Just out of curiosity, could you tell me how you handle the keg for that long a time? Did you build a custom chiller (there was a Slashdot article about that sometime back, I think) or do you just pour it warm?
Quoting The Bishop lecturing to Slippery Jim DiGriz (a.k.a. The Stainless Steel Rat): "Man is a rationalizing animal, and requires training to become a rational one."
Lawyer language can be aggressive, but when you bring in lawyers it means you have already tried nicely.
No longer. More and more, the lawyers are being turned loose at the first sign of trouble, apparently in the belief that a good offense is the best defense. Also, given that news travels very quickly on the Web, companies seem to figure that if they immediately bitchslap any person or organization that "offends" them, the deterrent effect will limit further "offenses." It's a crappy methodology but it's the modern way. Hard to say if it actually works, though.
I don't see anything wrong with this. If you don't like it, you should have immigrated into a different country.
Seriously: why does the very same sentiment in the US produce such vitriol?
Because the people who understand that being an American (or a Frenchman, or an Englishman, or anyone else) is more than a piece of paper are in diametric opposition to those who wish to exploit the current immigration crisis, in one way or another. Some see the influx of illegal immigrants (and their citizen offspring) as political power, other see them as a way to raise profit margins. Others see it as a destructive influence upon our traditional culture, and would like those that want to come here to a. play by the rules and b. to understand what it means to be an American, to truly be a part of our culture.
That's not happening with the influx of illegal aliens in the United States, nor is it happening in France. In both cases the incoming non-citizens are simply transplanting their existing societal values and deliberately attempting to influence the culture and politics of their adopted nation. That's a particular problem for France (indeed, for most European nations) since their social structures have been around for a lot longer than ours. Still, it's a problem here as well. It's not okay to come here and remake us into an analog of your home country. We're going to resent that, and we do.
They helped finance the Revolution... without France the United States would have been stillborn. They gave us the Statue of Liberty in recognition of the friendship and mutual respect between the two nations. Remember when Jane Fonda commented to Johnny Carson, "What did the French ever do for us?" That earned her Carson's famous wide-eyed "what the fuck?" look.
Of course, people would have to have some awareness of history to know any of this. There's a reason why we teach history in schools. It has numerous benefits: among other things, it helps you to remember who your friends are.
It wasn't illegal. People try to compare it to, say, Microsoft... but it's Apples to Oranges. AT&T was a government instituted monopoly, granted to AT&T in exchange for their following some strict regulations and providing service for all. Which, I might add, by and large they did, and did very well. We had the most reliable phone system on the planet.
What we really needed was to have the lock on subscriber equipment broken, so I could go out and buy a phone from a third party rather than being forced to rent it from AT&T. Judge Green overshot the mark when he broke up old AT&T. The result of his decision turned the telecom industry into a free for all which (predictably) resulted in the gradual coalescing of AT&T and the old Baby Bells back into the original giant, but without the original regulatory controls and quality-of-service standards.
All in all, not really a good thing. The court also failed to understand that competition was coming whether AT&T wanted it or not.
Well, I agree that running a Web server on a home box is pretty pointless (unless that site has some direct impact on your home, say a remote X10 controller or something like that) but there really isn't much "hassle" involved in running a mail server. I mean, it's about one of the most basic Internet services out there, and there's tons of good software. I run my own because I prefer to have my communications stored on media that is firmly under my control. I don't even run outgoing SMTP through my ISP's server (whose track record on privacy isn't particularly good anyway) and the outfit that hosts my domains allows me to alter their MX records to point directly to my own system. Performance is substantially better that way (no more polling) and people are often surprised that I receive their messages within a second or less of their clicking "Send".
Yeah, but can you watch your ripped DVDs on your laptop in the backyard while you're grilling burgers on the barbecue? Truth is, "Joe User" is going to be far more concerned with local bandwidth than anything else, and unless you've got a seriously fat pipe to that rackspace job it's not going to be much use for a typical home content server.
I don't think that's the case at all. I think external consequences are important to stop a very small subset of people who are borderline
I hope you're right, but then again it only takes a small increase in the size of that borderline subset to cause significant damage. I think we're seeing that increase right now.
I do not know how to do just one thing, I am not an older worker. I am young (32 years old), but have spent 10 years with the company.
I have news for you: thirty-two qualifies as an "older worker" in the modern world (not that I'm saying 32 is old!) However, ten years experience? You're no newbie: that's a substantial work history, my friend. It's worthy of a decent salary, much more than they would have to pay for an outsourced worker or a recent graduate. It's much more than the cheap bastards that run today's companies want to pay for. If I was still running my old consulting business and you were working for me, I would expect to pay you what you were worth, and I would expect you to make that money back for me and then some. That's how the game is supposed to be played.
The problem is that experience is simply not valued by American corporations anymore. It just isn't, and that really is the crux of the matter. If you do value the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of your employees, you come to the realization that paying them what they're worth is, in fact, worth every penny. That's because they are that which makes your company valuable. It's not the buildings, the furniture, the physical plant: it's the people. But you have to have a degree of foresight to understand that, and maybe an awareness of history, and both are in short supply nowadays.
Take me... I've been a software developer for twenty-seven years (started my own consulting business when I was twenty), doing software for the manufacturing sector, with a minor sideline in video games. So now, after all that time, all that experience in product design, management and implementation, I find that my country doesn't see me (and those like me) as anything but a cheap commodity. Too many Palmisano's and Fiorina's have devalued thousands upon thousands of talented engineers and technical people of all kinds, the very people that we need to maintain our industrial base and the high standard of living that came along with it.
At some point I guess I'll have to become a manager, or go back into business for myself. Personally, I find the latter option more appealing: even middle management isn't safe from layoffs anymore, and frankly I'd rather be bossing computers around than telling people what to do. But that's just me. Maybe when I get old enough and lose my edge I'll try management, but for now I like coding too much.
Oh well, I will take my severance and run and get the hell away from this sinking ship as fast as I can.
... do that, and don't look back. And good luck, whatever happens.
Given that the Attorney General is facing impeachment for obstruction of justice, lying to Congress and facilitating the corruption of at least ten Republicans in Congress, it does not look very likely that Congress is going to give Bush additional powers at this time. More likely they add illegal wiretapping to the Gonzalez impeachment charges.
Well, I guess the President will need that pardon power after all.
There aren't many people actually capable of comitting a murder, so the fact that Nina Reiser's ex-lover is a self-confessed serial killer strikes me as a far too remarkable coincidence.
It depends upon the motivation, the stakes. I wouldn't kill someone for money. I wouldn't kill them for revenge. I wouldn't kill them because they angered me. On the other hand, say you tried to kill my fiancee: I'd murder you in a heartbeat without batting an eye. Now, even if I escaped official punishment I would pay a high price for that act. Most of us would, but we're all capable of murder, at some level. We have to be, because sometimes... it's the right thing to do. There a lot of people in the United States that don't understand that anymore, don't accept that human life is valuable but not infinitely so, and that some are worth more than others. We may all have been created equal, but sadly not all end up that way.
You're right in that by far the majority of us won't kill for trivial reasons, although one has to wonder how much of that reluctance is due to the sanctions imposed by society against such behavior, or some intrinsic aversion to killing. Sociopathy, to varying degrees, is more common than one might want to believe, so maybe all that's keeping murder in check is the fear of consequences. I mean, all societies feel the need to impose severe punishment for murder, which leads me to believe that, at the core, we aren't quite as civilized as we think we are.
Besides, O.J. Simpson killed two people in cold blood, and in spite of substantially more incriminating evidence, O.J. managed to get off scott free. O.J. had mountains of money to spend on his Dream Team though.
I could make the same comment about the flaming, gaping assholes that run the international media companies. Tell them to stop trying to steal the public domain, stop trying to lock our culture and our history away from us, stop spending so much time bent over their desks taking it up the ass from their stockholders, stop fucking with us, stop bribing our lawmakers... and for fuck's sake fucking grow up. And while you're at it, poison that little rat bastard Mickey before he does any more damage to our legal system. These people are more dangerous to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness than the Russian mafia, and need to be reined in. If it takes the efforts of a few nerds to bring some balance back into the equation, so be it, because otherwise we're probably going to have to shoot them.
So, you can take the side of the big copyright holders, if you wish, but keep in mind that most of this is their fault in the first place. They asked for it, and when the Internet finally came along... they got it. Don't expect me to shed a single tear for any of those little pricks. They've been leeching off the genius of our most creative minds for ages, and if (and that's a big "if", Hollywood accounting being what it is) they're getting reamed now it's no more than they deserve.
Respect needs to go both ways in this case, or nothing will change. And as long as they're throwing lawsuits and DRM around, I will not respect them.
As to China, they are trying to position themselves to own the world economy and then control countries in manners that they see fit(a MUCH larger USA with a nastier attitude).
Ahh.. your friendly neighbors to the north do not see a functional difference between you two.
I object to that too, generally, but the alternatives (get people to stop breeding. . . somehow?) don't seem practical with today's technologies.
Really. I mean, even colonies of mice will limit their population when it reaches a certain density. We do too, but that usually involves unpleasantries such as war, famine, pestilence, and a lot of dead people.
No matter. If we continue waiting around without improving our industrial and cultural processes, the problem will resolve itself, in the aforementioned manner.
The problem with better solutions is that they often require cultural changes. That's hard, it takes time, and politicians want instant answers because that's what their constituents demand. Telling your elected representatives that "something must be done" will often result in something being done, it's true. Unfortunately, you'll usually wish you'd kept your mouth shut when they're finished doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. Can you say "Patriot Act"? It's amazing to me how many people simply take a name at face value and look no further.
I would define it as Uniconsensual Sexual Intercourse.
Just out of curiosity, could you tell me how you handle the keg for that long a time? Did you build a custom chiller (there was a Slashdot article about that sometime back, I think) or do you just pour it warm?
I'd say more as if "millions of ex-Star Wars fans yawned and went back to watching Stargate."
well I'll be a monkey's uncle...
Other way around, I'm afraid.
Quoting The Bishop lecturing to Slippery Jim DiGriz (a.k.a. The Stainless Steel Rat): "Man is a rationalizing animal, and requires training to become a rational one."
You have to ask how many of the pro-Verizon posters happen to also have some Verizon stock.
Lawyer language can be aggressive, but when you bring in lawyers it means you have already tried nicely.
No longer. More and more, the lawyers are being turned loose at the first sign of trouble, apparently in the belief that a good offense is the best defense. Also, given that news travels very quickly on the Web, companies seem to figure that if they immediately bitchslap any person or organization that "offends" them, the deterrent effect will limit further "offenses." It's a crappy methodology but it's the modern way. Hard to say if it actually works, though.
Yeah, and let's not forget the warpdrive. Of course, there's prior art for that one ...
I don't see anything wrong with this. If you don't like it, you should have immigrated into a different country.
Seriously: why does the very same sentiment in the US produce such vitriol?
Because the people who understand that being an American (or a Frenchman, or an Englishman, or anyone else) is more than a piece of paper are in diametric opposition to those who wish to exploit the current immigration crisis, in one way or another. Some see the influx of illegal immigrants (and their citizen offspring) as political power, other see them as a way to raise profit margins. Others see it as a destructive influence upon our traditional culture, and would like those that want to come here to a. play by the rules and b. to understand what it means to be an American, to truly be a part of our culture.
That's not happening with the influx of illegal aliens in the United States, nor is it happening in France. In both cases the incoming non-citizens are simply transplanting their existing societal values and deliberately attempting to influence the culture and politics of their adopted nation. That's a particular problem for France (indeed, for most European nations) since their social structures have been around for a lot longer than ours. Still, it's a problem here as well. It's not okay to come here and remake us into an analog of your home country. We're going to resent that, and we do.
They helped finance the Revolution ... without France the United States would have been stillborn. They gave us the Statue of Liberty in recognition of the friendship and mutual respect between the two nations. Remember when Jane Fonda commented to Johnny Carson, "What did the French ever do for us?" That earned her Carson's famous wide-eyed "what the fuck?" look.
Of course, people would have to have some awareness of history to know any of this. There's a reason why we teach history in schools. It has numerous benefits: among other things, it helps you to remember who your friends are.
It wasn't illegal. People try to compare it to, say, Microsoft ... but it's Apples to Oranges. AT&T was a government instituted monopoly, granted to AT&T in exchange for their following some strict regulations and providing service for all. Which, I might add, by and large they did, and did very well. We had the most reliable phone system on the planet.
What we really needed was to have the lock on subscriber equipment broken, so I could go out and buy a phone from a third party rather than being forced to rent it from AT&T. Judge Green overshot the mark when he broke up old AT&T. The result of his decision turned the telecom industry into a free for all which (predictably) resulted in the gradual coalescing of AT&T and the old Baby Bells back into the original giant, but without the original regulatory controls and quality-of-service standards.
All in all, not really a good thing. The court also failed to understand that competition was coming whether AT&T wanted it or not.
Well, I agree that running a Web server on a home box is pretty pointless (unless that site has some direct impact on your home, say a remote X10 controller or something like that) but there really isn't much "hassle" involved in running a mail server. I mean, it's about one of the most basic Internet services out there, and there's tons of good software. I run my own because I prefer to have my communications stored on media that is firmly under my control. I don't even run outgoing SMTP through my ISP's server (whose track record on privacy isn't particularly good anyway) and the outfit that hosts my domains allows me to alter their MX records to point directly to my own system. Performance is substantially better that way (no more polling) and people are often surprised that I receive their messages within a second or less of their clicking "Send".
Yeah, but can you watch your ripped DVDs on your laptop in the backyard while you're grilling burgers on the barbecue? Truth is, "Joe User" is going to be far more concerned with local bandwidth than anything else, and unless you've got a seriously fat pipe to that rackspace job it's not going to be much use for a typical home content server.
I don't think that's the case at all. I think external consequences are important to stop a very small subset of people who are borderline
I hope you're right, but then again it only takes a small increase in the size of that borderline subset to cause significant damage. I think we're seeing that increase right now.
I do not know how to do just one thing, I am not an older worker. I am young (32 years old), but have spent 10 years with the company.
... I've been a software developer for twenty-seven years (started my own consulting business when I was twenty), doing software for the manufacturing sector, with a minor sideline in video games. So now, after all that time, all that experience in product design, management and implementation, I find that my country doesn't see me (and those like me) as anything but a cheap commodity. Too many Palmisano's and Fiorina's have devalued thousands upon thousands of talented engineers and technical people of all kinds, the very people that we need to maintain our industrial base and the high standard of living that came along with it.
... do that, and don't look back. And good luck, whatever happens.
I have news for you: thirty-two qualifies as an "older worker" in the modern world (not that I'm saying 32 is old!) However, ten years experience? You're no newbie: that's a substantial work history, my friend. It's worthy of a decent salary, much more than they would have to pay for an outsourced worker or a recent graduate. It's much more than the cheap bastards that run today's companies want to pay for. If I was still running my old consulting business and you were working for me, I would expect to pay you what you were worth, and I would expect you to make that money back for me and then some. That's how the game is supposed to be played.
The problem is that experience is simply not valued by American corporations anymore. It just isn't, and that really is the crux of the matter. If you do value the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of your employees, you come to the realization that paying them what they're worth is, in fact, worth every penny. That's because they are that which makes your company valuable. It's not the buildings, the furniture, the physical plant: it's the people. But you have to have a degree of foresight to understand that, and maybe an awareness of history, and both are in short supply nowadays.
Take me
At some point I guess I'll have to become a manager, or go back into business for myself. Personally, I find the latter option more appealing: even middle management isn't safe from layoffs anymore, and frankly I'd rather be bossing computers around than telling people what to do. But that's just me. Maybe when I get old enough and lose my edge I'll try management, but for now I like coding too much.
Oh well, I will take my severance and run and get the hell away from this sinking ship as fast as I can.
Given that the Attorney General is facing impeachment for obstruction of justice, lying to Congress and facilitating the corruption of at least ten Republicans in Congress, it does not look very likely that Congress is going to give Bush additional powers at this time. More likely they add illegal wiretapping to the Gonzalez impeachment charges.
Well, I guess the President will need that pardon power after all.
There aren't many people actually capable of comitting a murder, so the fact that Nina Reiser's ex-lover is a self-confessed serial killer strikes me as a far too remarkable coincidence.
... it's the right thing to do. There a lot of people in the United States that don't understand that anymore, don't accept that human life is valuable but not infinitely so, and that some are worth more than others. We may all have been created equal, but sadly not all end up that way.
It depends upon the motivation, the stakes. I wouldn't kill someone for money. I wouldn't kill them for revenge. I wouldn't kill them because they angered me. On the other hand, say you tried to kill my fiancee: I'd murder you in a heartbeat without batting an eye. Now, even if I escaped official punishment I would pay a high price for that act. Most of us would, but we're all capable of murder, at some level. We have to be, because sometimes
You're right in that by far the majority of us won't kill for trivial reasons, although one has to wonder how much of that reluctance is due to the sanctions imposed by society against such behavior, or some intrinsic aversion to killing. Sociopathy, to varying degrees, is more common than one might want to believe, so maybe all that's keeping murder in check is the fear of consequences. I mean, all societies feel the need to impose severe punishment for murder, which leads me to believe that, at the core, we aren't quite as civilized as we think we are.
Besides, O.J. Simpson killed two people in cold blood, and in spite of substantially more incriminating evidence, O.J. managed to get off scott free. O.J. had mountains of money to spend on his Dream Team though.
I could make the same comment about the flaming, gaping assholes that run the international media companies. Tell them to stop trying to steal the public domain, stop trying to lock our culture and our history away from us, stop spending so much time bent over their desks taking it up the ass from their stockholders, stop fucking with us, stop bribing our lawmakers ... and for fuck's sake fucking grow up. And while you're at it, poison that little rat bastard Mickey before he does any more damage to our legal system. These people are more dangerous to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness than the Russian mafia, and need to be reined in. If it takes the efforts of a few nerds to bring some balance back into the equation, so be it, because otherwise we're probably going to have to shoot them.
... they got it. Don't expect me to shed a single tear for any of those little pricks. They've been leeching off the genius of our most creative minds for ages, and if (and that's a big "if", Hollywood accounting being what it is) they're getting reamed now it's no more than they deserve.
So, you can take the side of the big copyright holders, if you wish, but keep in mind that most of this is their fault in the first place. They asked for it, and when the Internet finally came along
Respect needs to go both ways in this case, or nothing will change. And as long as they're throwing lawsuits and DRM around, I will not respect them.
As to China, they are trying to position themselves to own the world economy and then control countries in manners that they see fit(a MUCH larger USA with a nastier attitude).
Ahh.. your friendly neighbors to the north do not see a functional difference between you two.
You will.
I guess they'll have to have them made in China, for that kind of money.
+1 Insightful if I had any points.
I object to that too, generally, but the alternatives (get people to stop breeding. . . somehow?) don't seem practical with today's technologies.
Really. I mean, even colonies of mice will limit their population when it reaches a certain density. We do too, but that usually involves unpleasantries such as war, famine, pestilence, and a lot of dead people.
No matter. If we continue waiting around without improving our industrial and cultural processes, the problem will resolve itself, in the aforementioned manner.
The problem with better solutions is that they often require cultural changes. That's hard, it takes time, and politicians want instant answers because that's what their constituents demand. Telling your elected representatives that "something must be done" will often result in something being done, it's true. Unfortunately, you'll usually wish you'd kept your mouth shut when they're finished doing it.
Apparently great minds think alike, looks like idiots do the same.
... it's why they're great. Idiots can't help but think the same as other idiots ... it's why they're idiots.
Great minds think differently