You're asking Slashdot how they deal with piracy? Slashdotters HATE creators' rights. Most will be fully in favor of piracy and consider it a "cultural revolution" or "free advertising" or whatever ridiculous excuse they've concocted that week to make themselves not feel guilty.
I think many Slashdotters had more respect for creators' rights before the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and other similar legislation were passed.
Ethics? If there are no ethics preventing people from pirating, there will be no ethics preventing them from trying to get a reward turning people in.
That's silly. People have different ethical views about different things.
For example, this issue puts two ethics at odds: obeying the law vs. loyalty to the offender. A very ethical person might have to sacrifice one of those ethics to serve the other.
3) Depending on your bosses answer and your morality
a) Boss says: hunt down priated software -> you do that
b) Boss says: dont touch the issue and you are not too worried about the moral/legal issues: close your eyes
c) Boss says: dont touch the issue and you are worried about the moral/legal issues AND you are brave: state is explicictely in an e-mail to your boss with somebody else in the company in the CC
d) Boss says: dont touch the issue and you are worried about the moral/legal issues AND you are reasonable: leave.
If you're worried about the law being broken, then you should also know that failure to report a crime to the police is also a law, iirc. So there should be:
e) Report the crime to the police. Then hope (in vain) that you still have a job.
Jeff Bezos once said to me 'you can't take something away from someone without giving something back of equivalent value without them being pissed off'.
Then I'm still waiting for him to compensate me for taking away my right to offer one-click orders.
Lastly, I would DOCUMENT everything, and let the Bossman know you are documenting everything, including the conversations you have regarding your findings and the solutions you're offering.
You're also documenting your failure to report a crime to the police, which I believe is illegal all by itself.
I realize that's true from a pure copyright standpoint, but in the real world it's sometimes useful to say, install a copy of a tool for evaluation in your workflow before deciding to spend $600 on a license for that tool.
And it's even more useful to get a warez version and not even bothering to purchase the full version at all.
If you're going to use convenience as an argument for breaking the law, I encourage you to follow that argument to its logical conclusions.
You know what other society went down in flames after concentrating all the governmental activities under the Executive?
Are you referring to the Roman Empire having its power concentrated in the various Caesars?
It's silly to say that we're in the same boat as them. What really killed the Roman Empire was trying to impose its political and military will far more broadly than it could manage. We should be fine!
I know this will seem foreign to most of the current generation of graduates, but I would suggest a strong grounding in assembly coding for any processor. If the programmer really understands assembly, s/he should "intuitively" acquire a sound grasp of what makes a good program written in C, Fortran or whatever.
Many of the current commercial languages belong in toyland. They are designed for programmers who really don't have any idea about managing resources efficiently.
I think you're dead wrong. In many, many situations, minimizing program complexity, development time, and bugs is a far more pressing concern than minimizing CPU time, memory usage, etc.
Understanding assembly has its benefits, but I'd much rather work with someone who's learned how to keep a 100k line program maintainable and correct, than someone who's learned how to write something in 50 assembly instructions rather than 60.
I have the feeling that you and Mel would get along just fine.
If you learn C++, use template metaprogramming and multiple inheritance (of templated classes, passing through template parameters up the inheritance chain). Use operator overloading for everything from combining 2 lists, write the complex number class everyone writes
Do you realize how insanely bad of a C++ program would typically result from programming that way? I actually had to re-read that paragraph two times to realize that you weren't telling him about pitfalls common to many new C++ programmers.
There are at least two kinds of idiomatic programming in C++: (1) using, as much as you can, every language feature that distinguishes C++ from C, or (2) using the language features that tend to lead to good, maintainable code and eschewing the rest. I think you're directing him towards (1).
1) You really shouldn't give the kids coffee. 2) I don't think kids like the taste of coffee filters. 3) Filtering them from starbucks.com will not accomplish much. 4) That would only get rid of aromatic Colombian and Ethiopian porn.
I'm a vegan. I'll be here all weak.
So the theory is, submit four "+0.25 funny" jokes, and you get a +1 Funny modification?
So you receive a letter on your mailbox saying that you were fined in AUD $11,000 , for linking to a site that you didn't know you could link, and if you knew that you couldn't link to it you would be even more penalized because that information is not for your security level?
Doesn't the Australian court system offer its citizens some kind of protection against this?
So if they're resistant to UV, which can kill many nasty bugs that plague humanity, I wonder which of our other defenses (antibiotics, autoclaves, etc.) they can survive.
She actually predates Bush: she was chairing hearings about trade agreements in 1992, and apparently has at least 30 years of Federal Civil Service behind her. She has always kept a very low profile: the only biography of her on the web is remarkable for saying very little and providing no dates at all. These are the hallmarks of a career bureaucrat; the kind of person who works hard, not out of any sense of ideals, or for the good of the team, but to assure that their personal situation will be more comfortable next year than it was last year (no matter who is in charge or what the new goals of the organization are).
What about that marks her as a career beuracrat? Everything you wrote about her sounds ambiguous at worst, and virtuous at best: she's not self-promoting, and she was willing to stick in an often-thankless, less-than-industry-average-paying job for 30 years.
Slashdot Mirror
You should check out
http://www.dragonflycomputing.com/
You're asking Slashdot how they deal with piracy? Slashdotters HATE creators' rights. Most will be fully in favor of piracy and consider it a "cultural revolution" or "free advertising" or whatever ridiculous excuse they've concocted that week to make themselves not feel guilty.
I think many Slashdotters had more respect for creators' rights before the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and other similar legislation were passed.
That's silly. People have different ethical views about different things.
For example, this issue puts two ethics at odds: obeying the law vs. loyalty to the offender. A very ethical person might have to sacrifice one of those ethics to serve the other.
I know that if the BSA got wind of this, it would all fall on me when they stormed in.
And those Boy Scouts are rotten little bastards.
Worst. Merit. Badge. Evar.
3) Depending on your bosses answer and your morality
a) Boss says: hunt down priated software -> you do that
b) Boss says: dont touch the issue and you are not too worried about the moral/legal issues: close your eyes
c) Boss says: dont touch the issue and you are worried about the moral/legal issues AND you are brave: state is explicictely in an e-mail to your boss with somebody else in the company in the CC
d) Boss says: dont touch the issue and you are worried about the moral/legal issues AND you are reasonable: leave.
If you're worried about the law being broken, then you should also know that failure to report a crime to the police is also a law, iirc. So there should be:
e) Report the crime to the police. Then hope (in vain) that you still have a job.
Then I'm still waiting for him to compensate me for taking away my right to offer one-click orders.
You're also documenting your failure to report a crime to the police, which I believe is illegal all by itself.
I realize that's true from a pure copyright standpoint, but in the real world it's sometimes useful to say, install a copy of a tool for evaluation in your workflow before deciding to spend $600 on a license for that tool.
And it's even more useful to get a warez version and not even bothering to purchase the full version at all.
If you're going to use convenience as an argument for breaking the law, I encourage you to follow that argument to its logical conclusions.
You know what other society went down in flames after concentrating all the governmental activities under the Executive?
Are you referring to the Roman Empire having its power concentrated in the various Caesars?
It's silly to say that we're in the same boat as them. What really killed the Roman Empire was trying to impose its political and military will far more broadly than it could manage. We should be fine!
Antivirus software I can believe in!
I know this will seem foreign to most of the current generation of graduates, but I would suggest a strong grounding in assembly coding for any processor. If the programmer really understands assembly, s/he should "intuitively" acquire a sound grasp of what makes a good program written in C, Fortran or whatever.
Many of the current commercial languages belong in toyland. They are designed for programmers who really don't have any idea about managing resources efficiently.
I think you're dead wrong. In many, many situations, minimizing program complexity, development time, and bugs is a far more pressing concern than minimizing CPU time, memory usage, etc.
Understanding assembly has its benefits, but I'd much rather work with someone who's learned how to keep a 100k line program maintainable and correct, than someone who's learned how to write something in 50 assembly instructions rather than 60.
I have the feeling that you and Mel would get along just fine.
Do you realize how insanely bad of a C++ program would typically result from programming that way? I actually had to re-read that paragraph two times to realize that you weren't telling him about pitfalls common to many new C++ programmers.
There are at least two kinds of idiomatic programming in C++: (1) using, as much as you can, every language feature that distinguishes C++ from C, or (2) using the language features that tend to lead to good, maintainable code and eschewing the rest. I think you're directing him towards (1).
OS X: $500
dark turtleneck + horn-rimmed glasses: $150
Don't conductors generally get more resistive when they heat up?
Is there a cost to data centers when their computers' circuits become more resistive?
The proper beginning is, "You know what really grinds my gears?"
Take your pick:
1) You really shouldn't give the kids coffee.
2) I don't think kids like the taste of coffee filters.
3) Filtering them from starbucks.com will not accomplish much.
4) That would only get rid of aromatic Colombian and Ethiopian porn.
I'm a vegan. I'll be here all weak.
So the theory is, submit four "+0.25 funny" jokes, and you get a +1 Funny modification?
Today mine got up at 5 a.m. My answer would have to be, "coffee filters".
Actually, the internet filter at work prevented me from checking out stories on the topic. I took a gamble with that link and lost. Sorry about that.
If this were happening in Canada, I'd start publishing every link I could on every website I could, and ask (no, beg) for trial date, and with a jury.
Sorry friend, I think your boat has already sailed.
Nope, they're immediately detained on some manner of prison island, no questions asked.
Yeah, but it's also filled with lots of women with Australian accents. Please excuse me while I go find some felony to commit...
So you receive a letter on your mailbox saying that you were fined in AUD $11,000 , for linking to a site that you didn't know you could link, and if you knew that you couldn't link to it you would be even more penalized because that information is not for your security level?
Doesn't the Australian court system offer its citizens some kind of protection against this?
So if they're resistant to UV, which can kill many nasty bugs that plague humanity, I wonder which of our other defenses (antibiotics, autoclaves, etc.) they can survive.
Being a bureaucrat for 30 years marks her as a career bureaucrat.
In a literal sense, yes, but I think he was using the term in a pejorative sense.
That's for their specialty product, the iWack.
What about that marks her as a career beuracrat? Everything you wrote about her sounds ambiguous at worst, and virtuous at best: she's not self-promoting, and she was willing to stick in an often-thankless, less-than-industry-average-paying job for 30 years.