But there's a difference between people who screw up - land in jail or with a record, then take it as a wake-up call to change their life - and those who are repeat offenders with little desire/ability to change their ways. If the justice system worked more towards recognizing and possibly dealing harder with or segregating repear offenders instead of allowing the first major screw-up to basically become a self-perpetuating cycle (record=no decent job, no decent job=less legit opportunities, less legit opportunities=illegit/criminal "opportunities" become more attractive).
You could even use the same codebase. If a particular method is using light-sources/shadow/etc to determine the authenticity of an image, then you could plot those same light-sources and have a plugin modify the image to be what the authentication plugin would expect.
Indeed. Every time I think of EA's acquisitions, I think about my more recent experience with C&C 3. I actually bought about 3-6 months after the release, so there were already patches, but still tons of bugs. Netplay was particularly horrible.
Forward to today, EA is touting the release of the addon to C&C3, but many bugs still exist in the game. I think the worst part is their online service, which seem to tie in all users regardless of location, which in many case pretty much guarantees a game with lag and dropouts. They've certainly got little on competitors like Blizzard, which - despite various other complaints about battle.net - generally has a reliable online experience, and has separate servers for the various world-regions.
EA is a bubblegum gaming company, and they turn all the companies they buy into such with little regard to quality or customer satisfaction.
I wonder about how useful this is anyhow? A store rating site I can see, you don't shop there. A political one perhaps, you don't vote there. With the police what do you do?
"Sorry officer, I can't accept that ticket because you have a poor rating on ratemycop.com?"
Can you use it in court? The best I could see is perhaps being more wary than usual about dealing with certain officers, but it's not like you generally have time to pop up and look them up in the heat-of-the-moment.
I've got my DSL line through a decent company (Teksavvy), but Bell still owns all the lines around here. Unfortunately, no matter who I sign up with, the service somewhat sucks as my line is past the distance-limit for a decent connection, and - despite being a major urban area - Bell isn't going to add a new node here anytime soon, and I have to live with the long-line to their central office.
Of course, the DSL company doesn't find this out until after the connection is first established, in which case that leaves me with about 500k/up and 1500k/down (instead of 800/5000 like I'm supposed to have). No matter who I go with, I'll still be screwed by Bell's shitty connection, as all DSL still uses their line system.
Not only that, but based on the distance of the run, there is a charge from Bell for the dry-loop (no phone) connection. Farther distance, more $$$, and shittier service. Personally, while it's nice that the gov't requires the big Telcos to lease out the lines (at a profit, still), it would be nicer still if they required them to actually supply decent service instead of just collecting their percentage. Bell does offer their own DSL service, but that's craptastic even beyond the line issues, so a 3rd-party is still the best choice, but in the end the limitation is still the Telco.
Selling personal stuff on eBay, unless it's obscure and only valuable to a more global audience, is definitely less feasible these days. However, both my girlfriend and I have recently being doing a fair bit of buying/sellings from the free lists like Craigslist, Kijiji, and Facebook's auctions. They're definitely more local-centric, but I find the ability to meet somebody face-to-face and check that the item isn't a scam is more a positive than a negative.
The only time I expect to use ebay (as a buyer) now is if I want something that's not really available locally, but a lot of people seem to buy common crap that you could pretty much buy at WalMart for the same price once you include shipping.
Except that it could still force a normal person into a position where they'd have to sell off their idea (because they can't afford taxes) to a large company, which could then screw everyone else over. Even if they had to pay taxes, would Disney give up the mouse?
It would also encourage the corps to sue more, to recover revenue lost to taxes.
Still, it's not a terrible idea, but perhaps it could use a little tweaking.
This would lend credence to why he would have bought all the "incriminating literature" though. Simply put, the guy couldn't sit down and let somebody else deal with things, he's obsessive compulsive and had to start digging into it himself.
Actually it's still a fair point. There are those that are into somewhat "safe" BDSM, and then there are those who (while often eventually weeded out by the community) are just in it because they're really screwed up people.
BDSM in itself might not be indicative of such a messed up personality, but one could conjecture based on this particular person's "other" habits that he's probably not the type that's into safe words.
Just like the nerd community is quite often full of the obsessive and antisocial, the BDSM community is often mature enough to admit to having some pretty messed up membership as well.
They aren't people, though people may be part of them, and direct them, but they are different. There are laws that govern them that don't apply to actual persons, and vice-versa. Corps have a responsibility, for example, to their shareholders. In many cases this means that even if a route is less ethical, they are bound to take it if it is more profitable (so long as it is legal).
In an overall sense, corps are governed by groups of people. You could also quote a once-famous movie in that "a person is smart; people are dumb panicky dangerous animals", but it's more than that. Often enough the corps have the "power of the group" (the money of many) without the accountability that would fall on a given individual.
I notice also that a lot of the sites appear to be gay-oriented, and as least as far as the names go, don't indicate child content. I'm not going to click on them (who knows what *my* ISP is logging), but I do wonder if they're just in there because of somebody's dislike of that particular content.
Here, while most of the "online" activities are still fairly safe, camming movies in a theatre is now a crime and can net you jailtime. Interestingly, that law was pushed forward by one of our ministers who was fired for sleeping with a US Corp lobbiest, yet nobody ever reviewed the bills that she had pushed forth on their behalf...
IMHO movie cammers are idiots anyhow, but I think that our prison and justice system could be put to better use, and I'd rather not be arrested myself because somebody decided to nab me because my digital camera (which I tend to keep with me at most times) can do (crappy) video and some theatre thug decided it's close enough...
Both still serve to a very strong extent their primary purpose: to provide transportation or to serve as a phone. Chances are that, if well maintained, both the car and phone will continue to serve that primary function as any other.
A blue-ray player that does not play discs labelled as "blue-ray" does not seem to serve the primary function.
which of Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and SLASH can be called "bleeding edge
Um, any or all of them could be, depending on the version being used. All regularly have updates with new features for enhanced (if not always liked) features and performance. Yes, they're definitely mature in that they've been around and are for the most part "tried, tested, and true", but that doesn't mean that development has ceased not that improvements aren't being regularly made.
First suspected instance of illegal file sharing they would receive a warning, at the second -- a suspension, and at the third they will have their Internet connection terminated
Nice to see that they're not even going for proven guilt in this case. So what happens when some poor Brit has his internet connection pulled for downloading Ubuntu ISO's or WOW updates via BitTorrent... or the media companies just screw up and finger the wrong IP as infringing.
There are plenty of ex-members of a given religion who do not feel threatened by leaving it. I myself was baptized Catholic when I was younger, but though I don't feel much respect for the policies of that particular church, I don't feel overly threatened by it either.
The stories of many who have left Scientology are quite different, and rather chilling.
So yeah, of those that left, many would likely be disillusioned. But it's like leaving the mob, it takes a lot of guts to do so, and overall it can be a pretty dangerous proposition.
Survival of the fittest
on
Ethics In IT
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
And in the business world, the "fittest" is often whomever is most willing to do whatever it takes, and stop over whomever they can, to achieve the goal.
The usual argument against "perpetual motion" seems to fall under conservation of energy. You can't get power from nothing, and some is always leaked. However, my thoughts tended to follow that - while you cannot magically create energy - you can pull energy from a hither unknown source, thus improving the efficiency of a system or providing new ways to juice. So a real "perpetual motion" machine may still follow C of E, but might be pulling energy from some weird and wonderful way that hadn't previously been realized.
Actually, IE runs fairly well on linux (well 5.5 and 6, I don't know about IE7) via wine using ies4linux. The nice thing is that you can have multiple IE versions installed, which is useful for testing.
Still, I'll expect to see icicles in hades before MS releases an official 'nix IE client:-)
And either way, that's somewhat of a dumb mistake to make on an enterprise website. Even smaller companies I've worked for have testing plans to ensure functionality on all major browsers.
So it's either a dumb technical mistake, or a dumb PR/social one... and just because it may take a lot of technical skills (of many people) run run a site with millions of users, doesn't inherently mean that the "social" aspect of the skills are on par.
Also, given MS's track record, I don't really think it's unreasonable to believe that a sudden "incompatibility" with competing products might be deliberate... it's been a pretty standard practice even from the early DOS/win3.1 days.
In many cases though, it seems that becoming "as good as Canada" in many senses entails bringing Canada down by instituting US-style copyright laws, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
But there's a difference between people who screw up - land in jail or with a record, then take it as a wake-up call to change their life - and those who are repeat offenders with little desire/ability to change their ways. If the justice system worked more towards recognizing and possibly dealing harder with or segregating repear offenders instead of allowing the first major screw-up to basically become a self-perpetuating cycle (record=no decent job, no decent job=less legit opportunities, less legit opportunities=illegit/criminal "opportunities" become more attractive).
You could even use the same codebase. If a particular method is using light-sources/shadow/etc to determine the authenticity of an image, then you could plot those same light-sources and have a plugin modify the image to be what the authentication plugin would expect.
Indeed. Every time I think of EA's acquisitions, I think about my more recent experience with C&C 3. I actually bought about 3-6 months after the release, so there were already patches, but still tons of bugs. Netplay was particularly horrible.
Forward to today, EA is touting the release of the addon to C&C3, but many bugs still exist in the game. I think the worst part is their online service, which seem to tie in all users regardless of location, which in many case pretty much guarantees a game with lag and dropouts. They've certainly got little on competitors like Blizzard, which - despite various other complaints about battle.net - generally has a reliable online experience, and has separate servers for the various world-regions.
EA is a bubblegum gaming company, and they turn all the companies they buy into such with little regard to quality or customer satisfaction.
I wonder about how useful this is anyhow? A store rating site I can see, you don't shop there. A political one perhaps, you don't vote there. With the police what do you do?
"Sorry officer, I can't accept that ticket because you have a poor rating on ratemycop.com?"
Can you use it in court? The best I could see is perhaps being more wary than usual about dealing with certain officers, but it's not like you generally have time to pop up and look them up in the heat-of-the-moment.
I've got my DSL line through a decent company (Teksavvy), but Bell still owns all the lines around here. Unfortunately, no matter who I sign up with, the service somewhat sucks as my line is past the distance-limit for a decent connection, and - despite being a major urban area - Bell isn't going to add a new node here anytime soon, and I have to live with the long-line to their central office.
Of course, the DSL company doesn't find this out until after the connection is first established, in which case that leaves me with about 500k/up and 1500k/down (instead of 800/5000 like I'm supposed to have). No matter who I go with, I'll still be screwed by Bell's shitty connection, as all DSL still uses their line system.
Not only that, but based on the distance of the run, there is a charge from Bell for the dry-loop (no phone) connection. Farther distance, more $$$, and shittier service. Personally, while it's nice that the gov't requires the big Telcos to lease out the lines (at a profit, still), it would be nicer still if they required them to actually supply decent service instead of just collecting their percentage. Bell does offer their own DSL service, but that's craptastic even beyond the line issues, so a 3rd-party is still the best choice, but in the end the limitation is still the Telco.
Selling personal stuff on eBay, unless it's obscure and only valuable to a more global audience, is definitely less feasible these days. However, both my girlfriend and I have recently being doing a fair bit of buying/sellings from the free lists like Craigslist, Kijiji, and Facebook's auctions. They're definitely more local-centric, but I find the ability to meet somebody face-to-face and check that the item isn't a scam is more a positive than a negative.
The only time I expect to use ebay (as a buyer) now is if I want something that's not really available locally, but a lot of people seem to buy common crap that you could pretty much buy at WalMart for the same price once you include shipping.
In 25 years will be fine. But 2015 is well within that deadline.
I think the grandparent meant "who needs it *now* or in the near future"?
Except that it could still force a normal person into a position where they'd have to sell off their idea (because they can't afford taxes) to a large company, which could then screw everyone else over. Even if they had to pay taxes, would Disney give up the mouse?
It would also encourage the corps to sue more, to recover revenue lost to taxes.
Still, it's not a terrible idea, but perhaps it could use a little tweaking.
This would lend credence to why he would have bought all the "incriminating literature" though. Simply put, the guy couldn't sit down and let somebody else deal with things, he's obsessive compulsive and had to start digging into it himself.
Actually it's still a fair point. There are those that are into somewhat "safe" BDSM, and then there are those who (while often eventually weeded out by the community) are just in it because they're really screwed up people.
BDSM in itself might not be indicative of such a messed up personality, but one could conjecture based on this particular person's "other" habits that he's probably not the type that's into safe words.
Just like the nerd community is quite often full of the obsessive and antisocial, the BDSM community is often mature enough to admit to having some pretty messed up membership as well.
They aren't people, though people may be part of them, and direct them, but they are different. There are laws that govern them that don't apply to actual persons, and vice-versa. Corps have a responsibility, for example, to their shareholders. In many cases this means that even if a route is less ethical, they are bound to take it if it is more profitable (so long as it is legal).
In an overall sense, corps are governed by groups of people. You could also quote a once-famous movie in that "a person is smart; people are dumb panicky dangerous animals", but it's more than that. Often enough the corps have the "power of the group" (the money of many) without the accountability that would fall on a given individual.
Personally, I'd like to learn more about the procedure for getting a site on the block list. Who can do so, and what oversight is there?
I notice also that a lot of the sites appear to be gay-oriented, and as least as far as the names go, don't indicate child content. I'm not going to click on them (who knows what *my* ISP is logging), but I do wonder if they're just in there because of somebody's dislike of that particular content.
Methinks that if this becomes commonplace, then perhaps that little header bit might become a whole lot more popular.
p.s. looks like those UK bastards stole my nick too...
Here, while most of the "online" activities are still fairly safe, camming movies in a theatre is now a crime and can net you jailtime. Interestingly, that law was pushed forward by one of our ministers who was fired for sleeping with a US Corp lobbiest, yet nobody ever reviewed the bills that she had pushed forth on their behalf...
IMHO movie cammers are idiots anyhow, but I think that our prison and justice system could be put to better use, and I'd rather not be arrested myself because somebody decided to nab me because my digital camera (which I tend to keep with me at most times) can do (crappy) video and some theatre thug decided it's close enough...
No, it doesn't. I plays some disks. Others, it needed to be patched for. Some, it still doesn't play properly at all (skips, hangs, etc).
Both still serve to a very strong extent their primary purpose: to provide transportation or to serve as a phone. Chances are that, if well maintained, both the car and phone will continue to serve that primary function as any other.
A blue-ray player that does not play discs labelled as "blue-ray" does not seem to serve the primary function.
which of Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and SLASH can be called "bleeding edge
Um, any or all of them could be, depending on the version being used. All regularly have updates with new features for enhanced (if not always liked) features and performance. Yes, they're definitely mature in that they've been around and are for the most part "tried, tested, and true", but that doesn't mean that development has ceased not that improvements aren't being regularly made.
First suspected instance of illegal file sharing they would receive a warning, at the second -- a suspension, and at the third they will have their Internet connection terminated
Nice to see that they're not even going for proven guilt in this case. So what happens when some poor Brit has his internet connection pulled for downloading Ubuntu ISO's or WOW updates via BitTorrent... or the media companies just screw up and finger the wrong IP as infringing.
There are plenty of ex-members of a given religion who do not feel threatened by leaving it. I myself was baptized Catholic when I was younger, but though I don't feel much respect for the policies of that particular church, I don't feel overly threatened by it either.
The stories of many who have left Scientology are quite different, and rather chilling.
So yeah, of those that left, many would likely be disillusioned. But it's like leaving the mob, it takes a lot of guts to do so, and overall it can be a pretty dangerous proposition.
And in the business world, the "fittest" is often whomever is most willing to do whatever it takes, and stop over whomever they can, to achieve the goal.
The usual argument against "perpetual motion" seems to fall under conservation of energy. You can't get power from nothing, and some is always leaked. However, my thoughts tended to follow that - while you cannot magically create energy - you can pull energy from a hither unknown source, thus improving the efficiency of a system or providing new ways to juice. So a real "perpetual motion" machine may still follow C of E, but might be pulling energy from some weird and wonderful way that hadn't previously been realized.
Actually, IE runs fairly well on linux (well 5.5 and 6, I don't know about IE7) via wine using ies4linux. The nice thing is that you can have multiple IE versions installed, which is useful for testing.
:-)
Still, I'll expect to see icicles in hades before MS releases an official 'nix IE client
And either way, that's somewhat of a dumb mistake to make on an enterprise website. Even smaller companies I've worked for have testing plans to ensure functionality on all major browsers.
So it's either a dumb technical mistake, or a dumb PR/social one... and just because it may take a lot of technical skills (of many people) run run a site with millions of users, doesn't inherently mean that the "social" aspect of the skills are on par.
Also, given MS's track record, I don't really think it's unreasonable to believe that a sudden "incompatibility" with competing products might be deliberate... it's been a pretty standard practice even from the early DOS/win3.1 days.
In many cases though, it seems that becoming "as good as Canada" in many senses entails bringing Canada down by instituting US-style copyright laws, etc.