but I remember a very old Scientific American article (60's maybe?) about program wars in which two programs would simultaneously reside in memory and each would seek out the other to destroy it, usually by inflicting a fatal erasure of a vital part from the memory stack. The article described the programs' different strategies of seek-and-destroy while simultaneously moving itself around to avoid destruction. Pretty primitive, but great fun.
You block it in your firewall program (which may be an override to the usual 'automatically configure' setting). MMJB attempts to access the internet, but the firewall stops it, in effect tricking the program into thinking there is no internet connection.
I stopped upgrading Musicmatch years ago by permanently blocking it from accessing the internet, back when I discovered the 'old' version ripped iTunes CD's and the 'new' didn't; it was a free no-choice-in-the-matter 'upgrade.' At that moment I learned my lesson and got off the upgrade train for all my applications unless and until I understood what was changing and why ahead of time.
Please accept this humble opinion as to a union's bad rep. It grows not from protecting benefits per se, but from demands to maintain rigid, hyper-sensitive work rules. My experience was from doing payroll for a unionized warehouse. There was 1 forklift and 4 guys qualified to run that forklift. Every time someone jumped on or off the forklift, they qualified for a higher rate of pay, which I consider to be hyper-sensitive to start. What really made it a pain was at the end of the day, the sum of time 4 guys spent on that fork-lift always exceeded the number of hours in the work day. Could the company simply pay a higher rate of pay for the higher skill level, regardless of whether someone was actually on or off the forklift? Of course not. We had to track the hours, and it was never the union's fault that the hours were falsified. Unions apparently have grown to thrive in an adversarial environment where they exploit every weakness of bargaining or management, and since that's their bread-and-butter, that's what they get: branded as an unreasonable adversary.
Come on, there's already a fair amount of theft protection with RFIDs. When the stores find out that it Doesn't lower theft, then maybe they'll finally figure out that it's the employees who are stealing all those DVD's because all they have to do is run them over the cash register device before taking them home, again, as with RFID's.
I'm sure when Circuit City re-hires all those employees at a new, lower salary, the employees will promptly make up for it with 'perks.'
And if M$'s new products are anything like Photo Editor or the other kludgy graphics offerings they've put out over the years, this competition is already over.
I'm afraid I don't agree that it's broken.
All she's done is sue. The law system is built to allow a pretty low bar to start the lawsuit. The next step will be a decision whether the case has any merit whatsoever (e.g. a demurrer or motion for summary judgment). Only if the case passes that point will it begin to get interesting. That's a far, far cry from winning, as your comparison with Canada uses. In the end, the law and facts will be applied fairly, depending on which venue (court) she's using. I'll freely admit that California comes out with some rather weird decisions sometimes ("I'm a victim because my coffee is hot...") but everyone else in the country discounts their thinking and applies much more rational standards. Here in Virginia, the standard is contributory negligence, i.e. you're all guilty; case dismissed.
I recall something like this happening with the Girl Scouts a few years ago, when they were sued maybe for singing Happy Birthday at camp functions without a license. After the public outrage, I believe they paid a license of fee of $1.00.
I gues this is why the SEC is pushing to apply tags to various financial statement data submitted in the annual and quarterly filings. Now the computers can consistently analyze the financial statements and trigger trading, all without human intervention.
Great.
Let's see, 800 lawsuits a month, at $1,000 per suit, comes to a little under 10,000,000 per year in legal fees. So instead, they want to file fewer lawsuits and twist the arms of the local media to publicize their (five, twenty?) local lawsuits, and make it sound just as punishing.
Score one for the bean-counters who were making the suits justify that budget. I mean, does anyone think they've been effective at stopping piracy?
My problem with this argument is the word "proof." Each party submits their "proof" to the credit card company and they make a decision whether the charge is valid or not. My experience has been the level of proof required of the merchant to support the charge to be low. A mere lack of a signature to find in favor of the consumer would be nice, but I doubt the standard is that low; 100% of online transactions would be invalid. I believe more is required. The consumer would have to present something credible on their end saying the charge is fraudulent, hence my argument the burden falls to the consumer.
Not so fast. Disputing a credit card charge is not equivalent to a stop-payment on a check. You can dispute the charge, certainly. But then YOU have to prove that the charge isn't proper.
I had this happen with a plumber who didn't clear a clogged sewer line; all he did was push the clog down a ways. When it backed up again later that day, he was 'unavailable.' I called in another plumber to do the job right and disputed the charge. To maintain the dispute, I had to produce a document that the second cleaning was the direct result of the first cleaning, signed by the second plumber.
Yeah, but in failing to disclose the withdrawals as income, he sets himself up for IRS fraud, a'la Al Capone. There are better ways.
My favorite story in this regard is about an owner/employee of a company, let's say a pizza joint. He put his arm in the dough machine, where it got broken. So he, as the employee, hired a lawyer to sue the company (owned by him, of course), who promptly sends a threatening letter. Then he, the owner, then hired another lawyer to defend the company. The two lawyers sat down and 'negotiated' a settlement for the employee's injuries. The money is compensation for a bodily injury, so it's tax-free, and it's a deduction for the company.
The whole article seems geared toward justifying spending money to root out "fraud." 6% of revenue is lost through fraud? Come on, that fails the smell test.
My favorite part of TFA: 900,000 is the average amount stolen by the owners of the business. Hello? The owners stole from themselves?
It's how it's used; the velocity of life would be the overpowering impression. Faxes, overnight delivery, emails, 300 channels on TV on split screens with the iPod playing in the background as we IM; that would freak out someone from the 20s, justifiably so.
Slashdot Mirror
but I remember a very old Scientific American article (60's maybe?) about program wars in which two programs would simultaneously reside in memory and each would seek out the other to destroy it, usually by inflicting a fatal erasure of a vital part from the memory stack. The article described the programs' different strategies of seek-and-destroy while simultaneously moving itself around to avoid destruction. Pretty primitive, but great fun.
Somebody with money did something stupid. We need a law to protect us from doing stupid things, and I'm sure someone will enact just that sort of law.
You block it in your firewall program (which may be an override to the usual 'automatically configure' setting). MMJB attempts to access the internet, but the firewall stops it, in effect tricking the program into thinking there is no internet connection.
I stopped upgrading Musicmatch years ago by permanently blocking it from accessing the internet, back when I discovered the 'old' version ripped iTunes CD's and the 'new' didn't; it was a free no-choice-in-the-matter 'upgrade.' At that moment I learned my lesson and got off the upgrade train for all my applications unless and until I understood what was changing and why ahead of time.
Civ 4 will still run slow.
Please accept this humble opinion as to a union's bad rep. It grows not from protecting benefits per se, but from demands to maintain rigid, hyper-sensitive work rules. My experience was from doing payroll for a unionized warehouse. There was 1 forklift and 4 guys qualified to run that forklift. Every time someone jumped on or off the forklift, they qualified for a higher rate of pay, which I consider to be hyper-sensitive to start. What really made it a pain was at the end of the day, the sum of time 4 guys spent on that fork-lift always exceeded the number of hours in the work day. Could the company simply pay a higher rate of pay for the higher skill level, regardless of whether someone was actually on or off the forklift? Of course not. We had to track the hours, and it was never the union's fault that the hours were falsified. Unions apparently have grown to thrive in an adversarial environment where they exploit every weakness of bargaining or management, and since that's their bread-and-butter, that's what they get: branded as an unreasonable adversary.
I'm sure when Circuit City re-hires all those employees at a new, lower salary, the employees will promptly make up for it with 'perks.'
And if M$'s new products are anything like Photo Editor or the other kludgy graphics offerings they've put out over the years, this competition is already over.
I delete all those noxious cookies on a regular basis. Does that mean I count as more than 1 person when I return to their sites?
We'll let you listen to that song once for, say, $0.25?
I'm afraid I don't agree that it's broken. All she's done is sue. The law system is built to allow a pretty low bar to start the lawsuit. The next step will be a decision whether the case has any merit whatsoever (e.g. a demurrer or motion for summary judgment). Only if the case passes that point will it begin to get interesting. That's a far, far cry from winning, as your comparison with Canada uses. In the end, the law and facts will be applied fairly, depending on which venue (court) she's using. I'll freely admit that California comes out with some rather weird decisions sometimes ("I'm a victim because my coffee is hot...") but everyone else in the country discounts their thinking and applies much more rational standards. Here in Virginia, the standard is contributory negligence, i.e. you're all guilty; case dismissed.
I recall something like this happening with the Girl Scouts a few years ago, when they were sued maybe for singing Happy Birthday at camp functions without a license. After the public outrage, I believe they paid a license of fee of $1.00.
Is there a reason the article's logo, the flag, has 12 stripes instead of 13?
I gues this is why the SEC is pushing to apply tags to various financial statement data submitted in the annual and quarterly filings. Now the computers can consistently analyze the financial statements and trigger trading, all without human intervention. Great.
Let's see, 800 lawsuits a month, at $1,000 per suit, comes to a little under 10,000,000 per year in legal fees. So instead, they want to file fewer lawsuits and twist the arms of the local media to publicize their (five, twenty?) local lawsuits, and make it sound just as punishing. Score one for the bean-counters who were making the suits justify that budget. I mean, does anyone think they've been effective at stopping piracy?
My problem with this argument is the word "proof." Each party submits their "proof" to the credit card company and they make a decision whether the charge is valid or not. My experience has been the level of proof required of the merchant to support the charge to be low. A mere lack of a signature to find in favor of the consumer would be nice, but I doubt the standard is that low; 100% of online transactions would be invalid. I believe more is required. The consumer would have to present something credible on their end saying the charge is fraudulent, hence my argument the burden falls to the consumer.
I had this happen with a plumber who didn't clear a clogged sewer line; all he did was push the clog down a ways. When it backed up again later that day, he was 'unavailable.' I called in another plumber to do the job right and disputed the charge. To maintain the dispute, I had to produce a document that the second cleaning was the direct result of the first cleaning, signed by the second plumber.
Yeah, but in failing to disclose the withdrawals as income, he sets himself up for IRS fraud, a'la Al Capone. There are better ways. My favorite story in this regard is about an owner/employee of a company, let's say a pizza joint. He put his arm in the dough machine, where it got broken. So he, as the employee, hired a lawyer to sue the company (owned by him, of course), who promptly sends a threatening letter. Then he, the owner, then hired another lawyer to defend the company. The two lawyers sat down and 'negotiated' a settlement for the employee's injuries. The money is compensation for a bodily injury, so it's tax-free, and it's a deduction for the company.
The whole article seems geared toward justifying spending money to root out "fraud." 6% of revenue is lost through fraud? Come on, that fails the smell test. My favorite part of TFA: 900,000 is the average amount stolen by the owners of the business. Hello? The owners stole from themselves?
It's how it's used; the velocity of life would be the overpowering impression. Faxes, overnight delivery, emails, 300 channels on TV on split screens with the iPod playing in the background as we IM; that would freak out someone from the 20s, justifiably so.