Looks like, Google provided the IP address of someone who posted derogatory images of Shivaji to the Indian authorities. They contacted the ISP and they fingered a wrong party. May be they fingered
the current holder of that IP address instead of
the user at the time of posting.
They got the wrong party and roughly treated the arrested man. The idea is to send the message loud and clear, "we will get the IP address and catch
you and mess you up. May this time we messed up
the wrong guy, but next time, watch out." That is
the logic of the Indian police who think this will reduce such incidents in the future. But what trips them up is that a savvy criminal will know
how to hide his tracks, and it will always be the wrong guy who gets nabbed. But it allows the police to pretend they did something. (You might argue defacing Shivaji's picture is not criminal. But given the reaction you typically get from Muslims for defacing images of Mohammad, this reaction by the desis is quite tame. And this is a different argument anyway, nothing concerning Google)
If google had not promised anonymity to Orkut users, then it can't be held accountable. There are bigger villains in the story, the desi police, incompetent desi ISP, desi politics and the desi population in general that accepts this all.
Shivaji was a Hindu king of Maharashtra who fought the (last powerful) Mogul emperor Aurangzeb and gave him run for his money. He is greatly revered by most desi patriots. But no desi calls him a saint!
EDS CEO Ron Rittenmeyer said he is going to get a pair of over sized rubber earlobes to put on and print some pie charts on 8x10 paper. He hopes that would be enough to get 17% of the vote in the coming presidential election. If he could get a retired admiral who turns off the hearing aid during vice-presidential debate it would be a dream ticket!
She was not driving. She was on the passenger seat with the plastic cup wedged between her thighs. Her grandson was driving, went over a speed bump and spilled the coffee. It pooled around the seat and she was sitting on boiling coffee and got burned. As far as I remember.
What kind of dumb stupid lawyers McD had to lose this case! The lawyers were incompetent or the company decided to lose the case on purpose.
But. now due to the negative keywords ruling, even if ORF changes its name to Uranus corporation, they still are bound not to advertise on a page where user searches for Orion.
I thought Uranus is the trademark of Goatse corporation. It is not?
Tracking sales taxes for all your buyers' states (and sometimes counties) is cumbersome,
Amazon pioneered the technology to track millions of individual orders and warehouse management and shipping schedules, and it can't keep a table of 50 sales tax entries? Come on! It already has the field to collect taxes for the state of Washington. Just add a table instead of a constant value... It can be done trivially.
So enlighten us, about what specific service that should be cut. It is easy to say, "I don't want to pay tax". It is far harder to identify the government spending that should be cut. If you don't get the spending down, refusing to pay taxes will just mean you will pay in other ways. Like inflation, unmaintained roads, slower snow clearance, longer waits through the security lines,
worse schools.
Get down to brass tacks and mention one service that you get from the state that you are willing to sacrifice to keep the spending down. Or you think every benefit you get is well deserved and ALL the government waste in the services other people are getting.
Problem is not that the Govt will tax, tax, tax and then tax some more. The problem is people want the Govt to spend, spend, spend and spend some more. Not a single person posting here about the money grubbing pols, and the greedy Govt will say one service he/she is willing to sacrifice.
The right way to control taxes is by voting for politicians who will cut services and spending. But that is hard. Every pol has a home constituency and will protect the govt spending in that sector. With no reduction in spending, there is no real easy solution. If you don't like tax-and-spend pols and vote for borrow-and-spend pols, what you are going to get? Inflation. Eventually you will pay. Either as a tax to the Government or as erosion of value of your savings and earning to inflation.
In a Democracy when people abdicate their responsibility and vote themselves more and more benefits without providing a way to pay for it, they will lose it one way or another. Starve-the-beast is a sound bite. It does not work.
NY could easily pass delivery tax and make UPS and Fed-ed collect the tax for them.
However much I dislike the taxes, I hate discrimination and government loading the dice and making the playing field slanted. The brick-and-mortar companies in New York are obligated to collect sales tax for NY. That includes you corner diner and the mom-and-pop store selling used books. There was a time when compiling 50 state sales tax codes or even 25000 local county tax codes and making businesses outside complying with these code was technologically impossible. But now that excuse is not valid anymore.
If Amazon does not have to collect the tax, none of the local businesses should have to collect the tax. If the local businesses must, then Amazon must too. It is a question of Government not playing favorites and creating walled gardens. It is not really a question of whether or not the the sales tax is fair or unfair. But I am not sure most people will see the distinction.
Well, it is a minor issue. They appropriate authority will confirm the appointments with retroactive effect and the congress might actually
pass a specific bill authorizing such an retroactive appointment.
The most interesting similar issue I remember is about he admission of the State of Ohio into the United States. Ohio joined the union in 1803. But there was some mishap in US congress ratifying the admission. It adjourned without completing the paperwork and nobody even noticed. In 1953 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the admission Ohio searched the archives to find the date and found that it was not really part of the United States!!!. The state sent its resolution on horseback with lots of fanfare and (I think it was Ike at that time) accepted the papers. The congress passed a retroactive admission of Ohio into the United States and there were lots of jokes about it.
I came across this nugget while reading some of the kukiest theories explaining why Income Tax is illegal and unconstitutional. Turns out Taft, who signed the Income Tax bill into law was born in Ohio, before 1953 so he was not technically born on the USA and hence his entire Presidency was null and void and all bills signed by him are null and void including the income tax bill. But it is not the most wacky theory. There was one that harped on the difference between the united States of America and the United States of America.
Of course courts have always recognized there must be a way to fix these minor mishaps. Sweeping changes to widely accepted and understood law is undesirable. During John Roberts confirmation hearings we kept hearing the Stari Decisis, remember?
It is probably folklore. But the story during my grad school days was that, Knuth offered 1000$ prize to anyone fining a bug TeX and he doubled it a couple of times. And it was never claimed. If that was true, it is very unlikely he was just flame baiting.
I am glad you were modded up for this. Thanks moderators. If out of state sellers are not taxed but the local producers are taxed it is unfair to the local business. Either tax neither or tax both.
The main intent of the interstate commerce laws were to prevent states from giving preferential treatment to their local producers.
People should realize that the "reduce the tax and starve the beast" does not work. Shrinking the government requires hard work by the electorate that gives up benefits, special treatments and subsidies and elects politicians who reduce the spending. As long as we keep electing the "Tax and Spend" Democrats or the "Borrow and spend" Republicans, we would not have the moral standing to demand smaller government.
I am from India. The accident rates in India are horrendously high. India has one third the area of USA and 3.5 times the population. So if count accident rate per thousand and such statistical measures you can make it appear as though accident rates are same in India and USA.
But in reality, roads are so horrible, the average speed is 40 Kmph within cities and much much lower during
rush hours. Between the cities, the speeds are between 60Kmph and 80Kmph. And the accidents are horrible.
Ambulance service is bad. Measured in passenger kilometer terms, India's rate is about 100 times worse than USA. See the stats below.
It is not the damage to the roads. It is my safety at issue. In principle, the people, have the collective right to impose restrictions and terms and conditions for fair use of all common property. The Government is our agency to make sure people use it safely without endangering anybody else, on a commonly accepted terms of use. That is the principle for issuing licenses for drivers. Road tax is a separate issue, people who use the road pay the tax to maintain it. Even if it is Amish, if they pose danger to the public, we have the right to restrict them. Amish have been cited for drunken driving of horse and buggy too.
Amish have to follow traffic rules and safety rules too..
. And we do have the right to tax them if we so desire. Usually we let them by because they are so peaceful. But in principle, we do have the right to tax them for the road, for their property and even
to collect school taxes for the county, even they don't send their children to the county schools. We the
government protect their property from intruders and provide for a non violent conflict resolution mechanism. Without our protection, those peaceful Amish would have been eaten alive. So we have the right to tax them. But usually we don't because it is so unfair to tax such peaceful people.
The original poster is making the point that it is one's inherent right to use the roads as long as he is not engaging in commerce, and he does not need any license, he need not obey any fitness-for-the-road criteria etc etc. Such claims are unreasonable.
You can argue, the license is just to make sure the driver is competent and it should not be used for the identification of individuals etc. Or you can argue a particular requirement does not improve the safety
of the road use. Or any such arguments on specifics of the law. And use democratic ways to elect people to change the law. But to make a blanket statement, anyone can drive a motor vehicle on any public road without license as long as he/she does not do it commercially is complete idiocy. It is not reasonable, ethical, moral, libertarian or legal.
First concern I have is my safety. Second is fair use of all people to use the roads. Third is the court deciding whether rights claimed by the individual are really his rights. Anyone who calls the judge
a traitor, is not going to have my sympathy.
The roads belong to all of us. A car can cause far more damage in the hand of an incompetent operator than a horse and a buggy. My right to use the highway safely can not be compromised just because you think you have the right to bring anything you want and use it any way you want. It is my right to demand that you demonstrate that you are competent to use a vehicle, and your vehicle poses no hazard to me. That is the
legal basis for creating the dept of motor vehicles to determine who is competent and what is safe. If you claim you don't need a license to drive on public roads, persuade a judge to agree with you. If not get a license. That guy went before a judge. And the judge ruled he is a kook. So he is a kook till an appeals court reverses the ruling.
I am saying he is very unreasonable. We are not in the horse and buggy days anymore. It is possible to cause far more damage with a car than it is possible with a horse and a buggy. Let him drive without a license if he wants to in his private property. The roads belong to all of us. We need reasonable restrictions so that we can all use it safely and effectively. If the guy can't demonstrate that he can operate a motor vehicle safely, I have the right to stop him from driving on my highway. My right to safe use of my highway can not be compromised by whatever rights he fancies he has. He has to demonstrate that
he is capable of handling a vehicle safely, and that he vehicle he is using is safe, with proper brakes and
lights and stuff. And we the people own the air collectively. We decide how much pollutants he can emit while operating his vehicle.
Whatever may be the merits of his case or his arguments, he can not unilaterally decide what rights he has. It is the courts of law that decide whether the rights he thinks he has are really his rights or he is blowing smoke. He went before a judge, and the judge ruled that he is a kook. So he remains a kook till
an appeals court reverses it. Stop supporting such idiots just because he is sticking to the MVD. You might hate MVD and MVD could be as stupid and inefficient as any govt bureaucracy can be. But the opposition must
be reasonable. Supporting all kinds of idiots just because they oppose MDV is stupid.
That Santa Fe guy talking about rights freedoms and the right drive without license etc is a total kook. So what is going to happen if someone steals his truck? He is going traipse all over New Mexico searching for his truck rustler? Or he is going to demand the same poor sheriff to find the thieves and restore his property, with so clear title he has to him?
Many vested interests, some bordering on corruption in banana republics, skew the decision making in IT.
How many top execs have cozy relationships with consultant firms who hire outsourcing firms?
Indian companies like Cognizant, Infosys and Wipro charge 20$ an hour to 50$ per hour depending on
the skill set of the ultimate employee who does the work. And they are hired by one oursourcing firm
in USA, which is hired by another management firm in USA, which is hired by a consultant firm in USA
and ultimately a publicly traded US company gets billed at 125$ to 250$ a hour. All the intermediaries
who pad the bill and collect the profits are all privately owned. The ultimate payer is usually a large
publicly traded company. Look at the rate of out sourcing by private companies, unlisted companies,
companies taken over by private equity and compare it to the public companies.
Basically the IT management is a personal cash cow for so many people in the corporate hierarchy.
India gets blamed for the giant sucking sound and out sourced jobs. But they get a pittance. And the
shareholders in America get some peanuts. And the corporate boards, who own very small percentage
of the stock anyway, form you-scratch-my-back-and-I-scratch-your-back arrangements with the top
executives.
I know people who are in the middle of the chain skimming something like 5 or 10 $ per hour per employee
for providing some six or eight consultants from cognizant to a large publicly traded company in USA.
Their only job is provide a shell and a cover to firms higher in the chain. They know and they told me
the total mark up for the Indians consultants run the range between 200% to 500%. India used to be
so cheap that the companies saved some money despite all the skimming by the middle men. But with
rupee appreciating and Indian salaries inflating, if the same rate of skimming continues, shareholders
don't save any money any longer through outsourcing. But the vested interests who are doing the
padding and skimming are not going to let go that easily.
Which is it? Do you need expert skill and knowledge to run windows properly and safely or not?
You don't need to be an expert to use windows. But you got to be an expert in
operating systems, linguistics, etymology, marketing and law to buy Windows systems.
Got that?
Slashdot Mirror
They got the wrong party and roughly treated the arrested man. The idea is to send the message loud and clear, "we will get the IP address and catch you and mess you up. May this time we messed up the wrong guy, but next time, watch out." That is the logic of the Indian police who think this will reduce such incidents in the future. But what trips them up is that a savvy criminal will know how to hide his tracks, and it will always be the wrong guy who gets nabbed. But it allows the police to pretend they did something. (You might argue defacing Shivaji's picture is not criminal. But given the reaction you typically get from Muslims for defacing images of Mohammad, this reaction by the desis is quite tame. And this is a different argument anyway, nothing concerning Google)
If google had not promised anonymity to Orkut users, then it can't be held accountable. There are bigger villains in the story, the desi police, incompetent desi ISP, desi politics and the desi population in general that accepts this all.
Shivaji was a Hindu king of Maharashtra who fought the (last powerful) Mogul emperor Aurangzeb and gave him run for his money. He is greatly revered by most desi patriots. But no desi calls him a saint!
Yeah, yeah. I likes it very much.
... for making available the IP addresses and tracking information.
Prohibit using LimeWire to harvest tracking and identifying information!
EDS CEO Ron Rittenmeyer said he is going to get a pair of over sized rubber earlobes to put on and print some pie charts on 8x10 paper. He hopes that would be enough to get 17% of the vote in the coming presidential election. If he could get a retired admiral who turns off the hearing aid during vice-presidential debate it would be a dream ticket!
What kind of dumb stupid lawyers McD had to lose this case! The lawyers were incompetent or the company decided to lose the case on purpose.
I thought Uranus is the trademark of Goatse corporation. It is not?
Amazon pioneered the technology to track millions of individual orders and warehouse management and shipping schedules, and it can't keep a table of 50 sales tax entries? Come on! It already has the field to collect taxes for the state of Washington. Just add a table instead of a constant value... It can be done trivially.
Get down to brass tacks and mention one service that you get from the state that you are willing to sacrifice to keep the spending down. Or you think every benefit you get is well deserved and ALL the government waste in the services other people are getting.
The right way to control taxes is by voting for politicians who will cut services and spending. But that is hard. Every pol has a home constituency and will protect the govt spending in that sector. With no reduction in spending, there is no real easy solution. If you don't like tax-and-spend pols and vote for borrow-and-spend pols, what you are going to get? Inflation. Eventually you will pay. Either as a tax to the Government or as erosion of value of your savings and earning to inflation.
In a Democracy when people abdicate their responsibility and vote themselves more and more benefits without providing a way to pay for it, they will lose it one way or another. Starve-the-beast is a sound bite. It does not work.
However much I dislike the taxes, I hate discrimination and government loading the dice and making the playing field slanted. The brick-and-mortar companies in New York are obligated to collect sales tax for NY. That includes you corner diner and the mom-and-pop store selling used books. There was a time when compiling 50 state sales tax codes or even 25000 local county tax codes and making businesses outside complying with these code was technologically impossible. But now that excuse is not valid anymore.
If Amazon does not have to collect the tax, none of the local businesses should have to collect the tax. If the local businesses must, then Amazon must too. It is a question of Government not playing favorites and creating walled gardens. It is not really a question of whether or not the the sales tax is fair or unfair. But I am not sure most people will see the distinction.
The most interesting similar issue I remember is about he admission of the State of Ohio into the United States. Ohio joined the union in 1803. But there was some mishap in US congress ratifying the admission. It adjourned without completing the paperwork and nobody even noticed. In 1953 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the admission Ohio searched the archives to find the date and found that it was not really part of the United States!!!. The state sent its resolution on horseback with lots of fanfare and (I think it was Ike at that time) accepted the papers. The congress passed a retroactive admission of Ohio into the United States and there were lots of jokes about it.
I came across this nugget while reading some of the kukiest theories explaining why Income Tax is illegal and unconstitutional. Turns out Taft, who signed the Income Tax bill into law was born in Ohio, before 1953 so he was not technically born on the USA and hence his entire Presidency was null and void and all bills signed by him are null and void including the income tax bill. But it is not the most wacky theory. There was one that harped on the difference between the united States of America and the United States of America.
Of course courts have always recognized there must be a way to fix these minor mishaps. Sweeping changes to widely accepted and understood law is undesirable. During John Roberts confirmation hearings we kept hearing the Stari Decisis, remember?
It is probably folklore. But the story during my grad school days was that, Knuth offered 1000$ prize to anyone fining a bug TeX and he doubled it a couple of times. And it was never claimed. If that was true, it is very unlikely he was just flame baiting.
The main intent of the interstate commerce laws were to prevent states from giving preferential treatment to their local producers.
People should realize that the "reduce the tax and starve the beast" does not work. Shrinking the government requires hard work by the electorate that gives up benefits, special treatments and subsidies and elects politicians who reduce the spending. As long as we keep electing the "Tax and Spend" Democrats or the "Borrow and spend" Republicans, we would not have the moral standing to demand smaller government.
Thanks. This is precisely the info I was seeking. Would have modded parent +1 informative if I had mod points.
But in reality, roads are so horrible, the average speed is 40 Kmph within cities and much much lower during rush hours. Between the cities, the speeds are between 60Kmph and 80Kmph. And the accidents are horrible. Ambulance service is bad. Measured in passenger kilometer terms, India's rate is about 100 times worse than USA. See the stats below.
90000 Indians die in road accidents, despite having less than 1% of the number of vehicles in the world. Assuming USA 150 million vehicles, traveling 15,000 miles per vehicle, 25000 traffic fatalities per year, India with 15 million vehicles, traveling 6000 miles per year, the accident rate in India is 90 times worse than USA.
. And we do have the right to tax them if we so desire. Usually we let them by because they are so peaceful. But in principle, we do have the right to tax them for the road, for their property and even to collect school taxes for the county, even they don't send their children to the county schools. We the government protect their property from intruders and provide for a non violent conflict resolution mechanism. Without our protection, those peaceful Amish would have been eaten alive. So we have the right to tax them. But usually we don't because it is so unfair to tax such peaceful people.
The original poster is making the point that it is one's inherent right to use the roads as long as he is not engaging in commerce, and he does not need any license, he need not obey any fitness-for-the-road criteria etc etc. Such claims are unreasonable.
You can argue, the license is just to make sure the driver is competent and it should not be used for the identification of individuals etc. Or you can argue a particular requirement does not improve the safety of the road use. Or any such arguments on specifics of the law. And use democratic ways to elect people to change the law. But to make a blanket statement, anyone can drive a motor vehicle on any public road without license as long as he/she does not do it commercially is complete idiocy. It is not reasonable, ethical, moral, libertarian or legal.
First concern I have is my safety. Second is fair use of all people to use the roads. Third is the court deciding whether rights claimed by the individual are really his rights. Anyone who calls the judge a traitor, is not going to have my sympathy.
The roads belong to all of us. A car can cause far more damage in the hand of an incompetent operator than a horse and a buggy. My right to use the highway safely can not be compromised just because you think you have the right to bring anything you want and use it any way you want. It is my right to demand that you demonstrate that you are competent to use a vehicle, and your vehicle poses no hazard to me. That is the legal basis for creating the dept of motor vehicles to determine who is competent and what is safe. If you claim you don't need a license to drive on public roads, persuade a judge to agree with you. If not get a license. That guy went before a judge. And the judge ruled he is a kook. So he is a kook till an appeals court reverses the ruling.
Whatever may be the merits of his case or his arguments, he can not unilaterally decide what rights he has. It is the courts of law that decide whether the rights he thinks he has are really his rights or he is blowing smoke. He went before a judge, and the judge ruled that he is a kook. So he remains a kook till an appeals court reverses it. Stop supporting such idiots just because he is sticking to the MVD. You might hate MVD and MVD could be as stupid and inefficient as any govt bureaucracy can be. But the opposition must be reasonable. Supporting all kinds of idiots just because they oppose MDV is stupid.
That Santa Fe guy talking about rights freedoms and the right drive without license etc is a total kook. So what is going to happen if someone steals his truck? He is going traipse all over New Mexico searching for his truck rustler? Or he is going to demand the same poor sheriff to find the thieves and restore his property, with so clear title he has to him?
I find it very difficult to imagine how much data is 1 TB. Can some one tell me how many libraries of congresses 1 TB is?
Basically the IT management is a personal cash cow for so many people in the corporate hierarchy. India gets blamed for the giant sucking sound and out sourced jobs. But they get a pittance. And the shareholders in America get some peanuts. And the corporate boards, who own very small percentage of the stock anyway, form you-scratch-my-back-and-I-scratch-your-back arrangements with the top executives.
I know people who are in the middle of the chain skimming something like 5 or 10 $ per hour per employee for providing some six or eight consultants from cognizant to a large publicly traded company in USA. Their only job is provide a shell and a cover to firms higher in the chain. They know and they told me the total mark up for the Indians consultants run the range between 200% to 500%. India used to be so cheap that the companies saved some money despite all the skimming by the middle men. But with rupee appreciating and Indian salaries inflating, if the same rate of skimming continues, shareholders don't save any money any longer through outsourcing. But the vested interests who are doing the padding and skimming are not going to let go that easily.
You don't need to be an expert to use windows. But you got to be an expert in operating systems, linguistics, etymology, marketing and law to buy Windows systems. Got that?