Absolutely right. However, this means that who the owner is, where it is headquartered and what the command structure is has no bearing on whether there could be spyware in the computers. Which just supports my main point: this is nothing but political grandstanding by some political fuckwit whose main loayalty is to his own paycheck.
You mean William Amelio, the current CEO of Lenovo, right? The guy who used to be a head of Dell in Asia? Yes, I can really imagine how that meeting with Hu would go down:
Hu: Buddy, dearest, we need to install these nifty little chips on your computers. Won't you help us? Amelio: Fuck off. Hu: Shame really that I can't put thumbscrews on you. Oh well, it was worth a try.
Or maybe you think the current chairman of the board would force these decisions? You then sure don't know how the power structure in an international company works.
There is nothing to see here outside of political grandstanding in an election year. Fuck that little dipshit who is trying to score election points by reenacting the Dubai World debacle.
Because these critical functions which are required to protect legal obligations of others end up with no loyalty to those they are serving, and in fact with fully conflicted interests.
Interesting. Are you claiming that Mike Honda, my representative in Congress, is actually loyal to me? I haven't voted for the fucker, and I doubt he cares a lick about me. How about Senator Feinstein? I wish I could get that idiot out of the Senate, as her positions generally are in direct conflict with my positions and my interests. You are correct that the Indian parliament is most likely even less beholden to my opinion, but that has merely become a question of degrees. You can argue technicalities all day, but the reality is that Feinstein and Honda have done probably as much to help me as has Manmohan Singh.
You are playing word games; simply moving the location of something is not outsourcing.
You're right; I am indeed playing word games. Everything is about what words you choose and what meaning you give them. For example, you claim that moving the location of an organization is not outsourcing. What is outsourcing then? Exactly how does subcontracting your IT department to an IBM datacenter in Florida differ from outsourcing your IT department to a Wipro or HCL datacenter in Bangalore?
Outsourcing *can* be a good idea, if you fully and carefully analyse the impacts on your business.
Very true. See the last paragraph in my original post.
IMHO any company with more than a dozen employees should have its own network admin, and any with more than a couple of hundred employees should seriously consider having their own software developers.
Completely, utterly fucking retarded. My girlfriend works in a small boardgame shop. There's about twelve people in there. They use email, have a little website and that's about it. Do you really think they should pay another 80k a year for a system admin, who will do nothing but sit on his hands for about 39 hours a week? Should they hire their own webdevelopers for a website that consists of a couple of semi-static pages? As another example, my company consists of 2500 people worldwide. They have their own software R&D, but should they also have their own developers for their CRM system? For their web-conference tool? For their IM?
See, it all boils down to competency, relevance and scale. How competent are you at doing that specific IT-related function? How competent is someone else, and what is the return on investment when you do it internally or when you hire someone to do it? How relevant is the system you're working on to your company - should you make it part of your core competency, or should you leave it to someone who specializes in it? Will it be part of your competitive advantage? Finally, how big will that project be - will it be something small that can be handled internally, is it what your company does, or is it something that will simply distract from what you do?
To argue that all things above a certain size are better handled in house is just as blindingly stupid as arguing that all things above a certain size should be outsourced. You said it yourself - outsourcing needs to be carefully analyzed.
That's not outsourcing, that's offshoring.
You completely missed the point. What I was getting at is that the problems associated with outsourcing can come up whether you move the operation 500 miles or 5000 miles. I speak French fluently, and I can't understand a word the damn Quebecians speak. Same with people from the sticks in Virginia. Culture differences? Man, ever traveled the country? You can get culture shock just by switching state. And hour differentials.... yeah, Hawaiians have a really easy time with support in Florida.
despite several sophistic arguments to the contrary, it IS harmful to the economy of the country that loses the jobs;
I'm glad you provided so much support for that statement. I'll buy that the argument isn't settle
A working brain is still a prized asset. Here's though what people are finding out: that there's nothing wrong with a third world brain. And that the primary distinction between an american brain and a brain from a different part of the world is that the american brain thinks it needs magnitudes more money to live. The only shift that happened is that it becomes easier to tap people in far away places. Competition used to be between blacksmiths in the same town. It is now between between blacksmiths (or coders, or IT people or marketers) in the entire world.
Welcome to global competition. It ain't going away. The only thing that can save you is that you have access to the same markets as everyone else.
Why exactly is a bad idea? Let me ask you a different question - why should government be outsourced to DC, Washington? Why should police enforcement be outsourced to the HQ two cities over? Why should the military be outsourced to Fort Bragg? Why should training of the federal police be outsourced to Quantico, Virginia?
Face it, outsourcing is already a way of life. The only difference between now and earlier is that the people to whom things get outsourced don't look like you, don't speak your language and keep different hours. And I'd argue that even that can also be said when you talk about outsourcing support centers from California to South Carolina.
The main problem with outsourcing right now has nothing to do with "ohhhh... scary foreigners get to do what we used to do!" It has everything to do with outsourcing being applied in the wrong places, unrealistic expectations of its benefits and there being little oversight and control exerted over the outsourced operations.
The Bin Laden part was easy. My first thought when I heard about the WTC attack was "Wow, bin Laden actually succeeded this time." Why? Cuz that's what he had done, had said would do, and was crazy and fanatical enough to do.
You also conveniently failed to mention that the news reports about these hijackers being alive turned out to be reports about people with the same names being alive. Nice.
Tell me again how patents are protecting the inventor against large corporations?
Patents stopped being useful for that when it became possible for corporations to simply outspend a small-time inventor in the lawyer department. Besides, I'll stick with my original claim: if you can't produce a working product (only needs to be one, but there needs to be a working product), you don't deserve a patent. End of story. If you can't build one, there's probably something fundamentally wrong with your idea.
How about this: you stop making thought experiments and actually expirement. You'll find out that your comparison is full of crap because ABS only works in the direction that the wheels are spinning. Once you go sideways, ABS is out of the equation.
5 mod points and I decide to take troll bait. I must be getting old.
Interestingly, the link doesn't work anymore. Maybe someone is a bit concerned about privacy after all? See, this is what this database is about - it's not about the number itself. It's the information that can be gotten at once you have all these records.
Then you did the right thing by refusing the work - not because it was the *Right* thing to do, but because it would have cost you a lot more if a break-in would have happened. The lesson here probably is to put these things into the contract ahead of time.
I am working for a company with 2500 people. We routinely integrate with 3rd party products. We license stuff, buy other people, all kinds of different things. A good chunk of our goodwill is created through our online service which includes stuff remarkably similar to your scenario.
It is absolutely irrelevant if you didn't write it, or that it wasn't your responsibility to find it. What I know is that if anyone on my team (and that comes from someone who is simply part of a team, and doesn't run one) pulls that kind of lame excuse once, he'll pull it again and again. And that means that either I or the other team members have to pick up the slack.
Now, it could be that your place really sucks (I'm lucky enough that I like most people I work with). In that case, I can tell you to run like hell. As said, not only because this kind of attitude will fail you every time in an interview. But because it also means that this company either is or will be in serious trouble.
Good point. Since I don't want to lay cable to my buddy half a mile away, I'll need wireless to link to him. Okay, let's assume that I've placed repeaters in the good spots, supplied them with electricity, and linked up with his wireless network. Sweet. I've got a network of one. But crap - he's also using SBC. So we need to find someone else. Let's roll more wireless repeaters to some more buddies. Soon we have a decent sized network, and magic - we found someone who uses something besides Comcast and SBC to connect to the internet. Joy! Oh, but my connection to the internet just went down. Was it one of the repeaters? Did someone's router die? I'll need to run some tests. Ohh.... one of the repeaters died. Let's drive out and find it. Ah man - a squirrel chewed on the power cord. Need to replace it. Maybe make it squirrel proof.
See where I'm getting here? It's not that it's impossible - it's impossible if I don't want to make my personal non-SBC connection my job. And that even assumes that Wi-Max will be all its cracked up to be. Compare that with running your own TV network. Put up a broadcast antenna, make it low-power enough to not infringe on FCC regulations (I assume the same rule that allows unlicensed college stations allows for unlicensed tv stations), and start sending out your buddies videos.
Your argument can be applied to a lot of instances, as the knowledge required to do anything is generally freely available. But that doesn't mean that it will be easy or available to everyone. Build your own car? Technically not a problem. Build your own rocket? Neither. But to do it right requires money and time. Lots of both.
Please list your name. I'll make sure that when your resume comes across, it goes straight into the "Burn Immediately" bin.
You're saying that you found a massive security problem during QA, and you didn't even discuss this with your managers? With your legal department? With anybody? You're saying this flaw is still in your product? And why do you think you still should get paid for your job?
Your average corporate executive types, with their business degrees and business experience, have gotten to where they are by using their understanding of capitalistic concepts like control of supply, scarcity, and material goods. This is especially true of those in the content business (the "traditional" cable and media industries).
Almost. What these executives have figured out is that they are sitting on a damn-near infrastructure monopoly, where the cost of entry is so astronomically high that competition is near impossible to happen at this stage. So what do they want to do? Why, extract monopoly rents of course. Now there is the pesky little problem that there might be one or two other companies who could sour the deal, but that's nothing a little nudgenudgewinkwink can't solve.
For those who are about to yell and scream that there is plenty of competition, I dare you to list it.
In my neck of the woods (Silicon Valley), I have the choice between SBC and Comcast. Sure, I can use Earthlink or Speakeasy or some other local ISPs - but they all lease lines from SBC. Same for the other cable operators. So there is a damn near monopoly on internet access, and a monopoly on specific types of access.
The same goes for backbone providers. There is a reason they are called backbones: nearly everyone transits through them, and there aren't too many of them. If they all decide that they can extract ungodly amounts of money from the people who route traffic through them by charging those ungodly amounts of money - well, there is no way to turn to get cheaper traffic. Sure, there could be one or two spoil-sports that decide to make money by offering cheaper service. But if you have 3 or at most 4 backbones, chances are that collusion is (even unspoken collusion) is going to work just fine.
Competition my ass. Prepare to be gouged by people who own the infrastructure that was largely built with tax breaks, incentives or outright government subsidises.
Thanks for the info. Looking for more information, it seems that their global audience wasn't completely cut off. This would lead credence to the fact that their main carrier, UUNet, somehow blackholed their traffic, but that it was still carried by smaller carriers.
Just one question for you: who determines who the parent is, and who the child is? Besides, I wouldn't call a country "orderly" when it has to shoot its own citizens, imprison them for what they believe in and just generally foul its environment. Oh, and corruption is ever present, too. I sure hope you don't plan on "exporting" your political system.
Nearly all traffic crosses UUNet backbones at some point. I've never heard of BTN (and I did worldwide network performance analysis for over two years not so long ago), so I can't imagine them carrying much traffic without routing through some other Tier-1 provider very soon. As for Telia, they don't carry much traffic. If PharmaMaster really managed to convince someone at UUNet to blackhole a website, it's very conceivable that no one outside of Israel would be able to access them.
Great read. While I fundamentally disagree with you on the usefulness of the implied contract (both its theory and its practice), this has greatly helped my understanding of the chinese political system.
Man, a great post lingering at 1, and me with no mod points.
Since I agree on all your points, I'll just reiterate my support for your main one: "States and societies don't have rights, individuals do". A state without people does not exist. A society without people does not exist. As a result, it is ludicrous to argue that actions designed to save the state while sacrificing individuals is anything but tyranny designed to satisfy a small subgroup of people.
I've had a number of discussion with various chinese on this (including an ex-girlfriend of mine) and tried to follow the background story on this as much as possible. There are two points that invariably come up among those who support the Chinese police state: China as an idea supercedes individual rights, and there are some people who do not know what's right for them, which means that like stray children, they need to be brought back onto the right path. Quite often, the family analogy is brought up to support the second idea: "If my children to something bad, I punish them. This is no different."
Both concepts I find highly disturbing. The first one for reasons already laid out. The second because the analogy is flawed: being in a family does not give the parents the right to abuse the children. Furthermore, it assumes that one adult has some intrinsic right to control another adult's life. Maybe it's just the individualist in me talking, or maybe it's just that I got tired of learning about atrocities committed in the name of the state ever since states were created. But I cannot see through what process you can decide who is actually suited to play the role of parent, and who is to play the role of the children. In the vast majority of the cases, not only are people with control issues the ones who are attracted to these types of positions (and are therefore fundamentally the wrong people for the job), but I fail to see what the point of such a position is - unless you buy into the first argument, namely that the state is more important than individuals. In this case, it is fairly easy to determine what the role of such a parental position would be.
In short, my disagreements with people like BlackRookSix is not merely a cultural disagreement. It's one that comes from disagreements on fundamental matters of the nature of the state and the individual. I sincerely hope that they stay away from me as much as possible - because I know how they would deal with me if they ever get to design laws by which I would have to abide. And the only option I would have at that point for preserving my way of life would be to remove the state monopoly on violence.
Who the hell modded this insightful? It's wrong on so many levels it isn't even funny anymore.
Shockingly they HAVE to, or said copyright/trademarks are diluted.
Shockingly, no. This isn't about trademarks, but copyright. As someone else in this thread pointed out, only trademarks can go into public domain if you fail to protect them.
Many look at lawsuits as something like the death penalty or a nuclear first-strike.
They are - if you are an individual person who doesn't happen to have a lawyer on retainer or several hundred thousand dollars in the bank. Exactly how do you think to defend yourself against a lawsuit you now as a fact is false? If there's even a shred of a possibility that the person instigating the lawsuit is right, you'll have to get a lawyer and spend some time in court. If you're going up against a company with decent funds, even an initial not-guilty verdit might not help - there's always appeals. Most likely, your cash will run out before theirs does. That's why it is a death penalty and a nuclear first strike. You can't recover, unless you have the same means available to you.
It is about protecting copyrighted material that is provided exclusively to internal Apple staff and employees of Apple Certified Resellers.
If a material is copyrighted, it doesn't mean no one can reference it. That's where fair use comes in. Not only that, but do you really think that copyright should even work this way? "Your honor, that child porn you see there is copyrighted. The FBI had no right to access it or distribute it, as it was only to be seen by this group of avowed pedophiles. Case should be dismissed with prejudice." Yeah, yeah, I brought child porn into this debate, making it emotional and killing any possible rational discussion. But it ticks me off to no end that some people think copyright is some sort of god-given right that supercedes all other rights of the public and individual citizen. It isn't. As a matter of fact, society only advances - even survives - if its members communicate. Your version of copyright would send humanity back to being nothing but animals in pants, to quote a recent commercial.
Ranting about Apple for non-sensible reasons is a sure-fire way to convince me you're a moron, and not because you use a "PC".
Pot, kettle, meet. You sound like you know technology, but the logic you used for everything else was a sure-fire way to convince me you're a moron.
Moral of the story: don't insult people, it just might stick on you more than on the other people.
The obvious solution is, of course, to incorporate everyone at birth. Think of the possibilities! The mergers, acquisitions and firesales that could happen! I'm sure this would be the beginning of a glorious new human age.
Note for the sarcasm impaired: the above was sarcasm.
Despite your misconception, science is not a search for truth. To misquote Indiana Jones, "If you're looking for truth, Philosophy 101 is down the hall." Science is the search for an explanation on how the observable world around us works. Nothing more. Nothing less.
"Until science _disproves_ something, that thing should not be discounted as a possibility. That includes God, goblins, and pink dinosaurs under the ocean floor."
Wrong. First, define God, goblins and pink dinosaurs under the ocean. You'll quickly understand which ones science can deal with it, and which ones it can't.
You know, statements like these are exactly one of the reasons why people in the Kansas Board of Education were able to take the ID farce and run with it. Science is not in the business of proving or disproving stuff that has no relationship with the natural world. Alternatively, just because you can dream something up doesn't mean it's worth the energy you expended to articulate it.
Copyright-enforced royalties should be a kind of pension for creators, offering some financial security to people who've spent their lives creating works of art (visual, literary, musical, etc).
I'm sorry, but what? No one, in any business except the one of copyrighted works, gets to derive a pension from work they have done earlier. As a matter of fact, copyrighted works are the only legal construct that allows someone to derive income from something that has not only been sold, resold and sold again, but has been done in the past (sometimes decades). By your logic, should the fact that I'm working right, creating software, writing fixes, entitle me to receive a pension 50 years down the line from the people who use my work right now?
This entire idea that people can somehow retire and still get paid for work that they used to is ludicrous. If you want to retire on the income you've generated by working, fine. Be my guest. I really don't care how you arrive at that result. But don't expect me to subsidize your retirement in the Bahamas, just because you did some work earlier.
I'm all for copyright. It does have a place indeed. But to twist this into some form of retirement plan is an insult to everyone who actually has to save money to retire. Furthermore, behind these types of uses for copyright is another ludicrous idea: that somehow, your work was so awesomely awesome and groundbreaking that you get to control how it gets used - regardless of how many previous ideas and methods you copied, used or abused to create your work. In short, it's the idea that writing a book or a song somehow results in something doesn't draw on anything else in the world - which is complete and utter crap. The only reason people can create stuff is because they use things and ideas that are already around them. It's the only way to create something that actually matters.
Let me repeat this: there is a place for copyright. There has to be a way that people can derive an income from creating works of art or software. But copyright is not a natural right, nor does more copyright result in more creativity. On the contrary - there is a very quick limit when copyright starts to inhibit creativity. So to people who think that copyright should be a way to subsidize retirement - go suck on a shotgun indeed.
Focus. We are talking about losses that the distributor incurs. If there is no sale, how is there a loss (i.e., the removal of something that was there)?
I missed the part where publishing is a competitive market. Especially when it comes to copyrighted works. Explain to me exactly where the competitive equilibrium price in this market is? It certainly isn't the intersection of the supply and demand curve, because guess what - this isn't a competitive market, which means that the supply curve means jack. The market for copyrighted works is a monopoly market, and prices are priced according to monopoly rents.
The funny part is, the market for unlicensed copies is far more competitive and free than the one for licensed copies. Wanna know why? Because there is indeed a free exchange of goods for cash, where goods compete on their merit. Think Blackbeard is charging too much for Gligli? Walk on over to Rackham and see how much he wants for it. Think Rackham's copy is shabby and poorly done? Check out Lafitte's version instead. Compare this with the current market for DVDs. I get one version of Gligli (some might say this is a good thing), at exactly one price. That price has not been set according to supply and demand rules, but according to how much the producer thinks the market can bear.
You know, I don't mind people defending copyright laws. There are good reasons to do so. It just annoys me when people pull facts and theories out of their ass to insult others and make themselves feel all high and mighty. Not to mention that in the process they support a system that hinders my ability to enjoy and produce art.
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely right. However, this means that who the owner is, where it is headquartered and what the command structure is has no bearing on whether there could be spyware in the computers. Which just supports my main point: this is nothing but political grandstanding by some political fuckwit whose main loayalty is to his own paycheck.
You mean William Amelio, the current CEO of Lenovo, right? The guy who used to be a head of Dell in Asia? Yes, I can really imagine how that meeting with Hu would go down:
Hu: Buddy, dearest, we need to install these nifty little chips on your computers. Won't you help us?
Amelio: Fuck off.
Hu: Shame really that I can't put thumbscrews on you. Oh well, it was worth a try.
Or maybe you think the current chairman of the board would force these decisions? You then sure don't know how the power structure in an international company works.
There is nothing to see here outside of political grandstanding in an election year. Fuck that little dipshit who is trying to score election points by reenacting the Dubai World debacle.
Interesting. Are you claiming that Mike Honda, my representative in Congress, is actually loyal to me? I haven't voted for the fucker, and I doubt he cares a lick about me. How about Senator Feinstein? I wish I could get that idiot out of the Senate, as her positions generally are in direct conflict with my positions and my interests. You are correct that the Indian parliament is most likely even less beholden to my opinion, but that has merely become a question of degrees. You can argue technicalities all day, but the reality is that Feinstein and Honda have done probably as much to help me as has Manmohan Singh.
You are playing word games; simply moving the location of something is not outsourcing.
You're right; I am indeed playing word games. Everything is about what words you choose and what meaning you give them. For example, you claim that moving the location of an organization is not outsourcing. What is outsourcing then? Exactly how does subcontracting your IT department to an IBM datacenter in Florida differ from outsourcing your IT department to a Wipro or HCL datacenter in Bangalore?
Outsourcing *can* be a good idea, if you fully and carefully analyse the impacts on your business.
Very true. See the last paragraph in my original post.
IMHO any company with more than a dozen employees should have its own network admin, and any with more than a couple of hundred employees should seriously consider having their own software developers.
Completely, utterly fucking retarded. My girlfriend works in a small boardgame shop. There's about twelve people in there. They use email, have a little website and that's about it. Do you really think they should pay another 80k a year for a system admin, who will do nothing but sit on his hands for about 39 hours a week? Should they hire their own webdevelopers for a website that consists of a couple of semi-static pages? As another example, my company consists of 2500 people worldwide. They have their own software R&D, but should they also have their own developers for their CRM system? For their web-conference tool? For their IM?
See, it all boils down to competency, relevance and scale. How competent are you at doing that specific IT-related function? How competent is someone else, and what is the return on investment when you do it internally or when you hire someone to do it? How relevant is the system you're working on to your company - should you make it part of your core competency, or should you leave it to someone who specializes in it? Will it be part of your competitive advantage? Finally, how big will that project be - will it be something small that can be handled internally, is it what your company does, or is it something that will simply distract from what you do?
To argue that all things above a certain size are better handled in house is just as blindingly stupid as arguing that all things above a certain size should be outsourced. You said it yourself - outsourcing needs to be carefully analyzed.
That's not outsourcing, that's offshoring.
You completely missed the point. What I was getting at is that the problems associated with outsourcing can come up whether you move the operation 500 miles or 5000 miles. I speak French fluently, and I can't understand a word the damn Quebecians speak. Same with people from the sticks in Virginia. Culture differences? Man, ever traveled the country? You can get culture shock just by switching state. And hour differentials.... yeah, Hawaiians have a really easy time with support in Florida.
despite several sophistic arguments to the contrary, it IS harmful to the economy of the country that loses the jobs;
I'm glad you provided so much support for that statement. I'll buy that the argument isn't settle
A working brain is still a prized asset. Here's though what people are finding out: that there's nothing wrong with a third world brain. And that the primary distinction between an american brain and a brain from a different part of the world is that the american brain thinks it needs magnitudes more money to live. The only shift that happened is that it becomes easier to tap people in far away places. Competition used to be between blacksmiths in the same town. It is now between between blacksmiths (or coders, or IT people or marketers) in the entire world.
Welcome to global competition. It ain't going away. The only thing that can save you is that you have access to the same markets as everyone else.
Why exactly is a bad idea? Let me ask you a different question - why should government be outsourced to DC, Washington? Why should police enforcement be outsourced to the HQ two cities over? Why should the military be outsourced to Fort Bragg? Why should training of the federal police be outsourced to Quantico, Virginia?
Face it, outsourcing is already a way of life. The only difference between now and earlier is that the people to whom things get outsourced don't look like you, don't speak your language and keep different hours. And I'd argue that even that can also be said when you talk about outsourcing support centers from California to South Carolina.
The main problem with outsourcing right now has nothing to do with "ohhhh... scary foreigners get to do what we used to do!" It has everything to do with outsourcing being applied in the wrong places, unrealistic expectations of its benefits and there being little oversight and control exerted over the outsourced operations.
The Bin Laden part was easy. My first thought when I heard about the WTC attack was "Wow, bin Laden actually succeeded this time." Why? Cuz that's what he had done, had said would do, and was crazy and fanatical enough to do.
You also conveniently failed to mention that the news reports about these hijackers being alive turned out to be reports about people with the same names being alive. Nice.
Patents stopped being useful for that when it became possible for corporations to simply outspend a small-time inventor in the lawyer department. Besides, I'll stick with my original claim: if you can't produce a working product (only needs to be one, but there needs to be a working product), you don't deserve a patent. End of story. If you can't build one, there's probably something fundamentally wrong with your idea.
How about this: you stop making thought experiments and actually expirement. You'll find out that your comparison is full of crap because ABS only works in the direction that the wheels are spinning. Once you go sideways, ABS is out of the equation.
5 mod points and I decide to take troll bait. I must be getting old.
Interestingly, the link doesn't work anymore. Maybe someone is a bit concerned about privacy after all? See, this is what this database is about - it's not about the number itself. It's the information that can be gotten at once you have all these records.
Then you did the right thing by refusing the work - not because it was the *Right* thing to do, but because it would have cost you a lot more if a break-in would have happened. The lesson here probably is to put these things into the contract ahead of time.
I am working for a company with 2500 people. We routinely integrate with 3rd party products. We license stuff, buy other people, all kinds of different things. A good chunk of our goodwill is created through our online service which includes stuff remarkably similar to your scenario.
It is absolutely irrelevant if you didn't write it, or that it wasn't your responsibility to find it. What I know is that if anyone on my team (and that comes from someone who is simply part of a team, and doesn't run one) pulls that kind of lame excuse once, he'll pull it again and again. And that means that either I or the other team members have to pick up the slack.
Now, it could be that your place really sucks (I'm lucky enough that I like most people I work with). In that case, I can tell you to run like hell. As said, not only because this kind of attitude will fail you every time in an interview. But because it also means that this company either is or will be in serious trouble.
Good point. Since I don't want to lay cable to my buddy half a mile away, I'll need wireless to link to him. Okay, let's assume that I've placed repeaters in the good spots, supplied them with electricity, and linked up with his wireless network. Sweet. I've got a network of one. But crap - he's also using SBC. So we need to find someone else. Let's roll more wireless repeaters to some more buddies. Soon we have a decent sized network, and magic - we found someone who uses something besides Comcast and SBC to connect to the internet. Joy! Oh, but my connection to the internet just went down. Was it one of the repeaters? Did someone's router die? I'll need to run some tests. Ohh.... one of the repeaters died. Let's drive out and find it. Ah man - a squirrel chewed on the power cord. Need to replace it. Maybe make it squirrel proof.
See where I'm getting here? It's not that it's impossible - it's impossible if I don't want to make my personal non-SBC connection my job. And that even assumes that Wi-Max will be all its cracked up to be. Compare that with running your own TV network. Put up a broadcast antenna, make it low-power enough to not infringe on FCC regulations (I assume the same rule that allows unlicensed college stations allows for unlicensed tv stations), and start sending out your buddies videos.
Your argument can be applied to a lot of instances, as the knowledge required to do anything is generally freely available. But that doesn't mean that it will be easy or available to everyone. Build your own car? Technically not a problem. Build your own rocket? Neither. But to do it right requires money and time. Lots of both.
Please list your name. I'll make sure that when your resume comes across, it goes straight into the "Burn Immediately" bin.
You're saying that you found a massive security problem during QA, and you didn't even discuss this with your managers? With your legal department? With anybody? You're saying this flaw is still in your product? And why do you think you still should get paid for your job?
Almost. What these executives have figured out is that they are sitting on a damn-near infrastructure monopoly, where the cost of entry is so astronomically high that competition is near impossible to happen at this stage. So what do they want to do? Why, extract monopoly rents of course. Now there is the pesky little problem that there might be one or two other companies who could sour the deal, but that's nothing a little nudgenudgewinkwink can't solve.
For those who are about to yell and scream that there is plenty of competition, I dare you to list it.
In my neck of the woods (Silicon Valley), I have the choice between SBC and Comcast. Sure, I can use Earthlink or Speakeasy or some other local ISPs - but they all lease lines from SBC. Same for the other cable operators. So there is a damn near monopoly on internet access, and a monopoly on specific types of access.
The same goes for backbone providers. There is a reason they are called backbones: nearly everyone transits through them, and there aren't too many of them. If they all decide that they can extract ungodly amounts of money from the people who route traffic through them by charging those ungodly amounts of money - well, there is no way to turn to get cheaper traffic. Sure, there could be one or two spoil-sports that decide to make money by offering cheaper service. But if you have 3 or at most 4 backbones, chances are that collusion is (even unspoken collusion) is going to work just fine.
Competition my ass. Prepare to be gouged by people who own the infrastructure that was largely built with tax breaks, incentives or outright government subsidises.
Thanks for the info. Looking for more information, it seems that their global audience wasn't completely cut off. This would lead credence to the fact that their main carrier, UUNet, somehow blackholed their traffic, but that it was still carried by smaller carriers.
Just one question for you: who determines who the parent is, and who the child is? Besides, I wouldn't call a country "orderly" when it has to shoot its own citizens, imprison them for what they believe in and just generally foul its environment. Oh, and corruption is ever present, too. I sure hope you don't plan on "exporting" your political system.
Nearly all traffic crosses UUNet backbones at some point. I've never heard of BTN (and I did worldwide network performance analysis for over two years not so long ago), so I can't imagine them carrying much traffic without routing through some other Tier-1 provider very soon. As for Telia, they don't carry much traffic. If PharmaMaster really managed to convince someone at UUNet to blackhole a website, it's very conceivable that no one outside of Israel would be able to access them.
Great read. While I fundamentally disagree with you on the usefulness of the implied contract (both its theory and its practice), this has greatly helped my understanding of the chinese political system.
Man, a great post lingering at 1, and me with no mod points.
Since I agree on all your points, I'll just reiterate my support for your main one: "States and societies don't have rights, individuals do". A state without people does not exist. A society without people does not exist. As a result, it is ludicrous to argue that actions designed to save the state while sacrificing individuals is anything but tyranny designed to satisfy a small subgroup of people.
I've had a number of discussion with various chinese on this (including an ex-girlfriend of mine) and tried to follow the background story on this as much as possible. There are two points that invariably come up among those who support the Chinese police state: China as an idea supercedes individual rights, and there are some people who do not know what's right for them, which means that like stray children, they need to be brought back onto the right path. Quite often, the family analogy is brought up to support the second idea: "If my children to something bad, I punish them. This is no different."
Both concepts I find highly disturbing. The first one for reasons already laid out. The second because the analogy is flawed: being in a family does not give the parents the right to abuse the children. Furthermore, it assumes that one adult has some intrinsic right to control another adult's life. Maybe it's just the individualist in me talking, or maybe it's just that I got tired of learning about atrocities committed in the name of the state ever since states were created. But I cannot see through what process you can decide who is actually suited to play the role of parent, and who is to play the role of the children. In the vast majority of the cases, not only are people with control issues the ones who are attracted to these types of positions (and are therefore fundamentally the wrong people for the job), but I fail to see what the point of such a position is - unless you buy into the first argument, namely that the state is more important than individuals. In this case, it is fairly easy to determine what the role of such a parental position would be.
In short, my disagreements with people like BlackRookSix is not merely a cultural disagreement. It's one that comes from disagreements on fundamental matters of the nature of the state and the individual. I sincerely hope that they stay away from me as much as possible - because I know how they would deal with me if they ever get to design laws by which I would have to abide. And the only option I would have at that point for preserving my way of life would be to remove the state monopoly on violence.
Shockingly they HAVE to, or said copyright/trademarks are diluted.
Shockingly, no. This isn't about trademarks, but copyright. As someone else in this thread pointed out, only trademarks can go into public domain if you fail to protect them.
Many look at lawsuits as something like the death penalty or a nuclear first-strike.
They are - if you are an individual person who doesn't happen to have a lawyer on retainer or several hundred thousand dollars in the bank. Exactly how do you think to defend yourself against a lawsuit you now as a fact is false? If there's even a shred of a possibility that the person instigating the lawsuit is right, you'll have to get a lawyer and spend some time in court. If you're going up against a company with decent funds, even an initial not-guilty verdit might not help - there's always appeals. Most likely, your cash will run out before theirs does. That's why it is a death penalty and a nuclear first strike. You can't recover, unless you have the same means available to you.
It is about protecting copyrighted material that is provided exclusively to internal Apple staff and employees of Apple Certified Resellers.
If a material is copyrighted, it doesn't mean no one can reference it. That's where fair use comes in. Not only that, but do you really think that copyright should even work this way? "Your honor, that child porn you see there is copyrighted. The FBI had no right to access it or distribute it, as it was only to be seen by this group of avowed pedophiles. Case should be dismissed with prejudice." Yeah, yeah, I brought child porn into this debate, making it emotional and killing any possible rational discussion. But it ticks me off to no end that some people think copyright is some sort of god-given right that supercedes all other rights of the public and individual citizen. It isn't. As a matter of fact, society only advances - even survives - if its members communicate. Your version of copyright would send humanity back to being nothing but animals in pants, to quote a recent commercial.
Ranting about Apple for non-sensible reasons is a sure-fire way to convince me you're a moron, and not because you use a "PC".
Pot, kettle, meet. You sound like you know technology, but the logic you used for everything else was a sure-fire way to convince me you're a moron.
Moral of the story: don't insult people, it just might stick on you more than on the other people.
The obvious solution is, of course, to incorporate everyone at birth. Think of the possibilities! The mergers, acquisitions and firesales that could happen! I'm sure this would be the beginning of a glorious new human age.
Note for the sarcasm impaired: the above was sarcasm.
Despite your misconception, science is not a search for truth. To misquote Indiana Jones, "If you're looking for truth, Philosophy 101 is down the hall." Science is the search for an explanation on how the observable world around us works. Nothing more. Nothing less.
"Until science _disproves_ something, that thing should not be discounted as a possibility. That includes God, goblins, and pink dinosaurs under the ocean floor."
Wrong. First, define God, goblins and pink dinosaurs under the ocean. You'll quickly understand which ones science can deal with it, and which ones it can't.
You know, statements like these are exactly one of the reasons why people in the Kansas Board of Education were able to take the ID farce and run with it. Science is not in the business of proving or disproving stuff that has no relationship with the natural world. Alternatively, just because you can dream something up doesn't mean it's worth the energy you expended to articulate it.
I'm sorry, but what? No one, in any business except the one of copyrighted works, gets to derive a pension from work they have done earlier. As a matter of fact, copyrighted works are the only legal construct that allows someone to derive income from something that has not only been sold, resold and sold again, but has been done in the past (sometimes decades). By your logic, should the fact that I'm working right, creating software, writing fixes, entitle me to receive a pension 50 years down the line from the people who use my work right now?
This entire idea that people can somehow retire and still get paid for work that they used to is ludicrous. If you want to retire on the income you've generated by working, fine. Be my guest. I really don't care how you arrive at that result. But don't expect me to subsidize your retirement in the Bahamas, just because you did some work earlier.
I'm all for copyright. It does have a place indeed. But to twist this into some form of retirement plan is an insult to everyone who actually has to save money to retire. Furthermore, behind these types of uses for copyright is another ludicrous idea: that somehow, your work was so awesomely awesome and groundbreaking that you get to control how it gets used - regardless of how many previous ideas and methods you copied, used or abused to create your work. In short, it's the idea that writing a book or a song somehow results in something doesn't draw on anything else in the world - which is complete and utter crap. The only reason people can create stuff is because they use things and ideas that are already around them. It's the only way to create something that actually matters.
Let me repeat this: there is a place for copyright. There has to be a way that people can derive an income from creating works of art or software. But copyright is not a natural right, nor does more copyright result in more creativity. On the contrary - there is a very quick limit when copyright starts to inhibit creativity. So to people who think that copyright should be a way to subsidize retirement - go suck on a shotgun indeed.
Focus. We are talking about losses that the distributor incurs. If there is no sale, how is there a loss (i.e., the removal of something that was there)?
I missed the part where publishing is a competitive market. Especially when it comes to copyrighted works. Explain to me exactly where the competitive equilibrium price in this market is? It certainly isn't the intersection of the supply and demand curve, because guess what - this isn't a competitive market, which means that the supply curve means jack. The market for copyrighted works is a monopoly market, and prices are priced according to monopoly rents.
The funny part is, the market for unlicensed copies is far more competitive and free than the one for licensed copies. Wanna know why? Because there is indeed a free exchange of goods for cash, where goods compete on their merit. Think Blackbeard is charging too much for Gligli? Walk on over to Rackham and see how much he wants for it. Think Rackham's copy is shabby and poorly done? Check out Lafitte's version instead. Compare this with the current market for DVDs. I get one version of Gligli (some might say this is a good thing), at exactly one price. That price has not been set according to supply and demand rules, but according to how much the producer thinks the market can bear.
You know, I don't mind people defending copyright laws. There are good reasons to do so. It just annoys me when people pull facts and theories out of their ass to insult others and make themselves feel all high and mighty. Not to mention that in the process they support a system that hinders my ability to enjoy and produce art.