Did the Cylon invasion target all cities, or just the major strategic sites?
We know that it didn't target all cities with heavy weapons. At least one (unnamed) city were left basically intact but for broken windows. Later, we'll see Delphi, a city that was attacked but clearly not hit with a large nuclear weapon.
the planet's atmosphere looks extremely yellow and cloudy
It looked like that before, I think. I think that's just the "Caprica look." I won't swear to that, however; it's just my impression.
Oh, definitely. That's absolutely right, which is why our system works as well as it does. Employers have a rational self-interest in finding good employees, hiring them, then keeping them employed for as long as possible. Employees, in turn, have a rational self-interest in staying employed as long as possible. So everybody's working toward the same goal with an absolute practical minimum of regulation and red tape.
The guy who wants to do this has told you why it's valuable to him, yet you continue to claim that it has no value.
That's it, right there. You've hit the nail right on the head, and yet you don't even see it. The fact that somebody says he thinks it's valuable doesn't mean that it actually is. In this case, he's wrong in his estimation.
Just because somebody thinks something has value doesn't mean that it actually does. See? There's objective truth here, and he's on the wrong side of it, as we've covered already in depth.
Okay. Then don't call it free. Call it "constitutionally protected." You'll have a fit of apoplexy whenever you read the first amendment, you know, the part where it says "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech," but that's okay, right?
Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe it makes more sense for you to rein your definition of "freedom of speech" in to more closely match the definition adopted by everybody else in the world. You know, the one that distinguishes between being free to speak and being free from responsibility.
That's funny. I taught as an adjunct professor at Baylor for a couple of terms about five years ago. The issue of my religious leanings never even came up.
Are you absolutely sure that you're telling the truth, here? Or is it just slightly possible that you're just making stuff up?
Absolutely nothing. Remember, this is Slashdot. Ninety-nine posts out of a hundred are written by sociopathic children with a grudge against the world.
Your comments are specific and clear. Please keep writing them.
is saying negative things about your company legitimate grounds for being fired?
Yes. Here's how we know.
Take a question of the form, "Is X legitimate grounds for being fired?" For any value of X, the answer is yes... except some very specific and narrow exceptions. You can't fire somebody for being one gender or the other, for belonging to a particular racial or political group or for adhering to a particular religion. You can't fire somebody for belonging to a union or for choosing not to join a union. That's about it.
For all other values of X, the answer is yes. Because employers are free, too, you know.
You defined some extreme end points but there is a lot left in the middle.
Um. Actually, there's not. You're not going to be imprisoned for what you say. That's it. That's the one data point. And even that has exceptions. If you disclose national secrets, for example, you can be imprisoned. But the exceptions are few and specific.
The only thing that the First Amendment guarantees is that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. In other words, you will not be imprisoned for what you say. Neither will you be deprived of life, liberty or property for what you say. Congress lacks that power.
Everything else is fair game. Your boss wants to fire you? He can fire you. Your wife wants to divorce you? She can divorce you. Your kids want to stop eating their vegetables? They can stop eating their vegetables. Your friends want to stop returning your calls? They can stop returning your calls. Your dog wants to run away? Bye bye, Rover.
Freedom is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means, hey, you're free. On the other, it means that there's no safety net. You have to accept responsibility for your own decisions.
I think you're just trying to be funny here, but what the heck, I'll play along. If the financial support in question were contingent upon their telling you to shut up, then you'd have an argument. But since it's not, the fact that they're telling you to shut up is merely an exercise of their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech.
Now back up a few months in time to your initial interview with that same boss. He can not ask you in that interview if you visit strip bars after work.
Sure he can.
If you can prove you were fired for something not directly work related, you do have an appeal process.
Not in the courts, you don't. Well, at least not in any of the states where I've ever worked. If you don't want to be fired for just any old reason, get a contract. They're not hard to find. Many employers offer them, in my experience. Though many are smart enough to explicitly reserve the right to terminate the contract at any time and for any reason.
You would be mistaken, at least in every locality where I've ever lived. See, employers have the right -- absolute, but limited by some very specific and narrow laws meant to keep the balance -- to hire and fire whomever they want for whatever reason they want. If you're my employee and I decide I don't like your socks, I can fire you on the spot if I want.
You are certainly free to hold the opinion that you don't think employers should have those rights, but it seems like most of the country disagrees with you, so you're not going to get your way any time soon.
But "freedom of speech" isn't real if you can't say what you wish without fear of repercussions
I'm gonna say it again, 'cause apparently it didn't sink in the first time. The freedom of speech is not a freedom from consequences. Everything you say or do has repercussions. The government is not in the business of wrapping the whole world in foam rubber so you never bruise your shin on a sharp corner.
Now, what the freedom of speech does mean is that you can say whatever you want without fear of being imprisoned for it. Within reason, of course. National security, incitement to violence, fraud, libel... we have some very specific limits on our freedom of speech, but the principle remains.
Might there be other consequences other than imprisonment? Bet your ass. You might lose your job. People might stop buying your records. Your TV show might get cancelled. If one of these things happens to you, it's going to be unpleasant. But it's not something the government has any business helping you with.
Okay. I'm sorry I misunderstood, but in all fairness your post was unclear. It made perfect sense to interpret it as your meaning that Jefferson should be spinning in his grave because some bloggers got fired.
I jumped the gun, but I think it would have been cool if you'd been more clear.
Penalties cancel out, return the ball to the line of scrimmage and reset the clock.
Um. Before you continue this discussion, I propose that you spend a little time reading what Mr. Jefferson actually wrote. Then you might realize that if he were here today, he'd say that the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. The fact that the government does not prohibit you, or anyone else, from saying whatever you want doesn't mean that your words won't have consequences, consequences up to and including the loss of your job.
Jefferson was a lot bigger on personal responsibility than you seem willing to give him credit for.
It varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In Texas, for example, where I grew up and had my first job, the employer has the absolute right to hire and fire at will with only a few narrow exceptions.
I don't know if this is universal, but in the jurisdictions with which I'm familiar, an NDA is not required. Any employee has an automatic and implicit responsibility to take reasonable precautions to ensure that trade secrets and other confidential information doesn't become public.
So even if you haven't signed an NDA, you're still expected not to disclose stuff that you know to be proprietary.
I'm fairly certain most of that constant rain has cleared up, so it should get very dark and cold soon.
It's not widely known, I guess, but the breathless predictions of nuclear winter in the 1980s have been called into question by new simulations. While nuclear detonations certainly would put a lot of dust into the air, it's not at all clear that a full-scale nuclear war would result in the kind of planet-altering catastrophe predicted by Sagan and others. The planet is big, bigger than most folks realize, and even a full-scale superpower nuclear war between the US, the USSR and China would have resulted in detonations over only a tiny fraction of the planet's surface. If you lived in Argentina, for instance, odds are fair that you'd never even notice any change at all.
But of course, all we have is speculation. There's no way to ever test a theory like this one experimentally. At least, no good way.
There's this neat new gadget. You might have heard of it. It's called an iPod. You should check it out.
And as for why the commentary isn't included in the broadcast, the answer is obvious: Because the episode was shot and finished months ago, while the commentary was recorded Thursday.
I don't mean to be snide, but I'm pretty sure all podcast client software does what you describe. That's exactly what podcasting is all about.
I use NetNewsWire 2, personally. (It's in public beta.) There are other clients, but this is the one I'm familiar with. Under the preferences are settings related to feed enclosures. You can tell NetNewsWire to automatically download audio enclosures and load them into iTunes. You can have it add them to a named playlist, or to put them in their own playlists corresponding to the feed from which they came. You can also set the genre; I have NetNewsWire set the genre of all podcasts to "Podcast" for easy sorting.
As for having it automatically trigger an iPod sync, no, but for good reason: What if your iPod isn't plugged in? No matter; when next you plug it in, your podcasts will be downloaded.
They are by far the most common music player in the world. Something like nine out of ten music players sold is an iPod.
Secondly that Ipod needs to be constantly connected to the PC
No, that's not how an iPod works. If you don't own one, it's understandable that you should be confused about this, but it's really very simple. You plug in the iPod, iTunes syncs either your entire music library or a subset of it, depending on how big your library and your iPod are. You go away, come back, plug in again, and any new content (such as podcasts) is automatically downloaded.
Hell, mine has only seen a dock twice since I bought it.
You don't charge your iPod?
Thirdly it's not any easier than providing a web page with the MP3 files on it
It is, in fact, much easier. Once you've subscribed to the podcast feed with an appropriate client, the podcasts will be automatically downloaded to your iTunes library without your intervention whenever they're available, and from there synched to your iPod. See? All without your having to actually do anything.
Your alternative suggestion -- "a Web page with MP3 files on it" -- is, by comparison, massively inconvenient. One must remember to check the page periodically for new content, then download the content to one's computer, then load the content into iTunes. Not a ton of work, but more than it should be. With a podcast, the amount of work required, after initially subscribing to the feed, is precisely zero.
But all you're "mirroring" is an MP3 file. That's not what people are going to want. What people are going to want is access to the RSS feed in which the MP3 file is enclosed. What good is that?
Besides, the Sci Fi server cluster that hosts both the feed and the enclosures can handle the traffic with aplomb. Your help was (1) not needed and (2) not remotely helpful.
You don't get to judge whether it's trivial or not.
Of course I do. Why don't I? I'm as entitled to an opinion as anybody else.
Who's 'we'?
Everybody. People. Human beings.
It's an individual moral decision.
Correct, and in this case, the person in question has made the wrong individual moral decision.
Do you also have a problem with people who publish instructions on how to pick locks?
Yes, I do, but not much of one because picking a lock isn't a reasonable way to steal something in most cases. A better analogy would be to ask whether I have a problem with people who publish instructions on how to weaponize anthrax or build a bomb out of an artillery shell. That's the type of thing we're talking about here. Zero practical use, massive potential for harm.
Somehow your attitude makes me think that you'd rather have a law that forces him to be a nice guy, under threat of prison.
Straw man. Move on.
If people are clamoring to violate copyrights and just looking for the tools to do so, that's a social problem
Agreed. And part of the solution to that social problem is for law-abiding people to wise up, take responsibility and stop providing thieves with the tools they need to steal things.
having revealed your underlying bias
Straw man. Move on.
The only convincing premise in your argument is that piracy costs media companies money, and that such a tool could be used for piracy.
So you weren't persuaded by the whole "piracy is wrong, and such a tool can only be used for piracy" thing? I guess now we're getting to see your underlying biases, huh?
That's not the spirit of freedom, but I'd have to admit it's becoming a more and more common approach in the US these days, since everyone has a moral agenda they want encoded into law now
Yup. There we go. Underlying biases all over the place.
Slashdot Mirror
Did the Cylon invasion target all cities, or just the major strategic sites?
We know that it didn't target all cities with heavy weapons. At least one (unnamed) city were left basically intact but for broken windows. Later, we'll see Delphi, a city that was attacked but clearly not hit with a large nuclear weapon.
the planet's atmosphere looks extremely yellow and cloudy
It looked like that before, I think. I think that's just the "Caprica look." I won't swear to that, however; it's just my impression.
Mind you, there's a disincentive.
Oh, definitely. That's absolutely right, which is why our system works as well as it does. Employers have a rational self-interest in finding good employees, hiring them, then keeping them employed for as long as possible. Employees, in turn, have a rational self-interest in staying employed as long as possible. So everybody's working toward the same goal with an absolute practical minimum of regulation and red tape.
The guy who wants to do this has told you why it's valuable to him, yet you continue to claim that it has no value.
That's it, right there. You've hit the nail right on the head, and yet you don't even see it. The fact that somebody says he thinks it's valuable doesn't mean that it actually is. In this case, he's wrong in his estimation.
Just because somebody thinks something has value doesn't mean that it actually does. See? There's objective truth here, and he's on the wrong side of it, as we've covered already in depth.
That was a beautiful comment. Truer words were never spoken.
Okay. Then don't call it free. Call it "constitutionally protected." You'll have a fit of apoplexy whenever you read the first amendment, you know, the part where it says "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech," but that's okay, right?
Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe it makes more sense for you to rein your definition of "freedom of speech" in to more closely match the definition adopted by everybody else in the world. You know, the one that distinguishes between being free to speak and being free from responsibility.
That's funny. I taught as an adjunct professor at Baylor for a couple of terms about five years ago. The issue of my religious leanings never even came up.
Are you absolutely sure that you're telling the truth, here? Or is it just slightly possible that you're just making stuff up?
Absolutely nothing. Remember, this is Slashdot. Ninety-nine posts out of a hundred are written by sociopathic children with a grudge against the world.
Your comments are specific and clear. Please keep writing them.
is saying negative things about your company legitimate grounds for being fired?
... except some very specific and narrow exceptions. You can't fire somebody for being one gender or the other, for belonging to a particular racial or political group or for adhering to a particular religion. You can't fire somebody for belonging to a union or for choosing not to join a union. That's about it.
Yes. Here's how we know.
Take a question of the form, "Is X legitimate grounds for being fired?" For any value of X, the answer is yes
For all other values of X, the answer is yes. Because employers are free, too, you know.
You defined some extreme end points but there is a lot left in the middle.
Um. Actually, there's not. You're not going to be imprisoned for what you say. That's it. That's the one data point. And even that has exceptions. If you disclose national secrets, for example, you can be imprisoned. But the exceptions are few and specific.
The only thing that the First Amendment guarantees is that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. In other words, you will not be imprisoned for what you say. Neither will you be deprived of life, liberty or property for what you say. Congress lacks that power.
Everything else is fair game. Your boss wants to fire you? He can fire you. Your wife wants to divorce you? She can divorce you. Your kids want to stop eating their vegetables? They can stop eating their vegetables. Your friends want to stop returning your calls? They can stop returning your calls. Your dog wants to run away? Bye bye, Rover.
Freedom is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means, hey, you're free. On the other, it means that there's no safety net. You have to accept responsibility for your own decisions.
I think you're just trying to be funny here, but what the heck, I'll play along. If the financial support in question were contingent upon their telling you to shut up, then you'd have an argument. But since it's not, the fact that they're telling you to shut up is merely an exercise of their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech.
Now back up a few months in time to your initial interview with that same boss. He can not ask you in that interview if you visit strip bars after work.
Sure he can.
If you can prove you were fired for something not directly work related, you do have an appeal process.
Not in the courts, you don't. Well, at least not in any of the states where I've ever worked. If you don't want to be fired for just any old reason, get a contract. They're not hard to find. Many employers offer them, in my experience. Though many are smart enough to explicitly reserve the right to terminate the contract at any time and for any reason.
I'd say you don't have any right to fire him
... we have some very specific limits on our freedom of speech, but the principle remains.
You would be mistaken, at least in every locality where I've ever lived. See, employers have the right -- absolute, but limited by some very specific and narrow laws meant to keep the balance -- to hire and fire whomever they want for whatever reason they want. If you're my employee and I decide I don't like your socks, I can fire you on the spot if I want.
You are certainly free to hold the opinion that you don't think employers should have those rights, but it seems like most of the country disagrees with you, so you're not going to get your way any time soon.
But "freedom of speech" isn't real if you can't say what you wish without fear of repercussions
I'm gonna say it again, 'cause apparently it didn't sink in the first time. The freedom of speech is not a freedom from consequences. Everything you say or do has repercussions. The government is not in the business of wrapping the whole world in foam rubber so you never bruise your shin on a sharp corner.
Now, what the freedom of speech does mean is that you can say whatever you want without fear of being imprisoned for it. Within reason, of course. National security, incitement to violence, fraud, libel
Might there be other consequences other than imprisonment? Bet your ass. You might lose your job. People might stop buying your records. Your TV show might get cancelled. If one of these things happens to you, it's going to be unpleasant. But it's not something the government has any business helping you with.
Okay. I'm sorry I misunderstood, but in all fairness your post was unclear. It made perfect sense to interpret it as your meaning that Jefferson should be spinning in his grave because some bloggers got fired.
I jumped the gun, but I think it would have been cool if you'd been more clear.
Penalties cancel out, return the ball to the line of scrimmage and reset the clock.
Um. Before you continue this discussion, I propose that you spend a little time reading what Mr. Jefferson actually wrote. Then you might realize that if he were here today, he'd say that the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. The fact that the government does not prohibit you, or anyone else, from saying whatever you want doesn't mean that your words won't have consequences, consequences up to and including the loss of your job.
Jefferson was a lot bigger on personal responsibility than you seem willing to give him credit for.
It varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In Texas, for example, where I grew up and had my first job, the employer has the absolute right to hire and fire at will with only a few narrow exceptions.
You are allowed to say whatever you want, and if your employer doesn't like it, he's allowed to fire you.
Freedom of speech, as the saying goes, does not mean freedom from consequences.
I don't know if this is universal, but in the jurisdictions with which I'm familiar, an NDA is not required. Any employee has an automatic and implicit responsibility to take reasonable precautions to ensure that trade secrets and other confidential information doesn't become public.
So even if you haven't signed an NDA, you're still expected not to disclose stuff that you know to be proprietary.
I'm fairly certain most of that constant rain has cleared up, so it should get very dark and cold soon.
It's not widely known, I guess, but the breathless predictions of nuclear winter in the 1980s have been called into question by new simulations. While nuclear detonations certainly would put a lot of dust into the air, it's not at all clear that a full-scale nuclear war would result in the kind of planet-altering catastrophe predicted by Sagan and others. The planet is big, bigger than most folks realize, and even a full-scale superpower nuclear war between the US, the USSR and China would have resulted in detonations over only a tiny fraction of the planet's surface. If you lived in Argentina, for instance, odds are fair that you'd never even notice any change at all.
But of course, all we have is speculation. There's no way to ever test a theory like this one experimentally. At least, no good way.
There's this neat new gadget. You might have heard of it. It's called an iPod. You should check it out.
And as for why the commentary isn't included in the broadcast, the answer is obvious: Because the episode was shot and finished months ago, while the commentary was recorded Thursday.
I don't mean to be snide, but I'm pretty sure all podcast client software does what you describe. That's exactly what podcasting is all about.
I use NetNewsWire 2, personally. (It's in public beta.) There are other clients, but this is the one I'm familiar with. Under the preferences are settings related to feed enclosures. You can tell NetNewsWire to automatically download audio enclosures and load them into iTunes. You can have it add them to a named playlist, or to put them in their own playlists corresponding to the feed from which they came. You can also set the genre; I have NetNewsWire set the genre of all podcasts to "Podcast" for easy sorting.
As for having it automatically trigger an iPod sync, no, but for good reason: What if your iPod isn't plugged in? No matter; when next you plug it in, your podcasts will be downloaded.
Listen to the track. Moore says specifically that this is the first one made.
Even if you win, you're still retarded?
they don't seem to be that common
They are by far the most common music player in the world. Something like nine out of ten music players sold is an iPod.
Secondly that Ipod needs to be constantly connected to the PC
No, that's not how an iPod works. If you don't own one, it's understandable that you should be confused about this, but it's really very simple. You plug in the iPod, iTunes syncs either your entire music library or a subset of it, depending on how big your library and your iPod are. You go away, come back, plug in again, and any new content (such as podcasts) is automatically downloaded.
Hell, mine has only seen a dock twice since I bought it.
You don't charge your iPod?
Thirdly it's not any easier than providing a web page with the MP3 files on it
It is, in fact, much easier. Once you've subscribed to the podcast feed with an appropriate client, the podcasts will be automatically downloaded to your iTunes library without your intervention whenever they're available, and from there synched to your iPod. See? All without your having to actually do anything.
Your alternative suggestion -- "a Web page with MP3 files on it" -- is, by comparison, massively inconvenient. One must remember to check the page periodically for new content, then download the content to one's computer, then load the content into iTunes. Not a ton of work, but more than it should be. With a podcast, the amount of work required, after initially subscribing to the feed, is precisely zero.
But all you're "mirroring" is an MP3 file. That's not what people are going to want. What people are going to want is access to the RSS feed in which the MP3 file is enclosed. What good is that?
Besides, the Sci Fi server cluster that hosts both the feed and the enclosures can handle the traffic with aplomb. Your help was (1) not needed and (2) not remotely helpful.
You don't get to judge whether it's trivial or not.
Of course I do. Why don't I? I'm as entitled to an opinion as anybody else.
Who's 'we'?
Everybody. People. Human beings.
It's an individual moral decision.
Correct, and in this case, the person in question has made the wrong individual moral decision.
Do you also have a problem with people who publish instructions on how to pick locks?
Yes, I do, but not much of one because picking a lock isn't a reasonable way to steal something in most cases. A better analogy would be to ask whether I have a problem with people who publish instructions on how to weaponize anthrax or build a bomb out of an artillery shell. That's the type of thing we're talking about here. Zero practical use, massive potential for harm.
Somehow your attitude makes me think that you'd rather have a law that forces him to be a nice guy, under threat of prison.
Straw man. Move on.
If people are clamoring to violate copyrights and just looking for the tools to do so, that's a social problem
Agreed. And part of the solution to that social problem is for law-abiding people to wise up, take responsibility and stop providing thieves with the tools they need to steal things.
having revealed your underlying bias
Straw man. Move on.
The only convincing premise in your argument is that piracy costs media companies money, and that such a tool could be used for piracy.
So you weren't persuaded by the whole "piracy is wrong, and such a tool can only be used for piracy" thing? I guess now we're getting to see your underlying biases, huh?
That's not the spirit of freedom, but I'd have to admit it's becoming a more and more common approach in the US these days, since everyone has a moral agenda they want encoded into law now
Yup. There we go. Underlying biases all over the place.