Well, in hindsight, squeezing additional money after a film's release is kind of the whole George Lucas "hallmark". It's really his "trump card" he played back when Star Wars was first released, which made him the man who beat Hollywood at their own game.
(He was the first to realize there was a potential fortune in marketing toys based on the movie characters, so got himself rights to any/all of those profits as part of his movie contract. Hollywood, at the time, didn't think that was important so they ignored that clause while trying to screw him in the usual ways,)
I've never really agreed with his premise that movies are always "unfinished projects" you can go back and revise at will, though. IMO, you're supposed to give your best effort and consider it a one-shot opportunity. When the final product comes out in the theater, it's "finished", for better or for worse. Yes, someone else can do a "remake" later, if they so desire. But remakes are other people's interpretations of the story... not the ORIGINAL producer deciding to revise it.
When it comes to the Star Wars saga though? Enough time has passed so you've got whole new generations of kids wanting to buy/watch it, and inevitably, some of them will buy whatever the latest edition is on store shelves, vs. going to extra effort to obtain the "original" versions. So yeah, some profits will always be there -- but it's just an annoyance to people like me.
In this scenario, I'd be happy to see the turn-about, because I'm against the whole concept of cops issuing speeding tickets as it's currently done. The REAL point to the whole exercise is SUPPOSED to be about improving motorist safety. (At least, that's sure what the cops are constantly heard to claim, whenever someone protests the high cost of a ticket.) IF this were really true, the right way to approach the problem would be handling out tickets for unsafe driving practices, period. That means, for example, treating all speed limit signs as "recommendations". Stop the nonsense of automatically ticketing any driver exceeding that posted limit by X miles per hour at the second they went by a radar or laser speed gun! Instead, observe how people are driving. Give out tickets to the people who swerve into a lane of traffic without signaling, or the idiot who slams on his/her brakes on the interstate suddenly, without good reason. And yes, occasionally issue a ticket for driving excessively slow or fast too -- but not JUST because of the sign. If everyone is driving approximately the same speed, whether it exceeds the "speed limit" or not, look for the odd one out who won't drive with the flow of traffic. He or she presents much more of a danger or impedance to the traffic than anyone else in that group! For that matter, it wouldn't hurt to take the type of vehicle into account! (You can't take turns safely at as high of a speed in a large truck or SUV as you can in a sports car. So for one, the speed might be perfectly "safe" while it's not for the other.)
The fact is though, speeding tickets are a big revenue generator (AKA. tax), thinly veiled with the lie about it being for "your safety".
As it should, IMHO. Were you attempting to shock us into thinking this should be otherwise?
If you commit armed robbery with an AK-47 (or whichever weapon you choose to wield?), you've presumably been successful in taking some money that wasn't yours -- but this charge, alone, doesn't mean you physically harmed anyone.
If you shoot into a crowd, again, you put people at RISK of injury or death, but again, if you actually injured/killed someone, the crime wouldn't simply be "shooting into a crowd" any longer.
If you sell heroin to children? Well, you're not likely to get off too easy for that one.... but at least you were simply conducting a business transaction with an illegal substance. Without looking into each individual circumstance, we know little to nothing about the long-term effects that sale had on the kid(s) who did the buying. Maybe they were just paid something to buy it for an adult family member who knew kids wouldn't serve time for such an act?
If you plant child porn on someone's computer or other property with successful intent to frame them for collecting it? You *definitely* ruined that person's life/reputation. There's really no "potentially" about it! They're going to go to prison for a long time for that crime they didn't commit, PLUS after they get out, they're stuck "checking in" with probation officers on pretty much a weekly basis, are restricted as to where they can buy or rent a home, and will have a really tough time getting respectable jobs. Many jobs will be illegal for them to obtain, period (such as a handyman or construction worker doing any work for schools or day-care/child-care centers). Even if you were DIRECTLY responsible for getting a person hooked on illegal drugs, at least that person could go seek treatment and get back off of them. There is no "cure" for someone's sexual interest in underage kids, so nowhere the framed individual could ever go to prove he was no longer a risk.
Sure, you can become a target when you make a lot of money. But that's one more reason to trot out the old line about, "With great power comes great responsibility." Money = power, in this case. If you manage to get into a position where you're paid millions of dollars to do a job, you should be extra cautious about the decisions you make that could negatively affect you.
He filed inaccurate expense reports? Well, who CARES if it was provably intentional or not!? How hard is it to accurately fill out an expense report?! I've done it many times at my job, and it's a simple matter of turning in all your receipts and documenting on a sheet of paper when and for what purpose each of them was. If you submitted tens of thousands of dollars worth of them "questionable" enough to result in your employer considering terminating you? You *screwed up*, period!
Unlike most of us, Hurd earned enough money so he could EASILY have just paid out of pocket for anything he wanted that he wasn't absolutely SURE his employer was going to cover without any problems!
Probably true, but I think the bigger problem is what I've stated before about the Pirate Party. They don't project a clear stance on any major issues not directly related to copyright. I'm all for the changes they propose, but I think it's a bit "excessive" to vote in a whole new political party just to address that, when there would be so many other unknowns about which way they'd vote on anything from foreign economic policy to education to war, to ??
You're acting like the only "problem" anyone has with Android OS is that they didn't do their homework before buying, and didn't know what they were getting!
Like anything, SOME minority of buyers fall into that category, but especially with something as advanced as a "smartphone", I don't think this is usually the case. People interested in a cellphone that does all of this tend to be fairly tech-savvy already. The others flatly reject such products as "useless", "too confusing" or "too expensive to buy/keep service on".
The problem I see with Android (and yes, I'm using an Android phone right now!), is that Google made a huge mess of it. After touting it as the world's greatest phone OS and hyping it up, they released a POS that needed multiple revisions to get it "on par" with its competitors, and even the latest 2.2 "Froyo" STILL lacks in many areas. Tasks that should be complete "no brainers" like dragging icons around on a screen to re-arrange them turned out to be impossible. Support for web proxy servers on wi-fi connections? Non-existent! Simply deleting an application takes about 5 steps (including scrolling through long list of all installed apps to find the one I want to remove), where it only took 2 on an iPhone (hold down icon until it "jiggles" and tap the X that appears in the top corner of the icon).
There's nothing inherently bad about allowing extendability and extra functionality, but there IS a real problem when you let individual carriers *cripple* functionality to suit their own best interests, and when you didn't take any steps to ensure the hardware your OS was offered on was adequate to give a good user experience! Even Microsoft tried to "certify" computer systems as being appropriate/sufficient to run various "flavors" of the Windows 7 product. With Android, there was no such thing. Lots of people promised a future update to phone X or Y from an older version of Android, without even verifying it was going to be possible to do -- so some are backpedaling, while others are just ignoring questions about it.
My Sanyo "Zio" Android phone, for example, includes demo versions of pointless games (Midnight Bowling and an Uno card game) that it won't let me delete, as well as some shortcut to my carrier's web site that I'd rather get rid of, but can't. Where's the "usability" in that, when I can't so much as erase a crippled/demo program I don't want on the device?!
As a former iPhone user who recently switched to Android based phones (not because I disliked the iPhone, mind you - but simply because I disliked AT&T), I've seen a weird "disconnect" between ultimately similar issues with both platforms. The media is constantly harping on the iPhone and its current jailbreak situation. Is firmware X broken? What does the LAW say about that? Is Steve Jobs pissed about it? What happens when firmware X.1 is released? Will jailbreakers skip the minor release and save their good exploit for a major rev? Stay tuned!!
Meanwhile, over in Android-land, you've got all these new makes and models of phones coming out on a weekly basis that use some variant of the OS, and everyone seems to need to be able to "root" the phones, or else they can't use some of the apps (such as various wi-fi tethering programs, or a version of "wireshark" for Android). Also, it seems it's a necessary first step so hackers can get into the phone to "dump" the ROM code, analyze it, and try to make custom firmware based off it it with the required drivers for phone-specific cameras and other hardware rolled into them. I hear VERY little in the news about ANY of this, however. (I bought a new Kyocera Zio Android to use with my Cricket wireless service, and it took the better part of a week to figure out how to get it rooted, since most message forums just had a few comments from people saying "I heard someone rooted their Zio already, but now I hear their phone isn't working right anymore...." and no solid info. I finally found a version of a "universal root" script I could email to the phone and run, and got root successfully - though the script author doesn't even list the Zio on his compatible phones list. Since the Zio still only comes with Android 1.6, there's a lot of incentive for people to roll some custom 2.1 or 2.2 firmware for it.... but again, I won't hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
As predicted, I already saw a bunch of comments on the original story with parents saying they'd be "angry if their kid wasted their money" on something like this, etc. etc.
In reality, it all depends on the instructor and their willingness to teach useful material. I remember when I was in college, I took a "History of Rock Music" course that the vast majority of people joked about and blew off as one of those "underwater basket-weaving" type classes you'd just take for an easy credit. In actuality, the instructor was a PhD in music who didn't even like rock music very much. He simply realized that most STUDENTS did, however, so it was a topic that held a lot of interest to them. He warned us from day 1 that "if you're expecting this to be an easy, blow-off class, you may want to drop out now". It turns out, he went into considerable depth about the roots of rock music and showed us the links between aspects of contemporary rock music and other forms of music that came before it. We covered what was essentially outright theft of R&B or Soul music of the 50's and 60's, as white musicians redid the original songs as early "pop/rock hits" and compared the original works to the "covers" or "re-makes". We had to write detailed reports and present them in class, discussing artists we felt were significant to the rock music genre and justify that position with facts and details. Essentially, it served as a writing course, an oral communications course, AND a history course all in one, and I think most of us got a lot out of it. (I was playing guitar in a local band at the time, so it seemed like a relevant elective course to take. I left with a little bit better presentation/public speaking skills and an ability to listen to music more critically than before. Really not a bad course at all.)
If the "in" thing is zombies, then great! Why not use it as a "hook" to get people in to a course that's going to teach them a lot about scriptwriting and the basic requirements for making a good movie? Again though, this could *easily* be abused too, if the wrong instructor is teaching it -- because the topic itself means very little. (Unless you REALLY believe the zombies are coming to take over the world -- you probably feel like learning about zombies is pretty pointless to spend college money on!) It's all about how the topic is used to teach something that goes beyond it.
Regardless of whether or not someone leaked out a copy of the movie months before its release, the *real* problem seems to be that they're spending WAY too much to make a movie, and then complaining when their return on investment isn't what they hoped for!
The average motion picture is roughly 2 hours long, right? (Often shorter, and sometimes a few minutes longer, but let's just say 2 hours for the sake of picking a number.) That appears to be about $125,000 per MINUTE they spent to make it, given a $15 million budget!
I haven't even watched Hurt Locker yet, but as I understand it, it's a contemporary movie about the war we're STILL fighting right now! It's definitely not a film that required a lot of painstaking effort to accurately re-create events of the distant past. All the costuming, props, etc. should have been readily available. So WHY can't this type of story be told for FAR less money?
Personally, if I was producing a movie in Hollywood today, I'd pass on any of the "big name" actors and actresses that demand huge salaries, and concentrate instead on having a really good script. Then I'd find some talented but under-appreciated/utilized actors/actresses and see what I could do with them instead. In the last 5 years or so, I've seen much more "in depth" and interesting stories coming out of foreign films with exponentially lower production budgets than the garbage we keep cranking out here in the USA. It's time for Hollywood to rethink how they do business... not to blame file-sharers for their problems and try to continue the status-quo!
Yeah.... but in all seriousness, if manufacturers like Intel or AMD would spend the money to make sure new laptops were designed with cool glowing, backlit versions of their logos on new notebooks - I don't think you'd see all the complaining!
People simply don't like the stickers because they make the whole machine look cheap and tacky, especially when they start wearing or peeling off in one corner after a while, but still refuse to come off cleanly. Nothing like a sticker that says "ntel Insi" with wear marks on the sides!
They'll keep reporting each and every one, now that the Obama administration is on a mission to push through new legislation promoting "alternate energy". After a few of them, they should have the public alarmed enough to agreeably pass things taxing them for their carbon footprint and much more....
You're talking about Sony and others regarding the device as though "the user is leasing it from them" -- yet every time I look at intellectual property copyright, it sounds like they're implying just that! (You're not really buying the music/movie/software! You're simply paying for a license to use the content according to all the rules we've set forth! The physical media you received in the transaction is just the vehicle used to get the intellectual property from point A to B. It doesn't imply you really BOUGHT a copy of our product itself.)
What I've observed as an I.T. guy who often worked along-side developers is, management often decides a certain technology is the way forward for a given project. At that point, the experienced developers are sometimes left out in the cold, because although they may have, say, 6 years of good experience coding in Java, they didn't spend time on the latest Microsoft technologies. The "new kid on the block", by contrast, may have claimed experience in that area, so to management, he's the "better bet".
Most likely, the REAL problem here is that management doesn't buy into or grasp the idea that the development language used is rather immaterial. If you've got someone with many years of experience coding in a specific language, it'd probably yield the best results to let them continue doing that. Ask them to produce product X or Y with whichever tools they're most versed in using!
Instead though, there's an overall sense that programming languages get "stale" after a while, and a new product needs to be designed with a new language.
I'd say I only have a few personal anecdotal stories to back this belief up, so it could be way off base... except how much demand is there today for developers with experience in COBOL or Fortran or BASIC, or Pascal, or Forth? I've always worked in a "Support Specialist" or "Network Management" role, but I've observed all these programming languages come and go -- and it seems like such a bad deal for a developer. He/she has to put in so much effort to learn and subsequently master one, only to find it fading into obscurity.
I, too, am a parent and find it a very good and useful thing that my kid can watch television without me having to worry constantly about what they might be showing her that's not appropriate for her age group. BUT, that doesn't justify the "indecency laws" enforced by the FCC either.
For one thing, when these were first conceived, television was a far different animal than it is today. There were no such things as cable TV or satellite broadcasting, with people getting hundreds of channels at a time. You had a few locals and that was pretty much it. The idea was, the free television stations were there to perform a public service, and as such, should be catering to as many potential viewers as possible.
These days, you have stations segmented by their content. Even with nothing more than an antenna on my digital TV, I can pick up stations like "PBS Kids" or a station showing nothing but DYI/Home Improvement content. Another has nothing but weather info on it. If I'm willing to pay a little bit for satellite or cable, I've got all sorts of choices including stations that only show kid's cartoons all day long and channels made by Disney that don't show any "adult" content either.
The need just isn't there anymore to punish a station for its content choices. At most, legislation should be aimed towards "truth in labeling" so viewers are always made aware of the type of content the station intends to show. IMHO, your basic local stations aren't going to express much interest in deviating from the type of material that broadcast now - regardless of FCC regulations. If they start allowing too much cursing and nudity, they're going to lose too many viewers, in a market where consumers have more options than ever before and tend to time-shift record programming anyway (sometimes even stripping out the commercials).
Probably just happened the be the max. amount they were insured for on their computer equipment?
I'm just saying... when crazy stuff like this happens and the accused is clearly in the wrong, they sure don't tend to go to lots of trouble to report accurate figures of what the cost of damage really was.
I mean, ok, it COULD have really been a $100,000 server, but everyplace I worked, our rack mount servers were more like $5,000 - $14,000 each. You might double that if you've got an external drive array in there attached to it. But shoot, even the big Oracle database server we purchased in the late 90's at a previous employer was around $60K, if I recall correctly. $100K should buy you quite a nice server configuration -- and seems like more than a typical home loan place would need?
Unfortunately, I *do* expect such commentary from magazines like Time or Newsweek. They still haven't really grasped (or don't wish to acknowledge) the idea that political viewpoints can be represented far better on a 4-square grid than on a line with "liberal" one one end and "conservative" on the other.
Ronald Reagan made MANY comments that lead me to believe he was more of a libertarian than a Republican (at least in any modern sense of the word). The fact the whole "war on drugs" started under his presidency tends to make people write that off as impossible -- but it's important to realize that was probably much more of his WIFE's pet-project and idea than his own. It looks like this judge he appointed follows in a similar vein of "fiscally conservative yet socially liberal". Good for him!
Are you really confident that colleges are churning out graduates with those "good foundations"? Among other flaws with this concept:
1. Many college graduates seem to THINK the whole purpose of that expensive education was to prove they now know all the things they need to know to be handed a job in their field of choice. These people can't be "readily trained" because they've already shut that part of their brain off, thinking after 4+ years of it, they're "done for now". 2. Considering how many courses in college have NO relevance to a given job, I'd question how good a "foundation" much of it really provides? (I think many others question it too... hence some of the recent backlash about the value proposition of going to colleges, especially for "Liberal Arts" type degrees.) "Well rounded individuals", unfortunately, tend to be "jacks of all trades, but masters of none". They may be better conversationalists than someone with less education, or who focused on a specialty... but not sure it puts them in an advantageous position in the job market? What REALLY matters is if the individual has the desire to KEEP learning the specific skills of relevance after school is done. But those types will look equally good/proficient whether they did this after a 4 year degree, or they did it on their own while skipping college. 3. You're absolutely right that college is "not supposed to be vocational training"... but that makes me question why we don't emphasize vocational training more than we do? Other countries seem to advocate it more than we do, offering students opportunities to go the vocational training route early in school -- and without the social stigma we still attach to it. College seems like it's great for people who want to become teachers or pursue an art. But it's almost disingenuous for them to offer degrees in things like I.T. -- when a good vocational school could provide FAR better preparation for that field.
I know in my own career, I've pretty much found that no matter where I apply for jobs, the companies who keep hiring me are all related to manufacturing. Before that, they were all small computer resellers/retailers (back in the days when I worked as a tech in the back room). After a while, you simply get proficient in too many specialized software packages that relate to a certain industry, and putting them on your resume attracts more people wanting the same thing.
I don't see how this will change either. Most people who manage to move into new areas of I.T. do so when they get lucky enough to work for an employer who lets them make lateral moves inside the business to try new things. If you work for smaller places, your options will always be more restricted in this regard (though you may get other benefits like more free time/less demand for you to be on-call during evenings and weekends).
No kidding.... but additionally, let's arrogantly assume that today's technology determines what materials and the quantities needed for all future generations to thrive!
IMHO, nature is all about evolving. Entire species die off over time, and others change over enough time. Why can't we humans accept that this is actually NORMAL, and just use whatever resources benefit us at the present time? If/when we run out of oil, for example, fine... Humans are equipped with brains, allowing us to come up with NEW ways to power things that don't require oil, or alternately, ways to synthesize oil from other materials. It's a basic law of physics that matter is neither created, nor destroyed -- just converted from one thing into another. There will always be some sorts of "raw materials" around to work with, if we just figure out effective ways to use/convert whatever makes the most sense at a given point in our history.
I mean, perhaps it's true that Apple sets themselves up to receive F.U.D. like this, because of their well-known stance of liking to retain control over the way their devices operate. But realistically, it's not even legal to go disabling people's electronic devices. Apple would be insane to think they'd get by with bricking or disabling iPhones whenever they detected a (legal to do) jailbreak occurred on one! (Imagine the magnitude of the lawsuits when some lawyer or doctor loses his/her important notes or contact info he/she stored in the phone - thanks to Apple auto-detecting the fact they jailbroke it in the past.)
The *only* valid reason they'd want to patent this is to aid in catching criminals who steal the devices. (If you have the system snap their picture and upload it before shutting down the device, that's an effective tool in helping nab the perpetrator.)
Yes, but how far did you push back when you were challenged?
It's really pretty clear that a photographer has certain rights to shoot photos anyplace in public in the U.S.A. Government has often tried to intimidate photographers, under the guise that "national security" demands they cease, or alternately, lower-level security protests under false claims that some "policy" was violated.
Having a gun pointed at you is a pretty strong intimidation tactic, yet if you're confident you're in the right, you can still stick up for your rights in that situation. Some soldier driving out to meet you in a Hummer is probably NOT prepared to fire a weapon at a civilian photographer. WAY too many consequences for an action that extreme. So you *could* have let them arrest you and take your camera, rather than complying... and you'd have a really GOOD chance of coming out the victor.
But let's face it.... that skyline photo probably wasn't something you wanted badly enough to fight for it.
Actually, it sounds like I should step back in here and clarify this a bit.
First off, the employer in question was already winding down his business before the whole "someone took my clients!" thing came up. He announced to us he was no longer paying for the office space he had been leasing, and he was going back to "running the business out of the basement of his house, like it was when he first started it". Right then, I knew that meant his office assistant was losing her job, so I asked what this meant for me? That's when I was assured that he'd "continue to send me jobs, like before - except he'd just call me on the phone to tell me where to go for each one" and I didn't need to come into an office first, anymore.
Within only a few DAYS of him ceasing to live up to his promise (and again, remember, I was never officially "fired".... just left hanging, waiting for my phone to ring until I realized he wasn't really going to call me anymore), I had a couple of his customers calling ME on my cellphone, because they couldn't reach the owner and needed computer service. They dug around until they got my cell number.
I just don't see any way to construe my actions as "wrong" under these circumstances. On the contrary, if I had just ignored the whole situation and started looking for a different job - how many people who relied on us for computer support would I have inconvenienced? Sure, they could hire some competitor -- but then they'd get people unfamiliar with their systems and software, who they'd be paying for their time to get up to speed on it again. And how would any of it been fair to me, personally, either? I gave 110% for this company for several years, because I really wanted it to succeed. I really ENJOYED doing on-site work and cared about the customer-base. I had no interest in trying to do it all alone, especially since he already had a great corporate logo, invested in Yellow Pages advertising, and had some parts inventory in stock that I would have had to buy out-of-pocket if I did it by myself. But after being back-stabbed for something I didn't do and putting me in that position? I think it was fully justifiable.
Heck no.... I've worked for 2 different businesses that standardized on McAfee corporate AV - about 5 years apart from each other. In neither case was the product worth a darn. Did it protect against any virus infections? Well, yes - I think maybe once at one company, and once at the other one, at least one or two PCs reported an infection that it cleaned/removed. But in the meantime, it killed performance on hundreds of workstations and caused a number of blue-screen crashes when various engine updates didn't work properly. The central administration console for it, I'd describe as shoddy at best. If I clicked around enough in it, I regularly got Windows exception errors and the console closed out. All around? It felt to me like a product someone might have given away as freeware... but definitely not worth paying for.
On the "personal" side? I've had equally poor experiences with McAfee as it came pre-loaded with various laptops. I'd have to say Symantec/Norton was often worse - but that's not saying much.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, in hindsight, squeezing additional money after a film's release is kind of the whole George Lucas "hallmark". It's really his "trump card" he played back when Star Wars was first released, which made him the man who beat Hollywood at their own game.
(He was the first to realize there was a potential fortune in marketing toys based on the movie characters, so got himself rights to any/all of those profits as part of his movie contract. Hollywood, at the time, didn't think that was important so they ignored that clause while trying to screw him in the usual ways,)
I've never really agreed with his premise that movies are always "unfinished projects" you can go back and revise at will, though. IMO, you're supposed to give your best effort and consider it a one-shot opportunity. When the final product comes out in the theater, it's "finished", for better or for worse. Yes, someone else can do a "remake" later, if they so desire. But remakes are other people's interpretations of the story ... not the ORIGINAL producer deciding to revise it.
When it comes to the Star Wars saga though? Enough time has passed so you've got whole new generations of kids wanting to buy/watch it, and inevitably, some of them will buy whatever the latest edition is on store shelves, vs. going to extra effort to obtain the "original" versions. So yeah, some profits will always be there -- but it's just an annoyance to people like me.
In this scenario, I'd be happy to see the turn-about, because I'm against the whole concept of cops issuing speeding tickets as it's currently done. The REAL point to the whole exercise is SUPPOSED to be about improving motorist safety. (At least, that's sure what the cops are constantly heard to claim, whenever someone protests the high cost of a ticket.) IF this were really true, the right way to approach the problem would be handling out tickets for unsafe driving practices, period. That means, for example, treating all speed limit signs as "recommendations". Stop the nonsense of automatically ticketing any driver exceeding that posted limit by X miles per hour at the second they went by a radar or laser speed gun! Instead, observe how people are driving. Give out tickets to the people who swerve into a lane of traffic without signaling, or the idiot who slams on his/her brakes on the interstate suddenly, without good reason. And yes, occasionally issue a ticket for driving excessively slow or fast too -- but not JUST because of the sign. If everyone is driving approximately the same speed, whether it exceeds the "speed limit" or not, look for the odd one out who won't drive with the flow of traffic. He or she presents much more of a danger or impedance to the traffic than anyone else in that group! For that matter, it wouldn't hurt to take the type of vehicle into account! (You can't take turns safely at as high of a speed in a large truck or SUV as you can in a sports car. So for one, the speed might be perfectly "safe" while it's not for the other.)
The fact is though, speeding tickets are a big revenue generator (AKA. tax), thinly veiled with the lie about it being for "your safety".
Probably so .... and wouldn't be surprised if it kicks off a new campaign to stop people from driving Segways while texting, too.
As it should, IMHO. Were you attempting to shock us into thinking this should be otherwise?
If you commit armed robbery with an AK-47 (or whichever weapon you choose to wield?), you've presumably been successful in taking some money that wasn't yours -- but this charge, alone, doesn't mean you physically harmed anyone.
If you shoot into a crowd, again, you put people at RISK of injury or death, but again, if you actually injured/killed someone, the crime wouldn't simply be "shooting into a crowd" any longer.
If you sell heroin to children? Well, you're not likely to get off too easy for that one .... but at least you were simply conducting a business transaction with an illegal substance. Without looking into each individual circumstance, we know little to nothing about the long-term effects that sale had on the kid(s) who did the buying. Maybe they were just paid something to buy it for an adult family member who knew kids wouldn't serve time for such an act?
If you plant child porn on someone's computer or other property with successful intent to frame them for collecting it? You *definitely* ruined that person's life/reputation. There's really no "potentially" about it! They're going to go to prison for a long time for that crime they didn't commit, PLUS after they get out, they're stuck "checking in" with probation officers on pretty much a weekly basis, are restricted as to where they can buy or rent a home, and will have a really tough time getting respectable jobs. Many jobs will be illegal for them to obtain, period (such as a handyman or construction worker doing any work for schools or day-care/child-care centers). Even if you were DIRECTLY responsible for getting a person hooked on illegal drugs, at least that person could go seek treatment and get back off of them. There is no "cure" for someone's sexual interest in underage kids, so nowhere the framed individual could ever go to prove he was no longer a risk.
Sure, you can become a target when you make a lot of money. But that's one more reason to trot out the old line about, "With great power comes great responsibility." Money = power, in this case. If you manage to get into a position where you're paid millions of dollars to do a job, you should be extra cautious about the decisions you make that could negatively affect you.
He filed inaccurate expense reports? Well, who CARES if it was provably intentional or not!? How hard is it to accurately fill out an expense report?! I've done it many times at my job, and it's a simple matter of turning in all your receipts and documenting on a sheet of paper when and for what purpose each of them was. If you submitted tens of thousands of dollars worth of them "questionable" enough to result in your employer considering terminating you? You *screwed up*, period!
Unlike most of us, Hurd earned enough money so he could EASILY have just paid out of pocket for anything he wanted that he wasn't absolutely SURE his employer was going to cover without any problems!
Probably true, but I think the bigger problem is what I've stated before about the Pirate Party. They don't project a clear stance on any major issues not directly related to copyright. I'm all for the changes they propose, but I think it's a bit "excessive" to vote in a whole new political party just to address that, when there would be so many other unknowns about which way they'd vote on anything from foreign economic policy to education to war, to ??
You're acting like the only "problem" anyone has with Android OS is that they didn't do their homework before buying, and didn't know what they were getting!
Like anything, SOME minority of buyers fall into that category, but especially with something as advanced as a "smartphone", I don't think this is usually the case. People interested in a cellphone that does all of this tend to be fairly tech-savvy already. The others flatly reject such products as "useless", "too confusing" or "too expensive to buy/keep service on".
The problem I see with Android (and yes, I'm using an Android phone right now!), is that Google made a huge mess of it. After touting it as the world's greatest phone OS and hyping it up, they released a POS that needed multiple revisions to get it "on par" with its competitors, and even the latest 2.2 "Froyo" STILL lacks in many areas. Tasks that should be complete "no brainers" like dragging icons around on a screen to re-arrange them turned out to be impossible. Support for web proxy servers on wi-fi connections? Non-existent! Simply deleting an application takes about 5 steps (including scrolling through long list of all installed apps to find the one I want to remove), where it only took 2 on an iPhone (hold down icon until it "jiggles" and tap the X that appears in the top corner of the icon).
There's nothing inherently bad about allowing extendability and extra functionality, but there IS a real problem when you let individual carriers *cripple* functionality to suit their own best interests, and when you didn't take any steps to ensure the hardware your OS was offered on was adequate to give a good user experience! Even Microsoft tried to "certify" computer systems as being appropriate/sufficient to run various "flavors" of the Windows 7 product. With Android, there was no such thing. Lots of people promised a future update to phone X or Y from an older version of Android, without even verifying it was going to be possible to do -- so some are backpedaling, while others are just ignoring questions about it.
My Sanyo "Zio" Android phone, for example, includes demo versions of pointless games (Midnight Bowling and an Uno card game) that it won't let me delete, as well as some shortcut to my carrier's web site that I'd rather get rid of, but can't. Where's the "usability" in that, when I can't so much as erase a crippled/demo program I don't want on the device?!
and the rumors of my death are GREATLY exaggerated! Thank-you.
As a former iPhone user who recently switched to Android based phones (not because I disliked the iPhone, mind you - but simply because I disliked AT&T), I've seen a weird "disconnect" between ultimately similar issues with both platforms.
The media is constantly harping on the iPhone and its current jailbreak situation. Is firmware X broken? What does the LAW say about that? Is Steve Jobs pissed about it? What happens when firmware X.1 is released? Will jailbreakers skip the minor release and save their good exploit for a major rev? Stay tuned!!
Meanwhile, over in Android-land, you've got all these new makes and models of phones coming out on a weekly basis that use some variant of the OS, and everyone seems to need to be able to "root" the phones, or else they can't use some of the apps (such as various wi-fi tethering programs, or a version of "wireshark" for Android). Also, it seems it's a necessary first step so hackers can get into the phone to "dump" the ROM code, analyze it, and try to make custom firmware based off it it with the required drivers for phone-specific cameras and other hardware rolled into them. I hear VERY little in the news about ANY of this, however. (I bought a new Kyocera Zio Android to use with my Cricket wireless service, and it took the better part of a week to figure out how to get it rooted, since most message forums just had a few comments from people saying "I heard someone rooted their Zio already, but now I hear their phone isn't working right anymore...." and no solid info. I finally found a version of a "universal root" script I could email to the phone and run, and got root successfully - though the script author doesn't even list the Zio on his compatible phones list. Since the Zio still only comes with Android 1.6, there's a lot of incentive for people to roll some custom 2.1 or 2.2 firmware for it .... but again, I won't hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
As predicted, I already saw a bunch of comments on the original story with parents saying they'd be "angry if their kid wasted their money" on something like this, etc. etc.
In reality, it all depends on the instructor and their willingness to teach useful material. I remember when I was in college, I took a "History of Rock Music" course that the vast majority of people joked about and blew off as one of those "underwater basket-weaving" type classes you'd just take for an easy credit. In actuality, the instructor was a PhD in music who didn't even like rock music very much. He simply realized that most STUDENTS did, however, so it was a topic that held a lot of interest to them. He warned us from day 1 that "if you're expecting this to be an easy, blow-off class, you may want to drop out now". It turns out, he went into considerable depth about the roots of rock music and showed us the links between aspects of contemporary rock music and other forms of music that came before it. We covered what was essentially outright theft of R&B or Soul music of the 50's and 60's, as white musicians redid the original songs as early "pop/rock hits" and compared the original works to the "covers" or "re-makes". We had to write detailed reports and present them in class, discussing artists we felt were significant to the rock music genre and justify that position with facts and details. Essentially, it served as a writing course, an oral communications course, AND a history course all in one, and I think most of us got a lot out of it. (I was playing guitar in a local band at the time, so it seemed like a relevant elective course to take. I left with a little bit better presentation/public speaking skills and an ability to listen to music more critically than before. Really not a bad course at all.)
If the "in" thing is zombies, then great! Why not use it as a "hook" to get people in to a course that's going to teach them a lot about scriptwriting and the basic requirements for making a good movie? Again though, this could *easily* be abused too, if the wrong instructor is teaching it -- because the topic itself means very little. (Unless you REALLY believe the zombies are coming to take over the world -- you probably feel like learning about zombies is pretty pointless to spend college money on!) It's all about how the topic is used to teach something that goes beyond it.
Regardless of whether or not someone leaked out a copy of the movie months before its release, the *real* problem seems to be that they're spending WAY too much to make a movie, and then complaining when their return on investment isn't what they hoped for!
The average motion picture is roughly 2 hours long, right? (Often shorter, and sometimes a few minutes longer, but let's just say 2 hours for the sake of picking a number.) That appears to be about $125,000 per MINUTE they spent to make it, given a $15 million budget!
I haven't even watched Hurt Locker yet, but as I understand it, it's a contemporary movie about the war we're STILL fighting right now! It's definitely not a film that required a lot of painstaking effort to accurately re-create events of the distant past. All the costuming, props, etc. should have been readily available. So WHY can't this type of story be told for FAR less money?
Personally, if I was producing a movie in Hollywood today, I'd pass on any of the "big name" actors and actresses that demand huge salaries, and concentrate instead on having a really good script. Then I'd find some talented but under-appreciated/utilized actors/actresses and see what I could do with them instead. In the last 5 years or so, I've seen much more "in depth" and interesting stories coming out of foreign films with exponentially lower production budgets than the garbage we keep cranking out here in the USA. It's time for Hollywood to rethink how they do business ... not to blame file-sharers for their problems and try to continue the status-quo!
Yeah.... but in all seriousness, if manufacturers like Intel or AMD would spend the money to make sure new laptops were designed with cool glowing, backlit versions of their logos on new notebooks - I don't think you'd see all the complaining!
People simply don't like the stickers because they make the whole machine look cheap and tacky, especially when they start wearing or peeling off in one corner after a while, but still refuse to come off cleanly.
Nothing like a sticker that says "ntel Insi" with wear marks on the sides!
They'll keep reporting each and every one, now that the Obama administration is on a mission to push through new legislation promoting "alternate energy". After a few of them, they should have the public alarmed enough to agreeably pass things taxing them for their carbon footprint and much more....
You're talking about Sony and others regarding the device as though "the user is leasing it from them" -- yet every time I look at intellectual property copyright, it sounds like they're implying just that! (You're not really buying the music/movie/software! You're simply paying for a license to use the content according to all the rules we've set forth! The physical media you received in the transaction is just the vehicle used to get the intellectual property from point A to B. It doesn't imply you really BOUGHT a copy of our product itself.)
What I've observed as an I.T. guy who often worked along-side developers is, management often decides a certain technology is the way forward for a given project. At that point, the experienced developers are sometimes left out in the cold, because although they may have, say, 6 years of good experience coding in Java, they didn't spend time on the latest Microsoft technologies. The "new kid on the block", by contrast, may have claimed experience in that area, so to management, he's the "better bet".
Most likely, the REAL problem here is that management doesn't buy into or grasp the idea that the development language used is rather immaterial. If you've got someone with many years of experience coding in a specific language, it'd probably yield the best results to let them continue doing that. Ask them to produce product X or Y with whichever tools they're most versed in using!
Instead though, there's an overall sense that programming languages get "stale" after a while, and a new product needs to be designed with a new language.
I'd say I only have a few personal anecdotal stories to back this belief up, so it could be way off base ... except how much demand is there today for developers with experience in COBOL or Fortran or BASIC, or Pascal, or Forth? I've always worked in a "Support Specialist" or "Network Management" role, but I've observed all these programming languages come and go -- and it seems like such a bad deal for a developer. He/she has to put in so much effort to learn and subsequently master one, only to find it fading into obscurity.
I, too, am a parent and find it a very good and useful thing that my kid can watch television without me having to worry constantly about what they might be showing her that's not appropriate for her age group. BUT, that doesn't justify the "indecency laws" enforced by the FCC either.
For one thing, when these were first conceived, television was a far different animal than it is today. There were no such things as cable TV or satellite broadcasting, with people getting hundreds of channels at a time. You had a few locals and that was pretty much it. The idea was, the free television stations were there to perform a public service, and as such, should be catering to as many potential viewers as possible.
These days, you have stations segmented by their content. Even with nothing more than an antenna on my digital TV, I can pick up stations like "PBS Kids" or a station showing nothing but DYI/Home Improvement content. Another has nothing but weather info on it. If I'm willing to pay a little bit for satellite or cable, I've got all sorts of choices including stations that only show kid's cartoons all day long and channels made by Disney that don't show any "adult" content either.
The need just isn't there anymore to punish a station for its content choices. At most, legislation should be aimed towards "truth in labeling" so viewers are always made aware of the type of content the station intends to show. IMHO, your basic local stations aren't going to express much interest in deviating from the type of material that broadcast now - regardless of FCC regulations. If they start allowing too much cursing and nudity, they're going to lose too many viewers, in a market where consumers have more options than ever before and tend to time-shift record programming anyway (sometimes even stripping out the commercials).
Probably just happened the be the max. amount they were insured for on their computer equipment?
I'm just saying ... when crazy stuff like this happens and the accused is clearly in the wrong, they sure don't tend to go to lots of trouble to report accurate figures of what the cost of damage really was.
I mean, ok, it COULD have really been a $100,000 server, but everyplace I worked, our rack mount servers were more like $5,000 - $14,000 each. You might double that if you've got an external drive array in there attached to it. But shoot, even the big Oracle database server we purchased in the late 90's at a previous employer was around $60K, if I recall correctly. $100K should buy you quite a nice server configuration -- and seems like more than a typical home loan place would need?
Unfortunately, I *do* expect such commentary from magazines like Time or Newsweek. They still haven't really grasped (or don't wish to acknowledge) the idea that political viewpoints can be represented far better on a 4-square grid than on a line with "liberal" one one end and "conservative" on the other.
Ronald Reagan made MANY comments that lead me to believe he was more of a libertarian than a Republican (at least in any modern sense of the word). The fact the whole "war on drugs" started under his presidency tends to make people write that off as impossible -- but it's important to realize that was probably much more of his WIFE's pet-project and idea than his own. It looks like this judge he appointed follows in a similar vein of "fiscally conservative yet socially liberal". Good for him!
Are you really confident that colleges are churning out graduates with those "good foundations"? Among other flaws with this concept:
1. Many college graduates seem to THINK the whole purpose of that expensive education was to prove they now know all the things they need to know to be handed a job in their field of choice. These people can't be "readily trained" because they've already shut that part of their brain off, thinking after 4+ years of it, they're "done for now". ... hence some of the recent backlash about the value proposition of going to colleges, especially for "Liberal Arts" type degrees.) "Well rounded individuals", unfortunately, tend to be "jacks of all trades, but masters of none". They may be better conversationalists than someone with less education, or who focused on a specialty ... but not sure it puts them in an advantageous position in the job market? What REALLY matters is if the individual has the desire to KEEP learning the specific skills of relevance after school is done. But those types will look equally good/proficient whether they did this after a 4 year degree, or they did it on their own while skipping college. ... but that makes me question why we don't emphasize vocational training more than we do? Other countries seem to advocate it more than we do, offering students opportunities to go the vocational training route early in school -- and without the social stigma we still attach to it. College seems like it's great for people who want to become teachers or pursue an art. But it's almost disingenuous for them to offer degrees in things like I.T. -- when a good vocational school could provide FAR better preparation for that field.
2. Considering how many courses in college have NO relevance to a given job, I'd question how good a "foundation" much of it really provides? (I think many others question it too
3. You're absolutely right that college is "not supposed to be vocational training"
I'd have to say I agree with this....
I know in my own career, I've pretty much found that no matter where I apply for jobs, the companies who keep hiring me are all related to manufacturing. Before that, they were all small computer resellers/retailers (back in the days when I worked as a tech in the back room). After a while, you simply get proficient in too many specialized software packages that relate to a certain industry, and putting them on your resume attracts more people wanting the same thing.
I don't see how this will change either. Most people who manage to move into new areas of I.T. do so when they get lucky enough to work for an employer who lets them make lateral moves inside the business to try new things. If you work for smaller places, your options will always be more restricted in this regard (though you may get other benefits like more free time/less demand for you to be on-call during evenings and weekends).
No kidding.... but additionally, let's arrogantly assume that today's technology determines what materials and the quantities needed for all future generations to thrive!
IMHO, nature is all about evolving. Entire species die off over time, and others change over enough time. Why can't we humans accept that this is actually NORMAL, and just use whatever resources benefit us at the present time? If/when we run out of oil, for example, fine ... Humans are equipped with brains, allowing us to come up with NEW ways to power things that don't require oil, or alternately, ways to synthesize oil from other materials. It's a basic law of physics that matter is neither created, nor destroyed -- just converted from one thing into another. There will always be some sorts of "raw materials" around to work with, if we just figure out effective ways to use/convert whatever makes the most sense at a given point in our history.
Exactly ....
I mean, perhaps it's true that Apple sets themselves up to receive F.U.D. like this, because of their well-known stance of liking to retain control over the way their devices operate. But realistically, it's not even legal to go disabling people's electronic devices. Apple would be insane to think they'd get by with bricking or disabling iPhones whenever they detected a (legal to do) jailbreak occurred on one! (Imagine the magnitude of the lawsuits when some lawyer or doctor loses his/her important notes or contact info he/she stored in the phone - thanks to Apple auto-detecting the fact they jailbroke it in the past.)
The *only* valid reason they'd want to patent this is to aid in catching criminals who steal the devices. (If you have the system snap their picture and upload it before shutting down the device, that's an effective tool in helping nab the perpetrator.)
Yes, but how far did you push back when you were challenged?
It's really pretty clear that a photographer has certain rights to shoot photos anyplace in public in the U.S.A. Government has often tried to intimidate photographers, under the guise that "national security" demands they cease, or alternately, lower-level security protests under false claims that some "policy" was violated.
The Amtrak photography incident comes to mind: http://carlosmiller.com/2008/12/27/amtrak-police-arrest-photographer-participating-in-amtrak-photo-contest/
A good guide to your REAL photographer's rights can be found here: http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm
Having a gun pointed at you is a pretty strong intimidation tactic, yet if you're confident you're in the right, you can still stick up for your rights in that situation. Some soldier driving out to meet you in a Hummer is probably NOT prepared to fire a weapon at a civilian photographer. WAY too many consequences for an action that extreme. So you *could* have let them arrest you and take your camera, rather than complying ... and you'd have a really GOOD chance of coming out the victor.
But let's face it.... that skyline photo probably wasn't something you wanted badly enough to fight for it.
Actually, it sounds like I should step back in here and clarify this a bit.
First off, the employer in question was already winding down his business before the whole "someone took my clients!" thing came up. He announced to us he was no longer paying for the office space he had been leasing, and he was going back to "running the business out of the basement of his house, like it was when he first started it". Right then, I knew that meant his office assistant was losing her job, so I asked what this meant for me? That's when I was assured that he'd "continue to send me jobs, like before - except he'd just call me on the phone to tell me where to go for each one" and I didn't need to come into an office first, anymore.
Within only a few DAYS of him ceasing to live up to his promise (and again, remember, I was never officially "fired" .... just left hanging, waiting for my phone to ring until I realized he wasn't really going to call me anymore), I had a couple of his customers calling ME on my cellphone, because they couldn't reach the owner and needed computer service. They dug around until they got my cell number.
I just don't see any way to construe my actions as "wrong" under these circumstances. On the contrary, if I had just ignored the whole situation and started looking for a different job - how many people who relied on us for computer support would I have inconvenienced? Sure, they could hire some competitor -- but then they'd get people unfamiliar with their systems and software, who they'd be paying for their time to get up to speed on it again. And how would any of it been fair to me, personally, either? I gave 110% for this company for several years, because I really wanted it to succeed. I really ENJOYED doing on-site work and cared about the customer-base. I had no interest in trying to do it all alone, especially since he already had a great corporate logo, invested in Yellow Pages advertising, and had some parts inventory in stock that I would have had to buy out-of-pocket if I did it by myself. But after being back-stabbed for something I didn't do and putting me in that position? I think it was fully justifiable.
Heck no.... I've worked for 2 different businesses that standardized on McAfee corporate AV - about 5 years apart from each other. In neither case was the product worth a darn. Did it protect against any virus infections? Well, yes - I think maybe once at one company, and once at the other one, at least one or two PCs reported an infection that it cleaned/removed. But in the meantime, it killed performance on hundreds of workstations and caused a number of blue-screen crashes when various engine updates didn't work properly. The central administration console for it, I'd describe as shoddy at best. If I clicked around enough in it, I regularly got Windows exception errors and the console closed out. All around? It felt to me like a product someone might have given away as freeware ... but definitely not worth paying for.
On the "personal" side? I've had equally poor experiences with McAfee as it came pre-loaded with various laptops. I'd have to say Symantec/Norton was often worse - but that's not saying much.