"It just goes to show you, that first past the post doesn't work well..."
Yes, it's one of those things you shouldn't have copied from Britain.
It's so bad that even our most left wing mainstream party is now well right of centre, so that rather than any hope of government that's representative of the people we have nothing but right wing idiocy, there's not even any hope of some rational centrism.
It doesn't really matter how you try and spin it, if you wont learn the skills businesses are looking for then you are not what the market wants, and can't shift the blame off onto ageism. It's still you that is the problem.
People line up to buy Apple because it's all they hear about from people they know and so they think it's must have. It's all they hear about from their friends because at least one of their friends has heard some story like this and mentioned it.
It's the same thing with X-Factor and American Idol etc. you really think Cheryl Cole went to the US with the expectation to work on the show indefinetely? Bollocks. They knew all along she was only going to do a episode or two, but the drama about her being "kicked off" got everyone talking about whether she'd come back in the UK and boosted hype about the new season here.
Believing this stuff isn't manufactured news is like believing WWE wrestling isn't coreographed and doesn't have pre-planned plots.
There's a good reason many people think iPhone is the most popular phone brand on the planet of both smart and non-smartphones, despite only holding around 18% marketshare of smartphones and less than 2% of all cell phones and it's because it has the top brand recognition, and it has the top brand recognition because of stories like this.
I don't disagree with what you're saying but I don't think it's really the point.
If you're not interested in chasing extra money and are happy with the wage you're on then fair enough, just stay there. The issue is people who complain they're not gettng paid more, but aren't willing to provide the skills the market wants to get paid more.
You seem to be implying though that people should be able to get paid more doing what they love? That might be nice in an ideal world, but with market forces that can't happen- why would a company pay someone $200k when someone will do it for $150k just as well?
It's really about priorities- if you want to do what you love above all else then you must accept that that limits your wage potential. If you want to make money above all else then that might simply mean not doing what you love all the time.
It's really just the choice to have to make. Personally though I've found I can find enjoyment in most roles- I've come to realise it's what you make of the job that matters, than what you actually do, and frankly, the higher you get, the more control you have over what your job is. Sure if you become a CTO there will inevitably be more meetings that you HAVE to attend but in the time left outside the things a CTO must do, which is still plentiful, you can really pick and choose somewhat what you do with it. Some just prefer to setup more meetings, others like to get hands on and help their staff a bit.
To be fair that's the same in many industries though, when you start to get to that age you need to start looking into more managerial jobs, like moving to a CTO position, and then eventually when you're ready, moving up to a CEO position or similar.
You'll find very few skillsets where your wage can go up beyond that point without starting to move into director level managerial roles.
Or to combine your point with mine- once you hit that ceiling the only option is really to start looking to be the one that as you said, has people working for them, not so much works for people- whether that's going it your own way with your own business, or getting to the upper echelons of a business, and once you're there, hopping to the upper echelons of ever larger, better financially endowed businesses.
Agreed, I've also been looking for a job lately (although I already had employment, I was just after career advancement) and had no problem whatsoever finding one, and managing a not to be sniffed at ~37%, 5 figure increase in wage to boot.
Although I've worked mainly with C# and Java in recent years I kind of felt like a C++ role because I hadn't worked with it in a while and thought it'd be nice to get back into it- that was far from my highest priority though, career progression was at the top of the list by far. I ended up settling for a job that has a mix of C#, Java, and a bit of PHP, because the fact is C++ jobs just weren't out there (with the exception of a handful of embedded jobs, but I have no embedded experience). There were far more C# jobs out there than candidates though, so as a result I really was able to basically just name my wage within reason- it took a couple of interviews at different places to get the kind of increase I was looking for with some firms having given me lower offers, but I got it okay in the end with a bit of patience.
You can't expect to get exactly what you want, the key point people miss nowadays is that if you want to get a job, or have a decent career, then you must provide what the market wants- it's not for the market to provide what you want. Although I've mainly been doing C# and Java, and was looking for C++, I still went for a few PHP jobs because the career direction, location, and wage were all right- PHP was not my first, or even my second or 3rd choice, but keeping it open as an option, kept the options open for me as a candidate.
I spoke to a lot of recruitment agents in recent weeks and a few of them I built up a decent working relationship with had a similar sentiment- that there are enough jobs for developers, if it weren't for the fact that a lot of developers just refuse to change languages or technologies, and because of that there is actually a shortage of developers fit to fill the posts available. This is very frustrating for the agents, because there's a lot of developers out there whining about being unable to find a job, even though there's a job there waiting, if only they'd be willing to spend a few weeks learning C#, the.NET framework, and SQL server or whatever rather than insisting they use what they've used for the last 20 - 30 years.
The worst part? a lot of the old curmudgeon stuck in the muds complaining about younger people coming in above them and not wanting to hire them are missing the point that the only reason those younger developers are coming in above them is because those younger developers do just happen to have been taught the specific languages that are relevant today. They're oblivious to the fact that they too could have those posts if they just bothered to make the slightest bit of effort to make their skills match the market and it's sad- because with a firm background in C++, picking up C# is easy, and developing with it is a fuckton more pleasant! Those younger folks aren't getting the job instead of you simply because they are younger, they're getting them by mere virtue of the fact that they've recently just come out of an education that teaches skills relevant to the current market and you're too fucking lazy to learn the same!
These people complaining are simply their own worst enemies. You wont always get fair treatment, some companies really are bigoted and such, but the vast majority aren't- they're just pragmatic, they'll take the person who can and wants to actually do the job, not the person with 2 decades experience in another language and who outright refuses to jump to the technologies the company that is recruiting has chosen to use and is already invested in.
Yes, but by that logic, if it weren't for Hitler's persecution of the jews the international community might never have acted to overthrow him and Britain may never have created the post-war NHS built on the idea of helping your neighbour and it might never have existed to plaster my arm when I fractured it. Thus, Hitler made my life better.
Unfortunately you can find a positive resultant effect from almost any scenario and make the claim that it hence indirectly made your life better, but it's a bit meaningless.
Fundamentally the issue is broader than that though, it's whether the knock on effects of a companies actions made my life better than if that company hadn't existed. If Apple hadn't had an effective media player and digital media store monopoly then there's a fair argument that digital content would be cheaper, less restrictive, and the jump from media players to smartphones would've happened far earlier due to increase competition speeding up the evolution of that market.
So yes you may be right- Apple might have indirectly made my life better, but it may also have made it worse. Who knows?
Not sure if you misread my comment, it wasn't humidity I was talking about, it was the dust from the Sahara which acts as fertilizer for places like the Amazon. If you make Africa green that dust will not be so easily able to blow free. Whilst it's likely the loss of that fertilizing dust from the Sahara wouldn't kill plantlife in the Amazon it would at least cripple growth somewhat- there would be a much larger pressure on plantlife to fight over nutrients such that many species of plant less strong would likely lose out in that battle and become extinct, resulting also in less overall biomass.
Certainly it wasn't the same ecosystem it is now, and certainly removing fertilization from the sahara would decrease south american biomass and reduce biodiversity.
If you mean it'd still have some green stuff there then yes, you're probably right, but how much, and how diverse would be the fundamental problem. Would biomass increase in Africa occur quickly enough to deal with the resultant decrease in South America, and hence the potential imbalances in CO2 capture, storage, and release? That's anyones guess. It's too complex a system to play around with without risking massively dangerous side effects far more damaging than the current situation of overpopulation relative to the resources to support the population in Africa.
It's not just internal. When I went on a trip to Reading in a previous job where they were showing off new server technologies they had hired good time girls there too to basically act as eye candy for all the people they were trying to tie in to a future with Microsoft tech.
But let's also be honest, Microsoft is far from unique here, it's not fair to single them out over it, really, it's a problem with corporate sales and marketing culture across many industries.
But how effective the leaks are in exposing malfeasance depends in part on the reputation of those exposing it, else if their reputation is poor their opponents can just write them off.
Working with the media has done nothing but harm Wikileaks image as they have found themselves embroiled in jealousy and political spats with the media. It's hurt their image badly, which has a detrimental effect on people's view of them as a trustworthy organisation.
Prior to working with the media whether you agreed with them or not it was hard to see them as anything other than an organisation that just leaks what it has without engaging in any particular partisanship or petty political squabbling with the media.
Working with the media has let the media put their own biased political spin on everything they release- ignoring stuff the media finds inconvenient to it's political viewpoint, and widely publicising arguably less relevant, but more politically beneficial content. By withdrawing away from the media they return to a position where there isn't so much partisanship and where it's simply about leaking the data, and letting people make up their mind as to the importance and interpretation of it.
I'm a bit of a lefty myself to an extent, but Wikileaks partnered with primarily left wing organisations and this meant that there was only so much of a focus on left-wing beneficial cables and so forth, whereas cables that catered more to serve the right wing ideology went ignored.
So effectively it's about neutrality- by ignoring the media Wikileaks moves back to a position of relative neutrality.
On the subject of danger I agree Wikileaks is partially to blame if someone is put in danger, but again I believe the media is also, and similarly I believe the government is also for ever documenting on a low level security clearance system to which many tens of thousands of people had access to the names of such informers. The blame has to be shared, and Wikileaks at least made an effort to resolve the issue, yet those efforts proved detrimental to it's cause as it inherently meant working with inept and biased organisations.
Yes, then that way the dust that blows across the Atlantic from the Sahara to fertilize the Amazon can stop, and whilst Africa becomes a luscious new area of growth the whole of the Amazon can just die off.
Really, fucking around with things that can have such a massive, potentially unknown effect elsewhere isn't a smart idea at all because you can just end up making things worse.
Other parts of the world depend on the Sahara being like the Sahara is, so if you change the Sahara, you change those other parts of the world. In boosting food supplies in Africa you damage the food supplies in say South America, and create a problem there instead.
The problem is that they're subverting democracy. They're using political lobbying and pressure to try and assert their will against the will of the population. This is not the first time they have done it.
Other issues stemming from their lobbying involve removing long running fundamental rights such as that of being deemed innocent until proven guilty to protect their content. Their content just isn't important enough to justify this raping of rights, but through corruption they've been able to get these laws pushed through in some countries. I wholeheartedly agree the politicians are as much to blame, but that doesn't mean it's right, and hence cutting off income to such firms by pirating or not consuming their content is justifiable in that it has the net effect of removing said organisations ability to trample over democracy and fundamental rights.
If it was just a court case and they were straight up about it I'd have no problem, but the very fact they can't be honest and instead are trying to hide the fact they're behind it demonstrates the problem- the populace aren't happy with them and their lobbying, that is, they're working against the democratic will of the population subversively. If they had the support of the population, and their actions were hence democratically and morally acceptable then they would have no need to hide their involvement.
"right -- do I really need to remind you that if you grab them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow?"
Er, this has never ever been the case. This is the attitude that left thousands of American's dead in America's Vietnam, and Iraq misadventures. It's completely wrong.
"You protect profits by whatever means necessary. Failing to do so is immoral, since the only morality in business is a comfortably darwinian one."
This is one of the more stupid comments I've ever seen on Slashdot, which is quite an achievement. Sometimes you have to let profits slide temporarily to protect the long term health of your company, but certainly your implication that you must do anything no matter how immoral or unethical is just stupid because doing immoral and unethical things often come back to bite. Ruper Murdoch thought the same thing as you, a year ago he was looking at owning the whole of the UK's biggest broadcaster, and the lion's share of the newspaper market. Now he's lost all hope of buying out the whole of SkyTV and is down one paper as he had to close it down, because he had the same utterly absurd belief as you that he could do immoral and unethical things indefinitely as a route to profit. Well, it's cost him dearly now and his footprint in UK media is far smaller than it was, and by the time various investigations finish, there's a possibility it could be even smaller again.
Please, don't go into business, ever. You'll fail hard.
I agree about DRM, I've long said DRM is about restricting what the user should legitimately be able to do with a product and nothing to do with anti-piracy.
The primary reason for DRM is to prevent swapping of games with friends, and second hand sales, which frankly completely stinks, because it makes digital content the only item you cannot do this with. You can share and sell second hand your toaster, your car, your clothes, your furniture, yet for some reason, you can no longer do this with digital content.
DRM makes digital content an anomally product with more restrictions than any other product you might own.
But I disagree that they'e somehow won the battle with DRM, the fact is most people don't care about it. In the UK estimates are that over 9 million people now download pirated content- that's 15% of the population, and when that many do it people aren't going to support it because linked to those downloaders are friends, and family, who likely also consume that content. No one believes MPAA/RIAA FUD that pirates are theives, they think pirates are their friends, their family, because they are, and they do not care what the MPAA/RIAA say to the contrary.
"In other words, Wikileaks no longer gives a s*** about protecting peoples' identity"
Well it's about weighing the dangers against the benefits, and as the dangers to date have seemed to be completely negligible I'm not sure I can blame them. When they did it last time, no harm came from it, even the Pentagon agreed.
This time, when they worked with media organisations they got nothing but shit off them. The old school media being pissed off that they'd been shown up in terms of their lack of journalistic capability by a bunch of upstarts and their falling hook line and sinker for Domscheit-Berg's FUD, Domscheit-Berg being someone who, for all his talk has yet to actually achieve anything worthwhile whatsoever, and on the contrary has achieved plenty of things that frankly make him a dick.
If Wikileaks is going back to just leaking raw data then I don't blame them, they were better off that way not getting fucked by a media that wanted to pick and choose what to release and what to redact so it could pursue it's own political agenda, and then launch rabid attacks against Wikileaks when it was done.
I don't believe Wikileaks is anything like perfect, it has many problems, but they were better off just leaking data and not really doing anything beyond that. Everything more they have done, even when they've tried to do so because people are telling them it's more "ethical" has just blown up in their faces. So again, it's no surprise they've gone back to their original ways- things worked out much better for them back then. Even if you don't agree with what they do it's not hard to see why they're now doing what they're doing, and it's easy to see that an irresponsible media shares some of the blame because when it was given a chance to do things a bit better, it turned round and stabbed it's partner in the back.
Old school media is to blame for many Western problems due to the fact it's more interested in politics than news, this is yet another demonstration of that, and is why Wikileaks is sensible in just sticking to real actual news than wasting time playing the media's political games.
Of course, if you care about protecting people's identities and think it's important, Wikileaks have asked for volunteers to help do redactions themselves because otherwise they wouldn't have the manpower to do it, and leaking with minimal chance of harm has arguably demonstrated itself better than not leaking at all as it has exposed the likes of the corrupt Tunisian and Egyptian regimes giving more weight to the revolutions in those countries. Of course, if you're like most Slashdotters I'm sure rather than volunteering to do something about it you'll just sit bitching and moaning revelling in your inaction instead though.
Agreed, I think the speed with which bamboo grows is really key here, and if this offers a better way of harvesting it as a biofuel then great.
For those who aren't aware, bamboo has very high oil content and, given the right conditions, some species can grow literally upto a metre per day. That's much better than many other plant species harvested for biofuel!
But this is equally a rediculous argument. When parties are too focussed on corporate interests at the expense of the voterbase, through, as we've seen recently in the UK, the likes of entire political parties running shit scared of the likes of Murdoch, then what use is voting when it comes to such things? On such issues most Western countries simply can't be classified as democracies as democratic principles are ignored when legislation is made surrounding things like saner copyright laws.
"But dont try to push some "I can do whatever I want and then act outraged when the courts disagree" nonsense, part of being an adult is that you put childish ideas behind you.."
Except many adults would disagree with you, and in fact, so would history.
Pirate radio in the UK in the 60s and 70s was instrumental in creating the UK's thriving private and public sector radio broadcaster market today. At the time law meant that radio was limited to literally only a select few stations, but because pirate radio persisted, government finally, over 20 - 30 years eventually realised that the only way to solve the problem was to give consumers what they want, not to fight them, because it's a fight that government and other vested interests cannot win.
The ideas you see as childish are the types of ideas that have kept democracy thriving. Bowing down blindly to government and putting faith indefinitely in a corruptible political system is naive at best.
To be fair I think it's more subtle than that. Each time people see something like this they feel ever less guilty about, and ever less desensitized to piracy.
Each time the MPAA does something like this, they push people further and further away from legitimate services.
I for one don't see why anyone should see the slightest guilt in downloading MPAA movies, frankly paying money to buy their product to support their existence seems more morally bankrupt than downloading, or ideally just simply not watching their content at all nowadays.
Really, all wars in whatever context rely on either winning the hearts and minds of the people, or brutally supressing them. The MPAA in it's war on piracy is attempting the latter, yet even the latter only works as a temporary stop gap, the former is the only permanent solution, yet that's a battle they've already long lost.
"This latest bit of research may have disproved the theory but it's still a fun song"
Actually, it may not. In a rare moment of good reporting when this was on the news last night here in the UK they had another scientist on pointing out that they've not really gone about this particularly scientifically. They haven't for example used the same technique on bodies that were around 100 years before the black death to see if the bacteria exists there too, which would hence suggest that it isn't necessarily the bacteria they're looking for.
In other words, it seems they've basically looked at some black death bodies, found this bacteria and said "Yep, that's conclusively the bacteria to blame that is!" when it might in fact well not be.
The story here is really the technique used, not that spin on it that they've found the bacteria responsible for black death- that latter part is still just sheer speculation right now.
I think you and him are talking about different people.
You're talking about the people who did figure out new methods of healing through the years, whilst ignoring those who did manage to fuck up and kill more people than they helped.
He's talking about the shit crazy "witch doctors" who still exist in places like Africa who claim they can produce cures, but first they need the limb of an albino African...
You're both right- you're right about the people you're talking about, but you're not talking about the people he's talking about- the people who, to this day, think they can cure people through things that have quite the opposite effect, they do exist, and they have always existed- not every "witch doctor" through history has been good or sensible. Humans are quite good at believing their own bullshit, and many such healers through history will have decided "Yes, this'll cure it" and stuck with it no matter how badly it went wrong, using the age old excuses of "Oh, god must've just wanted that one to die", or "He was too far gone, there was nothing that could be done for him" and the like.
There is any number of documented tragic cases in Africa still going on right now where people claim they can heal through things that are far more harmful to the "patient" and others around him.
What about cases like this where he's claiming he can cure AIDs, the people beleive they're cured, and then go and spread it? -
I don't think his view of many third world "healers" is particularly mistaken. Many are just people making up false claims to elevate their status in society, to make people look up to them. Just like faith healers in fact.
Because they wish to do business in the EU, you know, the biggest economy in the world.
Europe's opinion matters because not being able to do business in such a large economy would make it pointless to procede with the takeover anyway as they'd have been better off not taking over Sun and keeping their EU business than taking over Sun and being ineligible to do business in the EU.
It's worth pointing out it's a two way street too. BAE, a British defence firm, bribed Saudi officials to get an aircraft deal, but despite them being a British company and the deal being with Saudi Arabia and hence having nothing to do with the US, the US still fined the company and BAE accepted and paid the fine because it'd rather continue to be able to do business in the US, with by far the largest military expenditure in the world, than not pay the fine and not be able to do business in the US.
This is the thing with an increasingly globalised world, companies are responsible for their actions wherever they do business, not just where they were founded or are headquartered- if you want to take European money, you need to play by European rules.
"As a side effect, he might be setting up Openleaks to be a honeypot making it nice and easy to catch those trying to leak to the public."
Seeing as to date, OpenLeaks appears to not have leaked anything, but has actually deleted plenty of validly leakable material, I'd argue that's a pretty reasonable guess.
If it's not a honeypot, then it's the most incompetent leaking organisation on earth and not worth giving the time of day anyway.
I've always said the proof is in the pudding, many people looked to OpenLeaks as some saviour from the evils of Wikileaks and Julian Assange, but really- it's cold hard action that matters, and Assange has proven himself a sure thing. Assange, for all his faults, has actually done what he set out to do, and support that or hate that, at least he's willing to do what he believes. In contrast, Domscheit-Berg to date has proven himself nothing other than a gobby waste of space whose only mission seems to be to defame Assange and attack Wikileaks, rather than, you know, getting on with actually making OpenLeaks useful- the fact he hasn't done that, and has acted counter to that, does raise questions about the guy.
Either way, OpenLeaks should be completely ignored, as it's a waste of time. It needs to prove itself if it wants to be taken seriously.
Even if he's not an agent, he's probably been bought off, and even if he hasn't been bought off, he's so full of rage against Wikileaks/Assange that he's well beyond the point of being useful to the leaks community, or arguably anyone, anyway.
Apologies for being lazy, but I'll admit I didn't read the whole thread so I'm not sure what operation you're referring to.
I assumed it was the issue of having multiple iPods and multiple accounts and having it randomly delete some content when you try and sync sometimes, so apologies if that's not the case, but even if such a message did come up that doesn't excuse it deleting stuff irrecoverably from your local library.
Slashdot Mirror
"It just goes to show you, that first past the post doesn't work well..."
Yes, it's one of those things you shouldn't have copied from Britain.
It's so bad that even our most left wing mainstream party is now well right of centre, so that rather than any hope of government that's representative of the people we have nothing but right wing idiocy, there's not even any hope of some rational centrism.
It doesn't really matter how you try and spin it, if you wont learn the skills businesses are looking for then you are not what the market wants, and can't shift the blame off onto ageism. It's still you that is the problem.
The two things are linked, but different.
People line up to buy Apple because it's all they hear about from people they know and so they think it's must have. It's all they hear about from their friends because at least one of their friends has heard some story like this and mentioned it.
It's the same thing with X-Factor and American Idol etc. you really think Cheryl Cole went to the US with the expectation to work on the show indefinetely? Bollocks. They knew all along she was only going to do a episode or two, but the drama about her being "kicked off" got everyone talking about whether she'd come back in the UK and boosted hype about the new season here.
Believing this stuff isn't manufactured news is like believing WWE wrestling isn't coreographed and doesn't have pre-planned plots.
There's a good reason many people think iPhone is the most popular phone brand on the planet of both smart and non-smartphones, despite only holding around 18% marketshare of smartphones and less than 2% of all cell phones and it's because it has the top brand recognition, and it has the top brand recognition because of stories like this.
I don't disagree with what you're saying but I don't think it's really the point.
If you're not interested in chasing extra money and are happy with the wage you're on then fair enough, just stay there. The issue is people who complain they're not gettng paid more, but aren't willing to provide the skills the market wants to get paid more.
You seem to be implying though that people should be able to get paid more doing what they love? That might be nice in an ideal world, but with market forces that can't happen- why would a company pay someone $200k when someone will do it for $150k just as well?
It's really about priorities- if you want to do what you love above all else then you must accept that that limits your wage potential. If you want to make money above all else then that might simply mean not doing what you love all the time.
It's really just the choice to have to make. Personally though I've found I can find enjoyment in most roles- I've come to realise it's what you make of the job that matters, than what you actually do, and frankly, the higher you get, the more control you have over what your job is. Sure if you become a CTO there will inevitably be more meetings that you HAVE to attend but in the time left outside the things a CTO must do, which is still plentiful, you can really pick and choose somewhat what you do with it. Some just prefer to setup more meetings, others like to get hands on and help their staff a bit.
To be fair that's the same in many industries though, when you start to get to that age you need to start looking into more managerial jobs, like moving to a CTO position, and then eventually when you're ready, moving up to a CEO position or similar.
You'll find very few skillsets where your wage can go up beyond that point without starting to move into director level managerial roles.
Or to combine your point with mine- once you hit that ceiling the only option is really to start looking to be the one that as you said, has people working for them, not so much works for people- whether that's going it your own way with your own business, or getting to the upper echelons of a business, and once you're there, hopping to the upper echelons of ever larger, better financially endowed businesses.
Agreed, I've also been looking for a job lately (although I already had employment, I was just after career advancement) and had no problem whatsoever finding one, and managing a not to be sniffed at ~37%, 5 figure increase in wage to boot.
Although I've worked mainly with C# and Java in recent years I kind of felt like a C++ role because I hadn't worked with it in a while and thought it'd be nice to get back into it- that was far from my highest priority though, career progression was at the top of the list by far. I ended up settling for a job that has a mix of C#, Java, and a bit of PHP, because the fact is C++ jobs just weren't out there (with the exception of a handful of embedded jobs, but I have no embedded experience). There were far more C# jobs out there than candidates though, so as a result I really was able to basically just name my wage within reason- it took a couple of interviews at different places to get the kind of increase I was looking for with some firms having given me lower offers, but I got it okay in the end with a bit of patience.
You can't expect to get exactly what you want, the key point people miss nowadays is that if you want to get a job, or have a decent career, then you must provide what the market wants- it's not for the market to provide what you want. Although I've mainly been doing C# and Java, and was looking for C++, I still went for a few PHP jobs because the career direction, location, and wage were all right- PHP was not my first, or even my second or 3rd choice, but keeping it open as an option, kept the options open for me as a candidate.
I spoke to a lot of recruitment agents in recent weeks and a few of them I built up a decent working relationship with had a similar sentiment- that there are enough jobs for developers, if it weren't for the fact that a lot of developers just refuse to change languages or technologies, and because of that there is actually a shortage of developers fit to fill the posts available. This is very frustrating for the agents, because there's a lot of developers out there whining about being unable to find a job, even though there's a job there waiting, if only they'd be willing to spend a few weeks learning C#, the .NET framework, and SQL server or whatever rather than insisting they use what they've used for the last 20 - 30 years.
The worst part? a lot of the old curmudgeon stuck in the muds complaining about younger people coming in above them and not wanting to hire them are missing the point that the only reason those younger developers are coming in above them is because those younger developers do just happen to have been taught the specific languages that are relevant today. They're oblivious to the fact that they too could have those posts if they just bothered to make the slightest bit of effort to make their skills match the market and it's sad- because with a firm background in C++, picking up C# is easy, and developing with it is a fuckton more pleasant! Those younger folks aren't getting the job instead of you simply because they are younger, they're getting them by mere virtue of the fact that they've recently just come out of an education that teaches skills relevant to the current market and you're too fucking lazy to learn the same!
These people complaining are simply their own worst enemies. You wont always get fair treatment, some companies really are bigoted and such, but the vast majority aren't- they're just pragmatic, they'll take the person who can and wants to actually do the job, not the person with 2 decades experience in another language and who outright refuses to jump to the technologies the company that is recruiting has chosen to use and is already invested in.
Yes, but by that logic, if it weren't for Hitler's persecution of the jews the international community might never have acted to overthrow him and Britain may never have created the post-war NHS built on the idea of helping your neighbour and it might never have existed to plaster my arm when I fractured it. Thus, Hitler made my life better.
Unfortunately you can find a positive resultant effect from almost any scenario and make the claim that it hence indirectly made your life better, but it's a bit meaningless.
Fundamentally the issue is broader than that though, it's whether the knock on effects of a companies actions made my life better than if that company hadn't existed. If Apple hadn't had an effective media player and digital media store monopoly then there's a fair argument that digital content would be cheaper, less restrictive, and the jump from media players to smartphones would've happened far earlier due to increase competition speeding up the evolution of that market.
So yes you may be right- Apple might have indirectly made my life better, but it may also have made it worse. Who knows?
Not sure if you misread my comment, it wasn't humidity I was talking about, it was the dust from the Sahara which acts as fertilizer for places like the Amazon. If you make Africa green that dust will not be so easily able to blow free. Whilst it's likely the loss of that fertilizing dust from the Sahara wouldn't kill plantlife in the Amazon it would at least cripple growth somewhat- there would be a much larger pressure on plantlife to fight over nutrients such that many species of plant less strong would likely lose out in that battle and become extinct, resulting also in less overall biomass.
It depends what you mean by "just fine".
Certainly it wasn't the same ecosystem it is now, and certainly removing fertilization from the sahara would decrease south american biomass and reduce biodiversity.
If you mean it'd still have some green stuff there then yes, you're probably right, but how much, and how diverse would be the fundamental problem. Would biomass increase in Africa occur quickly enough to deal with the resultant decrease in South America, and hence the potential imbalances in CO2 capture, storage, and release? That's anyones guess. It's too complex a system to play around with without risking massively dangerous side effects far more damaging than the current situation of overpopulation relative to the resources to support the population in Africa.
It's not just internal. When I went on a trip to Reading in a previous job where they were showing off new server technologies they had hired good time girls there too to basically act as eye candy for all the people they were trying to tie in to a future with Microsoft tech.
But let's also be honest, Microsoft is far from unique here, it's not fair to single them out over it, really, it's a problem with corporate sales and marketing culture across many industries.
But how effective the leaks are in exposing malfeasance depends in part on the reputation of those exposing it, else if their reputation is poor their opponents can just write them off.
Working with the media has done nothing but harm Wikileaks image as they have found themselves embroiled in jealousy and political spats with the media. It's hurt their image badly, which has a detrimental effect on people's view of them as a trustworthy organisation.
Prior to working with the media whether you agreed with them or not it was hard to see them as anything other than an organisation that just leaks what it has without engaging in any particular partisanship or petty political squabbling with the media.
Working with the media has let the media put their own biased political spin on everything they release- ignoring stuff the media finds inconvenient to it's political viewpoint, and widely publicising arguably less relevant, but more politically beneficial content. By withdrawing away from the media they return to a position where there isn't so much partisanship and where it's simply about leaking the data, and letting people make up their mind as to the importance and interpretation of it.
I'm a bit of a lefty myself to an extent, but Wikileaks partnered with primarily left wing organisations and this meant that there was only so much of a focus on left-wing beneficial cables and so forth, whereas cables that catered more to serve the right wing ideology went ignored.
So effectively it's about neutrality- by ignoring the media Wikileaks moves back to a position of relative neutrality.
On the subject of danger I agree Wikileaks is partially to blame if someone is put in danger, but again I believe the media is also, and similarly I believe the government is also for ever documenting on a low level security clearance system to which many tens of thousands of people had access to the names of such informers. The blame has to be shared, and Wikileaks at least made an effort to resolve the issue, yet those efforts proved detrimental to it's cause as it inherently meant working with inept and biased organisations.
Yes, then that way the dust that blows across the Atlantic from the Sahara to fertilize the Amazon can stop, and whilst Africa becomes a luscious new area of growth the whole of the Amazon can just die off.
Really, fucking around with things that can have such a massive, potentially unknown effect elsewhere isn't a smart idea at all because you can just end up making things worse.
Other parts of the world depend on the Sahara being like the Sahara is, so if you change the Sahara, you change those other parts of the world. In boosting food supplies in Africa you damage the food supplies in say South America, and create a problem there instead.
The problem is that they're subverting democracy. They're using political lobbying and pressure to try and assert their will against the will of the population. This is not the first time they have done it.
Other issues stemming from their lobbying involve removing long running fundamental rights such as that of being deemed innocent until proven guilty to protect their content. Their content just isn't important enough to justify this raping of rights, but through corruption they've been able to get these laws pushed through in some countries. I wholeheartedly agree the politicians are as much to blame, but that doesn't mean it's right, and hence cutting off income to such firms by pirating or not consuming their content is justifiable in that it has the net effect of removing said organisations ability to trample over democracy and fundamental rights.
If it was just a court case and they were straight up about it I'd have no problem, but the very fact they can't be honest and instead are trying to hide the fact they're behind it demonstrates the problem- the populace aren't happy with them and their lobbying, that is, they're working against the democratic will of the population subversively. If they had the support of the population, and their actions were hence democratically and morally acceptable then they would have no need to hide their involvement.
"right -- do I really need to remind you that if you grab them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow?"
Er, this has never ever been the case. This is the attitude that left thousands of American's dead in America's Vietnam, and Iraq misadventures. It's completely wrong.
"You protect profits by whatever means necessary. Failing to do so is immoral, since the only morality in business is a comfortably darwinian one."
This is one of the more stupid comments I've ever seen on Slashdot, which is quite an achievement. Sometimes you have to let profits slide temporarily to protect the long term health of your company, but certainly your implication that you must do anything no matter how immoral or unethical is just stupid because doing immoral and unethical things often come back to bite. Ruper Murdoch thought the same thing as you, a year ago he was looking at owning the whole of the UK's biggest broadcaster, and the lion's share of the newspaper market. Now he's lost all hope of buying out the whole of SkyTV and is down one paper as he had to close it down, because he had the same utterly absurd belief as you that he could do immoral and unethical things indefinitely as a route to profit. Well, it's cost him dearly now and his footprint in UK media is far smaller than it was, and by the time various investigations finish, there's a possibility it could be even smaller again.
Please, don't go into business, ever. You'll fail hard.
I agree about DRM, I've long said DRM is about restricting what the user should legitimately be able to do with a product and nothing to do with anti-piracy.
The primary reason for DRM is to prevent swapping of games with friends, and second hand sales, which frankly completely stinks, because it makes digital content the only item you cannot do this with. You can share and sell second hand your toaster, your car, your clothes, your furniture, yet for some reason, you can no longer do this with digital content.
DRM makes digital content an anomally product with more restrictions than any other product you might own.
But I disagree that they'e somehow won the battle with DRM, the fact is most people don't care about it. In the UK estimates are that over 9 million people now download pirated content- that's 15% of the population, and when that many do it people aren't going to support it because linked to those downloaders are friends, and family, who likely also consume that content. No one believes MPAA/RIAA FUD that pirates are theives, they think pirates are their friends, their family, because they are, and they do not care what the MPAA/RIAA say to the contrary.
"In other words, Wikileaks no longer gives a s*** about protecting peoples' identity"
Well it's about weighing the dangers against the benefits, and as the dangers to date have seemed to be completely negligible I'm not sure I can blame them. When they did it last time, no harm came from it, even the Pentagon agreed.
This time, when they worked with media organisations they got nothing but shit off them. The old school media being pissed off that they'd been shown up in terms of their lack of journalistic capability by a bunch of upstarts and their falling hook line and sinker for Domscheit-Berg's FUD, Domscheit-Berg being someone who, for all his talk has yet to actually achieve anything worthwhile whatsoever, and on the contrary has achieved plenty of things that frankly make him a dick.
If Wikileaks is going back to just leaking raw data then I don't blame them, they were better off that way not getting fucked by a media that wanted to pick and choose what to release and what to redact so it could pursue it's own political agenda, and then launch rabid attacks against Wikileaks when it was done.
I don't believe Wikileaks is anything like perfect, it has many problems, but they were better off just leaking data and not really doing anything beyond that. Everything more they have done, even when they've tried to do so because people are telling them it's more "ethical" has just blown up in their faces. So again, it's no surprise they've gone back to their original ways- things worked out much better for them back then. Even if you don't agree with what they do it's not hard to see why they're now doing what they're doing, and it's easy to see that an irresponsible media shares some of the blame because when it was given a chance to do things a bit better, it turned round and stabbed it's partner in the back.
Old school media is to blame for many Western problems due to the fact it's more interested in politics than news, this is yet another demonstration of that, and is why Wikileaks is sensible in just sticking to real actual news than wasting time playing the media's political games.
Of course, if you care about protecting people's identities and think it's important, Wikileaks have asked for volunteers to help do redactions themselves because otherwise they wouldn't have the manpower to do it, and leaking with minimal chance of harm has arguably demonstrated itself better than not leaking at all as it has exposed the likes of the corrupt Tunisian and Egyptian regimes giving more weight to the revolutions in those countries. Of course, if you're like most Slashdotters I'm sure rather than volunteering to do something about it you'll just sit bitching and moaning revelling in your inaction instead though.
Agreed, I think the speed with which bamboo grows is really key here, and if this offers a better way of harvesting it as a biofuel then great.
For those who aren't aware, bamboo has very high oil content and, given the right conditions, some species can grow literally upto a metre per day. That's much better than many other plant species harvested for biofuel!
I think his point is that if the enzymes are so efficient, then what does the panda do with all that energy the enzymes produce?
Judging by the summary "shit it out" is one possible answer I suppose.
"If you dont like the laws, change how you vote."
But this is equally a rediculous argument. When parties are too focussed on corporate interests at the expense of the voterbase, through, as we've seen recently in the UK, the likes of entire political parties running shit scared of the likes of Murdoch, then what use is voting when it comes to such things? On such issues most Western countries simply can't be classified as democracies as democratic principles are ignored when legislation is made surrounding things like saner copyright laws.
"But dont try to push some "I can do whatever I want and then act outraged when the courts disagree" nonsense, part of being an adult is that you put childish ideas behind you.."
Except many adults would disagree with you, and in fact, so would history.
Pirate radio in the UK in the 60s and 70s was instrumental in creating the UK's thriving private and public sector radio broadcaster market today. At the time law meant that radio was limited to literally only a select few stations, but because pirate radio persisted, government finally, over 20 - 30 years eventually realised that the only way to solve the problem was to give consumers what they want, not to fight them, because it's a fight that government and other vested interests cannot win.
The ideas you see as childish are the types of ideas that have kept democracy thriving. Bowing down blindly to government and putting faith indefinitely in a corruptible political system is naive at best.
To be fair I think it's more subtle than that. Each time people see something like this they feel ever less guilty about, and ever less desensitized to piracy.
Each time the MPAA does something like this, they push people further and further away from legitimate services.
I for one don't see why anyone should see the slightest guilt in downloading MPAA movies, frankly paying money to buy their product to support their existence seems more morally bankrupt than downloading, or ideally just simply not watching their content at all nowadays.
Really, all wars in whatever context rely on either winning the hearts and minds of the people, or brutally supressing them. The MPAA in it's war on piracy is attempting the latter, yet even the latter only works as a temporary stop gap, the former is the only permanent solution, yet that's a battle they've already long lost.
"This latest bit of research may have disproved the theory but it's still a fun song"
Actually, it may not. In a rare moment of good reporting when this was on the news last night here in the UK they had another scientist on pointing out that they've not really gone about this particularly scientifically. They haven't for example used the same technique on bodies that were around 100 years before the black death to see if the bacteria exists there too, which would hence suggest that it isn't necessarily the bacteria they're looking for.
In other words, it seems they've basically looked at some black death bodies, found this bacteria and said "Yep, that's conclusively the bacteria to blame that is!" when it might in fact well not be.
The story here is really the technique used, not that spin on it that they've found the bacteria responsible for black death- that latter part is still just sheer speculation right now.
I think you and him are talking about different people.
You're talking about the people who did figure out new methods of healing through the years, whilst ignoring those who did manage to fuck up and kill more people than they helped.
He's talking about the shit crazy "witch doctors" who still exist in places like Africa who claim they can produce cures, but first they need the limb of an albino African...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/16/tanzania-humanrights
You're both right- you're right about the people you're talking about, but you're not talking about the people he's talking about- the people who, to this day, think they can cure people through things that have quite the opposite effect, they do exist, and they have always existed- not every "witch doctor" through history has been good or sensible. Humans are quite good at believing their own bullshit, and many such healers through history will have decided "Yes, this'll cure it" and stuck with it no matter how badly it went wrong, using the age old excuses of "Oh, god must've just wanted that one to die", or "He was too far gone, there was nothing that could be done for him" and the like.
There is any number of documented tragic cases in Africa still going on right now where people claim they can heal through things that are far more harmful to the "patient" and others around him.
What about cases like this where he's claiming he can cure AIDs, the people beleive they're cured, and then go and spread it? -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6323449.stm
Or this:
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/a/aids-virgins.htm
I don't think his view of many third world "healers" is particularly mistaken. Many are just people making up false claims to elevate their status in society, to make people look up to them. Just like faith healers in fact.
Because they wish to do business in the EU, you know, the biggest economy in the world.
Europe's opinion matters because not being able to do business in such a large economy would make it pointless to procede with the takeover anyway as they'd have been better off not taking over Sun and keeping their EU business than taking over Sun and being ineligible to do business in the EU.
It's worth pointing out it's a two way street too. BAE, a British defence firm, bribed Saudi officials to get an aircraft deal, but despite them being a British company and the deal being with Saudi Arabia and hence having nothing to do with the US, the US still fined the company and BAE accepted and paid the fine because it'd rather continue to be able to do business in the US, with by far the largest military expenditure in the world, than not pay the fine and not be able to do business in the US.
This is the thing with an increasingly globalised world, companies are responsible for their actions wherever they do business, not just where they were founded or are headquartered- if you want to take European money, you need to play by European rules.
"As a side effect, he might be setting up Openleaks to be a honeypot making it nice and easy to catch those trying to leak to the public."
Seeing as to date, OpenLeaks appears to not have leaked anything, but has actually deleted plenty of validly leakable material, I'd argue that's a pretty reasonable guess.
If it's not a honeypot, then it's the most incompetent leaking organisation on earth and not worth giving the time of day anyway.
I've always said the proof is in the pudding, many people looked to OpenLeaks as some saviour from the evils of Wikileaks and Julian Assange, but really- it's cold hard action that matters, and Assange has proven himself a sure thing. Assange, for all his faults, has actually done what he set out to do, and support that or hate that, at least he's willing to do what he believes. In contrast, Domscheit-Berg to date has proven himself nothing other than a gobby waste of space whose only mission seems to be to defame Assange and attack Wikileaks, rather than, you know, getting on with actually making OpenLeaks useful- the fact he hasn't done that, and has acted counter to that, does raise questions about the guy.
Either way, OpenLeaks should be completely ignored, as it's a waste of time. It needs to prove itself if it wants to be taken seriously.
Even if he's not an agent, he's probably been bought off, and even if he hasn't been bought off, he's so full of rage against Wikileaks/Assange that he's well beyond the point of being useful to the leaks community, or arguably anyone, anyway.
Apologies for being lazy, but I'll admit I didn't read the whole thread so I'm not sure what operation you're referring to.
I assumed it was the issue of having multiple iPods and multiple accounts and having it randomly delete some content when you try and sync sometimes, so apologies if that's not the case, but even if such a message did come up that doesn't excuse it deleting stuff irrecoverably from your local library.