That's what they want you to do. You leave without fulfilling your notice, so then they write bad things - self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts and they win.
How is that them winning? If their *goal* is to give you a bad reference then they will find an excuse, whether a real one or not. You might note the HR person made it immediate, which has different legal implications than somebody quitting early, so it sounds like the HR lost in a fit of rage.
If you don't have an agreed notice period, then you can't be held to one except by a mutual agreement. If one party isn't mature enough to accept this then it isn't going to work.
I think you are missing the point, daveime. I don't think the intent is to stop those that actually want to watch child pornography. That simply isn't going to happen. There are a zillion ways to bypass any filters the government could force on ISPs. I think the idea is to stop kids surfing around the net late at night and casually browsing onto really disturbing images. Look on youtube at the reaction videos to 2girls1cup, something even I refuse to watch, most of them are teenage kids.
Where the UK govt. miss the point by several thousand miles is to hand blanket censorship for an entire country over to some shadowy unaccountable group that decides what is and isn't an abusive image. They've only just started and shown they get things horribly wrong. There is potential for spiteful abuse, imposing arbitrary moralistic values, and blackmail.
The obvious solution to me is: * a government recommended list, published online * an arbitration board so people that end up on the list (in their opinion) wrongly can appeal to be removed * forcing the ISPs to add a PICS rating to the http headers of sites on the list * release a downloadable local proxy, and firefox plugin, that requires a user definably PIN number to access restricted content * allow ISPs to charge a monthly fee to proxy with PIN number server-side, much like they do for VOD.
The benefits are as follows: * government gets to look reasonable - with both transparency and recourse available. * the ISPs get a fixed cost target to implement, and aren't chasing a moving target. The watch list is downloadable on a daily basis, and the PICs system is nearly 14 years old with reference implementations available. * adults have the option of viewing whatever they want, possibly with a "Are you sure?" click-through supplied by the ISP * parents have the option to secure their children from viewing unwanted images * parents have the easier option of doing from the ISP side, but the ISPs can actually cover their costs for doing it. For those that cry loudly about protecting their children, isn't that worth £1.50 per month?
I agree with your fundamental premise though, the idea is to give greater control to the parent and not take it away from everybody.
Intercepting communications is pointless if the target has reason to suspect they are being watched.
It isn't pointless, it makes things much harder which isn't the same thing. First of all it will require much more patience, for either a slip or desperation to get a message through. On the plus side it will hinder the activities of those being watched. Even if they use some verbal code patterns will emerge, otherwise they need to refresh the key out of band which is inconvenient and carries its own risks. Plus they may have forgotten to invent a code for, "the police are knocking down your door in 1 hour", in which case that channel of communication has been rendered useless.
The point is that police should be able to get a warrant and intercept valid suspects. Not have access to a key that allows them to listen to anybody at any time, even potentially millions of people at the same time. If our government has a backdoor, it won't be too long before other governments have access to it too.
Where in the article does it say this is a WindowsXP SP3 issue? The Adobe official site clearly states "Platform: All platforms". The shadowserver site says they tested it works with WindowsXP SP3, not that it's restricted to this.
Both hedwards and rodney dill have good points, but both points have flaws.
Being able to block the number is useful if you value privacy, as there is nothing to stop a service harvesting incoming phone numbers as some harvest email addresses. I already get a fair amount of spam via both sms and automated diallers.
A lot of this spam isn't anonymous and bouncing to voicemail wouldn't help. The additional problem with rodney's solution is that if you have friends abroad then often the caller id gets lost internationally. Also some company exchanges strip the caller id from internal lines.
Here's an idea for a Symbian app: if the call is anonymous then bounce to a menu system, where the options are to go to voicemail or to key in their telephone number and be put through.
Car manufacturers know perfectly well that their vehicles are used to facilitate robberies. Hammer manufacturers know a number of their products will be directly used for murder.
The question is whether they are assisting or wehther they making available public resources which are being 'abused'. If they offered $1 for each file being uploaded and then made an average of $4 per file through advertising on the download page then this would be a pretty clear cut case. If you are simple acting as a Google, then you have to balance public interest and setting dangerous precedents against the rights of the copyright holders.
let me guess, you don't like mssql because it's microsoft? what a fucking sheep, mssql is a great database. oh and i've used all the others and for you to suggest mysql over mssql tells a lot...
MSSQL? Isn't that the only database that isn't cross platform these days? Why would anybody want to use MSSQL outside of.Net developers? On a side note, why is it that only MSSQL appears to get crippled by worms and none of the others?
Whoever he/she is sounds like a complete monster. There's obviously no smoke without fire. I reckon hanging/electric chair/castration is too good for him/her.
Or maybe this is all just a smear campaign against him/her by the extreme Left/Right? Wonder if freejahwrenryel.com is available? This country needs more people like him/her!
No reason the government can't just buy a copy of the game and let people experience it in the museums, much as they do with books for libraries. Where there is nobody to pay then assume it's abandonware until an author reclaims it and asks for it to be removed. No retroactive compensation but a fixed small sum that can be paid for future use.
Now that is poor juggling of semantics. I can have _confidence_ in my logic as I can repeatedly use it and have a predictable and observable result. I can have confidence in my observations as I can corroborate against other independent observations. People can have confidence that the text in the Bible are actual transcriptions of what the purported authors wrote, but have faith that what they actually wrote about really happened. Those people have faith in their crackpot theories but have confidence that they have the ability to prove them.
You can't simply rewrite the definition of words to make them fit your arguement.
That contradicts what I was taught about MP design. I don't have my old notes but there is a P3 internal diagram here. Ignoring the on-die cache, 5,6 and 7 aren't taking up far off 50% of that silicon. They would do it as you can't pipeline instructions that take wildly varying amounts of cycles.
Rather than the time-consuming labour-intensive task of fact checking, it's cheaper and easier to stick the word 'allegedly' in a sentence somewhere. Even if you forget you can print a retraction in small print on the page of page 32, and heaven forbid should you get a fine the increased circulation will pay for that.
I'm not the best person to ask as I've done a couple of degrees in CompSci and have over 15 years of programming experience (well official, stick another 10 years on that when younger). I'm not one of your 'self-taught techies'. But I think you are wrong, most techies are very self-aware of their short-comings. I, for instance, can't draw for toffee.
However because we are scientists at heart we take everything as a challenge. Tell us that an open wi-fi can't be used as a legal loophole and we'll try and find a way of making it possible. Try saying you can't fit 10 postmen in a letterbox and somebody will write a geometric tessellation algorithm to find a solution. This is why techies often play devils advocate. This is also why girlfriends of techies often hurl solid projectiles towards their allegedly over-sized cranium.
Lawyers on the other hand don't care about spirit of the law, they concentrate on manipulating emotions. Whether a jury, or even a client not to drop a case losing him billable hours ("no seriously, you have a really strong case"). Sure they work hard and do a lot of research, but they are very selective in their use of the findings. Give them the same facts on two different sides of the case and they come up with two very different conclusions.
The techies can argue their way to what they think is the ideal solution, then just leave it to the lawyers as "just an implementation detail".:-)
Well the plus side about Microsoft being an illegal monopoly is that practically everybody knows how bad it is. Ask them if they worry about viruses and spyware on their home Windows machine. Then point out the server versions are the same with a few extra apps thrown in. Point out that Linux has never had a virus and was designed to be multi-user unlike Windows.
If they point out a flaw in a crappy PHP app then point out that the same flaw exists if you run it under Windows. Some people associate a few major PHP apps with Linux even though it's really platform agnostic.
First of all you don't want an average lawyer, you want a good lawyer. Preferably the best lawyer. And definitely specialised in the area you have a problem in. I use three lawyers: one for real estate law, one for contracts, and a third one I know is going to cause a lot of pain to anybody that tries to annoy me. The last one is the most expensive one.
I've never paid a retainer, I just pay for the hours used. If I need advice I prepare a couple of key questions which are the crux of what I need, as I know if I'm in and out in less than 10 mins I normally won't get billed. For real estate problems I have insurance that covers 100% of any lawyer bills. If you live in France make sure your insurance has "assistance juridique" in it.
With contracts don't get the lawyer to write it, it will cost you a fortune. Write it yourself and then get the lawyer to correct it. There are plenty of templates you can pinch off the Internet to cover most situations.
Don't bother haggling on price, a really good lawyer won't budge, and don't worry about the cost. You either go ahead with the case in which case you go to the end and pay whatever it takes, or don't start in the first place. Don't start and figure if it gets too expensive you can always drop out.
As for where to look, finding out who all the other lawyers hate is a good start:-). A good way I've found which works for specialised areas is looking through forums and see who offers advice to readers. A bit like programmers that work on OSS, somebody that loves their subject and is happy to teach others increased the probability they are quite good at their job. For other cases, try talking to a couple of random lawyers where it's NOT their domain of expertise for recommendations. They don't have anything to gain by fobbing you off on a duff lawyer and most of the lawyers I've met are friendly people outside the courtroom.
I'd like to point out that I'm a strictly middle class guy, and definitely not wealthy.
Finally, if somebody has a lawyer writing you letters don't immediately think you need to get a lawyer yourself. Nine times out of ten their letters are dressed up BS designed to intimidate and you can safely bin them. If the judge hasn't given you a court date then they aren't really "suing" you.
I have a Nokia E71 with Fring on there. It connects to Skype, any SIP provider (in my case FreeWorldDialup), I have a virtual number forwarded to my SIP account so I can be called from a normal phone and the caller pays local rates to my mobile no matter where I am in the world, and it logs me onto my MSN and ICQ accounts. The only thing it lacks is IRC!
Fantastic. And it's so small and light it makes the iPhone feel like a brick. The only reason I didn't and never will buy an iPhone is the proprietary lock-down, and now I am so glad Apple forced me to look elsewhere. I find the E71 so much better. Give it a year when I am out of contract again, and a next-gen E71 running Mobile Ubuntu (and with better camera), and I'll be in heaven.
Even better, install a voice to text app off iTunes (Synthesised Mobile Speech). That way you can have the benefit of cheap VoIP calls but it's also usable in noisy situations. There is also a lower latency but proprietary version called Mobile Sythesised Networking which is quite popular.
Alternatively you could just buy a Nokia E71 and install Fring on it.
He was making a joke. Apple gave up their efficient PowerPC to move to box-shifter x86 machines like Dell. Apple then copied the touch-screen Prada phone to make their iPhone. And he is being sarcastic in that he is suggesting the iPhone is a low volume device. Hence he is predicting in a round-about way that Apple will release a sweet ARM-based Netbook. Which we know already as Apple have already licensed the technology. Apple have had experience with the ARM ever since the Newton so they shouldn't have any problem.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what they want you to do. You leave without fulfilling your notice, so then they write bad things - self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts and they win.
How is that them winning? If their *goal* is to give you a bad reference then they will find an excuse, whether a real one or not. You might note the HR person made it immediate, which has different legal implications than somebody quitting early, so it sounds like the HR lost in a fit of rage.
If you don't have an agreed notice period, then you can't be held to one except by a mutual agreement. If one party isn't mature enough to accept this then it isn't going to work.
Phillip.
I think you are missing the point, daveime. I don't think the intent is to stop those that actually want to watch child pornography. That simply isn't going to happen. There are a zillion ways to bypass any filters the government could force on ISPs. I think the idea is to stop kids surfing around the net late at night and casually browsing onto really disturbing images. Look on youtube at the reaction videos to 2girls1cup, something even I refuse to watch, most of them are teenage kids.
Where the UK govt. miss the point by several thousand miles is to hand blanket censorship for an entire country over to some shadowy unaccountable group that decides what is and isn't an abusive image. They've only just started and shown they get things horribly wrong. There is potential for spiteful abuse, imposing arbitrary moralistic values, and blackmail.
The obvious solution to me is:
* a government recommended list, published online
* an arbitration board so people that end up on the list (in their opinion) wrongly can appeal to be removed
* forcing the ISPs to add a PICS rating to the http headers of sites on the list
* release a downloadable local proxy, and firefox plugin, that requires a user definably PIN number to access restricted content
* allow ISPs to charge a monthly fee to proxy with PIN number server-side, much like they do for VOD.
The benefits are as follows:
* government gets to look reasonable - with both transparency and recourse available.
* the ISPs get a fixed cost target to implement, and aren't chasing a moving target. The watch list is downloadable on a daily basis, and the PICs system is nearly 14 years old with reference implementations available.
* adults have the option of viewing whatever they want, possibly with a "Are you sure?" click-through supplied by the ISP
* parents have the option to secure their children from viewing unwanted images
* parents have the easier option of doing from the ISP side, but the ISPs can actually cover their costs for doing it. For those that cry loudly about protecting their children, isn't that worth £1.50 per month?
I agree with your fundamental premise though, the idea is to give greater control to the parent and not take it away from everybody.
Phillip.
Intercepting communications is pointless if the target has reason to suspect they are being watched.
It isn't pointless, it makes things much harder which isn't the same thing. First of all it will require much more patience, for either a slip or desperation to get a message through. On the plus side it will hinder the activities of those being watched. Even if they use some verbal code patterns will emerge, otherwise they need to refresh the key out of band which is inconvenient and carries its own risks. Plus they may have forgotten to invent a code for, "the police are knocking down your door in 1 hour", in which case that channel of communication has been rendered useless.
The point is that police should be able to get a warrant and intercept valid suspects. Not have access to a key that allows them to listen to anybody at any time, even potentially millions of people at the same time. If our government has a backdoor, it won't be too long before other governments have access to it too.
Phillip.
I like the Foxmarks plugin:
http://www.foxmarks.com/
Phillip.
Where in the article does it say this is a WindowsXP SP3 issue? The Adobe official site clearly states "Platform: All platforms". The shadowserver site says they tested it works with WindowsXP SP3, not that it's restricted to this.
Phillip.
Both hedwards and rodney dill have good points, but both points have flaws.
Being able to block the number is useful if you value privacy, as there is nothing to stop a service harvesting incoming phone numbers as some harvest email addresses. I already get a fair amount of spam via both sms and automated diallers.
A lot of this spam isn't anonymous and bouncing to voicemail wouldn't help. The additional problem with rodney's solution is that if you have friends abroad then often the caller id gets lost internationally. Also some company exchanges strip the caller id from internal lines.
Here's an idea for a Symbian app: if the call is anonymous then bounce to a menu system, where the options are to go to voicemail or to key in their telephone number and be put through.
Phillip.
Car manufacturers know perfectly well that their vehicles are used to facilitate robberies. Hammer manufacturers know a number of their products will be directly used for murder.
The question is whether they are assisting or wehther they making available public resources which are being 'abused'. If they offered $1 for each file being uploaded and then made an average of $4 per file through advertising on the download page then this would be a pretty clear cut case. If you are simple acting as a Google, then you have to balance public interest and setting dangerous precedents against the rights of the copyright holders.
Phillip.
A screenscraper pointed at the imdb forums, a random number generator, and a thesaurus should do the trick?
Phillip.
Whichever open wi-fi network happens to be nearby?
Phillip.
let me guess, you don't like mssql because it's microsoft? what a fucking sheep, mssql is a great database.
oh and i've used all the others and for you to suggest mysql over mssql tells a lot...
MSSQL? Isn't that the only database that isn't cross platform these days? Why would anybody want to use MSSQL outside of .Net developers? On a side note, why is it that only MSSQL appears to get crippled by worms and none of the others?
Phillip.
Whoever he/she is sounds like a complete monster. There's obviously no smoke without fire. I reckon hanging/electric chair/castration is too good for him/her.
Or maybe this is all just a smear campaign against him/her by the extreme Left/Right? Wonder if freejahwrenryel.com is available? This country needs more people like him/her!
Phillip.
No reason the government can't just buy a copy of the game and let people experience it in the museums, much as they do with books for libraries. Where there is nobody to pay then assume it's abandonware until an author reclaims it and asks for it to be removed. No retroactive compensation but a fixed small sum that can be paid for future use.
Phillip.
Ok I'll bite. There are 128 characters in the ASCII character set including the null character.
Phillip.
Now that is poor juggling of semantics. I can have _confidence_ in my logic as I can repeatedly use it and have a predictable and observable result. I can have confidence in my observations as I can corroborate against other independent observations. People can have confidence that the text in the Bible are actual transcriptions of what the purported authors wrote, but have faith that what they actually wrote about really happened. Those people have faith in their crackpot theories but have confidence that they have the ability to prove them.
You can't simply rewrite the definition of words to make them fit your arguement.
Phillip.
That contradicts what I was taught about MP design. I don't have my old notes but there is a P3 internal diagram here. Ignoring the on-die cache, 5,6 and 7 aren't taking up far off 50% of that silicon. They would do it as you can't pipeline instructions that take wildly varying amounts of cycles.
Phillip.
Rather than the time-consuming labour-intensive task of fact checking, it's cheaper and easier to stick the word 'allegedly' in a sentence somewhere. Even if you forget you can print a retraction in small print on the page of page 32, and heaven forbid should you get a fine the increased circulation will pay for that.
Phillip.
I'm not the best person to ask as I've done a couple of degrees in CompSci and have over 15 years of programming experience (well official, stick another 10 years on that when younger). I'm not one of your 'self-taught techies'. But I think you are wrong, most techies are very self-aware of their short-comings. I, for instance, can't draw for toffee.
However because we are scientists at heart we take everything as a challenge. Tell us that an open wi-fi can't be used as a legal loophole and we'll try and find a way of making it possible. Try saying you can't fit 10 postmen in a letterbox and somebody will write a geometric tessellation algorithm to find a solution. This is why techies often play devils advocate. This is also why girlfriends of techies often hurl solid projectiles towards their allegedly over-sized cranium.
Lawyers on the other hand don't care about spirit of the law, they concentrate on manipulating emotions. Whether a jury, or even a client not to drop a case losing him billable hours ("no seriously, you have a really strong case"). Sure they work hard and do a lot of research, but they are very selective in their use of the findings. Give them the same facts on two different sides of the case and they come up with two very different conclusions.
The techies can argue their way to what they think is the ideal solution, then just leave it to the lawyers as "just an implementation detail". :-)
Phillip.
Well the plus side about Microsoft being an illegal monopoly is that practically everybody knows how bad it is. Ask them if they worry about viruses and spyware on their home Windows machine. Then point out the server versions are the same with a few extra apps thrown in. Point out that Linux has never had a virus and was designed to be multi-user unlike Windows.
If they point out a flaw in a crappy PHP app then point out that the same flaw exists if you run it under Windows. Some people associate a few major PHP apps with Linux even though it's really platform agnostic.
Phillip.
Why would you have to say how ASCII differs from other encodings? You can implement the ASCII encoding scheme without the knowledge of any others.
Phillip.
First of all you don't want an average lawyer, you want a good lawyer. Preferably the best lawyer. And definitely specialised in the area you have a problem in. I use three lawyers: one for real estate law, one for contracts, and a third one I know is going to cause a lot of pain to anybody that tries to annoy me. The last one is the most expensive one.
I've never paid a retainer, I just pay for the hours used. If I need advice I prepare a couple of key questions which are the crux of what I need, as I know if I'm in and out in less than 10 mins I normally won't get billed. For real estate problems I have insurance that covers 100% of any lawyer bills. If you live in France make sure your insurance has "assistance juridique" in it.
With contracts don't get the lawyer to write it, it will cost you a fortune. Write it yourself and then get the lawyer to correct it. There are plenty of templates you can pinch off the Internet to cover most situations.
Don't bother haggling on price, a really good lawyer won't budge, and don't worry about the cost. You either go ahead with the case in which case you go to the end and pay whatever it takes, or don't start in the first place. Don't start and figure if it gets too expensive you can always drop out.
As for where to look, finding out who all the other lawyers hate is a good start :-). A good way I've found which works for specialised areas is looking through forums and see who offers advice to readers. A bit like programmers that work on OSS, somebody that loves their subject and is happy to teach others increased the probability they are quite good at their job. For other cases, try talking to a couple of random lawyers where it's NOT their domain of expertise for recommendations. They don't have anything to gain by fobbing you off on a duff lawyer and most of the lawyers I've met are friendly people outside the courtroom.
I'd like to point out that I'm a strictly middle class guy, and definitely not wealthy.
Finally, if somebody has a lawyer writing you letters don't immediately think you need to get a lawyer yourself. Nine times out of ten their letters are dressed up BS designed to intimidate and you can safely bin them. If the judge hasn't given you a court date then they aren't really "suing" you.
Phillip.
And Dimitri Skylarov.
Phillip.
I'm hoping Bill Gates has been working on a suit like in Iron Man.
Phillip.
I have a Nokia E71 with Fring on there. It connects to Skype, any SIP provider (in my case FreeWorldDialup), I have a virtual number forwarded to my SIP account so I can be called from a normal phone and the caller pays local rates to my mobile no matter where I am in the world, and it logs me onto my MSN and ICQ accounts. The only thing it lacks is IRC!
Fantastic. And it's so small and light it makes the iPhone feel like a brick. The only reason I didn't and never will buy an iPhone is the proprietary lock-down, and now I am so glad Apple forced me to look elsewhere. I find the E71 so much better. Give it a year when I am out of contract again, and a next-gen E71 running Mobile Ubuntu (and with better camera), and I'll be in heaven.
Phillip.
Even better, install a voice to text app off iTunes (Synthesised Mobile Speech). That way you can have the benefit of cheap VoIP calls but it's also usable in noisy situations. There is also a lower latency but proprietary version called Mobile Sythesised Networking which is quite popular.
Alternatively you could just buy a Nokia E71 and install Fring on it.
Phillip.
He was making a joke. Apple gave up their efficient PowerPC to move to box-shifter x86 machines like Dell. Apple then copied the touch-screen Prada phone to make their iPhone. And he is being sarcastic in that he is suggesting the iPhone is a low volume device. Hence he is predicting in a round-about way that Apple will release a sweet ARM-based Netbook. Which we know already as Apple have already licensed the technology. Apple have had experience with the ARM ever since the Newton so they shouldn't have any problem.
Phillip.