Beyond that, Creation Science is NOT science. Science can make predictions. With science you can form an experiment who's result should align with the prediction. If the results of your experiment doesn't match then you have to change your theory.
So, what does Creation Science or Intelligent Design teach? What does it predict? How can you form an experiment? Can the result from an experiment change the premise? If not then it's not science.
As the Dover trial pointed out, all of the "evidence" for Intelligent Design is actually a false dichotomy logical fallacy. The argument consistently was "If Science doesn't know about X then the real cause must be God". However, it was discovered in the trial that the argument was closer to "if we ID folks don't understand X then it must be God" or "If we ID folks can misrepresent evolution and set up an easily destroyed straw man then the answer must be God."
It's analogous to saying "I have a strongly held dogmatic belief that the answer to all math questions is 42."
You may answer "But that's insane. 2+2 doesn't equal 42. 5*3 is not 42"
Then I would say "OK then, what's the cubed root of 4376 ?" to which you may reply:
"I don't know"
"Well then it must be 42"
I must admit, there is a big problem with this analogy. The problem is that there are SOME math problems to which the answer really is 42. That can be proven. But in thousands of years of humanity there is not a single piece of scientifically verifiable knowledge about how the universe works where the answer turned out to be "Well look at that! It really was God."
>Actually, to be exact- you left a Flash Card of some sort on the front seat of an unlocked car. You come back, the Flash Card is still there. Somebody else copied it in the mean time, but you haven't lost anything- you still have the data on your flash card. Was it your fault that the data was copied?
This is a much better analogy because it shows that the owner of the flash card neither gave permission to copy the data nor did he have any way of recognizing that the data had been copied. Both of those points are well made within the motion to squash. Furthermore, he never invited anyone to copy the files. The RIAA would have to show that placing the files on an unsecured hard drive is the same as offering the files for other to copy.
However, the John Does could easily have had a reasonable expectation of security. Certainly it would seem that your files should be secure from sources outside of the school (i.e. people without school network login IDs). The RIAA agents were (apparently) neither students nor faculty of the school. Therefore the John Does would not expect them to have access to the files. Since the RIAA agents are the ONLY ones whom the RIAA can prove accessed the files and that access broke through a reasonable expectation of security then it would be quite a stretch to call placing those files in a directory "distribution".
The section in the motion to squash about how the John Does did not place the files on the hard drive for profit and how they did not offer the files to the RIAA agents may be a spurious argument. I don't think the RIAA has to show that the John Does intended to profit. I believe that they only have to prove that they were damaged. However, all of that hinges on the idea that the John Does placed the files with the intention of damaging the RIAA. While that may be true, the RIAA doesn't seem to have provided actual proof.
Now, if they were to prove that other students were copying the files within the school's network then they might have a better case. But as it stands I think they've lost this one.
I've spent nearly a decade as a developer for a major California bank. I can't imagine that the SEC would allow any bank website to NOT use SSL. That's the most basic layer of security. But just to let you folks know that your data is safe, here are a few of the other things we do to keep your money and data safe from harm:
We also ask for your zip code and make sure it matches the user info we have on file.
We log the IP address you came from and the time. We do this for several reasons. The most common is that if we see 3 bad log in attempts in a row we lock your account. If we see several locked accounts spawning from the same IP address then we may have someone attempting to hack passwords. If that happens emails are automatically sent and pagers start going off. We notify our security people at once when that happens.
The password you enter is encrypted in our database via a public private key encryption. But we never generated the private key. We can tell if your password, when passed through the public key, matches what we have in our database. But we can't tell you what your password actually is. Even we don't know. That way if somebody ever gets into our database they can't use the password information.
We don't allow html or javascript in a user name, password field, account name or anywhere else that the user can enter data. We don't want a simple page display to run a rogue script.
We have a tremendous amount of safeguards to protect your account information from attacks from inside the bank, behind the firewall. Access to different apps are limit to certain staff via LDAP. All data changes create a record of the change with data on who changed it, what application was used to change it and who was logged into that app at the time. Every bank employee from the managers to the bank tellers is fingerprinted and goes through an FBI background check. Access to data is limited to those who need access to do their jobs. Physical access to the servers is severely limited to a select few.
The entire server and database infrastructure of the bank is duplicated in a 2nd location hundreds of miles away from the main servers. This database is being updated in real time so if any attack (whether a hack attack or a physical attack) brings down the system we do an immediate fail over to the backup system. This fail over and fail back system is tested regularly. I've been to that location. The servers are underground in a building with thick walls and no windows.
These really are just a few of the many many things we do to protect your data. In fact, I deleted 2 of the list items that I originally wrote about because I didn't want to give away any information that could be useful to a potential crook.
We take security very seriously for two main reasons. First, we're liable for any losses you have due to a security breach. But more importantly, we can't afford to lose the faith of our customers. If they don't trust us they'll take their money somewhere else. The actual financial loss from an attack on our system would be minor compared to the loss of trust from our customers.
As good a vigilante you are by doing that, I always have a voice in the back of my head nagging me about the legal aspects of doing that.
And THAT is one of the big things wrong with society today. People can be rude, obnoxious, even dangerous, but if we do something about it or react in any way WE are the ones who go to jail.
Think about that, the girl can yack on her phone and flip off anyone who complains, but if we respond to that incredible rudeness then we get in trouble. Notice how the majority of the comments here stem from "I don't go because the level of rudeness is too high for me to ignore. Because of that I can't enjoy the movie experience." That says a lot about our society.
If a game is not a game of chance, but a game of skill, then the law does not allow casinos to host that game. So on one hand, casinos want to ban card counters, but on the other hand they don't want to admit that skillfull players can play better than players relying purly on luck. Blackjack brings in a LOT of money for casinos. They want to keep that money stream coming.
Upon detection of pirated software the user will be given the oppportunity to purchase a legitimate copy of the software for a discounted price, upon providing proof of purchase etc."
So if you're found to have a pirated copy, you need to show proof of purchase? If I have proof of purchase then it's not pirated, and therefore, I wouldn't need to buy it again at a discounted price.
But once we get to photorealism, what is going to sustain growth?
What will sustain growth is better story lines. Look at Darwinia It's totally low res old school graphics but it's FUN!
Years ago I worked for Software Sorcery, producers of the games "Sea Rogue", "Jutland", "Aegis, Guardian of the fleet", and "Conqueror 1086". with each game the graphics got better and better, but the game play wasn't as fun.
What I want in a game is a story line that keeps me involved. And I want to have fun. That's what's missing in a lot of games today. They just arn't very fun.
To the PTC I say:
"If something offends, change the channel.
"If it is unsuitable for your children, change the channel.
"If you think that it might offend me, it is not your right to infringe upon mine."
Better yet, just turn the damn thing off. Read a book, practice playing music, gor for a walk for god's sake!
Chris Thile is probably one of the best mandolin players on the planet. On the liner notes of his first CD "Leading Off" (which he released when he just was 12 years old) Pete Wernick wrote the following words: "It's probably worth mentioning that the Thile family only recently purchased their first television".
Think about that. The Thile family played music together, went to see live music together, encouraged their kids to have fun with music, and DIDN'T watch television. And what happens? They have happy, and extremely talented children.
Chris has said that the average person spends 2 or 3 hours a day watching television. He ask: "What if you spent half that time playing an instrument every day? You'd be rockin!"
TV is unsuitable for children. Turn the damn thing off, throw it out the window.
I'd say he's trying to get rid of his Mother-in-Law
So this guy is sitting in his living room and it's raining cats and dogs outside. The wind's howling and it's just pouring. There's a knock at the door so he gets up to answer it. He opens the door and his mother in law is standing there. The man says:
"Oh my gosh. Don't just stand there in the rain getting soaking wet. Go Home! "
Thanks. I'm here all week. Please tip your wait staff.
Everyone's talking about how Java requires the user to install a JRE and how Java is slow (I beg to differ) and how Java Swing is to bloated. All these complaints assume that Java's predominant use is to write desktop applications.
But that's not what Java is being used for. The most common usage of Java is for high volume dynamic web sites such as Amazon.com and most online banking systems. The combination of Java servlets, Java Server Pages and Java based web engines (WebSphere or Web Logic for example, or even Apache and Tomcat) are becoming the most common usage of Java.
I work at a major California bank and have worked on various web based applications for about 9 years. Java is the standard for writing those types of dynamic web apps. For example. When you want to see your financial summary you wouldn't expect that there is somebody writing a web page just for you every time to make an ATM transaction would you? Of course not. You log in and we identify you. Then we go to an Oracle database or a bank host system and get your transaction history. We load that into a data object and pass it to a JSP which dynamically creates the web page with your transaction history. Java excels at that kind of application. And by the way, I can develop my code in Windows 2000, move it to a Linux box to do some basic testing, and then move it (all without recompiling) to an IBM AIX Unix box and have everything work the same on all these different environments. That makes my job easier.
So we need to stop comparing apples to oranges and saying things that essentially sum up to "A badly written Java program is slower than a well written C program" or "Java was slow 6 years ago so it's still slow today" or "I don't agree with the language designer's choice of [properties, no operator overloading or whatever language peeve you have]". Look at how the language is actually being used and you'll see that Java is indeed alive and well.
The example I will continue to use is http://slashdot.org/. When it stops forcing a refresh to fix the sidebar then I will believe Firefox is "acceptable". It's amazing how many Firefox zealots ignore this with a brush off. General Windows users will not.
Because I was interested to understand what you're saying I went to slashdot within Firefox and everything displays just fine. So I'm not sure what you mean about the sidebar not displaying properly.
If I remember correctly, in addition to being intelligent and somewhat crazy, wasn't there some talk a while back about him being autistic, or at least showing some traits of autism?
I have a nephew who is autistic. Autism is an overwhelming syndrome that generally restricts the person who has it to only the most basic level of communication. More likely Fischer has symptoms of Asperger's syndrome.
With Asperger's syndrom a person will often be quite intelligent but have some difficulty communicating verbally. They can speak, but they come off as being very shy. They tend to be focused on patterns and sequences (quite a talent to have for a chess player). They also tend to "self stimulate" by self hugging and/or rocking back and forth.
All these symptom also appear in autistic children but with autism the ability to speak and communicate normally is quite often lost. They sometimes also tend not to bond with people. I know there was a time when my nephew didn't seem to understand that he had to relate to the people in his family differently than he relates to a chair. Also, autism tends to strike male children at about 18 months to 2 years old. It's not a syndrome that get worse as you get older. You have it or you don't.
Fisher can obviously speak well. His thoughts may be delusional, but he doesn't have the speech issues or physical movement issues normally associated with autism.
I can't believe that there's nothing on Pohl Anderson, Ringworld or Kzinti. This is the best escape SiFi ever written. It must be fixed.
This was close to my thought. In my mind, Science Fiction is a WRITTEN art form. But I guess a museum of books would be called a "library", not a museum.
But imagine a set of displays that shows common Sci Fi themes from the point of view of various authors. Or perhaps a display showing what sci-fi predictions have (or havn't) come true. Yes, it's difficult demonstrate thoughts from a set of books that your audience may or may not have read. But Science Fiction is so much more then Start Trek, Aliens, and Terminator.
Are there banks which are better than the ones mentioned above?
Yep, I'm a programmer for one of them.
First of all, your login to our on-line banking system is a randomly generated unique 8 digit number. It's on your ATM card and it's your user ID number for the bank. You also have to remember your 6 digit PIN. But what if you forget your PIN? Well we can't give it to you. Why, because we use one half of a public private key encryption to save only the encrypted version of your PIN. And just to be safe we throw away the private key so even WE can't see what your PIN is. If we ever get hacked (and people try but they've never gotten through. And yes, we've caught them and put them in jail) in any case, if we ever do get hacked they can only see the encrypted version of your PIN and the private key to decrypt them is nowhere to be found.
So you forget your PIN. How do you get a new one? You call us and verify who you are via at least 2 or 3 different ways (I won't tell you how). Then we mail you (yes, snail mail) a new temp PIN to the address your checking account goes to. You can log in ONCE with that temp pin and you are required to change your password after the first login. By the way, if you log in 3 times incorrectly then we lock your account and notify people in the bank that this may be a hack attempt. Good thing we also log the IP address each of those login attempts were coming from.
By the way, when you first signed up you gave us a secret question like "When dad bought that farm in Kentucky he also bought some cattle. What was the name of the first cow that he bought?" You wrote the question yourself which makes it even harder for a hacker to guess what that question is. And when you applied for on-line access you gave us the answer "Matilda". That answer is also encrypted with a one way public-but-no-private-key on our servers. So when you log in with your temp password we're going to ask you the question that only you know the answer to.
I havn't even gotten to physical security. Believe me, don't even try to physically get to our servers, or even to the printers that print your statements. That is, if you could even find the buildings (There are no signs on teh building that say who we are) Add to that triple redundent servers and databases that are located in physically different locations over 200 miles apart so even a terrorist attack on one city won't destroy your bank records. AND those records are backed up and stored in yet another physical location.
And I could talk about all the auditing that the SEC does on us to make sure that our systems are secure, our data is redundently backed up, failover systems work and so on.
So yes, most banks have far more security than you can imagine. You may feel safe again.
Is that the fine was becasue the EU said that bundling Windows Media Player with the OS hurt competition. However, I pay for my Music Match software because I like the way it rips CDs to mp3s, burns CDs, and manipulates playlist better than Windows Media Player. Of all the places where a better competing product could kick Window's butt the media player is certianly one of them.
And why, exactly, is hiring people in other countries immoral?
As we've explained many many times before: In most cases it was Americans who built these companies both through their hard work and by buying the product and services that the companies produce. When you ship American jobs overseas that company is hurting America in several ways.
It's causing unemployment in America.
Because people are losing their jobs they have less income. This means that they are not contributing to the tax base as much as they use to.
These now unemployed people tend to require more social services since they can no longer support their families. This means that social services are needed more at the same time that the tax base to pay for them is shrinking. This causes even more deficit spending which causes even more debt to be piled up on us, our children, and future generations.
Overall it means less capital for people to spend on goods and services which means that even the people who wern't outsourced will have difficulty staying employed because there are fewer people who can afford their goods and services. That cycle continues on and on until there is no middle class.
Therefore, outsourcing has the potential to significantly damage or even destroy the American economy. Now, these companies have made profits in the past without outsourcing, why outsource now? Companies may certainly need to cut cost, but it's the act of choosing the cost cutting procedure (outsourcing) that causes the MOST harm to the very country that made that company profitable in the first place which makes it immoral.
A more cynical person than me would probably point out that the year after a company outsources significant portions of it's workers the upper management of those companies tend to get huge bonuses. Those bonuses are paid for by the destruction of American jobs, American dreams, and American families.
I don't seem to have a problem understanding what's immoral about that. Do you?
Unfortunately we have this disclaimer: "music unavailable due to copywrite restrictions". My gosh, if this isn't "Fair Use" then what is? Are they afraid that the RIAA will implement a new licensing fee for "non-virtual music played by robotic musicians"?
No wonder you're whining about losing jobs when your first response to something that's hard to do is:
Fuh Q Raghead
US tech workers, and US workers in particular, are well know for working tons of overtime to get the job done. Don't give me this crap that we run away when things get tough.
The problem with losing American Jobs to India is:
It causes unemployment in an already weak and jobless US economy.
It's killing off the higher paid tech jobs which means that we're not only losing jobs, we're losing the tax base that those jobs produce.
This combination of higher unemployment and a smaller tax base means more people are going to need government assistence to survive and yet there will be less and less of that assistence available.
Outsourcing at this point in our already damaged, over indebted, over inflated economy could quite easily be the straw that breaks the US economy's back. So use of few of your remaining brain cells and put some actual thought into how outsourcing is going to effect not only the US economy, but the world at large.
It's ironic that outsourcing US jobs to India will very likely cause a kind of mass poverty in the US that India is famous for.
Not everyone has the prudence to start there own buisness, not everyone can code 4000 (good) lines in a week, not everyone can program a pix without looking at it.
Hell, I've spent so much time on documentation, filling out time cards, attending meetings, helping other departments do their jobs etc. that I havn't written 4000 lines of code in the past 2 years.
I am currently building mountain dulcimers for sale and I'm learning to build acoustic guitars and mandolins. After playing music all my life and guitar for about 30 years I just feel like this is the right move. And now that we've been told that our company is going to be outsourcing our jobs it turns out to be good that I have a backup plan.
The way I feel about it is this: I can sit in a cubicle doing what is essentially rearranging random ones and zeros into non-random order to create something of value (although most of my time is actually spent doing documentation, reports, supervision, meetings etc). OR I can take a bunch of raw pieces of wood and create something that is not only beautiful, but allows a musician to create even more beauty and music.
Which one sounds more satisfying to you?
The more I write code the more I want to build guitars for a living.
[BTW, I'd love to add a shameless plug for my website right about here but I'd probably just slashdot myself and end up taking my whole site down]
Slashdot Mirror
Don't rate this insightful. It's a logical fallacy.
"Some schools with lots of resources are badly managed. Therefore, spending money to create better schools a bad idea."
The truth is that most schools with lots of funding produce students with higher GPA's. In general, more funding is a good thing.
So, what does Creation Science or Intelligent Design teach? What does it predict? How can you form an experiment? Can the result from an experiment change the premise? If not then it's not science.
As the Dover trial pointed out, all of the "evidence" for Intelligent Design is actually a false dichotomy logical fallacy. The argument consistently was "If Science doesn't know about X then the real cause must be God". However, it was discovered in the trial that the argument was closer to "if we ID folks don't understand X then it must be God" or "If we ID folks can misrepresent evolution and set up an easily destroyed straw man then the answer must be God."
It's analogous to saying "I have a strongly held dogmatic belief that the answer to all math questions is 42."
You may answer "But that's insane. 2+2 doesn't equal 42. 5*3 is not 42"
Then I would say "OK then, what's the cubed root of 4376 ?" to which you may reply:
"I don't know"
"Well then it must be 42"
I must admit, there is a big problem with this analogy. The problem is that there are SOME math problems to which the answer really is 42. That can be proven. But in thousands of years of humanity there is not a single piece of scientifically verifiable knowledge about how the universe works where the answer turned out to be "Well look at that! It really was God."
This is a much better analogy because it shows that the owner of the flash card neither gave permission to copy the data nor did he have any way of recognizing that the data had been copied. Both of those points are well made within the motion to squash. Furthermore, he never invited anyone to copy the files. The RIAA would have to show that placing the files on an unsecured hard drive is the same as offering the files for other to copy.
However, the John Does could easily have had a reasonable expectation of security. Certainly it would seem that your files should be secure from sources outside of the school (i.e. people without school network login IDs). The RIAA agents were (apparently) neither students nor faculty of the school. Therefore the John Does would not expect them to have access to the files. Since the RIAA agents are the ONLY ones whom the RIAA can prove accessed the files and that access broke through a reasonable expectation of security then it would be quite a stretch to call placing those files in a directory "distribution".
The section in the motion to squash about how the John Does did not place the files on the hard drive for profit and how they did not offer the files to the RIAA agents may be a spurious argument. I don't think the RIAA has to show that the John Does intended to profit. I believe that they only have to prove that they were damaged. However, all of that hinges on the idea that the John Does placed the files with the intention of damaging the RIAA. While that may be true, the RIAA doesn't seem to have provided actual proof.
Now, if they were to prove that other students were copying the files within the school's network then they might have a better case. But as it stands I think they've lost this one.
IANAL
These really are just a few of the many many things we do to protect your data. In fact, I deleted 2 of the list items that I originally wrote about because I didn't want to give away any information that could be useful to a potential crook.
We take security very seriously for two main reasons. First, we're liable for any losses you have due to a security breach. But more importantly, we can't afford to lose the faith of our customers. If they don't trust us they'll take their money somewhere else. The actual financial loss from an attack on our system would be minor compared to the loss of trust from our customers.
And THAT is one of the big things wrong with society today. People can be rude, obnoxious, even dangerous, but if we do something about it or react in any way WE are the ones who go to jail.
Think about that, the girl can yack on her phone and flip off anyone who complains, but if we respond to that incredible rudeness then we get in trouble. Notice how the majority of the comments here stem from "I don't go because the level of rudeness is too high for me to ignore. Because of that I can't enjoy the movie experience." That says a lot about our society.
Pretty Good Privacy. Get it and use it.
If a game is not a game of chance, but a game of skill, then the law does not allow casinos to host that game. So on one hand, casinos want to ban card counters, but on the other hand they don't want to admit that skillfull players can play better than players relying purly on luck. Blackjack brings in a LOT of money for casinos. They want to keep that money stream coming.
So if you're found to have a pirated copy, you need to show proof of purchase? If I have proof of purchase then it's not pirated, and therefore, I wouldn't need to buy it again at a discounted price.
What will sustain growth is better story lines. Look at Darwinia It's totally low res old school graphics but it's FUN!
Years ago I worked for Software Sorcery, producers of the games "Sea Rogue", "Jutland", "Aegis, Guardian of the fleet", and "Conqueror 1086". with each game the graphics got better and better, but the game play wasn't as fun.
What I want in a game is a story line that keeps me involved. And I want to have fun. That's what's missing in a lot of games today. They just arn't very fun.
Better yet, just turn the damn thing off. Read a book, practice playing music, gor for a walk for god's sake!
Chris Thile is probably one of the best mandolin players on the planet. On the liner notes of his first CD "Leading Off" (which he released when he just was 12 years old) Pete Wernick wrote the following words: "It's probably worth mentioning that the Thile family only recently purchased their first television".
Think about that. The Thile family played music together, went to see live music together, encouraged their kids to have fun with music, and DIDN'T watch television. And what happens? They have happy, and extremely talented children.
Chris has said that the average person spends 2 or 3 hours a day watching television. He ask: "What if you spent half that time playing an instrument every day? You'd be rockin!"
TV is unsuitable for children. Turn the damn thing off, throw it out the window.
Let's hope the folks McAfee are smart enough not to open an email attachment from freehotchicks@VxIxAxGxRxA.com
So this guy is sitting in his living room and it's raining cats and dogs outside. The wind's howling and it's just pouring. There's a knock at the door so he gets up to answer it. He opens the door and his mother in law is standing there. The man says: "Oh my gosh. Don't just stand there in the rain getting soaking wet. Go Home! " Thanks. I'm here all week. Please tip your wait staff.
But that's not what Java is being used for. The most common usage of Java is for high volume dynamic web sites such as Amazon.com and most online banking systems. The combination of Java servlets, Java Server Pages and Java based web engines (WebSphere or Web Logic for example, or even Apache and Tomcat) are becoming the most common usage of Java.
I work at a major California bank and have worked on various web based applications for about 9 years. Java is the standard for writing those types of dynamic web apps. For example. When you want to see your financial summary you wouldn't expect that there is somebody writing a web page just for you every time to make an ATM transaction would you? Of course not. You log in and we identify you. Then we go to an Oracle database or a bank host system and get your transaction history. We load that into a data object and pass it to a JSP which dynamically creates the web page with your transaction history. Java excels at that kind of application. And by the way, I can develop my code in Windows 2000, move it to a Linux box to do some basic testing, and then move it (all without recompiling) to an IBM AIX Unix box and have everything work the same on all these different environments. That makes my job easier.
So we need to stop comparing apples to oranges and saying things that essentially sum up to "A badly written Java program is slower than a well written C program" or "Java was slow 6 years ago so it's still slow today" or "I don't agree with the language designer's choice of [properties, no operator overloading or whatever language peeve you have]". Look at how the language is actually being used and you'll see that Java is indeed alive and well.
Because I was interested to understand what you're saying I went to slashdot within Firefox and everything displays just fine. So I'm not sure what you mean about the sidebar not displaying properly.
I have a nephew who is autistic. Autism is an overwhelming syndrome that generally restricts the person who has it to only the most basic level of communication. More likely Fischer has symptoms of Asperger's syndrome.
With Asperger's syndrom a person will often be quite intelligent but have some difficulty communicating verbally. They can speak, but they come off as being very shy. They tend to be focused on patterns and sequences (quite a talent to have for a chess player). They also tend to "self stimulate" by self hugging and/or rocking back and forth.
All these symptom also appear in autistic children but with autism the ability to speak and communicate normally is quite often lost. They sometimes also tend not to bond with people. I know there was a time when my nephew didn't seem to understand that he had to relate to the people in his family differently than he relates to a chair. Also, autism tends to strike male children at about 18 months to 2 years old. It's not a syndrome that get worse as you get older. You have it or you don't.
Fisher can obviously speak well. His thoughts may be delusional, but he doesn't have the speech issues or physical movement issues normally associated with autism.
This was close to my thought. In my mind, Science Fiction is a WRITTEN art form. But I guess a museum of books would be called a "library", not a museum.
But imagine a set of displays that shows common Sci Fi themes from the point of view of various authors. Or perhaps a display showing what sci-fi predictions have (or havn't) come true. Yes, it's difficult demonstrate thoughts from a set of books that your audience may or may not have read. But Science Fiction is so much more then Start Trek, Aliens, and Terminator.
The artist who wrote, performed, recorded, published, and promoted the music will get a coupon for a free super size upgrade.
Yep, I'm a programmer for one of them.
First of all, your login to our on-line banking system is a randomly generated unique 8 digit number. It's on your ATM card and it's your user ID number for the bank. You also have to remember your 6 digit PIN. But what if you forget your PIN? Well we can't give it to you. Why, because we use one half of a public private key encryption to save only the encrypted version of your PIN. And just to be safe we throw away the private key so even WE can't see what your PIN is. If we ever get hacked (and people try but they've never gotten through. And yes, we've caught them and put them in jail) in any case, if we ever do get hacked they can only see the encrypted version of your PIN and the private key to decrypt them is nowhere to be found.
So you forget your PIN. How do you get a new one? You call us and verify who you are via at least 2 or 3 different ways (I won't tell you how). Then we mail you (yes, snail mail) a new temp PIN to the address your checking account goes to. You can log in ONCE with that temp pin and you are required to change your password after the first login. By the way, if you log in 3 times incorrectly then we lock your account and notify people in the bank that this may be a hack attempt. Good thing we also log the IP address each of those login attempts were coming from.
By the way, when you first signed up you gave us a secret question like "When dad bought that farm in Kentucky he also bought some cattle. What was the name of the first cow that he bought?" You wrote the question yourself which makes it even harder for a hacker to guess what that question is. And when you applied for on-line access you gave us the answer "Matilda". That answer is also encrypted with a one way public-but-no-private-key on our servers. So when you log in with your temp password we're going to ask you the question that only you know the answer to.
I havn't even gotten to physical security. Believe me, don't even try to physically get to our servers, or even to the printers that print your statements. That is, if you could even find the buildings (There are no signs on teh building that say who we are) Add to that triple redundent servers and databases that are located in physically different locations over 200 miles apart so even a terrorist attack on one city won't destroy your bank records. AND those records are backed up and stored in yet another physical location.
And I could talk about all the auditing that the SEC does on us to make sure that our systems are secure, our data is redundently backed up, failover systems work and so on.
So yes, most banks have far more security than you can imagine. You may feel safe again.
Is that the fine was becasue the EU said that bundling Windows Media Player with the OS hurt competition. However, I pay for my Music Match software because I like the way it rips CDs to mp3s, burns CDs, and manipulates playlist better than Windows Media Player. Of all the places where a better competing product could kick Window's butt the media player is certianly one of them.
As we've explained many many times before: In most cases it was Americans who built these companies both through their hard work and by buying the product and services that the companies produce. When you ship American jobs overseas that company is hurting America in several ways.
Therefore, outsourcing has the potential to significantly damage or even destroy the American economy. Now, these companies have made profits in the past without outsourcing, why outsource now? Companies may certainly need to cut cost, but it's the act of choosing the cost cutting procedure (outsourcing) that causes the MOST harm to the very country that made that company profitable in the first place which makes it immoral.
A more cynical person than me would probably point out that the year after a company outsources significant portions of it's workers the upper management of those companies tend to get huge bonuses. Those bonuses are paid for by the destruction of American jobs, American dreams, and American families.
I don't seem to have a problem understanding what's immoral about that. Do you?
Let's see, I go to the music department of Barnes & Nobel/Tower/Sam Goody/Whatever and I see that :
Yep, you're right. Market forces are effecting CD sales. Hey! Maybe if the RIAA lowered CD prices sales would go up?
Unfortunately we have this disclaimer: "music unavailable due to copywrite restrictions". My gosh, if this isn't "Fair Use" then what is? Are they afraid that the RIAA will implement a new licensing fee for "non-virtual music played by robotic musicians"?
Fuh Q Raghead
US tech workers, and US workers in particular, are well know for working tons of overtime to get the job done. Don't give me this crap that we run away when things get tough.
The problem with losing American Jobs to India is:
Outsourcing at this point in our already damaged, over indebted, over inflated economy could quite easily be the straw that breaks the US economy's back. So use of few of your remaining brain cells and put some actual thought into how outsourcing is going to effect not only the US economy, but the world at large.
It's ironic that outsourcing US jobs to India will very likely cause a kind of mass poverty in the US that India is famous for.
Hell, I've spent so much time on documentation, filling out time cards, attending meetings, helping other departments do their jobs etc. that I havn't written 4000 lines of code in the past 2 years.
The way I feel about it is this: I can sit in a cubicle doing what is essentially rearranging random ones and zeros into non-random order to create something of value (although most of my time is actually spent doing documentation, reports, supervision, meetings etc).
OR I can take a bunch of raw pieces of wood and create something that is not only beautiful, but allows a musician to create even more beauty and music.
Which one sounds more satisfying to you?
The more I write code the more I want to build guitars for a living.
[BTW, I'd love to add a shameless plug for my website right about here but I'd probably just slashdot myself and end up taking my whole site down]