This law doesn't exist to repaire the patent system of all the problems that you, the little guy, sees with it. It is a handout for big business, who will always have the resources to file first. The problem with the patent system as the big boys see it is that it isn't easy enough to strongarm the little guy who actually comes up with the idea. How many David v Golaith patent cases have David been winning lately? In the eyes of the big boys, that needs to change.
I'm glad to see smoeone who still cares about the Constitution.. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to apply much to people over 18 anymore either. As George Bush Jr. said, "The Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper."
Yes, but a doctor isn't allowed to blab to anybody about your medical problems. If somebody sues you, they aren't allowed to subpoena your medical records.
Unless you happen to be the US Government post-Patriot Act (which is who I'm sure people are most concerned are the ones spying on them anyway). Plus, the true privacy of your medical records are not as locked down as you might think they are.
If you think the American Dream was ever anything more than exactly what it says it is (a dream), I'm sorry pal, but the joke is on you. The American Dream, like religions and ideology, has been given to us in order to keep us motivated in our task of generating more wealth for the elites and upper classes, obeying their rules, and perpetuating the class system that keeps the elite in power.
Anyone who relies on anti-virus alone to protect them is ignorant. However, on windows, anyone who doesn't ALSO use anti-virus as part of a more comprehensive protection scheme is equally ignorant.
It IS worse now... because now big business is writing the laws, just like the olden days of this country. When you hear the word "reform," most of the time that means big business rewriting the laws of a particular field to suit them.
Examples: the medicare reform bill (gift to big pharma and insurance companies) and the bankruptcy reform bill (a handout to the credit card companies).
If that's not good enough, look at America's history. Look at what railroad barons and mining companies put their employees through.. Not to mention the food processing industry. Not to mention.. jesus the list goes on and on.
There was a time where there were no labor laws, where employers could work children all day, every day, for little pay, or what amounted to "credit" at the company store (still for little pay)... If labor laws didn't exist, ALL of these practices would still be widespread. Some still are in spite of the laws. Some complain this is a misrepresentation of capitalism, or an example of capitalism corrupted by greed.. I simply see this as the ultimate goal of true, unfettered capitalism. The endgame is to have everyone else's money. If everyone is rich, your money is worth less, so the true capitalist wants to be rich and everyone else to be poor.
I am not a socialist or a capitalist. You don't have to pick one or the other extreme, no matter how many American capitalists tell you such. They tell you so at the ignorance of how the rest of the developed world operates: capitalist models with some social programs for things all of society needs, like food and health care, and the freedom to choose between them if you can afford to.
Since you asked, here's a few examples off the very top of my head:
* All oil/automobile execs telling us global warming doesn't exist * Pfizer execs burying reports that their artificial heart valves were faulty and burst in the chests of their recipients * Exxon telling everyone their oil spill was due to a drunken tanker captain when their ship lacked the proper safety equipment to protect the oil from spilling in the case of a wreck * The tobacco industry has buried countless reports about the health hazards of cigarettes * Auto companies putting cars on the market they know are prone to explosion in the case of accident * Wal-mart ignores (or gets exemptions) to local environmental laws all over the place.. not to mention how horribly they treat their employees, how they force taxpayers to pay for their health care, how they'll can you the second you get ill or pregnant, etc. * Enron (and many others who cook the books in the same way who don't make the news) shitting on employee pensions so that the executives could make themselves richer
As long as it's cheaper to bury the evidence or fight in court than it is to make right, big companies will bury the evidence. That's one of the reasons they're big. That part is my opinion, but my opinion was based on watching how they act.. and this is the shit that DID see the light of day. That means there is a lot more that didn't.
I love how you cite the fact that the government does environmental impact studies and big business does not as a shortcoming of the GOVERNMENT. The reason big business can do things more "efficiently" than the government is because they can cut all the corners government isn't allowed to and aren't held to the same standard of transparency and accountability. It looks nicer on paper and makes the company richer, but they typically don't care if they fuck up the environment, injure or kill people as a result.
Well, except that the "plan" is to increase it to keep pace with cost of living/inflation.. to not do so is to, in effect, cut the program. Those of you born with silver spoons in their mouths will never have to worry about it.
Try reading the whole thread, sport. Someone was excusing the fact that unix has shitty command names by saying "they are that way for historical reasons."
I was debunking this excuse. That's all. I wasn't the one who originally made the statement. I don't have much of a desire to use ANY command line if I can get away with it.. but I am proficient with both DOS and the bash shell.
No problem, I don't care what you use, simply quit using the "well it was invented in the 70s and we're stuck with whatever names were used then" argument as a valid excuse for bad command names.
Well, since the input/output device for most people hasn't been a teletype in, well, DECADES.. any chance we could address this issue and maybe stop using this as an excuse/crutch?
I wish I could mod you up. I am trying to get my family's unoccupied mobile home fixed up so I can live there and take the money I've been blowing on rent to help my family out instead. Life ISN'T about how nice your car is or how many unused bedrooms you have.
If every American paid heed to this advice, we'd have a happier (and friendlier) country. We wouldn't be stabbing each other in the back every chance we get.
If ONLY the first amendment were as vehemently and stridently defended as the second amendment is defended in the USA... That would be a country I'd be wavin' flags for.
There is still plenty of good jobs for people in IT.. Here's a hint: don't work for tech companies. I work IT for a local community clinic and I am loved. When I worked for a tech company, I was just another geek in the geek room typing some code-type gibberish.
I coudln't figure this one out and decided instead to stop going to church. I wish you the best of luck on this one. If you find a way to get through to them, please share it with the rest of the world; it is sorely needed right now. It's not that they can't grasp the logic behind it, it's that they have contempt for logic. Logic is for the devil. It makes any kind of debate or discussion on the issue pretty much pointless. They won't reject your evidence so much as they'll reject the notion that evidence could be anywhere as valid as blind faith.
Don't let any Christian moron or American moron make you ashamed of who you are by association, though. You are not them. At least, you don't seem to be.
Accept responsibility for what I've done, but not for who I am - NOFX
I know this article is somewhat tongue-in-cheek but it's actually a prevelant mentality. As someone who have watched people write unmaintainable code to ensure their own job security...
If the code is unmaintainable, the end product is probably bad. If the end product is bad, you're not protecting your job but making a case for your worthlessness. Even if the end product is good, most companies would favor a fresh, new person who can differentiate themselves from you by writing a more friendly, maintainable version of the same. When I have come in (back in my indie days) to update or maintain a system that is unmaintainable, I have always made a good case for a more ambitious bid (and more money) to recreate the system from scratch (or recreate as much of it as is necessary) in a more standard, maintainable format.
Besides, as all you open source geeks know, this is (job) security by obscurity, and while it may cause a major inconvienence for your employer, it's not going to force them to keep someone they want to can. IT kids are in for a rude awakening (or have already gotten one) if they think we're still in the era where you're irreplacable, where some other code monkey couldn't come in and do the same or better of a job of what you're doing for less money in a heartbeat.
Here's a hint, find a place that you actually ENJOY working for, that treats their employees well and isn't looking to pull the plug on them at the most convienent time.. And then give them the best work you can offer. Be willing to take the lumps as a line employee for a while and actually earn a career in that company.
I think there is as much intolerance here as there is in any other part of the world. What we have here are laws that protect the minority. We have laws that say even if you despise black people, they have the same rights as you, and that we cannot create arbitrary exclusions which unfairly target minorities. This goes for those who don't believe in the same god as you, those who don't have the same genetalia as you, and so on.
Or, as Martin Luther King Jr. put it:
"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."
I appreciate the tolerance for people not of the Christian faith you express in this statement, but to say that I have no clue what I'm talking about or that my statements are totally off-base.. well, you may be right, I was not responding to YOU (a person I don't know and never will) but YOUR COMMENTS, particularly these --
From your first statement:
Christianity suceeds at tolerant multi-culturalism when European secular Humanism fails. Your faith in humanity alone to save itself from itself will be your undoing unfortunately...
We are the Southern Bible Belt, and it's that shared Christian faith amongst all of us which binds us together.
--
Now you say:
You are way off base. One of my best friends is atheist (black guy), another good friend of mine is agnostic (white guy), I myself (white guy) happen to believe there is a God, and we all get along great. We never, ever preach at each other for or against religion, we simply agree to disagree and just let it go.
--
You mean your black athiest friend manages to live a morally upright life, and maintain a friendship with you, in spite of his adherence to "secular humanism?" If that is the case, it doesn't sound like your "shared Christian faith" is the bond that holds people togeteher after all. You have contradicted yourself in your statements. You can't blame me for that. What is it you said? Oh yeah, thanks for playing.
Slashdot Mirror
This law doesn't exist to repaire the patent system of all the problems that you, the little guy, sees with it. It is a handout for big business, who will always have the resources to file first. The problem with the patent system as the big boys see it is that it isn't easy enough to strongarm the little guy who actually comes up with the idea. How many David v Golaith patent cases have David been winning lately? In the eyes of the big boys, that needs to change.
And so it probably will.
I'm glad to see smoeone who still cares about the Constitution.. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to apply much to people over 18 anymore either. As George Bush Jr. said, "The Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper."
Yes, but a doctor isn't allowed to blab to anybody about your medical problems. If somebody sues you, they aren't allowed to subpoena your medical records.
Unless you happen to be the US Government post-Patriot Act (which is who I'm sure people are most concerned are the ones spying on them anyway). Plus, the true privacy of your medical records are not as locked down as you might think they are.
This is a travesty.. WE HUMANS don't even have the benefit of habeas corpus anymore! I am jealous of this chimp.
If you think the American Dream was ever anything more than exactly what it says it is (a dream), I'm sorry pal, but the joke is on you. The American Dream, like religions and ideology, has been given to us in order to keep us motivated in our task of generating more wealth for the elites and upper classes, obeying their rules, and perpetuating the class system that keeps the elite in power.
Anyone who relies on anti-virus alone to protect them is ignorant. However, on windows, anyone who doesn't ALSO use anti-virus as part of a more comprehensive protection scheme is equally ignorant.
It IS worse now... because now big business is writing the laws, just like the olden days of this country. When you hear the word "reform," most of the time that means big business rewriting the laws of a particular field to suit them.
Examples: the medicare reform bill (gift to big pharma and insurance companies) and the bankruptcy reform bill (a handout to the credit card companies).
If that's not good enough, look at America's history. Look at what railroad barons and mining companies put their employees through.. Not to mention the food processing industry. Not to mention.. jesus the list goes on and on.
There was a time where there were no labor laws, where employers could work children all day, every day, for little pay, or what amounted to "credit" at the company store (still for little pay)... If labor laws didn't exist, ALL of these practices would still be widespread. Some still are in spite of the laws. Some complain this is a misrepresentation of capitalism, or an example of capitalism corrupted by greed.. I simply see this as the ultimate goal of true, unfettered capitalism. The endgame is to have everyone else's money. If everyone is rich, your money is worth less, so the true capitalist wants to be rich and everyone else to be poor.
I am not a socialist or a capitalist. You don't have to pick one or the other extreme, no matter how many American capitalists tell you such. They tell you so at the ignorance of how the rest of the developed world operates: capitalist models with some social programs for things all of society needs, like food and health care, and the freedom to choose between them if you can afford to.
Since you asked, here's a few examples off the very top of my head:
* All oil/automobile execs telling us global warming doesn't exist
* Pfizer execs burying reports that their artificial heart valves were faulty and burst in the chests of their recipients
* Exxon telling everyone their oil spill was due to a drunken tanker captain when their ship lacked the proper safety equipment to protect the oil from spilling in the case of a wreck
* The tobacco industry has buried countless reports about the health hazards of cigarettes
* Auto companies putting cars on the market they know are prone to explosion in the case of accident
* Wal-mart ignores (or gets exemptions) to local environmental laws all over the place.. not to mention how horribly they treat their employees, how they force taxpayers to pay for their health care, how they'll can you the second you get ill or pregnant, etc.
* Enron (and many others who cook the books in the same way who don't make the news) shitting on employee pensions so that the executives could make themselves richer
As long as it's cheaper to bury the evidence or fight in court than it is to make right, big companies will bury the evidence. That's one of the reasons they're big. That part is my opinion, but my opinion was based on watching how they act.. and this is the shit that DID see the light of day. That means there is a lot more that didn't.
I love how you cite the fact that the government does environmental impact studies and big business does not as a shortcoming of the GOVERNMENT. The reason big business can do things more "efficiently" than the government is because they can cut all the corners government isn't allowed to and aren't held to the same standard of transparency and accountability. It looks nicer on paper and makes the company richer, but they typically don't care if they fuck up the environment, injure or kill people as a result.
Well, except that the "plan" is to increase it to keep pace with cost of living/inflation.. to not do so is to, in effect, cut the program. Those of you born with silver spoons in their mouths will never have to worry about it.
Find it & report it. Slashdot news is user-submitted.
Or maybe there are a lot of "slashdotters" and they run the gamut of opinions on the issue.
Try reading the whole thread, sport. Someone was excusing the fact that unix has shitty command names by saying "they are that way for historical reasons."
I was debunking this excuse. That's all. I wasn't the one who originally made the statement. I don't have much of a desire to use ANY command line if I can get away with it.. but I am proficient with both DOS and the bash shell.
dir, del, ren make a HELL OF A LOT MORE SENSE than mv, cp, ls.
No problem, I don't care what you use, simply quit using the "well it was invented in the 70s and we're stuck with whatever names were used then" argument as a valid excuse for bad command names.
Well, since the input/output device for most people hasn't been a teletype in, well, DECADES.. any chance we could address this issue and maybe stop using this as an excuse/crutch?
I wish I could mod you up. I am trying to get my family's unoccupied mobile home fixed up so I can live there and take the money I've been blowing on rent to help my family out instead. Life ISN'T about how nice your car is or how many unused bedrooms you have.
If every American paid heed to this advice, we'd have a happier (and friendlier) country. We wouldn't be stabbing each other in the back every chance we get.
If ONLY the first amendment were as vehemently and stridently defended as the second amendment is defended in the USA... That would be a country I'd be wavin' flags for.
There is still plenty of good jobs for people in IT.. Here's a hint: don't work for tech companies. I work IT for a local community clinic and I am loved. When I worked for a tech company, I was just another geek in the geek room typing some code-type gibberish.
I coudln't figure this one out and decided instead to stop going to church. I wish you the best of luck on this one. If you find a way to get through to them, please share it with the rest of the world; it is sorely needed right now. It's not that they can't grasp the logic behind it, it's that they have contempt for logic. Logic is for the devil. It makes any kind of debate or discussion on the issue pretty much pointless. They won't reject your evidence so much as they'll reject the notion that evidence could be anywhere as valid as blind faith.
Don't let any Christian moron or American moron make you ashamed of who you are by association, though. You are not them. At least, you don't seem to be.
Accept responsibility for what I've done, but not for who I am
- NOFX
I know this article is somewhat tongue-in-cheek but it's actually a prevelant mentality. As someone who have watched people write unmaintainable code to ensure their own job security...
If the code is unmaintainable, the end product is probably bad. If the end product is bad, you're not protecting your job but making a case for your worthlessness. Even if the end product is good, most companies would favor a fresh, new person who can differentiate themselves from you by writing a more friendly, maintainable version of the same. When I have come in (back in my indie days) to update or maintain a system that is unmaintainable, I have always made a good case for a more ambitious bid (and more money) to recreate the system from scratch (or recreate as much of it as is necessary) in a more standard, maintainable format.
Besides, as all you open source geeks know, this is (job) security by obscurity, and while it may cause a major inconvienence for your employer, it's not going to force them to keep someone they want to can. IT kids are in for a rude awakening (or have already gotten one) if they think we're still in the era where you're irreplacable, where some other code monkey couldn't come in and do the same or better of a job of what you're doing for less money in a heartbeat.
Here's a hint, find a place that you actually ENJOY working for, that treats their employees well and isn't looking to pull the plug on them at the most convienent time.. And then give them the best work you can offer. Be willing to take the lumps as a line employee for a while and actually earn a career in that company.
FNC and TBN wasn't meant to be an all-inclusive list.. just the worst offenders off the top of my head for a one-line quip on a slashdot post.
I think there is as much intolerance here as there is in any other part of the world. What we have here are laws that protect the minority. We have laws that say even if you despise black people, they have the same rights as you, and that we cannot create arbitrary exclusions which unfairly target minorities. This goes for those who don't believe in the same god as you, those who don't have the same genetalia as you, and so on.
Or, as Martin Luther King Jr. put it:
"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."
Assuming you're the AC who posted earlier..
I appreciate the tolerance for people not of the Christian faith you express in this statement, but to say that I have no clue what I'm talking about or that my statements are totally off-base.. well, you may be right, I was not responding to YOU (a person I don't know and never will) but YOUR COMMENTS, particularly these --
From your first statement:
Christianity suceeds at tolerant multi-culturalism when European secular Humanism fails. Your faith in humanity alone to save itself from itself will be your undoing unfortunately...
We are the Southern Bible Belt, and it's that shared Christian faith amongst all of us which binds us together.
--
Now you say:
You are way off base. One of my best friends is atheist (black guy), another good friend of mine is agnostic (white guy), I myself (white guy) happen to believe there is a God, and we all get along great. We never, ever preach at each other for or against religion, we simply agree to disagree and just let it go.
--
You mean your black athiest friend manages to live a morally upright life, and maintain a friendship with you, in spite of his adherence to "secular humanism?" If that is the case, it doesn't sound like your "shared Christian faith" is the bond that holds people togeteher after all. You have contradicted yourself in your statements. You can't blame me for that. What is it you said? Oh yeah, thanks for playing.