This is lawyers getting in the way of common sense again. While it's true that it inconveniences the innocent and doesn't affect the guilty, it does give the company legal weight behind prosecution/persecution if they can point at the policy and say "You broke the corporate policy so you're fired." In this way, they can attack people for breaking the policy instead of stealing data, cuz that's much harder to prove.
IMHO, a USB storage device is no different than a photocopier on every floor, except for the capacity. How many times is your briefcase searched at the door to ensure you haven't photocopied/printed sensitive info? A much better approach is to secure the data in the first place to ensure that untrustworthy people don't have access to it at all. Now all we need is a retina scanner that can differentiate between the untrustworthy and the everyday masses.
Actually, he accepted stock options, which became nearly worthless when the stock plummetted. The downside to options is they expire, and most bonus packages that are issued as options have an exercise clause that forces the former employee to exercise them or lose them (I don't know if his did or not).
What I don't understand is, he took a gamble that the options were going to be worth a whole lot more later. If the AOL-TW merger was a smashing success and his options were worth $1.6 billion, would he return the excess to the company? He took a risk in his bonus and lost. He could have just as easily (according to the article), accepted $25 million in cash.
If you settle, you are agreeing that the other side's case had merit such that you're willing to pay to make it go away.
Actually, in many cases the settlement specifies exactly the opposite. There is no admission of guilt, or even of the merit of the case. It's just an economic decision. You determine that settling and making them go away is cheaper than defending yourself, even if you're totally innocent.
A degree isn't something you should be able to take away, unless it's proven you cheated to get the degree
This is total BS. Read the text of your degree and you'll notice a few things. "University Name" admits "Student Name" to the degree of "Whatever" with all the rights, privileges, duties and responsibilities thereof.
It can be very easily, and quite rightly, argued that faking data violates the duties and responsibilities of his degree. You can't have the one without the other. If he wants to benefit from the privileges of his degree, namely employment at a nice facility for a fat paycheck, he needs to excercise the responsibilities of his degree. I am overjoyed that his university is taking the required step in revoking his degree. If they don't revoke his degree, they aren't doing their job, which is certifying that Mr. Schoen was indeed a qualified PhD.
And so, with my choice to not use Google email but the need to send a message to someone who does use Google email that means I don't have a choice whether or not my message is scanned by Google before it reaches the intended recipient.
If you are sending e-mail, assume it is read by a dozen people between you and the recipient. Why do so many people assume that cuz there's no paper trail, there's absolute privacy? Have we learned nothing about technology around here? E-mail is not private, has never been private, will never be private.
It's _VERY_ different from a letter to your aunt that is sealed in an envelope and is strictly private. In fact, it's a federal offense to open said letter if you aren't the authorized recipient. Your letter analogy only applies to encrypted e-mail communication, which is used, I'm guessing, less than 10% of the time.
Just don't try to upgrade it after the fact. I added 128MB of RAM to my ThinkPad. It took 3 calls: 1 to the parts dept to get the part number, 1 to accounting to get a price and 1 to shipping to get a delivery date.
In order to be an infringement, it would have to pass the "reasonable person" litmus test.
Would a reasonable person actually believe that they were visiting the microsoft.com site when they were at the mikerowesoft.com site? I haven't seen his site, so I don't know how close it is to MSFT's, in terms of layout & colours, but on the basis of how many extra and dissimilar letters you have to type to get there, it's a pretty easy argument to make that no reasonable person would honestly believe they were at Microsft's site when they were at Mike Rowe's site.
Just being a homonym of a registered trademark is probably not enough to be an infringement, but that's up to a judge or the WIPO board.
you're allowed to rape, torture and murder people without a care in the world as long as you do it at home
Don't be so assinine. The point he was making (if I can be so forward as to throw my own interpretation into the fire) is that if he shares his music collection "...in my own house..." he isn't breaking the law. And he's right...it's called fair use. That's a little fundamental right the RIAA has tried to translate into S-T-E-A-L-I-N-G.
A lot of it has to do with how long it takes to report bugs. I had to contact one of their tech support lines for a server-product related item. I am totally not making this up:
I waited 92 minutes on hold before giving up and passing the call over to one of our project managers to make.
She waited 75 minutes on hold before being disconnected.
She called back and waited 91 minutes before reaching a person, who told her to call back later!
I completely believe that 1% of calls are bug reports. Who would bother waiting through this kind of shit to report a bug that has almost 0 chance of actually being fixed. Not to mention that intermittent (i.e. non-reproducable errors) will NEVER be reported, because MS will tell you it's your fault.
that is how commercial software has changed the face of the computing industry - by promise of better features, but in reality, much less useful software
Much of this surrounds the business model of software vendors. Build it, sell it, change it, sell it again, repeat.
Features get added that aren't used much, if at all, while other features get diluted, altered or dropped altogether in a hope to get the resale dollars. The IT industry as a whole is to blame (although there are clueless faces to blame on the other side of the equation too).
Arguably, the technology in cars, vaccuum cleaners, wrist watches, calculators, alarm clocks, etc, has changed drastically over the years, but the user interface has remained virtually unchanged. ABS brakes don't change HOW the user stops the car, only WHAT happens to stop the car. This is a valuable lesson for us all to learn.
However, on the other side of the relationship, we also have eager beaver managers rolling out new version after new version with (I would guess) little benefit analysis being done. MS Office hasn't changed fundamentally since version 95 (with some exceptions), and yet almost every client site I'm on has Office 2000 or XP (although my current site is still 97).
Would you ever buy a toaster that didn't behave almost exactly like your last one? Can you say the same thing for software?
I'm sure you're glad that you don't live in Canada now, eh? The CPCC has actually proposed a levy on all digital media, including hard drives. This also includes hard drives that are embedded in other devices. The numbers they were proposing added over 120% to the current price of most portable MP3 players.
At the University of Victoria, way up here in Canada, there was a well-published case of 2 students (I believe from the Architecture dept) who sued the university for their entire tuition because the uni req'd a particular senior course to graduate that they hadn't offered for 2 years.
These poor students couldn't get their degree, the uni wouldn't let them take a substitute course, and wouldn't open even a single section due to "lack of demand and funding". After 6 semesters of waiting for the uni to open a section, they called a lawyer.
I'm not positive about how it turned out, but I think they settled out of court.
Rule by priveleged minority works well if (and only if) the interests of the elite and the interests of the nation are aligned.
I can't help but think of the Simpsons episode where the Mayor leaves town and a group of "learned" scholars (i.e. Lisa, Dr. Hibbard, the Professor, comic-book guy, etc) take over...with hilarious results.
The way I see it, the best approach would be to have an elected dictator. Every 7 years (or some other arbitrary number) elect the dictator that will rule for the next period. No dictator may rule more than once. Have a few fail-safes to prevent dictator from destroying your world, a la Hussein, and presto magic, you have a leader who can actually get something done, as opposed to the impotent leaders we have now.
PS I do realize there are flaws with this approach, but they are no worse than the garbage we have now.
CPU cycles are still consumed by processing filters
if I nailed your "closed" mail server with 10,000 messages in the span of an hour, you'd still go down
You view of "well I only get 1% of the spam sent to me" is so small scale and removed from the actual problem. You obviously have not ever managed a real system.
The point of a gun registry is not only to make it easier to track guns. It also provides another tool for law enforcement to use against gun-wielding maniacs.
Unfortunately, elected officials and other morons get involved in the process, which is why it always fails to appease anyone. Here is a simple solution:
Implement a mandatory gun registry that is easy, cheap and non-intrusive to use (I am often amazed at how many people complain about gun registries but have no issue with registering their vehicles every 2 years)
Provide a sufficiently long grace period for the public to register (1-2 years)
Enact a law making unregistered weapons a felony offence with MANDATORY 10-year sentence
Publish this fact ad nauseum during grace period
When the grace period is over, enforce the law in draconian style
Now, when your local gang banger robs a liquor store with his unregistered weapon, you have a massive club to beat him over the head with, and don't really present that large of a problem to the collector/sport shooter/hunter. Everyone is happy.
I couldn't point to Afghanistan on a map any more than a German could point to Kansas City
If you're going to jump to the defense of the notorious lack of geographic awareness in the US, at least make your arguments level. Afghanistan is a country, Kansas City is a might smaller than a country.
Had you said "I couldn't point to Afghanistan on a map any more than a German could point to Algeria," then you would be making a meaningful and FAIR argument. As it were, you are simply confirming the world's understanding of how important the rest of the world is to the US. Besides, most Americans probably couldn't point out KC on a map.
The US is HUGE. We're not self centered, we're overloaded with what we have.
You talk of "social value" and "market value" as being two separate things when they are exactly the same. The market will only tolerate a price if it provides value. And also, that market is made up of the very same people who make up the society.
the standard definition of "too high" really ends up meaning "as much as we can get people to pay"
Of course it does. And by the same measure, the standard definition of "just right" for the consumer is "as little as we can pay for as much as possible." This is called the law of supply and demand; when the price is such that the providers are willing to sell as much as the consumers are willing to buy, we reach an equilibrium point.
You asked, [...]is the percentage of my income that goes towards insurance truely justified [...]? That's a question that only you can answer, since different people are willing to accept different levels of risk. In the aggregate, the answer would be "yes," otherwise you (and I mean the greater sense of You, i.e. The People) wouldn't pay for it. However, on an individual basis, there may be some people who pay too little, and others who pay too much.
How important is salary insurance to a 24-year old rising professional with ambition in his/her eyes? Probably a lot less important than to a 55-year old getting ready for retirement. Which do you think will pay more for such insurance?
Of course there are other factors that throw a wrench in this whole thing, like compulsory insurance, but let's not go there.:)
Good morning, Mr SuperPedo, this is Mindless Droid from ACME Dolls calling. Our trading partner, Verizon, has indicated to us that you may be interested in our product, Billy Bob Blowup, based on your calls to certain 976 numbers in your area.
We have taken the liberty of mailing you a copy of our catalogue, and have also contacted your 10 most frequently called associates. We find it best to market our product in clusters to achieve maximum exposure and buy-in. Plus you get to benefit from our referral program with a 10% discount for anyone who purchases one of our fine blow-up dolls. Rest assured, your parents, co-workers and closest friends will all receive a complimentary copy of our catalogue in your name to ensure you receive your referral dollars.
And how can we blame the insurance companies for this? The market determines the price, so if people choose not to shop around but pay whatever they are told to, then the market has accepted that price.
prices don't really differ that much from competitor to competitor
There's a reason prices don't differ much between competitors: because that's the market price. You don't typically find a huge difference in the price of bread between grocery stores either, but not many people complain about bread monopolies.
I'm actually quite surprised (pleasantly) at how much the insurance market has changed over the last 5-10 years, competitively speaking. I switched insurance providers 2 years ago because a competitor was offering the same policies at 40% less. If other subscribers choose not to shop around regularly to see if they are being screwed, well, that's not the insurance co's fault. Caveat Emptor and all.
Actually, this tends to level the playing field, because the "little guy" no longer has to be little. He can also accumulate the huge expenses that the large corporation can with the marvel of consignment, thereby making suing the little guy a deterrent as well.
In the real world (i.e. outside the US), Loser Pays works exteremely well as a deterrent without impacting the little guy's rights/abilities to sue the big guy. Lawyers today are very keen on the whole "I don't get paid until you get paid" model, because good cases end up getting good settlements. Not many plaintiffs are able to get those types of settlements under the retainer model where they pay fees throughout the process.
Slashdot Mirror
This is lawyers getting in the way of common sense again. While it's true that it inconveniences the innocent and doesn't affect the guilty, it does give the company legal weight behind prosecution/persecution if they can point at the policy and say "You broke the corporate policy so you're fired." In this way, they can attack people for breaking the policy instead of stealing data, cuz that's much harder to prove.
IMHO, a USB storage device is no different than a photocopier on every floor, except for the capacity. How many times is your briefcase searched at the door to ensure you haven't photocopied/printed sensitive info? A much better approach is to secure the data in the first place to ensure that untrustworthy people don't have access to it at all. Now all we need is a retina scanner that can differentiate between the untrustworthy and the everyday masses.
Actually, he accepted stock options, which became nearly worthless when the stock plummetted. The downside to options is they expire, and most bonus packages that are issued as options have an exercise clause that forces the former employee to exercise them or lose them (I don't know if his did or not).
What I don't understand is, he took a gamble that the options were going to be worth a whole lot more later. If the AOL-TW merger was a smashing success and his options were worth $1.6 billion, would he return the excess to the company? He took a risk in his bonus and lost. He could have just as easily (according to the article), accepted $25 million in cash.
If you settle, you are agreeing that the other side's case had merit such that you're willing to pay to make it go away.
Actually, in many cases the settlement specifies exactly the opposite. There is no admission of guilt, or even of the merit of the case. It's just an economic decision. You determine that settling and making them go away is cheaper than defending yourself, even if you're totally innocent.
A degree isn't something you should be able to take away, unless it's proven you cheated to get the degree
This is total BS. Read the text of your degree and you'll notice a few things. "University Name" admits "Student Name" to the degree of "Whatever" with all the rights, privileges, duties and responsibilities thereof.
It can be very easily, and quite rightly, argued that faking data violates the duties and responsibilities of his degree. You can't have the one without the other. If he wants to benefit from the privileges of his degree, namely employment at a nice facility for a fat paycheck, he needs to excercise the responsibilities of his degree. I am overjoyed that his university is taking the required step in revoking his degree. If they don't revoke his degree, they aren't doing their job, which is certifying that Mr. Schoen was indeed a qualified PhD.
You say that you only get 1-2 spam...ever think that's cuz your ISP uses spamhaus (or something like it)?
And so, with my choice to not use Google email but the need to send a message to someone who does use Google email that means I don't have a choice whether or not my message is scanned by Google before it reaches the intended recipient.
If you are sending e-mail, assume it is read by a dozen people between you and the recipient. Why do so many people assume that cuz there's no paper trail, there's absolute privacy? Have we learned nothing about technology around here? E-mail is not private, has never been private, will never be private.
It's _VERY_ different from a letter to your aunt that is sealed in an envelope and is strictly private. In fact, it's a federal offense to open said letter if you aren't the authorized recipient. Your letter analogy only applies to encrypted e-mail communication, which is used, I'm guessing, less than 10% of the time.
Yet there is no logical reason to deny animals the same rights that protect individual humans from being sacrificed for the common good.
I will happily grant Rover the exact same "human" rights as a person as soon as he files his lawsuit against the government.
Just don't try to upgrade it after the fact. I added 128MB of RAM to my ThinkPad. It took 3 calls: 1 to the parts dept to get the part number, 1 to accounting to get a price and 1 to shipping to get a delivery date.
Talk about a waste of time...
In order to be an infringement, it would have to pass the "reasonable person" litmus test.
Would a reasonable person actually believe that they were visiting the microsoft.com site when they were at the mikerowesoft.com site? I haven't seen his site, so I don't know how close it is to MSFT's, in terms of layout & colours, but on the basis of how many extra and dissimilar letters you have to type to get there, it's a pretty easy argument to make that no reasonable person would honestly believe they were at Microsft's site when they were at Mike Rowe's site.
Just being a homonym of a registered trademark is probably not enough to be an infringement, but that's up to a judge or the WIPO board.
you're allowed to rape, torture and murder people without a care in the world as long as you do it at home
Don't be so assinine. The point he was making (if I can be so forward as to throw my own interpretation into the fire) is that if he shares his music collection "...in my own house..." he isn't breaking the law. And he's right...it's called fair use. That's a little fundamental right the RIAA has tried to translate into S-T-E-A-L-I-N-G.
A lot of it has to do with how long it takes to report bugs. I had to contact one of their tech support lines for a server-product related item. I am totally not making this up:
I completely believe that 1% of calls are bug reports. Who would bother waiting through this kind of shit to report a bug that has almost 0 chance of actually being fixed. Not to mention that intermittent (i.e. non-reproducable errors) will NEVER be reported, because MS will tell you it's your fault.
that is how commercial software has changed the face of the computing industry - by promise of better features, but in reality, much less useful software
Much of this surrounds the business model of software vendors. Build it, sell it, change it, sell it again, repeat.
Features get added that aren't used much, if at all, while other features get diluted, altered or dropped altogether in a hope to get the resale dollars. The IT industry as a whole is to blame (although there are clueless faces to blame on the other side of the equation too).
Arguably, the technology in cars, vaccuum cleaners, wrist watches, calculators, alarm clocks, etc, has changed drastically over the years, but the user interface has remained virtually unchanged. ABS brakes don't change HOW the user stops the car, only WHAT happens to stop the car. This is a valuable lesson for us all to learn.
However, on the other side of the relationship, we also have eager beaver managers rolling out new version after new version with (I would guess) little benefit analysis being done. MS Office hasn't changed fundamentally since version 95 (with some exceptions), and yet almost every client site I'm on has Office 2000 or XP (although my current site is still 97).
Would you ever buy a toaster that didn't behave almost exactly like your last one? Can you say the same thing for software?
Coming soon to the US Army: iTanks in blueberry!
I'm sure you're glad that you don't live in Canada now, eh? The CPCC has actually proposed a levy on all digital media, including hard drives. This also includes hard drives that are embedded in other devices. The numbers they were proposing added over 120% to the current price of most portable MP3 players.
If you're disenchanted with the system, spoil your ballot. They record it as a "dissatisfied voter".
At the University of Victoria, way up here in Canada, there was a well-published case of 2 students (I believe from the Architecture dept) who sued the university for their entire tuition because the uni req'd a particular senior course to graduate that they hadn't offered for 2 years.
These poor students couldn't get their degree, the uni wouldn't let them take a substitute course, and wouldn't open even a single section due to "lack of demand and funding". After 6 semesters of waiting for the uni to open a section, they called a lawyer.
I'm not positive about how it turned out, but I think they settled out of court.
Rule by priveleged minority works well if (and only if) the interests of the elite and the interests of the nation are aligned.
I can't help but think of the Simpsons episode where the Mayor leaves town and a group of "learned" scholars (i.e. Lisa, Dr. Hibbard, the Professor, comic-book guy, etc) take over...with hilarious results.
The way I see it, the best approach would be to have an elected dictator. Every 7 years (or some other arbitrary number) elect the dictator that will rule for the next period. No dictator may rule more than once. Have a few fail-safes to prevent dictator from destroying your world, a la Hussein, and presto magic, you have a leader who can actually get something done, as opposed to the impotent leaders we have now.
PS I do realize there are flaws with this approach, but they are no worse than the garbage we have now.
Your brilliant analysis overlooks a few details:
You view of "well I only get 1% of the spam sent to me" is so small scale and removed from the actual problem. You obviously have not ever managed a real system.
The point of a gun registry is not only to make it easier to track guns. It also provides another tool for law enforcement to use against gun-wielding maniacs.
Unfortunately, elected officials and other morons get involved in the process, which is why it always fails to appease anyone. Here is a simple solution:
Now, when your local gang banger robs a liquor store with his unregistered weapon, you have a massive club to beat him over the head with, and don't really present that large of a problem to the collector/sport shooter/hunter. Everyone is happy.
I couldn't point to Afghanistan on a map any more than a German could point to Kansas City
If you're going to jump to the defense of the notorious lack of geographic awareness in the US, at least make your arguments level. Afghanistan is a country, Kansas City is a might smaller than a country.
Had you said "I couldn't point to Afghanistan on a map any more than a German could point to Algeria," then you would be making a meaningful and FAIR argument. As it were, you are simply confirming the world's understanding of how important the rest of the world is to the US. Besides, most Americans probably couldn't point out KC on a map.
The US is HUGE. We're not self centered, we're overloaded with what we have.
Indeed, you certainly are huge.
Not to mention support (don't laugh).
I know I personally get much better support from LUG's, mail lists, and TLDP than I __EVER__ got from MS.
Not only do I get solutions to problems, I also get ANSWERS to "WHY DID THAT HAPPEN?"
When was the last time MS did that for you?
You talk of "social value" and "market value" as being two separate things when they are exactly the same. The market will only tolerate a price if it provides value. And also, that market is made up of the very same people who make up the society.
the standard definition of "too high" really ends up meaning "as much as we can get people to pay"
Of course it does. And by the same measure, the standard definition of "just right" for the consumer is "as little as we can pay for as much as possible." This is called the law of supply and demand; when the price is such that the providers are willing to sell as much as the consumers are willing to buy, we reach an equilibrium point.
You asked, [...]is the percentage of my income that goes towards insurance truely justified [...]? That's a question that only you can answer, since different people are willing to accept different levels of risk. In the aggregate, the answer would be "yes," otherwise you (and I mean the greater sense of You, i.e. The People) wouldn't pay for it. However, on an individual basis, there may be some people who pay too little, and others who pay too much.
How important is salary insurance to a 24-year old rising professional with ambition in his/her eyes? Probably a lot less important than to a 55-year old getting ready for retirement. Which do you think will pay more for such insurance?
Of course there are other factors that throw a wrench in this whole thing, like compulsory insurance, but let's not go there. :)
Good morning, Mr SuperPedo, this is Mindless Droid from ACME Dolls calling. Our trading partner, Verizon, has indicated to us that you may be interested in our product, Billy Bob Blowup, based on your calls to certain 976 numbers in your area.
We have taken the liberty of mailing you a copy of our catalogue, and have also contacted your 10 most frequently called associates. We find it best to market our product in clusters to achieve maximum exposure and buy-in. Plus you get to benefit from our referral program with a 10% discount for anyone who purchases one of our fine blow-up dolls. Rest assured, your parents, co-workers and closest friends will all receive a complimentary copy of our catalogue in your name to ensure you receive your referral dollars.
And how can we blame the insurance companies for this? The market determines the price, so if people choose not to shop around but pay whatever they are told to, then the market has accepted that price.
prices don't really differ that much from competitor to competitor
There's a reason prices don't differ much between competitors: because that's the market price. You don't typically find a huge difference in the price of bread between grocery stores either, but not many people complain about bread monopolies.
I'm actually quite surprised (pleasantly) at how much the insurance market has changed over the last 5-10 years, competitively speaking. I switched insurance providers 2 years ago because a competitor was offering the same policies at 40% less. If other subscribers choose not to shop around regularly to see if they are being screwed, well, that's not the insurance co's fault. Caveat Emptor and all.
Actually, this tends to level the playing field, because the "little guy" no longer has to be little. He can also accumulate the huge expenses that the large corporation can with the marvel of consignment, thereby making suing the little guy a deterrent as well.
In the real world (i.e. outside the US), Loser Pays works exteremely well as a deterrent without impacting the little guy's rights/abilities to sue the big guy. Lawyers today are very keen on the whole "I don't get paid until you get paid" model, because good cases end up getting good settlements. Not many plaintiffs are able to get those types of settlements under the retainer model where they pay fees throughout the process.