Who's apologizing? My wife is glad when it pops up with a episode of something from BBC she's been trying to catch at odd hours, and I find their guide info to be much more comprehensive (and accurate) than anything I can get from the local cable provider or newspaper web site. It's a service. It costs the same as two pints of Guiness.
The current form of corporation is almost always limited liability.
Right. Otherwise most people wouldn't bother. The alternative would be another form of business entity that would pass along to its customers the enormous burden of wider-ranging insurance (or, go out of business, much the way that OBGYNs are having to now, for pretty much the same reasons).
They were invented to further colonialism since the risks involved were too great for investors to take the risk on.
Right - because back then, the equivalent to start-up dot-coms and biotech firms were those companies that took chances on long-range shipping and trade. Economies have always had an interest in risk taking, as well as in punishing the clearly irrational risk takers. In the case of a limited liability corporation, who pays when it fails by virtue of being a Stupid Idea? Primarily the people that sunk money into it. But also those banks that, having looked over the business, decided it was worth hold paper on them... or, those vendors/suppliers/contractors that, having looked the company over as a customer to which credit should be extended, did just that. In effect, those business partners (and investors) become the people that absorb the risk. None of them are forced to take those risks or make those investments. If you don't like the look of an Enron, you don't float them cash through your bank, ship them a truck full of copier paper on Net 30 Days terms, and you sure as hell don't give them operating capital by buying their stock. On the other hand, if all of your care in looking that risk over makes for a nice picture, and someone was basically cooking the books or lying, well, they go to jail. They lose all of their personal assets.
It's the law that prevents shareholders from being held liable. If the law were not written this way, no bank or institutional investor would loan money to corporations under terms of the shareholders not being liable.
And they wouldn't have to, because there would be very few shareholders in the first place. People would make next to no investments if by buying $100 worth of stock to launch a company, they could find themselves getting sued for a million bucks. The people that take on that sort of risk are the VC types, and there's a reason that, when the venture succeeds, they get a lot more of a reward than the average stockholder might - becase they faced a larger risk of loss. But even the VCs basically only face the loss of what they put into the company. If the company goes under while owing a bunch of cash to, say, a key supplier - well, that's why key suppliers regularly review the books of their big customers... so that they can mitigate that risk. If they don't, or if the company won't submit to that review, then they need to back out, or adjust their prices to reflect the now higher risk.
Society holds all sorts of contracts to be invalid. For example, you can't sell yourself into slavery nor sell your organs.
OK, so those two are settled. Non-compete clauses in contracts, however, are generally more realistic than organ, baby, or slave sales. To the extent that non-compete clauses are still being shaken out in the courts (many get tossed right out as being unreasonable, or inapplicable to the circumstances), that's still pretty much a case-by-case thing. So, of course, both parties negotiating an employment contract are going to come to the table with what they want... the employer doesn't want you to take everything you just learned on the job and go use it against them, and the employee wants the option to do anything, including exactly that. Somewhere in between those two positions is reality, and it tends to depend on the industry, the people, and the talent/value of the employee being hired.
At a previous consulting gig, the employer and I agreed to strike the usual non-compete language from the boilerplate, and replaced it with mutually agreeable references to two s
Insightful? Damn... where is the Shrill BS mod when you need one.
He might as well have said... "OOOhhhh! Pretty buttons! Weeee!!! Look! They so shiny! Me likey the pretty buttons!"
But he didn't say that. He said the UI was "thoughtfully designed" and he's exactly correct. Just because you don't like TiVo's interface (I've got some small bones to pick with it, but have been consistently pleased with how it behaves, and the ease with which you can get into a rythm with skipping annoying segments, etc) doesn't mean that someone who does find it well designed isn't thinking about the larger picture.
You seem to be implying that the presence of a pleasant UI somehow precludes real functionality. So... non-hardcore-geeks who like the way a Mac interface looks/feels should be considered losers, and the Mac itself must therefore be trash? Extend your lame car analogy to iPod shopping, while you're at it. A lot of people would consider the iPod to have severly limited, or misplaced resources/UI. So, the people that find it just right, as it is and for what it costs, are... what... part of the great unwashed "so many of you" that you're stooping to lecture? I'd be curious to hear what OS you use. No, never mind. I'd be more curious to hear what your "rocket scientist" grandmother uses (for, surely she must be one, right?).
Not only did they force you to purchase monthly service, they also spy on you aswell.
There is no force involved. They're doing exactly what they said they do (tracking use so that their service can learn what to recommend to you, etc). You're certainly not forced to use a commercial product and its companion subscription service. Where does the force come in? Did some armed TiVo goons drag you to Best Buy and make you procure one of their devices? Here's an idea: stop using it if you are only now deciding to think through the nature of the service they've been providing (and how they do it). Sheesh.
Excellent way to help me see that the essence of your argument is about to be rational and persuasive! But, do carry on...
Corporations are a creation of the government.
Well, then so are marriages, families, estates, partnerships, townships, and so on. We invest such entities with certain legal rights (and obligations) so that people can function in productive groups with a membership larger that one, and have some expectation of how things can and will be done when it comes to relations between them. These are all cultural constructs that we recognize as a society, and define more specifically through legislation.
corporation is simply and aggregation of capital
No, it's a organizational unit that makes sure things can survive the death or absence of an individual. That's why towns incorporate, and it's why even a couple of guys that get together to run a small computer repair shop will incorporate - so that the business is more than just what happens to one person. Other people are going to be a lot more comfortable doing some sorts of business (like, trusting their life's savings, for example) with a an entity than can survive the fact that they guy they last talked to on the phone just got hit by a bus.
Allowing the corporations to prevent people from earning a living does not serve society's interest
Despite the loaded language you're using, I'll disagree. What you're really saying is, "allowing people to enter into contracts with each other does not serve society's interest." Which is not correct. People enter into contracts with each other all the time, and if there was no expectation that the contracts could be enforced, very little would get done (from being able to trust the electrician that wired your machine shop to knowing that the incoming shipment of parts that your company is depending on in order to serve your customers is actually going to be there). If a company (incorporated or otherwise) can't enter into a trustworthy contract with suppliers, how can it represent itself as a trustworthy provider of what it in turn does for its own customers? And of course, for most companies, one of their main suppliers is their own workforce. The people who are paid, week in, week out, to provide the service of each of the tasks that the company requires - they are each a paid supplier to the company.
It's absolutely in society's interests to allow both the company and the employee to expect that the contract between them is valid, and that the rule of law is there to help either party should the other act in bad faith (or worse). Expectations of enforceable contracts and predictable relationships are at the very foundation of our society.
All this nonsense about contract law forgets owners are granted immunity from corporate debts which is the government meddling in contract law.
Where's the meddling? If an investment contract (the sale of stock) says that the only thing the investor is risking is the investment itself, then it's as simple as that. That doesn't mean that the corporate officers are off the hook if they actually act criminally or knowingly allow their subordinates to do so (see the regular and recent convictions of a number that have). An investor risks losing his investment. An employee risks losing her job. A supplier risks not getting paid for services/material provided. A customer risks not getting what they paid for. All of those people are making what they deem to be a reasonable gamble that things will work out as expected. And when things go right, as they do in transactions between hundreds of millions of people and the businesses they work for and patronize, everyone comes out with what they were expecting. When a business fails, people lose. When a business fails because someone was actually being fraudulent, individual people end up in jail, right where they should be.
Schools, ironically, are the one place that I'd expect this not to be true. There are a -lot- of bored student crackers out there.
Alas, true. I'd actually be surprised if most schools aren't at least considering (if not already implementing) some sort of smart-card system for access to their networks. There's a lot at stake on a large campus system - but it does take a lot of cash to do it right. Of course, not as much cash as digging out of the lawsuits that can come from some of what happens when students abuse those networks (or each other, etc., through those networks). Good old just-a-password security is eventually going to be a quaint memory anyhow. At least anywhere that it counts. There will always be some twit that just won't be happy until he's cracked into his dorm-mate's laptop, but that guy is probably snooping through people's backpacks, too. It's a shame that people smart enough to rig up something like RF- or audio-based cracking (just because they're bored) don't have something more constructive into which they can pour all that energy and intellect. Some things never change, though!
people should able to work when and where they want, attempting to prevent us doing so, is slavery essentially
Sure, you can work at anything you want (provided you're qualified, and someone wants you at a price you're willing to accept). But if you want a nice six-figure paycheck from Microsoft, and all of the usual benefits, then you'll have to consider agreeing to some specific terms of that employment. They are hardly making a slave out of you for holding you to what you agreed to do in exchange for that fat paycheck.
but a blanket ban on being able to work for anyone else
Well, since that wasn't even an issue, it's not clear why you're bringing it up.
corperations don't own us, they OWE us
Well sure - right up until payday. And then, with that cash in your bank account, they don't owe you until you do more work for them. On the other hand, if you're a customer of that corporation... they only owe you if you pay in advance for whatever it is that they do for you.
The best way to avoid feeling "owned" by a company is to start one yourself. Or, be so valuable that you can either strike those non-compete terms from your contract, or get paid so much while you do work there that you don't really care if you have to take a year off of your career when you leave. But there is no "slavery essentially" involved, in that it's all about choice, for everybody involved.
Actually, it's biometrics and smartcards WAY before you get to the ultra-spooky world.
Well, sure. I guess my point is that by the time we're talking about targets that would attract sophisticated, unorthodox cracking (such as audio cracking of keystrokes), you're already dealing with other security measures that are going to make that specific technique pretty much useless.
Well maybe if you were using pistols or shotguns. My friends and I tended to use rifles at 100 yards. When a platter has multiple.30 caliber holes data recovery becomes much more difficult.;-)
Another fun one: put the platters on a clay pigeon launcher, and pepper those suckers with some goose loads. It's more challenging, and you can usually throw that thing a couple dozen times and watch it slowly look more and more like a dog chew toy. After a while, it stops flying very well, though. Also - wear eye protection - most geese don't cause ricochets like disk platters.
Honestly, I've always wondered about this. But then it occurs to be that you could type the ALT+Numeric equivalent of your password characters, just to throw off the bad guys. You know, ALT+100 = "d", etc. Or, just bang the drum slowly when entering the password - loud, thumpy keystrokes. Or put the keyboard in your lap momentarily to alter the acoustic signature.
Or, don't worry. I mean, realistically, what are the odds of this crack actually happening in the non-ultra-spooky world? And once you're in that playground, it's biometrics, smartcards, etc., anyway, right?
I pretty sure they didn't have a policy of using Nukes in conventional warfare.
The point is that neither the consitution nor the War Powers act speaks in terms of specific weapons, tactics, or strategies. Nor in terms of using them reactively or proactively.
Saying out loud that we don't find it out of the question to use them proactively (say, to obliterate some weapons lab in the desert somewhere) isn't even really a policy change - it's a marketing change. We're selling, to a new audience, the concept of deterrence. It's been very effective in the past, and still is. That we've shown our willingness to use overwhelming conventional force should make it clear that this is not an idle threat - and thus make it, one hopes, completely unnecessary to ever actually use them.
This is one of those things that history classes 100 years from now will look back upon and someone will ask: "Why would they ever give the president so much power?"
This is not a new power. This is more like a reminder, re-phrased, re-publicised for a new audience (Iran, North Korea). Kennedy had this power. Carter had this power. Clinton had this power. Reagan, Ford, Johnson, and Bushes had/have this power.
100 years from now, history will look back and wonder instead why so many presidents let so much stuff build up to the point where we'd ever have to contemplate using such powers.
By denying access, the Supreme Court is powerless to intervene, no matter what the Justices happen to think on the issue.
Well, you sure sound like you're explaining things. But the Supreme Court has already waded into this topic, following decisions by lower courts. The court found that those prisoners do have some court-oriented rights as it relates to their captivity, and will have to face a court in order to ultimately determine their status. The military is respecting this ruling by assigning new panels to determine which if the detainees should be considered combatants, and which not (which determines whether they'll face a tribunal, or another venue).
I'm not selling anything, or getting a commission.
But you can understand why someone reading your comment might think that. There was a certain tone to it that recalls the late-night-TV "in these unpredictable times, only gold will protect your assets" even as gold (for example) is turning out to be a lousy performer. Doesn't mean it will always be that way, only that it is now, and the people pushing are resorting to hokey looking 3:00AM advertising to get your attention.
There will certainly be a lot of people who will lose their shirts when their interest-only mortgages come home to roost and they can't keep up. Those people will be forced to buy a house more in keeping with their income, and people who did not over extend themselves will reap the rewards of their prudence.
Actually, the economy is doing well, considering the pressures that are weighing on it. You mentioned Katrina, but I really don't think that's going to be a big one for the economy as a whole. Something like 9/11, that impacts something huge like air travel across the entire world - that's more of an issue. Gas prices are something like that, but not in scope.
If I were you I would dump stocks, bonds, and dollars like it's doomsday (because it is) and start buying gold and silver (or maybe select gold, silver, and oil stocks)
Huh. I keep looking at your comment, and I can't find the affiliate marketing link to the as-seen-on-TV gold coin selling web site.
Watch out, all hell is about to break loose.
And you're recommending purchasing "select" gold, silver, and oil stocks?
The fact that good employees make a company great had nothing to do with how many there are. If simply having a higher headcount of "great employees" made the difference, then they could just sell all their other assets, borrow money, and hire a million new bodies. Except... if you don't have a big enough market for what you produce, or the industry landscape is changing, or the place where you do business is taxing and regulating you out of being competitive, then even if every employee is a rock star, you can still have too many of them.
"How sad" you say. But what's sad is that the company isn't coming up with enough new products (or enough viable lower prices) to sustain the number of people they have. Having too many employees is the symptom of the problem, but since they don't have a magic bullet for the marketplace, they can run the whole thing into the ground and let all of the HP employees in the world lose their jobs or just trim early, as they just did. And if I had employees in facilities all around the world, there's no question that one of the first places I'd cut would be in Europe, specifically in France. The load those countries put on the employer per employee is simply enormous.
I spoke to a Brit living in Germany for a while once, and he said, "Yeah, I pay taxes that are pretty high, but I don't have to pay for health care at all. What do you get for YOUR taxes in the states?" I had to agree- I don't get much other than frustration that I'm paying for a useless political circus and its associated pork barrel projects.
But it's apples and oranges. The tax rates in Germany (and Britain, for that matter) are much, much higher than in the US. There also tend to very high professional licensing fees, business taxes, and other factors that make a dollar-for-dollar comparison in the benefits purchased with tax dollars difficult at best.
Its times like this that the big firms should be congradulated. I dont see microsoft doing things like this *whistles*
OK, so Bill Gates isn't actually Microsoft, per se - but he's personally holding a lot of the stock and cash that has resulted from their growth. I'm sure it pains you to know that he's donated, personally, a fortune to relief and charities. Just one donation (the largest in history) was $5 Billion towards malaria relieft and innoculation of children. The Gates foundation has already donated $1.5 million towards hurricane relief this week (mostly through the red cross).
As for Microsoft itself, you might want to at least spend a couple of moments reading before you assume they're doing nothing. They have already lined up $9 Million in cash and donations in IT systems to help the local governments impacted by the storm. They're matching their employees' donations - and those people have collectively put up over a million as well. They've deployed three satellite communications busses in Baton Rouge and Mississippi, and are working directly with Intel and Cisco on support of Red Cross operations.
There are two predictable things, here. One - that since MS routinely does these things, they are doing it now, too - whether or not the press mentions it. And two - that it would of course never get a posting on slashdot, just on principle.
The facts are: our government can be (and was, and is) bought and sold like a cheap whore. Just because you think the claims sound outrageous doesn't mean they aren't true.
Since this thread started with the question "Why does Windows XP still dominate the OS market?" how about sticking with that subject? My point, in making fun of the gratuitous, reflexive "MS are criminals" jab as an explanation for why so many people use the OS is to point out that... well, that that's a pretty bogus explanation. People who wish that Linux or OS X were the dominant desktop OSes will latch onto anything they can grab to avoid confronting the fact that MS had good timing, better marketing, and the good luck to be where they were at the time they hit it big. We can debate the validity of antitrust laws, and we can debate the availability of the politicians that Netscape et al bought to go gunning for MS... but regardless of how you want to slice that all up, pretending that XP on the desktop is only as widely used as it is because someone "bought the DoJ" completely misses the point. Would breaking up MS have made OS X run on more, and cheaper hardware? Would it have made Linux desktops less freaking inscrutable to the vast majority of people who use machines to do work, rather than for the sake of using Linux, as an end to itself?
You can talk about the degree to which breaking up that company would have broken their software or support systems, thus making less usable/compatible systems, through attrition, a more prevalent, if grudging choice... but those legal issues didn't make or break the popularity of the software. Fun as it is to blame politicians, of course.
These things made society what it is and made the idea of society sustainable
Implying that social contracts (such as: "I won't steal your stuff - or wife - if you don't steal mine" etc) are reinforced by various religious documents and tenets is one thing. Suggesting that a collection of idealized histories and fables that reinforce those social concepts is somehow informing you about evolution (see the previous post), is still incorrect. Developing a viable culture is not the same as evolving the meat computer that's first needed as a platform. All sorts of animals have simplified cultures, and we've got a particularly good brain for that sort of thing. The Bible is not a resource for people who want to understand the evolutionary mechanisms that support speciation, adaptation of populations, and the like. Rather, things like the Noah myth fly completely in the face of any rational take on natural history, and those that take it literally are willingly stepping away from anything like a rational view of the world around them. From that deliberate embrace of an irrational world view comes just about everything that's been wrong with human affairs for the last several thousand years. The early folks have an excuse: no practical science to show them how things actually work. There's no excuse today for believing that Santa really does bring presents, or that God (again, with the sense of humor!) plants fake dinosaur bones just to see how far he can push the true believers into not believing their own eyes.
So you say that for anyone to have a discussion of evolution they must use your conventions of naming?
Just don't expect to persuade anybody to see your point of view if you refuse to base your conversation on a common usage of specific scientific terms. If you refuse to actually crack open a dictionary and get up to speed on what the word "theory" means (hey, click here for a definition - it's free!), then the first job you'll face is to get people who do use a functional, consistent vocabulary to abandon it and use a new, made-up definition that suits your agenda.
You will learn more about evolution in the Bible than any PH.D. granting institution can teach you
Huh. Well, that's just not even slightly true on the face of it, so you're going to have to work on that from another angle.
How do you explain miricles?
Well, I don't know. Perhaps you mean "miracles." Luckily, though, I don't need to explain them, since they don't actually happen. On the other hand, there's the more common daily usage of that term, which equates roughly to "amazingly lucky" or "rare" or "long odds," etc. As in "It's a miracle that I won the lottery. Of course, it's simple probability, really."
How do you explain the works of Mother Theresa?
Well, she got up each morning and did things for people. And she was persuasive enough to get people to give her money so she could do more of it the next day. Are you saying that she did magic? That when she scrambled eggs for poor people, there were more plates served than could be accounted for by the eggs she bought? You don't need any magical thinking or mysticism to explain the day to day behavior of someone who decided that the only way to find meaning in her personal life was to be a servant. That was her call, and she worked the celebrity status she earned to raise more cash to do more of it. Miracle? No.
How do you explain it when modern medicine says a person will die, that there is nothing else that can be done, but a priest comes and the person wakes up?
A mistake. A prediction based on incomplete information. How do you explain it when a million people pray for Mother Theresa not to die, and she dies anyway? How do you explain it when someone survives a bus crash that kills a bunch of other people, and they say that Jesus was looking out for them? Did Jesus hate the other people on the bus? How do you explain it when churches get struck by lightning and burn down? How do you explain it when innocent little children are born into an agony of birth defects? Is God trying to teach those kids a lesson? Nice guy! For someone who is All Powerful and Loves His Children, he sure has a cruel sense of humor!
Or, how about this notion: it's all made up! It's a semi-comforting myth that's caught on with a lot of people for a variety of cultural reasons, and preys upon the intellectual cowardice that's built into most of us (mostly, the denial of death that we all hang onto, at least most of the time, because it would be hard to function day-to-day if we really stopped to think about how pointless the whole thing might seem, what with the fact that we're all going to die). Priests are just people in a uniform that shows they've made a career out of perpetuating the myth. It's actually pretty embarasssing - a lot of them are smart, and good communicators. They've just bought into the fantasy because it makes people temporarily feel good, and they've lost the will to make meaning in their lives, deferring instead to a canned religious product that's easier to serve up and sell.
Let me see if I can sum up your point here: some of the people elected to makine decisions, or take actions on behalf of the US do things that you find distasteful or even criminal. The things that you do - and do not - say imply that you consider this to be a fairly recent development, embodied not by the previous administration, but rather the current one. This is enough of an issue for you that you're willing to indict the US as "brutal," "criminal," etc. I find this sentiment to be common enough on slashdot that I feel not the least bit jingoistic, as you put it, to counter intellectually lazy (or blatantly dishonest) statements (such as the GP's implication that the US has "killed more Iraqis" than Saddam) with a re-examination of some basic information.
You're countering with un-referenced, casually tossed-about notions (like the absurd "we told Saddam is was OK to invade/annex Kuwait") in a tone and manner that is deliberately framed to bypass the larger picture and focus on that which you're hoping will be (or lacking that, seem to be) notorious enough to set your readers up for whatever you're hoping will come of that altered world view.
I'm just really sick of that mindless America is the bestest coolest everything
So, instead, you'll do your level best to join the "America is the worstest, evilist everything" chorus? To what end? You suggest that you find support for the country's activities/attitude to be enabling even more of what you don't like, and the spending of money and blood on the same. So, what do you figure is the right use of US horsepower and the huge interest that so much of the world has in trading with, moving to, or being allies with western life? There are plenty of people in the US that would pick a completely different range of things that they'd consider to be either wastes of our tax dollars, a risk to the future of what's left of our rational culture, or endless miserable boondoggles, or even government structures/practices unconstituional/criminal in their nature. And we don't have to get past domestic politics, entitlement programs, or any of the other hot buttons that get other people just as wound up as you are about democracy in Iraq.
How about a little context, here? The entire thrust of the GP's post is that, somehow, the US is worse that Saddam was, in terms of the deaths of Iraqi people. That glib little assertion requires some perspective, and I'm not at all bothered by responding at least somewhat in kind. An exhaustive exploration of every bit of the geopolitical entanglements of the Cold War (as it relates to Iraq/Iran, for example) doesn't need to get dragged into a simple response pointing out that the GP's body-count-oriented comment was a troll. Now, let's say we didn't have to hold our noses about anything we've ever had to do, ever, in our relations with any country ever. What, would that reduce Saddam's personal culpability for murderering Iraqis by... a third? Half? My comment is still appropriate: the US hasn't "killed more Iraqis than Saddam's regime" no matter how you want to slice it. And as keen as you are to lecture me about what you perceive as jingoism, you're pretty gleefully ignoring the context of the thread. Are you equally ready to lambaste people who, without bothering to back up anything they say/imply, assert that we've killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, or that people from the US South are happy and willing torturers? Would you lay into those people... if they linked to some statistics? What would you call the opposite of jingoism? How would you address the reflexive, pervasive "America (and all the people in it) are evil murderers" tone that so frequently surfaces here and in other venues?
Fact: America does brutal, disgusting, inhuman and criminal things.
No, humans do. Every country, everywhere. Are you saying that it's the policy of the US, with the blessings of its voters, decade after decade, to do brutal, criminal th
Slashdot Mirror
I love the tivo apologists
Who's apologizing? My wife is glad when it pops up with a episode of something from BBC she's been trying to catch at odd hours, and I find their guide info to be much more comprehensive (and accurate) than anything I can get from the local cable provider or newspaper web site. It's a service. It costs the same as two pints of Guiness.
The current form of corporation is almost always limited liability.
Right. Otherwise most people wouldn't bother. The alternative would be another form of business entity that would pass along to its customers the enormous burden of wider-ranging insurance (or, go out of business, much the way that OBGYNs are having to now, for pretty much the same reasons).
They were invented to further colonialism since the risks involved were too great for investors to take the risk on.
Right - because back then, the equivalent to start-up dot-coms and biotech firms were those companies that took chances on long-range shipping and trade. Economies have always had an interest in risk taking, as well as in punishing the clearly irrational risk takers. In the case of a limited liability corporation, who pays when it fails by virtue of being a Stupid Idea? Primarily the people that sunk money into it. But also those banks that, having looked over the business, decided it was worth hold paper on them... or, those vendors/suppliers/contractors that, having looked the company over as a customer to which credit should be extended, did just that. In effect, those business partners (and investors) become the people that absorb the risk. None of them are forced to take those risks or make those investments. If you don't like the look of an Enron, you don't float them cash through your bank, ship them a truck full of copier paper on Net 30 Days terms, and you sure as hell don't give them operating capital by buying their stock. On the other hand, if all of your care in looking that risk over makes for a nice picture, and someone was basically cooking the books or lying, well, they go to jail. They lose all of their personal assets.
It's the law that prevents shareholders from being held liable. If the law were not written this way, no bank or institutional investor would loan money to corporations under terms of the shareholders not being liable.
And they wouldn't have to, because there would be very few shareholders in the first place. People would make next to no investments if by buying $100 worth of stock to launch a company, they could find themselves getting sued for a million bucks. The people that take on that sort of risk are the VC types, and there's a reason that, when the venture succeeds, they get a lot more of a reward than the average stockholder might - becase they faced a larger risk of loss. But even the VCs basically only face the loss of what they put into the company. If the company goes under while owing a bunch of cash to, say, a key supplier - well, that's why key suppliers regularly review the books of their big customers... so that they can mitigate that risk. If they don't, or if the company won't submit to that review, then they need to back out, or adjust their prices to reflect the now higher risk.
Society holds all sorts of contracts to be invalid. For example, you can't sell yourself into slavery nor sell your organs.
OK, so those two are settled. Non-compete clauses in contracts, however, are generally more realistic than organ, baby, or slave sales. To the extent that non-compete clauses are still being shaken out in the courts (many get tossed right out as being unreasonable, or inapplicable to the circumstances), that's still pretty much a case-by-case thing. So, of course, both parties negotiating an employment contract are going to come to the table with what they want... the employer doesn't want you to take everything you just learned on the job and go use it against them, and the employee wants the option to do anything, including exactly that. Somewhere in between those two positions is reality, and it tends to depend on the industry, the people, and the talent/value of the employee being hired.
At a previous consulting gig, the employer and I agreed to strike the usual non-compete language from the boilerplate, and replaced it with mutually agreeable references to two s
Insightful? Damn... where is the Shrill BS mod when you need one.
He might as well have said... "OOOhhhh! Pretty buttons! Weeee!!! Look! They so shiny! Me likey the pretty buttons!"
But he didn't say that. He said the UI was "thoughtfully designed" and he's exactly correct. Just because you don't like TiVo's interface (I've got some small bones to pick with it, but have been consistently pleased with how it behaves, and the ease with which you can get into a rythm with skipping annoying segments, etc) doesn't mean that someone who does find it well designed isn't thinking about the larger picture.
You seem to be implying that the presence of a pleasant UI somehow precludes real functionality. So... non-hardcore-geeks who like the way a Mac interface looks/feels should be considered losers, and the Mac itself must therefore be trash? Extend your lame car analogy to iPod shopping, while you're at it. A lot of people would consider the iPod to have severly limited, or misplaced resources/UI. So, the people that find it just right, as it is and for what it costs, are... what... part of the great unwashed "so many of you" that you're stooping to lecture? I'd be curious to hear what OS you use. No, never mind. I'd be more curious to hear what your "rocket scientist" grandmother uses (for, surely she must be one, right?).
Not only did they force you to purchase monthly service, they also spy on you aswell.
There is no force involved. They're doing exactly what they said they do (tracking use so that their service can learn what to recommend to you, etc). You're certainly not forced to use a commercial product and its companion subscription service. Where does the force come in? Did some armed TiVo goons drag you to Best Buy and make you procure one of their devices? Here's an idea: stop using it if you are only now deciding to think through the nature of the service they've been providing (and how they do it). Sheesh.
You're such an idiot.
Excellent way to help me see that the essence of your argument is about to be rational and persuasive! But, do carry on...
Corporations are a creation of the government.
Well, then so are marriages, families, estates, partnerships, townships, and so on. We invest such entities with certain legal rights (and obligations) so that people can function in productive groups with a membership larger that one, and have some expectation of how things can and will be done when it comes to relations between them. These are all cultural constructs that we recognize as a society, and define more specifically through legislation.
corporation is simply and aggregation of capital
No, it's a organizational unit that makes sure things can survive the death or absence of an individual. That's why towns incorporate, and it's why even a couple of guys that get together to run a small computer repair shop will incorporate - so that the business is more than just what happens to one person. Other people are going to be a lot more comfortable doing some sorts of business (like, trusting their life's savings, for example) with a an entity than can survive the fact that they guy they last talked to on the phone just got hit by a bus.
Allowing the corporations to prevent people from earning a living does not serve society's interest
Despite the loaded language you're using, I'll disagree. What you're really saying is, "allowing people to enter into contracts with each other does not serve society's interest." Which is not correct. People enter into contracts with each other all the time, and if there was no expectation that the contracts could be enforced, very little would get done (from being able to trust the electrician that wired your machine shop to knowing that the incoming shipment of parts that your company is depending on in order to serve your customers is actually going to be there). If a company (incorporated or otherwise) can't enter into a trustworthy contract with suppliers, how can it represent itself as a trustworthy provider of what it in turn does for its own customers? And of course, for most companies, one of their main suppliers is their own workforce. The people who are paid, week in, week out, to provide the service of each of the tasks that the company requires - they are each a paid supplier to the company.
It's absolutely in society's interests to allow both the company and the employee to expect that the contract between them is valid, and that the rule of law is there to help either party should the other act in bad faith (or worse). Expectations of enforceable contracts and predictable relationships are at the very foundation of our society.
All this nonsense about contract law forgets owners are granted immunity from corporate debts which is the government meddling in contract law.
Where's the meddling? If an investment contract (the sale of stock) says that the only thing the investor is risking is the investment itself, then it's as simple as that. That doesn't mean that the corporate officers are off the hook if they actually act criminally or knowingly allow their subordinates to do so (see the regular and recent convictions of a number that have). An investor risks losing his investment. An employee risks losing her job. A supplier risks not getting paid for services/material provided. A customer risks not getting what they paid for. All of those people are making what they deem to be a reasonable gamble that things will work out as expected. And when things go right, as they do in transactions between hundreds of millions of people and the businesses they work for and patronize, everyone comes out with what they were expecting. When a business fails, people lose. When a business fails because someone was actually being fraudulent, individual people end up in jail, right where they should be.
I think it's not too much to a
Schools, ironically, are the one place that I'd expect this not to be true. There are a -lot- of bored student crackers out there.
Alas, true. I'd actually be surprised if most schools aren't at least considering (if not already implementing) some sort of smart-card system for access to their networks. There's a lot at stake on a large campus system - but it does take a lot of cash to do it right. Of course, not as much cash as digging out of the lawsuits that can come from some of what happens when students abuse those networks (or each other, etc., through those networks). Good old just-a-password security is eventually going to be a quaint memory anyhow. At least anywhere that it counts. There will always be some twit that just won't be happy until he's cracked into his dorm-mate's laptop, but that guy is probably snooping through people's backpacks, too. It's a shame that people smart enough to rig up something like RF- or audio-based cracking (just because they're bored) don't have something more constructive into which they can pour all that energy and intellect. Some things never change, though!
people should able to work when and where they want, attempting to prevent us doing so, is slavery essentially
Sure, you can work at anything you want (provided you're qualified, and someone wants you at a price you're willing to accept). But if you want a nice six-figure paycheck from Microsoft, and all of the usual benefits, then you'll have to consider agreeing to some specific terms of that employment. They are hardly making a slave out of you for holding you to what you agreed to do in exchange for that fat paycheck.
but a blanket ban on being able to work for anyone else
Well, since that wasn't even an issue, it's not clear why you're bringing it up.
corperations don't own us, they OWE us
Well sure - right up until payday. And then, with that cash in your bank account, they don't owe you until you do more work for them. On the other hand, if you're a customer of that corporation... they only owe you if you pay in advance for whatever it is that they do for you.
The best way to avoid feeling "owned" by a company is to start one yourself. Or, be so valuable that you can either strike those non-compete terms from your contract, or get paid so much while you do work there that you don't really care if you have to take a year off of your career when you leave. But there is no "slavery essentially" involved, in that it's all about choice, for everybody involved.
Actually, it's biometrics and smartcards WAY before you get to the ultra-spooky world.
Well, sure. I guess my point is that by the time we're talking about targets that would attract sophisticated, unorthodox cracking (such as audio cracking of keystrokes), you're already dealing with other security measures that are going to make that specific technique pretty much useless.
Well maybe if you were using pistols or shotguns. My friends and I tended to use rifles at 100 yards. When a platter has multiple .30 caliber holes data recovery becomes much more difficult. ;-)
Another fun one: put the platters on a clay pigeon launcher, and pepper those suckers with some goose loads. It's more challenging, and you can usually throw that thing a couple dozen times and watch it slowly look more and more like a dog chew toy. After a while, it stops flying very well, though. Also - wear eye protection - most geese don't cause ricochets like disk platters.
Honestly, I've always wondered about this. But then it occurs to be that you could type the ALT+Numeric equivalent of your password characters, just to throw off the bad guys. You know, ALT+100 = "d", etc. Or, just bang the drum slowly when entering the password - loud, thumpy keystrokes. Or put the keyboard in your lap momentarily to alter the acoustic signature.
Or, don't worry. I mean, realistically, what are the odds of this crack actually happening in the non-ultra-spooky world? And once you're in that playground, it's biometrics, smartcards, etc., anyway, right?
I pretty sure they didn't have a policy of using Nukes in conventional warfare.
The point is that neither the consitution nor the War Powers act speaks in terms of specific weapons, tactics, or strategies. Nor in terms of using them reactively or proactively.
Saying out loud that we don't find it out of the question to use them proactively (say, to obliterate some weapons lab in the desert somewhere) isn't even really a policy change - it's a marketing change. We're selling, to a new audience, the concept of deterrence. It's been very effective in the past, and still is. That we've shown our willingness to use overwhelming conventional force should make it clear that this is not an idle threat - and thus make it, one hopes, completely unnecessary to ever actually use them.
This is one of those things that history classes 100 years from now will look back upon and someone will ask: "Why would they ever give the president so much power?"
This is not a new power. This is more like a reminder, re-phrased, re-publicised for a new audience (Iran, North Korea). Kennedy had this power. Carter had this power. Clinton had this power. Reagan, Ford, Johnson, and Bushes had/have this power.
100 years from now, history will look back and wonder instead why so many presidents let so much stuff build up to the point where we'd ever have to contemplate using such powers.
By denying access, the Supreme Court is powerless to intervene, no matter what the Justices happen to think on the issue.
Well, you sure sound like you're explaining things. But the Supreme Court has already waded into this topic, following decisions by lower courts. The court found that those prisoners do have some court-oriented rights as it relates to their captivity, and will have to face a court in order to ultimately determine their status. The military is respecting this ruling by assigning new panels to determine which if the detainees should be considered combatants, and which not (which determines whether they'll face a tribunal, or another venue).
I'm not selling anything, or getting a commission.
But you can understand why someone reading your comment might think that. There was a certain tone to it that recalls the late-night-TV "in these unpredictable times, only gold will protect your assets" even as gold (for example) is turning out to be a lousy performer. Doesn't mean it will always be that way, only that it is now, and the people pushing are resorting to hokey looking 3:00AM advertising to get your attention.
There will certainly be a lot of people who will lose their shirts when their interest-only mortgages come home to roost and they can't keep up. Those people will be forced to buy a house more in keeping with their income, and people who did not over extend themselves will reap the rewards of their prudence.
Actually, the economy is doing well, considering the pressures that are weighing on it. You mentioned Katrina, but I really don't think that's going to be a big one for the economy as a whole. Something like 9/11, that impacts something huge like air travel across the entire world - that's more of an issue. Gas prices are something like that, but not in scope.
If I were you I would dump stocks, bonds, and dollars like it's doomsday (because it is) and start buying gold and silver (or maybe select gold, silver, and oil stocks)
Huh. I keep looking at your comment, and I can't find the affiliate marketing link to the as-seen-on-TV gold coin selling web site.
Watch out, all hell is about to break loose.
And you're recommending purchasing "select" gold, silver, and oil stocks?
The fact that good employees make a company great had nothing to do with how many there are. If simply having a higher headcount of "great employees" made the difference, then they could just sell all their other assets, borrow money, and hire a million new bodies. Except... if you don't have a big enough market for what you produce, or the industry landscape is changing, or the place where you do business is taxing and regulating you out of being competitive, then even if every employee is a rock star, you can still have too many of them.
"How sad" you say. But what's sad is that the company isn't coming up with enough new products (or enough viable lower prices) to sustain the number of people they have. Having too many employees is the symptom of the problem, but since they don't have a magic bullet for the marketplace, they can run the whole thing into the ground and let all of the HP employees in the world lose their jobs or just trim early, as they just did. And if I had employees in facilities all around the world, there's no question that one of the first places I'd cut would be in Europe, specifically in France. The load those countries put on the employer per employee is simply enormous.
I spoke to a Brit living in Germany for a while once, and he said, "Yeah, I pay taxes that are pretty high, but I don't have to pay for health care at all. What do you get for YOUR taxes in the states?" I had to agree- I don't get much other than frustration that I'm paying for a useless political circus and its associated pork barrel projects.
But it's apples and oranges. The tax rates in Germany (and Britain, for that matter) are much, much higher than in the US. There also tend to very high professional licensing fees, business taxes, and other factors that make a dollar-for-dollar comparison in the benefits purchased with tax dollars difficult at best.
Or downtown Los Angeles, apparently. Woops: tripped a breaker!
Its times like this that the big firms should be congradulated. I dont see microsoft doing things like this *whistles*
OK, so Bill Gates isn't actually Microsoft, per se - but he's personally holding a lot of the stock and cash that has resulted from their growth. I'm sure it pains you to know that he's donated, personally, a fortune to relief and charities. Just one donation (the largest in history) was $5 Billion towards malaria relieft and innoculation of children. The Gates foundation has already donated $1.5 million towards hurricane relief this week (mostly through the red cross).
As for Microsoft itself, you might want to at least spend a couple of moments reading before you assume they're doing nothing. They have already lined up $9 Million in cash and donations in IT systems to help the local governments impacted by the storm. They're matching their employees' donations - and those people have collectively put up over a million as well. They've deployed three satellite communications busses in Baton Rouge and Mississippi, and are working directly with Intel and Cisco on support of Red Cross operations.
There are two predictable things, here. One - that since MS routinely does these things, they are doing it now, too - whether or not the press mentions it. And two - that it would of course never get a posting on slashdot, just on principle.
The facts are: our government can be (and was, and is) bought and sold like a cheap whore. Just because you think the claims sound outrageous doesn't mean they aren't true.
Since this thread started with the question "Why does Windows XP still dominate the OS market?" how about sticking with that subject? My point, in making fun of the gratuitous, reflexive "MS are criminals" jab as an explanation for why so many people use the OS is to point out that... well, that that's a pretty bogus explanation. People who wish that Linux or OS X were the dominant desktop OSes will latch onto anything they can grab to avoid confronting the fact that MS had good timing, better marketing, and the good luck to be where they were at the time they hit it big. We can debate the validity of antitrust laws, and we can debate the availability of the politicians that Netscape et al bought to go gunning for MS... but regardless of how you want to slice that all up, pretending that XP on the desktop is only as widely used as it is because someone "bought the DoJ" completely misses the point. Would breaking up MS have made OS X run on more, and cheaper hardware? Would it have made Linux desktops less freaking inscrutable to the vast majority of people who use machines to do work, rather than for the sake of using Linux, as an end to itself?
You can talk about the degree to which breaking up that company would have broken their software or support systems, thus making less usable/compatible systems, through attrition, a more prevalent, if grudging choice... but those legal issues didn't make or break the popularity of the software. Fun as it is to blame politicians, of course.
and they bought off the Bush DoJ to get a slap on the wrist
Come on, you're not even trying, here. How does Haliburton figure in? And you haven't even mentioned FEMA or global warming yet!
These things made society what it is and made the idea of society sustainable
Implying that social contracts (such as: "I won't steal your stuff - or wife - if you don't steal mine" etc) are reinforced by various religious documents and tenets is one thing. Suggesting that a collection of idealized histories and fables that reinforce those social concepts is somehow informing you about evolution (see the previous post), is still incorrect. Developing a viable culture is not the same as evolving the meat computer that's first needed as a platform. All sorts of animals have simplified cultures, and we've got a particularly good brain for that sort of thing. The Bible is not a resource for people who want to understand the evolutionary mechanisms that support speciation, adaptation of populations, and the like. Rather, things like the Noah myth fly completely in the face of any rational take on natural history, and those that take it literally are willingly stepping away from anything like a rational view of the world around them. From that deliberate embrace of an irrational world view comes just about everything that's been wrong with human affairs for the last several thousand years. The early folks have an excuse: no practical science to show them how things actually work. There's no excuse today for believing that Santa really does bring presents, or that God (again, with the sense of humor!) plants fake dinosaur bones just to see how far he can push the true believers into not believing their own eyes.
So you say that for anyone to have a discussion of evolution they must use your conventions of naming?
Just don't expect to persuade anybody to see your point of view if you refuse to base your conversation on a common usage of specific scientific terms. If you refuse to actually crack open a dictionary and get up to speed on what the word "theory" means (hey, click here for a definition - it's free!), then the first job you'll face is to get people who do use a functional, consistent vocabulary to abandon it and use a new, made-up definition that suits your agenda.
You will learn more about evolution in the Bible than any PH.D. granting institution can teach you
Huh. Well, that's just not even slightly true on the face of it, so you're going to have to work on that from another angle.
How do you explain miricles?
Well, I don't know. Perhaps you mean "miracles." Luckily, though, I don't need to explain them, since they don't actually happen. On the other hand, there's the more common daily usage of that term, which equates roughly to "amazingly lucky" or "rare" or "long odds," etc. As in "It's a miracle that I won the lottery. Of course, it's simple probability, really."
How do you explain the works of Mother Theresa?
Well, she got up each morning and did things for people. And she was persuasive enough to get people to give her money so she could do more of it the next day. Are you saying that she did magic? That when she scrambled eggs for poor people, there were more plates served than could be accounted for by the eggs she bought? You don't need any magical thinking or mysticism to explain the day to day behavior of someone who decided that the only way to find meaning in her personal life was to be a servant. That was her call, and she worked the celebrity status she earned to raise more cash to do more of it. Miracle? No.
How do you explain it when modern medicine says a person will die, that there is nothing else that can be done, but a priest comes and the person wakes up?
A mistake. A prediction based on incomplete information. How do you explain it when a million people pray for Mother Theresa not to die, and she dies anyway? How do you explain it when someone survives a bus crash that kills a bunch of other people, and they say that Jesus was looking out for them? Did Jesus hate the other people on the bus? How do you explain it when churches get struck by lightning and burn down? How do you explain it when innocent little children are born into an agony of birth defects? Is God trying to teach those kids a lesson? Nice guy! For someone who is All Powerful and Loves His Children, he sure has a cruel sense of humor!
Or, how about this notion: it's all made up! It's a semi-comforting myth that's caught on with a lot of people for a variety of cultural reasons, and preys upon the intellectual cowardice that's built into most of us (mostly, the denial of death that we all hang onto, at least most of the time, because it would be hard to function day-to-day if we really stopped to think about how pointless the whole thing might seem, what with the fact that we're all going to die). Priests are just people in a uniform that shows they've made a career out of perpetuating the myth. It's actually pretty embarasssing - a lot of them are smart, and good communicators. They've just bought into the fantasy because it makes people temporarily feel good, and they've lost the will to make meaning in their lives, deferring instead to a canned religious product that's easier to serve up and sell.
Also, I understand that if you wear an eyepatch, that strengthens the optic nerve on one side of your brain. It is proof of His Noodly Will.
Let me see if I can sum up your point here: some of the people elected to makine decisions, or take actions on behalf of the US do things that you find distasteful or even criminal. The things that you do - and do not - say imply that you consider this to be a fairly recent development, embodied not by the previous administration, but rather the current one. This is enough of an issue for you that you're willing to indict the US as "brutal," "criminal," etc. I find this sentiment to be common enough on slashdot that I feel not the least bit jingoistic, as you put it, to counter intellectually lazy (or blatantly dishonest) statements (such as the GP's implication that the US has "killed more Iraqis" than Saddam) with a re-examination of some basic information.
You're countering with un-referenced, casually tossed-about notions (like the absurd "we told Saddam is was OK to invade/annex Kuwait") in a tone and manner that is deliberately framed to bypass the larger picture and focus on that which you're hoping will be (or lacking that, seem to be) notorious enough to set your readers up for whatever you're hoping will come of that altered world view.
I'm just really sick of that mindless America is the bestest coolest everything
So, instead, you'll do your level best to join the "America is the worstest, evilist everything" chorus? To what end? You suggest that you find support for the country's activities/attitude to be enabling even more of what you don't like, and the spending of money and blood on the same. So, what do you figure is the right use of US horsepower and the huge interest that so much of the world has in trading with, moving to, or being allies with western life? There are plenty of people in the US that would pick a completely different range of things that they'd consider to be either wastes of our tax dollars, a risk to the future of what's left of our rational culture, or endless miserable boondoggles, or even government structures/practices unconstituional/criminal in their nature. And we don't have to get past domestic politics, entitlement programs, or any of the other hot buttons that get other people just as wound up as you are about democracy in Iraq.
How about a little context, here? The entire thrust of the GP's post is that, somehow, the US is worse that Saddam was, in terms of the deaths of Iraqi people. That glib little assertion requires some perspective, and I'm not at all bothered by responding at least somewhat in kind. An exhaustive exploration of every bit of the geopolitical entanglements of the Cold War (as it relates to Iraq/Iran, for example) doesn't need to get dragged into a simple response pointing out that the GP's body-count-oriented comment was a troll. Now, let's say we didn't have to hold our noses about anything we've ever had to do, ever, in our relations with any country ever. What, would that reduce Saddam's personal culpability for murderering Iraqis by... a third? Half? My comment is still appropriate: the US hasn't "killed more Iraqis than Saddam's regime" no matter how you want to slice it. And as keen as you are to lecture me about what you perceive as jingoism, you're pretty gleefully ignoring the context of the thread. Are you equally ready to lambaste people who, without bothering to back up anything they say/imply, assert that we've killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, or that people from the US South are happy and willing torturers? Would you lay into those people... if they linked to some statistics? What would you call the opposite of jingoism? How would you address the reflexive, pervasive "America (and all the people in it) are evil murderers" tone that so frequently surfaces here and in other venues?
Fact: America does brutal, disgusting, inhuman and criminal things.
No, humans do. Every country, everywhere. Are you saying that it's the policy of the US, with the blessings of its voters, decade after decade, to do brutal, criminal th