Good question; I suppose the only thing you could do is set up huge potential fines and jack up rewards and protections for whistleblowers.
I think what's happening to Andersen now might be a deterant, at least in the short run, to some of these other accounting firms -- all these guys have is reputation, so when it's exposed that they're dirty it hurts their biz... I almost expect that the next big corporate failure Andersen will be involved with will be their own.
I rather suspect that this discussion is premature, and that thanks to our good friends at Enron and Anderson you're going to see a serious change in the way the laws effect this area.
Personally, I think that corps shouldn't be allowed to destroy documents for at least 3-5 years -- all they're doing is covering their sins. Enron's a good example; they're destroying the evidence that they knew they were perpetrating a fraud against their investors. Destruction of the documents could mean that, as usual, the little guys get screwed and assholes like Ken Lay walk due to lack of evidence.
I would normally agree, but when you make fundemental changes to the product, it requires a rewrite.
For example, we were originally handling all voice mix in hardware until we realized our hardware supplier blew. So, now we had to change the basic setup and make major changes to the voice stack and control utility, as well as write a voice mixer from scratch.
And we do this sort of thing maybe once every quarter.
Please hire me! I can clean your garage, shine your shoes and keep you away from civil aviation!
Seriously, I'd (almost) give my left nut to work for a real geek like Wozniak. Hell, I'd be happy working anyplace where, when you tell your boss it can't be done without a complete rewrite of the codebase and a change in hardware vendors, he doesn't look at you blankly and say, "So, this should take about a week, right?" or where QA was given more than 8 hours to test the new version of the release before it was sent out to the customers.
Oh, and back on target: I could also pick up your drycleaning, Steve. Hire me!
Personally, AOL-TW scares me more than Microsoft; they've got that whole scary media empire thing going in addition to a large army of idiot users, whereas Microsoft only has a much smaller number of MCSEs (aka, professional dummies) to answer back with.
It's like fighting a war on a perfectly ordered (and symmetrical) battlefield with identical forces and perfect intelligence, a situation no one will ever be in, within the confines of reality.
So in other words, it's almost, but not completely unlike real war...
Chess is really more of a complex and somewhat variable logic puzzle -- closer to a Rubik's cube (where you let someone else take a crack at every other turn) than to war of any sort.
So maybe the whole chess/war comparison which seems so popular in this thread overcredits one and sells the other short, eh?
On one hand, when I sold my 1st Edition AD&D DragonLance Campaign hardcover, I got *triple* the cover price (I can't imagine this was collectible, folks). On the other hand, I just participated in an auction for a new set of taillights for my car (don't let the neighborhood kids ride their bikes near your car) and had it bid up well over the MSRP for replacement parts from your local Ford dealer.
People on eBay ain't so bright. Moral of the story? Sell on eBay, don't buy.
I don't see why we need to get into name-calling. I'm willing to dispute some of your assertions, I just didn't think it necessary.
Take #4: "You can wear a shirt during summer in Mars." You *could* wear a shirt, but even on the equater you'd die of the bends (and be very cold) -- the atmospheric pressure is very low on Mars, so walking out into it would be like bringing a sea creature used to an ocean trench up to sealevel.
6: "Mars can be easily terraformed (I know the word is sickening)." Mars is really cold and has a very thin, non-oxygen atmosphere. These are rather challenging, especially considering that humans have never done this sort of thing before.
#7: "Mars is a chance for us to start a world without infuence of religion (what c
reates war?), since on Mars, no one would be able to utter (.. And so God create
d the world and put adam on it..)" Huh? Where are you think the initial colonists are going to come from? Or do you think people will abandon faith just because they fly to another planet?
This is getting absurd.
#9: "Mars has enough water to sustatin the population of humans on earth." Maybe, but if there is, we sure haven't seen it.
Anyhow, just like I said: No call for name-calling, asshead.
Devil's Advocate: Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to put a colony on the moon, then? It's only a few days away, and it's always reachable (as opposed to Mars, which can be very tough to get to/from depending on the relative positions in our orbits).
Let me try to answer my own question:
Mars is a place with resources; there's an atmosphere and useful raw materials are present. You could make livable buildings, air, even grow food -- all you need is enough energy and you can do a lot of things based simply on what we already know is there.
The moon, on the other hand, is relatively barren. Living there would be a lot harder, especially in terms of the no atmosphere thing. You have to bring just about everything you need to the moon, but could live reasonably on Mars just by moving power there and investing a lot of elbow grease, building infrastructure and etc. Potentially, you could make the surface of Mars the second-safest place in the solar system, able to survive even thtough years of zero contact with earth.
Just a thought, though, that it you want *practice*, the moon's probably a better place to start.
Ah yes, one of the favorite arguements of people who think space exporation is a bad idea.
Look, spending the resources we currently expend on space travel isn't going to contribute substantially to work peace (nor hunger, nor overpopulation, nor keeping people from being laid off).
On the other hand, the greatest points of human progress have historically taken place in two times -- exploration and war. Both of them create necessity, which is (of course) the mother of invention. I assume you'd rather avoid war, as would I, so exploration seems like a good investment.
Besides, its our nature to do this sort of thing. That's why people weaved reed boats, why they sailed before they could figure their position with any certainty, why we, as a race, have always struggled to see what's over the next hill.
The small-minded idea that you could solve disease, hunger and war by supressing the instinct to explore and becoming universal xenophobes is both juvenile and foolish -- at no time in history has anything like this proven true. Indeed, the worst times tend to be those where we stopped being curious -- dark ages, anyone?
I don't mean to be too brutal, but your half-thought-out assertion in this area offends me.
I mean, you could probably come up with a method of generating some mechanical energy in the process of aerobraking, but it seems to me that we're dealing with a mechanical energy which wouldn't do you a whole lot of good in space -- after all, fuel isn't the problem, it's a lack of something to push against.
So, am I missing something here, or did you just post that link to look smart?
Yeah. Just because I can no longer type well enough to be a software developer doesn't preclude me from other, similarly dignified fields of work for which I am qualified, such as making chalupas at Taco Bell.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I see that it's time to put all of that first-person shooter training to work and invade Skywalker ranch. An unopened original Bubba Fett action figure to whoever brings me Lucas's head on a pike!
I dunno; it seems to me like he doesn't really cover the central issue: most of the populace out there don't care about their civil rights beyond the ability to own guns and drive a truck capable of driving through a swamp and seating 17 (where they are regularly the only passanger).
I don't think you can reverse this sort of trend until people start acting like they give a damn -- the various opposition forces have way too much motivation. At best, the ACLU and EFF can only drag their feet while Ashcroft and the MPAA and Disney work to strip us of our rights.
You figure out how to make people give a damn, you let me know. The fact is that people are ignoring even the really outragous stuff, say, secret trials, indefinate detentions, eternal copyrights, limits to free expression, etc. Mindshare, I suppose -- that's what really, really matters.
Hey, it could be worse -- my company's busily removing all of the (attentive) parents. You'll get older, but they're stuck.
The excuse being used is that the people who occassionally see their kids aren't working the same number of hours as we 24-year old single folks. This is being enforced by our VP, who has two kids but typically spends 80+ hours at work a week (no problem with priotiries there, eh?).
Hell, just last week the person in the cube next to me got a talking-to because she "left early" (went to see her son's orchestra concert -- at 7 PM). My veep told 'er if she does it again she'll be "in a bad position for future layoffs".
Of course, if you read my past comments about my company, this shouldn't be too shocking. I can't wait for the economy to recover so I can escape that shithole.
Well, if your boss was telling people you were hacking from work, you'd have a pretty darned heafty slander suit.
It's been a while since I had a law class, but I think you could hit him for lost wages at the very least, and probably for a lot more. Sounds like he has it coming.
Slashdot Mirror
I think what's happening to Andersen now might be a deterant, at least in the short run, to some of these other accounting firms -- all these guys have is reputation, so when it's exposed that they're dirty it hurts their biz... I almost expect that the next big corporate failure Andersen will be involved with will be their own.
Personally, I think that corps shouldn't be allowed to destroy documents for at least 3-5 years -- all they're doing is covering their sins. Enron's a good example; they're destroying the evidence that they knew they were perpetrating a fraud against their investors. Destruction of the documents could mean that, as usual, the little guys get screwed and assholes like Ken Lay walk due to lack of evidence.
Pretty disgusting.
Make that 911 GT2. 456 horses, overall drop-dead impressive:
r wd 2drcoupe36l6cylturbo6m/prices.html
http://www.edmunds.com/new/2002/porsche/911/gt2
Yeah. 'cause that's pretty funny.
For example, we were originally handling all voice mix in hardware until we realized our hardware supplier blew. So, now we had to change the basic setup and make major changes to the voice stack and control utility, as well as write a voice mixer from scratch.
And we do this sort of thing maybe once every quarter.
Please hire me! I can clean your garage, shine your shoes and keep you away from civil aviation!
Seriously, I'd (almost) give my left nut to work for a real geek like Wozniak. Hell, I'd be happy working anyplace where, when you tell your boss it can't be done without a complete rewrite of the codebase and a change in hardware vendors, he doesn't look at you blankly and say, "So, this should take about a week, right?" or where QA was given more than 8 hours to test the new version of the release before it was sent out to the customers.
Oh, and back on target: I could also pick up your drycleaning, Steve. Hire me!
For that kind of money, go buy a new 911 GT; less HP, but at least it'll last more than two years.
Personally, AOL-TW scares me more than Microsoft; they've got that whole scary media empire thing going in addition to a large army of idiot users, whereas Microsoft only has a much smaller number of MCSEs (aka, professional dummies) to answer back with.
Damn you, Martin Luther King, damn you and your banker's holiday!
So in other words, it's almost, but not completely unlike real war...
Chess is really more of a complex and somewhat variable logic puzzle -- closer to a Rubik's cube (where you let someone else take a crack at every other turn) than to war of any sort.
So maybe the whole chess/war comparison which seems so popular in this thread overcredits one and sells the other short, eh?
On one hand, when I sold my 1st Edition AD&D DragonLance Campaign hardcover, I got *triple* the cover price (I can't imagine this was collectible, folks). On the other hand, I just participated in an auction for a new set of taillights for my car (don't let the neighborhood kids ride their bikes near your car) and had it bid up well over the MSRP for replacement parts from your local Ford dealer.
People on eBay ain't so bright. Moral of the story? Sell on eBay, don't buy.
I've seen astroturfing on Slashdot before, but this is a pretty lame example of such.
Take #4: "You can wear a shirt during summer in Mars." You *could* wear a shirt, but even on the equater you'd die of the bends (and be very cold) -- the atmospheric pressure is very low on Mars, so walking out into it would be like bringing a sea creature used to an ocean trench up to sealevel.
6: "Mars can be easily terraformed (I know the word is sickening)." Mars is really cold and has a very thin, non-oxygen atmosphere. These are rather challenging, especially considering that humans have never done this sort of thing before.
#7: "Mars is a chance for us to start a world without infuence of religion (what c reates war?), since on Mars, no one would be able to utter (.. And so God create d the world and put adam on it..)" Huh? Where are you think the initial colonists are going to come from? Or do you think people will abandon faith just because they fly to another planet?
This is getting absurd.
#9: "Mars has enough water to sustatin the population of humans on earth." Maybe, but if there is, we sure haven't seen it.
Anyhow, just like I said: No call for name-calling, asshead.
Er, of course, an awful lot of what you said just isn't remotely true...
Let me try to answer my own question:
Mars is a place with resources; there's an atmosphere and useful raw materials are present. You could make livable buildings, air, even grow food -- all you need is enough energy and you can do a lot of things based simply on what we already know is there.
The moon, on the other hand, is relatively barren. Living there would be a lot harder, especially in terms of the no atmosphere thing. You have to bring just about everything you need to the moon, but could live reasonably on Mars just by moving power there and investing a lot of elbow grease, building infrastructure and etc. Potentially, you could make the surface of Mars the second-safest place in the solar system, able to survive even thtough years of zero contact with earth.
Just a thought, though, that it you want *practice*, the moon's probably a better place to start.
Look, spending the resources we currently expend on space travel isn't going to contribute substantially to work peace (nor hunger, nor overpopulation, nor keeping people from being laid off).
On the other hand, the greatest points of human progress have historically taken place in two times -- exploration and war. Both of them create necessity, which is (of course) the mother of invention. I assume you'd rather avoid war, as would I, so exploration seems like a good investment.
Besides, its our nature to do this sort of thing. That's why people weaved reed boats, why they sailed before they could figure their position with any certainty, why we, as a race, have always struggled to see what's over the next hill.
The small-minded idea that you could solve disease, hunger and war by supressing the instinct to explore and becoming universal xenophobes is both juvenile and foolish -- at no time in history has anything like this proven true. Indeed, the worst times tend to be those where we stopped being curious -- dark ages, anyone?
I don't mean to be too brutal, but your half-thought-out assertion in this area offends me.
I mean, you could probably come up with a method of generating some mechanical energy in the process of aerobraking, but it seems to me that we're dealing with a mechanical energy which wouldn't do you a whole lot of good in space -- after all, fuel isn't the problem, it's a lack of something to push against.
So, am I missing something here, or did you just post that link to look smart?
[Sound of original poster pressing the "Independant Thought Alarm" button]
Yeah. Just because I can no longer type well enough to be a software developer doesn't preclude me from other, similarly dignified fields of work for which I am qualified, such as making chalupas at Taco Bell.
I'll pass it off to never having seen it spelled...
Best. Comment. Ever.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I see that it's time to put all of that first-person shooter training to work and invade Skywalker ranch. An unopened original Bubba Fett action figure to whoever brings me Lucas's head on a pike!
I don't think you can reverse this sort of trend until people start acting like they give a damn -- the various opposition forces have way too much motivation. At best, the ACLU and EFF can only drag their feet while Ashcroft and the MPAA and Disney work to strip us of our rights.
You figure out how to make people give a damn, you let me know. The fact is that people are ignoring even the really outragous stuff, say, secret trials, indefinate detentions, eternal copyrights, limits to free expression, etc. Mindshare, I suppose -- that's what really, really matters.
The excuse being used is that the people who occassionally see their kids aren't working the same number of hours as we 24-year old single folks. This is being enforced by our VP, who has two kids but typically spends 80+ hours at work a week (no problem with priotiries there, eh?).
Hell, just last week the person in the cube next to me got a talking-to because she "left early" (went to see her son's orchestra concert -- at 7 PM). My veep told 'er if she does it again she'll be "in a bad position for future layoffs".
Of course, if you read my past comments about my company, this shouldn't be too shocking. I can't wait for the economy to recover so I can escape that shithole.
It's been a while since I had a law class, but I think you could hit him for lost wages at the very least, and probably for a lot more. Sounds like he has it coming.