Is not design but project management. Plant Vogtle has problems with things like concrete not built to design specs requiring expensive rework and delays. The whole idea with the next gen plants was standardized design an a combined construction operating license, which would keep costs down, IF you built it to the licensed design. Unfortunately that is proving not to be the case. Watts Bar is an old design that was mothballed with plans to restart construction and not a "new" plant.
Is someone concerned that gadget buyers are going so stop sorting by price and buying the cheapest one? Until Vietnam employs enough people to create wage pressure they don't have a damn thing to worry about. Exploding batteries, shredding tires, contaminated food... none of that has ever impacted Chinese trade with the west. Can't imagine why Vietnam should worry about that all.
Once Hillary pencil-whips TPP through however that could change; there are other disposable Asians that will breath aluminum dust 12 hours a day for even fewer pennies. That's what they really need to worry about.
Lovely little world we have here.
Exactly. There jobs are safe until someone cheaper comes along. Why do the think Samsung is in Vietnam instead of China or South Korea? Any product where labor is is a significant percentage the product cost and doesn't require highly skilled workers will be made at the lowest wage place that can make it at the required quality.
I'm a doctor, though not a diagnostician. Diagnosis is rarely hard - there are some hard cases, but they really mostly aren't. Do you have a persistently elevated blood glucose level? You have diabetes. Do you have consistently high blood pressure? You have hypertension. Etc. It's hardly surprising that computers are just as good as humans at diagnosing diseases that are mostly defined by strict, objective criteria.
Excellant point. My lay viewpoint on what most doctors do is not diagnose, but treat symptoms, especially at the primary care level. Someone comes in displaying X, the thought process is X is treated most commonly by doing Y and hence we will try Y. If the symptoms disappear than the patients is cured and all is well. The doctor may also offer a diagnosis, often because the patient expects it, but finding the cause is less important than deciding what will make the symptoms go away. To extend your car analogy, a low oil light can be caused by means things, but is fixed by adding oil. If it doesn't come back too quickly the cause is largely irrelevant since the vehicle is performing satisfactorily. If it comes back quickly, then it's time to find the cause an take it to a mechanic, much as a primary care doctor would refer a patient to a specialist if symptoms don't improve and indicate a more severe problem.
I wonder how much Feinstein gets from various pro-offshoring groups to be completely tone-deaf to her own constituents.
Nah, it's just most staffer send boilerplate replies without looking at what was asked. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by sloth or stupidity.
> "I am being asked to do knowledge transfer to a foreigner so they can take over my job in February of 2017,"
I have no idea why employees just sheeplike say yes to doing this shit, instead of taking all your accrued leave and looking for/starting a new job at the same time.
At least dick the company around, phone in sick all the time, and do nothing for your last few months. Certainly never give the foreigner any training or actually true information.
Many need the money and can't afford to walk away from a few more months pay and benefits simply to satisfy an urge to screw their employer. Of course, there is a difference between showing somebody the textbook way a system operates and showing them all the nuances and little things not in the manual that need to be done to really make the system work properly. A Brit friend of mine explained that to really mess with someone you need to be "maliciously complaint," i.e. follow the exact wording of what they say without regard to the results. I had a friend do that once after being deemed for "not following the procedure verbatim..." and plugging in the test equipment so it had power. After saying, "that's just good judgement" and being told "there is no room for judgement in these tests..." he didn't plug in the power plug for the equipment and when they went to get the results after an expensive test run the log was blank. Not much they could do then after writing him up for plugging the power in in a previous test.
It is, indeed, clear, yes. Only it is not, what you claim it to be. At any rate, the intent only needs to be examined, if the law itself is vague and unclear. Which the 2nd Amendment is not — citizens are to keep and bear arms, or else you will not be able to assemble a militia when the need arises.
Except we have a militia already, under the control of district, states and territories control; it's the National Guard. At a Federal level we have the Individual Ready Reserve as well to augment Regular and SELRES forces. At some point, SCOTUS should recognize the well regulated militia part of the second as allowing broader Federal and State regulation of arms than is currently permitted. There is no need to change the second, only its interpretation.
It seems you agree that the interpretation should change with time, base on your comment.
No, I rather dislike the idea of changing the laws by changing the language.
I tend to agree as well, since that allows common sense gun restrictions to be put in place
If the restrictions really were "common sense", you would've had no problems passing a new Amendment to alter/qualify the Second.
restore the rights of local governments to decide their own restrictions
Do you really wish for the local laws to trump the Bill of Rights? Go ahead, state so for the record here...
It's clear that the framers did not intend the 2cd to be a blanket right to own any weapon; even during the earliest days of our country localities controlled weapon ownership with various laws; so it's pretty clear what the intent was. I'd like to see that right returned to local citizens with respect to the 2cd.
Actually, the fourth protects against unreasonable search and seizure
Unreasonable search is unconstitutional by itself — nothing needs to be seized to violate the Constitution.
That's an interesting constitutional questions - do the words matter or are they open to interpretation over time. Courts have ignored the "and" for some time, just as cruel and unusual seems to have become cruel or unusual. It seems you agree that the interpretation should change with time, base on your comment. I tend to agree as well, since that allows common sense gun restrictions to be put in place, and would restore the rights of local governments to decide their own restrictions.
I see, so if a police officer saw your iPhone on the table in a public park, copied all the data and left it you would not consider that a seizure since no force was involved? Interesting way to let the NSA off the hook.
But I doubt, this is even technically true — though this monitoring does not, as you say, directly violate the Second Amendment, that's not the accusation. All other objectionable surveillance and recording is usually denounced on the Fourth Amendment grounds — like NSA's snooping of your e-mails or phone-records, it, likely, constitutes an unreasonable search.
Actually, the fourth protects against unreasonable search and seizure, so absent a seizure as in the case of the NSA collecting records, scanning license plates may not violate the fourth. At any rate, the police observing and collecting information in plain view in public would not, IMHO, be unreasonable since you have no expectation of privacy in public.
Moreover, the very "crime", that this effort was supposed to catch/prevent — transport of the legally purchased guns across the state-lines into areas, where they are illegal — should not be a crime to begin with (unlike the terrorism NSA is after). Any State-laws banning certain kinds of weapons are themselves in violation of the Bill of Rights and ought to be protested and denounced at any opportunity far more noisily than the marijuana prohibition or "gay marriage" inequality.
The question is not can certain weapons be banned, but where to draw the line.
is when the manufacturers of the devices get hit with DDoS attacks and it disrupts their business. Otherwise, as TFA points out, they had no reason to bear the costs of fixing the problem since it doesn't impact them. Until there is a significant cost associated with making an insecure device they will remain insecure. That's also one of the problems with the internet, there is no way to block access from insecure devices when they become part of a BotNet. If their was, and manufacturers suddenly got lots of warranty calls when it stopped working they might actual care about security.
Thus, to have Judge Haldane Mayer do an about-face on Software Patents is Huuuge, in part because of the influence the Federal Court of Appeals has on lower courts, but mostly since it shows that learning can take place at that level, when presented with cogent arguments.
Perhaps there is hope, after all.
It certainly is a good sign. The Alice ruling is key since it provides him with a basis for his opinion and the Appeals Court can use the SCOTUS decision and clarify and extend the boundaries of what is not patentable. Ultimately SCOTUS may have to weigh in on the boundaries established by the Appeals Court and say yay or nay. Which wold be good since there would be more clarity around patent law.
As a developer, I'm okay with that.
It means I can implement the best algorithm I can imagine as long as I take the time to implement it myself.
We no longer have to invent contrived ways of to make algorithms not look like the most obvious solution just because somebody patented it.
While I agree copyrights are better suited to protecting software, there has to be an allowance for the software equivalence of fair use. For example, if you an I independently come up with algorithms that are very similar, or identical, neither of us should be able to make a copyright claim against the other. There needs to be clear guidelines that say x% of similarity is OK but if there is more than you may be violating someone else's copyright. screens and displays are a bit easier to decide since designers generally don't just do things the same way; but possibly code code similarly, especially if they have similar backgrounds and experiences and are using the same tools and languages.
Patents are bad for makers, copyrights are bad for users.
I wouldn't say that. Copyrights encourage people to write things because they can get rewarded for it; users get access to things they may not have if copyright didn't exist. The holder can always let others use the material while still being able to limit its use if they don't want it to be used in certain ways; or they can release it under some sort of GPL or CC license.
Renegotiating a contract is a normal business activity and doesn't constitute a breach.
Depends slightly on whether both sides agree to it.
That's why it's called a negotiation. Ultimately, both sides need to agree to any changes; absent that both are free to act within the agreed upon terms. If Amazon was not contractually obligated to carry certain titles they can drop them whenever they want and baring an agreement to pay some minimum amount not owe the publishers any more money.
Yeah, hopefully Japanese lawyers hang them out to dry on this.
"Oops, we didn't plan this well" isn't a very good excuse for breach of contract.
True, but depending on the contract, Amazon could be well within its rights to pull titles to control costs; which is what it appeared to do in this case. So either publishers renegotiate the contact or simply don't have their titles included and thus make no money except for actual sales. Renegotiating a contract is a normal business activity and doesn't constitute a breach. As for the subscribers, it appears they are on a month to month plan so Amazon would be well within their rights to change the availability of title sand let subscribers cancel if they don't like what is offered.
More security means, ultimately, fewer charges, and when you're getting paid a percentage of the charges, including fraudulent ones, you benefit most by reducing the transaction friction.
Exactly. As long as the cost of fraud is low enough that the cost to eliminate exceeds its costs there is no incentive to completely eliminate it. If there is a low cost way to reduce it that doesn't make using the card too difficult than it will be implemented, but as you point out CC's are a volume business and that shapes how they are implemented.
If the credit card changes every hour, how do you recall the previous X number of numbers..
The CCV changes, not the CC number; but even if the CC number changes the issuers knows what your past numbers were and simply credits your account accordingly. I've had that happen when a card was reissued and I returned something purchased with a previously issued card. And before folks start talking about the large amounts of numbers they'd need to keep track off if they changed the card number, all they really need to do is check if a given number was valid at a given time; they could randomly reuse the number since it is only valid for an hour. There is no need for the number to be unique, only different from the previous hour and not follow a predictable pattern. That way, even if someone knew XYZ was a valid number for an account they wouldn't know when it was valid, making it useless; and if they kept trying in hopes of catching it when it was valid the issuer would easily detect the attempted fraud and simply cancel the card.
if the card is essentially useless... then recurrent payments will be a pain
Not really. My recurring payments, except for a few trivial ones,are direct debits from my bank account rather than charged to a credit card. While Credit card securing payments are easy to set p, US banks can handle direct debit with no problem.
I can't figure out that if they had their first appearance in 1965 they're probably at least 60? It ain't about age but having the look the directors want...
A big corporate entity buying a club and branding it to suit them. That's selling out! I've never liked how American stadiums are all named after corporations. It ruins the aura for me.
It's adorable that you think F1 has never "sold out" given that the entire business model is advertising. Without explicit corporate sponsorship F1 doesn't exist. They slap corporate logos on anything that moves - literally. And you think Apple getting involved in that promotion-fest would change things? Spare me.
It's interesting to see how F1 evolved from country colors to the corporate branding seen today after John Player slapped some logos on a car. Now, an F1 car probably has some of the highest priced real estate in the world on a square inch basis. As for US pro stadiums, Soldier Field and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum stand out in leagues by themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Is not design but project management. Plant Vogtle has problems with things like concrete not built to design specs requiring expensive rework and delays. The whole idea with the next gen plants was standardized design an a combined construction operating license, which would keep costs down, IF you built it to the licensed design. Unfortunately that is proving not to be the case. Watts Bar is an old design that was mothballed with plans to restart construction and not a "new" plant.
Is someone concerned that gadget buyers are going so stop sorting by price and buying the cheapest one? Until Vietnam employs enough people to create wage pressure they don't have a damn thing to worry about. Exploding batteries, shredding tires, contaminated food... none of that has ever impacted Chinese trade with the west. Can't imagine why Vietnam should worry about that all.
Once Hillary pencil-whips TPP through however that could change; there are other disposable Asians that will breath aluminum dust 12 hours a day for even fewer pennies. That's what they really need to worry about.
Lovely little world we have here.
Exactly. There jobs are safe until someone cheaper comes along. Why do the think Samsung is in Vietnam instead of China or South Korea? Any product where labor is is a significant percentage the product cost and doesn't require highly skilled workers will be made at the lowest wage place that can make it at the required quality.
I'm a doctor, though not a diagnostician. Diagnosis is rarely hard - there are some hard cases, but they really mostly aren't. Do you have a persistently elevated blood glucose level? You have diabetes. Do you have consistently high blood pressure? You have hypertension. Etc. It's hardly surprising that computers are just as good as humans at diagnosing diseases that are mostly defined by strict, objective criteria.
Excellant point. My lay viewpoint on what most doctors do is not diagnose, but treat symptoms, especially at the primary care level. Someone comes in displaying X, the thought process is X is treated most commonly by doing Y and hence we will try Y. If the symptoms disappear than the patients is cured and all is well. The doctor may also offer a diagnosis, often because the patient expects it, but finding the cause is less important than deciding what will make the symptoms go away. To extend your car analogy, a low oil light can be caused by means things, but is fixed by adding oil. If it doesn't come back too quickly the cause is largely irrelevant since the vehicle is performing satisfactorily. If it comes back quickly, then it's time to find the cause an take it to a mechanic, much as a primary care doctor would refer a patient to a specialist if symptoms don't improve and indicate a more severe problem.
I wonder how much Feinstein gets from various pro-offshoring groups to be completely tone-deaf to her own constituents.
Nah, it's just most staffer send boilerplate replies without looking at what was asked. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by sloth or stupidity.
should be compliant...
> "I am being asked to do knowledge transfer to a foreigner so they can take over my job in February of 2017,"
I have no idea why employees just sheeplike say yes to doing this shit, instead of taking all your accrued leave and looking for/starting a new job at the same time. At least dick the company around, phone in sick all the time, and do nothing for your last few months. Certainly never give the foreigner any training or actually true information.
Many need the money and can't afford to walk away from a few more months pay and benefits simply to satisfy an urge to screw their employer. Of course, there is a difference between showing somebody the textbook way a system operates and showing them all the nuances and little things not in the manual that need to be done to really make the system work properly. A Brit friend of mine explained that to really mess with someone you need to be "maliciously complaint," i.e. follow the exact wording of what they say without regard to the results. I had a friend do that once after being deemed for "not following the procedure verbatim..." and plugging in the test equipment so it had power. After saying, "that's just good judgement" and being told "there is no room for judgement in these tests..." he didn't plug in the power plug for the equipment and when they went to get the results after an expensive test run the log was blank. Not much they could do then after writing him up for plugging the power in in a previous test.
so it's pretty clear what the intent was
It is, indeed, clear, yes. Only it is not, what you claim it to be. At any rate, the intent only needs to be examined, if the law itself is vague and unclear. Which the 2nd Amendment is not — citizens are to keep and bear arms, or else you will not be able to assemble a militia when the need arises.
Except we have a militia already, under the control of district, states and territories control; it's the National Guard. At a Federal level we have the Individual Ready Reserve as well to augment Regular and SELRES forces. At some point, SCOTUS should recognize the well regulated militia part of the second as allowing broader Federal and State regulation of arms than is currently permitted. There is no need to change the second, only its interpretation.
No, I rather dislike the idea of changing the laws by changing the language.
If the restrictions really were "common sense", you would've had no problems passing a new Amendment to alter/qualify the Second.
Do you really wish for the local laws to trump the Bill of Rights? Go ahead, state so for the record here...
It's clear that the framers did not intend the 2cd to be a blanket right to own any weapon; even during the earliest days of our country localities controlled weapon ownership with various laws; so it's pretty clear what the intent was. I'd like to see that right returned to local citizens with respect to the 2cd.
Unreasonable search is unconstitutional by itself — nothing needs to be seized to violate the Constitution.
That's an interesting constitutional questions - do the words matter or are they open to interpretation over time. Courts have ignored the "and" for some time, just as cruel and unusual seems to have become cruel or unusual. It seems you agree that the interpretation should change with time, base on your comment. I tend to agree as well, since that allows common sense gun restrictions to be put in place, and would restore the rights of local governments to decide their own restrictions.
Not by anyone with a regular English dictionary.
I see, so if a police officer saw your iPhone on the table in a public park, copied all the data and left it you would not consider that a seizure since no force was involved? Interesting way to let the NSA off the hook.
NSA has never seized anything either.
They collected records, which could be considered a seizure.
But I doubt, this is even technically true — though this monitoring does not, as you say, directly violate the Second Amendment, that's not the accusation. All other objectionable surveillance and recording is usually denounced on the Fourth Amendment grounds — like NSA's snooping of your e-mails or phone-records, it, likely, constitutes an unreasonable search.
Actually, the fourth protects against unreasonable search and seizure, so absent a seizure as in the case of the NSA collecting records, scanning license plates may not violate the fourth. At any rate, the police observing and collecting information in plain view in public would not, IMHO, be unreasonable since you have no expectation of privacy in public.
Moreover, the very "crime", that this effort was supposed to catch/prevent — transport of the legally purchased guns across the state-lines into areas, where they are illegal — should not be a crime to begin with (unlike the terrorism NSA is after). Any State-laws banning certain kinds of weapons are themselves in violation of the Bill of Rights and ought to be protested and denounced at any opportunity far more noisily than the marijuana prohibition or "gay marriage" inequality.
The question is not can certain weapons be banned, but where to draw the line.
is when the manufacturers of the devices get hit with DDoS attacks and it disrupts their business. Otherwise, as TFA points out, they had no reason to bear the costs of fixing the problem since it doesn't impact them. Until there is a significant cost associated with making an insecure device they will remain insecure. That's also one of the problems with the internet, there is no way to block access from insecure devices when they become part of a BotNet. If their was, and manufacturers suddenly got lots of warranty calls when it stopped working they might actual care about security.
Thus, to have Judge Haldane Mayer do an about-face on Software Patents is Huuuge, in part because of the influence the Federal Court of Appeals has on lower courts, but mostly since it shows that learning can take place at that level, when presented with cogent arguments.
Perhaps there is hope, after all.
It certainly is a good sign. The Alice ruling is key since it provides him with a basis for his opinion and the Appeals Court can use the SCOTUS decision and clarify and extend the boundaries of what is not patentable. Ultimately SCOTUS may have to weigh in on the boundaries established by the Appeals Court and say yay or nay. Which wold be good since there would be more clarity around patent law.
I'm speechless. Is that patentable?
No, and you are violating John Cage's 4'33" copyright. Unless, of course, you are only silent for short enough periods to qualify as fair use.
As a developer, I'm okay with that. It means I can implement the best algorithm I can imagine as long as I take the time to implement it myself. We no longer have to invent contrived ways of to make algorithms not look like the most obvious solution just because somebody patented it.
While I agree copyrights are better suited to protecting software, there has to be an allowance for the software equivalence of fair use. For example, if you an I independently come up with algorithms that are very similar, or identical, neither of us should be able to make a copyright claim against the other. There needs to be clear guidelines that say x% of similarity is OK but if there is more than you may be violating someone else's copyright. screens and displays are a bit easier to decide since designers generally don't just do things the same way; but possibly code code similarly, especially if they have similar backgrounds and experiences and are using the same tools and languages.
Patents are bad for makers, copyrights are bad for users.
I wouldn't say that. Copyrights encourage people to write things because they can get rewarded for it; users get access to things they may not have if copyright didn't exist. The holder can always let others use the material while still being able to limit its use if they don't want it to be used in certain ways; or they can release it under some sort of GPL or CC license.
Think of it as an entrepreneurial opportunity. My very active Dachshunds could run around all day wearing half a dozen for a cut of the payment.
Pay someone to do something and they may do; stop paying and they stop. What's next? Water is wet? Moped Jesus spotted on El Camino Big Num?
Depends slightly on whether both sides agree to it.
That's why it's called a negotiation. Ultimately, both sides need to agree to any changes; absent that both are free to act within the agreed upon terms. If Amazon was not contractually obligated to carry certain titles they can drop them whenever they want and baring an agreement to pay some minimum amount not owe the publishers any more money.
Yeah, hopefully Japanese lawyers hang them out to dry on this. "Oops, we didn't plan this well" isn't a very good excuse for breach of contract.
True, but depending on the contract, Amazon could be well within its rights to pull titles to control costs; which is what it appeared to do in this case. So either publishers renegotiate the contact or simply don't have their titles included and thus make no money except for actual sales. Renegotiating a contract is a normal business activity and doesn't constitute a breach. As for the subscribers, it appears they are on a month to month plan so Amazon would be well within their rights to change the availability of title sand let subscribers cancel if they don't like what is offered.
More security means, ultimately, fewer charges, and when you're getting paid a percentage of the charges, including fraudulent ones, you benefit most by reducing the transaction friction.
Exactly. As long as the cost of fraud is low enough that the cost to eliminate exceeds its costs there is no incentive to completely eliminate it. If there is a low cost way to reduce it that doesn't make using the card too difficult than it will be implemented, but as you point out CC's are a volume business and that shapes how they are implemented.
If the credit card changes every hour, how do you recall the previous X number of numbers..
The CCV changes, not the CC number; but even if the CC number changes the issuers knows what your past numbers were and simply credits your account accordingly. I've had that happen when a card was reissued and I returned something purchased with a previously issued card. And before folks start talking about the large amounts of numbers they'd need to keep track off if they changed the card number, all they really need to do is check if a given number was valid at a given time; they could randomly reuse the number since it is only valid for an hour. There is no need for the number to be unique, only different from the previous hour and not follow a predictable pattern. That way, even if someone knew XYZ was a valid number for an account they wouldn't know when it was valid, making it useless; and if they kept trying in hopes of catching it when it was valid the issuer would easily detect the attempted fraud and simply cancel the card.
if the card is essentially useless... then recurrent payments will be a pain
Not really. My recurring payments, except for a few trivial ones,are direct debits from my bank account rather than charged to a credit card. While Credit card securing payments are easy to set p, US banks can handle direct debit with no problem.
I can't figure out that if they had their first appearance in 1965 they're probably at least 60? It ain't about age but having the look the directors want...
A big corporate entity buying a club and branding it to suit them. That's selling out! I've never liked how American stadiums are all named after corporations. It ruins the aura for me.
It's adorable that you think F1 has never "sold out" given that the entire business model is advertising. Without explicit corporate sponsorship F1 doesn't exist. They slap corporate logos on anything that moves - literally. And you think Apple getting involved in that promotion-fest would change things? Spare me.
It's interesting to see how F1 evolved from country colors to the corporate branding seen today after John Player slapped some logos on a car. Now, an F1 car probably has some of the highest priced real estate in the world on a square inch basis. As for US pro stadiums, Soldier Field and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum stand out in leagues by themselves.