"Ask them to send it again in a more useful format. If you think that request is going to get you fired, get yourself a better job FFS!"
Yeah, because jobs are so fucking easy to get right now. Let's see, so I pay next month's rent, or win an argument about intellectual freedom... hmmmm..
Well, seeing as how they're looking for volunteers it's not as if they're going to uncover anything illegal. Think about it, what person that downloads illegal material would, in their right mind, volunteer to have a freaking monitoring box hooked up to their network.
So probably not a trap.
Yes, the ISPs have lobbyists and I'd usually be quick to say that nothing will happen because the lobbyists will kill anything they don't like. But at the same time the government has never actually gone to the effort of doing this type or survey before. Sure, you can write off an internet speed test as nothing more than lip service, but a study involving 10000 and monitoring equipment for an extended period of time? This indicates that they're actually prepared to do something. No doubt the lobbyists have already been campaigning against this but apparently it didn't stop them from moving forward with it anyway.
And they're completely compatible with office? Look, as stupid as I think it is to use MS proprietary formats (.doc,.xlsx, etc.) for serious business work the fact of the matter is that it happens. Companies mandate sending memos as word files, they mandate that presentations be submitted as.pptx. When your software can't open an MS office file because someone used some weird feature buried within MS office that 3rd part software can't handle; no one is going to be sympathetic. You'll be fired or written up because you can't comply with internal company standards for presentations.
"I'm sorry I can't open your proprietary formats, you should send them to me using open source software" is a douchebag thing to say in your personal life. In your professional life, it isn't just rude, it's suicide. See how long you can keep your job while pushing your anti-MS ideals on your office.
Every single advantage you've mentioned (portability, touch screen) is an advantage of a tablet, not the ipad specifically. Much better to go buy the thinkpad tablet (I forgot the model number) which is more durable, allows you to use any OS you wish (except maybe apple*), and actually has a keyboard, dvd drive, USB, etc.
*Apple is not used for any serious business outside of the media industry. Media applications (photoshop, video and sound editing, etc.) require specs far exceeding that of an ipad.
Now, if you're looking for something to do email and word processing then you don't even need a fucking tablet. It makes exactly no sense to buy an ipad when you don't need a touchscreen, that's half the price right there. Go buy a netbook and a $10 full size keyboard, problem solved.
"Anyone who is using Windows would be better with something else" This is typical short sighted nonsense from a mac elitist. Mac, windows, and linux all have pros and cons. Statements like "Anyone using operating system XYZ would be better off using something else" are complete bullshit and demonstrate a lack of understanding of the diversity of computer users. I have to use windows because of what I do with a computer. I play games. I use solidworks CAD software. I use labview. Feel free to explain how I would be better off using any other operating system.
"1. It's not just BP - the other oil companies are doing exactly the same thing. It's just that BP drew the short straw today." Oh shit, well as long as everyone else is doing it then I guess it's OK.
"2. We do tons of things with no provable solution to a catastrophic failer. Do you want the short list or the long?" Take your long list. Now restrict it to things in which "catastrophic failure" also includes "catastrophic consequences". For example, the space shuttle disasters, catastrophic disaster resulted in the deaths of less than 10 people per shuttle. All of whom were volunteers with full knowledge of the risks. The risks they took were their own and the consequences were felt only by themselves. No one else died because they wanted to go into space. Catastrophic failure resulted in acceptable consequences.
With this oil situation we're talking about catastrophic failure causing absurdly huge consequences. Make sure you don't confuse "catastrophic failure" with "less than perfect success record".
Your argument sounds like it was generated by a 10 year old. "It's toooo haaaardddd, I don't wanna spend the time to make sure we have failsafes and that we take precautions when working with enough oil to cause absurdly huge environmental disasters"
Just because something is hard or unknown isn't a free pass to go do it with reckless abandon. Yes, there is acceptable risk, but that's just the point. "ACCEPTABLE" sure as hell isn't tens of millions of gallons of oil into the ocean.
The Russians have done it 5 times and it's worked 4 of those times. It was posted on slashdot a week or so ago, go read it. You're a moron for assuming it's a rumor without doing any checking.
That said, OP is a dumbass too. The conditions in former soviet waters are possibly quite different from these waters and the nuke isn't an infallible solution with no ill effects. It's a nuclear bomb, there's obviously some dangers.
However, what IS disturbing is that the nuke option is being dismissed out of hand. It has a track record of some real success, this indicates that's is not some crackpot theory that someone drempt up while high on meth. It's a valid option that deserves consideration.
Every option has risks. Nukes, top kill, and anything else BP or anyone else will present. These options need to be considered and judged. But here's the issue, this is an ENGINEERING problem. We need ENGINEERS to stop this oil leak. It's being handled by politicians, lobbyists, and the business and accounting majors at BP. Not a real surprise that nothing is getting done.
It's not hypocritical to suggest that we should drill for oil safely. The OP isn't stating "let's never drill for oil ever" but rather "We should only drill after a company proves they can do it safely, which none have so far".
Your post points out our dependency on oil, which has NOTHING to do with OP's point. He's saying we need to do it safely, you're saying that we need oil. The two posts aren't even related.
No, we don't. It's literally impossible to elect representatives into government that will further the public interest. It is completely absurd to suggest that we completely stop buying oil from companies that do unethical and irresponsible things because there are no alternatives.
We are completely dependent on oil and will be for some time. It is 100% BP's fault for this problem. The government shouldn't have to mandate safety. The simple fact that profit will take precedence over safety is proof that the UNRESTRICTED free market is an extremely poor system.
This article is completely horrible. There's absolutely NO description about how EXACTLY this person won against adobe. All the advice given is "be prepared" and "research the law". Well no fucking shit, of you should read up on the law and be prepared when going to court. That's the entire fucking point.
What tactics did she use? What the fuck is an "end user is stupid argument"? What piece of the law did she use to win? What did she argue made the license null and void?
This article doesn't give me any hope about winning lawsuits against big tech companies at all. It's actually quite discouraging. There's no real information in the article which leads me to believe that perhaps this was actually a fluke and this person won due to something stupid. (i.e. the lawyer didn't show up to court because he mismarked his calendar.)
Jesus fucking christ, I'm fucking sick of all this god damn bullshit "science is comparable with religion" nonsense. Science isn't a fucking daycare, we do NOT have to make everyone happy.
The core principles of science are that you can NEVER PROVE a single thing. You can ONLY DISPROVE hypotheses through experimentation. The "law" of gravity is really just a theory with a lot of support (experiments) to back it up. If gravity does not work like we think it does then it is conceivable that an experiment could be designed to disprove it by demonstrating that it does not hold for some circumstance. We have not explored 100 percent of every possible circumstance. It's possible there's a planet a million billion light years away that doesn't have gravity for some reason. If and when we find that planet then we'll have to reconsider gravity.
Religion can never be disprove. If there is truly an omnipotent being then that being could change the result of ANY experiment performed. Thus, the results of ANY experiment designed to disprove the existence of god can't be trusted because some omnipotent being could have simply fucked with the results.
For example, we have carbon dating techniques and other methods of dating that say we've found dinosaur bones that are some number of million years old. This would seem to disprove religions that state the earth is only 6000 years old. However, the RELIGIOUS argument (not scientific argument) is that god could have placed them there 6000 years ago and messed with the concentration of carbon-14 in their bones (or the rock or plants around the bones, or whatever) to make it appear that those bones are older than 6000 years. Furthermore, he could have not fucked with the C-14 and he could simply be messing with the instruments that we use to measure the concentration. Yes, if there is truly an omnipotent being then he could, theoretically, be messing with every carbon dating experiment ever performed.
There simply isn't any way to disprove god and because of that, the existence of god is not something science will ever explore. Any scientist telling you different is a quack.
Religion is not science and science is not religion. There's no link between the two, people need to stop trying to "reconcile" them.
"Considering that so many young Americans are obese that it's affected our military's ability to recruit"
[Citation needed]
Seriously, where are you hearing this? Furthermore, the ability to recruit might have a lot to do with being sent to Iraq the second you're out of basic.
Exactly. It's interesting to see people heralding Blizzard simply for not using nazi-level DRM. They should be criticized for removing the LAN feature from the game, not praised for not using always-connected DRM.
Likely, they considered always-connected DRM and didn't use it because they didn't want to spend the money to operate the shitload of servers they would need for it. Think about it. WoW costs $15 due, in part, to the fact that these servers cost a good amount of money to run. Now imagining having to operate as many servers as WoW requires but for every single-player game as well. They'd go bankrupt without charging a monthly fee. Of course, no one in their right mind is going to pay a monthly fee for a single player game.
I wonder if this was a business decision or a customer service decision. Hopefully the latter, but the former isn't implausible.
Yes, but only slightly so. See, games with constant internet connection required and other such bullshit aren't worth buying because it's LIKELY that they won't work. With this activate once and you're done thing it's highly unlikely that it will fail. If the company goes out of business then you can always pirate it then.
It's actually more of a pain in the ass to pirate the game and have to deal with half-assed cracks and things that don't unlock multiplayer options than it is to buy it. That's really the issue here. There's never going to be enough people that will forgo having the latest game due to restrictive DRM to make a difference. Why? Because people want what they want and they're willing to put up with a lot of shit to get it and they're too lazy to do anything other than complain a little bit. Of course, the laziness also means that if it is easier to pirate your game than to buy it then people won't buy it.
Any sales lost to piracy (I'm not accounting for people that wouldn't buy it under ANY circumstance) for assassin's creed 2 came from, I suspect, 50% of people not buying the game on principal due to the DRM and 50% not buying it because it was easier to get a working game if you pirated it.
For once in my life I can say that I actually like laziness. Make something too hard to do legally and people will start doing it illegally.
You're an idiot, it has nothing to do with no-call lists or any such thing.
It puts a "fraud alert" on your accounts and renews it every 90 days or however long they last for. Something you can easily do yourself for free. Basically having a fraud alert makes banks, lenders, etc. actually do SOME amount of work to verify your identity rather than blindly allowing anyone with a social security number to get a loan in the owner of that number's name.
Without names there isn't a whole lot anyone can do. All of this "Some companies are violating the GPL/the law/doing unethical things but I'm not going to name them because for some stupid reason I feel I should respect them" isn't doing anyone any good... except for the companies causing the problems.
For the free market to work, information like this has to be made available. If people know which companies are doing bad things then people will stop buying products from those companies and the companies will be compelled, via loss in profit, to change their ways to go belly up. Keeping secrets hinders the free market and does nothing but cause problems.
NAME NAMES! Obviously, you should do so anonymously to prevent lawsuits, but they need to be named.
They haven't changed a damn bit. This is done as one big PR stunt to make it look like they aren't completely anti-science. The "debate" about whether to teach science or religion in science classrooms is a huge thing right now. If the church's beliefs have been "comparable with science" for some time now then why did it take so long to rebury this guy? The answer is simple, they still think this guy is a heretic but they're pretending to honor him so it makes the "teach religion instead of science" argument more sensible. "SEE!! We can't possibly be anti-science, we just now honored a scientist we didn't like 500 years ago!!"
Not to mention that the ignition cycle is the most demanding thing on a car's engine. This system would wear out your engine one hell of a lot faster. I expect all automakers to be in favor of implementing this system because you'll have to buy a new car every few years.
This is just another reason I'm extremely wary of buying a car with lots of computer controlled components. OnStar has allowed the government to track you, OnStar can shut off your engine if the feel like it. There was a case where some dealer's system was "hacked" by a disgruntled employee and he remote killed hundreds of card. Toyota's software causes uncontrolled acceleration during which the transmission will apparently not allow you to shift into neutral. Their response? Blame cosmic rays and sue people rather than admit fault and fix it.
I love my '98 subaru. Not a whole lot that can go wrong in a car with only minimal computer control. The brakes are mechanical work, the throttle is mechanical, the transmission is mechanical in terms of drive/neutral/park. The computer probably controls valve timings and stuff, but nothing to remote start/stop the car and nothing that's going to send me flying into a brick wall at top speed.
It doesn't matter WHY the damn thing failed, the point is that it's fucking broken. BP has been attempting these solutions in order to recover oil such that they still maintain their bottom line. It's time the government stepped in and let the US Army/Navy/Air Force engineers solve this shit. Cap the well through any means necessary, even if it means that BP will not be able to make money from this well.
"Having a monopoly is, in itself, legal." No, it's not. There are anti-trust laws for specifically this sort of thing.
Regardless, if a company is doing something legal then there really shouldn't be an issue. What, should we not let Microsoft give away their software for free? Should we require them to charge money for the robotics studio? If it's legal then it's legal, end of story.
However, if a company is doing something illegal then it's illegal and they should be prosecuted, end of story.
I really don't understand how there's a debate here.
You're making the assumption that the company is going to drop in price and rebound over the next many years. You completely fail to account for the very real possibility that a company that was there for a hundred years yesterday is completely gone next week and you've just lost all the money you put into it. You call your coworkers stupid but you completely fail to realize that you're making assumptions that are just as stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
"Ask them to send it again in a more useful format. If you think that request is going to get you fired, get yourself a better job FFS!"
Yeah, because jobs are so fucking easy to get right now. Let's see, so I pay next month's rent, or win an argument about intellectual freedom... hmmmm..
Well, seeing as how they're looking for volunteers it's not as if they're going to uncover anything illegal. Think about it, what person that downloads illegal material would, in their right mind, volunteer to have a freaking monitoring box hooked up to their network.
So probably not a trap.
Yes, the ISPs have lobbyists and I'd usually be quick to say that nothing will happen because the lobbyists will kill anything they don't like. But at the same time the government has never actually gone to the effort of doing this type or survey before. Sure, you can write off an internet speed test as nothing more than lip service, but a study involving 10000 and monitoring equipment for an extended period of time? This indicates that they're actually prepared to do something. No doubt the lobbyists have already been campaigning against this but apparently it didn't stop them from moving forward with it anyway.
And they're completely compatible with office? Look, as stupid as I think it is to use MS proprietary formats (.doc, .xlsx, etc.) for serious business work the fact of the matter is that it happens. Companies mandate sending memos as word files, they mandate that presentations be submitted as .pptx. When your software can't open an MS office file because someone used some weird feature buried within MS office that 3rd part software can't handle; no one is going to be sympathetic. You'll be fired or written up because you can't comply with internal company standards for presentations.
"I'm sorry I can't open your proprietary formats, you should send them to me using open source software" is a douchebag thing to say in your personal life. In your professional life, it isn't just rude, it's suicide. See how long you can keep your job while pushing your anti-MS ideals on your office.
Every single advantage you've mentioned (portability, touch screen) is an advantage of a tablet, not the ipad specifically. Much better to go buy the thinkpad tablet (I forgot the model number) which is more durable, allows you to use any OS you wish (except maybe apple*), and actually has a keyboard, dvd drive, USB, etc.
*Apple is not used for any serious business outside of the media industry. Media applications (photoshop, video and sound editing, etc.) require specs far exceeding that of an ipad.
Now, if you're looking for something to do email and word processing then you don't even need a fucking tablet. It makes exactly no sense to buy an ipad when you don't need a touchscreen, that's half the price right there. Go buy a netbook and a $10 full size keyboard, problem solved.
"Anyone who is using Windows would be better with something else"
This is typical short sighted nonsense from a mac elitist. Mac, windows, and linux all have pros and cons. Statements like "Anyone using operating system XYZ would be better off using something else" are complete bullshit and demonstrate a lack of understanding of the diversity of computer users. I have to use windows because of what I do with a computer. I play games. I use solidworks CAD software. I use labview. Feel free to explain how I would be better off using any other operating system.
"1. It's not just BP - the other oil companies are doing exactly the same thing. It's just that BP drew the short straw today."
Oh shit, well as long as everyone else is doing it then I guess it's OK.
"2. We do tons of things with no provable solution to a catastrophic failer. Do you want the short list or the long?"
Take your long list. Now restrict it to things in which "catastrophic failure" also includes "catastrophic consequences". For example, the space shuttle disasters, catastrophic disaster resulted in the deaths of less than 10 people per shuttle. All of whom were volunteers with full knowledge of the risks. The risks they took were their own and the consequences were felt only by themselves. No one else died because they wanted to go into space. Catastrophic failure resulted in acceptable consequences.
With this oil situation we're talking about catastrophic failure causing absurdly huge consequences. Make sure you don't confuse "catastrophic failure" with "less than perfect success record".
Your argument sounds like it was generated by a 10 year old. "It's toooo haaaardddd, I don't wanna spend the time to make sure we have failsafes and that we take precautions when working with enough oil to cause absurdly huge environmental disasters"
Just because something is hard or unknown isn't a free pass to go do it with reckless abandon. Yes, there is acceptable risk, but that's just the point. "ACCEPTABLE" sure as hell isn't tens of millions of gallons of oil into the ocean.
The Russians have done it 5 times and it's worked 4 of those times. It was posted on slashdot a week or so ago, go read it. You're a moron for assuming it's a rumor without doing any checking.
That said, OP is a dumbass too. The conditions in former soviet waters are possibly quite different from these waters and the nuke isn't an infallible solution with no ill effects. It's a nuclear bomb, there's obviously some dangers.
However, what IS disturbing is that the nuke option is being dismissed out of hand. It has a track record of some real success, this indicates that's is not some crackpot theory that someone drempt up while high on meth. It's a valid option that deserves consideration.
Every option has risks. Nukes, top kill, and anything else BP or anyone else will present. These options need to be considered and judged. But here's the issue, this is an ENGINEERING problem. We need ENGINEERS to stop this oil leak. It's being handled by politicians, lobbyists, and the business and accounting majors at BP. Not a real surprise that nothing is getting done.
This guy is clearly a troll.
It's not hypocritical to suggest that we should drill for oil safely. The OP isn't stating "let's never drill for oil ever" but rather "We should only drill after a company proves they can do it safely, which none have so far".
Your post points out our dependency on oil, which has NOTHING to do with OP's point. He's saying we need to do it safely, you're saying that we need oil. The two posts aren't even related.
No, we don't. It's literally impossible to elect representatives into government that will further the public interest. It is completely absurd to suggest that we completely stop buying oil from companies that do unethical and irresponsible things because there are no alternatives.
We are completely dependent on oil and will be for some time. It is 100% BP's fault for this problem. The government shouldn't have to mandate safety. The simple fact that profit will take precedence over safety is proof that the UNRESTRICTED free market is an extremely poor system.
This article is completely horrible. There's absolutely NO description about how EXACTLY this person won against adobe. All the advice given is "be prepared" and "research the law". Well no fucking shit, of you should read up on the law and be prepared when going to court. That's the entire fucking point.
What tactics did she use? What the fuck is an "end user is stupid argument"? What piece of the law did she use to win? What did she argue made the license null and void?
This article doesn't give me any hope about winning lawsuits against big tech companies at all. It's actually quite discouraging. There's no real information in the article which leads me to believe that perhaps this was actually a fluke and this person won due to something stupid. (i.e. the lawyer didn't show up to court because he mismarked his calendar.)
"I have been told by many who have been in SCC that the company can not send an attorney to represent them. "
Depends on the laws in your state. In some states companies are REQUIRED to be represented by a lawyer.
"Well, in case you are not aware scientific method is not about proving things wrong, is about proving things right in the first place."
You have that completely backwards. I'm not going to bother explaining it because you're a dipshit. Go look up the "scientific method".
No, you can't.
Jesus fucking christ, I'm fucking sick of all this god damn bullshit "science is comparable with religion" nonsense. Science isn't a fucking daycare, we do NOT have to make everyone happy.
The core principles of science are that you can NEVER PROVE a single thing. You can ONLY DISPROVE hypotheses through experimentation. The "law" of gravity is really just a theory with a lot of support (experiments) to back it up. If gravity does not work like we think it does then it is conceivable that an experiment could be designed to disprove it by demonstrating that it does not hold for some circumstance. We have not explored 100 percent of every possible circumstance. It's possible there's a planet a million billion light years away that doesn't have gravity for some reason. If and when we find that planet then we'll have to reconsider gravity.
Religion can never be disprove. If there is truly an omnipotent being then that being could change the result of ANY experiment performed. Thus, the results of ANY experiment designed to disprove the existence of god can't be trusted because some omnipotent being could have simply fucked with the results.
For example, we have carbon dating techniques and other methods of dating that say we've found dinosaur bones that are some number of million years old. This would seem to disprove religions that state the earth is only 6000 years old. However, the RELIGIOUS argument (not scientific argument) is that god could have placed them there 6000 years ago and messed with the concentration of carbon-14 in their bones (or the rock or plants around the bones, or whatever) to make it appear that those bones are older than 6000 years. Furthermore, he could have not fucked with the C-14 and he could simply be messing with the instruments that we use to measure the concentration. Yes, if there is truly an omnipotent being then he could, theoretically, be messing with every carbon dating experiment ever performed.
There simply isn't any way to disprove god and because of that, the existence of god is not something science will ever explore. Any scientist telling you different is a quack.
Religion is not science and science is not religion. There's no link between the two, people need to stop trying to "reconcile" them.
"Considering that so many young Americans are obese that it's affected our military's ability to recruit"
[Citation needed]
Seriously, where are you hearing this? Furthermore, the ability to recruit might have a lot to do with being sent to Iraq the second you're out of basic.
Exactly. It's interesting to see people heralding Blizzard simply for not using nazi-level DRM. They should be criticized for removing the LAN feature from the game, not praised for not using always-connected DRM.
Likely, they considered always-connected DRM and didn't use it because they didn't want to spend the money to operate the shitload of servers they would need for it. Think about it. WoW costs $15 due, in part, to the fact that these servers cost a good amount of money to run. Now imagining having to operate as many servers as WoW requires but for every single-player game as well. They'd go bankrupt without charging a monthly fee. Of course, no one in their right mind is going to pay a monthly fee for a single player game.
I wonder if this was a business decision or a customer service decision. Hopefully the latter, but the former isn't implausible.
Yes, but only slightly so. See, games with constant internet connection required and other such bullshit aren't worth buying because it's LIKELY that they won't work. With this activate once and you're done thing it's highly unlikely that it will fail. If the company goes out of business then you can always pirate it then.
It's actually more of a pain in the ass to pirate the game and have to deal with half-assed cracks and things that don't unlock multiplayer options than it is to buy it. That's really the issue here. There's never going to be enough people that will forgo having the latest game due to restrictive DRM to make a difference. Why? Because people want what they want and they're willing to put up with a lot of shit to get it and they're too lazy to do anything other than complain a little bit. Of course, the laziness also means that if it is easier to pirate your game than to buy it then people won't buy it.
Any sales lost to piracy (I'm not accounting for people that wouldn't buy it under ANY circumstance) for assassin's creed 2 came from, I suspect, 50% of people not buying the game on principal due to the DRM and 50% not buying it because it was easier to get a working game if you pirated it.
For once in my life I can say that I actually like laziness. Make something too hard to do legally and people will start doing it illegally.
You're an idiot, it has nothing to do with no-call lists or any such thing.
It puts a "fraud alert" on your accounts and renews it every 90 days or however long they last for. Something you can easily do yourself for free. Basically having a fraud alert makes banks, lenders, etc. actually do SOME amount of work to verify your identity rather than blindly allowing anyone with a social security number to get a loan in the owner of that number's name.
Without names there isn't a whole lot anyone can do. All of this "Some companies are violating the GPL/the law/doing unethical things but I'm not going to name them because for some stupid reason I feel I should respect them" isn't doing anyone any good... except for the companies causing the problems.
For the free market to work, information like this has to be made available. If people know which companies are doing bad things then people will stop buying products from those companies and the companies will be compelled, via loss in profit, to change their ways to go belly up. Keeping secrets hinders the free market and does nothing but cause problems.
NAME NAMES! Obviously, you should do so anonymously to prevent lawsuits, but they need to be named.
"I don't see why C4 or some other high explosive couldn't work"
Because the two explosions are completely different. Nuclear bombs aren't the same thing as a really large amount of TNT or other explosive.
They haven't changed a damn bit. This is done as one big PR stunt to make it look like they aren't completely anti-science. The "debate" about whether to teach science or religion in science classrooms is a huge thing right now. If the church's beliefs have been "comparable with science" for some time now then why did it take so long to rebury this guy? The answer is simple, they still think this guy is a heretic but they're pretending to honor him so it makes the "teach religion instead of science" argument more sensible. "SEE!! We can't possibly be anti-science, we just now honored a scientist we didn't like 500 years ago!!"
Not to mention that the ignition cycle is the most demanding thing on a car's engine. This system would wear out your engine one hell of a lot faster. I expect all automakers to be in favor of implementing this system because you'll have to buy a new car every few years.
This is just another reason I'm extremely wary of buying a car with lots of computer controlled components. OnStar has allowed the government to track you, OnStar can shut off your engine if the feel like it. There was a case where some dealer's system was "hacked" by a disgruntled employee and he remote killed hundreds of card. Toyota's software causes uncontrolled acceleration during which the transmission will apparently not allow you to shift into neutral. Their response? Blame cosmic rays and sue people rather than admit fault and fix it.
I love my '98 subaru. Not a whole lot that can go wrong in a car with only minimal computer control. The brakes are mechanical work, the throttle is mechanical, the transmission is mechanical in terms of drive/neutral/park. The computer probably controls valve timings and stuff, but nothing to remote start/stop the car and nothing that's going to send me flying into a brick wall at top speed.
Certified by whom? BP?
It doesn't matter WHY the damn thing failed, the point is that it's fucking broken. BP has been attempting these solutions in order to recover oil such that they still maintain their bottom line. It's time the government stepped in and let the US Army/Navy/Air Force engineers solve this shit. Cap the well through any means necessary, even if it means that BP will not be able to make money from this well.
"Having a monopoly is, in itself, legal."
No, it's not. There are anti-trust laws for specifically this sort of thing.
Regardless, if a company is doing something legal then there really shouldn't be an issue. What, should we not let Microsoft give away their software for free? Should we require them to charge money for the robotics studio? If it's legal then it's legal, end of story.
However, if a company is doing something illegal then it's illegal and they should be prosecuted, end of story.
I really don't understand how there's a debate here.
No, the limit of the limit order is confidential. It's like the "bid up to" amount on ebay.
The order itself is obviously public.
You're making the assumption that the company is going to drop in price and rebound over the next many years. You completely fail to account for the very real possibility that a company that was there for a hundred years yesterday is completely gone next week and you've just lost all the money you put into it. You call your coworkers stupid but you completely fail to realize that you're making assumptions that are just as stupid.