For this reason your question is either biased or stupid or both.
Well then let's be fair: I think your comparisons are biased or stupid or both.
Photocopiers didn't kill the book publishers.
Because there is a significant time investment in standing around and copying all of the pages of a book. Not to mention that when you're finished, you end up with a stack of papers, not a book.
Tape recorders didn't kill music industry.
No, they didn't. Then again, tape recorders--in terms of piracy (which is what we're really talking about when we talk DRM--require that I know you and live nearby you. They require that I be able to hand you the physical copy. This is still a problem with CDs.
VCRs *multiplied* the profits of the movie industry
Again, for me to pirate you a movie, I have to be able to give it to you. Sure, I could mail it or something, but that's more work and expense for me. That fact means it's largely limited to me pirating things for my close friends, family or neighbors.
The issue with digital piracy is that you can create as many exact copies as you want with no quality issues, and distribute them around the globe with essentially no effort. It also costs essentially the same to make and share one copy with one friend as it would to make 10,000 copies to share with 10,000 random people (ignoring data transfer costs--which most people, at least in the US, don't pay specifically for anyway; they pay for the speeds of their lines, not how much data they squeeze through those lines in a month).
I don't support DRM for many reasons, but to pretend that my ability to make exact digital duplicates of a CD (or DVD or what have you) and distribute those copies to anybody in the world with a 'net connection is somehow akin to what I could do similarly with VHS tapes or cassettes is naive at best and disingenuous at worst.
To avoid having to make a second post, I'm going to go ahead and give my answer to the submitter's questions:
I'm perfectly willing to pay for, for example, music downloads, assuming that the price is fair. Here is clue #1 for music companies: If it would cost me roughly the same amount of money to buy each track on a CD digitally as to go to the store and buy the actual CD, you're charging too much. I should not have to pay the same amount for lower-quality copies of songs with no case, no insert, no artwork and no CD-pressing manufacturing costs, that I would for higher-quality versions with all that. That is just plain silly.
Clue #2: I want to be able to choose the quality of the song I download. If I really love a song, I want to be able to get a high-quality rip. On the contrary, if I don't really love a song, or if I'm just downloading it again for some reason (for example I took my laptop to school and noticed a few songs I had forgotten to transfer over, I re-downloaded those), I'd like to be able to get a lower bitrate--and to pay a lower price accordingly. A bit rate range of 128 to 320 (for MP3) seems fair. If you want to offer lossless options, hey, more power--but I personally could not hear a difference between 320 and lossless, so it means very little to me.
Clue #3: Choosing formats is nice. It's not particularly important to me, but I know it can be to a lot of people--and really, when you get right down to it, if you're doing steps #1 and #2 already, then letting people chose their format in addition to their bitrate is simply not that much more work, neither to code for nor on the server doing the jobs.
Clue #4: Probably the most important one, and the one that most specifically addresses the question posed in the submission: Once I buy the song from you, IT IS MINE. Get the hell off my back about what I can do with it. I don't want DRM. I don't want you to tell me how many different CDs I can burn it to, or what devices I can play it back on. If you charge reasonable prices, permit me to choose my for
Pull my other one, it makes a sound! Does Lockheed Martin really expect people to believe them?
Of course, the alternate could be true as well: Lockheed really was going to fire this guy so he decided to try to screw them as publicly as possible before he was gone.
If I were a company who told somebody they were going to be laid off on X date, and before that date they did something like that, I would certainly expedite his departure. In that case, it wouldn't mean that he was fired BECAUSE of what he did, but rather that the process was accelerated because of it.
We can assume incompetance at Lockheed, corruption among testers and officials, corruption among politicians... and even if we were right on all three points (certainly possible), it doesn't mean that in this particular case he wasn't being ignored because his concerns were simply not that important.
I don't pretend to know what the truth in this case is, but I am somewhat befuddled by the overwhelming majority of Slashdot who assume straight off that it is pure truth. I thought we were skeptical by nature around here.
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux
on
A New Kind of OS
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· Score: 5, Funny
I presume the "Read the article" option would be permanently grayed out?
The prevailing thought among the mac community was that they were secretly jealous, or unwilling to admit that they were had bought into a big monopoly that, in the end, resulted in crappy computing.
If that is the prevailing thought in the Mac community, doesn't it sort of not jive with you saying they're not really elitest? There's no comparison of value there, no comparison of experience. It's a judgement that people who chose differently were dumb and now they're pretending they didn't notice how dumb they are.
Maybe Mac users aren't elitest in the sense that they want to keep Macs as a smaller segment of the population, but it seems that they are elitest in that they think they're better or smarter than you because of their choice.
As many users have pointed out, Macs, and iPods, and really anything from Apple are as much statement as reason. I'm not cool if I have an MP3 player other than an iPod, and I'm not cool if I don't use the "clearly better" Mac and OS X. Half of their selling point is that eliteism--even when, like iPods, they dominate the market.
And you know what? There's nothing much wrong with that position, but in my experience people are not willing to admit it.
depending upon where you go (and where you happen to come back) it can get pretty darned unpleasant
Acknowledging that you said this in advance, because I don't want to appear to have not seen it. Just want to relay my own experience.
Really, my desire to travel has been pretty much eliminated by all this post 9/11 homeland insecurity stuff.
I don't know if it has gotten any worse since the latest issues, but I flew internationally (for the first time!) a little over a year ago, in early July. I departed O'Hare, connected in LAX and then on to Sydney, Australia. The security process was really smooth, as it has been every time I've flown (almost all of them after 9/11, though domestic). The lines were a little longer sometimes, but the process itself still only took a few minutes.
In O'Hare and LAX, there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in terms of security. In Sydney, the only "inconveinience" was that I was selected while I was going through the metal detectors to be randomly bomb tested. It was a process that took all of 45 seconds and the guy who did it was perfectly nice. He remarked, as he swabbed my clothes and luggage and stuck it in the machine, that farmers often set the machines off. So presumably, even if something on me had set it off, it wouldn't have been a particularly bad process since they deal with false positives what certainly seemed from his expression to be fairly routinely. I don't know though, because by the time he was done saying that the test was complete and I was on my way. In hindsight I'm kind of glad I got picked -- not because it was great fun or anything, but because it's good to be reminded when bad things like this, or racial profiling stories emerge, that there truly are good people just trying to do their jobs out there as well. I'm a white male, 21 at the time, so definitely not somebody who'd fit the typical terrorist profile that we hear so much about them looking for. I did have a laptop, though, just as a mention. Aaanyway...
Ditto the lack of complications on the way back on both sides. Honestly, the worst part of flying was the flight itself -- gahhh, 17 hours in those cramped little seats!! I know a trip to Australia isn't exactly likely to set off any security red flags like, say, a trip to Syria or something like that would, but this story was about a trip to Canada was it not? And either way, my point isn't to say anything other than that it's not so bad and to remind that these stories we hear, while certainly appalling and disappointing in many ways, are the exceptions rather than the rules.
If you don't want to fly, that's cool -- but if you're not flying because you're afraid of the security procedures, you really shouldn't be. Don't flush your iPod down the toilet and you should be good to go!
Well, obviously there are subjects where a new addition every year or two is appropiate.
New edition, or new addition? Or new textbook?
Obviously, technology changes fast enough that it might be that a new textbook (that is, a book on a different subject) is required. For example, my school recently replaced C++ with Java for their programming courses. If a new technology takes off today, it may be that in two or three years that the class might change focus and need a new book altogether.
But I'm not sure things change so dramatically that a new edition is needed every year or two, or even every five (more than that is probably okay). I think that a lot of those changes can be incorporated more easily, and certainly more cheaply, by instructors simply revising their curriculum a little bit. Is something in your book obsolete? Don't teach it the next year. Something new has cropped up that your book doesn't even touch? Print off a copy of an article online or draw something up yourself to give to your students. Or alternately, since colleges are also trying to get professors to stop copying so much, give students a URL to something online for the new material. If they want to print it, they're welcome to do so and if not, it's there anyway.
I only think new editions should be necessary when there is nearly as much supplementary material and obsolete material as there is material in the book that is actually being covered. Then you need a new book. If the book is greatly improved, that may also be a reason to change but that seems like a rare phenomena. Other than that, changing more than once every five years or so seems downright wrong, and even five years may be wasteful.
I can't believe you are the only one who replied to the GP with, you know, reality. Thanks for saving me the time of doing it myself. (Though you probably should have left off that last paragraph--true or not, it distracts from your spot-on points.)
Every lawyer I have ever said this to nodded their head in complete agreement. They seriously couldn't see that this is patently assinine. Amazing.
Why is it asinine? It exists to ensure that the government behaves itself in a certain way during the conduct of an investigation and trial. If they tortured somebody until they confessed, wouldn't you expect them to be found not guilty if it ever made it to court? It doesn't mean that they didn't COMMIT the crime. It means that the police could not PROVE that they committed the crime with evidence that was obtained in a legal manner. Along with the protection against double jeopardy, it helps to prevent law enforcement from dragging you into court every ten minutes until they get you convicted. They have to make sure they have a good case before they bring it, because they only get to lose once.
It's not an accident at all that juries decide between "guilty" and "not guilty" and not between "guilty" and "innocent." It is, in fact, the entire basis of the (criminal) US legal system: guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Anf if guilt beyond a reasonable doubt cannot be proven, they find you... yes. Not guilty.
Makes perfect sense to me. I wouldn't have it any other way.
I think most posters here are missing one fact: The evidence she destroyed was evidence against herself.
I think you're missing the point: it doesn't matter.
First and foremost, she just didn't decide one day that what she did was wrong and decide to "un-do" it, or to remove evidence of it having been done. If that were the case, she probably would have gotten away with it.
Rather, what she did is knowingly defy a court order. The court ordered her to turn the drive over as evidence, and she destroyed that evidence. Not only is it wrong, it is illegal. I'm not sure if they can build a criminal case from it since it arose in a civil suit, but they almost certainly can. And you know what? I wouldn't feel bad for her in the least if they tossed her in the clink for it.
But all of that is also somewhat beside the point because your entire premise is wrong. You have a Constitutional right not to "be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against [yourself]." That does NOT mean that you do not have to turn over evidence against yourself; evidence has nothing to do with you bearing witness. (Not) bearing witness against yourself is when you get up in the little examination box in court and say, "I plead the fifth."
Likewise, I'm not even 100% sure you have THAT right because this is a civil action; the US Constitution is a document constraining the power of government.
It maybe is a "disregard for the judicial process", but I think the stronger harm for the "judicial process" is forcing someone to provide evidence against him- or herself. This is such a fundamental idea that I really don't get how the judge missed it.
He didn't "miss it." He was applying the law, not your particular interpretation of the law. Saying something doesn't make it so.
Is the next step torturing someone until he provides evidence against himself ?
What now?
Surely it has happened--in the US, even (see the Chicago incidents for proof)--but I fail to see how you made the leap. A court ordering you to turn over subpoenaed evidence without destroying it is not even in the same ballpark as torturing somebody until they tell you whatever it is you want to hear, and you just make yourself look bad by insinuating otherwise.
"Slippery slope" is a logical error of argumentation for a reason, you know. Throwing that sort of thing out there without any connection between it and your evidence means nothing. It's just a way to get a cheap emotional reaction from people to distact them from your actual argument.
They believe "they know" and their kids don't: because they're kids and have not had enough experience.
It's not entirely an issue of whether or not they believe their kid has enough experience. It's a belief that kids--even really smart and responsible kids--make crappy, impulsive and generally really bad decisions. And they are correct. You can go look for any number of studies that show that kids' brain development, in terms of risk evaluation and the like, simply isn't there at 16, or even 18 (I think--but don't quote me--that it really starts to fill in around 20ish).
The kids "know" too, and the parents know their kids know. The kids know speeding lowers reaction time, they know it can lead to more accidents and more severe accidents. They know, relatedly, that drinking and driving is dangerous. They know many drugs can be dangerous. They know all sorts of things, and they do them anyway.
The "kids think they are invincible" mantra has been used well past the point of cliche, but it's essentially true and not just anecdotally. Kids do stupid things for no other reason than that they are kids and their brains don't work the same way they will in adulthood. That's simply fact.
Does this apply equally to every kid? I doubt it. I'm sure some kids' judgement centers develop faster than others in the same way that any area of the brain may develop faster (or slower) for some than others.
I suppose 90 year olds should dictate to everyone then
This is true in many parts of the world. "Respect your elders." It isn't just a cutesy phrase telling you to be nice to old people--it's telling you that old people have knowledge and experience to impart to you if you'll put aside the aversion most people seem to have to being given advice, particularly by people who don't specifically know you.
or maybe bred and groomed princes of a ruling class
I have absolutely no idea how you made this leap. Being old means you have experience. It may be valuable or it may not, but that's the way it works. Being bred into a ruling class means nothing other than that you were bred into a ruling class. You may be fantastic at it or you may suck. This is an absolutely ridiculous statement.
This is the initial reason for having kids.
I'd say the biological imperative is the initial reason for having kids. Species' that don't care whether or not they reproduce are going to die off. Humans care, in may ways and on many levels. The most base level is, of course, it involves sex--and sex feels good. It's not an accident or a byproduct that it feels good, it works that way specifically to make us want to have sex. Sex, in terms of reproduction, could be equally effective if it hurt like hell--but then not nearly so many people would do it.
I'm only 22 years old--unmarried--and I already want kids. Most people do. It isn't because I'm not happy or to fill some hole in my life. Can I be perfectly happy without children? Yes. Do I still want children? Yes.
Your child never asked to be born into this world, maybe you should be nice to him and just give him what he wants, regardless of what you you think his "best interests" are.
Congratulations. You've won the "stupidest statement I've seen on Slashdot this year" award, and that is saying something.
If, hypothetically, my 9-year-old wants a loaded gun, I should just give it to him right? He didn't ask to be born into this world, and who cares what I think is in his best interests?
If he wants to lie in bed all day playing video games instead of going to school, that's fine. The kid never saked to be born into this world, and who cares what I think is in his best interests?
Give me a break. It is your responsibility as a parent to take care of your children, and that includes much, much more than just providing the bear necessities. When the kid grows up he's free to make his own decisions, as good or bad as he likes. Until then, it's the job of his parents.
It's not my business, it's really not, unless he gets hurt, hurts someone else, damages MY property or gets in trouble with the police.
By which point it may be too late. Once your first (non-hypothetical) kid kills himself by wrapping his car around a tree several times, we'll see whether or not you'll feel that method of parenting is appropriate to use for your second.
I'm certainly no lawyer, so don't quote me on this, but...
I don't believe you are allowed to testify if you do not let both sides depose you. There's no secret evidence or testimony, based on the Constitutional right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him; [and] to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor"
Just to be nice, we're going to assume that you meant to keep both the quote and your reply in italics and that it wasn't something you would have noticed with some editing.
Well, that depends on how you define "unethical." In my opinion, my lawyer(s) not doing everything they are empowered to do to help me win my case is unethical. This guy, and IBM, have their own lawyers; they can handle their clients, while SCO's lawyers do what they can to help SCO.
It's like when people ask defense attorneys how they could defend people who almost certainly committed the crime. It's easy - we believe in an adversarial justice system, and the other side already has a lawyer who is obligated to prove his case.
Probably because it's a crime to lie in a deposition. If he suddenly "remembers" all the answers were the case to get to trial, he'd be spending a goodly amount of time in jail--plus his testimony would be tossed.
I really very seldom use eBay (I think I've bought things maybe twice, never sold) so if what I'm saying is close to how it works or not feasible or whatever, I apologize in advance.
Remember that negative feedback should be fairly rare for legitimate sellers and noone should be leaving negative feedback without first trying to resolve the problem.
Perhaps you have found the solution. People should be able to leave positive feedback at any time, because positive feedback is an indication that everything went well. For those buyers/sellers who are on the level, this allows the process to work in much the same way and with the same speed as it currently does.
For complaints, however, you should not be able to leave negative feedback. Instead, you should have a sort of "I have a problem, contact the seller" link that would basically do little more than initiate a dialog between the parties. After, say, two or three days (or maybe even a week) of no activity within that dialog, and assuming no positive feedback has been left by the buyer in that period, eBay should send an automatic message back to to the buyer which basically says: "Did the seller resolve your complaint? Yes/No/Ask me again in a week." "Yes" would leave positive feedback and let them specify a reason as if they had done it themselves. "No" would automatically leave negative feedback, but it would automatically link that negative feedback to the threaded conversation so that future buyers can determine for themselves exactly what happened and if the seller was making a reasonable effort to accomodate. It should also give the buyer a little area to explain exactly why the thread was unsatisfactory in resolving his problem. This would eliminate the problem of somebody saying all the right things but never actually coming through.
There are some flaws, of course--such as if any personal information (addresses, etc) end up in that dispute resolution dialog and the fact that (like the current system) it relies on people to be honest--but it gives the seller a chance to earn positive feedback even if a situation did not go great from the start.
(I don't know why it's ignoring my italics here--you italicized "bought," just for reference.)
Your statement is correct, but it seems to me that your italics stopped a bit too soon. It should be: "[You] bought a copy of the movie."
You bought the copy, not the movie. If you want to spread peanut butter all over it and eat it for lunch, that's your business. If you want to snap it over your knee, also your business. Plus of course all the more practical uses. You can also sell your copy, or borrow it to a friend.
You can argue about whether or not this is fair, but that is the current reality. You DO really own what you buy, you just think you have bought more than you have.
It ends when Hollywood says it does
No, it ends when the market says it does. If DVDs become obsolete and players hard to find, it isn't because Hollywood walked into every electronics store in the world and threw their merchandise on the ground. It's because a new format has become more popular and stores aren't interested in stocking something that hardly anybody buys. They shouldn't be. (Though that said, I also find it hard to believe that you would not be able to find a DVD player anywhere, but we'll ignore this for now.)
With that said, Hollywood has absolutely no say on how long I can legally use my purchased DVD. The fact that (in your example) all of my players broke or were thrown away as obsolete or what have you, and I can no longer play that DVD, is likewise not their fault.
Again, argue as much as you want over whether or not this is how it should be, but at least for now it's how it is. Understanding what it is you bought is critical to any understanding of the issues involved.
What if the president goes on a criminal rampage in plain sight? If he robbed a bank and took a few hostages, would the Secret Service jump in front of a SWAT sniper's bullet to save him?
Yes. That's the Secret Service's job, and their only job. And don't believe for a second that even if it happened exactly that way that the Secret Service wouldn't take the scene over before any SWAT member, much less a sniper, got anywhere near it.
The president is immune from prosecution for as long as he is president, that's just the way it is. The second part of your question --
Would he get away without punishment?
-- is a political question, not a legal one. If the situation you described actually happened, he would undoubtedly be impeached, after which he would be tried for whatever he did at the bank and almost certainly tossed in prison.
But things are not so clear-cut here. I doubt he would be impeached, and if he were, I very much doubt he would be removed from office for it.
People continue fighting this battle of science versus religion on slashdot which is barely, if even, existant.
No. The battle of science versus religion with regard to evolution rages in MOST places, at least in the US. People like the Pope (assuming you're correct) are the exception and not the rule. Debate evolution with some religious people some time and see how long it takes before they say "I'm not descended from a fucking ape!"
If more religious people accepted that evolution need not necessarily conflict with god, we wouldn't have a what appears from the (shitty!) chart to be roughly equal numbers of people who think it's true and don't. The fact that almost as many people seem to have said "not sure" is both depressing and encouraging in different ways. Those are minds that can be reached, at least. Still, implying that it is somehow a slashdot phenomena is just plain false.
Someone becoming a missionary and going to the jungles somewhere to teach a proverty stricken tribe how to avoid disease and get by economically doesn't make the news.
I am by no means trying to degrade the value of the contribution, but there are plenty of people who do things like that who are either not religious or do it because it's right, not because their religion tells them to. (Religion likes to take credit for morality, but that's a horrible joke--and a discussion for another time.)
I applaud any sort of service, but at the same time, I have to admit that I look funny at anybody who does it just because their religion tells them to. It's certainly better than not doing it at all, but if you only do good deeds out of fear of eternal damnation, there seems to be something wrong with you.
Question what you're being fed...
Which is fair enough, but it's hard to deny that religion is used as an excuse for horrendous things. It always has been, it likely always will be. Nobody has to "feed" me that knowledge in the same way that nobody has to feed me the knowledge that there are religious people who do good things as well.
The new license discrimantes on the type of activity the program is to be used for, not the nature of the people using it.
That's a fair distinction, so take it a step further.
Can that "no-Gays Public License" prohibit somebody from using the software to creating a dating website for homosexuals? What about a dating website that INCLUDES the ability to search for homosexual partners, such as a sexual preference option at signup?
No-Pagan Public License means I can't use it to look up passages from Norse, Greek or Roman mythology, right? Etc.
If a few dozen people complain of a problem it may sound like a lot. But if it's only a small percent of all customers it could be specific to only one lot of adapters or one specific subcontractor
There's some rule about the number of reports versus the number of problems. I'm not going to give any numbers because I frankly have no idea what they are, but I remember it being some insanely small percentage of people actually bother to complain. Meaning, of course, that a "few dozen" complaints could mean hundreds of problems, and suddenly the problem seems considerably larger.
I personally couldn't care less why the blog was created, nor do I particularly care if people are posting things just to make money. I judge articles based on whether or not I enjoyed them and that's it.*
* Acknowledging, of course, that some sites go so overboard with the 500 page articles (composed of 200 total words) filled with ads that even if it might be the greatest article ever I don't read it.
Slashdot Mirror
For this reason your question is either biased or stupid or both.
Well then let's be fair: I think your comparisons are biased or stupid or both.
Photocopiers didn't kill the book publishers.
Because there is a significant time investment in standing around and copying all of the pages of a book. Not to mention that when you're finished, you end up with a stack of papers, not a book.
Tape recorders didn't kill music industry.
No, they didn't. Then again, tape recorders--in terms of piracy (which is what we're really talking about when we talk DRM--require that I know you and live nearby you. They require that I be able to hand you the physical copy. This is still a problem with CDs.
VCRs *multiplied* the profits of the movie industry
Again, for me to pirate you a movie, I have to be able to give it to you. Sure, I could mail it or something, but that's more work and expense for me. That fact means it's largely limited to me pirating things for my close friends, family or neighbors.
The issue with digital piracy is that you can create as many exact copies as you want with no quality issues, and distribute them around the globe with essentially no effort. It also costs essentially the same to make and share one copy with one friend as it would to make 10,000 copies to share with 10,000 random people (ignoring data transfer costs--which most people, at least in the US, don't pay specifically for anyway; they pay for the speeds of their lines, not how much data they squeeze through those lines in a month).
I don't support DRM for many reasons, but to pretend that my ability to make exact digital duplicates of a CD (or DVD or what have you) and distribute those copies to anybody in the world with a 'net connection is somehow akin to what I could do similarly with VHS tapes or cassettes is naive at best and disingenuous at worst.
To avoid having to make a second post, I'm going to go ahead and give my answer to the submitter's questions:
I'm perfectly willing to pay for, for example, music downloads, assuming that the price is fair. Here is clue #1 for music companies: If it would cost me roughly the same amount of money to buy each track on a CD digitally as to go to the store and buy the actual CD, you're charging too much. I should not have to pay the same amount for lower-quality copies of songs with no case, no insert, no artwork and no CD-pressing manufacturing costs, that I would for higher-quality versions with all that. That is just plain silly.
Clue #2: I want to be able to choose the quality of the song I download. If I really love a song, I want to be able to get a high-quality rip. On the contrary, if I don't really love a song, or if I'm just downloading it again for some reason (for example I took my laptop to school and noticed a few songs I had forgotten to transfer over, I re-downloaded those), I'd like to be able to get a lower bitrate--and to pay a lower price accordingly. A bit rate range of 128 to 320 (for MP3) seems fair. If you want to offer lossless options, hey, more power--but I personally could not hear a difference between 320 and lossless, so it means very little to me.
Clue #3: Choosing formats is nice. It's not particularly important to me, but I know it can be to a lot of people--and really, when you get right down to it, if you're doing steps #1 and #2 already, then letting people chose their format in addition to their bitrate is simply not that much more work, neither to code for nor on the server doing the jobs.
Clue #4: Probably the most important one, and the one that most specifically addresses the question posed in the submission: Once I buy the song from you, IT IS MINE. Get the hell off my back about what I can do with it. I don't want DRM. I don't want you to tell me how many different CDs I can burn it to, or what devices I can play it back on. If you charge reasonable prices, permit me to choose my for
Pull my other one, it makes a sound! Does Lockheed Martin really expect people to believe them?
Of course, the alternate could be true as well: Lockheed really was going to fire this guy so he decided to try to screw them as publicly as possible before he was gone.
If I were a company who told somebody they were going to be laid off on X date, and before that date they did something like that, I would certainly expedite his departure. In that case, it wouldn't mean that he was fired BECAUSE of what he did, but rather that the process was accelerated because of it.
We can assume incompetance at Lockheed, corruption among testers and officials, corruption among politicians... and even if we were right on all three points (certainly possible), it doesn't mean that in this particular case he wasn't being ignored because his concerns were simply not that important.
I don't pretend to know what the truth in this case is, but I am somewhat befuddled by the overwhelming majority of Slashdot who assume straight off that it is pure truth. I thought we were skeptical by nature around here.
I presume the "Read the article" option would be permanently grayed out?
The prevailing thought among the mac community was that they were secretly jealous, or unwilling to admit that they were had bought into a big monopoly that, in the end, resulted in crappy computing.
If that is the prevailing thought in the Mac community, doesn't it sort of not jive with you saying they're not really elitest? There's no comparison of value there, no comparison of experience. It's a judgement that people who chose differently were dumb and now they're pretending they didn't notice how dumb they are.
Maybe Mac users aren't elitest in the sense that they want to keep Macs as a smaller segment of the population, but it seems that they are elitest in that they think they're better or smarter than you because of their choice.
As many users have pointed out, Macs, and iPods, and really anything from Apple are as much statement as reason. I'm not cool if I have an MP3 player other than an iPod, and I'm not cool if I don't use the "clearly better" Mac and OS X. Half of their selling point is that eliteism--even when, like iPods, they dominate the market.
And you know what? There's nothing much wrong with that position, but in my experience people are not willing to admit it.
depending upon where you go (and where you happen to come back) it can get pretty darned unpleasant
Acknowledging that you said this in advance, because I don't want to appear to have not seen it. Just want to relay my own experience.
Really, my desire to travel has been pretty much eliminated by all this post 9/11 homeland insecurity stuff.
I don't know if it has gotten any worse since the latest issues, but I flew internationally (for the first time!) a little over a year ago, in early July. I departed O'Hare, connected in LAX and then on to Sydney, Australia. The security process was really smooth, as it has been every time I've flown (almost all of them after 9/11, though domestic). The lines were a little longer sometimes, but the process itself still only took a few minutes.
In O'Hare and LAX, there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in terms of security. In Sydney, the only "inconveinience" was that I was selected while I was going through the metal detectors to be randomly bomb tested. It was a process that took all of 45 seconds and the guy who did it was perfectly nice. He remarked, as he swabbed my clothes and luggage and stuck it in the machine, that farmers often set the machines off. So presumably, even if something on me had set it off, it wouldn't have been a particularly bad process since they deal with false positives what certainly seemed from his expression to be fairly routinely. I don't know though, because by the time he was done saying that the test was complete and I was on my way. In hindsight I'm kind of glad I got picked -- not because it was great fun or anything, but because it's good to be reminded when bad things like this, or racial profiling stories emerge, that there truly are good people just trying to do their jobs out there as well. I'm a white male, 21 at the time, so definitely not somebody who'd fit the typical terrorist profile that we hear so much about them looking for. I did have a laptop, though, just as a mention. Aaanyway...
Ditto the lack of complications on the way back on both sides. Honestly, the worst part of flying was the flight itself -- gahhh, 17 hours in those cramped little seats!! I know a trip to Australia isn't exactly likely to set off any security red flags like, say, a trip to Syria or something like that would, but this story was about a trip to Canada was it not? And either way, my point isn't to say anything other than that it's not so bad and to remind that these stories we hear, while certainly appalling and disappointing in many ways, are the exceptions rather than the rules.
If you don't want to fly, that's cool -- but if you're not flying because you're afraid of the security procedures, you really shouldn't be. Don't flush your iPod down the toilet and you should be good to go!
Well, obviously there are subjects where a new addition every year or two is appropiate.
New edition, or new addition? Or new textbook?
Obviously, technology changes fast enough that it might be that a new textbook (that is, a book on a different subject) is required. For example, my school recently replaced C++ with Java for their programming courses. If a new technology takes off today, it may be that in two or three years that the class might change focus and need a new book altogether.
But I'm not sure things change so dramatically that a new edition is needed every year or two, or even every five (more than that is probably okay). I think that a lot of those changes can be incorporated more easily, and certainly more cheaply, by instructors simply revising their curriculum a little bit. Is something in your book obsolete? Don't teach it the next year. Something new has cropped up that your book doesn't even touch? Print off a copy of an article online or draw something up yourself to give to your students. Or alternately, since colleges are also trying to get professors to stop copying so much, give students a URL to something online for the new material. If they want to print it, they're welcome to do so and if not, it's there anyway.
I only think new editions should be necessary when there is nearly as much supplementary material and obsolete material as there is material in the book that is actually being covered. Then you need a new book. If the book is greatly improved, that may also be a reason to change but that seems like a rare phenomena. Other than that, changing more than once every five years or so seems downright wrong, and even five years may be wasteful.
I can't believe you are the only one who replied to the GP with, you know, reality. Thanks for saving me the time of doing it myself. (Though you probably should have left off that last paragraph--true or not, it distracts from your spot-on points.)
Ssh, this is slashdot. Being reasonable is illegal. Quick, wipe your hard drive before anybody can prove you did it.
Every lawyer I have ever said this to nodded their head in complete agreement. They seriously couldn't see that this is patently assinine. Amazing.
Why is it asinine? It exists to ensure that the government behaves itself in a certain way during the conduct of an investigation and trial. If they tortured somebody until they confessed, wouldn't you expect them to be found not guilty if it ever made it to court? It doesn't mean that they didn't COMMIT the crime. It means that the police could not PROVE that they committed the crime with evidence that was obtained in a legal manner. Along with the protection against double jeopardy, it helps to prevent law enforcement from dragging you into court every ten minutes until they get you convicted. They have to make sure they have a good case before they bring it, because they only get to lose once.
It's not an accident at all that juries decide between "guilty" and "not guilty" and not between "guilty" and "innocent." It is, in fact, the entire basis of the (criminal) US legal system: guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Anf if guilt beyond a reasonable doubt cannot be proven, they find you... yes. Not guilty.
Makes perfect sense to me. I wouldn't have it any other way.
I think most posters here are missing one fact: The evidence she destroyed was evidence against herself.
I think you're missing the point: it doesn't matter.
First and foremost, she just didn't decide one day that what she did was wrong and decide to "un-do" it, or to remove evidence of it having been done. If that were the case, she probably would have gotten away with it.
Rather, what she did is knowingly defy a court order. The court ordered her to turn the drive over as evidence, and she destroyed that evidence. Not only is it wrong, it is illegal. I'm not sure if they can build a criminal case from it since it arose in a civil suit, but they almost certainly can. And you know what? I wouldn't feel bad for her in the least if they tossed her in the clink for it.
But all of that is also somewhat beside the point because your entire premise is wrong. You have a Constitutional right not to "be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against [yourself]." That does NOT mean that you do not have to turn over evidence against yourself; evidence has nothing to do with you bearing witness. (Not) bearing witness against yourself is when you get up in the little examination box in court and say, "I plead the fifth."
Likewise, I'm not even 100% sure you have THAT right because this is a civil action; the US Constitution is a document constraining the power of government.
It maybe is a "disregard for the judicial process", but I think the stronger harm for the "judicial process" is forcing someone to provide evidence against him- or herself. This is such a fundamental idea that I really don't get how the judge missed it.
He didn't "miss it." He was applying the law, not your particular interpretation of the law. Saying something doesn't make it so.
Is the next step torturing someone until he provides evidence against himself ?
What now?
Surely it has happened--in the US, even (see the Chicago incidents for proof)--but I fail to see how you made the leap. A court ordering you to turn over subpoenaed evidence without destroying it is not even in the same ballpark as torturing somebody until they tell you whatever it is you want to hear, and you just make yourself look bad by insinuating otherwise.
"Slippery slope" is a logical error of argumentation for a reason, you know. Throwing that sort of thing out there without any connection between it and your evidence means nothing. It's just a way to get a cheap emotional reaction from people to distact them from your actual argument.
They believe "they know" and their kids don't: because they're kids and have not had enough experience.
It's not entirely an issue of whether or not they believe their kid has enough experience. It's a belief that kids--even really smart and responsible kids--make crappy, impulsive and generally really bad decisions. And they are correct. You can go look for any number of studies that show that kids' brain development, in terms of risk evaluation and the like, simply isn't there at 16, or even 18 (I think--but don't quote me--that it really starts to fill in around 20ish).
The kids "know" too, and the parents know their kids know. The kids know speeding lowers reaction time, they know it can lead to more accidents and more severe accidents. They know, relatedly, that drinking and driving is dangerous. They know many drugs can be dangerous. They know all sorts of things, and they do them anyway.
The "kids think they are invincible" mantra has been used well past the point of cliche, but it's essentially true and not just anecdotally. Kids do stupid things for no other reason than that they are kids and their brains don't work the same way they will in adulthood. That's simply fact.
Does this apply equally to every kid? I doubt it. I'm sure some kids' judgement centers develop faster than others in the same way that any area of the brain may develop faster (or slower) for some than others.
I suppose 90 year olds should dictate to everyone then
This is true in many parts of the world. "Respect your elders." It isn't just a cutesy phrase telling you to be nice to old people--it's telling you that old people have knowledge and experience to impart to you if you'll put aside the aversion most people seem to have to being given advice, particularly by people who don't specifically know you.
or maybe bred and groomed princes of a ruling class
I have absolutely no idea how you made this leap. Being old means you have experience. It may be valuable or it may not, but that's the way it works. Being bred into a ruling class means nothing other than that you were bred into a ruling class. You may be fantastic at it or you may suck. This is an absolutely ridiculous statement.
This is the initial reason for having kids.
I'd say the biological imperative is the initial reason for having kids. Species' that don't care whether or not they reproduce are going to die off. Humans care, in may ways and on many levels. The most base level is, of course, it involves sex--and sex feels good. It's not an accident or a byproduct that it feels good, it works that way specifically to make us want to have sex. Sex, in terms of reproduction, could be equally effective if it hurt like hell--but then not nearly so many people would do it.
I'm only 22 years old--unmarried--and I already want kids. Most people do. It isn't because I'm not happy or to fill some hole in my life. Can I be perfectly happy without children? Yes. Do I still want children? Yes.
Your child never asked to be born into this world, maybe you should be nice to him and just give him what he wants, regardless of what you you think his "best interests" are.
Congratulations. You've won the "stupidest statement I've seen on Slashdot this year" award, and that is saying something.
If, hypothetically, my 9-year-old wants a loaded gun, I should just give it to him right? He didn't ask to be born into this world, and who cares what I think is in his best interests?
If he wants to lie in bed all day playing video games instead of going to school, that's fine. The kid never saked to be born into this world, and who cares what I think is in his best interests?
Give me a break. It is your responsibility as a parent to take care of your children, and that includes much, much more than just providing the bear necessities. When the kid grows up he's free to make his own decisions, as good or bad as he likes. Until then, it's the job of his parents.
It's not my business, it's really not, unless he gets hurt, hurts someone else, damages MY property or gets in trouble with the police.
By which point it may be too late. Once your first (non-hypothetical) kid kills himself by wrapping his car around a tree several times, we'll see whether or not you'll feel that method of parenting is appropriate to use for your second.
I'm certainly no lawyer, so don't quote me on this, but...
I don't believe you are allowed to testify if you do not let both sides depose you. There's no secret evidence or testimony, based on the Constitutional right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him; [and] to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor"
(The somewhat-exception is rebuttal witnesses.)
Just to be nice, we're going to assume that you meant to keep both the quote and your reply in italics and that it wasn't something you would have noticed with some editing.
Well, that depends on how you define "unethical." In my opinion, my lawyer(s) not doing everything they are empowered to do to help me win my case is unethical. This guy, and IBM, have their own lawyers; they can handle their clients, while SCO's lawyers do what they can to help SCO.
It's like when people ask defense attorneys how they could defend people who almost certainly committed the crime. It's easy - we believe in an adversarial justice system, and the other side already has a lawyer who is obligated to prove his case.
Probably because it's a crime to lie in a deposition. If he suddenly "remembers" all the answers were the case to get to trial, he'd be spending a goodly amount of time in jail--plus his testimony would be tossed.
NO! Then you would expect it!!!
I really very seldom use eBay (I think I've bought things maybe twice, never sold) so if what I'm saying is close to how it works or not feasible or whatever, I apologize in advance.
Perhaps you have found the solution. People should be able to leave positive feedback at any time, because positive feedback is an indication that everything went well. For those buyers/sellers who are on the level, this allows the process to work in much the same way and with the same speed as it currently does.
For complaints, however, you should not be able to leave negative feedback. Instead, you should have a sort of "I have a problem, contact the seller" link that would basically do little more than initiate a dialog between the parties. After, say, two or three days (or maybe even a week) of no activity within that dialog, and assuming no positive feedback has been left by the buyer in that period, eBay should send an automatic message back to to the buyer which basically says: "Did the seller resolve your complaint? Yes/No/Ask me again in a week." "Yes" would leave positive feedback and let them specify a reason as if they had done it themselves. "No" would automatically leave negative feedback, but it would automatically link that negative feedback to the threaded conversation so that future buyers can determine for themselves exactly what happened and if the seller was making a reasonable effort to accomodate. It should also give the buyer a little area to explain exactly why the thread was unsatisfactory in resolving his problem. This would eliminate the problem of somebody saying all the right things but never actually coming through.
There are some flaws, of course--such as if any personal information (addresses, etc) end up in that dispute resolution dialog and the fact that (like the current system) it relies on people to be honest--but it gives the seller a chance to earn positive feedback even if a situation did not go great from the start.
Where in the grandparent post did you see any judgment about anything OTHER than her looks? Her "worth" was never mentioned.
If we can't judge peoples' looks by their looks, well, that's going to be a bit problematic.
(I don't know why it's ignoring my italics here--you italicized "bought," just for reference.)
Your statement is correct, but it seems to me that your italics stopped a bit too soon. It should be: "[You] bought a copy of the movie."
You bought the copy, not the movie. If you want to spread peanut butter all over it and eat it for lunch, that's your business. If you want to snap it over your knee, also your business. Plus of course all the more practical uses. You can also sell your copy, or borrow it to a friend.
You can argue about whether or not this is fair, but that is the current reality. You DO really own what you buy, you just think you have bought more than you have.
No, it ends when the market says it does. If DVDs become obsolete and players hard to find, it isn't because Hollywood walked into every electronics store in the world and threw their merchandise on the ground. It's because a new format has become more popular and stores aren't interested in stocking something that hardly anybody buys. They shouldn't be. (Though that said, I also find it hard to believe that you would not be able to find a DVD player anywhere, but we'll ignore this for now.)
With that said, Hollywood has absolutely no say on how long I can legally use my purchased DVD. The fact that (in your example) all of my players broke or were thrown away as obsolete or what have you, and I can no longer play that DVD, is likewise not their fault.
Again, argue as much as you want over whether or not this is how it should be, but at least for now it's how it is. Understanding what it is you bought is critical to any understanding of the issues involved.
What if the president goes on a criminal rampage in plain sight? If he robbed a bank and took a few hostages, would the Secret Service jump in front of a SWAT sniper's bullet to save him?
Yes. That's the Secret Service's job, and their only job. And don't believe for a second that even if it happened exactly that way that the Secret Service wouldn't take the scene over before any SWAT member, much less a sniper, got anywhere near it.
The president is immune from prosecution for as long as he is president, that's just the way it is. The second part of your question --
Would he get away without punishment?
-- is a political question, not a legal one. If the situation you described actually happened, he would undoubtedly be impeached, after which he would be tried for whatever he did at the bank and almost certainly tossed in prison.
But things are not so clear-cut here. I doubt he would be impeached, and if he were, I very much doubt he would be removed from office for it.
People continue fighting this battle of science versus religion on slashdot which is barely, if even, existant.
No. The battle of science versus religion with regard to evolution rages in MOST places, at least in the US. People like the Pope (assuming you're correct) are the exception and not the rule. Debate evolution with some religious people some time and see how long it takes before they say "I'm not descended from a fucking ape!"
If more religious people accepted that evolution need not necessarily conflict with god, we wouldn't have a what appears from the (shitty!) chart to be roughly equal numbers of people who think it's true and don't. The fact that almost as many people seem to have said "not sure" is both depressing and encouraging in different ways. Those are minds that can be reached, at least. Still, implying that it is somehow a slashdot phenomena is just plain false.
Someone becoming a missionary and going to the jungles somewhere to teach a proverty stricken tribe how to avoid disease and get by economically doesn't make the news.
I am by no means trying to degrade the value of the contribution, but there are plenty of people who do things like that who are either not religious or do it because it's right, not because their religion tells them to. (Religion likes to take credit for morality, but that's a horrible joke--and a discussion for another time.)
I applaud any sort of service, but at the same time, I have to admit that I look funny at anybody who does it just because their religion tells them to. It's certainly better than not doing it at all, but if you only do good deeds out of fear of eternal damnation, there seems to be something wrong with you.
Question what you're being fed...
Which is fair enough, but it's hard to deny that religion is used as an excuse for horrendous things. It always has been, it likely always will be. Nobody has to "feed" me that knowledge in the same way that nobody has to feed me the knowledge that there are religious people who do good things as well.
The new license discrimantes on the type of activity the program is to be used for, not the nature of the people using it.
That's a fair distinction, so take it a step further.
Can that "no-Gays Public License" prohibit somebody from using the software to creating a dating website for homosexuals? What about a dating website that INCLUDES the ability to search for homosexual partners, such as a sexual preference option at signup?
No-Pagan Public License means I can't use it to look up passages from Norse, Greek or Roman mythology, right? Etc.
If a few dozen people complain of a problem it may sound like a lot. But if it's only a small percent of all customers it could be specific to only one lot of adapters or one specific subcontractor
There's some rule about the number of reports versus the number of problems. I'm not going to give any numbers because I frankly have no idea what they are, but I remember it being some insanely small percentage of people actually bother to complain. Meaning, of course, that a "few dozen" complaints could mean hundreds of problems, and suddenly the problem seems considerably larger.
Did you enjoy it or not?
I personally couldn't care less why the blog was created, nor do I particularly care if people are posting things just to make money. I judge articles based on whether or not I enjoyed them and that's it.*
* Acknowledging, of course, that some sites go so overboard with the 500 page articles (composed of 200 total words) filled with ads that even if it might be the greatest article ever I don't read it.