I agree that there is little room left for legitimate mass emailing.
In fact, I would say there is NONE.
Look, we don't let people go around in the street, sneaking their hand into our pockets and putting their business card into it. Why? Because it is too close to an illegal act called pick-pocketing. Similarly, as much as the business men WANT to send out mass mailing, it is time to say:
Hey your business model is too close to an illegal act, so stop doing it.
There are alternatives, and frankly Email is NOT the best way to deliver 're-occuring' messages. You can do things like push technology where someone agrees to have a web site automatically background downloaded into a cache whenever they log on to the internet and stay on for more than 1 minute. A flag can pop up on your tool bar, saying you have unreviewed downloaded pages. I know push technology has failed, but that was in part due to email already being accepted. If we outlaw the email reoccuring mass-mailing, then that will give some form of Push technology an opportunity to fill the niche that email used to take care of.
If we ever want to clean up email, we need to STOP mis-using it ourselves.
What part of 3 months warning don't you understand?
Yes, the US, China, Russia, etc. are the worst abuser. That is NOT because those countries want to make spam.
Instead it is because of a culture that says "making this kind of mass mailing is OK, and we can't make strict laws against it because people will just move to other countries, so why not let us do it here." If you actually MAKE it illegal, and start ENFORCING it (Hm, I got a SPAM email, better call the police because they are legally required to investigate.) and make sure people can not easily move to another country, then things will change.
Your argument is like saying "You know, we can't make production of Cocaine illegal because Coca-cola has it." If you make it illegal, Coca-Cola takes it out.
I would never buy from a corpororation selling on ebay. They can legally put in a minimum bid secretly, which means that no matter WHAT you do, they will not be offering you a good price.
They just use it as advertisement for their product. Ebay as a general rule is MORE expensive than 'sale' products in a store.
Now, for individuals selling things, they rarely if ever do this. They care more about getting rid of something than getting the highest price.
Also for rare commodities, hard to find stuff, I might use ebay to find better search terms, then go looking for a real seller's non-ebay site.
All of the author's complaints could be solved simply by ruling that if you currently own a.com web address, you also now own a.xxx address.
If you want to sell it, you can. If you want to keep it and do nothing, you can. Or you could do anything else you want with it.
The single reason why spam and other net abuses go on is that there is no world wide laws. It is a public crime, people can click on the spam and hunt down the person committing the crime simply by following the money. They getaway with it because If one country creates an effective law and enforces it, the spammers can just move to another country.
You want to cure it? Have ICAAN come up with a set of standard, simple guidelines. Not censorship, just simple things like "No sending out spam emails", "No Zombie Bot". Then have ICAAN rule that failure to pass laws enforcing these guidelines (individual countries get to decide what the actual law would be) or failure to cooperate to enforce them results in disconnect for that country from the rest of the internet. That would be ICAAN's sole enforement power
Give people a 3 month warning, then start disconnecting the countries that are the worst violators, giving the secondary violators another warning. In one month, if they pass new laws or fund new enforcements, they get a trial hook up again.
I predict one year of nastyness, during which all countries scramble to create and enforce real laws.
The worst of the worst of the offending countries, might split off and form a secondary, 'dangerous' internet. But who would care.
I live in New York City. We give the Federal government about 11.4 Billion dollars than we receive in federal spending. We also give the State government about 7 Billion more dollars than we receive in state spending. That comes to about 18 billion dollars total.
Basically, most cities get screwed on federal payments. Large percentages of the money go to smaller towns, because they are ineffecient and need more money to do anything at all.
Everyone here is assuming the guy is giving an accurate description of what happened. Honestly, I don't know that, I wasn't there. I beleive that he THINKS that is what happened. I also believe that it was discussed and he was told he was getting the standard relocation package.
But what it comes down to is which person made a mistake:
A. The recruiting person described the standard package badly or
B. The employee heard/remembered it incorrectly.
Without something in writing, the employee may in fact be in the wrong. That is part of the reason why it is so hard to prove in court. For something like a relocation package, I would definitely want a written, signed copy of what was offered.
If you have that, show it to the relocation guy and say "This is what I was promissed. If I don't get it, I have a valid cause for legal actions. The fact that you have a company policy of ignoring written promisses is neither a legal justification nor is it an ethical act. It will cause the company many problems. Please explain the siutuation to your boss and have him call me back to discuss this extremely important ethical issue."
If you don't have that, your only hope is to call the recruiter and discuss with them what was originally promissed and any compensation you can get if the recruiter agrees the company has reneged on his original offer.
If you are a member of the armed forces or of the government, the reason is "I took an oath to protect my countryman". Also your job is to protect your countryman, even if you did not take the oath.
If you are a citizen than that statement is not neccesarilly true.
And no, I had not planned on wetting the sponge. I was wondering "Isn't this going to burn the sponge?" but I was going to do it anyway.
The main problem is that the article I read said that the water was the reason why the bacteria loved the sponge but did not mention that the scientists tried it with a wet sponge.
This encouraged the mistake people made.
It was a poorly written article.
As long as board members are choosen from the non-technical, management side, those same board members will pick non-technical peopel to head their company.
That is something completely different. That notice about promoters was probably honest.
They are probably not tout and dumpers, but paid promoters.
They were paid for by the company, to get people to buy their stock. As such, it is legal, and worthwhile for the company to try and build brand.
They do it all the time, but usually they focus on professionals.
He also powers his car, which typically costs $1,000/year. So he is spending 4k to save 2.5k
Honestly, the Hydrogen part is the most expensive. If he were to drop it, and just sell the electricity back to the state (and NJ pays MORE for solar generated electricity than regular electricity), which NJ does require utilities to accept, he would be profitable.
The cost they mentioned was under $200,000, not 1/2 a million.
As for how long, usually these things pay off in 10 years if you got tax incentives/discounts to buy, 15 if you did not.
Their life span is generally estimated at 20 years.
As in, if a law is passed and rejected by the courts, all the people that voted for it should be forced to watch a one hour video on the constition of the United States, before they are allowed to vote for any other law.
That is, don't make laws that everything must be in X. Instead make laws that everywhere you mention somthing in non metric formats, you are legally required to also list the metric equivelent.
Even on measuring instruments (you have a yardstick? It also has to list the number of centimeters down one side.)
Do this for 10 years. Let people get used to the idea.
Eventually, the printing/sign people will get cheap and offer the "metric" only versions.
Once those become common, then pass a law stating no more non-metric.
Would most people support a DRM that only enforced existing copyright laws, as interpreted by the COURTS (not the music companies), then most people here would agree with it.
But that goal is intrinsically impossible.
1) It has to allow legal copys, INCLUDING small sections for educational/parody/news other fair uses.
2) It has to work on ANY system, including systems where programers fiddle with things at basic levels (which means that the DRM will not work as DRM because then the programmer can strip out the DRM)
3) It would have to not 'tax' my system in any significant amount. I should not have to buy a more expensive machine so that you can make sure I am not a thief.
4) It would have to not be capable of spying on me, just prevent illegal actions, no 'reporting', etc.
--
So, this magical DRM system of yours would be acceptable. But it can't exist.
They don't have the creativy or the experience with our database/needs. If they did have the creativity, they would quit that $9/hour job and start their own company, just as I would if I were in Mumbai.
Without the creativity, they can not be trusted by my boss, (and my Bosses's boss who does knows my name and knows how valuable I am) so they can never obtain the experience to do what I do.
If by some wild chance the Mumbai team finds someone with the creativity to do what I can do that does not have the gumption to start his own company and is NOT quickly promoted to a managment position, then My Boss's Boss will find a new position for me here.
Why?
Because computer skill is a low value, common, commodity, while true creativity is a high value, rare talent. I was hired for my talent, not my commodity computer skill. India/China can easily provide the commodity computer skill, but it is NO easeir to find real talent there then it is to find it here. Once you find it, you keep it no matter what.
It also helps that I am not a money crazed fool chasing high priced jobs with low job security, and soul crushing 16 hour code-factory environment. They know I could quit and probably get a better paying job, but stay here because I LIKE the place and know they like me.
While as much as I admire the sentiment, it it almost certainly cheaper to build and launch a new satelite then it is to send someone up to fix this one.
The only important issue is that the diagnostic software may not have told us enough about what went wrong in the first place.
Surprisingly, often it is the guy in Mumbai making $9/hour.
Why? Because the guy in California making $50/hour was retained because he has fare more usefull skills than the guy in Mumbai.
The only time the guy in California is really going to be in danger is if he was never worth the 50/hour in the first place.
As someone making about 40/hour right now, I feel very safe because my extensive 5 year experience with our system and EXACTLY what we need and want mean that if money is an issue, my company would stop using our vendors, who cost less on a per job item, instead of me.
They know I can handle whatever they throw at me, with a 1 minute or less explanation, while the vendors need about 3 hours of explanation before they come close to giving us a useable product.
There are many different levels, from "we don't demand you log in", to "we keep zero internal records of the times and history of when people view, let alone submit to our web site, and unless you ask us to immediately post it, we wait 1-20 days to post anything you put up making it more dificult to even guess who might have done what when"
I am not a Microsoft fan, by any means.
But the crapware OEM put on computers is stupid, rude, poorly thought out attempt to 'differentiate' their machines, that I have NEVER found usefull.
Anything that gets rid of that junk is good in my book.
That does NOT mean the word is a description of the named item. For example, the United States of America is still the Name of a country, even during the Civil war, when the states were fighting and therefore obviously not United.
There Exists a type of market that is NAMED "Free Market".
This market has a definition, as set by economicists.
That is the "Free Market" people are talking about.
If you learn what other people are talking about, then you can communicate with them, instead of simply misunderstanding what they are talking about and making snide comments about it.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, I would say there is NONE.
Look, we don't let people go around in the street, sneaking their hand into our pockets and putting their business card into it. Why? Because it is too close to an illegal act called pick-pocketing. Similarly, as much as the business men WANT to send out mass mailing, it is time to say:
Hey your business model is too close to an illegal act, so stop doing it.
There are alternatives, and frankly Email is NOT the best way to deliver 're-occuring' messages. You can do things like push technology where someone agrees to have a web site automatically background downloaded into a cache whenever they log on to the internet and stay on for more than 1 minute. A flag can pop up on your tool bar, saying you have unreviewed downloaded pages. I know push technology has failed, but that was in part due to email already being accepted. If we outlaw the email reoccuring mass-mailing, then that will give some form of Push technology an opportunity to fill the niche that email used to take care of.
If we ever want to clean up email, we need to STOP mis-using it ourselves.
Yes, the US, China, Russia, etc. are the worst abuser. That is NOT because those countries want to make spam.
Instead it is because of a culture that says "making this kind of mass mailing is OK, and we can't make strict laws against it because people will just move to other countries, so why not let us do it here." If you actually MAKE it illegal, and start ENFORCING it (Hm, I got a SPAM email, better call the police because they are legally required to investigate.) and make sure people can not easily move to another country, then things will change.
Your argument is like saying "You know, we can't make production of Cocaine illegal because Coca-cola has it." If you make it illegal, Coca-Cola takes it out.
They just use it as advertisement for their product. Ebay as a general rule is MORE expensive than 'sale' products in a store.
Now, for individuals selling things, they rarely if ever do this. They care more about getting rid of something than getting the highest price.
Also for rare commodities, hard to find stuff, I might use ebay to find better search terms, then go looking for a real seller's non-ebay site.
All of the author's complaints could be solved simply by ruling that if you currently own a .com web address, you also now own a .xxx address.
If you want to sell it, you can. If you want to keep it and do nothing, you can. Or you could do anything else you want with it.
Here are the things I think we need a prize for. Each one is something that we scan get fairly quick advancements in, but appears just out of reach.
Cheap Silicon production (for solar power)
Better battery: 1. by weight and 2. by volume
Better Voice recognition software
Electronic voting machine with paper trail, prize awarded for the one hardest to break into.
You want to cure it? Have ICAAN come up with a set of standard, simple guidelines. Not censorship, just simple things like "No sending out spam emails", "No Zombie Bot". Then have ICAAN rule that failure to pass laws enforcing these guidelines (individual countries get to decide what the actual law would be) or failure to cooperate to enforce them results in disconnect for that country from the rest of the internet. That would be ICAAN's sole enforement power
Give people a 3 month warning, then start disconnecting the countries that are the worst violators, giving the secondary violators another warning. In one month, if they pass new laws or fund new enforcements, they get a trial hook up again.
I predict one year of nastyness, during which all countries scramble to create and enforce real laws.
The worst of the worst of the offending countries, might split off and form a secondary, 'dangerous' internet. But who would care.
Basically, most cities get screwed on federal payments. Large percentages of the money go to smaller towns, because they are ineffecient and need more money to do anything at all.
But what it comes down to is which person made a mistake:
A. The recruiting person described the standard package badly or
B. The employee heard/remembered it incorrectly.
Without something in writing, the employee may in fact be in the wrong. That is part of the reason why it is so hard to prove in court. For something like a relocation package, I would definitely want a written, signed copy of what was offered.
If you have that, show it to the relocation guy and say "This is what I was promissed. If I don't get it, I have a valid cause for legal actions. The fact that you have a company policy of ignoring written promisses is neither a legal justification nor is it an ethical act. It will cause the company many problems. Please explain the siutuation to your boss and have him call me back to discuss this extremely important ethical issue."
If you don't have that, your only hope is to call the recruiter and discuss with them what was originally promissed and any compensation you can get if the recruiter agrees the company has reneged on his original offer.
If you are a citizen than that statement is not neccesarilly true.
And no, I had not planned on wetting the sponge. I was wondering "Isn't this going to burn the sponge?" but I was going to do it anyway. The main problem is that the article I read said that the water was the reason why the bacteria loved the sponge but did not mention that the scientists tried it with a wet sponge. This encouraged the mistake people made. It was a poorly written article.
As long as board members are choosen from the non-technical, management side, those same board members will pick non-technical peopel to head their company.
They are probably not tout and dumpers, but paid promoters. They were paid for by the company, to get people to buy their stock. As such, it is legal, and worthwhile for the company to try and build brand.
They do it all the time, but usually they focus on professionals.
He also powers his car, which typically costs $1,000/year. So he is spending 4k to save 2.5k Honestly, the Hydrogen part is the most expensive. If he were to drop it, and just sell the electricity back to the state (and NJ pays MORE for solar generated electricity than regular electricity), which NJ does require utilities to accept, he would be profitable.
The cost they mentioned was under $200,000, not 1/2 a million. As for how long, usually these things pay off in 10 years if you got tax incentives/discounts to buy, 15 if you did not. Their life span is generally estimated at 20 years.
As in, if a law is passed and rejected by the courts, all the people that voted for it should be forced to watch a one hour video on the constition of the United States, before they are allowed to vote for any other law.
That is, don't make laws that everything must be in X. Instead make laws that everywhere you mention somthing in non metric formats, you are legally required to also list the metric equivelent. Even on measuring instruments (you have a yardstick? It also has to list the number of centimeters down one side.) Do this for 10 years. Let people get used to the idea. Eventually, the printing/sign people will get cheap and offer the "metric" only versions. Once those become common, then pass a law stating no more non-metric.
But that goal is intrinsically impossible.
1) It has to allow legal copys, INCLUDING small sections for educational/parody/news other fair uses.
2) It has to work on ANY system, including systems where programers fiddle with things at basic levels (which means that the DRM will not work as DRM because then the programmer can strip out the DRM)
3) It would have to not 'tax' my system in any significant amount. I should not have to buy a more expensive machine so that you can make sure I am not a thief.
4) It would have to not be capable of spying on me, just prevent illegal actions, no 'reporting', etc. --
So, this magical DRM system of yours would be acceptable. But it can't exist.
They don't have the creativy or the experience with our database/needs. If they did have the creativity, they would quit that $9/hour job and start their own company, just as I would if I were in Mumbai.
Without the creativity, they can not be trusted by my boss, (and my Bosses's boss who does knows my name and knows how valuable I am) so they can never obtain the experience to do what I do.
If by some wild chance the Mumbai team finds someone with the creativity to do what I can do that does not have the gumption to start his own company and is NOT quickly promoted to a managment position, then My Boss's Boss will find a new position for me here.
Why?
Because computer skill is a low value, common, commodity, while true creativity is a high value, rare talent. I was hired for my talent, not my commodity computer skill. India/China can easily provide the commodity computer skill, but it is NO easeir to find real talent there then it is to find it here. Once you find it, you keep it no matter what.
It also helps that I am not a money crazed fool chasing high priced jobs with low job security, and soul crushing 16 hour code-factory environment. They know I could quit and probably get a better paying job, but stay here because I LIKE the place and know they like me.
While as much as I admire the sentiment, it it almost certainly cheaper to build and launch a new satelite then it is to send someone up to fix this one. The only important issue is that the diagnostic software may not have told us enough about what went wrong in the first place.
Surprisingly, often it is the guy in Mumbai making $9/hour. Why? Because the guy in California making $50/hour was retained because he has fare more usefull skills than the guy in Mumbai. The only time the guy in California is really going to be in danger is if he was never worth the 50/hour in the first place. As someone making about 40/hour right now, I feel very safe because my extensive 5 year experience with our system and EXACTLY what we need and want mean that if money is an issue, my company would stop using our vendors, who cost less on a per job item, instead of me. They know I can handle whatever they throw at me, with a 1 minute or less explanation, while the vendors need about 3 hours of explanation before they come close to giving us a useable product.
There are many different levels, from "we don't demand you log in", to "we keep zero internal records of the times and history of when people view, let alone submit to our web site, and unless you ask us to immediately post it, we wait 1-20 days to post anything you put up making it more dificult to even guess who might have done what when"
I am not a Microsoft fan, by any means. But the crapware OEM put on computers is stupid, rude, poorly thought out attempt to 'differentiate' their machines, that I have NEVER found usefull. Anything that gets rid of that junk is good in my book.
The process of discovery is where you find out the answers, so you know if you want to ask them in the court-room.
The people here are asking for questions to be used in the Discovery process, not the court room.
Words have meanings.
Names have meanings too.
Sometimes, people create names that use words.
That does NOT mean the word is a description of the named item. For example, the United States of America is still the Name of a country, even during the Civil war, when the states were fighting and therefore obviously not United.
There Exists a type of market that is NAMED "Free Market".
This market has a definition, as set by economicists. That is the "Free Market" people are talking about.
If you learn what other people are talking about, then you can communicate with them, instead of simply misunderstanding what they are talking about and making snide comments about it.
But this is not that.
This is part of a program, that is being advertised.
That makes it a bribe.