I beleive thinkpads can be configured to encrypt the hard drive and require a bios password every time you power it up. Not sure how effective the hard drive encryption is, but Intel relies on this mechanism for keeping their company data secure.
To say nothing of the following: how does the laptop know that it has been stolen, and not just taken on a business trip? Does it send a report to Computrace every time it connects to the internet?
No, but they were susceptible to viruses and worms, much like modern computers... although it was much easier to tell when they had been hacked (blood everywhere).
computing power was measured not in megahertz or teraflops, but in kilogirls... a term now used only in reference to basketball star's recreational activities.
Sigh... you're correct. The word I was looking for was "miscegenation", not "misogyny". My bad.
By the way, I called the EEOC with a complaint once and was told "the EEOC only handles complaints about treatment of employees. You're a contractor, they can discriminate against you all they want!" or words to that effect.
since alternative medicine is alternative because science has shown that it doesn't really work Correction: alternative medice is alternative because science has not yet proven that it does work or cannot explain why it works. Who exactly is paying for clinical trials for alternative medicine? Certainly not the drug companies, they won't spend a dime on anything they can't patent.
We just committed an act of war on the inhabitants of that comet. They are now perfectly entitled to retaliate against the Earth! Actually, I do pray that there were no sentient beings inside that rock, however remote that possibility may seem. Perhaps we should seek to know more about astral bodies BEFORE we go about colliding with them...
Should I be fired for being married to a black woman because my employer beleives "misogyny is unnatural?" And if a black employee disagrees with the predominant corporate sentiment that "blacks are inferior," he should be fired too, right? And we can't have people wearing crosses, stars of david, head scarves, or yin/yang symbols to work either, because "religious messages disrupt workplace harmony..."
You've got the draw the line somewhere on employees being allowed to express personal opinions. I say the only criterion should be "Does this opinion adversely affect the employee's ability to do their job?" In this specific case, I see no evidence that being opposed to copyright affected his job performance in any way.
If it were legal, would you buy the cheapest product knowing that the company making it provides funding for guerilla groups who kidnap children, fill them with drugs and turn them in to child-soldiers? It apparently is "legal"; the product is called "diamonds".
Not parnoid at all. The last manager that didn't want to communicate in email was Ken Ross, a manager at Oracle who was pulling down $40,000 per quarter in bonuses by billing customers for work that wasn't being done, then assigning me the projects after they were already late and handing me the blame for the projects being late. So it seems he had good reason to NOT want to discuss this via email.
Uh, I think there might be a chance that decisions like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. may have some slight effect on Your Rights Online, and thus might qualify as "News for nerds".
In the 3 recent bad SCOTUS decisions (including the medical marijuana and eminent domain decisions) it seems to me the "conservatives" wrote the disents. That being said, we may very well be heading towards a fight to overturn Roe v. Wade. In general, I find the recent trend towards "govenments can do anything they damn well please" to be extremely disturbing. Remember that governments are made up of human beings that are quite capable of being short sighted, corrupt, even mean spirited. Hence the need to limit the power of governments to keep people like Richard Nixon and George Bush from doing whatever they want just because the beleive they have some divine right to do so.
For the more than two years that I worked at HMS, I used ssh and CVS to access company files with my laptop both from work and home, with management knowledge and approval.
Did he get that approval in writing? Remember, anytime a manager says "Let's not discuss this via email, let's just talk in person," it is because they don't want a written record of what was said to exist! In which case, your best recourse is to immediatly start looking for another job.
If he didn't keep any of the company's information, they likely have no case.
If he was still working for the company at the time of the seizure, than chances are he had a full source tree on his home computer so that he could do test builds at home. All of which is perfectly normal and necessary to do his job. To the non-technical, the argument "why did he need copies of files he was not charged with maintaining?" may sound valid. However, anybody who has ever maintained software can tell you that you usually need almost all the header files and always need all the objects to link against in order to do a test build just to see if you made any mistakes in the single file you changed. Again, finding all the companies source on his home computer proves nothing; what they would have to do is find proof that he was transmitting that source to somebody else. The REALLY stupid thing is that it is not at all necessary to download source to your home computer to appropriate secrets; anybody could walk into the company with a few 1GByte USB flash memory keys and walk out with all the source, and there would be no record of it having been transferred. Hmm... did the search warrant explicitly include flash memory devices as well? I am not a lawyer, but I beleive they can't seize anything not specifically mentioned in the warrant.
Omg! People who SMS or play online games a lot quickly learn that even saving 2 letters can make the difference between having a message fit on the display or having it be truncated and thus totally unreadable. Also, when you're trying to type as fast as you normally talk (or as fast as you can think), some typographical errors are inevitable. The objective of communication is to efficiently convey meaning between speaker and listener. To do this, you need to know your audience; for some audiences, these abbreviations ARE the most effective means of communication.
Can you send me a copy of the official English language handbook? It's called the Oxford English Dictionary, and no, I can't send you one... buy your own!
Why would they introduce another chip line into low end machines, when their customer base is 90% clueless about computers? Uh, because their customer base is cluefull about price, and if it allows them to sell a low end machine for 10% less, they will sell more of them and make more money. Dell is all about margins, I'm sure even saving 1% on CPU cost makes those guys salivate.
Yes, Intel is nowhere near as bad as DeBeers. But you don't have to have 100% market share to use "predatory business tactics".
Aren't you forgetting 4) The medical marijuana ruling, which by ruling that the federal government has the right to arrest people grown in their own home for the own use under the "commerce clause" of the constution, effectively established a precedent that state's rights no longer exist? Everything, including sex and politics, is sold somewhere and crosses state lines somewhere, therefore now everything can be controlled by the federal government, and the individual state statutes be damned!
Slashdot Mirror
I beleive thinkpads can be configured to encrypt the hard drive and require a bios password every time you power it up. Not sure how effective the hard drive encryption is, but Intel relies on this mechanism for keeping their company data secure.
To say nothing of the following: how does the laptop know that it has been stolen, and not just taken on a business trip? Does it send a report to Computrace every time it connects to the internet?
1) Buy $500 Dell laptop
2) Install Computrace
3) Throw laptop away and file police report as stolen
4) Apply to Computrace for $1000 guarantee
5) Profit!
But then, what would we need girlfriends for? Oh wait, this is slashdot...
Uh, "hacking" of people is done by sharp instruments...
No, but they were susceptible to viruses and worms, much like modern computers... although it was much easier to tell when they had been hacked (blood everywhere).
Well, at least the hunk of plastic and metal doesn't make you buy it dinner and a movie first...
computing power was measured not in megahertz or teraflops, but in kilogirls... a term now used only in reference to basketball star's recreational activities.
By the way, I called the EEOC with a complaint once and was told "the EEOC only handles complaints about treatment of employees. You're a contractor, they can discriminate against you all they want!" or words to that effect.
since alternative medicine is alternative because science has shown that it doesn't really work Correction: alternative medice is alternative because science has not yet proven that it does work or cannot explain why it works. Who exactly is paying for clinical trials for alternative medicine? Certainly not the drug companies, they won't spend a dime on anything they can't patent.
You mean... viruses are not protected by copyright laws?!?
We just committed an act of war on the inhabitants of that comet. They are now perfectly entitled to retaliate against the Earth! Actually, I do pray that there were no sentient beings inside that rock, however remote that possibility may seem. Perhaps we should seek to know more about astral bodies BEFORE we go about colliding with them...
You've got the draw the line somewhere on employees being allowed to express personal opinions. I say the only criterion should be "Does this opinion adversely affect the employee's ability to do their job?" In this specific case, I see no evidence that being opposed to copyright affected his job performance in any way.
If it were legal, would you buy the cheapest product knowing that the company making it provides funding for guerilla groups who kidnap children, fill them with drugs and turn them in to child-soldiers? It apparently is "legal"; the product is called "diamonds".
Not parnoid at all. The last manager that didn't want to communicate in email was Ken Ross, a manager at Oracle who was pulling down $40,000 per quarter in bonuses by billing customers for work that wasn't being done, then assigning me the projects after they were already late and handing me the blame for the projects being late. So it seems he had good reason to NOT want to discuss this via email.
Uh, I think there might be a chance that decisions like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. may have some slight effect on Your Rights Online, and thus might qualify as "News for nerds".
In the 3 recent bad SCOTUS decisions (including the medical marijuana and eminent domain decisions) it seems to me the "conservatives" wrote the disents. That being said, we may very well be heading towards a fight to overturn Roe v. Wade. In general, I find the recent trend towards "govenments can do anything they damn well please" to be extremely disturbing. Remember that governments are made up of human beings that are quite capable of being short sighted, corrupt, even mean spirited. Hence the need to limit the power of governments to keep people like Richard Nixon and George Bush from doing whatever they want just because the beleive they have some divine right to do so.
Damn! Where do I invest? Sure sounds like poetic justice to me!
Did he get that approval in writing? Remember, anytime a manager says "Let's not discuss this via email, let's just talk in person," it is because they don't want a written record of what was said to exist! In which case, your best recourse is to immediatly start looking for another job.
If he was still working for the company at the time of the seizure, than chances are he had a full source tree on his home computer so that he could do test builds at home. All of which is perfectly normal and necessary to do his job. To the non-technical, the argument "why did he need copies of files he was not charged with maintaining?" may sound valid. However, anybody who has ever maintained software can tell you that you usually need almost all the header files and always need all the objects to link against in order to do a test build just to see if you made any mistakes in the single file you changed. Again, finding all the companies source on his home computer proves nothing; what they would have to do is find proof that he was transmitting that source to somebody else. The REALLY stupid thing is that it is not at all necessary to download source to your home computer to appropriate secrets; anybody could walk into the company with a few 1GByte USB flash memory keys and walk out with all the source, and there would be no record of it having been transferred. Hmm... did the search warrant explicitly include flash memory devices as well? I am not a lawyer, but I beleive they can't seize anything not specifically mentioned in the warrant.
Omg! People who SMS or play online games a lot quickly learn that even saving 2 letters can make the difference between having a message fit on the display or having it be truncated and thus totally unreadable. Also, when you're trying to type as fast as you normally talk (or as fast as you can think), some typographical errors are inevitable. The objective of communication is to efficiently convey meaning between speaker and listener. To do this, you need to know your audience; for some audiences, these abbreviations ARE the most effective means of communication.
Can you send me a copy of the official English language handbook? It's called the Oxford English Dictionary, and no, I can't send you one... buy your own!
Wow... you're living room only has 2 corners? What shape is that?
Yes, Intel is nowhere near as bad as DeBeers. But you don't have to have 100% market share to use "predatory business tactics".
Aren't you forgetting 4) The medical marijuana ruling, which by ruling that the federal government has the right to arrest people grown in their own home for the own use under the "commerce clause" of the constution, effectively established a precedent that state's rights no longer exist? Everything, including sex and politics, is sold somewhere and crosses state lines somewhere, therefore now everything can be controlled by the federal government, and the individual state statutes be damned!