I don't think we can take it that simply, though... In considering how much money it costs to acheive a given level of service, there's more to the equation than retail price and service quality. Namely, subsidies.
Often, a side effect of monoplized/regulated utilities is that governments give the utilities something, either additional revenues or decreased costs. A utility's pension plan for employees might be partially state-funded or guaranteed, decreasing the company's liabilities and costs. Or, the company might get certain special rules for collective bargaining that prevent employees from striking whenever they want.
A key example from US history is the development of the railroads: the Federal government took a significant amount of land by eminent domain for use in railroad rights-of-way, usually much more land than was actually needed to build tracks and other infrastructure. Since the construction of rail tracks and stations tended to draw people to an area, the value of all that track-adjacent land skyrocketed. Many of the railroads made more money as land speculators than they did hauling freight and passengers.
Recently, the Internet has created what's arguably another example of these hidden subsidies: all of the R&D and standards creation that DARPA did made it possible for Internet companies to start providing services in that area far faster and cheaper than they would have if the market had been left to its own devices.
There are lots of problems in trying to account for these kinds of subsidies. For one, the exact value is often hard to determine. Do we count the railroad land grants at the value when the government seized it, or do at the much higher value when the railroad companies started selling it off? How do we even know that the government's initial valuation was fair (often, eminent domain valuations are hard fought in court)? How much money did the government actually spend in DARPA funding that was responsible for Internet standards and research? What portion of that spending can be considered a necessary expenditure by the government for its own purposes, versus the portion we're going to consider strictly a subsidy to the market?
And in the end, unless you have a fairly reasonable and accurate accounting of these things, you can't really answer the question of how much it costs to provide a particular level of service. Many economists have analyzed these cases and others like them, and some have come up with persuasive models, but they all have a hard time dealing with subsidy accounting.
"Catholicism did it, so it's OK" is not the point, and I really tried to make that clear. Sorry if you missed it.
There are two core points here:
1) Attacking Scientology's abuses while ignoring/minimizing the (worse) abuses of other groups diminishes the credibility of the attacker. If you're a bulldog on one particular group but don't seem to be bothered by other, similarly bad groups, it makes me wonder why you've got it in for your chosen foe.
2) Maligning Scientology for its outlandish, but harmless, beliefs is silly, because most popular religions share equally outlandish beliefs.
Scientology has been linked to some bad corporate behavior, like harassing people that publicly speak against it. It's also been responsible for stuff like the lady in Florida who died during auditing (are there more? I don't know of another example, but there may be). Generally, it has a suspicious appearance from the outside, because you have to pay to be a part of it and the church socially controls its members to a large extent.
Those are all problems that I have with Scientology, and I have a hard time taking it seriously without any kind of credible responses from the group itself. But I'm not going to stoop to the level of mocking their beliefs about Xenu.
I'm a relatively neutral observer in the whole religious escapades, and believe Scientology and Christianity to be on relatively equal planes of insanity, but for you to try to legitimize one by attacking the other is both hilarious and asinine.
Ad hominem? That would mean that I'm attacking the character of the person making the argument. There is a name for the logical fallacy I'm committing, but I forget what it is.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not legitimizing Scientology--of course its silly, non-factual BS. And it's kind of predatory, too, and I think their legal tactics are morally bankrupt. All I'm saying is that if you're going to judge, you have to use a fair standard. Otherwise, you're just picking on them. Which, in its own way, is just as intellectually dishonest as most of its detractors claim Scientology is.
(Here, I'm hoping to high heaven that this thread won't get me labeled as Slashdot's only proponent of Scientology.)
Let's go back to some basic precepts of ethics and logic: you cannot plausibly indict someone or something for moral/ethical lapses unless you apply a common standard to all actors in equivalent situations. It's difficult to defend the position that "murder is wrong" when applied to an enemy, if you let your friends or allies murder people without question.
The problem here is that very few people who attack Scientology, including the Operation Clambake dude, bother to consider any other religious or philosophical organizations using the same standards. You may think that Scientology and Christianty are both bullshit. That's fine, I believe you. But if you never bother to say anything bad about Christianity, and you take potshots at Scientology, are you surprised that I question your motivation?
I've observed that most of Scientology's outspoken detractors don't have the same level of vitriol for other religions, regardless of the logical equivalence. So I suspect that they have something particular about Scientology to dislike--it's probably the fact that Scientology is a pay-for thing (which smells to me like a scam!), or that it has some rather cult-like attributes like distancing members from family and friends.
But when your fundamental complaint is that Scientology is a psychologically abusive and manipulative organization, and that it pulls peoples' strings like a puppeteer to get their money, why are you complaining that it's theology sounds like science fiction? Tell me that they've hurt people and we can talk. But tell me that Xenu is silly, and I'll tell you that you're taking cheap shots.
All right, I'm gonna get some serious flames for this, but here goes nothing...
I've had some exposure to Scientology from different perspectives. My first introduction was, actually, Operation Clambake and some similar WWW resources. Since then, I've met some actual Scientologists and discussed the religion and the controversies it creates. And, full disclosure, I'm seeing a woman right now who works for the Church of Scientology. For real.
First point: My girlfriend is part of a religion that believes that millions of years ago, an alien overlord killed a bunch of aliens by detonating thermonuclear bombs in volcanos. OK, that's just crazy. BUT... my mother, a devout Catholic, believes that 2000 years ago, the Romans nailed some Jew to a tree in Jerusalem, and that his friends entombed him in a cave with a big boulder over the entrance, and that three days later he walked out again under his own power.
Now, you can make the obvious argument that Catholicism is a screwed up and silly as any religious, but I'd like to give them a little more credit than that. Let's continue...
Second point: Scientology sues people for copyright infringement and spreads bad PR about them if they speak ill of Scientology. But it was less than 100 years ago that Catholicism had a list of "banned books", and some even scarier intellectual practices. Less than 500 years ago, they had a thing called The Spanish Inquisition that harassed, tortured, and executed thousands of innocent people, many of whom were trying to do good for the human race in science and philosophy. Less than 1000 years ago, that same church initiated several wars called the Crusades that killed hundreds of thousands of people, wiped out whole cities and crippled empires, and has been partially responsible for centuries of tension and conflict between Arab Muslims and the Western world.
So really: Yeah, on Slashdot, suing someone for copyright infringement is morally on par with executing babies en masse by dropping them in vats of acid. But there are a lot of really, REALLY popular and respected religions that have historically done far, far worse. As in, actual evil things, not just harassing people with lawsuits.
Third point: When was the last time that Scientologists exerted political pressure to get a pro-life justice on the Supreme Court, or to push public schools to teach Intelligent Design theory or allow teachers to have class prayers? When was the last time a Scientologist suicide bomber strapped on an explosive belt and blew up a nightclub in Tel Aviv?
I guess my point is that everybody who talks about how scary and awful Scientology is forgets that religion IN GENERAL can be held responsible for enormous evils. And if you add up the scorecard from the last couple of hundred years alone, Scientology is practically blameless, compared to what Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam have perpetrated.
Yes, the culty stuff is scary and freaky. Yes, they have a siege mentality about criticism of the religion. But you know what? I'd challenge any of you who criticize Scientology based on a harsher standard than you apply to other religious to actually meet and get to know some of them--they're not bad people, and most of them are pretty goddamned normal folks.
Well then, the straw that breaks the camel's back can be anything from the sky scrpaer, to a simple dog house in someone's backyward. Looks like the author of the article and headline article are just trying to draw an ironic episode. And since it would be impossible to prove exactly what that straw was, its clearly just speculation.
OK, Mister "I-can't-be-bothered-to-spellcheck-my-posts". Whatever. Did it ever occur to you that the definition of "a little pressure" in seismology may be a term of art? That, for instance, a dog house in someone's backyard is what's termed "negligable pressure" or "noise", whereas an entire skyscraper is "a little pressure"?
It strikes me that seismology discusses forces and pressures in terms that are wildly different from normal human experience. Maybe I'm alone, here.
You think that the only killer feature of P2P networks is free content? My friend, you miss something, I think.
True P2P networks offer tremendous bandwidth efficiency for the distributors of content, which is especially important when you're delivering large content (like, say movies and other media). Think of how quickly Bittorrent downloads of Linux distros took off--it made it so much easier for gazillions of people to get a brand-new release at the same time. No more waiting a week for the Debian FTP servers to be pingable again.
Plus, the distributor saves money on bandwidth charges, since many of the users will get the content from each other instead of the central servers. Whether this in turn increases the costs of the users remains to be seen, but it probably won't affect their connectivity bills much more than using open P2P networks to get stuff on their own.
Traditional analog TV is based on technology that was designed decades ago. It uses a lot of bandwidth to transmit comparatively little information, and it's prone to interference. But at the time it was implemented, that was the best we knew how to do.
Since then, we've invented microprocessors and advanced digital signaling techniques. This means that we can transmit a LOT more information in the same bandwidth, or (as is the case with digital HDTV) somewhat more info in less bandwidth. Also, interference doesn't affect digital transmissions the same way--you either get the transmission error-free, or you don't. So no more snow, ghosting, and other visual artifacts.
But really, the quality issue is a non-issue. The driving force behind the adoption of digital HDTV and the end of analog TV is to free up the huge spectrum that we currently waste on analog TV broadcasts. Since we can cram all the TV we need into a much smaller slice of frequency, the old spectrum becomes available for all the new RF applications we've been hankering for: wireless broadband, expanded, high-power unlicensed communcations, et cetera.
I personally believe that the higher quality thing is just a piggyback issue--we can do it while we're making the change, so why not? It's a nice selling point for Joe Sixpack, who really couldn't give a rat's ass about spectrum allocation.
True, it is possible to evade most filtering systems. The basic proof-of-concept is an encrypted tunneling protocol, like OpenVPN, that can pass arbitrary IP traffic via UDP or TCP. You have to set up a remote server, outside of the filtered jurisdiction, to act as your gateway out, but it's not really that hard. It's similar to the idea of open proxies to get around the Great Firewall for web content, but it lets any layer 3 traffic pass (not just HTTP). In fact, OpenVPN even has a nifty method for encapsulating layer 2 (ethernet) inside of an encrypted UDP or TCP tunnel, so you can use non-routable protocols.
But most of these methods aren't commonly known to ordinary users, and they require some technical sophistication to set up. Then, you have the logistical difficulties of maintaining the remote servers and shuffling them around to avoid IP bans. A lone, tech savvy user can use these method for personal communications, or perhaps even support a small group of people, but stealing fire for the whole human race would require an active organization to keep things humming. At that point, you start to become a nice, fat target for the government to crack down on.
That's the problem with subversive activities: organizational capacity scales with org size, but so do the risks of operating.
See how easy that is. Arrest the guy, charge him with conspiracy to commit crimes, deny bail, get a warrant, hold him in jail, take all his stuff and take your time combing through it.
Okay. CALM DOWN. BREATHE.
Feel better now? Because I don't get your point at all. Cops can't just "charge him with a conspiracy to commit crimes". You actually have to have evidence to bring charges against someone (ever heard of a thing called a "grand jury"? No? Well, "Law & Order" is out on DVD now... do your own research.)
So your proposed solution either 1) doesn't work, because the cops won't have enough time to obtain the evidnence needed to bring the changes needed to hold the suspect under the current rules, or 2) provides an enormous incentive for the cops to plant evidence and manufacture charges simply in order to hold a suspect whom they "know" is dangerous.
Seems like the fundamental problem, at the bottom, is that when the cops run you in, it's because they think you've Done Something. They may not know exactly what, yet, but you did it. And in terrorism cases (so it's been argued) the danger is so great that it merits modifying the normal rules, letting civil liberties suffer. And yes, innocent people DO suffer injustices, but many people (apparantly including Tony Blair) think that the harms to liberty are outweighed by the clear and present danger of terrorism. It isn't possible to get around this, because Islamic terrorism is a real danger that kills real people if law enforcement doesn't give its best effort. Fiercer policing, at least in the short term, can thwart attacks.
Now... do terrorism cases really merit this additional vigilance? Is the security worth the cost of liberty? That's another argument, entirely...
Because we live in a free country, that's why! Be careful not to confuse porn, cigarettes, alcohol, and "mature" (violent but not pornographic) content. These are separately considered and regulated categories, as far as the law is concerned. The important question, here, is what category video games should fit into.
Porn: US law recognizes the concept of pornography through obscenity laws, which have been generally upheld (subject to scrutiny) by the Supreme Court. Banning access to porn is generally seen as an violation of the 1st Amendment, but statutory laws can ban trafficking/sale of porn where it has no redeeming value (artistic, scientific, etc.). It's therefore acceptable to regulate porn sales to minors because it's legally accepted that porn (espcially entertainment porn) itself isn't pure free speech.
Cigarettes and Alcohol: There is absolutely no free speech angle, here, unless you really want to blow smoke. These are considered to be harmful, judgement-impairing substances, and so we forbid minors from using or purchasing them.
"Mature" content: This is where we're talking about video games, movies, TV, and printed material (books, magazines, etc.) that aren't specifically pornographic. In this case, the courts have NEVER upheld government's ability to regulate the consumption of mature content, generally, by adults OR children.
What about R-rated movies, you say? Well, it turns out that the enforcement of MPAA ratings is entirely a matter between the MPAA, the studios (which own it), and the theatre owners around the country. Theatre owners can only get movies distributed to them if they agree to abide by MPAA age regulations, and to only show MPAA-rated movies. Studios therefore have to submit their films to the MPAA for review if they want them to be seen. This is entirely a private agreement, without laws or government regulations to enforce it.
And as far as books are concerned, just TRY passing a law that would mandate an age-rating system for books, and which would prevent minors from purchasing "mature" content. Kids of any age can buy a copy of "The Godfather" or "American Psycho" or "Without Remorse", any of which are at least as violent and graphic as "Grand Theft Auto".
Hell, most people I know got started on Stephen King in elementary school or junior high. Have you ever read "Gerald's Game" or "IT"? There's some mighty fucked-up stuff in those, and worse in some of King's other books. (I actually like SK, so don't take that the wrong way.)
Anyway, the point is that pornographic video games can be neatly dropped into the "porno" categories of laws that already ban distribution of porno movies and magazines to minors. But EVERYTHING ELSE that's considered "mature" content, including violence and such, is a much murkier question.
Do we ban kids from purchasing books that are as violent or twisted as GTA? Hell, no, not in the USA.
Do we ban kids from seeing movies that are as violent or twisted as GTA? Yes, unless accompanied by a parent or guardian, but the government doesn't tell us to do it. It's a private practice agreed to by the industry.
So don't be so knee-jerk about this stuff. It's complicated.
Re:So neither attempt actually used a parabolic...
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Archimedes Death Ray
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It would not be inconceivable for him to have started by carefully sculpting large clay molds to very precise tolerances, using the molds to cast the bronze dish, polishing it, and then coating the dish with a clear or white glaze to increase its reflectance (and thus efficienncy/output power).
A lot of people who pooh-pooh the ancients for having the fabrication skills needed to construct such as thing forget that it's not too hard to make a near-perfect parabola. One of the easier ways to generate an incredibly precise parabolic mirror is to spin a bowl full of mercury. The surface of the liquid takes on a parabolic curve, and the quality of the curve just depends on how well you can create uniform motion (eliminating vibrations, centering the bowl, etc).
I like to think of these as sort of "Timeline" problems: take me back in time to Archimedes' age, and see if I could make it work. Granted, I have a modern education to work with, but Archimedes was a lot smarter than me.
Yes, taking the system offline with a "rescue disk" and comparing cryptographically-secure checksums against known good values does work. That's the standard for rootkit detection.
However, it's hella inconvenient, on many servers, to boot to a "rescue disk". Do you have any:
- servers that cannot tolerate the downtime required to scan?
- servers at remote locations where you can't insert bootable media easily (CDROM, floppy, etc.)?
- servers or workstations that just don't have bootable media capabilities (headless/PXE boot systems, anything w/o CDROM and floppy drives)?
So while it's a theoretical solution, it's also a shitty solution in practice. How many administrators are going to take the time to take ALL of their servers offline for this kind of review? None, that's right. Because none of their managers are going to be willing to tolerate that kind of expense, effort, man time, and downtime in order to check for something that they can't even understand.
Not a full keyboard?? Are we looking at the same picture, here?
http://www.oqo.com/
Sure looks like a full keyboard to me... wait, checking for all the letters... Yep, pretty goddamn close to what's on my laptop right now.
And besides, even if you DO need to use an external keyboard (let's say you want to do some coding on the airplane), you can get small, comfortable USB keyboards that fold up smaller than a paperback book. More stuff, true, but still a hell of a lot smaller and lighter than a laptop.
Especially in the $2000 range, when for that price I can have a decent desktop PC (with better specs than this thing) AND a decent PDA.
Well, duh! If you buy a desktop and a conventional PDA for $2000, YOU obviously don't need one of these things!
This seems more like a laptop--portable and fairly full-featured, without making any concessions on the interface or operating system. Sure, it's expensive, but it's brand new and doesn't have any competitors, yet, that I know of. So of course it's going to be pricey. Remember when PDAs first came out? We were paying $300+ for something with 8MB RAM and a black-and-white LCD.
And for the record, there IS a reason to buy one of these things: carrying a goddamned laptop around gets old, really quick! Unless you shell out for an ultraportable, you're lugging around several extra pounds of gear whenever you need to take it somewhere. But if you only take your PDA, you're sacrificing a lot of functionality, ESPECIALLY the full keyboard. On airplanes, too, using a full-size laptop in coach can be a real bitch.
Now, granted, I wouldn't buy one of these things with WinXP installed on it, but as soon as someone has it booting Linux... look out, bank balance!
1) Britain doesn't just unabashedly remove citizens' rights. The Terrorism Act was a LEGISLATIVE act that was passed by their democratically-elected parliament. Now, it may have been a knee-jerk reaction, it may have been a vile thing to do, but it was still the act of a properly-formed democracy. And dammit, that's all we have over here in the US, too! Do I HAVE to remind you of the patriot act, or the subway searches that go on over here, or the arrests during the Republican National Convention??
2) "The Crown" is a figurehead, and that's it. The entire governance of Britain, including every law and regulation, is the product of a parlamentary democracy. They don't even consult with the royalty on making laws. The Royals are kind of an in-person version of our National Monument and stuff like that, and that's all.
3) The Revolutionary War happened more than 200 years ago. The government of Britain, and its international policy were COMPLETELY different. How would you feel if I started making conclusions about modern US policy based on the fact that we traded slaves, here, 200 years ago? Doesn't make any sense, does it?
(And, BTW, I'd also like to point out that Britain abolished slavery long before we ever got around to it, and they didn't even have to kill a couple hundred thousand of their own people to accomplish it.)
The only thing I'm smoking is a cigarette. Dictionary seems to agree with me on what a "weapon" is:
weapon Audio pronunciation of "weapon" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (wpn) n.
1. An instrument of attack or defense in combat, as a gun, missile, or sword.
2. Zoology. A part or organ, such as a claw or stinger, used by an animal in attack or defense.
3. A means used to defend against or defeat another: Logic was her weapon
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=weapon>
Take a look at definition #3: the radios, canteens, etc. are all means to defeat the enemy. The trucks, ships, and planes that take troops to the battlefield are also "weapons".
This is, granted, a very expansive definition of "weapon", but I think it's the important one. Soldiers without food, medicine, transport, etc. are pretty useless, even if they're top-notch and have big guns. Considering a modern military as a mechanism, of sorts, the non-combat stuff is just as essential to making the force lethal as the combat stuff (guns, knives, bombs) is.
This is all getting kind of semantic, though, isn't it?
Generally I (and, I think most other people, including your average dictionary editor) consider a weapon to be something used directly on or against an opponent to disuade, disrupt, disable, destroy, defeat or kill. Things like like canteens don't normally fit that definition.
And that's where you're wrong, actually: (www.dictionary.com to the rescue!)
Your concept of a weapon fits into definition #1, pretty neatly--not quite, but close. If you look at definition #3, though, you get a slightly different picture.
So yes, the term "weapon" can be used narrowly in the sense of some object or mechanism that you use to injure another in combat. But the definition also includes "means used to defend against or defeat another", which is what I was aiming for.
Now, back to the original point, are the canteens, first-aid kits, and radios being used to defend against or defeat another? They certainly are, at least if they're wielded by troops going into combat zones. Seems pretty clear-cut, to me.
I would also quarrel with the way you're tossing around the first-aid kit example. A weapon is all about intent, right? If I have a rifle that I take to the Boy Scout firing range, and I call it a "weapon", I will get reamed out by the rangemaster for using that word. It's a "gun" or a "rifle", never a "weapon", because a weapon is something used to hurt people. So even a gun, something arguably designed with hurting in mind, is not always a "weapon".
Taking the first-aid kit seriously, what if I were to bludgeon someone to death with a metal first-aid kit? In the police report, and in the courtroom, the prosecution would describe that first aid kit as "the weapon he used to bludgeon the victim." This is a perfectly valid use of the term, because at the time of the attack I WAS intending to cause harm with it. The maker of the first-aid kit probably never imagined that someone would use it to kill another human being, but that doesn't change the fact that in my hands, at that time, it was most certainly a "weapon".
True, the issue of intent does make for some very broad and very situational classifications of what's a weapon and what's not, but I think that's inherent in the term. No getting around it.
I beg to differ about the definition of a weapon, here. Anything that you take to war, from your rifles and tanks to your canteens, first-aid kits, and radios, is a weapon.
Moreso even than the items you're using to actively kill people, the support equipment will help determine how effectively you can fight. Body armor is a case-in-point, here: troops with effective personal body armor suffer less casualties, and are therefore more reliable in combat and less costly to support... meaning you can have a LOT more of them in the field. Also, effective armor allows soldiers to take risks in combat that they would otherwise shirk from: if one side is more willing to stick it's heads up and take shots than the other side is (because of a body armor disparity), the former can be more aggressive and tactically effective.
But communications, both in use and denial-of-use, are the REALLY important thing. You can be in command of Starship Troopers armed with nuclear warheads, and it's not going to win you any battles against horse-riding Indians with flintlocks if they're in communication and aware, and you're not.
Reminds me of one of my favorite sayings about cops: Police aren't effective because of their uniforms, badges, guns, or nightsticks, they're effective because of their radios.
I have, actually, experienced CC fraud. Card got double-swiped at a restaurant in San Jose, and a few years before that a shady acquiantance of a college roommate nicked my wallet and bought a few hundreds' worth of audio equipment.
I wasn't that big of a deal, either time. In the restaurant case, I called the CC company, got a CS rep in about 30 seconds, and explained the situation. I got a call back about an hour later and they instantly reversed the second charge--could have just been a mistake by the server, right?
The other time, I called and they told me to fill out a police report. They froze the fraudulent charge, essentially meaning that it was off for the time being, and cancelled that card. I got a call back the next week telling me that they'd looked into it and agreed with me. The only real hassle was the police report, but being as I was living in NYC, the local precinct was two blocks away. It took about 30 minutes, including travel time.
I thought of this immediately, too. But there HAS to be something more going on, right?
In the USA, at least, credit card issuers (the banks that back the cards) are ultimately responsible for fraud. Their agreements with merchants stipulate that the merchant has to eat any charges found to be fraudulent, and if the merchant can't/won't, the bank has to do it. By law, the customer is limited to being responsble for only the first $50 of charges. And most card issuers have policies that waive even that fee.
So if it's really going to be that easy to steal CC numbers, why in the hell would banks do this??
I had one idea that might float: The expected losses due to increased fraud are outweighed by their predictions of increased consumer credit spending, once it becomes easier to use the cards. Since the merchants eat fraudulent charges, anyway, the banks aren't out that much more money if fraud goes up.
Of course, this disincentivizes merchants to let people easily pay for things with a swipe (yif ou have to show your photo ID before you wave your card--defeats the point, doesn't it?). Which would make the whole thing moot.
I vote "mis-modded". I think you were trying to be funny. But there is a serious point here, nonetheless. Allow me to retort:
First of all, this "left brain, right brain" thing is just nonsense. Ask a neurologist. There's a popular myth that revolves around separation of brain function into creative and analytical thinking. The problem is that is complete bullshit. If you take a normal brain, there are "creative" centers in both hemispheres, and likewise with analytical skills.
Biology and evolution don't divide skills up into "creative" and "analytical" categories. The binary division of the two is a human conceit--not without its uses, but it has no place in talking about how the brain works.
Now, THAT being said, "left brain" and "right brain" are, regardless of science, common rhetorical devices used to divide people into analytical and creative categories. Lots of people have aptitudes one way or the other, so it's easy to think that you're naturally one or the other, and that's the way God made you, so be it.
But I think that's bullshit, too. I know far too many incredibly creative engineers, architects, and coders--look at www.hackaday.com if you can't think of any you know, yourself. And I know a hell of a lot of artists and musicians who sat down in front of Photoshop or Pro Tools for the first time as said "Ah-ha!" and did brilliant things.
I'll bet that a lot of people discover one particular aptitude early and focus on that, failing to develop other skills. When I was 12, I was about as good of a programmer as I was a piano player or a painter. But since I spent a lot of time coding, guess what, I'm a pretty damn good coder and a shitty piano player. That doesn't mean I couldn't have been a good piano player, just that it takes years to get good.
Comments are still a little thin, but I suspect we're going to hear a lot more people complaining about how coders can design, and designers can't code. I say, right now, fuck that. I know far too many people who bridge the gap, sometimes iat surprising moments. There are smart people, and there are not-so-smart people.
So who knows? Maybe there's something to this idea of "designer-cum-developer". From the tone of the comments, it doesn't seem like anyone's tried it, much.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't WANT the kind of free speech that comes with perfect anonymity. Seriously, this is no troll. Chevy/Ford might want protection from bad press, but I want protection when someone accuses me of being a pedophile or something.
Remember all that crap that Scientologists pull when someone pisses them off? They set up fronts and shills, and try to anonymously make horrific statements accusing their victims of anything from drug use to kiddie porn, to destroy their credibility. The only possible defense that an individual could have is a libel/slander lawsuit, because it gives you the power to unmask the true source of the attacks and compel the source to Shut The Fuck Up.
See, your line about "...our legal system is geared heavily against individuals..." makes me think you been drinking that Slashdot Kool-Aid. So now I'm going to make your brain explode... "Wait, but corporations are EVIL! But Scientology is evil, TOO! But corporations are..."
How does that relate to the issue of shareholders pressuring Novell to shape up? I didn't see anything in the article talking about a buyout happening anytime soon. Can you explain where you make that connection?
I mean, sure, it's possible in the future that they might get bought, but Novell is talking about a 2+ year plan to reshape themselves... Not exactly sounding like "sale", there.
What kind of time frame are you talking about, anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think we can take it that simply, though... In considering how much money it costs to acheive a given level of service, there's more to the equation than retail price and service quality. Namely, subsidies.
Often, a side effect of monoplized/regulated utilities is that governments give the utilities something, either additional revenues or decreased costs. A utility's pension plan for employees might be partially state-funded or guaranteed, decreasing the company's liabilities and costs. Or, the company might get certain special rules for collective bargaining that prevent employees from striking whenever they want.
A key example from US history is the development of the railroads: the Federal government took a significant amount of land by eminent domain for use in railroad rights-of-way, usually much more land than was actually needed to build tracks and other infrastructure. Since the construction of rail tracks and stations tended to draw people to an area, the value of all that track-adjacent land skyrocketed. Many of the railroads made more money as land speculators than they did hauling freight and passengers.
Recently, the Internet has created what's arguably another example of these hidden subsidies: all of the R&D and standards creation that DARPA did made it possible for Internet companies to start providing services in that area far faster and cheaper than they would have if the market had been left to its own devices.
There are lots of problems in trying to account for these kinds of subsidies. For one, the exact value is often hard to determine. Do we count the railroad land grants at the value when the government seized it, or do at the much higher value when the railroad companies started selling it off? How do we even know that the government's initial valuation was fair (often, eminent domain valuations are hard fought in court)? How much money did the government actually spend in DARPA funding that was responsible for Internet standards and research? What portion of that spending can be considered a necessary expenditure by the government for its own purposes, versus the portion we're going to consider strictly a subsidy to the market?
And in the end, unless you have a fairly reasonable and accurate accounting of these things, you can't really answer the question of how much it costs to provide a particular level of service. Many economists have analyzed these cases and others like them, and some have come up with persuasive models, but they all have a hard time dealing with subsidy accounting.
"Catholicism did it, so it's OK" is not the point, and I really tried to make that clear. Sorry if you missed it.
There are two core points here:
1) Attacking Scientology's abuses while ignoring/minimizing the (worse) abuses of other groups diminishes the credibility of the attacker. If you're a bulldog on one particular group but don't seem to be bothered by other, similarly bad groups, it makes me wonder why you've got it in for your chosen foe.
2) Maligning Scientology for its outlandish, but harmless, beliefs is silly, because most popular religions share equally outlandish beliefs.
Scientology has been linked to some bad corporate behavior, like harassing people that publicly speak against it. It's also been responsible for stuff like the lady in Florida who died during auditing (are there more? I don't know of another example, but there may be). Generally, it has a suspicious appearance from the outside, because you have to pay to be a part of it and the church socially controls its members to a large extent.
Those are all problems that I have with Scientology, and I have a hard time taking it seriously without any kind of credible responses from the group itself. But I'm not going to stoop to the level of mocking their beliefs about Xenu.
I'm a relatively neutral observer in the whole religious escapades, and believe Scientology and Christianity to be on relatively equal planes of insanity, but for you to try to legitimize one by attacking the other is both hilarious and asinine.
Ad hominem? That would mean that I'm attacking the character of the person making the argument. There is a name for the logical fallacy I'm committing, but I forget what it is.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not legitimizing Scientology--of course its silly, non-factual BS. And it's kind of predatory, too, and I think their legal tactics are morally bankrupt. All I'm saying is that if you're going to judge, you have to use a fair standard. Otherwise, you're just picking on them. Which, in its own way, is just as intellectually dishonest as most of its detractors claim Scientology is.
(Here, I'm hoping to high heaven that this thread won't get me labeled as Slashdot's only proponent of Scientology.)
Let's go back to some basic precepts of ethics and logic: you cannot plausibly indict someone or something for moral/ethical lapses unless you apply a common standard to all actors in equivalent situations. It's difficult to defend the position that "murder is wrong" when applied to an enemy, if you let your friends or allies murder people without question.
The problem here is that very few people who attack Scientology, including the Operation Clambake dude, bother to consider any other religious or philosophical organizations using the same standards. You may think that Scientology and Christianty are both bullshit. That's fine, I believe you. But if you never bother to say anything bad about Christianity, and you take potshots at Scientology, are you surprised that I question your motivation?
I've observed that most of Scientology's outspoken detractors don't have the same level of vitriol for other religions, regardless of the logical equivalence. So I suspect that they have something particular about Scientology to dislike--it's probably the fact that Scientology is a pay-for thing (which smells to me like a scam!), or that it has some rather cult-like attributes like distancing members from family and friends.
But when your fundamental complaint is that Scientology is a psychologically abusive and manipulative organization, and that it pulls peoples' strings like a puppeteer to get their money, why are you complaining that it's theology sounds like science fiction? Tell me that they've hurt people and we can talk. But tell me that Xenu is silly, and I'll tell you that you're taking cheap shots.
All right, I'm gonna get some serious flames for this, but here goes nothing...
I've had some exposure to Scientology from different perspectives. My first introduction was, actually, Operation Clambake and some similar WWW resources. Since then, I've met some actual Scientologists and discussed the religion and the controversies it creates. And, full disclosure, I'm seeing a woman right now who works for the Church of Scientology. For real.
First point: My girlfriend is part of a religion that believes that millions of years ago, an alien overlord killed a bunch of aliens by detonating thermonuclear bombs in volcanos. OK, that's just crazy. BUT... my mother, a devout Catholic, believes that 2000 years ago, the Romans nailed some Jew to a tree in Jerusalem, and that his friends entombed him in a cave with a big boulder over the entrance, and that three days later he walked out again under his own power.
Now, you can make the obvious argument that Catholicism is a screwed up and silly as any religious, but I'd like to give them a little more credit than that. Let's continue...
Second point: Scientology sues people for copyright infringement and spreads bad PR about them if they speak ill of Scientology. But it was less than 100 years ago that Catholicism had a list of "banned books", and some even scarier intellectual practices. Less than 500 years ago, they had a thing called The Spanish Inquisition that harassed, tortured, and executed thousands of innocent people, many of whom were trying to do good for the human race in science and philosophy. Less than 1000 years ago, that same church initiated several wars called the Crusades that killed hundreds of thousands of people, wiped out whole cities and crippled empires, and has been partially responsible for centuries of tension and conflict between Arab Muslims and the Western world.
So really: Yeah, on Slashdot, suing someone for copyright infringement is morally on par with executing babies en masse by dropping them in vats of acid. But there are a lot of really, REALLY popular and respected religions that have historically done far, far worse. As in, actual evil things, not just harassing people with lawsuits.
Third point: When was the last time that Scientologists exerted political pressure to get a pro-life justice on the Supreme Court, or to push public schools to teach Intelligent Design theory or allow teachers to have class prayers? When was the last time a Scientologist suicide bomber strapped on an explosive belt and blew up a nightclub in Tel Aviv?
I guess my point is that everybody who talks about how scary and awful Scientology is forgets that religion IN GENERAL can be held responsible for enormous evils. And if you add up the scorecard from the last couple of hundred years alone, Scientology is practically blameless, compared to what Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam have perpetrated.
Yes, the culty stuff is scary and freaky. Yes, they have a siege mentality about criticism of the religion. But you know what? I'd challenge any of you who criticize Scientology based on a harsher standard than you apply to other religious to actually meet and get to know some of them--they're not bad people, and most of them are pretty goddamned normal folks.
All right, flame away.
Well then, the straw that breaks the camel's back can be anything from the sky scrpaer, to a simple dog house in someone's backyward. Looks like the author of the article and headline article are just trying to draw an ironic episode. And since it would be impossible to prove exactly what that straw was, its clearly just speculation.
OK, Mister "I-can't-be-bothered-to-spellcheck-my-posts". Whatever. Did it ever occur to you that the definition of "a little pressure" in seismology may be a term of art? That, for instance, a dog house in someone's backyard is what's termed "negligable pressure" or "noise", whereas an entire skyscraper is "a little pressure"?
It strikes me that seismology discusses forces and pressures in terms that are wildly different from normal human experience. Maybe I'm alone, here.
Get yourself checked for ADD by someone with experience treating adult ADD. And be open to the idea that drugs help you. You'll thank me.
You think that the only killer feature of P2P networks is free content? My friend, you miss something, I think.
True P2P networks offer tremendous bandwidth efficiency for the distributors of content, which is especially important when you're delivering large content (like, say movies and other media). Think of how quickly Bittorrent downloads of Linux distros took off--it made it so much easier for gazillions of people to get a brand-new release at the same time. No more waiting a week for the Debian FTP servers to be pingable again.
Plus, the distributor saves money on bandwidth charges, since many of the users will get the content from each other instead of the central servers. Whether this in turn increases the costs of the users remains to be seen, but it probably won't affect their connectivity bills much more than using open P2P networks to get stuff on their own.
Traditional analog TV is based on technology that was designed decades ago. It uses a lot of bandwidth to transmit comparatively little information, and it's prone to interference. But at the time it was implemented, that was the best we knew how to do.
Since then, we've invented microprocessors and advanced digital signaling techniques. This means that we can transmit a LOT more information in the same bandwidth, or (as is the case with digital HDTV) somewhat more info in less bandwidth. Also, interference doesn't affect digital transmissions the same way--you either get the transmission error-free, or you don't. So no more snow, ghosting, and other visual artifacts.
But really, the quality issue is a non-issue. The driving force behind the adoption of digital HDTV and the end of analog TV is to free up the huge spectrum that we currently waste on analog TV broadcasts. Since we can cram all the TV we need into a much smaller slice of frequency, the old spectrum becomes available for all the new RF applications we've been hankering for: wireless broadband, expanded, high-power unlicensed communcations, et cetera.
I personally believe that the higher quality thing is just a piggyback issue--we can do it while we're making the change, so why not? It's a nice selling point for Joe Sixpack, who really couldn't give a rat's ass about spectrum allocation.
True, it is possible to evade most filtering systems. The basic proof-of-concept is an encrypted tunneling protocol, like OpenVPN, that can pass arbitrary IP traffic via UDP or TCP. You have to set up a remote server, outside of the filtered jurisdiction, to act as your gateway out, but it's not really that hard. It's similar to the idea of open proxies to get around the Great Firewall for web content, but it lets any layer 3 traffic pass (not just HTTP). In fact, OpenVPN even has a nifty method for encapsulating layer 2 (ethernet) inside of an encrypted UDP or TCP tunnel, so you can use non-routable protocols.
But most of these methods aren't commonly known to ordinary users, and they require some technical sophistication to set up. Then, you have the logistical difficulties of maintaining the remote servers and shuffling them around to avoid IP bans. A lone, tech savvy user can use these method for personal communications, or perhaps even support a small group of people, but stealing fire for the whole human race would require an active organization to keep things humming. At that point, you start to become a nice, fat target for the government to crack down on.
That's the problem with subversive activities: organizational capacity scales with org size, but so do the risks of operating.
See how easy that is. Arrest the guy, charge him with conspiracy to commit crimes, deny bail, get a warrant, hold him in jail, take all his stuff and take your time combing through it.
Okay. CALM DOWN. BREATHE.
Feel better now? Because I don't get your point at all. Cops can't just "charge him with a conspiracy to commit crimes". You actually have to have evidence to bring charges against someone (ever heard of a thing called a "grand jury"? No? Well, "Law & Order" is out on DVD now... do your own research.)
So your proposed solution either 1) doesn't work, because the cops won't have enough time to obtain the evidnence needed to bring the changes needed to hold the suspect under the current rules, or 2) provides an enormous incentive for the cops to plant evidence and manufacture charges simply in order to hold a suspect whom they "know" is dangerous.
Seems like the fundamental problem, at the bottom, is that when the cops run you in, it's because they think you've Done Something. They may not know exactly what, yet, but you did it. And in terrorism cases (so it's been argued) the danger is so great that it merits modifying the normal rules, letting civil liberties suffer. And yes, innocent people DO suffer injustices, but many people (apparantly including Tony Blair) think that the harms to liberty are outweighed by the clear and present danger of terrorism. It isn't possible to get around this, because Islamic terrorism is a real danger that kills real people if law enforcement doesn't give its best effort. Fiercer policing, at least in the short term, can thwart attacks.
Now... do terrorism cases really merit this additional vigilance? Is the security worth the cost of liberty? That's another argument, entirely...
Because we live in a free country, that's why! Be careful not to confuse porn, cigarettes, alcohol, and "mature" (violent but not pornographic) content. These are separately considered and regulated categories, as far as the law is concerned. The important question, here, is what category video games should fit into.
Porn: US law recognizes the concept of pornography through obscenity laws, which have been generally upheld (subject to scrutiny) by the Supreme Court. Banning access to porn is generally seen as an violation of the 1st Amendment, but statutory laws can ban trafficking/sale of porn where it has no redeeming value (artistic, scientific, etc.). It's therefore acceptable to regulate porn sales to minors because it's legally accepted that porn (espcially entertainment porn) itself isn't pure free speech.
Cigarettes and Alcohol: There is absolutely no free speech angle, here, unless you really want to blow smoke. These are considered to be harmful, judgement-impairing substances, and so we forbid minors from using or purchasing them.
"Mature" content: This is where we're talking about video games, movies, TV, and printed material (books, magazines, etc.) that aren't specifically pornographic. In this case, the courts have NEVER upheld government's ability to regulate the consumption of mature content, generally, by adults OR children.
What about R-rated movies, you say? Well, it turns out that the enforcement of MPAA ratings is entirely a matter between the MPAA, the studios (which own it), and the theatre owners around the country. Theatre owners can only get movies distributed to them if they agree to abide by MPAA age regulations, and to only show MPAA-rated movies. Studios therefore have to submit their films to the MPAA for review if they want them to be seen. This is entirely a private agreement, without laws or government regulations to enforce it.
And as far as books are concerned, just TRY passing a law that would mandate an age-rating system for books, and which would prevent minors from purchasing "mature" content. Kids of any age can buy a copy of "The Godfather" or "American Psycho" or "Without Remorse", any of which are at least as violent and graphic as "Grand Theft Auto".
Hell, most people I know got started on Stephen King in elementary school or junior high. Have you ever read "Gerald's Game" or "IT"? There's some mighty fucked-up stuff in those, and worse in some of King's other books. (I actually like SK, so don't take that the wrong way.)
Anyway, the point is that pornographic video games can be neatly dropped into the "porno" categories of laws that already ban distribution of porno movies and magazines to minors. But EVERYTHING ELSE that's considered "mature" content, including violence and such, is a much murkier question.
Do we ban kids from purchasing books that are as violent or twisted as GTA? Hell, no, not in the USA.
Do we ban kids from seeing movies that are as violent or twisted as GTA? Yes, unless accompanied by a parent or guardian, but the government doesn't tell us to do it. It's a private practice agreed to by the industry.
So don't be so knee-jerk about this stuff. It's complicated.
It would not be inconceivable for him to have started by carefully sculpting large clay molds to very precise tolerances, using the molds to cast the bronze dish, polishing it, and then coating the dish with a clear or white glaze to increase its reflectance (and thus efficienncy/output power).
A lot of people who pooh-pooh the ancients for having the fabrication skills needed to construct such as thing forget that it's not too hard to make a near-perfect parabola. One of the easier ways to generate an incredibly precise parabolic mirror is to spin a bowl full of mercury. The surface of the liquid takes on a parabolic curve, and the quality of the curve just depends on how well you can create uniform motion (eliminating vibrations, centering the bowl, etc).
I like to think of these as sort of "Timeline" problems: take me back in time to Archimedes' age, and see if I could make it work. Granted, I have a modern education to work with, but Archimedes was a lot smarter than me.
Yes, taking the system offline with a "rescue disk" and comparing cryptographically-secure checksums against known good values does work. That's the standard for rootkit detection.
However, it's hella inconvenient, on many servers, to boot to a "rescue disk". Do you have any:
- servers that cannot tolerate the downtime required to scan?
- servers at remote locations where you can't insert bootable media easily (CDROM, floppy, etc.)?
- servers or workstations that just don't have bootable media capabilities (headless/PXE boot systems, anything w/o CDROM and floppy drives)?
So while it's a theoretical solution, it's also a shitty solution in practice. How many administrators are going to take the time to take ALL of their servers offline for this kind of review? None, that's right. Because none of their managers are going to be willing to tolerate that kind of expense, effort, man time, and downtime in order to check for something that they can't even understand.
Not a full keyboard?? Are we looking at the same picture, here?
http://www.oqo.com/
Sure looks like a full keyboard to me... wait, checking for all the letters... Yep, pretty goddamn close to what's on my laptop right now.
And besides, even if you DO need to use an external keyboard (let's say you want to do some coding on the airplane), you can get small, comfortable USB keyboards that fold up smaller than a paperback book. More stuff, true, but still a hell of a lot smaller and lighter than a laptop.
Especially in the $2000 range, when for that price I can have a decent desktop PC (with better specs than this thing) AND a decent PDA.
Well, duh! If you buy a desktop and a conventional PDA for $2000, YOU obviously don't need one of these things!
This seems more like a laptop--portable and fairly full-featured, without making any concessions on the interface or operating system. Sure, it's expensive, but it's brand new and doesn't have any competitors, yet, that I know of. So of course it's going to be pricey. Remember when PDAs first came out? We were paying $300+ for something with 8MB RAM and a black-and-white LCD.
And for the record, there IS a reason to buy one of these things: carrying a goddamned laptop around gets old, really quick! Unless you shell out for an ultraportable, you're lugging around several extra pounds of gear whenever you need to take it somewhere. But if you only take your PDA, you're sacrificing a lot of functionality, ESPECIALLY the full keyboard. On airplanes, too, using a full-size laptop in coach can be a real bitch.
Now, granted, I wouldn't buy one of these things with WinXP installed on it, but as soon as someone has it booting Linux... look out, bank balance!
You trolling tart. What have you been smoking?
1) Britain doesn't just unabashedly remove citizens' rights. The Terrorism Act was a LEGISLATIVE act that was passed by their democratically-elected parliament. Now, it may have been a knee-jerk reaction, it may have been a vile thing to do, but it was still the act of a properly-formed democracy. And dammit, that's all we have over here in the US, too! Do I HAVE to remind you of the patriot act, or the subway searches that go on over here, or the arrests during the Republican National Convention??
2) "The Crown" is a figurehead, and that's it. The entire governance of Britain, including every law and regulation, is the product of a parlamentary democracy. They don't even consult with the royalty on making laws. The Royals are kind of an in-person version of our National Monument and stuff like that, and that's all.
3) The Revolutionary War happened more than 200 years ago. The government of Britain, and its international policy were COMPLETELY different. How would you feel if I started making conclusions about modern US policy based on the fact that we traded slaves, here, 200 years ago? Doesn't make any sense, does it?
(And, BTW, I'd also like to point out that Britain abolished slavery long before we ever got around to it, and they didn't even have to kill a couple hundred thousand of their own people to accomplish it.)
The only thing I'm smoking is a cigarette. Dictionary seems to agree with me on what a "weapon" is:
weapon Audio pronunciation of "weapon" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (wpn)
n.
1. An instrument of attack or defense in combat, as a gun, missile, or sword.
2. Zoology. A part or organ, such as a claw or stinger, used by an animal in attack or defense.
3. A means used to defend against or defeat another: Logic was her weapon
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=weapon>
Take a look at definition #3: the radios, canteens, etc. are all means to defeat the enemy. The trucks, ships, and planes that take troops to the battlefield are also "weapons".
This is, granted, a very expansive definition of "weapon", but I think it's the important one. Soldiers without food, medicine, transport, etc. are pretty useless, even if they're top-notch and have big guns. Considering a modern military as a mechanism, of sorts, the non-combat stuff is just as essential to making the force lethal as the combat stuff (guns, knives, bombs) is.
This is all getting kind of semantic, though, isn't it?
Generally I (and, I think most other people, including your average dictionary editor) consider a weapon to be something used directly on or against an opponent to disuade, disrupt, disable, destroy, defeat or kill. Things like like canteens don't normally fit that definition.
And that's where you're wrong, actually: (www.dictionary.com to the rescue!)
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=weapon
Your concept of a weapon fits into definition #1, pretty neatly--not quite, but close. If you look at definition #3, though, you get a slightly different picture.
So yes, the term "weapon" can be used narrowly in the sense of some object or mechanism that you use to injure another in combat. But the definition also includes "means used to defend against or defeat another", which is what I was aiming for.
Now, back to the original point, are the canteens, first-aid kits, and radios being used to defend against or defeat another? They certainly are, at least if they're wielded by troops going into combat zones. Seems pretty clear-cut, to me.
I would also quarrel with the way you're tossing around the first-aid kit example. A weapon is all about intent, right? If I have a rifle that I take to the Boy Scout firing range, and I call it a "weapon", I will get reamed out by the rangemaster for using that word. It's a "gun" or a "rifle", never a "weapon", because a weapon is something used to hurt people. So even a gun, something arguably designed with hurting in mind, is not always a "weapon".
Taking the first-aid kit seriously, what if I were to bludgeon someone to death with a metal first-aid kit? In the police report, and in the courtroom, the prosecution would describe that first aid kit as "the weapon he used to bludgeon the victim." This is a perfectly valid use of the term, because at the time of the attack I WAS intending to cause harm with it. The maker of the first-aid kit probably never imagined that someone would use it to kill another human being, but that doesn't change the fact that in my hands, at that time, it was most certainly a "weapon".
True, the issue of intent does make for some very broad and very situational classifications of what's a weapon and what's not, but I think that's inherent in the term. No getting around it.
I beg to differ about the definition of a weapon, here. Anything that you take to war, from your rifles and tanks to your canteens, first-aid kits, and radios, is a weapon.
Moreso even than the items you're using to actively kill people, the support equipment will help determine how effectively you can fight. Body armor is a case-in-point, here: troops with effective personal body armor suffer less casualties, and are therefore more reliable in combat and less costly to support... meaning you can have a LOT more of them in the field. Also, effective armor allows soldiers to take risks in combat that they would otherwise shirk from: if one side is more willing to stick it's heads up and take shots than the other side is (because of a body armor disparity), the former can be more aggressive and tactically effective.
But communications, both in use and denial-of-use, are the REALLY important thing. You can be in command of Starship Troopers armed with nuclear warheads, and it's not going to win you any battles against horse-riding Indians with flintlocks if they're in communication and aware, and you're not.
Reminds me of one of my favorite sayings about cops: Police aren't effective because of their uniforms, badges, guns, or nightsticks, they're effective because of their radios.
I have, actually, experienced CC fraud. Card got double-swiped at a restaurant in San Jose, and a few years before that a shady acquiantance of a college roommate nicked my wallet and bought a few hundreds' worth of audio equipment.
I wasn't that big of a deal, either time. In the restaurant case, I called the CC company, got a CS rep in about 30 seconds, and explained the situation. I got a call back about an hour later and they instantly reversed the second charge--could have just been a mistake by the server, right?
The other time, I called and they told me to fill out a police report. They froze the fraudulent charge, essentially meaning that it was off for the time being, and cancelled that card. I got a call back the next week telling me that they'd looked into it and agreed with me. The only real hassle was the police report, but being as I was living in NYC, the local precinct was two blocks away. It took about 30 minutes, including travel time.
I thought of this immediately, too. But there HAS to be something more going on, right?
In the USA, at least, credit card issuers (the banks that back the cards) are ultimately responsible for fraud. Their agreements with merchants stipulate that the merchant has to eat any charges found to be fraudulent, and if the merchant can't/won't, the bank has to do it. By law, the customer is limited to being responsble for only the first $50 of charges. And most card issuers have policies that waive even that fee.
So if it's really going to be that easy to steal CC numbers, why in the hell would banks do this??
I had one idea that might float: The expected losses due to increased fraud are outweighed by their predictions of increased consumer credit spending, once it becomes easier to use the cards. Since the merchants eat fraudulent charges, anyway, the banks aren't out that much more money if fraud goes up.
Of course, this disincentivizes merchants to let people easily pay for things with a swipe (yif ou have to show your photo ID before you wave your card--defeats the point, doesn't it?). Which would make the whole thing moot.
I vote "mis-modded". I think you were trying to be funny. But there is a serious point here, nonetheless. Allow me to retort:
First of all, this "left brain, right brain" thing is just nonsense. Ask a neurologist. There's a popular myth that revolves around separation of brain function into creative and analytical thinking. The problem is that is complete bullshit. If you take a normal brain, there are "creative" centers in both hemispheres, and likewise with analytical skills.
Biology and evolution don't divide skills up into "creative" and "analytical" categories. The binary division of the two is a human conceit--not without its uses, but it has no place in talking about how the brain works.
Now, THAT being said, "left brain" and "right brain" are, regardless of science, common rhetorical devices used to divide people into analytical and creative categories. Lots of people have aptitudes one way or the other, so it's easy to think that you're naturally one or the other, and that's the way God made you, so be it.
But I think that's bullshit, too. I know far too many incredibly creative engineers, architects, and coders--look at www.hackaday.com if you can't think of any you know, yourself. And I know a hell of a lot of artists and musicians who sat down in front of Photoshop or Pro Tools for the first time as said "Ah-ha!" and did brilliant things.
I'll bet that a lot of people discover one particular aptitude early and focus on that, failing to develop other skills. When I was 12, I was about as good of a programmer as I was a piano player or a painter. But since I spent a lot of time coding, guess what, I'm a pretty damn good coder and a shitty piano player. That doesn't mean I couldn't have been a good piano player, just that it takes years to get good.
Comments are still a little thin, but I suspect we're going to hear a lot more people complaining about how coders can design, and designers can't code. I say, right now, fuck that. I know far too many people who bridge the gap, sometimes iat surprising moments. There are smart people, and there are not-so-smart people.
So who knows? Maybe there's something to this idea of "designer-cum-developer". From the tone of the comments, it doesn't seem like anyone's tried it, much.
A little context would have been nice. Otherwise, talking about Sun is a total non sequitur.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't WANT the kind of free speech that comes with perfect anonymity. Seriously, this is no troll. Chevy/Ford might want protection from bad press, but I want protection when someone accuses me of being a pedophile or something.
Remember all that crap that Scientologists pull when someone pisses them off? They set up fronts and shills, and try to anonymously make horrific statements accusing their victims of anything from drug use to kiddie porn, to destroy their credibility. The only possible defense that an individual could have is a libel/slander lawsuit, because it gives you the power to unmask the true source of the attacks and compel the source to Shut The Fuck Up.
See, your line about "...our legal system is geared heavily against individuals..." makes me think you been drinking that Slashdot Kool-Aid. So now I'm going to make your brain explode... "Wait, but corporations are EVIL! But Scientology is evil, TOO! But corporations are..."
How does that relate to the issue of shareholders pressuring Novell to shape up? I didn't see anything in the article talking about a buyout happening anytime soon. Can you explain where you make that connection?
I mean, sure, it's possible in the future that they might get bought, but Novell is talking about a 2+ year plan to reshape themselves... Not exactly sounding like "sale", there.
What kind of time frame are you talking about, anyway?