I call BLULLSHIT! In these 'search' cases the law makes absolutely no fucking sense at all (how do I really feel about this? don't get me started... too late.).
If police do an 'illegal' search on a murderer's house and find a gun that proves his guilt, it proves his guilt. The mental mastribation that lawyers and judges go through to say that the gun is not admisable in court is pure unadulterated bullshit. It is throwing common sense and logic out the window. A fact is a fact, and denying that fact is completely stupid. The proof that the person is a murderer does not really go away even though the lawyers (judges are lawyers too) want to put on blinders. What is really happening is that society is being punished (allowing a murderer to walk free) for a policeman's crime (the illegal search). If one criminal were to break into the murderer's home and steal the gun, and later the police recover it from the thief, it could be used in court as proving the murderer had possession of a murder weapon... even though it was obtained through illegal activities (which the thief will be punished for). Bottom line: if the police broke the law, punish them, not society. The evidence should be still admisable, but the police involved in the illegal search should be punished with enough of a penalty that they won't do something like that at whim. Punish the person who did the crime, not everone else. And don't give any of the 'the police are an extension of society' crap. Police are people too.
This goes for all similar circumstances. A guy pulled over for speeding and the police officer not having reasonable call to search the car still finds 20 Kg of cocain (or whatever your preference) in the trunk. The guy still had 20 kg of cocain in the trunk. etc etc etc. The cop still broke the law. Punishing one person's bad behaviour by not punishing another's behaviour is just plain stupid.
Anyway, stupid rulings and interpretations of the law like this show that we have unfortunately drifted into having legal systems and not justice systems. Somehow we should take a lot of the power out of the lawyers hands to prevent them from coming up with these convoluted brain farts. I know as a now repatriated Canadian that I would love to be able to elect the judges... and would love to have ballots to recall supreme court justices during every federal election.
As with their french speaking breathren, Quebec has some funny notions. That is why some girl was able to successfully sue a photographer for taking her picture while she was sitting in a public place. It doesn't say in this article, but from what I can remember of it (it was a few years ago), she was a homeless person, and the photographer was doing some sort of editorial piece for some publication. I had to shake my head a groan when I read it the first time... actually, I still do even when I read it now.
Customer's feedback should be listened to, and I bet even you do it. The problem is, in a corporate environment, a developer's work has far too many end users and he/she cannot possibly take in all the feedback. That is why they have requirements and design teams between them and the customer. They filter the feedback/feature requrests and figure out what can possibly fit. My impression is that it is the communication between the designer and developer in this process that they are trying to improve so that the developer doesn't just receive orders from above that are technically difficult to achieve. i.e. having an idea of what the code is doing can help streamline and improve the design. I have seen this done in several places where the requirements person or designer does not program, but understands through close relations with the developers how the code is implemented. They can then understand what is sensible and even do-able when requirements are added and design is taking place.
Since you are a 'one man show' you probably do this intrinsically.
Having an Wikipedia alternative where a real (I hope) expert watches entries
Ahhhh... we all know the line, but who watches the watchers. There will always be a bias when people are involved. I guess however, that having a predictable bias is better than having the article change every few seconds... or will that still happen? Have to wait and see.
They do. And unfortunately I have direct experience with these people... and for the record, I *mostly* hate it.
Where I work, some of the architects and designers have decided to store more than a little XML in Oracle tables. In some cases this is not an entirely onerus decision (i.e. can make sense). e.g. if you are storing standardized configuration information in XML that will be queried as a string from the table and can be used by/passed to different consumer services/applications as an atomic unit (and which is not used in whole or in part as an sql 'where' predicate), then it can work.
However any time you may need to query information contained in the XML string, it seems to me to be kind of retarded to store it in a relational table. e.g. I have seen cases where IDs or service types etc. are stored in a large XML string in a field in a record, and eventually someone wants to retrieve a record based on that ID which is in the XML. This means parsing the field storing the XML in your query, killing any chances on performance since you are likely going to need a 'like' clause with wild cards at the front and back of the search term (even if the RDBMS has a built in XML search tool, the field still needs to be parsed). Unfortunately, people buy in to XML so much that some think that it is still OK to store XML in database tables... even in these cases.
I personally think it is generally a bad idea to store XML in a relational database as eventually the 2nd situation will come about (that is what experience tells me). You will then find that the practice totally negates the benefit of a relational database and sql (language) to easily and quickly retrieve relational data. I have seen this bite people many times. Ahhh... to use a technology, even a useful one, just because it is hip... but that is just my experience.
Made me think of Grannies Perls of Wisdom I read on Java Ranch (I first found it about 6 or 7 years ago...): "Testing can show the presence of bugs, but not their absence."
I agree and disagree with you. As long as the programmer properly unit tested his/her work, then you can shift blame to QA. I have seen developers not properly unit test their code too many times, relying on the QA department to do their work for them. But yes, unless it happens in very rare circumstances (is this the case?) someone should have caught this in testing somewhere... but not necessarily just QA.
First, the obligatory IANAL. Second, the only way I can think about this is to ask some questions and try to answer them. So I'll talk to myself here (why not do in public what we...err I do in private.:-D ).
The question is, when is it a crime to steal some sort of currency?
I would think it is when it is real world money backed by a government, or has there is a direct correlation with real world money. For example if someone were to steel U.S. dollars, European Euros, or Canadian Dollars then this would be crime.
Ok, so my next question is, what are the laws on coupon money?
For example, there is a real chain of stores in Canada called Canadian Tire (a big box automotive/hardware/home goods store) that really gives away "Canadian Tire Money" with every purchase (something like 10 cents on 5 dollars... not exact but an approximation). The Canadian Tire Money (really a kind of coupon) is redeemable at face value at any Canadian tire store on future purchases. What would be the law if someone stole Canadian Tire Money. I personally would think it is a crime since it is backed by Canadian Tire stores by providing real actual value in real world items (you can buy a set of socket wrenches, or a coffee maker with the 'money').
If I were to go by my musings so far, then since the game company does not back the game money, and expressely prohibits trading it for real world money, then stealing game money in the game shouldn't be a a real world crime.
Another question: Does the game provide for the characters to be thieves (and is it expected that there will be these kinds of characters in the game)?
The answer to this last and key question is a resounding *YES*.
A scam is the act of obtaining goods from other players through misinformation, confusion, pressure or by taking advantage of basic trust. Players enter into business dealings with others at their own risk and are strongly urged to exercise good judgment and common sense when trading.
We are not talking about a crime in the real world, it was part of the game (even if it might be a crime in the game, it still is dealt with *in*the*game*). Finally, unless the game limits how thievery takes place (which it doesn't appear that they do), then the character is free to practice their thievery in whatever manner they choose. A confidence scam (a 'con') is just another form of thievery. In fact, it looks like cons/scams are integral to this particular game. And this is probably why the game company does not 'back' the game money or allow it to be traded in the real world: to make sure no one tries to tie theft in the game to theft of real world money. You are in a 'make believe' world that allows theft. The 'make believe police' should arrest the person or whatever form of 'make believe' justice should be done. Otherwise it is no longer a game.
People are probably hurt that they got duped and lost their money to a clever thief. But it is in a game... remember that. Learn from it to make sure you and others don't fall prey to it again, both in and out of the game.
Someone may try to reclaim lost game money in a civil court. They might be able to claim that they spent a lot of real money to play the game long enought to amass whatever game money they had, and which was stolen *in the game*. But since the game allows for this behaviour (and in fact it is an expected part of the game), I doubt that they would have a leg to stand on in court. However, if they sued in the U.S. and claimed it got them so distraught that they also spilled a hot cup of McDonalds (tm) coffee in their lap, they might win.
Bottom line: Don't get so wound up in the game that you confuse your 'game life' with everyone else's 'real life'.
End of mad ramblings... transmission complete... engage tinfoil hat...
Isn't the same true for money, to a certain extent? For instance, while it's highly illegal, a banking establishment could simply add money to a computerized account balance. Less trivially but perfectly legally, the United States (or any other country) could decide to print a whole mess of money.
No. There are rules about this. Money in a bank is real money, usually backed by some government, and limited in supply. If the bank were to just add more money to your account, they would be taking it from someone else. Unless that person (or entity) agreed to them transferring funds from their account(s) to another, that would be larceny. A crime. The U.S. could print more money but usually doesn't as like any precious material, the more of it there is, the less it is worth. This would destabalize economies.
The point is, unless the crime can spill over into the real world, the so called 'crime' in the computer game is only in the computer game. The only way the crime could spill over into the real world is if the game money had a real world value in term of dollars and not just hurt feelings. Since the game company does not back the game currency in the real world, no harm was done and this wouldn't be a crime. That is how I understand it.
"I am trying to design a rather complex web page and am wondering if there are any tools which will allow me to make non-functioning mock-ups of each page so that a programmer can work from them.
From the OP's post, they obviously have the luxury of breaking down the job roles... Also if you read, the OP wanted something that would work in Linux. Macromedia products work on windows. If you are a developer, learn to read the specifications (The post's title is: Making Website Mock-Ups in Linux?).:-/
Yes I do think of others, but that is a completetely moot point.
When I buy a milkshake or soda at the local fast food shop, whatever size I order, I expect it to be full. If they are running low I still expect them to fill the cup or give me a refund. It would completely unacceptable for them to say, "we are running low, can you please share your milkshake with the next 20 people in line?" If they sell me a medium size drink, I want and *expect* a filled medium sized drink. If they screwed up and didn't order enough supply to meet the demand, that is their f***ing problem, not mine. They should learn to manage their business better, or put signs up that say, "we reserve the right to only give you half of what you paid for."
The only time this would be different is we were on a desert island somewhere and had to share in order to stay alive, and had enough to keep us all alive. But we are not talking about that, we are talking about purchasing a product in a capitalistic economic system. I earn my money so that I can spend it on the things important to me. Charities are important too, but my internet connection is not a charity. Nor is it an outlet for someone's socialistic/communistic tendancies. We can debate whether an ISP connection is a luxury or necessity, but that is not the point here... what is, is that the ISP connection is a commercial product. It is something that is paid for, and I expect what I pay for.
As others mentioned, if the ISP wants to sell a maximum burst 1, 3, 6, whatever Mb/sec rate, then they should advertise just that. If they say they are selling me an 8 Mb/sec pipe, then that is what I want. I get charged more for that than I would if I ordered a 256 Kb/sec pipe. If they want to sell by bandwidth, then they should do that.
In related news, telephone companies are limiting the amount of speaking their customers are allowed in order to save bandwidth. Customers will be asked to communicate in clicking-like sounds similar to dolphins. "We believe that this will serve our customers better, and allow them to better utilize the services that we offer," an industry spokesperson said.
The presentation is somewhat important. Instead of teaching the kids powerpoint at that stage, they should be teaching them the content that would go in a presentation. Oh, things like math, history, geography, etc. I think those things are much more important than learning powerpoint. But then again, maybe this is a sign of the shit that our society is sinking to... kind of like quantity is taking over, over quality of content. Sure, the kid has a great power point presentation, but if the substance is shit, then school failed them.
Which is more soul destroying? Being told by email that you are fired; or admitting to yourself you don't have the nuts to tell someone in person that you are terminating their job?
Even if they did only have one lawyer, he deserves a vacation. (And yes I know that there are more lawyers involved and the he was only needed here because of his specific history in the case.)
However, as with almost 100% of the people in the IT industry, why didn't he have a contact phone number. I have a cell phone that people can contact me at, even on vacation. 99.99% of the time, work respects my vacation and does not call. Those times they do, they are really stuck. It is part of the job, and the higher up the tree you get (or the closer to the root depending on how you like to look at it;-), the more so. Now I am not saying lawyers suffer the same kind job 'realities' (for want of a better word) as IT folk, but when a guy who is one of the active lawyers defending against a multi-billion dollar law suit goes missing, even while on vacation... I would be thinking about whether his long term career plans at IBM are being revisited right now.
Does this mean that you think that suicide is a smart thing to do? Or are you saying that slash dotters are stupid? Or are you saying slash dotters are as smart as goldfish?
I made a reply to another comment that relates to this: Don't re-invent the wheel.:-) There are people who already make cold service computer (and other) equipment. Yeah, they probably just build enclosures with heaters in them, but at least they worked the bugs out already (if they didn't die from the cold:-). It is very rare to come across a situation that someone else has not already had to find a solution for and now markets it!
Then there is this obsevation from another researcher in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
But measuring intelligence by glia and cortex ratios could be just as unreliable as the big-brain theory, said the head of Vancouver Aquarium's cetacean research program, Lance Barrett-Lennard.
Wading into the debate, Barrett-Lennard said the highly social networks of dolphins indicates they have strong social intelligence.
''A dolphin could have a brain the size of a walnut and it wouldn't affect the observations they live very complex and social lives,'' Barrett-Lennard said. ''They keep account of who their friends are, with very complicated hierarchies and allegiances.
"The other thing is they have spatial maps. They know exactly where to go when they need to look for certain food.''
And another thing... goldfish jump out of their bowls and *die*. Yep, self destructing is sure a smart thing to do. NOT! It's not like a Dolphin can jump out of the tank, catch a bus to the ocean and take off. Or maybe it might want to stop at a Starbucks on the way. Have to think on that a while. Anyway, it is probably a smarter thing to stay put for them. Glad I figured that out.
So you say keep the status quo? All that does is keep people in poverty since there is no incentive to do anything about it. By your logic we perpetuate child labour and other horrors. At the same time it weakens the western world since they are losing jobs. You cannot make the weak strong by making the strong weak. This is capatilism. The only way to leverage things is by voting with where you spend your money. It is not a 'stick' approach, it is a 'carrot' approach. Provide some decent labour laws and we will trade more with your country. If we used your method, the working class would all sink to a poverty level while the industrialists keep right on making money. Even IT people would likely be poor workers since there would be an abundance of cheap programmers and IT staff in overcrowded countries. Those governments would have no incentive for population control either. The more people in squallor you have, the bigger and cheaper your labour pool. No, we need to make sure all people have a minimum level of 'living'. And like I say, the only way to leverage that in a capatilistic world is by restricting money from places that don't provide that standard of living to their people, until they do. Just like you wouldn't spend money at a store that provides bad service until you do get it. While the poor country might not progress until they do something about their situation, at least we won't sink into the same level of poverty and third world working conditions too.
I too have lived in very, very cold places before. And while what you say is true, in respect to the OP of this article, you have it backwards. You are talking about taking something that is very cold into a warm place with moist air. Of course water will condense on the cold surfaces. But this is not the conditions the OP is talking about. They are not bringing equipment in from the cold, they are taking something into the cold and keeping it in the cold... where the water content of the air is low (not necessarily a low RH). The only chance of condensation would be from someone working on the equipment and breathing on it, or warm moist air somehow coming in contact with the it. The only other way would be if you moved it into an area with warmer, moister air (and not necessarily out of the warehouse.
Slashdot Mirror
I call BLULLSHIT! In these 'search' cases the law makes absolutely no fucking sense at all (how do I really feel about this? don't get me started... too late.).
If police do an 'illegal' search on a murderer's house and find a gun that proves his guilt, it proves his guilt. The mental mastribation that lawyers and judges go through to say that the gun is not admisable in court is pure unadulterated bullshit. It is throwing common sense and logic out the window. A fact is a fact, and denying that fact is completely stupid. The proof that the person is a murderer does not really go away even though the lawyers (judges are lawyers too) want to put on blinders. What is really happening is that society is being punished (allowing a murderer to walk free) for a policeman's crime (the illegal search). If one criminal were to break into the murderer's home and steal the gun, and later the police recover it from the thief, it could be used in court as proving the murderer had possession of a murder weapon... even though it was obtained through illegal activities (which the thief will be punished for). Bottom line: if the police broke the law, punish them, not society. The evidence should be still admisable, but the police involved in the illegal search should be punished with enough of a penalty that they won't do something like that at whim. Punish the person who did the crime, not everone else. And don't give any of the 'the police are an extension of society' crap. Police are people too.
This goes for all similar circumstances. A guy pulled over for speeding and the police officer not having reasonable call to search the car still finds 20 Kg of cocain (or whatever your preference) in the trunk. The guy still had 20 kg of cocain in the trunk. etc etc etc. The cop still broke the law. Punishing one person's bad behaviour by not punishing another's behaviour is just plain stupid.
Anyway, stupid rulings and interpretations of the law like this show that we have unfortunately drifted into having legal systems and not justice systems. Somehow we should take a lot of the power out of the lawyers hands to prevent them from coming up with these convoluted brain farts. I know as a now repatriated Canadian that I would love to be able to elect the judges... and would love to have ballots to recall supreme court justices during every federal election.
Privatization is not unheard of.
Yes, but can Sony put a digitial copyright or root kit on an analog 45?
As with their french speaking breathren, Quebec has some funny notions. That is why some girl was able to successfully sue a photographer for taking her picture while she was sitting in a public place. It doesn't say in this article, but from what I can remember of it (it was a few years ago), she was a homeless person, and the photographer was doing some sort of editorial piece for some publication. I had to shake my head a groan when I read it the first time... actually, I still do even when I read it now.
Customer's feedback should be listened to, and I bet even you do it. The problem is, in a corporate environment, a developer's work has far too many end users and he/she cannot possibly take in all the feedback. That is why they have requirements and design teams between them and the customer. They filter the feedback/feature requrests and figure out what can possibly fit. My impression is that it is the communication between the designer and developer in this process that they are trying to improve so that the developer doesn't just receive orders from above that are technically difficult to achieve. i.e. having an idea of what the code is doing can help streamline and improve the design. I have seen this done in several places where the requirements person or designer does not program, but understands through close relations with the developers how the code is implemented. They can then understand what is sensible and even do-able when requirements are added and design is taking place.
Since you are a 'one man show' you probably do this intrinsically.
Yeah... that is what I meant by 'if you need it as an atomic unit'...
They do. And unfortunately I have direct experience with these people... and for the record, I *mostly* hate it.
Where I work, some of the architects and designers have decided to store more than a little XML in Oracle tables. In some cases this is not an entirely onerus decision (i.e. can make sense). e.g. if you are storing standardized configuration information in XML that will be queried as a string from the table and can be used by/passed to different consumer services/applications as an atomic unit (and which is not used in whole or in part as an sql 'where' predicate), then it can work.
However any time you may need to query information contained in the XML string, it seems to me to be kind of retarded to store it in a relational table. e.g. I have seen cases where IDs or service types etc. are stored in a large XML string in a field in a record, and eventually someone wants to retrieve a record based on that ID which is in the XML. This means parsing the field storing the XML in your query, killing any chances on performance since you are likely going to need a 'like' clause with wild cards at the front and back of the search term (even if the RDBMS has a built in XML search tool, the field still needs to be parsed). Unfortunately, people buy in to XML so much that some think that it is still OK to store XML in database tables... even in these cases.
I personally think it is generally a bad idea to store XML in a relational database as eventually the 2nd situation will come about (that is what experience tells me). You will then find that the practice totally negates the benefit of a relational database and sql (language) to easily and quickly retrieve relational data. I have seen this bite people many times. Ahhh... to use a technology, even a useful one, just because it is hip... but that is just my experience.
Larry Flint
Made me think of Grannies Perls of Wisdom I read on Java Ranch (I first found it about 6 or 7 years ago...): "Testing can show the presence of bugs, but not their absence."
I agree and disagree with you. As long as the programmer properly unit tested his/her work, then you can shift blame to QA. I have seen developers not properly unit test their code too many times, relying on the QA department to do their work for them. But yes, unless it happens in very rare circumstances (is this the case?) someone should have caught this in testing somewhere... but not necessarily just QA.
IANAQAT (I am not a QA tester).
First, the obligatory IANAL. Second, the only way I can think about this is to ask some questions and try to answer them. So I'll talk to myself here (why not do in public what we...err I do in private. :-D ).
The question is, when is it a crime to steal some sort of currency?
I would think it is when it is real world money backed by a government, or has there is a direct correlation with real world money. For example if someone were to steel U.S. dollars, European Euros, or Canadian Dollars then this would be crime.
Ok, so my next question is, what are the laws on coupon money?
For example, there is a real chain of stores in Canada called Canadian Tire (a big box automotive/hardware/home goods store) that really gives away "Canadian Tire Money" with every purchase (something like 10 cents on 5 dollars... not exact but an approximation). The Canadian Tire Money (really a kind of coupon) is redeemable at face value at any Canadian tire store on future purchases. What would be the law if someone stole Canadian Tire Money. I personally would think it is a crime since it is backed by Canadian Tire stores by providing real actual value in real world items (you can buy a set of socket wrenches, or a coffee maker with the 'money').
If I were to go by my musings so far, then since the game company does not back the game money, and expressely prohibits trading it for real world money, then stealing game money in the game shouldn't be a a real world crime.
Another question: Does the game provide for the characters to be thieves (and is it expected that there will be these kinds of characters in the game)?
The answer to this last and key question is a resounding *YES*.
We are not talking about a crime in the real world, it was part of the game (even if it might be a crime in the game, it still is dealt with *in*the*game*). Finally, unless the game limits how thievery takes place (which it doesn't appear that they do), then the character is free to practice their thievery in whatever manner they choose. A confidence scam (a 'con') is just another form of thievery. In fact, it looks like cons/scams are integral to this particular game. And this is probably why the game company does not 'back' the game money or allow it to be traded in the real world: to make sure no one tries to tie theft in the game to theft of real world money. You are in a 'make believe' world that allows theft. The 'make believe police' should arrest the person or whatever form of 'make believe' justice should be done. Otherwise it is no longer a game.
People are probably hurt that they got duped and lost their money to a clever thief. But it is in a game... remember that. Learn from it to make sure you and others don't fall prey to it again, both in and out of the game.
Someone may try to reclaim lost game money in a civil court. They might be able to claim that they spent a lot of real money to play the game long enought to amass whatever game money they had, and which was stolen *in the game*. But since the game allows for this behaviour (and in fact it is an expected part of the game), I doubt that they would have a leg to stand on in court. However, if they sued in the U.S. and claimed it got them so distraught that they also spilled a hot cup of McDonalds (tm) coffee in their lap, they might win.
Bottom line: Don't get so wound up in the game that you confuse your 'game life' with everyone else's 'real life'.
End of mad ramblings... transmission complete... engage tinfoil hat...
No. There are rules about this. Money in a bank is real money, usually backed by some government, and limited in supply. If the bank were to just add more money to your account, they would be taking it from someone else. Unless that person (or entity) agreed to them transferring funds from their account(s) to another, that would be larceny. A crime. The U.S. could print more money but usually doesn't as like any precious material, the more of it there is, the less it is worth. This would destabalize economies.
The point is, unless the crime can spill over into the real world, the so called 'crime' in the computer game is only in the computer game. The only way the crime could spill over into the real world is if the game money had a real world value in term of dollars and not just hurt feelings. Since the game company does not back the game currency in the real world, no harm was done and this wouldn't be a crime. That is how I understand it.
IANAL
Read the original poster's entry!
From the OP's post, they obviously have the luxury of breaking down the job roles... Also if you read, the OP wanted something that would work in Linux. Macromedia products work on windows. If you are a developer, learn to read the specifications (The post's title is: Making Website Mock-Ups in Linux?). :-/
Yes I do think of others, but that is a completetely moot point.
When I buy a milkshake or soda at the local fast food shop, whatever size I order, I expect it to be full. If they are running low I still expect them to fill the cup or give me a refund. It would completely unacceptable for them to say, "we are running low, can you please share your milkshake with the next 20 people in line?" If they sell me a medium size drink, I want and *expect* a filled medium sized drink. If they screwed up and didn't order enough supply to meet the demand, that is their f***ing problem, not mine. They should learn to manage their business better, or put signs up that say, "we reserve the right to only give you half of what you paid for."
The only time this would be different is we were on a desert island somewhere and had to share in order to stay alive, and had enough to keep us all alive. But we are not talking about that, we are talking about purchasing a product in a capitalistic economic system. I earn my money so that I can spend it on the things important to me. Charities are important too, but my internet connection is not a charity. Nor is it an outlet for someone's socialistic/communistic tendancies. We can debate whether an ISP connection is a luxury or necessity, but that is not the point here... what is, is that the ISP connection is a commercial product. It is something that is paid for, and I expect what I pay for.
As others mentioned, if the ISP wants to sell a maximum burst 1, 3, 6, whatever Mb/sec rate, then they should advertise just that. If they say they are selling me an 8 Mb/sec pipe, then that is what I want. I get charged more for that than I would if I ordered a 256 Kb/sec pipe. If they want to sell by bandwidth, then they should do that.
In related news, telephone companies are limiting the amount of speaking their customers are allowed in order to save bandwidth. Customers will be asked to communicate in clicking-like sounds similar to dolphins. "We believe that this will serve our customers better, and allow them to better utilize the services that we offer," an industry spokesperson said.
The presentation is somewhat important. Instead of teaching the kids powerpoint at that stage, they should be teaching them the content that would go in a presentation. Oh, things like math, history, geography, etc. I think those things are much more important than learning powerpoint. But then again, maybe this is a sign of the shit that our society is sinking to... kind of like quantity is taking over, over quality of content. Sure, the kid has a great power point presentation, but if the substance is shit, then school failed them.
Which is more soul destroying? Being told by email that you are fired; or admitting to yourself you don't have the nuts to tell someone in person that you are terminating their job?
Holy Crap!!! I always thought PETA stood for *People*Eating*Tasty*Animals*
Go figure.
Even if they did only have one lawyer, he deserves a vacation. (And yes I know that there are more lawyers involved and the he was only needed here because of his specific history in the case.)
However, as with almost 100% of the people in the IT industry, why didn't he have a contact phone number. I have a cell phone that people can contact me at, even on vacation. 99.99% of the time, work respects my vacation and does not call. Those times they do, they are really stuck. It is part of the job, and the higher up the tree you get (or the closer to the root depending on how you like to look at it ;-), the more so. Now I am not saying lawyers suffer the same kind job 'realities' (for want of a better word) as IT folk, but when a guy who is one of the active lawyers defending against a multi-billion dollar law suit goes missing, even while on vacation... I would be thinking about whether his long term career plans at IBM are being revisited right now.
Does this mean that you think that suicide is a smart thing to do? Or are you saying that slash dotters are stupid? Or are you saying slash dotters are as smart as goldfish?
I made a reply to another comment that relates to this: Don't re-invent the wheel. :-) There are people who already make cold service computer (and other) equipment. Yeah, they probably just build enclosures with heaters in them, but at least they worked the bugs out already (if they didn't die from the cold :-). It is very rare to come across a situation that someone else has not already had to find a solution for and now markets it!
Then there is this obsevation from another researcher in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
And another thing... goldfish jump out of their bowls and *die*. Yep, self destructing is sure a smart thing to do. NOT! It's not like a Dolphin can jump out of the tank, catch a bus to the ocean and take off. Or maybe it might want to stop at a Starbucks on the way. Have to think on that a while. Anyway, it is probably a smarter thing to stay put for them. Glad I figured that out.
So you say keep the status quo? All that does is keep people in poverty since there is no incentive to do anything about it. By your logic we perpetuate child labour and other horrors. At the same time it weakens the western world since they are losing jobs. You cannot make the weak strong by making the strong weak. This is capatilism. The only way to leverage things is by voting with where you spend your money. It is not a 'stick' approach, it is a 'carrot' approach. Provide some decent labour laws and we will trade more with your country. If we used your method, the working class would all sink to a poverty level while the industrialists keep right on making money. Even IT people would likely be poor workers since there would be an abundance of cheap programmers and IT staff in overcrowded countries. Those governments would have no incentive for population control either. The more people in squallor you have, the bigger and cheaper your labour pool. No, we need to make sure all people have a minimum level of 'living'. And like I say, the only way to leverage that in a capatilistic world is by restricting money from places that don't provide that standard of living to their people, until they do. Just like you wouldn't spend money at a store that provides bad service until you do get it. While the poor country might not progress until they do something about their situation, at least we won't sink into the same level of poverty and third world working conditions too.
I too have lived in very, very cold places before. And while what you say is true, in respect to the OP of this article, you have it backwards. You are talking about taking something that is very cold into a warm place with moist air. Of course water will condense on the cold surfaces. But this is not the conditions the OP is talking about. They are not bringing equipment in from the cold, they are taking something into the cold and keeping it in the cold... where the water content of the air is low (not necessarily a low RH). The only chance of condensation would be from someone working on the equipment and breathing on it, or warm moist air somehow coming in contact with the it. The only other way would be if you moved it into an area with warmer, moister air (and not necessarily out of the warehouse.