It's pretty clear that he intended what he was doing. That said, not all port scanning is intentional.
When I first got Debian going, I installed klisa, since it was part of the Networking package, and I didn't know better.
Very quickly, I lost my internet connection. I didn't know why; I called up. I heard something about "hacker".
Later, I spoke to their English-speaking guy. He said that I was on their list of "worst hackers." I asked why. He said I was port scanning. I said I had no idea, could he work with me on it. So we tried my Windows setup -- nothing. We tried Linux. Port scanning. I then went through, one by one, asking "Is this it?" and killing processes, ten minutes apart. Finally, I killed klisa, and the port scanning stopped. I uninstalled it, and never again had a problem.
Merrill Lynch w/out integrity. Sun should ignore
on
Merrill Lynch Rips Sun
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Let me begin with a caveat. This is not to say that Sun is without problems.
But my experience with Merrill Lynch and my brother's experience likewise is that they are without integrity. Therefore, you cannot trust anything they say.
Just as an example, you read their advice to "convince Linux users that Linux is a subset of Solaris..."
Bud, that ain't going to happen. SCO is too busy with the exact same thing. And yes, it's great for their stock price, especially since a Microsoft-club investor is buying up as much stock as they can.
But SCO isn't healthy.
Of course, their other advice, to slash the workforce, is also in the same line: it is detrimental to the health of Sun. Let me explain what happens when you slash the work force.
First of all, all those employees who thought that they had reasonable job security, get depressed. Depression means more time wasted. It means decreased efficiency. That means more cuts, down the road. Eventually, it means you outsource everything, and end up as a shell (though maybe an IP shell like SCO, which generates lots of volatility, which might be good for Merrill Lynch).
Second of all, when you cut the workforce, employees get paranoid. That means that they start to decide that they don't have the authority to stick up (the nail that sticks up, getting hammered and all). So they don't try to innovate. In fact, they squelch innovation. They try to make it look like they're doing as good a job as anyone else, and aside from that avoid notice.
Worse than that, it sickens the company in another way:
Suppose you have n employees. The internal threats to a company are a function of the number of employees. A failure can happen with any one of the n employees. Or it can happen with any group of 2 employees. Or with 3 employees. All together, the probability of a failure occurring is n + n*(n-1)/2 + n*(n-1)*(n-2)/6 +...
Now, at the same time, employees don't like to see their company fail, so they do try to fix things. But their ability to fix things is a function of their authority. If their authority is not enough to fix it, then the fix won't happen, and the company takes a loss of some amount. So the same equation as above applies to the number of employees with authority:
a+a*(a-1)/2+a*(a-1)*(a-2)/6 +...
Of course, a is less than n. So the health of a company is greater if a=n, or is as large as possible. But when you're making cuts, even employees who are nominally with authority act like they have no authority. So every single little cold, every single angry statement, every single office affair hurts the company and results in real damages.
So Sun, Don't Listen to Merrill Lynch. Unless you first exchange all your stock for all of theirs in a 100%-100% stock swap. It might not be a bad idea, at that. From the open letter, I'm sure Merrill's market analysts know how to build hardware and write software. And at that, I'd trust you guys with my assets a lot sooner than I'd trust them.
Let's see... the big ideas that they gave us were:
#1) Don't put your email address on web pages.
#2)... uhh, there was no #2.
Aside from that, the article pointed out that it's relatively cheap to delete spam. Excuse me, is this guy a spammer during his off time?!?
Quite simply, I *don't* post my email address to web pages. Somehow, or other, the spammers get ahold of the email addresses anyhow.
Here are some other ways:
(1) You ISP sells your email address. No kidding. I have one email address,.omnitel.net, for which I suspect this is true, because the spam started rolling in immediately, and did not stop.
(2) Some friend's email provider sells recipient email addresses. This is another one. When some of my acquaintances got a certain famous webmail address, because it practically was part of the OS that they got and was free like mail.yahoo.com, it took one email from them, and the spam started rolling in.
(3) Some friend of yours fowards one of those semi-viral human-engineering emails "to all", and then another friend forwards it "to all", and some spammer down the line, who let that little wormie go, reels in fish after fish just by processing the thing. Oh, you can tell those friends, "please, please, PLEASE don't send this to me". But the next time he/she runs across another hyperfeminist laud, or something says "don't let another person die! Forward this TO ALL with headers attached!", why it comes your way. *sigh*.
The only way we'll end spam is having a penny-per-sent-email charge. If my ISP started doing this, and billing me that 1 cent per email, but also billing all other ISPs that sent email 1 cent (and blocking those that didn't pay) I would thank them from the bottom of my heart.
Of course, when my business email didn't go through, I would call my business contact, give them the address of the free and open-source automatic accounting software, and tell them "have your ISP start this up, and spam will stop. Don't, and your emails won't get through."
Very quickly, we'd pay the 1 cent per email charge, and find that those who paid got their email through; those who needed it to be free wouldn't.
Meanwhile, I'd only get spam that was worth more than a penny. In other words, I'd get spam that most people would be reasonably likely to buy.
Sounds good that they allow that there. I was interested in such a thing for Virginia Electric Power Company, since I'm aware that there are laws that they have to pay for renewable energy.
However, they told me that yeah, they'd do it, but they'd charge enough for the special inverter equipment that they'd require, that I'd never make any money off it. I asked how about if I provided the inverter, and they said they wouldn't accept that. In other words, "get lost".
In other words, yeah, there's a law, but it doesn't apply. So before you spend money trying to do what this guy did, check twice. The law doesn't always apply in light of company decisions.
Here's how ensemble forecasting works for horse racing. You find a track that's running at least 4 races per day, two weekend days in a row (Fri and Sat, for example, though it varies.) You then print up cards that forecast every single combination of the 8 horses. 8^4 is what, about 3600. Then, stand near the horse track, and hand out your cards, one for every tenth person who enters, no more. At the bottom, it says "to get our predictions for tomorrows' races, call xxx-xxxx."
Of course, those predictions you sell for quite a pretty penny. And some poor fool happens to get the card that predicts all four races, and thinks "these guys know their stuff..."
Crooks can make a bit of money that way. Marks can lose quite a bit more than a bit that way, too.
Anyhow, I like the fact that this Japanese computer is usuing a deterministic forecast. I don't put a lot of faith in (for example, the British distributed modeling) the methods that forecast every possible outcome.
Disclaimer: I do not advocate that anyone should behave like a crook. Please do not try to steal other peoples' money, just because they have a gambling addiction. Sure, someone's going to steal it -- but their blood doesn't have to be on your soul.
is it not just for someone to benefit from their ideas?
No. It is just for someone to benefit from their labors. The common law takes a lot from the Bible, and the biblical phrase is "the fruit of their labors", not "the fruit of their dreaming." That said, so that you don't think I'm pointlessly quoting something, let me ask you: when is the last time that you have seen someone *think* food onto the table or into peoples' hands? Mind you, it has happened [Christ feeding the 5000], yet he was also God. Therefore, it is just for God to benefit from His ideas, since His ideas have power. But it is just for ust to benefit from our labors. IP goes against that.
The point of an idea is that you can then put it into practice. Gut the idea of its point, and it's lost all its essence, and is rightfully worthless.
If you create a great idea You think it; you don't create it. you deserve to have that idea protected as intellectual property so that you can recoup your costs and efforts through the proceeds of your idea.
How quaint. And what, pray tell, are the costs of thinking? Zero? I thought so. So costs are already recouped. And what is the effort of thinking? Metabolic? I urge you not to go on strike. Who, exactly, told you that fib?
You just don't like having to conpensate others for creating the ideas you want to use or just plain couldn't think of yourself. You want a freebie from other people's hard work.
Again, hard work nothing. That aside, no, I don't want any freebees that are not freely given. But the same species has similar brains, and similar thoughts, and the thoughts are the easy part. I don't want peoples' hard work stolen from them, to give freebees to those who had the idea, and lazily chose not to implement it -- or had the idea, and chose to implement it, but did not have enough of an idea to get it right, so that it can't compete.
Who decides what is just? The final judge of all.
Who decides what is natural law?Nature, as designed by the final judge of all, see above. And remember, when your country which violates natural law goes through starvation and the 3rd world, rounds third without stopping, and heads for a home run. That will be the last witness to you that the final judge exists, and is a better judge than you.
What gives you the right to decide or to dare to think you are right? Look in the mirror. Which is arrogant? The man that looks at nature, and says "I see natural law" after studying it? Or the man who ignores nature, and says "who has the right to say what natural law is", as he steps off a cliff? By your actions, you are choosing to be a judge, and far more arrogant a judge, than any who defers to nature or the Bible, or the Koran, or the writings of the practitioners of Wing Tsun. They, at least, are deferring to the judgement of other men, and judgements that have stood the test of time. You are deferring, by your choices, to your own judgements and no other. See your own arrogance, be ashamed, and be silent. Learn.
What if my natural laws and just beliefs say that you should jump off a bridge? Gee I don't see you leaping! I, quite naturally, will follow the laws that I follow [mathematical logic there, identity theorem. You, quite naturally, will follow the laws that you follow. My law is natural law. Your law is yourself. Your law *does* say "walk off the cliff". My law says "do not walk off the cliff." You, from your tone, would say that you pay homage to Darwin. I too pay homage to Darwin, but with my circumspection, as opposed to my feet. I strongly advise you to pick a better law, and to recognize a better judge, for your judgement seems to be terrible.
I am quite against intellectual property in general, because intellectual property is not truly property, and violates natural law.
But I am also very much against anything that perverts justice, obfusciates the truth, and in general destroys respect for the law.
This one is ridiculous, because 99% of the people who say "no, it wasn't me, someone set me up" based upon this will be perjuring themselves.
Quite honestly, isn't that the claim that most criminals make?
I, for one, if set up, would have a different answer: "I never installed Kazaa or other P2P software, nor did I pay the Kazaa fee." Come to think of it, that would be my defense if accused of stealing cable channels too: "I never bought one of those cable-selection-hiding filters; indeed, I never bought cable TV."
Come off it, people. Stop trying to make a case for yourself why maybe it perhaps isn't so bad, and perverting your consciences.
There are a lot of nice features there, and it's a very attractive package and all. But a common criticism that I've heard is that the new T3 sometimes forgets that it can run.
(Note to moderators: please do not rate this informative. Check the link first. Aargh, why do I actually have to make such qualifying statements first? Do your job, or don't use the mod points. Maybe I'm just too subtle.)
I thought about this, and I should be more hopeful. Aside from that, I don't need to be nasty. Anyone want to mod the parent down (overrated, if nothing else), please do.
Third, as the sources pointed out, if Microsoft's latest versions are so secure, they should be able to get third party assessment.
Excellent point; and Microsoft should lose no time in calling up a well-trusted third-party security company to show that indeed Microsoft products are secure. Of course, it had better be a trusted company, because they don't want their source code getting out.
Hmm... I wonder if I should send my resume to an industry-leading security company, such as @stake, immediately. I'm into document preparation, not security, but I should be able to learn the language reasonably quickly.;->
Clearly, that's not the problem. If the Open-sourcing of TDIL's work was under GNU, then they can't use it line-for-line without some sort of *other* agreement with the authors. (well, actually, they might... but that would imply some sort of liability. I hope it doesn't happen, though, because I'd hate to see WWIII start between Microsoft and India.)
That also doesn't mean that the MOU won't eventually be signed. Rather, it means that the Indian Government is very cool to the idea right now.
now THAT is a serious charge, and should never be made without evidence. Can you point to specific examples of plagiarism? If so, then your *answer* should be modded through the roof. But aside from that, you've just made a false accusation, and should never be listened to again.
What he deserved was a reputation for honesty, even when his job is at stake. He got that.
If you cash in your business for gold, you're going to lose the gold, and then have nothing. If, on the other hand, you trade in your gold for a business, then you're going to get even more gold.
Substitute reputation for business, and you have the security business in a nutshell. @Stake just traded in their business for gold. Geer just traded in his gold for business.
Sooner or later, it's going to be apparent: EVERYONE gets what they deserve.
Bravo, Geer. If you never get another job, I predict you'll still look back on this and say it was one of the best days of your life.
It is no coincidence that the US empire rose above the level of other countries while it supported the Bill of Rights. Like the Roman Empire, a higher level of justice grants a higher level of economic performance, which in turn yields more power.
On the most immediate level, yes, the government's *not* taking action against @stake affirms the Bill of Rights (and yes, the Bill of Rights is best applied to *all* groups within our society, including both individuals and corporations and even clubs if you like.)
However, let me push this to an extreme: suppose Microsoft employed everyone in the US: by saying who had a job and who didn't, they could say who died without trial. At that point, wouldn't they be the de facto government? Thus, the Bill of Rights, as a philosophical statement of politically and economically effective action, is denied by @stake's actions (and by Microsoft).
Which probably meets most peoples' sensibilities pretty well -- nothing against Bill Gates, but they wouldn't want to live in a country ruled by Microsoft without a Bill of Rights (though some do have something against Bill Gates, too).
So no, the Bill of Rights doesn't apply. But really, if things were the best possible, it would.
Do whatever you can to bypass the wall of "human resources
So you mean, like, download the latest spam virus; pick it apart until you see what newsgroup to post your resume to, and what encoding to use. Then make sure your resume says something like "was able to decode the wthunk32.dll virus." Lastly, sit back and smile as 32 million copies of your resume go out... and again... and again...
I'm living a just and kind life / I've never really understood the idea of accepting things on faith.
Great! Hopefully, you will continue living such a life when times are incredibly hard. Now, that is not to say that it is only _____s that will be able to persevere in such. Rather, it is to say that God being Love, and God being in a continual process of creation in this universe, acts whereever reality is.
However, that said, a person is more likely to be able to persevere when the going gets tough, if he has faith. But true faith is not saying I believe; true faith is reflexive with "faithful". Which implies a kind of definition of what faith is, not a way to tell who will persevere and who will not.
That said, none of us are truly, completely just. We do our best. So the other part of persevering is persevering when you've just really screwed up, and trying again. Now, for that, I find faith in Christ to be incredibly important. But to have faith in Christ, the first part is you have to really believe that he existed, and that these things happened. For that, you have to weigh the evidence, and not just the evidence of yesterday, but the evidence of today.
Some of the evidence of today will be scientific in nature, though I'd find the soft sciences of history, archaeology, medicine, and especially psychology to be far more a factor than, for example, physics. Physics just doesn't strive for or against the Bible, as far as I can see. But another part of the evidence is what you see in the people around you, and another part is what you see in terms of the hand of God acting in modern day times. For example, you have to weigh the evidence of such things as The Cross and the Switchblade.
That's not to press my own denomination: David Wilkerson has in the past expressed doubts that Catholics are even Christian. Nonetheless, I think that his evidence is worth looking at.
Now, once you believe, and get to recognize God's signature, then it becomes easier to "accept things on faith." But until that time, no, that isn't where you start.
Did Jesus, the only one who was right by definition, say "Ignore these rules"...?
First, Jesus is not the only one right by definition. God is the only one in the Bible who is right by definition. Jesus is right by having the signature of God upon Him, for he said "I AM", that is, the Godly I am, and more explicitly he said "God is the Father; I am the Son; the Son and the Father are one." Now, either he was lying or telling the truth, or wrong. In the first and last case, though, God would not have signed Jesus' statements. The fact that Jesus could work miracles, and the fact that He rose from the dead, and the fact that his Christian Church still wields the power of the Holy Spirit today, all point to the authenticity of Jesus' statements. Which is why I say to look at David Wilkerson's book. It's something modern you can put your finger on.
Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that if you want your opinion to be respected, justify it. Don't do that by saying, "I think X, Famous person Y agrees with me." Say, "I think X because..."
I absolutely agree, in general. However, it depends upon whom I'm talking to. I don't always make proven statements. At the moment, I'm much more horrified by people who are in name only, Christians, acting evilly and without thought towards their religion, than I am by someone who has been for the moment turned off from the religion, because they don't see it truly making a difference in peoples' lives.
One is the cause, and one is the effect. For me to start preaching hellfire and damnation against you (??!?!?) would be like someone blaming all our ills upon George Bush. George Bush is the symptom. If I were to preach to you, it would be more on the order of the need for justice, and the need for repentance of past wrongs. But if I were to preach hellfire and damnation [and I won't -- I'll let God do that or not], I'd have to look first to hypocritical Christians.
No, it is the fact that you are living it, and see that it is working, that is testimony as to the rightness of the Bible.
[PS... you picked your examples badly. Shellfish, being bottom feeders, do accumulate more toxins than finned/scaled fish. So, though I'm not religious about it, I do in general avoid shellfish. If I want the taste of crab, I generally go for the sea-legs monkfish+1%crab stuff. As for pork, we actually go farther than the Bible nowadays, and avoid not only pork but all mammalian meat, for the reason that prion diseases seem to be carried by mammalian meat. But again, the pig is a garbage eater, and does accumulate more toxins than, say, a cow. As far as it goes, therefore, it takes a ton more faith and thinking to turn the other cheek than it does to avoid shellfish and pork. But by the book of Acts and the writings of Paul, the Bible also explicitly releases Christians from the necessity of not eating those things, though the wisdom of not eating them remains. Christians do still have to avoid eating meat sacrificed to idols, though.]
Not at all. Rather, for people who do have the same God as me, then this becomes the strongest reason of all: because God said it.
For others, I'll say what I said to the post above yours:
Consider people who have lived the good life, while choosing to not pay their workers a fair wage. Such people are essentially murdering their workers. At the very least, they are driving them away.
Let me specify:
"Your gold and silver are rusted, and they shall be a testimony against you... you have heaped together treasure for the last days, but you have withheld your workers' wages, and the money that you withheld cries out."
and to interpret:
What is wealth? Wealth is often considered to be money -- but if you have money, but not the ability to earn it, you will swiftly lose it. So wealth isn't money. Wealth, instead, is the ability to earn money, but money is symbolic of something else. Therefore, we would better say, true wealth is having a working part of the economy. In other words, the person with a working business is far wealthier than the person with a million dollars and no business.
Now, if a rich man destroys his business in order to get money, by not paying his workers fairly, he has in reality destroyed his wealth.
But this verse says that not only will he have destroyed his wealth -- but God's going to hold him accountable, as well.
Truly, if you read and understand this verse, you shouldn't need accountability in the afterlife to choose basic human decency. If you are even greedy but wise, you will say "I want to preserve my gold and silver. I don't want it to rust", and you will pay your workers well.
But if you do that, then you will also find that this becomes a testimony not against yourself, but for yourself, and as such also becomes a testimony as to the rightness of the Bible.
So in reality, this verse doesn't just say "do it because I say so," but actually tells why you should do it. In other words, James provided a rational reason.
As for appearing uneducated, I couldn't care less. I'm a thinking person, much more than an educated person. It is the unthinking who will fail to read and understand, but will judge by their gut reaction. My thinking has led me to confirm for myself that the Bible is essentially right. But just so you know, I'm a rocket scientist by education, so I can handle education as well. But I reserve the right to think things through for myself.
Umm... that is people who have lived the good life, while choosing to not pay their workers a fair wage.
Such people are essentially murdering their workers. At the very least, they are driving them away.
Let me specify:
"Your gold and silver are rusted, and they shall be a testimony against you... you have heaped together treasure for the last days, but you have withheld your workers' wages, and the money that you withheld cries out."
and to interpret:
What is wealth? Wealth is often considered to be money -- but if you have money, but not the ability to earn it, you will swiftly lose it. So wealth isn't money. Wealth, instead, is the ability to earn money, but money is symbolic of something else. Therefore, we would better say, true wealth is having a working part of the economy. In other words, the person with a working business is far wealthier than the person with a million dollars and no business.
Now, if a rich man destroys his business in order to get money, by not paying his workers fairly, he has in reality destroyed his wealth.
But this verse says that not only will he have destroyed his wealth -- but God's going to hold him accountable, as well.
Truly, if you read and understand this verse, you shouldn't need accountability in the afterlife to choose basic human decency. If you are even greedy but wise, you will say "I want to preserve my gold and silver. I don't want it to rust", and you will pay your workers well.
But if you do that, then you will also find that this becomes a testimony not against yourself, but for yourself, and as such also becomes a testimony as to the rightness of the Bible.
I don't see it listed at www.x-prize.org, but I wonder if they've already collected the $10M?
If they haven't, then what happens if the prize is won, and they only have $8M? Will they be able to find the other $2M, or will the prize have to be just $8M?
In case you didn't notice, someone else replied "-1 Beautiful South." There's a song, you know:
But it could be Rotterdam, or Liverpool, or anywhere you roam.
'Cause Rotterdam or Liverpool sell net just through the phone... you're gonna need a loan."
Your ISP has you in a pickle, 'cause they're in a pickle too!
They oversold 64-kay-baud, and now you're down to two!
This could be Rotterdam or Liverpool or anywhere you roam
'Cause Rotterdam or Liverpool sell net just through the phone... you're gonna need a loan."
You try to get some DSP, you thick the line will hold, but the DSP line stops 10 meters short, so bud you're in the cold!
This could be Rotterdam or Liverpool or anywhere you roam
'Cause Rotterdam or Liverpool sell net just through the phone... you're gonna need a loan."
So then you line up for a sat, install a Primestar dish
But your line of sight is almost gone, latency isn't what you'd wish...
This could be Rotterdam or Liverpool or anywhere you roam
'Cause Rotterdam or Liverpool sell net just through the phone... you're gonna need a loan.
For me, I like to have our web services, and our internal network. If you want to send files in or out, you have to put them on CD-R and transfer them to the outer network. So if we can afford a network at some time, that's what I'll do. But our business model matches that.
On the other hand, for a large company like Newport News Shipbuilding, with > 10k employees, and more than 3000 engineers, that really isn't going to be practical, is it?
Interesting thought... but suppose you were to have the two-tiered network like that, and not pierced at all, and every building has one virtual server computer with RAID, with CD-R, that allows files to be uploaded and downloaded. Every employee has an internal account, and an external account. Then, mail that comes in goes to the external account, but the text gets stripped and forwarded to the internal account through a hardware+ROM only "text email server". You want to reply, you can do so in text. You want to reply with more than text, you have to go to the "external access computers" in front of a security desk, and everything is logged to tapes, including video of the room, and kept for a year.
In other words, I wonder if there might not be a market for single-purpose-only ROM firewall piercing servers (and, of course, the servers have their own firewalls, if necessary).
Oh, well. I rather suspect that there's a different ideal setup for every business, but "different" isn't all that different.
... where can one get 2-way satellite internet connectivity in various parts of the world; how much does it cost [he had a ton of trouble with some of these options]; and where do you buy it?
When I was looking at the Debian sat-dish mini howto, they had some lists of satellites, but I found no way to actually buy in. Even emails went unanswered.
For me, it's the Baltic region (Lithuania). But it could be Rotterdam, or Liverpool, or anywhere I roam. So a list of the different options might be useful.
One thing that you're doing, that I think should be a lot more important, is pointing out that the CEOs who raid their companies should be an indicator of future bad performance at other companies.
This is important to customers too. I bought a Lucent WinModem, before I realized how bad those were. It burned out after a year, and our ISP said "well, that's a common problem with WinModems". Now, HP, on the other hand, had very solid products. But when HP hired their current president, the former VP-marketing of Lucent, the former management all fled. When that happened, I mentally red-flagged HP as a company not to buy new products from. Indeed, since that time their products have gotten a lot flashier and sexier, but they've started pulling such tricks as quarter-filling the inkjet cartridges, and lowering the price by 25%. Doing that hugely raises the cost-per-page for people who have already invested in a printer [I had a $650 or $500 DJHP1120c, for example]. Likewise, every time I or my brother have done business with Merrill Lynch, we've been burned, not just by bad business practices, but with outright fraud. Since then, there has been enough news to let me know that this is regular, and is a function of Merrill Lynch's management. There's a similar story for Sears.
But the problem, as you indicate, is that these managers are installed by pirate investors, who in turn move their people to a new location once they've pillaged out the old location. So you have to be able to keep track of this.
But it's incredibly hard to remember this, and to know. So if someone produced a mySql database web application that tracked these managers, that would be extremely useful.
As of that point, you could point to bad business practices, and have a list "check as customer; check as investor; check as worker; check for *any* problems."
Now, when companies make bad decisions, people can email you with a link to the news source. Once you confirm it, you enter the company. The application then automatically looks up the ticker symbol, and then uses the ticker symbol to look up management. All management gets entered into your database. Other companies with the same management gets redflagged.
So when someone wants to know whether to invest in a company, or to work there, or to buy a product, they can go and look.
Now, after that, you can start setting up orange flags for their underlings; and yellow flags for their close acquaintances: people of "known association", under the theory that whom you pick as your friends/spouse/club indicates what your ethics are.
Then, you can also start tracking pirate investors, so that when they start buying into a company, you can redflag the company instantly. At that point, once the pirates have 5% of a company, if it's possible then the company may choose to go private to protect itself. Once the pirates have something like 35% of the company, it's going to be worth a lot less -- people will be selling like crazy. It then becomes a real option for the company to sell its assets, distribute them to the shareholders, and go out of business. That implies a small loss for all, but it minimizes the cost to the shareholders, and ensures that the pirates will start losing money.
So as the database grows, it'll become more useful. Indeed, it will become useful in another way. As your database becomes better known, people will start checking it. The moment that a company hires one of these recalcitrant managers, it can expect its stock to dive -- and that becomes a legal liability for the management who made the decision. So what this will do is it will also clear the pirate managers out of the business.
Anyhow, it looks to me like you're able to run web applications. So maybe you could set up such a database.
Umm... Amish is a very closed society. A Catholic wouldn't fit in at all there, I suspect. I've gotta play the cards I was dealt. I never intended to be a CEO in particular (indeed, I'm not now -- I'm just the ghost in the machine; my wife is the manager of our LLC and handles the money+records+taxes).
To some extent, you're right of course, and in the end I choose to define myself as a Christian, not as a CEO, which means that I'm going to have to be able to let go of CEO whenever necessary. That's life, and I do accept that.
Not only that, but I think it's great, and I thank God wholeheartedly for the position I'm in. It's good to be able to sacrifice something that nobody else in their right mind would sacrifice, and it's very empowering in a strange way. Moreover, there are a ton of good things that would never have come my way if our publishers hadn't been like they are. It's just that it can't continue like this further, because I'm not willing to employ people and let them get hurt.
Nonetheless, I revert to my original statement. I do think that if you want to increase employment, you've got to give economic justice. What that means is that you've got to pay people living, family wages.
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It's pretty clear that he intended what he was doing. That said, not all port scanning is intentional.
When I first got Debian going, I installed klisa, since it was part of the Networking package, and I didn't know better.
Very quickly, I lost my internet connection. I didn't know why; I called up. I heard something about "hacker".
Later, I spoke to their English-speaking guy. He said that I was on their list of "worst hackers." I asked why. He said I was port scanning. I said I had no idea, could he work with me on it. So we tried my Windows setup -- nothing. We tried Linux. Port scanning. I then went through, one by one, asking "Is this it?" and killing processes, ten minutes apart. Finally, I killed klisa, and the port scanning stopped. I uninstalled it, and never again had a problem.
But my experience with Merrill Lynch and my brother's experience likewise is that they are without integrity. Therefore, you cannot trust anything they say.
Just as an example, you read their advice to "convince Linux users that Linux is a subset of Solaris..."
Bud, that ain't going to happen. SCO is too busy with the exact same thing. And yes, it's great for their stock price, especially since a Microsoft-club investor is buying up as much stock as they can.
But SCO isn't healthy.
Of course, their other advice, to slash the workforce, is also in the same line: it is detrimental to the health of Sun. Let me explain what happens when you slash the work force.
First of all, all those employees who thought that they had reasonable job security, get depressed. Depression means more time wasted. It means decreased efficiency. That means more cuts, down the road. Eventually, it means you outsource everything, and end up as a shell (though maybe an IP shell like SCO, which generates lots of volatility, which might be good for Merrill Lynch).
Second of all, when you cut the workforce, employees get paranoid. That means that they start to decide that they don't have the authority to stick up (the nail that sticks up, getting hammered and all). So they don't try to innovate. In fact, they squelch innovation. They try to make it look like they're doing as good a job as anyone else, and aside from that avoid notice.
Worse than that, it sickens the company in another way: ...
Suppose you have n employees. The internal threats to a company are a function of the number of employees. A failure can happen with any one of the n employees. Or it can happen with any group of 2 employees. Or with 3 employees. All together, the probability of a failure occurring is
n + n*(n-1)/2 + n*(n-1)*(n-2)/6 +
Now, at the same time, employees don't like to see their company fail, so they do try to fix things. But their ability to fix things is a function of their authority. If their authority is not enough to fix it, then the fix won't happen, and the company takes a loss of some amount. So the same equation as above applies to the number of employees with authority: ...
a+a*(a-1)/2+a*(a-1)*(a-2)/6 +
Of course, a is less than n. So the health of a company is greater if a=n, or is as large as possible. But when you're making cuts, even employees who are nominally with authority act like they have no authority. So every single little cold, every single angry statement, every single office affair hurts the company and results in real damages.
So Sun, Don't Listen to Merrill Lynch. Unless you first exchange all your stock for all of theirs in a 100%-100% stock swap. It might not be a bad idea, at that. From the open letter, I'm sure Merrill's market analysts know how to build hardware and write software. And at that, I'd trust you guys with my assets a lot sooner than I'd trust them.
Let's see... the big ideas that they gave us were: ... uhh, there was no #2.
#1) Don't put your email address on web pages.
#2)
Aside from that, the article pointed out that it's relatively cheap to delete spam. Excuse me, is this guy a spammer during his off time?!?
Quite simply, I *don't* post my email address to web pages. Somehow, or other, the spammers get ahold of the email addresses anyhow.
Here are some other ways: (1) You ISP sells your email address. No kidding. I have one email address, .omnitel.net, for which I suspect this is true, because the spam started rolling in immediately, and did not stop.
(2) Some friend's email provider sells recipient email addresses. This is another one. When some of my acquaintances got a certain famous webmail address, because it practically was part of the OS that they got and was free like mail.yahoo.com, it took one email from them, and the spam started rolling in.
(3) Some friend of yours fowards one of those semi-viral human-engineering emails "to all", and then another friend forwards it "to all", and some spammer down the line, who let that little wormie go, reels in fish after fish just by processing the thing. Oh, you can tell those friends, "please, please, PLEASE don't send this to me". But the next time he/she runs across another hyperfeminist laud, or something says "don't let another person die! Forward this TO ALL with headers attached!", why it comes your way. *sigh*.
The only way we'll end spam is having a penny-per-sent-email charge. If my ISP started doing this, and billing me that 1 cent per email, but also billing all other ISPs that sent email 1 cent (and blocking those that didn't pay) I would thank them from the bottom of my heart. Of course, when my business email didn't go through, I would call my business contact, give them the address of the free and open-source automatic accounting software, and tell them "have your ISP start this up, and spam will stop. Don't, and your emails won't get through." Very quickly, we'd pay the 1 cent per email charge, and find that those who paid got their email through; those who needed it to be free wouldn't.
Meanwhile, I'd only get spam that was worth more than a penny. In other words, I'd get spam that most people would be reasonably likely to buy.
However, they told me that yeah, they'd do it, but they'd charge enough for the special inverter equipment that they'd require, that I'd never make any money off it. I asked how about if I provided the inverter, and they said they wouldn't accept that. In other words, "get lost".
In other words, yeah, there's a law, but it doesn't apply. So before you spend money trying to do what this guy did, check twice. The law doesn't always apply in light of company decisions.
Of course, those predictions you sell for quite a pretty penny. And some poor fool happens to get the card that predicts all four races, and thinks "these guys know their stuff..."
Crooks can make a bit of money that way. Marks can lose quite a bit more than a bit that way, too.
Anyhow, I like the fact that this Japanese computer is usuing a deterministic forecast. I don't put a lot of faith in (for example, the British distributed modeling) the methods that forecast every possible outcome.
Disclaimer: I do not advocate that anyone should behave like a crook. Please do not try to steal other peoples' money, just because they have a gambling addiction. Sure, someone's going to steal it -- but their blood doesn't have to be on your soul.
No. It is just for someone to benefit from their labors. The common law takes a lot from the Bible, and the biblical phrase is "the fruit of their labors", not "the fruit of their dreaming." That said, so that you don't think I'm pointlessly quoting something, let me ask you: when is the last time that you have seen someone *think* food onto the table or into peoples' hands? Mind you, it has happened [Christ feeding the 5000], yet he was also God. Therefore, it is just for God to benefit from His ideas, since His ideas have power. But it is just for ust to benefit from our labors. IP goes against that.
The point of an idea is that you can then put it into practice. Gut the idea of its point, and it's lost all its essence, and is rightfully worthless.
If you create a great idea You think it; you don't create it. you deserve to have that idea protected as intellectual property so that you can recoup your costs and efforts through the proceeds of your idea.
How quaint. And what, pray tell, are the costs of thinking? Zero? I thought so. So costs are already recouped. And what is the effort of thinking? Metabolic? I urge you not to go on strike. Who, exactly, told you that fib?
You just don't like having to conpensate others for creating the ideas you want to use or just plain couldn't think of yourself. You want a freebie from other people's hard work.
Again, hard work nothing. That aside, no, I don't want any freebees that are not freely given. But the same species has similar brains, and similar thoughts, and the thoughts are the easy part. I don't want peoples' hard work stolen from them, to give freebees to those who had the idea, and lazily chose not to implement it -- or had the idea, and chose to implement it, but did not have enough of an idea to get it right, so that it can't compete.
Who decides what is just? The final judge of all.
Who decides what is natural law?Nature, as designed by the final judge of all, see above. And remember, when your country which violates natural law goes through starvation and the 3rd world, rounds third without stopping, and heads for a home run. That will be the last witness to you that the final judge exists, and is a better judge than you.
What gives you the right to decide or to dare to think you are right? Look in the mirror. Which is arrogant? The man that looks at nature, and says "I see natural law" after studying it? Or the man who ignores nature, and says "who has the right to say what natural law is", as he steps off a cliff? By your actions, you are choosing to be a judge, and far more arrogant a judge, than any who defers to nature or the Bible, or the Koran, or the writings of the practitioners of Wing Tsun. They, at least, are deferring to the judgement of other men, and judgements that have stood the test of time. You are deferring, by your choices, to your own judgements and no other. See your own arrogance, be ashamed, and be silent. Learn.
What if my natural laws and just beliefs say that you should jump off a bridge? Gee I don't see you leaping! I, quite naturally, will follow the laws that I follow [mathematical logic there, identity theorem. You, quite naturally, will follow the laws that you follow. My law is natural law. Your law is yourself. Your law *does* say "walk off the cliff". My law says "do not walk off the cliff." You, from your tone, would say that you pay homage to Darwin. I too pay homage to Darwin, but with my circumspection, as opposed to my feet. I strongly advise you to pick a better law, and to recognize a better judge, for your judgement seems to be terrible.
But I am also very much against anything that perverts justice, obfusciates the truth, and in general destroys respect for the law.
This one is ridiculous, because 99% of the people who say "no, it wasn't me, someone set me up" based upon this will be perjuring themselves.
Quite honestly, isn't that the claim that most criminals make?
I, for one, if set up, would have a different answer: "I never installed Kazaa or other P2P software, nor did I pay the Kazaa fee." Come to think of it, that would be my defense if accused of stealing cable channels too: "I never bought one of those cable-selection-hiding filters; indeed, I never bought cable TV."
Come off it, people. Stop trying to make a case for yourself why maybe it perhaps isn't so bad, and perverting your consciences.
(Note to moderators: please do not rate this informative. Check the link first. Aargh, why do I actually have to make such qualifying statements first? Do your job, or don't use the mod points. Maybe I'm just too subtle.)
I thought about this, and I should be more hopeful. Aside from that, I don't need to be nasty. Anyone want to mod the parent down (overrated, if nothing else), please do.
Excellent point; and Microsoft should lose no time in calling up a well-trusted third-party security company to show that indeed Microsoft products are secure. Of course, it had better be a trusted company, because they don't want their source code getting out.
Hmm... I wonder if I should send my resume to an industry-leading security company, such as @stake, immediately. I'm into document preparation, not security, but I should be able to learn the language reasonably quickly. ;->
Clearly, that's not the problem. If the Open-sourcing of TDIL's work was under GNU, then they can't use it line-for-line without some sort of *other* agreement with the authors. (well, actually, they might... but that would imply some sort of liability. I hope it doesn't happen, though, because I'd hate to see WWIII start between Microsoft and India.)
That also doesn't mean that the MOU won't eventually be signed. Rather, it means that the Indian Government is very cool to the idea right now.
Not hard to see why, really.
now THAT is a serious charge, and should never be made without evidence. Can you point to specific examples of plagiarism? If so, then your *answer* should be modded through the roof. But aside from that, you've just made a false accusation, and should never be listened to again.
If you cash in your business for gold, you're going to lose the gold, and then have nothing. If, on the other hand, you trade in your gold for a business, then you're going to get even more gold.
Substitute reputation for business, and you have the security business in a nutshell. @Stake just traded in their business for gold. Geer just traded in his gold for business.
Sooner or later, it's going to be apparent: EVERYONE gets what they deserve.
Bravo, Geer. If you never get another job, I predict you'll still look back on this and say it was one of the best days of your life.
On the most immediate level, yes, the government's *not* taking action against @stake affirms the Bill of Rights (and yes, the Bill of Rights is best applied to *all* groups within our society, including both individuals and corporations and even clubs if you like.)
However, let me push this to an extreme: suppose Microsoft employed everyone in the US: by saying who had a job and who didn't, they could say who died without trial. At that point, wouldn't they be the de facto government? Thus, the Bill of Rights, as a philosophical statement of politically and economically effective action, is denied by @stake's actions (and by Microsoft).
Which probably meets most peoples' sensibilities pretty well -- nothing against Bill Gates, but they wouldn't want to live in a country ruled by Microsoft without a Bill of Rights (though some do have something against Bill Gates, too). So no, the Bill of Rights doesn't apply. But really, if things were the best possible, it would.
So you mean, like, download the latest spam virus; pick it apart until you see what newsgroup to post your resume to, and what encoding to use. Then make sure your resume says something like "was able to decode the wthunk32.dll virus." Lastly, sit back and smile as 32 million copies of your resume go out... and again... and again...
Great! Hopefully, you will continue living such a life when times are incredibly hard. Now, that is not to say that it is only _____s that will be able to persevere in such. Rather, it is to say that God being Love, and God being in a continual process of creation in this universe, acts whereever reality is.
However, that said, a person is more likely to be able to persevere when the going gets tough, if he has faith. But true faith is not saying I believe; true faith is reflexive with "faithful". Which implies a kind of definition of what faith is, not a way to tell who will persevere and who will not.
That said, none of us are truly, completely just. We do our best. So the other part of persevering is persevering when you've just really screwed up, and trying again. Now, for that, I find faith in Christ to be incredibly important. But to have faith in Christ, the first part is you have to really believe that he existed, and that these things happened. For that, you have to weigh the evidence, and not just the evidence of yesterday, but the evidence of today.
Some of the evidence of today will be scientific in nature, though I'd find the soft sciences of history, archaeology, medicine, and especially psychology to be far more a factor than, for example, physics. Physics just doesn't strive for or against the Bible, as far as I can see. But another part of the evidence is what you see in the people around you, and another part is what you see in terms of the hand of God acting in modern day times. For example, you have to weigh the evidence of such things as The Cross and the Switchblade.
That's not to press my own denomination: David Wilkerson has in the past expressed doubts that Catholics are even Christian. Nonetheless, I think that his evidence is worth looking at.
Now, once you believe, and get to recognize God's signature, then it becomes easier to "accept things on faith." But until that time, no, that isn't where you start.
Did Jesus, the only one who was right by definition, say "Ignore these rules"...?
First, Jesus is not the only one right by definition. God is the only one in the Bible who is right by definition. Jesus is right by having the signature of God upon Him, for he said "I AM", that is, the Godly I am, and more explicitly he said "God is the Father; I am the Son; the Son and the Father are one." Now, either he was lying or telling the truth, or wrong. In the first and last case, though, God would not have signed Jesus' statements. The fact that Jesus could work miracles, and the fact that He rose from the dead, and the fact that his Christian Church still wields the power of the Holy Spirit today, all point to the authenticity of Jesus' statements. Which is why I say to look at David Wilkerson's book. It's something modern you can put your finger on.
Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that if you want your opinion to be respected, justify it. Don't do that by saying, "I think X, Famous person Y agrees with me." Say, "I think X because ..."
I absolutely agree, in general. However, it depends upon whom I'm talking to. I don't always make proven statements. At the moment, I'm much more horrified by people who are in name only, Christians, acting evilly and without thought towards their religion, than I am by someone who has been for the moment turned off from the religion, because they don't see it truly making a difference in peoples' lives.
One is the cause, and one is the effect. For me to start preaching hellfire and damnation against you (??!?!?) would be like someone blaming all our ills upon George Bush. George Bush is the symptom. If I were to preach to you, it would be more on the order of the need for justice, and the need for repentance of past wrongs. But if I were to preach hellfire and damnation [and I won't -- I'll let God do that or not], I'd have to look first to hypocritical Christians.
No, it is the fact that you are living it, and see that it is working, that is testimony as to the rightness of the Bible.
[PS... you picked your examples badly. Shellfish, being bottom feeders, do accumulate more toxins than finned/scaled fish. So, though I'm not religious about it, I do in general avoid shellfish. If I want the taste of crab, I generally go for the sea-legs monkfish+1%crab stuff. As for pork, we actually go farther than the Bible nowadays, and avoid not only pork but all mammalian meat, for the reason that prion diseases seem to be carried by mammalian meat. But again, the pig is a garbage eater, and does accumulate more toxins than, say, a cow. As far as it goes, therefore, it takes a ton more faith and thinking to turn the other cheek than it does to avoid shellfish and pork. But by the book of Acts and the writings of Paul, the Bible also explicitly releases Christians from the necessity of not eating those things, though the wisdom of not eating them remains. Christians do still have to avoid eating meat sacrificed to idols, though.]
Consider people who have lived the good life, while choosing to not pay their workers a fair wage. Such people are essentially murdering their workers. At the very least, they are driving them away.
Let me specify:
"Your gold and silver are rusted, and they shall be a testimony against you... you have heaped together treasure for the last days, but you have withheld your workers' wages, and the money that you withheld cries out."
and to interpret:
What is wealth? Wealth is often considered to be money -- but if you have money, but not the ability to earn it, you will swiftly lose it. So wealth isn't money. Wealth, instead, is the ability to earn money, but money is symbolic of something else. Therefore, we would better say, true wealth is having a working part of the economy. In other words, the person with a working business is far wealthier than the person with a million dollars and no business.
Now, if a rich man destroys his business in order to get money, by not paying his workers fairly, he has in reality destroyed his wealth.
But this verse says that not only will he have destroyed his wealth -- but God's going to hold him accountable, as well.
Truly, if you read and understand this verse, you shouldn't need accountability in the afterlife to choose basic human decency. If you are even greedy but wise, you will say "I want to preserve my gold and silver. I don't want it to rust", and you will pay your workers well.
But if you do that, then you will also find that this becomes a testimony not against yourself, but for yourself, and as such also becomes a testimony as to the rightness of the Bible.
So in reality, this verse doesn't just say "do it because I say so," but actually tells why you should do it. In other words, James provided a rational reason.
As for appearing uneducated, I couldn't care less. I'm a thinking person, much more than an educated person. It is the unthinking who will fail to read and understand, but will judge by their gut reaction. My thinking has led me to confirm for myself that the Bible is essentially right. But just so you know, I'm a rocket scientist by education, so I can handle education as well. But I reserve the right to think things through for myself.
Such people are essentially murdering their workers. At the very least, they are driving them away.
Let me specify:
"Your gold and silver are rusted, and they shall be a testimony against you... you have heaped together treasure for the last days, but you have withheld your workers' wages, and the money that you withheld cries out."
and to interpret:
What is wealth? Wealth is often considered to be money -- but if you have money, but not the ability to earn it, you will swiftly lose it. So wealth isn't money. Wealth, instead, is the ability to earn money, but money is symbolic of something else. Therefore, we would better say, true wealth is having a working part of the economy. In other words, the person with a working business is far wealthier than the person with a million dollars and no business.
Now, if a rich man destroys his business in order to get money, by not paying his workers fairly, he has in reality destroyed his wealth.
But this verse says that not only will he have destroyed his wealth -- but God's going to hold him accountable, as well.
Truly, if you read and understand this verse, you shouldn't need accountability in the afterlife to choose basic human decency. If you are even greedy but wise, you will say "I want to preserve my gold and silver. I don't want it to rust", and you will pay your workers well.
But if you do that, then you will also find that this becomes a testimony not against yourself, but for yourself, and as such also becomes a testimony as to the rightness of the Bible.
So it does have a place.
I don't see it listed at www.x-prize.org, but I wonder if they've already collected the $10M?
If they haven't, then what happens if the prize is won, and they only have $8M? Will they be able to find the other $2M, or will the prize have to be just $8M?
But it could be Rotterdam, or Liverpool, or anywhere you roam.
'Cause Rotterdam or Liverpool sell net just through the phone... you're gonna need a loan."
Your ISP has you in a pickle, 'cause they're in a pickle too!
They oversold 64-kay-baud, and now you're down to two!
This could be Rotterdam or Liverpool or anywhere you roam
'Cause Rotterdam or Liverpool sell net just through the phone... you're gonna need a loan."
You try to get some DSP, you thick the line will hold,
but the DSP line stops 10 meters short, so bud you're in the cold!
This could be Rotterdam or Liverpool or anywhere you roam
'Cause Rotterdam or Liverpool sell net just through the phone... you're gonna need a loan."
So then you line up for a sat, install a Primestar dish
But your line of sight is almost gone, latency isn't what you'd wish...
This could be Rotterdam or Liverpool or anywhere you roam
'Cause Rotterdam or Liverpool sell net just through the phone... you're gonna need a loan.
You just bought Worldcom for your netphone."
For me, I like to have our web services, and our internal network. If you want to send files in or out, you have to put them on CD-R and transfer them to the outer network. So if we can afford a network at some time, that's what I'll do. But our business model matches that.
On the other hand, for a large company like Newport News Shipbuilding, with > 10k employees, and more than 3000 engineers, that really isn't going to be practical, is it?
Interesting thought... but suppose you were to have the two-tiered network like that, and not pierced at all, and every building has one virtual server computer with RAID, with CD-R, that allows files to be uploaded and downloaded. Every employee has an internal account, and an external account. Then, mail that comes in goes to the external account, but the text gets stripped and forwarded to the internal account through a hardware+ROM only "text email server". You want to reply, you can do so in text. You want to reply with more than text, you have to go to the "external access computers" in front of a security desk, and everything is logged to tapes, including video of the room, and kept for a year.
In other words, I wonder if there might not be a market for single-purpose-only ROM firewall piercing servers (and, of course, the servers have their own firewalls, if necessary).
Oh, well. I rather suspect that there's a different ideal setup for every business, but "different" isn't all that different.
... where can one get 2-way satellite internet connectivity in various parts of the world; how much does it cost [he had a ton of trouble with some of these options]; and where do you buy it?
When I was looking at the Debian sat-dish mini howto, they had some lists of satellites, but I found no way to actually buy in. Even emails went unanswered.
For me, it's the Baltic region (Lithuania). But it could be Rotterdam, or Liverpool, or anywhere I roam. So a list of the different options might be useful.
One thing that you're doing, that I think should be a lot more important, is pointing out that the CEOs who raid their companies should be an indicator of future bad performance at other companies. This is important to customers too. I bought a Lucent WinModem, before I realized how bad those were. It burned out after a year, and our ISP said "well, that's a common problem with WinModems". Now, HP, on the other hand, had very solid products. But when HP hired their current president, the former VP-marketing of Lucent, the former management all fled. When that happened, I mentally red-flagged HP as a company not to buy new products from. Indeed, since that time their products have gotten a lot flashier and sexier, but they've started pulling such tricks as quarter-filling the inkjet cartridges, and lowering the price by 25%. Doing that hugely raises the cost-per-page for people who have already invested in a printer [I had a $650 or $500 DJHP1120c, for example]. Likewise, every time I or my brother have done business with Merrill Lynch, we've been burned, not just by bad business practices, but with outright fraud. Since then, there has been enough news to let me know that this is regular, and is a function of Merrill Lynch's management. There's a similar story for Sears. But the problem, as you indicate, is that these managers are installed by pirate investors, who in turn move their people to a new location once they've pillaged out the old location. So you have to be able to keep track of this. But it's incredibly hard to remember this, and to know. So if someone produced a mySql database web application that tracked these managers, that would be extremely useful. As of that point, you could point to bad business practices, and have a list "check as customer; check as investor; check as worker; check for *any* problems." Now, when companies make bad decisions, people can email you with a link to the news source. Once you confirm it, you enter the company. The application then automatically looks up the ticker symbol, and then uses the ticker symbol to look up management. All management gets entered into your database. Other companies with the same management gets redflagged. So when someone wants to know whether to invest in a company, or to work there, or to buy a product, they can go and look. Now, after that, you can start setting up orange flags for their underlings; and yellow flags for their close acquaintances: people of "known association", under the theory that whom you pick as your friends/spouse/club indicates what your ethics are. Then, you can also start tracking pirate investors, so that when they start buying into a company, you can redflag the company instantly. At that point, once the pirates have 5% of a company, if it's possible then the company may choose to go private to protect itself. Once the pirates have something like 35% of the company, it's going to be worth a lot less -- people will be selling like crazy. It then becomes a real option for the company to sell its assets, distribute them to the shareholders, and go out of business. That implies a small loss for all, but it minimizes the cost to the shareholders, and ensures that the pirates will start losing money. So as the database grows, it'll become more useful. Indeed, it will become useful in another way. As your database becomes better known, people will start checking it. The moment that a company hires one of these recalcitrant managers, it can expect its stock to dive -- and that becomes a legal liability for the management who made the decision. So what this will do is it will also clear the pirate managers out of the business. Anyhow, it looks to me like you're able to run web applications. So maybe you could set up such a database.
Umm... Amish is a very closed society. A Catholic wouldn't fit in at all there, I suspect. I've gotta play the cards I was dealt. I never intended to be a CEO in particular (indeed, I'm not now -- I'm just the ghost in the machine; my wife is the manager of our LLC and handles the money+records+taxes).
To some extent, you're right of course, and in the end I choose to define myself as a Christian, not as a CEO, which means that I'm going to have to be able to let go of CEO whenever necessary. That's life, and I do accept that.
Not only that, but I think it's great, and I thank God wholeheartedly for the position I'm in. It's good to be able to sacrifice something that nobody else in their right mind would sacrifice, and it's very empowering in a strange way. Moreover, there are a ton of good things that would never have come my way if our publishers hadn't been like they are. It's just that it can't continue like this further, because I'm not willing to employ people and let them get hurt.
Nonetheless, I revert to my original statement. I do think that if you want to increase employment, you've got to give economic justice. What that means is that you've got to pay people living, family wages.