Do you think the california recall election is fair? I understand that a lot of Californians are unhappy with Gray Davis' performance, but he WAS elected by the people
I would disagree with the original statement that he was elected by the people. I live in California, and the major problem is the nature of the "Open Primary" system. Basically what happened is that the Dems got the word out, and they voted in mass for the weaker of his potential Rebpublican opponents (ie, Bill Simon vs. Richard Riordan) in the Republican primary. This was enough to throw the elections. In addition, during hte *Republican* primary, Davis ran a massive number of attack ads against Riordan, the stronger Republican candidate.
So in the Republican primary, you had the Dems+1/3 Republicans voting for Simon, and 2/3 Republicans voting for Riordan. Of course, Riordan lost the primary, and Simon was such a weak candidate he couldn't beat Davis on his own merit.
So if you look at it that way, no, Davis was not elected by a fair majority of the population in a fair election. He bought it. People didn't like him then, and less now.
if people dislike him then they can vote him out of office when his term is up.
He's screwed this state up enough that he doesn't deserve the extra time. No thanks.
This whole situation seems like a gross abuse of a recall system that relies on honesty and virtuous politicians. Unfortunately California is no such utopia. By running in the election you have shown your support for it, how do you justify this support given the evident problems.
I will also say that Davis' popularity, which was never high, nosedived after the election when he was utterly unable to get a budget done and when people saw his choices for budget cuts. Of course, some people are dumb and get pissed at any budget cuts - I'll admit they are necessary. But his choices were horrendous - cutting education as one of the first things to go, that's just criminal.
I will be voting to get the hell rid of Davis. He's an idiot, he's dishonest (ask him how much money he took from Enron and Cisco), and he needs to leave. The basis for the recall is fair, and he's earned it by losing the trust of CA.
flavor" is the common spelling...Common? Surely flavour would be the most common usage? I expect more people in the world use English rather than 'merican. Basically the American empire uses American (flavor) and the British Commonwealth (inc India) uses English (flavour).
Something I've never thought of, but does the US have the majority of the worlds English-first speakers? I know US has more than the combined populations of Britain, Australia, and Canada are 60M, 20M, and 30M, respectively. That's only 110M total, which is well less than half the US population. Given that, are there another 160M-odd native English speakers elsewhere? No, India doesn't count, as that might skew things.;)
Based on that, however, I would say that the US has the bulk of the world's English-first speakers, so I think that "flavor" would *certainly* qualify as common.
And we're going to buy our own gear, train with it, and the like, and not be able to use it....
I wa being facetious, but being serious about it, what's the range of disruption caused by lines carrying broadband vs. regular power lines now? I'd recommend not operating HAM from under a transformer, but otherwise, I want to see how this development would make HAM thoroughly impossible.
Basically, how is it fair for a hobby shared by a few tens of thousands of people in this country (I'm guessing, don't flame) to take precedence of the needs of millions? Even if this were some sort of allocated resource, imminent domain would take precedence.
I'm not saying it wouldn't suck for a hobby into which you've sunk serious cash to be affected like this, but you have to see the public benefit aspect of this.
You just sound like one of those know-it-alls. You know, you buy something, a TV or a DVD player or a car, and they're always piping in 'hey, you could have gotten brand x model b for less money, and it's way better', or 'this is crap, brand z model k is infinitely superior, and only costs twice as much, buy hey, you pay for quality! wink wink nudge nudge'.
You do sound like a know it all if you do that. However, this situation is different that that analogy. When you've had to fix that person's box for the 5th time this month, it's like they KEEP buying the shitty car, despite knowing it is so. Some people eventually give "the other side" a try. I've had it happen. And if someone gets cranky about it, you're right, they can fix their own fucking box.
Does not. And I have had a couple pretty serious problems, (though nothing as bad as my problems with ext2/ext3 fucking up on my Linux file server box), and a re-install of ANYTHING was never required.
First, I'll concede that using an asynchronous file system was probably one of Linus's stupider decisions, as you can kill-switch BSD repeatedly with no worries, but do it twice with linux and it's happy format the hard drive time. With the re-install issues on WinXP, you say they were serious. How long did they take to fix? Could you have done a full re-install in the meantime? If so, then your problem effectively required a full reinstall.
The same place they found them after 9/11 where ham radio was the only reliable mode of comms around ground zero for a couple of days. You know who told the disaster workers WHO to contact to start getting phones setup? The Hams on site, who had contacts with the right folks
Here's a compromise. Give us all our broadband over power lines. In a natural disaster that cuts communication, it'll also cut power, and with it any interference with HAM. Bingo - problem solved.
But really, expecting millions to forego broadband access for the hobby of a few isn't realistic or fair.
Obviously the HAM operators are burning their mod points, but the guy is right. Boradband communication for (m|b)illions of people is more important than a hobby for a few thousand. Not trying to be insensitive, but maybe get away from the power lines?
Come to think of it, maybe that was the problem all along.;)
And don't say ham radio would be useful in some sort of natural disaster, seeing as the internet WAS designed to withstand a nuclear attack!
Not only that, but where the hell am I going to find a HAM operator after an earthquake? That's probably the least of my worries.
There are exceptions. I pay for AppleCare, because I know that Apple generally does an exceptionally good job of dealing with problems. Stories about of people having their iBook screens die, and having Apple replace the screen and overhaul the entire machine and get it back to them in 48 hours. Hot-plugging a dodgy peripheral fried a Firewire port? They'll swap out the motherboard, no problem. I believe Apple does quite well at selling AppleCare to customers.
Good example of an exception proving the rule. For those companies that make customer servicce a way of life, unbelievable margins are possible and a strong following as well. From there, the difficulty is of course leveraging any of that into sales volume.
But yeah, most people buy Dell
QED, eh?;)
Also, I only provide free tech support for Linux and Mac problems. If people have problems with Windows, I tell 'em to call Microsoft or the OEM. So at least I try not to enable evil.
Good for you. My dilemma is I don't want to screw my friends over, so I occasionally fix their shit, all the while telling them how it never happens to my linux box. Lately it's less of an issue though, as I don't really know how to run XP. That and any serious windows problem requires a full re-install.
I even told my parents I wasn't going to support Windows for them any more. Faced with the option of Windows reliability backed by Microsoft customer support, they're running Linux now
Newsflash: 99% of consumers are tools and $10 spent on marketing probably does do more than $50 spent on tech support.
That may be the case. If so, don't blame the company. However, there's still a limit to how much profit they're going to be able to take. Margins in software, outside of MS's monopoly, ain't great.
It seems to me that you've no idea what free software is about. Rerhaps reading this will help.
I agree that grandparent was a tad confused, but sending him over to the GNU page probably isn't going to give him the sort of clarity on the issue that he seems to need.
I wouldn't reccomend getting a projection TV if you are planning on hooking up a newer gaming console such as a PS2 or Xbox, they will most likely damage it. (Look for warnings in your console's manual.)
Yeah, but they also tell me not to play for more than an hour at a time lest I get "fatigued" (whatever that means) or have like a seizure or something.
The RedHat case is the only one in which i read the entire filing, and in it they explicitly request a jury trial. It's not unlikely that the others will work the same way, especially where monetary damages are involved. Judges may be the ones deciding on injunctions (i.e. the ones IBM and RedHat filed to force SCO to stop making possibly untrue statements), but the major decisions will likeley be made by a jury of our 'peers'.
Well, I would assume the people watching CNBC will be booted from the jury pool. So rest assured, all the people actually on the jury will be dumber than the CNBC retards. Believe it or not, this thing hasn't gotten that much press outside of/. and *maybe* CNBC. So this won't be the Kobe trial or anything
But do you really think that the people answering the phones get any more money if we pay more for tech support? Nope, the money goes right into the pockets of the people who are already getting most of it anyways.
Both. If product A charges $X for awful tech support, product B charges $X for good tech support, and product C charges $X-5 for no tech support, the company selling B will go out of business. Margins are already too small in most industries - if you charge more trying to pad your margins without making your product more appealing, it won't sell.
Obviously, the flaw in my argument is that it assumes that actual value ~ perceived value. Of course, if you can convince people you've improved your tech support without actually doing so, good for you! But that's hard to accomplish long term without consumers eventually catching on.
Therefore, one could reasonably conclude that $10 spent on marketing does more than $50 spent on tech support. And if that's so, then the consumer has himself to blame for being a tool.
Companies spend millions on advertising, but pay minimum wage to those who will be the first point of contact with the customer. Ain't economics great?
I don't want to defend this practice - I really don't - but we have to accept that companies are out to make money. And if people (on average) aren't willing to pay more to get better customer service, it won't exist. People say they want better service, but typically their wallets vote otherwise. And I readily admit I fall into this category, although that's only because I have learned to have absolutely no expectation of service at all.
But bottom line, it's exactly like you said: Ain't economics great?. Sucks that such an approach works, but it does. Also blame the idiots that provide free help/tech support on company support forums. You're just enabling them, people.
IANAPA (Patent attorney), but as I understand it, the holder of patent can choose when to enfornce the patent. "Because we have been" is NOT a legal argument.
So obviously people think SCO is trying to obfuscate trademarks and patents - they may be. They could also be raising doubts as to the applicability of IBM's patents in this situations by implying IBM's desperation. Don't know how far that would go in court though.
This is one more time where it seems as if their strategy seems more tied to maintaining stock price (for pump-n-dump) than for winning a case. It's easier to fool some retard watching CNBC than it is to fool a judge.
Get your dicks out of your floppy drives and try talking to a girl without sounding pathetic and like you'd nail the first available orafice whose owner was unlikely to file charges. That's step one.
That attitude will get you nowhere. The ones who file charges are just being a little frisky - call it "hard to get." Some even call it foreplay.
I mean come on. You can't be sued for implementing something , distributing it, have the other company KNOW that its in there, and never say a word until it wants to.
Seems to have worked damned well for Rambus. You know, developing open standards based on a patent you fail to mention. Nice move.
As far as SCO crying, I call bullshit. So they're pissed that IBM let them willingly infringe their patents until they sued IBM. And that, once sued, IBM gets pissy. Well, yeah. You would too.
It's basically like saying "I don't know why my neighbor stopped letting me take his lawnmower after I knocked up his daughter. He didn't complain all these years, so it must not really be his lawnmower." That's ridiculous, so is SCO's whining here.
Piss somebody off, don't expect "friend" treatment. That's the way the world works.
Because it's none of the cops damn business where I am all the time.
Right, but that has nothing to do with this device, since we've established they can do that now. Compared to status quo, no net disadvantage
You actually trust the police?
Fuck no!
My experience with police is they are power hungry, brutal, believe they are above the law and will flaunt it in every possible way they can each and every day.
You forgot "dumb as dogshit."
Police are supposed to be servents, but somewhere along the line they got this idea they are supposed to be in charge.
Probably with the nightstick they were issued.
Seriously, I don't like cops either, but I think that's the least bad thing about cheap tracking devices and such.
Heh. Had a friend in college who used to say, "This'd be better than sex if sex wasn't so good." (I doubt Battlebots beats sex... well, at least for a certain subset of Battlebots.)
True but they do need a warant to have your one device spy on you. Example a wire tap. Otherwise they have to do it the old fasioned way and follow you.
Not the same. Private communications are presumed secure - as such, they need a warrant to break that. Your location is not.
Bottom line is, the cops can know wherever you are at all times now. Why is this thing scary from that standpoint?
They of course fail to mention that if the technology were available, a judge
could easily grant a warrant to allow authorities to observe your movements without notifying you.
Cops don't *need* a warrant to observe you. Not even without this. There's never been any sort of protection against observing people.
I don't like the idea of a tracking device much, but for Chrissakes we can do without the damned 1984 bit every time.
Oh don't troll. This is actually an interesting article. Although this might not be world-shattering it is still a pretty nifty thing. The uses for a trackball in the mouse would incredible for a gamer. Imagine instead of WASD layout you could have all movement and shooting controls on one hand with the other one free for equipment managment and chatting.
Troll he certainly was. Raises the "slashdot payola" accusation again. I'm assuming the answer to that question is still no?
Slashdot Mirror
I would disagree with the original statement that he was elected by the people. I live in California, and the major problem is the nature of the "Open Primary" system. Basically what happened is that the Dems got the word out, and they voted in mass for the weaker of his potential Rebpublican opponents (ie, Bill Simon vs. Richard Riordan) in the Republican primary. This was enough to throw the elections. In addition, during hte *Republican* primary, Davis ran a massive number of attack ads against Riordan, the stronger Republican candidate.
So in the Republican primary, you had the Dems+1/3 Republicans voting for Simon, and 2/3 Republicans voting for Riordan. Of course, Riordan lost the primary, and Simon was such a weak candidate he couldn't beat Davis on his own merit.
So if you look at it that way, no, Davis was not elected by a fair majority of the population in a fair election. He bought it. People didn't like him then, and less now.
if people dislike him then they can vote him out of office when his term is up.
He's screwed this state up enough that he doesn't deserve the extra time. No thanks.
This whole situation seems like a gross abuse of a recall system that relies on honesty and virtuous politicians. Unfortunately California is no such utopia. By running in the election you have shown your support for it, how do you justify this support given the evident problems.
I will also say that Davis' popularity, which was never high, nosedived after the election when he was utterly unable to get a budget done and when people saw his choices for budget cuts. Of course, some people are dumb and get pissed at any budget cuts - I'll admit they are necessary. But his choices were horrendous - cutting education as one of the first things to go, that's just criminal.
I will be voting to get the hell rid of Davis. He's an idiot, he's dishonest (ask him how much money he took from Enron and Cisco), and he needs to leave. The basis for the recall is fair, and he's earned it by losing the trust of CA.
See ya, Gray.
Something I've never thought of, but does the US have the majority of the worlds English-first speakers? I know US has more than the combined populations of Britain, Australia, and Canada are 60M, 20M, and 30M, respectively. That's only 110M total, which is well less than half the US population. Given that, are there another 160M-odd native English speakers elsewhere? No, India doesn't count, as that might skew things. ;)
Based on that, however, I would say that the US has the bulk of the world's English-first speakers, so I think that "flavor" would *certainly* qualify as common.
I wa being facetious, but being serious about it, what's the range of disruption caused by lines carrying broadband vs. regular power lines now? I'd recommend not operating HAM from under a transformer, but otherwise, I want to see how this development would make HAM thoroughly impossible.
Basically, how is it fair for a hobby shared by a few tens of thousands of people in this country (I'm guessing, don't flame) to take precedence of the needs of millions? Even if this were some sort of allocated resource, imminent domain would take precedence.
I'm not saying it wouldn't suck for a hobby into which you've sunk serious cash to be affected like this, but you have to see the public benefit aspect of this.
You do sound like a know it all if you do that. However, this situation is different that that analogy. When you've had to fix that person's box for the 5th time this month, it's like they KEEP buying the shitty car, despite knowing it is so. Some people eventually give "the other side" a try. I've had it happen. And if someone gets cranky about it, you're right, they can fix their own fucking box.
Does not. And I have had a couple pretty serious problems, (though nothing as bad as my problems with ext2/ext3 fucking up on my Linux file server box), and a re-install of ANYTHING was never required.
First, I'll concede that using an asynchronous file system was probably one of Linus's stupider decisions, as you can kill-switch BSD repeatedly with no worries, but do it twice with linux and it's happy format the hard drive time. With the re-install issues on WinXP, you say they were serious. How long did they take to fix? Could you have done a full re-install in the meantime? If so, then your problem effectively required a full reinstall.
Here's a compromise. Give us all our broadband over power lines. In a natural disaster that cuts communication, it'll also cut power, and with it any interference with HAM. Bingo - problem solved.
But really, expecting millions to forego broadband access for the hobby of a few isn't realistic or fair.
Come to think of it, maybe that was the problem all along. ;)
And don't say ham radio would be useful in some sort of natural disaster, seeing as the internet WAS designed to withstand a nuclear attack!
Not only that, but where the hell am I going to find a HAM operator after an earthquake? That's probably the least of my worries.
Good example of an exception proving the rule. For those companies that make customer servicce a way of life, unbelievable margins are possible and a strong following as well. From there, the difficulty is of course leveraging any of that into sales volume.
But yeah, most people buy Dell
QED, eh? ;)
Also, I only provide free tech support for Linux and Mac problems. If people have problems with Windows, I tell 'em to call Microsoft or the OEM. So at least I try not to enable evil.
Good for you. My dilemma is I don't want to screw my friends over, so I occasionally fix their shit, all the while telling them how it never happens to my linux box. Lately it's less of an issue though, as I don't really know how to run XP. That and any serious windows problem requires a full re-install.
I even told my parents I wasn't going to support Windows for them any more. Faced with the option of Windows reliability backed by Microsoft customer support, they're running Linux now
Good job!
That may be the case. If so, don't blame the company. However, there's still a limit to how much profit they're going to be able to take. Margins in software, outside of MS's monopoly, ain't great.
Pay for value and you just might get it.
I agree that grandparent was a tad confused, but sending him over to the GNU page probably isn't going to give him the sort of clarity on the issue that he seems to need.
Yeah, but they also tell me not to play for more than an hour at a time lest I get "fatigued" (whatever that means) or have like a seizure or something.
Those warnings are straight CYA.
Well, I would assume the people watching CNBC will be booted from the jury pool. So rest assured, all the people actually on the jury will be dumber than the CNBC retards. Believe it or not, this thing hasn't gotten that much press outside of /. and *maybe* CNBC. So this won't be the Kobe trial or anything
Both. If product A charges $X for awful tech support, product B charges $X for good tech support, and product C charges $X-5 for no tech support, the company selling B will go out of business. Margins are already too small in most industries - if you charge more trying to pad your margins without making your product more appealing, it won't sell.
Obviously, the flaw in my argument is that it assumes that actual value ~ perceived value. Of course, if you can convince people you've improved your tech support without actually doing so, good for you! But that's hard to accomplish long term without consumers eventually catching on.
Therefore, one could reasonably conclude that $10 spent on marketing does more than $50 spent on tech support. And if that's so, then the consumer has himself to blame for being a tool.
No offense, but I don't think that deduction requires an RFID. ;)
I don't want to defend this practice - I really don't - but we have to accept that companies are out to make money. And if people (on average) aren't willing to pay more to get better customer service, it won't exist. People say they want better service, but typically their wallets vote otherwise. And I readily admit I fall into this category, although that's only because I have learned to have absolutely no expectation of service at all.
But bottom line, it's exactly like you said: Ain't economics great?. Sucks that such an approach works, but it does. Also blame the idiots that provide free help/tech support on company support forums. You're just enabling them, people.
So obviously people think SCO is trying to obfuscate trademarks and patents - they may be. They could also be raising doubts as to the applicability of IBM's patents in this situations by implying IBM's desperation. Don't know how far that would go in court though.
This is one more time where it seems as if their strategy seems more tied to maintaining stock price (for pump-n-dump) than for winning a case. It's easier to fool some retard watching CNBC than it is to fool a judge.
That attitude will get you nowhere. The ones who file charges are just being a little frisky - call it "hard to get." Some even call it foreplay.
Seems to have worked damned well for Rambus. You know, developing open standards based on a patent you fail to mention. Nice move.
As far as SCO crying, I call bullshit. So they're pissed that IBM let them willingly infringe their patents until they sued IBM. And that, once sued, IBM gets pissy. Well, yeah. You would too.
It's basically like saying "I don't know why my neighbor stopped letting me take his lawnmower after I knocked up his daughter. He didn't complain all these years, so it must not really be his lawnmower." That's ridiculous, so is SCO's whining here.
Piss somebody off, don't expect "friend" treatment. That's the way the world works.
Right, but that has nothing to do with this device, since we've established they can do that now. Compared to status quo, no net disadvantage
You actually trust the police?
Fuck no!
My experience with police is they are power hungry, brutal, believe they are above the law and will flaunt it in every possible way they can each and every day.
You forgot "dumb as dogshit."
Police are supposed to be servents, but somewhere along the line they got this idea they are supposed to be in charge.
Probably with the nightstick they were issued.
Seriously, I don't like cops either, but I think that's the least bad thing about cheap tracking devices and such.
Who, Linus? *ducks to avoid flying penguin toys*
You could try both and see. ;)
Not the same. Private communications are presumed secure - as such, they need a warrant to break that. Your location is not.
Bottom line is, the cops can know wherever you are at all times now. Why is this thing scary from that standpoint?
Cops don't *need* a warrant to observe you. Not even without this. There's never been any sort of protection against observing people.
I don't like the idea of a tracking device much, but for Chrissakes we can do without the damned 1984 bit every time.
Btw, if that was a troll, great job!
Have you only been here for a year? ;)
Black Jaguar. And their weapon is a patent portfolio. And their turf is on the northeast corner of Shoreside Vale. ;)
Troll he certainly was. Raises the "slashdot payola" accusation again. I'm assuming the answer to that question is still no?