Because business school also trains them to minimize costs and maximize quarterly profits. And their managers and stockholders reward them for that as well. Which inevitably leads to that behavior and a bunch of other idiotic ones. Because as you demonstrate with the bit about fixed costs, a lot of these numbers are fictions. Sometimes convenient fictions, but always fictions.

This is in contrast to the Lean approach where one minimizes waste and maximizes value delivered to the end user. In Lean thinking, staff aren't a cost to be shed ASAP, they're an asset, one you invest in.

That doesn't strike me as particularly paradoxical. Hate-crimes laws recognize existing substantial bias against particular minority groups with an eye toward reducing the bias. Most laws recoginize an existing problem and have the aim of reducing it.

As far as I can see, what I wrote is true.

But we happen to have hate-crime laws protecting specific groups because of the history of violence directed against them. If this is more common, I'm sure a law banning that will eventually appear.

I'm saying your question is nonsensical. The crime is "inciting racial hatred". It's a crime because there's a longstanding problem with racial hatred which people would like to stop.

Similarly, inciting a riot is a crime because that was a significant problem at some point. Imagine you find somebody convicted of inciting a riot and then ask me "well, what if he didn't incite?" or "what if it wasn't a riot he was inciting?" I'd have the same response to your question above: a) then it wouldn't be a crime, and b) you're missing the point.

It seems very weird. One rents something when one can't afford to buy it. Domain names cost very little, so they should just own the domain outright, especially as it's the one whose name matches the legal entity. As far as I'm concerned, any web site developer that doesn't insist that the client own the domain name in a case like this is at best negligent.

But it's also the kind of thing a shady operator would do to take advantage of naive clients.

Sure, but it makes it an understandable mistake on the part of Rackspace. And if the company gave Rackspace some documentation that the poster was buying the name on behalf of Learning Together, then the transfer may have been proper.

More importantly, though, it puts the poster in a different light. He concealed material facts in his summary, and on the face of it trying to hold on to a client's domain is shady. It makes me wonder what else he's hidden.

Whoa. That puts a different light on things. The poster, who does web development, bought a domain name learning-together.ca which was used by his client Learning Together Inc. Rackspace transferred control of the domain name from the poster to Learning Together, Inc. It seems very weird indeed that the poster is trying to keep control of that domain.

Yes, exactly. On a couple of occasions a sternly worded letter from a lawyer has worked wonders for me.

My favorite was when a company who owed me for months of contract work suddenly got a case of we-can't-afford-to-pay. My lawyer wrote a letter explaining that under California law, wages had to be paid before anything else, and encouraged them to contact the very energetic state agency in charge of enforcing that if they were unclear. It was a masterpiece of subtle menace, and I got a wire transfer for the whole amount two days later. Total cost to me: a few hundred bucks. A decade later, he's still my lawyer.

You're saying that if we take the "racial" out of inciting racial hatred then it would no longer be the crime of inciting racial hatred? Sure, ok.

Inciting racial hatred in the UK is something they've had a problem with, something that causes harm to the fabric of society. So they made it illegal. Seems reasonable to me.

That's a) ignoring the main point, which is that why someone does something matters, and b) wrong.

It's wrong because you could intend to beat somebody up because they're black but accidentally kill them. That would be voluntary manslaughter. And also a hate crime.

Inciting violence against a minority group can do a lot more than make them sad. It can intimidate people. It can force them to leave town or prevent them from voting. Oh, and it can trigger physical violence, which... gets people trampled and killed.

You haven't really thought this through. Even for non-hate crimes, consider:

• first-degree murder - premeditated intentional killing
• second-degree murder - unplanned intentional killing
• felony murder - accidental killing in the course of a felony,
• voluntary manslaughter - accidentally killing somebody while trying to harm them or intentionally killing them when provoked, and
• involuntary manslaughter - accidentally killing somebody without intent to harm (e.g., negligent homicide)

The difference for all of these is exactly "the reason you did it". The legal term is mens rea .

Hate crimes get an additional penalty because there's additional harm. It's an action against not just the person physically injured, but all the people of the sort of person hated. Slashdot-specific analogy: If a jock beats up another jock, it's just a fight. But if a jock beats up a nerd because he's a nerd then that will tend to intimidate not just the person he beat up, but all nerds.

HTC didn't start the war

Really? Because Apple claims that HTC did start the war. HTC stole Apple's property, Apple responded by using legal injunctions to stop the theft, and you're claiming Apple is the bad guy?

Bias showing much?

That's the biggest load of crap I ever read.

The Slashbots are claiming Skype and 2001-era Nokia phones as "prior art". If that's the level of understanding you consider to be "intelligent", then god help us all.

Of course, you've already compared me to a Nazi sympathiser, claimed FUD, and used potty language like "crap", so I honestly doubt you know what you're talking about either.

That you can't see the obvious - HTC is a rip off merchant who just steals from other companies - is your blind spot here. I'm not an Apple fanboy. I think software patents suck. I prefer Linux and GNU. But I'm not so blind as to defend HTC when clearly HTC is in the wrong. HTC stole technology from Apple, Apple took them to court, and Apple won. Good for Apple.

Unfortunately you are so blinded by your hatred of Apple that you would blame them no matter what the facts.

It is clearly self defence.

So your argument is that for reasons of "self-defence" it's OK for HTC to use frivolous patent lawsuits and injunction requests to try and destroy another company.

So if Apple were to assert that HTC attacked first by blatantly ripping off Apple's inventions, and that Apple was merely "retaliating" against HTC by asserting their legal property rights, you would defend Apple?

Or does "self-defence" only extend to lawsuits, not to property rights? Or, as I said earlier, are you just giving HTC a free ride because you're an Apple-hating Slashbot.

Apple get roasted on patent issues on slashdot because anyone with even basic programming knowledge (i.e. almost everyone on slashdot) knows how ridiculous Apple's lawsuits are

It's not for you to decide whether a patent is trivial or ridiculous. From reading other comments, most Slashbots don't even know the details of the patent, let alone the subtleties of patent law.

HTC ONLY sued Apple in retaliation,

Right, so in your world it's acceptable for HTC to launch frivolous patent lawsuits because it's retaliation against Apple.

That's exactly what I surmised. That's also why I said you and your ilk are hypocrites. If you were consistent you'd be heaping as much scorn on HTC as you heap on Apple.