but one could reasonably suspect that these are now potentially embarrising statements about how Saddam was the real brainchild behind 9/11, since that was the prime argument to convince Americans to go to war
No one could reasonably assume that, as it was never said. The main reason said for going to war with Iraq was WMDs (of course, that is a bit embarrasing now, but that isn't the subject of your comment). However, the claim was never made by anyone in high-position that Saddam was definatly the brainchild behind 9/11. It was always said that OBL was the brainchild behind 9/11.
Bin Laden's dislike of Saddam is well known (just read the 2000 book "Osama bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America"). There was some early speculation about Saddam and OBL working together (there is evidence of a meeting between low-level people, but I doubt that OBL and Saddam were personally involved).
Again: the main (inaccurate) reason for going to war was WMD, not Saddam's involvement in 9/11.
You know, people that dislike anything from the GWB administration "just because" are giving a bad name to people who truely have problems with certain policies and actions of the administration. It is just like the people that hated everything Clinton did "just because." Both of those Presidents have done some incredibly good, and pretty bad, things.
Definitely! It's not bad enough that doing outsourcing overseas is more complicated and, from what I've seen, more expensive in the long run. Now you have other considerations.
I've dealt with a lot of out-sourcing, and I can tell you it's not as black-or-white as anyone would like.
If I get an employee people in the US at $50/hour, and I can get people in India for $35/hour, the US people are probably, in fact, cheaper. (for many more reasons than I care to list, but including timezones, travel, communication, "off-the-block" skills, etc). However, if it is $150/hour compared to $35/hour, then India is cheaper (as long as I can find suitable people).
Risk has a cost (just ask an actuary). In my mind, this article just makes me add some money into the rates to pay for this risk. This payment could even be actual money if I take out liabiliy insurance to cover this specific risk.
While this is off-topic, if anyone is curious, for my calculations, I assume 2 off-shore people to replace every on-site person. So far, looking at my history on project deliveries, that simple number has been amazingly accurate for LOE purposes. I also tack on a $15/hour for my staff's "pain-and-suffering" with outsourcing arrangements (and, yes, there is pain-and-suffering). That means that if they charge me $35/hour for a person in India, and I get a "domestic-located" person for $85/hour, then the cost is the same and I go with the US. Over $85/hour, cheaper in India. (all of this, assumes economies of scale. Unless I am considering 20 or more people, then I don't even consider off-shore arrangements as they are more trouble than the delivery from a small team is worth).
Hey, I know people don't like to be reduced to simple cost/resource, but that is the math that many, many people in IT use.
The only people liable are the copyright infringers and this is always defined by access to the original work in question.
This is true in the traditional sense, but doesn't this change with Open Source? Let's say that I am the ACME Corporation, and one of my programmers does some work on the Linux kernel as part of his employement with my company?
Or, to use your Puff Daddy example, let's say that I copied that CD to my PC, changed it, and redistributed. Obviously, Puff Daddy has a claim against me. Will I also now be open to lawsuit from the person that owned the copyright Puff Daddy infringed, since I now took a semi-active part in that infringement (or at least re-infringed)?
I do not know that this situation has ever been tested in court, but it seems to me that the nature of Open Source (I am free examine and modify the source, unlike with a M$ product, for instance) might convey more responsibility in my direction. Anyone know?
More likely you are just a wannabe slashtroll hiding in Mom's basement.
And my policy of never, ever, reading or responding to AC's is again vindicated. On/., nearly every troll is an AC, where people who claim their posts at least don't do this nonsense usually.
(Ok, I admit I read the original post here after noticing the rapid comments. Good for a laugh. What a absolute, knuckle-dragging moron. Kernel programming in VB? It runs in ring-0 without its DLLs how, exactly? Linux is "shareware"? No SMP (my SMP Linux machine is suprised to hear that one)? )
Remember, don't feed the trolls! (or read AC posts!)
In an economic system it is much easier to "rebel": some competitor will come along that will not employ "trusted computing", perhaps a company like Apple or a flavor of Linux will force their inferior competitor (perhaps Microsoft) out of the market.
EVERYONE participates in the economy. Consumers, producers, observers. Everyone.
I say this to make a point: trusted computings new attention is the result of free market economics, not something against the grain. In this case, the need in the economy was born (at least in the case of RIAA/MPAA) on wide-spread copyright infringement. Some companies (MS, for instance) show up to fill that need.
Now, once that need is filled, and DRM really works, another economic segment pops up: people that don't want to pay for licenses, but also want to have access to those licenses that require payment (in simplier terms, people that want commerical music for free). So, up pops people (Kazaa, Linux perhaps) to fill that need.
And so on, and so forth.
Government regulation is an external influence in the system. Laws giving more teeth to DRM (like DCMA) nudge around the fundamental economics. In this case, it may make the potential "I won't pay" consumer base smaller, because some people obey laws, others don't. A good example of this is speed limits or prohibitions against kicking the crap out of someone that really deserves it: it stops most of us, but some just don't care.
I don't think this arms race between producers that illegal copyers is avoidable, because both groups will always exist. Caught in the middle is the legitamite customer (people that buy their commerical music). The producers want to show no mercy to the infringers, while, ideally, not affecting the actual customers in the least little bit. To me, thats the problem with all current DRM thinking: it will affect the legal customer, as well as the group they are targeting.
That is, by the way, unlike the speed limit. Non-speeders are completly unaffected by speed-limit enforcement. How can the non-copyright-infringer be unaffected by effective copyright-enforcement attempts?
Read more about how your "elected" officials are profiting from the "war" on Iraq.
I'm not sure why you chose to use quotation marks around the words elected and war. The officials were indeed elected, whether or not you believe the election process was proper or fair (or even legal). War was indeed waged on Iraq, even though there was not a proper Declaration of War by Congress.
1. Where is Osama bin Laden?
In Northeastern Afganistan or Northwestern Pakistan (most likely) according to the most recent public intelligence.
2. Where is Saddam Hussein?
Somewhere in Iraq, most likely in the suburbs of Baghdad. It is also possible he is being hidden in Tikrit. Less likely, although still possible, is that he is being sheltered in another country, possibly Syria.
3. Where is President-Vice Cheney?
I assume you are referring to Vice President Cheney. He is in Washington, D.C., usually on the VP's compound (the same compound that houses the DMA). I understand also that he has a daily briefing with the President. Unlike bin Laden and Husien, Cheney's location is fairly easy to know.
I'm not entirely sure the purpose of the questions. If you are trying to prove how hard it is to find a single human being, you are right. How long did Rudolf hide in North Carolina (through multiple US Presidents)? N. Carolina is considerably smaller than the search area for the first two individual's you mentioned.
So, as you allude to, finding a single human is, always has been, and may always be, hard. Bringing down an entire government is actually much easier (as we have demonstrated) than finding a single human, especially if rich and somewhat powerful. It's that part I find most amusing. The big is easy, the small is hard.
I guess the legal question is, does that make the participant a spy, or an enemy combatant?
Neither one. There is nothing inherently illegal/immoral from citizens monitoring their own government. Since the network is public, there is a national security concern if classified information is placed on the network (an example would be access codes to military facilities... obviously there is a national security interest in keeping those secret).
As long as the information posted is of a non-classified nature, then I would say it is almost a duty of the citizenry to understand whats its government - that it elects and supports through taxes - is doing.
On the subject of classified information, there is a side-topic I find interesting. I believe that most classified things are classified for a good reason. However, I think that some things are classified because they are embarassing to some official or organization. I think there should be substantail pentalties for classifying things secret that should not be, just as there are penalties for disclosing classified information.
Re:Keep putting it off. Please !
on
Longhorn in 2006
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· Score: 5, Interesting
DRM restrictions on what I can co with my own content on my own machine
Actually, I think the opposite is the problem. It seems that DRM restrictions are aimed at protecting other people's content, while so far MS has done a poor job of protecting my content.
I stuff that I create (documents, code, music, whatever) is very open to theft on my Windows machine due to MS's poor security. Yet, they are spending tons on DRM for other people's content.
Since their main customer is the mass-market, why don't they spend more time protecting the mass market and less protecting the professional artists with DRM? There are more of us than them.
(BTW, before you get the wrong idea, I am a supporter of IP and its protection, however, I am an even bigger supporter of the monopoly supplier's responsibility to its customers. If they were not a monopoly I, frankly, would not care, and would let the market decide. Them being a court-verified monopoly places certain resonsibilities on them)
And there is some doubt that they are even infringing copyright
Actually there is no doubt about this. The courts already ruled back in the Napster days that P2P sharing is not "fair use" and is indeed infringement.
Whether or not they are criminals (versus civil infringers) depends on their amount of file sharing. There has been a law on the books since 1909 that defines "criminal copyright infringement" and sets certain high-water marks that determines what constitutes criminal behaviour vs. simple infringement (I believe it is a least 10 instances with a total retail value of over of $2500 for all instances within a 180 day peroid. Your "instances" would include, I believe, both downloading from and allowing others to download from you).
I'm not sure if this is a troll or not, but Linux is indeed UNIX-based. It is "inspired by" UNIX (as opposed to having code in common).
Linux uses all of the old UNIX concepts of fork(), inodes, etc. For non-UNIX inspired systems, see OS/400, VMS, etc. These do not have UNIX primatives.
As a Linux user, I am proud that Linux is a UNIX derived (at least in spirit) system. It has a base of history, knowledge and experience from which to build. Would starting purely from scratch be better? I hardly think so.
I learned UNIX programming on SunOS. My SunOS knowledge works just fine on Linux (although not on OS/400 and hardly on Windows... unless you count what little POSIX compliance they barely put in).
This is a response the community can be proud of. The claim that the IP in Linux was pure as the driven snow didn't pass the smell test (just because of the size of the contributing community).
However, that the code was already widely available (whether or not officially in the public domain) seems perfectly plausible. This the SGI refrain became the "official" line, instead of just refusing to even cosider SCO's claim, I think this whole thing would die a quick death.
Its easy in the court of public opinion to win against a group who seems beligerent. However, a large, grass-roots movement that made an honest mistake wins in public opinion every time.
you think that 4 billion a week was going to come from the tooth fairy ? haliburton needs the cash yo
welcome to your national debt, enjoy your 25 years of paying it back, iam sure you childrens chlidren will enjoy paying it too
The Sales Tax would not go to the federal budget, and so would not help the federal defict. Haliburton is paid by the federal government, no the state governments. Internet sales tax will do 0 to pay for the defict or rebuilding Iraq. These are (mostly) unrelated issues (they only relate in lowering the amount of money the states go begging the federal government for... which is good, let the states take care of themselves).
This will wreck havoc on all of that though, take away the main advantage of online sellers...
But wouldn't that make things a little more fare? Why should we designate one group to be taxed, and another not? Even the Internet deals in physical things (warehouses, items, shipments, servers, etc), so I don't think the jurisdiction argument holds. After all, what is different from the Internet than mail-order in that regard?
I will miss avoiding taxes by buying online, but, at the end of the day, it was unfair to tax only bricks-and-mortar companies. One could even say it was a subsidy to get the eCommerence industry going. If that is true, its perfectly proper in my opinion. But now that the industry is going, its time to stop the subsidy.
I am in a position of managing development and procuring
hardware and software. I have used Open-Source Software (OSS)
instead of Commericial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) applications
recently; I have moved some of my development overseas to
India recently.
In hindsight, what I notice, is that I did both for the
same reasons. While the COTS applications have lots of
advantages (support, professional services, a vendor to yell
at), OSS' price was right, and it was good enough. There are a
lot of problems with off-shore development (time, politics,
control), but, its good-enough, and the price is right.
I know of COTS software companies whose chief competitors
are OSS solutions. As a customer, I have picked OSS over COTS.
The companies have had layoffs. Imagine if lots of people
decided to work on auto assembly lines in the spare time; what
would that do to the gainful employment for auto workers?
I'm not advocating anything, I just think that it is
important to remember that jobs are lost due to OSS as well as
foreign outsourcing. On/., we focus on losses due to outsourcing, but ignore the OSS losses (because this community, including me, tends to be pro-OSS and anti-offshore). In some cases, those losses are the same, when
OSS work is done in foreign countries. If you want to be
protectionist by making it harder to off-shore work, shouldn't
you also be trying to limit OSS?
On the other side, if you want openness, shouldn't we have
openness in labor markets as well as software?
I'm a professional consultant, so I pay for services to help find me work. (actually, this is a bit past-tense now, as I have work, but I would pay in the future).
I favor an outcome-oriented approach, personally.
I understand your position. However, I am comfortable with paying for time. My current clients pays for my time, not my results. Now, if I don't produce results for the time they've paid me for, they stop paying. Nothing stops me, I guess, from failure to complete assignments in attempt to get my contract extended, but that is not a long-term successful approach.
You should definatly check the agent's referenes before paying them anything. You are basically hiring them as your part-time contracted employee, so do the same things as you would if you were hiring any other employee.
Yes, I am taking some risk in paying for time without guaranteed results. However, I am asking him to find a client to take a risk in paying for my time, without guaranteeing results.
This is a pretty standard model in the consulting/contracting industry. You are asking for more of a "fixed-price" system, or pay for results. I am sure that exists, and maybe it works. I personally have no experience with that model, so maybe someone who does could comment?
If you want the recruiter on your side, find a pay service. Its just like actors using an agent. I deal with someone who is very good to me; I pay him for services, contacts, etc (fee-based).
As for recruiters who try to help you out for free, don't forget, you get what you pay for.
Now the loop is being closed with black box voting, which is impossible to audit
Is that good? No, this is not a troll. I always thought that higher turnout is, by nature, good. But after reading it, I got to thinking...
People at the bottom turn out much better than people at the top. Thats because if you are at the bottom you want to fight, but, if you are already a winner, you get lazy. That seems to me to keep improving the situation of those at the bottom (in theory, anyway).
Now, lets say that we get 100% turnout. Right now one party loves taking pop-shots at the "top 5%." That top 5% rarely votes. These elections are decided by such close margins, that if those 5% started turning out, "tax the rich" would quit being a cool thing to say. That would destroy a cheif strategy of one of our major parties.
Maybe in the end it would be good, but I would be scared of the immediate disruptions of turning out the comfortable-majority in much higher numbers.
(eek, I never new I felt this way. Does this make sense to anyone else or was I too heavy on the crack-pipe this morning?)
Malaysia uses a pure democracy form of government. A friend of mine from there, who is ethnic Chinese, tells me that open-discrimination is perfectly legal by the majority Malay against the minority Chinese. (there is even something about the minority subsidizing housing for the majority, even though the majority is financially better off)
The PM of Malaysia is quoted as saying the duty of the democracy is to better the majority. Strictly speaking, that is true in that form of government.
That is why I support the Republic form is government. Republic is representative rule, not majority rule. Each stakeholder in the US system should be represented. Arguments about the rights of any minority make sense only in a Republic. In a democracy, who cares about minorities? We all vote in self-interest, and majority rules.
To repeat an oft repeated quote, Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
There are few if any local independent news papers because they have all been crushed by big coroprate owned national broadcasters...
How, exactly, were they crushed? If their readers left their paper to read one of the "big corporated owned..." outlets, then they could not secure advertisers, then how is it the fault of those big corporate interests? If the public really wanted those independent papers, they would support them. Its called free-market at work (or, democracy expressed through the market).
BTW, in my town, there is a small independant newspaper, to which I subscribe, as do many people. I like it, I support it.
The same people have made sure that individuals have a hard time publishing on the internet
There are plenty of free web-hosting places. I have published plenty on the Internet. Hell, in a way, I'm publishing on the Internet right now (with my/. comment). There is no outlet similiar on the TV or Radio where other listeners can easily see my comments. Internet is much superior that way.
so everyone has to go through providers or portals where they can be shut down.
I don't access/. through a portal. People that value free information search the internet, follow links, etc. People that don't stick to portals. Again, free market in action. Its the purest form of direct democracy.
Now the loop is being closed with black box voting, which is impossible to audit
One of the key requirements of electronic voting is ability to audit. The book Applied Cryptography has a good chapter on that. You may check that out for some interesting thoughts on "good" electronic voting.
The political system itself is more democratic than that of the US
I would expect that, as America's form of government is not Democracy; it is actually Constitutional Republic. It is akin to Representative Democracy, but definatly not a "pure" or "direct" democracy. The republic form of government is good for the US because we have so many ethic, racial, religious, etc, groups, and they should all be represented. To understand the difference, I once heard democracy called "3 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner."
really smart people with a lot of forethought (they can be forgiven for the Second Amendment).
Whether or not the second amendment is appropriate in today's world, it was not put in for lack of forthought. If you read the writings of the founding fathers, you will learn that one of their paramount fears would be that the government would be more powerful than the people.
In the founding fathers belief, if a government became corrupt, it was the duty of the people to rise up and overthrow it. That principle was one of the justifications for the Declaration of Independance. How could the people change out the government if the government was allowed to have more weapons than the people? Remember, in their day, they owned weapons, including cannons, just as powerful as the government's and it was perfectly legal to do so.
Did they invision the kind of weaponry today? I don't know, but the priciple of always having the people as powerful as the government has some merrit. Would Tienemen (sp) Square Massacre have happened if the Chinese people had the same weapons the government did?
I government should live with a healthy fear of its populace. That keeps it honest.
Slashdot Mirror
No one could reasonably assume that, as it was never said. The main reason said for going to war with Iraq was WMDs (of course, that is a bit embarrasing now, but that isn't the subject of your comment). However, the claim was never made by anyone in high-position that Saddam was definatly the brainchild behind 9/11. It was always said that OBL was the brainchild behind 9/11.
Bin Laden's dislike of Saddam is well known (just read the 2000 book "Osama bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America"). There was some early speculation about Saddam and OBL working together (there is evidence of a meeting between low-level people, but I doubt that OBL and Saddam were personally involved).
Again: the main (inaccurate) reason for going to war was WMD, not Saddam's involvement in 9/11.
You know, people that dislike anything from the GWB administration "just because" are giving a bad name to people who truely have problems with certain policies and actions of the administration. It is just like the people that hated everything Clinton did "just because." Both of those Presidents have done some incredibly good, and pretty bad, things.
I've dealt with a lot of out-sourcing, and I can tell you it's not as black-or-white as anyone would like.
If I get an employee people in the US at $50/hour, and I can get people in India for $35/hour, the US people are probably, in fact, cheaper. (for many more reasons than I care to list, but including timezones, travel, communication, "off-the-block" skills, etc). However, if it is $150/hour compared to $35/hour, then India is cheaper (as long as I can find suitable people).
Risk has a cost (just ask an actuary). In my mind, this article just makes me add some money into the rates to pay for this risk. This payment could even be actual money if I take out liabiliy insurance to cover this specific risk.
While this is off-topic, if anyone is curious, for my calculations, I assume 2 off-shore people to replace every on-site person. So far, looking at my history on project deliveries, that simple number has been amazingly accurate for LOE purposes. I also tack on a $15/hour for my staff's "pain-and-suffering" with outsourcing arrangements (and, yes, there is pain-and-suffering). That means that if they charge me $35/hour for a person in India, and I get a "domestic-located" person for $85/hour, then the cost is the same and I go with the US. Over $85/hour, cheaper in India. (all of this, assumes economies of scale. Unless I am considering 20 or more people, then I don't even consider off-shore arrangements as they are more trouble than the delivery from a small team is worth).
Hey, I know people don't like to be reduced to simple cost/resource, but that is the math that many, many people in IT use.
This is true in the traditional sense, but doesn't this change with Open Source? Let's say that I am the ACME Corporation, and one of my programmers does some work on the Linux kernel as part of his employement with my company?
Or, to use your Puff Daddy example, let's say that I copied that CD to my PC, changed it, and redistributed. Obviously, Puff Daddy has a claim against me. Will I also now be open to lawsuit from the person that owned the copyright Puff Daddy infringed, since I now took a semi-active part in that infringement (or at least re-infringed)?
I do not know that this situation has ever been tested in court, but it seems to me that the nature of Open Source (I am free examine and modify the source, unlike with a M$ product, for instance) might convey more responsibility in my direction. Anyone know?
And my policy of never, ever, reading or responding to AC's is again vindicated. On /., nearly every troll is an AC, where people who claim their posts at least don't do this nonsense usually.
(Ok, I admit I read the original post here after noticing the rapid comments. Good for a laugh. What a absolute, knuckle-dragging moron. Kernel programming in VB? It runs in ring-0 without its DLLs how, exactly? Linux is "shareware"? No SMP (my SMP Linux machine is suprised to hear that one)? )
Remember, don't feed the trolls! (or read AC posts!)
EVERYONE participates in the economy. Consumers, producers, observers. Everyone.
I say this to make a point: trusted computings new attention is the result of free market economics, not something against the grain. In this case, the need in the economy was born (at least in the case of RIAA/MPAA) on wide-spread copyright infringement. Some companies (MS, for instance) show up to fill that need.
Now, once that need is filled, and DRM really works, another economic segment pops up: people that don't want to pay for licenses, but also want to have access to those licenses that require payment (in simplier terms, people that want commerical music for free). So, up pops people (Kazaa, Linux perhaps) to fill that need.
And so on, and so forth.
Government regulation is an external influence in the system. Laws giving more teeth to DRM (like DCMA) nudge around the fundamental economics. In this case, it may make the potential "I won't pay" consumer base smaller, because some people obey laws, others don't. A good example of this is speed limits or prohibitions against kicking the crap out of someone that really deserves it: it stops most of us, but some just don't care.
I don't think this arms race between producers that illegal copyers is avoidable, because both groups will always exist. Caught in the middle is the legitamite customer (people that buy their commerical music). The producers want to show no mercy to the infringers, while, ideally, not affecting the actual customers in the least little bit. To me, thats the problem with all current DRM thinking: it will affect the legal customer, as well as the group they are targeting.
That is, by the way, unlike the speed limit. Non-speeders are completly unaffected by speed-limit enforcement. How can the non-copyright-infringer be unaffected by effective copyright-enforcement attempts?
I'm not sure why you chose to use quotation marks around the words elected and war. The officials were indeed elected, whether or not you believe the election process was proper or fair (or even legal). War was indeed waged on Iraq, even though there was not a proper Declaration of War by Congress.
1. Where is Osama bin Laden?
In Northeastern Afganistan or Northwestern Pakistan (most likely) according to the most recent public intelligence.
2. Where is Saddam Hussein?
Somewhere in Iraq, most likely in the suburbs of Baghdad. It is also possible he is being hidden in Tikrit. Less likely, although still possible, is that he is being sheltered in another country, possibly Syria.
3. Where is President-Vice Cheney?
I assume you are referring to Vice President Cheney. He is in Washington, D.C., usually on the VP's compound (the same compound that houses the DMA). I understand also that he has a daily briefing with the President. Unlike bin Laden and Husien, Cheney's location is fairly easy to know.
I'm not entirely sure the purpose of the questions. If you are trying to prove how hard it is to find a single human being, you are right. How long did Rudolf hide in North Carolina (through multiple US Presidents)? N. Carolina is considerably smaller than the search area for the first two individual's you mentioned.
So, as you allude to, finding a single human is, always has been, and may always be, hard. Bringing down an entire government is actually much easier (as we have demonstrated) than finding a single human, especially if rich and somewhat powerful. It's that part I find most amusing. The big is easy, the small is hard.
Neither one. There is nothing inherently illegal/immoral from citizens monitoring their own government. Since the network is public, there is a national security concern if classified information is placed on the network (an example would be access codes to military facilities... obviously there is a national security interest in keeping those secret).
As long as the information posted is of a non-classified nature, then I would say it is almost a duty of the citizenry to understand whats its government - that it elects and supports through taxes - is doing.
On the subject of classified information, there is a side-topic I find interesting. I believe that most classified things are classified for a good reason. However, I think that some things are classified because they are embarassing to some official or organization. I think there should be substantail pentalties for classifying things secret that should not be, just as there are penalties for disclosing classified information.
Actually, I think the opposite is the problem. It seems that DRM restrictions are aimed at protecting other people's content, while so far MS has done a poor job of protecting my content.
I stuff that I create (documents, code, music, whatever) is very open to theft on my Windows machine due to MS's poor security. Yet, they are spending tons on DRM for other people's content.
Since their main customer is the mass-market, why don't they spend more time protecting the mass market and less protecting the professional artists with DRM? There are more of us than them.
(BTW, before you get the wrong idea, I am a supporter of IP and its protection, however, I am an even bigger supporter of the monopoly supplier's responsibility to its customers. If they were not a monopoly I, frankly, would not care, and would let the market decide. Them being a court-verified monopoly places certain resonsibilities on them)
Actually there is no doubt about this. The courts already ruled back in the Napster days that P2P sharing is not "fair use" and is indeed infringement.
Whether or not they are criminals (versus civil infringers) depends on their amount of file sharing. There has been a law on the books since 1909 that defines "criminal copyright infringement" and sets certain high-water marks that determines what constitutes criminal behaviour vs. simple infringement (I believe it is a least 10 instances with a total retail value of over of $2500 for all instances within a 180 day peroid. Your "instances" would include, I believe, both downloading from and allowing others to download from you).
I'm not sure if this is a troll or not, but Linux is indeed UNIX-based. It is "inspired by" UNIX (as opposed to having code in common).
Linux uses all of the old UNIX concepts of fork(), inodes, etc. For non-UNIX inspired systems, see OS/400, VMS, etc. These do not have UNIX primatives.
As a Linux user, I am proud that Linux is a UNIX derived (at least in spirit) system. It has a base of history, knowledge and experience from which to build. Would starting purely from scratch be better? I hardly think so.
I learned UNIX programming on SunOS. My SunOS knowledge works just fine on Linux (although not on OS/400 and hardly on Windows... unless you count what little POSIX compliance they barely put in).
Long live UNIX/Linux!
I think the difference was he wanted to remain employed, and they didn't agree...
Oh dear, if ranting makes a point void, the /. community is voiding an awful lot of points :)
However, that the code was already widely available (whether or not officially in the public domain) seems perfectly plausible. This the SGI refrain became the "official" line, instead of just refusing to even cosider SCO's claim, I think this whole thing would die a quick death.
Its easy in the court of public opinion to win against a group who seems beligerent. However, a large, grass-roots movement that made an honest mistake wins in public opinion every time.
welcome to your national debt, enjoy your 25 years of paying it back, iam sure you childrens chlidren will enjoy paying it too
The Sales Tax would not go to the federal budget, and so would not help the federal defict. Haliburton is paid by the federal government, no the state governments. Internet sales tax will do 0 to pay for the defict or rebuilding Iraq. These are (mostly) unrelated issues (they only relate in lowering the amount of money the states go begging the federal government for... which is good, let the states take care of themselves).
But wouldn't that make things a little more fare? Why should we designate one group to be taxed, and another not? Even the Internet deals in physical things (warehouses, items, shipments, servers, etc), so I don't think the jurisdiction argument holds. After all, what is different from the Internet than mail-order in that regard?
I will miss avoiding taxes by buying online, but, at the end of the day, it was unfair to tax only bricks-and-mortar companies. One could even say it was a subsidy to get the eCommerence industry going. If that is true, its perfectly proper in my opinion. But now that the industry is going, its time to stop the subsidy.
I am in a position of managing development and procuring hardware and software. I have used Open-Source Software (OSS) instead of Commericial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) applications recently; I have moved some of my development overseas to India recently.
In hindsight, what I notice, is that I did both for the same reasons. While the COTS applications have lots of advantages (support, professional services, a vendor to yell at), OSS' price was right, and it was good enough. There are a lot of problems with off-shore development (time, politics, control), but, its good-enough, and the price is right.
I know of COTS software companies whose chief competitors are OSS solutions. As a customer, I have picked OSS over COTS. The companies have had layoffs. Imagine if lots of people decided to work on auto assembly lines in the spare time; what would that do to the gainful employment for auto workers?
I'm not advocating anything, I just think that it is important to remember that jobs are lost due to OSS as well as foreign outsourcing. On /., we focus on losses due to outsourcing, but ignore the OSS losses (because this community, including me, tends to be pro-OSS and anti-offshore). In some cases, those losses are the same, when
OSS work is done in foreign countries. If you want to be
protectionist by making it harder to off-shore work, shouldn't
you also be trying to limit OSS?
On the other side, if you want openness, shouldn't we have openness in labor markets as well as software?
Just food for thought...
A firm like McKinsey-Scott is a fee-based employement helper. Check the career section of Wall Street Journal. Also check www.executiveopenings.com.
I'm a professional consultant, so I pay for services to help find me work. (actually, this is a bit past-tense now, as I have work, but I would pay in the future).
I favor an outcome-oriented approach, personally.
I understand your position. However, I am comfortable with paying for time. My current clients pays for my time, not my results. Now, if I don't produce results for the time they've paid me for, they stop paying. Nothing stops me, I guess, from failure to complete assignments in attempt to get my contract extended, but that is not a long-term successful approach.
You should definatly check the agent's referenes before paying them anything. You are basically hiring them as your part-time contracted employee, so do the same things as you would if you were hiring any other employee.
Yes, I am taking some risk in paying for time without guaranteed results. However, I am asking him to find a client to take a risk in paying for my time, without guaranteeing results.
This is a pretty standard model in the consulting/contracting industry. You are asking for more of a "fixed-price" system, or pay for results. I am sure that exists, and maybe it works. I personally have no experience with that model, so maybe someone who does could comment?
As for recruiters who try to help you out for free, don't forget, you get what you pay for.
Oops, the quote above should have been "... would increase voter turnout...". Copy/paste error.
Is that good? No, this is not a troll. I always thought that higher turnout is, by nature, good. But after reading it, I got to thinking...
People at the bottom turn out much better than people at the top. Thats because if you are at the bottom you want to fight, but, if you are already a winner, you get lazy. That seems to me to keep improving the situation of those at the bottom (in theory, anyway).
Now, lets say that we get 100% turnout. Right now one party loves taking pop-shots at the "top 5%." That top 5% rarely votes. These elections are decided by such close margins, that if those 5% started turning out, "tax the rich" would quit being a cool thing to say. That would destroy a cheif strategy of one of our major parties.
Maybe in the end it would be good, but I would be scared of the immediate disruptions of turning out the comfortable-majority in much higher numbers.
(eek, I never new I felt this way. Does this make sense to anyone else or was I too heavy on the crack-pipe this morning?)
The PM of Malaysia is quoted as saying the duty of the democracy is to better the majority. Strictly speaking, that is true in that form of government.
That is why I support the Republic form is government. Republic is representative rule, not majority rule. Each stakeholder in the US system should be represented. Arguments about the rights of any minority make sense only in a Republic. In a democracy, who cares about minorities? We all vote in self-interest, and majority rules.
To repeat an oft repeated quote, Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
How, exactly, were they crushed? If their readers left their paper to read one of the "big corporated owned..." outlets, then they could not secure advertisers, then how is it the fault of those big corporate interests? If the public really wanted those independent papers, they would support them. Its called free-market at work (or, democracy expressed through the market).
BTW, in my town, there is a small independant newspaper, to which I subscribe, as do many people. I like it, I support it.
The same people have made sure that individuals have a hard time publishing on the internet
There are plenty of free web-hosting places. I have published plenty on the Internet. Hell, in a way, I'm publishing on the Internet right now (with my /. comment). There is no outlet similiar on the TV or Radio where other listeners can easily see my comments. Internet is much superior that way.
so everyone has to go through providers or portals where they can be shut down.
I don't access /. through a portal. People that value free information search the internet, follow links, etc. People that don't stick to portals. Again, free market in action. Its the purest form of direct democracy.
Now the loop is being closed with black box voting, which is impossible to audit
One of the key requirements of electronic voting is ability to audit. The book Applied Cryptography has a good chapter on that. You may check that out for some interesting thoughts on "good" electronic voting.
I would expect that, as America's form of government is not Democracy; it is actually Constitutional Republic. It is akin to Representative Democracy, but definatly not a "pure" or "direct" democracy. The republic form of government is good for the US because we have so many ethic, racial, religious, etc, groups, and they should all be represented. To understand the difference, I once heard democracy called "3 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner."
really smart people with a lot of forethought (they can be forgiven for the Second Amendment).
Whether or not the second amendment is appropriate in today's world, it was not put in for lack of forthought. If you read the writings of the founding fathers, you will learn that one of their paramount fears would be that the government would be more powerful than the people.
In the founding fathers belief, if a government became corrupt, it was the duty of the people to rise up and overthrow it. That principle was one of the justifications for the Declaration of Independance. How could the people change out the government if the government was allowed to have more weapons than the people? Remember, in their day, they owned weapons, including cannons, just as powerful as the government's and it was perfectly legal to do so.
Did they invision the kind of weaponry today? I don't know, but the priciple of always having the people as powerful as the government has some merrit. Would Tienemen (sp) Square Massacre have happened if the Chinese people had the same weapons the government did?
I government should live with a healthy fear of its populace. That keeps it honest.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin