It's happening all through government. Military and GS people flipping over to contractors literally overnight. Same people doing the exact same job. Khaki on Friday, shirt and tie on Monday. Somehow they appear to have waived the conflict of interest clauses in military service that were supposed to keep that from happening.
I don't have that many contacts in the intelligence services but I wouldn't be surprised to find the same trend there. I'm betting a lot of the intelligence contracting were government people one day, private contractors the next.
Either way this is a bad trend. There are some things we want the government to do, even though you can argue it costs more and is less efficient. That's okay. Some services have considerations that need to go beyond the bottom line. Aside from that there appears to be little accountability in contract awards these days and many seem to have political overtones. High level positions going to people whose chief qualification seems to be that they graduated from Oral Roberts University.
If there's an encouraging sign it's that we're...finally...starting to see some outrage from those calling themselves conservatives. Better late than never I guess.
Here's a suggestion: 9-11 could have been prevented with locks on the cockpit door.
In at least one case they threatened to kill one of the flight attendants and the pilots opened the door. A lock wouldn't have cured the "just cooperate" mentality that was so prevalent and probably company policy at the time. 90 people sat in their seats and watched it happen.
9-11 will never happen again because even the sheeple know there's no margin in cooperating with a hijacker. We're spending billions of dollars and inconveniencing millions for a scenario that's never going to happen again. Or at least not for a long time. You can never under-estimate the stupidity of sheep who depend on the government to protect their fat ass.
It's legal here. Just last night there was a local news story about shoddy home construction and the owner was prevented from suing the developer by the very same type of arbitration agreement. In his case the arbitrator sided with the home owner and the builder basically thumbed their nose at the process and the owner was still prevented from suing.
Millions of people are signing those agreements...Best Buy employees have to sign one, or used to. Car dealerships, brokers, businesses of all types. Credit card companies are trying to slide them into agreements...now that's not always successful, depending on how they go about it.
But you better believe they're legal if you're signing one.
Anyone signing up for an Ameritrade account has to sign away their right to sue the company for damages. They're all like that now. So, who cares if customer data slips out? It's not like you can sue them for the actual cost of the loss or credit monitoring.
It's just a big yawner to Ameritrade. You can't do anything and they know it. So they can BS, soft shoe, deny and all you can do is have a passive-aggressive little snit fit.
Microsoft might stop distributing Suse coupons if the GPL version 3 interferes with their agreement or puts Microsoft's patents at risk, ultimately causing Novell's business and operating results to be adversely affected
Wow, what a crying shame that would be. The company that sullied themselves getting in bed with Microsoft being adversely affected. Excuse me while I work up a little tear.
How's that old saying go? Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
This law is obviously intended to take up the slack in our criminal justice system. Ever since violent crime and corporate theft dried up there just aren't enough prisoners to make license plates.
the judges will know what the hell radio is and realize and understand exactly what the RIAA is doing
Right. The radio is like a series of tubes with trucks running through them...not to be confused with that interweb thingy which is in your computer. Music can run through those tubes, too, but it's a different kind of tube with a different type of truck. Not like one is Ford and the other is Chevy kind of different. Really different. So you got your tubes and there's music running through the tubes and now RIAA will give your Congressman a lot of money so they can get paid for the music in the tubes.
Just wanted to clarify that for the judges who may be confused.
I would disagree that the "marginal cost of production of a unit of software is damn near 0," when you take into account the man-hours required to create the software in the first place.
You're partially correct. The cost to develop a piece of software is called the sunk cost. It's a good term, just what it sounds like. You sink money into development and it sinks out of sight. It's gone. The cost to duplicate and distribute the product after that is, essentially, 0.
Not like a car. You have sunk cost in auto design as well, but the bulk of the cost is in the components. Cars have intrinsic value as any chop-shop can demonstrate. Software does not have intrinsic value. It can be duplicated for nothing.
Many economists disagree, but my opinion getting away from an economy based on making things with value and relying on things with no intrinsic value is a really bad idea. An economic Pearl Harbor. Maybe we won't be around long enough for something really bad to happen, but if it ever does it could well be an unimaginable disaster.
You'll change your mind when our fully operational Death Star is orbiting over your crapass country. Lord Cheney will deal with you personally with his Light Shotgun.
It's as if thousands of people cried out all at once...but since they don't speak English we didn't understand a word they said. They're fereners anyway. It's the price of Democracy.
I was at the store this week and there was a huge ass pickup truck, towing a boat with a 4 wheeler in the bed of the pickup. Almost everyone around here drives a pickup or some giant SUV because they "need" a vehicle that big to tow their boat, camper, 4 wheeler, motorcycles or whatever. They'll drive a vehicle that gets 9 miles to a gallon all the time so they can get 5 mpg towing their boat to the lake and burning gas all day water skiing once or twice a month during the summer. It usually will have an American flag or support the troops magnet stuck on it somewhere.
The first thing we have to do is spend time and money educating people. I know that sounds horribly basic, but we want to start highlighting the connection between big vehicles and dependence on foreign oil. We need to do that before we start jacking the cost of owning and driving a gas pig. Then raise that cost in a way independent of gas prices. Because gas will drop and people will start consuming more all over again, just like the 80's. And we need better mass transportation options that don't exist right now.
I live on a farm...okay, a hobby farm...and understand what it is to need a big utility vehicle. I don't have one...yet...but there are really times when I could use one. Not to haul my camper or boat, but to haul fence supplies, gravel, dirt, trees, bags of concrete and...stuff you need out in the country. Moving things, hauling things. What would be perfect for me is if there was some place I could go and rent a pickup truck easily. Not like U-Haul (our only option here) endless paperwork, leave your first born...some place you could swipe a card and drive away. Do your business and take it back, all without reservations, fingerprinting, or a cavity search. ZipTrucks instead of a ZipCar.
Education and options. It's not sexy, it's not fast but it's a start.
What am I supposed to believe: facts, or Slashdot FUD?
Facts? You call what you get from a Microsoft press release facts? And since when is/. in the business of spreading FUD? Who was it threatening to sue Linux users for patent infringement? Sounds like fear mongering to me. Trying to undermine the certainty of Linux IP. Let's see fear, uncertainty...hmmm, looks like it's coming from MSFT!
That must mean the facts are coming from elsewhere...
Isn't it Flickr's site? They can do whatever they want.
You might have a point there. Digg suspended one of my accounts for political speech. It was annoying but it's their site. You can't expect freedom of speech to apply on commercial property, even if that property is in cyberspace. If I don't like Digg's decision, I'm free to go publish it on my own personal site.
But a more optimistic thought is that Microsoft may be afraid to list these supposed violations because it knows the patents can be worked around by the open source community, leaving Microsoft high and dry without any leverage at all.
Then why bluster with the threat? It makes them look like SCO and sound like the Iraqi Information Minister. We've got Super Secret IP! We will drive the Linsux invaders into the sea! There are no Linsux soldiers within 150 miles of Redmond! What kind of drugs is Ballmer on?
Not to mention the scrutiny this case would get by the open source community. Nothing like having an army of volunteers. And you know MSFT actually suing someone would vault them into action.
They trained on SCO, they're ready for the Redmond Death Cage Match.
"We think you might be running software which utilizes our patented technology without a license, but don't worry, we're not going to sue you, so long as you buy this license from us."
You'd think that after the SCO case vague threats lacking in specifics would pretty much a non-starter. Maybe it's the difference between vague threats from tough guys from Seattle in suits and some jerk from Utah in a clown suit.
Leave it to Microsoft to seize on a losing strategy in an attempt to salvage their future. Sounds like Ballmer has been hitting the peyote again. His spirit animal is a monkey.
I had with a friend who is a *very* fundamentalist Christian who believes in the Rapture. A time when all the "good" Christians (opposed to what?) get taken up to heaven for a thousand years. It went something like this:
Him: And then there will be plagues.
Me: What kind of plagues?
Him: The earth will get hot.
Me: Let me get this straight...all you right wing Christians will be gone and the rest of us can live our lives in peace without your religious dogma and misguided legislative agenda and it will be endless summer here? What's the bad part again?
Yes, it's true specific incidents can last seemingly forever on the internet. But when you look at the increase in available data, it's staggering. And that data is spread out around hundreds of servers in different formats. But the more data, the more junk data. Outdated, incorrect entries and, sometimes, forged entries.
I manage a lot of data and have learned over the years how easy it is to pollute that well. Users are ingenious in their ability to get crap information in a system, no matter how tight you think your validation is. And importing data from an outside source...lol...even more of a nightmare. The ability of the internet to store information long term can also be used to hide information by clouding the waters.
So, years ago I started polluting my personal online data well. Instead of one or two profiles, I'd have five or six, all different. Different addresses, phone numbers, cities, states even race and gender. Five turned into ten, turned into 15 or 20 and then I lost count. Started doing the same thing to my online resumes. Cloned the resume under a different name, address and phone number. Created new resumes with the name withheld or changed with many subtle variations, swapped out phone numbers, email addresses. Started masking personal information behind my own LLC. Turned into my own personal Wild Weasel. Which one of the clones is really me? Hard to tell.
Haven't done that to my direct marketing profile and credit report...yet. But the day may come when I want to poison those wells. Don't need instant credit, pay cash for almost everything, including cars. You can play hell with your credit report by getting a camper or a boat and living on one of them for a while. I could park in my nephews back 40 for a couple months. Or live overseas, almost as good. Use PO boxes, change addresses so many times no one can keep up. Have one address for drivers license and vehicle registrations, a different one for online orders, another one for tax purposes. Use the wife's cell phone one week, mine the next. Change phone numbers twice a year. And, ironically, it's computers that give me the ability to keep up with all the different versions of myself.
No matter how good you are at consolidating data, there's always going to be someone like me with the knowledge to crap it up and make you work at manual consolidation. Got a lot of spare time on your hands to figure that out?:)
The harder they try to control viewing habits, the harder people will work to thwart whatever system is put in place.
Sometimes when I'm watching something on TIVO I'll forget I can zip through the commercials. I'm more prone to forget and watch the commercials if there are fewer of them and they're interesting. The really obnoxious ones will spur me to either mute the TV if it's live, FF on TIVO and go to great lengths to find an alternative if some company like Disney tries to make me watch. Not happening.
I love the way advertisers treat viewing like a one-way street. You watch what we give you. Well, screw you, Disney. The local ads are the worst. There are several that get me diving for the mute button. Where if they were more informative and less obnoxious, it might make reaching for the remote more of an effort and I might not bother.
But broadcasters thinking they can squeeze 20 minutes of commercials into 60 minutes of broadcast and advertisers thinking we'll calmly sit through whatever annoying crap they throw up there...yes, I'm looking at you, Oxyclean guy...they can kiss my butt.
'He just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg.
It's easy for your brain to confuse a wounded machine with a wounded animal. Any robot with legs, usually designed by people more familiar with animal locomotion, may by chance mimic some behaviors of a crippled animal. It would be pretty natural for your brain to project feelings of sympathy on a machine, warranted or not. I used to have a coworker who had a hard time watching someone abuse a teddy bear, a shaped fabric shell stuffed with inert material. People humanize their pets all the time.
Personally, I hope we don't lose that misplaced sympathy completely. Robots are different than cars and other complex equipment in that they may some day progress to where they do have some type of electronic intelligence. At some point that machine intelligence may have the ability to grow and incorporate unique experiences. That's where the discussion will get interesting. At what point do machines become unique and independent enough warrant protection? Animals are still considered property under the law, that will likely be true for robots as well. For a long time anyway. The difference being once again that machine intelligence will likely evolve faster than animal intelligence.
And right about then some totally hot blond will want the codes for the defense department main frames and after that we'll be running for our lives on the last Battlestar.
This whole trend of trying to regulate what people do on their on their own time is getting totally out of hand. In business, government and academia. Why would it be so hard just for everyone to accept that some of their employees are going to do embarrassing things and sometimes end up on the internet? Or that they're going to hold political opinions that might not be shared by their employer?
If it were up to me, as long as it's not illegal it shouldn't be grounds for termination. Everyone's all for free speech as long as it doesn't apply to their employees or students. Baloney. Time to grow up and accept that people are allowed to say and do things you might find distasteful, even if you're their employer. Unless it's a threat of violence or libel, free speech should win out over corporate image.
Sarkozy is seen as a divisive figure for his demand that immigrants learn Western values (and the French language).
How do you say 'Thank you, Diebold' in French?
Seriously, though, if I'm going to move to France I'm at least going to try and learn French. And I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that if you want to come and work in America, you might pick up a little English first.
Perhaps making it a demand is what makes it unreasonable? I'm not sure. It doesn't seem like it should be that divisive. To me it would be reasonable to expect that those wishing to immigrate would reflect the values and language of their adopted country.
If I moved to Canada I'd say "a-boot" instead of about. It's just polite.
Slashdot Mirror
It's happening all through government. Military and GS people flipping over to contractors literally overnight. Same people doing the exact same job. Khaki on Friday, shirt and tie on Monday. Somehow they appear to have waived the conflict of interest clauses in military service that were supposed to keep that from happening.
I don't have that many contacts in the intelligence services but I wouldn't be surprised to find the same trend there. I'm betting a lot of the intelligence contracting were government people one day, private contractors the next.
Either way this is a bad trend. There are some things we want the government to do, even though you can argue it costs more and is less efficient. That's okay. Some services have considerations that need to go beyond the bottom line. Aside from that there appears to be little accountability in contract awards these days and many seem to have political overtones. High level positions going to people whose chief qualification seems to be that they graduated from Oral Roberts University.
If there's an encouraging sign it's that we're...finally...starting to see some outrage from those calling themselves conservatives. Better late than never I guess.
Here's a suggestion: 9-11 could have been prevented with locks on the cockpit door.
In at least one case they threatened to kill one of the flight attendants and the pilots opened the door. A lock wouldn't have cured the "just cooperate" mentality that was so prevalent and probably company policy at the time. 90 people sat in their seats and watched it happen.
9-11 will never happen again because even the sheeple know there's no margin in cooperating with a hijacker. We're spending billions of dollars and inconveniencing millions for a scenario that's never going to happen again. Or at least not for a long time. You can never under-estimate the stupidity of sheep who depend on the government to protect their fat ass.
It's legal here. Just last night there was a local news story about shoddy home construction and the owner was prevented from suing the developer by the very same type of arbitration agreement. In his case the arbitrator sided with the home owner and the builder basically thumbed their nose at the process and the owner was still prevented from suing.
Millions of people are signing those agreements...Best Buy employees have to sign one, or used to. Car dealerships, brokers, businesses of all types. Credit card companies are trying to slide them into agreements...now that's not always successful, depending on how they go about it.
But you better believe they're legal if you're signing one.
Anyone signing up for an Ameritrade account has to sign away their right to sue the company for damages. They're all like that now. So, who cares if customer data slips out? It's not like you can sue them for the actual cost of the loss or credit monitoring.
It's just a big yawner to Ameritrade. You can't do anything and they know it. So they can BS, soft shoe, deny and all you can do is have a passive-aggressive little snit fit.
Microsoft might stop distributing Suse coupons if the GPL version 3 interferes with their agreement or puts Microsoft's patents at risk, ultimately causing Novell's business and operating results to be adversely affected
Wow, what a crying shame that would be. The company that sullied themselves getting in bed with Microsoft being adversely affected. Excuse me while I work up a little tear.
How's that old saying go? Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
My dog ate the patent list.
That's actually more believable.
My mother was on a jury who convicted a man of assult. She didn't think he was guilty, but vital CCTV evidence was "lost"
She didn't think he was guilty but convicted him of assault anyway? Nice. Apparently actual proof is optional there too.
This law is obviously intended to take up the slack in our criminal justice system. Ever since violent crime and corporate theft dried up there just aren't enough prisoners to make license plates.
Absolute insanity.
Is Linux's less than impressive market share an indication that the movement is out of touch with the average computer user?
Of course it is. What we're really arguing is whether that's a bad thing. Remember when AOL users all piled on to the internet?
The awards list reminds of a manure spreader: Not much accuracy but lots of coverage.
the judges will know what the hell radio is and realize and understand exactly what the RIAA is doing
Right. The radio is like a series of tubes with trucks running through them...not to be confused with that interweb thingy which is in your computer. Music can run through those tubes, too, but it's a different kind of tube with a different type of truck. Not like one is Ford and the other is Chevy kind of different. Really different. So you got your tubes and there's music running through the tubes and now RIAA will give your Congressman a lot of money so they can get paid for the music in the tubes.
Just wanted to clarify that for the judges who may be confused.
I would disagree that the "marginal cost of production of a unit of software is damn near 0," when you take into account the man-hours required to create the software in the first place.
You're partially correct. The cost to develop a piece of software is called the sunk cost. It's a good term, just what it sounds like. You sink money into development and it sinks out of sight. It's gone. The cost to duplicate and distribute the product after that is, essentially, 0.
Not like a car. You have sunk cost in auto design as well, but the bulk of the cost is in the components. Cars have intrinsic value as any chop-shop can demonstrate. Software does not have intrinsic value. It can be duplicated for nothing.
Many economists disagree, but my opinion getting away from an economy based on making things with value and relying on things with no intrinsic value is a really bad idea. An economic Pearl Harbor. Maybe we won't be around long enough for something really bad to happen, but if it ever does it could well be an unimaginable disaster.
Your laws do not apply outside your borders.
You'll change your mind when our fully operational Death Star is orbiting over your crapass country. Lord Cheney will deal with you personally with his Light Shotgun.
It's as if thousands of people cried out all at once...but since they don't speak English we didn't understand a word they said. They're fereners anyway. It's the price of Democracy.
It's not rocket science.
I was at the store this week and there was a huge ass pickup truck, towing a boat with a 4 wheeler in the bed of the pickup. Almost everyone around here drives a pickup or some giant SUV because they "need" a vehicle that big to tow their boat, camper, 4 wheeler, motorcycles or whatever. They'll drive a vehicle that gets 9 miles to a gallon all the time so they can get 5 mpg towing their boat to the lake and burning gas all day water skiing once or twice a month during the summer. It usually will have an American flag or support the troops magnet stuck on it somewhere.
The first thing we have to do is spend time and money educating people. I know that sounds horribly basic, but we want to start highlighting the connection between big vehicles and dependence on foreign oil. We need to do that before we start jacking the cost of owning and driving a gas pig. Then raise that cost in a way independent of gas prices. Because gas will drop and people will start consuming more all over again, just like the 80's. And we need better mass transportation options that don't exist right now.
I live on a farm...okay, a hobby farm...and understand what it is to need a big utility vehicle. I don't have one...yet...but there are really times when I could use one. Not to haul my camper or boat, but to haul fence supplies, gravel, dirt, trees, bags of concrete and...stuff you need out in the country. Moving things, hauling things. What would be perfect for me is if there was some place I could go and rent a pickup truck easily. Not like U-Haul (our only option here) endless paperwork, leave your first born...some place you could swipe a card and drive away. Do your business and take it back, all without reservations, fingerprinting, or a cavity search. ZipTrucks instead of a ZipCar.
Education and options. It's not sexy, it's not fast but it's a start.
Considering how long it took Microsoft to field Vista there's a good chance we'll all be dead by the time the next OS limps out the door.
What am I supposed to believe: facts, or Slashdot FUD?
Facts? You call what you get from a Microsoft press release facts? And since when is /. in the business of spreading FUD? Who was it threatening to sue Linux users for patent infringement? Sounds like fear mongering to me. Trying to undermine the certainty of Linux IP. Let's see fear, uncertainty...hmmm, looks like it's coming from MSFT!
That must mean the facts are coming from elsewhere...
I'm confused...
We definitely agree on that part.
Isn't it Flickr's site? They can do whatever they want.
You might have a point there. Digg suspended one of my accounts for political speech. It was annoying but it's their site. You can't expect freedom of speech to apply on commercial property, even if that property is in cyberspace. If I don't like Digg's decision, I'm free to go publish it on my own personal site.
But a more optimistic thought is that Microsoft may be afraid to list these supposed violations because it knows the patents can be worked around by the open source community, leaving Microsoft high and dry without any leverage at all.
Then why bluster with the threat? It makes them look like SCO and sound like the Iraqi Information Minister. We've got Super Secret IP! We will drive the Linsux invaders into the sea! There are no Linsux soldiers within 150 miles of Redmond! What kind of drugs is Ballmer on?
Not to mention the scrutiny this case would get by the open source community. Nothing like having an army of volunteers. And you know MSFT actually suing someone would vault them into action.
They trained on SCO, they're ready for the Redmond Death Cage Match.
"We think you might be running software which utilizes our patented technology without a license, but don't worry, we're not going to sue you, so long as you buy this license from us."
You'd think that after the SCO case vague threats lacking in specifics would pretty much a non-starter. Maybe it's the difference between vague threats from tough guys from Seattle in suits and some jerk from Utah in a clown suit.
Leave it to Microsoft to seize on a losing strategy in an attempt to salvage their future. Sounds like Ballmer has been hitting the peyote again. His spirit animal is a monkey.
I had with a friend who is a *very* fundamentalist Christian who believes in the Rapture. A time when all the "good" Christians (opposed to what?) get taken up to heaven for a thousand years. It went something like this:
Him: And then there will be plagues.
Me: What kind of plagues?
Him: The earth will get hot.
Me: Let me get this straight...all you right wing Christians will be gone and the rest of us can live our lives in peace without your religious dogma and misguided legislative agenda and it will be endless summer here? What's the bad part again?
Yes, it's true specific incidents can last seemingly forever on the internet. But when you look at the increase in available data, it's staggering. And that data is spread out around hundreds of servers in different formats. But the more data, the more junk data. Outdated, incorrect entries and, sometimes, forged entries.
I manage a lot of data and have learned over the years how easy it is to pollute that well. Users are ingenious in their ability to get crap information in a system, no matter how tight you think your validation is. And importing data from an outside source...lol...even more of a nightmare. The ability of the internet to store information long term can also be used to hide information by clouding the waters.
So, years ago I started polluting my personal online data well. Instead of one or two profiles, I'd have five or six, all different. Different addresses, phone numbers, cities, states even race and gender. Five turned into ten, turned into 15 or 20 and then I lost count. Started doing the same thing to my online resumes. Cloned the resume under a different name, address and phone number. Created new resumes with the name withheld or changed with many subtle variations, swapped out phone numbers, email addresses. Started masking personal information behind my own LLC. Turned into my own personal Wild Weasel. Which one of the clones is really me? Hard to tell.
Haven't done that to my direct marketing profile and credit report...yet. But the day may come when I want to poison those wells. Don't need instant credit, pay cash for almost everything, including cars. You can play hell with your credit report by getting a camper or a boat and living on one of them for a while. I could park in my nephews back 40 for a couple months. Or live overseas, almost as good. Use PO boxes, change addresses so many times no one can keep up. Have one address for drivers license and vehicle registrations, a different one for online orders, another one for tax purposes. Use the wife's cell phone one week, mine the next. Change phone numbers twice a year. And, ironically, it's computers that give me the ability to keep up with all the different versions of myself.
No matter how good you are at consolidating data, there's always going to be someone like me with the knowledge to crap it up and make you work at manual consolidation. Got a lot of spare time on your hands to figure that out? :)
The harder they try to control viewing habits, the harder people will work to thwart whatever system is put in place.
Sometimes when I'm watching something on TIVO I'll forget I can zip through the commercials. I'm more prone to forget and watch the commercials if there are fewer of them and they're interesting. The really obnoxious ones will spur me to either mute the TV if it's live, FF on TIVO and go to great lengths to find an alternative if some company like Disney tries to make me watch. Not happening.
I love the way advertisers treat viewing like a one-way street. You watch what we give you. Well, screw you, Disney. The local ads are the worst. There are several that get me diving for the mute button. Where if they were more informative and less obnoxious, it might make reaching for the remote more of an effort and I might not bother.
But broadcasters thinking they can squeeze 20 minutes of commercials into 60 minutes of broadcast and advertisers thinking we'll calmly sit through whatever annoying crap they throw up there...yes, I'm looking at you, Oxyclean guy...they can kiss my butt.
'He just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg.
It's easy for your brain to confuse a wounded machine with a wounded animal. Any robot with legs, usually designed by people more familiar with animal locomotion, may by chance mimic some behaviors of a crippled animal. It would be pretty natural for your brain to project feelings of sympathy on a machine, warranted or not. I used to have a coworker who had a hard time watching someone abuse a teddy bear, a shaped fabric shell stuffed with inert material. People humanize their pets all the time.
Personally, I hope we don't lose that misplaced sympathy completely. Robots are different than cars and other complex equipment in that they may some day progress to where they do have some type of electronic intelligence. At some point that machine intelligence may have the ability to grow and incorporate unique experiences. That's where the discussion will get interesting. At what point do machines become unique and independent enough warrant protection? Animals are still considered property under the law, that will likely be true for robots as well. For a long time anyway. The difference being once again that machine intelligence will likely evolve faster than animal intelligence.
And right about then some totally hot blond will want the codes for the defense department main frames and after that we'll be running for our lives on the last Battlestar.
This whole trend of trying to regulate what people do on their on their own time is getting totally out of hand. In business, government and academia. Why would it be so hard just for everyone to accept that some of their employees are going to do embarrassing things and sometimes end up on the internet? Or that they're going to hold political opinions that might not be shared by their employer?
If it were up to me, as long as it's not illegal it shouldn't be grounds for termination. Everyone's all for free speech as long as it doesn't apply to their employees or students. Baloney. Time to grow up and accept that people are allowed to say and do things you might find distasteful, even if you're their employer. Unless it's a threat of violence or libel, free speech should win out over corporate image.
Sarkozy is seen as a divisive figure for his demand that immigrants learn Western values (and the French language).
How do you say 'Thank you, Diebold' in French?
Seriously, though, if I'm going to move to France I'm at least going to try and learn French. And I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that if you want to come and work in America, you might pick up a little English first.
Perhaps making it a demand is what makes it unreasonable? I'm not sure. It doesn't seem like it should be that divisive. To me it would be reasonable to expect that those wishing to immigrate would reflect the values and language of their adopted country.
If I moved to Canada I'd say "a-boot" instead of about. It's just polite.