to find out what happened exactly, who dumped what where, if it was done on purpose by somebody to spoil your water?
A government has more resources than a single individual. As well as being able to pay for things like trained investigators (essential in pretty much any kind of criminal investigation, from road accidents to murders) and labs to do chemical analysis, they could levy special investigative and punitive rights. For example, a criminal court can award search warrants for police to execute in order to collect evidence, and then impose a custodial penalty upon successful conviction. By ensuring that amateurs are not involved in the investigation and prosecution, this branch of government (theoretically) adheres to standards high enough to warrant them being given the kind of rights that allow them to suspend the freedom of those who break laws.
The government would also be able to address these problems without requiring private individuals to drop everything they're doing and start acting as investigators and lawyers. Even small civil cases take a LONG time to litigate (never mind investigate), especially if you aren't a specialist. As a software engineer, do you really expect me to drop my day job while I poke around a neighbour's private property to collect evidence of mercury poisoning I had to pay an expensive lab to uncover? I regard that kind of act to be a crime against society (like murder or drunk driving) and thus deem the onus of investigation/prosecution to be on society's collective representative - the executive and judicial branches of government.
The waterways should all be private property, and anybody affected by the actions of dumping the mercury there would have to take those people to court to seek damages.
How would a private individual go about investigating who dumped the mercury? What if they didn't have the resources to even detect the cause of whatever damage they suffered? What if multiple private interconnected waterways were involved? What if another waterway owner was responsible for the dumping? The cost of resolving this privately in civil courts would be astronomical, and the difficulty in securing evidence would probably dissuade many from pursuing it. This lack of action would encourage those responsible to continue their actions and cause damage to others. The kind of system you propose gives an obvious advantage to powerful organisations. In a fair society I believe individuals deserve collective protection and representation from exactly these sorts of problems, especially when from a macroscopic perspective such protection serves society as a whole.
It seems to me like non-political, government-sponsored social agents (the police and criminal courts, for example) are a pretty good solution.
I should also mention that as well as being a signatory to the treaty, it is actually implemented in domestic law, allowing the breach of these rights to be dealt with by UK courts instead of just the European Court of Human Rights.
The GP is talking about The European Convention on Human Rights. It has nothing to do with the UN. It is a treaty for the protection of fundamental rights within Europe. The UK is a signatory to the treaty.
Also, do you really think that codifying a law as coming from "God" makes it harder to change? I'd never thought about it before - it's an interesting concept, although I think a modern version would have to be secular. Perhaps a law of the universe? I think that one of the the main reasons the constitution is so hard to change is because the idea of its supremacy is socially entrenched in the US. We don't have a specific set of codified, core values with which the whole country can identify like that here in the UK, but I really like the idea. I would be very much in favour of drawing up a constitution of universal rights and freedoms that is strongly protected from change.
The person or persons to whom the job is outsourced is likely to already have a job... in fact that is likely, give the recent unemployment rates in the United States.
GP assumes, you assume.
The overwhelming sense that such outsourcing is unethical on this thread boils down to one very simple assumption: American lives are more important than others.
Take away the borders and you're left with people. x people lose a job, y people gain one. Maybe the details are more complicated, but that's the point of capitalism. If every possible effect of every decision had to be analysed and debated for its ethical merits (a process that would be wildly subjective and fallible at best), everything would grind to a halt and no-one would have anything. Capitalism lets market forces (forces that inextricably link us all) make these kinds of decisions in a bid for a sort of impartial fairness. It is on the back of these same forces that the US thrives as the world's largest economy.
If there are jobs in which you no longer present adequate value for money, the foremost solution should be changing what you do and differentiating yourself from the competition. Trying to suspend the operation of commercial forces in a competitive global capitalist market simply makes no sense.
Don't get me wrong. It sucks that anyone has to lose their job. It sucks that the equilibrium we strive for is not perfect and people still have to suffer. But remember: most people, especially in the US and Europe, derive infinitely more benefit from this way of doing things than they do harm.
Opera Mini is different - pages are rendered (and JavaScript executed) on Opera's servers and sent back to the device for display. No rendering happens locally.
I have a Desire too - it is an HTC app. The fastest way to do what the GP wants is to copy the RSS URL from the browser and then paste it into the RSS reader app. Integrated RSS support would be nice though!
Im Venezuelan, linving in Venezuela. And the seizing of gaming consoles is a lie.
You're a Venezuelan living in Venezuela, and the only thing you have to say is that the government is not seizing consoles? How about some outrage at the absurdity of this law? How about some disgust at the fact that your government is passing laws that shift parental responsibility to the state?
This is a silly ploy to make it look like the government is tackling crime. In actual fact, they are just trying to get political points at the expense of their citizens' freedoms and on the back of their citizens' fears.
Think about it: you take a psychedelic drug such as LSD and you experience auditory and visual hallucinations. These hallucinations are constructed by your brain from a variety of inputs, both external and internal. It is not hard to see how this can be used as a source of inspiration for artists.
private citizens would be able to help the less fortunate
Do you have any idea how difficult it would be to let individuals alone allocate resources to help "the less fortunate"? Who's going to look at the overall picture and decide which "less fortunate" group requires the most aid at a particular point in time? It seems to me the government is particularly well-positioned to do this. I mean, think about it: there are plenty of groups of people who are suffering that we don't know about with problems we've never even heard of. Enumerating them and then allocating my finances in the fairest way would be an incredible task. Even if I managed it, what about the rest of the country? Everything isn't just going to fall into line; the figures don't just magically add up correctly. The only way to ensure a system of social support is to have a third-party with more resources and information analyse the problem holistically and allocate the funds as fairly as possible given their remit (which should be defined through democratic process).
No you're missing the point. The point is this: Linux netbooks are being returned at a higher rate than Windows netbooks. All the Dell guy is saying is that the reason for these returns is not that Linux doesn't work, but that people bought the netbooks wanting/expecting Windows, only to find an unfamiliar interface. They then proceeded to return the netbooks.
Look at it this way:
Good News For Linux: Linux is performing well on the netbooks and Dell is happy with them (in the article Finch says "We've been quite pleased with the stability and technical soundness of the Linux machines.").
Bad News For Linux: People still want Windows instead and it appears that Windows is also performing well on the netbooks.
if you are saying that developers are not part of Information Technology, you are full of shit
IT (as an area of work) usually refers to IT support staff such as network administrators. Development is, generally, the writing of software.
IT as a general term can refer to pretty much anything directly or indirectly related to something using a microchip, so in that sense I suppose developers work in IT. But this use of the definition is so generic that it's not really useful at all, so dividing development and IT (as most people do) makes more sense.
Your comment and his moderation are an exact copy of what astroturfers has been doing for MS for years on public forums
You're implying he's being paid by someone to express certain opinions. Where's your evidence? Or maybe you have none?
Is it really so unlikely that someone might simply have an opinion different to yours and want to express it? Or is it that you are so insecure in your belief in the strength of your position that you feel the need to attribute different points of view to evil corporate conspiracies? Or is it that you are so utterly arrogant in your belief that things should work a certain way that you cannot fathom that anyone might prefer an alternative?
It just irks me that instead of expressing your opinions and arguments properly and letting them stand on their own merit, you resort to making baseless accusations that, frankly, seem rather paranoid. Oh and if that's the best response you can come up with to the GPs argument, then it suggests there's not much substance to your own.
So there isn't any shred of evidence for a universe that was created by an intelligent being? None?
That's not how science works. You present your evidence, then it's evaluated. Where's your evidence?
Of course, I'm wasting my time, aren't I? Because whatever rational criticism I make of your evidence, you will continue to believe what you want to believe, regardless. That is how religion works.
Slashdot Mirror
A government has more resources than a single individual. As well as being able to pay for things like trained investigators (essential in pretty much any kind of criminal investigation, from road accidents to murders) and labs to do chemical analysis, they could levy special investigative and punitive rights. For example, a criminal court can award search warrants for police to execute in order to collect evidence, and then impose a custodial penalty upon successful conviction. By ensuring that amateurs are not involved in the investigation and prosecution, this branch of government (theoretically) adheres to standards high enough to warrant them being given the kind of rights that allow them to suspend the freedom of those who break laws.
The government would also be able to address these problems without requiring private individuals to drop everything they're doing and start acting as investigators and lawyers. Even small civil cases take a LONG time to litigate (never mind investigate), especially if you aren't a specialist. As a software engineer, do you really expect me to drop my day job while I poke around a neighbour's private property to collect evidence of mercury poisoning I had to pay an expensive lab to uncover? I regard that kind of act to be a crime against society (like murder or drunk driving) and thus deem the onus of investigation/prosecution to be on society's collective representative - the executive and judicial branches of government.
How would a private individual go about investigating who dumped the mercury? What if they didn't have the resources to even detect the cause of whatever damage they suffered? What if multiple private interconnected waterways were involved? What if another waterway owner was responsible for the dumping? The cost of resolving this privately in civil courts would be astronomical, and the difficulty in securing evidence would probably dissuade many from pursuing it. This lack of action would encourage those responsible to continue their actions and cause damage to others. The kind of system you propose gives an obvious advantage to powerful organisations. In a fair society I believe individuals deserve collective protection and representation from exactly these sorts of problems, especially when from a macroscopic perspective such protection serves society as a whole.
It seems to me like non-political, government-sponsored social agents (the police and criminal courts, for example) are a pretty good solution.
But if it turns out that HTC comes out to 2% and Moto is at 25% then I'd say that it's not the OS, but the manuf. that's the problem.
How could it be the OS? This is about hardware faults, and in fact has nothing to do with Android.
I should also mention that as well as being a signatory to the treaty, it is actually implemented in domestic law, allowing the breach of these rights to be dealt with by UK courts instead of just the European Court of Human Rights.
Where did you get "UN Human Rights" from?
The GP is talking about The European Convention on Human Rights. It has nothing to do with the UN. It is a treaty for the protection of fundamental rights within Europe. The UK is a signatory to the treaty.
Also, do you really think that codifying a law as coming from "God" makes it harder to change? I'd never thought about it before - it's an interesting concept, although I think a modern version would have to be secular. Perhaps a law of the universe? I think that one of the the main reasons the constitution is so hard to change is because the idea of its supremacy is socially entrenched in the US. We don't have a specific set of codified, core values with which the whole country can identify like that here in the UK, but I really like the idea. I would be very much in favour of drawing up a constitution of universal rights and freedoms that is strongly protected from change.
If my life is worth exactly the same as yours, I am still not ethically required to sacrifice mine in order to better yours.
Of course not. That's not what I said.
What I said was that it is no more unethical to give an American job to an Indian than it is to give an American job to another American.
Especially if you are in a country that has caused its own problems due to things like ridiculous population density.
By that logic, has America not created its own problems by over-valuing certain skills such that they can be cheaply outsourced?
GP assumes, you assume.
The overwhelming sense that such outsourcing is unethical on this thread boils down to one very simple assumption: American lives are more important than others.
Take away the borders and you're left with people. x people lose a job, y people gain one. Maybe the details are more complicated, but that's the point of capitalism. If every possible effect of every decision had to be analysed and debated for its ethical merits (a process that would be wildly subjective and fallible at best), everything would grind to a halt and no-one would have anything. Capitalism lets market forces (forces that inextricably link us all) make these kinds of decisions in a bid for a sort of impartial fairness. It is on the back of these same forces that the US thrives as the world's largest economy.
If there are jobs in which you no longer present adequate value for money, the foremost solution should be changing what you do and differentiating yourself from the competition. Trying to suspend the operation of commercial forces in a competitive global capitalist market simply makes no sense.
Don't get me wrong. It sucks that anyone has to lose their job. It sucks that the equilibrium we strive for is not perfect and people still have to suffer. But remember: most people, especially in the US and Europe, derive infinitely more benefit from this way of doing things than they do harm.
I know - reading American responses to this kind of thing is really baffling, isn't it? They call it socialism, I call it basic human compassion.
There was an excellent article that delved into this mindset recently in Rolling Stone. I think it's especially enlightening when read from a European perspective, particularly in terms of how the working class perspectives on these issues differ so much (non-sensically, in fact) in the US.
Opera Mini is different - pages are rendered (and JavaScript executed) on Opera's servers and sent back to the device for display. No rendering happens locally.
I have a Desire too - it is an HTC app. The fastest way to do what the GP wants is to copy the RSS URL from the browser and then paste it into the RSS reader app. Integrated RSS support would be nice though!
U.S. high school level
He said the course was of a level equivalent to that of a US high school, not that it was actually a US high school course.
I am not American, nor am I living in America.
If such a tepid response to an obvious overstep by the government is a cultural difference, it certainly isn't a good one.
Im Venezuelan, linving in Venezuela. And the seizing of gaming consoles is a lie.
You're a Venezuelan living in Venezuela, and the only thing you have to say is that the government is not seizing consoles? How about some outrage at the absurdity of this law? How about some disgust at the fact that your government is passing laws that shift parental responsibility to the state?
This is a silly ploy to make it look like the government is tackling crime. In actual fact, they are just trying to get political points at the expense of their citizens' freedoms and on the back of their citizens' fears.
but i was not actually feeling, seeing, hearing, and thinking great things
The drugs won't just give you great things. You need to seed the experience. You need to participate in it, not just sit back and spectate.
"great thoughts" and drug use is an illusion
This may be true sometimes, but is certainly not always.
A lot of people would disagree with you.
Think about it: you take a psychedelic drug such as LSD and you experience auditory and visual hallucinations. These hallucinations are constructed by your brain from a variety of inputs, both external and internal. It is not hard to see how this can be used as a source of inspiration for artists.
Why are you so quick to reject this idea?
Sounds great. Hope they don't get the patent.
From the website navigation menu: bada for business | bada for developers.
Bada for Samsung, more like.
private citizens would be able to help the less fortunate
Do you have any idea how difficult it would be to let individuals alone allocate resources to help "the less fortunate"? Who's going to look at the overall picture and decide which "less fortunate" group requires the most aid at a particular point in time? It seems to me the government is particularly well-positioned to do this. I mean, think about it: there are plenty of groups of people who are suffering that we don't know about with problems we've never even heard of. Enumerating them and then allocating my finances in the fairest way would be an incredible task. Even if I managed it, what about the rest of the country? Everything isn't just going to fall into line; the figures don't just magically add up correctly. The only way to ensure a system of social support is to have a third-party with more resources and information analyse the problem holistically and allocate the funds as fairly as possible given their remit (which should be defined through democratic process).
And the legality of those TOS is also questionable!
Symantec Chief Technology Officer Mark Bregman [...] was advised to buy a new cellphone for each visit
Yes, heaven forbid China learns the secret of bloated antivirus software that ignores state-sponsored keyloggers.
You think jealousy and rage that others are better off than you constitutes perspective?
It doesn't.
No you're missing the point. The point is this: Linux netbooks are being returned at a higher rate than Windows netbooks. All the Dell guy is saying is that the reason for these returns is not that Linux doesn't work, but that people bought the netbooks wanting/expecting Windows, only to find an unfamiliar interface. They then proceeded to return the netbooks.
Look at it this way:
Good News For Linux: Linux is performing well on the netbooks and Dell is happy with them (in the article Finch says "We've been quite pleased with the stability and technical soundness of the Linux machines.").
Bad News For Linux: People still want Windows instead and it appears that Windows is also performing well on the netbooks.
if you are saying that developers are not part of Information Technology, you are full of shit
IT (as an area of work) usually refers to IT support staff such as network administrators. Development is, generally, the writing of software.
IT as a general term can refer to pretty much anything directly or indirectly related to something using a microchip, so in that sense I suppose developers work in IT. But this use of the definition is so generic that it's not really useful at all, so dividing development and IT (as most people do) makes more sense.
you are full of shit
That was pretty senseless, wasn't it?
Your comment and his moderation are an exact copy of what astroturfers has been doing for MS for years on public forums
You're implying he's being paid by someone to express certain opinions. Where's your evidence? Or maybe you have none?
Is it really so unlikely that someone might simply have an opinion different to yours and want to express it? Or is it that you are so insecure in your belief in the strength of your position that you feel the need to attribute different points of view to evil corporate conspiracies? Or is it that you are so utterly arrogant in your belief that things should work a certain way that you cannot fathom that anyone might prefer an alternative?
It just irks me that instead of expressing your opinions and arguments properly and letting them stand on their own merit, you resort to making baseless accusations that, frankly, seem rather paranoid. Oh and if that's the best response you can come up with to the GPs argument, then it suggests there's not much substance to your own.
So there isn't any shred of evidence for a universe that was created by an intelligent being? None?
That's not how science works. You present your evidence, then it's evaluated. Where's your evidence?
Of course, I'm wasting my time, aren't I? Because whatever rational criticism I make of your evidence, you will continue to believe what you want to believe, regardless. That is how religion works.
Faith == blind, irrational belief.