Those issues include identifying whackos, kooks, and nuts who are likely to commit a mass shooting. Almost always, people step forward after a shooting, to inform the media that the shooter was some kind of mental case. Family and acquaintances are generally unable to "connect" with the guy. He's strange, weird, or whatever - often a "loner".
The real issue here, is identifying such people, and getting help for them - OR, institutionalizing them, so that they most definitely CANNOT access weapons.
But, boo-hoo-hoo - it violates some kind of "rights" if we start institutionalizing mental cases.
Blame the NRA for that - they lobby for laws that prevent mental health professionals from asking about or connecting them to guns they own or have access to.
I just don't see the value proposition in spending time on this versus spending the time perfecting Arch Linux. I'm not an Arch user, though I'm interested in it. Right now I tend to mainly use Debian, Mint, and FreeBSD. What I'm sure of is that there are bugs and usability issues in Arch that this effort could have been used to address.
I didn't read the article (yet... yeah I know) but I can already come up with an answer - maybe this guy's expertise/interest is in low level kernel details that would crop up swapping kernels, instead of in bugs/usability issues which sound UI or user-mode related to me. It's like asking a compiler internals person to fix GNOME 3. Come on, not every developer and their particular skillset is 100% interchangeable with the area that you think needs attention.
How do you annul a bankruptcy? And even if it's annulled, it did happen. He was bankrupt, even if, like the stars, it was only 23 hours between marriage and annulment. If that annulment mattered, then "Guy Hingston" should complete to "Guy Hingston bankruptcy annuled", and that would be perfectly fine.
Not sure I understand the question... yes, an annulment might not make "sense", but this is the legal system.;) Marriages can get annulled, sometimes even when the couple has kids. That's mind boggling to say "legally, it never happened". But that's what it does.
But the issue of Poaching or Employees going to a competitor is a problem. Because the company invests in these employees and then they go out to their competitor, to give them value. It is like paying your competitors bills.
Well too damn bad. This is a "problem" only from the corporate/employer point of view. From the employee point of view, it sounds to me like Corporation X is undervaluing them compared to Corporation Y, holding their market value down. The solution is to be willing adjust their compensation to reflect their value, or be willing to let them go. No different than a star athlete becoming a free agent and taking a better deal (except in the numbers involved, both salary and employee/employer population).
It cuts both ways, somebody flipping constantly might price themselves out of the market. And others, desiring more stability, might choose to stay somewhere long term. Both sound fine to me!
Tablets 15 years ago were massively prone to breakage, had awful touch interfaces, had awful touch hardware, and were generally bad at everything they tried to be.
How many people have you seen with iPads and keyboards? What do you suppose those keyboards are for, if not "office-y" stuff?
Hm, most of the time I see people with tablets, outside my group at work where we are evaluating them, is at coffee shops or the airport. (And if you're curious, we have 2 Surface RTs and probably a dozen or more iPads). As an informal guess, I'd estimate ~25% of those sightings are tablets with keyboards. This is all anecdotal and I'm not sure what numbers are in places like NYC or SF. Something more accurate might be the volume of sales for these keyboard addons, but I'm not sure where to dig that up
I myself own 2 tablets, a Nexus 7 and an iPad Mini, but don't have an external keyboard for either.
Anyway, my personal opinion is that having MS Office and/or x86 compatibility will not be a significant draw, due to the current prices. These things are competing against iOS and Android, both of which are cheaper, sell cheaper apps, and have an enormous library as well. x86 compat is literally Microsoft's only "advantage", so they'll be flogging that constantly.
For the $1000 a Surface Pro plus keyboard cover will cost, you may as well buy an actual notebook, especially when you are stuck purchasing desktop-priced x86 apps. On top of that, most (all?) current x86 apps do not remotely have a UI appropriate for a tablet, and that will need to be addressed immediately by Microsoft and/or developers, or the Microsoft's foray will limp along like a plane with all engines on fire, and eventually crash and burn.
You dont think having the full MS Office available for surface (and built in by default) will have an effect here?
In summary, no. Longer answer: maybe, if all x86 apps get revamped for tablet/touch UIs, app prices drop down to the new table-ecosystem pricing levels, and their hardware pricing drops by at least 25%. I may be horribly off, but this looks like a perfect storm of disappointment. Microsoft will avoid total failure by propping this up with cash infusions.
The thing you are overlooking is your needs aren't a significant part of the market. A stylus and all that other stuff? If those were major selling points then Microsoft would have been successful with tablets say... 15 years ago.
Your repetitious "90% of today's tablets don't" blah blah. Sounds like a prediction that Surface will battle and claw it's way to... 10% market share?
Well, the obvious conspiracy theory is that disgruntled former Sun engineers, people with extremely deep knowledge about Java, are angry at Oracle and venting their frustrations by poking holes in their former product.;)
The question is why do a buyout now at current prices when you're sure to pay less in the future?
Maybe it gives them more control over their future, doing it on their terms now. Versus an uncertain future when anything might happen, including an even worse outcome due to plummeting stock, loss of confidence, etc.
Because this kind of beating is critical for corporations to experience. It shows that decisions have consequences, and you have to treat your customers/users with respect. Quite frankly, this should happen more often when corporations step over the line. Otherwise how will any of them learn?
If they are bought out, Apple fans will likely laugh remembering Dell's famous quote about shutting down Apple.
If they aren't... their stock surged on speculation of going private... it could plummet if the buyout doesn't happen. Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo in the spring of 2008, was rebuffed, and Yahoo stock took a nosedive. The second buyout offer didn't pan out either, but they didn't take the same beating.
I dunno, I see fast food restaurants latching on to this. They'll think, wait a sec, we can sell even more of our shitty food to people who like it?! They can pump it out and come back for more? Hell yes!!
I bet all those places put up posterboards advertising this device and might want to get cut in on referral business.
That's one of the downsides of the free market - the economy evolves for corporate profits, not necessarily for public good. It is more profitable to the corporations involves to extract subsidies, produce cheap low quality food (fast food industry), and treat the resultant health problems (health industry). It would be better for the population as a whole to eat better, but then profits go down for the fast food industry and the health industry.
They didn't do this, which indicates that they don't care.
You cannot draw that conclusion so simply. You have to remember that their first priority is to ship solid, full-feature software. Getting a patch through the professional regression testing takes some time.
All the same, the timeline shows some tradeoffs between priorities and incentives. Professional regression testing, etc didn't seem to act very fast for 5 months. Then when the bug was actively exploited, it took 3 days to fix.
I suppose you could claim they had the fix in hand and were just wrapping up coincidentally the same weekend exploit kits were using it and everybody was advising to uninstall/block java, but seriously, it is obvious what happened here: Oracle didn't care until the bonfire under their nuts was lit on fire.
I think it's more interesting to note this bug took "five months to fix", but 3 days to fix after it started showing up in point-and-click exploit kits. Seems pretty obvious that those initial five months didn't provide enough shall we say... motivation... to fix it, until Java started taking some black eyes and gut punches. Then, the solution miraculously came about over a weekend.
Why can't the larger companies, e.g. Microsoft and Oracle, respond to and fix the sucrity issues more quickly than on a timeline expressed in months?
They are a corporation and have no profit incentive to act faster? Or more specifically, risk to customers and ill-will generated doesn't cause a large enough monetary impact to the corporation than the cost to fix the problem? Until now, when the issue is out and actively exploited in malware kits.
This whole chain of responses is a perfect illustration of the saying "the perfect is the enemy of the good".
Seriously, I'm not even sure the previous administration had a clue what the internet is, and clearly didn't give a crap about dealing with the actual citizens of this country. But oh no, setup this website and suddenly this administration gets crap for not following up on every little thing it generates?
You want change? Well ask you CONGRESSMAN where the fuck the congressional WE THE PEOPLE is. Those people are the representative of citizens. Elected Representative? Do you even comprehend what branch of the government the President of over, versus Congress? And do you know where legislation comes from?
If you think the TSA, or whatever agency is the current popular one to dump on, sucks, well how about pulling your head out of your ass and directing your ire towards the legislative branch? With the same fell swoop that created the TSA, Congress can make them disappear. That is, if the GOP can quit beating off with both hands long enough to actually do some fucking work.
Jesus Christ the anti-government dumbfucks are thick around here.
Divide the number of switzerland sized areas in the US and you will find plenty that have had less mass shootings than Switzerland. These things don't happen every day. At least, not when it isn't convenient to the agendas of politicians. A coincidence I find quite disturbing, honestly.
set up a program where for one year the government covers half the cost for anyone buying a gun locker (reasonably priced and conforming to some specification)
No!
If there is shared cost for this, it should come out of the profits of gun manufacturers. Yes, they'll just pass their costs right on to their customers, which is the way it should be - gun owners get to contribute to each other to buy gun lockers.
The primary purpose of the research was to produce non-definitive results that could be used to justify more funding
Come on, the real hurdle in research is paying for the initial very expensive part. After that, when the mistakes are made and lessons learned, and engineering processes improved/perfected and supplementary systems built, then sure, it's cheap, easy, and obvious and corporations can swoop in. But don't pretend they would have been there without the funding guarantees and expensive earlier part first. The modern corporation doesn't wipe its ass without a clear profit inventive, since they have to answer to shareholders and what-not, so they aren't going to plunge into a deep money pit without crying for subsidies. Somebody has to pay to get over that initial hump and that winds up being the government, i.e. the public.
If we are going to mine asteroids or the ocean floor, I guarantee it'll trace back to technologies learned/developed from government grants.
There are billionaires who could fund this kind of stuff but it turns out those people aren't investing seriously pie-in-the-sky research.
You assume the purpose of shooting somebody is to kill them. That is not true. The purpose of shooting somebody is to stop them from doing what they are doing.
Next time you find your kids having sex, drinking, or smoking dope, just shoot them. Heck, that works for the guy playing their music too loud on the bus, just shoot them. Brilliant.
Both countries need a serious overhaul to their welfare systems.
I know what you mean, everywhere I go I see evidence on non-stop subsidies: construction assistance, building subsidies, tax breaks and forgiveness, food subsidies, welfare and cash infusion for self-inflicted problems...
Folks who apparently can search and discover cached videos that moron criminals took and placed online. I say good for them... law enforcement and citizens in general should be grateful.
There's no evidence of tampering or framing or anything.
(And, incidentally, if that 14% interest rate was so crushingly unfair, where exactly were the private lenders willing to offer better rates and cut big, bad, Uncle Sam out of the picture?)
No kidding. Looks like Wall Street can't live under the rules it expects everybody else to sacrifice everything in the name of their profits for. I wish our government would have given them the middle finger and told them to find private investors to bail them out.
This whole noise about a lawsuit has to be some negotiating gimmick to lower the interest rate. As in, give them a refund on money already paid back.
Screw them, time to initiate fraud lawsuits instead. Then their objections would suddenly vanish.
So? It isn't like they are the government or some regulated utility/monopoly.
I swear, half the time folks on Slashdot argue vociferously that a corporation is beholden only to itself, and then get all pissed off when that actually happens. I'm not saying it is good or bad, all the time and at the extremes, just don't be surprised when a corporation acts in self-interest when... you think it has every right to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
Those issues include identifying whackos, kooks, and nuts who are likely to commit a mass shooting. Almost always, people step forward after a shooting, to inform the media that the shooter was some kind of mental case. Family and acquaintances are generally unable to "connect" with the guy. He's strange, weird, or whatever - often a "loner".
The real issue here, is identifying such people, and getting help for them - OR, institutionalizing them, so that they most definitely CANNOT access weapons.
But, boo-hoo-hoo - it violates some kind of "rights" if we start institutionalizing mental cases.
Blame the NRA for that - they lobby for laws that prevent mental health professionals from asking about or connecting them to guns they own or have access to.
I just don't see the value proposition in spending time on this versus spending the time perfecting Arch Linux. I'm not an Arch user, though I'm interested in it. Right now I tend to mainly use Debian, Mint, and FreeBSD. What I'm sure of is that there are bugs and usability issues in Arch that this effort could have been used to address.
I didn't read the article (yet... yeah I know) but I can already come up with an answer - maybe this guy's expertise/interest is in low level kernel details that would crop up swapping kernels, instead of in bugs/usability issues which sound UI or user-mode related to me. It's like asking a compiler internals person to fix GNOME 3. Come on, not every developer and their particular skillset is 100% interchangeable with the area that you think needs attention.
His personal bankruptcy was annulled.
How do you annul a bankruptcy? And even if it's annulled, it did happen. He was bankrupt, even if, like the stars, it was only 23 hours between marriage and annulment. If that annulment mattered, then "Guy Hingston" should complete to "Guy Hingston bankruptcy annuled", and that would be perfectly fine.
Not sure I understand the question... yes, an annulment might not make "sense", but this is the legal system. ;)
Marriages can get annulled, sometimes even when the couple has kids. That's mind boggling to say "legally, it never happened". But that's what it does.
But the issue of Poaching or Employees going to a competitor is a problem. Because the company invests in these employees and then they go out to their competitor, to give them value. It is like paying your competitors bills.
Well too damn bad. This is a "problem" only from the corporate/employer point of view. From the employee point of view, it sounds to me like Corporation X is undervaluing them compared to Corporation Y, holding their market value down. The solution is to be willing adjust their compensation to reflect their value, or be willing to let them go. No different than a star athlete becoming a free agent and taking a better deal (except in the numbers involved, both salary and employee/employer population).
It cuts both ways, somebody flipping constantly might price themselves out of the market. And others, desiring more stability, might choose to stay somewhere long term. Both sound fine to me!
Tablets 15 years ago were massively prone to breakage, had awful touch interfaces, had awful touch hardware, and were generally bad at everything they tried to be.
How many people have you seen with iPads and keyboards? What do you suppose those keyboards are for, if not "office-y" stuff?
Hm, most of the time I see people with tablets, outside my group at work where we are evaluating them, is at coffee shops or the airport. (And if you're curious, we have 2 Surface RTs and probably a dozen or more iPads). As an informal guess, I'd estimate ~25% of those sightings are tablets with keyboards. This is all anecdotal and I'm not sure what numbers are in places like NYC or SF. Something more accurate might be the volume of sales for these keyboard addons, but I'm not sure where to dig that up
I myself own 2 tablets, a Nexus 7 and an iPad Mini, but don't have an external keyboard for either.
Anyway, my personal opinion is that having MS Office and/or x86 compatibility will not be a significant draw, due to the current prices. These things are competing against iOS and Android, both of which are cheaper, sell cheaper apps, and have an enormous library as well. x86 compat is literally Microsoft's only "advantage", so they'll be flogging that constantly.
For the $1000 a Surface Pro plus keyboard cover will cost, you may as well buy an actual notebook, especially when you are stuck purchasing desktop-priced x86 apps. On top of that, most (all?) current x86 apps do not remotely have a UI appropriate for a tablet, and that will need to be addressed immediately by Microsoft and/or developers, or the Microsoft's foray will limp along like a plane with all engines on fire, and eventually crash and burn.
You dont think having the full MS Office available for surface (and built in by default) will have an effect here?
In summary, no. Longer answer: maybe, if all x86 apps get revamped for tablet/touch UIs, app prices drop down to the new table-ecosystem pricing levels, and their hardware pricing drops by at least 25%. I may be horribly off, but this looks like a perfect storm of disappointment. Microsoft will avoid total failure by propping this up with cash infusions.
The thing you are overlooking is your needs aren't a significant part of the market. A stylus and all that other stuff? If those were major selling points then Microsoft would have been successful with tablets say... 15 years ago.
Your repetitious "90% of today's tablets don't" blah blah. Sounds like a prediction that Surface will battle and claw it's way to... 10% market share?
Well, the obvious conspiracy theory is that disgruntled former Sun engineers, people with extremely deep knowledge about Java, are angry at Oracle and venting their frustrations by poking holes in their former product. ;)
The question is why do a buyout now at current prices when you're sure to pay less in the future?
Maybe it gives them more control over their future, doing it on their terms now. Versus an uncertain future when anything might happen, including an even worse outcome due to plummeting stock, loss of confidence, etc.
Because this kind of beating is critical for corporations to experience. It shows that decisions have consequences, and you have to treat your customers/users with respect. Quite frankly, this should happen more often when corporations step over the line. Otherwise how will any of them learn?
If they are bought out, Apple fans will likely laugh remembering Dell's famous quote about shutting down Apple.
If they aren't... their stock surged on speculation of going private... it could plummet if the buyout doesn't happen. Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo in the spring of 2008, was rebuffed, and Yahoo stock took a nosedive. The second buyout offer didn't pan out either, but they didn't take the same beating.
I dunno, I see fast food restaurants latching on to this. They'll think, wait a sec, we can sell even more of our shitty food to people who like it?! They can pump it out and come back for more? Hell yes!!
I bet all those places put up posterboards advertising this device and might want to get cut in on referral business.
That's one of the downsides of the free market - the economy evolves for corporate profits, not necessarily for public good.
It is more profitable to the corporations involves to extract subsidies, produce cheap low quality food (fast food industry), and treat the resultant health problems (health industry). It would be better for the population as a whole to eat better, but then profits go down for the fast food industry and the health industry.
They didn't do this, which indicates that they don't care.
You cannot draw that conclusion so simply. You have to remember that their first priority is to ship solid, full-feature software. Getting a patch through the professional regression testing takes some time.
All the same, the timeline shows some tradeoffs between priorities and incentives.
Professional regression testing, etc didn't seem to act very fast for 5 months. Then when the bug was actively exploited, it took 3 days to fix.
I suppose you could claim they had the fix in hand and were just wrapping up coincidentally the same weekend exploit kits were using it and everybody was advising to uninstall/block java, but seriously, it is obvious what happened here: Oracle didn't care until the bonfire under their nuts was lit on fire.
I think it's more interesting to note this bug took "five months to fix", but 3 days to fix after it started showing up in point-and-click exploit kits.
Seems pretty obvious that those initial five months didn't provide enough shall we say... motivation... to fix it, until Java started taking some black eyes and gut punches. Then, the solution miraculously came about over a weekend.
Why can't the larger companies, e.g. Microsoft and Oracle, respond to and fix the sucrity issues more quickly than on a timeline expressed in months?
They are a corporation and have no profit incentive to act faster?
Or more specifically, risk to customers and ill-will generated doesn't cause a large enough monetary impact to the corporation than the cost to fix the problem?
Until now, when the issue is out and actively exploited in malware kits.
This whole chain of responses is a perfect illustration of the saying "the perfect is the enemy of the good".
Seriously, I'm not even sure the previous administration had a clue what the internet is, and clearly didn't give a crap about dealing with the actual citizens of this country. But oh no, setup this website and suddenly this administration gets crap for not following up on every little thing it generates?
You want change? Well ask you CONGRESSMAN where the fuck the congressional WE THE PEOPLE is. Those people are the representative of citizens. Elected Representative? Do you even comprehend what branch of the government the President of over, versus Congress? And do you know where legislation comes from?
If you think the TSA, or whatever agency is the current popular one to dump on, sucks, well how about pulling your head out of your ass and directing your ire towards the legislative branch? With the same fell swoop that created the TSA, Congress can make them disappear. That is, if the GOP can quit beating off with both hands long enough to actually do some fucking work.
Jesus Christ the anti-government dumbfucks are thick around here.
Divide the number of switzerland sized areas in the US and you will find plenty that have had less mass shootings than Switzerland. These things don't happen every day. At least, not when it isn't convenient to the agendas of politicians. A coincidence I find quite disturbing, honestly.
They don't happen every day... but they do happen every 6 months on average, going back 30 years.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map?page=2
set up a program where for one year the government covers half the cost for anyone buying a gun locker (reasonably priced and conforming to some specification)
No!
If there is shared cost for this, it should come out of the profits of gun manufacturers. Yes, they'll just pass their costs right on to their customers, which is the way it should be - gun owners get to contribute to each other to buy gun lockers.
The primary purpose of the research was to produce non-definitive results that could be used to justify more funding
Come on, the real hurdle in research is paying for the initial very expensive part. After that, when the mistakes are made and lessons learned, and engineering processes improved/perfected and supplementary systems built, then sure, it's cheap, easy, and obvious and corporations can swoop in. But don't pretend they would have been there without the funding guarantees and expensive earlier part first. The modern corporation doesn't wipe its ass without a clear profit inventive, since they have to answer to shareholders and what-not, so they aren't going to plunge into a deep money pit without crying for subsidies. Somebody has to pay to get over that initial hump and that winds up being the government, i.e. the public.
If we are going to mine asteroids or the ocean floor, I guarantee it'll trace back to technologies learned/developed from government grants.
There are billionaires who could fund this kind of stuff but it turns out those people aren't investing seriously pie-in-the-sky research.
let's see how well you can track your own internal organs once I am done with you. You people are sick.
Title: What have we become...
Post: excerpt, see above
It seems like Slashdot has been overrun by violent libertarian nutjobs, like yourself.
You assume the purpose of shooting somebody is to kill them. That is not true. The purpose of shooting somebody is to stop them from doing what they are doing.
Next time you find your kids having sex, drinking, or smoking dope, just shoot them.
Heck, that works for the guy playing their music too loud on the bus, just shoot them.
Brilliant.
Both countries need a serious overhaul to their welfare systems.
I know what you mean, everywhere I go I see evidence on non-stop subsidies: construction assistance, building subsidies, tax breaks and forgiveness, food subsidies, welfare and cash infusion for self-inflicted problems...
Damn corporations.
Oh, you were talking about people?
Wait, who are these people again?
Folks who apparently can search and discover cached videos that moron criminals took and placed online.
I say good for them... law enforcement and citizens in general should be grateful.
There's no evidence of tampering or framing or anything.
(And, incidentally, if that 14% interest rate was so crushingly unfair, where exactly were the private lenders willing to offer better rates and cut big, bad, Uncle Sam out of the picture?)
No kidding. Looks like Wall Street can't live under the rules it expects everybody else to sacrifice everything in the name of their profits for. I wish our government would have given them the middle finger and told them to find private investors to bail them out.
This whole noise about a lawsuit has to be some negotiating gimmick to lower the interest rate. As in, give them a refund on money already paid back.
Screw them, time to initiate fraud lawsuits instead. Then their objections would suddenly vanish.
So? It isn't like they are the government or some regulated utility/monopoly.
I swear, half the time folks on Slashdot argue vociferously that a corporation is beholden only to itself, and then get all pissed off when that actually happens. I'm not saying it is good or bad, all the time and at the extremes, just don't be surprised when a corporation acts in self-interest when... you think it has every right to do that.