Well I feel bad for him, for anyone that loses their job, however....
He lost his job because he went on TV and made a big freakin' deal out of it. That was an idiot thing to do. So he is not blamless in losing his own job. He should not be blind to such complications.
A analogy would be that if I used to work in the porn industry. If I don't bring that up in an interview, and they hire me, so what, none of their buisness.
However if they hire me as say a Teacher, or perhaps some very 'family values' kind of company, I don't think I would be too surprised that I got canned if I went on TV and went off about the illustrous Porn Jobs that I had been on.
Anyway it just makes sense. Is that a legitmate reason to fire someone? I don't know, thats for the court to decide. They may have to make some kind of restitution, and they may decide that the penalty is worth it. Anyway it shouldn't surprise the idiot that got fired for making public his ties to a related and doubious (spelling?) industry...
Yes. I belive his name was Nog. Son (or was it Nephew?) of Quark from DS9. The Wesley Crusher character was vastly superior to that one.
Note I am am not saying that the actor who played 'Nog' was horrible, just that the character was. Oh and while I am thinking of this add Sisko's son (can't even remember his name) to that list, he was also quite horrible and he and Nog got into all kinda of 'trouble' together. Those DS9 ep that revolved around Nog and Sisko's Son's shenanigans were the absolute worst.
Again no offence to those actors, but wow what horrible roles!
Its like the romance lines in SW ep 2, sure Haydon may or may not suck as an actor, but give anyone those lines and see how they fare, yuck.
Thats true they have to answer to their bottom line. I should have re-phrased in that NL isn't going to take PJ sueing them personally, its just buisness. Particualy with the amount of money involved (relationally). If PJ was trying to sue for a billion dollars or something NL might take exception to that and there may be a problem with them doing buisness again.
The way I see this is just a dry contract dispute that is going to a 3rd party to resolve (in this case the 3rd party happends to be the courts, so the decision is enforceable).
NL it seems did some "questionable" accounting by selling LOTR toys to a sister company, thus robbing PJ of his cut.
His contract probably read something like "PJ gets x percentage of profit on any merchindise that NL sells" or something like that.
NL by selling said toys at a loss to a 'independant' subsidudary or 'sister' company, did not make a 'profit' from the sale and thus PJ doesn't get a cut. You can bet however that the 'sister' company made a profit.
Peter Jackson would have to prove in court that NL has dealt is bad faith and that the intent of the contract is being breached. Never mind that sort of colusion between so called 'independant' companies is bullshit to begin with. But it seems to happen all the time and corporations get away with it.
Its that sort of corporate BS that really bugs me and I really hope PJ gets his and then some.
A perfect example of this kind of BS is Air industry up here in Canada. Once upon a time there was a little economy jet liner we'll call Kanada 300. Kanada 300 (to my knowlege) was a wholly owned subsiduary of Air Kanada (and I think is was called something else before Kanada 300 even, same story). Anyway through mismanagement and the rest, Kanada 300 goes Bankrupt. This means that it cannot be sued by creditors and is basically liquidated. Never mind all the passengers with tickets that get screwed, or the poor idiots that bought stock, all gone. However, in Canada there is really only a handful of Jet liners, of which Air Kanada probably makes up 95%. So here is how things play out. Air Kanda creates another wholly owned subsiduary called Tawango. Tawango, of course has no jets, but hey guess what there is the totally unrelated company called Kanada 300 that has tonnes of Jets to get rid of and no one to sell them to! Its a match made in heaven! So Tawango, buys all the Kanada 300's Jets (at a huge discount) and paints a brand new Tawango on the side! A new Jet liner is born! It would not surprise me if Tawango hired all the staff (or part of them) to run Tawango...
The moral of this story? Incorporate yourself! You can do whatever the fuck you want... and the bigger you are the more you can do.
Meh... bottom line is that PJ made hundreds of millions off the movie and NL made billions. I am pretty sure they can kiss and make up. I am sure they are just jumping through the legal hoops and motions to get the best deal that they can.
I am not sure about you, but I am not sure how pissed I would be if I made 300 million but got screwed out of 20 million or even 100 million, like how many millions do I need before it is kinda a pointless number.
Same goes for NL, if I made Billions off a movie and PJ wanted to sue for a bit more cash say between 20-100million, wtf do I care, I just made 4 BILLION dollars... The thats just a silly amount of money i can barly comprehend.
So in conclusion I doubt this is a big deal, just part of buisness these day. NL tried to make an extra buck, PJ thinks he is due his, courts will make a decision, and its done.
PJ may take it personally I suppose, but as I said I doubt it. He may just take this as an expensive learning experiance, and be even more careful in his contract next time.
Though any lawyer worth his salt can tell you no contract is going to be ironclad. It is written in words, and words can have many meanings. It is up to a court to decide what those meanings are, and if not clear, what the intent of the meaning was.
Now if the contract was written in Boolean, well then it might be less open to interpretation, of course it would also probably be a million pages long with all the cases and exceptions (hell it wouldn't surprise me if the orginal contract was long enough to make Robet Jorden blush).
Just a little tidbit incase it hasn't been mentioned yet. Not sure where the term Eskimo came from, or why it is bad, but I do know that "Inuit" in their own language simply means "The People" so it probably wins the PC genaric name award or something. I always refer to them as the Inuit the same way I would say someone is Native rather than Indian. I am not sure how many native people would take real offence to being called Indian (same with Eskimo vs Inuit), but it seems generally more excepted and correct so that is what is used. Anyway thats it! Though I will mention that I have some Native friends that seem to use the word "Indian" much the same was Blacks (African-American just seems wrong to me, kinda like vertically challanged should be short people) tend to use the word "Nigger" (I shudder even as I say it, for whatever reason I abhor saying that word, yes White guy here, though is "White guy" bad? Meh who knows...). Though I doubt Inuit do the same with Eskimo, though you never know.... ok now that I have kinda freaked myself out talking about race and names and stuff I am gonna leave... Please don't take offence and hurt me people *ducks*
I know those indians are a handful, but really, this smacks a bit of racism (more likely just trolling for people pissed about outsourceing).
I am sure the same thing happens with more regularity in the good 'ole U S of A. In fact we have seen many articles to that effect in the past.
So how is this news? Because an Indian did it? Look at the numbers, its even small fry stuff too. Sure maybe it would be a big deal if he sold the 200,000 addresses he said he could (probably lying anyway, looking for more payoff). But all he sold was 20,000. How many MILLION of people had their information stolen in the USA last year alone?
Anyway stupid story, why to go ed. All you gonna get is troll responses from people ticked about outsourcing from the US to india, and going "ohh i told you so" and "serves you right"...
My last beef with ebay I got really pissed about, and it is particulary stupid if ebay owns paypal.
The ubershort version of the story is this: I have had an ebay account since 2000, it was registered to a webmail address (yahoo). This year (so I have had an account in good standing for 5 years now using my webmail address), my computer basically had a virus meltdown as I was using a bootleg version of windows. I was in the middle of several trasactions at the time and did not want to cause delays to the sellers involved. So I changed my e-mail address to my work email address (which really is a no-no), just temporarly (so I thought) so I could finish my transactions.
I finally get my home system (it was a complicated mess) up and running again (had to abandon windows in favor of Linux). I decided to change my addess on ebay BACK to my orginally address (to stop all those annoying messanges being sent to my place of work). Guess what, ebay refuses to do so! They say because it is a webmail address they require my credit card number. I tell them to f*&k off. They can't seem to understand that I never gave them a credit card number before, and I am not about to now. It is bad enough that I have to suffer paypal having my credit card number (a nessary evil). I argued and argued with them, trying to point out how silly they were being. They even have on record my old address and how long I was registered to that address, yet still will not change it back.
So now unless I capitulate and give up my personal finicial information to them they are essientially holding both my ebay account and my work email address hostage. As now I get all this crap (I have turned off most of the junk they send) to my work email address which I could get in trouble for and I can't make them completely stop with out destroying my account and thus my built up feedback. Also it makes my ebay account unusable if I turn ALL the notifications off to avoid trouble at work. It really is bullshit.
so in summary. Don't change your email account in ebay. As how this ties into the parent message, if they own paypal, then they already HAVE my damn credit card number, confirmed, they don't need it again. Bastards!
Ebays Profit Model:
1)Users build up feedback 2)Leverage feedback 3)Profit!!!
Yup... this is why I rarely use the service anymore... or just lurk for long periods until I find a really good deal. The problem as I see it (as far as pricing goes) is two fold, mega seller BUISNESSES who basically sell from a store front. Normally I would not have a problem with that so long as it is cheaper than retail, but this is usually not the case. The other problem is stupid people on e-bay. There are either a) too many stupid people on ebay, or b) too many people that do not do reasearch into what an item is actually worth. Why assume risk and pay more than retail, its just stupid.
Ebay has been degenerated into a place where the only things worth buying are very rare hard to find items that have a limited buying base (not that many people will be interested, ie I am looking for a gasket for a specific machine), and illegal stuff like bootlegs etc...
I USED to shop all the time for computer equipment (usually slightly dated), but I would say 99% of the time I can find the same product or better for cheaper at an online retailer. Not to mention the risk involved in ebay, or the screwing of people on postage. I love looking at ads for a 1.99 product and a 30$ shipping fee... You get sick of the lies after a while.
Only two reasons to go to the moon as I see it, one is to use it as a base to launch more missions, and two is to research how to exist in that sort or eniroment and produce stuff from it.
Last I read, using our current technology, a chemical rocket, using hydrogen, would not work. I read someplace that in order to get to the closest star (perhaps it was with planets), within a reasonable time (I think they used a 100 years, but half that is more likely) and not kill everyone with extreem g-forces, you would have to burn pretty much constantly all the way (accelleration, and then braking), and to do so would consume about the same about of hydrogen as our sun. Which if you think about scale, is a pretty stupid statistic.
So in short if the purpose is to use moon as a base to explore the galaxy, well we would be better served by developing technology, that would enable travel. That is, why build a base to manufacture stuff, if the only stuff we can manufacture is pretty useless for that scale (or even solar system scale).
So that pretty much kills reason number one.
The second reason to figure out how to manufacture stuff and to figure out how to live in that that enviroment, well as to my knowlege ther really hasn't been much research into either. I think I would rather figure that stuff out BEFORE we go the the moon and try to just wing it or something.
Its not like we haven't studied the moon or anything, we know what the enviroment is like. Has anyone tried to construct a mock up? or Procedures for setting of manufacting facilities? Mining? How about ore smelting? construction? How about processes for extracting Air and Water from the moon? It is way to expensive to ship crap out of earth's gravity well... Have to get stuff locally.
It just seems to me that serious though has not been put into this endevor. I mean I am an idiot shlub and I can come up with tons of stuff that could plausibly be problems or issues.
If this is going to be another, "hey guys look what I can do!" affair, be it a distraction from a domestic and or international woes or just an opiate of the masses (I can just see some dumb shit like "Suvivor MOON!" or some wierd media event when you can vote some poor bastard off the shuttle or something).
Perhaps I am just cynical, but i see this as more of a circus than a serious scienctific endevor. If that is the case, then I ask Why? I can think of many more useful (perhaps not as cool) and more important things to spend several billion on.
Would be news to me... I know at one point they used to show it... so 300$ ipod and 30$ media tax or whatever... NOw I don't see it anymore. That says to me either they don't show it anymore, or like you said they don't do it anymore.
However, that isn't really the point, if you RTFA you would see that they (industry) still has about 250 MILLION of those tax dollars in a bank account. You can bet they ain't gonna give it back (even if they could possibly figure out how).
Another good analogy is smokes in Canada. For years the Canadian gouvernment has taxed the bejesus out of poor smokers, basically because they can. They use them as a revenue stream. If tomorow they suddenly decided "Hey you know what smoking is really fucking bad, they should be illegal"... This won't happen for several reasons, one is they would lose a boatload of money. They would also tick off voters. Third they would looke like really big idiots, as they basically have reversed their policy of many years exploiting people, and condoning an activity that NOW they admit should be illegal.
Believe it or not but gourvenments run on appreances and looking like a shit farmer isn't gonna sit well with most. So even by taxing media in the near past they have condoned the activity and made profits (for them or for industry), so to come out now and say, oopsie thats bad, illegal, go to jail, pay fine... well in short they will look like idiots, and dispite how the media paints them, political type people hate looking like idiots as it errodes their appreance and thus their power.
Interesting articles. The one thing that I found to be the most intersting is how this is going to work with the legislated media tax that is already in place.
When it first came out I thought it was wrong, but the government caved to pressure (presumably from the recording industry). Basically if you by CD-R's or writable DVD's you pay a 'media tax' on top of the purchace price (it is included in the price you see, they used to break it down for the consumer). However this is a very stupid tax as the limits are retaded (tax size is based up media storage capacity!), as this also includes things like ipods, and the like. Are CD players, nope. Is general memory, nope. But if a device is basically a big memory stick or HD that plays music, it is taxed. The real evil part of this tax is that it ASSUMES that everyone is a Buccaneer (Yar!). You could buy CD-R's for nothing more than stright data, yet you would be paying a media tax as they assume that they will be used to copy music or something. I am not sure about USB drives, but it would not surprise me if they are taxed as well. Very evil stuff considering out legal system and the whole innocent before proven guilty etc...
In a slightly unrealted note, this errosion has been happing in Canada for sometime now, under the guise or reasoning that the courts cannot handle the volume. Or that it is too expensive to try every case. An example of this is giving the powers to cities to write parking tickets, which most use maninly as a revune stream (not its intention I don't think). I got a parking ticket in Ottawa about a year ago (not where I live). The short version of the story is: I was never issued a ticket! I get a letter in the mail, saying I owe 40$ for parking tickets. I call the city and try to explain to the the issue, they do not care. Their response is that if I had a problem with it I COULD fight it in court. However, I would have to drive 250km on a work day in the middle of the week at least once, at the cost of at least 400$. Or I could pay the ticket. They warn me if I do not I will not be able to register my car when it comes up. So I can pay 400$ and fight it, or just pay the (and therefore pleading guilty of the offence) ticket of 40$. I paid the ticket, even though it was wrong. Most definitions I read would say this is stright up extortion, but whatever. Just thinking about this whole affair again boils my balls. Anyway enough of this rant. Back to regular programming.
Civil liberities aside what is really interesting is the recording industry cannot have it both ways. If legislation is passed making downloading and copying music illegal, then they cannot justify having a "media tax" anymore as I see it. You cannot tax an illegal activity (as that legitimizes it). Thats like making the crack dealer, pay tax (or even more funny in Canada, making his crackheads pay GST on their spank). Why not just tax murder while your at it, 10$ a head I say! However once a tax is in place it is VERY hard to get rid of it (GST anyone!), I bet you anything they will what to have both worlds.
Another of my favorite examples of this lunacy is I once heard a story about a Canadian that got caught selling cocain in Vietnam. The government there, sentanced her to death by firing squad, AND fined her 100,000$. The big joke eveyone was saying was "if I were her, I wouldn't pay the fine". The only differenace here is in Canada, IF they keep both the tax and pass the coyright bill it will be like eveytime you buy media, they convict you, and fine you, and if someday that ACTUALLY catch you doing it, they will try to convict you and fine and/or jail you. So in esasnce its like Canadians paying a mandatory tax on cocain, then if they are caught, fined. So in this case you cannot help but pay.
Anyway my rant is now very long and makes little sense even to me anymore. I am not sure why I picked all the drug referances, only that they are illegal.
Anyway thats my 2 cents (or twenty bucks as the case may be)
What do you mean there are different 'sockets' for different CPU types and manufactures.
News at 11
I though this was supposed to be 'news for nerds', not 'news for the moderaty ignorant masses'....
This is such dumb article topic (no I didn't rtfa (slashdotted already), but if what the parent says is true). If you think there are a lot of socket types now, rewind a couple years... Now that was freaking complicated. Slots, Sockets, some with a lifespan of only a few months (I think it was a P4 socket). Remember Cyrix, Transmeta.... not to mention Motorola... The fun times with socket 'adapters'.
Any self respecting nerd will know that CPU are not like lego or plugs (of which if you look around the world there are more of those standards than sockets), that you can just interchange at will (GASP!).
Anyway everyonce and a while an dumbed down version of an article will grace/. Here is a guidline... if you are getting a technical document from a mainstream (ie not technical) source it is gonna be a POS. If the article is from the manufactures website it is just going to be an advertisement and any details are subject to bullshit.
It amazes me how some of this stuff makes it by the editors (Ya now I can say i have bitched about the editors like everyone else!).
Hmmmmmm.... Cat's out of the bag it seems...
on
Google's Secret Lab
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· Score: 1
"The mystery behind eval.google.com should be solved soon. It's a secret lab of Google."
I personally love when these corporate interst biased idiots start just launching stats off the cuff...
Two-thirds eh? I am calling BS right now! Prove it! What studies were used? How big a sample? ETc... That just like the montary figure they keep using (and changing), oh we lost 80 blllion to pricry just last month! Wah Wah Wah. Come talk to me when you have gained back a shred of credibility.
"Sony has introduced a new DRM scheme. You can burn a cd-r from the original once, but you can't re-burn from that first copy." From the article: "he concept is known as "sterile burning."
When reached for comment about what this new technique will be called, officials stated that one of the two code names for the Standand Technique DRM (STD) might catch on, Syphilis or Gonorrhea.
"Who's to say what will catch on" a spokeperson said, "Sony has to Protect itself".
"Give the vote to every citizen above the age of zero (obviously until a child was able to claim the right to vote themselves, their parents would vote for them). In most places, there is no IQ pre-requisite to being an elector and children should have the right to be represented by their" government.
OK you had me until you stated this. Possibly one of the dumber ideas (the rest I could agree with). Number one children do not have the responsibility to vote in general. Also so you are giving more voting power to people with more children?! That is absurd. If you think people take advantage of welfare now, just wait still thay can have 8 brats and a voice. Any sort of IQ testing for voting rights is pretty lame. I don't really think that an IQ test is accurate at all, and personally not really an indicator of intelligence at all. Perhaps somesort of very simple test, just a few social questions, and VERY basic logic, and that would serve.
However all that said, I do believe that the democratic process should start earlier. Having a law where you can put a kid in a 3000lb death pod at 16, yet not vote seems silly to me. If the voting age was lowered to 16, I think it would make things better. It is pretty plain that the very old, own the polls, having a counter weight of possibly differing opinion I think would level the playing field a bit.
It seem to me (up here in canada anyway) that the 0.08% legal limit was put in place intentially lower than what actually makes you impared.
I think this was so back in the day (when driving drunk seemed a bit more socially acceptable), the police had some leeway on if to charge or not (kinda like speeding tickets). So if someone got pulled over and blowed (not sure if that is even a word) a 0.08 or 0.09 they might just get a warning.
However times have changed and it not very socially unacceptable to drink and drive (for good reason) and while the police have moved to a zero tolerance rule most likely the law is slow to change to keep up. They could also have an unwillingness to chnage it figureing that having a bit of leeway is good rather than bad. That is it might keep some unimpaired people from driving but it also might keep a few more drunkies of the road.
Anyway this is all speculation as I am not aware of the history, just seems a plausible rational.
I would rather a 10 buck clickity clack than a 100$ wireless, usb, internet, media, programmable, glow in the dark, led indicators, blue tooth, ergonomic, natural, quiet, windows, etc...
So long as it interpretes typing. I am so sick of the varients. Wireless might be ok in some applications (media center for example), but is half this stuff ever needed or used.
The last two stupid ones I bought (they were the cheapest I coudl find in a pinch), were a media one and an Internet one.
They both sucked, half the time you would inadvertantly hit a button while doing something else. Let me tell you hitting the "internet" or "Media Player" button while playing a FPS online will make you curse.
It is also all the more screwy buttons my cat can walk over and activate. So the next morning I can see several dozen apps started, or the computer put into standby or shutdown.
Another positive with the cheapo keyboard is the ability to just toss it if you accidently spill crap on it.
I am really just writing this to see if I get first post...:)
USA + UK trans-atlantic pass. There are SLIGHTLY more countries that border the atlantic ocean than just the two. Perhaps they only see those that were part of the "coalition of the willing"... who needs the rest of those countries anyway lol. The whole thing seems to be a great big joke to me.
Hell Canada and the UK would be closer to the term transatlantic...
Slashdot Mirror
Gulf War ended? News to me... You have to admit that really didn't turn out well...
Well I feel bad for him, for anyone that loses their job, however....
He lost his job because he went on TV and made a big freakin' deal out of it. That was an idiot thing to do. So he is not blamless in losing his own job. He should not be blind to such complications.
A analogy would be that if I used to work in the porn industry. If I don't bring that up in an interview, and they hire me, so what, none of their buisness.
However if they hire me as say a Teacher, or perhaps some very 'family values' kind of company, I don't think I would be too surprised that I got canned if I went on TV and went off about the illustrous Porn Jobs that I had been on.
Anyway it just makes sense. Is that a legitmate reason to fire someone? I don't know, thats for the court to decide. They may have to make some kind of restitution, and they may decide that the penalty is worth it. Anyway it shouldn't surprise the idiot that got fired for making public his ties to a related and doubious (spelling?) industry...
my two cents anyway...
Thats an EASY one I think.
Yes. I belive his name was Nog. Son (or was it Nephew?) of Quark from DS9. The Wesley Crusher character was vastly superior to that one.
Note I am am not saying that the actor who played 'Nog' was horrible, just that the character was. Oh and while I am thinking of this add Sisko's son (can't even remember his name) to that list, he was also quite horrible and he and Nog got into all kinda of 'trouble' together. Those DS9 ep that revolved around Nog and Sisko's Son's shenanigans were the absolute worst.
Again no offence to those actors, but wow what horrible roles!
Its like the romance lines in SW ep 2, sure Haydon may or may not suck as an actor, but give anyone those lines and see how they fare, yuck.
Thats true they have to answer to their bottom line. I should have re-phrased in that NL isn't going to take PJ sueing them personally, its just buisness. Particualy with the amount of money involved (relationally). If PJ was trying to sue for a billion dollars or something NL might take exception to that and there may be a problem with them doing buisness again.
The way I see this is just a dry contract dispute that is going to a 3rd party to resolve (in this case the 3rd party happends to be the courts, so the decision is enforceable).
NL it seems did some "questionable" accounting by selling LOTR toys to a sister company, thus robbing PJ of his cut.
His contract probably read something like "PJ gets x percentage of profit on any merchindise that NL sells" or something like that.
NL by selling said toys at a loss to a 'independant' subsidudary or 'sister' company, did not make a 'profit' from the sale and thus PJ doesn't get a cut. You can bet however that the 'sister' company made a profit.
Peter Jackson would have to prove in court that NL has dealt is bad faith and that the intent of the contract is being breached. Never mind that sort of colusion between so called 'independant' companies is bullshit to begin with. But it seems to happen all the time and corporations get away with it.
Its that sort of corporate BS that really bugs me and I really hope PJ gets his and then some.
A perfect example of this kind of BS is Air industry up here in Canada. Once upon a time there was a little economy jet liner we'll call Kanada 300. Kanada 300 (to my knowlege) was a wholly owned subsiduary of Air Kanada (and I think is was called something else before Kanada 300 even, same story). Anyway through mismanagement and the rest, Kanada 300 goes Bankrupt. This means that it cannot be sued by creditors and is basically liquidated. Never mind all the passengers with tickets that get screwed, or the poor idiots that bought stock, all gone. However, in Canada there is really only a handful of Jet liners, of which Air Kanada probably makes up 95%. So here is how things play out. Air Kanda creates another wholly owned subsiduary called Tawango. Tawango, of course has no jets, but hey guess what there is the totally unrelated company called Kanada 300 that has tonnes of Jets to get rid of and no one to sell them to! Its a match made in heaven! So Tawango, buys all the Kanada 300's Jets (at a huge discount) and paints a brand new Tawango on the side! A new Jet liner is born! It would not surprise me if Tawango hired all the staff (or part of them) to run Tawango...
The moral of this story? Incorporate yourself! You can do whatever the fuck you want... and the bigger you are the more you can do.
Anyway now I mad, must go.
Meh... bottom line is that PJ made hundreds of millions off the movie and NL made billions. I am pretty sure they can kiss and make up. I am sure they are just jumping through the legal hoops and motions to get the best deal that they can.
I am not sure about you, but I am not sure how pissed I would be if I made 300 million but got screwed out of 20 million or even 100 million, like how many millions do I need before it is kinda a pointless number.
Same goes for NL, if I made Billions off a movie and PJ wanted to sue for a bit more cash say between 20-100million, wtf do I care, I just made 4 BILLION dollars... The thats just a silly amount of money i can barly comprehend.
So in conclusion I doubt this is a big deal, just part of buisness these day. NL tried to make an extra buck, PJ thinks he is due his, courts will make a decision, and its done.
PJ may take it personally I suppose, but as I said I doubt it. He may just take this as an expensive learning experiance, and be even more careful in his contract next time.
Though any lawyer worth his salt can tell you no contract is going to be ironclad. It is written in words, and words can have many meanings. It is up to a court to decide what those meanings are, and if not clear, what the intent of the meaning was.
Now if the contract was written in Boolean, well then it might be less open to interpretation, of course it would also probably be a million pages long with all the cases and exceptions (hell it wouldn't surprise me if the orginal contract was long enough to make Robet Jorden blush).
Just a little tidbit incase it hasn't been mentioned yet. Not sure where the term Eskimo came from, or why it is bad, but I do know that "Inuit" in their own language simply means "The People" so it probably wins the PC genaric name award or something. I always refer to them as the Inuit the same way I would say someone is Native rather than Indian. I am not sure how many native people would take real offence to being called Indian (same with Eskimo vs Inuit), but it seems generally more excepted and correct so that is what is used. Anyway thats it! Though I will mention that I have some Native friends that seem to use the word "Indian" much the same was Blacks (African-American just seems wrong to me, kinda like vertically challanged should be short people) tend to use the word "Nigger" (I shudder even as I say it, for whatever reason I abhor saying that word, yes White guy here, though is "White guy" bad? Meh who knows...). Though I doubt Inuit do the same with Eskimo, though you never know.... ok now that I have kinda freaked myself out talking about race and names and stuff I am gonna leave... Please don't take offence and hurt me people *ducks*
I know those indians are a handful, but really, this smacks a bit of racism (more likely just trolling for people pissed about outsourceing).
I am sure the same thing happens with more regularity in the good 'ole U S of A. In fact we have seen many articles to that effect in the past.
So how is this news? Because an Indian did it? Look at the numbers, its even small fry stuff too. Sure maybe it would be a big deal if he sold the 200,000 addresses he said he could (probably lying anyway, looking for more payoff). But all he sold was 20,000. How many MILLION of people had their information stolen in the USA last year alone?
Anyway stupid story, why to go ed. All you gonna get is troll responses from people ticked about outsourcing from the US to india, and going "ohh i told you so" and "serves you right"...
Intelligent discussion that.
out.
My last beef with ebay I got really pissed about, and it is particulary stupid if ebay owns paypal.
The ubershort version of the story is this: I have had an ebay account since 2000, it was registered to a webmail address (yahoo). This year (so I have had an account in good standing for 5 years now using my webmail address), my computer basically had a virus meltdown as I was using a bootleg version of windows. I was in the middle of several trasactions at the time and did not want to cause delays to the sellers involved. So I changed my e-mail address to my work email address (which really is a no-no), just temporarly (so I thought) so I could finish my transactions.
I finally get my home system (it was a complicated mess) up and running again (had to abandon windows in favor of Linux). I decided to change my addess on ebay BACK to my orginally address (to stop all those annoying messanges being sent to my place of work). Guess what, ebay refuses to do so! They say because it is a webmail address they require my credit card number. I tell them to f*&k off. They can't seem to understand that I never gave them a credit card number before, and I am not about to now. It is bad enough that I have to suffer paypal having my credit card number (a nessary evil). I argued and argued with them, trying to point out how silly they were being. They even have on record my old address and how long I was registered to that address, yet still will not change it back.
So now unless I capitulate and give up my personal finicial information to them they are essientially holding both my ebay account and my work email address hostage. As now I get all this crap (I have turned off most of the junk they send) to my work email address which I could get in trouble for and I can't make them completely stop with out destroying my account and thus my built up feedback. Also it makes my ebay account unusable if I turn ALL the notifications off to avoid trouble at work. It really is bullshit.
so in summary. Don't change your email account in ebay. As how this ties into the parent message, if they own paypal, then they already HAVE my damn credit card number, confirmed, they don't need it again. Bastards!
Ebays Profit Model:
1)Users build up feedback
2)Leverage feedback
3)Profit!!!
Yup... this is why I rarely use the service anymore... or just lurk for long periods until I find a really good deal. The problem as I see it (as far as pricing goes) is two fold, mega seller BUISNESSES who basically sell from a store front. Normally I would not have a problem with that so long as it is cheaper than retail, but this is usually not the case. The other problem is stupid people on e-bay. There are either a) too many stupid people on ebay, or b) too many people that do not do reasearch into what an item is actually worth. Why assume risk and pay more than retail, its just stupid.
Ebay has been degenerated into a place where the only things worth buying are very rare hard to find items that have a limited buying base (not that many people will be interested, ie I am looking for a gasket for a specific machine), and illegal stuff like bootlegs etc...
I USED to shop all the time for computer equipment (usually slightly dated), but I would say 99% of the time I can find the same product or better for cheaper at an online retailer. Not to mention the risk involved in ebay, or the screwing of people on postage. I love looking at ads for a 1.99 product and a 30$ shipping fee... You get sick of the lies after a while.
Anyway thats my 2 cents.
It was announced that this technology would be the muscle behind Infinitium Labs new console codenamed "Give me your money you dumb suckers!".
When questioned over the length of the name, Tim said "Piss off and give me your investment money!"
[[[[Taken from the "I'll believe it when I see it" file]]]]
*END TRANSMISSION*
Why?
Few comments.
Only two reasons to go to the moon as I see it, one is to use it as a base to launch more missions, and two is to research how to exist in that sort or eniroment and produce stuff from it.
Last I read, using our current technology, a chemical rocket, using hydrogen, would not work. I read someplace that in order to get to the closest star (perhaps it was with planets), within a reasonable time (I think they used a 100 years, but half that is more likely) and not kill everyone with extreem g-forces, you would have to burn pretty much constantly all the way (accelleration, and then braking), and to do so would consume about the same about of hydrogen as our sun. Which if you think about scale, is a pretty stupid statistic.
So in short if the purpose is to use moon as a base to explore the galaxy, well we would be better served by developing technology, that would enable travel. That is, why build a base to manufacture stuff, if the only stuff we can manufacture is pretty useless for that scale (or even solar system scale).
So that pretty much kills reason number one.
The second reason to figure out how to manufacture stuff and to figure out how to live in that that enviroment, well as to my knowlege ther really hasn't been much research into either. I think I would rather figure that stuff out BEFORE we go the the moon and try to just wing it or something.
Its not like we haven't studied the moon or anything, we know what the enviroment is like. Has anyone tried to construct a mock up? or Procedures for setting of manufacting facilities? Mining? How about ore smelting? construction? How about processes for extracting Air and Water from the moon? It is way to expensive to ship crap out of earth's gravity well... Have to get stuff locally.
It just seems to me that serious though has not been put into this endevor. I mean I am an idiot shlub and I can come up with tons of stuff that could plausibly be problems or issues.
If this is going to be another, "hey guys look what I can do!" affair, be it a distraction from a domestic and or international woes or just an opiate of the masses (I can just see some dumb shit like "Suvivor MOON!" or some wierd media event when you can vote some poor bastard off the shuttle or something).
Perhaps I am just cynical, but i see this as more of a circus than a serious scienctific endevor. If that is the case, then I ask Why? I can think of many more useful (perhaps not as cool) and more important things to spend several billion on.
Would be news to me... I know at one point they used to show it... so 300$ ipod and 30$ media tax or whatever... NOw I don't see it anymore. That says to me either they don't show it anymore, or like you said they don't do it anymore.
However, that isn't really the point, if you RTFA you would see that they (industry) still has about 250 MILLION of those tax dollars in a bank account. You can bet they ain't gonna give it back (even if they could possibly figure out how).
Another good analogy is smokes in Canada. For years the Canadian gouvernment has taxed the bejesus out of poor smokers, basically because they can. They use them as a revenue stream. If tomorow they suddenly decided "Hey you know what smoking is really fucking bad, they should be illegal"... This won't happen for several reasons, one is they would lose a boatload of money. They would also tick off voters. Third they would looke like really big idiots, as they basically have reversed their policy of many years exploiting people, and condoning an activity that NOW they admit should be illegal.
Believe it or not but gourvenments run on appreances and looking like a shit farmer isn't gonna sit well with most. So even by taxing media in the near past they have condoned the activity and made profits (for them or for industry), so to come out now and say, oopsie thats bad, illegal, go to jail, pay fine... well in short they will look like idiots, and dispite how the media paints them, political type people hate looking like idiots as it errodes their appreance and thus their power.
Interesting articles. The one thing that I found to be the most intersting is how this is going to work with the legislated media tax that is already in place.
When it first came out I thought it was wrong, but the government caved to pressure (presumably from the recording industry). Basically if you by CD-R's or writable DVD's you pay a 'media tax' on top of the purchace price (it is included in the price you see, they used to break it down for the consumer). However this is a very stupid tax as the limits are retaded (tax size is based up media storage capacity!), as this also includes things like ipods, and the like. Are CD players, nope. Is general memory, nope. But if a device is basically a big memory stick or HD that plays music, it is taxed. The real evil part of this tax is that it ASSUMES that everyone is a Buccaneer (Yar!). You could buy CD-R's for nothing more than stright data, yet you would be paying a media tax as they assume that they will be used to copy music or something. I am not sure about USB drives, but it would not surprise me if they are taxed as well. Very evil stuff considering out legal system and the whole innocent before proven guilty etc...
In a slightly unrealted note, this errosion has been happing in Canada for sometime now, under the guise or reasoning that the courts cannot handle the volume. Or that it is too expensive to try every case. An example of this is giving the powers to cities to write parking tickets, which most use maninly as a revune stream (not its intention I don't think). I got a parking ticket in Ottawa about a year ago (not where I live). The short version of the story is: I was never issued a ticket! I get a letter in the mail, saying I owe 40$ for parking tickets. I call the city and try to explain to the the issue, they do not care. Their response is that if I had a problem with it I COULD fight it in court. However, I would have to drive 250km on a work day in the middle of the week at least once, at the cost of at least 400$. Or I could pay the ticket. They warn me if I do not I will not be able to register my car when it comes up. So I can pay 400$ and fight it, or just pay the (and therefore pleading guilty of the offence) ticket of 40$. I paid the ticket, even though it was wrong. Most definitions I read would say this is stright up extortion, but whatever. Just thinking about this whole affair again boils my balls. Anyway enough of this rant. Back to regular programming.
Civil liberities aside what is really interesting is the recording industry cannot have it both ways. If legislation is passed making downloading and copying music illegal, then they cannot justify having a "media tax" anymore as I see it. You cannot tax an illegal activity (as that legitimizes it). Thats like making the crack dealer, pay tax (or even more funny in Canada, making his crackheads pay GST on their spank). Why not just tax murder while your at it, 10$ a head I say! However once a tax is in place it is VERY hard to get rid of it (GST anyone!), I bet you anything they will what to have both worlds.
Another of my favorite examples of this lunacy is I once heard a story about a Canadian that got caught selling cocain in Vietnam. The government there, sentanced her to death by firing squad, AND fined her 100,000$. The big joke eveyone was saying was "if I were her, I wouldn't pay the fine". The only differenace here is in Canada, IF they keep both the tax and pass the coyright bill it will be like eveytime you buy media, they convict you, and fine you, and if someday that ACTUALLY catch you doing it, they will try to convict you and fine and/or jail you. So in esasnce its like Canadians paying a mandatory tax on cocain, then if they are caught, fined. So in this case you cannot help but pay.
Anyway my rant is now very long and makes little sense even to me anymore. I am not sure why I picked all the drug referances, only that they are illegal.
Anyway thats my 2 cents (or twenty bucks as the case may be)
Ha ha...
at sony, for spending untold on a new encryption scheme and having that guy render it useless in 72 house... oh boy.
What do you mean there are different 'sockets' for different CPU types and manufactures.
/. Here is a guidline... if you are getting a technical document from a mainstream (ie not technical) source it is gonna be a POS. If the article is from the manufactures website it is just going to be an advertisement and any details are subject to bullshit.
News at 11
I though this was supposed to be 'news for nerds', not 'news for the moderaty ignorant masses'....
This is such dumb article topic (no I didn't rtfa (slashdotted already), but if what the parent says is true). If you think there are a lot of socket types now, rewind a couple years... Now that was freaking complicated. Slots, Sockets, some with a lifespan of only a few months (I think it was a P4 socket). Remember Cyrix, Transmeta.... not to mention Motorola... The fun times with socket 'adapters'.
Any self respecting nerd will know that CPU are not like lego or plugs (of which if you look around the world there are more of those standards than sockets), that you can just interchange at will (GASP!).
Anyway everyonce and a while an dumbed down version of an article will grace
It amazes me how some of this stuff makes it by the editors (Ya now I can say i have bitched about the editors like everyone else!).
"The mystery behind eval.google.com should be solved soon. It's a secret lab of Google."
/.7 (Licence to Google)
Doesn't seem too secret to me.
Damn you
Borgle
Bork Bork Bork
I personally love when these corporate interst biased idiots start just launching stats off the cuff...
Two-thirds eh? I am calling BS right now! Prove it! What studies were used? How big a sample? ETc... That just like the montary figure they keep using (and changing), oh we lost 80 blllion to pricry just last month! Wah Wah Wah. Come talk to me when you have gained back a shred of credibility.
"Sony has introduced a new DRM scheme. You can burn a cd-r from the original once, but you can't re-burn from that first copy." From the article: "he concept is known as "sterile burning."
When reached for comment about what this new technique will be called, officials stated that one of the two code names for the Standand Technique DRM (STD) might catch on, Syphilis or Gonorrhea.
"Who's to say what will catch on" a spokeperson said, "Sony has to Protect itself".
"Service Robots in Service"
Thesaurus meet Cmd Taco. Taco this is Thesaurus...
OK you made make laugh out loud and snort at work... I have to at least sound like I am doing work!
"Give the vote to every citizen above the age of zero (obviously until a child was able to claim the right to vote themselves, their parents would vote for them). In most places, there is no IQ pre-requisite to being an elector and children should have the right to be represented by their" government.
OK you had me until you stated this. Possibly one of the dumber ideas (the rest I could agree with). Number one children do not have the responsibility to vote in general. Also so you are giving more voting power to people with more children?! That is absurd. If you think people take advantage of welfare now, just wait still thay can have 8 brats and a voice. Any sort of IQ testing for voting rights is pretty lame. I don't really think that an IQ test is accurate at all, and personally not really an indicator of intelligence at all. Perhaps somesort of very simple test, just a few social questions, and VERY basic logic, and that would serve.
However all that said, I do believe that the democratic process should start earlier. Having a law where you can put a kid in a 3000lb death pod at 16, yet not vote seems silly to me. If the voting age was lowered to 16, I think it would make things better. It is pretty plain that the very old, own the polls, having a counter weight of possibly differing opinion I think would level the playing field a bit.
Not sure what bus you ever rode on, but I would say the oppsite is true. Bus drivers are always drunk.
It seem to me (up here in canada anyway) that the 0.08% legal limit was put in place intentially lower than what actually makes you impared.
I think this was so back in the day (when driving drunk seemed a bit more socially acceptable), the police had some leeway on if to charge or not (kinda like speeding tickets). So if someone got pulled over and blowed (not sure if that is even a word) a 0.08 or 0.09 they might just get a warning.
However times have changed and it not very socially unacceptable to drink and drive (for good reason) and while the police have moved to a zero tolerance rule most likely the law is slow to change to keep up. They could also have an unwillingness to chnage it figureing that having a bit of leeway is good rather than bad. That is it might keep some unimpaired people from driving but it also might keep a few more drunkies of the road.
Anyway this is all speculation as I am not aware of the history, just seems a plausible rational.
The cheaper it is, and fewer options the better.
:)
I would rather a 10 buck clickity clack than a 100$ wireless, usb, internet, media, programmable, glow in the dark, led indicators, blue tooth, ergonomic, natural, quiet, windows, etc...
So long as it interpretes typing. I am so sick of the varients. Wireless might be ok in some applications (media center for example), but is half this stuff ever needed or used.
The last two stupid ones I bought (they were the cheapest I coudl find in a pinch), were a media one and an Internet one.
They both sucked, half the time you would inadvertantly hit a button while doing something else. Let me tell you hitting the "internet" or "Media Player" button while playing a FPS online will make you curse.
It is also all the more screwy buttons my cat can walk over and activate. So the next morning I can see several dozen apps started, or the computer put into standby or shutdown.
Another positive with the cheapo keyboard is the ability to just toss it if you accidently spill crap on it.
I am really just writing this to see if I get first post...
You gotta love the US....
USA + UK trans-atlantic pass. There are SLIGHTLY more countries that border the atlantic ocean than just the two. Perhaps they only see those that were part of the "coalition of the willing"... who needs the rest of those countries anyway lol. The whole thing seems to be a great big joke to me.
Hell Canada and the UK would be closer to the term transatlantic...