They then sue my ass for endorsing their junk, because I lied when I said it was good. Should I be on the hook?
Firtly, I'm no fan of Microsoft. XP will likely be the last operating system I use of theirs with any regularity.
That said, the certification program isn't an endorsement by the manufacturers. It's an endorsement by Microsoft of the manufacturer's suitability to run their product. If any testing was done, it seems more likely that it would be Microsoft receiving hardware samples to install and run their as-yet-unreleased product onto for testing. Even more likely is that they simply based the certification on benchmark numbers to keep costs down. Meet a minimum CPU speed and RAM amount as determined by Microsoft and you're golden.
Who knows though, maybe each hardware manufacturer was tasked with installing and testing the software on each machine to be certified. I didn't and don't care enough (at all, actually) about the program to take the time to look at their requirements, so this is entirely speculation on my part.
Which should result in the boss of those cops going to jail, because breaking the law is worse when you're a cop... that's the price of having special rights.
Wish it were like that in the US. Police rarely go to jail for anything here, especially if it involves abusing their authority. With all of the beatings that have been videotaped in the past several years, I'm not aware of any that have resulted in anything greater than unpaid administrative leave.
We'll see if the BART cop who shot a kid in the back while he was laying on the platform will have anything happen to him, or if it'll just be more of the same.
Movies are not subject to the same screwed-up rules as software, by-and-large. The "first sale" doctrine applies to them, as far as I'm aware, which means that while you cannot copy and distribute the copies any more than you can copy and distribute bindings of books, you can rip it apart and arrange it any way you wish for consumption.
There is no EULA for movies. None. They have not been held up in court relating to usage of a movie, and if you're claiming they have I'm sure there would be a large number of people here who would like to read the transcript. By all means, provide a reference to this in relation to consumer use and abuse (not copying and distribution, or public demonstration) of a DVD.
The only things you're arguing against that have any basis is piracy, and the only person in this string of replies who mentioned copying for anything other than private, personal use of already-owned movies did so as an obvious joke. Ergo, the only arguments you put forward with any merit are strawmen. Yeah, you can beat those arguments down, but that doesn't help when nobody was talking about them before you brought the subject up.
It's not "no paper, no pen = no contract." It's "no consideration, no meeting of the minds = no contract." Please, provide at least some basis for what appear to be entirely specious claims. I can do any damn thing I want with personally-owned movies, so long as I do not distribute them or present them for public display. If you disagree, I expect citations of the Federal Circuit case that affirms the limitation on a particular private use (that haven't been overturned).
I wish it caused people like that to lose sleep at night. The really sick thing is that it is unlikely that it causes the people who push these cases to lose any sleep.
He's also the same Chief Justice who screwed up the recitation of the oath, which is one of the most well-known passages in the Constitution. Wouldn't surprise me if he thought the President wasn't the President until the oath of office was administered. He's a special one, that Roberts.
Did you not RTFA? Did you not read any of the fifty-odd comments here refuting the old bullshit story you're repeating?
There was nothing in the article related to the engineering decisions behind the Qwerty keyboard. At the time I read the article and comments, there were no comments related to the engineering decisions behind the Qwerty keyboard (at least as far down as I read).
The QWERTY layout was to separate common digraphs to allow faster typing, not to slow typists down.
I have now thoroughly read the history of the Qwerty keyboard, and admit that I was mistaken. It was a design decision made to cope with a problem inherent in the underlying badly-engineered upstroke typebar machines. A fix to prevent a subpar technology from being even worse.
I love the arguments against other keyboard layouts for this very reason. Qwerty was specifically engineered to put a cap on typing speed to prevent jamming. Either the person who engineered it was very bad at his job or any random keyboard layout is likely to be more efficient once learned to the same degree as Qwerty.
That said, having used both Qwerty and Dvorak for many years, I am personally more comfortable on Dvorak keyboards. Dvorak is far easier to type one-handed on as well, even without using on of the two one-handed layouts.
So actual user demand (i.e., reality) means little when it conflicts with your idea of "how things should be"?
When you're volunteering your time to develop something you have an interest in? Absolutely user demand means little. User demand only means something when a developer chooses for it to mean something, either because they want money, want a product to be more widely used, or have an interest in the specific functionality that is demanded. Expecting otherwise is... illogical...
I replaced a Seagate drive during that timeframe as well, and they preshipped the replacement drive without any hassle at all. Of course, I was replacing a high-end not-your-typical-consumer drive, so perhaps that made the difference.
Looking at the access point can cause severe retinal burns. We are not responsible for retinal damage or permanent blindness as a result of using our product. Thank you, and have a nice day.
Why can't I just marry everyone I know, and thus get all the benefits?
You cite this as a ridiculous example, but ideally you should be allowed to. Marriage should be a secular contract like any other contract. If you want to draw up a contract determining legal rights of inheritance, visitation, etc, you should have every right to without interference.
The use of animals as an example, on the other hand, is always absurd. They have no standing at law, so, with extraodinarily limited exceptions, any use of them in argument is nothing more than a distraction from the actual issue at hand. If animals ever have standing in contract law, this argument can be revisited. Until that time, it is irrelevant.
To answer your question, morality is ever-shifting. It is always determined by present circumstances within a government. Ideally law would be based on rational reasoning, but that requires a rational populace. Humans are only rational in small quantities, so the basis of laws will always be arbitrary, capricious, and subjective. A basis in morality is no basis at all, because morality is based entirely on opinion. Unfortunately, that's what we have as humans, and as such governments and laws will be flawed for the forseeable future.
There, should be enough in the above statements to piss almost everyone off.:)
It's news so that when said penis goes through the hole it gets bitten off by the rabid badger on the other side of the hole.
Idiocy like this needs to be announced loudly so that either the electorate can do something about the fool or the rest of us can point and laugh at their collective incompetence. It's a win-win.
It's amazing how so many people miss or are unable to understand that. Employers don't pay taxes, their employees do. Corporations don't pay taxes, their customers do. In the end, virtually all taxes are picked up by consumers, workers, and borrowers in some manner or other.
So does official email sent between different governmental networks. I fail to see the relevance that a jaunt across the interwebs is going to have. Lots of official communications use the Internet. Nobody is engaging in hand-waving-freakoutery over that.
There is actually a tipping point at the smallest shred of the beginning of each higher tax bracket (obviously modified by each person's individual exemptions, deductions, loopholes, etc). The likelihood that you are ever going to hit one of those exact sweet spots, however, is almost nonexistent.
Despite that, it certainly is a particularly aggressive myth, especially in the service industry.
Where does this bring us? People in India COULD very well fix the problem if they wanted to. But they don't want to because the businesses don't require them to speak well enough, as such the education isn't much directed towards good English skills, etc... And those people who actually speak proper English probably want higher wages than others so companies don't want to hire them. Apparently companies don't do much to further train their employees in this or tell them "You'll get higher wage if you learn to pronounce better" because companies just want to save in expenses.
So yeah, I think that it is companies' fault for choosing to go with the cheapest solution when they know that the result is worse. And it is fault of anyone who is bothered by that but still stays as their customer.
This is exactly true. What a lot of people don't realize is that there are tiers of call center employees in India paid (and charging) commensurate with their grasp of proper pronunciation and accentation. There are people trained to speak non-accented American or British English. You just don't know it unless you know for certain who holds the call center contract for the company you're calling.
It is entirely the fault of the company outsourcing overseas for choosing to pay bottom-of-the-barrel prices for customer service work. When there are other options in the industry for better customer service, those who complain about it but stay because it's cheaper get what they pay for. Unfortunately, there are sometimes no better options in the industry, making voting with your wallet meaningless.
It would be interesting to see greater-than-binary states, though it would require a serious paradigm shift in many of the basic concepts taken for granted in computing.
The problem with voting is that it only takes something like 16% of the population to be motivated morons to outvote the 15% of people on the other side. That's best-case scenario, whereas in most cases the persons representing all parties with significant voting blocks are morons. Then you're screwed no matter who you vote for.
In many cases the removal of wisdom teeth is absolute necessity. There are many people born whose jaws simply are not large enough to accomodate the addition of wisdom teeth without serious dental problems. Add to that the number of people who have wisdom teeth growing in impacted, and there's a good reason why their removal is fairly standard.
I wouldn't have had mine removed, but unfortunately my jaw is both too small and the lower ones were impacted. Nothing like having 4 teeth extracted prior to eruption and finding out afterward that hydrocodone doesn't bind in you the way it should, hence providing zero pain relief. That was fun.
Forging currency is pretty high up there on the no-no list. Only governments and banks are allowed to create value out of thin air (or rather by stealing value from currently-existing currency). I can hardly see forging an SSL cert, if government issued, coming anywhere near the legal repercussions of forging currency.
The ramifications of using a fake SSL cert vs forging a fake passport are vastly different. I thought that would be obvious, but I forgot this is Slashdot.
I definitely understand questioning the best practices of dealing with the autistic, but the person I was replying to wrote their response in such a way that it seemed they had no interest in fostering actual intelligent debate, but would rather prefer to make a knee-jerk conclusion based on ignorance. It's possible I am wrong, but the above seems pretty likely given the word choices in the post.
Without knowing the exact circumstances of the family involved, it seems harsh to pass judgement on them for allowing their children to watch (and become dependent on, since autistics are compelled to follow routines) a specific channel/show. It can be hard enough for a family to survive with two full-time incomes, let alone dealing with two children with developmental problems. Having some time out to recharge is necessary for people who have to care for family members full-time. Serious breakdowns occur otherwise. It didn't sound like the television was used as a babysitter, but as a part of the overall strategy of dealing with a major medical condition.
As for other societies dealing with autism, if how it was dealt with in the past in the US is any indication, it was pretty horrible for the person suffering. That is, if they survived at all.
Again, there are a lot of issues surrounding autism that can be discussed intelligently, but the AC really didn't seem interested in discussion so much as holier-than-thou finger pointing.
Slashdot Mirror
Blah for being tired and hitting submit without proofing.
They then sue my ass for endorsing their junk, because I lied when I said it was good. Should I be on the hook?
Firtly, I'm no fan of Microsoft. XP will likely be the last operating system I use of theirs with any regularity.
That said, the certification program isn't an endorsement by the manufacturers. It's an endorsement by Microsoft of the manufacturer's suitability to run their product. If any testing was done, it seems more likely that it would be Microsoft receiving hardware samples to install and run their as-yet-unreleased product onto for testing. Even more likely is that they simply based the certification on benchmark numbers to keep costs down. Meet a minimum CPU speed and RAM amount as determined by Microsoft and you're golden.
Who knows though, maybe each hardware manufacturer was tasked with installing and testing the software on each machine to be certified. I didn't and don't care enough (at all, actually) about the program to take the time to look at their requirements, so this is entirely speculation on my part.
Which should result in the boss of those cops going to jail, because breaking the law is worse when you're a cop... that's the price of having special rights.
Wish it were like that in the US. Police rarely go to jail for anything here, especially if it involves abusing their authority. With all of the beatings that have been videotaped in the past several years, I'm not aware of any that have resulted in anything greater than unpaid administrative leave.
We'll see if the BART cop who shot a kid in the back while he was laying on the platform will have anything happen to him, or if it'll just be more of the same.
Movies are not subject to the same screwed-up rules as software, by-and-large. The "first sale" doctrine applies to them, as far as I'm aware, which means that while you cannot copy and distribute the copies any more than you can copy and distribute bindings of books, you can rip it apart and arrange it any way you wish for consumption.
There is no EULA for movies. None. They have not been held up in court relating to usage of a movie, and if you're claiming they have I'm sure there would be a large number of people here who would like to read the transcript. By all means, provide a reference to this in relation to consumer use and abuse (not copying and distribution, or public demonstration) of a DVD.
The only things you're arguing against that have any basis is piracy, and the only person in this string of replies who mentioned copying for anything other than private, personal use of already-owned movies did so as an obvious joke. Ergo, the only arguments you put forward with any merit are strawmen. Yeah, you can beat those arguments down, but that doesn't help when nobody was talking about them before you brought the subject up.
It's not "no paper, no pen = no contract." It's "no consideration, no meeting of the minds = no contract." Please, provide at least some basis for what appear to be entirely specious claims. I can do any damn thing I want with personally-owned movies, so long as I do not distribute them or present them for public display. If you disagree, I expect citations of the Federal Circuit case that affirms the limitation on a particular private use (that haven't been overturned).
I wish it caused people like that to lose sleep at night. The really sick thing is that it is unlikely that it causes the people who push these cases to lose any sleep.
Guess they didn't like my submission of this story, so here's the original news story and one from Faux News.
Similar incidents in Ohio and Indiana.
He's also the same Chief Justice who screwed up the recitation of the oath, which is one of the most well-known passages in the Constitution. Wouldn't surprise me if he thought the President wasn't the President until the oath of office was administered. He's a special one, that Roberts.
Did you not RTFA? Did you not read any of the fifty-odd comments here refuting the old bullshit story you're repeating?
There was nothing in the article related to the engineering decisions behind the Qwerty keyboard. At the time I read the article and comments, there were no comments related to the engineering decisions behind the Qwerty keyboard (at least as far down as I read).
The QWERTY layout was to separate common digraphs to allow faster typing, not to slow typists down.
I have now thoroughly read the history of the Qwerty keyboard, and admit that I was mistaken. It was a design decision made to cope with a problem inherent in the underlying badly-engineered upstroke typebar machines. A fix to prevent a subpar technology from being even worse.
Idiot.
How charming.
I love the arguments against other keyboard layouts for this very reason. Qwerty was specifically engineered to put a cap on typing speed to prevent jamming. Either the person who engineered it was very bad at his job or any random keyboard layout is likely to be more efficient once learned to the same degree as Qwerty.
That said, having used both Qwerty and Dvorak for many years, I am personally more comfortable on Dvorak keyboards. Dvorak is far easier to type one-handed on as well, even without using on of the two one-handed layouts.
So actual user demand (i.e., reality) means little when it conflicts with your idea of "how things should be"?
When you're volunteering your time to develop something you have an interest in? Absolutely user demand means little. User demand only means something when a developer chooses for it to mean something, either because they want money, want a product to be more widely used, or have an interest in the specific functionality that is demanded. Expecting otherwise is ... illogical ...
The only way to solve potential problems is proper backups, otherwise any HDD purchase is playing Russian roulette.
As has been said before, all of the top companies have had cyclical QC problems. Contrary to your statement, WD is absolutely no exception.
Anecdotal evidence is worthless to begin with, and the above statement doesn't even have that to back it up.
I replaced a Seagate drive during that timeframe as well, and they preshipped the replacement drive without any hassle at all. Of course, I was replacing a high-end not-your-typical-consumer drive, so perhaps that made the difference.
Looking at the access point can cause severe retinal burns. We are not responsible for retinal damage or permanent blindness as a result of using our product. Thank you, and have a nice day.
So why do we appeal to proof texts in Scripture, when we feel perfectly free to disagree with Scripture regarding other practices?
Fixed, and answered in a word: Hypocrisy.
Why can't I just marry everyone I know, and thus get all the benefits?
You cite this as a ridiculous example, but ideally you should be allowed to. Marriage should be a secular contract like any other contract. If you want to draw up a contract determining legal rights of inheritance, visitation, etc, you should have every right to without interference.
The use of animals as an example, on the other hand, is always absurd. They have no standing at law, so, with extraodinarily limited exceptions, any use of them in argument is nothing more than a distraction from the actual issue at hand. If animals ever have standing in contract law, this argument can be revisited. Until that time, it is irrelevant.
To answer your question, morality is ever-shifting. It is always determined by present circumstances within a government. Ideally law would be based on rational reasoning, but that requires a rational populace. Humans are only rational in small quantities, so the basis of laws will always be arbitrary, capricious, and subjective. A basis in morality is no basis at all, because morality is based entirely on opinion. Unfortunately, that's what we have as humans, and as such governments and laws will be flawed for the forseeable future.
There, should be enough in the above statements to piss almost everyone off. :)
It's news so that when said penis goes through the hole it gets bitten off by the rabid badger on the other side of the hole.
Idiocy like this needs to be announced loudly so that either the electorate can do something about the fool or the rest of us can point and laugh at their collective incompetence. It's a win-win.
It's amazing how so many people miss or are unable to understand that. Employers don't pay taxes, their employees do. Corporations don't pay taxes, their customers do. In the end, virtually all taxes are picked up by consumers, workers, and borrowers in some manner or other.
So does official email sent between different governmental networks. I fail to see the relevance that a jaunt across the interwebs is going to have. Lots of official communications use the Internet. Nobody is engaging in hand-waving-freakoutery over that.
There is actually a tipping point at the smallest shred of the beginning of each higher tax bracket (obviously modified by each person's individual exemptions, deductions, loopholes, etc). The likelihood that you are ever going to hit one of those exact sweet spots, however, is almost nonexistent.
Despite that, it certainly is a particularly aggressive myth, especially in the service industry.
Where does this bring us? People in India COULD very well fix the problem if they wanted to. But they don't want to because the businesses don't require them to speak well enough, as such the education isn't much directed towards good English skills, etc... And those people who actually speak proper English probably want higher wages than others so companies don't want to hire them. Apparently companies don't do much to further train their employees in this or tell them "You'll get higher wage if you learn to pronounce better" because companies just want to save in expenses.
So yeah, I think that it is companies' fault for choosing to go with the cheapest solution when they know that the result is worse. And it is fault of anyone who is bothered by that but still stays as their customer.
This is exactly true. What a lot of people don't realize is that there are tiers of call center employees in India paid (and charging) commensurate with their grasp of proper pronunciation and accentation. There are people trained to speak non-accented American or British English. You just don't know it unless you know for certain who holds the call center contract for the company you're calling.
It is entirely the fault of the company outsourcing overseas for choosing to pay bottom-of-the-barrel prices for customer service work. When there are other options in the industry for better customer service, those who complain about it but stay because it's cheaper get what they pay for. Unfortunately, there are sometimes no better options in the industry, making voting with your wallet meaningless.
It would be interesting to see greater-than-binary states, though it would require a serious paradigm shift in many of the basic concepts taken for granted in computing.
The problem with voting is that it only takes something like 16% of the population to be motivated morons to outvote the 15% of people on the other side. That's best-case scenario, whereas in most cases the persons representing all parties with significant voting blocks are morons. Then you're screwed no matter who you vote for.
In many cases the removal of wisdom teeth is absolute necessity. There are many people born whose jaws simply are not large enough to accomodate the addition of wisdom teeth without serious dental problems. Add to that the number of people who have wisdom teeth growing in impacted, and there's a good reason why their removal is fairly standard.
I wouldn't have had mine removed, but unfortunately my jaw is both too small and the lower ones were impacted. Nothing like having 4 teeth extracted prior to eruption and finding out afterward that hydrocodone doesn't bind in you the way it should, hence providing zero pain relief. That was fun.
Forging currency is pretty high up there on the no-no list. Only governments and banks are allowed to create value out of thin air (or rather by stealing value from currently-existing currency). I can hardly see forging an SSL cert, if government issued, coming anywhere near the legal repercussions of forging currency.
The ramifications of using a fake SSL cert vs forging a fake passport are vastly different. I thought that would be obvious, but I forgot this is Slashdot.
I definitely understand questioning the best practices of dealing with the autistic, but the person I was replying to wrote their response in such a way that it seemed they had no interest in fostering actual intelligent debate, but would rather prefer to make a knee-jerk conclusion based on ignorance. It's possible I am wrong, but the above seems pretty likely given the word choices in the post.
Without knowing the exact circumstances of the family involved, it seems harsh to pass judgement on them for allowing their children to watch (and become dependent on, since autistics are compelled to follow routines) a specific channel/show. It can be hard enough for a family to survive with two full-time incomes, let alone dealing with two children with developmental problems. Having some time out to recharge is necessary for people who have to care for family members full-time. Serious breakdowns occur otherwise. It didn't sound like the television was used as a babysitter, but as a part of the overall strategy of dealing with a major medical condition.
As for other societies dealing with autism, if how it was dealt with in the past in the US is any indication, it was pretty horrible for the person suffering. That is, if they survived at all.
Again, there are a lot of issues surrounding autism that can be discussed intelligently, but the AC really didn't seem interested in discussion so much as holier-than-thou finger pointing.