Suffice to say that I've acquaintances who refuse to work legitimately above ground (only under table) after expatriating. I have relocated myself and my business away from a tax happy, regulation happy, business destroying state. More than half a decade later, I'm still finding out there's another bureau I didn't inform I moved, I pay those fees, and fix that issue and there's another one. The DMV has three different branches who needed notifying and want to know my new address, my new business location, my new Drivers License, and everything else. And that's just the DMV!!!! Had a fleet of trucks there with DOT numbers. They tell me I'm still liable for the fees and taxes they come up with for the one truck that I kept, because I didn't re-register it in another jurisdiction and file an empty tax form for fuel taxes for the last half decade that I lived somewhere else. "But I don't run trucks anymore, I shut down that particular subsidiary and closed it down before I left." "That doesn't matter, we need forms, and a change of address form, with your new address, new truck registration, new title in the new jurisdiction, etc." "I'm not operating it as a commercial DOT numbered vehicle, its just sitting on a ranch and never sees highway use anymore, just a memento, really." "Well sir, I've told you what you need to do. Penalties will keep accruing until you file those forms and pay those late fees." (So not renewing your business in their jurisdiction is no longer enough, you have to notify every single department that might possibly conceive of a reason to nail you with a fee, especially in tax happy jurisdictions with fees for every leaf of toilet paper you might use.) So what I need to do is pay them another 200 bucks, plus get the vehicle retitled, plus pay them another 20 bucks to change my address in yet another of their computers, which apparently didn't match the regular DMV one, and pay yet another vehicle tax to license plate a vehicle that will never be on a state or federal highway (I pay to maintain the road the truck gets used on, private road and property.) All so it matches their regulations and rules. And they still find me "liable" for their taxes. Before that all got sorted out, they put a hold on my license so I couldn't get it replaced in another state. I fail to see how the feds would be any nicer in jurisdictions that are friendly to them. Hell, switzerland caved. Last I read in financial news some years back, US citizens aren't as welcome at swiss banks as we used to be. We're a source of unnecessary paperwork and compliance requests. So unless you moved to Zimbabwe, Russia or China (and Russia's kind of iffy) one has to wonder how far those guys could hound you, given their endless resources if they had a financial reason to dig into your pockets (i.e. you had a business here before you left and relocated abroad.)
Can you tell me its any different if you leave the country? Last I remember, if you fail to tell every single department that might nail you with a fee, that you've moved, and some of them want PROOF of your new location, so you aren't just vanishing from their system, they say you're still liable. Its not what I've heard from others, its what I've witnessed first hand. What I heard from others just served to reinforce what I already knew from my own experiences. So while the new state I moved to is tax friendly and does everything it can to encourage business to move here and flourish, the old state clings to every dollar it can steal from me, via all sorts of rules, regulations, and other bureaucratic loop holes. Given that DC passes 40 thousand new regulations and statutes every year (CFR's are getting ridiculously long) or more... I'd say they're far more paperwork happy than the last state I stayed in.
So when you call me a zealot... clarify. I'm only zealous in my disgust of unearned authority, undeserved authority and people demanding money from me by force and machination, without providing me with any service I desire or recognize.
And if you follow the money, you'd notice that a vast majority (we're talking what, 85%??) of code and funding for Linux at large is what? Red Hat.
I suspected connections to the spooks ever since they were in Arlington (you don't work or base your company near DC unless you want to stick your hands into that particular cookie jar all the way to your elbows.)
That said, much as I used to like Debian, and Ubuntu, lets not forget that Ubuntu forks over your search terms for sale. Unity is shaite (at least from my personal perspective) Gnome 3 is hated (don't know why, Unity is worse) KDE 4 is still as unstable as KDE3 used to be, but at least it resembles Windows far more so users who hate Microsoft can at least stay interface luddites until the sun dies of heat death.
Seriously... am I the only one who sees the hypocrisy here? Also, pulse audio sucks, great, wondrous. Am I the only one who notices that it makes no difference for VLC? I mean, I'm not exactly a netflix freak, but lets face it. There is NOTHING one can watch as videos online if one is a stickler to clean licensing. Neither Red Hat nor Debian off the bat are worth a shaite for the average consumer whom we as Linux IT people might want to lure away from Microsoft. Know why I renew my MS credentials each year? Because the average consumer wants Windows. They don't know anything. They couldn't navigate Microsoft Word. If the icons change? Pfffeh. They panic and freak out. Your phone is ringing that you broke their PC. "What's this fox thing? I want my "internet" back!!!"
And for the record, I had to sit and rebuild an entire set of apparmor profiles because Debian's Iceweasel doesn't come with them, and the firefox ones need combing through so one might as well make new ones. Ridiculous? Obviously. Does Debian ship updated profiles? Hell no. Make your own. How many users used to sandboxie and firefox in windows will go through the trouble to mess around with apparmor (or selinux, which at least comes configured in Redhat and Suse.)
Sorry to say folks, but Linux wasn't supposed to be neocommunism. Linux was supposed to be freedom.
On the other hand, look at sourceforge. Filezilla, which used to be fast and had very good support for crypto certs, self signed and otherwise, if one checks the herdfiles now, it is now published by some company out of Tel Aviv, and bundled with spyware and browser hijacks when downloaded from sourceforge. Now I'm stuck forcing IIS for my clients who run windows and need an FTP server, because I'm not willing to risk having to clean spyware off of mission critical machines if (more likely "when") a filezilla server update runs the risk of pulling down some crap like that. And this is Sourceforge. The place many people automagically associate with Open Source and Linux. So, Linux will not succeed at all in the market place if we're stuck having to find ways to not make it a profitable thing.
Bitch as we might. Cleaning spyware off of computers accounts for 75% of Microsoft computer shop revenues. Sales of hardware and software?? For every copy of Windows I've sold in the last 3 years I've cleaned a dozen trojans. On Windows copies I buy in bulk from my distributor, I make about 5 bucks a copy... 15 if I gouge above the price at Walmart. Cleaning trojans? Well, it keeps Best Buy solvent at rates so ridiculous it makes one wanna barf. Almost a hundred bucks to put it on the bench?! Profit indeed! You do the math.
Either way, bitching about systemd doesn't solve anything. I've run Red Hat servers since before there was a contract one had to sign and pay for before grabbing a copy (before the RHEL/Fedora split.) I've used CentOS and supported myself. Hasn't let me down. I've also run properly pruned and configured Microsoft servers. I haven't been let down by that, either. Hell, I put together the Microsoft security team at my old shop. So, far as I can tell, to each his own. Nothing but that. If something
You said:
Libertarians don't admit that because they typically don't admit to voting republican in the first place.
Ironically, corruption isn't needed on an "outside the system" basis, because the system is rigged so only the two main parties can really make a serious showing (except maybe New Hampshire because of the extremely strong libertarian presence there due to the freestate project, and take by difference, Wyoming, which also had its "free state project" but which only has one party, the Republicans, if you don't want to vote hard core socialist, you vote republican. Any other registration in Wyoming is just a political statement of no actual efficacy.)
The original statement is full of ignorance about how the US political system works. For elections, in most states, you are FORCED into "republican" or "democrat." In some jurisdictions they occasionally offer "independent" which basically just means your votes are discarded at count time.
The way to run for office, aside from funding issues is to get on a balot. Which means A, your party has to be endorsed by the state government (another term for it is accepted) and then you have to be approved by the state. Then you have to find a way to reach your target demographic and then persuade them to actually show up at primaries, otherwise you'll never even be remembered by November 5th. Most states don't recognize libertarians, constitutionalists or even a vague label like independent. As a result, when the election process starts, you're given the list of candidates for a "pre-election" voting process in which you ONLY vote for your party and are ONLY given their candidates to choose from, for any seat.
(Example: where I live, the only District Attorney to be voted for was a Democrat. There are less than a thousand registered democrats in an area with around ten thousand eligible voters, just by virtue of two wolves and one sheep voting on dinner, the man should have suffered a crushing defeat.)
So while many people may vote "no consent" (a little known "against all these guys" type thing that registers you're being taxed without representation) it didn't unelect that guy or block him from office. He was the only one running, so he got elected. For those of us who weren't Democrats, we saw an EMPTY District Attorney box/menu.
So in the primaries you get your "registered voter" party's list of candidates. Libertarians end up going republican because often times most actually libertarian candidates cannot run anything but republican. In most other places they can't get ON the ballot and very few people register as independent voters as they know despite the nobility and merit of the word "independent" what it actually means is "discarded before count."
Once the primaries are over (which most American voters don't know are also LOCAL elections), by virtue of two wolves and a lamb voting on dinner, you end up with a single candidate for each party, voted by the aforementioned majority rule, and all your local offices are also settled in the primaries.
I've seen some terrible candidates get elected over the years, all because a multitude of folks thought the local and candidate election was Nov 05 rather than primaries. Come 4 or 6 years later. They forgot. What's that saying about a nation of sheep begetting a government of wolves?
Remember, your primaries are state, county and city elections and national candidate selection. Rarely will a good candidate put on as good of a show as the authoritarian, tyranny loving psychopaths out there, and for good reason. Psychopaths know how to manipulate simpletons and get psychological and monetary rewards for successfully doing so (in english: they get off on it and get paid, double payday!)
There's a reason Nigerian scammers are rich enough to drive Ferraris.
Note: The author does not endorse the practice of voting to restrict other people's freedom (which is all this boils down to, these days) the author does endorse attempting it once in your life (after meeting and researching the candidates yourself) so you can see just how many EXCELLENT people get discarded either by voter ignorance or by system being rigged to keep them out.
How about this example: there's no law against me running a web server from my home, but Comcast won't let me. Nor will AT&T. Are they "quashing my right to free speech?" When the police show up and tell me I'm free to protest...over there, are they quashing my right to free speech?
***** Lets address Comcast first:
Comcast is a private company run by private people providing a voluntarily purchased service. You sound like you purchased the cheapest option and are upset that it is of less quality and permissiveness than their higher end service (for example most big ISP's now block port 25 so ignorant users won't end up running spam relays or intentional spam gateways. (The fact that government with such excessive coercive power exists for Comcast to abuse and lock competitors out of certain areas is not Comcast's fault. The company's directors merely used all the fancy government tools that other control freaks created and made themselves rich using the tools. Government exists precisely so one group can dominate another. In ancient times, when the new roving marauders ruled a place they called taxes tribute, and didn't pretend to be as nice as governments do today, but be assured those positions of power over others attract the exact same psychology. More on that in the cop section.)
Oftentimes if you were wise enough to purchase from a smaller company, you can talk to the techs and tell them you run a webserver for business and they upgrade you to the business service, or you can tell them you run a webserver for fun and games and need them to lift the restriction. Often times, they will. Occasionally they'll talk to you long enough to figure out you know what you're talking about and remove the port block. DSL companies are well known for letting people do whatever with their specific line or otherwise dedicated bandwidth, unless it results in lawyer calls.
The main issue here is that you are free to walk away and they won't raid your house with paramilitary troops or take half your stuff as an exit tax. Its a tossup between people who are equally as likely to not even return the leased cablemodems, unless the company nailed them with an extra refundable fee upon receipt of used/old hardware.
***** Lets address the cops and government in general:
First off, you likely never got to CHOOSE a government, and one was thrust upon you before you were even born, merely by virtue of which fiefdom (now called "jurisdiction") you had the fortune or misfortune of being born upon... some won't even let you leave, others just track you wherever they can and extract more tribute from you. USA does this to you. If you expatriate and thus no longer derive "income" from US sources, they still hunt you down for ten years to tax you some more... in effect they nail you with a serious exit tax.
Either way, I strongly doubt you got offered a menu of services, a fee schedule and other options you likely got from Comcast but were too busy to read after they said "residential service comes with 50% off cable TV and HBO while business service costs twice and comes with nothing but the ability to run your server."
So in effect, with cops and governments, you are NOT free to walk away, or to switch to a government with better rules, or shop until you find one with better rules or acceptable rules. There aren't any. They, to some degree, all take your stuff and give it to their friends or preferred class of people. Some are more forceful than others.(See Taliban, See ISIS, see pretty much every authoritarian regime from China to the NYPD and LAPD.) Some pretend to be nicer than others.(See the nordic countries.) Government is always, and foremost, a purveyor of force, which most people religiously obey and assume is correct. (See "divine right of kings" taken to its logical conclusion.) Occasionally only as a "they did it to me, so I want it done to everyone e
the only thing I like about MS is their keyboards... and well... gaming... no, their games suck and I get most of my hardware from NYKO and Logitech... but the natural keyboards from the OLD days are top notch... (the new ones suck)
Their servers work fine up to that little issue of "if you make use of a server as a server, the MS ones blow up" (I work for a microsoft partner, so believe me I've seen some crazy crap happening to Server 2003 and 2000... things that SHOULD NOT happen still do.
In all honesty I'd sooner have run a samba server for file mapping since they never seem to go down (though I seem perplexed that samba 2 no longer properly interoperates with XP Serv Pack 2... I wonder if Bill's bullshit hit the Red Hat again?
No, but if you read "turn off port 80 to secure your network" as a security advisory... any IDIOT can tell you that if you need to get out or serve html to the world... well, you CANT... sheesh... and its not like the emails and worms annihilating windows servers use Port 80 exclusively... I recall RPC was 5100 and such... not 80. I could be mistaken... but god knows I do business, I run servers, I code... nobody foocks with my servers or code, or nothing... and I run both winblows and linux. (and a bsd box for those that give a sh1t).
Anyways, go read up on your idiocy remarks before you comment on "anti microsoft".
The guy simply said that posting such blatant idiocy in his newsletter, the man deserves to be blocked before he further misinforms the already IGNORANT windows folks out there.
CONTRACT has to be SIGNED by the parties involved for it to be valid. Otherwise one party can deny it and invalidate the contract (and then sue for various damages and get rich =D )
Stupidity is as expensive as ignorance in the USA... someone's always dying to sue a moron. These people sound like morons or criminals....
It may be that soon we'll need CC apps notarized to keep this type stuff from ever happening again.
Yep... western digital made the parts last I checked. Dunno who else was contracted to do the assembly on the 75GXP's (had 2 30 giggers and BOTH burned out at exactly the same time... no natural events to cause them either... no storm, no nothing)... but hte 65GXP drives were back up to snuff.
Yes your point implies that just as the definition of communism was to "provide for all equally" yet in practice it was simply a government subsidized corporate culture, does a capitalism really give all freedom, or simply the freedom to survive? Instead of huge "PRIVATE" corporations holding power and capital... the governments and their anointed ones did.
The only difference between those societies and our own is that in ours you are fooled into thinking you have a choice. What you DON'T see is that CAPITALISM IS THE HOLDING AND RAISING OF CAPITAL BY PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS OF INDIVIDUALS. It has NOTHING to do with free (unregulated/monopolized) markets or not so free regulated markets. If they then abuse their power and reduce the rest of us to worker drones clawing their way up the ladder nobody stops them as they can PAY their way through the easilly purchaseable justice system (hmmm where in the USA has this NOT happened yet??)
The only ones who can claim freedom as you do in capitalism would be those who hit the jackpot first. Despite claims by Amway, only those who got to wealth FIRST can have it, unless one of them has a fit of charity and gives his wealth to the people. (or others take it from him in typical legalese warmaking).
Capitalism has NOTHING to do with FREEDOM. Capitalism deals with making money and that is that. Same goes with democracy, do recall a famous quote "The greatest tyranny of all is that of the ignorant majority."-Author Unknown
and calls them new versions... aka win98 to fix all the bullshit they charged you to fix (aka giving you an upgraded file system, etc). Because Microsoft has bought HPFS from IBM and STILL hasn't updated the standard filesystem one bit.
Oh and because microsoft waits until a new plus pack or whatnot is out or a service pack.
Linux patches are usually out within the week with a SCANT few so far being out later than that for any flaw that's affected my servers.
Nevermind that you can custom tailor your software and you're not forced to pay 200 bucks anytime you feel like getting a new word processor.
-Khye
PS - microsoft software sucks, microsoft legal strong-arming and litigation KICK ASS!!
His affiliates will jump ship to another place when this one is reduced to a filthy hellhole (not too far off now) and a slum.
Then India will flourish till the world's "elite" will forsake them to seek cheaper labor somewhere else. In the end they will serve themselves, not any "country" as we are so keen to rally behind. We are sheep my friends... the elite are the shepherds keeping our flock together to fatten up for the slaughter to come.
-Khye
PS - don't worry, they will eventually slaughter us on the unemployment block.
that I've been burned by some insecure lawyer working for microsoft and fearing he may soon have to find a "just" cause to defend... one not made just by the sheer amount of money spent on propagating stupidity and ignorance among its customers.
Perhaps you haven't been around groups that still use "tenure" as a term to refer to how long someone's been with a company.
This form of "tenure" as opposed to a that of a teacher means little nowadays though old timers might recall a time when americans who had stayed with a company for nearly a lifetime were regarded as "guys we can rely on" as opposed to "guys we can fire so I can get my executive bonus" as they are known today.
(and yes I have friends in lots of places including the educational field).
how many of those linux holes are still around. The linux folks all hunt for them and PATCH them asap. The M$ folks? Should I even bother to ask how many holes we DONT know about?!
how many of the microsoft ones? File Sharing has NOTHING to do with the holes present in OS's. And btw... since WHEN do they have access to my banking info? I do any important accounting offline on a machine meant to print checks not watch movies on. If I were to run any of the file sharing services I'd say they'd be the least of my risks in the case of my W2000 rig/SMB fileserver.
They still have network holes from the RC1 of Windows 2000.
Difference is the Linux holes are released to be patched. The MS holes are covered up in attempts to hide them and make users feel secure until Windows 2004 can patch the Windows 2000 holes.
[ANGRY-RANT] that we are TOTALLY screwed... if they got ppl coming up with new technologies that WORK over in India... it means corpers and domestics need even LESS of us here in the US... obviously us americans didn't come up with it... which means what? That that's another set of IT jobs that leaves the US to go to those guys. (or at least contracts that we could've had) Face it, we're not falling behind but we're not exactly price competitive these days either.
Granted we don't know how well they work and how secure they are... but guess what? If the technology outsourcing thing keeps picking up (not an *if* anymore is it?) we're gonna lose MORE jobs and they'll get more. In the end the corpers'll have to sell to the affluent here and to everyone elsewhere. It will look as if the US economy rocks on paper but it will hit rock bottom for at least 2/3 of us that aren't well to do, prices won't go down either, they'll go down only enough to be affordable if you forgot to pay rent. It won't happen next year all at once, but how many of us will be unlucky enough to be dead of natural causes that soon? In 20 years the slums we saw in all the futuristic society movies may be the slums many of us will call home.
To old timers among you, I ask this... have you made any breakthroughs lately? If not, I doubt tenure will keep you around these days. Unless you're a teacher. Tenure nowadays just means a higher pay job to eliminate and a bigger bonus to get for some CEO somewhere.
I'm not a doomsayer. I'm just a guy realizing that other than in small semi rural expanding areas here in the USA (where ppl can't afford to outsource offshores because no big corps have taken over yet) everyone else is gonna have a hard time finding jobs once they lose them...) Here at least (I live in a little suburban hell in VA) you can at least start a small company and hope to survive against the big guys... but how long will that be before ANOTHER republican president takes over and completely destroys the tatters of our so called "recovering" economy. [/ANGRY-RANT]
No you aren't. Myself and DaedalusHKX are both only running windows when other people pay us to (actually daedalus has stopped working for anyone that uses windows (and I only do it when others pay me, otherwise there's just too little incentive to keep up with it other than to know what new security breaches are discovered and which ones (all of them) are still unfixed:)
You ever appeal a case? Every word you and others say counts (for example if you plead guilty to any accident you are automatically guaranteed that if you are SUED over anyone else's health bills you will lose. You admitted guilt and did not attempt to clear your name. This (though you may not know it) automatically implies that you also accept any fault or blame and all it brings with it (lawsuits over health bills, property damage, etc, and believe me this is the united states, people sue for being stupid enough to spill fresh coffee on themselves and get 3.4 million... health and property damages can be quite nastier).
If your case is settled you still have to worry, but oddly enough if you are FOUND guilty but fight it, you're guaranteed that most lawsuits can actually be avoided or defeated assuming you provided convincing evidence and the jury was somewhat split.
If you don't believe me spend sometime in court and see how it comes out.
EXAMPLE: "While unintentional, Mr./Ms. (your name here)'s actions did cause damage however. Mr./Ms.(your name) did not intend to harm my client, but you were not prepared to respond to the situation. Therefore you were found not guilty of reckless endangerment, but were shown instead incompetent to operate the [insert piece of equipment or vehicle that caused accident and harm]. This lack of preparation / incompetence of Mr./Ms. (your name here) has rendered my client [insert name] with [insert overstated injuries and inflated health bills].")
Not that every lawyer would go to such an extent but don't be surprised to find someone likely to do something like that just to net some cash.[ahem.. Lowell "the hammer" Stanley] If you don't believe it, get sued sometime and see how fast you'll end up getting indebted to some schmuck if you don't cover your ass with every word you say (hence why paying a lawyer to help you is a smart thing to do when the risk is higher (workplace accidents, etc)). Oh and if you HIRE a lawyer, let them TALK, and carefully craft every scenario with them or at least go over them. Whether you sue or are sued, or served with an arrest warrant.
FINALE: if the original case's jury fails to convict the man or make him pay because they are split down the middle, they can sue him again on the basis that the original court was biased against videogame harm and time invested. OR the criminal justice section of the courts can take him in over the hack itself as a criminal or terrorist act with intent to humiliate and "defame" Mr. Morton or whatever they called the fictional plaintiff.
In a twist of fate the "Getta" company (if you read the articles) can sue the man for downtime and use the original case's findings and conclusion. (security breach, violation of license terms, etc)
-Khye
PS - I've typed TOO damn much and I'm tired... goodbye. Plus I've had enough of courts. Take it easy man... and if you ever get sued or arrested even for a parking ticket, never admit guilt. Go to a lawyer and see how you can get away without being screwed for years to come by saying the wrong thing.
PPS - and for the love of god, dress to impress, don't believe the justice being blind bullshit, judges often decide who's telling the truth or who deserves justice by who "respects" the courtroom more (hence who dresses better and who doesn't step out of line in the argument making). And since its their courtroom and they are justices what they say is final. Don't piss them off and TRY to make them like you since they ultimately decide your fate.
I normally don't respond to trolls, but I'll ask this. Do you know me? Do you understand that the cops nailed me for an accident, and they STATED under oath that I had hit the other guy driving the red car... after fully bullshitting their own case, I revealed to the judge when my turn came to be heard that I had indeed been the OWNER and DRIVER of the red car. The look on the cops face was priceless but his "honor" nailed my ass because I was wearing slacks and a silk shirt due to lack of more corporate style business suits. (I have a contact at the local court house who has informed me that said judge is a complete hard ass and nails anyone not wearing a full business suit with tie, and who doesn't show up with a lawyer).
Oddly enough my father is a local contractor and has won repeated cases in this same judge's courtroom. I pleaded at least as good a case as my father normally does (along with a few other friends I have in the area who also do a massive volume of business). Strange that I would get punished when the other moron peeled out of a hotel parking lot and while an idiotic cop bullshitted his entire presentation, the judge STILL nailed my ass to the wall... so please keep the AC crap to a minimum, you are the "punk ass" here and a pathetic moron to boot.
-Khye
feed a troll today and watch it grow until it pops
Damages were real, but to pass verdict would have been to decide which side is guilty and say so. To say "the damages are real BUT" that 'but' is what invalidated the verdict. Sort of like saying that the "dissenting" opinion was 50%, which pretty much invalidates a majority vote. The article was quite short though and didn't elaborate much in my opinion.
Courts can often throw a case out without deciding in anyone's favor (thus it seems as if one person wins by being acquited, BUT depending on wording, having the case thrown out can be grounds for denying it an appeals hearing.)
On the other side having the case thrown out with teh words "but there was damage done that is real" can be seen not as a verdict but as admitting that IF something comes up later, this can be used as evidence that the court DID see it as damage but refrained from passing a verdict. (i.e. party a is guilty and will pay or party a is not guilty and has not to pay even though).
In my experience if a case is passed on like that it can be because a decisive verdict cannot be reached. I've never seen one go that way, but I'm sure the possibility is there in a very controversial case. (this would probably NOT be it:)
Well I'm neither poor nor rich, but I've been both broke and affluent. In my studies of the past I seem to recall a time (1814?, not sure on date or year actually) when income taxes were established by vote by the poor / stupid majority.
I say stupid because that SAME attitude, "the rich will pay more, the poor will pay less" was prevalent then too.
Well look around. Percentage wise, the poor pay MORE taxes than the rich who found tax shelters and ways to escape (including the ones GW Bush helped them with recently).
The question you have to ask is this. Will the rich NOT find ways to saddle the "poor" and less affluent with their higher prices while they find ways to acquisition items at cheaper prices than the "poor" ?? I bet they will just like they've outsmarted the mob/masses ever since humanity could trade things.
As much as I agree with you I must disagree.
You forgot how many of the Enronites are still outside of jail. You also forgot how some of our gov't folks are involved in the Enron scandal yet they glossed it over and it was never brought up again. You also probably do not live in a small town where justice is available only to the old and well dressed driving jags or cadillacs. I should know, I was slapped with a ticket and a few other charges in the past, and despite pleading a good case and the cops having a shaky case (couldn't even organize their information) they STILL won. So believe you me, how much you have makes a BIG difference.
-K
As I have also been one and I know that it takes a bit to get out of the videogamer or family man mentallity and into the I'm at work, lemme waste time by the office water cooler instead.
Needless to say that either way, employees want to not work and make money, employers want everyone to work without being paid anything. I am 100% a liberal in that I believe whatever works and makes both sides happy (maximize profit, minimize loss for the employer and conversely productivity and morale for employees). If all those things are considered then I give my vote for unconventional methods.
When I coded, I found I did some of my best coding and design work (ahh the college years) in my boxers after a quick shower and a cup of coffee... (generally breakfast occured while my meastly 200 mhz back then performed the compile and build cycle that used to take minutes). I personally hate the office space but while living with parents, getting work done at home is nigh impossible since parents think you're always playing whether you are or not.
I'm single and living alone so for me having a home office is a perfect setup. Though my best work has been written on napkins at the local bookstore's coffee shop (books 'a million).
Patent, copyright and trademark holders, that is anyone who normally gets residual income from royalties on IP (intellectual property) should get a bigger cut and should even be able to DICTATE how things are done with their music.
If they indeed do, then why is it that artists speaking up has not put the RIAA on the pleasant side of things, when they instead are becoming greater aggressors against privacy and innovation?
If they wanted to stop piracy there are simpler ways. Lower prices on cds, and fill them with music people WANT to hear. At 10.99 I know most of my friends would buy another copy of Metallica's Black Album as well as most of the Megadeth cds. And that's what they cost back then.
Not to point out one of the great failures of our American society in the past, but lets recall "prohibition" where instead of destroying alcohol consumption in the public... the psychotic right wingers succeeded in making the mafia a nearly unstoppable force while also providing MORE than ample room for crime hubs, distribution centers, and allowing the mafia to become the equivalent of a labor / trade union (speakeasies and bootleggers ring a bell anyone??)
Trying to prohibit something people want, leads to rampant crime rate, jail overpopulation (with nonviolent offenders) while also forcing innovation in criminal procedures. You'd think the fools at the RIAA would've learned their USA history before repeating one of it's greatest mistakes so blatantly.
As a mixed business/comp sci geek, I am contented that innovation has not been slammed in the shitter and flushed down by the exploiters. I have nothing wrong with corporate politics, but in the case of art... and consumer music... regulation is much needed, to prevent such titanic and amoral groups such as the RIAA/MPAA from dicking people and innovators over only for the sake of executive profits. Since obviously the band doesn't get even HALF the money (or even a quarter of it for some bands).
Slashdot Mirror
Suffice to say that I've acquaintances who refuse to work legitimately above ground (only under table) after expatriating. I have relocated myself and my business away from a tax happy, regulation happy, business destroying state. More than half a decade later, I'm still finding out there's another bureau I didn't inform I moved, I pay those fees, and fix that issue and there's another one. The DMV has three different branches who needed notifying and want to know my new address, my new business location, my new Drivers License, and everything else. And that's just the DMV!!!! Had a fleet of trucks there with DOT numbers. They tell me I'm still liable for the fees and taxes they come up with for the one truck that I kept, because I didn't re-register it in another jurisdiction and file an empty tax form for fuel taxes for the last half decade that I lived somewhere else. "But I don't run trucks anymore, I shut down that particular subsidiary and closed it down before I left." "That doesn't matter, we need forms, and a change of address form, with your new address, new truck registration, new title in the new jurisdiction, etc." "I'm not operating it as a commercial DOT numbered vehicle, its just sitting on a ranch and never sees highway use anymore, just a memento, really." "Well sir, I've told you what you need to do. Penalties will keep accruing until you file those forms and pay those late fees." (So not renewing your business in their jurisdiction is no longer enough, you have to notify every single department that might possibly conceive of a reason to nail you with a fee, especially in tax happy jurisdictions with fees for every leaf of toilet paper you might use.) So what I need to do is pay them another 200 bucks, plus get the vehicle retitled, plus pay them another 20 bucks to change my address in yet another of their computers, which apparently didn't match the regular DMV one, and pay yet another vehicle tax to license plate a vehicle that will never be on a state or federal highway (I pay to maintain the road the truck gets used on, private road and property.) All so it matches their regulations and rules. And they still find me "liable" for their taxes. Before that all got sorted out, they put a hold on my license so I couldn't get it replaced in another state. I fail to see how the feds would be any nicer in jurisdictions that are friendly to them. Hell, switzerland caved. Last I read in financial news some years back, US citizens aren't as welcome at swiss banks as we used to be. We're a source of unnecessary paperwork and compliance requests. So unless you moved to Zimbabwe, Russia or China (and Russia's kind of iffy) one has to wonder how far those guys could hound you, given their endless resources if they had a financial reason to dig into your pockets (i.e. you had a business here before you left and relocated abroad.)
Can you tell me its any different if you leave the country? Last I remember, if you fail to tell every single department that might nail you with a fee, that you've moved, and some of them want PROOF of your new location, so you aren't just vanishing from their system, they say you're still liable. Its not what I've heard from others, its what I've witnessed first hand. What I heard from others just served to reinforce what I already knew from my own experiences. So while the new state I moved to is tax friendly and does everything it can to encourage business to move here and flourish, the old state clings to every dollar it can steal from me, via all sorts of rules, regulations, and other bureaucratic loop holes. Given that DC passes 40 thousand new regulations and statutes every year (CFR's are getting ridiculously long) or more... I'd say they're far more paperwork happy than the last state I stayed in.
So when you call me a zealot... clarify. I'm only zealous in my disgust of unearned authority, undeserved authority and people demanding money from me by force and machination, without providing me with any service I desire or recognize.
And if you follow the money, you'd notice that a vast majority (we're talking what, 85%??) of code and funding for Linux at large is what? Red Hat.
I suspected connections to the spooks ever since they were in Arlington (you don't work or base your company near DC unless you want to stick your hands into that particular cookie jar all the way to your elbows.)
That said, much as I used to like Debian, and Ubuntu, lets not forget that Ubuntu forks over your search terms for sale. Unity is shaite (at least from my personal perspective) Gnome 3 is hated (don't know why, Unity is worse) KDE 4 is still as unstable as KDE3 used to be, but at least it resembles Windows far more so users who hate Microsoft can at least stay interface luddites until the sun dies of heat death.
Seriously... am I the only one who sees the hypocrisy here? Also, pulse audio sucks, great, wondrous. Am I the only one who notices that it makes no difference for VLC? I mean, I'm not exactly a netflix freak, but lets face it. There is NOTHING one can watch as videos online if one is a stickler to clean licensing. Neither Red Hat nor Debian off the bat are worth a shaite for the average consumer whom we as Linux IT people might want to lure away from Microsoft. Know why I renew my MS credentials each year? Because the average consumer wants Windows. They don't know anything. They couldn't navigate Microsoft Word. If the icons change? Pfffeh. They panic and freak out. Your phone is ringing that you broke their PC. "What's this fox thing? I want my "internet" back!!!"
And for the record, I had to sit and rebuild an entire set of apparmor profiles because Debian's Iceweasel doesn't come with them, and the firefox ones need combing through so one might as well make new ones. Ridiculous? Obviously. Does Debian ship updated profiles? Hell no. Make your own. How many users used to sandboxie and firefox in windows will go through the trouble to mess around with apparmor (or selinux, which at least comes configured in Redhat and Suse.)
Sorry to say folks, but Linux wasn't supposed to be neocommunism. Linux was supposed to be freedom.
On the other hand, look at sourceforge. Filezilla, which used to be fast and had very good support for crypto certs, self signed and otherwise, if one checks the herdfiles now, it is now published by some company out of Tel Aviv, and bundled with spyware and browser hijacks when downloaded from sourceforge. Now I'm stuck forcing IIS for my clients who run windows and need an FTP server, because I'm not willing to risk having to clean spyware off of mission critical machines if (more likely "when") a filezilla server update runs the risk of pulling down some crap like that. And this is Sourceforge. The place many people automagically associate with Open Source and Linux. So, Linux will not succeed at all in the market place if we're stuck having to find ways to not make it a profitable thing.
Bitch as we might. Cleaning spyware off of computers accounts for 75% of Microsoft computer shop revenues. Sales of hardware and software?? For every copy of Windows I've sold in the last 3 years I've cleaned a dozen trojans. On Windows copies I buy in bulk from my distributor, I make about 5 bucks a copy... 15 if I gouge above the price at Walmart. Cleaning trojans? Well, it keeps Best Buy solvent at rates so ridiculous it makes one wanna barf. Almost a hundred bucks to put it on the bench?! Profit indeed! You do the math.
Either way, bitching about systemd doesn't solve anything. I've run Red Hat servers since before there was a contract one had to sign and pay for before grabbing a copy (before the RHEL/Fedora split.) I've used CentOS and supported myself. Hasn't let me down. I've also run properly pruned and configured Microsoft servers. I haven't been let down by that, either. Hell, I put together the Microsoft security team at my old shop. So, far as I can tell, to each his own. Nothing but that. If something
You said: Libertarians don't admit that because they typically don't admit to voting republican in the first place.
Ironically, corruption isn't needed on an "outside the system" basis, because the system is rigged so only the two main parties can really make a serious showing (except maybe New Hampshire because of the extremely strong libertarian presence there due to the freestate project, and take by difference, Wyoming, which also had its "free state project" but which only has one party, the Republicans, if you don't want to vote hard core socialist, you vote republican. Any other registration in Wyoming is just a political statement of no actual efficacy.)
The original statement is full of ignorance about how the US political system works. For elections, in most states, you are FORCED into "republican" or "democrat." In some jurisdictions they occasionally offer "independent" which basically just means your votes are discarded at count time.
The way to run for office, aside from funding issues is to get on a balot. Which means A, your party has to be endorsed by the state government (another term for it is accepted) and then you have to be approved by the state. Then you have to find a way to reach your target demographic and then persuade them to actually show up at primaries, otherwise you'll never even be remembered by November 5th. Most states don't recognize libertarians, constitutionalists or even a vague label like independent. As a result, when the election process starts, you're given the list of candidates for a "pre-election" voting process in which you ONLY vote for your party and are ONLY given their candidates to choose from, for any seat.
(Example: where I live, the only District Attorney to be voted for was a Democrat. There are less than a thousand registered democrats in an area with around ten thousand eligible voters, just by virtue of two wolves and one sheep voting on dinner, the man should have suffered a crushing defeat.)
So while many people may vote "no consent" (a little known "against all these guys" type thing that registers you're being taxed without representation) it didn't unelect that guy or block him from office. He was the only one running, so he got elected. For those of us who weren't Democrats, we saw an EMPTY District Attorney box/menu.
So in the primaries you get your "registered voter" party's list of candidates. Libertarians end up going republican because often times most actually libertarian candidates cannot run anything but republican. In most other places they can't get ON the ballot and very few people register as independent voters as they know despite the nobility and merit of the word "independent" what it actually means is "discarded before count."
Once the primaries are over (which most American voters don't know are also LOCAL elections), by virtue of two wolves and a lamb voting on dinner, you end up with a single candidate for each party, voted by the aforementioned majority rule, and all your local offices are also settled in the primaries.
I've seen some terrible candidates get elected over the years, all because a multitude of folks thought the local and candidate election was Nov 05 rather than primaries. Come 4 or 6 years later. They forgot. What's that saying about a nation of sheep begetting a government of wolves?
Remember, your primaries are state, county and city elections and national candidate selection. Rarely will a good candidate put on as good of a show as the authoritarian, tyranny loving psychopaths out there, and for good reason. Psychopaths know how to manipulate simpletons and get psychological and monetary rewards for successfully doing so (in english: they get off on it and get paid, double payday!)
There's a reason Nigerian scammers are rich enough to drive Ferraris.
Note: The author does not endorse the practice of voting to restrict other people's freedom (which is all this boils down to, these days) the author does endorse attempting it once in your life (after meeting and researching the candidates yourself) so you can see just how many EXCELLENT people get discarded either by voter ignorance or by system being rigged to keep them out.
You said:
How about this example: there's no law against me running a web server from my home, but Comcast won't let me. Nor will AT&T. Are they "quashing my right to free speech?" When the police show up and tell me I'm free to protest...over there, are they quashing my right to free speech?
***** Lets address Comcast first:
Comcast is a private company run by private people providing a voluntarily purchased service. You sound like you purchased the cheapest option and are upset that it is of less quality and permissiveness than their higher end service (for example most big ISP's now block port 25 so ignorant users won't end up running spam relays or intentional spam gateways.
(The fact that government with such excessive coercive power exists for Comcast to abuse and lock competitors out of certain areas is not Comcast's fault. The company's directors merely used all the fancy government tools that other control freaks created and made themselves rich using the tools. Government exists precisely so one group can dominate another. In ancient times, when the new roving marauders ruled a place they called taxes tribute, and didn't pretend to be as nice as governments do today, but be assured those positions of power over others attract the exact same psychology. More on that in the cop section.)
Oftentimes if you were wise enough to purchase from a smaller company, you can talk to the techs and tell them you run a webserver for business and they upgrade you to the business service, or you can tell them you run a webserver for fun and games and need them to lift the restriction. Often times, they will. Occasionally they'll talk to you long enough to figure out you know what you're talking about and remove the port block. DSL companies are well known for letting people do whatever with their specific line or otherwise dedicated bandwidth, unless it results in lawyer calls.
The main issue here is that you are free to walk away and they won't raid your house with paramilitary troops or take half your stuff as an exit tax. Its a tossup between people who are equally as likely to not even return the leased cablemodems, unless the company nailed them with an extra refundable fee upon receipt of used/old hardware.
***** Lets address the cops and government in general:
First off, you likely never got to CHOOSE a government, and one was thrust upon you before you were even born, merely by virtue of which fiefdom (now called "jurisdiction") you had the fortune or misfortune of being born upon... some won't even let you leave, others just track you wherever they can and extract more tribute from you. USA does this to you. If you expatriate and thus no longer derive "income" from US sources, they still hunt you down for ten years to tax you some more... in effect they nail you with a serious exit tax.
Either way, I strongly doubt you got offered a menu of services, a fee schedule and other options you likely got from Comcast but were too busy to read after they said "residential service comes with 50% off cable TV and HBO while business service costs twice and comes with nothing but the ability to run your server."
So in effect, with cops and governments, you are NOT free to walk away, or to switch to a government with better rules, or shop until you find one with better rules or acceptable rules. There aren't any. They, to some degree, all take your stuff and give it to their friends or preferred class of people. Some are more forceful than others.(See Taliban, See ISIS, see pretty much every authoritarian regime from China to the NYPD and LAPD.) Some pretend to be nicer than others.(See the nordic countries.) Government is always, and foremost, a purveyor of force, which most people religiously obey and assume is correct. (See "divine right of kings" taken to its logical conclusion.) Occasionally only as a "they did it to me, so I want it done to everyone e
the only thing I like about MS is their keyboards... and well... gaming... no, their games suck and I get most of my hardware from NYKO and Logitech... but the natural keyboards from the OLD days are top notch... (the new ones suck)
Their servers work fine up to that little issue of "if you make use of a server as a server, the MS ones blow up" (I work for a microsoft partner, so believe me I've seen some crazy crap happening to Server 2003 and 2000... things that SHOULD NOT happen still do.
In all honesty I'd sooner have run a samba server for file mapping since they never seem to go down (though I seem perplexed that samba 2 no longer properly interoperates with XP Serv Pack 2... I wonder if Bill's bullshit hit the Red Hat again?
No, but if you read "turn off port 80 to secure your network" as a security advisory... any IDIOT can tell you that if you need to get out or serve html to the world... well, you CANT... sheesh... and its not like the emails and worms annihilating windows servers use Port 80 exclusively... I recall RPC was 5100 and such... not 80. I could be mistaken... but god knows I do business, I run servers, I code... nobody foocks with my servers or code, or nothing... and I run both winblows and linux. (and a bsd box for those that give a sh1t).
Anyways, go read up on your idiocy remarks before you comment on "anti microsoft".
The guy simply said that posting such blatant idiocy in his newsletter, the man deserves to be blocked before he further misinforms the already IGNORANT windows folks out there.
-Khye
BINGO...
CONTRACT has to be SIGNED by the parties involved for it to be valid. Otherwise one party can deny it and invalidate the contract (and then sue for various damages and get rich =D )
Stupidity is as expensive as ignorance in the USA... someone's always dying to sue a moron. These people sound like morons or criminals....
It may be that soon we'll need CC apps notarized to keep this type stuff from ever happening again.
-Khye
Yep... western digital made the parts last I checked. Dunno who else was contracted to do the assembly on the 75GXP's (had 2 30 giggers and BOTH burned out at exactly the same time... no natural events to cause them either... no storm, no nothing)... but hte 65GXP drives were back up to snuff.
-Khye
Yes your point implies that just as the definition of communism was to "provide for all equally" yet in practice it was simply a government subsidized corporate culture, does a capitalism really give all freedom, or simply the freedom to survive? Instead of huge "PRIVATE" corporations holding power and capital... the governments and their anointed ones did.
The only difference between those societies and our own is that in ours you are fooled into thinking you have a choice. What you DON'T see is that CAPITALISM IS THE HOLDING AND RAISING OF CAPITAL BY PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS OF INDIVIDUALS. It has NOTHING to do with free (unregulated/monopolized) markets or not so free regulated markets. If they then abuse their power and reduce the rest of us to worker drones clawing their way up the ladder nobody stops them as they can PAY their way through the easilly purchaseable justice system (hmmm where in the USA has this NOT happened yet??)
The only ones who can claim freedom as you do in capitalism would be those who hit the jackpot first. Despite claims by Amway, only those who got to wealth FIRST can have it, unless one of them has a fit of charity and gives his wealth to the people. (or others take it from him in typical legalese warmaking).
-Khye
Capitalism has NOTHING to do with FREEDOM. Capitalism deals with making money and that is that.
Same goes with democracy, do recall a famous quote
"The greatest tyranny of all is that of the ignorant majority."-Author Unknown
-Khyeron
and calls them new versions... aka win98 to fix all the bullshit they charged you to fix (aka giving you an upgraded file system, etc). Because Microsoft has bought HPFS from IBM and STILL hasn't updated the standard filesystem one bit.
Oh and because microsoft waits until a new plus pack or whatnot is out or a service pack.
Linux patches are usually out within the week with a SCANT few so far being out later than that for any flaw that's affected my servers.
Nevermind that you can custom tailor your software and you're not forced to pay 200 bucks anytime you feel like getting a new word processor.
-Khye
PS - microsoft software sucks, microsoft legal strong-arming and litigation KICK ASS!!
Why would he?
His affiliates will jump ship to another place when this one is reduced to a filthy hellhole (not too far off now) and a slum.
Then India will flourish till the world's "elite" will forsake them to seek cheaper labor somewhere else. In the end they will serve themselves, not any "country" as we are so keen to rally behind. We are sheep my friends... the elite are the shepherds keeping our flock together to fatten up for the slaughter to come.
-Khye
PS - don't worry, they will eventually slaughter us on the unemployment block.
that I've been burned by some insecure lawyer working for microsoft and fearing he may soon have to find a "just" cause to defend... one not made just by the sheer amount of money spent on propagating stupidity and ignorance among its customers.
It's all good bro.
-Khye
Perhaps you haven't been around groups that still use "tenure" as a term to refer to how long someone's been with a company.
This form of "tenure" as opposed to a that of a teacher means little nowadays though old timers might recall a time when americans who had stayed with a company for nearly a lifetime were regarded as "guys we can rely on" as opposed to "guys we can fire so I can get my executive bonus" as they are known today.
(and yes I have friends in lots of places including the educational field).
-Khye
how many of those linux holes are still around. The linux folks all hunt for them and PATCH them asap. The M$ folks? Should I even bother to ask how many holes we DONT know about?!
how many of the microsoft ones? File Sharing has NOTHING to do with the holes present in OS's. And btw... since WHEN do they have access to my banking info? I do any important accounting offline on a machine meant to print checks not watch movies on. If I were to run any of the file sharing services I'd say they'd be the least of my risks in the case of my W2000 rig/SMB fileserver.
They still have network holes from the RC1 of Windows 2000.
Difference is the Linux holes are released to be patched. The MS holes are covered up in attempts to hide them and make users feel secure until Windows 2004 can patch the Windows 2000 holes.
-Khye
[ANGRY-RANT]
that we are TOTALLY screwed... if they got ppl coming up with new technologies that WORK over in India... it means corpers and domestics need even LESS of us here in the US... obviously us americans didn't come up with it... which means what? That that's another set of IT jobs that leaves the US to go to those guys. (or at least contracts that we could've had) Face it, we're not falling behind but we're not exactly price competitive these days either.
Granted we don't know how well they work and how secure they are... but guess what? If the technology outsourcing thing keeps picking up (not an *if* anymore is it?) we're gonna lose MORE jobs and they'll get more. In the end the corpers'll have to sell to the affluent here and to everyone elsewhere. It will look as if the US economy rocks on paper but it will hit rock bottom for at least 2/3 of us that aren't well to do, prices won't go down either, they'll go down only enough to be affordable if you forgot to pay rent. It won't happen next year all at once, but how many of us will be unlucky enough to be dead of natural causes that soon? In 20 years the slums we saw in all the futuristic society movies may be the slums many of us will call home.
To old timers among you, I ask this... have you made any breakthroughs lately? If not, I doubt tenure will keep you around these days. Unless you're a teacher. Tenure nowadays just means a higher pay job to eliminate and a bigger bonus to get for some CEO somewhere.
I'm not a doomsayer. I'm just a guy realizing that other than in small semi rural expanding areas here in the USA (where ppl can't afford to outsource offshores because no big corps have taken over yet) everyone else is gonna have a hard time finding jobs once they lose them...) Here at least (I live in a little suburban hell in VA) you can at least start a small company and hope to survive against the big guys... but how long will that be before ANOTHER republican president takes over and completely destroys the tatters of our so called "recovering" economy.
[/ANGRY-RANT]
-Khyeron
No you aren't. Myself and DaedalusHKX are both only running windows when other people pay us to (actually daedalus has stopped working for anyone that uses windows (and I only do it when others pay me, otherwise there's just too little incentive to keep up with it other than to know what new security breaches are discovered and which ones (all of them) are still unfixed :)
-Khye
You ever appeal a case? Every word you and others say counts (for example if you plead guilty to any accident you are automatically guaranteed that if you are SUED over anyone else's health bills you will lose. You admitted guilt and did not attempt to clear your name. This (though you may not know it) automatically implies that you also accept any fault or blame and all it brings with it (lawsuits over health bills, property damage, etc, and believe me this is the united states, people sue for being stupid enough to spill fresh coffee on themselves and get 3.4 million... health and property damages can be quite nastier).
If your case is settled you still have to worry, but oddly enough if you are FOUND guilty but fight it, you're guaranteed that most lawsuits can actually be avoided or defeated assuming you provided convincing evidence and the jury was somewhat split.
If you don't believe me spend sometime in court and see how it comes out.
EXAMPLE: "While unintentional, Mr./Ms. (your name here)'s actions did cause damage however. Mr./Ms.(your name) did not intend to harm my client, but you were not prepared to respond to the situation. Therefore you were found not guilty of reckless endangerment, but were shown instead incompetent to operate the [insert piece of equipment or vehicle that caused accident and harm]. This lack of preparation / incompetence of Mr./Ms. (your name here) has rendered my client [insert name] with [insert overstated injuries and inflated health bills].")
Not that every lawyer would go to such an extent but don't be surprised to find someone likely to do something like that just to net some cash.[ahem.. Lowell "the hammer" Stanley] If you don't believe it, get sued sometime and see how fast you'll end up getting indebted to some schmuck if you don't cover your ass with every word you say (hence why paying a lawyer to help you is a smart thing to do when the risk is higher (workplace accidents, etc)). Oh and if you HIRE a lawyer, let them TALK, and carefully craft every scenario with them or at least go over them. Whether you sue or are sued, or served with an arrest warrant.
FINALE: if the original case's jury fails to convict the man or make him pay because they are split down the middle, they can sue him again on the basis that the original court was biased against videogame harm and time invested. OR the criminal justice section of the courts can take him in over the hack itself as a criminal or terrorist act with intent to humiliate and "defame" Mr. Morton or whatever they called the fictional plaintiff.
In a twist of fate the "Getta" company (if you read the articles) can sue the man for downtime and use the original case's findings and conclusion. (security breach, violation of license terms, etc)
-Khye
PS - I've typed TOO damn much and I'm tired... goodbye. Plus I've had enough of courts. Take it easy man... and if you ever get sued or arrested even for a parking ticket, never admit guilt. Go to a lawyer and see how you can get away without being screwed for years to come by saying the wrong thing.
PPS - and for the love of god, dress to impress, don't believe the justice being blind bullshit, judges often decide who's telling the truth or who deserves justice by who "respects" the courtroom more (hence who dresses better and who doesn't step out of line in the argument making). And since its their courtroom and they are justices what they say is final. Don't piss them off and TRY to make them like you since they ultimately decide your fate.
I normally don't respond to trolls, but I'll ask this. Do you know me? Do you understand that the cops nailed me for an accident, and they STATED under oath that I had hit the other guy driving the red car... after fully bullshitting their own case, I revealed to the judge when my turn came to be heard that I had indeed been the OWNER and DRIVER of the red car. The look on the cops face was priceless but his "honor" nailed my ass because I was wearing slacks and a silk shirt due to lack of more corporate style business suits. (I have a contact at the local court house who has informed me that said judge is a complete hard ass and nails anyone not wearing a full business suit with tie, and who doesn't show up with a lawyer).
Oddly enough my father is a local contractor and has won repeated cases in this same judge's courtroom. I pleaded at least as good a case as my father normally does (along with a few other friends I have in the area who also do a massive volume of business). Strange that I would get punished when the other moron peeled out of a hotel parking lot and while an idiotic cop bullshitted his entire presentation, the judge STILL nailed my ass to the wall... so please keep the AC crap to a minimum, you are the "punk ass" here and a pathetic moron to boot.
-Khye
feed a troll today and watch it grow until it pops
Damages were real, but to pass verdict would have been to decide which side is guilty and say so. To say "the damages are real BUT" that 'but' is what invalidated the verdict. Sort of like saying that the "dissenting" opinion was 50%, which pretty much invalidates a majority vote. The article was quite short though and didn't elaborate much in my opinion.
:)
Courts can often throw a case out without deciding in anyone's favor (thus it seems as if one person wins by being acquited, BUT depending on wording, having the case thrown out can be grounds for denying it an appeals hearing.)
On the other side having the case thrown out with teh words "but there was damage done that is real" can be seen not as a verdict but as admitting that IF something comes up later, this can be used as evidence that the court DID see it as damage but refrained from passing a verdict. (i.e. party a is guilty and will pay or party a is not guilty and has not to pay even though).
In my experience if a case is passed on like that it can be because a decisive verdict cannot be reached. I've never seen one go that way, but I'm sure the possibility is there in a very controversial case. (this would probably NOT be it
-Khye
Well I'm neither poor nor rich, but I've been both broke and affluent. In my studies of the past I seem to recall a time (1814?, not sure on date or year actually) when income taxes were established by vote by the poor / stupid majority.
I say stupid because that SAME attitude, "the rich will pay more, the poor will pay less" was prevalent then too.
Well look around. Percentage wise, the poor pay MORE taxes than the rich who found tax shelters and ways to escape (including the ones GW Bush helped them with recently).
The question you have to ask is this. Will the rich NOT find ways to saddle the "poor" and less affluent with their higher prices while they find ways to acquisition items at cheaper prices than the "poor" ?? I bet they will just like they've outsmarted the mob/masses ever since humanity could trade things.
-Khye
As much as I agree with you I must disagree. You forgot how many of the Enronites are still outside of jail. You also forgot how some of our gov't folks are involved in the Enron scandal yet they glossed it over and it was never brought up again. You also probably do not live in a small town where justice is available only to the old and well dressed driving jags or cadillacs. I should know, I was slapped with a ticket and a few other charges in the past, and despite pleading a good case and the cops having a shaky case (couldn't even organize their information) they STILL won. So believe you me, how much you have makes a BIG difference. -K
As I have also been one and I know that it takes a bit to get out of the videogamer or family man mentallity and into the I'm at work, lemme waste time by the office water cooler instead.
Needless to say that either way, employees want to not work and make money, employers want everyone to work without being paid anything. I am 100% a liberal in that I believe whatever works and makes both sides happy (maximize profit, minimize loss for the employer and conversely productivity and morale for employees). If all those things are considered then I give my vote for unconventional methods.
When I coded, I found I did some of my best coding and design work (ahh the college years) in my boxers after a quick shower and a cup of coffee... (generally breakfast occured while my meastly 200 mhz back then performed the compile and build cycle that used to take minutes). I personally hate the office space but while living with parents, getting work done at home is nigh impossible since parents think you're always playing whether you are or not.
I'm single and living alone so for me having a home office is a perfect setup. Though my best work has been written on napkins at the local bookstore's coffee shop (books 'a million).
Laterz,
-Khye
Patent, copyright and trademark holders, that is anyone who normally gets residual income from royalties on IP (intellectual property) should get a bigger cut and should even be able to DICTATE how things are done with their music.
If they indeed do, then why is it that artists speaking up has not put the RIAA on the pleasant side of things, when they instead are becoming greater aggressors against privacy and innovation?
If they wanted to stop piracy there are simpler ways. Lower prices on cds, and fill them with music people WANT to hear. At 10.99 I know most of my friends would buy another copy of Metallica's Black Album as well as most of the Megadeth cds. And that's what they cost back then.
Not to point out one of the great failures of our American society in the past, but lets recall "prohibition" where instead of destroying alcohol consumption in the public... the psychotic right wingers succeeded in making the mafia a nearly unstoppable force while also providing MORE than ample room for crime hubs, distribution centers, and allowing the mafia to become the equivalent of a labor / trade union (speakeasies and bootleggers ring a bell anyone??)
Trying to prohibit something people want, leads to rampant crime rate, jail overpopulation (with nonviolent offenders) while also forcing innovation in criminal procedures. You'd think the fools at the RIAA would've learned their USA history before repeating one of it's greatest mistakes so blatantly.
Khyeron
As a mixed business/comp sci geek, I am contented that innovation has not been slammed in the shitter and flushed down by the exploiters. I have nothing wrong with corporate politics, but in the case of art... and consumer music... regulation is much needed, to prevent such titanic and amoral groups such as the RIAA/MPAA from dicking people and innovators over only for the sake of executive profits. Since obviously the band doesn't get even HALF the money (or even a quarter of it for some bands).
Khyeron