Police arresting a college professor in his own home for a contempt of cop charge is, indeed, stupid.
It seems to be a common thread in your two examples though: you think that being required to show identification to government agents (even on your own property, in some cases) is a good idea?
The funny thing is that Porsche at least sells a vehicle that (could) drive fast, if speed limit laws didn't prevent it.
Apple sells the same crap, assembled by the same Chinese laborers, in the same Chinese factories, as everyone else does. They just make sure to have a "Designed by Apple in California" as the first thing seen when their customers open their boxes to help them buy into the idea that the device with no replaceable battery and severe lack of standard ports is a "premium" device.
I mean, it's got rounded corners and a brushed aluminum case -- it has to be good, right?
(Disclaimer: I own a 17" i5 MacBook Pro. My employer bought it for me. It's no better than any other 17" quad-core notebook on the market, but it is 300% more expensive.)
Do you honestly believe that it costs them a significant percentage of that $440 million to keep a data center or two up and running, and to set up credit card processing? (I recently integrated an ordering platform with a credit card authorization system. It took me a couple of weeks, and most of that was testing.)
I haven't read the source link, but I'd assume that the question was probably asked in the context that McCain is likely to die before his term would be up. In that case, it's a very important question.
And even if that wasn't the context -- the belief that Palin is more qualified, when she can't answer hard-hitting gotcha questions like, "what newspapers do you like to read?" is hilarious. And there are people who really do believe this.
I think that Hollywood has just gotten to the point where it has confused tech jargon with technobabble.
It was OK for Geordi to say, "I'll redirect a tachyon pulse through the warp manifold to the main deflector dish" because none of that means anything to anyone. But then they try to apply the same thing to actual tech jargon and you end up with disasters like that.
You missed the best part -- before the zooming nonsense even started, they first scan an existing image, then Rimmer says "uncrop" -- and magically the image is widened to *include* the business card. The business card was not even in the original image when it was scanned.
You know just like everything else if you downright ban them from having it, once they're old enough to go out on their own they're going to get it all the time just to spite you.
I can see a new edition of Freakonomics coming out in 10 years, where they find a sudden popularity surge of Happy Meals amongst teenagers; because they were deprived of these when they were kids, as they start getting jobs and cars, their first thoughts will be to "stick it to the man" by buying shitty food from McDonald's.
You could spend all of your free time playing only 90%-rated games from the past decade and would probably still never run out of new things to play.
The only difference between the other 90%-rated games and Assassin's Creed 2 is that advertisements told them that they *must* play Assassin's Creed 2.
Alright, even though I disagree that it was "stolen", I'll grant that, for the sake of argument, it was.
Also, on the assumption of the fact that there was no industrial espionage means that the article and the information within it are fair game.
Given those things: what a huge waste of taxpayer resources. It's not like the seller was a criminal that made a career of out using Gizmodo as a fence. And he's the *only* person that *might* be in the wrong here, as Gizmodo already gave the damn phone back. Are the police really just interested in going for such low-hanging fruit that they want to nail some guy that found a phone, tried to return it, couldn't, and then sold it to a news site?
California's already having prison population issues -- so now they want to add one more non-violent "offender" to the system? And all the self-righteous idiots commenting about this article about how they all "deserve what they get" from the police... Seriously, get some perspective. I hope you enjoy the authoritarian government that you (apparently) want so badly.
Except that trade secrets are exactly that -- secrets. They receive no protection under the law. If KFC accidentally threw away copies their secret recipe and someone found it written on a piece of paper in the street, they'd be free to publish that secret in any medium they chose.
On top of that, this story doesn't sound like a case of receiving stolen property at all, either: according to the NPR story I heard last week, the Apple employee got drunk and left his phone in a bar. At that point it's lost property, and the finder isn't under any obligation to return it. Even so, the person who found it called up Apple and said, "hey, I have a prototype, I think" and the service rep said, "no you don't."
So he sells what is now his property to Gizmodo, and they publish information about the cell phone that they now own. Sorry, Apple -- cat's out of the bag.
The shit-in-a-can was itself a critique on buyers of modern art. The artist himself had no false pretenses about what it was.
It was very much a modern case of "the emperor has no clothes." I don't believe that the physical object was art, but the act of producing and -- in particular -- selling it, was.
Why is platform support for DirectX important when you're talking about IE? It's not like they're going to be porting IE to any other operating systems.
And on top of that, it's no different than having a Windows Forms/GDI layer for Firefox. Or the new WPF interface for Opera. WPF is proprietary, so it's automatically bad, right?
Seriously, the WHOLE FUCKING THING is proprietary. Having one new proprietary piece replace an old one doesn't suddenly make it more bad somehow. And being proprietary doesn't automatically make it bad, either.
Hmm, and how might we go about limiting the rights and increasing the obligations of corporations? There was this model I heard about somewhere -- some document that basically said, "all people are born with all rights, and we will set up this entity to restrict certain rights, so that we can make sure that some people don't abuse the rights of others."
I'll give an equivalent example, and let's see if you come to my defense:
I ran a business and it produced a lot of garbage. I used to throw all my garbage out into the street, but the city changed the laws to outlaw that, and now garbage removal costs me more than the business could afford! I had to close my business, and now I make half of what I used to.
So can you help a guy out and tell everyone how it's a bad thing for the economy that I shouldn't be able to dump garbage in the street?
You are aware that two bytes (16 bits) is capable of storing 65536 distinct values, yes?
Do you really think that's enough resolution to store any arbitrary date or time? 8 bits isn't even enough to count the number of minutes in a day or days in a year.
And your second paragraph is irrelevant. If disk storage is expensive enough (which it was, back in the day), it doesn't matter what percentage of the drive is used to store the data. If you can prune the data down to save several MB worth of storage, you do it. If data is expensive to transmit, you prune it down to save on transmission costs. If removing/inferring 10MB worth of data will save your organization $10,000 worth of hardware or bandwidth costs, you do it.
Hey, that might even work with nationalized health care, I mean we can now see that you buy WAY too much alcohol and cigarettes, I think we'll withold some of that care from you due to life choices.
I'm actually all for this. If you choose to engage in risky activities, why should I subsidize it? Oh wait -- it's only "personal responsibility" when it applies to other people, right?
And yes, that means I think that if you can't afford to pay out of your own pocket for a smoking- or alcohol-related issue, you should be denied access to even the emergency room. Leave that for responsible people who aren't actively trying to destroy their lungs or liver.
Similarly, if you're in a car accident and aren't wearing a seatbelt, you shouldn't get jack shit for your injuries, even if the other driver was at fault. You chose to take the risk; now you live with it.
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Police arresting a college professor in his own home for a contempt of cop charge is, indeed, stupid.
It seems to be a common thread in your two examples though: you think that being required to show identification to government agents (even on your own property, in some cases) is a good idea?
--Jeremy
The funny thing is that Porsche at least sells a vehicle that (could) drive fast, if speed limit laws didn't prevent it.
Apple sells the same crap, assembled by the same Chinese laborers, in the same Chinese factories, as everyone else does. They just make sure to have a "Designed by Apple in California" as the first thing seen when their customers open their boxes to help them buy into the idea that the device with no replaceable battery and severe lack of standard ports is a "premium" device.
I mean, it's got rounded corners and a brushed aluminum case -- it has to be good, right?
(Disclaimer: I own a 17" i5 MacBook Pro. My employer bought it for me. It's no better than any other 17" quad-core notebook on the market, but it is 300% more expensive.)
And never underestimate the ability of people who bought into hype to rationalize their decisions.
--Jeremy
Are you seriously asking this question? Have you ever had sex?
--Jeremy
Nobody is arguing that there is no cost involved.
Do you honestly believe that it costs them a significant percentage of that $440 million to keep a data center or two up and running, and to set up credit card processing? (I recently integrated an ordering platform with a credit card authorization system. It took me a couple of weeks, and most of that was testing.)
--Jeremy
Nice job dodging the issue.
I haven't read the source link, but I'd assume that the question was probably asked in the context that McCain is likely to die before his term would be up. In that case, it's a very important question.
And even if that wasn't the context -- the belief that Palin is more qualified, when she can't answer hard-hitting gotcha questions like, "what newspapers do you like to read?" is hilarious. And there are people who really do believe this.
--Jeremy
I think that Hollywood has just gotten to the point where it has confused tech jargon with technobabble.
It was OK for Geordi to say, "I'll redirect a tachyon pulse through the warp manifold to the main deflector dish" because none of that means anything to anyone. But then they try to apply the same thing to actual tech jargon and you end up with disasters like that.
--Jeremy
You missed the best part -- before the zooming nonsense even started, they first scan an existing image, then Rimmer says "uncrop" -- and magically the image is widened to *include* the business card. The business card was not even in the original image when it was scanned.
--Jeremy
Actually, I think the best lesson to be learned from this story is: never buy technology on a payment plan.
--Jeremy
I can see a new edition of Freakonomics coming out in 10 years, where they find a sudden popularity surge of Happy Meals amongst teenagers; because they were deprived of these when they were kids, as they start getting jobs and cars, their first thoughts will be to "stick it to the man" by buying shitty food from McDonald's.
--Jeremy
You could spend all of your free time playing only 90%-rated games from the past decade and would probably still never run out of new things to play.
The only difference between the other 90%-rated games and Assassin's Creed 2 is that advertisements told them that they *must* play Assassin's Creed 2.
--Jeremy
Alright, even though I disagree that it was "stolen", I'll grant that, for the sake of argument, it was.
Also, on the assumption of the fact that there was no industrial espionage means that the article and the information within it are fair game.
Given those things: what a huge waste of taxpayer resources. It's not like the seller was a criminal that made a career of out using Gizmodo as a fence. And he's the *only* person that *might* be in the wrong here, as Gizmodo already gave the damn phone back. Are the police really just interested in going for such low-hanging fruit that they want to nail some guy that found a phone, tried to return it, couldn't, and then sold it to a news site?
California's already having prison population issues -- so now they want to add one more non-violent "offender" to the system? And all the self-righteous idiots commenting about this article about how they all "deserve what they get" from the police ... Seriously, get some perspective. I hope you enjoy the authoritarian government that you (apparently) want so badly.
--Jeremy
Except that trade secrets are exactly that -- secrets. They receive no protection under the law. If KFC accidentally threw away copies their secret recipe and someone found it written on a piece of paper in the street, they'd be free to publish that secret in any medium they chose.
On top of that, this story doesn't sound like a case of receiving stolen property at all, either: according to the NPR story I heard last week, the Apple employee got drunk and left his phone in a bar. At that point it's lost property, and the finder isn't under any obligation to return it. Even so, the person who found it called up Apple and said, "hey, I have a prototype, I think" and the service rep said, "no you don't."
So he sells what is now his property to Gizmodo, and they publish information about the cell phone that they now own. Sorry, Apple -- cat's out of the bag.
--Jeremy
Wait, are you arguing that your God wants kids to tell grandma that they think her sweater is ugly and will never wear it?
I didn't think the Christian God was that much of a dick, to be honest.
--Jeremy
You are correct in that there is most definitely a fail here, but the fail is not by the GP/GGP posters.
--Jeremy
The shit-in-a-can was itself a critique on buyers of modern art. The artist himself had no false pretenses about what it was.
It was very much a modern case of "the emperor has no clothes." I don't believe that the physical object was art, but the act of producing and -- in particular -- selling it, was.
--Jeremy
Why is platform support for DirectX important when you're talking about IE? It's not like they're going to be porting IE to any other operating systems.
And on top of that, it's no different than having a Windows Forms/GDI layer for Firefox. Or the new WPF interface for Opera. WPF is proprietary, so it's automatically bad, right?
Seriously, the WHOLE FUCKING THING is proprietary. Having one new proprietary piece replace an old one doesn't suddenly make it more bad somehow. And being proprietary doesn't automatically make it bad, either.
--Jeremy
Hmm, and how might we go about limiting the rights and increasing the obligations of corporations? There was this model I heard about somewhere -- some document that basically said, "all people are born with all rights, and we will set up this entity to restrict certain rights, so that we can make sure that some people don't abuse the rights of others."
Maybe we could use that as a starting point.
--Jeremy
Nice rant, but I was really looking forward to seeing your list of recent successful ISP startups.
--Jeremy
I'll give an equivalent example, and let's see if you come to my defense:
I ran a business and it produced a lot of garbage. I used to throw all my garbage out into the street, but the city changed the laws to outlaw that, and now garbage removal costs me more than the business could afford! I had to close my business, and now I make half of what I used to.
So can you help a guy out and tell everyone how it's a bad thing for the economy that I shouldn't be able to dump garbage in the street?
--Jeremy
Well, to be fair, C accomplishes this with huge blocks of #ifdefs that are only preprocessed in for the appropriate architectures.
The code is certainly cross-platform, but the language itself isn't.
--Jeremy
You are aware that two bytes (16 bits) is capable of storing 65536 distinct values, yes?
Do you really think that's enough resolution to store any arbitrary date or time? 8 bits isn't even enough to count the number of minutes in a day or days in a year.
And your second paragraph is irrelevant. If disk storage is expensive enough (which it was, back in the day), it doesn't matter what percentage of the drive is used to store the data. If you can prune the data down to save several MB worth of storage, you do it. If data is expensive to transmit, you prune it down to save on transmission costs. If removing/inferring 10MB worth of data will save your organization $10,000 worth of hardware or bandwidth costs, you do it.
--Jeremy
Dunno, I'd take a kick in the balls over being shot in the foot any day, but to each his own.
--Jeremy
I'm actually all for this. If you choose to engage in risky activities, why should I subsidize it? Oh wait -- it's only "personal responsibility" when it applies to other people, right?
And yes, that means I think that if you can't afford to pay out of your own pocket for a smoking- or alcohol-related issue, you should be denied access to even the emergency room. Leave that for responsible people who aren't actively trying to destroy their lungs or liver.
Similarly, if you're in a car accident and aren't wearing a seatbelt, you shouldn't get jack shit for your injuries, even if the other driver was at fault. You chose to take the risk; now you live with it.
--Jeremy
But you're not going to call out that the GP's "argument" was made up entirely of unfounded assumptions, innuendo and ad hominem name calling?
At least go for some consistency here.
--Jeremy