> Your car may be your property too, but should
> you have the right to infringe on OTHER
> people's rights with it -- for instance, by
? purposely causing wrecks or running down
> pedestrians?
Would you then argiue that the pistons should be removed from all cars, so that they can't be used to infringe on the rights of pedestrians? I dunno about you, but I wouldn't buy a car that didn't run.
If you are going to build a strawman, you should
at least have the decency to follow through and rip him apart, these "Straw men that fall apart on their own" really arn't much fun.
The problem with copy protection is not that it "Stops me from violating the producers rights", it is that it stops me from excersising mine.
It is perfectly legal for me to make copies of works or parts of works under certain conditions. This technology is in place specifically to stop me from exercising those rights.
It is there to stop me from recording TV shows for archival or later veiwing (as mentioned in the article, the betamax court decision quite clearly states that this sort of "time shifting" of a broadcast is perfectly within my rights).
> * At some point in time, he predicted either
> your University will lay you off, or your salary
> will become too meager to live on (a wife, and
> a child or two, etc)
I don't see how these are very likely predictions. His actual prediction was that "We" would somehow effect the budget of Universities...a prediction that I am skeptical of at best.
Also, while th emoney is meager, compared to what I could be making doing the same job (Unix sysadmin) elsewhere, its certainly enough to live on. Were I to have a wife, I would expect her to work and bring in money also. I don't ever plan on breeding (and I wish others would do the same) so....I don't see this happening.
> * If you don't want to sign an NDA or a
> non-compete, then start handing in resume's
> at McDonalds, as *every* *single* tech company
> requires minimally an NDA for employment.
Thats fine for them. I wont work for them. As it is, I said I don't think I will EVER be looking to work for a for-profit company again anyway.
There are plenty of jobs available for people who do not want to sign NDAs, even in this industry. As a person who has had steady employment for the past 4 years, and has never signed an NDA, I think I am living proof of that.
Beyond that, there are plenty of Non-Macdonalds jobs that are not in this industry. The world is not "Programmers, Executives, and burger flippers".
> NDA's are absolutely nessecary pieces of paper
> for an employer.
I happen to disagree there. They may be necissary for certain things that some companies like to do (like selling proprietary software), but these are activities that I don't want to be onvolved with anyway (I wont write code where the programs are distributed but not the code)
Well most universities are not funded by taxes (directly) anyway. So I have to wonder how you "the taxpayers" plan to cut Unioversity budgets.
Most private Universities (like the one I work for) have whats called an endowment. The university has a large amount of money, that it invests and keeps in a bank, and it runs off the interest.
Alot of money comes from grants, either from the government, or private companies, or even individuals. Thats usually money to do something specific like research or build a library.
All in all taxpayers have very little say, except maybe in terms of some of he grants.
Who is "we" exactly...and how do "you" expect to cut budgets for all universities (there will still be other non-proits after universities you know)
Do you actually have any clue how Universities work financially? or are you just spewing mindless blather (I assume the latter).
Ok side question.... why is it that online discussion boards degenerate into such sillyness? Why do people post mindless blather?
I mean, I can understand a discussion going offtopic, or people dicussing side issues.... but whats the mindset involved in trying to derail discussion or adding zero content noise?
Your assumption is that it is the overall number of violations, or people whose rights ar eviolated that is whats important.... thus my statment is not logical, because we have made different base assumptions.
My assumption is simply that violating anothers rights is wrong. Wrong is a boolean. It is JUST as wrong whether I violate 100 peoples rights, or just one. (the magnitude of the needed correction may be different, but thats another issue).
If the state punishes an innocent man, then the state is just as guilty of violating peoples rights as ANY criminal that is in jail (with the exception, of course, of the innocent ones).
> determining anything with 100% certainty is
> impossible
What is the instruction given to a jury? They should say guilty ONLY if there is "NO REASONABLE DOUBT". If they have ANY REASONABLE DOUBT AT ALL, then the intruiction is that they are to find the person NOT GUILTY.
Punishment is a harsh thing, any way you cut it. As such the bar MUST be set high. It MUST be weighed more carefully than ANY other decision that our society makes.
There is always talk of making law enforcement "easier". The problem is that the risks are high, the dangers are high. It is suposed to be tough, it needs to be tough. It needs to be stricly controlled and monitored.
How about the freedom of 2 men to love eachother and have sexual relations? What about the freedom of kids to not pray in public school (or more to the point, prayers to someone elses God).
The freedom of a woman to terminate a pregnancy?
The freedom of an individual adult to put whatever drugs he may wish into his body? The freedom of any group (including but not limited to Gay groups, the KKK, litterally anyone) to assemble and make public demonstrations?
These are all things that the ACLU supports, and more (actually...do they support abortion rights or sit silent on the issue? I never can remember... so many issues, so little time). Unless "most right wingers" agree with them, then you can be sure at least this geek wont agree with "most right wingers".
In fact, Gun Control is the ONLY issue where I have had to disagree with the ACLU (so far). Normally they are right on the ball, and I support them 100%.... however this one issue is a problem for me.
NDAs and Non-Competition agreements - its amazing. All the hassle and problems. I dunno about anyone else, but this is alot of why I am seriously thinking that I don't ever want to work for a "for profit" company again (right now I work for a university).
In any case, I have already decided that I will NEVER sign an NDA, and I will never sign a non-compete agreement. EVER. I don't want to work on a project where I can't talk about it freely with my friends, or anyone else, and I wont.
I also wont buy a DVD player either, not unless I can find one that will not respect "regions" or any of the other nastyness. My player is _MY_ equipment and should do what _I_ tell it. It should NEVER tell me "you can't do that" or refuse to operate for anything other than real technical problems...not for simple "policy decisions" (like region encoding)
"You will love the ACLU, until something happens which effects you in a way that causes your emotional feelings to overrule your logical judgement"
The ACLU is pro-freedom. There is a very simple concept here. "It is better to let 100 guilty men go free, than to convict one innocent man".
I firmly believe that this is true. 100, nay even 1 million convicted criminals does not undo the harm of putting an innocent man in prison.
To go even farther, forget about conviction. If a practice of law enforcement or other arms of the government has the potential to infringe upon the rights of an innocent party...then that practice DESERVES to be attacked, even if it means a guilty person going free.
You can catch a criminal the next time they commit a crime, you can't undo their crime, nor can you undo the damage that can be done by unchecked government.
Thats why the ACLU exists. Because people are "Innocent until PROVEN guilty" and deserve to be treated and defended as if they are indeed innocent UNTIL they are PROVEN guilty.
It costs them money anyway! They still have to pay
someone to open each envelope and process the mail. So... just waste their time.
Its for the same reason I want to hook up a looped
tape to my telephone so I can turn it on and have it say "Im really not interested" every 30 seconds to telemarketers
Thats what I am thinking. Not that I wouldn't just read it on the computer but... I LIKE to read on paper. I sit at a computer for 7 hours a day at work (sometimes 8 or more if I sit through lunch or stay late) - I don't want to spend hours reading book son one too.
Books I find easier to sit and read for long periods. Not to mention that "bookmarking" works better;)
And I just bought a bookshelf... do need to finish filling it.
I have to agree.... the MAPS RBL that is used to stop web site traffic just goes too far. Its a bad idea.
However... the Maps email RBLs are not the same beast and IMHO are completely legitimate and a "good idea", and one that works. I would wholeheartedly support such a listing.
(noite I said MAPS, not ORBS, who has proven to be a "Good idea" with a piss poor implimentation and "y hand" additions that go too far and make them useless)
Which I find funny, as the few times that I have checked ebay for something, I have usually found bidding going above retail price, and not even for hard to find items.
Thats not to say that there are not values there but thats usually exclusively with used merchandise...and then you run intot he area of buying other peoples troubles (which I will do sometimes, but I prefer to be able to hold the product and look at it, at a minimum, before shelling out money)
Course... no value is highenough for me to do buisness with companies which I know to be engaging in unethical buisness practices... like this.
I agree... the government shouldn't "do things for us", its not their job to decide what products are good and bad.
However... I think it *IS* their place to step in when a corperation or individual is using lies and deception to trick people into making bad decisions.
This is why we have laws against false advertising. I think they are a very good thing, and need to be much more strict.
OK... I am about half way through the article. Before I started, and about 1/4th of the way through, I didn't see how your comment made sense.
Now I have to say I agree with you, and disagree with the author. I think the net WILL need some regulation (tho maybe not the net per se... I think trade needs to be regulated more specfifically).
This guy wants to tackle problems like "Disinformation" and "Child porn" etc. His problem being that "People assume what they read on the net is true"
Well fuck... people believe what they see on TV news is true too (whether or not it is) and that what many politicans say "is true".Whats the difference here?
This strikes me as a whole lot of fluff to promote his fluffy book (which I am assuming is as content free, and chock full of meaningless allegations as his article).
However, when drugs are legal, they are less "risky".
Purity goes up (or at the very least, any impure fillers are inert... like the buffers in tylanol) with no nasty imputities (like benzine which is commonly found in coke - for no other reason than the US has made exportation of the proper solvents very hard)
Also, addicts can, and do, live normal well-adjusted lives! The real barrier to this is NOT their addiction, but the cost of the drugs. When drugs come down to reasonable prices, outside of the black market, people can afford their habbit. (there was a study in switzerland a few years back that provided people with reasonably priced heroin to see the effect on their lifestyles - within a few months there was a 60% drop in the ilicit incomes of the participants - among other changes)
I didn't find it funny because I didn't get whatever the reference was (its after lunch on a friday...not the best time for mental capacity).
However I would point out a couple of things:
1) "Bad Taste" is subjective. Most funny things are in Bad taste according to someone. Andrew Dice Clay made alot of jokes in bad taste, and even stuff that I don't agree with on alot of levels, but he was still damned funny
2) Sorry to hear about your fammily member but... I have always felt that it is unrealistic to expect the world to conform to the way that I wish it would be.
3) Humor and pain seem to go hand in hand. Its an interesting thing to note but they seem so linked on a very basic level.
Then again.... I have always been told that y sense of humor can be quite morbid. Death is a natural part of life, it is the one thing that no being can avoid, you might as well get a good chuckle out of it now and again.
I don't imbibe alcohol much. I tend to have a drink or two, once or twice a year. Now that I am brewing mead, I may drink a bit more, but I never have more than one or two, and usually do it at the end of the night at home.
Mainly this is because i don't like the feeling of alcohol intoxication. However part of it is the thought I had the first time that I was drunk:
I was at a friends birthday party, I was like 18, he was 16. His mother had gotten us some Zima (I don't admit drinking zima wih pride mind you, but its what we drank).
I remember sitting on that couch, after throwing back a few zimas (my first time ever drinking) and thinking "This stuff hasn't touched me, I don't feel a thing, I am fine, I could drive a car anything".
Then I got up to walk, and nearly fell over. It was quite a sobering experience. A drunk persons judgement is impaired... to the point that they can not tell that they are impaired. That is the TRUE danger of alcohol in my book.
Its one thing to drive while impaired. Its not a good idea, or something I would suggest people do, under any drug. However, with alcohol it is that much worst, because its narly impossible to tell just how impaired you are.
I can't think of a single other drug that I have personally used (and I have sampled a few) that has ever left me sitting there unaware of how impaired I was. Just about everything else has always left me sitting there thing "Man am I ever toasted".
In any case... I could see him not pleading guilty and with justification. The charge as stated was "with intent to cause harm". Somehow I doubt that there was INTENTION to do harm. Drunk driving is a case of negligence and lack of education, not a matter of willfull harm.
As a SCSI lover myself... I certainly can understand the sentiment... IDE sucks major ass.
There are however those who are stuck with it for a while. There are even those who are so blind as to not see how much it sucks and the greatness of scsi.
Its really not nice to pull the wool from over their eyes. Let them live in blissful ignorance, until such time as they can be helped.
This is the type of policy that I would personally recomend. Put simply....
"It is our policy to NOT read email or monitor network traffic unless there is suspicoun of wrongdoing"
I have seen other policies like this. My own employers Drug Testing policy is like that "We test if we have reason to suspect that a person is using drugs during work hours" or some similar wording (too lazy to get the specific wording)
(if it were a policy of random or manditory testing I would have never come work here)
Unless there are legitimate complaints of wrongdoing... then its all good isn't it?
I would also encourage people to have and allow them to easily access personal email accouns from work machines... that way they can more easily keep personal and professional email seprate
Yea, we have Sony Trinitrons here at work (21 inch mmmm) and with 3 of them on in this room right now (its a small room - temporary space), I can hardly hear them (tho something in my box is making a similar squeal that I never noticed before I put it on my desk instead of under it)
Anyway, once when I was working at MGH, I went into the Jackson building on a call (was working as a desktop/network tech). I heard this loud high pitched squel. I could hear it all the way down the hall.
Eventually I tracked it down to an OLD monochrome monitor sitting in a room with plastic over the door, and I couldn't get in to turn it off because the plastic was there due to construction going on.
Then I bet you can hear that scanning noise that monitors and TVs make too. That annoys me more than anything else.
Whenever someone had a monitor or TV with no signal to it (especially newer TVs that don't display "snow" but just go to a black screen, or th emonitors that don't go into som elow power mode and do the same).
It bugs the hell out of me, whenever someone does it I have to seek out which tube it is and turn it off.
In any case, my solution is just to not put computers in the bedroom, and even then, its the LEDs that bother me the most. In my old apartment I had to cover them with electrical tape to get to sleep.
Slashdot Mirror
> Your car may be your property too, but should
> you have the right to infringe on OTHER
> people's rights with it -- for instance, by
? purposely causing wrecks or running down
> pedestrians?
Would you then argiue that the pistons should be removed from all cars, so that they can't be used to infringe on the rights of pedestrians? I dunno about you, but I wouldn't buy a car that didn't run.
If you are going to build a strawman, you should
at least have the decency to follow through and rip him apart, these "Straw men that fall apart on their own" really arn't much fun.
The problem with copy protection is not that it "Stops me from violating the producers rights", it is that it stops me from excersising mine.
It is perfectly legal for me to make copies of works or parts of works under certain conditions. This technology is in place specifically to stop me from exercising those rights.
It is there to stop me from recording TV shows for archival or later veiwing (as mentioned in the article, the betamax court decision quite clearly states that this sort of "time shifting" of a broadcast is perfectly within my rights).
-Steve
> * You are currently working at a University
Yes I do.
> * At some point in time, he predicted either
> your University will lay you off, or your salary
> will become too meager to live on (a wife, and
> a child or two, etc)
I don't see how these are very likely predictions. His actual prediction was that "We" would somehow effect the budget of Universities...a prediction that I am skeptical of at best.
Also, while th emoney is meager, compared to what I could be making doing the same job (Unix sysadmin) elsewhere, its certainly enough to live on. Were I to have a wife, I would expect her to work and bring in money also. I don't ever plan on breeding (and I wish others would do the same) so....I don't see this happening.
> * If you don't want to sign an NDA or a
> non-compete, then start handing in resume's
> at McDonalds, as *every* *single* tech company
> requires minimally an NDA for employment.
Thats fine for them. I wont work for them. As it is, I said I don't think I will EVER be looking to work for a for-profit company again anyway.
There are plenty of jobs available for people who do not want to sign NDAs, even in this industry. As a person who has had steady employment for the past 4 years, and has never signed an NDA, I think I am living proof of that.
Beyond that, there are plenty of Non-Macdonalds jobs that are not in this industry. The world is not "Programmers, Executives, and burger flippers".
> NDA's are absolutely nessecary pieces of paper
> for an employer.
I happen to disagree there. They may be necissary for certain things that some companies like to do (like selling proprietary software), but these are activities that I don't want to be onvolved with anyway (I wont write code where the programs are distributed but not the code)
-Steve
Well most universities are not funded by taxes (directly) anyway. So I have to wonder how you "the taxpayers" plan to cut Unioversity budgets.
Most private Universities (like the one I work for) have whats called an endowment. The university has a large amount of money, that it invests and keeps in a bank, and it runs off the interest.
Alot of money comes from grants, either from the government, or private companies, or even individuals. Thats usually money to do something specific like research or build a library.
All in all taxpayers have very little say, except maybe in terms of some of he grants.
-Steve
Who is "we" exactly...and how do "you" expect to cut budgets for all universities (there will still be other non-proits after universities you know)
Do you actually have any clue how Universities work financially? or are you just spewing mindless blather (I assume the latter).
Ok side question.... why is it that online discussion boards degenerate into such sillyness? Why do people post mindless blather?
I mean, I can understand a discussion going offtopic, or people dicussing side issues.... but whats the mindset involved in trying to derail discussion or adding zero content noise?
I just don't understand the mindset involved.
-Steve
Is it?
Your assumption is that it is the overall number of violations, or people whose rights ar eviolated that is whats important.... thus my statment is not logical, because we have made different base assumptions.
My assumption is simply that violating anothers rights is wrong. Wrong is a boolean. It is JUST as wrong whether I violate 100 peoples rights, or just one. (the magnitude of the needed correction may be different, but thats another issue).
If the state punishes an innocent man, then the state is just as guilty of violating peoples rights as ANY criminal that is in jail (with the exception, of course, of the innocent ones).
> determining anything with 100% certainty is
> impossible
What is the instruction given to a jury? They should say guilty ONLY if there is "NO REASONABLE DOUBT". If they have ANY REASONABLE DOUBT AT ALL, then the intruiction is that they are to find the person NOT GUILTY.
Punishment is a harsh thing, any way you cut it. As such the bar MUST be set high. It MUST be weighed more carefully than ANY other decision that our society makes.
There is always talk of making law enforcement "easier". The problem is that the risks are high, the dangers are high. It is suposed to be tough, it needs to be tough. It needs to be stricly controlled and monitored.
-Steve
How about the freedom of 2 men to love eachother and have sexual relations? What about the freedom of kids to not pray in public school (or more to the point, prayers to someone elses God).
The freedom of a woman to terminate a pregnancy?
The freedom of an individual adult to put whatever drugs he may wish into his body? The freedom of any group (including but not limited to Gay groups, the KKK, litterally anyone) to assemble and make public demonstrations?
These are all things that the ACLU supports, and more (actually...do they support abortion rights or sit silent on the issue? I never can remember... so many issues, so little time). Unless "most right wingers" agree with them, then you can be sure at least this geek wont agree with "most right wingers".
-Steve
I have to agree here.
In fact, Gun Control is the ONLY issue where I have had to disagree with the ACLU (so far). Normally they are right on the ball, and I support them 100%.... however this one issue is a problem for me.
-Steve
You know I have heard abou tthese so many times.
NDAs and Non-Competition agreements - its amazing. All the hassle and problems. I dunno about anyone else, but this is alot of why I am seriously thinking that I don't ever want to work for a "for profit" company again (right now I work for a university).
In any case, I have already decided that I will NEVER sign an NDA, and I will never sign a non-compete agreement. EVER. I don't want to work on a project where I can't talk about it freely with my friends, or anyone else, and I wont.
I also wont buy a DVD player either, not unless I can find one that will not respect "regions" or any of the other nastyness. My player is _MY_ equipment and should do what _I_ tell it. It should NEVER tell me "you can't do that" or refuse to operate for anything other than real technical problems...not for simple "policy decisions" (like region encoding)
-Steve
So what your saying is....
"You will love the ACLU, until something happens which effects you in a way that causes your emotional feelings to overrule your logical judgement"
The ACLU is pro-freedom. There is a very simple concept here. "It is better to let 100 guilty men go free, than to convict one innocent man".
I firmly believe that this is true. 100, nay even 1 million convicted criminals does not undo the harm of putting an innocent man in prison.
To go even farther, forget about conviction. If a practice of law enforcement or other arms of the government has the potential to infringe upon the rights of an innocent party...then that practice DESERVES to be attacked, even if it means a guilty person going free.
You can catch a criminal the next time they commit a crime, you can't undo their crime, nor can you undo the damage that can be done by unchecked government.
Thats why the ACLU exists. Because people are "Innocent until PROVEN guilty" and deserve to be treated and defended as if they are indeed innocent UNTIL they are PROVEN guilty.
-Steve
you really just need a tape that loops saying "I am really not interested" every 20 seconds. It should keep them going for hours.
-Steve
So?
It costs them money anyway! They still have to pay
someone to open each envelope and process the mail. So... just waste their time.
Its for the same reason I want to hook up a looped
tape to my telephone so I can turn it on and have it say "Im really not interested" every 30 seconds to telemarketers
-Steve
You also might be charged with sending biological waste without the proper containment/labeling.
Not a very good idea, the post office tends to be very pissy about that sort of thing.
Thats what I am thinking. Not that I wouldn't just read it on the computer but... I LIKE to read on paper. I sit at a computer for 7 hours a day at work (sometimes 8 or more if I sit through lunch or stay late) - I don't want to spend hours reading book son one too.
;)
Books I find easier to sit and read for long periods. Not to mention that "bookmarking" works better
And I just bought a bookshelf... do need to finish filling it.
-Steve
I have to agree.... the MAPS RBL that is used to stop web site traffic just goes too far. Its a bad idea.
However... the Maps email RBLs are not the same beast and IMHO are completely legitimate and a "good idea", and one that works. I would wholeheartedly support such a listing.
(noite I said MAPS, not ORBS, who has proven to be a "Good idea" with a piss poor implimentation and "y hand" additions that go too far and make them useless)
-Steve
Which I find funny, as the few times that I have checked ebay for something, I have usually found bidding going above retail price, and not even for hard to find items.
Thats not to say that there are not values there but thats usually exclusively with used merchandise...and then you run intot he area of buying other peoples troubles (which I will do sometimes, but I prefer to be able to hold the product and look at it, at a minimum, before shelling out money)
Course... no value is highenough for me to do buisness with companies which I know to be engaging in unethical buisness practices... like this.
-Steve
On some level I agree... on another I don't.
I agree... the government shouldn't "do things for us", its not their job to decide what products are good and bad.
However... I think it *IS* their place to step in when a corperation or individual is using lies and deception to trick people into making bad decisions.
This is why we have laws against false advertising. I think they are a very good thing, and need to be much more strict.
-Steve
OK... I am about half way through the article. Before I started, and about 1/4th of the way through, I didn't see how your comment made sense.
Now I have to say I agree with you, and disagree with the author. I think the net WILL need some regulation (tho maybe not the net per se... I think trade needs to be regulated more specfifically).
This guy wants to tackle problems like "Disinformation" and "Child porn" etc. His problem being that "People assume what they read on the net is true"
Well fuck... people believe what they see on TV news is true too (whether or not it is) and that what many politicans say "is true".Whats the difference here?
This strikes me as a whole lot of fluff to promote his fluffy book (which I am assuming is as content free, and chock full of meaningless allegations as his article).
-Steve
However, when drugs are legal, they are less "risky".
Purity goes up (or at the very least, any impure fillers are inert... like the buffers in tylanol) with no nasty imputities (like benzine which is commonly found in coke - for no other reason than the US has made exportation of the proper solvents very hard)
Also, addicts can, and do, live normal well-adjusted lives! The real barrier to this is NOT their addiction, but the cost of the drugs. When drugs come down to reasonable prices, outside of the black market, people can afford their habbit. (there was a study in switzerland a few years back that provided people with reasonably priced heroin to see the effect on their lifestyles - within a few months there was a 60% drop in the ilicit incomes of the participants - among other changes)
-Steve
heh lol now I get it.
Heh been so long since I had a computer that crashed for much less than an actual hardware problem, that I had forgotten about that.
-Steve
I didn't find it funny because I didn't get whatever the reference was (its after lunch on a friday...not the best time for mental capacity).
However I would point out a couple of things:
1) "Bad Taste" is subjective. Most funny things are in Bad taste according to someone. Andrew Dice Clay made alot of jokes in bad taste, and even stuff that I don't agree with on alot of levels, but he was still damned funny
2) Sorry to hear about your fammily member but... I have always felt that it is unrealistic to expect the world to conform to the way that I wish it would be.
3) Humor and pain seem to go hand in hand. Its an interesting thing to note but they seem so linked on a very basic level.
Then again.... I have always been told that y sense of humor can be quite morbid. Death is a natural part of life, it is the one thing that no being can avoid, you might as well get a good chuckle out of it now and again.
I hate to dredge up this topic but...
I don't imbibe alcohol much. I tend to have a drink or two, once or twice a year. Now that I am brewing mead, I may drink a bit more, but I never have more than one or two, and usually do it at the end of the night at home.
Mainly this is because i don't like the feeling of alcohol intoxication. However part of it is the thought I had the first time that I was drunk:
I was at a friends birthday party, I was like 18, he was 16. His mother had gotten us some Zima (I don't admit drinking zima wih pride mind you, but its what we drank).
I remember sitting on that couch, after throwing back a few zimas (my first time ever drinking) and thinking "This stuff hasn't touched me, I don't feel a thing, I am fine, I could drive a car anything".
Then I got up to walk, and nearly fell over. It was quite a sobering experience. A drunk persons judgement is impaired... to the point that they can not tell that they are impaired. That is the TRUE danger of alcohol in my book.
Its one thing to drive while impaired. Its not a good idea, or something I would suggest people do, under any drug. However, with alcohol it is that much worst, because its narly impossible to tell just how impaired you are.
I can't think of a single other drug that I have personally used (and I have sampled a few) that has ever left me sitting there unaware of how impaired I was. Just about everything else has always left me sitting there thing "Man am I ever toasted".
In any case... I could see him not pleading guilty and with justification. The charge as stated was "with intent to cause harm". Somehow I doubt that there was INTENTION to do harm. Drunk driving is a case of negligence and lack of education, not a matter of willfull harm.
-Steve
As a SCSI lover myself... I certainly can understand the sentiment... IDE sucks major ass.
There are however those who are stuck with it for a while. There are even those who are so blind as to not see how much it sucks and the greatness of scsi.
Its really not nice to pull the wool from over their eyes. Let them live in blissful ignorance, until such time as they can be helped.
This is the type of policy that I would personally recomend. Put simply....
"It is our policy to NOT read email or monitor network traffic unless there is suspicoun of wrongdoing"
I have seen other policies like this. My own employers Drug Testing policy is like that "We test if we have reason to suspect that a person is using drugs during work hours" or some similar wording (too lazy to get the specific wording)
(if it were a policy of random or manditory testing I would have never come work here)
Unless there are legitimate complaints of wrongdoing... then its all good isn't it?
I would also encourage people to have and allow them to easily access personal email accouns from work machines... that way they can more easily keep personal and professional email seprate
-Steve
Yea, we have Sony Trinitrons here at work (21 inch mmmm) and with 3 of them on in this room right now (its a small room - temporary space), I can hardly hear them (tho something in my box is making a similar squeal that I never noticed before I put it on my desk instead of under it)
Anyway, once when I was working at MGH, I went into the Jackson building on a call (was working as a desktop/network tech). I heard this loud high pitched squel. I could hear it all the way down the hall.
Eventually I tracked it down to an OLD monochrome monitor sitting in a room with plastic over the door, and I couldn't get in to turn it off because the plastic was there due to construction going on.
-Steve
Then I bet you can hear that scanning noise that monitors and TVs make too. That annoys me more than anything else.
Whenever someone had a monitor or TV with no signal to it (especially newer TVs that don't display "snow" but just go to a black screen, or th emonitors that don't go into som elow power mode and do the same).
It bugs the hell out of me, whenever someone does it I have to seek out which tube it is and turn it off.
In any case, my solution is just to not put computers in the bedroom, and even then, its the LEDs that bother me the most. In my old apartment I had to cover them with electrical tape to get to sleep.
-Steve