As others have noted, no. You're talking about Chrisitan Fundamentalists. The NeoCons are the heirs of Nixon, in every way, shape, and form. Granted, there's a lot of overlap and common ground between Fundies and Neocons, so your confusion is understandable.
Scenario 2:
Boss : "We sell them this software, it is expensive and useless but tell them it will solve their network problems"
Techie : "I'd rather not, I don't want to make my whole profession look bad by spreading lies.
Boss : "do that or I'll fire you for being unprofessional."
Techie: Well... I'll consider it over my lunch.
(after lunch break...)
Techie: OK, boss, I've detailed my complaint in a letter I just posted registered return receipt mail to our company legal department. I also sent one to myself the same way in case I need to mention this conversation to the local assistant DA. So, if you fire me without specific reason, I now have grounds against the company and you personally for unlawful termination of employment. Doubtless you'll screw over my performance reviews to get those grounds within a few months, so I'll be looking for my new job between now and then... unless you resign or get fired first. Oh, and mention this ever again and I'll contact the customer, explain the problem to them, say they shouldn't buy that product for that purpose but that there are a few good apples here -- but warn that YOU aren't one of them.
Boss: Bastard!
Techie: No, if I was a real BOFH, I'd have taped the conversation about it so I could blackmail you over trying to involve me in conspiracy to commit Federal wire and mail fraud.
Remember: sometimes you need to burn the bridge you're standing on, but be ready to start running instantly before you start the flames.
No, but $100-200/hour depending on the skill levels required sounds perfectly acceptable to me.
The problem with Best Buy's Geek Squad is not primarily the level of skill, but the level of ethics (like doctors and lawyers) about Confidentiality which practitioners should have... and demonstrate. The problem with Best Buy's methods seems to be that they're more worried about having a bad reputation than bad performance, and are focusing on compliance with company policy rather than on the actual ethics of the conduct. They'll end up with people who don't get caught or admit to breaking the rules, but who don't care about doing the right thing for the customer.
Quietly trying stings like The Consumerist did would work better. Consulting a professional ethicist rather than lawyers or PR types on how to fix the problem might work better.
They will then turn to David Hume's classic argument that there is no reason whatsoever that anybody should trust the results of inductive reasoning (i.e. they will say that evolution can never really be proved).
One may rebut that pure mathematics, such as set theory, is not subject to that limitation; that all work in the the real world is based on induction on finite ordered sequence of data observations; and that it may be mathematically shown (see Vitanyi and Li and Wallace and Dowe [WARNING: Postscript file of heavy duty math]) that the simplest expressed explanation for a finite data will most probably be correctly predictive.
For some reason, I've yet to meet a religious fundamentalist who can understand any set theory work done after Goedel's time...much less come up with a coherent response. Possibly because they're not that big into education?
Their is no place for religion in modern society. Nobody should expect their irrational fantasies to be taken seriously. Dressing up a bunch of myths and calling them religion does not make them valid. To see blind faith as a virtue is insane. Religious faith should be viewed as evidence of an inability to reason.
Not quite. First, most religions provide a social and moral framework that has (in most cases) survived, adapted, and proven workable over timescales of at least a century. From an evolutionary standpoint, that's progress not trivially to be thrown out. (Track down a copy of David Sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral; reading Pinker's The Blank Slate first might give further perspective.) Second, even blind faith is a survival virtue in some cases. The absolute delusional conviction that you CAN get out of a mess without dying leads one to keep trying, even when the chances are incredibly slim and when lying back and dying would be easier. Religious faith in the sense of acting 100% certain on questions when substantial doubt does exist or the proposition is fundamentally untestable (such as "Does our existence have any higher purpose?"), while understanding that doubt does exist and the answer may be "no", is the moral equivalent of a mathematician specializing in math where the axiom of choice is affirmed.
That said, I would agree that far greater skepticism should be shown to tenets unique to particular creeds (such as the need to eat filet mignon) than to those that nigh all creeds share (such as variants of the Golden Rule); and furthermore,
that blind faith in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence -- such as cdesign proponentsists show about Evolution -- is evidence of either inability or unwillingness to reason. But for socializing small children and other simple sociopaths, religion isn't the worst tool out there.
Tell the advertiser "no, you can't influence our reviews, take your business elsewhere".
"We'll be sure to have our columnist do a followup piece on how you tried to get him fired for not liking the taste of your bunghole, specifically listing any competitors who've earned earlier good reviews honestly. But if you back down now, we'll lean on him enough that when writing about this, he'll say in the interest of maintaining our journalistic integrity you reconsidered and withdrew your threat."
The problem is the dominance of advertising revenue. Short term, yeah, yanking a major contract will hit the budget hard. The key is, if you bend over to lick advertisers backside with everything you put out, your readership will drift away.... which more slowly but even more surely kills off the publication... and the taint sticks to those who move on.
The advertisers (in both cases) should have been offered a modest concession, like a chance to publish a rebuttal article disputing the points, but intimidiation deserves retaliation — such as offering an ad rate discount for a few months to any competitors who agree to say "We think OffendedCo are all assholes for not respecting your independence!" for the columnist's byline. Say, 15% off for other current advertisers and 30% off for new customers. Who knows? With luck, you might come out better funded than before... and less dependent on the impact of any single advertiser.
Maybe I've been perusing the BOFH archives too much? Nah, that would more probably have me thinking about a lime pit.
However, in the the void of a government of Iraq, and undefended borders, you get the rise of insurgents. Military solutions don't really work there.
"Diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means." — Zhou En Lai
It was a failure in the planning, where they didn't make plans for what happens after they're abruptly running the country... or even worse, look at the old set of contingency plans from Desert Storm.
add to that the three times difference in price between OEM and retail
Closer to two times; I've never seen an OEM XP Pro COA for under $119 from a reputable source, and it's currently running about $140 from most on-line dealers. This means, if you move it even ONCE, it just about pays for itself.
Home users will have little choice but to migrate as and when they buy thier next new PC
Well, they could go out and buy one copy of the ~$300 Full Retail XP, which you are allowed to transfer from old PC (IE: remove it) to a new PC every 90 days (or sooner, if the old machine failed). For the first time in quite a while, there's a major reason to buy the retail box instead of the (untransferable) OEM!
Admittedly, both salting and complex passwords increase the size of the database involved. However, there's no reason one couldn't generate those databases as well. In fact, one of the Google results is for an on-line Password hash database. So, all a group of hackers has to do is put the thing online in some manner of distributed storage, and wait for Google to index all the pages for 'em.
Fortunately, the problem grows exponentially with the number of allowable characters. Unfortunately, so does Google's headaches. I suspect Google will take some "don't be evil" measures on this shortly, if only to keep their Data Storage department from needing to give Earth a second moon....
So your day job supports people who are learning some of the things they need to know for jobs in... advertising, and worse. How do you sleep at night?
First, it's only the worse: in my area I only handle the engineers and associated geeks, most of whom don't go into advertising (except to hide the body). Second, I primarily deal with the faculty, not their students. Third, the terms "PFY" and "support" are only on very casual acquaintance terms, barring prospects for blackmail, bribery, or getting laid. Fourth, six years in an even more morally repugnant job (four as management). Fifth, a sociopathically open-minded morality. And last, a cup of chamomile tea with a half shot of Barenjager before bed.
Perhaps I ought to have added to the aforementioned scenario that I also have exactly the sympathy for the paranoid Boston authorities that I do for the STD... though the old fashioned phrase "Social Disease" would be clearer.
"The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care?"
That's only the second most important part. The most important part is the audience's love of music... because unless that is there, they won't care, and they won't pay.
The RIAA, by trying to reduce the channels that music leaks through without revenue, along with their increasing push to market shine on a sexpot rather than musical talent, isn't eroding their customer base, but it's underlying foundations. This is why suing Girl Scouts for singing popular songs was utterly asinine. My older sister spent twelve summers at Girl Scout camp between her time as a camper and counselor. Peter, Paul, and Mary was a major chunk of their songbook at that time. Guess how many of their albums she now owns? Guess who is the only musical act her impressionable "baby brother" has ever bothered to see live?
Gods, these people are morons... and the talentless ones are in charge.
Maybe if you folks would stop squabbling with each other, issues would actually be resolved and we wouldn't be as fucked as we are.
Mmm... no.
I periodically amuse myself with baiting conservatives in what may loosely be called debate. The majority of conservatives seem unwilling to re-examine their fundamental premises to see if they might possibly be mistaken... even when the observed world differs wildly from their conceptual model. Liberals, on the other hand, are willing to reconsider their own viewpoint; the worst do constantly, without any conviction that some answers really can be wrong.
Ideas are put to the test in many ways, and like anything else that replicates, mutates, and experiences selective pressure, they evolve. I admit the current means of debate is inefficient; however, don't see how stopping would be an improvement when conservatives refuse to change their positions, no matter how blatantly wrong they are proven by ultimate test of The Real World. Blind unity means putting all of your eggs in one basket, and that's a very risky strategy. Yes, we are all Americans. We scream, squabble, and fuss at one another, and have for all of history. This is not a weakness, as long as we do not let our disagreements on some issues blind us to our unity on others, and as long as we remember the dangers of full-fledged civil war. Honest dissent is not treason.
Howsover badly and ineptly it has been started, we have begun a culture clash that will dominate 21st century world history as the Cold war did the 20th (if we are lucky) or as the Hundred Years War did 14th century Europe. Continuing the debate until someone somehow comes up with a strategy that is neither rooted in delusions of our own power nor delusions about the threat is better than stupidly jumping off one cliff en masse.
What is intolerable, however, is for government officials to have a lot of information on private citizens, but for private citizens to have little information on the government.
Analog SF had a story on that about 1981 or so. Anyone could look for anything that was recorded anywhere... although the act of looking for it was also recorded.
This reminds me of a BOFH episode where he'd added all sorts of crazy clauses to his contract, which entitled him to all sorts of ridiculous things. Like declaring a night as the pub as business expenses or something.
I believe the BOFH just claims his pub visits as a business expense because of the number of IT meetings held there. That's easy enough. The tricky part is justifying including the two thousand percent "tip" to the "barmaid". However, there are several episodes that mention some of the more interesting aspects of his contract. EG:
"Your contract gives the company the right to vary acceptable behaviour policies."
"Not my contract," I say
"I think you'll find it does," the HR Guy responds.
"No, mine was sent as an electronic document, so I just cut out the clauses I didn't like, added a couple of my own, printed two copies and signed them. Then your guy signed them too - probably without checking. Or maybe he liked the idea of clause F.3 that I'm allowed to call Managers... 'knobface'."
"As impressed as they were about the numerous strange clauses in your contract - their favourite being the extortionate penalty payment for remaining at work after a UFO sighting in the vicinity of the building - they believe that there's nothing to stop us using you to provide services to other companies."
I want to be a BOFH when I grow more experienced. Alas, I'm merely PFY grade still....
Make a copy of the signed-and-modified version to retain for your files. Also, I(AmNotALawyer) would make a note to send a request in about two to three weeks to HR (assuming the alarm bells haven't gone off yet) for a copy of my personnel file including all ancillary and supplemental agreements (which you should already have). Presumably, this will yield a back a copy of the modified form signed by a company droid. At which point it's binding enough to make most major legal departments shuffle their feet a bit... and suggest management spend a year working on sufficiently solid documentation to fire you.
Pulling a BOFH and inserting a clause granting you the right to call your manager "Knobface" meanwhile is, of course, only for those who have serious authority issues.
This might ( most likely does ) violate most any ISP's eula.
The last time I checked my Embarq (formerly Sprint) DSL TOS and AUP, it not only didn't violate it, it discussed a few requirements for when you shared your access. (Namely, that your end-users also not $%^& up the network hardware upstream from you.) YMMV.
The EFF have to find something in that discovery to win their action, and that is the uphill battle....
No, I think the real uphill battle is to get the appeals courts to treat "State Secrets! State Secrets! Look at the Wookie!" with the dignity it deserves. Once they get a court to say that State Secrets can't be used to hide State Crimes, at least one or two of the cases ought to be downhill.
I just checked; they're not even available in the custom colors. Doubtless the removal of the Twenty-third color is part of a plot by the Illuminati to weaken the Discordians!
Slashdot Mirror
These people are called Neo-Conservatives.
As others have noted, no. You're talking about Chrisitan Fundamentalists. The NeoCons are the heirs of Nixon, in every way, shape, and form. Granted, there's a lot of overlap and common ground between Fundies and Neocons, so your confusion is understandable.
Scenario 2:
Boss : "We sell them this software, it is expensive and useless but tell them it will solve their network problems"
Techie : "I'd rather not, I don't want to make my whole profession look bad by spreading lies.
Boss : "do that or I'll fire you for being unprofessional."
Techie: Well... I'll consider it over my lunch.
(after lunch break...)
Techie: OK, boss, I've detailed my complaint in a letter I just posted registered return receipt mail to our company legal department. I also sent one to myself the same way in case I need to mention this conversation to the local assistant DA. So, if you fire me without specific reason, I now have grounds against the company and you personally for unlawful termination of employment. Doubtless you'll screw over my performance reviews to get those grounds within a few months, so I'll be looking for my new job between now and then... unless you resign or get fired first. Oh, and mention this ever again and I'll contact the customer, explain the problem to them, say they shouldn't buy that product for that purpose but that there are a few good apples here -- but warn that YOU aren't one of them.
Boss: Bastard!
Techie: No, if I was a real BOFH, I'd have taped the conversation about it so I could blackmail you over trying to involve me in conspiracy to commit Federal wire and mail fraud.
Remember: sometimes you need to burn the bridge you're standing on, but be ready to start running instantly before you start the flames.
No, but $100-200/hour depending on the skill levels required sounds perfectly acceptable to me.
The problem with Best Buy's Geek Squad is not primarily the level of skill, but the level of ethics (like doctors and lawyers) about Confidentiality which practitioners should have... and demonstrate. The problem with Best Buy's methods seems to be that they're more worried about having a bad reputation than bad performance, and are focusing on compliance with company policy rather than on the actual ethics of the conduct. They'll end up with people who don't get caught or admit to breaking the rules, but who don't care about doing the right thing for the customer.
Quietly trying stings like The Consumerist did would work better. Consulting a professional ethicist rather than lawyers or PR types on how to fix the problem might work better.
They will then turn to David Hume's classic argument that there is no reason whatsoever that anybody should trust the results of inductive reasoning (i.e. they will say that evolution can never really be proved).
One may rebut that pure mathematics, such as set theory, is not subject to that limitation; that all work in the the real world is based on induction on finite ordered sequence of data observations; and that it may be mathematically shown (see Vitanyi and Li and Wallace and Dowe [WARNING: Postscript file of heavy duty math]) that the simplest expressed explanation for a finite data will most probably be correctly predictive.
For some reason, I've yet to meet a religious fundamentalist who can understand any set theory work done after Goedel's time...much less come up with a coherent response. Possibly because they're not that big into education?
Their is no place for religion in modern society. Nobody should expect their irrational fantasies to be taken seriously. Dressing up a bunch of myths and calling them religion does not make them valid. To see blind faith as a virtue is insane. Religious faith should be viewed as evidence of an inability to reason.
Not quite. First, most religions provide a social and moral framework that has (in most cases) survived, adapted, and proven workable over timescales of at least a century. From an evolutionary standpoint, that's progress not trivially to be thrown out. (Track down a copy of David Sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral; reading Pinker's The Blank Slate first might give further perspective.) Second, even blind faith is a survival virtue in some cases. The absolute delusional conviction that you CAN get out of a mess without dying leads one to keep trying, even when the chances are incredibly slim and when lying back and dying would be easier. Religious faith in the sense of acting 100% certain on questions when substantial doubt does exist or the proposition is fundamentally untestable (such as "Does our existence have any higher purpose?"), while understanding that doubt does exist and the answer may be "no", is the moral equivalent of a mathematician specializing in math where the axiom of choice is affirmed.
That said, I would agree that far greater skepticism should be shown to tenets unique to particular creeds (such as the need to eat filet mignon) than to those that nigh all creeds share (such as variants of the Golden Rule); and furthermore, that blind faith in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence -- such as cdesign proponentsists show about Evolution -- is evidence of either inability or unwillingness to reason. But for socializing small children and other simple sociopaths, religion isn't the worst tool out there.
Tell the advertiser "no, you can't influence our reviews, take your business elsewhere".
"We'll be sure to have our columnist do a followup piece on how you tried to get him fired for not liking the taste of your bunghole, specifically listing any competitors who've earned earlier good reviews honestly. But if you back down now, we'll lean on him enough that when writing about this, he'll say in the interest of maintaining our journalistic integrity you reconsidered and withdrew your threat."
The problem is the dominance of advertising revenue. Short term, yeah, yanking a major contract will hit the budget hard. The key is, if you bend over to lick advertisers backside with everything you put out, your readership will drift away.... which more slowly but even more surely kills off the publication... and the taint sticks to those who move on.
The advertisers (in both cases) should have been offered a modest concession, like a chance to publish a rebuttal article disputing the points, but intimidiation deserves retaliation — such as offering an ad rate discount for a few months to any competitors who agree to say "We think OffendedCo are all assholes for not respecting your independence!" for the columnist's byline. Say, 15% off for other current advertisers and 30% off for new customers. Who knows? With luck, you might come out better funded than before... and less dependent on the impact of any single advertiser.
Maybe I've been perusing the BOFH archives too much? Nah, that would more probably have me thinking about a lime pit.
However, in the the void of a government of Iraq, and undefended borders, you get the rise of insurgents. Military solutions don't really work there.
"Diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means." — Zhou En Lai
It was a failure in the planning, where they didn't make plans for what happens after they're abruptly running the country... or even worse, look at the old set of contingency plans from Desert Storm.
add to that the three times difference in price between OEM and retail
Closer to two times; I've never seen an OEM XP Pro COA for under $119 from a reputable source, and it's currently running about $140 from most on-line dealers. This means, if you move it even ONCE, it just about pays for itself.
Home users will have little choice but to migrate as and when they buy thier next new PC
Well, they could go out and buy one copy of the ~$300 Full Retail XP, which you are allowed to transfer from old PC (IE: remove it) to a new PC every 90 days (or sooner, if the old machine failed). For the first time in quite a while, there's a major reason to buy the retail box instead of the (untransferable) OEM!
Let us worship Aphrodite
Even though she's rather flighty
She may not wear her nightie
So that's good enough for me!
Give me that Real Old Time Religion....
Admittedly, both salting and complex passwords increase the size of the database involved. However, there's no reason one couldn't generate those databases as well. In fact, one of the Google results is for an on-line Password hash database. So, all a group of hackers has to do is put the thing online in some manner of distributed storage, and wait for Google to index all the pages for 'em.
Fortunately, the problem grows exponentially with the number of allowable characters. Unfortunately, so does Google's headaches. I suspect Google will take some "don't be evil" measures on this shortly, if only to keep their Data Storage department from needing to give Earth a second moon....
So your day job supports people who are learning some of the things they need to know for jobs in... advertising, and worse. How do you sleep at night?
First, it's only the worse: in my area I only handle the engineers and associated geeks, most of whom don't go into advertising (except to hide the body). Second, I primarily deal with the faculty, not their students. Third, the terms "PFY" and "support" are only on very casual acquaintance terms, barring prospects for blackmail, bribery, or getting laid. Fourth, six years in an even more morally repugnant job (four as management). Fifth, a sociopathically open-minded morality. And last, a cup of chamomile tea with a half shot of Barenjager before bed.
Perhaps I ought to have added to the aforementioned scenario that I also have exactly the sympathy for the paranoid Boston authorities that I do for the STD... though the old fashioned phrase "Social Disease" would be clearer.
He's an artist and a VJ who was doing an advertising gig.
And I have exactly the sympathy for him that I'd give a prostitute who caught AIDS in 2005 from having unprotected anal sex.
(Day job = university PFY admin)
Can you say "guncotton" children?
For added challenge, find red and blue dyes that act as ignition catalysts when wetted and mixed.
What is it to "show cause?"
As I(AmNotALawyer) understand it, "put up or shut up".
"The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care?"
That's only the second most important part. The most important part is the audience's love of music... because unless that is there, they won't care, and they won't pay.
The RIAA, by trying to reduce the channels that music leaks through without revenue, along with their increasing push to market shine on a sexpot rather than musical talent, isn't eroding their customer base, but it's underlying foundations. This is why suing Girl Scouts for singing popular songs was utterly asinine. My older sister spent twelve summers at Girl Scout camp between her time as a camper and counselor. Peter, Paul, and Mary was a major chunk of their songbook at that time. Guess how many of their albums she now owns? Guess who is the only musical act her impressionable "baby brother" has ever bothered to see live?
Gods, these people are morons... and the talentless ones are in charge.
Maybe if you folks would stop squabbling with each other, issues would actually be resolved and we wouldn't be as fucked as we are.
Mmm... no.
I periodically amuse myself with baiting conservatives in what may loosely be called debate. The majority of conservatives seem unwilling to re-examine their fundamental premises to see if they might possibly be mistaken... even when the observed world differs wildly from their conceptual model. Liberals, on the other hand, are willing to reconsider their own viewpoint; the worst do constantly, without any conviction that some answers really can be wrong.
Ideas are put to the test in many ways, and like anything else that replicates, mutates, and experiences selective pressure, they evolve. I admit the current means of debate is inefficient; however, don't see how stopping would be an improvement when conservatives refuse to change their positions, no matter how blatantly wrong they are proven by ultimate test of The Real World. Blind unity means putting all of your eggs in one basket, and that's a very risky strategy. Yes, we are all Americans. We scream, squabble, and fuss at one another, and have for all of history. This is not a weakness, as long as we do not let our disagreements on some issues blind us to our unity on others, and as long as we remember the dangers of full-fledged civil war. Honest dissent is not treason.
Howsover badly and ineptly it has been started, we have begun a culture clash that will dominate 21st century world history as the Cold war did the 20th (if we are lucky) or as the Hundred Years War did 14th century Europe. Continuing the debate until someone somehow comes up with a strategy that is neither rooted in delusions of our own power nor delusions about the threat is better than stupidly jumping off one cliff en masse.
Runs it flat out at whatever the highest power it can output until something fries.
Or it gets hit with the incoming heavy artillery... which I understand is oft the more likely scenario in that mode.
What is intolerable, however, is for government officials to have a lot of information on private citizens, but for private citizens to have little information on the government.
Analog SF had a story on that about 1981 or so. Anyone could look for anything that was recorded anywhere... although the act of looking for it was also recorded.
This reminds me of a BOFH episode where he'd added all sorts of crazy clauses to his contract, which entitled him to all sorts of ridiculous things. Like declaring a night as the pub as business expenses or something.
I believe the BOFH just claims his pub visits as a business expense because of the number of IT meetings held there. That's easy enough. The tricky part is justifying including the two thousand percent "tip" to the "barmaid". However, there are several episodes that mention some of the more interesting aspects of his contract. EG:
In another episode...
I want to be a BOFH when I grow more experienced. Alas, I'm merely PFY grade still....
Make sure to initial your crossing-out;
Make a copy of the signed-and-modified version to retain for your files. Also, I(AmNotALawyer) would make a note to send a request in about two to three weeks to HR (assuming the alarm bells haven't gone off yet) for a copy of my personnel file including all ancillary and supplemental agreements (which you should already have). Presumably, this will yield a back a copy of the modified form signed by a company droid. At which point it's binding enough to make most major legal departments shuffle their feet a bit... and suggest management spend a year working on sufficiently solid documentation to fire you.
Pulling a BOFH and inserting a clause granting you the right to call your manager "Knobface" meanwhile is, of course, only for those who have serious authority issues.
This might ( most likely does ) violate most any ISP's eula.
The last time I checked my Embarq (formerly Sprint) DSL TOS and AUP, it not only didn't violate it, it discussed a few requirements for when you shared your access. (Namely, that your end-users also not $%^& up the network hardware upstream from you.) YMMV.
I believe this was a president, full of hubris, [...]
My main problem with this theory is that it presumes that the President was the prime mover in this plan.
The EFF have to find something in that discovery to win their action, and that is the uphill battle....
No, I think the real uphill battle is to get the appeals courts to treat "State Secrets! State Secrets! Look at the Wookie!" with the dignity it deserves. Once they get a court to say that State Secrets can't be used to hide State Crimes, at least one or two of the cases ought to be downhill.
I still say they should bring back the tan M&M's.
I just checked; they're not even available in the custom colors. Doubtless the removal of the Twenty-third color is part of a plot by the Illuminati to weaken the Discordians!