You could easily replace the door knob and deadbolt with matching keys...I have this in my apartment (but unfortunately the back door has non-matching keys and I am not going to pay to replace 4 locks in a rental to carry around one less key).
Of course it's all pointless from a security standpoint. You lose one keyring, and someone has access to everything.
The deadbolt on my former house had only one key, and it was kept on a leather strap around the neck of some weird Count named Rugan. When the deadbolt was locked, no one could get in. Of course one day some upstart Spanish brat confronted him, told Fezzik to 'rip his arms off', and the game was up.
Anyways--for all I care, a deadbolt should have NO key. If someone inside locks the damn thing, no one gets in unless they are willing to perform some impromptu demolition.
Sorry buddy, I've been (reluctantly) with the post office for more than a decade and, sadly, I'm not wrong. No, the US Gov. does not make a profit; they have not directly run the USPS for some time now.
See! The government is so damn inefficient, this dude doesn't want to work for the post office--and he's been there ten years... Gamefly is pretty lucky their complaint is being dealt with at all...
You're not buying the software, you're buying the customers who are locked into a proprietary system by network effects. Not sure how many people are on ICQ now. Statistics I read eight years ago were about 6 million active users. I wouldn't be surprised now if it's under $10/customer, which isn't bad for an advertising platform.
Right--but those 6 million customers need to have some sort of value. That's why I asked if the Windows client was some sort of ad-ridden piece of garbage. Using Pidgin on Linux I've never seen an ad. I occasionally get some sort of russian spam, it's once or twice a month. How the hell do they get that multi-million dollar figure? How are those users actually worth that much? In other words, if this new russian company liquidated 'ICQ', where would that money come from?
If you quite your job and just take the basics, that's fine.
And what if 40% of the population just quits so they can mooch of the money of the other 60%?
And what if 80% of the population quits? Are you willing to be in the 20% of people sending their ENTIRE paycheck in to the government to pay for the layabouts?
Ever hear of Maslow's hierarchy of needs? If people's basic needs are met, other drives can kick in, like the drive for social acceptance, respect and love,
Because that's what the world needs more than anything, social acceptance, respect, and love.
You know--instead of hard work, responsibility, and principals. If everyone's laying around doing nothing but respecting and loving each other, who is going to take care of things? While you're lying around, who will stop China or Korea or Panama from coming in and enslaving you?
and if those needs are met, people will generally self-sctualize, or work on becoming the people they want to be.
I could care less if you are the person you want to be--or anyone else for that matter. All I care about is if I am the person I want to be...
If society is fair,
Whoa--stop there. Society isn't fair. Life isn't fair. People will always be greedy. People always want to do better than everyone else. And to be honest--if I lived in your society and I just came up with the cure for AIDS, no one would get the cure. I have something lots of people want, and I wouldn't give it out without getting something in return for my 'genius'.
and working gets you social acceptance, respect, and greater freedom to be the person you want to be, most people will work at something useful even if they don't have to.
So if they're going to work regardless of having to or not (which is incorrect), why not have them work for their basic needs too?
Not everyone has access to land, you know.
I know--I'm one of 'em. But I'm working my ass off every day and saving every penny I can. I'm hoping within a year, I can go buy 10 acres and build a house for my wife and kids. That's why I work. Because I want something. But hey--if you and the other socialists on Slashdot really want to put your money where your mouth is, feel free to count yourselves and then figure out how much each one of you owes for my $120,000 house and property--then wire it to me via paypal...
But I agree: if someone won't work, they shouldn't get their wants met. Just their needs.
...? So what's wrong with our existing system? If I don't work, I don't eat, I don't get a house, I don't drive a car, etc... On the other hand, if I get fired, I have friends, and family who will help if I need it. There's also a church full of people who would pay for odd jobs to be done so I can earn some money.
I want a society where the hierarchy is both minimal and natural, where people can not rise above others through coercion, but only through those other's freely given respect.
Societal hierarchies are not both minimal and natural. It is human nature to compete and rise above. Your 'respect' is worth absolutely dick when it comes to feeding my family or buying a house. It still means dick if I were to buy a totally unnecessary boat. What matters in this society is the ability to perform a task and get paid for that task. If I can charge $125/hr for my skills and people are willing to pay it--good. I don't care if someone else is only able to flip burgers or mop floors for minimum wage.
Although logically I know I am a more useful and valuable person than average, I don't feel that way.
Unless you actually produce or provide value, you aren't 'logically' more valuable than average. Average is flip
AOL has sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies (DST), Russia's largest Internet company, for US$187.5 million.
I connect to ICQ using Pidgin. I also connect to GTalk and a few XMPP servers using Pidgin. The XMPP server software is running on some version of Linux--probably Ubuntu or Debian. It was free to download, free to setup, and free to use. HOW THE #$*@# IS ICQ WORTH $187.5 MILLION?!?!.
Is the Windows ICQ client really a direct pipe for advertisers to watch your web surfing habits or turn on and view your webcam at random or something? How in the hell can you buy an instant messaging company for $187.5 million now-a-days? IM clients and servers are free.
Yeah, but if "janitor steve" gets a virus, the IT department is liable and responsible to fix it and probably has the means to identify the virus and/or re-image the machine.
I think we're all missing the big picture here. What does Janitor Steve need with a laptop?
I think we've found the source for the protected health information leaks...
Oh--and I should probably mention that I installed the updates for the 10.04 release today, and all the same issues remain--so it's not an issue of being a pre-release OS. It's released and it still doesn't work.
I was using the Release Candidate last weekend--so I understand it might have bugs. But 'Release Candidate' means they think it's ready to release to the public, but they want wide-spread testing.
This means You can't early adopt an OS when it's in beta, and then complain when it doesn't work perfectly.
There's a difference between "It doesn't work perfectly" and: audio doesn't work, booting fails in a very common configuration, we're forcing plymouth on you no matter what, the kernel panics constantly, wireless doesn't work, and your NIC doesn't work.
If you did all of this and loaded Debian last week, you certainly weren't even using an RC copy. It's your own fault for installing a beta OS on your server..
The release candidate was released on Thursday the 22nd. I upgraded Friday night, and spend Saturday recovering my server. I upgraded my laptop Sunday afternoon, and my wife's computer Sunday evening.
If the release candidate was glitchy on one system, I would think it was some odd pre-release issue. But it completely hosed three systems. That's not some minor pre-release issue, it's a systemic problem. Every single one of these systems worked flawlessly under 8.04 (my server) and 9.10 (my laptop and my wife's computer).
You do realize that people have a right to be paid for their labor?
You have no right to lock the owner of the system out of his property and then hold it ransom and demand payment to unlock it.
There is a difference between actively locking an owner out of a system by going in, changing passwords, refusing to document them, and holding them hostage for money.
If my boss doesn't have a documentation system for tracking this information, and refuses to give me time to document the system--that's not my fault. He has made a choice to lock himself out of the system. I do what my boss says. If he says "There's no time for that now, get on to the next assignment." I do it. If he fires me, he's not my boss anymore. If he asks me for a password after I'm fired, he's not my boss anymore--but I'd be glad to be a temporary employee (at time-and-a-half) and work for him again and give him the password.
No, it would still be extortion no matter what you were charging. If you think such an argument would hold up in court, you are either extremely ignorant or stupid. The only thing you'd be winning is a one-way ticket to Federal Pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
You can NOT force someone to work without pay, that's slavery. The courts may indeed decide to send people to prison over that--but it doesn't make it 'right'. The courts use to allowed slavery in this nation. Was it right? No.
Here is where you and I differ: I support socialism.
Hence you are a foe...;)
What I want to see is everyone guaranteed to get the bare minimum for living: food, clean water, 400 square feet of shelter, and medicine, and we should all bear the cos of providing it.
And there's the problem. What are you going to do if I quit my job and say "I'm going to sit on my ass and drink beer. Where's my fucking healthcare, shelter, and food?"?
No really? What do you do with freeloading wastes of space? In your system, I am forced to work to feed them. (And what do you call someone who is forced to work for someone else? Slave.)
I know where they go in a capitalist system. They either start working, they die, or someone takes compassion on them and helps them out. But compassion has limits too. If someone continues to sit on their ass and drink beer and absolutely doesn't want to help themselves, your compassion will run out.
because we all benefit by not having desperate, starving humans around.
Really? How do I benefit by paying for housing for my beer-swilling neighbor who sits in his bathrobe all day on his front porch smoking pot? I'm out $x where $x is a small amount of money coming from me to him--but multiply that times all the wastes-of-space around the country...
I would be better off if he were not taking up valuable housing space, sucking up valuable medical resources, and siphoning value away from all the other hard working citizens.
I'm not a social Darwinist, and frankly, you are either a socialist or a social Darwinist who thinks death is the preferable outcome for those who find no place in the system.
You can't *not* find a place in the system.
This last year, I fed my family of four for three months off a small garden plot. I spend $20 for seeds, and the rest was the labor of my wife and I. So don't tell me the lazy wastes of space can't feed themselves.
Social Darwinism is a theory supported by the owning class because it lets them offer 'do what I say, or starve to death' to workers who have no real choice
Really? No one can tell me to starve to death. If I quit my job tomorrow, I won't have high speed internet, cable TV, a flashy cell phone, or a POS car--but I will have food. There's a difference between 'wants' and 'needs'.
But what I don't want to see is what we have now: socialism for the very rich only.
You will never stop that. You will *never* find a society or structure that says 'everyone is equal'. For one, people are not equal. While I may be an awesome network admin, I know nothing about cardiology. If I need a cardiologist, he can ask what he wants for his labor. When he needs a network setup, I can ask what I want.
People have a built-in desire to better themselves and make better lives for their families. You will always have ego and a fight to be 'on top'. Any government you appoint to 'oversee' this wonderous new society you propose will by definition be 'better' than the common surfs. They will start thinking that they need certain amenities so they can more easily 'help' the people. (Think about Nancy Pelosi needing her own aircraft to get to California because she can't be bothered to travel publically.).
If the government provides the bare minimum, and runs any natural monopolies, but the free market does everything else, I would be a very happy socialist.
There's the problem. The government only does one thing well. It's not running an efficient or intelligent business. A government's job is to protect us from other governments or other people trying to rule us. That's why the government is in charge of the military. That's why the government is in charge of defending our freedoms as outlined in the Constitution.
Also, let's make jury nullification official and legal. It is the whole reason we have juries instead of letting judges decide. If all twelve random citizens think a law is such bunk that it shouldn't be enforced, then it shouldn't be enforced.
Yeah--but look at 11 random people around you. Do you honestly think there are enough non-sheep among them to stand up against tyranny?
It is much easier to control government than a corporation.
Really? When was the last time a corporation was allowed to change the law to fit its own needs? Sure, they can lobby and find a 'friendly' member of congress to do it for them, but Congress can simply change the laws whenever they want for their own benefit.
Still, you have a point. It's hard to control the damage when we mistakenly elect an incompetent.
Exactly--Bush launched the bailout. Huuuuge mistake and abuse of power. Then along came Hopey-Changey and Sheriff Joe verses McMoron and Caribou Barbie. I hate voting for the person I detest the least. Hopey-Changey decided to continue the bailout. But let's face it--McCain would have too.
Obama says they are big evil corporations--then he bails out the ones that are failing. What?
However, we could have done what the Republicans attempted and impeached him, but apparently, too few Democrats have the balls to try something like that.
Both parties suck, and I'm willing to bet that November doesn't make us a freer citizens. We'll still have to chose between Socialism and Socialism-Light.
Canonical has been working extremely hard and it shows in the quality of this release.
Yeah--after upgrading my server which has a standalone boot drive along with 8 other disks that are in a RAID6 array--it completely fails to boot. Plymouth is a joke--why install graphical boot crap on a server? I can't even see the output of fsck which is apparently complaining that my array is corrupted--because the output is hooked into the fscked-up plymouth system. Lame regressions. Funny how the 8.04 recovery CD says the array is just fine. Meh, loaded Debian last weekend, haven't looked back.
Oh--and there's my netbook. After upgrading, the wireless and onboard NIC work intermittently. Most hibernates require a reboot because the wireless and NIC fail to come back up. Unplugging from the AC adapter causes a kernel panic about 60% of the time. Lots of lame regressions. But hey--at least plymouth works on my netbook. I can boot graphically into a flaky distro. It's scheduled to be upgraded to Debian this weekend.
I upgraded my wife's computer even though that BOFH part of my brain was screaming that I was 0 for 2 on 10.04 upgrades. Upgraded her from 9.10 and she immediately lost audio in Firefox along with the sound icon in her systray. Mplayer, totem, and the like all output sound just fine. Just no firefox or sound icon. And I can't seem to get it back. There is no audio panel applet. After a bunch of dorking around, uninstalling things, recompiling other things, I got audio working. Very lame regression.
I'm going to skip upgrading any of our customer systems to 10.04 in light of this. Instead, I'll start migrating to Debian. There doesn't seem to be any mention of 'plymouth' in their packaging system. That makes me feel a lot better.
I know everyone's experiences are different, but this upgrade totally kicked my ass.
Why don't they ever delay the long-term releases by a few weeks or months to put together a truly finished product?
Meh, that's not the purpose of the laws. This ain't no Harrison Bergeron, despite what many nerds believe. But this is a systemic problem, I agree: too many, too confusing laws, not enforced. We need to simplify our legal system so that the common man has access to justice, and so that money will not give anyone an advantage in the system. Then we need to enforce the laws, especially against white collar criminals who cause billions of dollars worth of damage to society.
Okay, let me put it this way: there is a mechanism, known as 'elections,' that citizens CAN use to hold politicians accountable. If we don't, well, it's out fault. With corporations, there is no real way to hold them accountable.
There is a mechanism, know as 'your wallet', that you CAN use to hold companies accountable. If we don't buy from them, they go out of business. With politicians, we can vote them out, but the damage is already done. I thought Bush was a good pick almost 10 years ago. After he was elected, it became rapidly apparent that he was not. But the damage is already done. Nothing us poor serfs can do about it.
You do realize that is extortion and you'd be in a whole mess of shit for doing so, right?
You do realize that people have a right to be paid for their labor?
I'm not talking about charging thousands or millions of dollars for giving them passwords, but I am talking about getting paid my normal overtime rate to document information that should have been required by policy. I have worked in a place where they were so 'busy' trying to get the 'next big project' finished that they completely skipped the part about documenting the servers and systems from the previous project. That's not my fault, and to ask me to do it for free would be wrong.
Like I said, I'm not charging $50,000 for a password--that would be extortionate. It it literally takes me 25 minutes to write down all the passwords I can think of, I'm billing them for 25 minutes of my time.
In that case, not only are you denying access to their systems but your are implicitly admitting that you can still give them access to their systems (you're happy to provide him the information, therefore we can safely assume you have it) and using extortion (you want to be paid - and paid more than you otherwise would have earned) to rectify the situation.
IANAL but if your former employer is of a mind to report you to the authorities I really can't see that ending well.
There is nothing extortionate about requiring payment for services. If your former boss called you up and said "Hey--can you come in this weekend and help us move office furniture?", would you do it for free? No. If my boss failed to provide time for documenting important information, a policy, and/or a system for documenting the information, that's his problem. If I am required after being fired to do a job he should have done, I will be asking for payment. And no, not thousands of millions of dollars (which would be extortionate), but simply my regular overtime rate.
stop worrying, personal recording devices will save the day. Won't be long before cops can't dump without it being public information.
Yeah--except that now it's illegal to record cops in at least one state. I don't recall which one, but it's on the east coast. You record 'em, you go to jail. Awesome.
Stop blaming the victims and defending the indefensible. No one has the right to lie, cheat, and rob others.
Agreed--if they did something wrong, the legal system needs to deal with them. I'm not defending theft. What I am defending is the endless stream of laws the government puts out to help idiots and hinder smart people.
It's still not pulling you over, declaring you an enemy of the state, putting you on your knees, and executing you on the spot and in the open because they don't like you, then putting some drugs on your dead body in order to make summarily executing you legal.
Bah! We skip all that by sending in the SWAT team because some 'informant' said they saw you smoking a joint. The SWAT team swoops in, shoots your dog, then shoots you because they thought you had a weapon. Saves a lot of time and hassle. No declaring you an enemy of this or that, planting evidence, etc...;)
Get some perspective. The cops in the U.S. trial freaked out and overreacted, and they killed someone. (Yeah, it's wrong and I'm not defending it.) Thaksin's police executed over a thousand people on purpose and with forethought.
I agree. There's a difference between premeditated murder of thousands verses simply shooting someone for 'contempt of cop' without any forethought.
It would absolve me from prosecution unless I violated any of the very specific rules that were listed.
The geek isn't always very good at distinguishing between civil and criminal actions. The question then becomes prosecution by who and under what set of rules.
The computer networks that sustain the city of San Francisco belong to the city of San Francisco. No court can allow them to be held hostage to any single individual. Not the system administrator. Not the mayor. Not anyone.
Really? What if you boss says 'setup that new server' and you say 'Yes sir'. You follow the standard practice of giving it a secure password because it's connected to the internet. Then you say to your boss "We really need a place to document the password". Your boss gives you no reply and immediately sends you out to your next assignment. There's also no formal documentation system in your organization. After a few weeks of being scheduled on assignments non-stop from 8 AM until 5 PM, you get fired. Whose fault is it that your boss doesn't know the password? Should you be required or forced to work for free for a few hours to cough up passwords because of a failing of your boss?
If, after you've been fired, you refuse to disclose the passwords necessary for your successor to do your job, then it is no longer something they can simply "fire" you for, (as you no longer work there) so it becomes something you need to take to court, not "theft" in this case, but "denial of service" because his action of refusing to release the passwords denied them access to administer those systems.
If I am fired, and then my boss realizes that he hasn't taken the proper steps (not saying this is the case with Childs) of making policies for documenting configurations and/or passwords, along with providing time during work-hours to document that information, he doesn't get them. I'm fired after all, and he doesn't get my free labor. I will be happy to provide him with the information though at my contracting rate of 1.5 times my normal pay.
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You could easily replace the door knob and deadbolt with matching keys...I have this in my apartment (but unfortunately the back door has non-matching keys and I am not going to pay to replace 4 locks in a rental to carry around one less key).
Of course it's all pointless from a security standpoint. You lose one keyring, and someone has access to everything.
The deadbolt on my former house had only one key, and it was kept on a leather strap around the neck of some weird Count named Rugan. When the deadbolt was locked, no one could get in. Of course one day some upstart Spanish brat confronted him, told Fezzik to 'rip his arms off', and the game was up.
Anyways--for all I care, a deadbolt should have NO key. If someone inside locks the damn thing, no one gets in unless they are willing to perform some impromptu demolition.
Sorry buddy, I've been (reluctantly) with the post office for more than a decade and, sadly, I'm not wrong. No, the US Gov. does not make a profit; they have not directly run the USPS for some time now.
See! The government is so damn inefficient, this dude doesn't want to work for the post office--and he's been there ten years... Gamefly is pretty lucky their complaint is being dealt with at all...
You're not buying the software, you're buying the customers who are locked into a proprietary system by network effects. Not sure how many people are on ICQ now. Statistics I read eight years ago were about 6 million active users. I wouldn't be surprised now if it's under $10/customer, which isn't bad for an advertising platform.
Right--but those 6 million customers need to have some sort of value. That's why I asked if the Windows client was some sort of ad-ridden piece of garbage. Using Pidgin on Linux I've never seen an ad. I occasionally get some sort of russian spam, it's once or twice a month. How the hell do they get that multi-million dollar figure? How are those users actually worth that much? In other words, if this new russian company liquidated 'ICQ', where would that money come from?
If you quite your job and just take the basics, that's fine.
And what if 40% of the population just quits so they can mooch of the money of the other 60%?
And what if 80% of the population quits? Are you willing to be in the 20% of people sending their ENTIRE paycheck in to the government to pay for the layabouts?
Ever hear of Maslow's hierarchy of needs? If people's basic needs are met, other drives can kick in, like the drive for social acceptance, respect and love,
Because that's what the world needs more than anything, social acceptance, respect, and love.
You know--instead of hard work, responsibility, and principals. If everyone's laying around doing nothing but respecting and loving each other, who is going to take care of things? While you're lying around, who will stop China or Korea or Panama from coming in and enslaving you?
and if those needs are met, people will generally self-sctualize, or work on becoming the people they want to be.
I could care less if you are the person you want to be--or anyone else for that matter. All I care about is if I am the person I want to be...
If society is fair,
Whoa--stop there. Society isn't fair. Life isn't fair. People will always be greedy. People always want to do better than everyone else. And to be honest--if I lived in your society and I just came up with the cure for AIDS, no one would get the cure. I have something lots of people want, and I wouldn't give it out without getting something in return for my 'genius'.
and working gets you social acceptance, respect, and greater freedom to be the person you want to be, most people will work at something useful even if they don't have to.
So if they're going to work regardless of having to or not (which is incorrect), why not have them work for their basic needs too?
Not everyone has access to land, you know.
I know--I'm one of 'em. But I'm working my ass off every day and saving every penny I can. I'm hoping within a year, I can go buy 10 acres and build a house for my wife and kids. That's why I work. Because I want something. But hey--if you and the other socialists on Slashdot really want to put your money where your mouth is, feel free to count yourselves and then figure out how much each one of you owes for my $120,000 house and property--then wire it to me via paypal...
But I agree: if someone won't work, they shouldn't get their wants met. Just their needs.
I want a society where the hierarchy is both minimal and natural, where people can not rise above others through coercion, but only through those other's freely given respect.
Societal hierarchies are not both minimal and natural. It is human nature to compete and rise above. Your 'respect' is worth absolutely dick when it comes to feeding my family or buying a house. It still means dick if I were to buy a totally unnecessary boat. What matters in this society is the ability to perform a task and get paid for that task. If I can charge $125/hr for my skills and people are willing to pay it--good. I don't care if someone else is only able to flip burgers or mop floors for minimum wage.
Although logically I know I am a more useful and valuable person than average, I don't feel that way.
Unless you actually produce or provide value, you aren't 'logically' more valuable than average. Average is flip
AOL has sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies (DST), Russia's largest Internet company, for US$187.5 million.
I connect to ICQ using Pidgin. I also connect to GTalk and a few XMPP servers using Pidgin. The XMPP server software is running on some version of Linux--probably Ubuntu or Debian. It was free to download, free to setup, and free to use. HOW THE #$*@# IS ICQ WORTH $187.5 MILLION?!?!.
Is the Windows ICQ client really a direct pipe for advertisers to watch your web surfing habits or turn on and view your webcam at random or something? How in the hell can you buy an instant messaging company for $187.5 million now-a-days? IM clients and servers are free.
I wouldn't call Flash a trash - thanks to FlashBlock/AdBlock I have little of the problem others are complaining about.
Though it seems that in my future Android phone I would have one more thing to disable right away.
Screw flash.
I'd settle for an e-mail client that can move messages between folders.
word
Terrible program. Wouldn't recommend it.
Yeah, but if "janitor steve" gets a virus, the IT department is liable and responsible to fix it and probably has the means to identify the virus and/or re-image the machine.
I think we're all missing the big picture here. What does Janitor Steve need with a laptop?
I think we've found the source for the protected health information leaks...
Well to be fair, you were using a beta version.
Oh--and I should probably mention that I installed the updates for the 10.04 release today, and all the same issues remain--so it's not an issue of being a pre-release OS. It's released and it still doesn't work.
Well to be fair, you were using a beta version.
I was using the Release Candidate last weekend--so I understand it might have bugs. But 'Release Candidate' means they think it's ready to release to the public, but they want wide-spread testing.
This means You can't early adopt an OS when it's in beta, and then complain when it doesn't work perfectly.
There's a difference between "It doesn't work perfectly" and: audio doesn't work, booting fails in a very common configuration, we're forcing plymouth on you no matter what, the kernel panics constantly, wireless doesn't work, and your NIC doesn't work.
If you did all of this and loaded Debian last week, you certainly weren't even using an RC copy. It's your own fault for installing a beta OS on your server..
The release candidate was released on Thursday the 22nd. I upgraded Friday night, and spend Saturday recovering my server. I upgraded my laptop Sunday afternoon, and my wife's computer Sunday evening.
If the release candidate was glitchy on one system, I would think it was some odd pre-release issue. But it completely hosed three systems. That's not some minor pre-release issue, it's a systemic problem. Every single one of these systems worked flawlessly under 8.04 (my server) and 9.10 (my laptop and my wife's computer).
You do realize that people have a right to be paid for their labor?
You have no right to lock the owner of the system out of his property and then hold it ransom and demand payment to unlock it.
There is a difference between actively locking an owner out of a system by going in, changing passwords, refusing to document them, and holding them hostage for money.
If my boss doesn't have a documentation system for tracking this information, and refuses to give me time to document the system--that's not my fault. He has made a choice to lock himself out of the system. I do what my boss says. If he says "There's no time for that now, get on to the next assignment." I do it. If he fires me, he's not my boss anymore. If he asks me for a password after I'm fired, he's not my boss anymore--but I'd be glad to be a temporary employee (at time-and-a-half) and work for him again and give him the password.
No, it would still be extortion no matter what you were charging. If you think such an argument would hold up in court, you are either extremely ignorant or stupid. The only thing you'd be winning is a one-way ticket to Federal Pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
You can NOT force someone to work without pay, that's slavery. The courts may indeed decide to send people to prison over that--but it doesn't make it 'right'. The courts use to allowed slavery in this nation. Was it right? No.
Here is where you and I differ: I support socialism.
Hence you are a foe... ;)
What I want to see is everyone guaranteed to get the bare minimum for living: food, clean water, 400 square feet of shelter, and medicine, and we should all bear the cos of providing it.
And there's the problem. What are you going to do if I quit my job and say "I'm going to sit on my ass and drink beer. Where's my fucking healthcare, shelter, and food?"?
No really? What do you do with freeloading wastes of space? In your system, I am forced to work to feed them. (And what do you call someone who is forced to work for someone else? Slave.)
I know where they go in a capitalist system. They either start working, they die, or someone takes compassion on them and helps them out. But compassion has limits too. If someone continues to sit on their ass and drink beer and absolutely doesn't want to help themselves, your compassion will run out.
because we all benefit by not having desperate, starving humans around.
Really? How do I benefit by paying for housing for my beer-swilling neighbor who sits in his bathrobe all day on his front porch smoking pot? I'm out $x where $x is a small amount of money coming from me to him--but multiply that times all the wastes-of-space around the country...
I would be better off if he were not taking up valuable housing space, sucking up valuable medical resources, and siphoning value away from all the other hard working citizens.
I'm not a social Darwinist, and frankly, you are either a socialist or a social Darwinist who thinks death is the preferable outcome for those who find no place in the system.
You can't *not* find a place in the system.
This last year, I fed my family of four for three months off a small garden plot. I spend $20 for seeds, and the rest was the labor of my wife and I. So don't tell me the lazy wastes of space can't feed themselves.
Social Darwinism is a theory supported by the owning class because it lets them offer 'do what I say, or starve to death' to workers who have no real choice
Really? No one can tell me to starve to death. If I quit my job tomorrow, I won't have high speed internet, cable TV, a flashy cell phone, or a POS car--but I will have food. There's a difference between 'wants' and 'needs'.
But what I don't want to see is what we have now: socialism for the very rich only.
You will never stop that. You will *never* find a society or structure that says 'everyone is equal'. For one, people are not equal. While I may be an awesome network admin, I know nothing about cardiology. If I need a cardiologist, he can ask what he wants for his labor. When he needs a network setup, I can ask what I want.
People have a built-in desire to better themselves and make better lives for their families. You will always have ego and a fight to be 'on top'. Any government you appoint to 'oversee' this wonderous new society you propose will by definition be 'better' than the common surfs. They will start thinking that they need certain amenities so they can more easily 'help' the people. (Think about Nancy Pelosi needing her own aircraft to get to California because she can't be bothered to travel publically.).
If the government provides the bare minimum, and runs any natural monopolies, but the free market does everything else, I would be a very happy socialist.
There's the problem. The government only does one thing well. It's not running an efficient or intelligent business. A government's job is to protect us from other governments or other people trying to rule us. That's why the government is in charge of the military. That's why the government is in charge of defending our freedoms as outlined in the Constitution.
Also, let's make jury nullification official and legal. It is the whole reason we have juries instead of letting judges decide. If all twelve random citizens think a law is such bunk that it shouldn't be enforced, then it shouldn't be enforced.
Yeah--but look at 11 random people around you. Do you honestly think there are enough non-sheep among them to stand up against tyranny?
It is much easier to control government than a corporation.
Really? When was the last time a corporation was allowed to change the law to fit its own needs? Sure, they can lobby and find a 'friendly' member of congress to do it for them, but Congress can simply change the laws whenever they want for their own benefit.
Still, you have a point. It's hard to control the damage when we mistakenly elect an incompetent.
Exactly--Bush launched the bailout. Huuuuge mistake and abuse of power. Then along came Hopey-Changey and Sheriff Joe verses McMoron and Caribou Barbie. I hate voting for the person I detest the least. Hopey-Changey decided to continue the bailout. But let's face it--McCain would have too.
Obama says they are big evil corporations--then he bails out the ones that are failing. What?
However, we could have done what the Republicans attempted and impeached him, but apparently, too few Democrats have the balls to try something like that.
Both parties suck, and I'm willing to bet that November doesn't make us a freer citizens. We'll still have to chose between Socialism and Socialism-Light.
Canonical has been working extremely hard and it shows in the quality of this release.
Yeah--after upgrading my server which has a standalone boot drive along with 8 other disks that are in a RAID6 array--it completely fails to boot. Plymouth is a joke--why install graphical boot crap on a server? I can't even see the output of fsck which is apparently complaining that my array is corrupted--because the output is hooked into the fscked-up plymouth system. Lame regressions. Funny how the 8.04 recovery CD says the array is just fine. Meh, loaded Debian last weekend, haven't looked back.
Oh--and there's my netbook. After upgrading, the wireless and onboard NIC work intermittently. Most hibernates require a reboot because the wireless and NIC fail to come back up. Unplugging from the AC adapter causes a kernel panic about 60% of the time. Lots of lame regressions. But hey--at least plymouth works on my netbook. I can boot graphically into a flaky distro. It's scheduled to be upgraded to Debian this weekend.
I upgraded my wife's computer even though that BOFH part of my brain was screaming that I was 0 for 2 on 10.04 upgrades. Upgraded her from 9.10 and she immediately lost audio in Firefox along with the sound icon in her systray. Mplayer, totem, and the like all output sound just fine. Just no firefox or sound icon. And I can't seem to get it back. There is no audio panel applet. After a bunch of dorking around, uninstalling things, recompiling other things, I got audio working. Very lame regression.
I'm going to skip upgrading any of our customer systems to 10.04 in light of this. Instead, I'll start migrating to Debian. There doesn't seem to be any mention of 'plymouth' in their packaging system. That makes me feel a lot better.
I know everyone's experiences are different, but this upgrade totally kicked my ass.
Why don't they ever delay the long-term releases by a few weeks or months to put together a truly finished product?
Meh, that's not the purpose of the laws. This ain't no Harrison Bergeron, despite what many nerds believe. But this is a systemic problem, I agree: too many, too confusing laws, not enforced. We need to simplify our legal system so that the common man has access to justice, and so that money will not give anyone an advantage in the system. Then we need to enforce the laws, especially against white collar criminals who cause billions of dollars worth of damage to society.
You've got no argument from me.
Okay, let me put it this way: there is a mechanism, known as 'elections,' that citizens CAN use to hold politicians accountable. If we don't, well, it's out fault. With corporations, there is no real way to hold them accountable.
There is a mechanism, know as 'your wallet', that you CAN use to hold companies accountable. If we don't buy from them, they go out of business. With politicians, we can vote them out, but the damage is already done. I thought Bush was a good pick almost 10 years ago. After he was elected, it became rapidly apparent that he was not. But the damage is already done. Nothing us poor serfs can do about it.
You do realize that is extortion and you'd be in a whole mess of shit for doing so, right?
You do realize that people have a right to be paid for their labor?
I'm not talking about charging thousands or millions of dollars for giving them passwords, but I am talking about getting paid my normal overtime rate to document information that should have been required by policy. I have worked in a place where they were so 'busy' trying to get the 'next big project' finished that they completely skipped the part about documenting the servers and systems from the previous project. That's not my fault, and to ask me to do it for free would be wrong.
Like I said, I'm not charging $50,000 for a password--that would be extortionate. It it literally takes me 25 minutes to write down all the passwords I can think of, I'm billing them for 25 minutes of my time.
In that case, not only are you denying access to their systems but your are implicitly admitting that you can still give them access to their systems (you're happy to provide him the information, therefore we can safely assume you have it) and using extortion (you want to be paid - and paid more than you otherwise would have earned) to rectify the situation.
IANAL but if your former employer is of a mind to report you to the authorities I really can't see that ending well.
There is nothing extortionate about requiring payment for services. If your former boss called you up and said "Hey--can you come in this weekend and help us move office furniture?", would you do it for free? No. If my boss failed to provide time for documenting important information, a policy, and/or a system for documenting the information, that's his problem. If I am required after being fired to do a job he should have done, I will be asking for payment. And no, not thousands of millions of dollars (which would be extortionate), but simply my regular overtime rate.
stop worrying, personal recording devices will save the day. Won't be long before cops can't dump without it being public information.
Yeah--except that now it's illegal to record cops in at least one state. I don't recall which one, but it's on the east coast. You record 'em, you go to jail. Awesome.
Stop blaming the victims and defending the indefensible. No one has the right to lie, cheat, and rob others.
Agreed--if they did something wrong, the legal system needs to deal with them. I'm not defending theft. What I am defending is the endless stream of laws the government puts out to help idiots and hinder smart people.
Politicians are accountable to those who elected them.
HAHAHAHAAAAAAA!
It's still not pulling you over, declaring you an enemy of the state, putting you on your knees, and executing you on the spot and in the open because they don't like you, then putting some drugs on your dead body in order to make summarily executing you legal.
Bah! We skip all that by sending in the SWAT team because some 'informant' said they saw you smoking a joint. The SWAT team swoops in, shoots your dog, then shoots you because they thought you had a weapon. Saves a lot of time and hassle. No declaring you an enemy of this or that, planting evidence, etc... ;)
Get some perspective. The cops in the U.S. trial freaked out and overreacted, and they killed someone. (Yeah, it's wrong and I'm not defending it.) Thaksin's police executed over a thousand people on purpose and with forethought.
I agree. There's a difference between premeditated murder of thousands verses simply shooting someone for 'contempt of cop' without any forethought.
It would absolve me from prosecution unless I violated any of the very specific rules that were listed.
The geek isn't always very good at distinguishing between civil and criminal actions. The question then becomes prosecution by who and under what set of rules.
The computer networks that sustain the city of San Francisco belong to the city of San Francisco. No court can allow them to be held hostage to any single individual. Not the system administrator. Not the mayor. Not anyone.
Really? What if you boss says 'setup that new server' and you say 'Yes sir'. You follow the standard practice of giving it a secure password because it's connected to the internet. Then you say to your boss "We really need a place to document the password". Your boss gives you no reply and immediately sends you out to your next assignment. There's also no formal documentation system in your organization. After a few weeks of being scheduled on assignments non-stop from 8 AM until 5 PM, you get fired. Whose fault is it that your boss doesn't know the password? Should you be required or forced to work for free for a few hours to cough up passwords because of a failing of your boss?
If, after you've been fired, you refuse to disclose the passwords necessary for your successor to do your job, then it is no longer something they can simply "fire" you for, (as you no longer work there) so it becomes something you need to take to court, not "theft" in this case, but "denial of service" because his action of refusing to release the passwords denied them access to administer those systems.
If I am fired, and then my boss realizes that he hasn't taken the proper steps (not saying this is the case with Childs) of making policies for documenting configurations and/or passwords, along with providing time during work-hours to document that information, he doesn't get them. I'm fired after all, and he doesn't get my free labor. I will be happy to provide him with the information though at my contracting rate of 1.5 times my normal pay.