Better still, the San Francisco Chronicle opines that the US Federal courts are likely to fall in line with the decision in the way they interpret California law.
Federal courts are obligated, when applying state law, to follow the highest court of the State (though, of course, they can rule that that law is unenforceable because it conflicts with superceding provisions of federal law.)
Why is this, does it cost more to ship it to Europe or is it we're supposed to subsidise the US market?
No, its because they think they'll make more profit in Europe charging more, either because Europeans have more money they are willing to throw at this kind of tech, or because its a narrower, richer segment of the market willing to consider the product at all in Europe; its simply a matter of segmenting the market and charging as much as the market will bear in each segment.
This is just the release of part 1 of a 4 part series showing a mock-up of what a future browser might look like. There is no code, there is no browser, this is vapor-ware at its finest.
Its not "vaporware", because its not even advertised as a software product. Its simply part of Mozilla Labs "Concepts" efforts, which is exactly about producing mockups of functionality ideas which can then be used as inspiration for product building.
When did software development turn into movie producing?
The first step of software development has always been to have a well-developed idea of what you want it to do. Mozilla Labs "Concepts" efforts seems to be an effort to develop those ideas, not to do software development. There are other Mozilla Labs (and Mozilla, outside of Labs) software development efforts, this is just blue-skying to foster new ideas that can lead to innovation in those efforts.
Because the U.S. has invaded more countries by far than any other country at least since World War II. The other leading contenders for the title aren't around any more, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union.
Japan is still around, and still has an Emporer, though AFAIK its only invaded one country since WWII (by participating in a supporting role in the most recent US-led invasion of Iraq), so it is hardly one of the other leading contenders. Nazi Germany ceased to exist with the end of WWII, so can't have been one of the leading contenders in invading other countries after WWII (though you are correct that it isn't around.)
The USSR is probably a valid leading contender for the post-WWII most-invasions-of-other-countries title, and is also not around anymore, so you were right on one out of three.
From the article: "He [State Controller Chiang] disputes Schwarzenegger's legal interpretation of a 2003 California Supreme Court decision," Chiang is the State Controller, not an attorney.
Actually, he is an attorney, and more importantly, the Controller's office has its own legal staff.
It's not his job to give legal interpretation on Supreme Court decisions. His job is to execute the orders of states executive branch, Gov. Schwarzenegger.
Its his job as an independently elected Constitutional officer to implement the law within the zone of authority given him by the Constitution and law of the State of California, which includes overseeing the state's financial affairs. Part of implementing the law is determining what law applies to a specific set of circumstances and interpreting that law and deciding how it applies. California, (unlike, e.g., the US Federal Government) does not have a purely unitary executive.
It sounds like the Controller is letting his personal beliefs interfere with his professional responsibilities. That's a quick route to unemployment.
The only ways the Controller can become unemployed under California law are: 1) He resigns, 2) He is impeached by the State Legislature, or 3) He is recalled by the voters.
So... the only thing keeping my laptop from falling out of my bag as I carry it (or someone bump-and-grabbing it) is going to be a strip of lint-encrusted velcro?
Probably not; it sounds like the laptop compartment can be, itself, contained in zippered (and/or snapped and/or buckled) compartment, so long as the bag can be unzipped so that the metal-free laptop compartment folds out and lies flat on the X-ray machine.
This, of course, obviously provides no additional actual security besides putting a laptop through in a normal, zippered bag, but its a nice bit of security theater that will provide a one-time stimulus to the bottom-line of certain firms as travelers with no other need for new laptop bags rush out to buy TSA-approved bags to slightly reduce travel hassles.
The facts in this particular case point to a truly twisted individual, but this individual is unable to be prosecuted for major jail time under current, non "novel" interpretations of law.
I'm not sure that's all that true; it seems to me an equally good, or better, argument could be made for murder of the depraved indifference type, which require a less "novel" approach than CFAA charges in this case; I think that the prosecution is advancing the novel argument to create precedent for it, using an extreme case in which it hopes courts will be swayed by emotion (wanting the accused to be held accountable) to give "the benefit of the doubt" on interpretation of the law.
It's a question of whether the government of California even has the authority to pay people. The law in California, as ruled by the Supreme Court of California, seems to require what the Governor has ordered
Having read the decision, I disagree that that is the case. Its arguable that the decision provides no certain guidance since it expressly refused to rule definitively on the exact kind of infeasibility argument raised by the Controller, as it had not been fully litigated below (though it did provide, in nonbinding dicta, some ideas of things it thought might be more feasible even if full compliance was nonfeasible that might resolve the issue, though it didn't point to any reason to think that those would, in fact, be feasible, and, in any rate, they were in dicta which has no authority as binding precedent and does not reflect a response to a full airing of the issue discussed). And even if, as the Governor claims, it does mandate federal minimum wage only, the Governor's attempt to limit the political furor over the order (and perhaps provide his office, which decides the exemption requests, the ability to play favorites) by selectively exempting workers he deems "critical" -- despite no provision in the law which would require or authorize different payment treatment for them -- is almost certainly without authority.
There is no reasonable reading of Davis v. White under which one could argue that the substance of the Governor's order is mandatory, and its pretty hard to argue that its even allowable.
Ok, I really don't know a whole lot about prices in America, I haven't lived there for 24 years, and I know Ireland is one of the most expensive countries in the world to live in, given that a substantial percentage of the actual profit made in our over-inflated economy goes abroad to American and other investors (who provide us with jobs, I'm not complainging too much about that), but... is it possible to live on $6.55 an hour in California?
Not really. That's why California's minimum wage is $8.00/hr.
Give me a break. They should have a way to do everyone at once, what happens when they all get union negotiated or legislated raises?
The pay rates for each salary classification, or each step within each salary classification, are adjusted, probably manually (there are a finite number of salary classifications). Of course, you can't just modify those all to $6.55/hr for this conversion since: 1) Many classifications aren't paid hourly normally, and 2) The original pay rate needs to be preserved, and the pay under it calculated, so that you can pay people the right balance at the end.
Also, the business logic for deductions may need to be changed, and certainly new business logic for deductions applicable to the catch-up payment needs to be put into place. And a system has to be in place to track the additional amounts not initially payed as debts owed by the state.
It's quite clear to anyone who has any real idea of what needs to be done that there is more than a trivial amount of work to be done. It's also important that whatever is done is particularly thoroughly tested since, even if the pay order is legal and doesn't expose the state to legal liability (and there are already at least two lawsuits and a labor relations complaint filed challenging that), paying people wrong (especially if its a error that results in a reduced payment from federal minimum wage) can have severe repercussions including legal liability.
Well, except for the 20,000+ student assistants, part-time employees, retired annuitants, etc., that were, in fact, furloughed by the same order.
While the legality of the pay order (and the furlough) itself is hotly debated, I'm not even aware of an argument that the Governor has the legal authority to unilaterally furlough most civil service employees, so its hardly as if that comparison is particularly relevant.
Surely in the most populous state in the Union there is a single COBOL developer that has touched this payroll system before and can get into it.
Even if there was such a programmer (which is not unlikely), if they weren't currently working for the Controller, the part of the order whose legality is not questioned would make it illegal for the Controller to hire this hypothetical programmer for the entire duration of the budget impasse.
Why would you need a programmer to change people's pay in the system?
Its not changing people's pay.
Its changing people from being paid in full immediately (in a very large percentage of this case based on salary) to being paid immediately based on an hourly wage and then later based on their full normal salary or hourly wage, as appropriate, while maintaining all the appropriate deductions in the right legal arrangement, some of which will need to be done immediately based on the reduced wages, some of which will probably be done in full immediately despite the reduced wages since they are paid to third parties [e.g., health insurance premiums], and some of which may be deferred entirely until the later settlement to the full pay.
Since this requires implementing a variety of calculations and tracking functionality which does not exist in the existing system, it requires programming.
Don't get me wrong I support Arnold's effort to cut state spending to try and lower their defecit.
The pay order is not, even taking the Governor's own description of it, an effort to cut state spending, its an effort to preserve cash in the short-term in the absence of a budget to prevent the state running out of usable cash. Whether or not this is reasonably necessary or simply a political ploy is a matter of debate between (among others) the Governor and the Controller.
There are plenty of COBOL Programmers out there, the problem is nobody in IT wants to hire old people.
No, the problem is that the same executive order means: 1) State agencies can't hire new employees, including hires from other agencies, 2) State agencies must minimize overtime for existing employees,
Plus, the absence of a state budget means the state can't pay contractors.
Consequently, even if there were plenty of COBOL programmers available on the market, the State Controller couldn't use any of them to implement the order, even if the Controller believed the provisions of the order related to pay were legal, which he doesn't.
The minimum wage thing is actually an improvement over what these clowns usually do every year when they utterly fail to pass the budget on time. Usually the state issues IOUs to it's employees which don't get paid of until the budget gets done. This year, they are talking about actually paying people something during the impasse and making up the difference when the budget gets passed.
It must be nice to be modded +5 Informative for this, despite the fact that what you say has almost no connection to the facts. Usually, in a budget impasse, the state pays civil service employees their full salary. The IOU's (technically, "registered warrants") were used in 1992, a practice later ruled illegal by a federal judge. Note that most California budgets have been late, and never since 1992 has anything but full salary been paid.
The problem is this person is lying. Seriously, wages change all the time; probably at least once a year people get reviewed and get raises; you're going to tell me there's a 9 month backlog?
There is a difference between changing wages from one existing, pre-set scale to another existing, pre-set scale, and changing tens of thousands of positions individually from salaried to hourly wage positions, establishing a new pay scale for them, and switching all existing workers to it, and, more importantly, switching them all (hourly and salaried) back later and determining what they should have been paid in the past, a function the system does not have at all, and paying them the unpaid balance.
I have never seen a payroll program that has the wages hardcoded in it... there is no reason that this can't be done... she simply doesn't want to.
First off, John Chiang is not a "she". Second of all, some of the problems involved include: 1) Many (as in several tens of thousands) of the affected workers are in positions which are salaried (even though many do get overtime and dock for short hours, they get consistent pay each "monthly" pay period [which isn't always exactly a month] even though different pay periods have either 176 or 168 hours [and may vary even more for workers on 9-8-80 schedules].) Changing them to federal minimum wage means manually changing each of those positions to be treated as an $6.55/hr hourly position instead of a salaried position for purpose of pay calculation. It may also require changing the methods used by the state departments to report hours for those workers to include all the information that would be transmitted for hourly workers plus all that that normally would be trasmitted for salaried workers.
2) It takes longer to switch back because you then have to recalculate what should have been paid all workers (salaried and hourly) based on their normal pay method, and determine from that and what they were actually paid what they should have been paid. Since the system is not designed to do this at all, this is more complicated than simply changing how you pay people.
I hate to barge in on the fun here, but after years of calling them "Micro$haft" and "Windoze" and lame outdated jokes about Bob and Clippy, not to mention the massive FUD campaign against Vista, do you really wonder why they'd trust you at all?
I think the key difference you've failed to recognize is that the people who have done the things you point to aren't trying to get in good with Microsoft, while Microsoft, which has likened Open Source to cancer, is trying to get on the good side of the open source community.
They're still the 300lb gorilla, and charging them head on while screaming is not going to work very well.
A 300lb gorilla is either abnormally small, juvenile, or perhaps a large female. The common term for an a juggernaut that dwarfs all competitors in an area of business is "800lb gorilla".
you run a self-signed certificate you still can get the man in the middle protection.
Well, no, you can't. If you share the key used to sign your certificates out-of-band with your users so that they can trust you as a CA, then you can get MITM protection, but then you aren't "self-signed" as the term is usually used (particularly, a browser with your CA key installed, the only way you get MITM protection, won't warn that your page is protected only by a "self-signed" certificate), you have a regular CA-signed certificate where the CA happens to be under your control.
wouldn't implementing what the author suggest, defeat the very purpose of having a CA ?
AFAICT, yes; self-signed certificates are less secure, and visitors should be warned about them (and, as Mozilla does now, allowed to proceed despite the warning, should they choose to.) OTOH, there should be a reasonably easy way to add new root certificates to allow new CA's to be trusted (and, in a perfect world, a UI feature that identifies the trust level the user has a assigned to the CA when connecting to a site with SSL), which would seem to deal with the entire neutrality problem without relying on blind trust for self-signed certificates.
Prices and values on a stock exchange are not about what is. It is about what is expected.
Yes, and the conventional wisdom, driving oil trading (which is on commodity exchanges, not stock exchanges, but that's a minor issue) was that behavior that drives demand doesn't respond significantly to prices; while there has been a slow decrease in the rate of increase in driving miles for several years in the US, this idea has been persistent until the recent news that driving miles actually began dropping, rather than merely increasing less rapidly.
So, yes, commodity prices are driven by perception of future value, but the actual concrete drop in driving miles, along with a slowing economy, which have gotten wide coverage, are more likely to have spurred perceptions that future oil demand may be weaker than is justified by current prices than talk about drilling, which in every forum in which it has been covered has been accompanied by analysis (and often admissions from its sponsors) that it will not add any oil to the market for a decade, and even then won't have any concrete expect on supplies.
There's simply no reason to believe that the talk of drilling has had any effect on oil prices.
Slashdot Mirror
Federal courts are obligated, when applying state law, to follow the highest court of the State (though, of course, they can rule that that law is unenforceable because it conflicts with superceding provisions of federal law.)
No, its because they think they'll make more profit in Europe charging more, either because Europeans have more money they are willing to throw at this kind of tech, or because its a narrower, richer segment of the market willing to consider the product at all in Europe; its simply a matter of segmenting the market and charging as much as the market will bear in each segment.
Cost probably has next to nothing to do with it.
Its not "vaporware", because its not even advertised as a software product. Its simply part of Mozilla Labs "Concepts" efforts, which is exactly about producing mockups of functionality ideas which can then be used as inspiration for product building.
The first step of software development has always been to have a well-developed idea of what you want it to do. Mozilla Labs "Concepts" efforts seems to be an effort to develop those ideas, not to do software development. There are other Mozilla Labs (and Mozilla, outside of Labs) software development efforts, this is just blue-skying to foster new ideas that can lead to innovation in those efforts.
Japan is still around, and still has an Emporer, though AFAIK its only invaded one country since WWII (by participating in a supporting role in the most recent US-led invasion of Iraq), so it is hardly one of the other leading contenders. Nazi Germany ceased to exist with the end of WWII, so can't have been one of the leading contenders in invading other countries after WWII (though you are correct that it isn't around.)
The USSR is probably a valid leading contender for the post-WWII most-invasions-of-other-countries title, and is also not around anymore, so you were right on one out of three.
Actually, he is an attorney, and more importantly, the Controller's office has its own legal staff.
Its his job as an independently elected Constitutional officer to implement the law within the zone of authority given him by the Constitution and law of the State of California, which includes overseeing the state's financial affairs. Part of implementing the law is determining what law applies to a specific set of circumstances and interpreting that law and deciding how it applies. California, (unlike, e.g., the US Federal Government) does not have a purely unitary executive.
The only ways the Controller can become unemployed under California law are:
1) He resigns,
2) He is impeached by the State Legislature, or
3) He is recalled by the voters.
Just like the Governor.
Probably not; it sounds like the laptop compartment can be, itself, contained in zippered (and/or snapped and/or buckled) compartment, so long as the bag can be unzipped so that the metal-free laptop compartment folds out and lies flat on the X-ray machine.
This, of course, obviously provides no additional actual security besides putting a laptop through in a normal, zippered bag, but its a nice bit of security theater that will provide a one-time stimulus to the bottom-line of certain firms as travelers with no other need for new laptop bags rush out to buy TSA-approved bags to slightly reduce travel hassles.
Well, no, there is no requirement that the Olympics have everything that qualifies as a "sport" under whatever definition applies.
That aside, Ice Dancing. Seriously.
I'm not sure that's all that true; it seems to me an equally good, or better, argument could be made for murder of the depraved indifference type, which require a less "novel" approach than CFAA charges in this case; I think that the prosecution is advancing the novel argument to create precedent for it, using an extreme case in which it hopes courts will be swayed by emotion (wanting the accused to be held accountable) to give "the benefit of the doubt" on interpretation of the law.
Having read the decision, I disagree that that is the case. Its arguable that the decision provides no certain guidance since it expressly refused to rule definitively on the exact kind of infeasibility argument raised by the Controller, as it had not been fully litigated below (though it did provide, in nonbinding dicta, some ideas of things it thought might be more feasible even if full compliance was nonfeasible that might resolve the issue, though it didn't point to any reason to think that those would, in fact, be feasible, and, in any rate, they were in dicta which has no authority as binding precedent and does not reflect a response to a full airing of the issue discussed). And even if, as the Governor claims, it does mandate federal minimum wage only, the Governor's attempt to limit the political furor over the order (and perhaps provide his office, which decides the exemption requests, the ability to play favorites) by selectively exempting workers he deems "critical" -- despite no provision in the law which would require or authorize different payment treatment for them -- is almost certainly without authority.
There is no reasonable reading of Davis v. White under which one could argue that the substance of the Governor's order is mandatory, and its pretty hard to argue that its even allowable.
Not really. That's why California's minimum wage is $8.00/hr.
$6.55 is federal minimum wage.
The pay rates for each salary classification, or each step within each salary classification, are adjusted, probably manually (there are a finite number of salary classifications). Of course, you can't just modify those all to $6.55/hr for this conversion since:
1) Many classifications aren't paid hourly normally, and
2) The original pay rate needs to be preserved, and the pay under it calculated, so that you can pay people the right balance at the end.
Also, the business logic for deductions may need to be changed, and certainly new business logic for deductions applicable to the catch-up payment needs to be put into place. And a system has to be in place to track the additional amounts not initially payed as debts owed by the state.
It's quite clear to anyone who has any real idea of what needs to be done that there is more than a trivial amount of work to be done. It's also important that whatever is done is particularly thoroughly tested since, even if the pay order is legal and doesn't expose the state to legal liability (and there are already at least two lawsuits and a labor relations complaint filed challenging that), paying people wrong (especially if its a error that results in a reduced payment from federal minimum wage) can have severe repercussions including legal liability.
The Governor, legislators, legislative staff, and political appointees are not paid when there is no budget.
Well, except for the 20,000+ student assistants, part-time employees, retired annuitants, etc., that were, in fact, furloughed by the same order.
While the legality of the pay order (and the furlough) itself is hotly debated, I'm not even aware of an argument that the Governor has the legal authority to unilaterally furlough most civil service employees, so its hardly as if that comparison is particularly relevant.
Even if there was such a programmer (which is not unlikely), if they weren't currently working for the Controller, the part of the order whose legality is not questioned would make it illegal for the Controller to hire this hypothetical programmer for the entire duration of the budget impasse.
Its not changing people's pay.
Its changing people from being paid in full immediately (in a very large percentage of this case based on salary) to being paid immediately based on an hourly wage and then later based on their full normal salary or hourly wage, as appropriate, while maintaining all the appropriate deductions in the right legal arrangement, some of which will need to be done immediately based on the reduced wages, some of which will probably be done in full immediately despite the reduced wages since they are paid to third parties [e.g., health insurance premiums], and some of which may be deferred entirely until the later settlement to the full pay.
Since this requires implementing a variety of calculations and tracking functionality which does not exist in the existing system, it requires programming.
The pay order is not, even taking the Governor's own description of it, an effort to cut state spending, its an effort to preserve cash in the short-term in the absence of a budget to prevent the state running out of usable cash. Whether or not this is reasonably necessary or simply a political ploy is a matter of debate between (among others) the Governor and the Controller.
No, the problem is that the same executive order means:
1) State agencies can't hire new employees, including hires from other agencies,
2) State agencies must minimize overtime for existing employees,
Plus, the absence of a state budget means the state can't pay contractors.
Consequently, even if there were plenty of COBOL programmers available on the market, the State Controller couldn't use any of them to implement the order, even if the Controller believed the provisions of the order related to pay were legal, which he doesn't.
It must be nice to be modded +5 Informative for this, despite the fact that what you say has almost no connection to the facts. Usually, in a budget impasse, the state pays civil service employees their full salary. The IOU's (technically, "registered warrants") were used in 1992, a practice later ruled illegal by a federal judge. Note that most California budgets have been late, and never since 1992 has anything but full salary been paid.
There is a difference between changing wages from one existing, pre-set scale to another existing, pre-set scale, and changing tens of thousands of positions individually from salaried to hourly wage positions, establishing a new pay scale for them, and switching all existing workers to it, and, more importantly, switching them all (hourly and salaried) back later and determining what they should have been paid in the past, a function the system does not have at all, and paying them the unpaid balance.
First off, John Chiang is not a "she". Second of all, some of the problems involved include:
1) Many (as in several tens of thousands) of the affected workers are in positions which are salaried (even though many do get overtime and dock for short hours, they get consistent pay each "monthly" pay period [which isn't always exactly a month] even though different pay periods have either 176 or 168 hours [and may vary even more for workers on 9-8-80 schedules].) Changing them to federal minimum wage means manually changing each of those positions to be treated as an $6.55/hr hourly position instead of a salaried position for purpose of pay calculation. It may also require changing the methods used by the state departments to report hours for those workers to include all the information that would be transmitted for hourly workers plus all that that normally would be trasmitted for salaried workers.
2) It takes longer to switch back because you then have to recalculate what should have been paid all workers (salaried and hourly) based on their normal pay method, and determine from that and what they were actually paid what they should have been paid. Since the system is not designed to do this at all, this is more complicated than simply changing how you pay people.
Yeah, its not like any major open source projects accept bug reports and feature requests other than patches submitted by developers.
I think the key difference you've failed to recognize is that the people who have done the things you point to aren't trying to get in good with Microsoft, while Microsoft, which has likened Open Source to cancer, is trying to get on the good side of the open source community.
A 300lb gorilla is either abnormally small, juvenile, or perhaps a large female. The common term for an a juggernaut that dwarfs all competitors in an area of business is "800lb gorilla".
Well, no, you can't. If you share the key used to sign your certificates out-of-band with your users so that they can trust you as a CA, then you can get MITM protection, but then you aren't "self-signed" as the term is usually used (particularly, a browser with your CA key installed, the only way you get MITM protection, won't warn that your page is protected only by a "self-signed" certificate), you have a regular CA-signed certificate where the CA happens to be under your control.
AFAICT, yes; self-signed certificates are less secure, and visitors should be warned about them (and, as Mozilla does now, allowed to proceed despite the warning, should they choose to.) OTOH, there should be a reasonably easy way to add new root certificates to allow new CA's to be trusted (and, in a perfect world, a UI feature that identifies the trust level the user has a assigned to the CA when connecting to a site with SSL), which would seem to deal with the entire neutrality problem without relying on blind trust for self-signed certificates.
Yes, and the conventional wisdom, driving oil trading (which is on commodity exchanges, not stock exchanges, but that's a minor issue) was that behavior that drives demand doesn't respond significantly to prices; while there has been a slow decrease in the rate of increase in driving miles for several years in the US, this idea has been persistent until the recent news that driving miles actually began dropping, rather than merely increasing less rapidly.
So, yes, commodity prices are driven by perception of future value, but the actual concrete drop in driving miles, along with a slowing economy, which have gotten wide coverage, are more likely to have spurred perceptions that future oil demand may be weaker than is justified by current prices than talk about drilling, which in every forum in which it has been covered has been accompanied by analysis (and often admissions from its sponsors) that it will not add any oil to the market for a decade, and even then won't have any concrete expect on supplies.
There's simply no reason to believe that the talk of drilling has had any effect on oil prices.