The mother was, according to the article, less than 3 feet away from her child at the time. I'd have enough of a question about her parenting skills if this was the only circumstance, but also allowing a 3 year old to play a "shooting game" (which are generally rated at least 'T', for good reason)... and then conveniently not noticing or forgetting the gun after her husband left it there? (I am making the assumption that she knew he had taken it out to look for the "prowler", but even if she didn't know, how do you miss a gun sitting on the coffee table?) Unless the article meant "the mother saw the child pick up the gun, and went running, and wasn't fast enough to stop her", it sounds like she was sitting right next to her daughter, and simply wasn't paying attention. THAT is what makes this a tragedy, far more than the actions of a little girl who just didn't know any better.
...to refer to a sack of sh!t, they had to use PeePoo? Third graders will get a real kick out of it, at least...
Just off the top of my head: Humanure (if it's not already patented), Green Latrine, Peecomposition, PissOff (contributed by my fiance), WasteAway, BuryIt, Poo4U, Re-Cycle, Poo-rify (purify), etc. I'm sure someone else can come up with better, too.
If someone could come up with a hardware-based DRM that worked well with Mac, Windows AND Linux machines, was upgradable easily, didn't have conflicts with any mix of manufacturers whose products I might put in a custom-built case, and was cheap enough that it wouldn't double the cost of a basic setup... yeah, I might consider it. I sure as hell wouldn't install it on my main desktop, though.
My bad. I guess I meant to say that it automatically detects every network in range if the wireless is turned on, and pops up a notification (unless you disable them) which alerts you to the fact that there are networks in range should you desire to connect. Not quite as bad as automatically connecting, but if you do choose to connect to a network it offers the default of auto-connecting to that network in the future.
It's called showmanship and every radio broadcaster out there does it, if he wants to keep his listener numbers high.
The woman actually seemed like she understood the basics of "stealing" internet service, but certainly didn't have much common sense if she had to call in just to agree with the guy's accusation that she's stealing.
Personally, I'd like to see some changes in the current systems before we go accusing people of theft for hopping on a wireless signal. For one thing, Windows automatically detects networks in the area, and a lot of the time will attempt to connect whether people ask it to or not. For the technologically inept, this method of connection may ensure that they can get on their neighbor's open signal without ever knowing what they're doing. And the basic router setup (Linksys routers appear to be ubiquitous) makes it easy to get online through an insecure network, because most people barely recognize how to use an included antivirus program, let alone a wireless security protocol. What it comes down to is that between the router default settings (broadcast without security) and the windows default settings (attempt to connect to the nearest network), it could be argued that idiot consumers aren't being given the house door and the key to unlock it; they're being given a house with an already-unlocked door, and told that if they want to get the key to lock the door they have to read the instruction manual - and for those people, reading a tech manual is equivalent to reading Latin.
I'm a fan of some music sampling. I like finding out that a rap song has a Beethoven sonata woven into the beat and I think hearing Pachelbel's canon in a million songs is amusing; finding familiar tunes in new music is like finding treasure. Similarly, if a favorite character of mine quotes Mark Twain (and the author doesn't smash the fourth wall to tell me they're quoting) I'm just glad I know where the quote came from - who cares if they're sampling? We quote people all the time when speaking and often don't know or credit the author... isn't that sampling, too?
The problem is attempting to pass off someone else's ideas as your own. Using one or two lines is cool. Pasting an entire book of other peoples' ideas together, as long as you're not using one single idea from one single artist/writer, is borderline okay and I'd rather see a work like that acknowledged as borrowing but I think like the parent I'd enjoy the game of figuring out who wrote what instead of worrying about plagiarism, especially if the sampled works are used to create a new and original point (much like sampled music can be used to create a new sound). I think the line ought to be drawn at using a single chunk of idea(s) from a single source work, and passing it off as your own or original. You wouldn't take Mozart's violin sonatas and pass them off as your own; don't do it to a book either.
Yeah, my first response to this headline was "If Google fails, I'll set a new homepage and move on." There are plenty of other mail services out there, several decent search engines (even though I like Google best, and would probably complain a good bit at having to use something else), and their other web tools are things I use rarely at best. Would Google's failure be a loss for the internet? Yeah, but it won't kill our economy. Advertisers are great at finding places to display their work.
You said yourself that most of the currently operating plants in the US are ancient (by nuclear power standards). Newer tech and newer plants would be many times safer and less likely to leak. Replacing the old plants with new ones, or simply building new ones nearby and shutting the old ones down as soon as possible would be a good choice, but many people point to the old plants as examples (as you're doing) without regard for the fact that a new, re-engineered plant wouldn't have any of the problems the 30-year-old ones are having. And in 30 years, I'm sure we'll have the capacity to build even more and better plants, or improve the ones we have so that they will last. The problem is getting past the folks who think that an old standard is the only standard.
Depression is probably more the cause of heavy internet use than the symptom. I know when I'm not feeling up to par I'd rather be online than dealing with the "real world"; I assume others feel the same way. Add to that the number of resources available online (not all good ones, but some very useful, including communities where you can discuss your depression and get help or get advised to see a therapist) and you have a really big draw for people who don't feel capable of dealing with society at any given moment.
This is a great article if you know your kid has social issues anyway, but you can't teach all people to avoid being victims and even if you could someone, somewhere is going to be one. Whether through misplaced kindness toward the bully one day or through sheer chance ("You're here and you're smaller than me so you're gonna get beat up"), bullying will latch onto whatever hold it finds. You can't teach a kid to avoid the inevitable, and certainly enough smart, outgoing kids get bullied because of their interests, their parents or their good grades, regardless of social issues.
It's a great step to teach a socially inept kid how to be more socially aware, yes. It's no great leap toward solving bullying, though.
The best research done on the topic of autism tends to be in the area of "how", not "why". The "why" research is slow, and most of it right now points to genetic correlations - it runs in families, most of the time; a child with autism is likely to have a sibling with autism, and there may be a few "types" caused either by spontaneous mutation or passed-on genetic code from parents. They think they've pinned down a few gene sequences which are mutated in children with autism vs without, but last I heard no one knew anything about how those sequences actually cause the disorder. And now they've got some behavioral studies out that say that you can predict autism rates fairly well in infants; something which is on terribly shaky ground but might be useful if it proves accurate enough - if at 6-12 months we can prove autism, then we can conclusively disprove a link between vaccines and autism... and maybe at that point we'd have some other conclusive evidence for the community to grasp at.
This should be old news.
Wakefield's hypothesis has long since been jumped on, ground into the dirt, ignored, badmouthed and laughed at by a lot of autism caregivers (unfortunately, not all... and the new big thing in autism care is "alternative" treatments, which is a whole other can of worms). The argument's not going to end, though. As another poster said: people need something to blame, and this is one thing that everyone's "heard" from someone, reputable or not.
As someone who works with autism on a daily basis (I am a behavioral therapist in early intervention wraparound services), it frustrates me endlessly that we're focusing on something so trivial as finding a single cause for autism when it's beginning to look more and more like there are a constellation of causes, each one probably dependent on the presence of several others and a genetic predisposition toward autistic behaviors. I'd rather see funding go toward long-term care; more and more of these kids are growing up without the right care and intervention, and those kids when they reach adulthood will be the ones you'll see on the news: vagrants because the state won't provide care any more, filling our jails because of misunderstandings caused by a lack of socially appropriate behavior, or worse - violent and hospitalized because their caregivers can't or won't take care of them any more. What happens when that cute kid with autism grows up to be that 6' tall, 250lb adult with autism? I know one of those kids. He's in and out of the hospital because he can't take care of himself and abuses his spineless mother. When she dies, he'll be a constant drain on the system. And here we are debating the vaccine link.
Waiting for the news that more states are approving funding for Autism care and proven wraparound services under mental health/disability guidelines...
It's well known that the airborne particles (fumes?) from high-heat cooking with nonstick pans CAN kill your pet bird, given a long enough exposure (a few hours, according to some bird owners).
The link to cancer in humans is, afaik, slightly less well supported. The coatings seem to be much safer at lower cooking temperatures, and anecdotal evidence suggests that as long as they're not scratched or peeling they shed very little particulate matter. I suspect this glass-like coating is rather the same. In the tiny amounts you'd possibly ingest, it's probably relatively harmless over the course of a day or even a few years. I'd be wary of immediately using it on my countertops, but I won't begrudge restaurants who decide to spray their tables with this stuff!
There are so many things that are believed to cause cancer in this world; you really can't avoid all of them. We're gonna die one way or another; I'm all for a long and healthy life but I'll take my nonstick cookware as a trade-off: cancer risk 20 years from now, vs. 10 minutes less scrubbing pans today.
I've found that Rosetta Stone itself doesn't work for me but their supplementary online stuff does. They have a "SharedTalk" site where you can join free of charge and message or chat with other language learners. I am learning Spanish; I'm messaging back and forth with 3 native Spanish speakers (Mexican, Spanish and Peruvian) who all want to learn English. We write in both languages and correct each other so we get feedback on everything said. It's rather like group instruction in a classroom, only with a really fluent groupmate. I still use a dictionary for some words, but for grammatical correction and colloquialisms nothing beats a live native speaker, especially once you have the language foundation already.
Because "no one" wants to sue. (I do, but the two of us probably won't make much headway). The cable companies would argue that they are providing shows which are clearly popular and in demand, and that it's down to personal responsibility whether someone watches them or not! Short of doing life-long studies on separated twins; one who watched TV and the other who read/exercised instead, you won't have the "scientific" data necessary to prove that TV rots your brain and to win the lawsuit. In the meantime, you'd also be fighting off rabid American Idol fans.
I've had a lot of people tell me that human nature is unchangeable. Humans by nature are lazy, greedy, sloppy little things whose main purpose in life is to eat, evacuate and procreate. When those 3 are taken care of, we get lazy. It apparently takes a lot of willpower to eat a healthy diet, potty-train your kids and abstain from the easiest, most base entertainment out there (TV). Sure, you read more books 'cause you have a Kindle. I'd read more books if I remembered to get those audio disks from the library so I could listen while I drive. Then again, I read at home because we don't subscribe to cable. We are trying to overcome our lizard-brain instincts. Hand the nearest ghetto-dweller a Kindle, and you think they'll download Mary Shelley?
Education is awesome and books are awesome and TV sucks, but it will take a massive cultural overhaul before handing someone a book will encourage them to turn off the TV, let alone actually "better their literacy". Can it be done? Probably. Will we see it during our lifetimes? Don't hold your breath.
As I understand it, she feels that she/her publisher have "control" over whether or not a book is available for purchase or look-up in your local library (by offering for sale or not, by retiring a book if it's not selling well, putting out new editions with shiny covers for libraries to buy, and by all the while making profits off books sold to libraries). She apparently does not feel that Google Books offers her the same control. This is true on the surface, but I think she's missing something.
From the way I understood it, the Google Books project was not intended as a public-domain free-for-all when it came to books. It would allow you to search, say, a quote from one of Einstein's essays to find where it was published, but you'd then have to buy or borrow the book from somewhere else in order to read it. I think it's a pretty damn cool idea although I admit that Google having a repository of every text in a single library, let alone every text they can get their massive volunteer force to upload, is a little scary. And I can see why an author would be wary of all of this, especially if Google's not paying to keep the copies they are making. The end-users are only getting text fragments based on search terms, but since Google itself is copying entire books it would stand to reason that they should get permission first, especially if you're the author whose works they're scanning.
That being said, I don't think Ms. LeGuin's petition is quite on-track. This isn't about controlling her work; her work will be protected in Google's data centers and not pirated or distributed without permission (more than usual, anyway) regardless of whether Google pays for its copy or "borrows" it from the library (see also: copying is not theft). I see a completely different issue here: Why are we relying on Google to do this for us? University libraries have these page scanners (or at least mine did; I assume others have them as well) and professors at my university used them to put selected readings online all the time. What hurdles are standing in the way of public libraries that prevent them from providing this service, instead of relying on a corporation? I'd assume that since a library has already paid to put books on its shelves (unlike Google, which pulled from library resources), it would be acceptable to scan and copy books for an internal backup database, and work in cooperation with Google to provide the keyword search and point users to the appropriate library shelf. IANAL, though, and what seems like it would fall under fair use to me (considering that if I own a piece of software I can make a private "backup" copy of it; why not a book?) might not be. If anything, offering a full text search on a scanned book seems like the toughest thing to pass off because I can't come up with anything that has been done like it. Anyone have insight on this?
Library lending is probably far more rampant than book piracy, although that may be on the rise with e-books making it easier to get the source material onto your computer in the first place (no one I know bothers with scanning an entire hardcover for the sake of uploading it). I don't see the point of pirating e-books anyway, really. I can't stand reading on my computer monitor and I can't be arsed to buy a reader, when I have a bookshelf and am still getting gift cards for actual bookstores.
Aside from dosage issues, etc... has anyone considered that people taking "herbal supplements" may also show other behavioral changes which may affect memory and cognitive capacities?
I expect if we attempted the kind of study complicated enough to trace and collect data from a dozen behavioral components (such as amount of reading/writing done, daily exercise, diet, social life, mental health/stability...) we'd find that one factor does not control memory loss or cognitive function. I'd bet money it's a lifestyle indicator, more than an indicator of taking the right herbal supplements.
Actually, if the directional light was below the green, and the driver was unfamiliar with the intersection, it's entirely possible that the light could have been mistaken for a full green. Most of us are taught since elementary school that the light on the bottom is green, middle yellow, top red. Add another one to the bottom and it'll confuse a lot of people. I much prefer the signals I've seen around here where there are a lot of separate turning lanes for left turns - a full separate signal with 2 arrows (green on bottom, yellow middle) and a red light at the top, so that the left turn is impossible to mistake for a full green even in bad weather.
I think by hand signs he means the frantic hand-waving gesture which is supposed to mean "No, you go first!", usually made by female drivers. It's rarely useful because it is common for two or more drivers to all get into a waving war, while no one takes the initiative. See above poster's note on jerks keeping traffic moving. I don't wave people on - I do however take the opportunity to go if someone else oh so politely wiggles their hand at me through the windshield.
Slashdot Mirror
This.
The mother was, according to the article, less than 3 feet away from her child at the time. I'd have enough of a question about her parenting skills if this was the only circumstance, but also allowing a 3 year old to play a "shooting game" (which are generally rated at least 'T', for good reason)... and then conveniently not noticing or forgetting the gun after her husband left it there? (I am making the assumption that she knew he had taken it out to look for the "prowler", but even if she didn't know, how do you miss a gun sitting on the coffee table?) Unless the article meant "the mother saw the child pick up the gun, and went running, and wasn't fast enough to stop her", it sounds like she was sitting right next to her daughter, and simply wasn't paying attention. THAT is what makes this a tragedy, far more than the actions of a little girl who just didn't know any better.
That tagline is pure gold. He should have printed THAT on the bags!
...to refer to a sack of sh!t, they had to use PeePoo? Third graders will get a real kick out of it, at least...
Just off the top of my head: Humanure (if it's not already patented), Green Latrine, Peecomposition, PissOff (contributed by my fiance), WasteAway, BuryIt, Poo4U, Re-Cycle, Poo-rify (purify), etc. I'm sure someone else can come up with better, too.
If someone could come up with a hardware-based DRM that worked well with Mac, Windows AND Linux machines, was upgradable easily, didn't have conflicts with any mix of manufacturers whose products I might put in a custom-built case, and was cheap enough that it wouldn't double the cost of a basic setup... yeah, I might consider it. I sure as hell wouldn't install it on my main desktop, though.
My bad. I guess I meant to say that it automatically detects every network in range if the wireless is turned on, and pops up a notification (unless you disable them) which alerts you to the fact that there are networks in range should you desire to connect. Not quite as bad as automatically connecting, but if you do choose to connect to a network it offers the default of auto-connecting to that network in the future.
It's called showmanship and every radio broadcaster out there does it, if he wants to keep his listener numbers high.
The woman actually seemed like she understood the basics of "stealing" internet service, but certainly didn't have much common sense if she had to call in just to agree with the guy's accusation that she's stealing.
Personally, I'd like to see some changes in the current systems before we go accusing people of theft for hopping on a wireless signal. For one thing, Windows automatically detects networks in the area, and a lot of the time will attempt to connect whether people ask it to or not. For the technologically inept, this method of connection may ensure that they can get on their neighbor's open signal without ever knowing what they're doing. And the basic router setup (Linksys routers appear to be ubiquitous) makes it easy to get online through an insecure network, because most people barely recognize how to use an included antivirus program, let alone a wireless security protocol. What it comes down to is that between the router default settings (broadcast without security) and the windows default settings (attempt to connect to the nearest network), it could be argued that idiot consumers aren't being given the house door and the key to unlock it; they're being given a house with an already-unlocked door, and told that if they want to get the key to lock the door they have to read the instruction manual - and for those people, reading a tech manual is equivalent to reading Latin.
I need mod points. This is a great post.
I'm a fan of some music sampling. I like finding out that a rap song has a Beethoven sonata woven into the beat and I think hearing Pachelbel's canon in a million songs is amusing; finding familiar tunes in new music is like finding treasure. Similarly, if a favorite character of mine quotes Mark Twain (and the author doesn't smash the fourth wall to tell me they're quoting) I'm just glad I know where the quote came from - who cares if they're sampling? We quote people all the time when speaking and often don't know or credit the author... isn't that sampling, too?
The problem is attempting to pass off someone else's ideas as your own. Using one or two lines is cool. Pasting an entire book of other peoples' ideas together, as long as you're not using one single idea from one single artist/writer, is borderline okay and I'd rather see a work like that acknowledged as borrowing but I think like the parent I'd enjoy the game of figuring out who wrote what instead of worrying about plagiarism, especially if the sampled works are used to create a new and original point (much like sampled music can be used to create a new sound). I think the line ought to be drawn at using a single chunk of idea(s) from a single source work, and passing it off as your own or original. You wouldn't take Mozart's violin sonatas and pass them off as your own; don't do it to a book either.
But both science and philosophy should be taught in schools, and are not mutually exclusive.
Yeah, my first response to this headline was "If Google fails, I'll set a new homepage and move on." There are plenty of other mail services out there, several decent search engines (even though I like Google best, and would probably complain a good bit at having to use something else), and their other web tools are things I use rarely at best. Would Google's failure be a loss for the internet? Yeah, but it won't kill our economy. Advertisers are great at finding places to display their work.
You said yourself that most of the currently operating plants in the US are ancient (by nuclear power standards). Newer tech and newer plants would be many times safer and less likely to leak. Replacing the old plants with new ones, or simply building new ones nearby and shutting the old ones down as soon as possible would be a good choice, but many people point to the old plants as examples (as you're doing) without regard for the fact that a new, re-engineered plant wouldn't have any of the problems the 30-year-old ones are having. And in 30 years, I'm sure we'll have the capacity to build even more and better plants, or improve the ones we have so that they will last. The problem is getting past the folks who think that an old standard is the only standard.
Damnit, beaten.
Depression is probably more the cause of heavy internet use than the symptom. I know when I'm not feeling up to par I'd rather be online than dealing with the "real world"; I assume others feel the same way. Add to that the number of resources available online (not all good ones, but some very useful, including communities where you can discuss your depression and get help or get advised to see a therapist) and you have a really big draw for people who don't feel capable of dealing with society at any given moment.
This is a great article if you know your kid has social issues anyway, but you can't teach all people to avoid being victims and even if you could someone, somewhere is going to be one. Whether through misplaced kindness toward the bully one day or through sheer chance ("You're here and you're smaller than me so you're gonna get beat up"), bullying will latch onto whatever hold it finds. You can't teach a kid to avoid the inevitable, and certainly enough smart, outgoing kids get bullied because of their interests, their parents or their good grades, regardless of social issues.
It's a great step to teach a socially inept kid how to be more socially aware, yes. It's no great leap toward solving bullying, though.
Mod parent up!
The best research done on the topic of autism tends to be in the area of "how", not "why". The "why" research is slow, and most of it right now points to genetic correlations - it runs in families, most of the time; a child with autism is likely to have a sibling with autism, and there may be a few "types" caused either by spontaneous mutation or passed-on genetic code from parents. They think they've pinned down a few gene sequences which are mutated in children with autism vs without, but last I heard no one knew anything about how those sequences actually cause the disorder. And now they've got some behavioral studies out that say that you can predict autism rates fairly well in infants; something which is on terribly shaky ground but might be useful if it proves accurate enough - if at 6-12 months we can prove autism, then we can conclusively disprove a link between vaccines and autism... and maybe at that point we'd have some other conclusive evidence for the community to grasp at.
Doesn't matter; she "cured" HER kid!
The day that woman dies, I will dance. She has turned autism research into a farce, and has damaged so many families...
This should be old news. Wakefield's hypothesis has long since been jumped on, ground into the dirt, ignored, badmouthed and laughed at by a lot of autism caregivers (unfortunately, not all... and the new big thing in autism care is "alternative" treatments, which is a whole other can of worms). The argument's not going to end, though. As another poster said: people need something to blame, and this is one thing that everyone's "heard" from someone, reputable or not.
As someone who works with autism on a daily basis (I am a behavioral therapist in early intervention wraparound services), it frustrates me endlessly that we're focusing on something so trivial as finding a single cause for autism when it's beginning to look more and more like there are a constellation of causes, each one probably dependent on the presence of several others and a genetic predisposition toward autistic behaviors. I'd rather see funding go toward long-term care; more and more of these kids are growing up without the right care and intervention, and those kids when they reach adulthood will be the ones you'll see on the news: vagrants because the state won't provide care any more, filling our jails because of misunderstandings caused by a lack of socially appropriate behavior, or worse - violent and hospitalized because their caregivers can't or won't take care of them any more. What happens when that cute kid with autism grows up to be that 6' tall, 250lb adult with autism? I know one of those kids. He's in and out of the hospital because he can't take care of himself and abuses his spineless mother. When she dies, he'll be a constant drain on the system. And here we are debating the vaccine link.
Waiting for the news that more states are approving funding for Autism care and proven wraparound services under mental health/disability guidelines...
It's well known that the airborne particles (fumes?) from high-heat cooking with nonstick pans CAN kill your pet bird, given a long enough exposure (a few hours, according to some bird owners).
The link to cancer in humans is, afaik, slightly less well supported. The coatings seem to be much safer at lower cooking temperatures, and anecdotal evidence suggests that as long as they're not scratched or peeling they shed very little particulate matter. I suspect this glass-like coating is rather the same. In the tiny amounts you'd possibly ingest, it's probably relatively harmless over the course of a day or even a few years. I'd be wary of immediately using it on my countertops, but I won't begrudge restaurants who decide to spray their tables with this stuff!
There are so many things that are believed to cause cancer in this world; you really can't avoid all of them. We're gonna die one way or another; I'm all for a long and healthy life but I'll take my nonstick cookware as a trade-off: cancer risk 20 years from now, vs. 10 minutes less scrubbing pans today.
I've found that Rosetta Stone itself doesn't work for me but their supplementary online stuff does. They have a "SharedTalk" site where you can join free of charge and message or chat with other language learners. I am learning Spanish; I'm messaging back and forth with 3 native Spanish speakers (Mexican, Spanish and Peruvian) who all want to learn English. We write in both languages and correct each other so we get feedback on everything said. It's rather like group instruction in a classroom, only with a really fluent groupmate. I still use a dictionary for some words, but for grammatical correction and colloquialisms nothing beats a live native speaker, especially once you have the language foundation already.
Pity. I'm a hot-looking girl in my bathrobe looking for someone to teach me Spanish!
But I don't have a webcam.
I'd rather Google gave the money to the libraries. They were the ones who paid for that particular copy of the book that Google's now scanning...
Because "no one" wants to sue. (I do, but the two of us probably won't make much headway). The cable companies would argue that they are providing shows which are clearly popular and in demand, and that it's down to personal responsibility whether someone watches them or not! Short of doing life-long studies on separated twins; one who watched TV and the other who read/exercised instead, you won't have the "scientific" data necessary to prove that TV rots your brain and to win the lawsuit. In the meantime, you'd also be fighting off rabid American Idol fans.
I've had a lot of people tell me that human nature is unchangeable. Humans by nature are lazy, greedy, sloppy little things whose main purpose in life is to eat, evacuate and procreate. When those 3 are taken care of, we get lazy. It apparently takes a lot of willpower to eat a healthy diet, potty-train your kids and abstain from the easiest, most base entertainment out there (TV). Sure, you read more books 'cause you have a Kindle. I'd read more books if I remembered to get those audio disks from the library so I could listen while I drive. Then again, I read at home because we don't subscribe to cable. We are trying to overcome our lizard-brain instincts. Hand the nearest ghetto-dweller a Kindle, and you think they'll download Mary Shelley?
Education is awesome and books are awesome and TV sucks, but it will take a massive cultural overhaul before handing someone a book will encourage them to turn off the TV, let alone actually "better their literacy". Can it be done? Probably. Will we see it during our lifetimes? Don't hold your breath.
As I understand it, she feels that she/her publisher have "control" over whether or not a book is available for purchase or look-up in your local library (by offering for sale or not, by retiring a book if it's not selling well, putting out new editions with shiny covers for libraries to buy, and by all the while making profits off books sold to libraries). She apparently does not feel that Google Books offers her the same control. This is true on the surface, but I think she's missing something.
From the way I understood it, the Google Books project was not intended as a public-domain free-for-all when it came to books. It would allow you to search, say, a quote from one of Einstein's essays to find where it was published, but you'd then have to buy or borrow the book from somewhere else in order to read it. I think it's a pretty damn cool idea although I admit that Google having a repository of every text in a single library, let alone every text they can get their massive volunteer force to upload, is a little scary. And I can see why an author would be wary of all of this, especially if Google's not paying to keep the copies they are making. The end-users are only getting text fragments based on search terms, but since Google itself is copying entire books it would stand to reason that they should get permission first, especially if you're the author whose works they're scanning.
That being said, I don't think Ms. LeGuin's petition is quite on-track. This isn't about controlling her work; her work will be protected in Google's data centers and not pirated or distributed without permission (more than usual, anyway) regardless of whether Google pays for its copy or "borrows" it from the library (see also: copying is not theft). I see a completely different issue here: Why are we relying on Google to do this for us? University libraries have these page scanners (or at least mine did; I assume others have them as well) and professors at my university used them to put selected readings online all the time. What hurdles are standing in the way of public libraries that prevent them from providing this service, instead of relying on a corporation? I'd assume that since a library has already paid to put books on its shelves (unlike Google, which pulled from library resources), it would be acceptable to scan and copy books for an internal backup database, and work in cooperation with Google to provide the keyword search and point users to the appropriate library shelf. IANAL, though, and what seems like it would fall under fair use to me (considering that if I own a piece of software I can make a private "backup" copy of it; why not a book?) might not be. If anything, offering a full text search on a scanned book seems like the toughest thing to pass off because I can't come up with anything that has been done like it. Anyone have insight on this?
Mod Parent UP!
Library lending is probably far more rampant than book piracy, although that may be on the rise with e-books making it easier to get the source material onto your computer in the first place (no one I know bothers with scanning an entire hardcover for the sake of uploading it). I don't see the point of pirating e-books anyway, really. I can't stand reading on my computer monitor and I can't be arsed to buy a reader, when I have a bookshelf and am still getting gift cards for actual bookstores.
Aside from dosage issues, etc... has anyone considered that people taking "herbal supplements" may also show other behavioral changes which may affect memory and cognitive capacities?
I expect if we attempted the kind of study complicated enough to trace and collect data from a dozen behavioral components (such as amount of reading/writing done, daily exercise, diet, social life, mental health/stability...) we'd find that one factor does not control memory loss or cognitive function. I'd bet money it's a lifestyle indicator, more than an indicator of taking the right herbal supplements.
Actually, if the directional light was below the green, and the driver was unfamiliar with the intersection, it's entirely possible that the light could have been mistaken for a full green. Most of us are taught since elementary school that the light on the bottom is green, middle yellow, top red. Add another one to the bottom and it'll confuse a lot of people. I much prefer the signals I've seen around here where there are a lot of separate turning lanes for left turns - a full separate signal with 2 arrows (green on bottom, yellow middle) and a red light at the top, so that the left turn is impossible to mistake for a full green even in bad weather.
I think by hand signs he means the frantic hand-waving gesture which is supposed to mean "No, you go first!", usually made by female drivers. It's rarely useful because it is common for two or more drivers to all get into a waving war, while no one takes the initiative. See above poster's note on jerks keeping traffic moving. I don't wave people on - I do however take the opportunity to go if someone else oh so politely wiggles their hand at me through the windshield.