Realistically, you're not going to eliminate standby mode. People aren't going to unplug all their things when they are not in use, and they're not going to give up on the remote control.
Disclaimer: I haven't thought this all the way through, so feel free to help me through it.
I only use my entertainment center a few times a week, so I usually turn off its surge protector when I'm done. As far as I can tell this only has two drawbacks:
1. I have go to the center and reach with my foot to power on the surge protector. 2. Some of the devices don't persist their previous usage settings, so it takes a minute or two to get everything playing running properly.
Obviously these things aren't deal-breakers for me because I continue to deal with it. They don't seem like hard problems to solve though.
- If the surge protector itself had some sort of standby mode, you could make a remote that can talk to it. - If "standby" was moved to the surge protector, it would make sense for device manufacturers to spend less money on their standby features and more on persisting settings.
But for the record, I hate the idea of governments mandating things like this. If the things I suggest are practical, I expect that the market will make it happen.
Sooner or later all of eastern europe will have to realise that Democracy is no better than Communism was. All it provides is the illusion of having a say in who runs your country so nobody starts a revolution.
A couple points:
- Replace "Communism" with "totalitarianism". Communism is an economic system. Your point was related to the political system.
- Democracy does give you a say in who runs your country, we just haven't implemented it in such a way to exercise it properly. Don't lose hope yet.
Your post was insightful until you went off on the Iraq/oil tangent. It was largely unsubstantiated.
the militant islamist countries, they would certainly prefer everyone dead over both they and the "infidels" being alive.
I doubt this is actually true. Martyrdom is certainly drummed into the minds of the footsoldiers, but when was the last time that one of the leaders put himself in the line of fire? I highly doubt Bin Laden would make himself a martyr. He just knows that this kind of rhetoric will play well with his troops and keep him in power.
As the GP pointed out, you can meet nutjobs anywhere. The problem with meeting people on the Net is that there can be a very long delay before you realize that your "friend" is one such nutjob.
My theory is that the vast majority of well-balanced females don't make themselves available online. Sure they chat with people they already know, but they don't expand their circles. They can make friends in any setting, so why bother with one where deception is so easy? So any female you're likely to meet online is going to be less than well-balanced. Most people are aware of this trend (even if they can't put words to it), so they're likely to be pessimistic about the prospects of your new relationship.
Note: Yes, the same logic applies if you transpose the genders, but I think the females started the downward spiral (or prevented it from ever spiralling upwards... however you want to look at it.)
Note: It's possible that this is no longer the case, but it is the source of the stigma. If the situation has changed, the stigma will eventually disappear.
I'm completely against legislation like this, but in the interest of having a full discussion, I'll explain why they want this legislation.
They don't intend to use this against people that they already suspect. Instead, they will identify sites containing illegal images/information and then subpoena the major ISPs for lists of users that have accessed any of those sites. This becomes their probable cause and then they resume normal investigation techniques to solidify their cases.
And I vote for the best candidate, regardless of their party.
Are you sure? Or do you simply choose the best candidate in from the two major parties?
I've read your other posts, so believe me when I say I'm not just trying to be a dick. It's just that I believe that choosing between "the lesser of two evils" is a very short sighted option. You should ask yourself two questions: Why are my options so limited? and what can be done to improve my options in the future?
Just what sort of world is my daughter going to grow up in?
Sadly, it'll be one that she doesn't even realize is wrong.
Check out this opinion voiced by an 18 year old girl last week. Unfortunately, it's only available in Real Media format. rtsp://video.c-span.org/60days/ap090906.rm. Fast Forward to 57 minutes 40 seconds.
Some notable quotes:
"I don't know what it's like to be on a plane before September 11th, so to me, the security that we have in place, that's all I've ever known."
"When I walk around and I hear 'We're on alert today' or 'The airports banning water', alright... it's just another safety precaution..."
If you think about it, this really isn't that surprising, but it is sobering to actually hear it. Bottom line: it only takes a couple generations to phase out the people that actually know what freedom is.
You're not a common carrier, unless you can show you were just a router and you can identify who sent you the packet so the investigator can continue to trace it back to the source.
Most of your logic is sound, but I disagree with this statement. I have no idea what the actual law is, but that's irrelevant since we're not talking about a specific jurisdiction anyways. Feel free to offer counter-examples in case I'm forgetting something, but it is my personal opinion is that no law is just if it doesn't require atleast some sort of intent or negligence. If I conduct a large number of transactions in a given timeframe and a small percentage of them happen to relate to an illegal activity of which I have no knowledge, why should I bear the burden of inspecting or tracking everything? Should I track the source and serial number of every piece of currency that I receive on the off chance that it turns out to be counterfeit?
There are many facets of life where you are not allowed to act with anonymity. You can not own property, drive a car, fly on a plane, or have a bank account and remain anonymous.
You're right, but the anonymity should only be waived in relation to situations such as you enumerated. Per the 9th and 10th, we do (should?) have the inherent right to anonymity. It's not absolute, but the state should have something akin to "probably cause" before it can compel you to identify yourself.
This is merely academic though, since this is taking place in Germany and it sounds like they have more than enough probable cause anyways.
Next thing you know, they'll be telling you how much water you legally can use to flush your crap down the toilet. Oh, wait...
Yeah, it's a stupid law and I support its repeal, but I won't really start to protest until they mandate timers that prevent me from flushing twice in a row.
The specifics of the law are not important. It's the fact that there's plenty of legal definition in the law to protect an individual from harm from other people, but not employers.
I think you're misusing "harm". An employer, aside from OSHA issues, does not inflict "physical injury or damage" upon you. Nor is it inherently "wrong or evil" for them to dismiss you, unless they dismiss an employee in violation of a prior promise. The only meaning of "harm" that may be applicable is "psychological injury", but even then, it's hard to say how much of that is due to their actions and how much is due to the employee having "thin skin". I'm making absolutely no judgements about you or your situation, but we all know people that play the victim card at every opportunity. These people certainly suffer psychological injury on a regular basis, but most of the time, it's self-inflicted.
NYS law provides 17 pages dealing with contract labor law. How contracted employees are to be treated, how they're to be dealt with and negotiated with, etc. It's pretty much a copy of what exists in the "contract law" section already. It's a useless addition that provides no value, but someone took the time to write it to protect the contracted employees.
I know nothing of these laws, but based on your description, I would advocate their repeal. I firmly believe that "the government which governs least, governs best."
Hell, something as simple as "These are the valid cause reasons for immediate termination: XXX, XXX and XXX. Anything else requires at least some documentation that you've put in a reasonable attempt to work with the employee to correct the behavior" would save a lot of people a lot of pain.
I think this illustrates the core of our philosophical differences. I believe that the government's sole job is to set the boundaries on what we can't do to one another. I think we currently do that by forbidding discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, and disability. Your proposal, which I realize was just an illustration, reverses the logic by saying "You can do XXX, but not YYY. If you want to do YYY, you have to do ZZZ first." This is inherently more intrusive. As a small business owner, I have a hard enough time keeping myself in business, let alone staying aware of, and in compliance of the millions of government regulations.
I sympathize with your situation. It sounds like you got a pretty raw deal. My problem is that every time you create a government mandated protection for one person/entity, you're reducing the freedom of another person/entity. There are just reasons for doing so, but it should not be done lightly.
By the way, I read your recent article. If you handed that agreement to me, I, as an employer, would sign it with only a few modifications. They are as follows:
Company understands that employee relies on the pay and benefits provided by company, and therefore company will not change any part of those benefits or pay (either up or down) without acceptance of the employee. Failure of employee to accept a change in benefits cannot be considered in disciplinary actions.
Sorry, can't do it. If I overestimate my ability to compensate you, I need to have recourse. If I can't reduce your compensation, you'll slowly drag me into bankruptcy and then we're both screwed. I would agree to give you 60 days notice before the changes took effect. I would also agree not to hold it against you if you decided you needed to seek employment elsewhere. Hell, I'd probably even give ya a couple paid days off to go to interviews, but I do need to retain the right to adjust your compensation.
Company also understands that if its employees consistently need to work over 40 hours/week, that there aren't sufficient employees to cover the work t
I do understand where you're coming from, but I think there's a key difference in your analogy. In most, if not all states, when you receive your license, you are agreeing to operate the vehicle safely and accepting responsibility for any injuries that may come of you failure to do so. There is no such agreement when it comes to employment. Your employer is obligated to provide you with a safe work environment, handle some tax issues, and pay you promptly for your services.
If you wish to have more security than that, feel free to insist on a contract. You may have to take a paycut to make it worth the employer's while, but security isn't free. Could the government mandate one year contracts for everyone? Sure, but it still has an associated cost. Haven't you ever worked with someone who hung around for far too long despite being completely inept? That guy costs the company money and he would cost even more if they were stuck with him for X days. So now every company would have to subtract a bit from every salary to compensate for the risk that the new hire is dead weight. All you've done is spread the cost out to everyone. The net effect would be decentralized employment insurance. This isn't a totally bad thing, but we already have a centralized employment insurance program, so you'd have to can that before you could talk me into it.
My political affiliations (you're wrong, btw) have nothing to do with it. "At will" simply means that either party is free to sever the relationship at any time. Your former employer decided to exercise that right. It simply doesn't matter whether the decision was justified or not. It's unfortunate that you spent nine months unemployed, but honestly... who is responsible for solving your problems besides you?
If, however, your employer decides to go skeet shooting with pink slips you're pretty much fucked.
Only if you've managed your finances on the premise that you would never go a week (or *gasp* months) without a paycheck. It's called a rainy day fund. Your company has one. I have one. You should too. No one is responsible for your life except you.
You've never done ANY of them? Come on, tell me another one. I call bullshit on you.
That's absolutely irrelevant. I have committed many minor offenses in my life, but it's been a long time since I've done it willfully and consciously. Maturity is not about being perfect. It's about being honest and accepting the consequences of your action. The Great-Grandparent poster was using absurd logic to justify his deeds, rather than honestly acknowledging that most of them were either inconsiderate or immoral.
Sorry, but that response was a load of garbage. I would especially love to hear you justify more than five of those examples as "necessary for the functioning of our society". Bonus points if you can justify stealing cable, littering, and tax evasion.
I can classify every single example in one of four categories:
Theft
Willful disregard for laws that ration and coordinate the use of limited public resources
Not actually crimes
Crimes that maybe shouldn't be crimes
My responses can be summarized as follows:
I don't know where you got the idea that theft is justified as long as it's petty enough that you can usually get away with it. Sorry, theft is wrong. It is one of the few moral absolutes.
These rules are essential for a reasonably civil society. We can overcome the willful disobedience of a small percentage of people, but that certainly doesn't make you right.
They're not crimes so they don't belong in your list, but they are still betrayals of trust
If you truly don't think some thing should be a crime or if the crime should be more narrowly defined (and I agree with a couple of your examples), then let's work to get it repealed. If society agrees with us, we can make it happen.
If we, the people, ever want to be in control of things, we need to start exercising our power again. If you let them keep and pass overly broad (yet constitutional) laws under the assumption that they won't be enforced under a certain set of conditions, what will you do when Sheriff John Brown decides to (or gains the resources to) enforce them?
Yes, it would be easier to proxy everything, but it reduces your speed to the 56k neighborhood. Most of us aren't paranoid enough to want to take that hit. It's much more effective to proxy only the sites you don't trust.
The summary itself answers your question, and TFA goes even further to say
If there are any other sites that may be unduly logging your activity...add some entries for these sites into your anonymous proxy matchlist in FoxyProxy.
Next time spend atleast 30 seconds reading before you post.
Your response was simply pessimism masquerading as logic. Using your own thought process, how could we possibly educate that many people when we're barely even maintaining our own education infrastructure?
The bottom line is that there's no simple bottom line. It takes a constant cycle of capital and education in order to grow an economy. You're more than welcome to debate how the capital should be spent and how the education should be accomplished, but it's useless to debate which should come first.
As a side note, please remember that rudimentary roads can be built without heavy machinery. I'm sure there's no shortage of labor in these countries.
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: I haven't thought this all the way through, so feel free to help me through it.
I only use my entertainment center a few times a week, so I usually turn off its surge protector when I'm done. As far as I can tell this only has two drawbacks:
1. I have go to the center and reach with my foot to power on the surge protector.
2. Some of the devices don't persist their previous usage settings, so it takes a minute or two to get everything playing running properly.
Obviously these things aren't deal-breakers for me because I continue to deal with it. They don't seem like hard problems to solve though.
- If the surge protector itself had some sort of standby mode, you could make a remote that can talk to it.
- If "standby" was moved to the surge protector, it would make sense for device manufacturers to spend less money on their standby features and more on persisting settings.
But for the record, I hate the idea of governments mandating things like this. If the things I suggest are practical, I expect that the market will make it happen.
- Replace "Communism" with "totalitarianism". Communism is an economic system. Your point was related to the political system.
- Democracy does give you a say in who runs your country, we just haven't implemented it in such a way to exercise it properly. Don't lose hope yet.
Your post was insightful until you went off on the Iraq/oil tangent. It was largely unsubstantiated.Copyright law protects you no matter how bad you are in school.
My theory is that the vast majority of well-balanced females don't make themselves available online. Sure they chat with people they already know, but they don't expand their circles. They can make friends in any setting, so why bother with one where deception is so easy? So any female you're likely to meet online is going to be less than well-balanced. Most people are aware of this trend (even if they can't put words to it), so they're likely to be pessimistic about the prospects of your new relationship.
Note: Yes, the same logic applies if you transpose the genders, but I think the females started the downward spiral (or prevented it from ever spiralling upwards... however you want to look at it.)
Note: It's possible that this is no longer the case, but it is the source of the stigma. If the situation has changed, the stigma will eventually disappear.
I'm completely against legislation like this, but in the interest of having a full discussion, I'll explain why they want this legislation.
They don't intend to use this against people that they already suspect. Instead, they will identify sites containing illegal images/information and then subpoena the major ISPs for lists of users that have accessed any of those sites. This becomes their probable cause and then they resume normal investigation techniques to solidify their cases.
lol, you sure are the sunny-side up type, aren't you? I don't believe it, but I won't argue you. Atleast it's a unique viewpoint. BTW, nice sig.
I've read your other posts, so believe me when I say I'm not just trying to be a dick. It's just that I believe that choosing between "the lesser of two evils" is a very short sighted option. You should ask yourself two questions: Why are my options so limited? and what can be done to improve my options in the future?
Sadly, it'll be one that she doesn't even realize is wrong.
Check out this opinion voiced by an 18 year old girl last week. Unfortunately, it's only available in Real Media format. rtsp://video.c-span.org/60days/ap090906.rm. Fast Forward to 57 minutes 40 seconds.
Some notable quotes:
"I don't know what it's like to be on a plane before September 11th, so to me, the security that we have in place, that's all I've ever known."
"When I walk around and I hear 'We're on alert today' or 'The airports banning water', alright... it's just another safety precaution..."
If you think about it, this really isn't that surprising, but it is sobering to actually hear it. Bottom line: it only takes a couple generations to phase out the people that actually know what freedom is.
This is merely academic though, since this is taking place in Germany and it sounds like they have more than enough probable cause anyways.
You mean you can't? I figured it was normal.
Wouldn't work... my librarian is 25. She's pretty cute too. Not sure if cuteness affects her hearing, but it's worth mentioning anyways.
I think you're misusing "harm". An employer, aside from OSHA issues, does not inflict "physical injury or damage" upon you. Nor is it inherently "wrong or evil" for them to dismiss you, unless they dismiss an employee in violation of a prior promise. The only meaning of "harm" that may be applicable is "psychological injury", but even then, it's hard to say how much of that is due to their actions and how much is due to the employee having "thin skin". I'm making absolutely no judgements about you or your situation, but we all know people that play the victim card at every opportunity. These people certainly suffer psychological injury on a regular basis, but most of the time, it's self-inflicted.
I know nothing of these laws, but based on your description, I would advocate their repeal. I firmly believe that "the government which governs least, governs best."
I think this illustrates the core of our philosophical differences. I believe that the government's sole job is to set the boundaries on what we can't do to one another. I think we currently do that by forbidding discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, and disability. Your proposal, which I realize was just an illustration, reverses the logic by saying "You can do XXX, but not YYY. If you want to do YYY, you have to do ZZZ first." This is inherently more intrusive. As a small business owner, I have a hard enough time keeping myself in business, let alone staying aware of, and in compliance of the millions of government regulations.
I sympathize with your situation. It sounds like you got a pretty raw deal. My problem is that every time you create a government mandated protection for one person/entity, you're reducing the freedom of another person/entity. There are just reasons for doing so, but it should not be done lightly.
By the way, I read your recent article. If you handed that agreement to me, I, as an employer, would sign it with only a few modifications. They are as follows:
Sorry, can't do it. If I overestimate my ability to compensate you, I need to have recourse. If I can't reduce your compensation, you'll slowly drag me into bankruptcy and then we're both screwed. I would agree to give you 60 days notice before the changes took effect. I would also agree not to hold it against you if you decided you needed to seek employment elsewhere. Hell, I'd probably even give ya a couple paid days off to go to interviews, but I do need to retain the right to adjust your compensation.
I do understand where you're coming from, but I think there's a key difference in your analogy. In most, if not all states, when you receive your license, you are agreeing to operate the vehicle safely and accepting responsibility for any injuries that may come of you failure to do so. There is no such agreement when it comes to employment. Your employer is obligated to provide you with a safe work environment, handle some tax issues, and pay you promptly for your services.
If you wish to have more security than that, feel free to insist on a contract. You may have to take a paycut to make it worth the employer's while, but security isn't free. Could the government mandate one year contracts for everyone? Sure, but it still has an associated cost. Haven't you ever worked with someone who hung around for far too long despite being completely inept? That guy costs the company money and he would cost even more if they were stuck with him for X days. So now every company would have to subtract a bit from every salary to compensate for the risk that the new hire is dead weight. All you've done is spread the cost out to everyone. The net effect would be decentralized employment insurance. This isn't a totally bad thing, but we already have a centralized employment insurance program, so you'd have to can that before you could talk me into it.
My political affiliations (you're wrong, btw) have nothing to do with it. "At will" simply means that either party is free to sever the relationship at any time. Your former employer decided to exercise that right. It simply doesn't matter whether the decision was justified or not. It's unfortunate that you spent nine months unemployed, but honestly... who is responsible for solving your problems besides you?
- Theft
- Willful disregard for laws that ration and coordinate the use of limited public resources
- Not actually crimes
- Crimes that maybe shouldn't be crimes
My responses can be summarized as follows:If we, the people, ever want to be in control of things, we need to start exercising our power again. If you let them keep and pass overly broad (yet constitutional) laws under the assumption that they won't be enforced under a certain set of conditions, what will you do when Sheriff John Brown decides to (or gains the resources to) enforce them?
Yes, it would be easier to proxy everything, but it reduces your speed to the 56k neighborhood. Most of us aren't paranoid enough to want to take that hit. It's much more effective to proxy only the sites you don't trust.
Your response was simply pessimism masquerading as logic. Using your own thought process, how could we possibly educate that many people when we're barely even maintaining our own education infrastructure?
The bottom line is that there's no simple bottom line. It takes a constant cycle of capital and education in order to grow an economy. You're more than welcome to debate how the capital should be spent and how the education should be accomplished, but it's useless to debate which should come first.
As a side note, please remember that rudimentary roads can be built without heavy machinery. I'm sure there's no shortage of labor in these countries.