Proof yet again that Lucas is a pretentious know-nothing hack. "Mon Calamari," being a bastardization of both French and Italian isn't, even forgiving that, gramatically correct as it uses a singular possessive with a plural noun. Lucas, you ignorant slut...
I think the greater point here is that he's being charged for crimes committed before they were crimes and which as many have pointed out are questionable as to if they should be considered crimes at all.
Yes, if you defraud or outright steal (think: hijacked zombie computers), sure, that should be criminal. If you merely annoy from the comfort of your home, using your hardware, that should be purely a civil matter for which you should suffer perhaps severe penalties, but not incarceration.
Sacrificing your life in war is honorable and deserves recognition because of your service to your country; Sacrificing your life in space because of some stupid engineering/manufacturing mistake is a waste.
So, being an astronaut is not an honorable service to your country? Those are some brass ones you've got there...
Is this country so arrogant that we actually believe there won't be fatal engineering and manufacturing mistakes when we lob people into space? We haven't been doing it very long, folks. We WILL be making rather huge mistakes for quite some time. Hell, we still can't manufacture a perfect pair of rollerskates, what makes you think we can manufacture a perfect orbiter?
If the companies in the chain appear to exist for the sole purpose of doing business with each other, you gain precisely zero protection except for a certain sense of self-satisfaction for making things more complex than they need to be.
Yes, this is done all the time, but no, it does not afford the protection people think it does. Now, if each company does some TINY percentage of its business with one of the others, you might succeed. But if you are your only customer...it ain't happening.
People used to try to do this with their personal assets. They'd set up a holding company that would then purchase and lease back all of their stuff and existed soley for that purpose. The IRS is quite aware of how clever people think they are for setting up these paper companies and does not take kindly to them.
Anyone who does this sort of crap and then bitches about the tax code being insanely complex can thank themselves for dreaming up all these schemes, which then require endless legislation to clarify their absurdity.
This is a demonstration of why anything that is not isolated should be treated as inherently insecure.
Put the AP on the outside of the firewall and your network security is no more compromised than it is by simple fact of being connected to the internet in the first place. Your internet connection is FAR more dangerous. Secure yourself against that and treat any wireless connection no differently.
I use WEP _purely_ to limit leeching, nothing more. Beyond that, I don't see the point in bothering worrying about it, since if your primary network connection is LESS secure than your WiFi connection, you have MUCH bigger problems. Bandying around about encrypted APs just seems pennywise in that context. I mean, would you feel terribly secure if your wired network connection was absolutely secure for 500ft from your building and totally wide open at either end? Seems rather pointless to me and that is EXACTLY what you have with WiFi. Who the fsck cares and if so why?
Well, yes, I suppose they do have certain copyrights that they have licensed, but I'm getting so sick of Google acting like it owns goddamned everything just because they threw someone else's property into a database.
..right, which is why I pointed out the source of the opposing sides. Perhaps I wasn't blunt enough. My previous post can be restated:
"Why aren't you using this?!? It's the BEST!!!"
"Erm, no, this is currently better for me, thanks. Not really interested, too expensive, unstable, blah blah blah, you know the drill."
"You suck! What are you too stupid to learn a new language? You scared of change? Oooh, must feel really safe only using your favorite language."
"You must live in your mom's garage. I work for IBM and already know fifteen languages, five of them spoken. Piss off."
Rinse. Repeat.
My point is that the roles reverse depending on the [something] vs. [something else], but the cause is generally the same. So, when Java/J2EE came around everyone bitched because they just luved [whatever] and that was just so much extra abstraction and bloat yadda-yadda--and, at that point, why the hell does EVERYTHING have to be on the freakin' Web anyway? Can't we just keep these old curses apps that have worked since the dawn of time and run on a server that is little more than a glorified pocket calculator? Well, after a few years, companies (the ones who write the individual's paychecks, so it's rather presumptuous to separate the individual from the company in these arguments for that reason, IMHO) started embracing Java/J2EE because it was safe. Now other languages and frameworks like Ruby are coming along and becoming safer bets to entertain, but people are comfortable (that is to say "not threatened," although they may be pained) with Java, so most of these flames can be translated into "goddamnit, I spent ten years building everything in [x], then five years rebuilding every goddamned thing in [y], now you want me to spend the next three years rebuilding the same f!@$ing thing in [z]?!"
So, we just use the above "yo momma" shorthand because we assume that we've all heard this song before and no matter if you replace the Hammond Organ with the London Philharmonic, it's still the same tired old tune.
See? It was on topic. If we keep this thread alive and turn it into a flamewar it'll REALLY be on-topic, non?
Here, I'll start: you didn't get it the first time around because you're fapping to pr0n in yo momma's garage you Ruby-loving hippie...
In sixteen years of developing for large-cum-huge organizations, I've found that there is one overriding criterion for EVERYTHING that such companies do: stability.
People who are "fanboys" may just be so invested in [something] that to achieve the same depth of _tested_ knowledge in [something else] would take five years. They may in fact be looking at things like Ruby, but they aren't planning on switching their production development to it until both they and it are seasoned because it would be insane to do so. It's not just THEIR level of comfort that is in question, it is the organizations ability to accept it.
Before someone slams on corporate culture limiting your godlike creative powers, it's actually pretty reasonable. A business is a machine. You want to get some return on the machine before you rip the engine out and retool it--and that timeframe is generally ~5 years. Think of it like buying a car. YOU may be able to afford to replace yours every year or maybe you're a grease monkey who does a frame-off rebuild every spring just for kicks, but the vast majority don't want to go through the hassle and expense on an annual basis.
So, Ruby has now reached the point where it is a serious contender. Expect it to start replacing J2EE somewhere between 2008-2010.
Two former bosses had the proper method for expressing respect towards techies:
Cold, hard cash, baby.
Seriously, you want to quantify how "respect" has diminished, look at the salaries. I'm not talking about "back when I made $100k for writing HTML," I'm talking about comparing between similarly complex jobs TODAY. There are a great number of companies that still pay respectable sums for the work, but a quick spin around a few major markets will show that, yes, respect has diminished. When I saw a programming position requiring 10+ years of experience in aerospace engineering and a PhD going for $45k at a MAJOR company in Los Angeles, I knew it was time to move. How much you wanna bet the executive secretaries make more than that? In that sense, yes, respect IS a zero-sum game...
It also is not unique. It is charged with precisely the same duties as similar agencies in other countries that have many sitting parties.
The cause is the constitution. This country was designed from day one to have, more or less, a two party system.
I'm not remotely in favor of the so-called "two party system." However, in analyizing the problem, it helps to be precise (preferably correct) in identifying causes and effects. In this case, the FEC is neither cause nor effect. If we magically transformed into, say, South Africa, where they have a dozen or so relevant parties, the FEC would still have a role and would have to change little to accommodate the difference.
From your argument, you could blame every single agency of the United States as both cause and effect of the two party system--and in a prosaic sort of way, you'd be right. If your goal is to devise a solution to bring about multi-party politics in the US, I suggest you look elsewhere.
IF the FEC suddenly disappeared in a cloud of smoke it would change absolutely nothing about that aspect of the electoral process, ergo, your suggestion is specious at best.
What amazes me is how everyone in IT knows that even some of the most expensive certification programs are bullshiat -- I've taken my share through some of the big guns, like SUN for godssake, and can you say crrrrap? -- but still everyone demands the damned certs.
There have been a couple occassions where I've been in a slump and just need to pick up some work and would have been more than happy to do basic hardware work. I've been building PCs since I was in Jr. High over twenty years ago, but oh hell no, you don't have an A+ certification... oooh no, can't let you swap out that DIMM, buddy, you're an unqualified amateur. You've got to be fscking kidding me.
That said, corporate IT departments survive because they can enforce a known configuration where they can just re-image a troubled machine. Consumers, with their infinite and arbitrary configurations insist first on having support cost less than the machine, but also insist on never returning to a known-state. With a vehicle, your mechanic can simply return it to factory specs, generally with no complaints. Everytime a computer tech suggests that, oh hell no, you obviously don't know what you're doing. No, it's just that I have know way of knowing what YOU have already DONE without a point of reference.
With cheap computers, however, simply replacing them outright is the most logical solution to almost any problem for those who need support. Google, from what I understand, does ZERO diagnostics on malfunctioning nodes. They just pull out the pizza box and toss it in the trash. It's just not cost effective to even bother figuring out what went wrong when just replacing the entire machine is cheaper and that applies to most consumer computers, like it or not.
But, like with cars, they scream conspiracy. The industry wants me to keep replacing these things!! Well, if you knew how to maintain and rebuild either yourself, you wouldn't have to pay $75/hour to replace a $2 component and, voila, it might be more cost effective to fix rather than replace.
Look, my point is that in the capacity in which the FEC is currently charged, this is reasonable. We can endlessly broaden the debate to whether they should exist at all, but that's fantasyland. The reality we're in now is that election campaigns are regulated--for good reasons, imho--and all they are doing is responding to how campaigns are run. It's not perfect, there are massive holes, but it's at least an attempt to level the playing field.
This is about disclosure. One major reason the FEC exists is so when someone gives a bazillion dollars to prop up some puppet candidate, you know who you're REALLY voting for. Remove the reporting requirements and *poof* everything becomes confidential and, for all reasonable purposes, untraceable. Frankly, if it was the case that the DNC bankrolled F911 or the GOP was directly underwriting Fox News, yeah, I'd want to know.
So, you're saying that the FEC is fundamentally an unconstitutional entity? I'd think that if that was the case, it would have come up in the Supreme Court sometime in the last thirty years.
Have you read the proposed language? Every other blinking sentence talks of protecting individual free speech. They're talking about circumstances where there is direct financial backing or administrative coordination with campaigns, not Joe Six-pack's blog--and all they are proposing is that it be reported the same way they would have to if you made sammiches and donated them to the boiler room. It's not at all about abridging free speech, it's about documenting contributions, whether in-cash or in-kind. Period.
There are plenty of very good reasons they're tackling the issue and if you bother to read the related documents, it is quite clear they are attempting to draft rules that impact only coordinated, primarily directly paid, activity--and even then, they're simply requiring the campaign connections to be disclosed and, when appropriate, reported as contributions.
Do a google on "ultrasound china or india 'sex selection'" for an excellent primer on why this is a bad idea. Sure, on an individual level, many things appear innocuous. Translate to a societal level and things can get very, very messy. China already has an 8% disparity over the rest of the world and India is catching up. Granted, this would take the abortion problem out of the loop. However, that may be the only thing restraining "western" countries from experiencing the same problem.
On the other hand, this might solve the whole "gay marriage" issue. If there simply are not enough women, some otherwise heterosexual men may just give up and demand the right to marry each other out of exhaustion and apathy.
Meh. Laptop specs seem to be flat-lining, but the prices are distinctly not dropping. I mean, come on, three years ago, I bought a UXGA/1Ghz/1GB Dell for $1,100 LESS than this, with TWO optical drives (one CDRW, one DVD) and about the same battery life. Yeah, gee-whiz technology, but from previous reports, it's about as "3D" as a prismatic baseball card (and, frankly, about as high-tech). The rest of the specs are downright underwhelming. Even if that damned screen was by itself worth $2k, this is still way overpriced, not least because they force you to toss out BOTH 512MB modules if you later want to max it out. Screw that, if you're going to pry $4k out of my hands, you can at least have the decency to use a single 1GB DIMM, damn it.
...and you may have to shell out three months (or more) salary to the poor schmuck you're firing, whether in accrued leave, severance or both on top of the three months you'll waste training the new guy--and it just gets worse the higher up you go. There are horror stories at damn near every company of the worthless manager who just can't seem to get fired barring gunning down the place because the parachute is just a little too golden, so it's cheaper to churn the ranks to keep him/her in a constant state of denial and let the company die the death of 1000 cuts in the process.
Erm, this argument is gaining traction and it needs to have its tires punched out. Remember, this is silencing due to the views of a vocal religious minority. I never had these asinine arguments during my religious education (preschool through university, each of jewish, lutheran and methodist) and it disgusts me to see people loudly pronouncing their Christian-ness making such ludicrous protests. When those views are used to silence others, expressing intolerance of that act of silencing IS TOLERANCE -- chances are a great number of the voices expressing dismay at these actions ARE CHRISTIANS... and chances are, they're truer to their faith by denouncing such blatant bigotry than those clamoring around for book burnings.
Because Google is trying to set the game to where they are allowed to violate the copyrights of millions of sites in order to produce what they do, but then THEY turn around and claim copyright on the result and have written TsOS that are utterly absurd in that context.
I've been waiting for such a lawsuit. I agree with you, but Google need to be honest that they wouldn't have a product if they didn't do on a massive scale what they forbid anyone from doing, even on an individual scale. Go read their API TOS, where, seriously, they forbid "any automated searching" or the republishing of the results. Well what the @#ck is an API for then?
They need to be challenged so that the law and their business practices are compatible. Utility simply is not an excuse for blatant disregard for rights and law.
I'm not denying they have the legal right to whatever they want. I'm also not denying potential liability issues. I'm just saying the previous argument used ("no factory parts=no registration") was, quite frankly, a load of crap that someone pulled straight out of their very hyperbolic ass....and that's that.
All manner of vehicles with parts, including brakes, that must be custom fabricated or retrofit from others are perfectly well being driven legally. Seriously, do you think Ford is still making Model T parts? Come on. This is just GM erasing them so they can't be reminded of failure.
...it would appear that Microsoft is trying, deliberately or inadvertently, to completely dismantle the WTO. If this sort of crap actually succeeds, it might cause enough attrition in the ranks to effectively dump WIPO into the dustbin of history.
On the other hand, New Zealanders having a rather caustic sense of turnabout, I fear for the minions of the USPTO on the day they get the reciprocal volley and I'd kill to be in an Auckland rugby club the day it hits the news...
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it would be "mon calmar."
"Calamari" is Italian.
Proof yet again that Lucas is a pretentious know-nothing hack. "Mon Calamari," being a bastardization of both French and Italian isn't, even forgiving that, gramatically correct as it uses a singular possessive with a plural noun. Lucas, you ignorant slut...
I think the greater point here is that he's being charged for crimes committed before they were crimes and which as many have pointed out are questionable as to if they should be considered crimes at all.
Yes, if you defraud or outright steal (think: hijacked zombie computers), sure, that should be criminal. If you merely annoy from the comfort of your home, using your hardware, that should be purely a civil matter for which you should suffer perhaps severe penalties, but not incarceration.
...that's rather my point.
Sacrificing your life in war is honorable and deserves recognition because of your service to your country; Sacrificing your life in space because of some stupid engineering/manufacturing mistake is a waste.
So, being an astronaut is not an honorable service to your country? Those are some brass ones you've got there...
Is this country so arrogant that we actually believe there won't be fatal engineering and manufacturing mistakes when we lob people into space? We haven't been doing it very long, folks. We WILL be making rather huge mistakes for quite some time. Hell, we still can't manufacture a perfect pair of rollerskates, what makes you think we can manufacture a perfect orbiter?
You ever been to court with that?
If the companies in the chain appear to exist for the sole purpose of doing business with each other, you gain precisely zero protection except for a certain sense of self-satisfaction for making things more complex than they need to be.
Yes, this is done all the time, but no, it does not afford the protection people think it does. Now, if each company does some TINY percentage of its business with one of the others, you might succeed. But if you are your only customer...it ain't happening.
People used to try to do this with their personal assets. They'd set up a holding company that would then purchase and lease back all of their stuff and existed soley for that purpose. The IRS is quite aware of how clever people think they are for setting up these paper companies and does not take kindly to them.
Anyone who does this sort of crap and then bitches about the tax code being insanely complex can thank themselves for dreaming up all these schemes, which then require endless legislation to clarify their absurdity.
This is a demonstration of why anything that is not isolated should be treated as inherently insecure.
Put the AP on the outside of the firewall and your network security is no more compromised than it is by simple fact of being connected to the internet in the first place. Your internet connection is FAR more dangerous. Secure yourself against that and treat any wireless connection no differently.
I use WEP _purely_ to limit leeching, nothing more. Beyond that, I don't see the point in bothering worrying about it, since if your primary network connection is LESS secure than your WiFi connection, you have MUCH bigger problems. Bandying around about encrypted APs just seems pennywise in that context. I mean, would you feel terribly secure if your wired network connection was absolutely secure for 500ft from your building and totally wide open at either end? Seems rather pointless to me and that is EXACTLY what you have with WiFi. Who the fsck cares and if so why?
..and it wasn't splattered with "(C)2005 GOOGLE."
Well, yes, I suppose they do have certain copyrights that they have licensed, but I'm getting so sick of Google acting like it owns goddamned everything just because they threw someone else's property into a database.
..right, which is why I pointed out the source of the opposing sides. Perhaps I wasn't blunt enough. My previous post can be restated:
"Why aren't you using this?!? It's the BEST!!!"
"Erm, no, this is currently better for me, thanks. Not really interested, too expensive, unstable, blah blah blah, you know the drill."
"You suck! What are you too stupid to learn a new language? You scared of change? Oooh, must feel really safe only using your favorite language."
"You must live in your mom's garage. I work for IBM and already know fifteen languages, five of them spoken. Piss off."
Rinse. Repeat.
My point is that the roles reverse depending on the [something] vs. [something else], but the cause is generally the same. So, when Java/J2EE came around everyone bitched because they just luved [whatever] and that was just so much extra abstraction and bloat yadda-yadda--and, at that point, why the hell does EVERYTHING have to be on the freakin' Web anyway? Can't we just keep these old curses apps that have worked since the dawn of time and run on a server that is little more than a glorified pocket calculator? Well, after a few years, companies (the ones who write the individual's paychecks, so it's rather presumptuous to separate the individual from the company in these arguments for that reason, IMHO) started embracing Java/J2EE because it was safe. Now other languages and frameworks like Ruby are coming along and becoming safer bets to entertain, but people are comfortable (that is to say "not threatened," although they may be pained) with Java, so most of these flames can be translated into "goddamnit, I spent ten years building everything in [x], then five years rebuilding every goddamned thing in [y], now you want me to spend the next three years rebuilding the same f!@$ing thing in [z]?!"
So, we just use the above "yo momma" shorthand because we assume that we've all heard this song before and no matter if you replace the Hammond Organ with the London Philharmonic, it's still the same tired old tune.
See? It was on topic. If we keep this thread alive and turn it into a flamewar it'll REALLY be on-topic, non?
Here, I'll start: you didn't get it the first time around because you're fapping to pr0n in yo momma's garage you Ruby-loving hippie...
In sixteen years of developing for large-cum-huge organizations, I've found that there is one overriding criterion for EVERYTHING that such companies do: stability.
People who are "fanboys" may just be so invested in [something] that to achieve the same depth of _tested_ knowledge in [something else] would take five years. They may in fact be looking at things like Ruby, but they aren't planning on switching their production development to it until both they and it are seasoned because it would be insane to do so. It's not just THEIR level of comfort that is in question, it is the organizations ability to accept it.
Before someone slams on corporate culture limiting your godlike creative powers, it's actually pretty reasonable. A business is a machine. You want to get some return on the machine before you rip the engine out and retool it--and that timeframe is generally ~5 years. Think of it like buying a car. YOU may be able to afford to replace yours every year or maybe you're a grease monkey who does a frame-off rebuild every spring just for kicks, but the vast majority don't want to go through the hassle and expense on an annual basis.
So, Ruby has now reached the point where it is a serious contender. Expect it to start replacing J2EE somewhere between 2008-2010.
Two former bosses had the proper method for expressing respect towards techies:
Cold, hard cash, baby.
Seriously, you want to quantify how "respect" has diminished, look at the salaries. I'm not talking about "back when I made $100k for writing HTML," I'm talking about comparing between similarly complex jobs TODAY. There are a great number of companies that still pay respectable sums for the work, but a quick spin around a few major markets will show that, yes, respect has diminished. When I saw a programming position requiring 10+ years of experience in aerospace engineering and a PhD going for $45k at a MAJOR company in Los Angeles, I knew it was time to move. How much you wanna bet the executive secretaries make more than that? In that sense, yes, respect IS a zero-sum game...
It also is not unique. It is charged with precisely the same duties as similar agencies in other countries that have many sitting parties.
The cause is the constitution. This country was designed from day one to have, more or less, a two party system.
I'm not remotely in favor of the so-called "two party system." However, in analyizing the problem, it helps to be precise (preferably correct) in identifying causes and effects. In this case, the FEC is neither cause nor effect. If we magically transformed into, say, South Africa, where they have a dozen or so relevant parties, the FEC would still have a role and would have to change little to accommodate the difference.
From your argument, you could blame every single agency of the United States as both cause and effect of the two party system--and in a prosaic sort of way, you'd be right. If your goal is to devise a solution to bring about multi-party politics in the US, I suggest you look elsewhere.
IF the FEC suddenly disappeared in a cloud of smoke it would change absolutely nothing about that aspect of the electoral process, ergo, your suggestion is specious at best.
What amazes me is how everyone in IT knows that even some of the most expensive certification programs are bullshiat -- I've taken my share through some of the big guns, like SUN for godssake, and can you say crrrrap? -- but still everyone demands the damned certs.
There have been a couple occassions where I've been in a slump and just need to pick up some work and would have been more than happy to do basic hardware work. I've been building PCs since I was in Jr. High over twenty years ago, but oh hell no, you don't have an A+ certification... oooh no, can't let you swap out that DIMM, buddy, you're an unqualified amateur. You've got to be fscking kidding me.
That said, corporate IT departments survive because they can enforce a known configuration where they can just re-image a troubled machine. Consumers, with their infinite and arbitrary configurations insist first on having support cost less than the machine, but also insist on never returning to a known-state. With a vehicle, your mechanic can simply return it to factory specs, generally with no complaints. Everytime a computer tech suggests that, oh hell no, you obviously don't know what you're doing. No, it's just that I have know way of knowing what YOU have already DONE without a point of reference.
With cheap computers, however, simply replacing them outright is the most logical solution to almost any problem for those who need support. Google, from what I understand, does ZERO diagnostics on malfunctioning nodes. They just pull out the pizza box and toss it in the trash. It's just not cost effective to even bother figuring out what went wrong when just replacing the entire machine is cheaper and that applies to most consumer computers, like it or not.
But, like with cars, they scream conspiracy. The industry wants me to keep replacing these things!! Well, if you knew how to maintain and rebuild either yourself, you wouldn't have to pay $75/hour to replace a $2 component and, voila, it might be more cost effective to fix rather than replace.
Look, my point is that in the capacity in which the FEC is currently charged, this is reasonable. We can endlessly broaden the debate to whether they should exist at all, but that's fantasyland. The reality we're in now is that election campaigns are regulated--for good reasons, imho--and all they are doing is responding to how campaigns are run. It's not perfect, there are massive holes, but it's at least an attempt to level the playing field.
This is about disclosure. One major reason the FEC exists is so when someone gives a bazillion dollars to prop up some puppet candidate, you know who you're REALLY voting for. Remove the reporting requirements and *poof* everything becomes confidential and, for all reasonable purposes, untraceable. Frankly, if it was the case that the DNC bankrolled F911 or the GOP was directly underwriting Fox News, yeah, I'd want to know.
Yeah, I've read the constitution.
So, you're saying that the FEC is fundamentally an unconstitutional entity? I'd think that if that was the case, it would have come up in the Supreme Court sometime in the last thirty years.
Have you read the proposed language? Every other blinking sentence talks of protecting individual free speech. They're talking about circumstances where there is direct financial backing or administrative coordination with campaigns, not Joe Six-pack's blog--and all they are proposing is that it be reported the same way they would have to if you made sammiches and donated them to the boiler room. It's not at all about abridging free speech, it's about documenting contributions, whether in-cash or in-kind. Period.
Big fat farking deal.
There are plenty of very good reasons they're tackling the issue and if you bother to read the related documents, it is quite clear they are attempting to draft rules that impact only coordinated, primarily directly paid, activity--and even then, they're simply requiring the campaign connections to be disclosed and, when appropriate, reported as contributions.
See: India, China.
Do a google on "ultrasound china or india 'sex selection'" for an excellent primer on why this is a bad idea. Sure, on an individual level, many things appear innocuous. Translate to a societal level and things can get very, very messy. China already has an 8% disparity over the rest of the world and India is catching up. Granted, this would take the abortion problem out of the loop. However, that may be the only thing restraining "western" countries from experiencing the same problem.
On the other hand, this might solve the whole "gay marriage" issue. If there simply are not enough women, some otherwise heterosexual men may just give up and demand the right to marry each other out of exhaustion and apathy.
Hmm... come to think of it, this is a GREAT idea.
Search
Evertyhing is going to ball bearings these days.
Meh. Laptop specs seem to be flat-lining, but the prices are distinctly not dropping. I mean, come on, three years ago, I bought a UXGA/1Ghz/1GB Dell for $1,100 LESS than this, with TWO optical drives (one CDRW, one DVD) and about the same battery life. Yeah, gee-whiz technology, but from previous reports, it's about as "3D" as a prismatic baseball card (and, frankly, about as high-tech). The rest of the specs are downright underwhelming. Even if that damned screen was by itself worth $2k, this is still way overpriced, not least because they force you to toss out BOTH 512MB modules if you later want to max it out. Screw that, if you're going to pry $4k out of my hands, you can at least have the decency to use a single 1GB DIMM, damn it.
...and you may have to shell out three months (or more) salary to the poor schmuck you're firing, whether in accrued leave, severance or both on top of the three months you'll waste training the new guy--and it just gets worse the higher up you go. There are horror stories at damn near every company of the worthless manager who just can't seem to get fired barring gunning down the place because the parachute is just a little too golden, so it's cheaper to churn the ranks to keep him/her in a constant state of denial and let the company die the death of 1000 cuts in the process.
Erm, this argument is gaining traction and it needs to have its tires punched out. Remember, this is silencing due to the views of a vocal religious minority. I never had these asinine arguments during my religious education (preschool through university, each of jewish, lutheran and methodist) and it disgusts me to see people loudly pronouncing their Christian-ness making such ludicrous protests. When those views are used to silence others, expressing intolerance of that act of silencing IS TOLERANCE -- chances are a great number of the voices expressing dismay at these actions ARE CHRISTIANS... and chances are, they're truer to their faith by denouncing such blatant bigotry than those clamoring around for book burnings.
Because Google is trying to set the game to where they are allowed to violate the copyrights of millions of sites in order to produce what they do, but then THEY turn around and claim copyright on the result and have written TsOS that are utterly absurd in that context.
I've been waiting for such a lawsuit. I agree with you, but Google need to be honest that they wouldn't have a product if they didn't do on a massive scale what they forbid anyone from doing, even on an individual scale. Go read their API TOS, where, seriously, they forbid "any automated searching" or the republishing of the results. Well what the @#ck is an API for then?
They need to be challenged so that the law and their business practices are compatible. Utility simply is not an excuse for blatant disregard for rights and law.
I'm not denying they have the legal right to whatever they want. I'm also not denying potential liability issues. I'm just saying the previous argument used ("no factory parts=no registration") was, quite frankly, a load of crap that someone pulled straight out of their very hyperbolic ass. ...and that's that.
All manner of vehicles with parts, including brakes, that must be custom fabricated or retrofit from others are perfectly well being driven legally. Seriously, do you think Ford is still making Model T parts? Come on. This is just GM erasing them so they can't be reminded of failure.
...it would appear that Microsoft is trying, deliberately or inadvertently, to completely dismantle the WTO. If this sort of crap actually succeeds, it might cause enough attrition in the ranks to effectively dump WIPO into the dustbin of history.
On the other hand, New Zealanders having a rather caustic sense of turnabout, I fear for the minions of the USPTO on the day they get the reciprocal volley and I'd kill to be in an Auckland rugby club the day it hits the news...