Banking in North America is so far behind Europe, it is not even funny
The problem in America, my smug European friend, is that the laws surrounding electronic fund transfers and debit cards are not nearly as complete and settled as they are for either checks or credit cards. Guess who loses (both time and money) when a screwup is handled by "bank policy" instead of settled law? That's right, the customer. When the laws become more rigorous and the courts start enforcing them on electronic transfers and debit cards, then more Americans will become more comfortable using those forms of payment. However, until that day most of us are stuck using checks for at least some of our transactions (typically large and important ones).
As an American living in the United States I would just like to amplify what the parent is saying about the legal frameworks surrounding checks and credit cards. In the United States the banks are well known for dragging their feet on issues that the courts and regulators have not forced them to address. There are clear legal procedures and consumer protections in place for checks and credit cards, but the state of affairs with debit cards and electronic transfers is much more tenuous and is often a matter of "bank policy" rather than firmly settled law. The problem in the United States is not technical, but rather legal and regulatory. Until banks are forced by law to offer the same protections to debit and electronic funds transfers as they do to checks and credit cards (with similar consumer protections against botched transactions of missing funds), many people will remain reluctant to use the later methods of payment for large or important transactions.
Let's kill AT&T - screw the shareholders. Time for "too big to fail" to take a nosedive into history.
Unfortunately, we are all riding on the same economic ship; if it goes down then we all go with it. Do you think unemployment is bad now? Just wait until the foundations of the entire economy crumble into dust after Bernanke adopts your advice. The disorderly collapse of Lehman Brothers almost pushed us over the brink. How would you feel if the doors to all of the banks were locked, the FDIC couldn't pay but a fraction of your deposits and the federal government itself was bankrupt (or effectively so)? It has happened several times in Argentina in the last 40 years and the social consequences have been extremely damaging (not anything like what most Americans who weren't alive during the Great Depression are used to or even remember). You can read about it here. I don't like bailouts or "too big to fail" either, but the modern economy and monetary system are very complex and IMHO there really are no perfectly just solutions, only some which are relatively "less bad".
If they change the terms of the contract then those contracts are no longer valid, allowing customers to cancel them prematurely.
There is usually a clause in your contract that says something to the effect of, "you agree that we have the right to change the agreement at any time with X days notice and all early termination fees remain in effect no matter what changes we make". You can cancel anyway, but they will charge you and if you don't pay then there will be a brouhaha with the credit reporting agencies as you insist that they charged you unfairly and they insist that you broke a contract and owe them a debt.
There are any number of more pressing matters currently facing our nation and the Obama administration is wasting their time with Hollywood moguls? This demonstrates yet again that the Obama administration has a rather tenuous grasp of what the American people consider to be important. The economy is in the toilet, we are engaged in two major wars (or as they like to call them in the Obama administration, "overseas contingency operations"), and we are still hemorrhaging jobs. In fact, the number one issue with most Americans right now is JOBS. Just about every American either knows someone who has lost their job, fears losing their own, or in fact has already lost it. This has an effect similar to a giant parachute retarding the acceleration of economic growth necessary for a full recovery.
The Obama administration, if it cares at all about its own political survival, has got to stop the bleeding on jobs or their goose will be cooked in the 2010 congressional elections and they can kiss a second term goodbye. I suppose it could be argued that Hollywood does produce some jobs and that copyright infringement does have some effect on those jobs, but any number of industries are both bigger and employ more people than the entertainment industry. The only consolation in this whole affair is that the Vice President, Joe Biden, is chairing the summit (which practically ensures that nothing useful is going to come of it).
I think you mean capitalism (mostly the same thing, but sure). You know, the whole, priced to what the market will bear nonesense that is the fundemental underpinnings of our economy.
And you propose what exactly as the alternative? Shall the government set the price? What happens if the seller doesn't want to sell at the government set price? If you and the seller conduct the transaction "under the table" on terms agreeable to both of you should you be prosecuted for "illegal purchasing/selling"?
Nobody is forcing you to buy or sell something that you don't want to. If you don't like the price or you don't want to engage in the transaction then walk away. That is the free market. When the government or any other external agent attempts to interfere with that, anger and violence are very likely to result. For example, in Venezuela the Hugo Chavez government has threatened and harassed warehouse owners and small groceries who refuse to sell milk, meat, and other food products (which are in short supply because of the idiotic policies of that government) at the government fixed price with arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment. The business owners have argued that the government price causes them to lose money and that they will go out of business, but the pleas have fallen on deaf ears in the Chavez government.
So go ahead and continue to knock capitalism if it makes you feel better, but ask yourself this: would you rather live in Hugo Chavez's socialist paradise in Venezuela? If the answer is 'no' then perhaps you need to rethink your sweeping critique of the entire capitalist system as "pure greed".
or the ad is done in such a way that billy is on my left and molly is on my right and mom is shaking and baking that chicken directly inside my fucking subwoofer.
Billy: WHAT IS FOR DINNER TONIGHT MOM?
Mom: WHY GREAT TASTING BRAND X SHAKE-N-BAKE CHICKEN OF COURSE!
Molly: OH GOODY, JUST WHAT WE WANTED!
<Mom shakes and bakes the chicken in the subwoofer>
Subwoofer: SCRIBBBEEE...SHABOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
NARRATOR: MMMMMMM! CAN YOU SMELL THAT? REMEMBER, BRAND X SHAKE-N-BAKE CHICKEN FOR YOUR NEXT MEAL!
If I have the movie or TV show at 70 dB, I want the commercials at 70 dB as well.
I am not an audio technician or an electrical engineer. However, from what I understand the problem is not just the volume in an absolute sense (i.e. the db noise), but the various parts of the sound (i.e. the music, voices, sound effects, etc). In most television programs the volume of the individual portions, the voices for example, might be louder than the background music. This is done to build dramatic effect and achieve different moods. Advertisers, for the most part, don't care about building mood or achieving dramatic presentation; they typically have only 30 seconds so they prefer to GRAB YOUR ATTENTION by being as loud as possible. This means that everything about the Ad, including voices, music, sound effects, etc will be played at the maximum volume. While it is true that the ad is not "louder" in an absolute sense (i.e. db noise) than the rest of the programming, we perceive it as being much louder because everything in the ad is being played at the maximum allowed volume. This is especially apparent in the first Ads played during a break following a period of regular programing; the transition can be jarring to say the least (especially in a dramatic program with soft music and low voices).
While "X is dying" is like a troll magnet here on Slashdot, the OP does raise an interesting question: To what extent will casual smartphone gamers, notably on the iPhone, cut into the future sales of consoles which have historically catered to and targeted more casual gamers? The smartphone effect will probably not much effect PC gaming because PC gamers, with the exception of those who simply play flash games in their browser or the bundled OS games, are already mostly not casual anymore (the casual ones have long since left for consoles) because of the large investments of both time and money required to get into PC gaming.
It appears that Oracle has now made some public promises with regard to MySQL so couldn't we return the favor and give them some time and see how it goes before allowing the GPL "true believers" tar and feather them? If any company that touches a GPL product gets burnt, no matter what their intentions, then doesn't that ultimately hurt rather than help the cause of free software?
Excuse me, but the points the parent made about government run (or even government subsidized) health care are not garbage. The bottom line is this: if someone else buys something for you (i.e. they spend either their own or someone else's money on you) then they have a say on issues related to that purchase. You want to eat that big mac? sorry, no fast food allowed for those on Uncle Sam's health plan. How about a beer? No way! What about a smoke? fahgeddaboutit.
Don't think this can happen in America? Think again. Once healthcare becomes the number one ongoing expense of government, there will be tremendous pressure to regulate, tax, or even ban as necessary in an effort to control costs. For example, high taxes on sugary sodas and other "unhealthy" beverages or fatty and calorie dense foods. How about some more of those QALYs (Quality Adjusted Life Years)? You might be to old to get the hip or knee replacement, here is your pill instead. Finally, the gravest insult is banning of private payment for extra medical services in an attempt to lower costs by granting the government monopsony (single-buyer) power. In other words, you may not pay for that hip replacement yourself if the government has already turned you down on the government run plan. This has actually happened to some extant in Britain under the NHS where some cancer patients, for example, have run afoul of the private pay rules by paying out of pocket for drugs which were not covered by NHS. I understand that some "adjustments" have been made to allow private "topping off" in some cases now in Britain, but they addressed the specific case of drugs rather than other issues of "no private pay" (i.e. the problem could come up again in a different context next time).
Being forced to purchase insurance, the insurance is paid for by your employer whether you want it or not.
The unusual employer sponsored health benefits here in the United States are the result of an accident of history dating back to WWII (when wage and price controls were in effect and employers competed for top employees by offering fringe non-monetary benefits) which has been perpetuated and perversely incentivized through special exemptions in the tax code. In fact, the single best thing that the government could do to improve healthcare in the United States would be to eliminate or equalize the tax treatment of income spent on health insurance so that there is no special tax advantages for insurance provided by the employer versus private individual or group purchases. This will not happen (of course) because of the powerful interests on all sides lined up against this who benefit from the present peculiar tax situation. However, it is still worthwhile to state the ideal so that people can at least understand where the health care problems are really coming from.
BTW: For a really good explanation of what is wrong with health care in the United States and how to fix it, check out: How to Cure Healthcare.
And, of course, they want the other rate payers to help them pay for it.
There is nothing wrong with them advocating that position, but the rate payers in a particular area should have a vote on it to see if enough of them want to pay extra fees to build out expanded services. If the vote is 'no' then I agree with you; they should accept it and move on or out, as the case may be. They can ask, but only the people living in the area can decide what level of infrastructure they are collectively willing to pay for.
and ultimately erode more freedoms than the number of crimes it may solve.
So your proposed solution is international cooperation and extradition treaties to cover all crimes? To me that sounds like a global police state. I like the fact that separate countries have separate jurisdictions and separate laws. If a question of law or right and wrong is strong enough and means enough to you, then declare war; otherwise butt the hell out of other peoples' business. People these days, especially in the United States, have become far too willing to use the power of law and government to crush individual freedoms and "deviants" whom they don't like while at the same time failing to recognize that they could be next. Ask yourself this: are you wiling to pick up a rifle and risk your own life and limb to enforce a law? If the answer is "no" then maybe its not important enough and we shouldn't have that law.
If the goal is silence then get a pair of gun muffs with 40db noise attenuation. That way the weenies will have no more argument unless the consider wearing ear protection or earplugs to be a "privilege" and your boss cannot reasonably argue that increased silence is more distracting than the general office noise.
Rude, nasty, undereducated and morally/ethically small people abound in those uniforms.
The best way to deal with these sorts is to say as little as possible in the most ordinary, mater of fact, and disinterested tone of voice that one can manage. Do not become agitated, fidget, or make aggressive movements. If they do ask questions give the shortest truthful answers possible (the more mundane the better) and do not volunteer any information whatsoever. If it makes no difference (i.e. the DHS goons wouldn't understand even if you tried to explain it to their level), then use simple and plausibly deniable lies to expedite the process. If you really want to pull this off well then it is best to do some research into their procedures and decide what you are going to say ahead of time. Prepare you persona and then be that person and be as boring and ordinary as possible. Incidentally, these are some of the same techniques that our own government teaches to CIA case officers for crossing foreign borders or customs into foreign countries on unofficial cover.
I've honestly had better and more pleasant experiences with the East German border patrol in the mid-80s.
That was probably due to the fact that western tourists and family visitors were a major source of hard currency for the former East Germany. In fact, you may recall that it was mandatory to exchange a certain amount of deutschemarks or other western monies into convertible 'ost marks' on each entry. The border guards were probably ordered to be nice to western tourists in order to encourage repeat visits and more currency exchange opportunities.
It's a miracle that it isn't full of crap posts and automated spam messages.
At least part of that stems from the aforementioned moderation system, the fact that most regular users don't browse at -1 (which means we wouldn't actually see AC spam even if it was occurring), and perhaps also because geeks are not good marks for the sorts of products generally plugged via spam; that and geeks have the means, motive, and opportunity to take active technical measures against spammers making us doubly not worth the effort from the spammer's point of view. In short, The spammers don't spam Slashdot because picking fights with the geeks is not in their interest; it wastes their time and invites sophisticated and targeted retaliation which only distracts their attentions from their real prey (i.e. grandma's AOL account).
I'm not in the habit of combing through forum code looking for unvalidated inputs.
That is not the correct way to address SQL injection anyway; there will always be one that you don't check for or a textbox that slipped past your validation routines. No, the proper way to avoid SQL injection is to avoid using string operations to build your query before running it directly against the database (a common practice in cheesy php and old asp tutorials on the web). To avoid falling victim to a SQL injection attack, use either stored procedures OR parameterized statements. SQL injection is trivially simple to avoid provided that one knows about it (all web devs worth their salt should by now) and knows how to code web apps properly to avoid it (again simple).
When I was a kid, I used to genuinely believe that humans were on a path to greater wisdom, more profound discourse, and perfect knowledge.
In a manner of speaking we still are, but not everyone is coming along for the ride.
Lately, I just see a bunch of power-hungry assholes doing their utmost to discredit intelligent thought and dumb-down the world around them, so they can continue on an unimpeded path toward greater assholism.
Personally, I am not troubled by this because it is not essential that every person currently living survives to enjoy the fruits of our progress. As long as some of us survive, the human race will still have been successful.
The Cloud applications and Web Services to provide the ultimate platform upon which we can layer our business intelligence and reporting, because there are still a few verticals that we need to leverage before we can move to The Cloud 2.0.
One good step towards making imprisonment and mistreatment of journalists a big international no-no would be for all the major countries to openly ban their intelligence agencies (the CIA, MI6, etc.) from using operatives posing as journalists, or hiring journalists for intelligence gathering purposes.
If you want to neuter your intelligence agencies maybe, but not if you want them to actually be useful. The world outside of your comfortable first world community is a nasty place, get used to it.
It would be nice if we could at least have the CIA come out openly and bluntly and say to the world community "We don't do this, under any circumstances" the next time some petty tyrant claims that the journalists he's caught are working for the CIA
Please tell us that you aren't that naïve. What would that gain the CIA? Nobody would believe them anyway.
As it is, anyone wandering into a foreign country and asking questions, journalist or not, is going to be wearing a big target on their chest that says "Possible intelligence operative."
A good reason not to do that wouldn't you say? If you want to risk your neck that is your own business, but I don't need independent journalists to tell me that Iran, North Korea, Burma, and the like have unsavory regimes.
the world community to go to bat for more journalists if they had some sort of assurance that the sanctions they were imposing were on behalf of actual legitimate journalists, not James Bond wannabes with fake press credentials.
The pariah countries, like Iran, don't care about world opinion.
The problem with technical conferences is that there are too many people at widely varying levels of skill to fully satisfy anyone. The newbies are going to feel like they have just had their butts kicked while the more experienced will feel like their time has been wasted. When I am looking to spend time training I prefer to do it with books, frameworks, and google at my own pace and level of competence. The last conference that I attended was mostly a waste of time and money IMHO. Conferences are among the most expensive and inefficient forms of training compared to what one gets out of them.
Only if they actually get away with it; otherwise they might still be on the hook for those statutory damages. IANAL, but what happens if they plaintiffs prevail and Warner, Sony, et al refuse to pay? I doubt their assets in Canada exceed $60 billion so what is to prevent them from simply leaving Canada entirely and abandoning whatever they cannot take with them?
Slashdot Mirror
Banking in North America is so far behind Europe, it is not even funny
The problem in America, my smug European friend, is that the laws surrounding electronic fund transfers and debit cards are not nearly as complete and settled as they are for either checks or credit cards. Guess who loses (both time and money) when a screwup is handled by "bank policy" instead of settled law? That's right, the customer. When the laws become more rigorous and the courts start enforcing them on electronic transfers and debit cards, then more Americans will become more comfortable using those forms of payment. However, until that day most of us are stuck using checks for at least some of our transactions (typically large and important ones).
As an American living in the United States I would just like to amplify what the parent is saying about the legal frameworks surrounding checks and credit cards. In the United States the banks are well known for dragging their feet on issues that the courts and regulators have not forced them to address. There are clear legal procedures and consumer protections in place for checks and credit cards, but the state of affairs with debit cards and electronic transfers is much more tenuous and is often a matter of "bank policy" rather than firmly settled law. The problem in the United States is not technical, but rather legal and regulatory. Until banks are forced by law to offer the same protections to debit and electronic funds transfers as they do to checks and credit cards (with similar consumer protections against botched transactions of missing funds), many people will remain reluctant to use the later methods of payment for large or important transactions.
Let's kill AT&T - screw the shareholders. Time for "too big to fail" to take a nosedive into history.
Unfortunately, we are all riding on the same economic ship; if it goes down then we all go with it. Do you think unemployment is bad now? Just wait until the foundations of the entire economy crumble into dust after Bernanke adopts your advice. The disorderly collapse of Lehman Brothers almost pushed us over the brink. How would you feel if the doors to all of the banks were locked, the FDIC couldn't pay but a fraction of your deposits and the federal government itself was bankrupt (or effectively so)? It has happened several times in Argentina in the last 40 years and the social consequences have been extremely damaging (not anything like what most Americans who weren't alive during the Great Depression are used to or even remember). You can read about it here. I don't like bailouts or "too big to fail" either, but the modern economy and monetary system are very complex and IMHO there really are no perfectly just solutions, only some which are relatively "less bad".
If they change the terms of the contract then those contracts are no longer valid, allowing customers to cancel them prematurely.
There is usually a clause in your contract that says something to the effect of, "you agree that we have the right to change the agreement at any time with X days notice and all early termination fees remain in effect no matter what changes we make". You can cancel anyway, but they will charge you and if you don't pay then there will be a brouhaha with the credit reporting agencies as you insist that they charged you unfairly and they insist that you broke a contract and owe them a debt.
There are any number of more pressing matters currently facing our nation and the Obama administration is wasting their time with Hollywood moguls? This demonstrates yet again that the Obama administration has a rather tenuous grasp of what the American people consider to be important. The economy is in the toilet, we are engaged in two major wars (or as they like to call them in the Obama administration, "overseas contingency operations"), and we are still hemorrhaging jobs. In fact, the number one issue with most Americans right now is JOBS. Just about every American either knows someone who has lost their job, fears losing their own, or in fact has already lost it. This has an effect similar to a giant parachute retarding the acceleration of economic growth necessary for a full recovery.
The Obama administration, if it cares at all about its own political survival, has got to stop the bleeding on jobs or their goose will be cooked in the 2010 congressional elections and they can kiss a second term goodbye. I suppose it could be argued that Hollywood does produce some jobs and that copyright infringement does have some effect on those jobs, but any number of industries are both bigger and employ more people than the entertainment industry. The only consolation in this whole affair is that the Vice President, Joe Biden, is chairing the summit (which practically ensures that nothing useful is going to come of it).
I think you mean capitalism (mostly the same thing, but sure). You know, the whole, priced to what the market will bear nonesense that is the fundemental underpinnings of our economy.
And you propose what exactly as the alternative? Shall the government set the price? What happens if the seller doesn't want to sell at the government set price? If you and the seller conduct the transaction "under the table" on terms agreeable to both of you should you be prosecuted for "illegal purchasing/selling"?
Nobody is forcing you to buy or sell something that you don't want to. If you don't like the price or you don't want to engage in the transaction then walk away. That is the free market. When the government or any other external agent attempts to interfere with that, anger and violence are very likely to result. For example, in Venezuela the Hugo Chavez government has threatened and harassed warehouse owners and small groceries who refuse to sell milk, meat, and other food products (which are in short supply because of the idiotic policies of that government) at the government fixed price with arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment. The business owners have argued that the government price causes them to lose money and that they will go out of business, but the pleas have fallen on deaf ears in the Chavez government.
So go ahead and continue to knock capitalism if it makes you feel better, but ask yourself this: would you rather live in Hugo Chavez's socialist paradise in Venezuela? If the answer is 'no' then perhaps you need to rethink your sweeping critique of the entire capitalist system as "pure greed".
How many extra lives has it racked up?
Well, it got 30 extra lives right off the bat by pressing up up down down left right left right start .
or the ad is done in such a way that billy is on my left and molly is on my right and mom is shaking and baking that chicken directly inside my fucking subwoofer.
Billy: WHAT IS FOR DINNER TONIGHT MOM?
Mom: WHY GREAT TASTING BRAND X SHAKE-N-BAKE CHICKEN OF COURSE!
Molly: OH GOODY, JUST WHAT WE WANTED!
<Mom shakes and bakes the chicken in the subwoofer>
Subwoofer: SCRIBBBEEE...SHABOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
NARRATOR: MMMMMMM! CAN YOU SMELL THAT? REMEMBER, BRAND X SHAKE-N-BAKE CHICKEN FOR YOUR NEXT MEAL!
Subwoofer: SHABABOOOM!
If I have the movie or TV show at 70 dB, I want the commercials at 70 dB as well.
I am not an audio technician or an electrical engineer. However, from what I understand the problem is not just the volume in an absolute sense (i.e. the db noise), but the various parts of the sound (i.e. the music, voices, sound effects, etc). In most television programs the volume of the individual portions, the voices for example, might be louder than the background music. This is done to build dramatic effect and achieve different moods. Advertisers, for the most part, don't care about building mood or achieving dramatic presentation; they typically have only 30 seconds so they prefer to GRAB YOUR ATTENTION by being as loud as possible. This means that everything about the Ad, including voices, music, sound effects, etc will be played at the maximum volume. While it is true that the ad is not "louder" in an absolute sense (i.e. db noise) than the rest of the programming, we perceive it as being much louder because everything in the ad is being played at the maximum allowed volume. This is especially apparent in the first Ads played during a break following a period of regular programing; the transition can be jarring to say the least (especially in a dramatic program with soft music and low voices).
While "X is dying" is like a troll magnet here on Slashdot, the OP does raise an interesting question: To what extent will casual smartphone gamers, notably on the iPhone, cut into the future sales of consoles which have historically catered to and targeted more casual gamers? The smartphone effect will probably not much effect PC gaming because PC gamers, with the exception of those who simply play flash games in their browser or the bundled OS games, are already mostly not casual anymore (the casual ones have long since left for consoles) because of the large investments of both time and money required to get into PC gaming.
It appears that Oracle has now made some public promises with regard to MySQL so couldn't we return the favor and give them some time and see how it goes before allowing the GPL "true believers" tar and feather them? If any company that touches a GPL product gets burnt, no matter what their intentions, then doesn't that ultimately hurt rather than help the cause of free software?
Excuse me, but the points the parent made about government run (or even government subsidized) health care are not garbage. The bottom line is this: if someone else buys something for you (i.e. they spend either their own or someone else's money on you) then they have a say on issues related to that purchase. You want to eat that big mac? sorry, no fast food allowed for those on Uncle Sam's health plan. How about a beer? No way! What about a smoke? fahgeddaboutit.
Don't think this can happen in America? Think again. Once healthcare becomes the number one ongoing expense of government, there will be tremendous pressure to regulate, tax, or even ban as necessary in an effort to control costs. For example, high taxes on sugary sodas and other "unhealthy" beverages or fatty and calorie dense foods. How about some more of those QALYs (Quality Adjusted Life Years)? You might be to old to get the hip or knee replacement, here is your pill instead. Finally, the gravest insult is banning of private payment for extra medical services in an attempt to lower costs by granting the government monopsony (single-buyer) power. In other words, you may not pay for that hip replacement yourself if the government has already turned you down on the government run plan. This has actually happened to some extant in Britain under the NHS where some cancer patients, for example, have run afoul of the private pay rules by paying out of pocket for drugs which were not covered by NHS. I understand that some "adjustments" have been made to allow private "topping off" in some cases now in Britain, but they addressed the specific case of drugs rather than other issues of "no private pay" (i.e. the problem could come up again in a different context next time).
Being forced to purchase insurance, the insurance is paid for by your employer whether you want it or not.
The unusual employer sponsored health benefits here in the United States are the result of an accident of history dating back to WWII (when wage and price controls were in effect and employers competed for top employees by offering fringe non-monetary benefits) which has been perpetuated and perversely incentivized through special exemptions in the tax code. In fact, the single best thing that the government could do to improve healthcare in the United States would be to eliminate or equalize the tax treatment of income spent on health insurance so that there is no special tax advantages for insurance provided by the employer versus private individual or group purchases. This will not happen (of course) because of the powerful interests on all sides lined up against this who benefit from the present peculiar tax situation. However, it is still worthwhile to state the ideal so that people can at least understand where the health care problems are really coming from.
BTW: For a really good explanation of what is wrong with health care in the United States and how to fix it, check out: How to Cure Healthcare.
And, of course, they want the other rate payers to help them pay for it.
There is nothing wrong with them advocating that position, but the rate payers in a particular area should have a vote on it to see if enough of them want to pay extra fees to build out expanded services. If the vote is 'no' then I agree with you; they should accept it and move on or out, as the case may be. They can ask, but only the people living in the area can decide what level of infrastructure they are collectively willing to pay for.
and ultimately erode more freedoms than the number of crimes it may solve.
So your proposed solution is international cooperation and extradition treaties to cover all crimes? To me that sounds like a global police state. I like the fact that separate countries have separate jurisdictions and separate laws. If a question of law or right and wrong is strong enough and means enough to you, then declare war; otherwise butt the hell out of other peoples' business. People these days, especially in the United States, have become far too willing to use the power of law and government to crush individual freedoms and "deviants" whom they don't like while at the same time failing to recognize that they could be next. Ask yourself this: are you wiling to pick up a rifle and risk your own life and limb to enforce a law? If the answer is "no" then maybe its not important enough and we shouldn't have that law.
If the goal is silence then get a pair of gun muffs with 40db noise attenuation. That way the weenies will have no more argument unless the consider wearing ear protection or earplugs to be a "privilege" and your boss cannot reasonably argue that increased silence is more distracting than the general office noise.
Rude, nasty, undereducated and morally/ethically small people abound in those uniforms.
The best way to deal with these sorts is to say as little as possible in the most ordinary, mater of fact, and disinterested tone of voice that one can manage. Do not become agitated, fidget, or make aggressive movements. If they do ask questions give the shortest truthful answers possible (the more mundane the better) and do not volunteer any information whatsoever. If it makes no difference (i.e. the DHS goons wouldn't understand even if you tried to explain it to their level), then use simple and plausibly deniable lies to expedite the process. If you really want to pull this off well then it is best to do some research into their procedures and decide what you are going to say ahead of time. Prepare you persona and then be that person and be as boring and ordinary as possible. Incidentally, these are some of the same techniques that our own government teaches to CIA case officers for crossing foreign borders or customs into foreign countries on unofficial cover.
I've honestly had better and more pleasant experiences with the East German border patrol in the mid-80s.
That was probably due to the fact that western tourists and family visitors were a major source of hard currency for the former East Germany. In fact, you may recall that it was mandatory to exchange a certain amount of deutschemarks or other western monies into convertible 'ost marks' on each entry. The border guards were probably ordered to be nice to western tourists in order to encourage repeat visits and more currency exchange opportunities.
It's a miracle that it isn't full of crap posts and automated spam messages.
At least part of that stems from the aforementioned moderation system, the fact that most regular users don't browse at -1 (which means we wouldn't actually see AC spam even if it was occurring), and perhaps also because geeks are not good marks for the sorts of products generally plugged via spam; that and geeks have the means, motive, and opportunity to take active technical measures against spammers making us doubly not worth the effort from the spammer's point of view. In short, The spammers don't spam Slashdot because picking fights with the geeks is not in their interest; it wastes their time and invites sophisticated and targeted retaliation which only distracts their attentions from their real prey (i.e. grandma's AOL account).
I'm not in the habit of combing through forum code looking for unvalidated inputs.
That is not the correct way to address SQL injection anyway; there will always be one that you don't check for or a textbox that slipped past your validation routines. No, the proper way to avoid SQL injection is to avoid using string operations to build your query before running it directly against the database (a common practice in cheesy php and old asp tutorials on the web). To avoid falling victim to a SQL injection attack, use either stored procedures OR parameterized statements. SQL injection is trivially simple to avoid provided that one knows about it (all web devs worth their salt should by now) and knows how to code web apps properly to avoid it (again simple).
Bada-Bing, Bada-Bang
When I was a kid, I used to genuinely believe that humans were on a path to greater wisdom, more profound discourse, and perfect knowledge.
In a manner of speaking we still are, but not everyone is coming along for the ride.
Lately, I just see a bunch of power-hungry assholes doing their utmost to discredit intelligent thought and dumb-down the world around them, so they can continue on an unimpeded path toward greater assholism.
Personally, I am not troubled by this because it is not essential that every person currently living survives to enjoy the fruits of our progress. As long as some of us survive, the human race will still have been successful.
The Cloud applications and Web Services to provide the ultimate platform upon which we can layer our business intelligence and reporting, because there are still a few verticals that we need to leverage before we can move to The Cloud 2.0.
Bingo!
One good step towards making imprisonment and mistreatment of journalists a big international no-no would be for all the major countries to openly ban their intelligence agencies (the CIA, MI6, etc.) from using operatives posing as journalists, or hiring journalists for intelligence gathering purposes.
If you want to neuter your intelligence agencies maybe, but not if you want them to actually be useful. The world outside of your comfortable first world community is a nasty place, get used to it.
It would be nice if we could at least have the CIA come out openly and bluntly and say to the world community "We don't do this, under any circumstances" the next time some petty tyrant claims that the journalists he's caught are working for the CIA
Please tell us that you aren't that naïve. What would that gain the CIA? Nobody would believe them anyway.
As it is, anyone wandering into a foreign country and asking questions, journalist or not, is going to be wearing a big target on their chest that says "Possible intelligence operative."
A good reason not to do that wouldn't you say? If you want to risk your neck that is your own business, but I don't need independent journalists to tell me that Iran, North Korea, Burma, and the like have unsavory regimes.
the world community to go to bat for more journalists if they had some sort of assurance that the sanctions they were imposing were on behalf of actual legitimate journalists, not James Bond wannabes with fake press credentials.
The pariah countries, like Iran, don't care about world opinion.
The problem with technical conferences is that there are too many people at widely varying levels of skill to fully satisfy anyone. The newbies are going to feel like they have just had their butts kicked while the more experienced will feel like their time has been wasted. When I am looking to spend time training I prefer to do it with books, frameworks, and google at my own pace and level of competence. The last conference that I attended was mostly a waste of time and money IMHO. Conferences are among the most expensive and inefficient forms of training compared to what one gets out of them.
Brilliant idea, guys! Thanks!
Only if they actually get away with it; otherwise they might still be on the hook for those statutory damages. IANAL, but what happens if they plaintiffs prevail and Warner, Sony, et al refuse to pay? I doubt their assets in Canada exceed $60 billion so what is to prevent them from simply leaving Canada entirely and abandoning whatever they cannot take with them?