Unethical companies would find themselves hard to find employees, because nobody wants to go under with the company. In the end, nobody would trust them: consumer, government watchdog, or employee. Basically, it would pay to be a more ethical company.
A more theoretical situation for sure, but not impossible. The problem is the lack of accountability... wherein the above brings some of that to the table.
It's Jack we're talking about. With his uncanny ability to fly off the handle he'll be more likely seen as the large annoyance/jackass at the shareholder's meeting.
Either you can just ignore what is happening and assume that "all will come out in the end," or perhaps you might want to stop the boulder at the top of the hill before it gains enough momentum to crush all those at the bottom?
OK, so this is a US law, but the product is available in Canada. So what about Canadian resells? How about me as a user. I could buy the software, and then resell it to somebody in another country. EULA preventing that... how about if I leave the shrink-wrap on, then I haven't agreed to anything.
Not that such laws would actually have a snowball's chance in hell of preventing this software from reaching other countries, but I do wonder when the US includes Canada in their private little party whether or not they expect us to play with their rulebook.
Nobody would be stupid enough to think it is possible to keep a commercial product out of foreign hands
It's a bit of stupidity mixed with deviousness. This isn't about restricting tech to foreign countries so likely as it's the ability to arrest/incarcerate anyone who distributes them. The might not be able to control the flow of such tech outside of the country, but it gives them another reason to arrest anyone who they can nail as a distributor should they need an extra charge or two to lay down.
This is true. The only real heavy you could lay against a large corporation is such a severe financial penalty that it is just as painful to the corporation as a whole as a prison sentence is to an individual.
If the average individual would be getting 2-5 years jailtime, I want a financial penalty so heavy that Sony is feeling the aftereffects for 2-5 years to come.
a) A bittorrent network where I can download the shows, legally, with commercials as needed and perhaps localized ones (a nice ad for a store in Arizona doesn't help me where I live, but a globally available product is fine)
b) The ability to rate the ads. Computers are an interactive medium, why not create a system that allows you to download a video format including commercials, but with the ability to hit say "1-9" to give a rating, or choose INFORMATIVE, BORING, FUNNY, EXCITING, INTERESTING. The ratings for the commercial could be uploaded at the end of the episode
c) Commercials are fine so long as they don't suck, with the ratings in (b) you could tell advertisers which commercials suck, and hopefully they'd begin to make better ads (some ads are actually worth watching, heck some are damn funny)
Part of the law is intent though, just like you can be charged for conspiracy to commit murder if nobody is killed. So if I open somebody's unlocked car door to turn off his headlights, I might not be nailed (depends on the cop, the judge, and the owner), but if I do so and then drive off with the car... then I'm probably liable for both the theft and the steps leading up to it.
The problem of course is that the legal system often looks past intent nowadays.
Yes, but the problem is that selling copied games is an offense of copyright infringement, not really circumvention. If they had sold the games without a modded console would they have been charged, or if they just modded the console?
Indeed, if they have gained enough evidence ahead of time to indicate criminal activity is taking place, then they should be able to seize systems. However, if I - being not a large corporation - had made a complaint similar to the ??AA, would the same situation have occurred? If the servers belonged to a larger corporation, perhaps a bank, would they have so easily decided to seize them?
One of the whole points of evolution is adaption to environment. Maybe the blind spot imperfection doesn't serve a purpose, but perhaps the steps that led to having such an imperfection have come out as the eye is changing from a previous state to match the needs of the current environment. Evolution (whether by ID or otherwise) is rarely a fast process by human timeline.
Yes, but when the investigation disrupts your business/life severely, at a certain point it becomes unreasonable. If all it takes is a "tip" from a wealthy complainant to have your servers/property seized, then it puts too much power in the wrong hands. Just because harassment is done using the law doesn't make it any more right.
You might expect the police to march in and ask questions, I doubt many people expect them to walk in and walk out with all your electronics equipment.
Because there is an intellectual reason why they might (pissed off a bunch of corporate fatcats with his warez links) vs the legal reason (was an law actually broken in his country).
Often enough it seems you don't have to actually break any laws, just annoy people who have a lot more money than you.
The RIAA or MPAA could impose economic sanctions on sales in that country
a) Only on RIAA/MPAA music, domestic and independant is fine
b) Only on new music
c) Not likely from online merchants (since it's not a government sanction, but a corporate one, they cannot force all retailers to follow through)
d) In a remote country, US music is probably already outrageously expensive
e) If people can't buy it, the alternative of downloading becomes stronger
They do have an influence. They showed a bit of force with the initial arrest. They'll show more force next time to get their way.
Yes, but up to a point. Many countries other than the US have laws limiting the actions that corporate entities can take, even in the courts. Hell, within the US various states have laws that would limit certain behavior (SLAPP laws, etc).
If they couldn't get the cannister out, would flooding the tube with some form of radiation blocking/absorbing material have worked? Maybe they could have injected it with molten lead, leaded water, or some other radiation dampening material (probably not a permanent solution, but a time-giver).
Unfortunately, we need them to recieve radation because if they DON'T, we can't communicate with them.
You actually give a solution with your comment...
the team had tied a rope around the machine, and it was hauled in
What if instead of a rope it was a well-shielded data cable? Run the robot on a lengthy cable coming off a spool, and then you don't need to use wireless communication.
I'm not sure how I feel about having to fail people and ruin their lives
I know a few people that managed to make it through their IT classes but never really had an aptitude/drive in the actual IT field. They generally end up in call-centres or other jobs that also house people of much lesser education (in other words, the education got them nothing).
Failing somebody who isn't cut out for IT or doesn't have the drive to become a good worker isn't necessarily a bad thing, I know a few people who went on the alternate/better jobs that they were likely more suited to.
As for becoming a programmer with influence... not always an easy thing. My current (and previous) job involves a mix of programming, hardware, and system administration. In most situations management still calls the shots, and it's rather painful in the coding arena having to fix the systems that we hired out to a contractor for (when I was capable of doing them myself at less expense/time/headache) and/or seeing projects almost come to fruition only to die in the final stages due to a change of company direction.
Not that there aren't good coding jobs, but I've found that the best is a mix of coding and sysadminning... at the very least I get to pull machines apart every now and again which gives my eyes a rest from screenwatching... and I have a growing collection of hard-drive magnets.
I hope you don't find this harassing, but: one thing I would ask about would be your goals from your given education. I'm a guy, but as with many I got an education/job in IT due to the fact that I was good at it, and (less now than previous) enjoyed it in general. In the workplace however I am semi-aggressive. I keep tabs on job market and watch for what I could/should be worth, and I've hopped up the ladder a few times. The next hop I'm looking at working overseas, but that looks to require hitting the books again.
In opposition to myself, the women I know that have taken up educations/careers in IT seem to be more sedentary. One of my friends has a job where I swear there are warning signs that they may one day let her go, but she seems to hang on to them in some weird sense of loyalty or something else I'm unsure of. Other geek girls I know (some whom I've dated) seem to have also ended up in the lower job bracket. Some of them are certainly as smart as I am if not moreso, yet they show less interest in ladder-climbing.
So I do wonder, what do women in IT have as goals in life and/or employment? Personally I'd love to meet more women in the field, but for some reason it bothers to see that most lack the personal ambition that many of my counterparts exhibit.
To be fair though, I do know a number of male IT works that lack ambition as well, and it could just be that the lesser number of female IT workers make it seem that they are less ambitious overall.
p.s. Don't sweat the math too much, formulas you might need to know, but you can keep those around on reference sheets and generally if you're in IT you can get the computer to do the rest of the work for you:-D
Well, one way that might work might be to have a "master password" on GAIM. It would be used to encrypt all the individual account passwords (in my case 5+ accounts), and require only a single password to do the initial login.
Hell, you could have a machine pick an excellent plot (say from a book that sold excellently), choose a bunch of top-notch actors, and still have a bomb. How many book-adapted scripts sucked incredibly on the big screen?
There is no magic bullet, if you make a stew from the best ingredients of 5 different other foods you can still end with something that tastes overall like strawberry-flavored-fish-in-marinara-sauce.
First of all, I have personally sat through many a phonecall with a co-worker who had his billing repeatedly screwed up by his phone company (Bell Canada). He meticulously went over the phone details every month, and quite often found several invalid charges for calls that were during his free time, or to his wife's "companion phone", etc. Hours on the phone each month were required to correct this, each month.
Now my question is, what happens if the cell phone company threw in an extra minute here, an extra minute there. Perhaps a phone call or two to a number you often call, or a random number in general.
How do you know, and if you were meticulous enough to know you're being screwed with... how could you prove it wasn't an error (whether intentional or otherwise) on behalf of the phone company?
The problem is that use of heroin has the predicable effect of addition and other serious life-draining problems. Somebody with no history of drug usage or addiction can still easily become addicted after using heroin for a few times, whereas regular will not predicably cause high-level addiction in most individuals.
It really depends on when you buy the card and how long the drivers come out. My experience has been that the initial drivers are really unpleasant, but later fixes do come out that make them much improved - but of course by that time there are newer cards available.
Slashdot Mirror
If this begat a tend, think of it:
Unethical companies would find themselves hard to find employees, because nobody wants to go under with the company. In the end, nobody would trust them: consumer, government watchdog, or employee. Basically, it would pay to be a more ethical company.
A more theoretical situation for sure, but not impossible. The problem is the lack of accountability... wherein the above brings some of that to the table.
It's Jack we're talking about. With his uncanny ability to fly off the handle he'll be more likely seen as the large annoyance/jackass at the shareholder's meeting.
Here's a key word for you, "yet."
Either you can just ignore what is happening and assume that "all will come out in the end," or perhaps you might want to stop the boulder at the top of the hill before it gains enough momentum to crush all those at the bottom?
No, instead it will be like copyright, and the government will simply renew them year after year after year until it fades from public attention.
Somewhat how like copyrights have been extended one a consistent basis so that they renew into perpetuety.
OK, so this is a US law, but the product is available in Canada. So what about Canadian resells? How about me as a user. I could buy the software, and then resell it to somebody in another country. EULA preventing that... how about if I leave the shrink-wrap on, then I haven't agreed to anything.
Not that such laws would actually have a snowball's chance in hell of preventing this software from reaching other countries, but I do wonder when the US includes Canada in their private little party whether or not they expect us to play with their rulebook.
Nobody would be stupid enough to think it is possible to keep a commercial product out of foreign hands
It's a bit of stupidity mixed with deviousness. This isn't about restricting tech to foreign countries so likely as it's the ability to arrest/incarcerate anyone who distributes them. The might not be able to control the flow of such tech outside of the country, but it gives them another reason to arrest anyone who they can nail as a distributor should they need an extra charge or two to lay down.
This is true. The only real heavy you could lay against a large corporation is such a severe financial penalty that it is just as painful to the corporation as a whole as a prison sentence is to an individual.
If the average individual would be getting 2-5 years jailtime, I want a financial penalty so heavy that Sony is feeling the aftereffects for 2-5 years to come.
a) A bittorrent network where I can download the shows, legally, with commercials as needed and perhaps localized ones (a nice ad for a store in Arizona doesn't help me where I live, but a globally available product is fine)
b) The ability to rate the ads. Computers are an interactive medium, why not create a system that allows you to download a video format including commercials, but with the ability to hit say "1-9" to give a rating, or choose INFORMATIVE, BORING, FUNNY, EXCITING, INTERESTING. The ratings for the commercial could be uploaded at the end of the episode
c) Commercials are fine so long as they don't suck, with the ratings in (b) you could tell advertisers which commercials suck, and hopefully they'd begin to make better ads (some ads are actually worth watching, heck some are damn funny)
Part of the law is intent though, just like you can be charged for conspiracy to commit murder if nobody is killed. So if I open somebody's unlocked car door to turn off his headlights, I might not be nailed (depends on the cop, the judge, and the owner), but if I do so and then drive off with the car... then I'm probably liable for both the theft and the steps leading up to it.
The problem of course is that the legal system often looks past intent nowadays.
Yes, but the problem is that selling copied games is an offense of copyright infringement, not really circumvention. If they had sold the games without a modded console would they have been charged, or if they just modded the console?
Indeed, if they have gained enough evidence ahead of time to indicate criminal activity is taking place, then they should be able to seize systems. However, if I - being not a large corporation - had made a complaint similar to the ??AA, would the same situation have occurred? If the servers belonged to a larger corporation, perhaps a bank, would they have so easily decided to seize them?
One of the whole points of evolution is adaption to environment. Maybe the blind spot imperfection doesn't serve a purpose, but perhaps the steps that led to having such an imperfection have come out as the eye is changing from a previous state to match the needs of the current environment. Evolution (whether by ID or otherwise) is rarely a fast process by human timeline.
Yes, but when the investigation disrupts your business/life severely, at a certain point it becomes unreasonable. If all it takes is a "tip" from a wealthy complainant to have your servers/property seized, then it puts too much power in the wrong hands. Just because harassment is done using the law doesn't make it any more right.
You might expect the police to march in and ask questions, I doubt many people expect them to walk in and walk out with all your electronics equipment.
Because there is an intellectual reason why they might (pissed off a bunch of corporate fatcats with his warez links) vs the legal reason (was an law actually broken in his country).
Often enough it seems you don't have to actually break any laws, just annoy people who have a lot more money than you.
The RIAA or MPAA could impose economic sanctions on sales in that country
a) Only on RIAA/MPAA music, domestic and independant is fine
b) Only on new music
c) Not likely from online merchants (since it's not a government sanction, but a corporate one, they cannot force all retailers to follow through)
d) In a remote country, US music is probably already outrageously expensive
e) If people can't buy it, the alternative of downloading becomes stronger
They do have an influence. They showed a bit of force with the initial arrest. They'll show more force next time to get their way.
Yes, but up to a point. Many countries other than the US have laws limiting the actions that corporate entities can take, even in the courts. Hell, within the US various states have laws that would limit certain behavior (SLAPP laws, etc).
WTF, this copy of "Dogma" is actually "The Passion" ... darn you VTH (Vatican Torrent Host)!!!
If they couldn't get the cannister out, would flooding the tube with some form of radiation blocking/absorbing material have worked? Maybe they could have injected it with molten lead, leaded water, or some other radiation dampening material (probably not a permanent solution, but a time-giver).
Unfortunately, we need them to recieve radation because if they DON'T, we can't communicate with them.
You actually give a solution with your comment...
the team had tied a rope around the machine, and it was hauled in
What if instead of a rope it was a well-shielded data cable? Run the robot on a lengthy cable coming off a spool, and then you don't need to use wireless communication.
I'm not sure how I feel about having to fail people and ruin their lives
I know a few people that managed to make it through their IT classes but never really had an aptitude/drive in the actual IT field. They generally end up in call-centres or other jobs that also house people of much lesser education (in other words, the education got them nothing).
Failing somebody who isn't cut out for IT or doesn't have the drive to become a good worker isn't necessarily a bad thing, I know a few people who went on the alternate/better jobs that they were likely more suited to.
As for becoming a programmer with influence... not always an easy thing. My current (and previous) job involves a mix of programming, hardware, and system administration. In most situations management still calls the shots, and it's rather painful in the coding arena having to fix the systems that we hired out to a contractor for (when I was capable of doing them myself at less expense/time/headache) and/or seeing projects almost come to fruition only to die in the final stages due to a change of company direction.
Not that there aren't good coding jobs, but I've found that the best is a mix of coding and sysadminning... at the very least I get to pull machines apart every now and again which gives my eyes a rest from screenwatching... and I have a growing collection of hard-drive magnets.
I hope you don't find this harassing, but: one thing I would ask about would be your goals from your given education. I'm a guy, but as with many I got an education/job in IT due to the fact that I was good at it, and (less now than previous) enjoyed it in general. In the workplace however I am semi-aggressive. I keep tabs on job market and watch for what I could/should be worth, and I've hopped up the ladder a few times. The next hop I'm looking at working overseas, but that looks to require hitting the books again.
:-D
In opposition to myself, the women I know that have taken up educations/careers in IT seem to be more sedentary. One of my friends has a job where I swear there are warning signs that they may one day let her go, but she seems to hang on to them in some weird sense of loyalty or something else I'm unsure of. Other geek girls I know (some whom I've dated) seem to have also ended up in the lower job bracket. Some of them are certainly as smart as I am if not moreso, yet they show less interest in ladder-climbing.
So I do wonder, what do women in IT have as goals in life and/or employment? Personally I'd love to meet more women in the field, but for some reason it bothers to see that most lack the personal ambition that many of my counterparts exhibit.
To be fair though, I do know a number of male IT works that lack ambition as well, and it could just be that the lesser number of female IT workers make it seem that they are less ambitious overall.
p.s. Don't sweat the math too much, formulas you might need to know, but you can keep those around on reference sheets and generally if you're in IT you can get the computer to do the rest of the work for you
Well, one way that might work might be to have a "master password" on GAIM. It would be used to encrypt all the individual account passwords (in my case 5+ accounts), and require only a single password to do the initial login.
Hell, you could have a machine pick an excellent plot (say from a book that sold excellently), choose a bunch of top-notch actors, and still have a bomb. How many book-adapted scripts sucked incredibly on the big screen?
There is no magic bullet, if you make a stew from the best ingredients of 5 different other foods you can still end with something that tastes overall like strawberry-flavored-fish-in-marinara-sauce.
First of all, I have personally sat through many a phonecall with a co-worker who had his billing repeatedly screwed up by his phone company (Bell Canada). He meticulously went over the phone details every month, and quite often found several invalid charges for calls that were during his free time, or to his wife's "companion phone", etc. Hours on the phone each month were required to correct this, each month.
Now my question is, what happens if the cell phone company threw in an extra minute here, an extra minute there. Perhaps a phone call or two to a number you often call, or a random number in general.
How do you know, and if you were meticulous enough to know you're being screwed with... how could you prove it wasn't an error (whether intentional or otherwise) on behalf of the phone company?
The problem is that use of heroin has the predicable effect of addition and other serious life-draining problems. Somebody with no history of drug usage or addiction can still easily become addicted after using heroin for a few times, whereas regular will not predicably cause high-level addiction in most individuals.
It really depends on when you buy the card and how long the drivers come out. My experience has been that the initial drivers are really unpleasant, but later fixes do come out that make them much improved - but of course by that time there are newer cards available.