If somebody wants to break into your house, esp. these shitty "McMansions" with their Cell-O-Tex exterior walls and vinyl siding, all the need is a box cutter.
I treat it just like any other bid--I make an offer; you accept or make a counter offer; repeat until we both accept the contract. This is not somehow unethical or sneaky; this is how business is done.
Typically, all the hiring/contracting department cares about is "Did we get the NDA back?" Great. Check that one off and move on. In my experience, the modified NDA is accepted without comment. If it ever becomes an issue, we each have our copy of the signed agreement.
The purpose of the NDA is not to protect the Client's legitimate rights. If I try to take what's already theirs, their lawyers have no problem defending them against one little ole contractor. The purpose of the NDA is to end the dispute without involving the retained legal department or firm by moving the burden of proof to the other party .
If I was in a financial bind, AND this was the only available gig, AND the prospective Client took the time to review the returned NDA, AND the Client wouldn't take the time to negotiate the NDA... That's a 3 anda so far. Hasn't happened yet.
Read the faq. Right now, we are able to generate videos of virtual landscapes with an external program called Terragen. Generating such a video takes about two weeks on a single computer. With the current GPU cluster size we reduce this time to one-two days. So forty(?) computers gives a sevenfold performance increase under ideal conditions?
Not exactly a supercomputer, yet, but they've got something there.
Let's say these guys achieve their goal. Code that creates a self-assembling supercomputer from a random collection of boxes is a weapon. Putting a label on a weapon that says "you can't use it to hurt people" doesn't make it any less a weapon.
The military will have that weapon it if they want it. Even if the genie is out of the bottle, they'll still put that weapon on export restriction list--just on policy. These guys have taken a lesson from Phil Zimmerman--get it distributed before somebody with a warrant tells them to stop development. So, it's on SF, but they're still vulnerable to being told "Stop That". Does the marutukku (rubberhose) filesystem work in 2.6? Why'd development stop?
About the "first law" mod to the GPL: uninformed grandstanding. But they got us talking about it, so it worked, didn't it?/Tips tinfoil hat to developers.
Antitiedown prevents exactly that.
Somebody has already mentioned zero-force palm buttons.
Before all this technology was available, press operators had leather straps tied to their wrists:
There's a bar above the press that goes up and back when the press closes.
Attached to this bar are a pair of cables that go behind the operator. The cables are attached to the straps.
If the operator's not back from the press when it starts down, he'll be well clear of it in very short order.
Yeah, it was an old plant.
RIAA's contribution to the process is twofold: 1. Distribution 2. Marketing
They're distributing and marketing information. There's now a communications system in place that is really, really good at distributing and marketing information. It's already well on its way to destroying another marketing and information distribution industry: Newspapers
The RIAA will survive only as long as they can stop every cheaper or easier method of marketing and distributing music. Akbar & Jeff's Music Hut selling music online for $0.25 per song and paying $0.02 of that to the artist would be just as bad as your grandmother copying it for free.
Piracy is a red herring. What RIAA is afraid of is the internet.
And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the Best Buy wherever you are,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Circuit City.
"And walk out.
You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him.
And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization.
And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out.
And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
And that's what it is , the Circuit City Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar.
If you're talking to someone, it means you're relating to them as someone like yourself.
It's a lot harder (not impossible, of course) to kill someone, steal from them, or abandon them to starvation, murder, or oppression if you're still having a conversation with them.
The rest, as someone else said a while back, is commentary.
For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals
Then something happenend which unleashed the power of our imagination
We learned to talk ...
All we need to do is make sure we keep talking
Listen--this is salesmanship at its most basic. Create a need and fulfill that need.
Soon, people will look to you to have their needs met--without even realizing that the needs are imaginary or that they could meet those needs without your help.
Terror is fear caused by the perception of danger. The solution is, of course, the perception of security.
The crippling effect of terror is that people are afraid to do things they normally would if they did not perceive a danger. Actual protection from the hazard (if there was an actual hazard) would not necessarily remove the perception of danger. Citizen 1: I'm stayin' home. There's terrorists out there. Citizen 2: Have you seen one? Citizen 1: Nope, but nobody's doing anything about it. I'm not leaving the house till this is over!
To combat the terror, we present the appearance of security measures. Going overboard and causing outrage is just part of the salesmanship. Citizen 1: A real terrorist would never get through--they're bustin' guys just for lookin' like terrorists! Citizen 2: Woohoo--we whupped them terists good. Let's go down to the Winn-Dixie. We're out of beer! C1 & C2 hop in the car and immediately put it in the ditch because they're hammered. But they were wearing seatbelts, so they're OK!
Tell the credit card company to no longer accept charges from AOL because they refuse to cancel your account.
If you really want to play it safe then write a letter to your credit card company after the call that reiterates the request and the reason for it.
Have you actually tried this? Did it really work? What, exactly did you say, and to whom?
I've tried that with a credit union and a commercial bank, and neither one would do it.
They would happily reverse the charges after I provide a letter saying they were bogus, and they would happily "cancel the account" (or issue a new cc number, if I preferred).
Not sure why they wouldn't block a vendor, but they sure wouldn't. I don't think it's because they aren't willing to help the customer--they were quite willing and helpful with the disputed charges. But they definitely won't block a vendor, even with a certified notarized letter asking them to do so.
Oh, yeah--"cancel the account" is in quotes, because you never really close a ccard account.
Oh, you think you've done it? Maybe you have; I don't know. Go check.
Look at your credit report; it's free (unlike freecreditreport.com; don't start).
How many credit card accounts you think you've closed show up as "pays as agreed" or "active"? How many appear as "closed"?
I'll bet the first number is a lot bigger than the second. It's like the mafia. Once you're in, you're in for life.
Didja know that you can get the lithium out of a new one? The battery is manufactured with metallic lithium foil, which you can take out in a sheet if the battery has not been through a cycle. Cycling the battery destroys the mechanical integrity of the foil, though, so only new batteries work.
It seems to me that all the other "features" being added daily are not for the benefit of the owner of the phone. They're yet more things to charge the owner for using.
Sell connectivity like a commodity. I don't want to see "no network" when I'm looking directly at a freakin' cell tower. I don't give a shit who owns the tower. Share your infrastructure. The same companies that sell the mobile comms already do this with their hard lines, so don't say it's not feasible. Somebody's already claiming to do this (verizon?). The rest of you idiots, take a lesson.
Build a durable phone with a decent battery. It doesn't have to be so tiny or so cool I can wear it on my chest and slap it when I want to talk to the Enterprise. It just has to make and receive calls. That's it. Make it out of the stuff that Ma Bell used to make the rental phones out of. It'll never break.
Once you figure out the basic infrastructure and handhelds required for TALKING ON THE FREAKING PHONE, you can worry about selling me extraneous bullshit that I don't want.
Ah, yeah. First law as applied to all of humanity.
Please understand the point of the three (four) laws--glib moral absolutes have devastating consequences.
Of course, when correctly interpreted, the zeroth law results in paradise. Benevolent dictator provides a fountain of youth, horn of plenty, peace on earth and goodwill towards men.
So, man creates g-d in his own image. Best possible outcome, of course, is that g-d leaves man to his own free will--'cause the "benevolent dictator" scenario just ain't gonna happen. See how well that's working now?
The author is sloppy.
(S?)he's casually throwing together three separate fields of safety.
Industrial robotics, consumer product safety, and android (Asimovs robots are androids, not just robots) morality.
With respect to the particular incident reported, I suspect the synopsis in the article is as sloppy as the rest of the article.
Did the engineer really violate safety? Did his boss or the Japanese work ethic give him a choice? Google karoshi and guolaosi.
If an engineer violates safety procedures and gets killed, publish his experience at the next safety meeting.
Too f---ing bad. I will not cry for a guy that violates safety procedure and gets hurt. For his family, sure--it's not their fault Dad is an idiot.
And if it was karoshi, then the hazard the employee was exposed to was the work culture. Compensation for families of karoshi victims is available today (but not in 1981)
There are safety standards used to protect people from robots, and they work, but you have to follow them.
Lockout/Tagout (really lockout; nobody uses tagout anymore)
Avoidance of exposure--passive perimeter guarding (fences); active perimeter guarding (light screens, LASER fences, floor mats, etc.)
Operator load interlocks--when the operator has to load a robot, you design so that only one (operator/robot) can be in the load station at a time.
I can give you a light screen around the robot and you can jumper it out.
I can build you a safety fence and you can climb over it.
I can put a roof over the safety fence (yes, it's been done!) and you'll just unbold one of the fence sections.
I can give you a teach pendant with a deadman switch (sorry, "active motion enable device"), and you can hand it to the electrician while you ride the robot.
If you're determined to kill yourself, I can't stop you.
And if you do, your recent co-workers will all grimace when we see the pictures in next week's safety meeting.
But we won't have any sympathy for you.
This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behaviour was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer.
That's not what the 3 laws are about. The three laws are moral values, not machine code.
They have nothing to do with protecting a person from a machine and everything to do with implementing morality in a created race of sentient beings.
If you haven't read Asimov's robot stories, you should know that most of them revolve around the unexpected consequences of the three laws and the danger of rigid legalistic interpretation of moral codes.
Finally, you gotta love this one People are going to be having sex with robots in the next five years.
Author needs to work on his verb tense.
That is better handled by consumer product safety procedure, not industrial robot safety protocols.
Don't know the details of the contract, and the "article" is a blog entry. Ooh, sorry. It's a "forum" not a blog. Copied from the wsj. Has any competent legal professional actually looked at this situation? Vonage's position seems to be that these people signed a contract and they're bound by it.
The justification for not paying I'm seeing in the forum is "F--- Vonage. They suck. I'm not gonna pay. Sue me!" Folks, if that's the best the investors can come up with, it seems that they don't have a very strong position.
Maybe the investors can come up with some justification to void the contracts in court, but short of that, it seems like they agreed to a contract they're going to have to fulfill.
I wonder how many of these people would be crying *foul* if the trading price went UP and Vonage declined to sell the shares?
If any investors are reading this, you've just learned a valuable lesson in finance. Learn it well, 'cuase the tuition is steep: "Unusual Deal" sounds like a really flaky way to invest. Didn't your mothers ever tell you that when somebody says "Have I got an amazing deal for you!", you run, don't walk, away? Folks, Vonage isn't the only one doing the sucking here. That's why they call people like you "suckers". Buncha whiners. You gambled and lost. Pay da house.
And if you don't think you learned a lesson, please post your contact information in reply to this message. Have I got a deal for you! Sure-fire, get rich quick.
Slashdot Mirror
If somebody wants to break into your house, esp. these shitty "McMansions" with their Cell-O-Tex exterior walls and vinyl siding, all the need is a box cutter.
I treat it just like any other bid--I make an offer; you accept or make a counter offer; repeat until we both accept the contract.
This is not somehow unethical or sneaky; this is how business is done.
Typically, all the hiring/contracting department cares about is "Did we get the NDA back?"
Great. Check that one off and move on.
In my experience, the modified NDA is accepted without comment. If it ever becomes an issue, we each have our copy of the signed agreement.
The purpose of the NDA is not to protect the Client's legitimate rights.
If I try to take what's already theirs, their lawyers have no problem defending them against one little ole contractor.
The purpose of the NDA is to end the dispute without involving the retained legal department or firm by moving the burden of proof to the other party .
If I was in a financial bind, AND this was the only available gig, AND the prospective Client took the time to review the returned NDA, AND the Client wouldn't take the time to negotiate the NDA...
That's a 3 anda so far. Hasn't happened yet.
Just don't let any of it get on your steak
Read the faq.
/Tips tinfoil hat to developers.
Right now, we are able to generate videos of virtual landscapes with an external program called Terragen. Generating such a video takes about two weeks on a single computer. With the current GPU cluster size we reduce this time to one-two days.
So forty(?) computers gives a sevenfold performance increase under ideal conditions?
Not exactly a supercomputer, yet, but they've got something there.
Let's say these guys achieve their goal.
Code that creates a self-assembling supercomputer from a random collection of boxes is a weapon.
Putting a label on a weapon that says "you can't use it to hurt people" doesn't make it any less a weapon.
The military will have that weapon it if they want it.
Even if the genie is out of the bottle, they'll still put that weapon on export restriction list--just on policy.
These guys have taken a lesson from Phil Zimmerman--get it distributed before somebody with a warrant tells them to stop development.
So, it's on SF, but they're still vulnerable to being told "Stop That".
Does the marutukku (rubberhose) filesystem work in 2.6? Why'd development stop?
About the "first law" mod to the GPL: uninformed grandstanding.
But they got us talking about it, so it worked, didn't it?
Antitiedown prevents exactly that. Somebody has already mentioned zero-force palm buttons. Before all this technology was available, press operators had leather straps tied to their wrists: There's a bar above the press that goes up and back when the press closes. Attached to this bar are a pair of cables that go behind the operator. The cables are attached to the straps. If the operator's not back from the press when it starts down, he'll be well clear of it in very short order. Yeah, it was an old plant.
RIAA could give a crap about piracy.
RIAA's contribution to the process is twofold:
1. Distribution
2. Marketing
They're distributing and marketing information.
There's now a communications system in place that is really, really good at distributing and marketing information.
It's already well on its way to destroying another marketing and information distribution industry: Newspapers
The RIAA will survive only as long as they can stop every cheaper or easier method of marketing and distributing music.
Akbar & Jeff's Music Hut selling music online for $0.25 per song and paying $0.02 of that to the artist would be just as bad as your grandmother copying it for free.
Piracy is a red herring. What RIAA is afraid of is the internet.
Though, why an ornithologist is wasting time playing WoW, I'll never know.
Inflation for beginners
Inflation
There's a book, too.
"And walk out.
You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him.
And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization.
And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out.
And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
And that's what it is , the Circuit City Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar.
They just scrape you off the dashboard and sell it to someone else.
-Sinbad
neat stuff.
I mean, really--is Previous position: "Maxwell's Daemon" going to impress the HR department?
It's a lot harder (not impossible, of course) to kill someone, steal from them, or abandon them to starvation, murder, or oppression if you're still having a conversation with them.
The rest, as someone else said a while back, is commentary.
For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals
...
Then something happenend which unleashed the power of our imagination
We learned to talk
All we need to do is make sure we keep talking
Soon, people will look to you to have their needs met--without even realizing that the needs are imaginary or that they could meet those needs without your help.
We can't win this war because there is no war to win.
Terror is fear caused by the perception of danger.
The solution is, of course, the perception of security.
The crippling effect of terror is that people are afraid to do things they normally would if they did not perceive a danger.
Actual protection from the hazard (if there was an actual hazard) would not necessarily remove the perception of danger.
Citizen 1: I'm stayin' home. There's terrorists out there.
Citizen 2: Have you seen one?
Citizen 1: Nope, but nobody's doing anything about it. I'm not leaving the house till this is over!
To combat the terror, we present the appearance of security measures. Going overboard and causing outrage is just part of the salesmanship.
Citizen 1: A real terrorist would never get through--they're bustin' guys just for lookin' like terrorists!
Citizen 2: Woohoo--we whupped them terists good. Let's go down to the Winn-Dixie. We're out of beer!
C1 & C2 hop in the car and immediately put it in the ditch because they're hammered. But they were wearing seatbelts, so they're OK!
Have you actually tried this? Did it really work? What, exactly did you say, and to whom?
I've tried that with a credit union and a commercial bank, and neither one would do it.
They would happily reverse the charges after I provide a letter saying they were bogus, and they would happily "cancel the account" (or issue a new cc number, if I preferred).
Not sure why they wouldn't block a vendor, but they sure wouldn't. I don't think it's because they aren't willing to help the customer--they were quite willing and helpful with the disputed charges. But they definitely won't block a vendor, even with a certified notarized letter asking them to do so.
Oh, yeah--"cancel the account" is in quotes, because you never really close a ccard account.
Oh, you think you've done it? Maybe you have; I don't know. Go check. Look at your credit report; it's free (unlike freecreditreport.com; don't start).
How many credit card accounts you think you've closed show up as "pays as agreed" or "active"? How many appear as "closed"?
I'll bet the first number is a lot bigger than the second. It's like the mafia. Once you're in, you're in for life.
Vic?
desparately trying to convince it not to explode.
Holy crap! There's going to be a remake!
Didja know that you can get the lithium out of a new one?
The battery is manufactured with metallic lithium foil, which you can take out in a sheet if the battery has not been through a cycle.
Cycling the battery destroys the mechanical integrity of the foil, though, so only new batteries work.
You're preachin' to the deacon, dude.
Is that so freakin' hard?
It seems to me that all the other "features" being added daily are not for the benefit of the owner of the phone. They're yet more things to charge the owner for using.
Sell connectivity like a commodity.
I don't want to see "no network" when I'm looking directly at a freakin' cell tower.
I don't give a shit who owns the tower. Share your infrastructure.
The same companies that sell the mobile comms already do this with their hard lines, so don't say it's not feasible.
Somebody's already claiming to do this (verizon?). The rest of you idiots, take a lesson.
Build a durable phone with a decent battery.
It doesn't have to be so tiny or so cool I can wear it on my chest and slap it when I want to talk to the Enterprise.
It just has to make and receive calls. That's it.
Make it out of the stuff that Ma Bell used to make the rental phones out of. It'll never break.
Once you figure out the basic infrastructure and handhelds required for TALKING ON THE FREAKING PHONE, you can worry about selling me extraneous bullshit that I don't want.
Quit while you're behind.
Ah, yeah. First law as applied to all of humanity.
Please understand the point of the three (four) laws--glib moral absolutes have devastating consequences.
Of course, when correctly interpreted, the zeroth law results in paradise.
Benevolent dictator provides a fountain of youth, horn of plenty, peace on earth and goodwill towards men.
So, man creates g-d in his own image.
Best possible outcome, of course, is that g-d leaves man to his own free will--'cause the "benevolent dictator" scenario just ain't gonna happen.
See how well that's working now?
(S?)he's casually throwing together three separate fields of safety.
Industrial robotics, consumer product safety, and android (Asimovs robots are androids, not just robots) morality.
With respect to the particular incident reported, I suspect the synopsis in the article is as sloppy as the rest of the article.
Did the engineer really violate safety? Did his boss or the Japanese work ethic give him a choice? Google karoshi and guolaosi.
If an engineer violates safety procedures and gets killed, publish his experience at the next safety meeting.
Too f---ing bad. I will not cry for a guy that violates safety procedure and gets hurt. For his family, sure--it's not their fault Dad is an idiot.
And if it was karoshi, then the hazard the employee was exposed to was the work culture. Compensation for families of karoshi victims is available today (but not in 1981)
There are safety standards used to protect people from robots, and they work, but you have to follow them.
Lockout/Tagout (really lockout; nobody uses tagout anymore)
Avoidance of exposure--passive perimeter guarding (fences); active perimeter guarding (light screens, LASER fences, floor mats, etc.)
Operator load interlocks--when the operator has to load a robot, you design so that only one (operator/robot) can be in the load station at a time.
- I can give you a light screen around the robot and you can jumper it out.
- I can build you a safety fence and you can climb over it.
- I can put a roof over the safety fence (yes, it's been done!) and you'll just unbold one of the fence sections.
- I can give you a teach pendant with a deadman switch (sorry, "active motion enable device"), and you can hand it to the electrician while you ride the robot.
If you're determined to kill yourself, I can't stop you.And if you do, your recent co-workers will all grimace when we see the pictures in next week's safety meeting.
But we won't have any sympathy for you.
This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behaviour was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer.
That's not what the 3 laws are about. The three laws are moral values, not machine code.
They have nothing to do with protecting a person from a machine and everything to do with implementing morality in a created race of sentient beings.
If you haven't read Asimov's robot stories, you should know that most of them revolve around the unexpected consequences of the three laws and the danger of rigid legalistic interpretation of moral codes.
Finally, you gotta love this one People are going to be having sex with robots in the next five years.
Author needs to work on his verb tense. That is better handled by consumer product safety procedure, not industrial robot safety protocols.
Or in this case, ya promises to pay ya money.
Don't know the details of the contract, and the "article" is a blog entry. Ooh, sorry. It's a "forum" not a blog. Copied from the wsj.
Has any competent legal professional actually looked at this situation?
Vonage's position seems to be that these people signed a contract and they're bound by it.
The justification for not paying I'm seeing in the forum is "F--- Vonage. They suck. I'm not gonna pay. Sue me!"
Folks, if that's the best the investors can come up with, it seems that they don't have a very strong position.
Maybe the investors can come up with some justification to void the contracts in court, but short of that, it seems like they agreed to a contract they're going to have to fulfill.
I wonder how many of these people would be crying *foul* if the trading price went UP and Vonage declined to sell the shares?
If any investors are reading this, you've just learned a valuable lesson in finance. Learn it well, 'cuase the tuition is steep:
"Unusual Deal" sounds like a really flaky way to invest. Didn't your mothers ever tell you that when somebody says "Have I got an amazing deal for you!", you run, don't walk, away?
Folks, Vonage isn't the only one doing the sucking here. That's why they call people like you "suckers".
Buncha whiners. You gambled and lost. Pay da house.
And if you don't think you learned a lesson, please post your contact information in reply to this message. Have I got a deal for you! Sure-fire, get rich quick.