You mean this law that's being a) ignored, b) ignored, c) ignored, d) ignored and e) ignored ?
The 25- page brief (PDF) continues the DOJ's practice of (a) ignoring the case law which holds that the Supreme Court's due process jurisprudence is applicable to statutory damages, (b) ignoring the law review articles to like effect, (c) ignoring the actual holding of the 1919 case they rely upon, (d) ignoring the fact that the RIAA failed to prove 'distribution' as defined by the Copyright Act, and (e) ignoring the actual wording and reasoning of the Supreme Court in its leading Gore and Campbell decisions.
I don't think anyone is really saying file sharing is ok. What's wrong is the ways in which people are being raped by the RIAA, the absolutely ridiculous amounts of fines, etc. Those amounts have a purpose for the RIAA, they want them to be so ridiculously high that people will stop. Guess what, not working. Therefore, there is nothing to justify them. The music industry doesn't help themselves by wanting to make you pay over and over again for the same music because you want to play it on a different device. They simply come across as the greedy ba****ds that they really are. Hopefully, someday, all the musicians will be done with the recording companies and sell it all on their own.
Exactly how clueless are you? How many times are you going to give this guy a free pass on his appointments and hires? He can't even put someone up that isn't exposed almost instantly with some baggage. The only change he's come up with is that these people are exposed instantly versus weeks/months/years.
This is what we get with the big O in charge.... OPRAH had a major to do with getting him in, what group of people do you think obama is going to be beholden to?
I guess I'll be the 100th person or so to say that $500 for hardware of this level is a total ripoff. The only thing causing this to cost more than about $175 is the 3GB of memory as machines at that price point have 1GB and a $20 optical drive. Price should be no more than $225.
Perhaps you should take a look at what the bulk of say TV shows are available in for download from "fill in your source" here. AVI
"Obsolete" is a word that is used by someone or some company that wants you to buy their new product or buy into their mantra. Back in the mainframe days a company insured their multi-million dollar mainframe against becoming obsolete. At some point they claimed it was obsolete. The insurance company said prove it. They said it runs your programs properly, blah, blah, blah. The insurance company won and rightfully so.
Is a standard definition TV set obsolete? Certainly not yet. Cable/Satellite/Converter boxes still provide signals that can be watched in either the old aspect ratio or in letterbox. Of course every HD TV mfr wants you to believe that and every provider wants you to get an HD box.
Am I supposed to throw out my DVD players that can play AVI out and buy new ones because the Handbrake guys say so. Not going to happen. I'll just not use their software if I have any conversion tasks. In my opinion this is just a foolish move and plenty of others think so too.
It didn't work the first time and it won't work this time. The paper is a political rag now anyways. I used to love it for all of the other sections but when their "news" became a day-to-day political agenda that was it for me.
Yeah you can tell that to HR on your exit interview after they fire you for substandard work. Don't be more of an ass than the manager. The manager is simply wrong but guess what, he/she is an ass and unfortunately you have to abide by their decision unless someone above is willing to countermand that decision. That is the way I work.
Start at the top and work down, present some valid published research to support your point. You cannot use your work as an example since that's an obvious conflict of interest and you will of course make the numbers work to support what you want. Make sure you remain anonymous and that if you are successful with this tactic keep quiet about it.
As for me, I have the TV on all day. When I'm busy and engrossed in my work, I might see the start of a show and then the credits rolling at the end.
You never know. Perhaps they are being funded by the very ones they are suing to establish some precedent. For sure it's at the very least the cheapest global advertising you can get even if it never goes to trial or they simply drop it. You pay the couple of hundred dollars or less it costs to file and they get 100's of thousands or more of free publicity.
That's an incredibly ridiculous example. There are dozens of generic plumbers, electricians, etc that are available and you as the consumer have a choice just as they do. They can decline your offer to employ them for no reason at all because they generally have enough work since they usually have 1000s of potential employers. You ever work with these people. We'll be there tomorrow, no show, BS excuse, Tuesday no show, had an emergency, etc.
This guys position is absolutely nothing like that. My scenario is simple, you call me off hours, that's a 1/2 day minimum because chances are you interrupted my sleep, interrupted my weekend or interrupted my vacation. You didn't have to pay someone to work those hours while I'm not there so that's your savings. Large companies employ people around the world for coverage or have 2nd and 3rd shifts. Small companies can simply pay someone a major premium for a rare occurrence instead of employing extra personnel. You can use your imagination how often I get called. Practically never. Those critical problems suddenly become not so critical.
Make an attempt to switch them over to free for commercial use products as mentioned (e.g. 7-Zip, whatever free PDF software). That might get them into the mood to switch over to more FOSS or pay for licenses once it's shown to be a success. Then ask "what should we do with the remainder of the license issues" that they are more hesitant to switch from (e.g. Office) pointing out that a disgruntled employee or ex-employee could turn them in for a bounty. You want to appear that you are helping them to avoid a potentially huge fine. They will either go along with it or possibly fire you. If they fire you drop a dime and collect additional unemployment benefits.
A gross insult to people who actually deserved the award. This guy went from a nothing to the president of the United States and has DELIVERED nothing but scripted speeches. People who actually did things for years or lifetimes were passed over because the "potential" is there that this guy MIGHT deliver something. Another group pandering to Hollywood. My disgust has reached a new level.
Many good points particularly the "fatal wound" comments. I've found it useful to have your internal clients do your dirty work as well. Sometimes your boss' boss is clueless or unaware of the ineptness of your boss and you need others to perform that function for you. Mind you every effort should be made to do things the right way (good karma) before resorting to this. Sadly being nice, helping people do their job, etc frequently accomplishes nothing.
Here's the story I love repeating. We had a "boss" that was thrust upon us one afternoon when my colleague was told he would run the project that morning. We had the expertise in the project, this guy was being unloaded from somewhere else and landed on us. We tried to get along but the guy was a total loser. Every meeting he had with others would result in a change of plans which of course we would have to re-document. At one point it cycled back to the original plan and then with the next meeting another change of plans where we decided enough was enough. We refused to make any more changes. It was a Friday and after stating "But, I'm the boss" he said take the rest of the day off and let's start fresh on Monday. After all of his crap and many beers it was deemed time to eliminate him.
Our first opportunity (his own fault) was during a large meeting. My colleague professionally offered to present because after all we were the experts. The boss, of course, said he'll do it. Within a few minutes he was getting questions (due to his utter lack of knowledge) from the group. He would re-present the question ineptly to us (we were in the meeting) and our responses were "we're not sure what you're asking for Joe" or "we're not sure what you are referring to Joe". We, of course, commented to the attendees afterward about how well the meeting went.
Our last effort was a couple of days before his vacation. We intentionally kept the documentation without page numbers and shuffled. He asked us if we had read anything good lately (surprising since he had seen a copy of "How to Fire your Boss" on one our desks a couple of weeks earlier). Then he asked if he could get a copy of the document to read. As we predicted that night he put page numbers on it, a cover page with only his name on it and distributed it the next day before leaving early. Later that day we went around distributing our properly titled, order and paginated document to everyone. Each person asked what it was that Joe had distributed. We advised them to read it (or try to) and then read ours.
Joe was fired a couple of months later on Christmas Eve but after both of us had transferred leaving the project with no expertise for the effort.
Pretty close. However, if you can bring a new tool in and quickly and clearly demonstrate the advantages of this tool you stand a chance. Did it with Cold Fusion. Demonstrated how quickly one can knock out a website versus the excruciating Java development environment that was set up. It became something of a grassroots development environment in the company and dozens of apps are written in it. They tried to get it out because they only wanted to use Weblogic but fortunately CF was rewritten to run in Weblogic and other app engines and that kept it in here.
Your first sentence is quite accurate though. Things that can be touchy feely as soon as possible always impress. Add real data into it and they'll be putty in your hands. Beware! As soon as they see something seemingly nearly working they'll expect it yesterday so a realistic timeframe needs to be presented in advance of showing off anything.
Absolutely untrue. Most people want to avoid change. You have to factor many things in not just higher salary. Commute, hours, family, debt, environment (co-workers, office space, office location). Are there people like this, definitely.
Where do I see it the most. Outsourcing companies. People making say 30K will leave tomorrow for 33-35K because 1) that's a huge % difference; 2) the new commute might be going to a different floor in the same building; 3) the demand is there and this is the norm. Who's suffering for this, the client. You end up with a revolving door of developers where their experience is nearly zero, have no prior knowledge of the company they're going to do the work for, etc. You could easily end up with a group of people working on something for 6 months or a year, say you need a couple of more enhancements and you have an entirely new team of people and you're back to square one.
Where else, middle to upper management where generic manager A convinces some other company that they're the greatest thing since sliced bread, they hire him for a lot more money and after 2 years or less he's gone from your place and repeating the cycle somewhere else. Of course, after they've left your company realizes what a dolt he/she was and the cleaning up the mess begins. I know a guy that does this. He must start planning his departure a little after a year or 18 months after his arrival.
Another example of a company striving for mediocrity by replacing acknowledged, talented people with "x" number of "y" people that cost as much or less. I had a similar experience. I ran the whole environment (which management should never have allowed but never wanted to pay for more staff), never a problem, only kudos, total support by the internal clientele. I even brought money in from other divisions to support their needs. 13 management changes, most were wise (or lazy) managers that were more than happy to simply sign my timesheet, ask me if they needed to do anything for me, etc. Then, of course, there's the manager that just has to make their mark. Let's replace him with some outsourcing. My client's were sold a bill of goods which I warned them about but they were getting this change rammed down their throats. Fortunately, the clients from the other divisions realized what the deal was and hired me in directly from day 1.
So after eventually staffing up with 5 outsourcers and a year+ goes by, absolutely nothing new was developed, problems were rampant, clients disgusted, etc, I get a call. Can you come back in and help us out with this, that and the other thing. I was more than happy to be double paid working at my convenience, etc.
For the young guy, doing a good job is mandatory. Making sure you have people that want to keep you in your job is also mandatory. Those people are generally not IT people. They are your clients and they are the ones being charged by IT to pay for you. The more important/high level your client the more survivability you have. The more breadth of clientele the better. I had clients that went 3 levels up in their management chain just to have him tell IT to go stick it for 3 years on replacing me. During that time I cultivated more internal clients and ended up where I am now. Do I want to spend my time being political, no. I just want to deliver good quality stuff quickly in support of my clients. However, it's simply unavoidable.
We've gotten several inquires about this by the fantastically loyal and knowledgeable Mac community. After further investigating the item, here's the information: Firstly, this Macintosh was, indeed, presented to Gene Roddenberry by Apple. There is no doubt about this. The conflict between the photo and the serial number is as follows. This computer, given by Apple to Mr. Roddenberry, is an early production Macintosh 128 (#776), which was then upgraded by Apple for Gene to a Macintosh Plus-thus the model number / serial number / panel that "belongs to" a Macintosh Plus. The 0001 led us to mistakenly believe that it was the first one off the line. Again, the provenance of the item is perfect and it did belong to Mr. Roddenberry. I apologize for any confusion.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could get the entire country or even better world to not buy any music for a few days in protest of the RIAA / ASCAP / Record Labels BS NAZI tactics? Any other business that pulled this BS would be out of business in a second. Imagine walking into a car showroom and them saying "Ok, that'll be $20 to take a testdrive" or a clothing store to say "That'll be $2 to try that on"?
How could one conclude that Lego was "saved" by these tie-ins and would have ceased to exist? Did they promote added sales, etc, yeah sure. But "saved" is simply a ridiculous statement.
Perhaps someone pulled a switcharoo? If someone actually called NASA and they said they had provided a rock for this purpose then that is likely true. What was presented may or may not have been real or at some point after the presentation some monkey business might have occurred.
So you're basically better off shoplifting, stealing from the library, breaking into cars, stealing iPods, etc. Sorry the "crime" does not justify the "fine".
This is why we need to have penalties for filing nuisance law suits. Yes, another person in this world that wants to blame their problems on anyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Was the first thing that popped into my head too. Of course, depends on many factors I'm sure.
You mean this law that's being a) ignored, b) ignored, c) ignored, d) ignored and e) ignored ?
The 25- page brief (PDF) continues the DOJ's practice of (a) ignoring the case law which holds that the Supreme Court's due process jurisprudence is applicable to statutory damages, (b) ignoring the law review articles to like effect, (c) ignoring the actual holding of the 1919 case they rely upon, (d) ignoring the fact that the RIAA failed to prove 'distribution' as defined by the Copyright Act, and (e) ignoring the actual wording and reasoning of the Supreme Court in its leading Gore and Campbell decisions.
I don't think anyone is really saying file sharing is ok. What's wrong is the ways in which people are being raped by the RIAA, the absolutely ridiculous amounts of fines, etc. Those amounts have a purpose for the RIAA, they want them to be so ridiculously high that people will stop. Guess what, not working. Therefore, there is nothing to justify them. The music industry doesn't help themselves by wanting to make you pay over and over again for the same music because you want to play it on a different device. They simply come across as the greedy ba****ds that they really are. Hopefully, someday, all the musicians will be done with the recording companies and sell it all on their own.
Exactly how clueless are you? How many times are you going to give this guy a free pass on his appointments and hires? He can't even put someone up that isn't exposed almost instantly with some baggage. The only change he's come up with is that these people are exposed instantly versus weeks/months/years.
This is what we get with the big O in charge.... OPRAH had a major to do with getting him in, what group of people do you think obama is going to be beholden to?
I guess I'll be the 100th person or so to say that $500 for hardware of this level is a total ripoff. The only thing causing this to cost more than about $175 is the 3GB of memory as machines at that price point have 1GB and a $20 optical drive. Price should be no more than $225.
Perhaps you should take a look at what the bulk of say TV shows are available in for download from "fill in your source" here. AVI
"Obsolete" is a word that is used by someone or some company that wants you to buy their new product or buy into their mantra. Back in the mainframe days a company insured their multi-million dollar mainframe against becoming obsolete. At some point they claimed it was obsolete. The insurance company said prove it. They said it runs your programs properly, blah, blah, blah. The insurance company won and rightfully so.
Is a standard definition TV set obsolete? Certainly not yet. Cable/Satellite/Converter boxes still provide signals that can be watched in either the old aspect ratio or in letterbox. Of course every HD TV mfr wants you to believe that and every provider wants you to get an HD box.
Am I supposed to throw out my DVD players that can play AVI out and buy new ones because the Handbrake guys say so. Not going to happen. I'll just not use their software if I have any conversion tasks. In my opinion this is just a foolish move and plenty of others think so too.
It didn't work the first time and it won't work this time. The paper is a political rag now anyways. I used to love it for all of the other sections but when their "news" became a day-to-day political agenda that was it for me.
Thanks. You saved me the trouble of writing this :-)
Yeah you can tell that to HR on your exit interview after they fire you for substandard work. Don't be more of an ass than the manager. The manager is simply wrong but guess what, he/she is an ass and unfortunately you have to abide by their decision unless someone above is willing to countermand that decision. That is the way I work.
Start at the top and work down, present some valid published research to support your point. You cannot use your work as an example since that's an obvious conflict of interest and you will of course make the numbers work to support what you want. Make sure you remain anonymous and that if you are successful with this tactic keep quiet about it.
As for me, I have the TV on all day. When I'm busy and engrossed in my work, I might see the start of a show and then the credits rolling at the end.
You never know. Perhaps they are being funded by the very ones they are suing to establish some precedent. For sure it's at the very least the cheapest global advertising you can get even if it never goes to trial or they simply drop it. You pay the couple of hundred dollars or less it costs to file and they get 100's of thousands or more of free publicity.
That's an incredibly ridiculous example. There are dozens of generic plumbers, electricians, etc that are available and you as the consumer have a choice just as they do. They can decline your offer to employ them for no reason at all because they generally have enough work since they usually have 1000s of potential employers. You ever work with these people. We'll be there tomorrow, no show, BS excuse, Tuesday no show, had an emergency, etc.
This guys position is absolutely nothing like that. My scenario is simple, you call me off hours, that's a 1/2 day minimum because chances are you interrupted my sleep, interrupted my weekend or interrupted my vacation. You didn't have to pay someone to work those hours while I'm not there so that's your savings. Large companies employ people around the world for coverage or have 2nd and 3rd shifts. Small companies can simply pay someone a major premium for a rare occurrence instead of employing extra personnel. You can use your imagination how often I get called. Practically never. Those critical problems suddenly become not so critical.
Plain and simple money grab attempt. Shame on these "officials". How about more concern about the victim?
Make an attempt to switch them over to free for commercial use products as mentioned (e.g. 7-Zip, whatever free PDF software). That might get them into the mood to switch over to more FOSS or pay for licenses once it's shown to be a success. Then ask "what should we do with the remainder of the license issues" that they are more hesitant to switch from (e.g. Office) pointing out that a disgruntled employee or ex-employee could turn them in for a bounty. You want to appear that you are helping them to avoid a potentially huge fine. They will either go along with it or possibly fire you. If they fire you drop a dime and collect additional unemployment benefits.
A gross insult to people who actually deserved the award. This guy went from a nothing to the president of the United States and has DELIVERED nothing but scripted speeches. People who actually did things for years or lifetimes were passed over because the "potential" is there that this guy MIGHT deliver something. Another group pandering to Hollywood. My disgust has reached a new level.
Many good points particularly the "fatal wound" comments. I've found it useful to have your internal clients do your dirty work as well. Sometimes your boss' boss is clueless or unaware of the ineptness of your boss and you need others to perform that function for you. Mind you every effort should be made to do things the right way (good karma) before resorting to this. Sadly being nice, helping people do their job, etc frequently accomplishes nothing.
Here's the story I love repeating. We had a "boss" that was thrust upon us one afternoon when my colleague was told he would run the project that morning. We had the expertise in the project, this guy was being unloaded from somewhere else and landed on us. We tried to get along but the guy was a total loser. Every meeting he had with others would result in a change of plans which of course we would have to re-document. At one point it cycled back to the original plan and then with the next meeting another change of plans where we decided enough was enough. We refused to make any more changes. It was a Friday and after stating "But, I'm the boss" he said take the rest of the day off and let's start fresh on Monday. After all of his crap and many beers it was deemed time to eliminate him.
Our first opportunity (his own fault) was during a large meeting. My colleague professionally offered to present because after all we were the experts. The boss, of course, said he'll do it. Within a few minutes he was getting questions (due to his utter lack of knowledge) from the group. He would re-present the question ineptly to us (we were in the meeting) and our responses were "we're not sure what you're asking for Joe" or "we're not sure what you are referring to Joe". We, of course, commented to the attendees afterward about how well the meeting went.
Our last effort was a couple of days before his vacation. We intentionally kept the documentation without page numbers and shuffled. He asked us if we had read anything good lately (surprising since he had seen a copy of "How to Fire your Boss" on one our desks a couple of weeks earlier). Then he asked if he could get a copy of the document to read. As we predicted that night he put page numbers on it, a cover page with only his name on it and distributed it the next day before leaving early. Later that day we went around distributing our properly titled, order and paginated document to everyone. Each person asked what it was that Joe had distributed. We advised them to read it (or try to) and then read ours.
Joe was fired a couple of months later on Christmas Eve but after both of us had transferred leaving the project with no expertise for the effort.
Pretty close. However, if you can bring a new tool in and quickly and clearly demonstrate the advantages of this tool you stand a chance. Did it with Cold Fusion. Demonstrated how quickly one can knock out a website versus the excruciating Java development environment that was set up. It became something of a grassroots development environment in the company and dozens of apps are written in it. They tried to get it out because they only wanted to use Weblogic but fortunately CF was rewritten to run in Weblogic and other app engines and that kept it in here.
Your first sentence is quite accurate though. Things that can be touchy feely as soon as possible always impress. Add real data into it and they'll be putty in your hands. Beware! As soon as they see something seemingly nearly working they'll expect it yesterday so a realistic timeframe needs to be presented in advance of showing off anything.
Absolutely untrue. Most people want to avoid change. You have to factor many things in not just higher salary. Commute, hours, family, debt, environment (co-workers, office space, office location). Are there people like this, definitely.
Where do I see it the most. Outsourcing companies. People making say 30K will leave tomorrow for 33-35K because 1) that's a huge % difference; 2) the new commute might be going to a different floor in the same building; 3) the demand is there and this is the norm. Who's suffering for this, the client. You end up with a revolving door of developers where their experience is nearly zero, have no prior knowledge of the company they're going to do the work for, etc. You could easily end up with a group of people working on something for 6 months or a year, say you need a couple of more enhancements and you have an entirely new team of people and you're back to square one.
Where else, middle to upper management where generic manager A convinces some other company that they're the greatest thing since sliced bread, they hire him for a lot more money and after 2 years or less he's gone from your place and repeating the cycle somewhere else. Of course, after they've left your company realizes what a dolt he/she was and the cleaning up the mess begins. I know a guy that does this. He must start planning his departure a little after a year or 18 months after his arrival.
Another example of a company striving for mediocrity by replacing acknowledged, talented people with "x" number of "y" people that cost as much or less. I had a similar experience. I ran the whole environment (which management should never have allowed but never wanted to pay for more staff), never a problem, only kudos, total support by the internal clientele. I even brought money in from other divisions to support their needs. 13 management changes, most were wise (or lazy) managers that were more than happy to simply sign my timesheet, ask me if they needed to do anything for me, etc. Then, of course, there's the manager that just has to make their mark. Let's replace him with some outsourcing. My client's were sold a bill of goods which I warned them about but they were getting this change rammed down their throats. Fortunately, the clients from the other divisions realized what the deal was and hired me in directly from day 1.
So after eventually staffing up with 5 outsourcers and a year+ goes by, absolutely nothing new was developed, problems were rampant, clients disgusted, etc, I get a call. Can you come back in and help us out with this, that and the other thing. I was more than happy to be double paid working at my convenience, etc.
For the young guy, doing a good job is mandatory. Making sure you have people that want to keep you in your job is also mandatory. Those people are generally not IT people. They are your clients and they are the ones being charged by IT to pay for you. The more important/high level your client the more survivability you have. The more breadth of clientele the better. I had clients that went 3 levels up in their management chain just to have him tell IT to go stick it for 3 years on replacing me. During that time I cultivated more internal clients and ended up where I am now. Do I want to spend my time being political, no. I just want to deliver good quality stuff quickly in support of my clients. However, it's simply unavoidable.
determined to be not as advertised
We've gotten several inquires about this by the fantastically loyal and knowledgeable Mac community. After further investigating the item, here's the information:
Firstly, this Macintosh was, indeed, presented to Gene Roddenberry by Apple. There is no doubt about this.
The conflict between the photo and the serial number is as follows. This computer, given by Apple to Mr. Roddenberry, is an early production Macintosh 128 (#776), which was then upgraded by Apple for Gene to a Macintosh Plus-thus the model number / serial number / panel that "belongs to" a Macintosh Plus. The 0001 led us to mistakenly believe that it was the first one off the line.
Again, the provenance of the item is perfect and it did belong to Mr. Roddenberry. I apologize for any confusion.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could get the entire country or even better world to not buy any music for a few days in protest of the RIAA / ASCAP / Record Labels BS NAZI tactics? Any other business that pulled this BS would be out of business in a second. Imagine walking into a car showroom and them saying "Ok, that'll be $20 to take a testdrive" or a clothing store to say "That'll be $2 to try that on"?
How could one conclude that Lego was "saved" by these tie-ins and would have ceased to exist? Did they promote added sales, etc, yeah sure. But "saved" is simply a ridiculous statement.
Perhaps someone pulled a switcharoo? If someone actually called NASA and they said they had provided a rock for this purpose then that is likely true. What was presented may or may not have been real or at some point after the presentation some monkey business might have occurred.
The garbage I read from younger co-workers in the office certainly doesn't demonstrate this. 1/3 of it is simply embarrassing.
So you're basically better off shoplifting, stealing from the library, breaking into cars, stealing iPods, etc. Sorry the "crime" does not justify the "fine".
This is why we need to have penalties for filing nuisance law suits. Yes, another person in this world that wants to blame their problems on anyone else.