>isn't Yahoo's only obligation to increase shareholder value within the constraints of the laws of the countries in which it does business ?
Even if you take this extreme, then Yahoo! still did the wrong action.
This whole hearing is bad for Yahoo!; weak management who didn't have the full story on something this big, bad publicity in non-China far-east Asia, bad publicity in the tech community around the world, potential new legal regulations in their home country, management has to spend time on this whole issue (now and in the future).
Ignoring morals, this whole thing is bad for shareholders.
>you suggest migrating an OS is easier that a portal?
Actually yes I am.
I switch between various MS and Linux OS over the years that its pretty simple for me now. Backup personal files/bookmarks, reformat, search for similar/the best program for the task on that OS (clicks on a browser) -> done. Linux makes it easier since most of these programs are already installed with the OS.
The portal page is different; Example I track about 100 stocks from 3 exchanges, that's manual input. Another example; I have to figure out which cookie/url-that-gets-blocked I need to let in. I've done it a couple of times and its a pain.
As for the other stuff; if you are going to say that IE had a monopoly when it was easy to install Netscape/Opera/Mozilla, then Google has a lock on each one of those things.
Both companies sell products and give away services/products for free.
Examples of free things; Search, web email, home pages.
Examples of services for sale; advertisements, apps (Google Apps Premier Edition costs $), Search engines (Google's custom search engine for business costs $)
>Google on the other hand tends to provide free service for things
In 2006 they sold a little over $10 billion dollars in advertisements. All those free things are paid via this and their IPO.
>I can't see it dominating any area to an extent where it can lock people in.
Gmail - Try moving you email
iGoogle - Default home page, I didn't ask for it but just went to it once to see what it was. I find moving OS is easier than home pages due to the manual input needed for customization.
AdSense/AdWords- Once your business is dependent on it, you are locked in.
Google Calender
Blogger
Orkut/Dodgeball
I find it hard to believe people can make a case that MS is/was a monopoly and Google is not or is not going down the same path.
I'm not saying that this is the fault or wrong-doing of the US government or the database. I am saying that an American citizen shouldn't complain about another government actions. They should work on their own government problems before they point out the flaws in other governments (take your pick of which obvious problems the US government has that are not related to this issue e.g. FEMA fake press conference).
>The "government database" in question doesn't do anything on its own, the problem is all in how it is used, and it appears Canada may be using it quite strictly.
Thats for Canadians to decide, not Americans.
>If Canada was refusing entry to everyone that ever got ticketed while driving, would you blame the US' traffic laws?
I'm not blaming anyone. I'm saying that its Canadian rules, not American rules.
>keep in mind that we make life and death decisions every single day based on scientific "proof," and we don't even think twice about it.
That is more of a product of human nature/physiological training than "scientific proof" (either the "correctness of" or the "acceptance of"). It just makes things easier to do it this way for fragile humans.
An example of this would be how people's health aliments are treated differently in different parts of the world. In rural China treatment is different than in NYC. (Is there a Western equivalent of a "hot blood" theory?) Treatment would be different in parts of Europe than in America also.
>I'm not referring to the current state of scientific methodology,... >I'm talking about "science" in a more general sense, as the idea that we discover truth by making observations and formulating models that explain those observations, then making predictions about new observations and test them.
How is that not the definition of "scientific methodology"?
>In other words, "science" is nothing but common sense.
Um... what is common sense to you is not to others. "Common sense" is subjective. Is it "common sense" that a keyboard will not cause you harm if you've never seen it before? Is it "common sense" that multi-verses theory or string theory is valid? Wasn't it "common sense" that Newton's Three laws are valid when they first got accepted"? Wouldn't you have to be against "common sense" to get to Relativity? What is "common sense" now?
That would be an interesting story as more and more humans would start to realize it. Sort of like how society slowly changed their opinion of smoking.
The vast majority would be against it, as they do with certain types of energy sources today. Some violently, most passively. Think about the panic of the living about to die? How about the desperation of those to live forever, just to escape the pain? Some scientific groups would always deny it. Some groups would justify it in a philosophical way (Don't the living feel pain after a good hard days work? Is it serious pain or joggers-high pain? We are doing them a favour since without pain you can't feel relief/joy. Since they are dead forever, what is a couple of decades of pain?)
Certain countries/cultures would be willing to exploit it as it fits their religion (reincarnation/rebirth is a wonderful thing since it elevates the pain) Or contradicts the specifics of their religion so therefore the "soul-pain-for-energy" can't be right. Vegans and fruitarians would grow dramatically.
Some groups would try and target certain souls for the pain aspect of it. Hate groups would be one. Some would be those looking for a specific person for revenge or justice.
Perhaps more interestingly would be that you now have a setup that you can send signals between the living and dead. (Living are recieving/detecting something to figure out the pain. Souls are recieving something causes a stimulus/pain.)
What about souls of those from other planets, the alien dead?
>In other words, I believe that science (in its ideal form) is not only the best method we've found so far, but the best method there could possibly be.
Your personal view points regarding the absolute perfection of the current state of scientific methodology is disturbing for someone who claims to be a scientist. What if someone comes up with a potentially better method? Don't you already have a bias against it and more likely to give them a "rough treatment"?
>You seem to imply that it's possible to "prove" things in the real world, but I would argue that it simply is not, through science or any other method.
Apparently, via some method, you have enough proof to believe that the current scientific method is the best it will ever be.
This is the first thing I think about when I hear that someone has a wok at home.
Go to any Chinese restaurant and take a peak at their woks. The heat source is literally a series of blowtorches in a circle. You can't get that sort of consistent heat at home.
>It seems that no public employee, elected or not, understands that prevention is better than reaction.
1. Its every elected and non-elected public service employee understanding that you NEVER want anything to make the news in a negative way, regardless how correct the information is. This goes for dog-leash laws to fire services. Preventing this from happening is almost their number 1 job. 2. Regardless of what your perception is, there are some serious employees at any government. How many professional civil engineers, with their oaths and rings and ethics, do you think are looking at the roads and bridges at the local government? How much money is being spent? Its so easy to say "this should have been prevented" and lay it on lazy bureaucratic government workers. Maybe we should have some more rules/paperwork and levels of government so this never happens again?
What a strange argument to apply here. You've already on record for attending university. You are already on record for living in a dormroom. You've even posted this on the Internet. Do you think they need to track small unmarked bills or credit card records or satelite photos to get this information?
>If one is in a position of authority, and is expected to determine how laws should be applied to society -- one has an obligation to be a part of society and understand that society.
And whom is to say what is part of society? I would think the vast majority of society NOT know enough about the Internet, networking and its specific terms to any degree. Just because its common to you, doesn't mean that its common to society.
Could you give me an exact and clear definition of what a "blog" is? How about the meaning of "hollaback girl"? What is a "T-stop"? What is "hitting for a cycle"? What is the difference between "deprecation" and "amortization"? "fo sizzle"?
>I can do whatever you want with this number so long as I don't identify it as the decryption key for YOUR encrypted data.
>However, I could whack YOU with the racket, and suddenly its role changes from "sporting equipment" to "deadly weapon".
You don't charge mystery writers for murder just because they show in detail how to do so. You don't charge news reporters with breaking-and-entering because they communicate to the public how breaking-and-entering was performed. You don't censor history books because they outline how to commit acts of genocide.
For a person who is old enough to have a child, you think about bullies/intimidation just way too much.
Entitlement to what is "mine". Surround themselves with others they dominate. Creating fear while at the same time existing in fear. Cowardly when confronted.
To one degree or another and how choose to interpret things, you just described just about everyone in society.
>the appropriate thing to do when you meet such a person is to drill them in the nose with your knuckles as hard as you can, unless they outweigh you by a significant margin, in which case you should hit them with a chair until they crumple to the ground.
You do realize that this is the attitude all bullies have? "They were clearly in the wrong. Its not my fault, they deserved it."
>This means that you now have to go back to the sproc to update it. Why is this bad? Because sprocs are almost always under the control of the DBA.
For the most part DBAs see stored procs as part of the application and would love to have developers have full control and responsiblity over the apps stored procedures. They have more things to do than to fool around with app programming. Usually developers don't want to do stored procedures because they can't/won't/don't want to learn a new language.
I find when you see a DBA too controlling its because they've learned that when things go wrong that its way too easy for developers to push back to the DBAs. ("Oh, its part of the database. Ask the DBA, I need to go home early.")
What if I had a time machine and when into the past and saw Jesus rise from the dead (or not) or Mohammad rise to heaven (or not). Wouldn't that disprove certain religions?
Ship a bad game (on time or not), it gets slaughtered. Think about any bad game, does the fact that it shipped late factor into why its bad? Ship a good game late and people will still love it. In the long run, if its good no one complains about how they waited two months for it. They are too busy playing it.
>"Do no evil" is a nice motto for an individual or a privately owned company, but a publicly traded corporation is different
1. Regardless, Google put this in their official documents when going public. Its not us that should have known better, but its Google to live up to their standard they set. 2. Google is not really a public compnay, most of the voting shares are held by a few individuals. Unless you are one of these people, Google could be run into the ground and there is very little you could do about it. So I'm not sure what being a public corporation has now changed the way they do business.
>the specific company name and project details kept confidential.
>Those are normal requests in business negotiations.
Not when you are dealing with government organizations. Its called Transparency. Elected officials were voting/reviewing a bill and were not given all the information.
Slashdot Mirror
>isn't Yahoo's only obligation to increase shareholder value within the constraints of the laws of the countries in which it does business ?
Even if you take this extreme, then Yahoo! still did the wrong action.
This whole hearing is bad for Yahoo!; weak management who didn't have the full story on something this big, bad publicity in non-China far-east Asia, bad publicity in the tech community around the world, potential new legal regulations in their home country, management has to spend time on this whole issue (now and in the future).
Ignoring morals, this whole thing is bad for shareholders.
>you suggest migrating an OS is easier that a portal?
Actually yes I am.
I switch between various MS and Linux OS over the years that its pretty simple for me now. Backup personal files/bookmarks, reformat, search for similar/the best program for the task on that OS (clicks on a browser) -> done. Linux makes it easier since most of these programs are already installed with the OS.
The portal page is different; Example I track about 100 stocks from 3 exchanges, that's manual input. Another example; I have to figure out which cookie/url-that-gets-blocked I need to let in. I've done it a couple of times and its a pain.
As for the other stuff; if you are going to say that IE had a monopoly when it was easy to install Netscape/Opera/Mozilla, then Google has a lock on each one of those things.
Both companies sell products and give away services/products for free.
Examples of free things; Search, web email, home pages.
Examples of services for sale; advertisements, apps (Google Apps Premier Edition costs $), Search engines (Google's custom search engine for business costs $)
>Google on the other hand tends to provide free service for things
In 2006 they sold a little over $10 billion dollars in advertisements. All those free things are paid via this and their IPO.
>I can't see it dominating any area to an extent where it can lock people in.
Gmail - Try moving you email
iGoogle - Default home page, I didn't ask for it but just went to it once to see what it was. I find moving OS is easier than home pages due to the manual input needed for customization.
AdSense/AdWords- Once your business is dependent on it, you are locked in.
Google Calender
Blogger
Orkut/Dodgeball
I find it hard to believe people can make a case that MS is/was a monopoly and Google is not or is not going down the same path.
I'm not saying that this is the fault or wrong-doing of the US government or the database. I am saying that an American citizen shouldn't complain about another government actions. They should work on their own government problems before they point out the flaws in other governments (take your pick of which obvious problems the US government has that are not related to this issue e.g. FEMA fake press conference).
>The "government database" in question doesn't do anything on its own, the problem is all in how it is used, and it appears Canada may be using it quite strictly.
Thats for Canadians to decide, not Americans.
>If Canada was refusing entry to everyone that ever got ticketed while driving, would you blame the US' traffic laws?
I'm not blaming anyone. I'm saying that its Canadian rules, not American rules.
"The Canadian government should certainly not accept this FBI database as the criteria for entering the country"
..."
"It's outrageous that Canada is turning away peacemakers
Fix your own government and your own government database before you complain about someones else's government.
>keep in mind that we make life and death decisions every single day based on scientific "proof," and we don't even think twice about it.
That is more of a product of human nature/physiological training than "scientific proof" (either the "correctness of" or the "acceptance of"). It just makes things easier to do it this way for fragile humans.
An example of this would be how people's health aliments are treated differently in different parts of the world. In rural China treatment is different than in NYC. (Is there a Western equivalent of a "hot blood" theory?) Treatment would be different in parts of Europe than in America also.
>I'm not referring to the current state of scientific methodology, ...
>I'm talking about "science" in a more general sense, as the idea that we discover truth by making observations and formulating models that explain those observations, then making predictions about new observations and test them.
How is that not the definition of "scientific methodology"?
>In other words, "science" is nothing but common sense.
Um... what is common sense to you is not to others. "Common sense" is subjective. Is it "common sense" that a keyboard will not cause you harm if you've never seen it before? Is it "common sense" that multi-verses theory or string theory is valid? Wasn't it "common sense" that Newton's Three laws are valid when they first got accepted"? Wouldn't you have to be against "common sense" to get to Relativity? What is "common sense" now?
That would be an interesting story as more and more humans would start to realize it. Sort of like how society slowly changed their opinion of smoking.
The vast majority would be against it, as they do with certain types of energy sources today. Some violently, most passively. Think about the panic of the living about to die? How about the desperation of those to live forever, just to escape the pain? Some scientific groups would always deny it. Some groups would justify it in a philosophical way (Don't the living feel pain after a good hard days work? Is it serious pain or joggers-high pain? We are doing them a favour since without pain you can't feel relief/joy. Since they are dead forever, what is a couple of decades of pain?)
Certain countries/cultures would be willing to exploit it as it fits their religion (reincarnation/rebirth is a wonderful thing since it elevates the pain) Or contradicts the specifics of their religion so therefore the "soul-pain-for-energy" can't be right. Vegans and fruitarians would grow dramatically.
Some groups would try and target certain souls for the pain aspect of it. Hate groups would be one. Some would be those looking for a specific person for revenge or justice.
Perhaps more interestingly would be that you now have a setup that you can send signals between the living and dead. (Living are recieving/detecting something to figure out the pain. Souls are recieving something causes a stimulus/pain.)
What about souls of those from other planets, the alien dead?
>In other words, I believe that science (in its ideal form) is not only the best method we've found so far, but the best method there could possibly be.
Your personal view points regarding the absolute perfection of the current state of scientific methodology is disturbing for someone who claims to be a scientist. What if someone comes up with a potentially better method? Don't you already have a bias against it and more likely to give them a "rough treatment"?
>You seem to imply that it's possible to "prove" things in the real world, but I would argue that it simply is not, through science or any other method.
Apparently, via some method, you have enough proof to believe that the current scientific method is the best it will ever be.
2008: Please choose wisely America.
>based probably on some sort of hubris-laden supposition that the American people will buy just about anything.
I'm not sure whom to blame for this, FEMA or the American people.
This is the first thing I think about when I hear that someone has a wok at home.
Go to any Chinese restaurant and take a peak at their woks. The heat source is literally a series of blowtorches in a circle. You can't get that sort of consistent heat at home.
>It seems that no public employee, elected or not, understands that prevention is better than reaction.
1. Its every elected and non-elected public service employee understanding that you NEVER want anything to make the news in a negative way, regardless how correct the information is. This goes for dog-leash laws to fire services. Preventing this from happening is almost their number 1 job.
2. Regardless of what your perception is, there are some serious employees at any government. How many professional civil engineers, with their oaths and rings and ethics, do you think are looking at the roads and bridges at the local government? How much money is being spent? Its so easy to say "this should have been prevented" and lay it on lazy bureaucratic government workers. Maybe we should have some more rules/paperwork and levels of government so this never happens again?
What a strange argument to apply here. You've already on record for attending university. You are already on record for living in a dormroom. You've even posted this on the Internet. Do you think they need to track small unmarked bills or credit card records or satelite photos to get this information?
>If one is in a position of authority, and is expected to determine how laws should be applied to society -- one has an obligation to be a part of society and understand that society.
And whom is to say what is part of society? I would think the vast majority of society NOT know enough about the Internet, networking and its specific terms to any degree. Just because its common to you, doesn't mean that its common to society.
Could you give me an exact and clear definition of what a "blog" is? How about the meaning of "hollaback girl"? What is a "T-stop"? What is "hitting for a cycle"? What is the difference between "deprecation" and "amortization"? "fo sizzle"?
>I can do whatever you want with this number so long as I don't identify it as the decryption key for YOUR encrypted data.
>However, I could whack YOU with the racket, and suddenly its role changes from "sporting equipment" to "deadly weapon".
You don't charge mystery writers for murder just because they show in detail how to do so.
You don't charge news reporters with breaking-and-entering because they communicate to the public how breaking-and-entering was performed.
You don't censor history books because they outline how to commit acts of genocide.
For a person who is old enough to have a child, you think about bullies/intimidation just way too much.
Entitlement to what is "mine".
Surround themselves with others they dominate.
Creating fear while at the same time existing in fear.
Cowardly when confronted.
To one degree or another and how choose to interpret things, you just described just about everyone in society.
>the appropriate thing to do when you meet such a person is to drill them in the nose with your knuckles as hard as you can, unless they outweigh you by a significant margin, in which case you should hit them with a chair until they crumple to the ground.
You do realize that this is the attitude all bullies have? "They were clearly in the wrong. Its not my fault, they deserved it."
>This means that you now have to go back to the sproc to update it. Why is this bad? Because sprocs are almost always under the control of the DBA.
For the most part DBAs see stored procs as part of the application and would love to have developers have full control and responsiblity over the apps stored procedures. They have more things to do than to fool around with app programming. Usually developers don't want to do stored procedures because they can't/won't/don't want to learn a new language.
I find when you see a DBA too controlling its because they've learned that when things go wrong that its way too easy for developers to push back to the DBAs. ("Oh, its part of the database. Ask the DBA, I need to go home early.")
What if I had a time machine and when into the past and saw Jesus rise from the dead (or not) or Mohammad rise to heaven (or not). Wouldn't that disprove certain religions?
Thats the opposite of what is happening.
Ship a bad game (on time or not), it gets slaughtered. Think about any bad game, does the fact that it shipped late factor into why its bad?
Ship a good game late and people will still love it. In the long run, if its good no one complains about how they waited two months for it. They are too busy playing it.
>"Do no evil" is a nice motto for an individual or a privately owned company, but a publicly traded corporation is different
1. Regardless, Google put this in their official documents when going public. Its not us that should have known better, but its Google to live up to their standard they set.
2. Google is not really a public compnay, most of the voting shares are held by a few individuals. Unless you are one of these people, Google could be run into the ground and there is very little you could do about it. So I'm not sure what being a public corporation has now changed the way they do business.
>the specific company name and project details kept confidential.
>Those are normal requests in business negotiations.
Not when you are dealing with government organizations. Its called Transparency. Elected officials were voting/reviewing a bill and were not given all the information.