You're right. And as long as we all continue to participate in the charade where the laws are reasonable and we're innocent and keep our heads down, those laws will continue. As long as the Ivory Tower folks are the only one with access to the data and they can keep us all from wanting to face these retarded laws, they can freely choose to arrest anyone at any time they wish.
I didn't know Aljazeera.Net was a solid source of science news. Are we sure this isn't intended to divert funding from the navy's guerilla dolphin program?
No, dude... it's got an oral biointerface, you just lick it and it transfers the data directly into your brain. I had a copy of Yellow Submarine on it once, but I accidentally swallowed it. The fidelity was intense, man.
No, slashdot isn't evil. But when they sell our mindspace to Microsoft etc, they do evil. We're just so accustomed to it that we tolerate it, but we shouldn't. Personally, if I could choose between condemning an advertising exec or a mugger, I'd go for the advertising exec. The mugger could stay busy every day for years and not cause the kind of harm that advertisers with their capacity to reach billions of people cause every day.
Don't watch google videos with ads. Refuse. Make this a money loser. Please, please, please don't let them make money off this. Utilizing psychological techniques on people to make them take actions without reason is EVIL, google. That means advertising. It's evil. Hiring psyche majors to apply their scientific knowledge to the task of assembling a visual display that convinces millions of people to act contrary to reason and buy inferior crap in the warped belief that it will make them thin and get them laid hurts us all. Please don't tolerate it.
Telling him that it will take 2-4 weeks and a server rack to get some kind of basic "store my recipes" database up and running is unacceptable. I envy people with jobs where they can lollygag around with "professional coding" solutions for all problems.
I wrote a professional "store my dvds and tv shows" app. SQL Server 2K and IIS, only because I have it on my dev box for work. Database, subdomain, separation of business and display logic, hardened against SQL injection and other common hacks, yadda yadda yadda. It took me 10 minutes. I could do it as easily in, say, my PHP/Postgres box, or whatever else you happened to have running on the corporate intranet server. It's rather trivial.
Where do you find people who will wait 2-4 weeks and pony up money for a server rack for such things? I want to steal your job.
Perhaps he simply recognizes that any benefit he might possibly gain from trusting microsoft should they prove trustworthy would not justify the cost of investigating them to such a degree as would be necessary to establish that trust.
Or to put it another way... I personally would be open to trusting Microsoft just as soon as you pay for me to send in the weapons inspectors, but I'm not paying for them.
This is a company with, in many cases, the best people in the world.
I don't know which is more disturbing. I mean, I use windows, I form an impression about the quality of its makers, and I think how scary it is, that good management can bring such a bunch of monkeys to world domination. Then I read something like this, and I think how scary would be if he was right, that bad management really can cause the best people in the world to produce something like windows.
I smoke a lot of pot when I'm burning the midnight oil, but I don't think it's making me smarter, just keeping me conscious. I get the work done though.
Have you already forgotten that there was a recent problem with some first tier networks having a spat over peering agreements that put significant chunks of the network out of reach for a day or so?
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this a perfect example of greedy businesses screwing with peoples service as a means of squeezing them for more money, precisely what network neutrality as a general principle is supposed to address?
The costs involved in telecommunications are in the laying of infrastructure. The cost to operate it after it is built is insignificant by comparison. Furthermore, the cost to operate it doesn't decrease appreciably with less users. You still need to run the lines regardless. It's not like when half the people turn their connections off they get to turn off half the lines and save electricity.
And this nightmare scenario, where too many people downloading a hot wardrobe malfunction cause the rest of the internet to stop, that has NEVER HAPPENED. The fact of the matter is that all this chaos exists because it has been demonstrated to be the most reliable means of running telecommunications in the public sector ever created. He talks about how all these essential services are moving online. They're not moving online because it's the cool thing to do and all the firefighters and EMS workers want to be hip. They're doing it because it's MORE reliable than the pre-existing ivory tower administered systems that predate it.
The reason why it's more reliable is because it is NOT STRATEGIC. It is TACTICAL. Highly structured systems where you say "we need to do it precisely this way and everything will work" rely on perfect information and perfect judgement, which do not exist. Chaotic systems like the internet work better because they say "we're not capable of making all these determinations and decisions on how the system should work, so we're going to lay down a set of tactics that will allow individual components to react co-operatively and intelligently to problems".
It's like the difference between a good boss, who recognizes the strength your individuality brings to the table and attempts to make it useful, and a bad manager, who tries to micromanage you and just ends up making you (and the entire system) less effective.
The internet, in it's chaotic form, is a SMART internet. Every node has the capacity to make tactical decisions, and thus react to problems that no other node even recognizes exists. Tiering, rather than attempting to progress this powerful idea, is a fundamental rejection and dismissal of that intelligence and the value it brings to the table.
I'll cap my little rant by mentioning that this whole thing about the internet being a resource in short supply is a ridiculous joke. Capacity has been growing faster than usage for a long time now, and we're at the point where free wireless mesh networks can be set up for next to nothing. Small cities with limited budgets and technical resources have demonstrated that they have the capacity to do this with no help all from any existing carrier. We could, with minimal investment in infrastucture, set up wireless networks of sufficient speed that they could assume all the burdens off the wired net for all in-city traffic, and with an intelligent caching system, it could assume a lot of the burden for inter-city traffic too. So for negligible investment (compared to laying fibre) we could practically unburden the entire existing internets physical infrastructure and use it for some new purpose without losing any of the communications we currently enjoy.
In a nutshell, the mans position is either utterly ignorant foolishness or a blatant lie intended to manipulate the people who are exposed to his bullshit, to the detriment of us all. Having seen how very warped the views of people who are isolated from reality with other intellectuals can become, I'm not quite cynical enough to say with any confidence which one it is.
It's based on common law. Which has roots that extend back to the UK, and further back to the Roman empire. In the absense of additional subsequent legislation, which does exist in some but not all areas, it holds true in Canada, US, UK, Australia, etc.
I'm Canadian too. If there's a law that stipulates that I must actively look for the owner of something that I find in a public place, I've never heard of it.
Common law is that the finder of a lost item could claim the right to possess the item against any other person in the world except the true owner. If I find a phone on the street, it is mine unless someone who can prove ownership asks me for it. I am not obliged to look for them, and I am not obliged to return it in the absense of proof of their ownership.
They found a phone and got an SMS from a third party advising them that there was a reward for its return. Then they got a message via AOL asking for them to come return it. I highly doubt that ANY of this would hold up in court. There's no proof of identity or proof of ownership inherent in either of these that would compel the finder to act.
The cops asked them to come down with evidence of ownership. When the evidence is present, and all parties are present, at that time, if they are asked to return the phone and do not, THEN they are guity of a crime. But until then, they're no more obliged to go out of their way to meet the woman who lost the phone than they would be if I were to send them a message and ask them to come give me the phone.
I would imagine this is why the cops asked them to bring the reciept and contact information of the person who found it down.
Why is everyone referring to these people as thieves? They FOUND the phone. They aren't guilty of a crime. So, what exactly are the police supposed to do about it? This is more like if your mom put all the money in the till in an envelope, wrote her name on it, and left it on the back seat of a taxi.
Exploiting someone elses stupid carelessness isn't nice, but it's not expressly against the law either.
Re:Cheaper isn't everything
on
The Art of SQL
·
· Score: 1
For this particular book, why do you need to purchase from them? You know what the book is, so no service needed, and selection is also not aplicable.
So how is buying this book from them (which is what you recomended) any different then charity?
It's different because of the motivation. If you value the existance of a local marketplace because it offers you value, you support it with your patronage so it will continue to exist. Pretty simple equation.
Actually, I was employeed to develop software to handle promotional merchandise for HP Asia because they didn't have the internal talent. Web site with cXML support for Ariba. Handled everything, stock management at the warehouses, shipping across asia, internal departmental payments, currency conversion in real time across 7 different currencies, expandable translation management system preloaded with 7 languages, etc. I worked directly with one of the VPs of the company and with a number of their internal IT staff. And this was neither the largest company I've worked with nor the largest project I've completed, so I feel qualified to at least have a somewhat informed opinion.
You can form whatever opinions you want about the subject, or my motivations for why I think the way that I do. But my opinions are based on my not inconsiderable experience. I may be a bit of a lone gun, but I hire people from time to time, I judge them based on my real world experiences, and I deliver successful projects. Every single time. What percentage of cubicle warriors do you think get to say that with a straight face?
I'm reminded of a conversation I had with an old electrical engineer that worked for the government. He told me that he wouldn't ever recommend that anyone work for the government in a technical role, because while the money and security were good, you would repeatedly spend months or years on a project only to have it axed because of administrative changes and your hard work would have no meaning whatsoever. It sucks your soul, makes you bitter, teaches you that hard work and good craftsmanship are a waste of time. The corporate world is the same way. Doesn't mean I'm flat out not going to hire you, but it does mean I'm going to take an awful hard second look at your project experience.
If there was ever an industry that smiles on the driven and responsible small entrepreneur, it is the IT industry. Most of us are to some extent or another self taught. The ones that have a self-improving and driven to achieve attitude are the ones least likely to fit into the "big company cubicle" culture. They run the show, they work in small development shops, they like to see their personal decisions put into implementation. They find reward in a job well done.
If you're working at a huge company like HP, you're not that sort of person. You're mediocre, that's why you're there. You're a person who wants security. You'll sacrifice creative control for it, you'll do a shoddy job because thats what the manager wants, you just want to get paid. You went to school for a career, and this is it. You like safe and lazy. Not the best attitudes for telecommuters.
Flat out. If you're looking for an independent self-starter, you should consider cubicle drone experience a black mark. For this reason, I'm not suprised a huge, sprawling, badly managed company like HP is having troubles with their telecommuters.
When I was in high school, typing class was a prerequisite for computer programming, and they had 30 typewriters in the class with no letters on the keys, just like these keyboards. Instead, there was a large diagram of the keyboard WITH the letters stuck on the front wall. If you couldn't remember where a letter was, you looked up at the board instead of down at your hands.
It made a huge difference learning to type. That's not just my opinion, everyone thought it was strange at first, but all agreed that it helped them learn.
When my daughter is older and has big enough hands to touch type rather than hunt and peck, I'll prob replace her keyboard with one of these and put a diagram on the wall next to her desk.
I know how to deal with this. We need to get the feminists on board.
First, we explain how the internet makes culture and information plentiful goods, and how if the government didn't criminalize sharing it, market forces would in short order make them freely available to everyone in as much abundance as they wished.
Then we explain how the whole copyright thing is a conspiracy by a bunch of Rich White Men to tie access to culture, education and information to earning power as a covert way of keeping it away from women, who have less earning power. (Don't worry if that last bit is true or not, they'll accept it.)
Then we can just sit back, watch the fireworks, and in no time copyright will be toast.
(Just don't let the chinese hear this logic, or they might start enforcing copyright over there)
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. And as long as we all continue to participate in the charade where the laws are reasonable and we're innocent and keep our heads down, those laws will continue. As long as the Ivory Tower folks are the only one with access to the data and they can keep us all from wanting to face these retarded laws, they can freely choose to arrest anyone at any time they wish.
This is how police states are formed.
It's simpler than that. Just make it all totally public.
Your sense of humour astounds me.
I didn't know Aljazeera.Net was a solid source of science news. Are we sure this isn't intended to divert funding from the navy's guerilla dolphin program?
AFF
Johansson served for some five years as a 'senior security strategist'
He's #1 in securing windows machines. He carries very sharp scissors in his back pocket.
If I had mod points, you would have them
No, dude... it's got an oral biointerface, you just lick it and it transfers the data directly into your brain. I had a copy of Yellow Submarine on it once, but I accidentally swallowed it. The fidelity was intense, man.
Intense...
No, slashdot isn't evil. But when they sell our mindspace to Microsoft etc, they do evil. We're just so accustomed to it that we tolerate it, but we shouldn't. Personally, if I could choose between condemning an advertising exec or a mugger, I'd go for the advertising exec. The mugger could stay busy every day for years and not cause the kind of harm that advertisers with their capacity to reach billions of people cause every day.
Don't watch google videos with ads. Refuse. Make this a money loser. Please, please, please don't let them make money off this. Utilizing psychological techniques on people to make them take actions without reason is EVIL, google. That means advertising. It's evil. Hiring psyche majors to apply their scientific knowledge to the task of assembling a visual display that convinces millions of people to act contrary to reason and buy inferior crap in the warped belief that it will make them thin and get them laid hurts us all. Please don't tolerate it.
Telling him that it will take 2-4 weeks and a server rack to get some kind of basic "store my recipes" database up and running is unacceptable. I envy people with jobs where they can lollygag around with "professional coding" solutions for all problems.
I wrote a professional "store my dvds and tv shows" app. SQL Server 2K and IIS, only because I have it on my dev box for work. Database, subdomain, separation of business and display logic, hardened against SQL injection and other common hacks, yadda yadda yadda. It took me 10 minutes. I could do it as easily in, say, my PHP/Postgres box, or whatever else you happened to have running on the corporate intranet server. It's rather trivial.
Where do you find people who will wait 2-4 weeks and pony up money for a server rack for such things? I want to steal your job.
Perhaps he simply recognizes that any benefit he might possibly gain from trusting microsoft should they prove trustworthy would not justify the cost of investigating them to such a degree as would be necessary to establish that trust.
Or to put it another way... I personally would be open to trusting Microsoft just as soon as you pay for me to send in the weapons inspectors, but I'm not paying for them.
This is a company with, in many cases, the best people in the world.
I don't know which is more disturbing. I mean, I use windows, I form an impression about the quality of its makers, and I think how scary it is, that good management can bring such a bunch of monkeys to world domination. Then I read something like this, and I think how scary would be if he was right, that bad management really can cause the best people in the world to produce something like windows.
He can't be right, can he?
Time to start investing in wireless...
I smoke a lot of pot when I'm burning the midnight oil, but I don't think it's making me smarter, just keeping me conscious. I get the work done though.
Have you already forgotten that there was a recent problem with some first tier networks having a spat over peering agreements that put significant chunks of the network out of reach for a day or so?
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this a perfect example of greedy businesses screwing with peoples service as a means of squeezing them for more money, precisely what network neutrality as a general principle is supposed to address?
This is all bullshit.
The costs involved in telecommunications are in the laying of infrastructure. The cost to operate it after it is built is insignificant by comparison. Furthermore, the cost to operate it doesn't decrease appreciably with less users. You still need to run the lines regardless. It's not like when half the people turn their connections off they get to turn off half the lines and save electricity.
And this nightmare scenario, where too many people downloading a hot wardrobe malfunction cause the rest of the internet to stop, that has NEVER HAPPENED. The fact of the matter is that all this chaos exists because it has been demonstrated to be the most reliable means of running telecommunications in the public sector ever created. He talks about how all these essential services are moving online. They're not moving online because it's the cool thing to do and all the firefighters and EMS workers want to be hip. They're doing it because it's MORE reliable than the pre-existing ivory tower administered systems that predate it.
The reason why it's more reliable is because it is NOT STRATEGIC. It is TACTICAL. Highly structured systems where you say "we need to do it precisely this way and everything will work" rely on perfect information and perfect judgement, which do not exist. Chaotic systems like the internet work better because they say "we're not capable of making all these determinations and decisions on how the system should work, so we're going to lay down a set of tactics that will allow individual components to react co-operatively and intelligently to problems".
It's like the difference between a good boss, who recognizes the strength your individuality brings to the table and attempts to make it useful, and a bad manager, who tries to micromanage you and just ends up making you (and the entire system) less effective.
The internet, in it's chaotic form, is a SMART internet. Every node has the capacity to make tactical decisions, and thus react to problems that no other node even recognizes exists. Tiering, rather than attempting to progress this powerful idea, is a fundamental rejection and dismissal of that intelligence and the value it brings to the table.
I'll cap my little rant by mentioning that this whole thing about the internet being a resource in short supply is a ridiculous joke. Capacity has been growing faster than usage for a long time now, and we're at the point where free wireless mesh networks can be set up for next to nothing. Small cities with limited budgets and technical resources have demonstrated that they have the capacity to do this with no help all from any existing carrier. We could, with minimal investment in infrastucture, set up wireless networks of sufficient speed that they could assume all the burdens off the wired net for all in-city traffic, and with an intelligent caching system, it could assume a lot of the burden for inter-city traffic too. So for negligible investment (compared to laying fibre) we could practically unburden the entire existing internets physical infrastructure and use it for some new purpose without losing any of the communications we currently enjoy.
In a nutshell, the mans position is either utterly ignorant foolishness or a blatant lie intended to manipulate the people who are exposed to his bullshit, to the detriment of us all. Having seen how very warped the views of people who are isolated from reality with other intellectuals can become, I'm not quite cynical enough to say with any confidence which one it is.
It's based on common law. Which has roots that extend back to the UK, and further back to the Roman empire. In the absense of additional subsequent legislation, which does exist in some but not all areas, it holds true in Canada, US, UK, Australia, etc.
I'm Canadian too. If there's a law that stipulates that I must actively look for the owner of something that I find in a public place, I've never heard of it.
Common law is that the finder of a lost item could claim the right to possess the item against any other person in the world except the true owner. If I find a phone on the street, it is mine unless someone who can prove ownership asks me for it. I am not obliged to look for them, and I am not obliged to return it in the absense of proof of their ownership.
They found a phone and got an SMS from a third party advising them that there was a reward for its return. Then they got a message via AOL asking for them to come return it. I highly doubt that ANY of this would hold up in court. There's no proof of identity or proof of ownership inherent in either of these that would compel the finder to act.
The cops asked them to come down with evidence of ownership. When the evidence is present, and all parties are present, at that time, if they are asked to return the phone and do not, THEN they are guity of a crime. But until then, they're no more obliged to go out of their way to meet the woman who lost the phone than they would be if I were to send them a message and ask them to come give me the phone.
I would imagine this is why the cops asked them to bring the reciept and contact information of the person who found it down.
Why is everyone referring to these people as thieves? They FOUND the phone. They aren't guilty of a crime. So, what exactly are the police supposed to do about it? This is more like if your mom put all the money in the till in an envelope, wrote her name on it, and left it on the back seat of a taxi.
Exploiting someone elses stupid carelessness isn't nice, but it's not expressly against the law either.
For this particular book, why do you need to purchase from them? You know what the book is, so no service needed, and selection is also not aplicable.
So how is buying this book from them (which is what you recomended) any different then charity?
It's different because of the motivation. If you value the existance of a local marketplace because it offers you value, you support it with your patronage so it will continue to exist. Pretty simple equation.
Actually, I was employeed to develop software to handle promotional merchandise for HP Asia because they didn't have the internal talent. Web site with cXML support for Ariba. Handled everything, stock management at the warehouses, shipping across asia, internal departmental payments, currency conversion in real time across 7 different currencies, expandable translation management system preloaded with 7 languages, etc. I worked directly with one of the VPs of the company and with a number of their internal IT staff. And this was neither the largest company I've worked with nor the largest project I've completed, so I feel qualified to at least have a somewhat informed opinion.
You can form whatever opinions you want about the subject, or my motivations for why I think the way that I do. But my opinions are based on my not inconsiderable experience. I may be a bit of a lone gun, but I hire people from time to time, I judge them based on my real world experiences, and I deliver successful projects. Every single time. What percentage of cubicle warriors do you think get to say that with a straight face?
I'm reminded of a conversation I had with an old electrical engineer that worked for the government. He told me that he wouldn't ever recommend that anyone work for the government in a technical role, because while the money and security were good, you would repeatedly spend months or years on a project only to have it axed because of administrative changes and your hard work would have no meaning whatsoever. It sucks your soul, makes you bitter, teaches you that hard work and good craftsmanship are a waste of time. The corporate world is the same way. Doesn't mean I'm flat out not going to hire you, but it does mean I'm going to take an awful hard second look at your project experience.
If there was ever an industry that smiles on the driven and responsible small entrepreneur, it is the IT industry. Most of us are to some extent or another self taught. The ones that have a self-improving and driven to achieve attitude are the ones least likely to fit into the "big company cubicle" culture. They run the show, they work in small development shops, they like to see their personal decisions put into implementation. They find reward in a job well done.
If you're working at a huge company like HP, you're not that sort of person. You're mediocre, that's why you're there. You're a person who wants security. You'll sacrifice creative control for it, you'll do a shoddy job because thats what the manager wants, you just want to get paid. You went to school for a career, and this is it. You like safe and lazy. Not the best attitudes for telecommuters.
Flat out. If you're looking for an independent self-starter, you should consider cubicle drone experience a black mark. For this reason, I'm not suprised a huge, sprawling, badly managed company like HP is having troubles with their telecommuters.
When I was in high school, typing class was a prerequisite for computer programming, and they had 30 typewriters in the class with no letters on the keys, just like these keyboards. Instead, there was a large diagram of the keyboard WITH the letters stuck on the front wall. If you couldn't remember where a letter was, you looked up at the board instead of down at your hands.
It made a huge difference learning to type. That's not just my opinion, everyone thought it was strange at first, but all agreed that it helped them learn.
When my daughter is older and has big enough hands to touch type rather than hunt and peck, I'll prob replace her keyboard with one of these and put a diagram on the wall next to her desk.
I know how to deal with this. We need to get the feminists on board.
First, we explain how the internet makes culture and information plentiful goods, and how if the government didn't criminalize sharing it, market forces would in short order make them freely available to everyone in as much abundance as they wished.
Then we explain how the whole copyright thing is a conspiracy by a bunch of Rich White Men to tie access to culture, education and information to earning power as a covert way of keeping it away from women, who have less earning power. (Don't worry if that last bit is true or not, they'll accept it.)
Then we can just sit back, watch the fireworks, and in no time copyright will be toast.
(Just don't let the chinese hear this logic, or they might start enforcing copyright over there)