"13 year olds are the scariest most belligerent people on the planet"
After the United States government.
Sure, you're trying to be funny and America-bash at the same time, but really. If the U.S. government were truly composed of the scariest, most belligerent people on the planet, why, we'd all be very fortunate. As it happens, there are far scarier, more belligerent, and rapidly-becoming-nuclear-capable governments on the planet. Get a grip. We may be your enemy, but we're not your only one.
But in the case of a Public Entity, It's the public that should be told. If the truth is inconvienient, so be it.
Indeed. And if that were the accepted practice (as it should be) I bet there'd be more QA positions opening up at some of these vendors.
So even if you do figure it out, Who are you gonna call?
That's an excellent point
I found a screwup once too... it was a major national newspaper (which I won't name) who left a folder full of word docs of upcoming stories wide open off their main Web site. Plus all kinds of other official-looking documents.
Now, I could have called or emailed or otherwise contacted them about their gaffe, and in fact I was tempted to do so. But I'd just read an article about another guy who did follow his Good Samaritan instincts. He got arrested by the FBI and charged with a felony. The IT person he contacted start shouting at him on the phone, called him all kinds of names, and then called the Feds.
So I just closed my browser, opened it again and went elsewhere. Fuck 'em... their incompetence is not my problem. The risk of jail time (particularly now, with everybody so paranoid about "terrorists" and "hackers") it's just not worth it.
I would think that proves that they are the stuff we want our citizens to be.
That is the flaw in your thinking. You, in one swell foop, have completely reduced the process of assimilation, of requiring an immigrant to show that they are Americans in all ways that count, to a simple matter of a desire for education. That's just not true, it has never been true, and it will never be true for any nation that gives a damn whether any of its culture's values persist.
Tell you what, why don't you talk to a few people that have successfully immmigrated to the United States and earned their citizenship. Ask them what they think about this idea of granting citizenship to anyone that wants it. You know what? They'll tell you it's a terrible idea. Being an American (or Chinese, or German, or French, or English or any other nationality) is not a matter of where you happen to live. It's a matter of who you are, and who you are willing to become.
I've said this before and I'll say it again: all nations reserve the right to determine who gets to live and work within their borders. The criteria that get applied are those that the citizens of that country want to be applied. Whether or not people from other nations agree with those policies is irrelevant.
If he refuses to help on the patent application after being instructed to do so, he's being insubordinate. That's grounds for immediate dismissal at most places I've worked. His personal feelings aside (and I agree with him that software patents were and are a bad idea) the reality is that the code in question is not his property. He should just deal with it, and if it really bothers him that much seek a position elsewhere.
Why stop there? Make it 25% per month and be done with it. As I understand it, they refused a court order to pay. Interest should be punitive at this point, I'd say.
Wasn't me. Although, at the moment I'm pretty baked on a narcotic, having recently had surgery. Probably a good thing I don't have any mod points right now.
Umm... if the RIAA doesn't control the rights to the music, it can't collect any royalties. Internet radio won't be dead, US based broadcasts of RIAA music will be dead.
As I understand it, the law as written requires payment of royalties regardless of whether the music in question is "owned" by the media cartel. Twisted as this is, they're way ahead of you there. I suspect that a U.S.-based Internet broadcaster won't be able to get out of paying these royalties by just moving the servers out of the country.
Clearly net radio is a huge market, why shoot themselves in the foot in the name of short term greed.
It's not their own feet that they're blowing holes in. They're shooting everyone else straight through the heart.
That is the problem with both the movie and the music industries: they have repeatedly shown themselves to be utterly unenlightened capitalists. In other words, they really don't care who they hurt as long as they get their way. Now, that's to be expected when you consider that all the large entertainment companies are no longer U.S. corporations: they're foreign-owned. So the real question is, why the hell are we allowing these bastards to influence our government? I'm sorry, but this has to be coming close to treason.
Your argument would actually have merit if there were a private organization (say, the Vehicle Owner's Association of Germany or some such) that was filing suit against thousands upon thousands of individuals with at best flimsy evidence. Furthermore, if numbered among their victims were people that were bedridden, paralyzed, legless or otherwise physically unable to drive a car, and if they continued to pursue those cases when clear evidence was presented that the person in question could not possibly, under any conditions, be the perpetrator then yes, you might have a point.
Court time is a limited resource, and prosectors in Germany are making the point that it shouldn't be spent on hundreds or thousands of frivolous lawsuits. Not all crimes are the same, and some "crimes" have no business in court, particularly when they're only there as part of a multinational private-sector terror campaign having nothing to do with redress of grievance.
Couldn't agree more. I've been on the same plan for some time as well, and I was also pleasantly surprised when they dropped the price. Perhaps they managed to work a better royalty deal with the studios, or maybe managed some other cost savings. Either way, I thought it was way cool that they passed some of those savings along to their customers rather than looking at it as a windfall profit. I've never had to call their customer service people, because I haven't yet had a problem with the service.
One time I sent three discs back, and one of them didn't make it. I just marked it as lost and that was that.
They kind of have to operate that way, because delivery of their product is dependent upon factors totally outside their control (the Post Office, neighbors, weather, etc.) If customers had to risk getting hit with charges for lost discs, the service would be perceived as too risky for most people.
If you want balance in blogs, just read biased blogs on both sides of a particular issue. Problem solved. No need to force someone who simply wants to vent his opinions to be "balanced".
Depends. The government would like to intimidate us into not using encryption in our daily lives. The problem comes in when not using encryption becomes at least as dangerous. Then, millions of people get put into a very difficult position, and that's not a situation that can last very long.
The way matters are going between ordinary Internet-using citizens and online criminals, we're all going to be forced into using encryption at some point. If the Feds try to take that away from us and get ugly about it, we're all going to be between a rock and a very hard place.
"Public Virtue cannot exist without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics." Adams insisted, "There must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power, and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real Liberty. And this public Passion must be Superior to all private Passions. Men must be ready, they must pride themselves, and be happy to sacrifice their private Pleasures, Passions, and Interests, nay their private Friendships and dearest connections, when they Stand in Competition with the Rights of society."
Kennedy was more succinct: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather, what you can do for your country."
Put Americans or Europeans in high density, tiny houses with tiny streets, and see what happens (my guess, the same).
My guess, very different. Put Americans and/or Europeans in a similar situation and I can guarantee the murder rate will go way up ("Hey! Stop looking at my wife, asshole!") Whether or not the Japanese like their lifestyle, or whether they simply accept it, is nothing I can comment upon. That they have adapted to it in ways that would be utterly foreign to most Westerners and Europeans is pretty obvious.
In addition to that, the project managed to show how trusting the local law enforcement agencies really were.
Why shouldn't they be? Why should people out in the open with laptops automatically be assumed to be criminals? No matter what they were doing, odds are the cops wouldn't have to technical knowledge to make a proper judgment anyway. Suppose these guys really were up to no good, and the cops questioned them about it. "We're just playing some network video games officer."
Or is the use of a portable computer in public now considered criminal behavior?
Slashdot Mirror
"13 year olds are the scariest most belligerent people on the planet"
After the United States government.
Sure, you're trying to be funny and America-bash at the same time, but really. If the U.S. government were truly composed of the scariest, most belligerent people on the planet, why, we'd all be very fortunate. As it happens, there are far scarier, more belligerent, and rapidly-becoming-nuclear-capable governments on the planet. Get a grip. We may be your enemy, but we're not your only one.
Yes, it's sad, Yes, it's leading to the decline of the United States. But if you're young and have college loans to pay off, what can you do?
A very profitable area for young students to go into is "Intellectual Property" law, which field is also hastening the decline of the United States.
'You can't simulate everything.'
Yet.
I'm on a bandwidth cap you insensitive clo(u)d!
I am too ... but I have Comcast so I don't know what it is.
But in the case of a Public Entity, It's the public that should be told. If the truth is inconvienient, so be it.
Indeed. And if that were the accepted practice (as it should be) I bet there'd be more QA positions opening up at some of these vendors.
So even if you do figure it out, Who are you gonna call?
That's an excellent point
... it was a major national newspaper (which I won't name) who left a folder full of word docs of upcoming stories wide open off their main Web site. Plus all kinds of other official-looking documents.
... their incompetence is not my problem. The risk of jail time (particularly now, with everybody so paranoid about "terrorists" and "hackers") it's just not worth it.
I found a screwup once too
Now, I could have called or emailed or otherwise contacted them about their gaffe, and in fact I was tempted to do so. But I'd just read an article about another guy who did follow his Good Samaritan instincts. He got arrested by the FBI and charged with a felony. The IT person he contacted start shouting at him on the phone, called him all kinds of names, and then called the Feds.
So I just closed my browser, opened it again and went elsewhere. Fuck 'em
The first fare card system, San Francisco's BART
I understand that they were originally going to call it the "Frisco Area Rapid Transit".
MTV plays music?
Technically.
He didn't say he wanted to drink our beer, just that he wanted to take it from us. Damned unfriendly, if you ask me.
I would think that proves that they are the stuff we want our citizens to be.
That is the flaw in your thinking. You, in one swell foop, have completely reduced the process of assimilation, of requiring an immigrant to show that they are Americans in all ways that count, to a simple matter of a desire for education. That's just not true, it has never been true, and it will never be true for any nation that gives a damn whether any of its culture's values persist.
Tell you what, why don't you talk to a few people that have successfully immmigrated to the United States and earned their citizenship. Ask them what they think about this idea of granting citizenship to anyone that wants it. You know what? They'll tell you it's a terrible idea. Being an American (or Chinese, or German, or French, or English or any other nationality) is not a matter of where you happen to live. It's a matter of who you are, and who you are willing to become.
I've said this before and I'll say it again: all nations reserve the right to determine who gets to live and work within their borders. The criteria that get applied are those that the citizens of that country want to be applied. Whether or not people from other nations agree with those policies is irrelevant.
If he refuses to help on the patent application after being instructed to do so, he's being insubordinate. That's grounds for immediate dismissal at most places I've worked. His personal feelings aside (and I agree with him that software patents were and are a bad idea) the reality is that the code in question is not his property. He should just deal with it, and if it really bothers him that much seek a position elsewhere.
Why stop there? Make it 25% per month and be done with it. As I understand it, they refused a court order to pay. Interest should be punitive at this point, I'd say.
Wasn't me. Although, at the moment I'm pretty baked on a narcotic, having recently had surgery. Probably a good thing I don't have any mod points right now.
Umm ... if the RIAA doesn't control the rights to the music, it can't collect any royalties. Internet radio won't be dead, US based broadcasts of RIAA music will be dead.
As I understand it, the law as written requires payment of royalties regardless of whether the music in question is "owned" by the media cartel. Twisted as this is, they're way ahead of you there. I suspect that a U.S.-based Internet broadcaster won't be able to get out of paying these royalties by just moving the servers out of the country.
Clearly net radio is a huge market, why shoot themselves in the foot in the name of short term greed.
It's not their own feet that they're blowing holes in. They're shooting everyone else straight through the heart.
That is the problem with both the movie and the music industries: they have repeatedly shown themselves to be utterly unenlightened capitalists. In other words, they really don't care who they hurt as long as they get their way. Now, that's to be expected when you consider that all the large entertainment companies are no longer U.S. corporations: they're foreign-owned. So the real question is, why the hell are we allowing these bastards to influence our government? I'm sorry, but this has to be coming close to treason.
Sounds to me like McCain's "platform" is centered around trying save a sinking ship. That's too bad. He's lost my vote on that issue alone.
Your argument would actually have merit if there were a private organization (say, the Vehicle Owner's Association of Germany or some such) that was filing suit against thousands upon thousands of individuals with at best flimsy evidence. Furthermore, if numbered among their victims were people that were bedridden, paralyzed, legless or otherwise physically unable to drive a car, and if they continued to pursue those cases when clear evidence was presented that the person in question could not possibly, under any conditions, be the perpetrator then yes, you might have a point.
Court time is a limited resource, and prosectors in Germany are making the point that it shouldn't be spent on hundreds or thousands of frivolous lawsuits. Not all crimes are the same, and some "crimes" have no business in court, particularly when they're only there as part of a multinational private-sector terror campaign having nothing to do with redress of grievance.
The Courts have better things to do.
Couldn't agree more. I've been on the same plan for some time as well, and I was also pleasantly surprised when they dropped the price. Perhaps they managed to work a better royalty deal with the studios, or maybe managed some other cost savings. Either way, I thought it was way cool that they passed some of those savings along to their customers rather than looking at it as a windfall profit. I've never had to call their customer service people, because I haven't yet had a problem with the service.
One time I sent three discs back, and one of them didn't make it. I just marked it as lost and that was that.
They kind of have to operate that way, because delivery of their product is dependent upon factors totally outside their control (the Post Office, neighbors, weather, etc.) If customers had to risk getting hit with charges for lost discs, the service would be perceived as too risky for most people.
A friend of mine gave a name to the phenomen you're describing: he calls it the "Firestone Theory of Managed Incompetence".
It seems they are being bitten in the rear by their home-grown proprietary inventory management system.
Scalability, scalability, scalability.
If you want balance in blogs, just read biased blogs on both sides of a particular issue. Problem solved. No need to force someone who simply wants to vent his opinions to be "balanced".
Depends. The government would like to intimidate us into not using encryption in our daily lives. The problem comes in when not using encryption becomes at least as dangerous. Then, millions of people get put into a very difficult position, and that's not a situation that can last very long.
The way matters are going between ordinary Internet-using citizens and online criminals, we're all going to be forced into using encryption at some point. If the Feds try to take that away from us and get ugly about it, we're all going to be between a rock and a very hard place.
The question is whether or not the problem went away, win, lose or settled.
"Public Virtue cannot exist without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics." Adams insisted, "There must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power, and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real Liberty. And this public Passion must be Superior to all private Passions. Men must be ready, they must pride themselves, and be happy to sacrifice their private Pleasures, Passions, and Interests, nay their private Friendships and dearest connections, when they Stand in Competition with the Rights of society."
Kennedy was more succinct: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather, what you can do for your country."
Put Americans or Europeans in high density, tiny houses with tiny streets, and see what happens (my guess, the same).
My guess, very different. Put Americans and/or Europeans in a similar situation and I can guarantee the murder rate will go way up ("Hey! Stop looking at my wife, asshole!") Whether or not the Japanese like their lifestyle, or whether they simply accept it, is nothing I can comment upon. That they have adapted to it in ways that would be utterly foreign to most Westerners and Europeans is pretty obvious.
In addition to that, the project managed to show how trusting the local law enforcement agencies really were.
Why shouldn't they be? Why should people out in the open with laptops automatically be assumed to be criminals? No matter what they were doing, odds are the cops wouldn't have to technical knowledge to make a proper judgment anyway. Suppose these guys really were up to no good, and the cops questioned them about it. "We're just playing some network video games officer."
Or is the use of a portable computer in public now considered criminal behavior?