Sometimes you get companies that are too powerful to die quickly even with gross incompetence.
Occasionally the government steps in to save them and the incompetent people who ran it get away without consequence. I believe the term is "too big to fail".
I'm anti-patent-troll, and I'm also anti-current-US-patent-system. If we were designing an inventor protection system today, we would not invent this.
Having said that, we tend to notice here because of the way patents are used in the software industry. In most businesses, exactly the same "invention" isn't simultaneously "protected" by patent, trade secret, and copyright.
As much as we like to complain about people like Shkreli, patents as they are currently implemented seem to work reasonably well in the pharmaceutical industry. It'd work even better with some tweaking (e.g. public health emergency exceptions for developing countries with proportionate compensation), but most of the problems in that business are only tangentially related to patents.
The man will not do any prison time if he is not convicted, yes. As always, that is a higher standard than the one used to decide whether or not you want to work with him or let your kids be around him.
In most civilized countries, possibly including the USA, the government can and should take down anything inciting violence or hatred, Surely you're not going to argue that posts that talks about a 'kike infestation' and hint at 'final solutions' (translated from the original German, I suppose) should be protected by free-speech laws?
I'm saying that it would almost certainly be illegal for a municipal government to implement a content-based filter on an ISP that they ran. I am saying no more and no less than this.
They killed Kavin Spacey's career over an allegation.
Over 30 allegations, three historic police reports and six open police investigations in the UK alone, and a statement by Spacey that he was seeking "evaluation and treatment".
Governments are not legally allowed to implement content-related speech filters. Sure, it may take a lawsuit to fix that, but that lawsuit will succeed. Corporations usually are allowed to "censor".
Moore's Law hasn't stopped, but it hasn't given us an automatic performance boost across the board for a while now. It's still there, but it's giving us things like wider vector units, more cores, etc. You know, all the stuff that Python and Javascript programmers can't take useful advantage of.
Your mechanic may not be able to build a car from scratch, but he or she probably knows how to get the best mileage out of most vehicles.
And I dare say that most mechanics would refuse to build a car which only works with a certain brand of fuel, or spies on the driver and passengers, but that's a topic for another day.
Truth be told, most people in the tech industry don't seem to know either. Or don't want to know. Most of our infrastructure is built on layers upon layers of buggy software, as if software was a platform.
If Americans weren't so divided the trolling wouldn't work. After decades of being told by establishment politicians and talking heads that the other half of the population is the enemy, it doesn't take much to push this over the edge.
"There is great danger of a final, and we believe fatal, identification of the word religion with doctrines and methods which have lost their significance and which are powerless to solve the problem of human living in the Twentieth Century. Religions have always been means for realizing the highest values of life. Their end has been accomplished through the interpretation of the total environing situation (theology or world view), the sense of values resulting therefrom (goal or ideal), and the technique (cult), established for realizing the satisfactory life. A change in any of these factors results in alteration of the outward forms of religion. This fact explains the changefulness of religions through the centuries. But through all changes religion itself remains constant in its quest for abiding values, an inseparable feature of human life."
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes you get companies that are too powerful to die quickly even with gross incompetence.
Occasionally the government steps in to save them and the incompetent people who ran it get away without consequence. I believe the term is "too big to fail".
Yeah, they are all very different certifications which require distinct expensive training courses. Now hand over several thousand or else.
Because burglar-hackers and/or the future totalitarian government would like an accurate layout of your house.
Or something. I'm sure a bad sci-fi author or conspiracy theorist could come up with something more entertaining.
True, though. I've also had an hour of online sexual harassment training and basically nothing else in that list.
I assume that, for some reason, laboratory safety training, handling of personal information training, etc don't fall under the same umbrella.
I'm anti-patent-troll, and I'm also anti-current-US-patent-system. If we were designing an inventor protection system today, we would not invent this.
Having said that, we tend to notice here because of the way patents are used in the software industry. In most businesses, exactly the same "invention" isn't simultaneously "protected" by patent, trade secret, and copyright.
As much as we like to complain about people like Shkreli, patents as they are currently implemented seem to work reasonably well in the pharmaceutical industry. It'd work even better with some tweaking (e.g. public health emergency exceptions for developing countries with proportionate compensation), but most of the problems in that business are only tangentially related to patents.
Ah, but you're conveniently forgetting that even though utopianism has never worked, it could if we just threw enough technology at the problem.
Nevada would be a great candidate for a solar updraft tower.
The man will not do any prison time if he is not convicted, yes. As always, that is a higher standard than the one used to decide whether or not you want to work with him or let your kids be around him.
In most civilized countries, possibly including the USA, the government can and should take down anything inciting violence or hatred, Surely you're not going to argue that posts that talks about a 'kike infestation' and hint at 'final solutions' (translated from the original German, I suppose) should be protected by free-speech laws?
I'm saying that it would almost certainly be illegal for a municipal government to implement a content-based filter on an ISP that they ran. I am saying no more and no less than this.
They killed Kavin Spacey's career over an allegation.
Over 30 allegations, three historic police reports and six open police investigations in the UK alone, and a statement by Spacey that he was seeking "evaluation and treatment".
Governments are not legally allowed to implement content-related speech filters. Sure, it may take a lawsuit to fix that, but that lawsuit will succeed. Corporations usually are allowed to "censor".
Can anyone name a single instance of relatively recent sexual harassment allegation to be conclusively proven in the court of law?
Cosby has been mentioned. Others (e.g. Kevin Spacey, Morgan Spurlock, Louis CK) have admitted it.
US courts only work fast when poor people are involved. For rich people, justice is slow.
And the equivalents from other vendors, yes.
Moore's Law hasn't stopped, but it hasn't given us an automatic performance boost across the board for a while now. It's still there, but it's giving us things like wider vector units, more cores, etc. You know, all the stuff that Python and Javascript programmers can't take useful advantage of.
Your mechanic may not be able to build a car from scratch, but he or she probably knows how to get the best mileage out of most vehicles.
And I dare say that most mechanics would refuse to build a car which only works with a certain brand of fuel, or spies on the driver and passengers, but that's a topic for another day.
Linus and crew don't work at the level of any ring below 0.
Even that doesn't help these days. Not only do we not know how our CPUs work, we're not allowed to know.
Nothing gives you responsiveness like being on fire. This is true.
Truth be told, most people in the tech industry don't seem to know either. Or don't want to know. Most of our infrastructure is built on layers upon layers of buggy software, as if software was a platform.
Nobody is talking about the environmental devastation caused by over-harvesting of pac-dots.
If Americans weren't so divided the trolling wouldn't work. After decades of being told by establishment politicians and talking heads that the other half of the population is the enemy, it doesn't take much to push this over the edge.
Yeah, but ten year old girls are unusually creative when it comes to insults.
Everyone posting about politics on Slashdot and elsewhere on the Internet is doing the same thing.
I am spending exactly zero money on influencing public opinion on the Internet. Campaign finance rules therefore do not apply to what I do.
"There is great danger of a final, and we believe fatal, identification of the word religion with doctrines and methods which have lost their significance and which are powerless to solve the problem of human living in the Twentieth Century. Religions have always been means for realizing the highest values of life. Their end has been accomplished through the interpretation of the total environing situation (theology or world view), the sense of values resulting therefrom (goal or ideal), and the technique (cult), established for realizing the satisfactory life. A change in any of these factors results in alteration of the outward forms of religion. This fact explains the changefulness of religions through the centuries. But through all changes religion itself remains constant in its quest for abiding values, an inseparable feature of human life."
- The Humanist Manifesto
There exist people who worship the Sun.
By any reasonable definition of the word "god", the Sun is their god.
By any reasonable scientific standard, the Sun exists.
Therefore, at least one god exists. QED