Since extra taxes never seem to go toward the national debt, but rather to new pet projects (aka money sinks), I can't blame people for wanting lower taxes.
The people I'm specifically speaking of our Republicans in the House and Senate who are more than willing to sign an anti-tax pledge to agree to never raise taxes or push for a dollar for dollar spending cuts to tax cuts in budget planning and the people who consistently vote in people like this. I mean, isn't the whole point of conservatives voting in Republicans precisely so the Republicans do their bidding? So, how can it be that if and when they are in power that they neither push nor succeed in raising extra taxes to go toward the national debt? I mean, sure, they say things about it *now*, but it's not like Republicans are an up and coming party that only recently came into existence nor is the national debt a new problem.
I'm conservative, but I would vote for a tax increase if it were guaranteed to go exclusively toward curbing the national debt.
Great. Please tell you representative just that, even if it does no good. I'd love to hear more conservatives/Republicans say such a thing.
Note also that I think we need to reduce our spending.
I agree. There's plenty of room to cut spending in entitlements and defense, probably more in the latter than in the former. Of the latter that is really just proxy scientific research, it'd be likely better to actually directly fund some good scientific research for tools of civilization that may have military applications than tools of the military destruction that may have civilian applications.
PS - Yeah, I know that conservative != Republican. The problem is that conservative is a pretty useless label (as is liberal) when it comes to a lot of issues and deflects from the point that there is no "Conservative" party in power so speaking in terms of conservative/liberal from a political power perspective seems more to disassociate oneself from all the bad things Republicans and Democrats are doing. The only way to fix a problem is to first own it. Meanwhile, the Tea Party's heavy anti-tax message hardly helps things as it seems more to echo selfish individualism than any real thought about society, even when it's society that's providing the means of their survival. But, then, I guess there's a clear disconnect when one thinks "I pay a fair share of taxes so I pay for the services I use" when (1) plenty of times one doesn't remotely pay for all the services one personally uses even amortizing over one's whole life, (2) there's plenty of people other than oneself who you want to provide for (prisons alone, if you're entirely inhumane), and (3) there really is a difference between "million" and "billion" and focusing on the smaller issues misses the point.:/ But, then, that's me trying to be pragmatic about things.
I'm neither, but in all fairness I think the idea is to spend less on services, or have fewer services.
...while lowering taxes. Never mind that the US has a huge deficit or a massive debt. Sure, they're all for spending less but in the same way corporate raiders take out massive loans on good company credit while cutting back on costs. Actually making the country/company stronger costs money and is antithetical to tax cuts/price increases which are potentially unpalatable even if necessary.
To wit, it's also the cornerstone of capitalism that there's massive duplication of effort and a lot of failed pathways. So, it would seem that obviously some sort of joint, government control of the means of production would be the solution. But, that just consolidates the power and leaves there little recourse for new ideas or new direction. But in open source, the power is always in everyone's hand and everyone is able to launch a fork. But, forks don't span in all directions because of in part capital and in part because there's an obvious advantage in cooperation at times.
In effect, open source is a lot closer to the ideals of capitalism than capitalism ends up being thanks to monopolies/oligarchies and government influence. But, then, you don't see many people bitching about capitalism and its by design constant fracturing and duplication of effort.:/
PS - I'm not bitching about it:) But, then, I'm not blind to it, either.
And sometimes there are two sides to a story, and sometimes people hear things that weren't actually said. We have one person saying "I was threatened", the other says "didn't happen". Who to believe? I don't automatically believe either one.
Fine. Feel free to believe neither one. What does that leave you with? Nothing? Great.
And? You give reasons both ways why they wouldn't hire him. And yet, they did. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle? Maybe the president of the company feels bad that what he actually did say was misinterpreted so badly? Or maybe they recognize talent and want to hire it?
So the whole NDA didn't happen? Or it did happen but what was stated wasn't a threat but fatherly advice, with a whole NDA that violates the whole concept of fatherly advice? Let's think up a couple hundred other possibles once we allow ourselves to presume there's a "somewhere in the middle" and just get to make up things to try to explain things. However you wish to look at it, I see the whole situation very fishy from Skytech's position. As for talent, more on that point later.
So you don't know that they didn't run the same tests.
I also don't know what color pants Al-Khabaz was wearing at the time. Such is irrelevant given that my original statement didn't presume they did or didn't run the test; it was a statement of what I believed should be the proper course of action, of which they obviously didn't follow the latter parts.
You miss the point that running the scan itself was the issue, not whether or not he found anything by running it. When I find someone who is abusing one of my systems, I don't put in place a temporary ban, I put it in and forget about it. I certainly don't say "come back soon!".
"Except through our HR department!" Seriously, the scan itself *shouldn't* be an issue precisely because it's the sort of thing one would expect black hats, grey hats, and possibly even white hats to be using. And the point of putting in place a temporary ban is to prevent exploitation *at the moment*, nothing more. Once the fixes are in place, all the scans will show is that you're not vulnerable. And given that most black hats are likely to be using bots to run scans, exploits, etc, a ban approach is inappropriate generally anyways. Finally, and again, if the scan was the issue, why the job offer? How can you rationalize what may be a black hat a second chance when they've, AFAIK, not expressed any sort of remorse nor does using a standard scan tool, which is at the same level of a script kiddie, in the category of "talent". Now, finding the original bugs quite probably *was* talent, but then the whole NDA, possible threats, etc so muddle the point, that I can't imagine the effort being more than trying to save face. But, yea, I'm sure you can come up with possible kindhearted or good reasons for it.
No, I pointed out that your point was based on an assumption. You don't know that they didn't run the test themselves. And now we know that your assumption would be that the company would remove a block on his IP after they fixed anything that he might have been scanning for, which is something else that is unlikely. I "selective short snip" what I am replying to, which is specifically your comment saying that they should do something that you don't know that they didn't already.
Of course I said what they *should* do because they, IMNHO, fucked it up and did the wrong thing. If they had done the right thing, I don't think I'd be botthering to comment. It's sort of funny, actually. If you believe Al-Khabaz's intent, he was effectively expelled for “serious professional conduct issue” because "the testing software Mr. Al-Khabaz ran to verify the system was fixed crossed a line", yet Skytech's reaction was to apparently just push a NDA on him which seems like a
So, in short, what Al-Khabaz did was so horrible the president of Skytech threatened him with 6-12 months jail time for a "cyber attack"
And if you read the original article, you'll see that the person who allegedly made this threat denies it.
And? The president of Skytech denies threatening Al-Khabaz, yet again Skytech is now offering Al-Khabaz a job now. If the threat was made, Skytech should not want to hire a seeming criminal and risk the liability. If the threat was not made, Skytech should not want to hire a liar who has created such negative PR and who likely will in the future.
But, then, if I were in that position I'd as quickly as possible run the same pen tester myself
Do we know this didn't happen?
As much as they may have, they didn't follow the rest of my advice. It sounds like their logs could tell Al-Khabaz was running the tester which implies they could have easily (a) banned his or any other IP temporarily that used the tester while they finished fixing the bugs and (b) "immediately fix" the bugs as they promised which should make that ban rather short. Instead, Al-Khabaz was called up and "banned" with a NDA which does nothing about any other person who would use the tester against their site, is a waste of time if the bugs were fixed quickly (as the NDA would be effectively quite moot), and seemingly is just a stalling tactic to try to force "responsible disclosure" on Al-Khabaz which we've seen repeatedly has turned into months or even years from a vulnerability being reported to being fixed by a vendor.
In short, your selective short snip pit of my statement missed the point entirely. It's in the same general area as police who take down a report for stolen goods but do nothing more to actually find the culprit(s). It's an almost meaningless gesture if there's good indication that there is no intention to follow through.
He did something wrong, sure. But what he did was not bad enough to justify completely destroying his future from an academic and professional standpoint.
Did something wrong? Destryong his future from a professional standpoint?
Skytech. He said that this was the second time they had seen me in their logs, and what I was doing was a cyber attack. I apologized, repeatedly, and explained that I was one of the people who discovered the vulnerability earlier that week and was just testing to make sure it was fixed. He told me that I could go to jail for six to twelve months for what I had just done and if I didn’t agree to meet with him and sign a non-disclosure agreement he was going to call the RCMP and have me arrested. So I signed the agreement.” -- Youth Expelled from Montreal College... (emphasis mine)
If it hadn't attracted all this attention, he wouldn't have had all these job offers, and would have been screwed.
"In the meantime, Al-Khabaz has received more than one job offer from technology firms, including Skytech, the company that makes Omnivox" -- from the summary (again, emphasis mine)
So, in short, what Al-Khabaz did was so horrible the president of Skytech threatened him with 6-12 months jail time for a "cyber attack" (with a convenient way to get out of jail card to sign a NDA) and *now* Skytech wants to hire him? The whole thing screams out that Skytech's president was overly reactionary and the whole "cyber attack" angle has more to do with Skytech's pants being proverbial down than any real wrong doing on Al-Khabaz's part.
Of course, I'm sure I'd feel a lot differently if I saw a pen tester being run against my site. But, then, if I were in that position I'd as quickly as possible run the same pen tester myself and *fix the bugs* because the next person who comes along is unlikely to be a person well intentioned enough to call me up and tell me about the bugs nor someone I myself could call as someone I can confirm any problems they expose. But then perhaps the only lesson to be learned is that Al-Khabaz should have used a Tor proxy to run the scan and companies really should treat the internet like waves battering against a levee with more concern about building a better levee and a lot less on getting the name and number of every big wave that comes along.
Now we have a new batch of designers that is making the same mistake, taking the mobile layouts and trying to use them on a desktop where they do not make much sense.
It's interesting you say that, but there's at least one area where the opposite was true to success: pie menus. With mice, a pie menu isn't as useful precisely because desktops have so many options and layered pie menus can quickly become confusing. Meanwhile, pie menus are a great fit on a touch screen with only a few options and layers (just gesture one of eight directions from the center of the screen). I think the difficult part is really knowing where, if anywhere, success will be with a design. Oh, and of course, it's not to say pie menus were a complete failure on desktops and mouse gesturing in general is something some people like. So, there are perhaps usage cases or users where mobile layouts are a good fit on the desktop much more than would otherwise seem.,/p>
Sovereign nations don't often let other countries dictate their policies, but they quite often listen to what other countries have to say about them.
Dictate policies, no. Heavily follow them when they come from the US? Too often. Of course, the reverse is true (Berne Convention) and of course the real point is not that sovereign nation A is talking to sovereign nation B but that companies in sovereign nation A and B are using A to pressure/suggest/lobby B to change their laws to their own advantage.
The article does not say that the US threatened the EC, it just says that the US is lobbying the EC.
And what if the US *did* threaten the EC? Can't sovereign nations threaten each other? Aren't sovereign nations supposed to be strong enough to stand up to threats, idle or otherwise? The point is that at least as far as nations go, it's all very much one and the same if it's all just talk.
If one country is proposing to do something that another affects the interests of another country, the latter can and should lobby the former.
Well, given that the whole point is EU law in EU nations among EU borders involving EU citizens and businesses operating within the EU...what part of the above "affects the interests of another country" except in the same absurd concept that being a subsistence farmer is regulated under federal interstate commerce laws because to feed oneself through farming means a potential lack of interstate commerce. Ie, to accept that the Us has some reasonable standing to lobby effectively means all countries have standing to lobby all other countries at all other times for any reason.
Foreign companies and governments lobby the US government on a regular basis, this is just the reciprocal of that.
Yea, reciprocal. An 800 lb gorilla US over a 50 lb country or a 50 lb country over an 800 lb gorilla US. Seriously, though, at least the EC is its own 800 lb gorilla. But the real problem is governments, both EC and US, treat plenty of companies as their own 800 lb gorillas, potentially out of a belief that those companies could readily cut jobs or otherwise risk the political career of politicians who oppose their objectives or potentially out of a want for campaign contributions or perhaps out of a really seriously warped view that companies really are 800 lb gorillas. Whatever the case, the idea that foreign companies doing it is okay is absurd for the same reason there's a serious problem already with local companies lobbying the US government. And the fact that a lot of the time other governments are lobbying on the behest of foreign (or even local) companies... Really, the idea that reciprocity somehow justifies it is absurd.
No, that is not impressive. Super lo-res screen, slower than any phone that is available today. But it's open source, so I suppose that's good.
The point of the lo-res screen is to be more in sync with the games that are planned for it--having said that, I do sort of wish it were 640x480. Meanwhile, your phone may be "faster" in GHz but that doesn't mean it's actually better at playing games. The fact that it's open source, btw, is a pretty big plus for people like me who would prefer not buying into a model of some device that very quickly is a brick because there's an effectively finite amount of interest in it. This hold just as true for Android phones as either games require a new version of Android to run or require higher specs to run.
But what is the point? Learning? Because the thing won't sell, like the previous models didn't do. You can have the best hardware, but if you don't have games for the device it doesn't matter.
The point is to actually play a decent amount of games that people want to play be actually playable. Most every other open(-like) handheld before has been either (a) too shy to actually demo what actually works and how well it works precisely because of a failing in the affordable hardware--meanwhile, on youtube there's plenty of videos of just how good the GCW Zero is--and the state of game porting and (b) tried too hard to fulfill some sort of a niche without really fleshing it out--the scope of what GCW Zero is meant for is rather bounded, but that's mostly a good thing in that people won't really expect much outside of it or seek some sort of treadmill to expand to.
I, for one, would rather game on my phone which is faster and has a much higher resolution display, with a bluetooth connected game controller of my choice.
I'd rather have a portable game console and no cell phone. To each his own.
Let us be clear here. Ownership of firearms has never really been about hunting or really even about home defense. It's about the right of the citizenry to have the means to protect themselves from tyranny.
The best protection from tyranny in a democracy is making good choices in (a) including a system of elections and (b) not allowing paranoia or other emotional arguments to cloud judgment on actually doing the significantly and costly evaluation of political candidates. For (a), we already fail quite heavily in that we've got it rigged so only D and R have any real chance in a lot of elections because *they* are the gatekeepers not only in setting districts but also in choosing where and how voting occurs, not to mention the way in which they've joined with media to heavily try to define who the legitimate candidates are and who aren't--although that in part is also the populace's fault because of (b). For (b), well, you're guilty right here, right now just as much as politicians are of using the latest school shooting to support their agenda. Instead of merely calling them out on it and saying you disapprove on its face, you speak of a tyranny that is neither sought nor really defensible against with said weapons, anyways.
The government may not trust us with our guns but really we don't trust them much with their guns.
Who has almost all the guns in the government? The military? Who does everyone politically in the US seem to worship and trust? The military. Who has the power to crush any sort of civilian uprising? The military. Clearly, that doesn't add up.
There is always a certain level of paranoia about government control anyway and any attempt to limit weapons at all directly reinforces that paranoia.
So, what you're saying is, you're really against how the government won't let you make nukes? I mean, what's with all that government control to try to limit weapons at all when that weapon is the great equalizer on the national stage--look who is on the UN security council and can veto anything they don't like and think why they have that power? Seriously, though, I can understand not likely living in a place where you're placed under restrictions on what you can do or what you can own/make, but to say that it reinforces a paranoia? That I just don't get.
In short, Americans really don't trust their leadership and if you sit and listen to CSPAN for a few hours it's easy to understand why.
For all that lack of trust, it's really surprising that there's yet to be a coup attempt. Or is it that all those people with guns are lazy? Or realize they don't stand a chance and it'd just be a suicide mission where they'd be called delusional? Or perhaps most Americans *do* trust their leadership and just really like to bitch about the 101 ways it which it's far from a perfect system. Nah, that's just crazy talk.
From the article: "Analyzing self-reported data from more than 222,000 people aged 45 and older, Australian researchers found that mortality risks spike after 11 hours of total daily sitting but are still 15 percent higher for those sitting between 8 and 11 hours compared to those sitting fewer than 4 hours per day."
My wild guess? Old people who slowly deteriorate because of old age quickly deteriorate once they reach the point they're confined to a wheel chair. It'd be about as much of a valuable study as noting that eating a significant amount of pureed food shows a mortality risk spike; because once you're at the state that all your food is and will always be pureed without any real hope of going back to solid food, you'll probably lose a lot of will to live, desire to eat, and be by the fact that you're eating puree-only food be in bad shape. By the same token, trying to force a person to stand or eat solid food probably won't do a lot since it's the physical deteriorating that needs fixed and while certain exercise and good food can help, I don't think it'll substantially influence the results.
Now, if all of this wasn't about a "mortality risk spike"... Besides, today most people *do* sit a lot more than people did two hundred years ago and life expectancy is a lot higher. Still, I do like the tagline, "Sitting: The Silent Killer".
Well, the problem is as follows. The Old Testament is all supportive of war as a byproduct of duty to whatever governmental authority one lives in. The New Testament speaks again of duty to governmental authority but doesn't per se really speak of any support for or against waging of war. Having said that, the New Testament speaks of communes formed by early Christians, effectively establishing a new governmental authority which is peaceful. Given that countries like the United States were formed under the banner of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness--through failing to adhere to a loyalty to the divine governmental authority--, it would seem to follow that from the former requirement of duty that one should not be for war either because of the banner of seeming peace or because one could argue the government in question is no longer of divine authority to follow. Or, you know, Christians could live in communes just as the early Christians did.
Of course, the early Christians were something closer to a suicide cult because they thought the end of the world was near and Jesus was coming back in their lifetime or a small multiple of lifetimes, so they didn't go out of their way to support any policy of self-protection or long-term planning for the survivability of the group. That's a strong basis for the martyr complex of Christianity. It is, after all, viewed as better to die for one's beliefs than to kill for them--hence those that live by the sword die by it.
.. which all politicians do because they can't win elections without paying lip service to Christianity. There's nothing particularly Christian about waging war, refusing to support a policy the poor or needy, or using any amount of force to collect taxes from anyone, really. Really, governance in general is all about world wants and needs, often through the use of force others to go along with it. Christianity is about spiritual enlightenment that compels one to do good works, but without forcing others to go along with it. They're really very orthogonal things.
And yes, constituents are quite happy to be lied to and go along with the charade because they want politicians who are "Christian enough" to do what they want to force others to go along with their beliefs. Ie, it's the fact that so few people are Christian but go along with the charade and hence are quite happy to push their political views on others under a comfy label instead of admitting their own little tyranny of opinion they wish to force on others. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar and leave Earthly matters to man while seeking God. The idea of usurping government to avoid oppression seems born from the Christian conquest of Rome, and there seems no end in sight. But, it's certainly not what Jesus commanded nor wanted any more than Marx's communism is equivalent to Soviet Russia.
Yup. The accounting scheme by which schools are funded. It's not based on the number of students attending a school, but the number of seat hours. RFID offers a better way of tracking students while they're on campus, which in turn increases the number of seat hours while holding down the costs of keeping detailed attendance records. It actually has absolutely nothing to do with tracking students.
That is its own perverseness, then. If anything RFID tags *should* be used to track students while on campus to keep a better history of who is showing up to which classes--coupled with a random sampling to verify that said tag is being used by said student.
You know those little ID batches you have to wear to work (office workers everywhere know this)? Same technology. Adults do it all the time, and nobody complains about how MegaCorp Inc is watching where they're going once they're off work because they're carrying an RFID card. Your credit card probably has an RFID too. Your cell phone may even have one. The crap you buy at the superstore... yup, there too.
Um, plenty of people complain about MegaCorp Inc and others tracking them. They also worry about RFID tags in credit cards or other monetary cards being read and used elsewhere. The general feeling though is, well, what are you going to do about it? As you point out, RFID tags have become quite pervasive. In any case, for all the talk of it, at least adults generally have the luxury of avoiding or blocking RFID tags as they can choose where to work, where to shop, whether or not to buy a tin foil wallet, etc. Given school is mandatory...
But stick it on a kid and suddenly everyone goes full retard. As if.
Perhaps it's because they're kids and it's yet another example of the state forcing temporary guardianship over other people's children to seemingly indoctrinate them into accepting yet another potentially creepy privacy violation? I mean, for all the talk of a school being a public building, it behaves a lot more like a private building most the time. And I think most adults would be unhappy about CCTV everywhere at their place of work. That the RFID tag could be used as a metaphorical equivalent.... Of course, as you original state, the whole point really is to allow schools to game the budgeting system and actually tracking students would almost certain work against that gaming, so I can only really see it being used for tracking in isolated incidents by school administrators to bully students they don't like. But, then, they'd do that anyways without the RFID tags.
No, they're making an argument based upon discrimination law, just as the headline states. Indiana being an at-will state means there is no "other side of the argument" to consider. The hospital doesn't have to have a good, bad, or any reason to set a policy that all staff take flu shots. The absurdity of the situation could be easily be taken as follows.
Presume, somehow, an atheist managed to become a priest at a church. Well, as a matter of discrimination law, if the church found out, they couldn't fire the priest purely based on their being an atheist. Having said that, if an atheist refused to perform a duty of his position, like say eating a communal wafer, they'd have reason enough to fire him for failing in his duty.
So, for all the arguments about a nurse unwilling to take a flu shot likely being a bad nurse or an atheist likely being a bad priest, so long as they actually carried out their duty, their religious convictions wouldn't enter into it. And to me, that's a pretty good standard to set anyways, since as the saying goes, "actions speak louder than words" and really firing people for their words/beliefs in generally absurd. But as this is a matter of action (or really, inaction), I just don't see the nurse's case having a leg to stand on.
"And some of them join because they believe the Constitution and what it represents matters enough to risk their lives defending it" by killing other people. The best real defense would be something like the Peace Corps--as stable countries are a better defense to outside aggression.
Except that an author doesn't live forever, and therefore, the economic life to the author (or perhaps his/her immediate heirs) is not indefinite.
If I'm 75 years old, the idea that the next book in my highly successful trilogy will be copyrighted for life + 95 years is quite possibly a strong motivation as it could well provide for my heirs. Sure, after some point the sales rate will likely be so low to amount to merely a few pennies a year (ie, one sale every few years), but that doesn't mean sales will drop to outright zero. Hell, consider how much money Twain's descendants could be raking in today. Ironically, not all of Twain's work is in the public domain apparently because not all of it was published before 1923 (Twain himself died in 1910).
Nice strawman... none of what you described is subject to copyright. I always laught when people argue points when they are completely ignorant of the law. Slashdot is a great place for this. I cannot tell you how many mistruths about intellectual property have been perpetuated by people on slashdot who are merely parroting what they've been told in the past.
Except the point being raised that people were being merely freeloaders and hence why copyright should cover at least what it does cover. My point was, then, that copyright should by that same logic cover even more things. Hence, of course, copyright doesn't cover the things I listed. The question then is, why not?
However, to be copyrightable, they have to create something -- merely copying isn't going to cut it.
Yet authors very often copy a very substantial amount and merely speak in their own words. How many times has Shakespeare been redone?
Nothing stopping anybody from reinterpreting the same fairy tales. Disney add their "twist" to them, and they can get a copyright on their artistic interpretation. BTW -- were those prior fairy tales animated movies? I didn't think so.
But why are fairy tales excluded? Everyone should be able to make their own written "twist" of Star Wars by that logic. And as for prior animated movies, yes Disney has frequently been the second or third to have made an animated film adaptation of a fairy tale.
There is a difference between reinterpreting a 400 year old fairy tale and rewriting Star Wars so that Luke and Hans Solo become lovers. You want to do a parady of Star Wars (e.g., Space Balls by Mel Brooks), then that is OK as well. Just look at the "Scary Movie" line of parody films.
Plenty of fairy tales are closer to only two hundred years old which is in in striking distance of current copyright law; to that end, there are still some fairy tales that are copyrighted still. And again, the only reason parody is allowed is because copyright law grants a special exception; why the exception?
What, these people cannot create a new world and new characters? That is a sad state of affairs if they want to be a real writer. Regardless, that probably won't get them into trouble unless they try to commercialize their "fan fiction."
Ask Disney about creating new worlds and being real writers, as well as commercializing their own fan fiction. See, most new studios or authors want to use a familiar extant work to allow people to relate to their own writing style, to help them clearly spell out just how their interpretation of things is different than others. It's an important note that while there might be a great many fairy tales older in the public domain, the same can't be said for science fiction stories; and yea, one could certainly take a fairy tale and morph it into "in space", but that's almost instantly mockable. Of course, the hope is that once an author gets their footing they write less derivative works, but clearly that's not a real necessity for commercial success--*cough* H
The copyright term was intended to reflect the economic life of the work to the author -- not how long it took the copyrighted work to be reproduced. The economic life of today's works are longer. In today's society, we consume (e.g., watch movies, listen to mustic) from generations ago. We, as a society, have more leisure time to enjoy these works, and the mediums used to store these works are much longer lasting.
Um..."the economic life of the work to the author" is about as long as there's a copyright term. Choosing that term is based in part on the curve of sales tapering off over time, but if it were merely a consideration of the author's economic future with a work, copyright would never end. Further, the idea that today's society consumes older works in general is very preposterous except in that re-implementation of very old Greek works keep popping up. Of course, as you note, people used to have a lot less leisure time long ago. Yet oddly people still did a lot of reading and then, like now, it was centered on the popular works of the day with few people really reading classical works.
The copyright system is to protect the creator's interests -- not to protect the interest of the consumers. The consumers already have a legitimate way to obtain the work -- purchase it or borrow it from a library or a friend.
No, the copyright system is to protect society's interests; that's why copyright terms end at some time--late enough to create an incentive to authors but short enough to hopefully allow society at large to prosper from the new ideas introduced. Having said, the very point is that one can't borrow or purchase a lot of works precisely because the copyright term today is so long that surviving copies of a work are often incredibly rare and because the ownership of the copyright is often enough in dispute there's often no clear legal means to make more copies.
Copyright consumers don't add anything to society as it pertains to artistic works beyond their ability to pay for it. The Copyright Act was meant to provide a mechanism by which the creators of artistic works can be paid. Personally, I don't have any sympathy for people wanting to get something for free.
Which is why, I presume, you support all authors paying royalties on plot ideas from the Greeks, words and grammar from the English, and religious, moral, musical, and cultural themes from Mesopotamia. It's not like authors create all those things out of whole clothe and so they can't expect "to get something for free". Oh, right, at some point it's recognized that to create indefinitely copyright or patents or trademarks on things is actually a bad thing.
Like most things, if you are honest with yourself, this debates centers about the economic interests of the two sides. In such a debate, I'm going to side with the creators – not the copiers.
Yep. Because we all know fairy tales, which were heavily copied by Disney and a large basis for its economic success, were all sourced from one creator who created them perfectly in their original. It's not like a lot of oral copiers took fairy tales, "made it better" when they told the story, and the very fact that actually better stories were more likely to be copied meant those versions were the ones we know more today... Oh, right, what you're talking about is people who are wholly consumers. Gee, I wonder why, in a system in which copyright lasts a lifetime and then some, people would be less inclined to take existing ideas and experiment with them. It's almost like they've been trained to believe they either have to (a) consumer soley, (b) be sued if they try to create upon an extant idea (fan fiction is a starting place for a lot of writers, programmers are more inclined to clone an extant game first to learn, etc), or (c) be very good at changing the window dressings on a story to avoid (b) given how very little really new stuff there is to create.
One can grasp one's hand tighter, to more securely hold one's own rights that are so dear. Or one can extend one's hand out and security the rights of others to yet again reaffirm that their rights and yours are real and not merely nice sounding words spoken by those who would readily ignore them in fear or convenience.
The true essence of what has changed humanity today is recognizing how many people are actually human and deserving of many rights and protections that some would otherwise take for granted and hence others would be empowered to abuse. Fearfully pulling back at recognizing what constitutes a human or a "person" over some vague belief that tech-enthusiasts are heartless monsters, I don't think, is the right answer in the long-term.
PS - This of course assumes humans ever manage to produce AI and consciousness of a sort. If it does happen, I think we're so far from it that it won't occur in centuries anyways. So, yea, today it makes sense to see robots for what they are, a bunch of pre-programmed mechanical parts. But in the far future? Who knows.
It's a Microsoft device. It was designed to run Win RT. This is quite clearly marked on the box and the device itself.
Which is presumably part of the allure. It's not a hack to install Linux on a random x86-64 box.
There are a thousand other things wrong with Linux right now and nobody seems interested in fixing them (yes, I'm doing my part, but I only have so much free time to spend fixing random issues and maintaining my own packages). No, instead, we're going to dump all our time and effort into making a device that was NEVER DESIGNED TO RUN LINUX, well, run Linux.
Who is this "we" you speak of? You make it sound like all computer nerds everywhere are all devoted to just one thing at a time. The very existence of the MS Surface and Linux at the same time inherently debunks the idea. No, in fact, the sort of people who are likely to "dump all [their] time and effort into making a device that was NEVER DESIGNED TO RUN LINUX, well, run Linux" are the people who are currently doing just that on some other device. So, beyond the fact that such people have a right to do such a thing inherent, beyond your holier-than-thou attitude command to direct them to do otherwise, it's not likely that their actions will have much effect one way or the other on fixing the things that are wrong with Linux.
Sooner or later you just have to say enough is enough. This is almost as stupid as buying an iPad or iPhone and attempting to run Android on it. Just because you're buying "hardware" doesn't mean you're getting the privilege of installing whatever the hell you want on the device. Mobile equipment like this is marketed and sold as an end-to-end solution, you're not buying hardware- you're buying software tied to hardware. Making the mistake of thinking that the hardware is there for you to do whatever you wish with is silly. If you want a tablet to run Linux on, buy a tablet that runs Linux.
Yep. How dare hackers hack! Those fuckers should just swallow whatever commercial crap that's put on the market and do exactly what the manufacturer commands them to do with it. Or, you know, they could use their mind and actually think outside the box. Perhaps that means trying to shove Android on an iPhone. Maybe it means running Windows on a Linux tablet. Whatever it is, it makes the world a better place because the very people who figure out exactly how to break the plans of manufacturers are precisely the people who can in the future work to make those plans work better in the future. In short, it's a win-win in the long term.
Trying to shoehorn the 'tux onto the ARM Surface is stupid. No shit Microsoft has locked the thing up, they're subsidizing the damned hardware by assuming that you'll run Windows on it and buy applications through the Windows App Store.
Then that's an even better reason to hack the thing. Who in their right mind would in trying to use X buy a $500 tablet designed for X when they could buy a $300 tablet designed for Y but hackable to X through a few simple steps? Of course, nothing I've heard about the MS Surface sounds like it's subsidized in any fashion. It sounds to be even more costly than an iPad and iPads are overly expensive tablets compared to Android tablets. So, I presume it's more the challenge of it at the moment and using it as a blueprint for hacking Windows 8 for x86 if it ever requires Secure Boot.
This is almost as dumb as buying a set of kitchen utensils then wondering why you can't build a shed with them. If you wanted to buy a shed, why didn't you invest in a set of proper tools? What on earth made you think a few forks, spoons, and knives were going to let you do the same thing?
MS Surface : Any other Tablet:: Kitchen Utensils : Proper Tools? So MS Surface
Obviously, nobody gets fired for "left leaning views". But you can find a cause to fire anybody if you look just hard enough. Business is generally a pretty hostile environment to either social or fiscal liberals. Most liberals I know just don't talk about their political views in such environments at all, but sadly still have to listen to the endless right-wing chatter of their colleagues.
Oh, and I'm speaking from, you know, experience. Funny thing, too, how I'm a bit more worried about being fired from "business[es]" than "academia". But, you know, let's really rag on academia in general because of some general feeling that academia is more left leaning than other places. Perhaps it's most accurate to say that academia is usually located in more urban areas and more urban areas are more liberal in so far as "liberal" == "government-based services" given urban areas basically don't function without "government-based services". Add to that the general truth that people who believe a thing are not easily convinced by another person simply because that other person fervently believes something else and given that a lot of the specific details of a situation require the careful analysis that no one--including you or I right now--are willing to actively engage in...and you get an inherent and obvious bias. After all, "conservative" and "liberal" are very extreme generalizations and do nothing to address specific points where a more liberal or a more conservative approach is appropriate*.
So..um..how about some specific examples of things you'd like to see fixed and some suggestions on how to fix them.:)
*Conservative or liberal should be an ends to a means not the end in itself. After all, the whole point of being more conservative is to retain social and fiscal norms that are beneficial to society and people in general and the whole point of being more liberal is to change those social and fiscal norms that are beneficial to society and people in general. Of course, what's "beneficial", whether society is more important than people, and which people are more important than others... Never the less, I often feel plenty of people aren't well centered on an actual understanding on what they really believe or want and instead cling to what others provide for them because actually thinking about it is very, very hard.
It's not clear that software is heating up as much as you propose.
While I'd readily agree it isn't clear that software is heating up much, that's in large part because what used to be near miraculous is now mundane. Look no further than the sheer volume of free 2d flash games. The real areas where software is heating up of course is precisely in the areas where most people won't realize it until five years down the road when that hot software is, again, mundane.
Most systems depend on vast foundation libraries,
Which is a good thing. Wanting or even having to recreate the foundation is precisely the major stumbling block on further advancement in software.
and commercial viability frequently depends on vast developer ecosystems.
Beyond the question of whether "commercial viability" in software itself is really important--after all, a lot of software today is written ad hoc as part of IT not as "commercially viable" per se anything--, I still don't see how requiring a lot of developers is relevant. A vast interconnected ecosystem is part of what makes something an industry.
It is getting harder and harder over time to launch novel software stacks.
Um..and why *should* there be novel software stacks? For the sake of being novel?
As new computer programs depend on ever larger and more stable platforms, inertia naturally means that the rate of "real" change is less now than it was earlier in the evolution of computer programs.
If you mean as a percentage of the total lines of code necessary to run a program, well, duh, yes. But by that logic, there isn't much difference really between humans and chimps because the DNA difference is less than 2%. Yet, it's those small differences on a huge inertia of DNA that has made humanity what it is. By the same token, it's taking advantage of the mountains of well optimized, well designed, and well structure code that is used in interesting ways along with a small percentage of new code that can lead to new revolutions. I mean, a web browser is a heavily cobbled together mess of code--especially for those which are well refactored--yet it is in many ways much more than the sum of its parts.
I think it's perfectly fair to say that the computer revolution is slowing down. Even as people remain hard at work, and some metrics continue to climb as fast as ever, the different between a 16 KB home computer and a 16 MB home computer is extraordinary. The difference between a 16 MB system and a 16 GB system is really much smaller, even though the systems are separated by a factor of 1000x (for the sake of a simple argument, assume compute performance and storage capacity scale at a rate roughly equal to main memory.)
I think you're forgetting vast data centers that are able to exist precisely because those 16GB systems which don't do a heck of a lot locally may do quite a bit remotely.
A 16 MB 686 running Windows 95 has windows, icons, color graphics, a mouse. A 16 GB Sandy Bridge running Windows 7 has windows, icons, color graphics, a mouse. A user teleported some years in the future would have no problem accepting the faster system.
Not much difference between a Model T and a Ferrari either by that logic. Of course the fact that the OS's base interface being pretty static for ages is precisely by design because the OS is but a gateway to use and every attempt to retrain users into a new interface--aside from tablets--has been a dismal failure...
A 16 KB system has a keyboard, text mode, built in BASIC, incredibly primitive graphics with limited colors. Moving from that to the 16 MB one would be a revelation.
Almost entirely because of the software being implemented on affordable hardware. The simple truth i
If you're lucky it's over in a few days... if you're particularly hardy or are cursed with sympathetic guards/observers who sneak you water... well then he torture could last for weeks.
Well, if the Bible is at all accurate on the point, sympathetic guards/observers tended to break a condemned persons legs to speed up the death--the downward hanging pressure would prevent them from breathing and they'd quickly suffocate; I do sort of wonder if that had more to do with the assembly line fashion the Romans were doing in crucifying people and needing the space. Anyways, as the story goes, Jesus died quickly enough to not have his legs broken which oddly implies he was either not hardy, the torture by the Romans up to that point was that severe, or he had some sort of divine intervention to speed up his death. The overall point being that presumably other people suffered worse.
You're the only other person apart from myself I've known to state that it wasn't such a big sacrifice after all. Congrats and thankyou.
Of course thats only true if he knew he would be resurrected. I don't really recall having the foreknowledge of such things as part of the story.
Except that Jesus is/was God or a part of God or whatever and presuming that God is immortal...well, even if he didn't know he would be de facto resurrected, he knew full well that he could trivially under his/God's power.
And that, if nothing else, is why I consider Christianity as pure garbage unfortunately.
Well, that just makes you ignorant. Religion, even without the actual existence of a God serves many purposes. Sometimes it is twisted to do bad things, most of the time it isn't. Saying its 'pure garbage' just shows you don't understand it at all, neither the bad parts or the good parts.
So because some religions or parts of a religion can serve many purposes, a specific example of a religion that could be said to really fail massively in one of its core messages--damnation for most of humanity to an eternity of torment--is someone *not* garbage? Seriously, though, the really sad part is precisely that the message of Christianity is often presented as Christ sort of cutting deal with God that amounts to Jesus suffering death by crucifixion once as being equivalent to all of humanity suffering in hell for all eternity with the small cavity that all people have to do is believe in Christ as the son of God. Of course, taken literally, that would seem to imply one could steal, rape, murder to one's hearts content--there's clearly a heavy dose of BS in the idea that believing in Christ as son of God == being a good person because, well, it obviously isn't true with Satan or most Christians who "falter".
In any case, the real issue is that once you start laying credence to anything and everything that as "good parts" you're left really accepting almost everything to some degree and that sort of acceptance is pretty useless. So, perhaps technically Christianity isn't "pure garbage", but then I don't think that was the GP's point anyways. It was mostly to note just how broken as an overall point it and honestly most religions are (I would say all, but I readily acknowledge I don't know all religions to go that far) in requiring you to accept a lot of garbage as canon to really get to any of the good parts. Why not just have the good parts de facto based on something a lot more substantial than myths and legends, especially those that nay condemn most of humanity?
Isn't that the logic behind curse words? It is beholden to the idea that words have magical powers which, if spoken, can curse or otherwise do harm to others. That's paramount to superstitious belief on the side of belief in satanism--for God might have said not to take his own name in vain, he certainly isn't like some sort of border collie who follows orders on command so the very idea basically demands that some supernatural being other than God be ordered around to the will of man. Besides, if there was ever anything wrong wrong with saying "damn you to hell" or "go to hell", it's the sentiment and not the actual words. There's nothing particularly nicer about "be sent to the lake of fire" or "go spend all eternity in the lake of fire".
Now, on the other hand, if people were being reprimanded for using "shit" when they should have used "fuck"...at least they'd be properly teaching grammar, and that could be of some worth.
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The people I'm specifically speaking of our Republicans in the House and Senate who are more than willing to sign an anti-tax pledge to agree to never raise taxes or push for a dollar for dollar spending cuts to tax cuts in budget planning and the people who consistently vote in people like this. I mean, isn't the whole point of conservatives voting in Republicans precisely so the Republicans do their bidding? So, how can it be that if and when they are in power that they neither push nor succeed in raising extra taxes to go toward the national debt? I mean, sure, they say things about it *now*, but it's not like Republicans are an up and coming party that only recently came into existence nor is the national debt a new problem.
Great. Please tell you representative just that, even if it does no good. I'd love to hear more conservatives/Republicans say such a thing.
I agree. There's plenty of room to cut spending in entitlements and defense, probably more in the latter than in the former. Of the latter that is really just proxy scientific research, it'd be likely better to actually directly fund some good scientific research for tools of civilization that may have military applications than tools of the military destruction that may have civilian applications.
PS - Yeah, I know that conservative != Republican. The problem is that conservative is a pretty useless label (as is liberal) when it comes to a lot of issues and deflects from the point that there is no "Conservative" party in power so speaking in terms of conservative/liberal from a political power perspective seems more to disassociate oneself from all the bad things Republicans and Democrats are doing. The only way to fix a problem is to first own it. Meanwhile, the Tea Party's heavy anti-tax message hardly helps things as it seems more to echo selfish individualism than any real thought about society, even when it's society that's providing the means of their survival. But, then, I guess there's a clear disconnect when one thinks "I pay a fair share of taxes so I pay for the services I use" when (1) plenty of times one doesn't remotely pay for all the services one personally uses even amortizing over one's whole life, (2) there's plenty of people other than oneself who you want to provide for (prisons alone, if you're entirely inhumane), and (3) there really is a difference between "million" and "billion" and focusing on the smaller issues misses the point. :/ But, then, that's me trying to be pragmatic about things.
...while lowering taxes. Never mind that the US has a huge deficit or a massive debt. Sure, they're all for spending less but in the same way corporate raiders take out massive loans on good company credit while cutting back on costs. Actually making the country/company stronger costs money and is antithetical to tax cuts/price increases which are potentially unpalatable even if necessary.
To wit, it's also the cornerstone of capitalism that there's massive duplication of effort and a lot of failed pathways. So, it would seem that obviously some sort of joint, government control of the means of production would be the solution. But, that just consolidates the power and leaves there little recourse for new ideas or new direction. But in open source, the power is always in everyone's hand and everyone is able to launch a fork. But, forks don't span in all directions because of in part capital and in part because there's an obvious advantage in cooperation at times.
In effect, open source is a lot closer to the ideals of capitalism than capitalism ends up being thanks to monopolies/oligarchies and government influence. But, then, you don't see many people bitching about capitalism and its by design constant fracturing and duplication of effort. :/
PS - I'm not bitching about it :) But, then, I'm not blind to it, either.
Fine. Feel free to believe neither one. What does that leave you with? Nothing? Great.
So the whole NDA didn't happen? Or it did happen but what was stated wasn't a threat but fatherly advice, with a whole NDA that violates the whole concept of fatherly advice? Let's think up a couple hundred other possibles once we allow ourselves to presume there's a "somewhere in the middle" and just get to make up things to try to explain things. However you wish to look at it, I see the whole situation very fishy from Skytech's position. As for talent, more on that point later.
I also don't know what color pants Al-Khabaz was wearing at the time. Such is irrelevant given that my original statement didn't presume they did or didn't run the test; it was a statement of what I believed should be the proper course of action, of which they obviously didn't follow the latter parts.
"Except through our HR department!" Seriously, the scan itself *shouldn't* be an issue precisely because it's the sort of thing one would expect black hats, grey hats, and possibly even white hats to be using. And the point of putting in place a temporary ban is to prevent exploitation *at the moment*, nothing more. Once the fixes are in place, all the scans will show is that you're not vulnerable. And given that most black hats are likely to be using bots to run scans, exploits, etc, a ban approach is inappropriate generally anyways. Finally, and again, if the scan was the issue, why the job offer? How can you rationalize what may be a black hat a second chance when they've, AFAIK, not expressed any sort of remorse nor does using a standard scan tool, which is at the same level of a script kiddie, in the category of "talent". Now, finding the original bugs quite probably *was* talent, but then the whole NDA, possible threats, etc so muddle the point, that I can't imagine the effort being more than trying to save face. But, yea, I'm sure you can come up with possible kindhearted or good reasons for it.
Of course I said what they *should* do because they, IMNHO, fucked it up and did the wrong thing. If they had done the right thing, I don't think I'd be botthering to comment. It's sort of funny, actually. If you believe Al-Khabaz's intent, he was effectively expelled for “serious professional conduct issue” because "the testing software Mr. Al-Khabaz ran to verify the system was fixed crossed a line", yet Skytech's reaction was to apparently just push a NDA on him which seems like a
And? The president of Skytech denies threatening Al-Khabaz, yet again Skytech is now offering Al-Khabaz a job now. If the threat was made, Skytech should not want to hire a seeming criminal and risk the liability. If the threat was not made, Skytech should not want to hire a liar who has created such negative PR and who likely will in the future.
As much as they may have, they didn't follow the rest of my advice. It sounds like their logs could tell Al-Khabaz was running the tester which implies they could have easily (a) banned his or any other IP temporarily that used the tester while they finished fixing the bugs and (b) "immediately fix" the bugs as they promised which should make that ban rather short. Instead, Al-Khabaz was called up and "banned" with a NDA which does nothing about any other person who would use the tester against their site, is a waste of time if the bugs were fixed quickly (as the NDA would be effectively quite moot), and seemingly is just a stalling tactic to try to force "responsible disclosure" on Al-Khabaz which we've seen repeatedly has turned into months or even years from a vulnerability being reported to being fixed by a vendor.
In short, your selective short snip pit of my statement missed the point entirely. It's in the same general area as police who take down a report for stolen goods but do nothing more to actually find the culprit(s). It's an almost meaningless gesture if there's good indication that there is no intention to follow through.
Did something wrong? Destryong his future from a professional standpoint?
Skytech. He said that this was the second time they had seen me in their logs, and what I was doing was a cyber attack. I apologized, repeatedly, and explained that I was one of the people who discovered the vulnerability earlier that week and was just testing to make sure it was fixed. He told me that I could go to jail for six to twelve months for what I had just done and if I didn’t agree to meet with him and sign a non-disclosure agreement he was going to call the RCMP and have me arrested. So I signed the agreement.” -- Youth Expelled from Montreal College... (emphasis mine)
"In the meantime, Al-Khabaz has received more than one job offer from technology firms, including Skytech, the company that makes Omnivox" -- from the summary (again, emphasis mine)
So, in short, what Al-Khabaz did was so horrible the president of Skytech threatened him with 6-12 months jail time for a "cyber attack" (with a convenient way to get out of jail card to sign a NDA) and *now* Skytech wants to hire him? The whole thing screams out that Skytech's president was overly reactionary and the whole "cyber attack" angle has more to do with Skytech's pants being proverbial down than any real wrong doing on Al-Khabaz's part.
Of course, I'm sure I'd feel a lot differently if I saw a pen tester being run against my site. But, then, if I were in that position I'd as quickly as possible run the same pen tester myself and *fix the bugs* because the next person who comes along is unlikely to be a person well intentioned enough to call me up and tell me about the bugs nor someone I myself could call as someone I can confirm any problems they expose. But then perhaps the only lesson to be learned is that Al-Khabaz should have used a Tor proxy to run the scan and companies really should treat the internet like waves battering against a levee with more concern about building a better levee and a lot less on getting the name and number of every big wave that comes along.
It's interesting you say that, but there's at least one area where the opposite was true to success: pie menus. With mice, a pie menu isn't as useful precisely because desktops have so many options and layered pie menus can quickly become confusing. Meanwhile, pie menus are a great fit on a touch screen with only a few options and layers (just gesture one of eight directions from the center of the screen). I think the difficult part is really knowing where, if anywhere, success will be with a design. Oh, and of course, it's not to say pie menus were a complete failure on desktops and mouse gesturing in general is something some people like. So, there are perhaps usage cases or users where mobile layouts are a good fit on the desktop much more than would otherwise seem.,/p>
Dictate policies, no. Heavily follow them when they come from the US? Too often. Of course, the reverse is true (Berne Convention) and of course the real point is not that sovereign nation A is talking to sovereign nation B but that companies in sovereign nation A and B are using A to pressure/suggest/lobby B to change their laws to their own advantage.
And what if the US *did* threaten the EC? Can't sovereign nations threaten each other? Aren't sovereign nations supposed to be strong enough to stand up to threats, idle or otherwise? The point is that at least as far as nations go, it's all very much one and the same if it's all just talk.
Well, given that the whole point is EU law in EU nations among EU borders involving EU citizens and businesses operating within the EU...what part of the above "affects the interests of another country" except in the same absurd concept that being a subsistence farmer is regulated under federal interstate commerce laws because to feed oneself through farming means a potential lack of interstate commerce. Ie, to accept that the Us has some reasonable standing to lobby effectively means all countries have standing to lobby all other countries at all other times for any reason.
Yea, reciprocal. An 800 lb gorilla US over a 50 lb country or a 50 lb country over an 800 lb gorilla US. Seriously, though, at least the EC is its own 800 lb gorilla. But the real problem is governments, both EC and US, treat plenty of companies as their own 800 lb gorillas, potentially out of a belief that those companies could readily cut jobs or otherwise risk the political career of politicians who oppose their objectives or potentially out of a want for campaign contributions or perhaps out of a really seriously warped view that companies really are 800 lb gorillas. Whatever the case, the idea that foreign companies doing it is okay is absurd for the same reason there's a serious problem already with local companies lobbying the US government. And the fact that a lot of the time other governments are lobbying on the behest of foreign (or even local) companies... Really, the idea that reciprocity somehow justifies it is absurd.
The point of the lo-res screen is to be more in sync with the games that are planned for it--having said that, I do sort of wish it were 640x480. Meanwhile, your phone may be "faster" in GHz but that doesn't mean it's actually better at playing games. The fact that it's open source, btw, is a pretty big plus for people like me who would prefer not buying into a model of some device that very quickly is a brick because there's an effectively finite amount of interest in it. This hold just as true for Android phones as either games require a new version of Android to run or require higher specs to run.
The point is to actually play a decent amount of games that people want to play be actually playable. Most every other open(-like) handheld before has been either (a) too shy to actually demo what actually works and how well it works precisely because of a failing in the affordable hardware--meanwhile, on youtube there's plenty of videos of just how good the GCW Zero is--and the state of game porting and (b) tried too hard to fulfill some sort of a niche without really fleshing it out--the scope of what GCW Zero is meant for is rather bounded, but that's mostly a good thing in that people won't really expect much outside of it or seek some sort of treadmill to expand to.
I'd rather have a portable game console and no cell phone. To each his own.
The best protection from tyranny in a democracy is making good choices in (a) including a system of elections and (b) not allowing paranoia or other emotional arguments to cloud judgment on actually doing the significantly and costly evaluation of political candidates. For (a), we already fail quite heavily in that we've got it rigged so only D and R have any real chance in a lot of elections because *they* are the gatekeepers not only in setting districts but also in choosing where and how voting occurs, not to mention the way in which they've joined with media to heavily try to define who the legitimate candidates are and who aren't--although that in part is also the populace's fault because of (b). For (b), well, you're guilty right here, right now just as much as politicians are of using the latest school shooting to support their agenda. Instead of merely calling them out on it and saying you disapprove on its face, you speak of a tyranny that is neither sought nor really defensible against with said weapons, anyways.
Who has almost all the guns in the government? The military? Who does everyone politically in the US seem to worship and trust? The military. Who has the power to crush any sort of civilian uprising? The military. Clearly, that doesn't add up.
So, what you're saying is, you're really against how the government won't let you make nukes? I mean, what's with all that government control to try to limit weapons at all when that weapon is the great equalizer on the national stage--look who is on the UN security council and can veto anything they don't like and think why they have that power? Seriously, though, I can understand not likely living in a place where you're placed under restrictions on what you can do or what you can own/make, but to say that it reinforces a paranoia? That I just don't get.
For all that lack of trust, it's really surprising that there's yet to be a coup attempt. Or is it that all those people with guns are lazy? Or realize they don't stand a chance and it'd just be a suicide mission where they'd be called delusional? Or perhaps most Americans *do* trust their leadership and just really like to bitch about the 101 ways it which it's far from a perfect system. Nah, that's just crazy talk.
From the article: "Analyzing self-reported data from more than 222,000 people aged 45 and older, Australian researchers found that mortality risks spike after 11 hours of total daily sitting but are still 15 percent higher for those sitting between 8 and 11 hours compared to those sitting fewer than 4 hours per day."
My wild guess? Old people who slowly deteriorate because of old age quickly deteriorate once they reach the point they're confined to a wheel chair. It'd be about as much of a valuable study as noting that eating a significant amount of pureed food shows a mortality risk spike; because once you're at the state that all your food is and will always be pureed without any real hope of going back to solid food, you'll probably lose a lot of will to live, desire to eat, and be by the fact that you're eating puree-only food be in bad shape. By the same token, trying to force a person to stand or eat solid food probably won't do a lot since it's the physical deteriorating that needs fixed and while certain exercise and good food can help, I don't think it'll substantially influence the results.
Now, if all of this wasn't about a "mortality risk spike"... Besides, today most people *do* sit a lot more than people did two hundred years ago and life expectancy is a lot higher. Still, I do like the tagline, "Sitting: The Silent Killer".
Well, the problem is as follows. The Old Testament is all supportive of war as a byproduct of duty to whatever governmental authority one lives in. The New Testament speaks again of duty to governmental authority but doesn't per se really speak of any support for or against waging of war. Having said that, the New Testament speaks of communes formed by early Christians, effectively establishing a new governmental authority which is peaceful. Given that countries like the United States were formed under the banner of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness--through failing to adhere to a loyalty to the divine governmental authority--, it would seem to follow that from the former requirement of duty that one should not be for war either because of the banner of seeming peace or because one could argue the government in question is no longer of divine authority to follow. Or, you know, Christians could live in communes just as the early Christians did.
Of course, the early Christians were something closer to a suicide cult because they thought the end of the world was near and Jesus was coming back in their lifetime or a small multiple of lifetimes, so they didn't go out of their way to support any policy of self-protection or long-term planning for the survivability of the group. That's a strong basis for the martyr complex of Christianity. It is, after all, viewed as better to die for one's beliefs than to kill for them--hence those that live by the sword die by it.
.. which all politicians do because they can't win elections without paying lip service to Christianity. There's nothing particularly Christian about waging war, refusing to support a policy the poor or needy, or using any amount of force to collect taxes from anyone, really. Really, governance in general is all about world wants and needs, often through the use of force others to go along with it. Christianity is about spiritual enlightenment that compels one to do good works, but without forcing others to go along with it. They're really very orthogonal things.
And yes, constituents are quite happy to be lied to and go along with the charade because they want politicians who are "Christian enough" to do what they want to force others to go along with their beliefs. Ie, it's the fact that so few people are Christian but go along with the charade and hence are quite happy to push their political views on others under a comfy label instead of admitting their own little tyranny of opinion they wish to force on others. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar and leave Earthly matters to man while seeking God. The idea of usurping government to avoid oppression seems born from the Christian conquest of Rome, and there seems no end in sight. But, it's certainly not what Jesus commanded nor wanted any more than Marx's communism is equivalent to Soviet Russia.
That is its own perverseness, then. If anything RFID tags *should* be used to track students while on campus to keep a better history of who is showing up to which classes--coupled with a random sampling to verify that said tag is being used by said student.
Um, plenty of people complain about MegaCorp Inc and others tracking them. They also worry about RFID tags in credit cards or other monetary cards being read and used elsewhere. The general feeling though is, well, what are you going to do about it? As you point out, RFID tags have become quite pervasive. In any case, for all the talk of it, at least adults generally have the luxury of avoiding or blocking RFID tags as they can choose where to work, where to shop, whether or not to buy a tin foil wallet, etc. Given school is mandatory...
Perhaps it's because they're kids and it's yet another example of the state forcing temporary guardianship over other people's children to seemingly indoctrinate them into accepting yet another potentially creepy privacy violation? I mean, for all the talk of a school being a public building, it behaves a lot more like a private building most the time. And I think most adults would be unhappy about CCTV everywhere at their place of work. That the RFID tag could be used as a metaphorical equivalent.... Of course, as you original state, the whole point really is to allow schools to game the budgeting system and actually tracking students would almost certain work against that gaming, so I can only really see it being used for tracking in isolated incidents by school administrators to bully students they don't like. But, then, they'd do that anyways without the RFID tags.
No, they're making an argument based upon discrimination law, just as the headline states. Indiana being an at-will state means there is no "other side of the argument" to consider. The hospital doesn't have to have a good, bad, or any reason to set a policy that all staff take flu shots. The absurdity of the situation could be easily be taken as follows.
Presume, somehow, an atheist managed to become a priest at a church. Well, as a matter of discrimination law, if the church found out, they couldn't fire the priest purely based on their being an atheist. Having said that, if an atheist refused to perform a duty of his position, like say eating a communal wafer, they'd have reason enough to fire him for failing in his duty.
So, for all the arguments about a nurse unwilling to take a flu shot likely being a bad nurse or an atheist likely being a bad priest, so long as they actually carried out their duty, their religious convictions wouldn't enter into it. And to me, that's a pretty good standard to set anyways, since as the saying goes, "actions speak louder than words" and really firing people for their words/beliefs in generally absurd. But as this is a matter of action (or really, inaction), I just don't see the nurse's case having a leg to stand on.
"And some of them join because they believe the Constitution and what it represents matters enough to risk their lives defending it" by killing other people. The best real defense would be something like the Peace Corps--as stable countries are a better defense to outside aggression.
If I'm 75 years old, the idea that the next book in my highly successful trilogy will be copyrighted for life + 95 years is quite possibly a strong motivation as it could well provide for my heirs. Sure, after some point the sales rate will likely be so low to amount to merely a few pennies a year (ie, one sale every few years), but that doesn't mean sales will drop to outright zero. Hell, consider how much money Twain's descendants could be raking in today. Ironically, not all of Twain's work is in the public domain apparently because not all of it was published before 1923 (Twain himself died in 1910).
Except the point being raised that people were being merely freeloaders and hence why copyright should cover at least what it does cover. My point was, then, that copyright should by that same logic cover even more things. Hence, of course, copyright doesn't cover the things I listed. The question then is, why not?
Yet authors very often copy a very substantial amount and merely speak in their own words. How many times has Shakespeare been redone?
But why are fairy tales excluded? Everyone should be able to make their own written "twist" of Star Wars by that logic. And as for prior animated movies, yes Disney has frequently been the second or third to have made an animated film adaptation of a fairy tale.
Plenty of fairy tales are closer to only two hundred years old which is in in striking distance of current copyright law; to that end, there are still some fairy tales that are copyrighted still. And again, the only reason parody is allowed is because copyright law grants a special exception; why the exception?
Ask Disney about creating new worlds and being real writers, as well as commercializing their own fan fiction. See, most new studios or authors want to use a familiar extant work to allow people to relate to their own writing style, to help them clearly spell out just how their interpretation of things is different than others. It's an important note that while there might be a great many fairy tales older in the public domain, the same can't be said for science fiction stories; and yea, one could certainly take a fairy tale and morph it into "in space", but that's almost instantly mockable. Of course, the hope is that once an author gets their footing they write less derivative works, but clearly that's not a real necessity for commercial success--*cough* H
Um..."the economic life of the work to the author" is about as long as there's a copyright term. Choosing that term is based in part on the curve of sales tapering off over time, but if it were merely a consideration of the author's economic future with a work, copyright would never end. Further, the idea that today's society consumes older works in general is very preposterous except in that re-implementation of very old Greek works keep popping up. Of course, as you note, people used to have a lot less leisure time long ago. Yet oddly people still did a lot of reading and then, like now, it was centered on the popular works of the day with few people really reading classical works.
No, the copyright system is to protect society's interests; that's why copyright terms end at some time--late enough to create an incentive to authors but short enough to hopefully allow society at large to prosper from the new ideas introduced. Having said, the very point is that one can't borrow or purchase a lot of works precisely because the copyright term today is so long that surviving copies of a work are often incredibly rare and because the ownership of the copyright is often enough in dispute there's often no clear legal means to make more copies.
Which is why, I presume, you support all authors paying royalties on plot ideas from the Greeks, words and grammar from the English, and religious, moral, musical, and cultural themes from Mesopotamia. It's not like authors create all those things out of whole clothe and so they can't expect "to get something for free". Oh, right, at some point it's recognized that to create indefinitely copyright or patents or trademarks on things is actually a bad thing.
Yep. Because we all know fairy tales, which were heavily copied by Disney and a large basis for its economic success, were all sourced from one creator who created them perfectly in their original. It's not like a lot of oral copiers took fairy tales, "made it better" when they told the story, and the very fact that actually better stories were more likely to be copied meant those versions were the ones we know more today... Oh, right, what you're talking about is people who are wholly consumers. Gee, I wonder why, in a system in which copyright lasts a lifetime and then some, people would be less inclined to take existing ideas and experiment with them. It's almost like they've been trained to believe they either have to (a) consumer soley, (b) be sued if they try to create upon an extant idea (fan fiction is a starting place for a lot of writers, programmers are more inclined to clone an extant game first to learn, etc), or (c) be very good at changing the window dressings on a story to avoid (b) given how very little really new stuff there is to create.
One can grasp one's hand tighter, to more securely hold one's own rights that are so dear. Or one can extend one's hand out and security the rights of others to yet again reaffirm that their rights and yours are real and not merely nice sounding words spoken by those who would readily ignore them in fear or convenience.
The true essence of what has changed humanity today is recognizing how many people are actually human and deserving of many rights and protections that some would otherwise take for granted and hence others would be empowered to abuse. Fearfully pulling back at recognizing what constitutes a human or a "person" over some vague belief that tech-enthusiasts are heartless monsters, I don't think, is the right answer in the long-term.
PS - This of course assumes humans ever manage to produce AI and consciousness of a sort. If it does happen, I think we're so far from it that it won't occur in centuries anyways. So, yea, today it makes sense to see robots for what they are, a bunch of pre-programmed mechanical parts. But in the far future? Who knows.
Hammer time?
Which is presumably part of the allure. It's not a hack to install Linux on a random x86-64 box.
Who is this "we" you speak of? You make it sound like all computer nerds everywhere are all devoted to just one thing at a time. The very existence of the MS Surface and Linux at the same time inherently debunks the idea. No, in fact, the sort of people who are likely to "dump all [their] time and effort into making a device that was NEVER DESIGNED TO RUN LINUX, well, run Linux" are the people who are currently doing just that on some other device. So, beyond the fact that such people have a right to do such a thing inherent, beyond your holier-than-thou attitude command to direct them to do otherwise, it's not likely that their actions will have much effect one way or the other on fixing the things that are wrong with Linux.
Yep. How dare hackers hack! Those fuckers should just swallow whatever commercial crap that's put on the market and do exactly what the manufacturer commands them to do with it. Or, you know, they could use their mind and actually think outside the box. Perhaps that means trying to shove Android on an iPhone. Maybe it means running Windows on a Linux tablet. Whatever it is, it makes the world a better place because the very people who figure out exactly how to break the plans of manufacturers are precisely the people who can in the future work to make those plans work better in the future. In short, it's a win-win in the long term.
Then that's an even better reason to hack the thing. Who in their right mind would in trying to use X buy a $500 tablet designed for X when they could buy a $300 tablet designed for Y but hackable to X through a few simple steps? Of course, nothing I've heard about the MS Surface sounds like it's subsidized in any fashion. It sounds to be even more costly than an iPad and iPads are overly expensive tablets compared to Android tablets. So, I presume it's more the challenge of it at the moment and using it as a blueprint for hacking Windows 8 for x86 if it ever requires Secure Boot.
MS Surface : Any other Tablet :: Kitchen Utensils : Proper Tools? So MS Surface
Obviously, nobody gets fired for "left leaning views". But you can find a cause to fire anybody if you look just hard enough. Business is generally a pretty hostile environment to either social or fiscal liberals. Most liberals I know just don't talk about their political views in such environments at all, but sadly still have to listen to the endless right-wing chatter of their colleagues.
Oh, and I'm speaking from, you know, experience. Funny thing, too, how I'm a bit more worried about being fired from "business[es]" than "academia". But, you know, let's really rag on academia in general because of some general feeling that academia is more left leaning than other places. Perhaps it's most accurate to say that academia is usually located in more urban areas and more urban areas are more liberal in so far as "liberal" == "government-based services" given urban areas basically don't function without "government-based services". Add to that the general truth that people who believe a thing are not easily convinced by another person simply because that other person fervently believes something else and given that a lot of the specific details of a situation require the careful analysis that no one--including you or I right now--are willing to actively engage in...and you get an inherent and obvious bias. After all, "conservative" and "liberal" are very extreme generalizations and do nothing to address specific points where a more liberal or a more conservative approach is appropriate*.
So..um..how about some specific examples of things you'd like to see fixed and some suggestions on how to fix them. :)
*Conservative or liberal should be an ends to a means not the end in itself. After all, the whole point of being more conservative is to retain social and fiscal norms that are beneficial to society and people in general and the whole point of being more liberal is to change those social and fiscal norms that are beneficial to society and people in general. Of course, what's "beneficial", whether society is more important than people, and which people are more important than others... Never the less, I often feel plenty of people aren't well centered on an actual understanding on what they really believe or want and instead cling to what others provide for them because actually thinking about it is very, very hard.
While I'd readily agree it isn't clear that software is heating up much, that's in large part because what used to be near miraculous is now mundane. Look no further than the sheer volume of free 2d flash games. The real areas where software is heating up of course is precisely in the areas where most people won't realize it until five years down the road when that hot software is, again, mundane.
Which is a good thing. Wanting or even having to recreate the foundation is precisely the major stumbling block on further advancement in software.
Beyond the question of whether "commercial viability" in software itself is really important--after all, a lot of software today is written ad hoc as part of IT not as "commercially viable" per se anything--, I still don't see how requiring a lot of developers is relevant. A vast interconnected ecosystem is part of what makes something an industry.
Um..and why *should* there be novel software stacks? For the sake of being novel?
If you mean as a percentage of the total lines of code necessary to run a program, well, duh, yes. But by that logic, there isn't much difference really between humans and chimps because the DNA difference is less than 2%. Yet, it's those small differences on a huge inertia of DNA that has made humanity what it is. By the same token, it's taking advantage of the mountains of well optimized, well designed, and well structure code that is used in interesting ways along with a small percentage of new code that can lead to new revolutions. I mean, a web browser is a heavily cobbled together mess of code--especially for those which are well refactored--yet it is in many ways much more than the sum of its parts.
I think you're forgetting vast data centers that are able to exist precisely because those 16GB systems which don't do a heck of a lot locally may do quite a bit remotely.
Not much difference between a Model T and a Ferrari either by that logic. Of course the fact that the OS's base interface being pretty static for ages is precisely by design because the OS is but a gateway to use and every attempt to retrain users into a new interface--aside from tablets--has been a dismal failure...
Almost entirely because of the software being implemented on affordable hardware. The simple truth i
Well, if the Bible is at all accurate on the point, sympathetic guards/observers tended to break a condemned persons legs to speed up the death--the downward hanging pressure would prevent them from breathing and they'd quickly suffocate; I do sort of wonder if that had more to do with the assembly line fashion the Romans were doing in crucifying people and needing the space. Anyways, as the story goes, Jesus died quickly enough to not have his legs broken which oddly implies he was either not hardy, the torture by the Romans up to that point was that severe, or he had some sort of divine intervention to speed up his death. The overall point being that presumably other people suffered worse.
Except that Jesus is/was God or a part of God or whatever and presuming that God is immortal...well, even if he didn't know he would be de facto resurrected, he knew full well that he could trivially under his/God's power.
So because some religions or parts of a religion can serve many purposes, a specific example of a religion that could be said to really fail massively in one of its core messages--damnation for most of humanity to an eternity of torment--is someone *not* garbage? Seriously, though, the really sad part is precisely that the message of Christianity is often presented as Christ sort of cutting deal with God that amounts to Jesus suffering death by crucifixion once as being equivalent to all of humanity suffering in hell for all eternity with the small cavity that all people have to do is believe in Christ as the son of God. Of course, taken literally, that would seem to imply one could steal, rape, murder to one's hearts content--there's clearly a heavy dose of BS in the idea that believing in Christ as son of God == being a good person because, well, it obviously isn't true with Satan or most Christians who "falter".
In any case, the real issue is that once you start laying credence to anything and everything that as "good parts" you're left really accepting almost everything to some degree and that sort of acceptance is pretty useless. So, perhaps technically Christianity isn't "pure garbage", but then I don't think that was the GP's point anyways. It was mostly to note just how broken as an overall point it and honestly most religions are (I would say all, but I readily acknowledge I don't know all religions to go that far) in requiring you to accept a lot of garbage as canon to really get to any of the good parts. Why not just have the good parts de facto based on something a lot more substantial than myths and legends, especially those that nay condemn most of humanity?
Isn't that the logic behind curse words? It is beholden to the idea that words have magical powers which, if spoken, can curse or otherwise do harm to others. That's paramount to superstitious belief on the side of belief in satanism--for God might have said not to take his own name in vain, he certainly isn't like some sort of border collie who follows orders on command so the very idea basically demands that some supernatural being other than God be ordered around to the will of man. Besides, if there was ever anything wrong wrong with saying "damn you to hell" or "go to hell", it's the sentiment and not the actual words. There's nothing particularly nicer about "be sent to the lake of fire" or "go spend all eternity in the lake of fire".
Now, on the other hand, if people were being reprimanded for using "shit" when they should have used "fuck"...at least they'd be properly teaching grammar, and that could be of some worth.