Not quite. The system should work no matter what. Really you have people contributing to the system, then the government sits on the money. If you include interest and modest management by investing, social security would have a never ending pool of money.
With a guaranteed contribution based system, correctly administered, you're right. Guaranteed contribution says "you invest X now and get X plus or minus the accrued gain/loss" This is what US 401K's are
Most pension systems are guaranteed benefit, you contribute X now, you're guaranteed Y, the administrators have to make up the difference through investing. This is both incredibly difficult to do correctly since it involves long range forecasting and even more difficult to audit due to the compromises the accounting industry has made. Most union and govt pensions are an example of defined benefit: You spend 20 years in the union contributing X dollars, you recieve Y dollars back for some period, often life. If you live longer than the actuary thought you would, or if the pension administrator is an idiot (google Orange County, CA), the pension fund runs out...
But here's what happened. People are now forced to contribute to social security, and the politicians can't stand just having all that money sitting around and not "doing something" with it, so they gutted social security. What they did is essentially turned social security into a pyramid scheme based on population where I pay for my grandfathers social security
You're absolutely right on the first part, though I think anything other than a defined contribution is a pyramid scheme, there's simply no way to take out more than what you put in + what that money earned unless you have a larger base paying in.
take 20% of my salary now and save it away. It has grown to about $100,000. If I had a job in Canada, that would mean I would only have $60,000 saved up isntead of $100,000.
I don't know for sure, but I'm assuming that reduced savings for a pension plan is because it's being paid into a required, state run plan - like U.S. Social <snicker> Security. As the entire world is now learning, this plan works great when there is an increasing birth rate, or high immigration rate of very young people, but since birth rates in developed countries are falling these plans, well, aren't so good...
The baby boom is not a US only phenominom, as far as I've seen, everybody involved with WWII experienced it.
Kerry isn't perfect (though you must be really paranoid if you think he can be as bad as Dubya)
I don't know, I think with Bush we'll lose reproductive rights, with Kerry it'll be gun rights. Bush will bankrupt us with military spending, Kerry with healthcare and welfare. Bush will try to wreck the economy with corporate welfare, Kerry with protectionism. I see a difference, but yeah, I think one is as bad as the other.
Ideally Kerry wins and spends four years doing nothing but fighting with the Republicans. A government in stalemate is much better than a government who can do whatever it wants.
OK, that might be the most sensible and optimistic thought I've seen yet.
Remember people claiming there was no difference between Bush and Gore? Well, I don't see that this time, rather this is separate but equal evil. Why willingly trade giving up rights a,b, and c for giving up x, y, and z?
Personally, I can't stomach voting for either of them and will probably throw my vote in for Badnarik. Yes, I know he has exactly a zero percent chance of winning. Yes, I know it's "throwing my vote away" and "helping Bush." Either way, no matter who wins, we're fscked. At least by floating him $50 and voting my conscience, maybe one more person will be exposed to the LP and eventually there will be an actual challenger to the two parties.
You should probably contact the ACLU and consider filing a harassment lawsuit.
I've been debating about that, even a suit just to get the records opened. I'm a little concerned about getting "doesn't play well with others" and "suspected terrorist" added to my permanent record, I kind of like being gainfully employed... Otoh, keeping anonymous just perpetuates it and if they're fscking me, they're fscking others as well... I've been working up the nerve to post it here for months, even semi-anonymously has taken some doing...
Listen to me, it's every time. Every time, without fail, that I board a plane in the US I get the routine. No If's, ands or buts. If I was next to Bin Laden himself, I'd get hauled off and searched. No debate, no question, no explanation, I fly through an airport, I go to the front of the line...
What does the fact that you have 2 degrees have to do with anything?
Well let's see what government DB's I'd be entered in. They're both from state run universities. In both cases I had to apply for federal and state financial aid which involved cross checking with the various income tax entities. I was on the GI bill for the first, that's cross referenced to the DOD. Shall I go on?
My point is that my life has been thoroughly and completly documented by the state and federal governments. I have entries, all positive, in hundreds of databases. Yet for some reason, I am singled out, harrassed and embarrassed every time I fly, without fail, by agents of that same government. If this were mistake on a credit report I'd be able to locate the offending item and get it corrected, but since we're dealing with "terrorism", there is no admission that I'm even flagged, let alone a process to fix it.
Re-read my last post, while I'm being harassed, someone with bad intentions may be getting through.
I posted all the bio information to demonstrate the debris of bits we leave without realizing it, just by trying to get ahead in life. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, one of those bits in my life flipped the "potential terrorist" bit from 0 to 1. Think about that the next time someone wants to start a file on you, for your own good.
That's my next step. I'm looking for a new job now and "No Travel" is the big requirement. I figure if I can't drive there, it ain't worth seeing - pretty easy since I'm moving back to the middle of the country, even the coasts are only 3 days away by car or motorcycle.
I'm a native born, US citizen, of (obvious) northern European ancestory. I have 2 degrees, an honorable discharge and have filed a tax return every year since I was 15 (that's 19 years if you're counting). I held a secret clearance for several years and have been bonded several times. I've had a couple speeding tickets, but never even been accused of any other misdemeanor, let alone a felony. In other words, my life has been documented by our government in quite substantial detail.
Despite this, every time I fly in the continental US I get searched. At the security screen where everybody else is passed through the x-ray and detector, my shoes are removed, I'm patted down, my hands and shoes are swabbed for explosive residue and my bags are rifled through. When I get to the gate and hand my ticket over, I get hauled off to the side, patted down again, and my bags re-searched. Every plane change, every pass through a gate or security station brings the same result. I have not boarded a flight in the US in the last 3 years without this happening. There is no appeal, there is no questioning why, there is only the choice to submit to this or not fly. My crime? Well, the only event I can come up with is I declared a firearm in my luggage after 9/11. A perfectly legal thing, I followed all the rules - demonstrated it was clear, locked the case, and placed it in the suitcase with the "steal me" tag.
It's embarassing, being dragged off to stand in the "special line" by myself. Mainly, I wonder what lowlife is getting through while they interogate me? Security personel are a finite resource, people have to be moved through at a reasonable clip or else flights are missed. When they spend 15 minutes with me, that's 15 minutes they could be investigating someone with bad intentions. Mistakes on credit reports can be researched, documented and appealed, usually successfully. This is unappealable, hell, nobody will even admit I've been flagged, it's "random".
Has anyone considered the possibility that Microsquash may be backing some of these lawyers?
After replying to this earlier, I had another thought:
There once was a shepherd boy who was bored as he sat on the hillside watching the village sheep. To amuse himself he took a great breath and sang out, "Wolf! Wolf! The Wolf is chasing the sheep!"
The villagers came running up the hill to help the boy drive the wolf away. But when they arrived at the top of the hill, they found no wolf. The boy laughed at the sight of their angry faces.
"Don't cry 'wolf', shepherd boy," said the villagers, "when there's no wolf!" They went grumbling back down the hill.
Later, the boy sang out again, "Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!" To his naughty delight, he watched the villagers run up the hill to help him drive the wolf away.
When the villagers saw no wolf they sternly said, "Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don't cry 'wolf' when there is NO wolf!"
But the boy just grinned and watched them go grumbling down the hill once more.
Later, he saw a REAL wolf prowling about his flock. Alarmed, he leaped to his feet and sang out as loudly as he could, "Wolf! Wolf!"
But the villagers thought he was trying to fool them again, and so they didn't come.
At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy hadn't returned to the village with their sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy. They found him weeping.
"There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, "Wolf!" Why didn't you come?"
An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village.
"We'll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning," he said, putting his arm around the youth, "Nobody believes a liar...even when he is telling the truth!"
Yeah - what if RH fight the case and win - then the lawyers get zilch.
Exactly, that was the point I was trying to make. Lawyers know that enough companies will settle out of court to avoid the negative press. They also know that every once in a while, they'll pull one off and that makes up for all the cases that go nowhere. Check out what the lawyers walked away with in the tobacco suits, or since he's so recently in the news, check out some of the settlements Edwards won while in practice. Even if 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000 win big, the expected payoff is non-zero. I'd bet it's way more likely that the action would be settled out of court for some fee, add that in to the expected payoff as well.
It would be nice for them if some one was providing insurance against this though a backdoor cash infusion lack with Baystar for SCO gives them the incentive to take the riskI'd love to see companies actively fighting this, countersuing for slander, libel, or whatever they can come up with. Too many companies take the "easy" way out, settle out of court for a few hundred thousand and hope it goes away. All this does is encourage the sharks and the next time it will be a few million, then a few ten million, and so on.
I believe that we, the consumers and investors, need to be the ones to push this, after all, we're the ones who will be left with higher prices or diminished returns in the end.
Has anyone considered the possibility that Microsquash may be backing some of these lawyers?
Have you considered that the lawyers in question stand to make between 35 and 50% off the top of the settlement? So many companies settle out of court these days, trying to avoid bad press, that it's worthwhile for these bastards to file every single lawsuit they can. A few will pay off huge, many will pay off some, and they'll take their fee right off the plunderings, er, judgement...
But under pure capitalism you couldn't force the private company to do anything about maintaining standards. It could sell the domain to Disney (or a wealthy pedophile), accept pr0n adverts and leave with the profit.
And there's the best part of unbridaled capitalism, IMO. If you want to control how something is run, buy it. Whether by yourself or with a bunch of like minded people, buy the thing, and manage it the way you see fit. On the other hand, if you don't own something, have no interest in owning it, and don't like it's product, nobody can force you to pay for it. That is not a luxury we have under government controls, where our money is taken from us by force and used "in our best interest", regardless of how offensive or harmful we may find that use.
The Department of Commerce?? Gotta get the kids into capitalism early I guess...
I'm sorry, but how exactly is a domain overseen by the Department of Commerce, a taxpayer funded government institution "getting the kids into capitalism"? If anything, this is reinforcing the socialist/communist argument of the state as the great protector and provider.
For the record, I'm an unabashed capitalist. I'd much rather see a private company register the domain and sell access to those who are concerned about such things than see more of my tax dollars go toward this, another dubious effort to mollify both the sides of the argument.
Being impersonal is close to the heart of the problem. Yes, accountability is too. One of the reasons people get that way is because nobody cared enough to straighten them out before they got that way (we are accountable to care).
I do agree with you there, being impersonal contributes to the problem. I see more of this behavior in the city I live in now (pop 9 million) than the city I lived in before (2 million ppl) and way more than where I grew up (26,000 ppl). I've also spent time in rural Nebraska, a town of 400, where this sort of attitude did not exist. While there were grudges and catty comments behind your back, they were dropped when you took ill (and usually restored immediatly after).
Personally, I believe this all grew out of the boom generation in the 60's, rebellion against everything their parents stood for (accountability was a big one). That's how they've raised their children (my generation) and grandchildren.
To back this up, I point to my previous example of the cities - Their sizes also mirror their cultural experiences in that time: Paris in the late 60's was a bomb throwers delight. Boulder (Denver) was still a beat town. My little city in Ohio: Remember the song "4 dead in ohio"? Uprisings were not permitted, let alone encouraged. As for the little town in Nebraska, what do you think? Today, you're more likely to be helped by a casual stranger in the inverse order of my little population list. You're also less likely to be dragged into court for helping someone who got themselves into a mess through their own doing.
France is a little different, IMO, it's moved beyond suing people and they're trying to hold the state responsible for everyone's well being. To me, this is the inevitable end to the loss of accountability. Look at OB's (obstetricians sp?) in Illinois, they've largely been sued out of practice or out of the State. What is the next step, why a law of course, either banning lawsuits or banning OB's from quitting the practice. This is not entirely a new problem, Ayn Rand wrote at length about it in '57 with "Atlas Shrugged". It didn't have the magnitude then, but it still existed. Crying for new laws just further reduces our responsibility and in the end, exasperates the problem.
Second, the media is partly to blame. First for the lawyers (where did they get the idea, tv maybe); also for the common frame of mind.
Mass media, especially the info-tainment set, certainly play on this, I think the blame falls solely on the plaintiffs. True, the lawyers actively fish for clients, but the people with dollar signs in their eyes freely go along with it. Had they been brought up with some accountability, maybe, just maybe, they'd tell the ambulance chasers where to go. The lawyers are there because there are enough people ready to absolve themselves. And the media? Well, that crap sells, and selling crap is their job.
The odds of being sued in such a fashion are extremely low. How low, I don't know exactly. I would suggest you stop worrying about it.
don't give up hope on humanity. When we do that, then there is no hope for humanity.
By my count, there's a 4 in 5 chance [joke]. You're right, there is a low but ever increasing chance of being sued. As for giving up hope on humanity, sadly, I get a little closer to that every day.
...we all need to be more friendly and outgoing than we think the other guy will be.
IMO, friendly and outgoing isn't the problem, a growing unwillingness to accept responsibility for one's actions is.
Someone getting shitfaced drunk and crashing her car and then suing the EMT's, police dispatchers, and the guy who stopped to see if they were OK.
Someone having a heart attack, nearly dying, then suing the guy who performed CPR (saving his life) for breaking a rib.
The list goes on and on, "It's not my fault" has become the chant echoing from the US populace, and there's a huge industry of personal injury lawyers with flashy TV ad's encouraging it. Only when people start standing up and saying, "whoops, yup that's my fault" and fixing the problem instead of passing the blame off to the deeper pockets will society begin to turn around. Award cap laws won't help the problem, there are always ways around the laws, we need to change what is now a deeply ingrained human behaviour.
there may be laws that protect you if you try and perform first aid, for example, rhode island's "good samaritan" law.
First, IANAL, but I am the only member of my immediate family not to be sued by someone after competently helping someone.
Good Samaritan laws are your defense _AFTER_ you're sued, they protect you from incurring damages. The problem is, you still have to defend yourself in court: spend the money on lawyers, lose time from work, deal with the bad publicity that comes with being sued for negligence and the stress that comes with it. Fuck that, who needs it.
I'm afraid this kind of behaviour is unacceptable, but people don't help each other anymore these days
How about this, when people stop suing each other for chickenshit things, I'll start helping. If it's truly life or death, I'll get involved: Choking, CPR, major life-threatening bleeding and I'm there until the medics arrive. Anything otherwise and I'll be more than happy to call 911 for you but that's where my involvement ends.
It makes me sad to look at the world this way, but I'm also unwilling to put myself at risk unless the outcome is certain death.
There's no hiding the leanings of Persuasive Games when the goal is "Strategically place campaigners on a virtual map to reach out to more Dean supporters". In the same vein, there's no hidden agenda with that movie that came out last week, it seems pretty up front in the advertising. It's the messages weaved into the story lines of games, movies and tv shows, the preaching under the guise of entertainment, that gets my hackles up.
Indeed - this businessman's smart card may well encode "Search me!" and he won't know it for sure.
Until he notices this is the second and third time he's been hauled off to the side for a "random" exam on this trip. And come to think of it, last time he flew he got hauled off to the side for random searching. That's how I figured out I was in CAPPS.
certainly for a company with that much $$ laying around, its not unreasonable to collect the fine before the appeals process is done
Why should the justice system work differently for monied entities? Isn't that one of the complaints here, that they're being treated different because they've got money (they must have bought off somebody)? What happens when you're charged, in your mind unfairly, with a crime? Will you pony up then and ask for a refund if it's overturned?
Pay twice? These pricks want us to pay over and over again. The current direction of the greedy bastards is to convince congress (or the relevant rule making body) that people should be forced to pay for everything that they COULD be forced to pay for.
You're confusing the public and private sectors.
For things that we've been forced to pay for through taxation, the NWS in this example, should not be able to turn around and charge us again to access the data, other than whatever minimal distribution fee is applicable. We paid, at gunpoint IMHO, for the NWS to collect weather data. I don't have a problem if they want to charge a small printing fee (N cents / copy for example) to distribute it or the equivelent. It's when the data that I already bought is being sold back to me that I have issues.
When it comes to disposable intellectual property be it music, movies or weather reports, computers make it technologically possible to force people to "pay per use". It's like installing a vending machine for your product in everyone's home, worldwide. Since it's basically been proven that copy protection doesn't work they want to make it illegal for anything to be free
This is the private sector, if you don't like it than don't buy it. Nobody is putting a gun to your head and saying "Buy the new Robbie Williams CD or else". If enough people don't like it, the product will disappear (New Coke). OTOH, if "pay per use" takes off on a large scale and you don't like it, you're free to join us luddites on the front porch bitching about the good old days when you bought a CD once.
The key difference is voluntary funding, nobody can force you to buy a product on the free market while taxpayer funded projects are a different matter (the gun to your head).
Those of us who are US taxpayers have already ante'd up for it. Either take our tax money and return a service or (preferably) stop robbing me every pay period than turning around and charging me again.
Wear do current technologies like Heart Rate Monitors fit into this?
Polar, Nike, even Timex have what I'd call body based data bus technology already
Don't HRM's transmit the data via radio frequency? They recieve electrical impulses through the skin, but don't use the body as a conductor to transmit the data.
Slashdot Mirror
With a guaranteed contribution based system, correctly administered, you're right. Guaranteed contribution says "you invest X now and get X plus or minus the accrued gain/loss" This is what US 401K's are
Most pension systems are guaranteed benefit, you contribute X now, you're guaranteed Y, the administrators have to make up the difference through investing. This is both incredibly difficult to do correctly since it involves long range forecasting and even more difficult to audit due to the compromises the accounting industry has made. Most union and govt pensions are an example of defined benefit: You spend 20 years in the union contributing X dollars, you recieve Y dollars back for some period, often life. If you live longer than the actuary thought you would, or if the pension administrator is an idiot (google Orange County, CA), the pension fund runs out...
But here's what happened. People are now forced to contribute to social security, and the politicians can't stand just having all that money sitting around and not "doing something" with it, so they gutted social security. What they did is essentially turned social security into a pyramid scheme based on population where I pay for my grandfathers social security
You're absolutely right on the first part, though I think anything other than a defined contribution is a pyramid scheme, there's simply no way to take out more than what you put in + what that money earned unless you have a larger base paying in.
I don't know for sure, but I'm assuming that reduced savings for a pension plan is because it's being paid into a required, state run plan - like U.S. Social <snicker> Security. As the entire world is now learning, this plan works great when there is an increasing birth rate, or high immigration rate of very young people, but since birth rates in developed countries are falling these plans, well, aren't so good...
The baby boom is not a US only phenominom, as far as I've seen, everybody involved with WWII experienced it.
I don't know, I think with Bush we'll lose reproductive rights, with Kerry it'll be gun rights. Bush will bankrupt us with military spending, Kerry with healthcare and welfare. Bush will try to wreck the economy with corporate welfare, Kerry with protectionism. I see a difference, but yeah, I think one is as bad as the other.
Ideally Kerry wins and spends four years doing nothing but fighting with the Republicans. A government in stalemate is much better than a government who can do whatever it wants.
OK, that might be the most sensible and optimistic thought I've seen yet.
Remember people claiming there was no difference between Bush and Gore? Well, I don't see that this time, rather this is separate but equal evil. Why willingly trade giving up rights a,b, and c for giving up x, y, and z?
Personally, I can't stomach voting for either of them and will probably throw my vote in for Badnarik. Yes, I know he has exactly a zero percent chance of winning. Yes, I know it's "throwing my vote away" and "helping Bush." Either way, no matter who wins, we're fscked. At least by floating him $50 and voting my conscience, maybe one more person will be exposed to the LP and eventually there will be an actual challenger to the two parties.
I've been debating about that, even a suit just to get the records opened. I'm a little concerned about getting "doesn't play well with others" and "suspected terrorist" added to my permanent record, I kind of like being gainfully employed... Otoh, keeping anonymous just perpetuates it and if they're fscking me, they're fscking others as well... I've been working up the nerve to post it here for months, even semi-anonymously has taken some doing...
Listen to me, it's every time. Every time, without fail, that I board a plane in the US I get the routine. No If's, ands or buts. If I was next to Bin Laden himself, I'd get hauled off and searched. No debate, no question, no explanation, I fly through an airport, I go to the front of the line...
Well let's see what government DB's I'd be entered in. They're both from state run universities. In both cases I had to apply for federal and state financial aid which involved cross checking with the various income tax entities. I was on the GI bill for the first, that's cross referenced to the DOD. Shall I go on?
My point is that my life has been thoroughly and completly documented by the state and federal governments. I have entries, all positive, in hundreds of databases. Yet for some reason, I am singled out, harrassed and embarrassed every time I fly, without fail, by agents of that same government. If this were mistake on a credit report I'd be able to locate the offending item and get it corrected, but since we're dealing with "terrorism", there is no admission that I'm even flagged, let alone a process to fix it.
Re-read my last post, while I'm being harassed, someone with bad intentions may be getting through.
I posted all the bio information to demonstrate the debris of bits we leave without realizing it, just by trying to get ahead in life. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, one of those bits in my life flipped the "potential terrorist" bit from 0 to 1. Think about that the next time someone wants to start a file on you, for your own good.
That's my next step. I'm looking for a new job now and "No Travel" is the big requirement. I figure if I can't drive there, it ain't worth seeing - pretty easy since I'm moving back to the middle of the country, even the coasts are only 3 days away by car or motorcycle.
I'm a native born, US citizen, of (obvious) northern European ancestory. I have 2 degrees, an honorable discharge and have filed a tax return every year since I was 15 (that's 19 years if you're counting). I held a secret clearance for several years and have been bonded several times. I've had a couple speeding tickets, but never even been accused of any other misdemeanor, let alone a felony. In other words, my life has been documented by our government in quite substantial detail.
Despite this, every time I fly in the continental US I get searched. At the security screen where everybody else is passed through the x-ray and detector, my shoes are removed, I'm patted down, my hands and shoes are swabbed for explosive residue and my bags are rifled through. When I get to the gate and hand my ticket over, I get hauled off to the side, patted down again, and my bags re-searched. Every plane change, every pass through a gate or security station brings the same result. I have not boarded a flight in the US in the last 3 years without this happening. There is no appeal, there is no questioning why, there is only the choice to submit to this or not fly. My crime? Well, the only event I can come up with is I declared a firearm in my luggage after 9/11. A perfectly legal thing, I followed all the rules - demonstrated it was clear, locked the case, and placed it in the suitcase with the "steal me" tag.
It's embarassing, being dragged off to stand in the "special line" by myself. Mainly, I wonder what lowlife is getting through while they interogate me? Security personel are a finite resource, people have to be moved through at a reasonable clip or else flights are missed. When they spend 15 minutes with me, that's 15 minutes they could be investigating someone with bad intentions. Mistakes on credit reports can be researched, documented and appealed, usually successfully. This is unappealable, hell, nobody will even admit I've been flagged, it's "random".
After replying to this earlier, I had another thought:
There once was a shepherd boy who was bored as he sat on the hillside watching the village sheep. To amuse himself he took a great breath and sang out, "Wolf! Wolf! The Wolf is chasing the sheep!"
The villagers came running up the hill to help the boy drive the wolf away. But when they arrived at the top of the hill, they found no wolf. The boy laughed at the sight of their angry faces.
"Don't cry 'wolf', shepherd boy," said the villagers, "when there's no wolf!" They went grumbling back down the hill.
Later, the boy sang out again, "Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!" To his naughty delight, he watched the villagers run up the hill to help him drive the wolf away.
When the villagers saw no wolf they sternly said, "Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don't cry 'wolf' when there is NO wolf!"
But the boy just grinned and watched them go grumbling down the hill once more.
Later, he saw a REAL wolf prowling about his flock. Alarmed, he leaped to his feet and sang out as loudly as he could, "Wolf! Wolf!"
But the villagers thought he was trying to fool them again, and so they didn't come.
At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy hadn't returned to the village with their sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy. They found him weeping.
"There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, "Wolf!" Why didn't you come?"
An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village.
"We'll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning," he said, putting his arm around the youth, "Nobody believes a liar...even when he is telling the truth!"
Aesop's fables
Exactly, that was the point I was trying to make. Lawyers know that enough companies will settle out of court to avoid the negative press. They also know that every once in a while, they'll pull one off and that makes up for all the cases that go nowhere. Check out what the lawyers walked away with in the tobacco suits, or since he's so recently in the news, check out some of the settlements Edwards won while in practice. Even if 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000 win big, the expected payoff is non-zero. I'd bet it's way more likely that the action would be settled out of court for some fee, add that in to the expected payoff as well.
It would be nice for them if some one was providing insurance against this though a backdoor cash infusion lack with Baystar for SCO gives them the incentive to take the risk I'd love to see companies actively fighting this, countersuing for slander, libel, or whatever they can come up with. Too many companies take the "easy" way out, settle out of court for a few hundred thousand and hope it goes away. All this does is encourage the sharks and the next time it will be a few million, then a few ten million, and so on.
I believe that we, the consumers and investors, need to be the ones to push this, after all, we're the ones who will be left with higher prices or diminished returns in the end.
It smells of MS
Think twice about making those kind of statements.
Have you considered that the lawyers in question stand to make between 35 and 50% off the top of the settlement? So many companies settle out of court these days, trying to avoid bad press, that it's worthwhile for these bastards to file every single lawsuit they can. A few will pay off huge, many will pay off some, and they'll take their fee right off the plunderings, er, judgement...
And there's the best part of unbridaled capitalism, IMO. If you want to control how something is run, buy it. Whether by yourself or with a bunch of like minded people, buy the thing, and manage it the way you see fit. On the other hand, if you don't own something, have no interest in owning it, and don't like it's product, nobody can force you to pay for it. That is not a luxury we have under government controls, where our money is taken from us by force and used "in our best interest", regardless of how offensive or harmful we may find that use.
I'm sorry, but how exactly is a domain overseen by the Department of Commerce, a taxpayer funded government institution "getting the kids into capitalism"? If anything, this is reinforcing the socialist/communist argument of the state as the great protector and provider.
For the record, I'm an unabashed capitalist. I'd much rather see a private company register the domain and sell access to those who are concerned about such things than see more of my tax dollars go toward this, another dubious effort to mollify both the sides of the argument.
I always used root@localhost as the replyto when I posted to usenet, let the spambots pick that one up...
Being impersonal is close to the heart of the problem. Yes, accountability is too. One of the reasons people get that way is because nobody cared enough to straighten them out before they got that way (we are accountable to care).
I do agree with you there, being impersonal contributes to the problem. I see more of this behavior in the city I live in now (pop 9 million) than the city I lived in before (2 million ppl) and way more than where I grew up (26,000 ppl). I've also spent time in rural Nebraska, a town of 400, where this sort of attitude did not exist. While there were grudges and catty comments behind your back, they were dropped when you took ill (and usually restored immediatly after).
Personally, I believe this all grew out of the boom generation in the 60's, rebellion against everything their parents stood for (accountability was a big one). That's how they've raised their children (my generation) and grandchildren.
To back this up, I point to my previous example of the cities - Their sizes also mirror their cultural experiences in that time: Paris in the late 60's was a bomb throwers delight. Boulder (Denver) was still a beat town. My little city in Ohio: Remember the song "4 dead in ohio"? Uprisings were not permitted, let alone encouraged. As for the little town in Nebraska, what do you think? Today, you're more likely to be helped by a casual stranger in the inverse order of my little population list. You're also less likely to be dragged into court for helping someone who got themselves into a mess through their own doing.
France is a little different, IMO, it's moved beyond suing people and they're trying to hold the state responsible for everyone's well being. To me, this is the inevitable end to the loss of accountability. Look at OB's (obstetricians sp?) in Illinois, they've largely been sued out of practice or out of the State. What is the next step, why a law of course, either banning lawsuits or banning OB's from quitting the practice. This is not entirely a new problem, Ayn Rand wrote at length about it in '57 with "Atlas Shrugged". It didn't have the magnitude then, but it still existed. Crying for new laws just further reduces our responsibility and in the end, exasperates the problem.
Second, the media is partly to blame. First for the lawyers (where did they get the idea, tv maybe); also for the common frame of mind.
Mass media, especially the info-tainment set, certainly play on this, I think the blame falls solely on the plaintiffs. True, the lawyers actively fish for clients, but the people with dollar signs in their eyes freely go along with it. Had they been brought up with some accountability, maybe, just maybe, they'd tell the ambulance chasers where to go. The lawyers are there because there are enough people ready to absolve themselves. And the media? Well, that crap sells, and selling crap is their job.
The odds of being sued in such a fashion are extremely low. How low, I don't know exactly. I would suggest you stop worrying about it.
don't give up hope on humanity. When we do that, then there is no hope for humanity.
By my count, there's a 4 in 5 chance [joke]. You're right, there is a low but ever increasing chance of being sued. As for giving up hope on humanity, sadly, I get a little closer to that every day.
IMO, friendly and outgoing isn't the problem, a growing unwillingness to accept responsibility for one's actions is.
Someone getting shitfaced drunk and crashing her car and then suing the EMT's, police dispatchers, and the guy who stopped to see if they were OK.
Someone having a heart attack, nearly dying, then suing the guy who performed CPR (saving his life) for breaking a rib.
The list goes on and on, "It's not my fault" has become the chant echoing from the US populace, and there's a huge industry of personal injury lawyers with flashy TV ad's encouraging it. Only when people start standing up and saying, "whoops, yup that's my fault" and fixing the problem instead of passing the blame off to the deeper pockets will society begin to turn around. Award cap laws won't help the problem, there are always ways around the laws, we need to change what is now a deeply ingrained human behaviour.
thus endeth the sermon...
First, IANAL, but I am the only member of my immediate family not to be sued by someone after competently helping someone.
Good Samaritan laws are your defense _AFTER_ you're sued, they protect you from incurring damages. The problem is, you still have to defend yourself in court: spend the money on lawyers, lose time from work, deal with the bad publicity that comes with being sued for negligence and the stress that comes with it. Fuck that, who needs it.
How about this, when people stop suing each other for chickenshit things, I'll start helping. If it's truly life or death, I'll get involved: Choking, CPR, major life-threatening bleeding and I'm there until the medics arrive. Anything otherwise and I'll be more than happy to call 911 for you but that's where my involvement ends.
It makes me sad to look at the world this way, but I'm also unwilling to put myself at risk unless the outcome is certain death.
There's no hiding the leanings of Persuasive Games when the goal is "Strategically place campaigners on a virtual map to reach out to more Dean supporters". In the same vein, there's no hidden agenda with that movie that came out last week, it seems pretty up front in the advertising. It's the messages weaved into the story lines of games, movies and tv shows, the preaching under the guise of entertainment, that gets my hackles up.
Until he notices this is the second and third time he's been hauled off to the side for a "random" exam on this trip. And come to think of it, last time he flew he got hauled off to the side for random searching. That's how I figured out I was in CAPPS.
Why should the justice system work differently for monied entities? Isn't that one of the complaints here, that they're being treated different because they've got money (they must have bought off somebody)? What happens when you're charged, in your mind unfairly, with a crime? Will you pony up then and ask for a refund if it's overturned?
You're confusing the public and private sectors.
For things that we've been forced to pay for through taxation, the NWS in this example, should not be able to turn around and charge us again to access the data, other than whatever minimal distribution fee is applicable. We paid, at gunpoint IMHO, for the NWS to collect weather data. I don't have a problem if they want to charge a small printing fee (N cents / copy for example) to distribute it or the equivelent. It's when the data that I already bought is being sold back to me that I have issues.
When it comes to disposable intellectual property be it music, movies or weather reports, computers make it technologically possible to force people to "pay per use". It's like installing a vending machine for your product in everyone's home, worldwide. Since it's basically been proven that copy protection doesn't work they want to make it illegal for anything to be free
This is the private sector, if you don't like it than don't buy it. Nobody is putting a gun to your head and saying "Buy the new Robbie Williams CD or else". If enough people don't like it, the product will disappear (New Coke). OTOH, if "pay per use" takes off on a large scale and you don't like it, you're free to join us luddites on the front porch bitching about the good old days when you bought a CD once.
The key difference is voluntary funding, nobody can force you to buy a product on the free market while taxpayer funded projects are a different matter (the gun to your head).
Those of us who are US taxpayers have already ante'd up for it. Either take our tax money and return a service or (preferably) stop robbing me every pay period than turning around and charging me again.
Don't HRM's transmit the data via radio frequency? They recieve electrical impulses through the skin, but don't use the body as a conductor to transmit the data.