We must assume that even outright cutting social security and medicare, assuming that was politically viable, would then revoke the FICA tax. I'd imagine that'd actually hurt the deficit since traditionally congress has stolen from FICA funds.
A priori, I'd happily let each state take over social security, medicare, and medicaid, in exchange for them taking all the FICA funds collected in-state. It'd provide a massive bail out of the bankrupt states in the short term, while insuring that some states got universal healthcare. I'm fairly sure the federal government wouldn't fair so well doing this however.
There are several discretionary spending cuts that are quite dramatic however : - We could double these $40 billion across the board cuts by dropping the war on drugs. - We can drastically reduce federal prison populations. - We can simply bring home the troops from Afghanistan and Iraq for astronomical savings. - We can make deeper cuts in foreign military aid, Egypt alone take $2B. - We can reduce our military presence in Europe and slow *army* procurement. - And we can drastically reduce farm subsidies. Did I mention we've a world wide food crisis? All these expenses are clearly unwarranted or outright harmful.
I use rsync, unison, sshd regularly on my N900. I'd imagine those all run under Android, but usually native software gets tricky, yes? It's definitely not just apt-get like under Maemo. I've only rarely run gpg, x11vnc, python, and latex, and never gcc, but I've a bash script that populates a widget. Afaik, Android lacks virtual desktops making widgets less useful, yes?
I adore how the N900 merges gsm, skype and sip calls into one phone application, as well as integrating all IM protocols into the SMS application. I'll want that in my next mobile phone, not sure if Android heads that way.
Btw, N900s run Android apps too : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXWEyKjwk2g
All phones running Android, iOS, Blackberry, WebOS, WP7, Maemo, etc. are by-definition high-end. It'll take years before any low-end hardware can run those OSs.
WP7 phones are running like $200--$400 unsubsidized. Android and iOS are similarly priced. Symbian is less resource intensive with the cheapest unsubsidized phones costing around $100.
You've pulled those polls from the most die hard Maemo community anywhere. Almost half the users say they'll switch to Android. Almost half say they'll buy the first MeeGo phone even if it's the last MeeGo phone. And the remainder say they'll give WebOS a chance.
You'd see almost nothing but Android from the far larger community of Symbian users, although obviously many will try WebOS and Blackberry. There are many Symbian fans out there who've been waiting for Nokia's declaration of victory on the Maemo/MeeGo project. All those users are united in their loathing of Windows phones, even the Microsoft fanboys among them.
Microsoft's payola for positive WP7 reviews will bring in some new users, but they won't suffice. WP7 simply copies iOS and Android, unlike Maemo.
I've know many die hard Nokia loyalists that've tuck with Symbian phones as iOS and Android surpassed them, as well as many Maemo fans, both Nokia loyalists and new blood. I've never know anyone who actually liked Windows Mobile however. And all these high -end Nokia users are among the least likely WM7 converts. All will now migrate to Android.
You might ask how many new smartphone users Microsoft will bring, well some no doubt. Microsoft has payolaed some good reviews for WM7, but users are not pleased overall. Worse yet, WM7 is little more than a clone of Android/iOS.
Maemo/MeeGo behaves more like a computer than Android, iOS, etc. giving users some advantages over those operating systems. Yes, Maemo/MeeGo were lacking in the development environment and entertainment apps, i.e. games, but Nokia could've easily solved the games issue by creating an Android emulation layer.
For tablets, Maemo is truely the superior when compared with iOS and Android, or the joke on the cloud Chrome OS. I'd imagine that Intels efforts will ensure that MeeGo lives on in the netbook and tablet markets. I cannot however imagine Intel doing the necessary work to bring a good development environment and developers to MeeGo.
Btw, the mefi thread offers more relevant links than slashdot.
Except there are no legitimate critics of wikileaks, not anymore.
There *were* legitimate critics of wikileaks way back when they screwed up the redaction of the Afgan War Logs, Amnesty international even yelled at them, but after that criticism wikileaks has been sooo slow & careful about publication that nobody reasonable could complain. Afaik, all human rights groups are quite happy with wikileaks demonstrated willingness to respond to legitimate criticism and current self-scrutiny.
And all the rape charges already convinced anyone reasonable who might worry that wikileaks is more important than any collateral damage.
All that'll change here will be some American libertarians who're stupid enough to belief Fox news even half the time will now lump Fox news criticism of wikileaks into the half they recognize as bullshit, but honestly the rape charges already did that for the only such Fox news viewers I know.
I disagree that the Nobel Peace Prize is meaningless. It's known that dissidents who receive the award become very difficult to kill, although usually they aren't released from prison either. Awards are also given, or not given, for very political reasons however. Obama isn't that out-of-line for a political award, vaguely on par with Arafat. The Nobel Peace Prize's two biggest disgraces were awarding Henry Kissinger and not awarding Mahatma Gandhi. wtf!?!
Obama was awarded the prize simply because (a) he convincingly said he wanted to do good things, like ending torture, closing Guantánamo Bay, etc., and (b) he clearly held the power to do so. Awarding him the prize was meant to help insure that he carried out those campaign promises, both by granting him greater authority to do so, and by causing embarrassment if he did not.
I imagine the nobel committee simply didn't understand several factors : - Republicans are inherently so polarized they won't care who supports Obama. - Democrats are such cowards that a foreign peace prize will shame them in front of the Republicans. - Obama was never going to prioritize the clean up Bush's foreign affairs disasters over his own domestic program, i.e. stimulus and healthcare.
We'll never know how much the peace prize helped coerce powerful figures in the executive branch's bureaucracy into supporting Obama's reforms instead of opposing him, but all indications are that the nobel committee got robbed. I'll change that evaluation if & when some retired DoD, CIA, or DoJ official says "Yeah, we were fighting Obama until he won the peace prize."
As I said, their attempt seems much like the Arafat award in it's naivety, but not so bad as the Kissinger award. Or as another comment said : Obama [was given the prize] specifically for not being George W. Bush! Unfortunately, Obama has not done quite as well at not being Bush than many of us had hoped...
There is another darker side to the Nobel Committees selection of Barak Obama, namely the best other candidates were Chinese and Iranian dissidents. We've all seen that China was angered by the nomination of Liu Xiaobo, maybe they wished to postpone any associated economic pain. I'd imagine they wouldn't want to nominate an Iranian dissident because that might tacitly endorse Bush's foreign policy. You might even imagine that Obama's prize was the cowards way lining up an Iranian nomination without endorsing Bush, but the non-cowards won this years debate by giving the prize to Liu Xiaobo.
Finally, if you think the Nobel Prize has become meaningless, then you should hope like hell the award goes to wikileaks this year. Why? Easy, it'll deeply embarrass Sweden that Assange can't receive the prize in person. Epic lulz!
I'm surprised at the level of ignorance displayed here on slashdot, well no I'm not but, still.
I'm perfectly willing to believe that best solution is unfirewalled webheads sporting two network cards, one internal for database and maintenance traffic, and one external with all ports blocked save http. Sure, why not?
I'm slightly more dubious when you claim it's worth all the extra man hours required for double cabling, insuring the iptables are configured correctly, etc.
Amazon E3 has thus far proved themselves DDoS proof. I'd spend the money on building the infrastructure for an emergency Amazon E3 scale up instead of worrying about firewalls.
If the parent went to EP or ENS, well those are actually better than Berkeley. lol
Almost all civilized countries have kept university basically free. Do you a realize French doctor charges only $25 for a consultation? Yeah, that's partially cuz med school costs them nothing. Did I mention every French doctor I've ever seen was better every American doctor I've seen? Did I mention those were mostly walkup appointments in France?
Btw, you'll actually find nearly open admission for European universities once you drop below the elites like EP and ENS, but that's kinda an illusion, most people who enter will never graduate, kinda like Georgia Tech. In particular, failing *any* required class twice will usually prevent you from graduating.
It's infinitely more important to nab the university than the kids. If we em' to testify against the university, well shit give em' 5 year work visas conditional upon that testimony. I'd imagine the GPS devices were used to evidence so that INS didn't need to keep them here for testimony. If so, yes that dumb, let earn some money here in exchange for testimony. Don't treat em' like cattle.
INS most likely nabbed them at the border, maybe even planning it when they were in India. INS should've promised them at minimum immunity form a deportation stamp in exchange for helping to collect evidence against this for-profit university and their employers. Ideally, they should be sent home with a reasonable paycheck for working as a police informer, and no deportation stamp, assuming we don't need their testimony in court.
It appears they were willing to help INS nail their employers and this fraudulent for-profit 'university', therefore thy should be awarded all the usual benefits of police informers, i.e. no deportation stamp in their passport, payment for their services, keeping the gains of their illegal work, etc. At minimum, INS would've given them immunity from immediate deportation in exchange for their cooperation.
If you send some Indians home happy after helping INS nail exploitive employers, you'll get more confessing to passport control officers. Yeah sure they might've made oodles more working here illegally for years, but spending time with your family while receiving a reasonable one time payout, well that's probably good enough for most.
I'd imagine INS felt they needed more evidence against the university, overboard or not. All these students should be well paid for their time working as informants against the university, keep their work paychecks, and be refunded their 'tuition'. Send them home happy with a "thank you come again", not a deportation stamp. And then extract massive fines from this for-profit university that more than cover these expenses.
Isn't this protecting Indian students from immigration exploitation?
All fees collected by this 'university' should be refunded to the students, along with a nice payment for working as an undercover informant. If the students can gain admission to a legitimate university and can afford it, they should be granted new student visa. Otherwise, they should be given a 90 day visa to wrap up their affairs in the U.S., under the understanding that this might involve continued work, and given a plane ticket home to india. They should not be considered deported if they leave within three months. Send them home happy for helping out INS.
And all these expenses should be recouped tenfold form this for-profit 'university' that obtained their visa.
Except the FBI stands a very real chance of losing some cases if they target people who only ran the LOIC. And punishments will seem excessive even if they win. Instead, they'll probably prosecute only the people who controlled LOIC through IRC. Those people really should've made themselves Anonymous by using Tor.
There is considerable low level unrest caused by corruption and inequality in China, far more so than in the middle east. Yet, the Chinese people know from their parents and grand parents just how bad life was only a few generations ago. It's amazing how much exploitation and corruption people will tolerate if the leadership is seen as actually achieving anything.
In time, the U.S. and E.U. will need to enforce trade balance with China, which is the last legal recourse under the WTO treaties. After this, China's economic expansion will slow and inequality and corruption will become more important to the Chinese. I'd imagine whether the Chinese eventually revolt depends mostly upon how much their economy grows between now & then. And clever leaders could placate the people for decades through gradual reforms.
Imho, the biggest problem for China isn't how unrest will grow as their economy slows, but instead their future leadership : All the current Chinese leaders were trained under a communist system, which while steeped in eastern style familial favoritism & corruption, also rewarded achievement. Among this wealthy class, the children are a stinking load of spoiled brats who're still steeped in familial favoritism & corruption. There are obviously many successful countries whose upper class fits the same description, but it makes choosing the leaders important, think Bush v2.
There is ample evidence that this doesn't really work that way. They learn the underlying theory while working with the technology. Even if they don't push towards the most advanced stuff, they'll still seal up the market, blocking out the company that originally sold them the airplanes.
In the end, the U.S. and E.U. will need to impose tariffs to balance the trade with China, not much choice otherwise.
I thought it's kinda hard for a programmer to gain exemption under the federal FLSA, but perhaps California has rolled back some exemptions, perhaps the lawsuits you mention are why congress recently added additional exemptions targeted at programmers, etc.
Your link says the must meet three tests on salary level test, salary basis, and duties, which make FLSA status mostly about the duties in practice. Yes, there are IT guys who are exempt, but most are not exempt.
A guy who physically mounts servers and installs & configures what he's been told to install will usually not be exempt. Just because you listen to his opinions about how stuff should be configured doesn't immediately change that.
If otoh you take his opinions as gospel, then obviously he's exempt under the duties test. As you say, he's still an IT guy though.
Afaik, all the specialized computer exemptions apply only to developer and system analysis types. Imho, there are many programmer who should not be considered exempt, but FLSA must error on the side not being too onerous.
I don't think it's illegal for developers who're actually writing mission critical software.
There is no federal protection for overtime for most classes employees who are somewhat irreplaceable, i.e. the company will fail if too many quit over not being paid overtime. If you're hot shit, then negotiate your hours when you negotiate your salary.
All those guys who just install software & set up servers are most definitely covered by FLSA, well unless they're executives or paid very highly. Easily replaceable people should be covered by FLSA.
Just fyi, 'salary' doesn't mean shit. The Fair Labor Standards Act gives all manor of salaried employees overtime. And many many companies have ponied up millions in settlements because managers thought 'salary' mean no overtime, or even just miss-understood the exempt classes in FLSA.
Programmers are usually exempt because their duties are integrally bound to the success or failure of the company, i.e. FLSA feels they can & should negotiate more pay by threatening bye-bye instead of by suing later. Server monkeys are NOT exempt from FLSA and commonly sue their ex-employers for small fortunes.
Are you old enough that you've seen ftp used for non-piracy purposes? Does that means we should place a tax on ftp requests that lines the pockets of the MafiAA?
There is a younger variation on RapidShare called DropBox which provide better backup & syncing functionality, but it's not as well suited for just sending a file. You better believe DropBox gets used for piracy though too. Does that mean file syncing services should be illegal?
RapidShare exists primarily because email doesn't transport large files. You cannot expect a client to install skype, gtalk, etc. In fact, you don't want all your client's on your IMs, given how easily one can offend older people on IM. Ditto for firewalls, NATs, sshd, etc. RapidShare URLs just works.
RapidShare also gets used by people trying to save bandwidth, like software developers distributing shareware & crippleware, etc. BitTorrent hasn't exactly been a bandwidth panacea for everyone, plus not everyone understands it.
If you ever left your IT bubble, you'd realize there is a whole world of small business out there that ravenously consumes simple, cheap, and fast solutions to simple problems. RapidShare has hit back hard for defamation partially because that core user base can have fairly stringent sensibilities.
The Freedom of Information Act and the Whistleblower Protection Act are the single best deterrents against leaks, especially megaleaks like these.
First, federal employees with some social conscience commonly see FOIA requests deliver tangible improvements.
Second, any federal employee wishing to leak documents may avoid doing so by describing a desirable FOIA request to an organization like the EFF or Amnesty International. Such 'micro-leaks' may not be desirable for the federal agency filling the FOIA request, but they prevent real leaks, especially mega leaks.
Third, the WPA prevents all manor of leaks by instead encouraging whistleblowing. Did you know whistleblowing saves more federal taxpayer dollars than all other cost saving efforts combined?
Despite all this, Republicans stripped the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of its protections for federal employees working in classified projects and then secretly vetoed it.
The N900 is hands down the best phone for unix command line tools, including ssh. Beyond ssh, you've got dssh, sql clients, perl, python, ruby, etc. There are tools like desktop command execution widget that aleviate the need to develop applications for easy access to commonly used scripts. If you need a more complex gui interface, you can radically simplify the development process by using python,
Slashdot Mirror
We must assume that even outright cutting social security and medicare, assuming that was politically viable, would then revoke the FICA tax. I'd imagine that'd actually hurt the deficit since traditionally congress has stolen from FICA funds.
A priori, I'd happily let each state take over social security, medicare, and medicaid, in exchange for them taking all the FICA funds collected in-state. It'd provide a massive bail out of the bankrupt states in the short term, while insuring that some states got universal healthcare. I'm fairly sure the federal government wouldn't fair so well doing this however.
There are several discretionary spending cuts that are quite dramatic however :
- We could double these $40 billion across the board cuts by dropping the war on drugs.
- We can drastically reduce federal prison populations.
- We can simply bring home the troops from Afghanistan and Iraq for astronomical savings.
- We can make deeper cuts in foreign military aid, Egypt alone take $2B.
- We can reduce our military presence in Europe and slow *army* procurement.
- And we can drastically reduce farm subsidies. Did I mention we've a world wide food crisis?
All these expenses are clearly unwarranted or outright harmful.
Does it run latex or gcc? ;)
I use rsync, unison, sshd regularly on my N900. I'd imagine those all run under Android, but usually native software gets tricky, yes? It's definitely not just apt-get like under Maemo. I've only rarely run gpg, x11vnc, python, and latex, and never gcc, but I've a bash script that populates a widget. Afaik, Android lacks virtual desktops making widgets less useful, yes?
I adore how the N900 merges gsm, skype and sip calls into one phone application, as well as integrating all IM protocols into the SMS application. I'll want that in my next mobile phone, not sure if Android heads that way.
Btw, N900s run Android apps too :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXWEyKjwk2g
All phones running Android, iOS, Blackberry, WebOS, WP7, Maemo, etc. are by-definition high-end. It'll take years before any low-end hardware can run those OSs.
WP7 phones are running like $200--$400 unsubsidized. Android and iOS are similarly priced. Symbian is less resource intensive with the cheapest unsubsidized phones costing around $100.
You've pulled those polls from the most die hard Maemo community anywhere. Almost half the users say they'll switch to Android. Almost half say they'll buy the first MeeGo phone even if it's the last MeeGo phone. And the remainder say they'll give WebOS a chance.
You'd see almost nothing but Android from the far larger community of Symbian users, although obviously many will try WebOS and Blackberry. There are many Symbian fans out there who've been waiting for Nokia's declaration of victory on the Maemo/MeeGo project. All those users are united in their loathing of Windows phones, even the Microsoft fanboys among them.
Microsoft's payola for positive WP7 reviews will bring in some new users, but they won't suffice. WP7 simply copies iOS and Android, unlike Maemo.
I've know many die hard Nokia loyalists that've tuck with Symbian phones as iOS and Android surpassed them, as well as many Maemo fans, both Nokia loyalists and new blood. I've never know anyone who actually liked Windows Mobile however. And all these high -end Nokia users are among the least likely WM7 converts. All will now migrate to Android.
You might ask how many new smartphone users Microsoft will bring, well some no doubt. Microsoft has payolaed some good reviews for WM7, but users are not pleased overall. Worse yet, WM7 is little more than a clone of Android/iOS.
Maemo/MeeGo behaves more like a computer than Android, iOS, etc. giving users some advantages over those operating systems. Yes, Maemo/MeeGo were lacking in the development environment and entertainment apps, i.e. games, but Nokia could've easily solved the games issue by creating an Android emulation layer.
For tablets, Maemo is truely the superior when compared with iOS and Android, or the joke on the cloud Chrome OS. I'd imagine that Intels efforts will ensure that MeeGo lives on in the netbook and tablet markets. I cannot however imagine Intel doing the necessary work to bring a good development environment and developers to MeeGo.
Btw, the mefi thread offers more relevant links than slashdot.
Except there are no legitimate critics of wikileaks, not anymore.
There *were* legitimate critics of wikileaks way back when they screwed up the redaction of the Afgan War Logs, Amnesty international even yelled at them, but after that criticism wikileaks has been sooo slow & careful about publication that nobody reasonable could complain. Afaik, all human rights groups are quite happy with wikileaks demonstrated willingness to respond to legitimate criticism and current self-scrutiny.
And all the rape charges already convinced anyone reasonable who might worry that wikileaks is more important than any collateral damage.
All that'll change here will be some American libertarians who're stupid enough to belief Fox news even half the time will now lump Fox news criticism of wikileaks into the half they recognize as bullshit, but honestly the rape charges already did that for the only such Fox news viewers I know.
I disagree that the Nobel Peace Prize is meaningless. It's known that dissidents who receive the award become very difficult to kill, although usually they aren't released from prison either. Awards are also given, or not given, for very political reasons however. Obama isn't that out-of-line for a political award, vaguely on par with Arafat. The Nobel Peace Prize's two biggest disgraces were awarding Henry Kissinger and not awarding Mahatma Gandhi. wtf!?!
Obama was awarded the prize simply because (a) he convincingly said he wanted to do good things, like ending torture, closing Guantánamo Bay, etc., and (b) he clearly held the power to do so. Awarding him the prize was meant to help insure that he carried out those campaign promises, both by granting him greater authority to do so, and by causing embarrassment if he did not.
I imagine the nobel committee simply didn't understand several factors :
- Republicans are inherently so polarized they won't care who supports Obama.
- Democrats are such cowards that a foreign peace prize will shame them in front of the Republicans.
- Obama was never going to prioritize the clean up Bush's foreign affairs disasters over his own domestic program, i.e. stimulus and healthcare.
We'll never know how much the peace prize helped coerce powerful figures in the executive branch's bureaucracy into supporting Obama's reforms instead of opposing him, but all indications are that the nobel committee got robbed. I'll change that evaluation if & when some retired DoD, CIA, or DoJ official says "Yeah, we were fighting Obama until he won the peace prize."
As I said, their attempt seems much like the Arafat award in it's naivety, but not so bad as the Kissinger award. Or as another comment said : Obama [was given the prize] specifically for not being George W. Bush! Unfortunately, Obama has not done quite as well at not being Bush than many of us had hoped...
There is another darker side to the Nobel Committees selection of Barak Obama, namely the best other candidates were Chinese and Iranian dissidents. We've all seen that China was angered by the nomination of Liu Xiaobo, maybe they wished to postpone any associated economic pain. I'd imagine they wouldn't want to nominate an Iranian dissident because that might tacitly endorse Bush's foreign policy. You might even imagine that Obama's prize was the cowards way lining up an Iranian nomination without endorsing Bush, but the non-cowards won this years debate by giving the prize to Liu Xiaobo.
Finally, if you think the Nobel Prize has become meaningless, then you should hope like hell the award goes to wikileaks this year. Why? Easy, it'll deeply embarrass Sweden that Assange can't receive the prize in person. Epic lulz!
I'm surprised at the level of ignorance displayed here on slashdot, well no I'm not but, still.
I'm perfectly willing to believe that best solution is unfirewalled webheads sporting two network cards, one internal for database and maintenance traffic, and one external with all ports blocked save http. Sure, why not?
I'm slightly more dubious when you claim it's worth all the extra man hours required for double cabling, insuring the iptables are configured correctly, etc.
Amazon E3 has thus far proved themselves DDoS proof. I'd spend the money on building the infrastructure for an emergency Amazon E3 scale up instead of worrying about firewalls.
If the parent went to EP or ENS, well those are actually better than Berkeley. lol
Almost all civilized countries have kept university basically free. Do you a realize French doctor charges only $25 for a consultation? Yeah, that's partially cuz med school costs them nothing. Did I mention every French doctor I've ever seen was better every American doctor I've seen? Did I mention those were mostly walkup appointments in France?
Btw, you'll actually find nearly open admission for European universities once you drop below the elites like EP and ENS, but that's kinda an illusion, most people who enter will never graduate, kinda like Georgia Tech. In particular, failing *any* required class twice will usually prevent you from graduating.
It's infinitely more important to nab the university than the kids. If we em' to testify against the university, well shit give em' 5 year work visas conditional upon that testimony. I'd imagine the GPS devices were used to evidence so that INS didn't need to keep them here for testimony. If so, yes that dumb, let earn some money here in exchange for testimony. Don't treat em' like cattle.
INS most likely nabbed them at the border, maybe even planning it when they were in India. INS should've promised them at minimum immunity form a deportation stamp in exchange for helping to collect evidence against this for-profit university and their employers. Ideally, they should be sent home with a reasonable paycheck for working as a police informer, and no deportation stamp, assuming we don't need their testimony in court.
It appears they were willing to help INS nail their employers and this fraudulent for-profit 'university', therefore thy should be awarded all the usual benefits of police informers, i.e. no deportation stamp in their passport, payment for their services, keeping the gains of their illegal work, etc. At minimum, INS would've given them immunity from immediate deportation in exchange for their cooperation.
If you send some Indians home happy after helping INS nail exploitive employers, you'll get more confessing to passport control officers. Yeah sure they might've made oodles more working here illegally for years, but spending time with your family while receiving a reasonable one time payout, well that's probably good enough for most.
I'd imagine INS felt they needed more evidence against the university, overboard or not. All these students should be well paid for their time working as informants against the university, keep their work paychecks, and be refunded their 'tuition'. Send them home happy with a "thank you come again", not a deportation stamp. And then extract massive fines from this for-profit university that more than cover these expenses.
Isn't this protecting Indian students from immigration exploitation?
All fees collected by this 'university' should be refunded to the students, along with a nice payment for working as an undercover informant. If the students can gain admission to a legitimate university and can afford it, they should be granted new student visa. Otherwise, they should be given a 90 day visa to wrap up their affairs in the U.S., under the understanding that this might involve continued work, and given a plane ticket home to india. They should not be considered deported if they leave within three months. Send them home happy for helping out INS.
And all these expenses should be recouped tenfold form this for-profit 'university' that obtained their visa.
Except the FBI stands a very real chance of losing some cases if they target people who only ran the LOIC. And punishments will seem excessive even if they win. Instead, they'll probably prosecute only the people who controlled LOIC through IRC. Those people really should've made themselves Anonymous by using Tor.
There is considerable low level unrest caused by corruption and inequality in China, far more so than in the middle east. Yet, the Chinese people know from their parents and grand parents just how bad life was only a few generations ago. It's amazing how much exploitation and corruption people will tolerate if the leadership is seen as actually achieving anything.
In time, the U.S. and E.U. will need to enforce trade balance with China, which is the last legal recourse under the WTO treaties. After this, China's economic expansion will slow and inequality and corruption will become more important to the Chinese. I'd imagine whether the Chinese eventually revolt depends mostly upon how much their economy grows between now & then. And clever leaders could placate the people for decades through gradual reforms.
Imho, the biggest problem for China isn't how unrest will grow as their economy slows, but instead their future leadership : All the current Chinese leaders were trained under a communist system, which while steeped in eastern style familial favoritism & corruption, also rewarded achievement. Among this wealthy class, the children are a stinking load of spoiled brats who're still steeped in familial favoritism & corruption. There are obviously many successful countries whose upper class fits the same description, but it makes choosing the leaders important, think Bush v2.
There is ample evidence that this doesn't really work that way. They learn the underlying theory while working with the technology. Even if they don't push towards the most advanced stuff, they'll still seal up the market, blocking out the company that originally sold them the airplanes.
In the end, the U.S. and E.U. will need to impose tariffs to balance the trade with China, not much choice otherwise.
I thought it's kinda hard for a programmer to gain exemption under the federal FLSA, but perhaps California has rolled back some exemptions, perhaps the lawsuits you mention are why congress recently added additional exemptions targeted at programmers, etc.
U.S. and U.K. central banks discussing the solvency liquidity crisis.
Danish government lied about investigating whether the CIA had used Danish airspace for secret prisoner transports.
Don't forget your Guy Fawkes mask tomorrow!
There will be anonymous protests like everywhere tomorrow.
Your link says the must meet three tests on salary level test, salary basis, and duties, which make FLSA status mostly about the duties in practice. Yes, there are IT guys who are exempt, but most are not exempt.
A guy who physically mounts servers and installs & configures what he's been told to install will usually not be exempt. Just because you listen to his opinions about how stuff should be configured doesn't immediately change that.
If otoh you take his opinions as gospel, then obviously he's exempt under the duties test. As you say, he's still an IT guy though.
Afaik, all the specialized computer exemptions apply only to developer and system analysis types. Imho, there are many programmer who should not be considered exempt, but FLSA must error on the side not being too onerous.
I don't think it's illegal for developers who're actually writing mission critical software.
There is no federal protection for overtime for most classes employees who are somewhat irreplaceable, i.e. the company will fail if too many quit over not being paid overtime. If you're hot shit, then negotiate your hours when you negotiate your salary.
All those guys who just install software & set up servers are most definitely covered by FLSA, well unless they're executives or paid very highly. Easily replaceable people should be covered by FLSA.
Nah, I'd say 'overtime' instead. :)
Just fyi, 'salary' doesn't mean shit. The Fair Labor Standards Act gives all manor of salaried employees overtime. And many many companies have ponied up millions in settlements because managers thought 'salary' mean no overtime, or even just miss-understood the exempt classes in FLSA.
Programmers are usually exempt because their duties are integrally bound to the success or failure of the company, i.e. FLSA feels they can & should negotiate more pay by threatening bye-bye instead of by suing later. Server monkeys are NOT exempt from FLSA and commonly sue their ex-employers for small fortunes.
That says more about you than about rapid share.
Are you old enough that you've seen ftp used for non-piracy purposes? Does that means we should place a tax on ftp requests that lines the pockets of the MafiAA?
There is a younger variation on RapidShare called DropBox which provide better backup & syncing functionality, but it's not as well suited for just sending a file. You better believe DropBox gets used for piracy though too. Does that mean file syncing services should be illegal?
RapidShare exists primarily because email doesn't transport large files. You cannot expect a client to install skype, gtalk, etc. In fact, you don't want all your client's on your IMs, given how easily one can offend older people on IM. Ditto for firewalls, NATs, sshd, etc. RapidShare URLs just works.
RapidShare also gets used by people trying to save bandwidth, like software developers distributing shareware & crippleware, etc. BitTorrent hasn't exactly been a bandwidth panacea for everyone, plus not everyone understands it.
If you ever left your IT bubble, you'd realize there is a whole world of small business out there that ravenously consumes simple, cheap, and fast solutions to simple problems. RapidShare has hit back hard for defamation partially because that core user base can have fairly stringent sensibilities.
The Freedom of Information Act and the Whistleblower Protection Act are the single best deterrents against leaks, especially megaleaks like these.
First, federal employees with some social conscience commonly see FOIA requests deliver tangible improvements.
Second, any federal employee wishing to leak documents may avoid doing so by describing a desirable FOIA request to an organization like the EFF or Amnesty International. Such 'micro-leaks' may not be desirable for the federal agency filling the FOIA request, but they prevent real leaks, especially mega leaks.
Third, the WPA prevents all manor of leaks by instead encouraging whistleblowing. Did you know whistleblowing saves more federal taxpayer dollars than all other cost saving efforts combined?
Despite all this, Republicans stripped the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of its protections for federal employees working in classified projects and then secretly vetoed it.
The N900 is hands down the best phone for unix command line tools, including ssh. Beyond ssh, you've got dssh, sql clients, perl, python, ruby, etc. There are tools like desktop command execution widget that aleviate the need to develop applications for easy access to commonly used scripts. If you need a more complex gui interface, you can radically simplify the development process by using python,