Microsoft stockholders probably don't feel too badly about the Ballmer legacy overall, though
He joined in January 2000 when according to that link, the stock was at 48.94. Today the stock is at 36.50. Managing a -25% return over 14 years is not a good thing.
Dead vs, can't sell produce. Hard choice? On the other hand, we can walk straight into a climate change catastrophe, trying to mitigate it with vaporware (subsidised by the US and German govts). It's lucky we ditched the probability theory early on otherwise this argument would start to look like suicide.
One thing I noticed is they didn't proof-read their press releases. I guess broken english is appropriate though, since they are representing journalists. "The United States (47th) also owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests." http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html
Can you see why death threats and mock executions are criminal? If the US jailors in Abu Ghraib doctored pictures of the prisoners' families to show their children being executed, then presented them to the prisoners as real photos, would that be criminal, in your eyes?
There is no moral or philosophically defensible position that says someone needs to own a song or a movie for 70 years. The only explanation is greed overstepping all sense of proportion and reason. Disgusting. It just moves me with great anger to make sure I will do my best to hurt the bottom line of those who think dollar signs are more important than the common property of mankind.
You actually go further than this in your sig - "intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent". Does that mean you wouldn't mind if I just copy and re-post all of your comments as my own? If, in an exam, I copied you and your friend's answers, and through doing so raised the pass grade, so through my actions I passed and you both failed - would that be fair? If a hedge fund manager steals information on a stock, and through doing it makes money, is that wrong? I'm not criticising your views - I agree this legislation is horrible. I would just be interested from a philosophical sense, what you believe.
what is the future of a civilisation whose most capitalised stock is gadget manufacturer?
The future is tech rather than oil.
It seems perfectly fitting to western society. When Papua New Guinean natives first met western GIs and explorers, they noticed one major difference between our societies - the westerners had more "cargo" - cargo being sharp knives, jeeps, planes, radios, tinned food. This is the one area which the west has consistently outperformed, and has led to the dominance of our society over all others. The ipad is just the latest useful tool that has been produced. In the 40s, the future looked bright for the west, and not so bright for the Papua New Guinean natives. Might I suggest that today, things look bright for Apple, but not so bright for Exxon?
With all the surveillance cameras in London one would thought that is has to be the most secure city in the world.
Oh the irony.
And you know what the really strange thing is? After these riots, you can bet there will be a whole lot more CCTV cameras, and police, and I suspect that Theresa May is quietly reviewing the costs of getting a water cannon fleet. And what is even stranger is that the British people will be right behind her. Strange thing is, when people see their houses being burnt down, they stop caring about whether a CCTV camera guy might take photos of a stupid girl that leaves her curtains open, and start thinking it's nicer to lose a bit of privacy than be burnt to death. Funny old world, isn't it?
UK is AAA because we have a competent government which has undertaken spending cuts, even at the cost of riots. It also helps that our debt is denominated in Sterling, so we can print as much as we want - of course the same is true of the US, but Standard & Poor's Credit Ratings never have been very good at actually rating credit. Remember when they downgraded Japan, then had to upgrade them again:)
I accept your point that it is impressive that such a mountain of suck runs so effectively on MySQL. However it is still a mountain of suck. Or to put it another way, I don't think computers were invented so some mini bill gates can try to cajole me into "poking" my friends for the purposes of selling advertising.
This all seems pretty simple. You record every access, all accesses will be audited at a later stage by an oversight committee. 99% of cases are automatically handled (e.g. doctor accessing records for his patient day after admission) but cases which are not clear are reviewed. Any employee who accesses records has to explain his rationale for doing so. If the rationale doesn't hold up, they are disciplined / sacked. A warning explaining this comes up when you try to access records. I would imagine the guarantee of losing your job would curtail the curiosity of most nosy employees, and while the sacking might be post-hoc, their apprehension will be before the fact.
I agree. The party line seems to be "Things like Wikileaks are good, because they deny privacy to other people. Things like car number plate recognition are bad, because they deny privacy to us." I personally hope that personal privacy is eroded at the expense of public information. I'm here to learn, not to cheat, and I'm not afraid of anyone.
It's a religious movement - after Marxism was totally discredited, these guys have got to believe that someone is out to get them. Monsanto, Nike, GAP, Starbucks. I waded through some anti-globalisation literature, there's a whole post-modern framework ("counter-narrative") behind some of these guys. Total bullshit of course, but new religions usually are. Their form of the armageddon is that man's sinful ways (capitalism, scientific advance, industry, the evil pursuit of money) will lead to an ecological catastrophe. They don't provide any solutions, because that's not their job.
Penrose's entire argument (in "The Emperor's New Mind") for why consciousness was quantum mechanical was that a computer could not be concious, because it could not answer the question "how do you feel?" - to which I respond "can I have my money back". Scientists like Penrose, Hawking and Dawkins should be locked up for their own good when they start mumbling about philosophy and God. They would be very quick to point fingers if the Dalai Lama or Amartya Sen started making statements about microbiology or quantum gravity based on their philosophical skill.
I think we are supposed to go "back to nature" - like the end of Battlestar Galactica, we give up our technology. After 95% of the population have starved to death, we could have a perfectly sustainable life "in harmony" with nature - i.e. up until the point something less conflicted evolves to kill us all. I think the enviro-crowd's anti-industrial ideas come from people like Rousseau and Marx, and just like Rousseau and Marx, they are totally reliant on the culture they criticize.
So to summarise your argument: the police force is corrupt, therefore anything that gives the police force information is bad, because they misuse whatever power they have. These people are armed with guns, they have great power to tamper with the criminal system, but you are particularly worried that they might be able to track a car that goes into a "gay district". Why don't you follow your argument to the logical conclusion, and dissolve the police force? We could all police ourselves, with our.44s.
Why should anyone be alarmed about Fukushima? Let's do some risk analysis. What do you think the severity of the problem is? I assume we can limit this to how many people do you think are going to die. What do you think the probability is? For me, I estimate the probability of more than 100 people dying is less than 1 in a million, even granted the one in a thousand events that overtook the reactor have happened. If the public reaction is reasonable, then it should be a reasonable reaction to these figures - which are something like the number of people that die on the roads in a day. If you are factoring an unreasonable public reaction into your analysis (i.e. germans banning all nuclear power), then we might as well stop arguing - they could ban nuclear power for any reason (and effectively, they already have banned nuclear power - there are very few new nuclear plants in the US or Europe, due to irrational public fear). We slashdotters understand rationality, and nuclear power, and pity the poor idiots who are trapped by their ignorance into a carbon burning future.
This argument doesn't work. If people gave press to preventable death, they would highlight obesity, gun ownership and safe driving. The reason people are scared of nuclear power is because they do not understand the issue. The reason people live in hurricane afflicted areas is probably because they do not think it will happen to them. If the same number of people died from artificial nuclear radiation in Florida as die from hurricanes, can you imagine the hysteria?
Well, lucky for you that the legal system requires your guilt to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. If you told someone you were going down that road, by your logic, you would be arrested. So effectively what you are saying is, the police are going to fit someone up for this crime. If they have more information, it is more likely to be me. I don't see how you can deduce that - and since in your world, law enforcement is random anyway, what does it even matter - it's not fair either with or without the cameras. I think the real point of this argument is this gives information and power to the state, and the police, something which slashdotters are against, since they have an instinctive distrust of authority. Slashdotters might be against authority, but that doesn't mean authority is wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft stockholders probably don't feel too badly about the Ballmer legacy overall, though
He joined in January 2000 when according to that link, the stock was at 48.94. Today the stock is at 36.50. Managing a -25% return over 14 years is not a good thing.
Neither mine nor my wife's is there. Hers is unchanged in 3 years.
Dead vs, can't sell produce. Hard choice? On the other hand, we can walk straight into a climate change catastrophe, trying to mitigate it with vaporware (subsidised by the US and German govts). It's lucky we ditched the probability theory early on otherwise this argument would start to look like suicide.
Holding up well? It's June 2011 peak was 30 USD per BTC. Now it's 5 USD per BTC. It appears to be holding up about as well as Greek bonds.
One thing I noticed is they didn't proof-read their press releases. I guess broken english is appropriate though, since they are representing journalists. "The United States (47th) also owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests." http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html
Wheras in america they can legally shoot back. Don't tread on me, officer.
You earned twice as much as an executive's bonus when you were young and immature? That would make most execs I know cry in their beer.
Agreed. Flamebait crap about unions and corporations might boost page views, but it is killing the site.
Can you see why death threats and mock executions are criminal? If the US jailors in Abu Ghraib doctored pictures of the prisoners' families to show their children being executed, then presented them to the prisoners as real photos, would that be criminal, in your eyes?
There is no moral or philosophically defensible position that says someone needs to own a song or a movie for 70 years. The only explanation is greed overstepping all sense of proportion and reason. Disgusting. It just moves me with great anger to make sure I will do my best to hurt the bottom line of those who think dollar signs are more important than the common property of mankind.
You actually go further than this in your sig - "intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent". Does that mean you wouldn't mind if I just copy and re-post all of your comments as my own? If, in an exam, I copied you and your friend's answers, and through doing so raised the pass grade, so through my actions I passed and you both failed - would that be fair? If a hedge fund manager steals information on a stock, and through doing it makes money, is that wrong? I'm not criticising your views - I agree this legislation is horrible. I would just be interested from a philosophical sense, what you believe.
what is the future of a civilisation whose most capitalised stock is gadget manufacturer?
The future is tech rather than oil.
It seems perfectly fitting to western society. When Papua New Guinean natives first met western GIs and explorers, they noticed one major difference between our societies - the westerners had more "cargo" - cargo being sharp knives, jeeps, planes, radios, tinned food. This is the one area which the west has consistently outperformed, and has led to the dominance of our society over all others. The ipad is just the latest useful tool that has been produced. In the 40s, the future looked bright for the west, and not so bright for the Papua New Guinean natives. Might I suggest that today, things look bright for Apple, but not so bright for Exxon?
With all the surveillance cameras in London one would thought that is has to be the most secure city in the world. Oh the irony.
And you know what the really strange thing is? After these riots, you can bet there will be a whole lot more CCTV cameras, and police, and I suspect that Theresa May is quietly reviewing the costs of getting a water cannon fleet. And what is even stranger is that the British people will be right behind her. Strange thing is, when people see their houses being burnt down, they stop caring about whether a CCTV camera guy might take photos of a stupid girl that leaves her curtains open, and start thinking it's nicer to lose a bit of privacy than be burnt to death. Funny old world, isn't it?
UK is AAA because we have a competent government which has undertaken spending cuts, even at the cost of riots. It also helps that our debt is denominated in Sterling, so we can print as much as we want - of course the same is true of the US, but Standard & Poor's Credit Ratings never have been very good at actually rating credit. Remember when they downgraded Japan, then had to upgrade them again :)
Thank you for making this point so eloquently.
I accept your point that it is impressive that such a mountain of suck runs so effectively on MySQL. However it is still a mountain of suck. Or to put it another way, I don't think computers were invented so some mini bill gates can try to cajole me into "poking" my friends for the purposes of selling advertising.
This all seems pretty simple. You record every access, all accesses will be audited at a later stage by an oversight committee. 99% of cases are automatically handled (e.g. doctor accessing records for his patient day after admission) but cases which are not clear are reviewed. Any employee who accesses records has to explain his rationale for doing so. If the rationale doesn't hold up, they are disciplined / sacked. A warning explaining this comes up when you try to access records. I would imagine the guarantee of losing your job would curtail the curiosity of most nosy employees, and while the sacking might be post-hoc, their apprehension will be before the fact.
These are the guys that brought you the credit crunch. Nice to see nothing has changed.
I agree. The party line seems to be "Things like Wikileaks are good, because they deny privacy to other people. Things like car number plate recognition are bad, because they deny privacy to us." I personally hope that personal privacy is eroded at the expense of public information. I'm here to learn, not to cheat, and I'm not afraid of anyone.
It's a religious movement - after Marxism was totally discredited, these guys have got to believe that someone is out to get them. Monsanto, Nike, GAP, Starbucks. I waded through some anti-globalisation literature, there's a whole post-modern framework ("counter-narrative") behind some of these guys. Total bullshit of course, but new religions usually are. Their form of the armageddon is that man's sinful ways (capitalism, scientific advance, industry, the evil pursuit of money) will lead to an ecological catastrophe. They don't provide any solutions, because that's not their job.
Penrose's entire argument (in "The Emperor's New Mind") for why consciousness was quantum mechanical was that a computer could not be concious, because it could not answer the question "how do you feel?" - to which I respond "can I have my money back". Scientists like Penrose, Hawking and Dawkins should be locked up for their own good when they start mumbling about philosophy and God. They would be very quick to point fingers if the Dalai Lama or Amartya Sen started making statements about microbiology or quantum gravity based on their philosophical skill.
I think we are supposed to go "back to nature" - like the end of Battlestar Galactica, we give up our technology. After 95% of the population have starved to death, we could have a perfectly sustainable life "in harmony" with nature - i.e. up until the point something less conflicted evolves to kill us all. I think the enviro-crowd's anti-industrial ideas come from people like Rousseau and Marx, and just like Rousseau and Marx, they are totally reliant on the culture they criticize.
So to summarise your argument: the police force is corrupt, therefore anything that gives the police force information is bad, because they misuse whatever power they have. These people are armed with guns, they have great power to tamper with the criminal system, but you are particularly worried that they might be able to track a car that goes into a "gay district". Why don't you follow your argument to the logical conclusion, and dissolve the police force? We could all police ourselves, with our .44s.
Why should anyone be alarmed about Fukushima? Let's do some risk analysis. What do you think the severity of the problem is? I assume we can limit this to how many people do you think are going to die. What do you think the probability is? For me, I estimate the probability of more than 100 people dying is less than 1 in a million, even granted the one in a thousand events that overtook the reactor have happened. If the public reaction is reasonable, then it should be a reasonable reaction to these figures - which are something like the number of people that die on the roads in a day. If you are factoring an unreasonable public reaction into your analysis (i.e. germans banning all nuclear power), then we might as well stop arguing - they could ban nuclear power for any reason (and effectively, they already have banned nuclear power - there are very few new nuclear plants in the US or Europe, due to irrational public fear). We slashdotters understand rationality, and nuclear power, and pity the poor idiots who are trapped by their ignorance into a carbon burning future.
This argument doesn't work. If people gave press to preventable death, they would highlight obesity, gun ownership and safe driving. The reason people are scared of nuclear power is because they do not understand the issue. The reason people live in hurricane afflicted areas is probably because they do not think it will happen to them. If the same number of people died from artificial nuclear radiation in Florida as die from hurricanes, can you imagine the hysteria?
Well, lucky for you that the legal system requires your guilt to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. If you told someone you were going down that road, by your logic, you would be arrested. So effectively what you are saying is, the police are going to fit someone up for this crime. If they have more information, it is more likely to be me. I don't see how you can deduce that - and since in your world, law enforcement is random anyway, what does it even matter - it's not fair either with or without the cameras. I think the real point of this argument is this gives information and power to the state, and the police, something which slashdotters are against, since they have an instinctive distrust of authority. Slashdotters might be against authority, but that doesn't mean authority is wrong.