So I am going to do something interesting that doesn't pay shit and is low-tech and let's me hide for 3 months of the year -- college professor.
Grammar Nazi cheap shot: I hope you won't be teaching English.
Innuendo (and keeping with the Grammar Nazi theme): You're going to get paid for doing a college professor? Is that legal?
Self-pitying jab: Speaking as someone in academic tech support, you're not leaving the battle, you're switching sides.
Boring observation: Some college professors are also poorly paid, especially if they can't get a full-time position (and they don't necessarily suck). Hell, I make more than some of the non-tenured faculty here and that's with nothing more than a liberal arts degree and 5 years in this position.
Well, there's the possibility that those bands collected an extremely dedicated following _because_ they allowed their music to be widely copied & distributed
Horseshit. It takes 30 seconds to know what those bands are about, you don't need a waist-high pile of bootlegs, authorized or not, to be pretty sure if you want to hear more (especially if the answer is "no"). Their concerts were popular because they were a scene. If they only played in concert halls where you had to be quiet and stay in your seat, they would flop. Of course pot was a part of it but I wouldn't go so far as to say that without the pervasive drugs in the scene, they wouldn't have been successful.
The building owner(s) is not providing cable, they're providing satellite. The cable agreements with cities are mostly about the rights-of-way to run the physical cables throughout the city. That's not an issue within a building. The cable company may not be able to refuse an individual cable customer but the building owner *can* refuse to let the cable company run the cables within the building. I'm sure the city agreements could not force a cable company to link up to the existing cable plant of the building to solely provide Internet service.
The cable company would have to either use the existing cables or run their own through the building. The building owner(s) doesn't have to let the cable company do either one just to make this guy happy. His lease probably also says that he can't put holes in his walls or floor either which would of course be necessary to do the installation within the apartment.
Why does the owner care? The satellite "cable" is probably a perk that draws tenants and the price to the owner is probably contingent upon its exclusivity. If the owner had to let another company run their own cables or use the existing ones (which could work for Internet only but not for TV), the cost of the sat. feed would go way up, enough that the cost combined with people choosing cable instead could lead to the cancellation of the sat. feed.
This is nowhere near a monopoly, this guy can just live somewhere else. If all the apartments in town were owned by the same company and all had the same rule, then would probably be a monopoly.
This guy probably won't get anywhere with the cable company. Even though it's technically possible, it's probably not worth it to them to implement and deal with a relatively oddball arrangement. He'd probably have better luck convincing the building owner to get something like a T-1 but it's costly and really, what makes it worth it just to avoid DSL? He can get good bandwidth from DSL, if he has some big problem with the service and wants Internet over cable, he can move.
That reminds me of a so-so Jessica Lange movie called Men Don't Leave. Some kids start stealing TVs and selling them to a creepy guy who edits out all the "talking parts" in porn movies. The creepy guy was played by a great character actor, Kevin Corrigan, who plays Uncle Eddie on the TV series "Grounded for Life."
Thank you! I haven't read every comment but I've seen lots of "curve" talk thrown around. If you have to weed out X number of students, fine, use a curve. If you're try to teach a subject then assess how to what degree students have learned it, don't.
I would certainly expect grade inflation to be more prevalent in humanities courses because it's harder to assess a student's grasp of the material. The sciences can frequently use very objective right/wrong questions so it's easier to attach a grade to a student's performance. Humanities course can also use objective questions ("When was the war of 1812?" "What was the name of Tom Sawyer's best friend?") but often those are the least interesting.
I think another thing which a school or professor can choose to take into account is personal achievement, how much improvement a student has made. This is especially true in a class which focuses on creativity or physical abilities like playwriting or modern dance. Maybe a student still can't write a good play but has demonstrated a mastery of the form's conventions, they might earn an 'A.' Maybe a student has greatly improved their balance, grace (which is hard to quantify anyway), and has learned the movements and traditions taught in the class. Perhaps that student isn't physically capable of performing all the movements but that doesn't have to mean they can't get a good grade.
In any case, I think grade inflation is real and it happens in many disciplines. It makes it harder to discern when someone has *truly* excelled and gives people an unrealistic view of their own capabilities.
I'm almost done with a Masters in Information Technology at RIT and I have a 4.0. I can definitely tell you that I did not deserve an 'A' in every class and yet that's what I received. Why? I don't know. Maybe there was a curve factor and I got an 'A' because I perform the best in the class. Maybe I really deserved a 'B+' but I was good enough that the professor didn't want to risk dealing with a grade dispute (not that I ever gave them a reason they'd get one from me). It's cute to be able to say I have a 4.0 but it bothers me that I feel I didn't have to work that hard all the time to earn it. I'm smart but I'm not *that* smart. I like the college's general approach to I.T. but this makes me wonder what a degree from this college really signifies. (All the people in engineering and CS programs can now say snarky things about I.T. programs but I.T. isn't *just* for people who couldn't hack a CS or engineering program).
You want to read The Transparent Society, it's all about ubiquitious "eyes" and how it can be a good thing. I'm skeptical, I think people of wealth, power, and influence will always have means to keep their dealings secret and I have a great fear that privacy as we know it will be only for those who can afford it.
My partner had a sudden pain in her lower back while we were in the grocery store. The pain wasn't that severe but her leg got kind of rigid and purple-y. We were stupid and thought she should "sleep on it" and see how it was in the morning. Luckily she was still alive in the morning to see that it was a bit worse so she called her doctor who got her in the office pretty quickly after hearing the symptoms then sent her straight away to the emergency room.
Turned out she had a clot basically from her pelvis to the knee in her left leg. I guess the anatomical cause was one vein pressing down on another in the pelvic area, apparently it's not too uncommon in women. She's also been taking birth control pills for years, which contribute to coagulation, but the big news was she has these lupus antibodies (sorry I'm not being more specific in my language). She doesn't actually have Lupus but these antibodies mean her blood has too much of a tendency to clot. Her mom once had a clot in her leg 15-20 years ago but she was never diagnosed as having these antibodies (she definitely had other factors, including smoking).
The normal way for dealing with such clots is to be on blood thinners from an IV for a many days, probably weeks in her case. In the meantime, the clot would be damaging the "valves" in her vein and the result would be she would have a "bum" leg for the rest of her life. Because she's younger and otherwise pretty healthy, the doctors recommended and we went with the clot-busting medication to quickly dissolve the clot. We called it the "Draino." There's a risk that a piece can break away and travel to cause a stroke or pumonary embolism (x-ray showed she already had had a small one) so she was kept in the Intensive Care Unit for close observation for about 36 hours (though the last 8 was really just waiting for a bed downstairs). Then they went in the vein from behind the knee to put a stent (a tiny chinese finger puzzle thing) in the vein to hold it open where it was compressed and also to "roto-rooter" the vein along the way.
She also had to get similarly expensive injections in her stomach 2x a day (I had to do it) and blood draws every few days for a month until her Warfarin doses were where they should be (they call it her "INR"). I think it took a month in part due to poor communication at times with the doctor about how to adjust the Warfarin dose. Because of the lupus antibodies, she has to be on Warfarin for the rest of her life and get her INR checked every few weeks. She also had to stop the birth control pills. Boo!
It was definitely a good thing she had health insurance. The hospital bill for 5 days including the time in the emergency room and 1 1/2 days in the ICU was over $24,000. I think we paid $6 for the phone service in her room.
The original version of the patch did *not* come with an installer. So says Microsoft's documentation on the re-released version of the patch *with* installer.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/defaul t. asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-061.asp
Also, I can tell you that more than one SQL Server/MSDE patch in the past has required not only replacing files by hand but running commands within the server. That's all well and good if it's SQL Server but MSDE doesn't provide a command-line to run the commands! What to do then? I still don't know, the patch documentation sure didn't explain it. Thankfully, I'm not the one supporting it.
Men work only for that which will bring them glory, riches, or both.
As things stand, the men in question only have the option of working for "glory" or perhaps "fun." If fixing a bug isn't going to give them either, it doesn't get fixed. The idea that a person or company will pay someone to fix a bug is unrealistic. This option makes the possiblity for another motivation, "riches," more realistic by spreading the financial burden over many people. One would hope that people would pledge money to fix the bugs that aren't getting fixed because there's no fun or glory in it.
Note that I'm not suggesting that all bug votes include assigned monetary value. I would expect most bug votes would keep their 2 cents metaphorical. I don't think there would be any goldmines, everyone would see what a bug's total was and if the total was in the hundreds of dollars, it would make no sense to pledge more until it remained unfixed for an extended period of time. Money won't replace glory, critical bugs will still be fixed for non-monetary reasons. And if a bug is really critical, it's probably critical to someone who can pony up some cash to see it fixed.
Short of having programmers on salary, some bugs just won't get fixed because no one capable of fixing them wishes to do so. The monetary reward complements the existing motivations, it does not replace them. What could happen is delays in bug fixes, programmers could wait to see how high the total gets rather than jumping in and fixing it right away. Of course the programmers would also be competing so they'd have to weigh waiting against the possibility someone will be them to it. Anyhow, it would be smart to keep the default pledge totals small, if the sums really became large it could hurt the community. People will do bad & stupid things when there's serious money at stake.
First, I think it would have to be initiated by someone offering to fix a bug. Bugzilla already shows bug popularity, right? So a programmer makes a post somethingn like, "I'll fix this bug when this tip jar < link > reaches X dollars."
I don't think a pledge would cut it. You would either have to have the dollars held in escrow until the work was completed or just pay the dollars up front. The latter option would be dependent upon the reputation of the person offering the service. I think that's how other "software ransoming" schemes have worked. Escrow would be tricky because who's to say when the work it done to everyone's satifaction?
Actually, it could be really interesting if voting for bugs could include monetary value. Programmers could be like bounty hunters, looking for the bugs which have racked up the most loot. They pick a bug, fix it, then collect the loot. For such a thing to work, I think the Mozilla people would have to collect real money from the bug voters beforehand, perhaps a small account (~US$20) from which bug voters could pledge dollars. The Mozilla people could distribute the funds when they think the bug is fixed. Maybe Mozilla could make a little money, like a small initial setup fee then a percentage of each bounty payment. I don't know much about how the Mozilla project is run so I don't know how off-base this is.
There is no marriage tax benefit, this guy is a moron. In fact something Conservatives are constantly trying to work on is the "marriage penalty" which is not a specific tax on marriage people but apparently the way the tax code works out, married people pay a little more than unmarried people. There are tax deductions for having children and homosexual parents can receive it because one of them is legally the parent and receives the deduction. It's demonstrates a lack of respect for such parents but they're not losing out on any money.
I'm aware of and concerned for such laws because I have a heterosexual life partner (even though they're usually explicitly written to exclude non-homosexuals). Legally that means almost nothing. No health insurance, no decision-making power for health related decisions (she was in the hospital last year and I just lied and said I was her husband so I could stay with her), and problems with inheritance unless there's an explicit will. The only time partnerships really *are* recognized is when they split up. You can bet one can take the other to court and have the kind of financial re-distribution a divorce would have.
ISPs wouldn't even be that specific. Since many of these DDoS attacks depend upon tricking another machine into sending packets to the real target of the attack, it would help a great deal if ISPs at least made sure outgoing packets matched their own subnets. How intensive could it be to check the first 2 octets and drop the packet if they don't match a class B subnet the ISP uses?
MyMP3.com provided a service by ripping CDs to MP3 then letter users use their CD as a key to "unlock" access to the MP3 version on the web site and stream it (I believe it was not designed for downloading but if you were inclined to do so, it was relatively easy to download tracks). You have to get permission from copyright holders to provide a service based on their intellectual property. I was a MyMP3 user but I basically agreed with the court ruling. So MyMP3 paid the labels a ton of money and tried to keep going.
I checked my MyMP3 account about 6 months ago and it was just as I left it. I just checked it now and found none of my albums listed any more, only the free tracks they offered from time to time (none by anyone you've heard of). I don't know if it's because I'm not and never have been a paying member or if it's for some other reason.
I hear you (~250lbs at 5'8"). I'm going to the "Y" pretty regularly now. However I'm more concerned with my volume than my weight:-) and it has improved a bit (1 belt notch, skinnier legs). I rarely weigh myself but when I have, my weight hasn't changed. I guess I'm trading fat for muscle. I haven't really changed my diet (which is not terrible but not good) and that's probably necessary to do serious damage to this gut. I don't have any specific goals, right now I'm just trying to make exercise a regular part of my life. I think that's the most important thing, finding stuff to do that you can stick with.
Not. Mickey Mouse is protected by its trademark, you can't make your own Mickey Mouse cartoon without them coming down on your hard (barring exceptions like parody).
They've prevented anyone else from distributing copies of "Steamboat Willie."
For the record, I think the situation sucks but I don't know yet whether I think the Supreme Court was wrong to rule this way. Either way, it's Congress which is bad for passing such laws in the first place.
I think you're mis-remembering. Check out this link which does a decent job of explaining the difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercise. Here's the most relevant part of the page:
Anaerobic endurance refers to short term
endurance capacity which relies mainly on anaerobic energy pathways.
Simplistically, anaerobic endurance is of such a short duration that oxygen from
the lungs does not have time to reach the muscles.
Anaerobic exercise is essential for strength building & muscle gain.
Normally, short, intensive activities
lasting less than 60 seconds, might be though of as "anaerobic,"
Also,
longer activities which are intermittent (i.e., boxing, football, etc.) are also
thought of as "anaerobic," since they consist of repeated
high-intensity bouts of activity.
Aerobic endurance, on the other hand,
refers to longer-term activities which rely primarily on the oxidative energy
pathway.
Simplistically, aerobic endurance is of long duration & relies mainly on oxygen from the lungs
Aerobic Exercise is essential for weight loss,
cardio vascular fitness and body-shaping.
Longer, less intensive work is thought of as "aerobic."
They're both "aerobic exercise." The first might be called "aerobic training" because running all out (or biking) then resting a little, the running again is supposed to make you better at aerobic exercise, more so than running at a steady pace. Exercise equipment like treadmills, stairmasters, and stationary bikes all have a setting to do such a "peaks and valleys" workout.
For the RIAA's part is more about not pushing for "locking" mechanisms in "entertainment devices" like DVD recorders rather than general purpose devices likes desktop PCs. The MPAA still seems very fixed on such mechanisms, everything from crude crippleware like no digital I/O on devices to fancy chip-ware which tries to do things like determine if a display device is an "approved" one rather than some form of recorder.
I agree that it seems like the RIAA isn't really giving up significant ground. However the BSA members may be stepping aside as an ally to consumers by not supporting new laws which would make explicit many acts which reasonable people consider to be Fair Use. I'm not certain such laws are necessary and I would be afraid at how badly they might be written but I want that sabre kept handy in case it needs to get rattled.
MyMp3 is still around. I got on it early, before the lawsuits. About 75% of my CDs at the time were available through the site and it only took a few hours one evening to "Beam" them all. While the cases were going on access to my albums was locked but once they were done I could get back into them. I still can and if I wanted to pay them some money, I could Beam more albums. There are still some albums which I can't access, presumably because they couldn't get permission for those particular albums, but there are few of them.
But a funny thing happened in the meantime, big drives got cheap and MP3 ripper/players got better. Thanks to MusicMatch at work and iTunes at home, I have my whole CD collection on disk in the two locations I care about (hooray for laissez faire bosses!). I also listen to a lot of streamed MP3 radio because even with 200 CDs, I can still get tired of listening to them.
I still think MyMP3 is a sound model (no pun intended) but big, cheap drives has made it less useful. What it still has going for it is speed (Beaming is a lot faster than ripping), and accessibility (more people can listen to streamed audio at work than store gigs of mp3s there).
BTW, I agreed with the basic argument of the record companies'. While customers owned the CDs in question, by ripping them themselves and using the CD as a key to access the rip, MyMP3 was providing a service. Sure, technically it's stupid to have every customer rip and upload each CD to their own "locker" when 100 people have already done the same thing for the same CD (such a waste of disk space), but legally the difference is important. The service MP3 locker sites, where you upload the files yourself, provides is disk space on the Internet. MyMP3's service is providing access to copyrighted materials on the Internet, it's not individuals space-shifting like the locker sites. So MyMP3 now pays record companies for the right to provide the service and customers pay MyMP3 for what is a worthwhile service.
My mother-in-law doesn't drive but she has a hand brake on the dash of any car in which she rides. It's not very effective but effectiveness improves if she makes a screeching sound, not unlike the sound of squealing brakes.
Slashdot Mirror
So I am going to do something interesting that doesn't pay shit and is low-tech and let's me hide for 3 months of the year -- college professor.
Grammar Nazi cheap shot: I hope you won't be teaching English.
Innuendo (and keeping with the Grammar Nazi theme): You're going to get paid for doing a college professor? Is that legal?
Self-pitying jab: Speaking as someone in academic tech support, you're not leaving the battle, you're switching sides.
Boring observation: Some college professors are also poorly paid, especially if they can't get a full-time position (and they don't necessarily suck). Hell, I make more than some of the non-tenured faculty here and that's with nothing more than a liberal arts degree and 5 years in this position.
Well, there's the possibility that those bands collected an extremely dedicated following _because_ they allowed their music to be widely copied & distributed
Horseshit. It takes 30 seconds to know what those bands are about, you don't need a waist-high pile of bootlegs, authorized or not, to be pretty sure if you want to hear more (especially if the answer is "no"). Their concerts were popular because they were a scene. If they only played in concert halls where you had to be quiet and stay in your seat, they would flop. Of course pot was a part of it but I wouldn't go so far as to say that without the pervasive drugs in the scene, they wouldn't have been successful.
The building owner(s) is not providing cable, they're providing satellite. The cable agreements with cities are mostly about the rights-of-way to run the physical cables throughout the city. That's not an issue within a building. The cable company may not be able to refuse an individual cable customer but the building owner *can* refuse to let the cable company run the cables within the building. I'm sure the city agreements could not force a cable company to link up to the existing cable plant of the building to solely provide Internet service.
I liked this part from your link, "Sorry, no pets or undergraduate students." There's a difference? ;-)
The cable company would have to either use the existing cables or run their own through the building. The building owner(s) doesn't have to let the cable company do either one just to make this guy happy. His lease probably also says that he can't put holes in his walls or floor either which would of course be necessary to do the installation within the apartment.
Why does the owner care? The satellite "cable" is probably a perk that draws tenants and the price to the owner is probably contingent upon its exclusivity. If the owner had to let another company run their own cables or use the existing ones (which could work for Internet only but not for TV), the cost of the sat. feed would go way up, enough that the cost combined with people choosing cable instead could lead to the cancellation of the sat. feed.
This is nowhere near a monopoly, this guy can just live somewhere else. If all the apartments in town were owned by the same company and all had the same rule, then would probably be a monopoly.
This guy probably won't get anywhere with the cable company. Even though it's technically possible, it's probably not worth it to them to implement and deal with a relatively oddball arrangement. He'd probably have better luck convincing the building owner to get something like a T-1 but it's costly and really, what makes it worth it just to avoid DSL? He can get good bandwidth from DSL, if he has some big problem with the service and wants Internet over cable, he can move.
That reminds me of a so-so Jessica Lange movie called Men Don't Leave. Some kids start stealing TVs and selling them to a creepy guy who edits out all the "talking parts" in porn movies. The creepy guy was played by a great character actor, Kevin Corrigan, who plays Uncle Eddie on the TV series "Grounded for Life."
I think this deserves a nomination for Best Slashdot Article Title.
Thank you! I haven't read every comment but I've seen lots of "curve" talk thrown around. If you have to weed out X number of students, fine, use a curve. If you're try to teach a subject then assess how to what degree students have learned it, don't.
I would certainly expect grade inflation to be more prevalent in humanities courses because it's harder to assess a student's grasp of the material. The sciences can frequently use very objective right/wrong questions so it's easier to attach a grade to a student's performance. Humanities course can also use objective questions ("When was the war of 1812?" "What was the name of Tom Sawyer's best friend?") but often those are the least interesting.
I think another thing which a school or professor can choose to take into account is personal achievement, how much improvement a student has made. This is especially true in a class which focuses on creativity or physical abilities like playwriting or modern dance. Maybe a student still can't write a good play but has demonstrated a mastery of the form's conventions, they might earn an 'A.' Maybe a student has greatly improved their balance, grace (which is hard to quantify anyway), and has learned the movements and traditions taught in the class. Perhaps that student isn't physically capable of performing all the movements but that doesn't have to mean they can't get a good grade.
In any case, I think grade inflation is real and it happens in many disciplines. It makes it harder to discern when someone has *truly* excelled and gives people an unrealistic view of their own capabilities.
I'm almost done with a Masters in Information Technology at RIT and I have a 4.0. I can definitely tell you that I did not deserve an 'A' in every class and yet that's what I received. Why? I don't know. Maybe there was a curve factor and I got an 'A' because I perform the best in the class. Maybe I really deserved a 'B+' but I was good enough that the professor didn't want to risk dealing with a grade dispute (not that I ever gave them a reason they'd get one from me). It's cute to be able to say I have a 4.0 but it bothers me that I feel I didn't have to work that hard all the time to earn it. I'm smart but I'm not *that* smart. I like the college's general approach to I.T. but this makes me wonder what a degree from this college really signifies. (All the people in engineering and CS programs can now say snarky things about I.T. programs but I.T. isn't *just* for people who couldn't hack a CS or engineering program).
You want to read The Transparent Society, it's all about ubiquitious "eyes" and how it can be a good thing. I'm skeptical, I think people of wealth, power, and influence will always have means to keep their dealings secret and I have a great fear that privacy as we know it will be only for those who can afford it.
My partner had a sudden pain in her lower back while we were in the grocery store. The pain wasn't that severe but her leg got kind of rigid and purple-y. We were stupid and thought she should "sleep on it" and see how it was in the morning. Luckily she was still alive in the morning to see that it was a bit worse so she called her doctor who got her in the office pretty quickly after hearing the symptoms then sent her straight away to the emergency room.
Turned out she had a clot basically from her pelvis to the knee in her left leg. I guess the anatomical cause was one vein pressing down on another in the pelvic area, apparently it's not too uncommon in women. She's also been taking birth control pills for years, which contribute to coagulation, but the big news was she has these lupus antibodies (sorry I'm not being more specific in my language). She doesn't actually have Lupus but these antibodies mean her blood has too much of a tendency to clot. Her mom once had a clot in her leg 15-20 years ago but she was never diagnosed as having these antibodies (she definitely had other factors, including smoking).
The normal way for dealing with such clots is to be on blood thinners from an IV for a many days, probably weeks in her case. In the meantime, the clot would be damaging the "valves" in her vein and the result would be she would have a "bum" leg for the rest of her life. Because she's younger and otherwise pretty healthy, the doctors recommended and we went with the clot-busting medication to quickly dissolve the clot. We called it the "Draino." There's a risk that a piece can break away and travel to cause a stroke or pumonary embolism (x-ray showed she already had had a small one) so she was kept in the Intensive Care Unit for close observation for about 36 hours (though the last 8 was really just waiting for a bed downstairs). Then they went in the vein from behind the knee to put a stent (a tiny chinese finger puzzle thing) in the vein to hold it open where it was compressed and also to "roto-rooter" the vein along the way.
She also had to get similarly expensive injections in her stomach 2x a day (I had to do it) and blood draws every few days for a month until her Warfarin doses were where they should be (they call it her "INR"). I think it took a month in part due to poor communication at times with the doctor about how to adjust the Warfarin dose. Because of the lupus antibodies, she has to be on Warfarin for the rest of her life and get her INR checked every few weeks. She also had to stop the birth control pills. Boo!
It was definitely a good thing she had health insurance. The hospital bill for 5 days including the time in the emergency room and 1 1/2 days in the ICU was over $24,000. I think we paid $6 for the phone service in her room.
The original version of the patch did *not* come with an installer. So says Microsoft's documentation on the re-released version of the patch *with* installer.
l t. asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-061.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/defau
Also, I can tell you that more than one SQL Server/MSDE patch in the past has required not only replacing files by hand but running commands within the server. That's all well and good if it's SQL Server but MSDE doesn't provide a command-line to run the commands! What to do then? I still don't know, the patch documentation sure didn't explain it. Thankfully, I'm not the one supporting it.
As things stand, the men in question only have the option of working for "glory" or perhaps "fun." If fixing a bug isn't going to give them either, it doesn't get fixed. The idea that a person or company will pay someone to fix a bug is unrealistic. This option makes the possiblity for another motivation, "riches," more realistic by spreading the financial burden over many people. One would hope that people would pledge money to fix the bugs that aren't getting fixed because there's no fun or glory in it.
Note that I'm not suggesting that all bug votes include assigned monetary value. I would expect most bug votes would keep their 2 cents metaphorical. I don't think there would be any goldmines, everyone would see what a bug's total was and if the total was in the hundreds of dollars, it would make no sense to pledge more until it remained unfixed for an extended period of time. Money won't replace glory, critical bugs will still be fixed for non-monetary reasons. And if a bug is really critical, it's probably critical to someone who can pony up some cash to see it fixed.
Short of having programmers on salary, some bugs just won't get fixed because no one capable of fixing them wishes to do so. The monetary reward complements the existing motivations, it does not replace them. What could happen is delays in bug fixes, programmers could wait to see how high the total gets rather than jumping in and fixing it right away. Of course the programmers would also be competing so they'd have to weigh waiting against the possibility someone will be them to it. Anyhow, it would be smart to keep the default pledge totals small, if the sums really became large it could hurt the community. People will do bad & stupid things when there's serious money at stake.
First, I think it would have to be initiated by someone offering to fix a bug. Bugzilla already shows bug popularity, right? So a programmer makes a post somethingn like, "I'll fix this bug when this tip jar < link > reaches X dollars."
I don't think a pledge would cut it. You would either have to have the dollars held in escrow until the work was completed or just pay the dollars up front. The latter option would be dependent upon the reputation of the person offering the service. I think that's how other "software ransoming" schemes have worked. Escrow would be tricky because who's to say when the work it done to everyone's satifaction?
Actually, it could be really interesting if voting for bugs could include monetary value. Programmers could be like bounty hunters, looking for the bugs which have racked up the most loot. They pick a bug, fix it, then collect the loot. For such a thing to work, I think the Mozilla people would have to collect real money from the bug voters beforehand, perhaps a small account (~US$20) from which bug voters could pledge dollars. The Mozilla people could distribute the funds when they think the bug is fixed. Maybe Mozilla could make a little money, like a small initial setup fee then a percentage of each bounty payment. I don't know much about how the Mozilla project is run so I don't know how off-base this is.
There is no marriage tax benefit, this guy is a moron. In fact something Conservatives are constantly trying to work on is the "marriage penalty" which is not a specific tax on marriage people but apparently the way the tax code works out, married people pay a little more than unmarried people. There are tax deductions for having children and homosexual parents can receive it because one of them is legally the parent and receives the deduction. It's demonstrates a lack of respect for such parents but they're not losing out on any money.
I'm aware of and concerned for such laws because I have a heterosexual life partner (even though they're usually explicitly written to exclude non-homosexuals). Legally that means almost nothing. No health insurance, no decision-making power for health related decisions (she was in the hospital last year and I just lied and said I was her husband so I could stay with her), and problems with inheritance unless there's an explicit will. The only time partnerships really *are* recognized is when they split up. You can bet one can take the other to court and have the kind of financial re-distribution a divorce would have.
ISPs wouldn't even be that specific. Since many of these DDoS attacks depend upon tricking another machine into sending packets to the real target of the attack, it would help a great deal if ISPs at least made sure outgoing packets matched their own subnets. How intensive could it be to check the first 2 octets and drop the packet if they don't match a class B subnet the ISP uses?
MyMP3.com provided a service by ripping CDs to MP3 then letter users use their CD as a key to "unlock" access to the MP3 version on the web site and stream it (I believe it was not designed for downloading but if you were inclined to do so, it was relatively easy to download tracks). You have to get permission from copyright holders to provide a service based on their intellectual property. I was a MyMP3 user but I basically agreed with the court ruling. So MyMP3 paid the labels a ton of money and tried to keep going.
I checked my MyMP3 account about 6 months ago and it was just as I left it. I just checked it now and found none of my albums listed any more, only the free tracks they offered from time to time (none by anyone you've heard of). I don't know if it's because I'm not and never have been a paying member or if it's for some other reason.
I hear you (~250lbs at 5'8"). I'm going to the "Y" pretty regularly now. However I'm more concerned with my volume than my weight :-) and it has improved a bit (1 belt notch, skinnier legs). I rarely weigh myself but when I have, my weight hasn't changed. I guess I'm trading fat for muscle. I haven't really changed my diet (which is not terrible but not good) and that's probably necessary to do serious damage to this gut. I don't have any specific goals, right now I'm just trying to make exercise a regular part of my life. I think that's the most important thing, finding stuff to do that you can stick with.
Natalie Portman recommends it!
Not. Mickey Mouse is protected by its trademark, you can't make your own Mickey Mouse cartoon without them coming down on your hard (barring exceptions like parody).
They've prevented anyone else from distributing copies of "Steamboat Willie."
For the record, I think the situation sucks but I don't know yet whether I think the Supreme Court was wrong to rule this way. Either way, it's Congress which is bad for passing such laws in the first place.
Yeah, but that's too long to fit on a button ;-)
Anaerobic endurance refers to short term endurance capacity which relies mainly on anaerobic energy pathways.
Simplistically, anaerobic endurance is of such a short duration that oxygen from the lungs does not have time to reach the muscles.
Anaerobic exercise is essential for strength building & muscle gain.
Normally, short, intensive activities lasting less than 60 seconds, might be though of as "anaerobic,"
Also, longer activities which are intermittent (i.e., boxing, football, etc.) are also thought of as "anaerobic," since they consist of repeated high-intensity bouts of activity.
Aerobic endurance, on the other hand, refers to longer-term activities which rely primarily on the oxidative energy pathway.
Simplistically, aerobic endurance is of long duration & relies mainly on oxygen from the lungs
Aerobic Exercise is essential for weight loss, cardio vascular fitness and body-shaping.
Longer, less intensive work is thought of as "aerobic."
They're both "aerobic exercise." The first might be called "aerobic training" because running all out (or biking) then resting a little, the running again is supposed to make you better at aerobic exercise, more so than running at a steady pace. Exercise equipment like treadmills, stairmasters, and stationary bikes all have a setting to do such a "peaks and valleys" workout.
For the RIAA's part is more about not pushing for "locking" mechanisms in "entertainment devices" like DVD recorders rather than general purpose devices likes desktop PCs. The MPAA still seems very fixed on such mechanisms, everything from crude crippleware like no digital I/O on devices to fancy chip-ware which tries to do things like determine if a display device is an "approved" one rather than some form of recorder.
I agree that it seems like the RIAA isn't really giving up significant ground. However the BSA members may be stepping aside as an ally to consumers by not supporting new laws which would make explicit many acts which reasonable people consider to be Fair Use. I'm not certain such laws are necessary and I would be afraid at how badly they might be written but I want that sabre kept handy in case it needs to get rattled.
MyMp3 is still around. I got on it early, before the lawsuits. About 75% of my CDs at the time were available through the site and it only took a few hours one evening to "Beam" them all. While the cases were going on access to my albums was locked but once they were done I could get back into them. I still can and if I wanted to pay them some money, I could Beam more albums. There are still some albums which I can't access, presumably because they couldn't get permission for those particular albums, but there are few of them.
But a funny thing happened in the meantime, big drives got cheap and MP3 ripper/players got better. Thanks to MusicMatch at work and iTunes at home, I have my whole CD collection on disk in the two locations I care about (hooray for laissez faire bosses!). I also listen to a lot of streamed MP3 radio because even with 200 CDs, I can still get tired of listening to them.
I still think MyMP3 is a sound model (no pun intended) but big, cheap drives has made it less useful. What it still has going for it is speed (Beaming is a lot faster than ripping), and accessibility (more people can listen to streamed audio at work than store gigs of mp3s there).
BTW, I agreed with the basic argument of the record companies'. While customers owned the CDs in question, by ripping them themselves and using the CD as a key to access the rip, MyMP3 was providing a service. Sure, technically it's stupid to have every customer rip and upload each CD to their own "locker" when 100 people have already done the same thing for the same CD (such a waste of disk space), but legally the difference is important. The service MP3 locker sites, where you upload the files yourself, provides is disk space on the Internet. MyMP3's service is providing access to copyrighted materials on the Internet, it's not individuals space-shifting like the locker sites. So MyMP3 now pays record companies for the right to provide the service and customers pay MyMP3 for what is a worthwhile service.
My mother-in-law doesn't drive but she has a hand brake on the dash of any car in which she rides. It's not very effective but effectiveness improves if she makes a screeching sound, not unlike the sound of squealing brakes.