Honestly in the world we live in, 1 vote is worthless.
One need look no further than Florida in 2000 to cast doubt on the above.
There have been numerous state-wide elections in the US over the last decade that have had a margin of less than 500 voters, with millions of votes cast.
BTW: if it's less than $1000.00 you are pretty much hosed. I lost $500.00 to a scammer auto parts dealer on the east coast (read my blog for the name and location) and after getting my lawyer poised and finding out how much to bring the small claims suit against them It was much cheaper to simply drop it as it would have cost me $1500.00 to sue him... These scammers know this and that is why they rarely venture over that $1000.00 line.
Most state filing fees are under $100, and in some states you can even recover the fee if you win the case. One doesn't normally bring a lawyer to small claims court--that is why it would have cost you $1500 to recover $1000.
Options: a) Google sensors sites for China. b) China sensors Google.... wonder which one I'd pick.
Most people would choose the former over the latter--however, that has nothing at all to do with the moral question at hand. Doing what's right is rarely the same thing as doing what's easy.
How is it evil? Just because you don't believe in a validity of a certain way of governing (attempting to strictly control information) doesn't mean that it's evil.
I'll accept that--while I personally may find the entire concept of communism (or at least the way it's actually been implemented thus far) to be "evil," I understand that others may disagree. After all, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" does indeed sound like a wonderful way to live, if impractical.
However, when discussing the Chinese government in particular, I think just about any reasonable person would agree that "evil" fits the bill. Here's a good example of why.
There are some bad apples in the "big" one, but there are also good ones. 47th Street photo was always hit or miss. They sold 'gray market' goods, but DID back them up themselves.
Weren't they one of those stores on 5th Avenue that had the "going out of business" signs up for over a decade?
That the above is marked "informative" is pathetic.
There is no reason to lie to the credit card company--in a chargeback situation, they'll almost always be on your side because they don't eat the charge, the merchant does. They're much more interested in keeping you happy (the one they make all their money off of, who can drop them in favor of another bank if they don't perform) instead of the merchant, whose only alternative is to stop accepting credit cards--which is no choice at all.
In short: "I am dealing with a scam artist merchant, please initiate a chargeback and issue me a new card number" is a much better approach than "someone stole my credit card and is trying to buy a camera with it."
It was 100 bucks cheaper, he knew that Canon USA would probably provide warranty service and yet he decides to return it
He decided to return it because it was NOT THE PRODUCT THAT WAS ADVERTISED. I would return it, too.
in the mean time he ends up with a free camera and he is proud of it.
He made a good faith effort to return the item to the merchant. The merchant chose not to accept his return. When the merchant later demanded return, he offered to do so if they would pay for the shipping, the previous shipping both ways, and compensation for his time required to fix their mistake (the refusal to accept the COD package.) Seems more than fair to me.
I'm not sure I agree with that. Instead of issuing one to each doctor/nurse/whatever, you could have a bunch of them sitting in charging cradles at the nurse's stations. When your battery starts to go, you just pick up a new one and throw the old one on the charger.
OTOH, this thing is the size of a PSP... I don't think the screen is quite large enough for medical use.
I work for a SMB and I want some of these for my manufacturing guys. We've looked at tablets before, but $2k/each is too large an investment for something we're not entirely sure (yet) is going to be a real benefit--and that is fairly fragile. On the other hand, at $359, we can give these devices to almost all of our shop leads for $2k, and the replacement cost after they get run over by a forklift (it's a "when" not an "if") is reasonable.
I'll be keeping an eye on these, particularly the hacker community that is sure to develop. Once real applications are verified to work (the ARM port of OpenOffice, for example) we'll probably pick one up, with more to almost certainly follow.
I realize we're NOT the target market, but I see real possibilities here.
Re:"Upgrade" boycott doesn't ignore Vista
on
Ignore Vista Until 2008
·
· Score: 2, Informative
A big problem with his premise is no companies would be able to purchase a computer from Dell, HP, IBM, etc. until 2008. As soon as Vista is released they will stop offering XP (almost immediately), and start offering only Vista.
Err, I don't know about HP or IBM, but Windows 2000 just dropped out of Dell's product line about a year ago. Three years after XP's release.
I would expcet Dell to offer a similar choice after Vista is released, and for just as long.
Remember who signed the DMCA--Clinton. I think free speech in the slashdot, eff sense is really quite orthogonal to party lines.
And a Republican congress passed the law to begin with. Both major parties have similar agendas in this regard--most people, sadly, choose to ignore that fact and simply spout "my party is all that is good and light. Your party is teh suck" tripe.
Think of a 2 year old having a temper tantrum because their parents won't let them do something, and you have described libertarian politics well
Suggesting that, "what is mine should stay mine, unless I choose to give it to someone else," in response to someone else saying that, "what is yours is mine, and I will choose who to give it to," is most certainly not a temper tantrum. I would also point out that I am not a child, the government is not my parent, and that I am perfectly capable of tending to my own affairs.
They're open to competition and they're a matter of individual choice. Don't like Google's results? Use Yahoo!'s or Teoma's or any of the hundreds that would spring up in response
And how are you navigating to these other competing search engines, if there's no DNS? Would any service that you feel the need to switch away from still carry its competitors in its directory?
Eminent Domain requires that the person the government is taking property from be fairly compensated. Given that a jury found the value of the infringement here to be worth $180million, that's the minimum amount the government would have to pay to exercise its power.
Multiply that by a thousand bad patents every year, and you begin to see the problem... indeed, I would argue that such a policy would actually INCREASE the number of such patents, since everyone so inclined could cash in easily.
TFA quite clearly states that he was convicted because he lied to the police about his activities.
Great--so instead of charging him with something appropriate (obstruction of justice?) they convict him of "hacking" when he did nothing of the sort. That's not a "mountain, meet molehill" situation--it's an injustice!
Sometimes the key to having a successful business is the careful regulation of theft.
Microsoft, Adobe, and id software are all students of this method. While turning a blind eye to a certain amount of piracy hasn't been the cornerstone of their business, it has been an immense help.
In other words, you work with appliances where the hardware is always the same, configuration is entirely under the control of the vendor, and all the customer is expected to do is use some serial port or web control panel to set things like network parameters.
ERP systems don't work that way.
1) load an installer CD (maybe 10 minutes for a "minimal" install)
2) stick in an installation CD, and run the installer
3) Have a functioning, self-tested software install in a total time (including unpacking the box) of less than 20 minutes per machine. The installer uses yum to resolve any missing package dependencies, and downloading all current OS updates is inherent into the process.
That's great...IF you're, say, installing the same pre-configured image on multiple systems. On the other hand, when you actually have to make changes to the configuration to support your applications and environment, it tends to take a tad longer. If you REALLY think it only takes "20 minutes" to properly install AND CONFIGURE a server that's going to host a mission critical application you're not just crazy, you're stupid.
Why isn't SAP running their own YUM server? That way, "approved" patches can be run with a simple "yum -y update" !??!
Hmm, maybe because we're talking about a complex system that is going to differ (greatly!) from installation to installation, and when dealing with production systems where downtime can cost tens of millions of dollars, some of us aren't so cavalier about letting an automated tool install patches that may break things.
Think Microsoft GUIs and the absolutely terrible configuration options when you think about how bad this can become.
While, personally, I'm alot more comfortable doing things the *nix way (for example, I find httpd.conf to be a much better administrative interface than MS's IIS Manager) Microsoft's MMC based tools are pretty good these days--they cover about 95% of everything your average admin is going to do in the lifetime of the application. They're "good enough" to get the job done, and I think that most people who say otherwise probably haven't used them recently... or are simply more comfortable using different tools to do the job and just aren't willing to sit down and learn the MS way of doing things.
Would you feel you were getting a fair trial as a Christian if the judge had the Koran on display in the lobby?
Yes. Why not? If the Judge tried to force me to pray to Allah before the trial began, I'd have an issue, but the Koran seems to be appropriate decor in a court of law. So are the ten commandments. Both are surviving examples of early codes of law.
How about if his school principal lead a daily service to Thor?
If participation is voluntary, have at it. If the English teacher wants to leads a prayer to Jesus at the same time, while the math teacher was kneeling on a mat with a dozen students facing Mecca, a couple of Jews were reading Torah commentaries, all while some Budhists are meditating, that's even better.
The establishment clause is all about keeping the government from establishing a state religion, or giving favor to one sect over another. That's it. We've turned freedom of religion into freedom from religion, and that's a horrible thing. If you don't want to worship, then don't fucking worship! Taking away the rights of others to do so just because you find it "offensive" is bullshit.
At least from reading the article, there's no violation of the 7th amendment.
It was a summary judgement that was upheld at the appelate and Texas supreme court levels. Given that the value of the controversy exceeded $20 and a jury never heard the case, I've gotta disagree with you.
No. This is what happens when the judge (Judge Henderson) is a Texas Republican; a corporate whore.
Actually, this is what happens when our constitution becomes a watered down piece of meaningless paper. The 7th Amendment is unambiguous:
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
The 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th are in a similar state--being redefined out of existance as we speak. The 9th and 10th are long dead.
Even the 1st amendment is dying--and, ironically, it is doing so partially at the hands of the ACLU which believes that when it comes to religion, the establishment clause is far more important than the "free exercise thereof." The government is doing its own share, though... the right to assembly no longer has any real meaning (see "first amendment zones.")
Our Republic is doomed and, sadly, I see the end coming sooner rather than later.
The intent is to show that anti-terrorism measures as they currently stand are impractical and disrupting much more than actual terrorism. Either the police tighten the guidelines of what indicates a terrorist, or the program comes under fire for being responsible for the tube being shut down for an unacceptably long time.
I realize what your intent is, and I agree with it in principle. However, you missed option 3: shoot the messenger.
It seems that an organized civil disobedience effort could keep the entire London tube system offfline indefinitely by wearing backpacks and using cell phones in carefully chosen stations and times. How long could that go on before someone realizes it's not preventing terrorism and it's more trouble than it's worth for everyone?
Unfortunately, you have it backward--your demonstration would not be seen as you intend--namely, to point out (correctly!) that these measures are error-prone and ineffective. The words that the police would use to describe your actions would be "conspiracy to commit a terrorist act."
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The constitution does gaurentee certain unalienable rights... life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
:)
FWIW, this does not appear in the Constitution--you're quoting the Declaration of Independence. I do agree with you in spirit, however.
Honestly in the world we live in, 1 vote is worthless.
One need look no further than Florida in 2000 to cast doubt on the above.
There have been numerous state-wide elections in the US over the last decade that have had a margin of less than 500 voters, with millions of votes cast.
BTW: if it's less than $1000.00 you are pretty much hosed. I lost $500.00 to a scammer auto parts dealer on the east coast (read my blog for the name and location) and after getting my lawyer poised and finding out how much to bring the small claims suit against them It was much cheaper to simply drop it as it would have cost me $1500.00 to sue him... These scammers know this and that is why they rarely venture over that $1000.00 line.
Most state filing fees are under $100, and in some states you can even recover the fee if you win the case. One doesn't normally bring a lawyer to small claims court--that is why it would have cost you $1500 to recover $1000.
Options: ...
a) Google sensors sites for China.
b) China sensors Google.
wonder which one I'd pick.
Most people would choose the former over the latter--however, that has nothing at all to do with the moral question at hand. Doing what's right is rarely the same thing as doing what's easy.
How is it evil? Just because you don't believe in a validity of a certain way of governing (attempting to strictly control information) doesn't mean that it's evil.
I'll accept that--while I personally may find the entire concept of communism (or at least the way it's actually been implemented thus far) to be "evil," I understand that others may disagree. After all, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" does indeed sound like a wonderful way to live, if impractical.
However, when discussing the Chinese government in particular, I think just about any reasonable person would agree that "evil" fits the bill. Here's a good example of why.
There are some bad apples in the "big" one, but there are also
good ones. 47th Street photo was always hit or miss. They sold
'gray market' goods, but DID back them up themselves.
Weren't they one of those stores on 5th Avenue that had the "going out of business" signs up for over a decade?
That the above is marked "informative" is pathetic.
There is no reason to lie to the credit card company--in a chargeback situation, they'll almost always be on your side because they don't eat the charge, the merchant does. They're much more interested in keeping you happy (the one they make all their money off of, who can drop them in favor of another bank if they don't perform) instead of the merchant, whose only alternative is to stop accepting credit cards--which is no choice at all.
In short: "I am dealing with a scam artist merchant, please initiate a chargeback and issue me a new card number" is a much better approach than "someone stole my credit card and is trying to buy a camera with it."
It was 100 bucks cheaper, he knew that Canon USA would probably provide warranty service and yet he decides to return it
He decided to return it because it was NOT THE PRODUCT THAT WAS ADVERTISED. I would return it, too.
in the mean time he ends up with a free camera and he is proud of it.
He made a good faith effort to return the item to the merchant. The merchant chose not to accept his return. When the merchant later demanded return, he offered to do so if they would pay for the shipping, the previous shipping both ways, and compensation for his time required to fix their mistake (the refusal to accept the COD package.) Seems more than fair to me.
True. But a second point would be to mention that SUSE is not a server distribution.
SLES (i.e. Suse Linux Enterprise Server) is a server distribution--or at least that's how Novell bills it. Suse Professional::Fedora as SLES::RHEL.
I'm not sure I agree with that. Instead of issuing one to each doctor/nurse/whatever, you could have a bunch of them sitting in charging cradles at the nurse's stations. When your battery starts to go, you just pick up a new one and throw the old one on the charger.
OTOH, this thing is the size of a PSP... I don't think the screen is quite large enough for medical use.
I work for a SMB and I want some of these for my manufacturing guys. We've looked at tablets before, but $2k/each is too large an investment for something we're not entirely sure (yet) is going to be a real benefit--and that is fairly fragile. On the other hand, at $359, we can give these devices to almost all of our shop leads for $2k, and the replacement cost after they get run over by a forklift (it's a "when" not an "if") is reasonable.
I'll be keeping an eye on these, particularly the hacker community that is sure to develop. Once real applications are verified to work (the ARM port of OpenOffice, for example) we'll probably pick one up, with more to almost certainly follow.
I realize we're NOT the target market, but I see real possibilities here.
A big problem with his premise is no companies would be able to purchase a computer from Dell, HP, IBM, etc. until 2008. As soon as Vista is released they will stop offering XP (almost immediately), and start offering only Vista.
Err, I don't know about HP or IBM, but Windows 2000 just dropped out of Dell's product line about a year ago. Three years after XP's release.
I would expcet Dell to offer a similar choice after Vista is released, and for just as long.
Remember who signed the DMCA--Clinton. I think free speech in the slashdot, eff sense is really quite orthogonal to party lines.
And a Republican congress passed the law to begin with. Both major parties have similar agendas in this regard--most people, sadly, choose to ignore that fact and simply spout "my party is all that is good and light. Your party is teh suck" tripe.
Think of a 2 year old having a temper tantrum because their parents won't let them do something, and you have described libertarian politics well
Suggesting that, "what is mine should stay mine, unless I choose to give it to someone else," in response to someone else saying that, "what is yours is mine, and I will choose who to give it to," is most certainly not a temper tantrum. I would also point out that I am not a child, the government is not my parent, and that I am perfectly capable of tending to my own affairs.
They're open to competition and they're a matter of individual choice. Don't like Google's results? Use Yahoo!'s or Teoma's or any of the hundreds that would spring up in response
And how are you navigating to these other competing search engines, if there's no DNS? Would any service that you feel the need to switch away from still carry its competitors in its directory?
Eminent Domain requires that the person the government is taking property from be fairly compensated. Given that a jury found the value of the infringement here to be worth $180million, that's the minimum amount the government would have to pay to exercise its power.
Multiply that by a thousand bad patents every year, and you begin to see the problem... indeed, I would argue that such a policy would actually INCREASE the number of such patents, since everyone so inclined could cash in easily.
TFA quite clearly states that he was convicted because he lied to the police about his activities.
Great--so instead of charging him with something appropriate (obstruction of justice?) they convict him of "hacking" when he did nothing of the sort. That's not a "mountain, meet molehill" situation--it's an injustice!
Sometimes the key to having a successful business is the careful regulation of theft.
Microsoft, Adobe, and id software are all students of this method. While turning a blind eye to a certain amount of piracy hasn't been the cornerstone of their business, it has been an immense help.
I routinely sell embedded server systems
In other words, you work with appliances where the hardware is always the same, configuration is entirely under the control of the vendor, and all the customer is expected to do is use some serial port or web control panel to set things like network parameters.
ERP systems don't work that way.
1) load an installer CD (maybe 10 minutes for a "minimal" install)
2) stick in an installation CD, and run the installer
3) Have a functioning, self-tested software install in a total time (including unpacking the box) of less than 20 minutes per machine. The installer uses yum to resolve any missing package dependencies, and downloading all current OS updates is inherent into the process.
That's great...IF you're, say, installing the same pre-configured image on multiple systems. On the other hand, when you actually have to make changes to the configuration to support your applications and environment, it tends to take a tad longer. If you REALLY think it only takes "20 minutes" to properly install AND CONFIGURE a server that's going to host a mission critical application you're not just crazy, you're stupid.
Why isn't SAP running their own YUM server? That way, "approved" patches can be run with a simple "yum -y update" !??!
Hmm, maybe because we're talking about a complex system that is going to differ (greatly!) from installation to installation, and when dealing with production systems where downtime can cost tens of millions of dollars, some of us aren't so cavalier about letting an automated tool install patches that may break things.
Think Microsoft GUIs and the absolutely terrible configuration options when you think about how bad this can become.
While, personally, I'm alot more comfortable doing things the *nix way (for example, I find httpd.conf to be a much better administrative interface than MS's IIS Manager) Microsoft's MMC based tools are pretty good these days--they cover about 95% of everything your average admin is going to do in the lifetime of the application. They're "good enough" to get the job done, and I think that most people who say otherwise probably haven't used them recently... or are simply more comfortable using different tools to do the job and just aren't willing to sit down and learn the MS way of doing things.
Would you feel you were getting a fair trial as a Christian if the judge had the Koran on display in the lobby?
Yes. Why not? If the Judge tried to force me to pray to Allah before the trial began, I'd have an issue, but the Koran seems to be appropriate decor in a court of law. So are the ten commandments. Both are surviving examples of early codes of law.
How about if his school principal lead a daily service to Thor?
If participation is voluntary, have at it. If the English teacher wants to leads a prayer to Jesus at the same time, while the math teacher was kneeling on a mat with a dozen students facing Mecca, a couple of Jews were reading Torah commentaries, all while some Budhists are meditating, that's even better.
The establishment clause is all about keeping the government from establishing a state religion, or giving favor to one sect over another. That's it. We've turned freedom of religion into freedom from religion, and that's a horrible thing. If you don't want to worship, then don't fucking worship! Taking away the rights of others to do so just because you find it "offensive" is bullshit.
By the way, I say all of this as an agnostic.
At least from reading the article, there's no violation of the 7th amendment.
It was a summary judgement that was upheld at the appelate and Texas supreme court levels. Given that the value of the controversy exceeded $20 and a jury never heard the case, I've gotta disagree with you.
No. This is what happens when the judge (Judge Henderson) is a Texas Republican; a corporate whore.
Actually, this is what happens when our constitution becomes a watered down piece of meaningless paper. The 7th Amendment is unambiguous:
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
The 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th are in a similar state--being redefined out of existance as we speak. The 9th and 10th are long dead.
Even the 1st amendment is dying--and, ironically, it is doing so partially at the hands of the ACLU which believes that when it comes to religion, the establishment clause is far more important than the "free exercise thereof." The government is doing its own share, though... the right to assembly no longer has any real meaning (see "first amendment zones.")
Our Republic is doomed and, sadly, I see the end coming sooner rather than later.
The intent is to show that anti-terrorism measures as they currently stand are impractical and disrupting much more than actual terrorism. Either the police tighten the guidelines of what indicates a terrorist, or the program comes under fire for being responsible for the tube being shut down for an unacceptably long time.
I realize what your intent is, and I agree with it in principle. However, you missed option 3: shoot the messenger.
It seems that an organized civil disobedience effort could keep the entire London tube system offfline indefinitely by wearing backpacks and using cell phones in carefully chosen stations and times. How long could that go on before someone realizes it's not preventing terrorism and it's more trouble than it's worth for everyone?
Unfortunately, you have it backward--your demonstration would not be seen as you intend--namely, to point out (correctly!) that these measures are error-prone and ineffective. The words that the police would use to describe your actions would be "conspiracy to commit a terrorist act."