First, thank you for providing a link that requires a subscription to view. That will be ever so helpful to me. Not.
You do, however, exhibit an obvious bias against corporations, especially big ones.
No argument there. My contention is that this is a general statement, not one that is true for all businesses (large or small). I must object to anyone who would say that because I say something is generally true it is always true, it's stretching things just a tad!
Your claiming corporations are out to screw the little guy is no better than my claiming that Open Source advocates are just trying to create communism.
Well, actually, I'd say Open Source is a closer to being socialist ideal than a communist one. That aside, there's no single label one can use, but a combination of a meritocracy, alittle democracy, alittle anarchy, and alittle socialism all go into the mix. That being said, yes, I do believe the vast majority of large corporations got to be where they are by "screwing over the little guy". Economic darwinism, if you will... you only get more powerful if you are aggressive in this economy.
Well I shouldn't really need to, since there is realms of empirical evidence showing the benefits of deregulation over the past 3 decades. If you studied economics even modestly, you'd be familiar with them.
Well, I did study economics, actually. It was one of the first two courses I signed up for - Macroeconomics and Philosophy, a bad mix if you ask me. Anyway, that aside, any economics book will also talk to you about the fallacy of assuming that because Event A preceeded Event B, Event B was caused by Event A. Deregulation may improve things. Then again, it may not. Then again, modern economics only recently aquired a decent enough theoretical framework to start making good guesses about how things interoperate - 30 years ago they were still using symbols for "customer happiness", among other unmeasurable things. That aside, I've been living in a "deregulated" market for several years and have yet to see any improvement as a result. Infact, quite the opposite, my bill keeps going up.
You obviously lack even the most basic comprehension of what market capitalization is.
Ngggh, it was the first stat I found on their website, give me some credit. My point is they can spare a few bucks to bribe, er, persuade the politicians to see things their way. The Minnesota PUC is wrapped around the finger of their local encumbant, one QWest - just try filing a complaint and see what the reply will be. Static on the lines? Must be RFI, go bug the FCC. Getting crossover? Nothing we can do about it! Prices went up again? Hey, not our department. Ngggh, very useful, those fellows. Sorry, getting alittle offtopic...
The utilities have long been seen as being cash cows. That is changing today, because they now are facing competition.
I can't speak for the entire country, but up here in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area (aka the Twin Cities) there are only two incumbent providers to choose from - QWest and Sprint. The CLECs here are mainly for businesses. Sure, they do residential lines, but even those are specialized - xDSL, dry lines (for security circuits), etc. It just occurred to me, why the hell are we arguing about deregulation? The point of my original post was to underscore that H1B workers are being foisted onto the tech industry because companies don't want to pay the high rates that techs currently make around here...
The French have consistently had some of the most socialized and protectionist politics in Europe, and they've had broad support at that.
Well, that has less to do with their government than the fact that they were involved in a war that completely destroyed the infrastructure of their entire country, and in the past 10 years have they started to move forward again. I think it might have had something to do with that Hitler fellow I mentioned earlier.
Interesting. Well, my statement above then is alittle inaccurate then, some roll-up-your-sleeves work will be necessary then. I have faith in this community though to reverse engineer it and give me a linux client again. Dammit, if they're this interested in protecting their servers, why don't they just release an official client for linux and *BSD. That would take the wind out of the whole "go get 'em!" attitude and simultaniously reduce the number of parties interested in reverse-engineering of their protocol.
Still, being the stupid corporation that it is, it would probably rather belch out lawsuits and proclimations of theft and damage rather than try to be helpful and considerate of other people.
Do you deny that you've said words to that effect that big corporations are evil?
Yes. That is a unilateral statement which, if I have ever said, was meant in general and not specific terms. Not all corporations are evil. Corporations are organizations of men, and if those men are of good moral character, they cannot be evil. It is only when the men of these corporations persue the dollar that they do harm to society.
That is your "evidence"?
Show me more than hot air and I might be inclined to believe you. For now, any link is sufficient because I know most people who argue with me are too slothful to actually go through the effort of backing up their claims.
No, it does not disagree with the fact that genuine deregulation has been shown to be a good thing.
Coulda fooled me.
a) The source is not exactly an unbiased ones, much of the content in there is conjecture and opinion, not hard statistics and facts.
There's alot more facts in that "conjecture and opinion" article than has been put forward in this entire thread.
b) Texas is only one state.
True, but they'd have you believe they're a seperate country. And even if it is a small sample, it is still beats the opposition's comments (that would be you), which to date have been nothing more than chest beating.
No matter what your opinion of deregulation, it is not reasonable to expect instant results.
This deregulation has been going on for several years. I've seen its impact, as have many other people. The deregulation started before the 'net was more than an idle curiosity and BBS' reigned supreme. If you shrink the time-frame enough, anyone can claim "nothing happened!" Look at the bigger picture here.
e) One of the key factors these companies look to if they're going to expand their networks and facilities is some basic assurances that the government won't turn around on them in another year or two and pull the carpet out from under them.
US West, now "QWest" in my area, has a 85 billion dollar market capitalization right now. I think they can divert a few thousand for contributinos to local politicians to keep this from happening.
No, you're not. You're going to sit around slashdot and poh poh everything that you deam "establishment", "corporatist", or what have you.
The "establishment" (that would be the government) created the internet. I'm not complaining. They created a police force which guards my house from criminals. I'm not complaining. The "establishment" is responsible for putting men on the moon and providing the funding for Hubble, arguably the biggest thing (excuse the pun) in astronomy right now. The establishment has contributed immeasurably to my quality of life. Corporations too, as they have provided me the clothes on my back, the food that I eat, even the keyboard that I type this to you now. I'm very selective about who I "poo-bah" as you put it.
I do, however, think your viewpoint is shared by the French. I dare you to look at what it's cost them.
If you could be more specific with what you are referring to (names of people, businesses, etc) it would assist me greatly.
Sure it does, if AOL was more subtle it'd be weeks before anyone caught on. But like the big, stupid dinosaur that it is, it thought it would simply belch out its commandments and the peons would happily comply. Oops.. seems there's this group of people called "geeks" that are immune to the jedi mind-tricks of capitalism...
I have in my hand the response from the geek community in response to this...
Nuts.
For those who don't know the historical reference, pop open the nearest history book and flip to the WWII section. =) All this means is that now we're going to change the version the software reports and recompile. w00t, big deal, hardly worth a post to/..
Because there is a rational belief that as China moves into the 21st century, the government and the people will have to change.
Umm, last I looked it up, they crossed into the 21st century almost 20 hours before we did.
Dictatorships don't foster productivity, nor does socialism.
Then why do all the shoes, shirts, and consumer electronics in my house have little stickers that say "Made in China" ?
We're talking about 400k H1B visas in a much much larger industry. These "lower paid" employees, can only do so much to lower salaries.
They're slaves, goddamnit! The wages argument aside, these people are sponsored by that corporation, and then they OWN them - if they quit or are fired, they must return to their home country.
...part of the costs of the large companies that you like to villify.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I never itemized which companies I like and which ones I don't, so don't say that I have. I fault the system for this, and the citizens for not getting informed on the issues.
They're making much more money than most people in their respective countries. They're even making more money than most Americans. So don't act as if your concern is for them.
So we just wave money underneath their noses and it's then OK if they accept and we strip them of their civil rights? No, I don't think so. Either we do it right and give everyone in this country the same rights, or we don't let them in in the first place. It is an injustice regardless of whether they "want it" or not. Alot of people in Germany liked Hitler and followed him, that doesn't mean their rights weren't violated.
Even if salaries were the sole reason for this law [which it is not],
Clickity-click. You're new around here, aren't you? Everything is about money - this is a capitalist country. Our government is run by money, it collects money, everyone calls the working class "consumers", and people are more concerned about tax raises/cuts than they are about whether or not their local schools are properly funded. Hello? Politics = Money. It is a very simple equation and if you'd pull your head out of your arse and look around, you'd find this is a world run by money the money, for the money.
, it is obvious what your direction is...
Right, of course. The only bill on the list I couldn't find anything bad to say about and my position is "obvious". That's right, I have little to say on the issue.
Yeah, and the evidence of all the damage of regulation is where?
Yup, unless you've already patented the idea, formed your own company, and had an IPO, you don't have the right to do anything besides be a mindless consumer-drone.
I'm actually starting to warm up to the chinese government. Atleast they explicitly tell their citizens what's ok and what's not ok. Up here, everything's "kinda" illegal, but not really illegal unless you step on someone's toes. Yeah, that's the way to oppress people.. keep them guessing at what they need to fight against.
What you need to do is simply setup a server and get ftp/shell access to it and then make sure whatever you're doing is legal in that jurisdiction and that they're not a WIPO member or friendly to the Red, White and Blue Empire (that would be us, folks).
Play each sovereign nation off of each other, they're in a constant state of disagreement anyway.
PNTR China Act China has a nasty habit of starting up bulldozers and mowing down people who think freely. Why are we, a allegedly democratic part-of-the-free-world country supporting this?
American Competitiveness... Oh, you mean the we're-paying-those-bastard-techs-too-much-so-lets- fuck-them-over act? There is no shortage of tech workers. There's a shortage of tech workers who'll work 60 hour workweeks for pisspoor wages. Geeks need to unionize
Internet Nondiscrimination Act Oh, who cares if they don't legislate federal taxes on the 'net this year? The states are already doing it. I guess this *might* be an OK bill, watch for riders to be inserted at the last minute
Broadband something-something act Steal from both Paul and Peter and deploy high speed internet, then the government "deregulates" and they jack up their prices. So we get a double-whammy - we pay increased taxes (and taxes never go DOWN) to deploy net access in an area not fit to support it and then the people who are in that area, due to having little/no competition have their prices jacked through the roof. Joy!
UCE Act Woo-hoo, let's just make it so people who send UCE have to have a valid e-mail addy. That'll, uhh, do nothing - domain names cost, what, $10 bucks now? Just use one up, direct the flames to/dev/null, and in a week or two, trash the domain and sell it on the "Network Solutions Auction Block" and go buy another. Yeah! Go congress.
The Businesses Own Everything Act of 2000
The Screw Your Privacy Act of 1999
I Know What You Bought Last Summer Act of 2000
Protection of Children From RealWorld Act of 2001
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Well, isn't that nice? We haven't advanced any further in display technology on the web than the primitive Amiga? 22 colors? Umm, hello? In this day of active matrix LCDs, 32 bit monitors and even color CCDs, we're limited to 22 colors?! Ngggghhh.
Well, let's see, up here in minnesota we have this "card anyone who looks under the age of 35" for cigarettes. That's actually the law - if you *look* young, they'll card 'ya. Funny how I walk into a store and pickup a pack with nary a word 90% of the time. I'm twenty years old.
Not only that, as a kid, anyone remember how you got cigarettes? Anyone? Bueller? I'll tell you how, you asked your big brother or one of the seniors to do it, and you paid them an extra 5 spot for helping you out. Viola, problem solved.
I know what I'll be doing at Kmart next week...
Get your copy of DOOM 4: Columbine Massacre in Living Color right here! Step right up, no ID required!
... the title alone should have the religious right burning effugy's of me across the street! And they call themselves non-violent. Yeah. *cough*
Sorry, is this the same kmart that buys shoes from a company that was recently involved in an expose by several human rights groups for running sweatshops? Where's the righteous indignation against Nike shoes?
I can't speak from a developer standpoint, but from a user standpoint, I have personally witnessed the following problems:
Poor documentation
Buggy and/or half-working menus/programs.
No support if something goes wrong (imagine a database that develops a bug that won't let you read the data anymore if you insert more than n objects into it. Imagine if you don't have a backup.)
If there is support, you can only get it from one or two places.
There is another "hidden" risk in custom programs - the talent pool isn't readily accessible to the company. When you have a developer in house, you can pickup the phone and go "Hey fred, how come xyzzy doesn't work?" and get an answer now. Maybe even a patch.
It's more red tape, which means getting things fixed, new features added, or whatelsenot will take longer. You won't be saving any time by outsourcing because there needs to be a tight communication channel between the developers and the users. If that channel isn't there, you get Microsoft products but with worse reliability.
As submitted to slashdot 09/07/00 and REJECTED (maybe they didn't want me to scoop katz?):
The FBI today released a report on school violence. Ironically, there is only a 1 in a million chance at present of someone being shot in school. Despite that, the political fallout has been fast and extensive. What follows is my own analysis of the report, along with my thoughts on what they did right, and what they did wrong, in the report.
"... a great many adolescents who will never commit violent acts will show some of the behaviors or personality traits included on the list."
The FBI went to great pains in this report to inform the reader that this report is not intended to be a basis for forming a profile of a potential killer. There is no single metric to judge the threat someone poses. Almost all of the information in the report points to this underlying theme - "do not profile students." The FBI also cautioned against the impulsive responses that the issue of school violence has generated, going as far as to say that these demands "have been accompanied by little if any concerted and organized effort to understand the roots of school shooting incidents." The FBI also stated that as a direct result of these incidents being so rare, there was no reliable way to pick out from any group who the killer will be.
The FBI also lashed out at the media, dedicating an entire
section to debunking various myths that the media has propagated. Some of these I didn't pick up. Among the myths debunked that slashdotters would be most interested in:
School violence is an epidemic
The school shooter is always a loner
Unusual or aberrant behaviors, interests, hobbies, etc.,
are hallmarks of the student destined to become violent.
The FBI, in a very round-about way, also slammed schools for zero tolerance policies, saying that the "one-size-fits-all approach" many schools take was ill-advised and could even be dangerous. To quote, "...schools must recognize that every threat does not represent the same danger or require the same level of response."
The core of the report, however, doesn't take some of its own advice and goes on to offer a series of threat assessment criterion to identify potential problems. In other words, profiling.
The assessment approach advocated in the report is based on a "four-pronged" model, with the main areas to identify falling into the personality of the student, and the family, school, and social dynamics in that student's life. This approach is *very* similar to current practices in "emotionally/behaviorally disturbed" programs for many schools. The difference between the FBI's approach hinges on the idea that a student should not be "profiled" until after a threat has been made. It is a small, but important, distinction. [Of interest to myself, the report noted that "about 25% of the adolescent population is at risk for psycho-social problems..." Also, the report notes that adolescence begins earlier in today's kids - as early as age nine. I found that somewhat suprising.]
The actual threat list had several interesting things listed in it which I will list below.
lack of empathy
exaggerated sense of entitlement
attitude of superiority
externalizes blame
intolerance
seeks to manipulate others
lack of trust
rigid and opinionated
All of these, to me, seem like values my boss has. Should I turn him in?
Continuing down the list...
Unsupervised computer access
Media, Entertainment, Technology
Hmm, apparently having unmonitored access to TV and standard media, as well as the internet, are threat factors according to the FBI. So, despite all the effort the FBI made to make it clear to people that profiling was a bad idea, here they are using a very generalized list to determine whether someone really is a threat or not.
The last leg of the report has recommendations for handling threats. As a short summary, the FBI recommends that schools form a group of teachers specifically to deal with possible threats. They specifically note that expelling or suspending the student is NOT a substitute for evaluating the student. Such an impulsive move can actually worsen the situation as the student may feel as if he/she was treated unfairly and feel a need for retribution. Also among the recommendations made, is that each case be treated individually, rather than the one-size-fits all approach common in schools.
In the conclusion, the FBI recommends additional research, and that in the interim, that both educators and law enforcement be trained in handling of such incidents and that a plan be put in place ahead of time to deal with
serious, specific threats. The report also notes that school violence is continuing on a downward trend. The report concludes with the following: "Threats in schools are not just the schools' problem; therefore, neither is the solution".
The report is available directly from the FBI homepage, or via this link.
Yes, that is what I meant. When I tried to correct it, slashdot locked me out and I couldn't post for several minutes. I gave up posting the correction and instead wrote a feature on the FBI's violence report, available here and submitted the analysis to slashdot for rejection.:/
MP3.com, AFAIK, legally aquired those CDs. Once they do that, they can make a collection on any medium, it is called fair use.
I have a collection here at home, it is on CDs. Many radio stations digitize their CDs by loading them onto harddrives as part of their daily program. It is cheaper. Their catalog is even online, in a form, as most of them fax daily playlists out to record stores, as well as posting them online.
MP3.com digitized those files and then offered to share them with anyone who had a legally purchased copy. MP3.com was providing a service - namely, rather than encode the MP3's yourself and waste your CPU power, they would do it for you. As the CD you have is a bit for bit duplicate of the one MP3.com has, whether you encode it or they do, it is the same file.
MP3.com provided a translation service, specifically allowed under fair use guidelines, the only difference is, they were a business and not an individual.
The reason for the large damages? The judge wants to deter other people from "infringing on copyrighted materials". Anyone notice a drop in music sharing? Anyone? Bueller?
This is really stupid and I hope MP3.com approves it. There was already an analysis of the My MP3 protocol put up. There was no way to infringe. Period. MP3 is shelling out twenty five thousand dollars per CD - payment for what? If this is the modern definition of compensatory damages, I'm shocked.
Just chiming in here to agree with you - I learned PHP solely from the documentation. Sadly, it is not as good as it could be. But compared to java, it's a godsend. =)
Okay, I know open source develops software fast, but that's nothing compared to the speed marketing works at. I mean, look - just today both 1.6 and 2.0 were released. Gee, they sure look similar, but one has a snappier version number.. gotta be better than the competition. Eh, if they're following the Microsoft way of development, by the middle of next week we should have Python 2000 Release Candidate 3 available for download.:)
Slashdot Mirror
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I don't believe that's biologically possible.
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First, thank you for providing a link that requires a subscription to view. That will be ever so helpful to me. Not.
You do, however, exhibit an obvious bias against corporations, especially big ones.
No argument there. My contention is that this is a general statement, not one that is true for all businesses (large or small). I must object to anyone who would say that because I say something is generally true it is always true, it's stretching things just a tad!
Your claiming corporations are out to screw the little guy is no better than my claiming that Open Source advocates are just trying to create communism.
Well, actually, I'd say Open Source is a closer to being socialist ideal than a communist one. That aside, there's no single label one can use, but a combination of a meritocracy, alittle democracy, alittle anarchy, and alittle socialism all go into the mix. That being said, yes, I do believe the vast majority of large corporations got to be where they are by "screwing over the little guy". Economic darwinism, if you will... you only get more powerful if you are aggressive in this economy.
Well I shouldn't really need to, since there is realms of empirical evidence showing the benefits of deregulation over the past 3 decades. If you studied economics even modestly, you'd be familiar with them.
Well, I did study economics, actually. It was one of the first two courses I signed up for - Macroeconomics and Philosophy, a bad mix if you ask me. Anyway, that aside, any economics book will also talk to you about the fallacy of assuming that because Event A preceeded Event B, Event B was caused by Event A. Deregulation may improve things. Then again, it may not. Then again, modern economics only recently aquired a decent enough theoretical framework to start making good guesses about how things interoperate - 30 years ago they were still using symbols for "customer happiness", among other unmeasurable things. That aside, I've been living in a "deregulated" market for several years and have yet to see any improvement as a result. Infact, quite the opposite, my bill keeps going up.
You obviously lack even the most basic comprehension of what market capitalization is.
Ngggh, it was the first stat I found on their website, give me some credit. My point is they can spare a few bucks to bribe, er, persuade the politicians to see things their way. The Minnesota PUC is wrapped around the finger of their local encumbant, one QWest - just try filing a complaint and see what the reply will be. Static on the lines? Must be RFI, go bug the FCC. Getting crossover? Nothing we can do about it! Prices went up again? Hey, not our department. Ngggh, very useful, those fellows. Sorry, getting alittle offtopic...
The utilities have long been seen as being cash cows. That is changing today, because they now are facing competition.
I can't speak for the entire country, but up here in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area (aka the Twin Cities) there are only two incumbent providers to choose from - QWest and Sprint. The CLECs here are mainly for businesses. Sure, they do residential lines, but even those are specialized - xDSL, dry lines (for security circuits), etc. It just occurred to me, why the hell are we arguing about deregulation? The point of my original post was to underscore that H1B workers are being foisted onto the tech industry because companies don't want to pay the high rates that techs currently make around here...
The French have consistently had some of the most socialized and protectionist politics in Europe, and they've had broad support at that.
Well, that has less to do with their government than the fact that they were involved in a war that completely destroyed the infrastructure of their entire country, and in the past 10 years have they started to move forward again. I think it might have had something to do with that Hitler fellow I mentioned earlier.
~ Signal 11
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Rather takes the fun out of making the jump, now doesn't it?
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Still, being the stupid corporation that it is, it would probably rather belch out lawsuits and proclimations of theft and damage rather than try to be helpful and considerate of other people.
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Do you deny that you've said words to that effect that big corporations are evil?
Yes. That is a unilateral statement which, if I have ever said, was meant in general and not specific terms. Not all corporations are evil. Corporations are organizations of men, and if those men are of good moral character, they cannot be evil. It is only when the men of these corporations persue the dollar that they do harm to society.
That is your "evidence"?
Show me more than hot air and I might be inclined to believe you. For now, any link is sufficient because I know most people who argue with me are too slothful to actually go through the effort of backing up their claims.
No, it does not disagree with the fact that genuine deregulation has been shown to be a good thing.
Coulda fooled me.
a) The source is not exactly an unbiased ones, much of the content in there is conjecture and opinion, not hard statistics and facts.
There's alot more facts in that "conjecture and opinion" article than has been put forward in this entire thread.
b) Texas is only one state.
True, but they'd have you believe they're a seperate country. And even if it is a small sample, it is still beats the opposition's comments (that would be you), which to date have been nothing more than chest beating.
No matter what your opinion of deregulation, it is not reasonable to expect instant results.
This deregulation has been going on for several years. I've seen its impact, as have many other people. The deregulation started before the 'net was more than an idle curiosity and BBS' reigned supreme. If you shrink the time-frame enough, anyone can claim "nothing happened!" Look at the bigger picture here.
e) One of the key factors these companies look to if they're going to expand their networks and facilities is some basic assurances that the government won't turn around on them in another year or two and pull the carpet out from under them.
US West, now "QWest" in my area, has a 85 billion dollar market capitalization right now. I think they can divert a few thousand for contributinos to local politicians to keep this from happening.
No, you're not. You're going to sit around slashdot and poh poh everything that you deam "establishment", "corporatist", or what have you.
The "establishment" (that would be the government) created the internet. I'm not complaining. They created a police force which guards my house from criminals. I'm not complaining. The "establishment" is responsible for putting men on the moon and providing the funding for Hubble, arguably the biggest thing (excuse the pun) in astronomy right now. The establishment has contributed immeasurably to my quality of life. Corporations too, as they have provided me the clothes on my back, the food that I eat, even the keyboard that I type this to you now. I'm very selective about who I "poo-bah" as you put it.
I do, however, think your viewpoint is shared by the French. I dare you to look at what it's cost them.
If you could be more specific with what you are referring to (names of people, businesses, etc) it would assist me greatly.
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Nuts .
For those who don't know the historical reference, pop open the nearest history book and flip to the WWII section. =) All this means is that now we're going to change the version the software reports and recompile. w00t, big deal, hardly worth a post to /..
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But, I would very much like to see the MPAA try to stop this one...
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Umm, last I looked it up, they crossed into the 21st century almost 20 hours before we did.
Dictatorships don't foster productivity, nor does socialism.
Then why do all the shoes, shirts, and consumer electronics in my house have little stickers that say "Made in China" ?
We're talking about 400k H1B visas in a much much larger industry. These "lower paid" employees, can only do so much to lower salaries.
They're slaves, goddamnit! The wages argument aside, these people are sponsored by that corporation, and then they OWN them - if they quit or are fired, they must return to their home country.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I never itemized which companies I like and which ones I don't, so don't say that I have. I fault the system for this, and the citizens for not getting informed on the issues.
They're making much more money than most people in their respective countries. They're even making more money than most Americans. So don't act as if your concern is for them.
So we just wave money underneath their noses and it's then OK if they accept and we strip them of their civil rights? No, I don't think so. Either we do it right and give everyone in this country the same rights, or we don't let them in in the first place. It is an injustice regardless of whether they "want it" or not. Alot of people in Germany liked Hitler and followed him, that doesn't mean their rights weren't violated.
Even if salaries were the sole reason for this law [which it is not],
Clickity-click. You're new around here, aren't you? Everything is about money - this is a capitalist country. Our government is run by money, it collects money, everyone calls the working class "consumers", and people are more concerned about tax raises/cuts than they are about whether or not their local schools are properly funded. Hello? Politics = Money. It is a very simple equation and if you'd pull your head out of your arse and look around, you'd find this is a world run by money the money, for the money.
, it is obvious what your direction is...
Right, of course. The only bill on the list I couldn't find anything bad to say about and my position is "obvious". That's right, I have little to say on the issue.
Yeah, and the evidence of all the damage of regulation is where?
It's on my phone bill.
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I'm actually starting to warm up to the chinese government. Atleast they explicitly tell their citizens what's ok and what's not ok. Up here, everything's "kinda" illegal, but not really illegal unless you step on someone's toes. Yeah, that's the way to oppress people.. keep them guessing at what they need to fight against.
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Play each sovereign nation off of each other, they're in a constant state of disagreement anyway.
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China has a nasty habit of starting up bulldozers and mowing down people who think freely. Why are we, a allegedly democratic part-of-the-free-world country supporting this?
American Competitiveness...- fuck-them-over act? There is no shortage of tech workers. There's a shortage of tech workers who'll work 60 hour workweeks for pisspoor wages. Geeks need to unionize
Oh, you mean the we're-paying-those-bastard-techs-too-much-so-lets
Internet Nondiscrimination Act
Oh, who cares if they don't legislate federal taxes on the 'net this year? The states are already doing it. I guess this *might* be an OK bill, watch for riders to be inserted at the last minute
Broadband something-something act
Steal from both Paul and Peter and deploy high speed internet, then the government "deregulates" and they jack up their prices. So we get a double-whammy - we pay increased taxes (and taxes never go DOWN) to deploy net access in an area not fit to support it and then the people who are in that area, due to having little/no competition have their prices jacked through the roof. Joy!
UCE Act /dev/null, and in a week or two, trash the domain and sell it on the "Network Solutions Auction Block" and go buy another. Yeah! Go congress.
Woo-hoo, let's just make it so people who send UCE have to have a valid e-mail addy. That'll, uhh, do nothing - domain names cost, what, $10 bucks now? Just use one up, direct the flames to
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The Businesses Own Everything Act of 2000
The Screw Your Privacy Act of 1999
I Know What You Bought Last Summer Act of 2000
Protection of Children From RealWorld Act of 2001
...
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Same here - mine is much more compact.
Not only that, as a kid, anyone remember how you got cigarettes? Anyone? Bueller? I'll tell you how, you asked your big brother or one of the seniors to do it, and you paid them an extra 5 spot for helping you out. Viola, problem solved.
I know what I'll be doing at Kmart next week...
Get your copy of DOOM 4: Columbine Massacre in Living Color right here! Step right up, no ID required!
... the title alone should have the religious right burning effugy's of me across the street! And they call themselves non-violent. Yeah. *cough*
Sorry, is this the same kmart that buys shoes from a company that was recently involved in an expose by several human rights groups for running sweatshops? Where's the righteous indignation against Nike shoes?
There is another "hidden" risk in custom programs - the talent pool isn't readily accessible to the company. When you have a developer in house, you can pickup the phone and go "Hey fred, how come xyzzy doesn't work?" and get an answer now. Maybe even a patch.
It's more red tape, which means getting things fixed, new features added, or whatelsenot will take longer. You won't be saving any time by outsourcing because there needs to be a tight communication channel between the developers and the users. If that channel isn't there, you get Microsoft products but with worse reliability.
Just my $0.02.
As submitted to slashdot 09/07/00 and REJECTED (maybe they didn't want me to scoop katz?):
The FBI today released a report on school violence. Ironically, there is only a 1 in a million chance at present of someone being shot in school. Despite that, the political fallout has been fast and extensive. What follows is my own analysis of the report, along with my thoughts on what they did right, and what they did wrong, in the report. "... a great many adolescents who will never commit violent acts will show some of the behaviors or personality traits included on the list."
The FBI went to great pains in this report to inform the reader that this report is not intended to be a basis for forming a profile of a potential killer. There is no single metric to judge the threat someone poses. Almost all of the information in the report points to this underlying theme - "do not profile students." The FBI also cautioned against the impulsive responses that the issue of school violence has generated, going as far as to say that these demands "have been accompanied by little if any concerted and organized effort to understand the roots of school shooting incidents." The FBI also stated that as a direct result of these incidents being so rare, there was no reliable way to pick out from any group who the killer will be.
The FBI also lashed out at the media, dedicating an entire section to debunking various myths that the media has propagated. Some of these I didn't pick up. Among the myths debunked that slashdotters would be most interested in:
The FBI, in a very round-about way, also slammed schools for zero tolerance policies, saying that the "one-size-fits-all approach" many schools take was ill-advised and could even be dangerous. To quote, "...schools must recognize that every threat does not represent the same danger or require the same level of response."
The core of the report, however, doesn't take some of its own advice and goes on to offer a series of threat assessment criterion to identify potential problems. In other words, profiling.
The assessment approach advocated in the report is based on a "four-pronged" model, with the main areas to identify falling into the personality of the student, and the family, school, and social dynamics in that student's life. This approach is *very* similar to current practices in "emotionally/behaviorally disturbed" programs for many schools. The difference between the FBI's approach hinges on the idea that a student should not be "profiled" until after a threat has been made. It is a small, but important, distinction. [Of interest to myself, the report noted that "about 25% of the adolescent population is at risk for psycho-social problems..." Also, the report notes that adolescence begins earlier in today's kids - as early as age nine. I found that somewhat suprising.]
The actual threat list had several interesting things listed in it which I will list below.
All of these, to me, seem like values my boss has. Should I turn him in?
Continuing down the list...
Hmm, apparently having unmonitored access to TV and standard media, as well as the internet, are threat factors according to the FBI. So, despite all the effort the FBI made to make it clear to people that profiling was a bad idea, here they are using a very generalized list to determine whether someone really is a threat or not.
The last leg of the report has recommendations for handling threats. As a short summary, the FBI recommends that schools form a group of teachers specifically to deal with possible threats. They specifically note that expelling or suspending the student is NOT a substitute for evaluating the student. Such an impulsive move can actually worsen the situation as the student may feel as if he/she was treated unfairly and feel a need for retribution. Also among the recommendations made, is that each case be treated individually, rather than the one-size-fits all approach common in schools.
In the conclusion, the FBI recommends additional research, and that in the interim, that both educators and law enforcement be trained in handling of such incidents and that a plan be put in place ahead of time to deal with serious, specific threats. The report also notes that school violence is continuing on a downward trend. The report concludes with the following: "Threats in schools are not just the schools' problem; therefore, neither is the solution".
The report is available directly from the FBI homepage, or via this link.
Yes, that is what I meant. When I tried to correct it, slashdot locked me out and I couldn't post for several minutes. I gave up posting the correction and instead wrote a feature on the FBI's violence report, available here and submitted the analysis to slashdot for rejection. :/
I have a collection here at home, it is on CDs. Many radio stations digitize their CDs by loading them onto harddrives as part of their daily program. It is cheaper. Their catalog is even online, in a form, as most of them fax daily playlists out to record stores, as well as posting them online.
MP3.com digitized those files and then offered to share them with anyone who had a legally purchased copy. MP3.com was providing a service - namely, rather than encode the MP3's yourself and waste your CPU power, they would do it for you. As the CD you have is a bit for bit duplicate of the one MP3.com has, whether you encode it or they do, it is the same file.
MP3.com provided a translation service, specifically allowed under fair use guidelines, the only difference is, they were a business and not an individual.
The reason for the large damages? The judge wants to deter other people from "infringing on copyrighted materials". Anyone notice a drop in music sharing? Anyone? Bueller?
This is really stupid and I hope MP3.com approves it. There was already an analysis of the My MP3 protocol put up. There was no way to infringe. Period. MP3 is shelling out twenty five thousand dollars per CD - payment for what? If this is the modern definition of compensatory damages, I'm shocked.
Just chiming in here to agree with you - I learned PHP solely from the documentation. Sadly, it is not as good as it could be. But compared to java, it's a godsend. =)
Okay, I know open source develops software fast, but that's nothing compared to the speed marketing works at. I mean, look - just today both 1.6 and 2.0 were released. Gee, they sure look similar, but one has a snappier version number.. gotta be better than the competition. Eh, if they're following the Microsoft way of development, by the middle of next week we should have Python 2000 Release Candidate 3 available for download. :)