So because you can't be bothered to read means the GUBMINT should protect you from the evil corporations who, in English, up front, are explaining to you what they intend to do with the stuff you give to them, and that you implicitly agreed to when you clicked your happy ass through that EULA?
No, sorry, that's not how it should work. Take responsibility for your own actions (or lack thereof). You are not entitled to be lazy and then go complain to big brother to "fix it" when someone does something you agreed to let them do.
No, you have it backwards. These are all things that Libertarians want Congress to *stick* to doing, and stop doing all the rest of the stuff like wealth redistribution that they have no authority to do.
Netflix surely has a good engineering team that is thoroughly familiar with the system.
This is a bad assumption. It is not at all unusual for a company to build an in-house product, then have all the developers who actually wrote the thing move on to bigger and better things, leaving behind junior and not-quite-up-to-speed people to maintain it day-to-day. No matter how good the documentation (hahahahahaha documentation!) is that the original developers left behind, there's always things buried deep in the bowels of any large piece of software that can bite you in the ass if you're not careful. It may be something the original developers thought would "never come up" or it may just be a bug that has been in there from day one that never got triggered until someone did just the right combination of things that wasn't anticipated by the original developers.
The company I work at now uses a heavily modified bit of proprietary software written in COBOL. Over the years, all the people who have written the modifications have left the company, so nobody really *knows* how this thing works anymore. We keep pulling COBOL programmers out of retirement and have them come in and spend weeks reading code trying to figure it out, but I'm still not convinced anybody here really understands the system--it *still* does things we can't explain from time to time. Now I'm sure Netflix's software wasn't written in COBOL, but it's still very easy for this situation to come up if a company is not super careful--and they never are.
He already told you. Because the company is worth more (has more assets, makes more money, sells more product) and therefore your small piece of said company is worth more, because people are willing to pay more to take it off your hands.
Why does gold ever appreciate? It becomes more scarce, demand goes up, new gold mines don't pan out and can't keep up with current demand--many reasons. Your gold bar doesn't suddenly get bigger, but it is worth more because people are willing to pay more for it.
Neither have any realized profits unless you sell them when they're up. But it doesn't mean there's no added value there, or that you somehow can't measure that value.
That's not a strongly competitive market, is it? When there is more labor than jobs to fill, salaries go down and competition is hard. When there are more jobs than labor to fill them, salaries go up and there is much less competition. Anybody who was in tech during and after the bubble has seen both sides. It evens out eventually, but at any given point you're not guaranteed a favorable condition.
I think the app should be allowed, but I can completely see Apple's reasoning for taking it down, and it is completely within their rights to take it down.
It is within Apple's best interests to take it down for the reason the guy you're arguing with already gave. Someone will likely sue them over it at some point, and even though the app does exactly what it claims to do (NOTHING), is clearly marked as $999.99, and you're an idiot if you buy it, it still probably isn't worth Apple's time and money to deal with possible litigation resulting from this. Even frivolous lawsuits cost the participants money.
So yeah, although I totally agree Apple should leave it up, I can totally see why they didn't. It's just a lawsuit waiting to happen, and that's a hassle they don't need.
This is just Apple being selfish and trying to remove something that mocks them. Stupid if you ask me, let the free market do it's thing.
The free market *is* doing its thing. Apple is exercising its right to not offer a product through its service. There's nothing that isn't free market about that. Forcing them to offer a product they do not want to offer through their service would be *against* free market principles.
The app, imo, is totally valid as long as it does what it claimed even if it's over priced because no one forced you to buy it. Apple should reinstate it.
I completely agree. The subtle difference in my stance as opposed to the one I think you hold (and forgive me if I'm wrong here) is that I don't think Apple should be *forced* to put it back. If enough of their customers complain about something, they're within their rights to change it. It's sad that dumb people can force a company to do dumb things, but forcing Apple to do otherwise is even dumber.
I do have a problem with the pure seniority model as well. I don't think time worked is nearly as important as competence and skills. But then again, using your line of reasoning, if you can get your employer to buy it... Its fine and dandy.
Yup. I believe that, within certain limited restrictions, two people or entities should be allowed to freely enter into a contractual agreement. If you can convince your employer to sign a contract with you that says you get free donuts every morning and are entitled to a Swedish massage every week, that's between you and your employer. You're probably not going to get that kind of contract unless the value you bring to the company is equal to or more than what you're demanding in return, though, so it's very unlikely bolt turners on an assembly line would be able to bargain for this in a truly free market.
The "limited restrictions", basically, are that you are not free to contract for something illegal. Contract murder, for instance, is not an enforceable contract (not that you'd take your hitman to court for breach of contract if he decided not to go through with it anyway, but you see the theory.) Similarly, these non-compete clauses, under current California law, are unenforceable--you can't contract for something that is illegal, nor should you be allowed to. We can argue about whether or not non-compete clauses *should* be illegal or not, but there doesn't seem to be any argument (at least, anymore) about whether they *are* illegal in California.
I do think there is some protections that should be granted though, like firing people for reasons that have nothing to do with their accepted wage, or ability to do the job, reasons such as gender, sexual orientation, and race. We probably disagree there...
From a strictly libertarian worldview, yes, discrimination should be legal. Anybody should be free to do anything that doesn't infringe upon the rights of others, and in theory, refusing someone a job because they are gay or black does not infringe upon their rights, because they don't have a right to a job.
In practice? I think in practice, a compromise is necessary. If discrimination was widespread enough, a person could end up unemployable because of their race or creed or whatever. Institutionalized discrimination could easily lead to infringement on personal rights. If you can't make a living through no fault of your own because of something you are not free to change (or should not be reasonably expected to change in order to be employed) then your rights are almost certainly being infringed indirectly. So I can certainly see the need for certain limited anti-discrimination laws.
A truly hardcore libertarian would probably disagree, and could come up with a thousand reasons why I'm wrong. But these are the same people who think it's a good idea to run on a platform of "ELIMINATE ALL TAXES NOW!" and don't see how that could possibly be a problem.
Libertarians are not against unions in principle. Collective bargaining is something you are completely free to try, if you can convince your employer to go for it. What they're against is the idea that employers should be forced to allow it.
If you are an unskilled laborer, and there is someone else out there who will do your job for less than what you will do it for, your employer should be completely free to get rid of you and hire that person. You do not have a right to that particular job or to any particular wage. You are entitled to whatever you can bargain for with your employer. If you and all your coworkers get together and insist on collective bargaining, and your employer thinks it'd be better to go for that than to go through the hassle of firing the lot of you and hiring a whole new staff, that's great. You're completely free to do that.
You can't sign a contract that allows another party to do something to you that is against the law. You can't, for instance, sign a contract, even knowingly and willfully, that allows someone else to shoot you in the leg. That person will still get tried for assault.
So no, it's not a nutty ruling. If the law says non-compete clauses are illegal, you can't just go ahead and sign a contract that has one in it anyway and expect it will be enforced. Nobody is allowed to break the law just because they signed a contract saying they could.
Think if your iPod, every time you turned it on, had to connect via WiFi to a server at your house in order to do anything at all. A thin client has just a tiny OS that basically has no functionality whatsoever except the ability to make a network connection to a server and get you logged in. Windows thin clients are usually run off WinCE or Embedded XP, but you generally have zero interaction with the OS burned into the firmware--it's only there to pop up an RDP screen and let you connect to some other machine.
If all your iPod could do was connect via WiFi to your home computer and run iTunes on your home computer and stream the music back to your headphones, then you could consider it a thin client. But the GP was right--your iPod is just a mini computer. It has its own OS and it runs iTunes locally, not remotely.
It was a commonly accepted fact for quite awhile. If you read any Asimov or Heinlein stories in your youth, you could have picked it up there, because both of those guys wrote about the dark side of Mercury. I'm not sure when exactly it was discovered that this is not true, actually.
Few young people realize that until the 1964-1968 time period it was possible to bring your dollars to the government and get precious metal on demand.
You're also being trolled. The AC was (probably deliberately) conflating the LHC with the SSC (the Superconducting Super Collider) which *was* being built in Texas, and had it not been killed by Congress in the mid 90s, would still be the highest energy collider in the world (even the LHC would not have outdone it).
Pretty sure you're just being intentionally dumb here, but you're thinking of the Superconducting Supercollider. The SSC was indeed being built in Texas, but Congress killed it in the mid 90s.
I think what he's trying to say is that individual photons only ever travel at c. What's happening when light "slows down" when it enters a medium is that individual photons are being absorbed by the atoms of the substance, their electrons are jumping to a higher state, and then a photon is re-emmited sometime later. This process takes time, and is what causes the appearance that light has "slowed down" as it passes through a medium.
I have no idea if that's a correct explanation of the phenomenon or not, but that's how I parse the explanation.
Slashdot Mirror
Might I suggest something that can actually be pronounced without spitting all over the place?
http://www.alphasmart.com/Retail/
Try that. Doesn't do OpenOffice formatting I don't think, but it seems to fit the bill otherwise.
How are you going to make sure the people who "did all the work" get the profits without patents?
So because you can't be bothered to read means the GUBMINT should protect you from the evil corporations who, in English, up front, are explaining to you what they intend to do with the stuff you give to them, and that you implicitly agreed to when you clicked your happy ass through that EULA?
No, sorry, that's not how it should work. Take responsibility for your own actions (or lack thereof). You are not entitled to be lazy and then go complain to big brother to "fix it" when someone does something you agreed to let them do.
No, you have it backwards. These are all things that Libertarians want Congress to *stick* to doing, and stop doing all the rest of the stuff like wealth redistribution that they have no authority to do.
Solicitation is a crime. So yes, if you ask a police woman to have sex with you for money, you have committed a crime.
Netflix surely has a good engineering team that is thoroughly familiar with the system.
This is a bad assumption. It is not at all unusual for a company to build an in-house product, then have all the developers who actually wrote the thing move on to bigger and better things, leaving behind junior and not-quite-up-to-speed people to maintain it day-to-day. No matter how good the documentation (hahahahahaha documentation!) is that the original developers left behind, there's always things buried deep in the bowels of any large piece of software that can bite you in the ass if you're not careful. It may be something the original developers thought would "never come up" or it may just be a bug that has been in there from day one that never got triggered until someone did just the right combination of things that wasn't anticipated by the original developers.
The company I work at now uses a heavily modified bit of proprietary software written in COBOL. Over the years, all the people who have written the modifications have left the company, so nobody really *knows* how this thing works anymore. We keep pulling COBOL programmers out of retirement and have them come in and spend weeks reading code trying to figure it out, but I'm still not convinced anybody here really understands the system--it *still* does things we can't explain from time to time. Now I'm sure Netflix's software wasn't written in COBOL, but it's still very easy for this situation to come up if a company is not super careful--and they never are.
But why would it go up in value?
He already told you. Because the company is worth more (has more assets, makes more money, sells more product) and therefore your small piece of said company is worth more, because people are willing to pay more to take it off your hands.
Why does gold ever appreciate? It becomes more scarce, demand goes up, new gold mines don't pan out and can't keep up with current demand--many reasons. Your gold bar doesn't suddenly get bigger, but it is worth more because people are willing to pay more for it.
Neither have any realized profits unless you sell them when they're up. But it doesn't mean there's no added value there, or that you somehow can't measure that value.
If you aren't in a situation where you have marketable skills, that's probably an indication that you need to develop some... marketable skills.
Nobody is entitled to a particular job, or a particular rate of pay.
That's not a strongly competitive market, is it? When there is more labor than jobs to fill, salaries go down and competition is hard. When there are more jobs than labor to fill them, salaries go up and there is much less competition. Anybody who was in tech during and after the bubble has seen both sides. It evens out eventually, but at any given point you're not guaranteed a favorable condition.
I think the app should be allowed, but I can completely see Apple's reasoning for taking it down, and it is completely within their rights to take it down.
It is within Apple's best interests to take it down for the reason the guy you're arguing with already gave. Someone will likely sue them over it at some point, and even though the app does exactly what it claims to do (NOTHING), is clearly marked as $999.99, and you're an idiot if you buy it, it still probably isn't worth Apple's time and money to deal with possible litigation resulting from this. Even frivolous lawsuits cost the participants money.
So yeah, although I totally agree Apple should leave it up, I can totally see why they didn't. It's just a lawsuit waiting to happen, and that's a hassle they don't need.
This is just Apple being selfish and trying to remove something that mocks them. Stupid if you ask me, let the free market do it's thing.
The free market *is* doing its thing. Apple is exercising its right to not offer a product through its service. There's nothing that isn't free market about that. Forcing them to offer a product they do not want to offer through their service would be *against* free market principles.
The app, imo, is totally valid as long as it does what it claimed even if it's over priced because no one forced you to buy it. Apple should reinstate it.
I completely agree. The subtle difference in my stance as opposed to the one I think you hold (and forgive me if I'm wrong here) is that I don't think Apple should be *forced* to put it back. If enough of their customers complain about something, they're within their rights to change it. It's sad that dumb people can force a company to do dumb things, but forcing Apple to do otherwise is even dumber.
I do have a problem with the pure seniority model as well. I don't think time worked is nearly as important as competence and skills. But then again, using your line of reasoning, if you can get your employer to buy it... Its fine and dandy.
Yup. I believe that, within certain limited restrictions, two people or entities should be allowed to freely enter into a contractual agreement. If you can convince your employer to sign a contract with you that says you get free donuts every morning and are entitled to a Swedish massage every week, that's between you and your employer. You're probably not going to get that kind of contract unless the value you bring to the company is equal to or more than what you're demanding in return, though, so it's very unlikely bolt turners on an assembly line would be able to bargain for this in a truly free market.
The "limited restrictions", basically, are that you are not free to contract for something illegal. Contract murder, for instance, is not an enforceable contract (not that you'd take your hitman to court for breach of contract if he decided not to go through with it anyway, but you see the theory.) Similarly, these non-compete clauses, under current California law, are unenforceable--you can't contract for something that is illegal, nor should you be allowed to. We can argue about whether or not non-compete clauses *should* be illegal or not, but there doesn't seem to be any argument (at least, anymore) about whether they *are* illegal in California.
I do think there is some protections that should be granted though, like firing people for reasons that have nothing to do with their accepted wage, or ability to do the job, reasons such as gender, sexual orientation, and race. We probably disagree there...
From a strictly libertarian worldview, yes, discrimination should be legal. Anybody should be free to do anything that doesn't infringe upon the rights of others, and in theory, refusing someone a job because they are gay or black does not infringe upon their rights, because they don't have a right to a job.
In practice? I think in practice, a compromise is necessary. If discrimination was widespread enough, a person could end up unemployable because of their race or creed or whatever. Institutionalized discrimination could easily lead to infringement on personal rights. If you can't make a living through no fault of your own because of something you are not free to change (or should not be reasonably expected to change in order to be employed) then your rights are almost certainly being infringed indirectly. So I can certainly see the need for certain limited anti-discrimination laws.
A truly hardcore libertarian would probably disagree, and could come up with a thousand reasons why I'm wrong. But these are the same people who think it's a good idea to run on a platform of "ELIMINATE ALL TAXES NOW!" and don't see how that could possibly be a problem.
Libertarians are not against unions in principle. Collective bargaining is something you are completely free to try, if you can convince your employer to go for it. What they're against is the idea that employers should be forced to allow it.
If you are an unskilled laborer, and there is someone else out there who will do your job for less than what you will do it for, your employer should be completely free to get rid of you and hire that person. You do not have a right to that particular job or to any particular wage. You are entitled to whatever you can bargain for with your employer. If you and all your coworkers get together and insist on collective bargaining, and your employer thinks it'd be better to go for that than to go through the hassle of firing the lot of you and hiring a whole new staff, that's great. You're completely free to do that.
You can't sign a contract that allows another party to do something to you that is against the law. You can't, for instance, sign a contract, even knowingly and willfully, that allows someone else to shoot you in the leg. That person will still get tried for assault.
So no, it's not a nutty ruling. If the law says non-compete clauses are illegal, you can't just go ahead and sign a contract that has one in it anyway and expect it will be enforced. Nobody is allowed to break the law just because they signed a contract saying they could.
Arthur Anderson and Enron both effectively received the death penalty for what they did. How is that not the harshest possible punishment?
I vote we get rid of the government nanny state so we don't have to deal with this at all.
You don't understand what a thin client is.
Think if your iPod, every time you turned it on, had to connect via WiFi to a server at your house in order to do anything at all. A thin client has just a tiny OS that basically has no functionality whatsoever except the ability to make a network connection to a server and get you logged in. Windows thin clients are usually run off WinCE or Embedded XP, but you generally have zero interaction with the OS burned into the firmware--it's only there to pop up an RDP screen and let you connect to some other machine.
If all your iPod could do was connect via WiFi to your home computer and run iTunes on your home computer and stream the music back to your headphones, then you could consider it a thin client. But the GP was right--your iPod is just a mini computer. It has its own OS and it runs iTunes locally, not remotely.
It was a commonly accepted fact for quite awhile. If you read any Asimov or Heinlein stories in your youth, you could have picked it up there, because both of those guys wrote about the dark side of Mercury. I'm not sure when exactly it was discovered that this is not true, actually.
Few young people realize that until the 1964-1968 time period it was possible to bring your dollars to the government and get precious metal on demand.
You haven't been able to do this since 1933.
Actually, you could do it up until 1971, at least if you were a foreign government: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock
From an end-user viewpoint, there is no difference at all.
You're also being trolled. The AC was (probably deliberately) conflating the LHC with the SSC (the Superconducting Super Collider) which *was* being built in Texas, and had it not been killed by Congress in the mid 90s, would still be the highest energy collider in the world (even the LHC would not have outdone it).
Pretty sure you're just being intentionally dumb here, but you're thinking of the Superconducting Supercollider. The SSC was indeed being built in Texas, but Congress killed it in the mid 90s.
I think what he's trying to say is that individual photons only ever travel at c. What's happening when light "slows down" when it enters a medium is that individual photons are being absorbed by the atoms of the substance, their electrons are jumping to a higher state, and then a photon is re-emmited sometime later. This process takes time, and is what causes the appearance that light has "slowed down" as it passes through a medium.
I have no idea if that's a correct explanation of the phenomenon or not, but that's how I parse the explanation.