However, the Constitution specifically forbids Congress from writing any ex-post-facto laws, which includes retroactive immunity.
No, it does not include retroactive immunity.
These are the ex post facto laws, according to the Supreme Court in Calder v. Bull :
----- 1st. Every law that makes an action , done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action.
2nd. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed.
3rd. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.
4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offence, in order to convict the offender. ---- A law making something NOT a crime when it was a crime when committed is not covered.
(incidentally, the Supreme Court has pretty much chipped the 3rd one away to nothing since Calder v. Bull)
They lost the 2600 case, and the Blizzard v. bnetd case -- so hypertext links are not free speech, the DMCA interoperability exception applies only to "program to program" interoperability and not "program to data", software which violates protection mechanisms are not free speech, and reverse-engineering a product by examining its output is copyright infringement.
There's something deliciously ironic about the RIAA citing "Red Herring" magazine in an attempt to get their bogus case dismissed Mr. Beckerman sanctioned...
Anticorporate socialist environmentalist types really are a bunch of whiners. Know what would happen if these things weren't shipped to third-world countries to be destructively recycled? They'd be dumped in landfills, where they'd cause relatively little problem. It just isn't economically feasible (nor even technically feasible in many cases) to cleanly deconstruct them for their raw materials. And in the US you can't do the destructive recycling.
So, choose -- do you want recycling, or do you want clean disposal processes? Or would you rather take option C, whine about the evil US and evil corporations, and say we shouldn't be using electronics at all until we've figured out how to turn them back into sand, oil, and metal without any byproducts?
Does this mean one can now pad one's resume with "Studied at Stanford" or some such verbiage, without (much) guilt? Not an issue for me but for those newer to the field, it just might help...
Aren't you glad there's no such thing as complete privacy in our society? I don't consider it "raping my privacy" if someone sees me in the street. And if someone decides to follow me where I go, well, it's a free country, isn't it?
If everywhere everyone goes, their whereabouts are tracked and recorded... then no, no it's not a free country.
If you're one of those "reasonable" people who, when discussing these sorts of cameras, pooh-poohed other people's claims that they'd be used for this purpose, calling them "paranoid" and accusing them of seeing black helicopters or some such, please accept this on behalf of all us paranoid types everywhere
WE TOLD YOU SO, ASSHOLE!
(And if you're interested, tinfoil hat fitting is down the hall and to the right. Remember, shiny side out)
The dragon cannot appreciate the tiger's position because he is not a tiger. The tiger is in the same situation.
But like the real situation, that's a false symmetry. The dragon doesn't much care that the tiger cannot appreciate his position, as long as he's tasty. The tiger, on the other hand, is rather put out that the dragon can't appreciate his position.
Now see your real part in the business.
Yeah. You're the tiger. Which implies the relationship is necessarily adversarial.
There may very well be a management vs. labour conflict (even though it's a bit of a dated idea), but I don't think it's analogous to IT vs. Business.
There's two different conflicts here. One is staff versus line -- in non-tech companies, IT has a purely staff role, and are thus often not considered as important as those doing the primary business of the company. However, in technology firms, development organizations who are actually producing the product are "line", and the problem still exists. There, it may be management versus labor.
The two conflicts, have been joined by the prevalent and pernicious view expressed by a few of the pro-business posters here -- that if you're not upper management and you're not directly making money for the company, you're of secondary importance, which means that only sales and upper management are important.
Re:Everyone should try the other side
on
Tech Vs. Business?
·
· Score: 1
I have been a tech, developer in a software house, and the internal fight with the sale dept were daily occurrence. Some promises to a customer or some awful technical wording made it so we (tech) had to step up to the plate and "fix" something or implement some dumb feature overnight bypassing QA and all other SOP. I hated those guys.. can't they have their fact straights?
Why should they? They write the check, YOUR ass has to make good on it, and they get the commission. If you can't make good on it, you get the blame from management, and the salesguy has already moved on to another prospect; sure, he lost that commission but he wouldn't have gotten it without making the promise anyway.
As techies our instinct goes to "good and fast". Almost without thinking. Business people, on the other hand, really are the exact opposite: "cheap" is the fixed value for them, and then they pick either good or fast depending on the specific project.
My experience is that they generally pick "fast" and then complain when it isn't "good", or pick "good" and then move the deadlines up to demand "fast". Either way, development gets the blame. And if by some miracle of overinflated estimates development manages to pull off the right combination of good, cheap, and fast, who gets the bonuses? Not development.
To business guys, there's only three types of people
1) Sales. They go out and get the money. Business guys like these people 2) Businesspeople. They get the lion's share of the money. 3) Staff. Everyone else. Whether they are support staff or actually building the company's product, they don't make money; they require it. Businesspeople would ideally get rid of these people, but they've found it impossible to run the business without them.
I think we do need a tradesman and professional level in the industry. Unfortunately, the idea hasn't taken hold and probably never will.
And never should.
Advantage: Employers wouldn't have Mickey-mouse testing during job interviews Disadvantages: (drawn from my knowledge of other professional areas)
* Requirements to pass a grueling series of tests which may or may not be relevant to the job. * Formal "continuing education" requirements, in which one must take a class about last year's technology taught by someone who knows less about it than the student does. * Requirement to work "supervised" under another professional for some time (typically years), and to obtain sign-off of time worked before qualifying for professional level * Education requirements which preclude those without C.S. or C.E. degrees from entering the field ** Also, typically "professional" fields require at least the equivalent of a masters degree before one can qualify for licensure, and the supervised work must be post-masters. * Inability to legally work in the field unless one is willing to jump through the hoops. * Dues to professional organizations, probably at least 2 (state and national) and perhaps more. ** Said professional organizations being dominated by those in the field with largest ego to brain ratio. * Professional liability, and the associated professional liability insurance premiums.
Of course, you want REALLY annoying looks? In cs100 we had common exams in college. Try being the first one done in an auditorium of 4-500 people and having to first deliver your test to the stage, then walking out past the glares of all the other people.....
Better, try arriving half an hour late and out of breath, working rapidly through the exam, and still being the first to turn it in. For bonus points, do that in a few classes you aren't even registered in.
After Iraq, if the US asks to inspect anyone people will just say that the US is not to be trusted on weapons inspections.
The weapons inspectors were UN, not US
Dictators will be able to claim that the US is sending in spies, not working towards disarmament.
Which Saddam did anyway.
With Russia going nuts, and Pakistan on the brink, the US has lost the credibility it needs to diffuse international conflicts.
The "credibility" needed to defuse international conflicts is enough military force to make both parties take notice. We don't (and never did) have that with Russia, at least not on their doorstep, as a number of Soviet-crushed revolutions during the cold war should demonstrate.
What kind of future will it be when even relatively simple electronics come with DRM to prevent 'misuse'?
A future where embedded software people will have skills which demand a high price on the black market. How much would someone pay to have their Gucci watch work even when they aren't carrying the matching Gucci handbag? To use unapproved attachments on their Dremel tool? To disable that damn "fly-dropping" DRM on the Levi's which happens when you don't wear their partner's underwear?
Wow. This thing pretty much hits all the points of non-patentability.
1) Most of it -- the non-DRM stuff -- isn't at all novel; it has been done before by Apple, even. They're just re-iterating the prior art to bulk out the application. The stuff about analyzing the running style, I've been hearing about being used for athletes for years; commercializing it doesn't make it patentable.
2) Nor is it non-obvious. The patent (again, aside from the DRM stuff) appears to be trying to cover a specific sort of telemetry. Telemetry has been done for a while -- likely from garments, even, if you consider a spacesuit or a diving suit a garment. Given that you have telemety, it's pretty obvious (here in 2008, or even in 2007) you can process it on a networked computer or receive it on a portable computer. And making that computer a portable multimedia player doesn't make it any different either.
3) The DRM stuff isn't novel either. Using a physical device to provide authorization and authentication information goes back to antiquity. Using it in computers goes back to the days of "dongles". Using an RFID device to provide authorization and authentication... well, isn't that one of the originally envisioned uses of RFID? Using a hammer to drive in a nail isn't novel, even if the nail itself is.
4) Not really related to patentability, but it's unlikely to be implemented, at least in the RFID embodiment. Providing enough power to ping passive RFID will kill the sensor's battery. And active RFID is likely to be too expensive and present manufacturing problems, not insurmountable but certainly greater than the "problem" of having people do other things with the sensors.
Re:Fat chance of that happening...
on
Fire Your IT Boss
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
... if developers want to work for sane people they are going to have to get their collective heads out of their asses and come together as a community and fund their own companies.
Most developers, myself included, don't have the skills to run their own company. We're as out of place in the business world as Donald Trump would be with a C++ compiler.
Worse, those developers who do have the skills to run their own company, if they do so, will eventually be viewed by those working for them just as they used to view their bosses. Or they'll just go bankrupt. There's a reason it's the same thing everywhere you go, and that's because that's what works in the business world.
Forcing you to use an inferior tool because there is a standard everyone at the company has to use means anyone can pick up your work later.
Forcing you to change tools 6 days into a two-week project is a bad idea regardless.
It decreases your ability to do the spectacular. But it increases your ability to be replaced if the worst happens.
From the employee's point of view, BOTH of those are bad things. The first means they'll be seen as a poorer performer, the second means they'll be more likely to be out on the street.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it does not include retroactive immunity.
These are the ex post facto laws, according to the Supreme Court in Calder v. Bull :
-----
1st. Every law that makes an action , done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action.
2nd. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed.
3rd. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.
4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offence, in order to convict the offender.
----
A law making something NOT a crime when it was a crime when committed is not covered.
(incidentally, the Supreme Court has pretty much chipped the 3rd one away to nothing since Calder v. Bull)
They lost the 2600 case, and the Blizzard v. bnetd case -- so hypertext links are not free speech, the DMCA interoperability exception applies only to "program to program" interoperability and not "program to data", software which violates protection mechanisms are not free speech, and reverse-engineering a product by examining its output is copyright infringement.
There's something deliciously ironic about the RIAA citing "Red Herring" magazine in an attempt to get their bogus case dismissed Mr. Beckerman sanctioned...
I mean, can you get any more obvious?
Anticorporate socialist environmentalist types really are a bunch of whiners. Know what would happen if these things weren't shipped to third-world countries to be destructively recycled? They'd be dumped in landfills, where they'd cause relatively little problem. It just isn't economically feasible (nor even technically feasible in many cases) to cleanly deconstruct them for their raw materials. And in the US you can't do the destructive recycling. So, choose -- do you want recycling, or do you want clean disposal processes? Or would you rather take option C, whine about the evil US and evil corporations, and say we shouldn't be using electronics at all until we've figured out how to turn them back into sand, oil, and metal without any byproducts?
Wait, it's "cigar-shaped" and they're naming it after a fertility _Goddess_? Something's not right here.
Does this mean one can now pad one's resume with "Studied at Stanford" or some such verbiage, without (much) guilt? Not an issue for me but for those newer to the field, it just might help...
If everywhere everyone goes, their whereabouts are tracked and recorded... then no, no it's not a free country.
If you're one of those "reasonable" people who, when discussing these sorts of cameras, pooh-poohed other people's claims that they'd be used for this purpose, calling them "paranoid" and accusing them of seeing black helicopters or some such, please accept this on behalf of all us paranoid types everywhere
WE TOLD YOU SO, ASSHOLE!
(And if you're interested, tinfoil hat fitting is down the hall and to the right. Remember, shiny side out)
Depends on what caused the panic. I wouldn't be surprised if the book value on many skyscrapers dropped significantly about 7 years ago.
But like the real situation, that's a false symmetry. The dragon doesn't much care that the tiger cannot appreciate his position, as long as he's tasty. The tiger, on the other hand, is rather put out that the dragon can't appreciate his position.
Yeah. You're the tiger. Which implies the relationship is necessarily adversarial.
There's two different conflicts here. One is staff versus line -- in non-tech companies, IT has a purely staff role, and are thus often not considered as important as those doing the primary business of the company. However, in technology firms, development organizations who are actually producing the product are "line", and the problem still exists. There, it may be management versus labor.
The two conflicts, have been joined by the prevalent and pernicious view expressed by a few of the pro-business posters here -- that if you're not upper management and you're not directly making money for the company, you're of secondary importance, which means that only sales and upper management are important.
Why should they? They write the check, YOUR ass has to make good on it, and they get the commission. If you can't make good on it, you get the blame from management, and the salesguy has already moved on to another prospect; sure, he lost that commission but he wouldn't have gotten it without making the promise anyway.
My experience is that they generally pick "fast" and then complain when it isn't "good", or pick "good" and then move the deadlines up to demand "fast". Either way, development gets the blame. And if by some miracle of overinflated estimates development manages to pull off the right combination of good, cheap, and fast, who gets the bonuses? Not development.
(what, bitter, me?)
To business guys, there's only three types of people
1) Sales. They go out and get the money. Business guys like these people
2) Businesspeople. They get the lion's share of the money.
3) Staff. Everyone else. Whether they are support staff or actually building the company's product, they don't make money; they require it. Businesspeople would ideally get rid of these people, but they've found it impossible to run the business without them.
Now we know why the CIA etc has been so often completely off base -- they've been getting their information from Slashdot!
And never should.
Advantage: Employers wouldn't have Mickey-mouse testing during job interviews
Disadvantages: (drawn from my knowledge of other professional areas)
* Requirements to pass a grueling series of tests which may or may not be relevant to the job.
* Formal "continuing education" requirements, in which one must take a class about last year's technology taught by someone who knows less about it than the student does.
* Requirement to work "supervised" under another professional for some time (typically years), and to obtain sign-off of time worked before qualifying for professional level
* Education requirements which preclude those without C.S. or C.E. degrees from entering the field
** Also, typically "professional" fields require at least the equivalent of a masters degree before one can qualify for licensure, and the supervised work must be post-masters.
* Inability to legally work in the field unless one is willing to jump through the hoops.
* Dues to professional organizations, probably at least 2 (state and national) and perhaps more.
** Said professional organizations being dominated by those in the field with largest ego to brain ratio.
* Professional liability, and the associated professional liability insurance premiums.
So what would you take as a right answer?
A) "I don't understand? 0xff is an integer already".
B) -1
C) TRUE
D) 255
E) 0377
(four of those answers are arguably correct, one of those being definitely smartass and one being possibly smartass)
Better, try arriving half an hour late and out of breath, working rapidly through the exam, and still being the first to turn it in. For bonus points, do that in a few classes you aren't even registered in.
The weapons inspectors were UN, not US
Which Saddam did anyway.
The "credibility" needed to defuse international conflicts is enough military force to make both parties take notice. We don't (and never did) have that with Russia, at least not on their doorstep, as a number of Soviet-crushed revolutions during the cold war should demonstrate.
A future where embedded software people will have skills which demand a high price on the black market. How much would someone pay to have their Gucci watch work even when they aren't carrying the matching Gucci handbag? To use unapproved attachments on their Dremel tool? To disable that damn "fly-dropping" DRM on the Levi's which happens when you don't wear their partner's underwear?
Wow. This thing pretty much hits all the points of non-patentability.
1) Most of it -- the non-DRM stuff -- isn't at all novel; it has been done before by Apple, even. They're just re-iterating the prior art to bulk out the application. The stuff about analyzing the running style, I've been hearing about being used for athletes for years; commercializing it doesn't make it patentable.
2) Nor is it non-obvious. The patent (again, aside from the DRM stuff) appears to be trying to cover a specific sort of telemetry. Telemetry has been done for a while -- likely from garments, even, if you consider a spacesuit or a diving suit a garment. Given that you have telemety, it's pretty obvious (here in 2008, or even in 2007) you can process it on a networked computer or receive it on a portable computer. And making that computer a portable multimedia player doesn't make it any different either.
3) The DRM stuff isn't novel either. Using a physical device to provide authorization and authentication information goes back to antiquity. Using it in computers goes back to the days of "dongles". Using an RFID device to provide authorization and authentication... well, isn't that one of the originally envisioned uses of RFID? Using a hammer to drive in a nail isn't novel, even if the nail itself is.
4) Not really related to patentability, but it's unlikely to be implemented, at least in the RFID embodiment. Providing enough power to ping passive RFID will kill the sensor's battery. And active RFID is likely to be too expensive and present manufacturing problems, not insurmountable but certainly greater than the "problem" of having people do other things with the sensors.
Most developers, myself included, don't have the skills to run their own company. We're as out of place in the business world as Donald Trump would be with a C++ compiler.
Worse, those developers who do have the skills to run their own company, if they do so, will eventually be viewed by those working for them just as they used to view their bosses. Or they'll just go bankrupt. There's a reason it's the same thing everywhere you go, and that's because that's what works in the business world.
Forcing you to change tools 6 days into a two-week project is a bad idea regardless.
From the employee's point of view, BOTH of those are bad things. The first means they'll be seen as a poorer performer, the second means they'll be more likely to be out on the street.
If the algorithms were static, it would be security through obscurity. Since they aren't, it's an ongoing contest between Google and the gamers.
No; they're indistinguishable.