So, you knowingly and deliberately inflated your billing to your client by doing unnecessary work due entirely to your own conceit? You owe your client a refund.
Not unnecessary. The consultant had been given no guidelines at all with which he might have reasonably limited the scope of his search for the requested documentation. He was given a demand for any and all such documentation. By what yardstick would you presume to make such a determination that seem to suggest the consultant should have "known" to make?
Just because you haven't found Him doesn't mean He doesn't exist, I can't find most of the constellations in the night sky but apparently they exist.
Granted, and without qualification.
Alas, most believers are utterly unwilling to admit that their "knowledge" is no more certain than that of most non-believers. It is this irrational disregard for reason, and probably more importantly, the inability to truly lean on faith alone, that gives rise to the fears that so frequently manifest themselves whenever the believer feels "threatened". No, I'm not talking about wild-eyed jihadist loonies. Not exclusively, anyway. I'm pointing the same finger at the "Christian Family Values (whatever that really means) are under attack from the secular humanist/gay/pro-choice/insert-latest-scarey-bogeyman-here agenda" whiners.
Look, believe what you want, m'kay? Just admit that it is a belief and stop with the lame arguments that one can actually "know" something that is unknowable. BTW, that goes for you atheists too.
Retired firefighter here...
The noise might not be that bad. The noise from the nozzle discharge is negligible. The pump's power plant is another matter though. Still, a properly designed exhaust system could reduce the noise to well below that of your average two-stroke jet ski. Think tournament ski boat...
As for getting hit by the discharge..., don' t. It will hurt, a lot, even at the nominal 30m max range.
Hmm..., come to think of it, this might be just the thing for silencing noisy two-stroke jet skis that come within range.
Mod parent insightful, but not funny, because funny it most certainly is not. The telecom lobby is, by some measures, the most powerful lobby in the world. They spend lots of money, on both sides of the aisle to make sure that they get what they want. There is no organized voice loud enough to effectively oppose them.
If you want to fix this situation (and the many, many others just like it) find a way to eliminate special interests from buying influence.
HINT - public campaign financing
...using media that contains all the detail. That means no lossy compression technologies (mp3). And choose a sound system that will faithfully reproduce all that detail. No, your $20 ear buds or the Wal-Mart home theater sound system won't do. You don't have to spend tens of thousands for "boutique" audiophile gear, but you do need components that don't add to (or remove from) the program material
If you do these things, the difference between well-recorded audio and over-processed drek will be clear. I'm not saying the electronic tricks don't have their place, but they are not a substitute for genuine artistry in both the performance and engineering regimes.
God help us if the minority party in the Senate can not stop preoccupying themselves with focusing on things that have nothing to do with the appointees' ability to do their jobs. The entire Senate, for that matter, should just shut the fuck up about unpaid taxes until every last one of them has proven that they are as squeaky-clean as they'd like everyone else to be.
Yes, the immediate temptation is to mount this thing on our cars, so we can "communicate" with other drivers, who often are badly in need of a little more information. But we all know that are at least as many drivers out there who will act like butt-heads despite being made aware of their condition. Indeed, some will go out of their way to ratchet up their anti-social behavior.
No. What we need is a DIY tool that can forcefully terminate the offending behavior. Then engineering specifics are left to the group for discussion.
To be clear, this has nothing to do with child porn. This is a law intended to prevent children from accessing porn.
...or anything else that some authority deems "harmful", like pictures of naked female breasts. No shit, those controversial MySpace photos would have landed those pornographer/nursing mothers in the pokey under COPA.
Can we please stop wasting the courts' time now and stop the political pandering, by our elected representatives, to a noisy few, uptight, religious nut-jobs?
You may attribute this to Ronald Reagan and his political cronies, for it was in Reagan's first inaugural address that the phrase "...government is the problem..." began to gain traction in the public mindset. The misguided notion that government has no legitimate role and that "the free market" will, if left unfettered by evil government intervention, will take care of everything.
As we have seen over the last several months, it is the notion that there truly exists "a free market" (which, by definition, includes a well-informed public) that is the problem. Without governmental oversight, markets are manipulated, the public is cheated, and, just as in the early part of the 20th century, a privileged few were allowed to amass staggering wealth at the expense of everyone else.
I agree it's questionable as to whether it's legally stealing. But what about morally? That seems pretty clear-cut - taking someone else's work without paying for it, and without permission, is stealing.
I guess it has to be repeated (at least) one more time...
No, it isn't. Unless one were to physically "take" a physical thing, that thing has not been stolen. Get it? The thing is still in the possession of it's owner. Get it?
Yes, of course it is morally wrong to make (not steal) a copy of a work for which the owner/creator has demanded compensation, but that is (pay attention now) not the same thing as theft.
I don't think anything really bad is being done against the American people at this moment.
Think again.
Call me idealistic, but when I have to start even wondering what "the government" is up to, as it does secret things to my neighbors, or me, then the quality of my life has fundamentally changed. I now live in fear of that government. I can not trust it because it no longer transparently acts as my servant.
The courts got it right, this time. Yeah, sure, the whole argument is a no-brainer for anyone who thinks about it for more than 30 seconds, but the jurists weighing similar cases re. voting machine source-code seem to be struggling with it nonetheless.
Wrong, on all points.
Natural gas may "come out of the grown on it's own accord" but whatever initiative may be represented there, is far from enough to move it from place to place in volumes sufficient to be practical. In other words, NG distribution requires energy to be expended. Period.
As for your simple-minded view of geography as it relates to climate, you need to get out more. I use far more energy cooling my home here in Houston (where it virtually never snows) than I do heating it. Nevertheless, it dipped into the low thirties (F) outside last night. The furnace is on right now. Now, you might be tempted to say, "Move further south, where it never gets that cold." Fine. You move to the tropics, and live, in the manner to which you are accustomed, without air conditioning. Good luck. If everyone takes your daft advice, it will be very, very crowded.
Fiat also means: decree: a legally binding command or decision entered on the court record (as if issued by a court or judge);
No! Really? Now I understand the parent post. It was a joke, a witty play on words deliberately juxtaposing into this context an almost non-sensical definition of the word "fiat".
Boy, you slashdotters... You don't miss a trick, I tell you what.
Touche', sir. I salute your artful approach to the otherwise simple act of "shooting fish in a barrel". Now let us pause and lament that there are so many fucking fish.
You are quite correct that it is not our place to dictate how they (the recording industry) run their business, beyond exercising our right to not patronize them, of course. But that is most certainly not the same thing as taking issue with legally indefensible procedures in gathering their "evidence". You claim that "99+% of all cases even filed by the RIAA... were against people who were breaking the law..." You may be right, but since when does that give license to anyone else to break the law? If the RIAA wants their "customers" to play by the rules, they should at least expect to be required to the same. That they have had their legal ass handed to them time after time is ample evidence that their expectations were not so reasonable.
RIAA members have bigger problems. They are quickly becoming a buggy-whip manufacturer. The value of their product is decreasing. The ease with recorded music can now be distributed (legally as well as illegally) is a large part of the reason, but their are other factors, not the least of which is the quality of their product. There is some hard evidence that people simply don't engage in listening to recorded music as a discrete activity anymore. I recently viewed a video of a collection of recording engineers and audiophiles discussing this. Their conclusion was that the digitization of music, and the almost inevitable decrease in quality that goes with the process, is largely to blame. If this is indeed the case, it follows that people are disinclined to pay traditional prices for what has become little more than background music. If they want to continue in the business of selling recorded music, RIAA's members should figure out how to produce something that people will pay for.
I realize that in many, if not most shops, the network admin is also regularly called upon to provide desktop support. This is an unfortunate reality, owing in no small part to the ignorant view of many managers that the two skill sets are interchangeable. While their is almost always some overlap (network administrators are, almost by definition, more adept with their PC than the average user), that's not the same thing. Not by a long shot. I've known some truly awesome server and network admins who absolutely didn't belong in a role where they had to regularly interact with other humans. People skills, and all that.
But it gets worse for the multi-hatted "IT guy". He is charged with the care and feeding of the outfit's network resources, something that, should it fail, affects everyone, not just the user who can't figure out that he's holding his mouse upside down. When he has done that job well, no one notices anything. Well, except for the prick who thinks that network admins spend their time "sucking their thumb". In fact, the admin has spent time seeing to it that things operate well, and that when they are about to not operate so well, he is given enough warning that he can respond in non-panic mode. Every minute the network admin spends at someone's desk, turning the mouse around for the user, is time that is not spent on a higher value task.
Where would all you music sharers be if the RIAA responds with a valid billing address? It is just a matter of money before those ISPs start cooperating.
Well... yes, but how much money? The task under discussion (enforcing RIAA's IP claims) is formidable. Yes, efficient solutions can be engineered by those ISP's with the resources to develop them, but at what cost? And of course those ISP's who can't make the business case for such an initiative will have to throw more labor at the problem on an ongoing basis, instead of up front. Never mind all that. Just know that all of that cost, plus profit, will be on the bills sent to RIAA.
Perhaps those bills will be lower than those of the lawyers's they'be been using so far, but my hunch is that if most ISP's really do dig in their heels and insist on compensation, the cost would be unpalatable for RIAA and their clients. If I'm right, this will be just another of the music industry's protracted death throes. The buggy whip manufacturers that RIAA represents are still failing to grasp how the Internet has forever changed the nature of their business. Eventually, someone who makes the music I like to listen to will distribute it, in a hi-fi format, on-line, for a price I am willing to pay. That price is certainly lower than what RIAA and it's clients are accustomed to squeezing out of their customers, but it is also most definitely a non-zero number. Someone is going to figure that out, eventually. I wonder who it will be...
Hey asshole, aren't search warrants supposed to explicitly specify what you're looking for? You seized the computer, it should've been for a specific reason, not to conduct a fishing expedition.
Ermm... Where have you been for the last 7 years? Under a rock? If we were to let you actually invoke those civil rights they taught you about in school, the terrorists would win! Stop being silly and just admit that we're all much better off with a government and it's goons... er, "law enforcement agencies" who can make sure that we're all "safe", no matter what the cost to our so-called liberty.
...that the U.S. government "leaders" don't have an exclusive on dunder-headed confusion about technology and what it can and can not do. Yes, I know, it's hardly fair to compare TFA's example to esoteric concepts like why internet censorship will always fail or why 20th century copyright law is so badly broken, but you get the idea.
Hey! Maybe ex-Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) can go work as a consultant to the Egyptian Government (when he gets out of the joint, that is). He's got a knack for simplifying those hi-tech concepts.
Slashdot Mirror
Matters? /.?
To whom, exactly, and how many of them read
But those inconsiderate dickheads who insist on texting in the movie theater should be drawn and quartered.
So, you knowingly and deliberately inflated your billing to your client by doing unnecessary work due entirely to your own conceit? You owe your client a refund.
Not unnecessary. The consultant had been given no guidelines at all with which he might have reasonably limited the scope of his search for the requested documentation. He was given a demand for any and all such documentation. By what yardstick would you presume to make such a determination that seem to suggest the consultant should have "known" to make?
Just because you haven't found Him doesn't mean He doesn't exist, I can't find most of the constellations in the night sky but apparently they exist.
Granted, and without qualification. Alas, most believers are utterly unwilling to admit that their "knowledge" is no more certain than that of most non-believers. It is this irrational disregard for reason, and probably more importantly, the inability to truly lean on faith alone, that gives rise to the fears that so frequently manifest themselves whenever the believer feels "threatened". No, I'm not talking about wild-eyed jihadist loonies. Not exclusively, anyway. I'm pointing the same finger at the "Christian Family Values (whatever that really means) are under attack from the secular humanist/gay/pro-choice/insert-latest-scarey-bogeyman-here agenda" whiners.
Look, believe what you want, m'kay? Just admit that it is a belief and stop with the lame arguments that one can actually "know" something that is unknowable. BTW, that goes for you atheists too.
If it please the court, I give you exhibit A
(Whom I wish to thank for illustrating my point in such a charmingly unwitting manner)
Retired firefighter here... The noise might not be that bad. The noise from the nozzle discharge is negligible. The pump's power plant is another matter though. Still, a properly designed exhaust system could reduce the noise to well below that of your average two-stroke jet ski. Think tournament ski boat...
As for getting hit by the discharge..., don' t. It will hurt, a lot, even at the nominal 30m max range.
Hmm..., come to think of it, this might be just the thing for silencing noisy two-stroke jet skis that come within range.
Probably pretty good. After all, God doesn't exist, but millions of people convince themselves that they are finding Him all the time.
There. Fixed that for you.
If you want to fix this situation (and the many, many others just like it) find a way to eliminate special interests from buying influence.
HINT - public campaign financing
...using media that contains all the detail. That means no lossy compression technologies (mp3). And choose a sound system that will faithfully reproduce all that detail. No, your $20 ear buds or the Wal-Mart home theater sound system won't do. You don't have to spend tens of thousands for "boutique" audiophile gear, but you do need components that don't add to (or remove from) the program material
If you do these things, the difference between well-recorded audio and over-processed drek will be clear. I'm not saying the electronic tricks don't have their place, but they are not a substitute for genuine artistry in both the performance and engineering regimes.
God help us if the minority party in the Senate can not stop preoccupying themselves with focusing on things that have nothing to do with the appointees' ability to do their jobs. The entire Senate, for that matter, should just shut the fuck up about unpaid taxes until every last one of them has proven that they are as squeaky-clean as they'd like everyone else to be.
No. What we need is a DIY tool that can forcefully terminate the offending behavior. Then engineering specifics are left to the group for discussion.
To be clear, this has nothing to do with child porn. This is a law intended to prevent children from accessing porn.
...or anything else that some authority deems "harmful", like pictures of naked female breasts. No shit, those controversial MySpace photos would have landed those pornographer/nursing mothers in the pokey under COPA. Can we please stop wasting the courts' time now and stop the political pandering, by our elected representatives, to a noisy few, uptight, religious nut-jobs?
As we have seen over the last several months, it is the notion that there truly exists "a free market" (which, by definition, includes a well-informed public) that is the problem. Without governmental oversight, markets are manipulated, the public is cheated, and, just as in the early part of the 20th century, a privileged few were allowed to amass staggering wealth at the expense of everyone else.
I agree it's questionable as to whether it's legally stealing. But what about morally? That seems pretty clear-cut - taking someone else's work without paying for it, and without permission, is stealing.
I guess it has to be repeated (at least) one more time...
No, it isn't. Unless one were to physically "take" a physical thing, that thing has not been stolen. Get it? The thing is still in the possession of it's owner. Get it?
Yes, of course it is morally wrong to make (not steal) a copy of a work for which the owner/creator has demanded compensation, but that is (pay attention now) not the same thing as theft.
I don't think anything really bad is being done against the American people at this moment.
Think again.
Call me idealistic, but when I have to start even wondering what "the government" is up to, as it does secret things to my neighbors, or me, then the quality of my life has fundamentally changed. I now live in fear of that government. I can not trust it because it no longer transparently acts as my servant.
The courts got it right, this time. Yeah, sure, the whole argument is a no-brainer for anyone who thinks about it for more than 30 seconds, but the jurists weighing similar cases re. voting machine source-code seem to be struggling with it nonetheless.
Wrong, on all points. Natural gas may "come out of the grown on it's own accord" but whatever initiative may be represented there, is far from enough to move it from place to place in volumes sufficient to be practical. In other words, NG distribution requires energy to be expended. Period. As for your simple-minded view of geography as it relates to climate, you need to get out more. I use far more energy cooling my home here in Houston (where it virtually never snows) than I do heating it. Nevertheless, it dipped into the low thirties (F) outside last night. The furnace is on right now. Now, you might be tempted to say, "Move further south, where it never gets that cold." Fine. You move to the tropics, and live, in the manner to which you are accustomed, without air conditioning. Good luck. If everyone takes your daft advice, it will be very, very crowded.
Fiat also means: decree: a legally binding command or decision entered on the court record (as if issued by a court or judge);
No! Really? Now I understand the parent post. It was a joke, a witty play on words deliberately juxtaposing into this context an almost non-sensical definition of the word "fiat".
Boy, you slashdotters... You don't miss a trick, I tell you what.
Did you know gullible isn't in the dictionary?
Touche', sir. I salute your artful approach to the otherwise simple act of "shooting fish in a barrel". Now let us pause and lament that there are so many fucking fish.
RIAA members have bigger problems. They are quickly becoming a buggy-whip manufacturer. The value of their product is decreasing. The ease with recorded music can now be distributed (legally as well as illegally) is a large part of the reason, but their are other factors, not the least of which is the quality of their product. There is some hard evidence that people simply don't engage in listening to recorded music as a discrete activity anymore. I recently viewed a video of a collection of recording engineers and audiophiles discussing this. Their conclusion was that the digitization of music, and the almost inevitable decrease in quality that goes with the process, is largely to blame. If this is indeed the case, it follows that people are disinclined to pay traditional prices for what has become little more than background music. If they want to continue in the business of selling recorded music, RIAA's members should figure out how to produce something that people will pay for.
You mean they weren't largely a waste of time and bandwidth before?
But it gets worse for the multi-hatted "IT guy". He is charged with the care and feeding of the outfit's network resources, something that, should it fail, affects everyone, not just the user who can't figure out that he's holding his mouse upside down. When he has done that job well, no one notices anything. Well, except for the prick who thinks that network admins spend their time "sucking their thumb". In fact, the admin has spent time seeing to it that things operate well, and that when they are about to not operate so well, he is given enough warning that he can respond in non-panic mode. Every minute the network admin spends at someone's desk, turning the mouse around for the user, is time that is not spent on a higher value task.
"What's your billing address?"
That's not exactly an unequivocal rejection.
Where would all you music sharers be if the RIAA responds with a valid billing address? It is just a matter of money before those ISPs start cooperating.
Well... yes, but how much money? The task under discussion (enforcing RIAA's IP claims) is formidable. Yes, efficient solutions can be engineered by those ISP's with the resources to develop them, but at what cost? And of course those ISP's who can't make the business case for such an initiative will have to throw more labor at the problem on an ongoing basis, instead of up front. Never mind all that. Just know that all of that cost, plus profit, will be on the bills sent to RIAA.
Perhaps those bills will be lower than those of the lawyers's they'be been using so far, but my hunch is that if most ISP's really do dig in their heels and insist on compensation, the cost would be unpalatable for RIAA and their clients. If I'm right, this will be just another of the music industry's protracted death throes. The buggy whip manufacturers that RIAA represents are still failing to grasp how the Internet has forever changed the nature of their business. Eventually, someone who makes the music I like to listen to will distribute it, in a hi-fi format, on-line, for a price I am willing to pay. That price is certainly lower than what RIAA and it's clients are accustomed to squeezing out of their customers, but it is also most definitely a non-zero number. Someone is going to figure that out, eventually. I wonder who it will be...
Hey asshole, aren't search warrants supposed to explicitly specify what you're looking for? You seized the computer, it should've been for a specific reason, not to conduct a fishing expedition.
Ermm... Where have you been for the last 7 years? Under a rock? If we were to let you actually invoke those civil rights they taught you about in school, the terrorists would win! Stop being silly and just admit that we're all much better off with a government and it's goons... er, "law enforcement agencies" who can make sure that we're all "safe", no matter what the cost to our so-called liberty.
Hey! Maybe ex-Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) can go work as a consultant to the Egyptian Government (when he gets out of the joint, that is). He's got a knack for simplifying those hi-tech concepts.