If Private Company X can get an internet connection to someone's door without going through public space once, then they can do whatever they want. Unfortunately AFAIK they currently can't.
Nonsense. Using a public right of way as part of your business has nothing to do with your pricing. Do you drive on public roads while commuting to work? Should a company that uses public roads while delivering a mail-order shipment to you suddenly be subject to government-approved pricing models for every transaction, or not be allowed to offer discounts to customers that do more business with them?
Government legislated control of Internet traffic management is exactly what it means for our government to keep us free.
Nonsense. If a private company providing a service in a market where many other companies are doing the same wants to offer special pricing or performance options to customers that want to pay for such, they are (or should be) free to do so. It's no "distortion" of the market to change your offering to suit your own business objectives. You, as a customer, can just "distort" it right back by taking your business to another provider that suits your tastes.
In fact, it is the primary purpose of our government to keep us free,
No. It is your primary purpose to do so, and mine. The government's obligation is to stay out of our way, and to be there in case someone decides to prevent you (or me) from doing so.
and the primary instrument our government has for that is legislation:
Yikes! No. It's the Constitution that does that. Legislation comes and goes, but the key structural pillars of the government are set forth in the Constitution.
legislation that keeps people from harming each other,
Legislation doesn't do any such thing. People either do, or do not, harm each other. Legislation may set forth such penalties as are trotted out after that happens. Otherwise, you're talking about prior restraint... to which our courts are thankfully generally allergic.
legislation that establishes institutions that protect us from external threats
No, that's the executive branch's job. They do that through the military and various other supporting agencies. Certainly the legislative bodies approve funding, etc., but from a Founding Fathers perspective, defense against "external threats" is something the C-in-C and his branch is supposed to take care of.
Now, I'll give you this much: our government sometimes does the wrong thing
And the more you stick the government in the middle of transactions between private parties, especially where evolving technology is concerned, the more mistakes happen.
Considering the fact that rejecting a procedure would take more paperwork than approving it, I fail to see any ethical problem.;)
What makes you think that's how it would work? With the federal government, it's more likely to be a matter of having to get approval for every significant action, in advance. Just like it tends to be in most other countries with highly centralized/socialized medical systems.
The insurance companies are an unnecessary middleman, a bureaucracy that that eats money like a black hole. Money that could be spent on providing the actual healthcare.
OK, so we cut out the middleman. No middleman allowed, including any government agency playing the same role. Now: you take the same dollars you'd normally use to pay your healthcare premium at work (don't forget the larger portion that your employer pays!), and use that money instead directly for healthcare, right? Great! No middleman!
Oops, you just put your head through the windshield of your car. You'll be needing three weeks in the hospital, and you'll be paying for the attentive services of a couple dozen people for three weeks, many drugs, supplies, and the maintained floorspace and services of the hospital. Total tab in the many thousands of dollars. Congratulatios: with no middleman managing a larger group of similar accounts and taking the financial risks for you, you're now bankrupt. Yes, it's much better not to have those pesky, deep-pocketed insurance companies around.
What's the purpose of health insurance companies? On paper it's to collect premiums and rationally allocate them to health care while paying the employees and investors. But what do they *do*?
Sorry, but descending into semantics and confusion over causality doesn't really help. If the reason I build a crosswalk at an intersection is to help pedestrians, and yet at least a couple of people are still killed by people running red lights... that does not convert my purpose for building the crosswalk into "a way to kill pedestrians."
The truth is that the vast majority of people who buy health insurance get exactly what they're buying: basic health care at tolerable prices, and the ability to undergo more substantial, rarer treatment (cancer, major car accident, etc) without automatically going bankrupt. Arguably insurance should only be about those more catastrophic situations, but the trend is to also use it more or less like a savings account... take a little out every week, and then only "pay" $10 when you visit the doctor for a checkup, etc. But that is "what they do." That's what they do for almost everyone that uses them. That is their purpose, and the people running those businesses make a living and pay back their investors while doing so. That's how it is on paper, and that's how it is in practice.
Of course, things are much more awkward now because everyone expects health care, as practiced by humans on humans, to be somehow perfect, and they're more than happy to take millions of dollars (with the help of a 30%-earning lawyer) from any practitioner or related institution under whose care things did not go perfectly. And, of course, we've now got million-dollar pieces of equipment that can do things no family doctor could ever have done a few years ago, and everyone just assumes that for a couple hundred a month for their entire family, that the machine that costs $1000/hour to operate should be at their disposal for every twisted ankle or playground bump on the head. Is it any wonder that insurance companies must play the heavy hand and try to reign it in... or, charge a fortune to actually cover the real costs.
Why people think that magically having the government provide all of these services will somehow make it cheaper is beyond me. It will just become another area of deficit spending... something insurance companies couldn't survive themselves.
The health insurance industry is a parasite the purpose of which is to interfere with your patient-doctor relationship and to deny your treatment.
Oh yes, no doubt that millions of people invest their money in companies that are formed specifically to deny people health care treatments. There is this enormous camp of people out there that find it essential to make sure that patients receive no care. Good for you, finally exposing that fact! I'll be curious, though, if you'll let us know when you post anything like actual evidence that the countless people that fund and work for health coverage providers are doing so expressly to make sure that people don't get health care. It's amazing that so many people have been able to keep that conspiracy so quiet until you came along.
Hmmm. Or maybe you're lying, mischaracterizing the entire situation, know it, and are hoping that making emotionally charged, irrational Moore-like rants will rhetorically resonate with at least a couple of other reason-challenged readers.
The debate isn't about insurance companies actively trying to prevent people from getting health care. It's about striking a balance in how the money they pay out (which they collect from their own customers, under circumstances dictated by both the millions of people that invest in the ownership of the companies and an incredibly vast body of government regulation) does or does not land on the spectrum of people that pay the money in.
I pay a fair amount for coverage. I can see my doctor any time I want, have never felt that relationship to be in any way limited, and can get referals to specialists if needed. The amount my wife and I consume (in terms of health care dollars) is a pale shadow of the amount we spend (in payroll deduction premiums). That money is being redistributed among the larger group of my co-workers, and if I don't like that miniature little bit of socialized medicine, I can opt out of it, or get a different paycheck. It's risk management, and I'm willing to forgo an additional $150 a month for a plan that removes the risk that I'll have limited choices in my healthcare. If I want to save that $150, I'll still get the care, but it will be under a more generic plan... but in no way will I be without health care if I actually get sick... I'll just be $1800 ahead at the end of the year, and could consider investing that money towards future, age-related medical expenses (instead of telling YOU that you have to pay for me).
When will the world learn, violence begets violence and spam begets spam. Lets find a real solution to the problem rahter then a vigalante justice.
Actually, I've found that things some people think are unfortunate or bad beget shallow, empty platitudes.
Sometimes, violence simply ends violence, because there is no other way. Sometimes, fighting fire with fire is the best way. Sometimes showing someone what it's like to suffer the consequences of their own actions actually changes their behavior.
I'm all for as many technical approaches as possible, but finding "a real solution to the problem" that doesn't involve some degree of making this painful/costly for the spammers simply isn't going to work. Even if, through filtering, you can get 99% of the stuff blocked, all they have to do is increase the volume that much more to make that remaining 1% still pay off. Remember, they're not paying for their own overhead most of the time.
Your "real solution" comment, in the context of "violence only begets violence" is completely tone deaf. You're applying Israeli-Palestinian-conflict-type babble to a completely different situation. The spammers are not oppressed, or the victims of some historical violent wrong... they're a parasitic, bandwidth sucking plague. Any means by which we can stop them is called for. Surely you don't think that you're going to just turn the other Bayesian Filter Cheek, or write a Korea-bound, thought-provoking appeal to integrity and expect the onslaught to stop? Tempting as it is, no one is suggesting actual violence - just a substantial response in kind, only when provoked. It's called self defense, and it's an appropriate measure because it only happens when an illegal spammer causes it to happen.
How fortunate for you that you've never had anything violent threaten you, requiring you to offer up a physical deterrent to stop it. If you had, you might rethink your metaphors.
Google's main source of revenue is the advertising they display in search results. When Firefox or Opera default to Google, they are in effect directly boosting Google's revenue stream. By the millions of dollars.
Windows has become such a huge part of European infratructure that we can no longer rely on a shady corporation.
You know, I was thinking of starting to manufacture avionics stuff. But Airbus seems to have a "stranglehold" on the fly-by-wire control systems used in the vast majority of EU-made passenger aircraft. They should have to not only give me their source code, but assign people to help me make products to take business away from the European operations that actually came up with the stuff. It's either that, or I'm going to have to invest billions of dollars... oh, wait.
Then what would be lost if he would be lost? Publicity?
Business continuity. Investor confidence. Morale. All for only a while, but the result in lost productivity at the company, and in the value of the stock would, despite certain recovery down the road, absolutely eclipse the expense of going to the comparitively routine expense of keeping a large company's leaders traveling and being in public as safe as possible. It's not complicated, it's simple math, and they're doing a certain amount of risk analysis/gambling, but they do that involving WAY more investor dollars every time they make a decision about one of their warehouses and how many Harry Potter books to ship in.
That's insane. Images to test their alertness sure, but images of bombs? That's just plain crazy. All you're doing is desensitising them and guaranteeing that even if they're alert they won't get the adrenaline rush they should. What brainiac thought this one up?
The same ones that know that combat simulations help cops and soldier generally make more level-headed decisions. The same ones that know that simulating in-flight emergencies in flight simulators takes the "holy crap!" out of handling such things. There are VERY good reasons that you want your bag screeners to be able to react calmly or subtly to what they see on the screen in front of them. They may need to be able to signal armed support, depending on their assesment of the person in line, without Freaking Out while they're looking at their equipment. These are supposed to be professionals, and it sounds like the person involved acted like one (absent the "this is a test" message).
No, but for as long as he's doing what he's doing for Amazon, much of what makes him (and other big-ticket, very public figures) valuable and a magnet for criminals (of both the nefarious and crackpot variety) is because of what he does for Amazon. To the degree that what you spend your days doing for a multi-billion dollar company employing thousands of people makes you more vulnerable to everything from pie-throwing faux-anarachist buffoons to Pacific-Rim kidnapping gangs or some supremely disgruntled ex-employee... it's reasonable for the company that's reaping the benefits of your employment to mitigate some of what comes with that territory. It's not Amazon's problem if Bezos falls off a cliff while hiking (though Amazon would lose a fortune overnight), but it is reasonably is the company's concern if someone tries to throw acid in is face at a stockholder's meeting, wants to Send Him To Hell because he provides benefits to gay employees' partners (or the opposite if he doesn't, whatever).
But it seems here, the same person is doing both sides of the negotiation.
Wrong. It's a company owned by its investors. He's one of the investors, certainly, and probably the most influential employee. But the board of directors is a collaborative body, and if they (and the vast voting ownership that hold stock) thought that corporately provided security for Bezos was frivalous, it wouldn't be there. He's more rock-star/rainmaker at this point, than business manager.
Why is it that every time we hear about some bored schmuck wanting to regulate the internet, it's always an American ?
You wouldn't be confusing "always an American" with "is French" or "is German" or "is Chinese" or anything, would you? Do you really read so little that you don't know that mentioning certain historical items (like, say, old Nazi trash from WWII) is illegal in various oh-we're-so-progressive European locales? Ask Yahoo or eBay what it's like to try to freely operate online in the EU. Have you just mentally blocked out the fact that evil words like "freedom" and "democracay" get whole sites shut down (and people jailed) in China? I'm not particularly in favor of the approach Gonzales is mentioning, and I don't think it will pass muster in court anyway (thanks, US Constitution), but if you think the US is the only (or worst) regulator of communications on the internet, you're sadly, sadly mistaken. No, you have to know that. So, you're just a flaming troll with an axe to grind.
As for "get your own," do it yourself. If you don't like the US-built network, you build your own. We already did. No doubt the internally cooperative, resourceful, ever-productive EU can pull something totally liberating, non-censored in any way, and completely protective of your privacy together in a week or so. You know, the same collective cultures that so courageously dealt with the publising of a handful of Danish cartoons.
There's a not that uncommon tax scam for company owners which works as the following...
Think, for a moment, past whatever distaste you have for the fact that some people launch successful businesses and get themselves (and the people who risked money to help) a good (or great) return on that investment.
What do you think it would cost Amazon if something unexpected were to happen to Bezos? A million dollars? Way, way more than that. What do you think it would cost everyone who have a bit of their pension fund invested in Amazon's stock? What do you think it would cost the thousands of vendors, partners, employees, re-sellers, affiliates, freight companies, publishers, and everyone else if Amazon had a big stumble - even if just temporarily - because Bezos got wacked by some addled-brained author who's mad because his crappy book couldn't get out of position 150,000 on the A-list?
Companies with interests that far reaching and of that much significant financial impact on/for so many people are simply buying insurance when they spend such a relatively small amount on protective services for their key figures. A million is a lot of money. But that's nothing compared to what it would cost Amazon if Bezos got killed in a carjacking or got kidnapped in Belize while on vacation. I own some stock in Amazon, and I sure as hell would hope that the company's looking out for the interests of their highest-profile, most important human asset. Sure the company would function without him... but way, way more than a million bucks would go down the toilet if he met a sudden violent end.
So how would you get investors to put a ton of money into your company so that you can hire and sustain a crew of developers working full time on something high-tech? Do you really think that Google could possibly exist if everything they spent time producing could just be ripped off by someone else? How is it reasonable for some parasite to just run off with your work and do business without having to shoulder the same overhead, years of work and investment, and risk as someone else? Where would you rather go to work... someplace that's likely to be able to continue to pay you because they are actually able to compete in the marketplace with the tools you help them build, or someplace that doesn't actually protect what you spend all that time building, and goes bankrupt because they had to invest all that money, and are now losing business to someone who's out making money off of the same technology without having had to do anything to put it to work?
Wake up. Socialized technology doesn't innovate with anything like the speed and reach of that which is produced by people competing for a better job, funded by people looking to grow the next Google, etc. Organizations can't sink millions of dollars into R&D with no expectation of being able to actually put it competitively to work.
At least the guy may get compensated for their misdeeds?
Using unique product keys is a misdeed? Individual bank PINs, maybe, too? Come on, it's a plain-as-day concept. There are only two reason companies scramble to patent stuff like this: to actually produce nothing except the capacity to sue people for a living, or to cover their asses while they're in the business of actually providing goods and services to real customers.
Ubuntu routinely uses version numbers in press releases. The email was not a press release, it was an announcement to the Ubuntu community.
You tell me: which versioning/labeling actually, really gets used in conversation that gets out past "the community?" Wider adoption depends on getting through to, and educationg people outside of that community. When all of the talk about something sounds insular, cliquish, and like one big inside joke, it doesn't help. At least, not if the purpose is to actually (as is so often proclaimed) bring in new users.
Everyone does it, it doesn't hurt anyone, and you can always call it by the version number if you really want
I know, you're right that everyone uses project code names. Traditionally, that was so that it could be referred to in in-house correspondence, at least for a while, without so much of a risk that if such stuff got out that it would directly wreck some market position or give competition something to chew on. After that it just plain became fashionable. I've even all for that. It's just the... well, deliberate goofiness that these particular guys use that I'm making a little fun of. They can certainly call it anything they want - it's just that their urge to make it such a warm-n-fuzzy is a little cloying, that's all. You're right to point that stuff out though - I didn't mean to come across like I didn't know about the wider practice.
As a plus, a rapper-themed naming scheme has built-in celebrity endorsement tie-ins. ("Use Ubuntu, yo! Fo Shiz!")
I don't know, open-sourcey, info-wants-to-be-free, sandal-wearing Ubuntu-ites may not exactly hit it off with the rapper crowd. I mean, there are enough mixed messages in rap already: "He had what I wanted, so I wacked him and took it. Me so blingy! But remember kids, it's bad to download and steal my music, um, because I don't actually wack people for their bling, I um... work with my corporate partners and representatives to sell entertainment and make more money in a year posing than you will in your entire life doing an hard day's physical labor. Um, Yo!, also."
So, I guess we'll need a new naming theme. I think Norse mythology, maybe. Fuzzy Freia, Luscious Loki, and Thistly Thor, perhaps.
Yes, Ubuntu, we get it. I mean, I know version numbers in press releases are so corporate and everything, but but some day (say, when they're releasing Zoroastrian Zebra or whatever) they'll look back on this little phase and feel a little silly. Like when you see your really cool high school yearbook shot about 10 years later, when it's so absolutley, positively, not cool (and worse: you realize it wasn't then, either!).
I don't really see anything adding to the discussion in here at all, there's no new facts or data reference, and barely any opinion expressed
I've always considered the Greenpeace-types, especially the No Nukes Orthodox Sect, to be a little loony. But it was reading up on the history of this guy's division from that group, and their quite crazy behavior... that made me see the stark (to me, now) parallels between them and more traditional religious types. To me it's the irony of the "normal" true believers (usually, the righty-type conservatives) that catch flack from the left, and in this case, from people that are just as dogmatic about something baseless and fantasy-driven. The clarity of the situation just wasn't as obvious (to me, anyway) until I understood (from reading and following up on this article) how out to lunch this particular group can be.
So, Mr. Anonymous Environmentalist Coward, which part - exactly - of the editorial is the lie? He's right on the money, and talking about how to use less oil is "selling out?" To whom? Would you call someone that, after a "greenwashing" with too many beers in a trendy hipster Greenpeace-infested bar, suddenly starts ranting "no nukes!" in order to impress the hot eco-chick he just met a sell out? I would.
I'm not sure he addresses the contention that the whole nuclear power lifecycle, from mining the uranium to decommissioning end-of-life power stations, is a net producer of CO2.
But he does mention something way, way more important: that 95% of the potential energy is still sitting there in the post-reactor material... and that we're just scratching the surface of re-processing the waste and getting many, many times more energy out of the current byproducts ("waste").
Slashdot Mirror
If Private Company X can get an internet connection to someone's door without going through public space once, then they can do whatever they want. Unfortunately AFAIK they currently can't.
Nonsense. Using a public right of way as part of your business has nothing to do with your pricing. Do you drive on public roads while commuting to work? Should a company that uses public roads while delivering a mail-order shipment to you suddenly be subject to government-approved pricing models for every transaction, or not be allowed to offer discounts to customers that do more business with them?
Government legislated control of Internet traffic management is exactly what it means for our government to keep us free.
Nonsense. If a private company providing a service in a market where many other companies are doing the same wants to offer special pricing or performance options to customers that want to pay for such, they are (or should be) free to do so. It's no "distortion" of the market to change your offering to suit your own business objectives. You, as a customer, can just "distort" it right back by taking your business to another provider that suits your tastes.
In fact, it is the primary purpose of our government to keep us free,
No. It is your primary purpose to do so, and mine. The government's obligation is to stay out of our way, and to be there in case someone decides to prevent you (or me) from doing so.
and the primary instrument our government has for that is legislation:
Yikes! No. It's the Constitution that does that. Legislation comes and goes, but the key structural pillars of the government are set forth in the Constitution.
legislation that keeps people from harming each other,
Legislation doesn't do any such thing. People either do, or do not, harm each other. Legislation may set forth such penalties as are trotted out after that happens. Otherwise, you're talking about prior restraint... to which our courts are thankfully generally allergic.
legislation that establishes institutions that protect us from external threats
No, that's the executive branch's job. They do that through the military and various other supporting agencies. Certainly the legislative bodies approve funding, etc., but from a Founding Fathers perspective, defense against "external threats" is something the C-in-C and his branch is supposed to take care of.
Now, I'll give you this much: our government sometimes does the wrong thing
And the more you stick the government in the middle of transactions between private parties, especially where evolving technology is concerned, the more mistakes happen.
Considering the fact that rejecting a procedure would take more paperwork than approving it, I fail to see any ethical problem. ;)
What makes you think that's how it would work? With the federal government, it's more likely to be a matter of having to get approval for every significant action, in advance. Just like it tends to be in most other countries with highly centralized/socialized medical systems.
The insurance companies are an unnecessary middleman, a bureaucracy that that eats money like a black hole. Money that could be spent on providing the actual healthcare.
OK, so we cut out the middleman. No middleman allowed, including any government agency playing the same role. Now: you take the same dollars you'd normally use to pay your healthcare premium at work (don't forget the larger portion that your employer pays!), and use that money instead directly for healthcare, right? Great! No middleman!
Oops, you just put your head through the windshield of your car. You'll be needing three weeks in the hospital, and you'll be paying for the attentive services of a couple dozen people for three weeks, many drugs, supplies, and the maintained floorspace and services of the hospital. Total tab in the many thousands of dollars. Congratulatios: with no middleman managing a larger group of similar accounts and taking the financial risks for you, you're now bankrupt. Yes, it's much better not to have those pesky, deep-pocketed insurance companies around.
What's the purpose of health insurance companies? On paper it's to collect premiums and rationally allocate them to health care while paying the employees and investors. But what do they *do*?
Sorry, but descending into semantics and confusion over causality doesn't really help. If the reason I build a crosswalk at an intersection is to help pedestrians, and yet at least a couple of people are still killed by people running red lights... that does not convert my purpose for building the crosswalk into "a way to kill pedestrians."
The truth is that the vast majority of people who buy health insurance get exactly what they're buying: basic health care at tolerable prices, and the ability to undergo more substantial, rarer treatment (cancer, major car accident, etc) without automatically going bankrupt. Arguably insurance should only be about those more catastrophic situations, but the trend is to also use it more or less like a savings account... take a little out every week, and then only "pay" $10 when you visit the doctor for a checkup, etc. But that is "what they do." That's what they do for almost everyone that uses them. That is their purpose, and the people running those businesses make a living and pay back their investors while doing so. That's how it is on paper, and that's how it is in practice.
Of course, things are much more awkward now because everyone expects health care, as practiced by humans on humans, to be somehow perfect, and they're more than happy to take millions of dollars (with the help of a 30%-earning lawyer) from any practitioner or related institution under whose care things did not go perfectly. And, of course, we've now got million-dollar pieces of equipment that can do things no family doctor could ever have done a few years ago, and everyone just assumes that for a couple hundred a month for their entire family, that the machine that costs $1000/hour to operate should be at their disposal for every twisted ankle or playground bump on the head. Is it any wonder that insurance companies must play the heavy hand and try to reign it in... or, charge a fortune to actually cover the real costs.
Why people think that magically having the government provide all of these services will somehow make it cheaper is beyond me. It will just become another area of deficit spending... something insurance companies couldn't survive themselves.
The health insurance industry is a parasite the purpose of which is to interfere with your patient-doctor relationship and to deny your treatment.
Oh yes, no doubt that millions of people invest their money in companies that are formed specifically to deny people health care treatments. There is this enormous camp of people out there that find it essential to make sure that patients receive no care. Good for you, finally exposing that fact! I'll be curious, though, if you'll let us know when you post anything like actual evidence that the countless people that fund and work for health coverage providers are doing so expressly to make sure that people don't get health care. It's amazing that so many people have been able to keep that conspiracy so quiet until you came along.
Hmmm. Or maybe you're lying, mischaracterizing the entire situation, know it, and are hoping that making emotionally charged, irrational Moore-like rants will rhetorically resonate with at least a couple of other reason-challenged readers.
The debate isn't about insurance companies actively trying to prevent people from getting health care. It's about striking a balance in how the money they pay out (which they collect from their own customers, under circumstances dictated by both the millions of people that invest in the ownership of the companies and an incredibly vast body of government regulation) does or does not land on the spectrum of people that pay the money in.
I pay a fair amount for coverage. I can see my doctor any time I want, have never felt that relationship to be in any way limited, and can get referals to specialists if needed. The amount my wife and I consume (in terms of health care dollars) is a pale shadow of the amount we spend (in payroll deduction premiums). That money is being redistributed among the larger group of my co-workers, and if I don't like that miniature little bit of socialized medicine, I can opt out of it, or get a different paycheck. It's risk management, and I'm willing to forgo an additional $150 a month for a plan that removes the risk that I'll have limited choices in my healthcare. If I want to save that $150, I'll still get the care, but it will be under a more generic plan... but in no way will I be without health care if I actually get sick... I'll just be $1800 ahead at the end of the year, and could consider investing that money towards future, age-related medical expenses (instead of telling YOU that you have to pay for me).
When fully operational, the facility is expected to host up to 2,000 international scientists annually
This is the oldest trick in the book. Behold the power of their fully operational Spallation Neutron Source! Bwah-haa-haa, etc.
When will the world learn, violence begets violence and spam begets spam. Lets find a real solution to the problem rahter then a vigalante justice.
Actually, I've found that things some people think are unfortunate or bad beget shallow, empty platitudes.
Sometimes, violence simply ends violence, because there is no other way. Sometimes, fighting fire with fire is the best way. Sometimes showing someone what it's like to suffer the consequences of their own actions actually changes their behavior.
I'm all for as many technical approaches as possible, but finding "a real solution to the problem" that doesn't involve some degree of making this painful/costly for the spammers simply isn't going to work. Even if, through filtering, you can get 99% of the stuff blocked, all they have to do is increase the volume that much more to make that remaining 1% still pay off. Remember, they're not paying for their own overhead most of the time.
Your "real solution" comment, in the context of "violence only begets violence" is completely tone deaf. You're applying Israeli-Palestinian-conflict-type babble to a completely different situation. The spammers are not oppressed, or the victims of some historical violent wrong... they're a parasitic, bandwidth sucking plague. Any means by which we can stop them is called for. Surely you don't think that you're going to just turn the other Bayesian Filter Cheek, or write a Korea-bound, thought-provoking appeal to integrity and expect the onslaught to stop? Tempting as it is, no one is suggesting actual violence - just a substantial response in kind, only when provoked. It's called self defense, and it's an appropriate measure because it only happens when an illegal spammer causes it to happen.
How fortunate for you that you've never had anything violent threaten you, requiring you to offer up a physical deterrent to stop it. If you had, you might rethink your metaphors.
Google makes no money in the sell of either.
Google's main source of revenue is the advertising they display in search results. When Firefox or Opera default to Google, they are in effect directly boosting Google's revenue stream. By the millions of dollars.
Windows has become such a huge part of European infratructure that we can no longer rely on a shady corporation.
You know, I was thinking of starting to manufacture avionics stuff. But Airbus seems to have a "stranglehold" on the fly-by-wire control systems used in the vast majority of EU-made passenger aircraft. They should have to not only give me their source code, but assign people to help me make products to take business away from the European operations that actually came up with the stuff. It's either that, or I'm going to have to invest billions of dollars... oh, wait.
Then what would be lost if he would be lost? Publicity?
Business continuity. Investor confidence. Morale. All for only a while, but the result in lost productivity at the company, and in the value of the stock would, despite certain recovery down the road, absolutely eclipse the expense of going to the comparitively routine expense of keeping a large company's leaders traveling and being in public as safe as possible. It's not complicated, it's simple math, and they're doing a certain amount of risk analysis/gambling, but they do that involving WAY more investor dollars every time they make a decision about one of their warehouses and how many Harry Potter books to ship in.
That's insane. Images to test their alertness sure, but images of bombs? That's just plain crazy. All you're doing is desensitising them and guaranteeing that even if they're alert they won't get the adrenaline rush they should. What brainiac thought this one up?
The same ones that know that combat simulations help cops and soldier generally make more level-headed decisions. The same ones that know that simulating in-flight emergencies in flight simulators takes the "holy crap!" out of handling such things. There are VERY good reasons that you want your bag screeners to be able to react calmly or subtly to what they see on the screen in front of them. They may need to be able to signal armed support, depending on their assesment of the person in line, without Freaking Out while they're looking at their equipment. These are supposed to be professionals, and it sounds like the person involved acted like one (absent the "this is a test" message).
And now he's safe from death?
No, but for as long as he's doing what he's doing for Amazon, much of what makes him (and other big-ticket, very public figures) valuable and a magnet for criminals (of both the nefarious and crackpot variety) is because of what he does for Amazon. To the degree that what you spend your days doing for a multi-billion dollar company employing thousands of people makes you more vulnerable to everything from pie-throwing faux-anarachist buffoons to Pacific-Rim kidnapping gangs or some supremely disgruntled ex-employee... it's reasonable for the company that's reaping the benefits of your employment to mitigate some of what comes with that territory. It's not Amazon's problem if Bezos falls off a cliff while hiking (though Amazon would lose a fortune overnight), but it is reasonably is the company's concern if someone tries to throw acid in is face at a stockholder's meeting, wants to Send Him To Hell because he provides benefits to gay employees' partners (or the opposite if he doesn't, whatever).
But it seems here, the same person is doing both sides of the negotiation.
Wrong. It's a company owned by its investors. He's one of the investors, certainly, and probably the most influential employee. But the board of directors is a collaborative body, and if they (and the vast voting ownership that hold stock) thought that corporately provided security for Bezos was frivalous, it wouldn't be there. He's more rock-star/rainmaker at this point, than business manager.
Why is it that every time we hear about some bored schmuck wanting to regulate the internet, it's always an American ?
You wouldn't be confusing "always an American" with "is French" or "is German" or "is Chinese" or anything, would you? Do you really read so little that you don't know that mentioning certain historical items (like, say, old Nazi trash from WWII) is illegal in various oh-we're-so-progressive European locales? Ask Yahoo or eBay what it's like to try to freely operate online in the EU. Have you just mentally blocked out the fact that evil words like "freedom" and "democracay" get whole sites shut down (and people jailed) in China? I'm not particularly in favor of the approach Gonzales is mentioning, and I don't think it will pass muster in court anyway (thanks, US Constitution), but if you think the US is the only (or worst) regulator of communications on the internet, you're sadly, sadly mistaken. No, you have to know that. So, you're just a flaming troll with an axe to grind.
As for "get your own," do it yourself. If you don't like the US-built network, you build your own. We already did. No doubt the internally cooperative, resourceful, ever-productive EU can pull something totally liberating, non-censored in any way, and completely protective of your privacy together in a week or so. You know, the same collective cultures that so courageously dealt with the publising of a handful of Danish cartoons.
There's a not that uncommon tax scam for company owners which works as the following...
Think, for a moment, past whatever distaste you have for the fact that some people launch successful businesses and get themselves (and the people who risked money to help) a good (or great) return on that investment.
What do you think it would cost Amazon if something unexpected were to happen to Bezos? A million dollars? Way, way more than that. What do you think it would cost everyone who have a bit of their pension fund invested in Amazon's stock? What do you think it would cost the thousands of vendors, partners, employees, re-sellers, affiliates, freight companies, publishers, and everyone else if Amazon had a big stumble - even if just temporarily - because Bezos got wacked by some addled-brained author who's mad because his crappy book couldn't get out of position 150,000 on the A-list?
Companies with interests that far reaching and of that much significant financial impact on/for so many people are simply buying insurance when they spend such a relatively small amount on protective services for their key figures. A million is a lot of money. But that's nothing compared to what it would cost Amazon if Bezos got killed in a carjacking or got kidnapped in Belize while on vacation. I own some stock in Amazon, and I sure as hell would hope that the company's looking out for the interests of their highest-profile, most important human asset. Sure the company would function without him... but way, way more than a million bucks would go down the toilet if he met a sudden violent end.
And the latter is as bad a reason as the former.
So how would you get investors to put a ton of money into your company so that you can hire and sustain a crew of developers working full time on something high-tech? Do you really think that Google could possibly exist if everything they spent time producing could just be ripped off by someone else? How is it reasonable for some parasite to just run off with your work and do business without having to shoulder the same overhead, years of work and investment, and risk as someone else? Where would you rather go to work... someplace that's likely to be able to continue to pay you because they are actually able to compete in the marketplace with the tools you help them build, or someplace that doesn't actually protect what you spend all that time building, and goes bankrupt because they had to invest all that money, and are now losing business to someone who's out making money off of the same technology without having had to do anything to put it to work?
Wake up. Socialized technology doesn't innovate with anything like the speed and reach of that which is produced by people competing for a better job, funded by people looking to grow the next Google, etc. Organizations can't sink millions of dollars into R&D with no expectation of being able to actually put it competitively to work.
At least the guy may get compensated for their misdeeds?
Using unique product keys is a misdeed? Individual bank PINs, maybe, too? Come on, it's a plain-as-day concept. There are only two reason companies scramble to patent stuff like this: to actually produce nothing except the capacity to sue people for a living, or to cover their asses while they're in the business of actually providing goods and services to real customers.
I now understand that the Ubuntu "community" is being run by the inmates.
:-) Excellent work!
Ubuntu routinely uses version numbers in press releases. The email was not a press release, it was an announcement to the Ubuntu community.
You tell me: which versioning/labeling actually, really gets used in conversation that gets out past "the community?" Wider adoption depends on getting through to, and educationg people outside of that community. When all of the talk about something sounds insular, cliquish, and like one big inside joke, it doesn't help. At least, not if the purpose is to actually (as is so often proclaimed) bring in new users.
Everyone does it, it doesn't hurt anyone, and you can always call it by the version number if you really want
I know, you're right that everyone uses project code names. Traditionally, that was so that it could be referred to in in-house correspondence, at least for a while, without so much of a risk that if such stuff got out that it would directly wreck some market position or give competition something to chew on. After that it just plain became fashionable. I've even all for that. It's just the... well, deliberate goofiness that these particular guys use that I'm making a little fun of. They can certainly call it anything they want - it's just that their urge to make it such a warm-n-fuzzy is a little cloying, that's all. You're right to point that stuff out though - I didn't mean to come across like I didn't know about the wider practice.
As a plus, a rapper-themed naming scheme has built-in celebrity endorsement tie-ins. ("Use Ubuntu, yo! Fo Shiz!")
I don't know, open-sourcey, info-wants-to-be-free, sandal-wearing Ubuntu-ites may not exactly hit it off with the rapper crowd. I mean, there are enough mixed messages in rap already: "He had what I wanted, so I wacked him and took it. Me so blingy! But remember kids, it's bad to download and steal my music, um, because I don't actually wack people for their bling, I um... work with my corporate partners and representatives to sell entertainment and make more money in a year posing than you will in your entire life doing an hard day's physical labor. Um, Yo!, also."
So, I guess we'll need a new naming theme. I think Norse mythology, maybe. Fuzzy Freia, Luscious Loki, and Thistly Thor, perhaps.
Yes, Ubuntu, we get it. I mean, I know version numbers in press releases are so corporate and everything, but but some day (say, when they're releasing Zoroastrian Zebra or whatever) they'll look back on this little phase and feel a little silly. Like when you see your really cool high school yearbook shot about 10 years later, when it's so absolutley, positively, not cool (and worse: you realize it wasn't then, either!).
I don't really see anything adding to the discussion in here at all, there's no new facts or data reference, and barely any opinion expressed
I've always considered the Greenpeace-types, especially the No Nukes Orthodox Sect, to be a little loony. But it was reading up on the history of this guy's division from that group, and their quite crazy behavior... that made me see the stark (to me, now) parallels between them and more traditional religious types. To me it's the irony of the "normal" true believers (usually, the righty-type conservatives) that catch flack from the left, and in this case, from people that are just as dogmatic about something baseless and fantasy-driven. The clarity of the situation just wasn't as obvious (to me, anyway) until I understood (from reading and following up on this article) how out to lunch this particular group can be.
So, Mr. Anonymous Environmentalist Coward, which part - exactly - of the editorial is the lie? He's right on the money, and talking about how to use less oil is "selling out?" To whom? Would you call someone that, after a "greenwashing" with too many beers in a trendy hipster Greenpeace-infested bar, suddenly starts ranting "no nukes!" in order to impress the hot eco-chick he just met a sell out? I would.
I'm not sure he addresses the contention that the whole nuclear power lifecycle, from mining the uranium to decommissioning end-of-life power stations, is a net producer of CO2.
But he does mention something way, way more important: that 95% of the potential energy is still sitting there in the post-reactor material... and that we're just scratching the surface of re-processing the waste and getting many, many times more energy out of the current byproducts ("waste").