Does Sweden also support the pernicious notion of civil lawsuits, where the defendant has essentially no chance of winning unless they're prepared to spend an enormous sum of money?
There are civil lawsuits, but since the loser pays, if you win, you've spent the other side's money, so that is not much of a problem.
The end result is that people only sue if they're real sure of winning.
*I* think the good thing about the Swedish system is that the loser pays the costs for both parties. That ends most frivolous lawsuits long before they even started.
I actually like the US jury system better than being judged by third rate politicians as in Sweden.
I buy a lot of stuff over the web, but I've never made a "web transaction". I pay by credit card or money order.
People are mixing up how buyer and seller contact, and the transaction itself. Two very different things. Taxing the transaction makes sense. Taxing differently depending on the medium of contact does not.
The absence of a "phone transaction tax" or "fax transaction tax" speaks volumes. *Could* it be that people pushing for this do not have a full grasp of what the internet is??
I think the real issue here is the somewhat odd US law/custom that transactions where buyer and seller are in different states, are not subject to sales tax. With improving communications, that is bound to give the taxman a bigger headache each year.
While it is true that some first class people make a great living as contractors/consultants, many are also people who just can't get hired on a regular job.
For some reason the "hiring process" is much less stringent for contractors, so these unhirable people can make a living that way.
One of the top level contractors told me that 80% are of the useless variety, that give people like him a bad name. Don't know if it's true, but it sure is food for thought...
If you are getting mailed a voter card that sure sounds like you are already registered. What happens if you move? Let me guess, you notify the government and they update your registration. Not much different then what goes on in the US.
I'm not sure exactly how the US system works, but it seems that you have to manually go somewhere to register your intent to vote, possibly for each election.
In Sweden, every citizen is kept track of, and you get a vote card whether you asked for it or not.
Yes, you do send in an address update when you move, but it is not just for voting, but for every possible governemnt interaction (of which there are plenty over there).
Eliminate registration, and you suddenly get graveyards voting for a candidate (Remember Chicago?)
In Sweden you don't have to register to vote. The government sends you a voter card, you bring it to the voting place, show your ID, and it's done. I think most countries work like this.
Vote fraud is literaly unheard of.
I never really understood why the US has this arcane registration procedure, but I guess it's because they don't keep track of where their citizens live. Or even if they're alive, it seems.
Anyway. Just wanted to point out that what you take for granted is not at all the only way to do things.
> Computing is as white an industry as exists in American life, as any > high-tech worker can see just from peering around.
The typical make up of software engineering groups here in Silicon Valley is 25% chinese, 25% indian, 25% american and 25% european. That would make it one of the most non white industries in America.
Granted, there are very few blacks around, but such a blatant asertion of total untruth just put me off from the whole article.
>It is possible to transfer a visa to another employer, but this can sometimes take up to >2-3 months, and the person in question is not legally allowed to work during this time.
It does take 2-3 months, but you can continue working at your old job while you get the new visa. In fact, you can have 2 or more jobs, and have a separate H1B for each one of them.
I'm on my second H1B. I'm sure there are these Indian sweat shops around, but far from all H1B holders live under those conditions. I know I get paid as well as any other engineer. And the only problem with getting a new job is that it takes 2-3 months to switch instead of 2 weeks. That is a handicap when looking for a job, but not a real major one. The lawyer fees are $2-3k, which is peanuts in technical recruiting.
The real problem for people may well be that they are inexperienced and from an alien culture. For a senior engineer like me who understands the US system fairly well, things work pretty OK.
Now the INS may well be the worst working organization in the civilized world. But that's an other vent...
That's interesting -- didn't know that. Doesn't seem like a particularly good deal from MS' perspective anymore.
1. The "Pirates of Silicon Valley" view of this deal is completely wrong. M$ made a symbolic investment as part of a big deal. They did not even remotely take over Apple.
2. The other parts of the deal were more important. M$ agreed to pay $100-200M for stolen technology. M$ agreed to not kill Office for Mac. Apple agreed to make IE the default browser, and some other things. It was a "cease fire" of sorts.
I didn't reply to the Ethan Butterfield article, but/. thinks so, at least in preview mode. Looks like a/. bug.
Humans actually generate a LOT of energy, just that the majority of this energy is in the form of heat (I recall from my 3 semesters of biology that ~ 95% of the energy our muscles use goes to creating heat), which we (at this time) don't know how to make use of efficently, but with proper thermoelectrics it would be possible to create electicity from this.
Sorry, but this is totally wrong. We don't produce any energy. We consume energy, and turn most of it into heat. The energy comes in our food and is better known as "calories".
People who don't eat turn cold when their stored energy ("fat") run out. Don't try this at home.
So the evil computers in the movie would be much better off producing heat from just burning whatever it is they're feeding the humans. That would also make their system administration so much easier!
A friend of mine registered a Linux related.com domain name. Very shortly the.net name, as well as both.com and.net of a slight spelling variation had been registered. This is no coincidence. He expects that when he gets his trademark he can just force them to drop the names.
I find it pretty irritating that this goes on. There has to be a better system. Not that I have any suggestions...
> But I have to wholeheartedly echo the sentiments of an earlier poster . . . > no matter where you go there are already stations playing the rubbish that they call pop music.
Driving around California and other western states, it is not too unusual to not be able to pick up a single FM station, and quite common to only have 3-4 poor sound country/bible/NPR stations.
If this thing provides good quality channels it would be very cool. And with 200 channels, you'd think that they'd have to provide a pretty diverse diet. I'll believe that when I hear it, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get the impression that this is a common practice in the US. It wouldn't get reported as news on /. if it were.
Besides, I'm sure they sell this software to all countries. Perhaps even to your employer...
The report on the major and respected newspaper Svenska Dagbladet's web site (www.svd.se) contradicts what has been reported here somewhat.
"The prosecutor never charged the 17-year old with assisting a crime. Therefore the court does not take any stand on that issue."
Does Sweden also support the pernicious notion of civil lawsuits, where the defendant has essentially no chance of winning unless they're prepared to spend an enormous sum of money?
There are civil lawsuits, but since the loser pays, if you win, you've spent the other side's money, so that is not much of a problem.
The end result is that people only sue if they're real sure of winning.
*I* think the good thing about the Swedish system is that the loser pays the costs for both parties. That ends most frivolous lawsuits long before they even started.
I actually like the US jury system better than being judged by third rate politicians as in Sweden.
OK, so this is off topic. Sue me...
I buy a lot of stuff over the web, but I've never made a "web transaction". I pay by credit card or money order.
People are mixing up how buyer and seller contact, and the transaction itself. Two very different things. Taxing the transaction makes sense. Taxing differently depending on the medium of contact does not.
The absence of a "phone transaction tax" or "fax transaction tax" speaks volumes. *Could* it be that people pushing for this do not have a full grasp of what the internet is??
I think the real issue here is the somewhat odd US law/custom that transactions where buyer and seller are in different states, are not subject to sales tax. With improving communications, that is bound to give the taxman a bigger headache each year.
While it is true that some first class people make a great living as contractors/consultants, many are also people who just can't get hired on a regular job.
For some reason the "hiring process" is much less stringent for contractors, so these unhirable people can make a living that way.
One of the top level contractors told me that 80% are of the useless variety, that give people like him a bad name. Don't know if it's true, but it sure is food for thought...
If you are getting mailed a voter card that sure sounds like you are already registered. What happens if you move? Let me guess, you notify the government and they update your registration. Not much different then what goes on in the US.
I'm not sure exactly how the US system works, but it seems that you have to manually go somewhere to register your intent to vote, possibly for each election.
In Sweden, every citizen is kept track of, and you get a vote card whether you asked for it or not.
Yes, you do send in an address update when you move, but it is not just for voting, but for every possible governemnt interaction (of which there are plenty over there).
Eliminate registration, and you suddenly get graveyards voting for a candidate (Remember Chicago?)
In Sweden you don't have to register to vote. The government sends you a voter card, you bring it to the voting place, show your ID, and it's done. I think most countries work like this.
Vote fraud is literaly unheard of.
I never really understood why the US has this arcane registration procedure, but I guess it's because they don't keep track of where their citizens live. Or even if they're alive, it seems.
Anyway. Just wanted to point out that what you take for granted is not at all the only way to do things.
Anything you permanently put in your living- or work-space in furniture, whether you want it or not. That is just an undeniable reality. Deal
with it.
> Computing is as white an industry as exists in American life, as any
> high-tech worker can see just from peering around.
The typical make up of software engineering groups here in Silicon Valley is 25% chinese, 25% indian, 25% american and 25% european. That would make it one of the most non white industries in America.
Granted, there are very few blacks around, but such a blatant asertion of total untruth just put me off from the whole article.
>It is possible to transfer a visa to another employer, but this can sometimes take up to
>2-3 months, and the person in question is not legally allowed to work during this time.
It does take 2-3 months, but you can continue working at your old job while you get the new visa. In fact, you can have 2 or more jobs, and have a separate H1B for each one of them.
I'm on my second H1B. I'm sure there are these Indian sweat shops around, but far from all H1B holders live under those conditions. I know I get paid as well as any other engineer. And the only problem with getting a new job is that it takes 2-3 months to switch instead of 2 weeks. That is a handicap when looking for a job, but not a real major one. The lawyer fees are $2-3k, which is peanuts in technical recruiting.
The real problem for people may well be that they are inexperienced and from an alien culture. For a senior engineer like me who understands the US system fairly well, things work pretty OK.
Now the INS may well be the worst working organization in the civilized world. But that's an other vent...
That's interesting -- didn't know that. Doesn't seem like a particularly good deal from MS' perspective anymore.
/. thinks so, at least in preview mode. Looks like a /. bug.
1. The "Pirates of Silicon Valley" view of this deal is completely wrong. M$ made a symbolic investment as part of a big deal. They did not even remotely take over Apple.
2. The other parts of the deal were more important. M$ agreed to pay $100-200M for stolen technology. M$ agreed to not kill Office for Mac. Apple agreed to make IE the default browser, and some other things. It was a "cease fire" of sorts.
I didn't reply to the Ethan Butterfield article, but
Humans actually generate a LOT of energy, just that the majority of this energy is in the form of heat (I recall from my 3 semesters of biology that ~ 95% of the energy our muscles use goes to creating heat), which we (at this time) don't know how to make use of efficently, but with proper thermoelectrics it would be possible to create electicity from this.
Sorry, but this is totally wrong. We don't produce any energy. We consume energy, and turn most of it into heat. The energy comes in our food and is better known as "calories".
People who don't eat turn cold when their stored energy ("fat") run out. Don't try this at home.
So the evil computers in the movie would be much better off producing heat from just burning whatever it is they're feeding the humans. That would also make their system administration so much easier!
A friend of mine registered a Linux related .com domain name. Very shortly the .net name, as well as both .com and .net of a slight spelling variation had been registered. This is no coincidence. He expects that when he gets his trademark he can just force them to drop the names.
I find it pretty irritating that this goes on. There has to be a better system. Not that I have any suggestions...
> But I have to wholeheartedly echo the sentiments of an earlier poster . . .
> no matter where you go there are already stations playing the rubbish that they call pop music.
Driving around California and other western states, it is not too unusual to not be able to pick up a single FM station, and quite common to only have 3-4 poor sound country/bible/NPR stations.
If this thing provides good quality channels it would be very cool. And with 200 channels, you'd think that they'd have to provide a pretty diverse diet. I'll believe that when I hear it, though.