Sure, all we need now is a corporation willing to spend tens, even hundreds of BILLIONS on making spaceships.
Bear in mind that no private organisation has made a spaceship yet. And that no company in the world has NASA's budget, and they haven't managed a new spaceship in decades.
And on top of all that, there's zero money to be made in space. So what you need is a multi-billionaire with a space-fetish and no brains.
It depends on what type of "state secret" you're talking about. If the "state secrets" you're giving away are secret military plans that put thousands of lives at risk, you're right. If, on the other hand, said "state secret" is a dirty little secret of the government who is engaged in conduct they don't want exposed, you are a hero, not a criminal
How is it Yahoo's business to decide the morality of crimes which have been committed? It's nothing to do with them. If the police come to you with the legal authority to search your records, you cannot deny them that. If you don't like it, live somewhere else.
Breaking an antitrust law is an entirely different animal then supporting state-sponsored censorship and murder because "it's the law over there", despite the fact that these "laws" are in clear contravention of several human rights treaties to which the US is a signatory.
What human rights treaties make it illegal to arrest someone for giving away state secrets? I think that antitrust laws are immoral, whilst anyone giving away state secrets gets what he deserves.
I used to be a big fan of the BBC and its licence for UK viewers. However now I've realised how bad it really is. Nothing but braindead soaps, decorating programmes, buying/selling programmes (usually houses or antiques), reality TV, cooking, gardening and hospital programmes. Everything decent seems to come from America these days.
The news is dumbed-down beyond belief. In a half hour news programme you'd think they'd be able to get a lot of information in, but they only manage about a dozen items at most. It's padded out with waffle and irrelevence, rather than hard facts. This insults the viewer by assuming we watch the news for entertainment rather than information.
Programmes are dumbed-down and drowned out by background music and attention-seeking idiot presenters. Just have a look at Horizon to see how shallow these shows really are. When's the last time we had a decent comedy, like Blackadder? Between programmes they show some stupid thing with people dressed in red. How much did this cost to make? I don't know why they can't just show which programmes are coming up instead. But then that would be informative, which goes against the BBC's charter.
They employ Natasha Kaplinsky.
They talk over end credits (which should be banned, it's irritating and patronising, as if we only have a 5-second attention span), they show endless repeats, they shamelessly promote themselves, they threaten you over TV licences (even if you've already bought one), they're complacent, they're run by the London middle-class, things are decided on politics rather than what's actually the best decision.
They don't even have sport anymore, it's all on Sky. The lottery programme insults everyone's intelligence, especially the people who made it, its presenter should never be on TV again.
In the end, the BBC is just ITV without the adverts. Better than a lot of American channels, but then that's not an achievement.
The problem isn't the stupid people breeding too much, it's the so-called "smart" people not breeding enough. We're on our way to a societal collapse because of it
Take a look at your nearest council estate, jobless thugs with 18 kids from 15 different mothers, all on benefits with a state-provided house. Stupidity is encouraged, intelligence is punished with taxes to support said stupidity.
And if we need more people to breed, why are we having to build more houses and pave-over the countryside? Surely that would only be necessary if the population was increasing?
they don't necessarily care if Joe Bob next door is running it
But they'll be the first to moan if they don't get driver support or software or anything. Just look at that article where that flood insurance site only supported Windows, there was plenty of moaning. Yet in the next breath the same people are saying they don't want mainstream support. Make your minds up!
If you had an aeroplane that cost millions of dollars, would you fly it into a hurricane?
And after all the stories of beatings, shootings, rapes and murders, I don't blame any private industry not wanting to go within a thousand miles of that city.
A lot of people there either didn't bother leaving because they thought the hurricane wasn't too bad, or they refused (and still refuse) to leave. I don't have any sympathy for them.
Problem with that 'urban legend' is, now what happens is that every other employee is encouraged to throw money around, knowing that if they make a mistake they'll still keep their jobs.
In the case of New Orleans, it wasn't just a 'simple mistake', but utter incompetence.
I'm fascinated. Please tell me how an article on the Internet can prove beyond all doubt that Yahoo are the only country in the history of communist China to ever cooperate with the police, as required by law.
Let me see if I can work out the Slashdot lefty hivemind:
Laws against drugs or porn or violent computer games are bad, people should be able to buy and sell whatever they want as it's none of the government's business.
Tobacco companies are evil as people shouldn't be allowed to buy and consume what they want.
It's funny how people criticise Microsoft for breaking the law, and now criticise Yahoo for helping enforce the law. Seems if you're a big corporation (outside of Google and Apple), you just can't win on this site!
Of course this is the same site which preaches that you can ignore laws you don't agree with, so I don't konw what the hell anyone here actually thinks.
Did you even read the article, which said the average worker of an 8 hour day wastes 2 hours? And the subsequent debate that seems to favor the proposition that they waste those 2 hours because they're working too long?
If I have a machine running for 24 hours a day, if someone's stood working at it for 8 hours, there's 8 hours of production. If they're stood at it for 6 hours, there's 6 hours of production. 2 hours isn't wasted, it's 2 hours of production.
Do you expect managers to shut down machines for 2 hours every shift to give the workers rest?
Where I come from, getting paid the same hourly amount, only for less hours, isn't a pay cut.
So if you work only 6 hours a day rather than 8, all the bills/mortgage/food/taxes costs go down by 25% as well? What world do you live in?
Millions of people work on Saturday and/or Sunday.
So, instead of working 8 hours a day Monday to Friday, you're expecting people to work 6 hours a day seven days a week? I can't see that being too popular.
# eating out 6 times a week = waste of money and health # party time on Saturdays - see above
Yeah, god forbid people actually ENJOY the fruits of their labour. Everyone knows that the whole reason for giving away half your waking life to work is to save up money and assets for when you're old enough to realise you've wasted your youth at work.
Cars are equity? Unless it's some obscure fancy car that saddo collectors might want, the values of cars do nothing but plummet.
Seriously though, if you can't go out and get bladdered on a Saturday, what's the point in slaving away during the week? You may as well just kill yourself because with no 'party time' there's no point in living at all.
I can't speak for America, but in Britain at least:
Socialism = Hard working people get taxed to the hilt so that scroungers with 6 kids by the time they're 20 years old who haven't worked a day in their life but have a government-supplied house can live off benefits and handouts.
Seriously though, that is NOT an extreme exagerration, it's actually true. Makes you sympathetic for people who exploit every loophole they can find to get out of being taxed.
The EU is a more complicated market though. In the USA they speak English, in Japan they speak Japanese, in the EU there are at least a dozen languages. A lot of the EU don't speak the languages that games are usually translated into, especially the old Soviet countries.
Water and electricity, likewise. There are the same number of people working at any time.
Actually, during the day, there are MORE people there, due to the overhead that comes with hiring 33% more workers. Water goes up, as now 33% more people have a wash/shower after the shift.
All the shift-working establishments I worked at either gave you a lunch break and let you leave the store/facility to buy lunch elsewhere, or had you pay for food you got at the facility. Either way, no increased cost.
Food is often subsidised. The more workers, the higher the cost. The more staff needed to cook, i.e. more money. There are higher cleaning costs also.
Paperwork and administrative costs, I'll grant you, but in turn, you have to grant that the company is no longer paying each employee for 8 hours of productivity and getting 6. The marginal costs are wiped out entirely by the marginal gain
No, they used to be paying for 8 hours and getting 8, now they're paying for 6 and getting 6, but with increased overhead and NO SAVINGS. This costs the company money. That's not even including the costs (both in time and money) of training up hundreds more people.
and that's not even taking into account the benefits gained through increased worker morale.
The increased morale that comes with a 25% paycut?
as opposed to giving employees less hours per day, but more days per week.
So now they have to come in on Saturday/Sunday? Your idea is a disgrace.
Nah, the an erotic book might have been one of the first, but the printing press was largely pushed forward by the civil war, as both sides used it for propaganda.
I'm sure that pornographers were a minority of camera users as well.
You're neglecting all the costs which are the same for each worker regardless of how many hours they work. Things like take-over pay, lockers, water, electricity, soap, overalls, gloves, showers, car parking space, food, paperwork, administrative costs, training costs, keys, swipe cards, tools, and about a million other costs which are the same for every employee regardless of hours.
Bear in mind that people aren't going to want to earn $300 a week when they used to earn $400.
Clearly you've never been in a shift-working environment.
Basically, any job where you're expected to do manual labor for 8-10 hours per day. But aren't these the types of jobs we'd like to get rid of anyways?
Who is this 'we'? I don't want to get rid of my job, I need the money to pay for things like food and shelter. The last thing I need is the middle classes saying by job should disappear. If such jobs did go, the same people like you would be complaining about all the people on the dole taking their tax money.
At some point we will want to create disincentives to using humans as automatons.
Sure, all we need is about another two hundred years of robot design. By then they could even replace office workers, and we can all just sit on the dole.
The difference is, whilst Firefox is better than IE in pretty much every single department, Open Office just isn't up to scratch. Add to the fact it's too big to download on dialup and you can't get CDs of it anywhere, and its uptake will be hindered.
Installing OO on Linux is a challenge in itself. And it doesn't install itself into the menus so you have to launch it from the command line.
Maybe the Firefox team could work on OO? They seem to know how to put together a decent opensource application.
Well all this talk about 9-5 and flexible hours doesn't mean anything to me, I'm a shiftworker in a factory. The way I see it, even in a research position, you should get paid by the hour, that's the only fair way. Unless you want people sitting about all week saying they're 'thinking'. Or unless they want paying by results, i.e. £1000 per discovery or something.
Yeah, so now instead of three 8 hour shifts, now there are four 6 hour shifts. That's even more money down the can, just because workers don't want to do any work.
There are two solutions to this: either wages go down accordingly, or prices go up. Either way laziness is going to cost. Eight hours isn't that long. If you don't like it get a part time job or run your own business and work whatever hours you want.
Christ, there are people who would kill to be able to work forty hours, and even that's too much for some people. Like I said, no wonder companies want to outsource. I bet Indians don't bitch about working a normal 40 hour week.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, all we need now is a corporation willing to spend tens, even hundreds of BILLIONS on making spaceships.
Bear in mind that no private organisation has made a spaceship yet. And that no company in the world has NASA's budget, and they haven't managed a new spaceship in decades.
And on top of all that, there's zero money to be made in space. So what you need is a multi-billionaire with a space-fetish and no brains.
It depends on what type of "state secret" you're talking about. If the "state secrets" you're giving away are secret military plans that put thousands of lives at risk, you're right. If, on the other hand, said "state secret" is a dirty little secret of the government who is engaged in conduct they don't want exposed, you are a hero, not a criminal
How is it Yahoo's business to decide the morality of crimes which have been committed? It's nothing to do with them. If the police come to you with the legal authority to search your records, you cannot deny them that. If you don't like it, live somewhere else.
Breaking an antitrust law is an entirely different animal then supporting state-sponsored censorship and murder because "it's the law over there", despite the fact that these "laws" are in clear contravention of several human rights treaties to which the US is a signatory.
What human rights treaties make it illegal to arrest someone for giving away state secrets? I think that antitrust laws are immoral, whilst anyone giving away state secrets gets what he deserves.
I used to be a big fan of the BBC and its licence for UK viewers. However now I've realised how bad it really is. Nothing but braindead soaps, decorating programmes, buying/selling programmes (usually houses or antiques), reality TV, cooking, gardening and hospital programmes. Everything decent seems to come from America these days.
The news is dumbed-down beyond belief. In a half hour news programme you'd think they'd be able to get a lot of information in, but they only manage about a dozen items at most. It's padded out with waffle and irrelevence, rather than hard facts. This insults the viewer by assuming we watch the news for entertainment rather than information.
Programmes are dumbed-down and drowned out by background music and attention-seeking idiot presenters. Just have a look at Horizon to see how shallow these shows really are. When's the last time we had a decent comedy, like Blackadder? Between programmes they show some stupid thing with people dressed in red. How much did this cost to make? I don't know why they can't just show which programmes are coming up instead. But then that would be informative, which goes against the BBC's charter.
They employ Natasha Kaplinsky.
They talk over end credits (which should be banned, it's irritating and patronising, as if we only have a 5-second attention span), they show endless repeats, they shamelessly promote themselves, they threaten you over TV licences (even if you've already bought one), they're complacent, they're run by the London middle-class, things are decided on politics rather than what's actually the best decision.
They don't even have sport anymore, it's all on Sky. The lottery programme insults everyone's intelligence, especially the people who made it, its presenter should never be on TV again.
In the end, the BBC is just ITV without the adverts. Better than a lot of American channels, but then that's not an achievement.
The problem isn't the stupid people breeding too much, it's the so-called "smart" people not breeding enough. We're on our way to a societal collapse because of it
Take a look at your nearest council estate, jobless thugs with 18 kids from 15 different mothers, all on benefits with a state-provided house. Stupidity is encouraged, intelligence is punished with taxes to support said stupidity.
And if we need more people to breed, why are we having to build more houses and pave-over the countryside? Surely that would only be necessary if the population was increasing?
they don't necessarily care if Joe Bob next door is running it
But they'll be the first to moan if they don't get driver support or software or anything. Just look at that article where that flood insurance site only supported Windows, there was plenty of moaning. Yet in the next breath the same people are saying they don't want mainstream support. Make your minds up!
If the machine runs independent of the person running it, then the employer's wasting money having the person there at all.
Generally machines need people to run them, that's why they employ people.
If you had an aeroplane that cost millions of dollars, would you fly it into a hurricane?
And after all the stories of beatings, shootings, rapes and murders, I don't blame any private industry not wanting to go within a thousand miles of that city.
A lot of people there either didn't bother leaving because they thought the hurricane wasn't too bad, or they refused (and still refuse) to leave. I don't have any sympathy for them.
Problem with that 'urban legend' is, now what happens is that every other employee is encouraged to throw money around, knowing that if they make a mistake they'll still keep their jobs.
In the case of New Orleans, it wasn't just a 'simple mistake', but utter incompetence.
I'm fascinated. Please tell me how an article on the Internet can prove beyond all doubt that Yahoo are the only country in the history of communist China to ever cooperate with the police, as required by law.
Let me see if I can work out the Slashdot lefty hivemind:
Laws against drugs or porn or violent computer games are bad, people should be able to buy and sell whatever they want as it's none of the government's business.
Tobacco companies are evil as people shouldn't be allowed to buy and consume what they want.
You couldn't make it up.
It's funny how people criticise Microsoft for breaking the law, and now criticise Yahoo for helping enforce the law. Seems if you're a big corporation (outside of Google and Apple), you just can't win on this site!
Of course this is the same site which preaches that you can ignore laws you don't agree with, so I don't konw what the hell anyone here actually thinks.
Did you even read the article, which said the average worker of an 8 hour day wastes 2 hours? And the subsequent debate that seems to favor the proposition that they waste those 2 hours because they're working too long?
If I have a machine running for 24 hours a day, if someone's stood working at it for 8 hours, there's 8 hours of production. If they're stood at it for 6 hours, there's 6 hours of production. 2 hours isn't wasted, it's 2 hours of production.
Do you expect managers to shut down machines for 2 hours every shift to give the workers rest?
Where I come from, getting paid the same hourly amount, only for less hours, isn't a pay cut.
So if you work only 6 hours a day rather than 8, all the bills/mortgage/food/taxes costs go down by 25% as well? What world do you live in?
Millions of people work on Saturday and/or Sunday.
So, instead of working 8 hours a day Monday to Friday, you're expecting people to work 6 hours a day seven days a week? I can't see that being too popular.
You really are a fucking idiot.
# eating out 6 times a week = waste of money and health
# party time on Saturdays - see above
Yeah, god forbid people actually ENJOY the fruits of their labour. Everyone knows that the whole reason for giving away half your waking life to work is to save up money and assets for when you're old enough to realise you've wasted your youth at work.
Cars are equity? Unless it's some obscure fancy car that saddo collectors might want, the values of cars do nothing but plummet.
Seriously though, if you can't go out and get bladdered on a Saturday, what's the point in slaving away during the week? You may as well just kill yourself because with no 'party time' there's no point in living at all.
I can't speak for America, but in Britain at least:
Socialism = Hard working people get taxed to the hilt so that scroungers with 6 kids by the time they're 20 years old who haven't worked a day in their life but have a government-supplied house can live off benefits and handouts.
Seriously though, that is NOT an extreme exagerration, it's actually true. Makes you sympathetic for people who exploit every loophole they can find to get out of being taxed.
The EU is a more complicated market though. In the USA they speak English, in Japan they speak Japanese, in the EU there are at least a dozen languages. A lot of the EU don't speak the languages that games are usually translated into, especially the old Soviet countries.
Water and electricity, likewise. There are the same number of people working at any time.
Actually, during the day, there are MORE people there, due to the overhead that comes with hiring 33% more workers. Water goes up, as now 33% more people have a wash/shower after the shift.
All the shift-working establishments I worked at either gave you a lunch break and let you leave the store/facility to buy lunch elsewhere, or had you pay for food you got at the facility. Either way, no increased cost.
Food is often subsidised. The more workers, the higher the cost. The more staff needed to cook, i.e. more money. There are higher cleaning costs also.
Paperwork and administrative costs, I'll grant you, but in turn, you have to grant that the company is no longer paying each employee for 8 hours of productivity and getting 6. The marginal costs are wiped out entirely by the marginal gain
No, they used to be paying for 8 hours and getting 8, now they're paying for 6 and getting 6, but with increased overhead and NO SAVINGS. This costs the company money. That's not even including the costs (both in time and money) of training up hundreds more people.
and that's not even taking into account the benefits gained through increased worker morale.
The increased morale that comes with a 25% paycut?
as opposed to giving employees less hours per day, but more days per week.
So now they have to come in on Saturday/Sunday? Your idea is a disgrace.
That's an odd thing to say in a discussion about user friendliness. Please mod parent up '+5 funny'.
Nah, the an erotic book might have been one of the first, but the printing press was largely pushed forward by the civil war, as both sides used it for propaganda.
I'm sure that pornographers were a minority of camera users as well.
You're neglecting all the costs which are the same for each worker regardless of how many hours they work. Things like take-over pay, lockers, water, electricity, soap, overalls, gloves, showers, car parking space, food, paperwork, administrative costs, training costs, keys, swipe cards, tools, and about a million other costs which are the same for every employee regardless of hours.
Bear in mind that people aren't going to want to earn $300 a week when they used to earn $400.
Clearly you've never been in a shift-working environment.
Basically, any job where you're expected to do manual labor for 8-10 hours per day. But aren't these the types of jobs we'd like to get rid of anyways?
Who is this 'we'? I don't want to get rid of my job, I need the money to pay for things like food and shelter. The last thing I need is the middle classes saying by job should disappear. If such jobs did go, the same people like you would be complaining about all the people on the dole taking their tax money.
At some point we will want to create disincentives to using humans as automatons.
Sure, all we need is about another two hundred years of robot design. By then they could even replace office workers, and we can all just sit on the dole.
The difference is, whilst Firefox is better than IE in pretty much every single department, Open Office just isn't up to scratch. Add to the fact it's too big to download on dialup and you can't get CDs of it anywhere, and its uptake will be hindered.
Installing OO on Linux is a challenge in itself. And it doesn't install itself into the menus so you have to launch it from the command line.
Maybe the Firefox team could work on OO? They seem to know how to put together a decent opensource application.
So Paypal gets to make money from every single e-mail sent in the world?
Not only that, but Paypal will effectively CONTROL ALL E-MAIL. I don't trust them with my money, let alone communication.
Well all this talk about 9-5 and flexible hours doesn't mean anything to me, I'm a shiftworker in a factory. The way I see it, even in a research position, you should get paid by the hour, that's the only fair way. Unless you want people sitting about all week saying they're 'thinking'. Or unless they want paying by results, i.e. £1000 per discovery or something.
Yeah, so now instead of three 8 hour shifts, now there are four 6 hour shifts. That's even more money down the can, just because workers don't want to do any work.
There are two solutions to this: either wages go down accordingly, or prices go up. Either way laziness is going to cost. Eight hours isn't that long. If you don't like it get a part time job or run your own business and work whatever hours you want.
Christ, there are people who would kill to be able to work forty hours, and even that's too much for some people. Like I said, no wonder companies want to outsource. I bet Indians don't bitch about working a normal 40 hour week.