That's actually a pretty good point. Policies are set out to protect the company, while appearing to protect the employees. If an employee signs something saying they know harassment is not allowed on premises, it makes it a lot easier to fire them. If you don't have such a policy, it makes it a lot easier for the harassee to go after the company as well as the harasser.
Besides it isn't always so clear cut, which illegal activities will get you fired. How many companies will fire you for getting a speeding ticket? What if you get a DUI? How many companies will fire you if you smoke a joint (while not at work)? What about bouncing a check? Hell, some school districts have policies forbidding teachers from being seen drinking in public.
I don't think a company policy is meant to cover everything, just everything they are worried about getting sued over. I wonder if anybody has ever used the excuse "Well it wasn't in the policy, so you can't fire me for torturing my puppy to death," or some other heinous act.
Basically if there's no personal or financial information I'll use a low security password. Hasn't caused any problems yet, and I find it easy to remember passwords for forums this way.
I was thinking the same thing. If you fall asleep, a jolt to the old butt-cheeks might just wake you up before you become a menace. And the fear of it happening again would probably be enough to keep you wired (no pun intended) until you get to your destination.
Terrorists seem to be just as irrational about their targets as we are about our fears. I'm not the one who singled out bombing airplanes as this weird, master goal. I can think of many, many ways to cause much more economic and human damage than to take down a single airplane. But that's not what gets people in a tizzy.
Hmm... That's actually the best argument I've ever heard for this whole TSA/airport thing. Well done!
It is absolutely insanity. If the goal is to make it very unlikely, we were already there before naked scanners and confiscating water bottles. Using your own example of ever-shrinking Venn diagram intersections: The circle containing "people who just forgot to charge their phone" is probably 4 or 5 orders of magnitude bigger than any of the other circles you just told us to draw. Also the odds of the people building a bomb into an iPhone not being able to also make the phone look and act like an iPhone for some short amount of time is tiny.
Further, the act of blowing up the iBomb in the security line would be more dangerous and costly than actually blowing it up on a plane. Can you imagine? You'd get to shut down an entire airport and kill the hundred people in line. Back to my point, the continuing addition of rules at the checkpoints is insane. To think otherwise is willful ignorance.
Actually, Title III of the ADA pretty much says they must let us bring in food. Space Center Houston is a "public accommodation." An allergy is "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities" (eating). They have to make reasonable accommodations to their policies. Since they do not offer any dairy free menu items in their food court, a reasonable accommodation would be to allow us to bring in a sandwich. The alternative is that they lose ALL the money I would spend in their food court.
Shit... now that I look more closely at this, I really should sue the Honolulu airport. When we went through there, they had all these signs saying that they don't serve people with food allergies. WTF? Of course, since it's an airport, you're kind stuck there without a lot of options. Anybody know any good civil rights lawyers?
Can you imagine if they had a sign that said "Sorry, no retards allowed."
At first I was surprised to see this article didn't have at least 300 comments. Look at the recent SCOTUS article. But now I see why. I can't believe they chose to present answers from Lessig in this format. How absurd. I was just telling my son how stupid it was that he wades through 7 minutes of Minecraft Youtube videos when the same info can be garnered in 10 seconds on the wiki. I'm appalled that they don't at least have a transcription posted here. Web accessibility is one of those touchstone topics for Mr. Lessig, so I am flabbergasted that they would have chosen him for a video-sans-transcript response.
We were going to go to NASA Space Center, and they have a "security checkpoint" before you enter. You know what they're looking for? Food! I couldn't bring in a sandwich so my son with food allergies (yes the real, anaphylaxis kind) could eat lunch with us. All so they could make an extra buck at the snack counter. I guess they got enough complaints, because they allow bottled water now. I raised a big enough stink about it that they finally let me in, but what the fuck? If it's a goddam security check, look for guns and knives and forget the rest. If a little ham is going to cause the Mars exhibit to implode, why don't they have another checkpoint as you leave the food court?!
Anyway, I would have left, but my wife had already bought the tickets and was pissed at me for raising such a fuss. I was offended that she was not outraged. I mean this is complete bullshit, and she wants to raise our kids to just roll over and take it. More people need to get pissed at these "security" checks. I see it happening at more and more venues: football games, art museums, etc... At least the metal detectors in the courthouse came as a response to actual shootings. But come on, who is going to bother with a terrorist attack on the Duct Tape Museum of Greater Bumfuck? At some point the security measures cost more than what you're actually preventing.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but it looks like this is a case of a judge stretching the law as far as possible to try to enforce an order against some really crappy people. If the plaintiff is correct (AFAIK they are), then the defendants absolutely deserve to get struck from Google's search results. Hell, if they're really bait-and-switching customers, you'd think Google would be pleased as punch to give these guys the finger.
Look, it's nice to talk in absolute terms about freedom of speech, sovereignty, judicial activism, or what have you. But this is part of an ongoing trial, and the judge is trying to do what's fair while the underlying trade secret case plays through. I wouldn't want to be in her position. If the plaintiff goes under because all the Google results for their equipment point to these other asshats, then the judge will be blamed for not doing enough.
If one of my engineers started up a company in Canada using my technology, I would love for a judge to be able to enjoin Google to remove their search results. This is a feature, not a bug.
You look like a knee-jerk muppet conjuring stereotypes...
Ha! I parsed that as "muppet-conjuring." I had a fleeting image of the Count as a muppet necromancer. One, two, three, four! Four muppet zombies! ah ah ah ah.
My little brother and I wrote a casino emulator on my TI calculator while riding in the back of a car. Could choose from blackjack, roulette, or slots. Never got craps working, though.
I know for damn sure I can't sleep well when there's a blue or white LED on within eye-shot. Reds and Ambers are no problem, though. Don't know that I've noticed one way or the other for green.
First of all, if you follow the Kickstarter link, I think you could figure it out. Second, this is Slashdot. It has a lot of topics that not everybody knows about. If you can't figure out Ctrl+T, Ctrl+L, Tab, "Reading Rainbow", Enter, you're going to have a hard time making it through just about any article. On the front right now are several topics people might not know about that do not have a Wikipedia link: hydraulic power steering, trademark infringement, sleep, Donald Sterling. I daresay more/. readers are familiar with LeVar Burton than with Donald Sterling (and if they're not, they need to turn in their geek card to the nearest person with a penguin or light saber on their desk).
As an active member of my son's school's PTO, I find it infuriating how many of the really good programs are funded 100% through PTO fundraisers. Every field trip, First in Math, Accelerated Reader, the entire science lab, most of the computers, even a portion of the substitute teaching budget. And of course the money raised in the fundraisers come from primarily the parents and businesses in the area. If I were in a less affluent part of the school district, that would mean my child would probably not have access to these programs. In fact, in the district we are down to only two or three of the schools participating in First in Math, and all of the schools have dropped AR.
I don't know what the answer is. I suppose higher property tax would go a long way to leveling some of the disparity, but unfortunately a lot of the money would get wasted at the district level [citation needed]. At least with the PTO taking care of this stuff, we know where all the money goes. But it's not like our PTO is going to turn around and hand over 20% of our budget to some underperforming school where we don't know the principal or teachers.
It's a conundrum. If you don't give underperforming schools more money, how can they improve? If you do, how do you keep schools from gaming the system? How do you make sure the money goes to improving the education of the children?
Whether you're vaccinated is different than if you actually have a disease. So it's not really the same thing. But, don't hookers in Nevada have something like this already? (Definitely not googling "nevada prostitute registry" at work)
That interpretation of a wife's duty is not terribly uncommon. Some even argue that I Corinthians 7:5 is a biblical mandate to both the husband and wife to never deny their partner sex. If that's the case, the most chaste wives are also the most sinful. Ahhh the irony.
Of course on the opposite side of the spectrum are those wackos that think all sex is rape, and that all porn stars are being taken advantage of.
Slashdot Mirror
That's actually a pretty good point. Policies are set out to protect the company, while appearing to protect the employees. If an employee signs something saying they know harassment is not allowed on premises, it makes it a lot easier to fire them. If you don't have such a policy, it makes it a lot easier for the harassee to go after the company as well as the harasser.
Besides it isn't always so clear cut, which illegal activities will get you fired. How many companies will fire you for getting a speeding ticket? What if you get a DUI? How many companies will fire you if you smoke a joint (while not at work)? What about bouncing a check? Hell, some school districts have policies forbidding teachers from being seen drinking in public.
I don't think a company policy is meant to cover everything, just everything they are worried about getting sued over. I wonder if anybody has ever used the excuse "Well it wasn't in the policy, so you can't fire me for torturing my puppy to death," or some other heinous act.
Man that guy is a complete idiot. Pa$$w0rd! is like the stupidest password ever.
Basically if there's no personal or financial information I'll use a low security password. Hasn't caused any problems yet, and I find it easy to remember passwords for forums this way.
I was thinking the same thing. If you fall asleep, a jolt to the old butt-cheeks might just wake you up before you become a menace. And the fear of it happening again would probably be enough to keep you wired (no pun intended) until you get to your destination.
Terrorists seem to be just as irrational about their targets as we are about our fears. I'm not the one who singled out bombing airplanes as this weird, master goal. I can think of many, many ways to cause much more economic and human damage than to take down a single airplane. But that's not what gets people in a tizzy.
Hmm... That's actually the best argument I've ever heard for this whole TSA/airport thing. Well done!
It is absolutely insanity. If the goal is to make it very unlikely, we were already there before naked scanners and confiscating water bottles. Using your own example of ever-shrinking Venn diagram intersections: The circle containing "people who just forgot to charge their phone" is probably 4 or 5 orders of magnitude bigger than any of the other circles you just told us to draw. Also the odds of the people building a bomb into an iPhone not being able to also make the phone look and act like an iPhone for some short amount of time is tiny.
Further, the act of blowing up the iBomb in the security line would be more dangerous and costly than actually blowing it up on a plane. Can you imagine? You'd get to shut down an entire airport and kill the hundred people in line. Back to my point, the continuing addition of rules at the checkpoints is insane. To think otherwise is willful ignorance.
Actually, Title III of the ADA pretty much says they must let us bring in food. Space Center Houston is a "public accommodation." An allergy is "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities" (eating). They have to make reasonable accommodations to their policies. Since they do not offer any dairy free menu items in their food court, a reasonable accommodation would be to allow us to bring in a sandwich. The alternative is that they lose ALL the money I would spend in their food court.
Shit... now that I look more closely at this, I really should sue the Honolulu airport. When we went through there, they had all these signs saying that they don't serve people with food allergies. WTF? Of course, since it's an airport, you're kind stuck there without a lot of options. Anybody know any good civil rights lawyers?
Can you imagine if they had a sign that said "Sorry, no retards allowed."
At first I was surprised to see this article didn't have at least 300 comments. Look at the recent SCOTUS article. But now I see why. I can't believe they chose to present answers from Lessig in this format. How absurd. I was just telling my son how stupid it was that he wades through 7 minutes of Minecraft Youtube videos when the same info can be garnered in 10 seconds on the wiki. I'm appalled that they don't at least have a transcription posted here. Web accessibility is one of those touchstone topics for Mr. Lessig, so I am flabbergasted that they would have chosen him for a video-sans-transcript response.
Fuck security guards.
We were going to go to NASA Space Center, and they have a "security checkpoint" before you enter. You know what they're looking for? Food! I couldn't bring in a sandwich so my son with food allergies (yes the real, anaphylaxis kind) could eat lunch with us. All so they could make an extra buck at the snack counter. I guess they got enough complaints, because they allow bottled water now. I raised a big enough stink about it that they finally let me in, but what the fuck? If it's a goddam security check, look for guns and knives and forget the rest. If a little ham is going to cause the Mars exhibit to implode, why don't they have another checkpoint as you leave the food court?!
Anyway, I would have left, but my wife had already bought the tickets and was pissed at me for raising such a fuss. I was offended that she was not outraged. I mean this is complete bullshit, and she wants to raise our kids to just roll over and take it. More people need to get pissed at these "security" checks. I see it happening at more and more venues: football games, art museums, etc... At least the metal detectors in the courthouse came as a response to actual shootings. But come on, who is going to bother with a terrorist attack on the Duct Tape Museum of Greater Bumfuck? At some point the security measures cost more than what you're actually preventing.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but it looks like this is a case of a judge stretching the law as far as possible to try to enforce an order against some really crappy people. If the plaintiff is correct (AFAIK they are), then the defendants absolutely deserve to get struck from Google's search results. Hell, if they're really bait-and-switching customers, you'd think Google would be pleased as punch to give these guys the finger.
Look, it's nice to talk in absolute terms about freedom of speech, sovereignty, judicial activism, or what have you. But this is part of an ongoing trial, and the judge is trying to do what's fair while the underlying trade secret case plays through. I wouldn't want to be in her position. If the plaintiff goes under because all the Google results for their equipment point to these other asshats, then the judge will be blamed for not doing enough.
If one of my engineers started up a company in Canada using my technology, I would love for a judge to be able to enjoin Google to remove their search results. This is a feature, not a bug.
Better-er question: why use the teletype tag? It's non-standard.
You look like a knee-jerk muppet conjuring stereotypes ...
Ha! I parsed that as "muppet-conjuring." I had a fleeting image of the Count as a muppet necromancer. One, two, three, four! Four muppet zombies! ah ah ah ah.
wacking them behind the head all the time like little babies
What kind of fucked up place are you from where they whack little babies upside the head all the time?! And you think WE have issues?
My little brother and I wrote a casino emulator on my TI calculator while riding in the back of a car. Could choose from blackjack, roulette, or slots. Never got craps working, though.
One can still visit Polihale to the north, but the road getting there is very hard on rental cars.
In fact, most rental car companies give you a map that says, "If you go past here, we will fine you $XXX." Never tested it out, but I was tempted.
I found a word today: lipogram. Although it is not in my word allowance algorithm.
Of course in a Rand Paul world, we would also have smallpox epidemics, since there would be no UN, and no World Health Organization, to eradicate it.
But... but... freedom invisible hand small government patriotism free market liberty state's rights!
I know for damn sure I can't sleep well when there's a blue or white LED on within eye-shot. Reds and Ambers are no problem, though. Don't know that I've noticed one way or the other for green.
wow. Avoiding his mark is not as hard as I though it would b... crap.
First of all, if you follow the Kickstarter link, I think you could figure it out. Second, this is Slashdot. It has a lot of topics that not everybody knows about. If you can't figure out Ctrl+T, Ctrl+L, Tab, "Reading Rainbow", Enter, you're going to have a hard time making it through just about any article. On the front right now are several topics people might not know about that do not have a Wikipedia link: hydraulic power steering, trademark infringement, sleep, Donald Sterling. I daresay more /. readers are familiar with LeVar Burton than with Donald Sterling (and if they're not, they need to turn in their geek card to the nearest person with a penguin or light saber on their desk).
As an active member of my son's school's PTO, I find it infuriating how many of the really good programs are funded 100% through PTO fundraisers. Every field trip, First in Math, Accelerated Reader, the entire science lab, most of the computers, even a portion of the substitute teaching budget. And of course the money raised in the fundraisers come from primarily the parents and businesses in the area. If I were in a less affluent part of the school district, that would mean my child would probably not have access to these programs. In fact, in the district we are down to only two or three of the schools participating in First in Math, and all of the schools have dropped AR.
I don't know what the answer is. I suppose higher property tax would go a long way to leveling some of the disparity, but unfortunately a lot of the money would get wasted at the district level [citation needed]. At least with the PTO taking care of this stuff, we know where all the money goes. But it's not like our PTO is going to turn around and hand over 20% of our budget to some underperforming school where we don't know the principal or teachers.
It's a conundrum. If you don't give underperforming schools more money, how can they improve? If you do, how do you keep schools from gaming the system? How do you make sure the money goes to improving the education of the children?
Whether you're vaccinated is different than if you actually have a disease. So it's not really the same thing. But, don't hookers in Nevada have something like this already? (Definitely not googling "nevada prostitute registry" at work)
um... you're doing it wrong.
ROTFLMFAO
That interpretation of a wife's duty is not terribly uncommon. Some even argue that I Corinthians 7:5 is a biblical mandate to both the husband and wife to never deny their partner sex. If that's the case, the most chaste wives are also the most sinful. Ahhh the irony.
Of course on the opposite side of the spectrum are those wackos that think all sex is rape, and that all porn stars are being taken advantage of.