I couldn't agree more. If someone really wants to get data out of your office, they're going to find a way, even if it's not convenient. If everything is locked up super tight, your productivity will definitely suffer.
The political spectrum is not really a straight line. Its more like an oval. The people on the far right and the people on the far left have a surprisingly large amount of common beliefs (compare Ralph Nader to Pat Buchanan). They end up going to such extremes that they almost come full circle. Bottom line is, extremists on both the left and right are so convinced that their way is the only way that they want the government to take their views and force them on everyone.
Sadly, this is not a new business model. It's just that it has caught up with IT in recent years. Other industries, such as manufacturing and biotech have been suffering from similar extortion schemes for decades.
I doubt they would find it productive to go around monitoring for wifi signals. The reason universities have bans on access points in their policies is so that if a problem arises (interference, someone hacks network via wifi, etc) they can pull the plug on the offending connection and say "you weren't supposed to be running that device here". Just a CYA policy to make things easier for network admins.
I hope they've fixed their popup blocker with this new version. It seems like some asshole marketroid has found a way around it to pop ads on the screen with the toolbar running. Yea, that's going to be a really successful ad campaign. Serve popups to people who have taken specific effort to block them. When will these idiots get a clue?
I absolutely agree with this approach; it would definitely put a dent in spam profitability. But when it starts happening, they will move to foreign servers anyway to make prosecution a lot more difficult. But when U.S. internet providers threaten to cut off connections to all of the aforementioned countries, which they could do without a problem, then those countries will start taking the anti-spam fight seriously.
Another method of financially hurting spammers, which the government could start doing anytime they wanted to, is the Al Capone style of prosecution. Get them for tax evasion. I highly doubt that spammers report all of their income to the government. There's probably a bunch of general business laws they are violating, in addition to the fact that a lot of what they advertise for is blatantly illegal. The government doesn't need new laws to crack down on spammers, they need to enforce the ones we already have. When word gets around that spammers are being hauled into court, the others will stop soon.
Last I checked, West Virginia wasn't a republican state. Yet they are definitely a welfare state. Not just everyone in the state, but the state itself. If it weren't for Mr. Pork Barrel himself Robert Byrd, the state would totally self destruct and everyone in it would either leave or starve to death. As a side note, Byrd pitched a fit when Bush wanted more money for Iraq, but he has no problem whatsoever with the federal government subsidizing almost every aspect of his mismanaged state. I guess politicians who say they are against government waste are just pissed because it leaves them with less money to waste.
The objective should be to force spammers to migrate to smaller and smaller ISPs, that way the small ISPs which host spammers and few other clients can be completely firewalled with minimal collateral damage. As the ISPs lose customers, which are sick of being blocked, they will be left with only spammers and eventually they'll die out completely. Only then will spamming become too difficult to be profitable.
Unemployment measures the number of people actively looking for jobs. It doesn't count those that are "long term unemployed". This is the way it is measured it 2004 and the way it was measured in 1996. To say that there are more unemployed people now just because more of them have been unemployed long term is faulty reasoning at best. How do you know there weren't long term unemployed people in 1996? I guarantee there were.
Call me a cynic, but I have a hard time believing that a site called anyonebutbush.com is an objective source of facts and information. If you want to read such a site for your amusement, go right ahead, but to cite it in an argument as a factual source will not convince anyone who was not already a Bush basher.
True. Both Bush and Kerry established early on that this would be the nastiest presidential campaign ever, with no attack too personal. Now that the rules have been set, neither side has the right to complain about ANY attack ads the other party comes up with. For every attack against Kerry, his side has engineered one against Bush that was at least as nasty, and the reverse applies as well.
FYI docking a salaried employee's pay for being late / leaving early and then at the same time requiring unpaid overtime is illegal. Either you're salaried or you're not. If they want to go by straight salary with no overtime pay, then they can't dock for being late. At the very least, this is a horrible working environment and I'm sure you weren't the only one wanting to leave. A hostile current or former employee could cause them some real trouble if they wanted to pursue the pay docking issue with an employment lawyer.
False reporting is a crime. If the school authorities had no credible evidence of a gun, and no verifiable witness report, I'd say they are on very shaky legal grounds. I had thought it would be a cold day in hell before a sheriff arrested a school principal for reporting any kind of violence at school, no matter how remote the threat, but then I learned that a Chicago principal got arrested for falsely reporting a gun at school. I couldn't imagine this happening in a small town, only a big city where cops have real crime to deal with. I'd say not only does this guy have a shot at a lawsuit against the school (retaliation, unreasonable search, false reporting, defamation of character, emotional trauma, denial of education, etc.), but he should try to get the principal criminally charged. Wasting police time on a blatantly false crime report hurts society as a whole, and could even put someone's life at stake if there were a real emergency at the same time.
It seems like it would work, but I'm sure there would be teachers who would get very good at test taking but continue to spew drivel to their students who would learn nothing. Ever had a college professor who was brilliant and well known for research but couldn't explain his way out of a paper bag?
There's a reason for these tests: students wouldn't learn shit without them. What else would give teachers motivation to teach something other than feel good politically correct non-factual crap? There are many talented teachers who care about education, but there are many idiots teaching as well. Testing is the closest thing we have to protect kids from idiot teachers. If schools were teaching rigorous material in the first place, they wouldn't have to prepare students for the test. It's not like these tests are especially hard to begin with; all they do is verify that a high school graduate can perform at a minimum of a 10th grade level.
Like I said, I wish I was wrong, but this is the attitude that many business leaders and authority figures have. I'm not saying that everyone should just accept this fact and do nothing about it, but everyone must be aware that this line of thinking exists so that they do not find themselves surprisingly punished for stepping on someone's toes like the grandparent poster did. By all means I admire people who fight to change an established system that is wrong, but it is worth noting that doing such things takes guts and hard work and there will be the occaisional setback. If fighting for change was easy, it wouldn't be a fight and everyone could do it.
Agreed. I've always said that making schools a religion free zone is just as bad as requiring everyone to pray to the Christian God. The constitution provides freedom to practice the religion of your choice, not a guarantee that you will never be exposed to someone else's religion.
Better you learned that lesson at an early age rather than on the job, where your opinions can get you fired (some people never understand this, like slashdot member CubicleDrone). As much as it kills me to say it, the dean was absolutely right. That's not the way society should be, but it always will be. In the United States or anywhere else. Speaking out is very courageous, but as you learned it carries a price. The establishment feels very uncomfortable when someone catches on to their game and publicly calls them out. I guess what you have to ask yourself, when confronted with a situation like this, is what is my opinion worth? If it's something you aren't too passionate about, it's probably not worth making a scene. If it's more important, then you have to weigh the consequences and see if you can afford to suffer them. No matter what some people may say, free speech is not free.
In all seriousness, I'll be surprised if we don't see one of those within 2 years. Now that picture phones are widespread, it's only the next logical progression. The ultimate in public annoyances all packaged together, with a built in loudspeaker of course.
I think the normal moderation system should not apply for the politics section. We don't need to make it all too easy for someone with strong political views and mod points to go through marking Troll on every opinion they disagree with. We get enough of that on the stories that are only semi-political.
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I couldn't agree more. If someone really wants to get data out of your office, they're going to find a way, even if it's not convenient. If everything is locked up super tight, your productivity will definitely suffer.
The political spectrum is not really a straight line. Its more like an oval. The people on the far right and the people on the far left have a surprisingly large amount of common beliefs (compare Ralph Nader to Pat Buchanan). They end up going to such extremes that they almost come full circle. Bottom line is, extremists on both the left and right are so convinced that their way is the only way that they want the government to take their views and force them on everyone.
Exactly. This couldn't have happened to a more deserving group of people. You know what they say, those who live by the sword die by the sword.
Sadly, this is not a new business model. It's just that it has caught up with IT in recent years. Other industries, such as manufacturing and biotech have been suffering from similar extortion schemes for decades.
I doubt they would find it productive to go around monitoring for wifi signals. The reason universities have bans on access points in their policies is so that if a problem arises (interference, someone hacks network via wifi, etc) they can pull the plug on the offending connection and say "you weren't supposed to be running that device here". Just a CYA policy to make things easier for network admins.
RTFA. The access points they're trying to ban are those connected to independent broadband connections, not the university network.
I hope they've fixed their popup blocker with this new version. It seems like some asshole marketroid has found a way around it to pop ads on the screen with the toolbar running. Yea, that's going to be a really successful ad campaign. Serve popups to people who have taken specific effort to block them. When will these idiots get a clue?
I absolutely agree with this approach; it would definitely put a dent in spam profitability. But when it starts happening, they will move to foreign servers anyway to make prosecution a lot more difficult. But when U.S. internet providers threaten to cut off connections to all of the aforementioned countries, which they could do without a problem, then those countries will start taking the anti-spam fight seriously.
Another method of financially hurting spammers, which the government could start doing anytime they wanted to, is the Al Capone style of prosecution. Get them for tax evasion. I highly doubt that spammers report all of their income to the government. There's probably a bunch of general business laws they are violating, in addition to the fact that a lot of what they advertise for is blatantly illegal. The government doesn't need new laws to crack down on spammers, they need to enforce the ones we already have. When word gets around that spammers are being hauled into court, the others will stop soon.
Last I checked, West Virginia wasn't a republican state. Yet they are definitely a welfare state. Not just everyone in the state, but the state itself. If it weren't for Mr. Pork Barrel himself Robert Byrd, the state would totally self destruct and everyone in it would either leave or starve to death. As a side note, Byrd pitched a fit when Bush wanted more money for Iraq, but he has no problem whatsoever with the federal government subsidizing almost every aspect of his mismanaged state. I guess politicians who say they are against government waste are just pissed because it leaves them with less money to waste.
The objective should be to force spammers to migrate to smaller and smaller ISPs, that way the small ISPs which host spammers and few other clients can be completely firewalled with minimal collateral damage. As the ISPs lose customers, which are sick of being blocked, they will be left with only spammers and eventually they'll die out completely. Only then will spamming become too difficult to be profitable.
Yea, that's the trick. Then what do we do when they move the whole company overseas?
Unemployment measures the number of people actively looking for jobs. It doesn't count those that are "long term unemployed". This is the way it is measured it 2004 and the way it was measured in 1996. To say that there are more unemployed people now just because more of them have been unemployed long term is faulty reasoning at best. How do you know there weren't long term unemployed people in 1996? I guarantee there were.
Call me a cynic, but I have a hard time believing that a site called anyonebutbush.com is an objective source of facts and information. If you want to read such a site for your amusement, go right ahead, but to cite it in an argument as a factual source will not convince anyone who was not already a Bush basher.
True. Both Bush and Kerry established early on that this would be the nastiest presidential campaign ever, with no attack too personal. Now that the rules have been set, neither side has the right to complain about ANY attack ads the other party comes up with. For every attack against Kerry, his side has engineered one against Bush that was at least as nasty, and the reverse applies as well.
FYI docking a salaried employee's pay for being late / leaving early and then at the same time requiring unpaid overtime is illegal. Either you're salaried or you're not. If they want to go by straight salary with no overtime pay, then they can't dock for being late. At the very least, this is a horrible working environment and I'm sure you weren't the only one wanting to leave. A hostile current or former employee could cause them some real trouble if they wanted to pursue the pay docking issue with an employment lawyer.
Man, that guy screwed up, what an idiot. He should've sent an ASCII Goatse!
False reporting is a crime. If the school authorities had no credible evidence of a gun, and no verifiable witness report, I'd say they are on very shaky legal grounds. I had thought it would be a cold day in hell before a sheriff arrested a school principal for reporting any kind of violence at school, no matter how remote the threat, but then I learned that a Chicago principal got arrested for falsely reporting a gun at school. I couldn't imagine this happening in a small town, only a big city where cops have real crime to deal with. I'd say not only does this guy have a shot at a lawsuit against the school (retaliation, unreasonable search, false reporting, defamation of character, emotional trauma, denial of education, etc.), but he should try to get the principal criminally charged. Wasting police time on a blatantly false crime report hurts society as a whole, and could even put someone's life at stake if there were a real emergency at the same time.
It seems like it would work, but I'm sure there would be teachers who would get very good at test taking but continue to spew drivel to their students who would learn nothing. Ever had a college professor who was brilliant and well known for research but couldn't explain his way out of a paper bag?
There's a reason for these tests: students wouldn't learn shit without them. What else would give teachers motivation to teach something other than feel good politically correct non-factual crap? There are many talented teachers who care about education, but there are many idiots teaching as well. Testing is the closest thing we have to protect kids from idiot teachers. If schools were teaching rigorous material in the first place, they wouldn't have to prepare students for the test. It's not like these tests are especially hard to begin with; all they do is verify that a high school graduate can perform at a minimum of a 10th grade level.
Like I said, I wish I was wrong, but this is the attitude that many business leaders and authority figures have. I'm not saying that everyone should just accept this fact and do nothing about it, but everyone must be aware that this line of thinking exists so that they do not find themselves surprisingly punished for stepping on someone's toes like the grandparent poster did. By all means I admire people who fight to change an established system that is wrong, but it is worth noting that doing such things takes guts and hard work and there will be the occaisional setback. If fighting for change was easy, it wouldn't be a fight and everyone could do it.
Agreed. I've always said that making schools a religion free zone is just as bad as requiring everyone to pray to the Christian God. The constitution provides freedom to practice the religion of your choice, not a guarantee that you will never be exposed to someone else's religion.
Better you learned that lesson at an early age rather than on the job, where your opinions can get you fired (some people never understand this, like slashdot member CubicleDrone). As much as it kills me to say it, the dean was absolutely right. That's not the way society should be, but it always will be. In the United States or anywhere else. Speaking out is very courageous, but as you learned it carries a price. The establishment feels very uncomfortable when someone catches on to their game and publicly calls them out. I guess what you have to ask yourself, when confronted with a situation like this, is what is my opinion worth? If it's something you aren't too passionate about, it's probably not worth making a scene. If it's more important, then you have to weigh the consequences and see if you can afford to suffer them. No matter what some people may say, free speech is not free.
In all seriousness, I'll be surprised if we don't see one of those within 2 years. Now that picture phones are widespread, it's only the next logical progression. The ultimate in public annoyances all packaged together, with a built in loudspeaker of course.
I thought it was the Jews that ran the world. At least that's what most of the conspiracy theories say. So I'll give you points for creativity.
I think the normal moderation system should not apply for the politics section. We don't need to make it all too easy for someone with strong political views and mod points to go through marking Troll on every opinion they disagree with. We get enough of that on the stories that are only semi-political.