I'll describe the workspace at my employer. I think it qualifies as an example of the things that places SHOULD be like....
Start with a big cubicle farm. People with like tasks (engineers) or working on the same project (same portion of the site) have cubicles located proximal to each other. Many times, people will tear down the wall between two cubicles to form a "bullpen" where those two (sometimes three or four depending on the space requirements of the people involved) can share the space and work better.
Each person's workspace is his own, and short of legal requirements (no p0rn, no fire or safety hazards, etc.) what you do with your own space is your own business. Some people have very neat and orderly spaces, some (like me) have a cube filled with clutter. You want an arcade game in your workspace? Fine, if you've got the room. You want a TV and Sega Dreamcast in your cube? Fine, if you've got the room. (Just try to keep the volume down on both of them so as not to annoy the neighbors, something people are very good about doing)
Surrounding the cube farm are conference rooms (the only people in the entire company who have actual DOORS on their office-space are the legal dept, so closed off rooms being available is a must). The conference rooms are fairly well sound-insulated so that if groups need to meet, they can. The conference rooms vary in size from cozy (2-3 people comfortably) to gargantuan (30-40 people), so you can pick a conference room that fits your needs.
Coffee bar and vending machines are located in their own walled-off niches, so that they can generate the noise that is "natural" to them, but they do so largely without interfering with anyone. (In the building I work in, they're further separated by having a conference room in between them and the workspace).
There are also rows of phone-booths, which are essentially closets with phones (as opposed to traditional "phone booths" like you might see at the airport). The doors are heavily sound-proofed, so if you need to make a private call to your therapist or doctor about the lab results, you can do so without your cube-neighbors overhearing.
The only complaint is the ever-present "flourescent lighting" complaint, however our buildings/facilities department is very understanding about people who disable the lighting above their cubicles (And they'll even, if you fill out the online request form, come over and "do it right" removing the bulbs completely as opposed to just twisting them to the failure-point.
From my experiences so far, this has been the best work-space I've ever had.
Not true... if he had addressed the constitutional issue, then the "Free speech" or "freedom of the press" arguments would have won out, easily.
Admittedly, there's a bit of "this is stupid" in his tone as I read it as well, but he definitely doesn't seem inclined to want to be the person to rule the DMCA unconstitutional. Damn pussy.;-)
Bullshit! If that were "fair" then Consumer Reports would have nothing to do.
Buying competing products, and pitting them against each other under identical circumstances is a time-honored tradition. You're even allowed to make TV commercials about it (to wit, the "Pepsi Challenge" ads are nice examples, as are any which have statements like "FooWidget outperforms BarWidget 2-to-1 on {whatever}", which happen all the time.
It'd be VERY hard to enforce that clause of the license, methinks.
D
The two industry leaders cannot be mentioned by name because their restrictive licensing agreements prohibit anyone who buys their closed source products from publishing their company names in benchmark testing results without the companies' prior approval.
Apparently, if you succumb to the MS, or Oracle virus (or whomever it was they tested), you're not allowed to talk about your experiences comparing them to other products. I wonder exactly how legal that clause is in the license....
.ORG: The top-level domain originally designated for miscellaneous entities such as non-profit organizations that do not fit under any of the other top-level domains. Any person or organization may now register a domain name in.org, a worldwide top-level domain.
Actually, NSI doesn't get to set TLD policy. Can you cite an RFC to such a beast?
Actually, I can't find ANY documents showing that it is for "non-profit", I see where it is listed as a "catch-all" to catch categories "not in the above", but just because you're not.com-mercial doesn't mean you're not-for-profit. (e.g., a personal domain). D
I've read this book (bought a copy while wandering through B&N's meat-space store).
It's QUITE interesting, although I must admit that I kept visualizing Ed Harris as Kranz from Apollo 13, but that's OK, because near as I can tell, Harris was a good likeness for him, both in physical appearance as well as in "demeanour".
They COULD aim for the much-nicer "perjury" charge. The Metallijerks signed an affidavit that a copyright violation had occurred (even though they hadn't actually downloaded the MP3 to check), so anyone who was sharing "Enter-Sandman.mp3" and it was a live recording that, say, THEY owned the copyright for (or really anyone other than E/M Ventures), then Metallica committed perjury in claiming that they HAD committed a crime.
Perjury is SO much more fun. In fact, I suspect it could POSSIBLY get Lars deported, since he's not a US Citizen, and egotistical enought that he probably signed the paperwork himself (with a flourish).
But, let's say I went to a Metallica show.. and had tapers-section seats, and I recorded the show. That's MY recording, I own it, and the copyright on it. I can share "Metallica-Enter Sandman.mp3" if it is from the Albany, NY show I taped it at.
Now, what differentiates my "metallica-enter-sandman.mp3" file from some bozo's "metallica-enter-sandman.mp3" CD-Rip? It's the CONTENTS... and I can bet you they didn't sit down and listen to the contents.
Napster can summarily reject the data as bogus on that principle right there.
Do you honestly attribute your declining CD sales (source: RIAA) on your more recent albums to be because of MP3 traders? Considering that Metallica sales were waning even before MP3's became an issue, isn't it more likely that people just don't like the stuff you're putting out these days and THAT's the reason for the decreased sales?
Given that MP3 is the modern form of tape-trading, how can you, in good conscience, attack MP3 traders when you yourselves encouraged the tape-traders of the 80's? Metallica's early success was founded on people making (admittedly illegal) copies of the No Life Til Leather demo-tape and circulating them everywhere. Heck, Metallica even took bootleg material of themselves and repackaged it as "The 19.98 Home Vid". How can you justify this change in attitude as anything other than "we don't need the traders any more?"
Given that Napster itself is a piece of software which does not discriminate between "legal" and "illegal" distribution, is it your intention to sue The Apache Group or Microsoft for having popular web servers often used for illegal distribution of software, or to sue the various IRC server operators or IRC client software authors for their software which can be used (and often IS used) for the distribution of MP3 software?
No actually, the tapes in question were their (copyrighted) demo tapes which a couple people had.. not quite legally.. gotten their hands on. They were certainly selling tapes at their shows (I imagine), but the bottom line is that they've always credited their success to the bootleggers who were copying their demo tape and giving it everywhere.
Now that they're rich, they don't NEED the bootleggers any more, in fact, they are a hindrance to their profitability. (Like the decline of their music wasn't a bigger hindrance).
The trading of in-game items for cash was causing a serious problem on some of the servers where once a group of players had established high-level characters, they would simply camp (i.e., hog) the area or monster where a rare item dropped around-the-clock taking each and every one of the rare items and forcing anyone who wanted one to pay them money just to get it.
Then EQ's code should have better randomization. Or, more appropriately it sounds like, some CONCEPT of randomization. That's just stupid coding. In the 'real' world, orc's aren't born in the same spot every day with the same rare item. Randomize it, and that problem goes away, WITHOUT breaking valid uses of Virtual Real Estate.
There was also the problem of people selling characters (which involved selling the entire account) on E-Bay, only to wait until a couple of weeks had passed, and then calling customer support, verifying the information which would almost invariably still be associated with the selling player, and taking the account BACK. Since Verant has no way of verifying who owns an account beyond what information was used to create the account, this was causing MASSIVE headaches for their customer support people, because when someone pays a few thousand dollars for a high-level character, they tend to not take "We're sorry there's nothing more we can do" for an answer.
So what you're saying is that because some luser couldn't figure out how to get something in writing about the transfer of the account, it is now up to EQ to solve the problem? Nope. Let the affected user prosecute the seller for fraud using whatever documentation he has. That's what its all about.
Basically, it was a similar system, "back in the day", (although obviously nowhere near as interactive or as advanced). This paper documents some of the lessons they learned about how people interact in a "virtual environment". It will offer some interesting insight on why EQ people just "don't get it", and I recommend if any of them are reading this... hey, YOU.. go read that article.
For example, there was a situation where a normal player got a "DM only" weapon (a weapon that could kill anyone instantly). How they handled that situation was ingenious, inventive, and consistent with the rules they had laid out for "The reality". The EQ people need to understand these things before they go passing edicts like this.
They're going to be titled "Gatchaman", since its being released in Japan. Remember that the series has never existed under any other name there.:)
As for dubbing... don't know. I doubt it. I suspect there MAY be english subtitles available (it is a DVD after all), but I doubt it would be dubbed. Again, why dub a Japanese cartoon in English, when you're releasing it in Japan?
Gatchaman (the three(?) anime series that Sandy Frank gutted for stock-footage to make "Battle of the Planets") is actually being rereleased on DVD in Japan. It'll be Region 2 only (I suspect), but with DeCSS or an Apex player, you should be able to pick them up without a problem.
Do a Yahoo search on gatchaman and I'm sure you'll find the info. They start coming out... later this month I think, and they're going to release like one DVD a month until its all out. I think the price was something like US$40 per disc, so its pricy, but worth it.
Actually, I don't remember it, but searching for it in the archives did find it. So there was a whopping two weeks notice (it was posted 3/15). Still not exactly prime candidates for affordable airfare, is it?
Am I delusional or is it REALLY annoying that there was, essentially, 48 hours notice on this? Ah, obviously, all geeks MUST have "mondo frequent flyer miles" to be able to burn on picking up high-priced airfare at the last minute if they wanted to attend.
Come on guys, Andover's part of this, we should have had WAY better notice than 2 days...
The USA may not be perfect, but it is one of the few places whose constitution protects freedom of speach and press and whose laws enforce the notion that speach is not a crime.
Shoot a black man.. go to jail for murder.
Shoot a black man, calling him "nigger" while you do it.. go to jail for committing the "hate crime" of murder, with a longer sentence.
Simply uttering the word "nigger" in that case, made the crime "more severe". The speech brought about additional punishment.
Is it any wonder that the US has the highest per-capita imprisonment rate in the world?
If there was any doubt that these weren't quid pro quo-style payments, notice that he donated to EVERY major presidential candidate....
01/29/1999 $1,000 Gore, Al
09/14/1999 $1,000 Gore, Al
09/30/1999 $1,000 McCain, John
10/21/1999 $1,000 Bush, George W
The only guy of any consequence not on the list is Bradley. This guy doesn't care WHO wins, he just wants to try and make sure he has a little leverage, albeit small, on the guy who wins.
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The problem with your environment, is that if you have several thousand employees, it just doesn't scale well. :)
Start with a big cubicle farm. People with like tasks (engineers) or working on the same project (same portion of the site) have cubicles located proximal to each other. Many times, people will tear down the wall between two cubicles to form a "bullpen" where those two (sometimes three or four depending on the space requirements of the people involved) can share the space and work better.
Each person's workspace is his own, and short of legal requirements (no p0rn, no fire or safety hazards, etc.) what you do with your own space is your own business. Some people have very neat and orderly spaces, some (like me) have a cube filled with clutter. You want an arcade game in your workspace? Fine, if you've got the room. You want a TV and Sega Dreamcast in your cube? Fine, if you've got the room. (Just try to keep the volume down on both of them so as not to annoy the neighbors, something people are very good about doing)
Surrounding the cube farm are conference rooms (the only people in the entire company who have actual DOORS on their office-space are the legal dept, so closed off rooms being available is a must). The conference rooms are fairly well sound-insulated so that if groups need to meet, they can. The conference rooms vary in size from cozy (2-3 people comfortably) to gargantuan (30-40 people), so you can pick a conference room that fits your needs.
Coffee bar and vending machines are located in their own walled-off niches, so that they can generate the noise that is "natural" to them, but they do so largely without interfering with anyone. (In the building I work in, they're further separated by having a conference room in between them and the workspace).
There are also rows of phone-booths, which are essentially closets with phones (as opposed to traditional "phone booths" like you might see at the airport). The doors are heavily sound-proofed, so if you need to make a private call to your therapist or doctor about the lab results, you can do so without your cube-neighbors overhearing.
The only complaint is the ever-present "flourescent lighting" complaint, however our buildings/facilities department is very understanding about people who disable the lighting above their cubicles (And they'll even, if you fill out the online request form, come over and "do it right" removing the bulbs completely as opposed to just twisting them to the failure-point.
From my experiences so far, this has been the best work-space I've ever had.
Admittedly, there's a bit of "this is stupid" in his tone as I read it as well, but he definitely doesn't seem inclined to want to be the person to rule the DMCA unconstitutional. Damn pussy. ;-)
Bullshit! If that were "fair" then Consumer Reports would have nothing to do. Buying competing products, and pitting them against each other under identical circumstances is a time-honored tradition. You're even allowed to make TV commercials about it (to wit, the "Pepsi Challenge" ads are nice examples, as are any which have statements like "FooWidget outperforms BarWidget 2-to-1 on {whatever}", which happen all the time. It'd be VERY hard to enforce that clause of the license, methinks. D
The two industry leaders cannot be mentioned by name because their restrictive licensing agreements prohibit anyone who buys their closed source products from publishing their company names in benchmark testing results without the companies' prior approval.
Apparently, if you succumb to the MS, or Oracle virus (or whomever it was they tested), you're not allowed to talk about your experiences comparing them to other products. I wonder exactly how legal that clause is in the license....
D
What do you do with companies who aren't "one-country-based"?
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/glossary/l ookup?term=.ORG
Actually, NSI doesn't get to set TLD policy. Can you cite an RFC to such a beast?
Actually, I can't find ANY documents showing that it is for "non-profit", I see where it is listed as a "catch-all" to catch categories "not in the above", but just because you're not .com-mercial doesn't mean you're not-for-profit. (e.g., a personal domain). D
It's QUITE interesting, although I must admit that I kept visualizing Ed Harris as Kranz from Apollo 13, but that's OK, because near as I can tell, Harris was a good likeness for him, both in physical appearance as well as in "demeanour".
HIGHLY recommended reading. :)
Perjury is SO much more fun. In fact, I suspect it could POSSIBLY get Lars deported, since he's not a US Citizen, and egotistical enought that he probably signed the paperwork himself (with a flourish).
But, let's say I went to a Metallica show.. and had tapers-section seats, and I recorded the show. That's MY recording, I own it, and the copyright on it. I can share "Metallica-Enter Sandman.mp3" if it is from the Albany, NY show I taped it at.
Now, what differentiates my "metallica-enter-sandman.mp3" file from some bozo's "metallica-enter-sandman.mp3" CD-Rip? It's the CONTENTS... and I can bet you they didn't sit down and listen to the contents.
Napster can summarily reject the data as bogus on that principle right there.
D
Do you honestly attribute your declining CD sales (source: RIAA) on your more recent albums to be because of MP3 traders? Considering that Metallica sales were waning even before MP3's became an issue, isn't it more likely that people just don't like the stuff you're putting out these days and THAT's the reason for the decreased sales?
Given that MP3 is the modern form of tape-trading, how can you, in good conscience, attack MP3 traders when you yourselves encouraged the tape-traders of the 80's? Metallica's early success was founded on people making (admittedly illegal) copies of the No Life Til Leather demo-tape and circulating them everywhere. Heck, Metallica even took bootleg material of themselves and repackaged it as "The 19.98 Home Vid". How can you justify this change in attitude as anything other than "we don't need the traders any more?"
Given that Napster itself is a piece of software which does not discriminate between "legal" and "illegal" distribution, is it your intention to sue The Apache Group or Microsoft for having popular web servers often used for illegal distribution of software, or to sue the various IRC server operators or IRC client software authors for their software which can be used (and often IS used) for the distribution of MP3 software?
Now that they're rich, they don't NEED the bootleggers any more, in fact, they are a hindrance to their profitability. (Like the decline of their music wasn't a bigger hindrance).
Then EQ's code should have better randomization. Or, more appropriately it sounds like, some CONCEPT of randomization. That's just stupid coding. In the 'real' world, orc's aren't born in the same spot every day with the same rare item. Randomize it, and that problem goes away, WITHOUT breaking valid uses of Virtual Real Estate.
There was also the problem of people selling characters (which involved selling the entire account) on E-Bay, only to wait until a couple of weeks had passed, and then calling customer support, verifying the information which would almost invariably still be associated with the selling player, and taking the account BACK. Since Verant has no way of verifying who owns an account beyond what information was used to create the account, this was causing MASSIVE headaches for their customer support people, because when someone pays a few thousand dollars for a high-level character, they tend to not take "We're sorry there's nothing more we can do" for an answer.
So what you're saying is that because some luser couldn't figure out how to get something in writing about the transfer of the account, it is now up to EQ to solve the problem? Nope. Let the affected user prosecute the seller for fraud using whatever documentation he has. That's what its all about.
Basically, it was a similar system, "back in the day", (although obviously nowhere near as interactive or as advanced). This paper documents some of the lessons they learned about how people interact in a "virtual environment". It will offer some interesting insight on why EQ people just "don't get it", and I recommend if any of them are reading this... hey, YOU .. go read that article.
For example, there was a situation where a normal player got a "DM only" weapon (a weapon that could kill anyone instantly). How they handled that situation was ingenious, inventive, and consistent with the rules they had laid out for "The reality". The EQ people need to understand these things before they go passing edicts like this.
As for dubbing... don't know. I doubt it. I suspect there MAY be english subtitles available (it is a DVD after all), but I doubt it would be dubbed. Again, why dub a Japanese cartoon in English, when you're releasing it in Japan?
Do a Yahoo search on gatchaman and I'm sure you'll find the info. They start coming out... later this month I think, and they're going to release like one DVD a month until its all out. I think the price was something like US$40 per disc, so its pricy, but worth it.
D
... and fatbrain and bn.com?
Boston Geeks need to learn to communicate better. ;-) Well, maybe not BETTER, but SOONER. :)
Actually, I don't remember it, but searching for it in the archives did find it. So there was a whopping two weeks notice (it was posted 3/15). Still not exactly prime candidates for affordable airfare, is it?
Come on guys, Andover's part of this, we should have had WAY better notice than 2 days...
Shoot a black man.. go to jail for murder.
Shoot a black man, calling him "nigger" while you do it.. go to jail for committing the "hate crime" of murder, with a longer sentence.
Simply uttering the word "nigger" in that case, made the crime "more severe". The speech brought about additional punishment.
Is it any wonder that the US has the highest per-capita imprisonment rate in the world?
01/29/1999
$1,000
Gore, Al
09/14/1999
$1,000
Gore, Al
09/30/1999
$1,000
McCain, John
10/21/1999
$1,000
Bush, George W
The only guy of any consequence not on the list is Bradley. This guy doesn't care WHO wins, he just wants to try and make sure he has a little leverage, albeit small, on the guy who wins.
*sigh*