This bill protects against genetic predisposition NOT actions.
And if I claim my actions are driven by my genetic predisposition, what then? Can you say with 100% certainty that I'm wrong? Are you sure I won't be able to find medical researcher who says it's not impossible?
I know this is going to get modded -1 in about 30 seconds, and really anger people, but this bill seems like one of those "Let's make ourselves look good" bills more than anything else. I think the guy voting against it may have been in the right.
If my dad was a drunk, can I drink at work or right before work and claim it's in my genes? Technically they can't discriminate against me in that case.
What about smoking? If I claim the genes for addiction run in my family, and that's why I smoke 3 packs a day, should I still get the same insurance rates as nonsmokers?
Because of this law, fewer people will be able to afford insurance. Normally high risk people get higher rates. Since the insurance companies can't do that in these cases, they're going to raise rates for everybody instead. So in 5 years the same people who voted for this bill are going to claim the system is broken because there's so many people without insurance. Guess why? It's because they keep breaking the system with bills like this one.
It's unfair that some people are genetically programmed to get certain diseases. That sucks. But life isn't fair. Why should the rest of us have to pay for other people's bad luck?
There will be no servers hosting DeCSS in Finland.
Other than that, there won't be any change. I've been watching DVDs under Linux in the United States for years and have never had a problem.
Unless you call up your local copyright police, report you're "illegally" watching a DVD, and then let them watch you play it on an "unapproved" player, there's no way for them to prove you've broken the law. Short of that, if it ever comes up, point to your regular DVD player and claim you've only used it to watch movies. Burden of proof is on them.
Oh, I definitely noticed that. But let me put it this way... if Emacs is terrible for using "Eight megs and constantly swapping", there's really no excuse for Eclipse using 800 megs with far fewer features.
Eclipse sucks. It uses 10x more memory than it should, it's a gigantic download, it's slow, the user interface is annoying, it takes forever to start, getting support for new file types requires downloading dozens of megabytes of "plugins", the autocomplete is slow, it only allows you to do one thing at a time (i.e. try configuring build settings and starting a build at the same time), outside of installing (or creating) a new "plugin" it's not very customizable, different "project" types have radically different interfaces,...
I could go on all day. I'll stick with Emacs, thanks.
Beyond that, their stance seems relatively well founded. Take a look at the new privacy policies for Google Health... saying that they might release your records in some situations when required to do so by law.
What the hell? Is that real? There are actually people stupid enough to upload their medical history to Google? Why?
If it's a choice between a company with a history of quality and MicroSoft, then it's inevitably worse then only having the first to "choose" from.
MS is very good at sleazy market manipulation and little else. If they get into a market, then they will drag it down. That's the only tactic they know.
Microsoft is sleazy? Well no shit. But you didn't explain how having only one product to choose from is better than having two products to choose from.
With two products I can say "I don't like Microsoft's product" or "I don't like Google's product", and go to their competitor. I can't do that any more. I either use what Google gives me, or I stop using it at all. How is that better?
Microsoft products suck so bad in part because they (try to) monopolize every market they're in. The best solution to that isn't giving a monopoly to some other company instead.
I don't know anybody who ever thought MS did a good job of anything. Paid for shills like Didio and the like were happy to pump them up, but they've been a joke among the technically adept since day one.
People were saying, "Don't do that or it will get hacked in minutes" for 30 years and they still haven't learned a damn thing.
LOL
Microsoft was the Google of the 80s. Geeks loved them because they released all kinds of neat, affordable PC software. If you wanted a compiler for a PC, you got it from Microsoft. At the time, they could do no wrong. Remind you of anyone?
Seriously, dude, pay attention once in a while.
LOL. You're ignorant, so I should pay more attention. Nice.
Not goofy at all. Virtualization has benefits that traditional security can't offer and never will be able to offer.
That wasn't the question, though. The virtual machine is using the underlying Windows network infrastructure, but supposedly you're only running a seperate firewall in a virtual machine because you distrust the underlying Windows network infrastructure. So how are you any more safe than before?
They closed our division. It was a small experimental entry into a related market. All the other company divisions were pretty well established, and layoffs were extremely uncommon in the company.
Exactly. They still had the entire rest of the company to motivate.
The people who decided to close the department were mostly salaried managers. They were also the people who arranged the settlement. The success of the company really didn't mean that much to them. Yes, they wanted the company to be successful because it looked good on them, but they also wanted to make sure we were okay because we'd been working well for them, and the managers were human beings who felt bad for people who'd been good to them.
See? They laid you off and you're still singing their praises. And no doubt there are many people still employed there singing praises about the great severance packages their company gives. That was the goal. The end effect is that the company looks good, which in turn is good for the bottom line. If they could have achieved the same thing, cheaper rest assured they would have.
To make the remaining employees less likely to leave. When a lot of people get laid off, a lot of the remaining employees will quit out of fear they're going to get laid off soon. If you find a new job and quit, it removes the uncertainty and you don't have to worry about it.
Did they lay off every single person in the company? I'm guessing they didn't. I'm also guessing a large percentage of the remaining employees thought "Man, even when they lay people off, this company kicks ass. I'm not gonna worry about getting laid off and try to stay here as long as possible instead."
Big companies look out for themselves. Always. If you find a situation where that doesn't seem to be the case, you're not thinking about it hard enough.
A good company will treat its staff well simply because the staff deserve to be treated well. A good employee will try to do as good a job as he can simply because he feels he should.
No. A good company treats its employees well because it's in the companies best interest to retain good staff. Training new employees is expensive and its cheaper, to a point, to make the existing employees happy so they don't leave. A good employee does his best because he needs to make sure he's worth retaining.
Unless you run your own business or work for a tiny startup, don't give your employer charity because they will not return the favor. Do the work they pay you for, and let them worry about the rest. Harsh as it sounds, it's really better that way.
You shouldn't do the work for the credit, you should do it for the sake of the company and the greater good.
No. Go to work for the money. This "greater good", "for the company" bullshit is why so many idiot software people complain about working 80 hours a week for a 40 hour a week salary.
Don't fool yourself. The company will cut you loose in the blink of an eye when it's in their financial interests.
Working in a corporation is not about "the greater good", it's about making money.
In many cases types of monitor, video card, HDD, optical drive, keyboard, mouse, CPU, memory, etc are options.
That's not always the case. And even when it is, it's usually the same brand. If you buy a Dell, you get a Western Digital hard drive. Whether it's 80, 160, 250 GB, it's still Western Digital. So Western Digital hard drives are illegally bundled with Dell PCs?
No matter how many sticks of RAM you get in the computer, they'll always be the same brand. Since it's easier to change out RAM than it is to change out operating systems, how does RAM not count as being illegally bundled? Where is the lawsuit for that?
The Computer will not function without these things.
It will function without paying for an OS.
A PC can be "fully functional" without a mouse, keyboard, monitor, graphics card, sound card, or hard drive. Should it also be illegal to package those with the computer?
Would Asus's target customer consider their PC fully functional without those pieces? Probably not. Would they consider it fully functional without the OS?
The operating system is a component of the computer, just like the processor, video card, sound card, network card, monitor, keyboard, mouse,... Just because it's not hardware doesn't make it less necessary for using the end product.
If your going to complain about the OS, why not complain that they won't sell a specific PC without and AMD processor or a Tyan motherboard? And if you're going to go there, why not complain about the resistors and individual components on the boards? They're all made by different companies, and the way you're interpretting the law would require letting the consumer pick and choose. If that's where you're heading with this, I guess I see your side of the argument, I just don't understand it.
Your claim about the EULA is also wrong. Of course the purchaser might expect to be presented with a EULA but the EULA that you are supporting is not readable until it has been opened which in itself constitutes acceptance of it. That is not legal in France - or the rest of Europe for that matter. Secondly, the wrapping states quite clearly that, if you do not wish to accept the conditions of the EULA then you may return it unopened for a full refund. The customer was doing exactly this but was having unreasonable barriers placed before him to prevent him from benefiting from the refund. The judge viewed that as unfair and ordered ASUS to refund fair costs. Both Microsoft and ASUS are well aware of the statement on the EULA wrapping but both, in their own way, were attempting to make it uneconomical for the purchaser to exercise his rights.
Okay, fair enough. Not presenting the EULA until after purchase is a bit sneaky, even if it is common practice. But in this case, since the customer didn't buy the OS itself, wouldn't "return for a refund" be referring to the whole PC? If they didn't buy the OS, how can they get a refund for it? Can I rip out the processor and return it specifically? No, if it were bad, I'd have to replace or get a refund for the whole PC.
I don't see how that's relevant. What the PC manufacturer does with the money after I buy their product is none of my business. If they pay Intel every time they sell a machine with an AMD is no more relevant to me than which color they paint their company headquarters. I don't really care.
Does it make business sense? No, because theoretically they could lower prices without paying Intel. But if I still chose to buy their product, I don't give a shit what they use the money for after I give it to them.
Look, if the guy doesn't want to pay the Microsoft Tax, then he shouldn't have to. Last time I checked, they were 2 completely seperate companies, ASUS and Microsoft. Imagine that if every manufacturer pre-installed a $1000 copy of Adobe CS3 and you couldn't opt out of it, wouldn't you be a little pissed off? Wouldn't you feel that you'd have the right to get your money back for something you didn't want in the first place? This isn't the slightest bit different. Not to mention the whole EULA problem. If you can't see the EULA before you purchase something, you can't just say "Oh, well, I won't buy this then". If he didn't agree with the EULA upon starting his computer (which it may not have even appeared, if ASUS preinstalled XP, which would create a whole new problem in itself) then he has every right to tell ASUS to kiss his ass and give him his money back.
You're a moron. The following parts of a computer are usually made by companies other than the comapany assembling the computer:
Processors
Video cards
Sound cards
Motherboards
Keyboards
Mice
Connector cables
Speakers
Printers
Monitors
Network cards
If you want to get really picky, most of those are built from components from even more manufacturers. Maybe next time you should sue because your Asus PC isn't using entirely Panasonic brand resistors.
When you buy an Asus PC, you're buying the combination of hardware and software that Asus wants to sell. If you think they've made a bad system, don't buy one and go shop somewhere else. There's no shortage of companies selling prebuilt computers.
As for the EULA, everybody knows commercial software requires agreeing to EULAs. Did you honestly buy a PC from Asus, knowing it came with Windows, and *NOT* expect it to have a EULA? Were you hoping that despite every other copy of Windows requiring a EULA, you would get the one copy that didn't require one?
Does your car dealer sell you a car, you drive it away, then when you go to use the power windows it pops up an EULA with onerous terms that you don't agree to?
But that's not the same thing. The computer manufacturer was selling a computer that comes with Windows. If you don't want a computer that comes with windows, don't buy one. It's not like there aren't dozens of places that will sell computers with other operating systems.
To use your analogy, it's like buying a car with power windows, then suing for money back because you don't actually want power windows.
But it doesn't matter. It's like suing Rolls Royce because they won't sell you an SUV or a fancy car with vinyl seats. There are a number of companies that sell PCs without Windows, and if she didn't want Windows, she should've bought from one of those.
What? I hate ISP traffic shaping as much as anybody, but if you agreed to the contract, you agreed that you didn't care if they shaped your bandwidth. If you didn't like the product they were selling, why did you buy it? Nobody likes traffic shaping, and if people would stop being idiots and start refusing to agree to these contracts, one of the big ISPs would start offering non-shaped bandwidth.
This "I don't like this, but I'll just buy it now and sue later" bullshit is out of control Don't people take any responsibility for their actions any more?
That's definitely true. But, if you cut your weight in half, you would get even better gas milage than you already do. When you take that effect and multiply it by all the "overweight" people in the world, it adds up.
Is dieting the best way to save fuel? Probably not. But being over weight does impact on fuel usage.
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And if I claim my actions are driven by my genetic predisposition, what then? Can you say with 100% certainty that I'm wrong? Are you sure I won't be able to find medical researcher who says it's not impossible?
I know this is going to get modded -1 in about 30 seconds, and really anger people, but this bill seems like one of those "Let's make ourselves look good" bills more than anything else. I think the guy voting against it may have been in the right.
If my dad was a drunk, can I drink at work or right before work and claim it's in my genes? Technically they can't discriminate against me in that case.
What about smoking? If I claim the genes for addiction run in my family, and that's why I smoke 3 packs a day, should I still get the same insurance rates as nonsmokers?
Because of this law, fewer people will be able to afford insurance. Normally high risk people get higher rates. Since the insurance companies can't do that in these cases, they're going to raise rates for everybody instead. So in 5 years the same people who voted for this bill are going to claim the system is broken because there's so many people without insurance. Guess why? It's because they keep breaking the system with bills like this one.
It's unfair that some people are genetically programmed to get certain diseases. That sucks. But life isn't fair. Why should the rest of us have to pay for other people's bad luck?
There will be no servers hosting DeCSS in Finland.
Other than that, there won't be any change. I've been watching DVDs under Linux in the United States for years and have never had a problem.
Unless you call up your local copyright police, report you're "illegally" watching a DVD, and then let them watch you play it on an "unapproved" player, there's no way for them to prove you've broken the law. Short of that, if it ever comes up, point to your regular DVD player and claim you've only used it to watch movies. Burden of proof is on them.
Oh, I definitely noticed that. But let me put it this way... if Emacs is terrible for using "Eight megs and constantly swapping", there's really no excuse for Eclipse using 800 megs with far fewer features.
Eclipse sucks. It uses 10x more memory than it should, it's a gigantic download, it's slow, the user interface is annoying, it takes forever to start, getting support for new file types requires downloading dozens of megabytes of "plugins", the autocomplete is slow, it only allows you to do one thing at a time (i.e. try configuring build settings and starting a build at the same time), outside of installing (or creating) a new "plugin" it's not very customizable, different "project" types have radically different interfaces, ...
I could go on all day. I'll stick with Emacs, thanks.
What the hell? Is that real? There are actually people stupid enough to upload their medical history to Google? Why?
That's the scariest thing I've seen all week.
Microsoft is sleazy? Well no shit. But you didn't explain how having only one product to choose from is better than having two products to choose from.
With two products I can say "I don't like Microsoft's product" or "I don't like Google's product", and go to their competitor. I can't do that any more. I either use what Google gives me, or I stop using it at all. How is that better?
Microsoft products suck so bad in part because they (try to) monopolize every market they're in. The best solution to that isn't giving a monopoly to some other company instead.
LOL
Microsoft was the Google of the 80s. Geeks loved them because they released all kinds of neat, affordable PC software. If you wanted a compiler for a PC, you got it from Microsoft. At the time, they could do no wrong. Remind you of anyone?
LOL. You're ignorant, so I should pay more attention. Nice.
Maybe because they were trying to make sure they beat Microsoft?
In any case, not so long ago people were saying the same things about Microsoft, and look how they turned out. Lack of choices is never a good thing.
That wasn't the question, though. The virtual machine is using the underlying Windows network infrastructure, but supposedly you're only running a seperate firewall in a virtual machine because you distrust the underlying Windows network infrastructure. So how are you any more safe than before?
Exactly. They still had the entire rest of the company to motivate.
See? They laid you off and you're still singing their praises. And no doubt there are many people still employed there singing praises about the great severance packages their company gives. That was the goal. The end effect is that the company looks good, which in turn is good for the bottom line. If they could have achieved the same thing, cheaper rest assured they would have.
To make the remaining employees less likely to leave. When a lot of people get laid off, a lot of the remaining employees will quit out of fear they're going to get laid off soon. If you find a new job and quit, it removes the uncertainty and you don't have to worry about it.
Did they lay off every single person in the company? I'm guessing they didn't. I'm also guessing a large percentage of the remaining employees thought "Man, even when they lay people off, this company kicks ass. I'm not gonna worry about getting laid off and try to stay here as long as possible instead."
Big companies look out for themselves. Always. If you find a situation where that doesn't seem to be the case, you're not thinking about it hard enough.
No. A good company treats its employees well because it's in the companies best interest to retain good staff. Training new employees is expensive and its cheaper, to a point, to make the existing employees happy so they don't leave. A good employee does his best because he needs to make sure he's worth retaining.
Unless you run your own business or work for a tiny startup, don't give your employer charity because they will not return the favor. Do the work they pay you for, and let them worry about the rest. Harsh as it sounds, it's really better that way.
No. Go to work for the money. This "greater good", "for the company" bullshit is why so many idiot software people complain about working 80 hours a week for a 40 hour a week salary.
Don't fool yourself. The company will cut you loose in the blink of an eye when it's in their financial interests.
Working in a corporation is not about "the greater good", it's about making money.
Does that make his point any less valid? Just because some "FLOSS projects" don't clean up their warnings, doesn't mean the rest of us shouldn't.
That's not always the case. And even when it is, it's usually the same brand. If you buy a Dell, you get a Western Digital hard drive. Whether it's 80, 160, 250 GB, it's still Western Digital. So Western Digital hard drives are illegally bundled with Dell PCs?
No matter how many sticks of RAM you get in the computer, they'll always be the same brand. Since it's easier to change out RAM than it is to change out operating systems, how does RAM not count as being illegally bundled? Where is the lawsuit for that?
A PC can be "fully functional" without a mouse, keyboard, monitor, graphics card, sound card, or hard drive. Should it also be illegal to package those with the computer?
Would Asus's target customer consider their PC fully functional without those pieces? Probably not. Would they consider it fully functional without the OS?
The operating system is a component of the computer, just like the processor, video card, sound card, network card, monitor, keyboard, mouse, ... Just because it's not hardware doesn't make it less necessary for using the end product.
If your going to complain about the OS, why not complain that they won't sell a specific PC without and AMD processor or a Tyan motherboard? And if you're going to go there, why not complain about the resistors and individual components on the boards? They're all made by different companies, and the way you're interpretting the law would require letting the consumer pick and choose. If that's where you're heading with this, I guess I see your side of the argument, I just don't understand it.
Okay, fair enough. Not presenting the EULA until after purchase is a bit sneaky, even if it is common practice. But in this case, since the customer didn't buy the OS itself, wouldn't "return for a refund" be referring to the whole PC? If they didn't buy the OS, how can they get a refund for it? Can I rip out the processor and return it specifically? No, if it were bad, I'd have to replace or get a refund for the whole PC.
I don't see how that's relevant. What the PC manufacturer does with the money after I buy their product is none of my business. If they pay Intel every time they sell a machine with an AMD is no more relevant to me than which color they paint their company headquarters. I don't really care.
Does it make business sense? No, because theoretically they could lower prices without paying Intel. But if I still chose to buy their product, I don't give a shit what they use the money for after I give it to them.
I already explained it here.
It's a stupid law.
You're a moron. The following parts of a computer are usually made by companies other than the comapany assembling the computer:
If you want to get really picky, most of those are built from components from even more manufacturers. Maybe next time you should sue because your Asus PC isn't using entirely Panasonic brand resistors.
When you buy an Asus PC, you're buying the combination of hardware and software that Asus wants to sell. If you think they've made a bad system, don't buy one and go shop somewhere else. There's no shortage of companies selling prebuilt computers.
As for the EULA, everybody knows commercial software requires agreeing to EULAs. Did you honestly buy a PC from Asus, knowing it came with Windows, and *NOT* expect it to have a EULA? Were you hoping that despite every other copy of Windows requiring a EULA, you would get the one copy that didn't require one?
But that's not the same thing. The computer manufacturer was selling a computer that comes with Windows. If you don't want a computer that comes with windows, don't buy one. It's not like there aren't dozens of places that will sell computers with other operating systems.
To use your analogy, it's like buying a car with power windows, then suing for money back because you don't actually want power windows.
But it doesn't matter. It's like suing Rolls Royce because they won't sell you an SUV or a fancy car with vinyl seats. There are a number of companies that sell PCs without Windows, and if she didn't want Windows, she should've bought from one of those.
What? I hate ISP traffic shaping as much as anybody, but if you agreed to the contract, you agreed that you didn't care if they shaped your bandwidth. If you didn't like the product they were selling, why did you buy it? Nobody likes traffic shaping, and if people would stop being idiots and start refusing to agree to these contracts, one of the big ISPs would start offering non-shaped bandwidth.
This "I don't like this, but I'll just buy it now and sue later" bullshit is out of control Don't people take any responsibility for their actions any more?
Yeah... that might actually replace "e-learning 2.0 Space" as my favorite buzzword laden nonsense in a Slashdot summary.
That's definitely true. But, if you cut your weight in half, you would get even better gas milage than you already do. When you take that effect and multiply it by all the "overweight" people in the world, it adds up.
Is dieting the best way to save fuel? Probably not. But being over weight does impact on fuel usage.