Frankly what ever the number of years a copyright is now should be good enough. After that the book should become public domain. Now there might be some small exceptions (like how to build a hydrogen bomb in you bath tub as an example). Technology is changing just to fast. Even lets say you had a BIG best seller. The copyright law allows you to collect money for (I think 28 years). Lets say something like the BIBLE (or some "new" book) the people are giving away copies of the Bible, who should get the money from that (if you allow copy writes to live forever). Our best guess says it was a group of people from say 2000 years ago) again are you going to give the money to the Catholics? to the Lutherans? To the Mormons? All the(western) religions will be claiming rights and we will end up in a holy war at Fort Knox. Do we really want the europeans coming over here and making a mess out of the US like they have done to the med East? NO>>>>>>>>>>>>
To your comment "Nothing is completely secure-- even strong passwords might be defeated through sheer luck or coercion"
Not true the Swiss are using electronic balloting in a 100 percent (not 99.9999999999999999999999999999999 etc ) safe and secure method. The Swiss do like to keep secrets and they do it in a safe and secure way.
So, if someone were to stalk you and post all the information online would you be upset?
Probably. What makes this so bad is that there are undercover police people involved. They give us protection and they do at at a heavy cost to themselves and their families.
Would you want to go out on the street if their are no police to keep you safe from the criminals out there, probably not and you would be the first to complain about such situation. I am NOT a fan of the police but they do have a job to do and the do it right most of the time. They are also the people out there finding and jailing the bad guys.
well... That is OK in Canada but in the US it is NOT a simple answer. There are all sorts of ways a company gets around the 40 hour work week. The simplest is that they can call an "exempt" employee. So it comes down to work as many hours as is needed to get the job done.
ABout 20 years ago I was working 100+ hours a week, I did not see a dime of overtime, ever. I was so good in fact they thought they didn't need me and they laid me off. Then they had to hire 3 people to do the same job I was doing.
The companies in the US are generally jerks when it comes time to pay for OT for IS people. IBM got away with it for years and years and years.
As for healthcare you get what ever the employer has a contract with at that point in time. I was with one company for 15 years and every 5 years we would get a worse health insurance company. Most of my friends who had spouses in other companies asked for them to be carried the spouses insurance.
Of course I do know there are companies that do not offer any health insurance but those tend to be the places where people do not want to work there in the first place.
"education and training policy" eh thats a good one I laughed for about 5 minutes on that one. I asked the same question and got assurances that training will be provided.
Here is the real story (at least at one place where I worked) you asked the boss is this course "OK" to take and he says sure that is part of your job go ahead. Fast forward 6 months and you hand the bill for company tuition reimbursement to the boss. He turns around and says "This course is not part of your job so no we will not pay for it" end of discussion. Everybody got the message do not expect to get reimbursed for any education.
The problem is that there is no way to hold your boss responsible without going to court. Also, the way the in the US (most of the time) it gets sent for mediation. Did I forget to tell you the company gets to pick the mediator and there is also quite a bit of "I will scratch your back if you scratch mine" in these mediation companies. Essentially the mediation is nothing more that a jury that only favors the company side.
I know he is a huge jerk and his reaction is at best short sighted.
People, IMO, will stay away from any site that charges for everything. A good example is WSJ. I never go near the site after a couple of years ago they want $$ for a 1 paragraph story that showed up in the journal. I had already paid for the paper. What I ended up doing was scanning the 1 paragraph "story" into text and sent it to my friends (who already get the journal) but had not seen it.
I will also do the same for any site that charges. I know he is a money grubbing a** but now he has tipped the boat to far.
Hmmm doesn't this sentence seem like something is wrong:
"most people just never even try to figure out"
With the basic premise of the product? Word has gotten so bloated over the years that no one can keep on top of its capabilities. I am a user of Word Perfect and I am sure I do not understand all the capabilities of it, however, I can figure out 99 percent of the issues if I do a show/reveal codes. Approximately 18 years ago I started with WP and if I didn't understand why it was doing something I would do a reveal codes and all would be explained as it made simple sense.
My first attempt at WORD ended up in failure as I could not figure out how to so something simple. A call to the help desk gave no help and even the secretaries couldn't figure out something that would have taken me all of a minute to figure out in Word Perfect.
I do simple things like writing letters and creating envelopes is nothing like trying to get the same thing done with WORD. No embedded super features or anything. I would suspect that is what 90 percent of the people out there use it for. Why pay for all these blankity blank features when only 10 percent will use them (if that much).
If people want to continue to use a Word processing program to do really nifty things great have a Word processor that has all the bells and whistles for the 90 percent of the people and come up with a word processing feature for the 10 percent.
No, they are the "thingy" items that MS sends outs its OS on. It is so buggy anyway the items attract other bugs so they are useful pest control objects.
Never mind that you left many OS's out of your comment. There are actually OS's that ARE *SMART* and they truly optimize (pretty much by themselves the work load and they also have an very high I/O thru-put). Non of the OS's you cite can come close. And this has been done with more and more sophistication over the last 50 years that it would make those OS's you listed are arcane and should be set out to greener pasteurs.
I *HATE* the num locks key. I have it turned off in the keyboard layout. I am sure there is a reason why it is there but I do not use it and disable the damn thing.
I will be the first to commend Canada for doing so. I applaud their initiative. I may not know many Canadians but I would venture a guess that most (read 99 percent) are extremely honest and would not try and screw around with the election process.
Americans are a *LOT* different than our friends from the North. I would be cautious oh sure but I would trust a Canadian voter judge over most American election judges. I am sure there are 1 or 2 rotten ones but compared to the thousands we have in the US. That is a sad commentary on the US.
To be upfront here I worked at several companies over the last 40+ years and they all has IBM Mainframes. I have a slant which is a little different than most so here it goes:
In the beginning and up until Amdahl came along yes IBM was extremely non competitive. After Amdahl IBM still retained its uncompetitive stance and when IBM went to OCO (Object Code Only). Once they essentially did that any and all so called competitors were(are) dead in the water. You cannot reverse engineer (it would be way hard) a lot of machine instructions. Although IBM documents(well I might add) most (not all) in a book called POP (principals of operations). Remember I did not say *ALL* I said most.
IBM has also come up from time to time with new instructions and most of them are miscellaneous places in their code so if the code was to run on a non IBM machine it would fail. Good bad its a mixed bag, IMO.
In the recent time IBM pulled some fast tricks(IMO) on an OEM that was trying to sell a small version of the MF. There is a long story that I will not go into here but users are really clamoring for a small machine to do testing/development work on and IBM shut the OEM down so fast you could not blink an eye.
Fast forward to this year and IBM is coming up finally with smaller machines. I still hear groans from OEMs as they lost some business. Will it succeed (IBM's forced that you must use IBM hardware) maybe. Ibm, IMO is on the brink of a bug fall they have screwed so many people I am almost tempted to say "yes they will fall"
I think I understand IBM's position but do not agree with it. Yes they have in server box enough resources to run possibly 1000's of servers.
Are they short sided? YES they let go a large number of extremely talented people in the 80's & 90's. The marketing rep and the SE (Sales engineer) were a just plane stupid move. If you had good SE & MR you could open doors all over IBM and actually had some input to IBM future. Now its a miracle to find either of these individuals let alone good ones.
True, but they stole money from everyone (almost) and now lot of people are not going to be in a risky home situation where they may not have enough money to feed themselves which means we will have to support them with our tax money. Plus the government is going to get involved and that means 80 cents (or more) of every dollar we give them will go to the to the people who administer the program.
I am not going to get into the employment/unemployment argument. What I have found in the last say 40 years in IT. Schooling is fine up to a point but I would be happy to find someone who can do their jobs at least reasonably well and that do not expect riches overnight (no racing car and million dollar houses). The people that can sit back and think for themselves in a way which they win and the company wins are the ones needed. Not the hot shot "I can code in any language you can throw at me". We need people who have the brains to look at an issue and take it on so it gets fixed with every bodies participation and approval. In other woods not yes type people.
There are very few people like that and when you find them hire them. I hired one about a year ago and he is still here and doing a great job and he is from the US. Not to sound down on foreign workers almost none of them do not have the self motivation that is needed and the willingness to be a self starter and can handle office politics (well). Also, good debuggers seems to have become a lost art. That is desperately needed as well
I also find Americans are less interested in keeping the same technology and they want to learn more and better way of doing things where foreign people (at least the ones I have tried) just tend not to have the imagination needed.
I just wrote the hospital and sent $5 and in a week I got the birth certificate. Another friend called and they sent it out the next day. So indeed it depends on where you live (BTW the two places above were in different states).
The trick (in IL) is to go to the DMV in non rush hour times and go to one that is far away from the crowds. I have as little as possible to do with the DMV but the few times I have gone there has been minimal time waiting (10 minutes max) and the only downside is the stupid written drivers test. I swear they love to use double negative questions. Then the guy has the nerve to say "don't you know this?" yes I do but when you couch the questions in double negatives I do not know it. The first time I went to the DMV was to get an IL drivers license after I moved here from Ohio. It was a breeze and all succeeding renewals have gone smooth and we are in a state run mostly by Republicans who are as crooked as the Democrats.
No no you have it wrong make BUSH the governor of Nt St. Helens. With a chain driven down about 100 feet.
Then you make everyone happy. Oh yes if you want to make his cabinet as citizens and fence them in as well I will vote for any candidate that would do this.
There is also a nice issue in the same area in which there is no good answer.
What if someone from Geek Squad (or whoever) puts child porn on your computer it is almost impossible that the "owner" had done it or someone else. I am sure the courts would not allow the introduction of such evidence (or would they?). With the way PC based systems work there is not logging of file update/deletion or change. Essentially if a cleaning woman puts it on there while you are not at home there would be no way to find out who really did do it.
What might be more interesting is to ban the trading of MSN stock on any american exchange. Frankly, Steve B is a big boy and if he can't have all his toys let him go some place where to can. Sooner or later that country will be over thrown and then Steve will have to move again. He will have to stay out of Europe so that limits him to South America and Australia. Australia has the room for the big ego Stevie has but will not put up his shenanigans for very long. Well we could give him an igloo at the pole and let him feed the endangered specious in his spare time The other option is to shoot him into space on a voyager type mission after 20 years we will not be able to hear him anymore.
Or wait we could give him a passport to Russia. Then the Russians can take the credit for all of Stevies little ideas. Bet they won't put up with his pettiness over there
Slashdot Mirror
I am not a lawyer and I am not (too ) published.
Frankly what ever the number of years a copyright is now should be good enough. After that the book should become public domain. Now there might be some small exceptions (like how to build a hydrogen bomb in you bath tub as an example). Technology is changing just to fast. Even lets say you had a BIG best seller. The copyright law allows you to collect money for (I think 28 years). Lets say something like the BIBLE (or some "new" book) the people are giving away copies of the Bible, who should get the money from that (if you allow copy writes to live forever). Our best guess says it was a group of people from say 2000 years ago) again are you going to give the money to the Catholics? to the Lutherans? To the Mormons? All the(western) religions will be claiming rights and we will end up in a holy war at Fort Knox. Do we really want the europeans coming over here and making a mess out of the US like they have done to the med East? NO>>>>>>>>>>>>
To your comment "Nothing is completely secure-- even strong passwords might be defeated through sheer luck or coercion"
Not true the Swiss are using electronic balloting in a 100 percent (not 99.9999999999999999999999999999999 etc ) safe and secure method. The Swiss do like to keep secrets and they do it in a safe and secure way.
So, if someone were to stalk you and post all the information online would you be upset?
Probably. What makes this so bad is that there are undercover police people involved. They give us protection and they do at at a heavy cost to themselves and their families.
Would you want to go out on the street if their are no police to keep you safe from the criminals out there, probably not and you would be the first to complain about such situation. I am NOT a fan of the police but they do have a job to do and the do it right most of the time. They are also the people out there finding and jailing the bad guys.
Could you afford to hire your own police person?
Lay off and let the police do their jobs.
well... That is OK in Canada but in the US it is NOT a simple answer. There are all sorts of ways a company gets around the 40 hour work week. The simplest is that they can call an "exempt" employee. So it comes down to work as many hours as is needed to get the job done.
ABout 20 years ago I was working 100+ hours a week, I did not see a dime of overtime, ever. I was so good in fact they thought they didn't need me and they laid me off. Then they had to hire 3 people to do the same job I was doing.
The companies in the US are generally jerks when it comes time to pay for OT for IS people. IBM got away with it for years and years and years.
As for healthcare you get what ever the employer has a contract with at that point in time. I was with one company for 15 years and every 5 years we would get a worse health insurance company. Most of my friends who had spouses in other companies asked for them to be carried the spouses insurance.
Of course I do know there are companies that do not offer any health insurance but those tend to be the places where people do not want to work there in the first place.
"education and training policy" eh thats a good one I laughed for about 5 minutes on that one. I asked the same question and got assurances that training will be provided.
Here is the real story (at least at one place where I worked) you asked the boss is this course "OK" to take and he says sure that is part of your job go ahead.
Fast forward 6 months and you hand the bill for company tuition reimbursement to the boss. He turns around and says "This course is not part of your job so no we will not pay for it" end of discussion. Everybody got the message do not expect to get
reimbursed for any education.
The problem is that there is no way to hold your boss responsible without going to court. Also, the way the in the US (most of the time) it gets sent for mediation. Did I forget to tell you the company gets to pick the mediator and there is also quite a bit of "I will scratch your back if you scratch mine" in these mediation companies. Essentially the mediation is nothing more that a jury that only favors the company side.
Mediation is nothing but a big joke in the US.
Well add Jerry Louis to the list as well. The French love him but they are about his only fans.
I know he is a huge jerk and his reaction is at best short sighted.
People, IMO, will stay away from any site that charges for everything. A good example is WSJ. I never go near the site after a couple of years ago they want $$ for a 1 paragraph story that showed up in the journal. I had already paid for the paper. What I ended up doing was scanning the 1 paragraph "story" into text and sent it to my friends (who already get the journal) but had not seen it.
I will also do the same for any site that charges. I know he is a money grubbing a** but now he has tipped the boat to far.
Hmmm doesn't this sentence seem like something is wrong:
"most people just never even try to figure out"
With the basic premise of the product? Word has gotten so bloated over the years that no one can keep on top of its capabilities. I am a user of Word Perfect and I am sure I do not understand all the capabilities of it, however, I can figure out 99 percent of the issues if I do a show/reveal codes. Approximately 18 years ago I started with WP and if I didn't understand why it was doing something I would do a reveal codes and all would be explained as it made simple sense.
My first attempt at WORD ended up in failure as I could not figure out how to so something simple. A call to the help desk gave no help and even the secretaries couldn't figure out something that would have taken me all of a minute to figure out in Word Perfect.
I do simple things like writing letters and creating envelopes is nothing like trying to get the same thing done with WORD. No embedded super features or anything. I would suspect that is what 90 percent of the people out there use it for. Why pay for all these blankity blank features when only 10 percent will use them (if that much).
If people want to continue to use a Word processing program to do really nifty things great have a Word processor that has all the bells and whistles for the 90 percent of the people and come up with a word processing feature for the 10 percent.
You betcha and hope your mother did not got turned for using brand X.
No, they are the "thingy" items that MS sends outs its OS on. It is so buggy anyway the items attract other bugs so they are useful pest control objects.
Well now lets look at this situation.
I use SAFARI and every once in a while I will see the message about an invalid certificate.
*IF* I am at a site that say is a newspaper. I ignore it as I am just reading articles and not doing any $$ transactions.
Isn't his a reasonable reason to ignore the message?
Never mind that you left many OS's out of your comment. There are actually OS's that ARE *SMART* and they truly optimize (pretty much by themselves the work load and they also have an very high I/O thru-put). Non of the OS's you cite can come close. And this has been done with more and more sophistication over the last 50 years that it would make those OS's you listed are arcane and should be set out to greener pasteurs.
I *HATE* the num locks key. I have it turned off in the keyboard layout. I am sure there is a reason why it is there but I do not use it and disable the damn thing.
Or even better delete OS key.
That would help out users a lot more.
I will be the first to commend Canada for doing so. I applaud their initiative. I may not know many Canadians but I would venture a guess that most (read 99 percent) are extremely honest and would not try and screw around with the election process.
Americans are a *LOT* different than our friends from the North. I would be cautious oh sure but I would trust a Canadian voter judge over most American election judges. I am sure there are 1 or 2 rotten ones but compared to the thousands we have in the US.
That is a sad commentary on the US.
To be upfront here I worked at several companies over the last 40+ years and they all has IBM Mainframes. I have a slant which is a little different than most so here it goes:
In the beginning and up until Amdahl came along yes IBM was extremely non competitive. After Amdahl IBM still retained its uncompetitive stance and when IBM went to OCO (Object Code Only). Once they essentially did that any and all so called competitors were(are) dead in the water. You cannot reverse engineer (it would be way hard) a lot of machine instructions. Although IBM documents(well I might add) most (not all) in a book called POP (principals of operations). Remember I did not say *ALL* I said most.
IBM has also come up from time to time with new instructions and most of them are miscellaneous places in their code so if the code was to run on a non IBM machine it would fail. Good bad its a mixed bag, IMO.
In the recent time IBM pulled some fast tricks(IMO) on an OEM that was trying to sell a small version of the MF. There is a long story that I will not go into here but users are really clamoring for a small machine to do testing/development work on and IBM shut the OEM down so fast you could not blink an eye.
Fast forward to this year and IBM is coming up finally with smaller machines. I still hear groans from OEMs as they lost some business. Will it succeed (IBM's forced that you must use IBM hardware) maybe. Ibm, IMO is on the brink of a bug fall they have screwed so many people I am almost tempted to say "yes they will fall"
I think I understand IBM's position but do not agree with it. Yes they have in server box enough resources to run possibly 1000's of servers.
Are they short sided? YES they let go a large number of extremely talented people in the 80's & 90's. The marketing rep and the SE (Sales engineer) were a just plane stupid move. If you had good SE & MR you could open doors all over IBM and actually had some input to IBM future. Now its a miracle to find either of these individuals let alone good ones.
True, but they stole money from everyone (almost) and now lot of people are not going to be in a risky home situation where they may not have enough money to feed themselves which means we will have to support them with our tax money. Plus the government is going to get involved and that means 80 cents (or more) of every dollar we give them will go to the to the people who administer the program.
I am not going to get into the employment/unemployment argument. What I have found in the last say 40 years in IT. Schooling is fine up to a point but I would be happy to find someone who can do their jobs at least reasonably well and that do not expect riches overnight (no racing car and million dollar houses). The people that can sit back and think for themselves in a way which they win and the company wins are the ones needed. Not the hot shot "I can code in any language you can throw at me". We need people who have the brains to look at an issue and take it on so it gets fixed with every bodies participation and approval. In other woods not yes type people.
There are very few people like that and when you find them hire them. I hired one about a year ago and he is still here and doing a great job and he is from the US. Not to sound down on foreign workers almost none of them do not have the self motivation that is needed and the willingness to be a self starter and can handle office politics (well). Also, good debuggers seems to have become a lost art. That is desperately needed as well
I also find Americans are less interested in keeping the same technology and they want to learn more and better way of doing things where foreign people (at least the ones I have tried) just tend not to have the imagination needed.
Or even worse get tasered by a policeman that likes to do the same to 70++ year old women.
I just wrote the hospital and sent $5 and in a week I got the birth certificate. Another friend called and they sent it out the next day. So indeed it depends on where you live (BTW the two places above were in different states).
The trick (in IL) is to go to the DMV in non rush hour times and go to one that is far away from the crowds. I have as little as possible to do with the DMV but the few times I have gone there has been minimal time waiting (10 minutes max) and the only downside is the stupid written drivers test. I swear they love to use double negative questions. Then the guy has the nerve to say "don't you know this?" yes I do but when you couch the questions in double negatives I do not know it.
The first time I went to the DMV was to get an IL drivers license after I moved here from Ohio. It was a breeze and all succeeding renewals have gone smooth and we are in a state run mostly by Republicans who are as crooked as the Democrats.
No no you have it wrong make BUSH the governor of Nt St. Helens. With a chain driven down about 100 feet.
Then you make everyone happy. Oh yes if you want to make his cabinet as citizens and fence them in as well I will vote for any candidate that would do this.
FIXED?
Did you have "the operation" no? Then do not say it is "fixed".
There is also a nice issue in the same area in which there is no good answer.
What if someone from Geek Squad (or whoever) puts child porn on your computer it is almost impossible that the "owner" had done it or someone else. I am sure the courts would not allow the introduction of such evidence (or would they?). With the way PC based systems work there is not logging of file update/deletion or change. Essentially if a cleaning woman puts it on there while you are not at home there would be no way to find out who really did do it.
What might be more interesting is to ban the trading of MSN stock on any american exchange. Frankly, Steve B is a big boy and if he can't have all his toys let him go some place where to can. Sooner or later that country will be over thrown and then Steve will have to move again. He will have to stay out of Europe so that limits him to South America and Australia. Australia has the room for the big ego Stevie has but will not put up his shenanigans for very long. Well we could give him an igloo at the pole and let him feed the endangered specious in his spare time The other option is to shoot him into space on a voyager type mission after 20 years we will not be able to hear him anymore.
Or wait we could give him a passport to Russia. Then the Russians can take the credit for all of Stevies little ideas. Bet they won't put up with his pettiness over there