Let's just say that, just like you don't want people freely bidding for, say, a biological weapon some lab came up with
You are cherry-picking from among the few examples that almost everyone agrees should *not* be for sale to anyone with cash (also included in that category would be nukes and selected ICBM technologies). However, it does not follow that computer vulnerabilities are subject to the same level of scrutiny simply because there exist unrelated items, nukes and biological weapons, that almost everyone agrees should not be for sale. The comparison does nothing to advance your suggestion that the "free market" is not a good idea in the case of software vulnerabilities.
Are those legal on TV? How about putting those episodes on the internet (say CBS did it), would that be legal under this law? Seems to me those two answers might be different.
That depends upon where the episodes in question are being broadcast. It is not unusual for episodes from American produced television series to be censored, edited for content when broadcast, or even banned entirely in the UK, where a long tradition of censorship of broadcast media exists. Presumably these laws would extend to the Internet in that if a UK citizen viewed the banned episode that was posted by an American then it would still be unlawful in the UK (or anywhere else where free speech is free sort of but with exceptions). It has always seemed strange to me that the British feel this need to ban their citizens from watching certain American films. The problem is that films that were banned say 40 or 50 years ago, at least in theory, still remained banned long after the societal norms have passed them by (i.e. films that were considered outrageous in the 1950s would probably be considered campy or quaint by today's standards...omg you can see her bare thighs...the horror!). The broadcast censors may get around to "un-banning" the content eventually (especially if something becomes notorious for having been banned according to the prudish standards of the 1950s), but then again they might not so you *could* still get busted (at least in theory) for importing that American copy of Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" even though it is no longer "wild" by today's standards.
As a student, I can find health coverage for as cheap as like $1000 or so per year. I'm not exactly how much of everything it covers, but I feel it isn't worth it.
The insurance is meant to cover you in the event that you have a catastrophic accident or sudden and massively expensive illness such as cancer which causes your medical expenses to pass the $5,000 per year mark or have a one time hospital bill of say $50,000 for major life saving surgeries after your accident that were, of course, unforeseen. The point of insurance is to cover your butt in the event that the worst case scenario actually occurs, not to see how much it pays on small things like your doctor visits or your prescription drug co-pays. The various scenarios can be modeled on the expected winnings equation from probability theory or:
expected winnings = expected winnings (hospital bills) * chance of catastrophic accident or illness (i.e. expensive) - expected losses (paid insurance premiums, but no accidents or illness) * chance of not having illness or accident in a given year (or 1-P where P was the probability that you would have the expensive accident or illness)
Now, depending upon the premium and the deductible for the insurance (the point where the insurance kicks in and pays 100% up to a very high, ~$500,000 - $3 million, set lifetime or perhaps unlimited amount) a rational person would choose to buy the insurance.
Logically, if I had the money, I could put that $1000 aside each year, into an interest earning bank account. I could then use that money, when needed, for any health care related issues.
This is exactly why the United States government legislated into being the Health Savings Account, a tax-deductible savings account for expected and unexpected health care expenses (provided that you have a high deductible health plan, ~$1,250+ depending upon your situation) with a yearly maximum contribution (you can save extra money above and beyond the maximum in a separate general savings or investment account of course, but it wouldn't be tax deductible) so that you can pay up to your deductibles when you need to. The only problem is that many people in the United States still get their health care coverage through their employer in plans which do not qualify. However, this plan is now available to all taxpayers who can get a qualifying health care plan.
Chances are, I won't be using $1000 worth of health care coverage in any given year, given that I am not unhealthy enough to reap the benefits.
That is short sighted, you don't buy the insurance only if you think that you are going to fully use it each year. The insurance companies wouldn't be able to offer you insurance if you planned to fully use it every year or they would offer you such a high premium that you wouldn't want to buy it. This kind of thing happens with cell phone insurance, where most people who buy it plan to collect at some point so the insurance providers charge very high rates to cover it (on a percentage basis)...people just don't notice because cell phones are relatively cheap and the insurance "is only $5 more per month", but if you work it out then it is a bad deal.
Another good reason to buy your health insurance sooner rather than later is that once you have a serious and expensive illness *nobody* will sell you a new policy (at least not as an individual), so you have to rely on your existing insurance.
Unfortunately, if I am seriously hurt, I am out of luck. Even if I did get health care coverage, chances are there will be a copay or percentage of the cost I would have to pay. This means I'm going to have to find money, outside of that $1000 I would be paying, to pay for something I need.
That is why rational people choose to save some money for health expenses, perhaps in their Health Savings Account, so that when that day comes they will have saved money to meet their deductible when the illness or accident strikes...save for a rainy day and all of that.
many doctors who accept insurance in populous areas are simply not accepting new patients
Then you either have the wrong health plan or you are seeing the wrong doctors. I have a high deductible, non-hmo, health savings account plan and I had no problem whatsoever seeing the doctor of *my* choice immediately the last time I needed him because that doctor knew that he would receive *full* payment for his services and not some low-balled arm-twisting HMO rate. If you tell a doctor that he has to accept ten dollars per hour for your treatment, take it or leave it, then don't be surprised when most doctors respond by leaving it (i.e. "sorry, but we are not accepting new patients right now"). The moral of the story is that price controls, whatever form they take, always always always result in shortages, waiting lists, or rationing. There is no free lunch and you really do get what you pay for.
It's a shame to even ask that question. It shows a profound lack of understanding of how the world operates.
On the contrary the question is absolutely worth asking. If you were in the situation that the parent describes then you would be asking the same question. How would you feel if you had worked hard all your life, prudently saving and spending your money, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and finally enjoying some measure of success for your hard work and effort only to be handed a bill for the poor life choices of other people? I agree that the government should provide assistance for those few genuinely hard up cases out there, but let's be honest...many of those people who want to reach into your pocket when they need a few bucks are those same lazy bums that you so aptly describe. They could have turned out differently, but they made some bad choices. Now, it may be worthwhile to help these people anyway, since it is better to have a marginally productive citizen than a lazy bum, but they must also be willing to help themselves or else you are doing nothing except enabling another lazy bum.
If you want to spend your money helping these people without expectation of change in their lifestyle, the by all means do so, but try to keep your hand (the hand of the taxman) out of my pocket while you are doing it. It is the height of hubris and intellectual arrogance to presume that one knows better how to spend the money of another man on his behalf, through taxes to achieve some misguided egalitarian goals, than the man does for himself and his own benefit. It is this type of socialist thinking which makes men slaves to the state and heirs to an equal portion of misery for all.
You say that the question indicates a profound lack of understanding of how the world operates, but I say that it indicates a keen understanding of how the world operates in that the parent is indicating his desire to *not* pay for the poor choices of the lazy bums precisely because he understands the value of a day of hard work and does not wish to be coerced into sharing the fruits of his labors with the lazy bums.
Fuck all of you blasting Socialized Medicine - it's a safety net for people like me - like the original poster of this thread said: healthcare is a necessity, not a luxury - unless you don't mind dying early or being crippled for life.
While I sympathize with your position it is difficult to accept your argument when it is so obviously based upon an appeal to emotion. My question is twofold, first is it prudent to do without health insurance, which is obviously prudent and important for one to obtain, while at the same time owning and operating an automobile? I maintained health insurance, even in my poor student days, while simultaneously NOT owning and operating an automobile, for precisely this reason (among others). Second, you say that you want socialized medicine, but in your case you will probably pay less taxes than the costs of your likely future care. While this may be a good thing for you it is probably not a good thing for Canada. It may therefore be difficult for someone in your situation to receive full benefits in Canada without meeting some relatively high bar for entry into their system, especially if you were not born there. Finally, would you say that is fair for a man to help himself from the pocket of another man (taxes are not optional after all, they are really a form of coercion backed up by threat of violence on the part of the government) simply because you desire a good or service, however needed and noble that good or service may be, and cannot or will not pay what it actually costs for society to produce that good or service? Perhaps you do believe that such a thing is fair, but I on the other hand do not. I did not spend money on other discretionary things when I was a poor student, such as an automobile, so that I *would* have enough money to pay for health insurance, which wasn't particularly expensive anyway because I was young and healthy at the time. The problem with socialized medicine is and always will be that it removes the responsibility for the consequences of certain life choices from the people who make those choices and therefore incentivizes people to make those choices anyway secure in the knowledge that they are protected from the consequences of those choices. Unfortunately, this wears heavily on the people who work hard and play by the rules and we very soon tire of paying a heavy tax burden to cover people who have their priorities out of whack. So I wish you good luck in Canada and bid you farewell from the United States, but I cannot say that I will be sorry to see you go.
I think a war should be fought to determine the owner...would be interesting history making to wage war in that type of environment...
heh...Canada would lose big time to the Russians, unless the United States came to their rescue. The Canadians have chosen throughout their history to devote somewhat less to military spending than other nations, which is not necessarily a bad thing. However, it does mean that one cannot go around spoiling for a fight with those nations that *have* spent massively on their militaries.
Liability for any loss resulting from unauthorized Internet banking transactions rests with the customer if they have 'used a computer or device that does not have appropriate protective software and operating system installed.
What is and is not appropriate and who decides that? If it is the banks then you can bet that Linux and FOSS will probably not be on the pre-approved list and will require substantial hassles to be approved by the bank. Perhaps they intend to run Active-X controls on their sites to run and enforce these checks? How long until we see a "Banking Designed for Windows" or "Certified Banking for Windows" logo campaign complete with FUD marketing issuing warnings and alerts concerning "risky" open source or free products?
you should use the * + 2-4 digit codes to set your number to "unblock Caller ID or I will not take your call". That way the caller must unblock their Caller ID, which they can do on a per call basis with another star code, or the call will never be routed through the phone network to your phone. They can still spoof the ID if they want to, but if you don't recognize them or you were not expecting the call then you can choose not to answer it
its become perfectly okay to have a firm opinion, no matter how insane it is (Cheney and his "I'm not in the executive" for starters).
That sword cuts both ways...there is a similar phenomenon on the left, which is sympathetic to strong opinions, ignoring reasonable objections to the contrary, as long as the proponent is 'passionate' in their advocacy of the position. I agree that the level of debate has declined substantially in both civility and intelligence here in the United States, but whose fault is that? To paraphrase Julius Caesar, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
It was dropped as soon as the Soviet Union fell. The primary purpose of the program was to tempt the Russians into a spending war by uping the ante in the arms race and waiting for them to call our bluff (sort of like going all-in for a decisive hand in a game of high stakes poker). The United States gambled (correctly) that the Russians would not be able to call the bet as the defense budget spiraled into the hundreds of billions of dollars. The Soviet Union would have collapsed eventually anyway (by the early 1980s they were already in dire economic straits), but Strategic Defense Initiative probably hastened the process (by adding even more pressure to keep up with the Joneses at the worst possible time for the Soviets). The project itself wasn't useless, other technologies came out of research conducted by the United States, but the Strategic Defense Initiative, as envisioned in the pentagon promotional films, never would have worked. In, fact the movie, Spies Like Us focus on the humorous and wasteful extravagence of a program which ultimately fails to shoot down a single missile (they blow up the MTV satellite instead).
The criticisms of Google's "college kid" atmosphere remind me of the apple "flashback" ad from the "get a mac" campaign where PC is always calculating how much time Mac is wasting doing "fun" things like creating something in iPhoto. iLife really does imitate art I suppose.
Is it just a fundamental belief on here that copyright holders should have no recourse against violaters?
No, but there is a problem with the system as it presently exists. The protection of intellectual property was orignially enshrined in the Constitution as a *limited* (not as Jack Valenti was fond of saying, "infinity minus one day") term of protection, and therefore profit, for the creator in exchange for the public receiving the fruits of that idea when it entered the public domain, thereby "promoting the progress of useful arts and sciences". However, something has gone wrong over the last one hundred years and the careful balance that was maintained between creators and the public by copyright, patent, and trade secret laws has been steadily erroded, hijacked, and skewed in the favor of the creators to the point that now many copyrights will not expire during the *lifetimes* of the people presently living that want to use or benefit from these "useful arts and sciences" without paying monopoly rents to the creators.
The average citizen can no longer maintain his position in copyright law against the onslaught of the content creators and their big money full-time lobbyists and so the public domain is erroded to the point where only quaint anachronisms and rare abandonments will ever see the light of day in the public domain. In the face of such a manifestly unfair system, as it stands today, many people have decided to work around or outside of the system because it is impossible for them to work within it.
The MAFIAA will attempt to drag this out as long as possible (10-20 years probably) all the while dangling a settlement worth tens of millions of dollars in front of her. It would take a *very* principled person to go through that, even though she is in the right, while forgoing all of that money in the meantime for an uncertain reward (the legal system sometimes delivers surprises after all). It may be impossible for her anyway unless she gets some legal help from the likes of EFF or Groklaw behind her to see the case through to the end. I would like to see the MAFIAAs toes held to the fire as much as anyone, but as the parent has said this is a shady organization that resorts to questionable tactics. I wouldn't put it past them to engage in a campaign of threatening phone calls, scary surveillance people, and assorted harassments (ala the big tobacco lawsuits) to 'convince' her to accept the settlement. If I were her, I would be seeking some dependable bodyguards to fend off the MAFIAA goon squads.
since the act of handing a single copied CD is clearly protected behavior...
Well, you wouldn't know that from the propaganda that the MAFIAA prepares as 'educational and factual' instructional materials to be shown in American classrooms right along with the reading, writing, and arithmetic. If further evidence of under-qualified, unmotivated, and undiscerning teachers in our public school system was required then surely this fits the bill. Manipulating politicians (who as adults should know better) is one thing, but presenting false or misleading information to our children in the guise of factual instructional materials is especially contemptible.
Vista: The program ~_AllofTheBestOffers.exe is attempting to escalate its privilege level, Cancel or Allow?
User: Allow, Allow, Allow (dangit where is the free pron already?)
Vista: The program ~tracker.exe is attempting to change the firewall settings, Cancel or Allow?
User: Change the what? Allow...come on
Vista: The run32.dll has been altered since the last system scan do you wish to proceed? Cancel or Allow?
User: sigh....Allow
Vista: Windows has been updated and must be restarted, Cancel or Allow?
User: hmmmm....don't remember getting updates but updates are good...Allow
Several weeks later....
User: What is going on with all of these popups and free pron offers? Isn't Vista supposed to be more secure?
Support: Did you try rebooting?
User: yes, yes, yes I have already done that.
Support: Well, we can send you a new motherboard w/installation instructions....
User: Thanks, but my bank is on the other line...I am having some trouble with my accounts. Can I call you back?
Support: We are here to serve all of your customer service needs.
User: Uh, yeah whatever, bye.
The moral of this story is that no matter how many times the user is forced to click Allow, I agree, Yes, or Continue in order to shoot themselves the foot they will find a way to do it guaranteed. It may be true that Vista is better than XP is or was out of the box, but they have to assume that even though the user would have to click Allow ten times for some malware to get through that it will happen and not just to a couple of people either. They should at least tell people that they are working on the fixes instead of saying, "well if you are smart you wont get hacked, just don't always click allow."
I do that frequently when websites force the user to fill out a profile for whatever lame reason. I am usually an 70+ year old female CEO or CFO of a fortune 1000 company who makes purchasing decisions for 100,000+ person departments, my hobbies are usually woodworking, knitting, and fly fishing, and my annual income is always stated (for the purposes of maximum database poisoning) to be less than 15,000 per year or more than 250,000. Does anybody answer such surveys honestly anymore? Do the advertisers actually believe that this information is accurate? They should just save their money and dump the survey companies.
Politicians live in a different world my friend and the lobbyists do everything that they can to maintain the illusion for them. Perhaps there is some vague notion of service to the public remaining in the back of their collective heads, but for most of them the reality of living a normal life and working a typical job is so far removed from their everyday experience that the parliament building might as well be located somewhere in the Twilight Zone.
As terms and concepts we all took for granted when the agreements were written get redefined to mean something entirely different
They were taken for granted because in the early and formative years of OS development (i.e. circa 1950-1980 or the first 30 years or so) nobody bothered to litigate when Bell Labs decided to unilaterally alter the memory manager (back then it was tapes I think) in the operating system kernel. The terms cannot be redefined per se because many of them never were defined in a way that everyone agreed on and people wrote code because they thought that certain features would be useful, they didn't think of anti-trust laws.
My question is this...Why can Microsoft, or indeed any company, be compelled to make it easy for you to integrate whatever unforseen modification that you might like to make into their existing system? Can I sue GM because the Suburban, as it is sold at retail, is not readily or easily converted into a rocket car? Where is the line drawn?
or if someone from IT gets an iPhone they write a plugin for Exchange w/Visual Studio so that they can support syncing their new iPhone (good sourceforge project) to the corporate messaging system. Management finds out about the custom job at some point in the future (in which case some enterprising middle manager takes credit for the successful "project" even though he had nothing to do with it whatsoever) or perhaps never in which case the people in the IT department enjoy their synced iPhones and nobody is the wiser.
Long story short: Bad fan on the power supply. After reviewing options, he decided that the option he liked was to buy a new machine.
After market power supplies can be had brand new for less than $120 for a really nice one (Antec Whisper w/variable speed temperature controlled fans and 400+ watts) and less than $60 for a generic one. Heck you could probably pick up a used one (salvaged by your local electronics warehouse store from who knows what old machine) in the parts bin for $20 or less. The upgrade is really simple too (or at least it should be) unless Dell uses some funky non-standard positioning, sizing, and mounting holes (I presume that this was the case?). In any case this is substantially cheaper than purchasing a new PC just to get a new power supply. In the worst case you might have to order the non-standard Dell power supply from Dell (they do sell spares right?).
Slashdot Mirror
Let's just say that, just like you don't want people freely bidding for, say, a biological weapon some lab came up with
You are cherry-picking from among the few examples that almost everyone agrees should *not* be for sale to anyone with cash (also included in that category would be nukes and selected ICBM technologies). However, it does not follow that computer vulnerabilities are subject to the same level of scrutiny simply because there exist unrelated items, nukes and biological weapons, that almost everyone agrees should not be for sale. The comparison does nothing to advance your suggestion that the "free market" is not a good idea in the case of software vulnerabilities.
Are those legal on TV? How about putting those episodes on the internet (say CBS did it), would that be legal under this law? Seems to me those two answers might be different.
That depends upon where the episodes in question are being broadcast. It is not unusual for episodes from American produced television series to be censored, edited for content when broadcast, or even banned entirely in the UK, where a long tradition of censorship of broadcast media exists. Presumably these laws would extend to the Internet in that if a UK citizen viewed the banned episode that was posted by an American then it would still be unlawful in the UK (or anywhere else where free speech is free sort of but with exceptions). It has always seemed strange to me that the British feel this need to ban their citizens from watching certain American films. The problem is that films that were banned say 40 or 50 years ago, at least in theory, still remained banned long after the societal norms have passed them by (i.e. films that were considered outrageous in the 1950s would probably be considered campy or quaint by today's standards...omg you can see her bare thighs...the horror!). The broadcast censors may get around to "un-banning" the content eventually (especially if something becomes notorious for having been banned according to the prudish standards of the 1950s), but then again they might not so you *could* still get busted (at least in theory) for importing that American copy of Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" even though it is no longer "wild" by today's standards.
As a student, I can find health coverage for as cheap as like $1000 or so per year. I'm not exactly how much of everything it covers, but I feel it isn't worth it.
The insurance is meant to cover you in the event that you have a catastrophic accident or sudden and massively expensive illness such as cancer which causes your medical expenses to pass the $5,000 per year mark or have a one time hospital bill of say $50,000 for major life saving surgeries after your accident that were, of course, unforeseen. The point of insurance is to cover your butt in the event that the worst case scenario actually occurs, not to see how much it pays on small things like your doctor visits or your prescription drug co-pays. The various scenarios can be modeled on the expected winnings equation from probability theory or:
expected winnings = expected winnings (hospital bills) * chance of catastrophic accident or illness (i.e. expensive) - expected losses (paid insurance premiums, but no accidents or illness) * chance of not having illness or accident in a given year (or 1-P where P was the probability that you would have the expensive accident or illness)
Now, depending upon the premium and the deductible for the insurance (the point where the insurance kicks in and pays 100% up to a very high, ~$500,000 - $3 million, set lifetime or perhaps unlimited amount) a rational person would choose to buy the insurance.
Logically, if I had the money, I could put that $1000 aside each year, into an interest earning bank account. I could then use that money, when needed, for any health care related issues.
This is exactly why the United States government legislated into being the Health Savings Account, a tax-deductible savings account for expected and unexpected health care expenses (provided that you have a high deductible health plan, ~$1,250+ depending upon your situation) with a yearly maximum contribution (you can save extra money above and beyond the maximum in a separate general savings or investment account of course, but it wouldn't be tax deductible) so that you can pay up to your deductibles when you need to. The only problem is that many people in the United States still get their health care coverage through their employer in plans which do not qualify. However, this plan is now available to all taxpayers who can get a qualifying health care plan.
Chances are, I won't be using $1000 worth of health care coverage in any given year, given that I am not unhealthy enough to reap the benefits.
That is short sighted, you don't buy the insurance only if you think that you are going to fully use it each year. The insurance companies wouldn't be able to offer you insurance if you planned to fully use it every year or they would offer you such a high premium that you wouldn't want to buy it. This kind of thing happens with cell phone insurance, where most people who buy it plan to collect at some point so the insurance providers charge very high rates to cover it (on a percentage basis)...people just don't notice because cell phones are relatively cheap and the insurance "is only $5 more per month", but if you work it out then it is a bad deal.
Another good reason to buy your health insurance sooner rather than later is that once you have a serious and expensive illness *nobody* will sell you a new policy (at least not as an individual), so you have to rely on your existing insurance.
Unfortunately, if I am seriously hurt, I am out of luck. Even if I did get health care coverage, chances are there will be a copay or percentage of the cost I would have to pay. This means I'm going to have to find money, outside of that $1000 I would be paying, to pay for something I need.
That is why rational people choose to save some money for health expenses, perhaps in their Health Savings Account, so that when that day comes they will have saved money to meet their deductible when the illness or accident strikes...save for a rainy day and all of that.
many doctors who accept insurance in populous areas are simply not accepting new patients
Then you either have the wrong health plan or you are seeing the wrong doctors. I have a high deductible, non-hmo, health savings account plan and I had no problem whatsoever seeing the doctor of *my* choice immediately the last time I needed him because that doctor knew that he would receive *full* payment for his services and not some low-balled arm-twisting HMO rate. If you tell a doctor that he has to accept ten dollars per hour for your treatment, take it or leave it, then don't be surprised when most doctors respond by leaving it (i.e. "sorry, but we are not accepting new patients right now"). The moral of the story is that price controls, whatever form they take, always always always result in shortages, waiting lists, or rationing. There is no free lunch and you really do get what you pay for.
It's a shame to even ask that question. It shows a profound lack of understanding of how the world operates.
On the contrary the question is absolutely worth asking. If you were in the situation that the parent describes then you would be asking the same question. How would you feel if you had worked hard all your life, prudently saving and spending your money, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and finally enjoying some measure of success for your hard work and effort only to be handed a bill for the poor life choices of other people? I agree that the government should provide assistance for those few genuinely hard up cases out there, but let's be honest...many of those people who want to reach into your pocket when they need a few bucks are those same lazy bums that you so aptly describe. They could have turned out differently, but they made some bad choices. Now, it may be worthwhile to help these people anyway, since it is better to have a marginally productive citizen than a lazy bum, but they must also be willing to help themselves or else you are doing nothing except enabling another lazy bum.
If you want to spend your money helping these people without expectation of change in their lifestyle, the by all means do so, but try to keep your hand (the hand of the taxman) out of my pocket while you are doing it. It is the height of hubris and intellectual arrogance to presume that one knows better how to spend the money of another man on his behalf, through taxes to achieve some misguided egalitarian goals, than the man does for himself and his own benefit. It is this type of socialist thinking which makes men slaves to the state and heirs to an equal portion of misery for all.
You say that the question indicates a profound lack of understanding of how the world operates, but I say that it indicates a keen understanding of how the world operates in that the parent is indicating his desire to *not* pay for the poor choices of the lazy bums precisely because he understands the value of a day of hard work and does not wish to be coerced into sharing the fruits of his labors with the lazy bums.
Fuck all of you blasting Socialized Medicine - it's a safety net for people like me - like the original poster of this thread said: healthcare is a necessity, not a luxury - unless you don't mind dying early or being crippled for life.
While I sympathize with your position it is difficult to accept your argument when it is so obviously based upon an appeal to emotion. My question is twofold, first is it prudent to do without health insurance, which is obviously prudent and important for one to obtain, while at the same time owning and operating an automobile? I maintained health insurance, even in my poor student days, while simultaneously NOT owning and operating an automobile, for precisely this reason (among others). Second, you say that you want socialized medicine, but in your case you will probably pay less taxes than the costs of your likely future care. While this may be a good thing for you it is probably not a good thing for Canada. It may therefore be difficult for someone in your situation to receive full benefits in Canada without meeting some relatively high bar for entry into their system, especially if you were not born there. Finally, would you say that is fair for a man to help himself from the pocket of another man (taxes are not optional after all, they are really a form of coercion backed up by threat of violence on the part of the government) simply because you desire a good or service, however needed and noble that good or service may be, and cannot or will not pay what it actually costs for society to produce that good or service? Perhaps you do believe that such a thing is fair, but I on the other hand do not. I did not spend money on other discretionary things when I was a poor student, such as an automobile, so that I *would* have enough money to pay for health insurance, which wasn't particularly expensive anyway because I was young and healthy at the time. The problem with socialized medicine is and always will be that it removes the responsibility for the consequences of certain life choices from the people who make those choices and therefore incentivizes people to make those choices anyway secure in the knowledge that they are protected from the consequences of those choices. Unfortunately, this wears heavily on the people who work hard and play by the rules and we very soon tire of paying a heavy tax burden to cover people who have their priorities out of whack. So I wish you good luck in Canada and bid you farewell from the United States, but I cannot say that I will be sorry to see you go.
I propose that Slashdot add a category for 'downgrade'. They have one for 'upgrade' so why not 'downgrade'?
I think a war should be fought to determine the owner...would be interesting history making to wage war in that type of environment...
heh...Canada would lose big time to the Russians, unless the United States came to their rescue. The Canadians have chosen throughout their history to devote somewhat less to military spending than other nations, which is not necessarily a bad thing. However, it does mean that one cannot go around spoiling for a fight with those nations that *have* spent massively on their militaries.
Liability for any loss resulting from unauthorized Internet banking transactions rests with the customer if they have 'used a computer or device that does not have appropriate protective software and operating system installed.
What is and is not appropriate and who decides that? If it is the banks then you can bet that Linux and FOSS will probably not be on the pre-approved list and will require substantial hassles to be approved by the bank. Perhaps they intend to run Active-X controls on their sites to run and enforce these checks? How long until we see a "Banking Designed for Windows" or "Certified Banking for Windows" logo campaign complete with FUD marketing issuing warnings and alerts concerning "risky" open source or free products?
you should use the * + 2-4 digit codes to set your number to "unblock Caller ID or I will not take your call". That way the caller must unblock their Caller ID, which they can do on a per call basis with another star code, or the call will never be routed through the phone network to your phone. They can still spoof the ID if they want to, but if you don't recognize them or you were not expecting the call then you can choose not to answer it
its become perfectly okay to have a firm opinion, no matter how insane it is (Cheney and his "I'm not in the executive" for starters).
That sword cuts both ways...there is a similar phenomenon on the left, which is sympathetic to strong opinions, ignoring reasonable objections to the contrary, as long as the proponent is 'passionate' in their advocacy of the position. I agree that the level of debate has declined substantially in both civility and intelligence here in the United States, but whose fault is that? To paraphrase Julius Caesar, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
It was dropped as soon as the Soviet Union fell. The primary purpose of the program was to tempt the Russians into a spending war by uping the ante in the arms race and waiting for them to call our bluff (sort of like going all-in for a decisive hand in a game of high stakes poker). The United States gambled (correctly) that the Russians would not be able to call the bet as the defense budget spiraled into the hundreds of billions of dollars. The Soviet Union would have collapsed eventually anyway (by the early 1980s they were already in dire economic straits), but Strategic Defense Initiative probably hastened the process (by adding even more pressure to keep up with the Joneses at the worst possible time for the Soviets). The project itself wasn't useless, other technologies came out of research conducted by the United States, but the Strategic Defense Initiative, as envisioned in the pentagon promotional films, never would have worked. In, fact the movie, Spies Like Us focus on the humorous and wasteful extravagence of a program which ultimately fails to shoot down a single missile (they blow up the MTV satellite instead).
The criticisms of Google's "college kid" atmosphere remind me of the apple "flashback" ad from the "get a mac" campaign where PC is always calculating how much time Mac is wasting doing "fun" things like creating something in iPhoto. iLife really does imitate art I suppose.
Is it just a fundamental belief on here that copyright holders should have no recourse against violaters?
No, but there is a problem with the system as it presently exists. The protection of intellectual property was orignially enshrined in the Constitution as a *limited* (not as Jack Valenti was fond of saying, "infinity minus one day") term of protection, and therefore profit, for the creator in exchange for the public receiving the fruits of that idea when it entered the public domain, thereby "promoting the progress of useful arts and sciences". However, something has gone wrong over the last one hundred years and the careful balance that was maintained between creators and the public by copyright, patent, and trade secret laws has been steadily erroded, hijacked, and skewed in the favor of the creators to the point that now many copyrights will not expire during the *lifetimes* of the people presently living that want to use or benefit from these "useful arts and sciences" without paying monopoly rents to the creators.
The average citizen can no longer maintain his position in copyright law against the onslaught of the content creators and their big money full-time lobbyists and so the public domain is erroded to the point where only quaint anachronisms and rare abandonments will ever see the light of day in the public domain. In the face of such a manifestly unfair system, as it stands today, many people have decided to work around or outside of the system because it is impossible for them to work within it.
The MAFIAA will attempt to drag this out as long as possible (10-20 years probably) all the while dangling a settlement worth tens of millions of dollars in front of her. It would take a *very* principled person to go through that, even though she is in the right, while forgoing all of that money in the meantime for an uncertain reward (the legal system sometimes delivers surprises after all). It may be impossible for her anyway unless she gets some legal help from the likes of EFF or Groklaw behind her to see the case through to the end. I would like to see the MAFIAAs toes held to the fire as much as anyone, but as the parent has said this is a shady organization that resorts to questionable tactics. I wouldn't put it past them to engage in a campaign of threatening phone calls, scary surveillance people, and assorted harassments (ala the big tobacco lawsuits) to 'convince' her to accept the settlement. If I were her, I would be seeking some dependable bodyguards to fend off the MAFIAA goon squads.
si vis pacem, parabellum
the sig is supposed to be funny (sarcasm), but not enough people are getting the joke so I am thinking about changing it...
since the act of handing a single copied CD is clearly protected behavior...
Well, you wouldn't know that from the propaganda that the MAFIAA prepares as 'educational and factual' instructional materials to be shown in American classrooms right along with the reading, writing, and arithmetic. If further evidence of under-qualified, unmotivated, and undiscerning teachers in our public school system was required then surely this fits the bill. Manipulating politicians (who as adults should know better) is one thing, but presenting false or misleading information to our children in the guise of factual instructional materials is especially contemptible.
Vista: The program ~_AllofTheBestOffers.exe is attempting to escalate its privilege level, Cancel or Allow?
User: Allow, Allow, Allow (dangit where is the free pron already?)
Vista: The program ~tracker.exe is attempting to change the firewall settings, Cancel or Allow?
User: Change the what? Allow...come on
Vista: The run32.dll has been altered since the last system scan do you wish to proceed? Cancel or Allow?
User: sigh....Allow
Vista: Windows has been updated and must be restarted, Cancel or Allow?
User: hmmmm....don't remember getting updates but updates are good...Allow
Several weeks later....
User: What is going on with all of these popups and free pron offers? Isn't Vista supposed to be more secure?
Support: Did you try rebooting?
User: yes, yes, yes I have already done that.
Support: Well, we can send you a new motherboard w/installation instructions....
User: Thanks, but my bank is on the other line...I am having some trouble with my accounts. Can I call you back?
Support: We are here to serve all of your customer service needs.
User: Uh, yeah whatever, bye.
The moral of this story is that no matter how many times the user is forced to click Allow, I agree, Yes, or Continue in order to shoot themselves the foot they will find a way to do it guaranteed. It may be true that Vista is better than XP is or was out of the box, but they have to assume that even though the user would have to click Allow ten times for some malware to get through that it will happen and not just to a couple of people either. They should at least tell people that they are working on the fixes instead of saying, "well if you are smart you wont get hacked, just don't always click allow."
Humans lie for amusement
I do that frequently when websites force the user to fill out a profile for whatever lame reason. I am usually an 70+ year old female CEO or CFO of a fortune 1000 company who makes purchasing decisions for 100,000+ person departments, my hobbies are usually woodworking, knitting, and fly fishing, and my annual income is always stated (for the purposes of maximum database poisoning) to be less than 15,000 per year or more than 250,000. Does anybody answer such surveys honestly anymore? Do the advertisers actually believe that this information is accurate? They should just save their money and dump the survey companies.
Politicians live in a different world my friend and the lobbyists do everything that they can to maintain the illusion for them. Perhaps there is some vague notion of service to the public remaining in the back of their collective heads, but for most of them the reality of living a normal life and working a typical job is so far removed from their everyday experience that the parliament building might as well be located somewhere in the Twilight Zone.
As terms and concepts we all took for granted when the agreements were written get redefined to mean something entirely different
They were taken for granted because in the early and formative years of OS development (i.e. circa 1950-1980 or the first 30 years or so) nobody bothered to litigate when Bell Labs decided to unilaterally alter the memory manager (back then it was tapes I think) in the operating system kernel. The terms cannot be redefined per se because many of them never were defined in a way that everyone agreed on and people wrote code because they thought that certain features would be useful, they didn't think of anti-trust laws.
My question is this...Why can Microsoft, or indeed any company, be compelled to make it easy for you to integrate whatever unforseen modification that you might like to make into their existing system? Can I sue GM because the Suburban, as it is sold at retail, is not readily or easily converted into a rocket car? Where is the line drawn?
or if someone from IT gets an iPhone they write a plugin for Exchange w/Visual Studio so that they can support syncing their new iPhone (good sourceforge project) to the corporate messaging system. Management finds out about the custom job at some point in the future (in which case some enterprising middle manager takes credit for the successful "project" even though he had nothing to do with it whatsoever) or perhaps never in which case the people in the IT department enjoy their synced iPhones and nobody is the wiser.
Long story short: Bad fan on the power supply. After reviewing options, he decided that the option he liked was to buy a new machine.
After market power supplies can be had brand new for less than $120 for a really nice one (Antec Whisper w/variable speed temperature controlled fans and 400+ watts) and less than $60 for a generic one. Heck you could probably pick up a used one (salvaged by your local electronics warehouse store from who knows what old machine) in the parts bin for $20 or less. The upgrade is really simple too (or at least it should be) unless Dell uses some funky non-standard positioning, sizing, and mounting holes (I presume that this was the case?). In any case this is substantially cheaper than purchasing a new PC just to get a new power supply. In the worst case you might have to order the non-standard Dell power supply from Dell (they do sell spares right?).
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