But what would happen if another company, say IBM maybe, buys out SCO? Answer: typically all unvested options are immediately vested and available for exercise. You are right. SCO is most likely not trying to pump and dump. The SEC makes it too difficult to do that. Getting someone to buy you, however, can be relatively easy and makes for some interesting scenarios.
It's tricky. My wife used to work at Best Buy, and while nobody directly gets paid commission for PSP's, the store management is evaluated by regional and corporate management on PSP sales, as they are by far the highest margin item that Best Buy sells. Because of this, store management tracks individual PSP sales performance and puts a great deal of pressure on employees to push them.
OK, I've said this before, but here goes again: You can't penalize the corporations being "advertised" because the guilty parties are actually resellers of their products. Norton is not funding spammers to get more of their products sold, some jerkoff in his garage that bought 1000 copies of SystemWorks decided to crank out 5 million annoying messages to turn them over. It probably works too... What you are proposing would be the end of the reseller channel as we know it.
I think the end solution is going to be on the user end, as it is right now. The "Do Not Spam Registry" is never going to work like the "Do Not Call Registry" because there is a fundamental difference between the two: With spam, the law can be easily circumvented by setting up shop outside the US and spamming the holy hell out of all the same addresses. This would be prohibitively expensive for telemarketers due to the international phone charges.
Uhhhh, I'll be contacting the owners of this system to use MY email address when they set up Seti@Home on the box... Look for me to vault into the top 10 in about 38 seconds!
I don't think this vaccine working for Ebola would necessarily translate to a successful vaccine for other viruses, especially HIV. My understanding on this (and I am NOT an expert, by any stretch, so I hope someone more knowledgable will weigh in) is that HIV is a "retrovirus", which means that it can kind of change itself to suit its needs. I think this is different from the "Flu Virus" which is in fact thousands of different mutations with very similar symptoms. If I recall correctly, there are only four or five distinct types of Ebola virus, so creating vaccines for them would be a "relatively" easy task. Again, I'm not an expert, but I believe this is the case.
I think it has a lot to do with narrowing the search space. A computer has to start out by considering every possible move on the board, ranking these initial choices, eliminating the worst of the bunch, then moving on to the next 'round' of evaluations. The initial search space on a 19X19 board is massive. A human, on the other hand, can very easily eliminate a large number of choices (probably over half) in a second just by looking over the board. That allows the human brain to focus on the select few moves still in consideration as 'valid' choices that make sense.
Yea, that's great until you start getting competitors DoS'ing each other... ie. Microsoft hires a spammer to send out spam advertising Sun's products. All of a sudden you've got innocent companies getting sued and/or shut down for the actions of a third party.
While I agree with your overall gist, I wouldn't say it is the *only* reason we see so many Windows worms... The fact remains, there are serious issues with the MS Windows code base, as evidenced by the ridiculous number of MS Security Advisories coming out every month... The major reason for this is the fact that MS Windows XP still supports Windows 95, and even MS-DOS programs, so there is most likely still native code that is eight or more years old in there. Regardless of MS' supposed committment to secure programming, they would have to perform a major code review to clean everything up.
Don't forget: A good portion of "us Americans" totally agree with you. We just happen to have a puppet President in office that is taking his marching orders from a bunch of neo-Conservative crazies and screwing things up very badly.
Regarding the swords that Strider gives the hobbits, don't forget that the gifts presented to Merry and Pippen by Galadriel were Elvish blades that had "already been tested in battle". I think the general idea is that they will use those weapons at the critical time in the movie. The part of RotK dealing with the destruction of the Witch King has a great deal of exposition and back plot detailing the crafting of the sword for that specific purpose. There is no good way to fit it into a movie...
Remember what Galadriel says after Frodo looks into the mirror: (I'm paraphrasing here) This is what will happen if you fail to complete your quest. --- So instead of thinking that those shots are related to the scouring of the Shire, I think they are meant to show the enslavement of the Shire by Sauron's minions if Frodo should fail to destroy the ring.
Alright... Now I'm just waiting for the first "USB Toothbrush Hack" to be released... I can see it now, it'll be just like the exploding monitor "hack" from years ago...
I would not be terribly surprised to find that the DMCA shields RIAA from being counter-sued for these fees. That seems like just the thing they would put in there...
"Wow, we really did a number on your front door when we busted it in... You should get that fixed..."
This sounds like more of a case of you needing to move on to a new employer. I previously worked for a telephone company that owned an ISP. All of the telecom guys were unionized, of course, but they didn't know what to make the ISP Help Desk people, so they created a hybrid position that was "in-between" a Union and a non-Union position. I did not realize how bad this was until I became a shift supervisor.
I had one employee in particular that thought she was in a totally Union position. She wanted to "bump" someone off a different shift and take their spot because she had seniority. To her, job performance was not important. Luckily, I found that I was not required to abide by most of the Union rules, so I was able to ignore this person for the most part. But the fact remains that Unions place rules into effect that are good for some, and extremely bad for others. I do not feel that just because you have worked for a company for 5 years you deserve the keys to the city. Work ethic and professionalism need to be accounted for in determining raises, promotions, and other rewards. Otherwise you end up with a shop full of people that sit around and wait until they get seniority so they can move up in the world. This is no way to run a productive business.
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But what would happen if another company, say IBM maybe, buys out SCO? Answer: typically all unvested options are immediately vested and available for exercise. You are right. SCO is most likely not trying to pump and dump. The SEC makes it too difficult to do that. Getting someone to buy you, however, can be relatively easy and makes for some interesting scenarios.
It's tricky. My wife used to work at Best Buy, and while nobody directly gets paid commission for PSP's, the store management is evaluated by regional and corporate management on PSP sales, as they are by far the highest margin item that Best Buy sells. Because of this, store management tracks individual PSP sales performance and puts a great deal of pressure on employees to push them.
{blinding white light} Wow! You mean everything posted on Slashdot by Anonymous Coward is the truth? {/blinding white light}
You had tin cans and plastic? Maaaaan!
Ahhh... I can see it now... GNAA and all the other idiots adding "sleep 120" into their scripts...
But what about when the whole Internet goes down? What then? You know it happens all the time!
OK, I've said this before, but here goes again: You can't penalize the corporations being "advertised" because the guilty parties are actually resellers of their products. Norton is not funding spammers to get more of their products sold, some jerkoff in his garage that bought 1000 copies of SystemWorks decided to crank out 5 million annoying messages to turn them over. It probably works too... What you are proposing would be the end of the reseller channel as we know it.
I think the end solution is going to be on the user end, as it is right now. The "Do Not Spam Registry" is never going to work like the "Do Not Call Registry" because there is a fundamental difference between the two: With spam, the law can be easily circumvented by setting up shop outside the US and spamming the holy hell out of all the same addresses. This would be prohibitively expensive for telemarketers due to the international phone charges.
Uhhhh, I'll be contacting the owners of this system to use MY email address when they set up Seti@Home on the box... Look for me to vault into the top 10 in about 38 seconds!
I don't think this vaccine working for Ebola would necessarily translate to a successful vaccine for other viruses, especially HIV. My understanding on this (and I am NOT an expert, by any stretch, so I hope someone more knowledgable will weigh in) is that HIV is a "retrovirus", which means that it can kind of change itself to suit its needs. I think this is different from the "Flu Virus" which is in fact thousands of different mutations with very similar symptoms. If I recall correctly, there are only four or five distinct types of Ebola virus, so creating vaccines for them would be a "relatively" easy task. Again, I'm not an expert, but I believe this is the case.
I think it has a lot to do with narrowing the search space. A computer has to start out by considering every possible move on the board, ranking these initial choices, eliminating the worst of the bunch, then moving on to the next 'round' of evaluations. The initial search space on a 19X19 board is massive. A human, on the other hand, can very easily eliminate a large number of choices (probably over half) in a second just by looking over the board. That allows the human brain to focus on the select few moves still in consideration as 'valid' choices that make sense.
Sure, but then the game is called 'Squash', not 'Tennis'.
Yea, that's great until you start getting competitors DoS'ing each other... ie. Microsoft hires a spammer to send out spam advertising Sun's products. All of a sudden you've got innocent companies getting sued and/or shut down for the actions of a third party.
While I agree with your overall gist, I wouldn't say it is the *only* reason we see so many Windows worms... The fact remains, there are serious issues with the MS Windows code base, as evidenced by the ridiculous number of MS Security Advisories coming out every month... The major reason for this is the fact that MS Windows XP still supports Windows 95, and even MS-DOS programs, so there is most likely still native code that is eight or more years old in there. Regardless of MS' supposed committment to secure programming, they would have to perform a major code review to clean everything up.
Don't forget: A good portion of "us Americans" totally agree with you. We just happen to have a puppet President in office that is taking his marching orders from a bunch of neo-Conservative crazies and screwing things up very badly.
Regarding the swords that Strider gives the hobbits, don't forget that the gifts presented to Merry and Pippen by Galadriel were Elvish blades that had "already been tested in battle". I think the general idea is that they will use those weapons at the critical time in the movie. The part of RotK dealing with the destruction of the Witch King has a great deal of exposition and back plot detailing the crafting of the sword for that specific purpose. There is no good way to fit it into a movie...
Remember what Galadriel says after Frodo looks into the mirror: (I'm paraphrasing here) This is what will happen if you fail to complete your quest. --- So instead of thinking that those shots are related to the scouring of the Shire, I think they are meant to show the enslavement of the Shire by Sauron's minions if Frodo should fail to destroy the ring.
Alright... Now I'm just waiting for the first "USB Toothbrush Hack" to be released... I can see it now, it'll be just like the exploding monitor "hack" from years ago...
"Man dies in horrific toothbrush accident."
Actually, if you look behind disk 4 in the case you'll find the special Lord of the Rings branded colostomy bag. Limited edition!
I would not be terribly surprised to find that the DMCA shields RIAA from being counter-sued for these fees. That seems like just the thing they would put in there...
"Wow, we really did a number on your front door when we busted it in... You should get that fixed..."
This sounds like more of a case of you needing to move on to a new employer. I previously worked for a telephone company that owned an ISP. All of the telecom guys were unionized, of course, but they didn't know what to make the ISP Help Desk people, so they created a hybrid position that was "in-between" a Union and a non-Union position. I did not realize how bad this was until I became a shift supervisor. I had one employee in particular that thought she was in a totally Union position. She wanted to "bump" someone off a different shift and take their spot because she had seniority. To her, job performance was not important. Luckily, I found that I was not required to abide by most of the Union rules, so I was able to ignore this person for the most part. But the fact remains that Unions place rules into effect that are good for some, and extremely bad for others. I do not feel that just because you have worked for a company for 5 years you deserve the keys to the city. Work ethic and professionalism need to be accounted for in determining raises, promotions, and other rewards. Otherwise you end up with a shop full of people that sit around and wait until they get seniority so they can move up in the world. This is no way to run a productive business.