Unlike programmers, age really doesn't have the same impact in employability for everyone else... in fact it seems to enhance it in many aspects (e.g. you're less likely to find the 'cowboy' type in older sysadmins.)
I thought that too... until I saw how much it costs in SFO to rent an apartment less than an hour's drive to work, buy groceries, pay taxes, own/use a car...
That's because it makes perfect sense... In my wee opinion, this is prima facie evidence that there is money in shouting the AGW 'gospel' and pushing the panic button.
Now, you can mod this post down into oblivion and prove me right, or you can prove me wrong by replying with facts, evidence, and reason... your call.
As a former teacher, I can tell you right now that the claim is bullshit. For three months of the year, they're not working at all (unless they volunteer for summer school or suchlike, for which they get extra pay). Then we get to remove the snow days, weekends, holidays, the occasional bi-annual NEA-goaded strike, etc. On the adding portion, there are PTA meetings, and suchlike, but they don't really make up for much.
By the time you're done removing all that, it comes down to 32 weeks a year or so of actual workweeks. Of those, you would have to work 12 hours a day for five days a week just to make that assertion for just the 32 weeks, but there's a problem with that too: Most school hours are usually open 7:30am-3:00pm at the most, and most schools are ghost towns before 7am and after 4pm. Teachers from grade 6 on up (e.g. Middle/High School) alternate quiet periods (with no students) with active periods (students) so that they can grade papers, plan upcoming curriculum and syllabi, etc. Oftentimes, school districts will extend that alternating period schemata all the way down to the 2nd grade. ( As for the younger kids? Any teacher for grades 5 and under who cannot whiz through 45 test papers in 30 minutes for their kids really should not be teaching.)
Long story short, if you find a teacher working "60 hours a week", one of three things are wrong: Either the district sucks balls, the principal is shit, or the teacher is incompetent.
In my 20 years in the workforce (mostly service jobs) I have NEVER had even a single day of paid vacation.
...then you're doing it wrong.
You only get what you negotiate. Sometimes life dictates that it cannot be helped, but you always have the chance to improve your situation if only you work at it.
I started my working life in some of the crappiest jobs known to man (my very first job was at a lumberyard for a very abysmal wage, but small towns don't grant much options). However, I constantly sought and pursued better options wherever I could find them. Sometimes I had setbacks (and one year was positively evil), but overall I'm doing fairly well now, and I never turn away new opportunities without at least looking at them first.
As for TFA? I remember one of my earliest EE gigs - I put in hellish hours for shitty pay. It was then that I realized that damn... this sucks. I started looking around, and not long after, something better presented itself. It was there that I shifted from EE to IT (mid-1990s), and found something I really loved to do.
Call it luck all you want, call it a mere assertion, but lucky breaks are only 1% blind luck... the rest involves 49% patience and 50% looking for the damned thing to come along, recognizing it, and jumping on it.
Sucks to be American, right? In the (rest of the) civilised world unions are protected by law.
Unions are protected by law throughout the US. We just don't baby them to the point of crippling the economy (unless we're talking about Detroit, but that's a way different story, no?)
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. Maybe you should take a look before opening your yap?
Kindly put down your ideological/political biases for a moment... as sibling mentioned, the site is a perfect analog for what Obama is proposing.
From what I see, I find it strange that the President would have his staff put out a website, instead of, you know, trying to talk to the Senate about putting something forward to rectify the patent mess. After all, his party does dominate the Senate side of Congress, and I bet it wouldn't be that hard to get folks from among the opposition to join in. What, you ask? Glad you asked: For instance, there was once a rule that you had to present a working physical model of your idea to the USPTO before it could be patented... so why not reinstate that?
Hell - he doesn't even need to involve Congress: Why not issue an executive order to have the USPTO define a patentable idea as something with a physical basis as a critical portion of the proposed patent. Why not have the USPTO put an automatic 18-24 month hold on all inbound software patents? Lots of options open to him... but a website that someone else has already implemented to do the same thing? Makes no sense, and has a danger of diluting the whole reason for having such a website in the first place.
This will perhaps finally break Android's staggering left-behind numbers, once someone writes malware to abuse such an unpatched issue in a way that effects people in a serious way (not just people installing illegal or otherwise wildly non-mainstream apps).
No, it will more likely drive the average consumer to buying iPhones (if they have the money) or WinMo devices (if they don't.)
You see, people aren't all that technically in-depth, and so they're not going to (rightly) blame the manufacturers or carriers for blocking patches/upgrade - they'll blame "Android", and avoid it like the plague, even if the newer versions are fully patched against it.
Can we PLEASE work on writing CORRECT code before adding ever more features?
Welcome to the consumer electronics industry! You must be new here, so I'll try to be helpful: these things are, in the industry's eyes, disposable. Bugs and vulns simply mean that the next phone models will get the fixes, and unless you shelled out enough money for yours? You most likely won't.
it was fixed in v 4.2 so it is patchable
QED
Not exactly QED: Most Android phones are unpatchable due to the carrier not giving a damn (for various reasons), the phone hardware being too old (or too low-end), and/or the manufactuer not giving a damn (they'd prefer you buy a new phone from them instead). There are of course jailbreaks, if your carrier doesn't cut you off for using it, and if there's one that works on your phone, and if you have the technical 'oomph to install it without bricking the thing.
To put it bluntly? Unless you paid at least $300 for your Android smartphone and it's less than 3 years old (if you're lucky), you're pretty much screwed.
(Before anyone gets butthurt about it, no, I don't own an iPhone. I have a cheap Android device, but as I bought it recently, it has 4.2 on it.)
if you utilized any of the online functions that any of the national banks offer, you'll find that most local credit unions lack this feature severely.
funny, but I have all of the basics - online billpay (via Checkfree, which most banks use), the works. The only thing I don't have is the bells and whistles - e.g. the ability to snap a photo of a check on the phone and have it auto-deposited, but honestly? I so rarely see a check these days it's not worth the bother.
I suspect that a simple change such as requiring a bank be contained to just the state their HQ is located (and break up or spin off the out-of-state assets/customers into separate companies) would be plenty enough to retract a lot of the damage that they've wreaked over the years... plus there would be no more "too big to fail!!!111OMGBBQ!one!" banks.
I find having a bank account very handy for handling my money. Banks do contribute to society.
I find that Credit Unions do a far better job of it, and without the rapacious fees, policies, and hassles. They also happen to have better rates (for what that's worth nowadays).
For awhile, I even experimented with using just a simple pre-paid debit card, where my paycheck was deposited into an account tied to the card. It cost me something like $7/mo flat-fee, and I could even have the one I used generate and mail certified checks if needed (I think some of them have online bill-pay services now on top of that.)
I guess I really don't understand what makes people want to use, say, BoA or Chase, when it seems that their sole purpose is to rake as much money out of you as possible. :/
I have a fun question: Why do media reporters complain about CEO pay, when many of the really big media journalists themselves pull in $20+ million a year in salary?
Applications that haven't been updated for Server Core won't run on Server Core. So do you ditch Server Core, or do you ditch incompatible applications?
Depends - how much $$$$$(!) did the corporation lay out to purchase that incompatible application, and how long until the CapEx is amortized on it? If we crawl up into Oracle, BI, ERP, or similar-sized app suite territory, you can bet your ass that if the OS won't run it, we simply won't use the OS.
If you can't figure out how to use Metro then I question your ability to do IT.
I've worked with Server 2012 in three languages so far (one of which was Japanese/Kanji - the other two were US English and German.) It's not a question of knowing how to use it, it's a question of it being a massive time-suck because some jagoff dev team in Redmond thought it would be really really cool to completely re-arrange the majority of the UI and all of the workflow - on a fucking server.
Meanwhile, in *nix-land I can run the Bourne shell universally. vi works universally. The vast majority of std. *nix commands work universally... hell, even OSX gives you the same kind of love viz their Terminal.app. In most cases, I can script once and run anywhere... except on Windows, where you're stuck with VB or PowerShell. Only Microsoft decided to be a total snowflake about it and force world+dog to completely shift gears, and then had the nerve to scramble how they do shit on the OS.
Shit, man - I can do that with a Raspberry Pi, a copy of FreeBSD, a multi-GB MicroSD stick, and I'd get an infinitely more secure solution to boot. :/
Do be careful about that...
I did that once, years ago, on a hotel WiFi network while traveling - I found a wide-open shared directory (I was bored, so I sniffed around, and...) The folder had a lot of rather sensitive-looking stuff laying about in it, judging by the filenames. I left a small anonymous text file asking the owner to secure the laptop in the future, and wrote out step-by-step how to do it. The next morning, I was walking by the front lobby desk when I heard a hysterical woman demanding that the staff call the cops because she'd been "hacked".
First, last, and only time I'll ever be a good samaritan. :(
This is what happens when politics and religion ride in the same cart. The dictator gets to set what is morally "right and wrong", and declare every violation of the law as a "sin".
I suspect it would be more properly said that this is what happens when politics and ideology ride in the same cart. While religion can qualify as an ideology, it does not and cannot encompass such things as fascism or the writings of Karl Marx.
After all, the governments of China, Nazi Germany, North Korea, and what used to be the USSR recognized no god, but that never stopped them from setting "moral" standards, then enforcing them by way of law and police.
Dude, are you kidding? Win or lose, whatever lawyer represents him at any potential trial will stand to make a metric fuck-ton of money.
See also the lawyer (Jose Baez, I think?) that represented Casey Anthony in her little baby-killing trial. Hell, he probably did that one for free, because he knows full well that his name and number is now on the Rolodex of any defendant (potential or actual) in the region that happens to have an obscene amount of money in the bank.
As another more technical example, that dude David Boies made a shitload of dosh off of representing SCO, in spite of his crappy track record (ex: he represented Al Gore in that little election dust-up back in 2000), and in spite of losing all the SCO v. (//insert linux vendor) cases rather spectacularly.
1. Crimes are not harmless.
Depends on what is being called a crime. In this case, they use the term "crime" as one would expect from some two-bit fascist commissar in a half-assed Junta. That is, the term "crime" is more easily translatable to "something that embarrassed the shit out of me, uncovered some bad doings, probably hampered my plans, and will require a lot of work on my part to get the sheep to ignore it."
She was detained on advise of the US's TSA, so the England point is irrelevant.
Doesn't matter - the actions were performed by a UK authority, so the UK authority is still answerable to it.
Thugs have no authority. The are responsible for the crimes they commit and should be jailed immediately.
...unless they have guns and governmental backing. In this case, they're more properly classified as goons. :(
Usually, the best way to deal with a goon is by one of two methods, depending on governmental status:
1) publicity and shaming of their superiors. You do it hard and heavy enough to generate outrage, and force change to a positive direction (change in policies, fire the SOBs who performed the violations, etc.) When appropriate, a loud and messy lawsuit can provide the same results, and simultaneously enrich you a bit for your time and trouble.
2) subterfuge and quiet resistance. In the case when a government has begun its descent into fascism, your best bet is hide what you must hide, find workarounds to the obstacles, and quietly help remove the fascist elements of the government. As an addendum, carefully probe the possibility of bribery and other methods.
Sadly, we're fast becoming forced to go with #2 - in most of the EU and in the US. In the above case, I suggest that the lady in this story continue to scream bloody murder, and perhaps launch a lawsuit for any credible reason (she's a lawyer, it wouldn't be hard for her to figure out some reason) but meanwhile use the Chunnel next time, and then leave/arrive from a French (or possibly Spanish or German) airport.
*sigh*... if only the population at large would get their eyeballs off the TV and celebrity gossip for long enough to realize just how far down the shitter we're all heading...
Using your logic:
There's been massive flooding in the UK in recent weeks. So if the government allocate a significant budget to deal with the problem, that means that there wasn't really any flooding, it's just that there's money available for people to shout "Flood!"
1) Nobody is claiming that climate doesn't change - the debate is over the source(s) of that change.
2) Flooding is a present problem that causes damage, and is quite demonstrable as to its immediacy and even its sources. AGW theory on the other hand promises problems later down the road... maybe, well, if their models are proven to be correct.
Try again?
Wait until your resume shows you're over 40.
Most of our best candidates so far are well past 40.
Unlike programmers, age really doesn't have the same impact in employability for everyone else... in fact it seems to enhance it in many aspects (e.g. you're less likely to find the 'cowboy' type in older sysadmins.)
I thought that too... until I saw how much it costs in SFO to rent an apartment less than an hour's drive to work, buy groceries, pay taxes, own/use a car...
That's because it makes perfect sense... In my wee opinion, this is prima facie evidence that there is money in shouting the AGW 'gospel' and pushing the panic button.
Now, you can mod this post down into oblivion and prove me right, or you can prove me wrong by replying with facts, evidence, and reason... your call.
K-12 teachers do it all the time.
As a former teacher, I can tell you right now that the claim is bullshit. For three months of the year, they're not working at all (unless they volunteer for summer school or suchlike, for which they get extra pay). Then we get to remove the snow days, weekends, holidays, the occasional bi-annual NEA-goaded strike, etc. On the adding portion, there are PTA meetings, and suchlike, but they don't really make up for much.
By the time you're done removing all that, it comes down to 32 weeks a year or so of actual workweeks. Of those, you would have to work 12 hours a day for five days a week just to make that assertion for just the 32 weeks, but there's a problem with that too: Most school hours are usually open 7:30am-3:00pm at the most, and most schools are ghost towns before 7am and after 4pm. Teachers from grade 6 on up (e.g. Middle/High School) alternate quiet periods (with no students) with active periods (students) so that they can grade papers, plan upcoming curriculum and syllabi, etc. Oftentimes, school districts will extend that alternating period schemata all the way down to the 2nd grade. ( As for the younger kids? Any teacher for grades 5 and under who cannot whiz through 45 test papers in 30 minutes for their kids really should not be teaching.)
Long story short, if you find a teacher working "60 hours a week", one of three things are wrong: Either the district sucks balls, the principal is shit, or the teacher is incompetent.
In my 20 years in the workforce (mostly service jobs) I have NEVER had even a single day of paid vacation.
...then you're doing it wrong.
You only get what you negotiate. Sometimes life dictates that it cannot be helped, but you always have the chance to improve your situation if only you work at it.
I started my working life in some of the crappiest jobs known to man (my very first job was at a lumberyard for a very abysmal wage, but small towns don't grant much options). However, I constantly sought and pursued better options wherever I could find them. Sometimes I had setbacks (and one year was positively evil), but overall I'm doing fairly well now, and I never turn away new opportunities without at least looking at them first.
As for TFA? I remember one of my earliest EE gigs - I put in hellish hours for shitty pay. It was then that I realized that damn... this sucks. I started looking around, and not long after, something better presented itself. It was there that I shifted from EE to IT (mid-1990s), and found something I really loved to do.
Call it luck all you want, call it a mere assertion, but lucky breaks are only 1% blind luck... the rest involves 49% patience and 50% looking for the damned thing to come along, recognizing it, and jumping on it.
Sucks to be American, right? In the (rest of the) civilised world unions are protected by law.
Unions are protected by law throughout the US. We just don't baby them to the point of crippling the economy (unless we're talking about Detroit, but that's a way different story, no?)
FYI - teachers are often paid once a month.
(...at least in Utah they were.)