>> f that means looking for a reason to terminate you, they WILL find one > In many (most?) states, they don't need a reason. It's "at-will".
The sole function of HR is to prove beyond any shadow of doubt that the organization does not discriminate against EEOC/ADA protected classes, even if that is the de facto policy of the company.
As such, HR will demonstrate a pattern of behaviors such that the person was fired for cause, even if everybody privately admits that the sole reason for the firing was because the discriminated individual was a member of an ADA/EEOC protected class.
>the typical attempt I've seen basically claims all IPR to anything you do during the period of your employment,
Would a company really claim all IPR to: * a movie that has a "XXX" rating; * a play that promotes pedestry; * a song that equates governments with thugs; * a book that explores the theology of the Apostles Creed, and its relationship to the Ten commandment's thereby demonstrating that the company advocates that which is both immoral and unethical;
> How "Necessary" is this technology for the average joe? I
How necessary is a curb cut for the average joe?
For those who don't get my point, the benefit is in the unexpected/unanticipated users of the product.
I see their utility as an easy,fast, and inexpensive way to create documents in the Moon Writing System, or in Embossed Braille Graphics.
It also provides an easy way for educational institutions to produce 3D maps on demand. (Hopefully, the materials can be recycled, so the created objects can be tossed into the "recycle and reuse bin".)
Manufacturers might include plans for "cosmetic accessories" with their appliances. (Fabricate this part, and mix in the coloring that you want your appliance to be. Fabricate butterflies to add to your appliance.)
>I have no doubt that the price will drop....does anyone remember how expensive the first LaserWriter printers were?
If the cost of the raw materials is law enough, and the demand for the product is high enough, then the cost will drop.
At US$2,500 it will be cheaper than most other accessibility tools that are currently available. (Braille Printer, Moon Printer, Braille Graphics Printing.)
Ah, the good old African way of doing things. Pay baksheesh to the appropriate party, and whatever is wanted/needed to be done, gets done. It doesn't matter where on the continent one is, it is the most effective/fastest way of getting anything done.
>There seems to be a misconception. It's not a numbers game.
Those in languages other than English are a pure numbers game. Rational is irrelevant, all that counts is the number of votes to keep, or delete, or merge.
> People have to have compelling arguments.
A "compelling argument" all to often, on the English language version, is "Delete: Fails [[WP:NOTE]]".
There is an unofficial guideline for determining how notable a road or street in a city is. There is another unofficial guideline for determining how notoble a religion, and the things associated with that religion on.
There is a semi-official guideline for determining how notable a school is. (High schools are notable. Middle schools and elementary schools are, by definition, not notable.)
The _sole_ justification for the "notability" requirement, is that it prevents one from hitting the Information Dragon. Problem is, that Information Dragon is an extremely good thing to hit.
> Now imagine the same, except that *every single example of that proper noun in existence is included*. That's way too much stuff to easily search through it.
That is "The Information Dragon". If you don't find it in your search for data, then your search for data is severally flawed.
>If you didn't have notability guidelines, everyone would be writing articles about themselves, and then adding links to themselves from truly relevant articles.
Notability guidelines don't cover links. Reread [[WP:NOTE]] and [[WP:LINK]]
> Those guidelines help keep Wikipedia from filling up with useless trivia, which would negatively affect important articles.
And the problem with so-called useless trivia is?
I consider every article about Bollywood, Hollywood, and their related industries to be useless trivia, and should be deleted on sight.
Oddly enough, I can point to at least one clause in [[WP:NOTE]],[[WP:VERIFY]] or [[WP:NOR]] to justify an AfD for every one of those articles. How successful the first AfD is questionable. But by the time the tenth AfD has gone through, those articles will be history. Do keep in mind that that would not be vandalism, because the articles do not meet the criteria that Wikipedia has laid out for their content.
>>Nope. Then they'd deny everything. >This is a bad thing? That's the whole point!:)
Better solution.
If a patent application cites another patent, it is denied on the grounds of being "obvious".
If the patent application could have cited another patent, but did not, it is denied on the grounds of being a fraudulent application.
If any party wants to appeal a denied application,they may pay the sum of US$1 000 000 000 000 for an application to appeal the denial. If the application to appeal is granted, the organization pays a further US$1 000 000 per hour of time spent in adjudicating the patent.
If a party wishes to appeal a patent that has been granted, they may pay the sum of US$100 for an application to appeal the acceptance of the patent. There is no charge for adjudicating a patent that has been granted.
>Geez, with how horrible you make MS Word sound, it's a wonder anyone uses it at all! The productivity of those that do must be pretty awful as well..
Every time I write more than ten pages using MS Word, either Word crashes,or I get the BSOD. This is when the BSOD does not occur upon loading a document.
Then I take my nicely formatted document to Kinko's and end up having to rewrite it there, because it won't render on their system, even though they use the same version of operating system, and office suite as I use.
If you want me to read something, use PDF. If you want me to edit something, use plain text, csv, or ODF.
I have configured my email filter to reject everything that has an attachment in an MSO file format as a virus, and to send a message to that effect to the originator of the email.
> In a business setting, Ubuntu offers what you need: a secure, lean, cheap, and easy to administer platform.
And to further minimize their time wasting, you can "easily" install Dansguardian. That will block all those nice time wasting sites --- eBay, YouTube, MySpace, eBid, K5, digg,/., etc.
>I know that the FSF and the SFLC say that GPL is only license, not contract, but are they really willing to live or die on this issue?
Under Anglo-American Law, a contract requires consideration. With the GPL there is no consideration,and hence no contract.
Under Roman Dutch Law, a contract does not require consideration. Hence,in jurisdictions that are based upon Roman-Dutch law, the GPL can be construed to be a contract.
For the US, the only legal theory they can use, is that the GPL is a license. If they are not willing to bet the farm that it is a license, then they need to be in another line of work.
Note: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
>I could see it. IT in each airline contributing to the project.
In the early days, that is what happened. The code was closed source, not open source. A couple of companies that didn't contribute to the code discovered that they were locked out of that system. So they created their own closed source system. IIRC, the upshot of the ensuing court cases was that the programs had to play nicely with each other.
>Change the words "sue" to "levy" and "broadband connection" to "writable media" and you've basically described the situation in Canada
That is also the case in the US.
The only music on the 100+ DVDs I've burned this year was stuff I arranged and performed myself. Score and lyrics are in the public domain. Nonetheless the RIAA gets to collect a royalty on those DVDs to pay some crappy artist whose garbage is used as a music break on the current top 40 commercials station.
> However, it would be reasonable to say it's 99% cross-version formatting compatible. In other words, yes there are issues but unless you're doing some very fancy work in a part of Office which was never really designed for it.
A prime example of something that Microsoft Office is incapable of doing is creating a document using MSO2003 running Windows XP, and going to Kinko's to print it out on a WinXp machine running MSO 2003. I spent roughly 2 hours fixing the document up, so that the print out looked reasonable.
The "fancy document" consisted of pure text. No graphics. No embedded objects. Just plain text.
I could have written it using edlin on a DosBox, and printed it on a Vista box using notepade with no loss in formatting.
> Now, Open Office... try to launch your own fork and wait to see how much it takes for Sun lawyers to knock your door.
Sun doesn't knock on the doors. There are roughly half a dozen or so commercial outfits that have forked OOo, but do not adhere to the LGPL requirements.
Slashdot Mirror
> In north america one can easily get by without a cell phone, and I do so every single day.
You haven't applied for a job recently.
HR departments expect one to have both a landline and a cell phone.
>> f that means looking for a reason to terminate you, they WILL find one
> In many (most?) states, they don't need a reason. It's "at-will".
The sole function of HR is to prove beyond any shadow of doubt that the organization does not discriminate against EEOC/ADA protected classes, even if that is the de facto policy of the company.
As such, HR will demonstrate a pattern of behaviors such that the person was fired for cause, even if everybody privately admits that the sole reason for the firing was because the discriminated individual was a member of an ADA/EEOC protected class.
Amber
>the typical attempt I've seen basically claims all IPR to anything you do during the period of your employment,
Would a company really claim all IPR to:
* a movie that has a "XXX" rating;
* a play that promotes pedestry;
* a song that equates governments with thugs;
* a book that explores the theology of the Apostles Creed, and its relationship to the Ten commandment's thereby demonstrating that the company advocates that which is both immoral and unethical;
Amber
> How "Necessary" is this technology for the average joe? I
How necessary is a curb cut for the average joe?
For those who don't get my point, the benefit is in the unexpected/unanticipated users of the product.
I see their utility as an easy,fast, and inexpensive way to create documents in the Moon Writing System, or in Embossed Braille Graphics.
It also provides an easy way for educational institutions to produce 3D maps on demand. (Hopefully, the materials can be recycled, so the created objects can be tossed into the "recycle and reuse bin".)
Manufacturers might include plans for "cosmetic accessories" with their appliances. (Fabricate this part, and mix in the coloring that you want your appliance to be. Fabricate butterflies to add to your appliance.)
Amber
>I have no doubt that the price will drop....does anyone remember how expensive the first LaserWriter printers were?
If the cost of the raw materials is law enough, and the demand for the product is high enough, then the cost will drop.
At US$2,500 it will be cheaper than most other accessibility tools that are currently available.
(Braille Printer, Moon Printer, Braille Graphics Printing.)
> A monopolist convicted of anti-competitive behavior on two continents.
Three:
* Europe;
* Asia;
* America;
Amber
>Baksheesh is probably the best B-word to use
Ah, the good old African way of doing things. Pay baksheesh to the appropriate party, and whatever is wanted/needed to be done, gets done. It doesn't matter where on the continent one is, it is the most effective/fastest way of getting anything done.
Amber
>There seems to be a misconception. It's not a numbers game.
Those in languages other than English are a pure numbers game.
Rational is irrelevant, all that counts is the number of votes to keep, or delete, or merge.
> People have to have compelling arguments.
A "compelling argument" all to often, on the English language version, is "Delete: Fails [[WP:NOTE]]".
There is an unofficial guideline for determining how notable a road or street in a city is.
There is another unofficial guideline for determining how notoble a religion, and the things associated with that religion on.
There is a semi-official guideline for determining how notable a school is. (High schools are notable. Middle schools and elementary schools are, by definition, not notable.)
The _sole_ justification for the "notability" requirement, is that it prevents one from hitting the Information Dragon. Problem is, that Information Dragon is an extremely good thing to hit.
Amber
> Are there examples of articles where the information can be verified to be true, but which shouldn't exist on Wikipedia due to lack of notability
On any random day, there will be at least one, and probably closer to five articles in the AfD list that meet that criteria.
Amber
> Now imagine the same, except that *every single example of that proper noun in existence is included*.
That's way too much stuff to easily search through it.
That is "The Information Dragon". If you don't find it in your search for data, then your search for data is severally flawed.
Amber
>If you didn't have notability guidelines, everyone would be writing articles about themselves, and then adding links to themselves from truly relevant articles.
Notability guidelines don't cover links. Reread [[WP:NOTE]] and [[WP:LINK]]
> Those guidelines help keep Wikipedia from filling up with useless trivia, which would negatively affect important articles.
And the problem with so-called useless trivia is?
I consider every article about Bollywood, Hollywood, and their related industries to be useless trivia, and should be deleted on sight.
Oddly enough, I can point to at least one clause in [[WP:NOTE]],[[WP:VERIFY]] or [[WP:NOR]] to justify an AfD for every one of those articles. How successful the first AfD is questionable. But by the time the tenth AfD has gone through, those articles will be history. Do keep in mind that that would not be vandalism, because the articles do not meet the criteria that Wikipedia has laid out for their content.
Amber
> So long as it's accurate, why does it matter if it's deemed "important"? Importance is hugely subjective -
Wikipeida admins are overhasty in what they speedy delete.
I a still waiting for a wikipedia admin to justify why the image at
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D0%B7%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5:Ubuntu_CE_logo_only.png
was slated as a speedy delete when that image was used in the English language Wikipedia.
Amber
> Since being inconspicuous is the very definition of steganography, something tells me Mr. Schneier doesn't have a firm handle on the concept,
Have you considered that what is very conspicuous to Bruce might be extremely inconspicuous to somebody who knows nothing about security?
In one of his very early books, Bruce spends several pages on the difference in how conspicuous something is for a novice, and an expert.
Amber
>>Nope. Then they'd deny everything. :)
>This is a bad thing? That's the whole point!
Better solution.
If a patent application cites another patent, it is denied on the grounds of being "obvious".
If the patent application could have cited another patent, but did not, it is denied on the grounds of being a fraudulent application.
If any party wants to appeal a denied application,they may pay the sum of US$1 000 000 000 000 for an application to appeal the denial. If the application to appeal is granted, the organization pays a further US$1 000 000 per hour of time spent in adjudicating the patent.
If a party wishes to appeal a patent that has been granted, they may pay the sum of US$100 for an application to appeal the acceptance of the patent. There is no charge for adjudicating a patent that has been granted.
Amber
>Geez, with how horrible you make MS Word sound, it's a wonder anyone uses it at all! The productivity of those that do must be pretty awful as well..
Every time I write more than ten pages using MS Word, either Word crashes,or I get the BSOD.
This is when the BSOD does not occur upon loading a document.
Then I take my nicely formatted document to Kinko's and end up having to rewrite it there, because it won't render on their system, even though they use the same version of operating system, and office suite as I use.
If you want me to read something, use PDF.
If you want me to edit something, use plain text, csv, or ODF.
I have configured my email filter to reject everything that has an attachment in an MSO file format as a virus, and to send a message to that effect to the originator of the email.
Amber
> In a business setting, Ubuntu offers what you need: a secure, lean, cheap, and easy to administer platform.
/., etc.
And to further minimize their time wasting, you can "easily" install Dansguardian. That will block all those nice time wasting sites --- eBay, YouTube, MySpace, eBid, K5, digg,
Amber
>The requirements are IE7 and Office 2007 working as well as "All media in books in the library are readable."
What is the rational for MSO2007?
Especially since it does not produce documents that conform to ISO 26300 requirements?
Amber
>fixing the problem of only supporting 65,536 rows in Calc.
a) If you are using that many rows, you should be using a real database.
b) If you are willing to compile source code, there is an OOo code snippet showing how to have millions of rows in Calc. The use of that code snippet is entirely experimental. (A five second search on Google didn't find it. I did find the thread that discussed it at http://www.nabble.com/Recompile-Calc-to-support-more-than-64k-rows-and-256-columns--t725995.html
c) http://osdir.com/ml/gnome.apps.gnumeric/2002-10/msg00019.html is a link to how to change the number of rows in Gnumeric.
Amber
>"how is the slogan 'virgin to virgin' derogatory to a faithful churchgoing 16 year old? aren't girls like that supposed to be proud to be virgins?
In some countries, the sign she flashes with her hand is an invitation for sex.
The implications of that are left as an exercise to the reader.
Amber
>I know that the FSF and the SFLC say that GPL is only license, not contract, but are they really willing to live or die on this issue?
Under Anglo-American Law, a contract requires consideration. With the GPL there is no consideration,and hence no contract.
Under Roman Dutch Law, a contract does not require consideration. Hence,in jurisdictions that are based upon Roman-Dutch law, the GPL can be construed to be a contract.
For the US, the only legal theory they can use, is that the GPL is a license. If they are not willing to bet the farm that it is a license, then they need to be in another line of work.
Note: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
Amber
>I could see it. IT in each airline contributing to the project.
In the early days, that is what happened. The code was closed source, not open source. A couple of companies that didn't contribute to the code discovered that they were locked out of that system. So they created their own closed source system. IIRC, the upshot of the ensuing court cases was that the programs had to play nicely with each other.
Amber
> For example, I can't imagine an altruistic bunch of people getting together to write a special flight booking system for British Airways.
The company that wrote that booking system might open source it. (There can be extremely sound legal reasons to open source your software code.)
Amber
>Change the words "sue" to "levy" and "broadband connection" to "writable media" and you've basically described the situation in Canada
That is also the case in the US.
The only music on the 100+ DVDs I've burned this year was stuff I arranged and performed myself. Score and lyrics are in the public domain. Nonetheless the RIAA gets to collect a royalty on those DVDs to pay some crappy artist whose garbage is used as a music break on the current top 40 commercials station.
Amber
> However, it would be reasonable to say it's 99% cross-version formatting compatible. In other words, yes there are issues but unless you're doing some very fancy work in a part of Office which was never really designed for it.
A prime example of something that Microsoft Office is incapable of doing is creating a document using MSO2003 running Windows XP, and going to Kinko's to print it out on a WinXp machine running MSO 2003. I spent roughly 2 hours fixing the document up, so that the print out looked reasonable.
The "fancy document" consisted of pure text.
No graphics. No embedded objects. Just plain text.
I could have written it using edlin on a DosBox, and printed it on a Vista box using notepade with no loss in formatting.
Amber
> Now, Open Office... try to launch your own fork and wait to see how much it takes for Sun lawyers to knock your door.
Sun doesn't knock on the doors.
There are roughly half a dozen or so commercial outfits that have forked OOo, but do not adhere to the LGPL requirements.
Amber