Hmm, when I jack a laptop at the airport or library I don't usually check first to see if anything is engraved on it or to see whether it is registered in any databases. Whenever I steal my roommate's or BFF's computers I usually have time to check beforehand, but I generally prefer to steal laptops quickly.
If they didn't have a warrant, and they just left the devices laying about willy nilly with no express intent, I'd say they were littering. A heinous crime committed by the gestapo!!!
Further, I'd prefer not to have to go to court to prove my case and pay a lawyer just because some prick treats me like shit. Having a bad attitude or being rude is not a crime, though I avoid these situations by being more forgiving and respectful. The point is that it shouldn't matter.
ANAL -- Without taking a side on the issue (I really don't care that much), acting combative and rude will give a police officer probable cause that you have something to hide. A courtroom is a place to argue your case, not the parking lot. He would have faired better if he politely refused to show ID, explained why he refused, and try to reason with the officer.
Exercising one's guaranteed rights and acting "rude" does NOT provide probable cause to assume a crime has been committed, ever! The guy in question certainly could have handled the situation in an easier, less antagonistic way, but he did nothing to warrant being charged with a crime. Pissing off a police officer is not a crime in an of itself, and it is merely a sign here that the the officer is over zealous. A cop MUST know that sometimes he has to defuse a situation rather than always allowing it to escalate so he can crack skulls and make collars. I've personally seen good cops calm people down and avoid messes like this by talking calmly and respectfully and knowing when to walk away. Sometimes that is the right thing to do.
I think simply asking for "Identification" would have been the way to go.
Around here (Ohio), no one is required to own or carry "identification." Many people do not have drivers licenses because they don't drive, and many of those folks do not have state-issued identification cards. Being able to be out in public without purchasing a government ID card is still an inalienable right in Ohio (for now).
I'm sure the cop realized that this was likely to be a lawsuit just over the false report of theft and harassment. The cop has paperwork, it needs to be completed correctly since its likely to become evidence.
If the cop realized the store was in the wrong, he shouldn't have been such a dick. Cops are there to protect the rights of citizens, as well as to protect business interests and enforce traffic regulations. He should have at least known the law. If the shopper in question wasn't driving a car, why would anyone think he should even have a drivers license, let alone have to present it?
It sounds like the guy was also very very rude and combative, well, cops are trained to react to that in a certain way.
This is not a justification. The cop was wrong, he should be trained properly, and he should know what to do in a situation like this. Now he (and perhaps the taxpayers there) will pay the price for improperly detaining someone. I suspect the driver of the car was also pretty salty, seeing as he was never even wrongly accused of doing anything wrong, right? I almost became a cop a few years ago, and I'm glad I wised up a bit, but I have no tolerance for jackholes like this moron. I've had one or two annoying experiences with hot-shot idiots but also several very good experiences where cops were very accommodating and helpful. Unfortunately the stories about bad cops are the only ones anyone ever wants to hear.
Right or wrong, if I swat at a hornet, its going to sting me. Sounds like this guy delights in complaining.
If you were to step back and think for a moment, you could grab a newspaper, or anything close at hand, and smack that SOB hornet with your weapon, and avoid being stung. And, complaining is not illegal or wrong. I know for certain that if I went to a store and spent a bunch of my hard-earned dough on their products, I'd be pretty upset if they then accused me of stealing from them. Of course, I'd never be so stupid as to shop at Circuit City in the first place, though I have definitely been followed around Target (haha, Target).
Or perhaps that should have read: The internet says Elton John is destroying music.
Either way, the guy is one "artist," so I don't give a poop about what he says. He knows nothing of economics or how the music or internet industries work and support each other. He can record all the crap he wants, and morons can buy it, that's fine. But he is not qualified to comment as an expert on this subject, and we should not take his comments as anything more than a flame from one disgruntled salesman who hasn't yet been able to rake in an infinite amount of money.
If Sir Elton and the crap artists he listens to were cleaning-up in regards to their online sales, I doubt we'd hear a peep out of him, other than that the internet is a great, logical new market.
I don't know about this, since I don't move my whole arm but it seems like I barely move my wrist at all when I use my mouse. I think I actually move it mostly with my thumb and pinky finger, without moving my wrist or arm much. It seems very natural to me, and my wrist is never sore from using a mouse, even after extended sessions with graphics apps or mouse-intensive games.
I have a freaking GE Dual-Scroll Optical Mouse than is nearly amazing. It works on a variety of surfaces and it has two programmable, thumb-accessible buttons. Perhaps it's Ironic that I've never been able to make the horizontal scroll wheel (the "Dual" part of its name) really work properly, but this mouse works beautifully as a mouse. It was made in China, and it was only like 13 bucks at Target, but it works and it isn't sold by M$, so I can't help but recommend it to everyone.
How are you supposed to gain market share or establish a brand name if someone else is permitted to infringe upon your legal patent and utilize technology that has been defined as yours? How much market share is necessary? What brand names are significant and which are not? If the manufacturers of Sparkle paper towels patented something, would there be any reason to prevent Bounty, Brawny, or Scott from simply copying them? Should Subaru stop wasting more money on further innovation for fear of Toyota stealing it because the former has not yet been able to market it? Where is this leeway written into the law?
I'm certainly no fan of patent trolls, but if some entity is able to obtain a patent, shouldn't they be afforded all of the legal protections that are supposed to come with said patent? If not, did the patent infringer make a good-faith effort to purchase the technology before claiming it? Maybe Merc were just slow to market, which is not supposed be something that voids a patent.
I admit I did not RTFA, and that I'm not especially concerned for this company in particular, but this doesn't look like a good precedent.
TFA wins the award for Worst Possible Presentation of a 3-Page Article. Sandwiching one paragraph between what is otherwise an entire page of ads, and a few misc. comments, is simply not a good idea. I actually wanted to RTFA, but the presentation was just so bad I skipped it. Lesson: crap like that is no way to retain readers or advertisers.
He said the traffic in question related to his home network, not necessarily the machine that was running Peer Guardian 2 for the screenies, right? I don't know how much difference this makes, just playing devil's advocate and trying not to dismiss every concern as BS. It's easy to ignore everyone's alarming claims as over zealous, misunderstood data, but maybe we should take this type of thing more seriously until we have all the facts.
So I see that everyone and their mother (right upstairs) has an example of ugly code, or why something is not written as well as it could be. Plenty of mentions here of why decent programmers hate this or that (mostly well-reasoned), but no examples of good code that everyone can agree on. I can't claim to be a "good" or even "decent" coder, but I will refrain from knocking everyone else's code if I am not good enough to contribute to it.
Enough with "You want ugly, check out project xxx," what do you actually have to offer that IS easy to read, comprehend, and debug? I know the concept of "pretty" code should not be so subjective that we can not agree on anything, so where is the good stuff we can all learn from????
yeah cuz some ppl like me can have too much and end up in the hospital. I'm super sensitive to it which is made worse from never having it so if I drank a whole monster on an empty stomach, I'd be in big trouble
IANAD, but common sense tells me that if you know you are definitely sensitive to caffeine, you should not drink beverages that list caffeine as an ingredient. If you must have sodapop, there are plenty of flavors/brands that contain no caffeine. If it is a medical concern, stick with none rather than trying to estimate how much is in drink X.
It's interesting to see that Diet Coke (46.3 mg/12 oz) has so much more caffeine than regular Coke (33.9 mg/12 oz).
Well, Diet Coke tastes like crap, so they had to give us some other reason to drink it! With Coke Zero and Diet Pepsi Max around now, I have no idea why anyone would opt for Diet Coke (eewww) or Diet Pepsi(boh-ring).
The espresso Nazi has spoken. Personally, I request that my espresso and wheat ales be served without any fruit of any sort, as I like the taste of the beverage itself. My simple solution to the numerous problems with Starbucks is that I avoid them like the plague. There are enough other coffee shops around that I don't have to wait in line ten minutes to have some poor underpaid but untrained idiot serve me overpriced crap.
I rather like Vault Zero. I would have preferred "Diet Surge," but I guess the marketing studies currently show that "zero" is more attractive to younger consumers than is "diet." But to be honest, if I'm out of Vault Zero and Pepsi products are on sale, I buy Diet Dew or, more recently, Diet Pepsi Max.
I'm not yet sure of the caffeine content of Diet Pepsi Max, but it feels good to me, and it tastes an awful lot like good ol' sugary Pepsi. I also must say that Coke Zero tastes pretty close to real Coke, to me, which is a good thing. It seems both Pepsi and Coke have figured out how to combine sweeteners in a manner to resemble genuine sugars fairly well now. If you like to drink Pepsi, Coke, Mountain Dew, or Vault, I see little reason to consume the calorie-laden, tooth-destroying regular formulations anymore.
Sugar-free NoS (beware of the caffeine content) wins my pick for best "energy drink," though the low-cal Jolt with the green label is pretty darn good. Neither is sickly sweet like Red Bull or its numerous clones. Rockstar Low-Carb gets props for the caffeine, but I don't like the taste.
My personal thanks to everyone who put in the effort to save Surge! Vault Zero might not otherwise exist.
Oh Boy! Just when I thought the credibility of the affidavit dude couldn't get any lower, someone alludes to him being like Stanton Friedman. Very nice comment based on personal experience and a bit o' psychiatry and good science.
Just because somebody believes something doesn't mean it's true. (Just like how I think I'm a dork, but everyone I meet seems to love me and think I'm the greatest thing since the Commie64, and they give me money and hang out with me and tell me I'm great and that I'm a super l337 hacker, and I date chicks who model, part time when I'm not around they say, and my mom is always right, especially when she says I am smart and handsome.) I guess the dead guy in question was just one of those poor delusional, misinformed bastards.
Either that or the aliens are just noobs. I mean: how many pro aliens crash their saucers- be they egg-shaped or not?
I know. I mean, only n00b interstellar pilots would consider going to a backwater planet like Earth, AND get close enough to crash into it. Lamerz. It's totally believable if you take care not to underestimate the ability of a new egg pilot to be stupid. We've all seen this before 100 times, haven't we?
Apple read your comment, and that's the last straw.
They're canceling the iPhone, disbanding the dev team, and selling the entire production run at Overstock.com and everyone gets a free Clio while supplies last.
iPhones on Overstock.com? Sweet! Now I can get one for only $475, and out of four will probably even work. That's great, since I won't want to bother trying to go through their return process with the other three.
That most states use some or all of the fuel taxes to help defray the cost of road improvements / maintenance (no one said they do a *good* job of this) Someone who is "home-brewing" fuel, whether it be bio-diesel, ethanol, or used cooking oil, ends up essentially using the roads for "free" as they don't pay the fuel tax.
That's one way to look at it. At this point, we need to encourage people to find and use alternative fuels. These folks are still very few and far between, so if it takes letting them use the roads for free to get them to keep doing their thing, we can pay the extra 1% that they won't. I don't know whether they should be sold cheap licenses to use their fuels or made exempt from certain taxes or whatever, but I do know we shouldn't punish them for being forward-thinking and doing a good thing.
Now, if a bunch of/.ers got together and started an ISP (grafting on the significant marketing, legal, HR, and executive chops you'd need), who here really thinks the final company, Applied Slashdot Superiority, would offer a significantly less evil/more reliable offering to the public?
I propose a vote on what the/. community does about this.
My vote on Applied Slashdot Superiority: I love ASS! I can't wait to get ASS around here and have it on a regular basis. ASS is just about the best thing ever. Not getting ASS is making me angry, but I'm sure that, in the end, that ASS will be worth the wait. But if I were in charge, I'd be pretty upset if someone penetrated my ASS and had their way with it without my approval. Everyone should vote for something as reliable as openASS or ASS being offered-up to the public.
Mark those words. After some years of cooperation, and disarray in the East, tensions are increasing again. The US seems to have alienated once more many parts of the world, and Russia appears newly emboldened. Scary times, though I think every nuclear power is smart enough to keep its ICBMs in the silos, for now and the near future.
Strained Washington-Moscow relations are certainly not helping to calm the rest of the world. North Korea is still a wannabe threat, while China is something of a wild card who needs continued international trade but has aspirations of being the dominant superpower. All of this lingers in the back of my mind, with the weak dollar worrying more, at least for now.
Hmm, will my neighbor who runs an unsecured wireless network, the guy who does the same thing across the street from my favorite lunch spot, and my local library system have to ante-up the tax for my usage? Good luck figuring out how to properly tax shared sub-networks. Any internet tax will have to be minimal to avoid a huge backlash.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, when I jack a laptop at the airport or library I don't usually check first to see if anything is engraved on it or to see whether it is registered in any databases. Whenever I steal my roommate's or BFF's computers I usually have time to check beforehand, but I generally prefer to steal laptops quickly.
If they didn't have a warrant, and they just left the devices laying about willy nilly with no express intent, I'd say they were littering. A heinous crime committed by the gestapo!!!
Further, I'd prefer not to have to go to court to prove my case and pay a lawyer just because some prick treats me like shit. Having a bad attitude or being rude is not a crime, though I avoid these situations by being more forgiving and respectful. The point is that it shouldn't matter.
Exercising one's guaranteed rights and acting "rude" does NOT provide probable cause to assume a crime has been committed, ever! The guy in question certainly could have handled the situation in an easier, less antagonistic way, but he did nothing to warrant being charged with a crime. Pissing off a police officer is not a crime in an of itself, and it is merely a sign here that the the officer is over zealous. A cop MUST know that sometimes he has to defuse a situation rather than always allowing it to escalate so he can crack skulls and make collars. I've personally seen good cops calm people down and avoid messes like this by talking calmly and respectfully and knowing when to walk away. Sometimes that is the right thing to do.
Around here (Ohio), no one is required to own or carry "identification." Many people do not have drivers licenses because they don't drive, and many of those folks do not have state-issued identification cards. Being able to be out in public without purchasing a government ID card is still an inalienable right in Ohio (for now).
I'm sure the cop realized that this was likely to be a lawsuit just over the false report of theft and harassment. The cop has paperwork, it needs to be completed correctly since its likely to become evidence.
If the cop realized the store was in the wrong, he shouldn't have been such a dick. Cops are there to protect the rights of citizens, as well as to protect business interests and enforce traffic regulations. He should have at least known the law. If the shopper in question wasn't driving a car, why would anyone think he should even have a drivers license, let alone have to present it?
It sounds like the guy was also very very rude and combative, well, cops are trained to react to that in a certain way.
This is not a justification. The cop was wrong, he should be trained properly, and he should know what to do in a situation like this. Now he (and perhaps the taxpayers there) will pay the price for improperly detaining someone. I suspect the driver of the car was also pretty salty, seeing as he was never even wrongly accused of doing anything wrong, right? I almost became a cop a few years ago, and I'm glad I wised up a bit, but I have no tolerance for jackholes like this moron. I've had one or two annoying experiences with hot-shot idiots but also several very good experiences where cops were very accommodating and helpful. Unfortunately the stories about bad cops are the only ones anyone ever wants to hear.
Right or wrong, if I swat at a hornet, its going to sting me. Sounds like this guy delights in complaining.
If you were to step back and think for a moment, you could grab a newspaper, or anything close at hand, and smack that SOB hornet with your weapon, and avoid being stung. And, complaining is not illegal or wrong. I know for certain that if I went to a store and spent a bunch of my hard-earned dough on their products, I'd be pretty upset if they then accused me of stealing from them. Of course, I'd never be so stupid as to shop at Circuit City in the first place, though I have definitely been followed around Target (haha, Target).
Or perhaps that should have read: The internet says Elton John is destroying music.
Either way, the guy is one "artist," so I don't give a poop about what he says. He knows nothing of economics or how the music or internet industries work and support each other. He can record all the crap he wants, and morons can buy it, that's fine. But he is not qualified to comment as an expert on this subject, and we should not take his comments as anything more than a flame from one disgruntled salesman who hasn't yet been able to rake in an infinite amount of money.
If Sir Elton and the crap artists he listens to were cleaning-up in regards to their online sales, I doubt we'd hear a peep out of him, other than that the internet is a great, logical new market.
I don't know about this, since I don't move my whole arm but it seems like I barely move my wrist at all when I use my mouse. I think I actually move it mostly with my thumb and pinky finger, without moving my wrist or arm much. It seems very natural to me, and my wrist is never sore from using a mouse, even after extended sessions with graphics apps or mouse-intensive games.
I have a freaking GE Dual-Scroll Optical Mouse than is nearly amazing. It works on a variety of surfaces and it has two programmable, thumb-accessible buttons. Perhaps it's Ironic that I've never been able to make the horizontal scroll wheel (the "Dual" part of its name) really work properly, but this mouse works beautifully as a mouse. It was made in China, and it was only like 13 bucks at Target, but it works and it isn't sold by M$, so I can't help but recommend it to everyone.
How are you supposed to gain market share or establish a brand name if someone else is permitted to infringe upon your legal patent and utilize technology that has been defined as yours? How much market share is necessary? What brand names are significant and which are not? If the manufacturers of Sparkle paper towels patented something, would there be any reason to prevent Bounty, Brawny, or Scott from simply copying them? Should Subaru stop wasting more money on further innovation for fear of Toyota stealing it because the former has not yet been able to market it? Where is this leeway written into the law? I'm certainly no fan of patent trolls, but if some entity is able to obtain a patent, shouldn't they be afforded all of the legal protections that are supposed to come with said patent? If not, did the patent infringer make a good-faith effort to purchase the technology before claiming it? Maybe Merc were just slow to market, which is not supposed be something that voids a patent. I admit I did not RTFA, and that I'm not especially concerned for this company in particular, but this doesn't look like a good precedent.
TFA wins the award for Worst Possible Presentation of a 3-Page Article. Sandwiching one paragraph between what is otherwise an entire page of ads, and a few misc. comments, is simply not a good idea. I actually wanted to RTFA, but the presentation was just so bad I skipped it. Lesson: crap like that is no way to retain readers or advertisers.
He said the traffic in question related to his home network, not necessarily the machine that was running Peer Guardian 2 for the screenies, right? I don't know how much difference this makes, just playing devil's advocate and trying not to dismiss every concern as BS. It's easy to ignore everyone's alarming claims as over zealous, misunderstood data, but maybe we should take this type of thing more seriously until we have all the facts.
So I see that everyone and their mother (right upstairs) has an example of ugly code, or why something is not written as well as it could be. Plenty of mentions here of why decent programmers hate this or that (mostly well-reasoned), but no examples of good code that everyone can agree on. I can't claim to be a "good" or even "decent" coder, but I will refrain from knocking everyone else's code if I am not good enough to contribute to it. Enough with "You want ugly, check out project xxx," what do you actually have to offer that IS easy to read, comprehend, and debug? I know the concept of "pretty" code should not be so subjective that we can not agree on anything, so where is the good stuff we can all learn from????
IANAD, but common sense tells me that if you know you are definitely sensitive to caffeine, you should not drink beverages that list caffeine as an ingredient. If you must have sodapop, there are plenty of flavors/brands that contain no caffeine. If it is a medical concern, stick with none rather than trying to estimate how much is in drink X.
Well, Diet Coke tastes like crap, so they had to give us some other reason to drink it! With Coke Zero and Diet Pepsi Max around now, I have no idea why anyone would opt for Diet Coke (eewww) or Diet Pepsi(boh-ring).
The espresso Nazi has spoken. Personally, I request that my espresso and wheat ales be served without any fruit of any sort, as I like the taste of the beverage itself. My simple solution to the numerous problems with Starbucks is that I avoid them like the plague. There are enough other coffee shops around that I don't have to wait in line ten minutes to have some poor underpaid but untrained idiot serve me overpriced crap.
I rather like Vault Zero. I would have preferred "Diet Surge," but I guess the marketing studies currently show that "zero" is more attractive to younger consumers than is "diet." But to be honest, if I'm out of Vault Zero and Pepsi products are on sale, I buy Diet Dew or, more recently, Diet Pepsi Max. I'm not yet sure of the caffeine content of Diet Pepsi Max, but it feels good to me, and it tastes an awful lot like good ol' sugary Pepsi. I also must say that Coke Zero tastes pretty close to real Coke, to me, which is a good thing. It seems both Pepsi and Coke have figured out how to combine sweeteners in a manner to resemble genuine sugars fairly well now. If you like to drink Pepsi, Coke, Mountain Dew, or Vault, I see little reason to consume the calorie-laden, tooth-destroying regular formulations anymore. Sugar-free NoS (beware of the caffeine content) wins my pick for best "energy drink," though the low-cal Jolt with the green label is pretty darn good. Neither is sickly sweet like Red Bull or its numerous clones. Rockstar Low-Carb gets props for the caffeine, but I don't like the taste. My personal thanks to everyone who put in the effort to save Surge! Vault Zero might not otherwise exist.
Jolt and Bawls in Cleveland? Can you be specific as to where? I'd like to see and experience for myself, as I am in the Cleveland area (usually).
Which is why things like rubber bullets, "bean bags", and pepper spray are often now called "less lethal" weapons, rather than "non-lethal."
Just because somebody believes something doesn't mean it's true. (Just like how I think I'm a dork, but everyone I meet seems to love me and think I'm the greatest thing since the Commie64, and they give me money and hang out with me and tell me I'm great and that I'm a super l337 hacker, and I date chicks who model, part time when I'm not around they say, and my mom is always right, especially when she says I am smart and handsome.) I guess the dead guy in question was just one of those poor delusional, misinformed bastards.
I know. I mean, only n00b interstellar pilots would consider going to a backwater planet like Earth, AND get close enough to crash into it. Lamerz. It's totally believable if you take care not to underestimate the ability of a new egg pilot to be stupid. We've all seen this before 100 times, haven't we?
iPhones on Overstock.com? Sweet! Now I can get one for only $475, and out of four will probably even work. That's great, since I won't want to bother trying to go through their return process with the other three.
That's one way to look at it. At this point, we need to encourage people to find and use alternative fuels. These folks are still very few and far between, so if it takes letting them use the roads for free to get them to keep doing their thing, we can pay the extra 1% that they won't. I don't know whether they should be sold cheap licenses to use their fuels or made exempt from certain taxes or whatever, but I do know we shouldn't punish them for being forward-thinking and doing a good thing.
I propose a vote on what the /. community does about this.
My vote on Applied Slashdot Superiority: I love ASS! I can't wait to get ASS around here and have it on a regular basis. ASS is just about the best thing ever. Not getting ASS is making me angry, but I'm sure that, in the end, that ASS will be worth the wait. But if I were in charge, I'd be pretty upset if someone penetrated my ASS and had their way with it without my approval. Everyone should vote for something as reliable as openASS or ASS being offered-up to the public.
Mark those words. After some years of cooperation, and disarray in the East, tensions are increasing again. The US seems to have alienated once more many parts of the world, and Russia appears newly emboldened. Scary times, though I think every nuclear power is smart enough to keep its ICBMs in the silos, for now and the near future.
Strained Washington-Moscow relations are certainly not helping to calm the rest of the world. North Korea is still a wannabe threat, while China is something of a wild card who needs continued international trade but has aspirations of being the dominant superpower. All of this lingers in the back of my mind, with the weak dollar worrying more, at least for now.
Hmm, will my neighbor who runs an unsecured wireless network, the guy who does the same thing across the street from my favorite lunch spot, and my local library system have to ante-up the tax for my usage? Good luck figuring out how to properly tax shared sub-networks. Any internet tax will have to be minimal to avoid a huge backlash.