I am catholic, but to me the catholic church has become the very thing that made Jesus stand on the steps of the temple in Rome and accused the leaders of his religion of being hypocrites. They put their religion before God.
absolutely right. Communication skills are the crux of any job. Take more than one speech class and writing class. Excellent communication skills can land you a job even if you dont have a lot of experience. When I was in school I took a business oriented writing class, that one class alone has really helped me to communicate with the business dweebs in my life over the years. Think about it, sure your boss and fellow workers will most likely be techies, but everyone else in the business is probably not a techie. It is only to your advantage to learn to communicate technical issues with non-technical people. In fact I have seen people with less than stellar technical skills who are absolutely loved within a corporation just because they are able to explain what is going on in non-technical terms, of course these people usually become managers/executives. If you have excellent tech skills and excellent communication skills you will go very far in this industry.
There is a downside to that. I am currently working on a project where EVERYONE REWRITES everything. Even though we have a good set of libraries they could use. We now have a dozen implementations of everything, try maintaining that. And this is definately a problem with "CS" majors/engineers these days I see, most of them have a hard time fitting into an already existing team. They all come into the team wanting to be the boss.
I am pretty sure we can assume the current pricing scheme is not fair, otherwise so many people would not be sharing these files. The reason p2p is so popular is that is where the market is right now, this is what the people want, like it or not that is the truth. Look at allofm3.com, they had a fair pricing scheme and look at the millions of people that flocked to "buy" music from them instead of copying it for free from p2p. iTunes is just on the border of being fair, hence people buy from them even when they could download the music for free.
The current scheme is nothing more than a money sieve, designed to suck as much money out of the consumer as possible while providing as little real value as possible. The consumers are tired of being sucked. They want cheap and easy to use, if the record companies arent going to give it to them, then they are going to just take it. This is reality. The RIAA can piss and moan and get as many laws as they want passed, but until they start providing the consumer with what they want, they are just going to keep fading into obscurity until there is nothing left of them.
Gun control is in there because Popular Mechanics often does articles on new weapon technology. They used to have a regular column on military tech, I am not sure if they still do I havent read it in quite some time. Remember PM is the magazine that published instructions on how to build a nuclear weapon that caused quite a bit of controversy a few decades ago (late 70s, early 80s, I cant remember the exact date).
I have to agree with this. Any web developer who thinks their users are clicking that logout button and not the little red X in the upper right hand corner are just deluding themselves. Most users think the X means the eXit button
if this guy realised that now his kid will probably get stuck in the social services system where he will get good and abused. Someone wasnt thinking of the children. I feel really bad for that poor kid who is now fatherless, of course given the solution the father thought up to his problem it may be a good thing that kid gets away from that psycho.
This is what pisses me the fuck off. This lawyer is so sleazy he cant just leave it at the plaintiff shared the mp3s, he has to throw in the smartassed comment about ripping his music. Then tie it in to make it look like ripping to mp3 was also part of the fair-use infringement. This is wrong, the ingfringement occured when he shared the damn mp3s not when he ripped them. No matter how much they try to spin this, RIPPING CDs FOR MY USE FROM CDs THAT I BOUGHT IS FAIR USE, sharing those rips is not.
when all of you said "information wants to be free"? Well it appears that your personal information also wants to be free. With bone-headed moves like this UK'rs can now expect to have all of their personal data in the public domain in no time. Including the numbnuts that thought this brilliant scheme up.
Yes but forcing the employees to hide it when a laptop gets stolen allows the bosses to say, "See we reduced the number of stolen laptops". Nothing but a law designed by idiots for idiots.
Still dont get it? This not about file sharing or piracy (or whatever), its about control.
1). They want to close what they call the "analog hole", in other words they want to eliminate Fair Use. 2). They want us to pay every time we consume their content, none of this pay once and listen anytime nonsense. 3). With the internet and prices of recording technology going down, they are scared that they are becoming irrelevant (this will happen no matter what). They are a dinosaur thrashing in the tar pit of a changing industry.
These law suits are a tool so they can go to our legislators and claim they need more laws to keep the dirty pirates at bay. They are trying to create a world where legally they are the only ones allowed to distribute entertainment.
Guns and porn, yup, yup, thems there are our greatest threats to freedom Billy Bob.
Why don't we try restoring Habeas Corpus, stopping the unwarranted surveillance of our own citizens, the shadow government. Don't you think those things threaten our freedom just a little more?
and anyone can start another company based on the same code.
But can anyone afford being taken to court for 10 years to prove they legally can fork code that MS owns? I guarantee they will keep it in court until their opponent is bankrupt, look at WordStar, CP/M, Lotus, etc.
I still dont think Microsoft understands open source, I am sure they are doing this because they think they can change the licensing once they buy the company, thinking it is the company that owns the code and not the individuals. If I had a successful OSS company I would let them buy the company but only allow them to fork the code at the state it was in when they bought the company. Of course given the greedy nature of people, I am sure we will see a few good projects go away. MYSQL? They seem to be moving in that general direction anyway. Is the GNOME project still soley run by Miguel? Novell does own the copyright on the flavor of unix much of linux is based on. All we can hope is that sane heads will prevail when faced with wheelbarrows full of cash. Im pretty cynical in this regard but it could happen, look at RedHat and Ubuntu. The result, a few very good OSS companies will disappear (probably to be replaced by better alternatives), MS will spend a crapload of money and Linux will just keep on chugging along like always. This seems to be shaping up to be an "unstoppable force(linux) against an immovable object(MS)" type of scenario.
Slashdot Mirror
wouldnt that be iStake?
I am catholic, but to me the catholic church has become the very thing that made Jesus stand on the steps of the temple in Rome and accused the leaders of his religion of being hypocrites. They put their religion before God.
What they give you a million dollars when you get elected?
absolutely right. Communication skills are the crux of any job. Take more than one speech class and writing class. Excellent communication skills can land you a job even if you dont have a lot of experience. When I was in school I took a business oriented writing class, that one class alone has really helped me to communicate with the business dweebs in my life over the years. Think about it, sure your boss and fellow workers will most likely be techies, but everyone else in the business is probably not a techie. It is only to your advantage to learn to communicate technical issues with non-technical people. In fact I have seen people with less than stellar technical skills who are absolutely loved within a corporation just because they are able to explain what is going on in non-technical terms, of course these people usually become managers/executives. If you have excellent tech skills and excellent communication skills you will go very far in this industry.
children whose parents both work in IT or engineering.
So what are you saying, Hot Pockets and Mountain Dew cause autism?
There is a downside to that. I am currently working on a project where EVERYONE REWRITES everything. Even though we have a good set of libraries they could use. We now have a dozen implementations of everything, try maintaining that. And this is definately a problem with "CS" majors/engineers these days I see, most of them have a hard time fitting into an already existing team. They all come into the team wanting to be the boss.
with these guys in charge...we're boned.
Damn, your quick. It takes me about 6 minutes.
at the very least hairy palms.
I am pretty sure we can assume the current pricing scheme is not fair, otherwise so many people would not be sharing these files. The reason p2p is so popular is that is where the market is right now, this is what the people want, like it or not that is the truth. Look at allofm3.com, they had a fair pricing scheme and look at the millions of people that flocked to "buy" music from them instead of copying it for free from p2p. iTunes is just on the border of being fair, hence people buy from them even when they could download the music for free.
The current scheme is nothing more than a money sieve, designed to suck as much money out of the consumer as possible while providing as little real value as possible. The consumers are tired of being sucked. They want cheap and easy to use, if the record companies arent going to give it to them, then they are going to just take it. This is reality. The RIAA can piss and moan and get as many laws as they want passed, but until they start providing the consumer with what they want, they are just going to keep fading into obscurity until there is nothing left of them.
Gun control is in there because Popular Mechanics often does articles on new weapon technology. They used to have a regular column on military tech, I am not sure if they still do I havent read it in quite some time. Remember PM is the magazine that published instructions on how to build a nuclear weapon that caused quite a bit of controversy a few decades ago (late 70s, early 80s, I cant remember the exact date).
this guy is a lawsuit just waiting to happen.
I have to agree with this. Any web developer who thinks their users are clicking that logout button and not the little red X in the upper right hand corner are just deluding themselves. Most users think the X means the eXit button
if this guy realised that now his kid will probably get stuck in the social services system where he will get good and abused. Someone wasnt thinking of the children. I feel really bad for that poor kid who is now fatherless, of course given the solution the father thought up to his problem it may be a good thing that kid gets away from that psycho.
This is what pisses me the fuck off. This lawyer is so sleazy he cant just leave it at the plaintiff shared the mp3s, he has to throw in the smartassed comment about ripping his music. Then tie it in to make it look like ripping to mp3 was also part of the fair-use infringement. This is wrong, the ingfringement occured when he shared the damn mp3s not when he ripped them. No matter how much they try to spin this, RIPPING CDs FOR MY USE FROM CDs THAT I BOUGHT IS FAIR USE, sharing those rips is not.
What a tool.
Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and most of them stink.
Did anyone consider that Harvard is probably where most of the RIAA lawyers come from? My guess is they just dont want to sue their alma-mater.
when all of you said "information wants to be free"? Well it appears that your personal information also wants to be free. With bone-headed moves like this UK'rs can now expect to have all of their personal data in the public domain in no time. Including the numbnuts that thought this brilliant scheme up.
Yes but forcing the employees to hide it when a laptop gets stolen allows the bosses to say, "See we reduced the number of stolen laptops". Nothing but a law designed by idiots for idiots.
Still dont get it? This not about file sharing or piracy (or whatever), its about control.
1). They want to close what they call the "analog hole", in other words they want to eliminate Fair Use.
2). They want us to pay every time we consume their content, none of this pay once and listen anytime nonsense.
3). With the internet and prices of recording technology going down, they are scared that they are becoming irrelevant (this will happen no matter what). They are a dinosaur thrashing in the tar pit of a changing industry.
These law suits are a tool so they can go to our legislators and claim they need more laws to keep the dirty pirates at bay. They are trying to create a world where legally they are the only ones allowed to distribute entertainment.
That is a valid theory. But I still say they had no exit plan because they had no intention of exiting this war from the very beginning.
You obviously have never been married.
Your just figuring that out now?
Guns and porn, yup, yup, thems there are our greatest threats to freedom Billy Bob.
Why don't we try restoring Habeas Corpus, stopping the unwarranted surveillance of our own citizens, the shadow government. Don't you think those things threaten our freedom just a little more?
and anyone can start another company based on the same code.
But can anyone afford being taken to court for 10 years to prove they legally can fork code that MS owns? I guarantee they will keep it in court until their opponent is bankrupt, look at WordStar, CP/M, Lotus, etc.
I still dont think Microsoft understands open source, I am sure they are doing this because they think they can change the licensing once they buy the company, thinking it is the company that owns the code and not the individuals. If I had a successful OSS company I would let them buy the company but only allow them to fork the code at the state it was in when they bought the company. Of course given the greedy nature of people, I am sure we will see a few good projects go away. MYSQL? They seem to be moving in that general direction anyway. Is the GNOME project still soley run by Miguel? Novell does own the copyright on the flavor of unix much of linux is based on. All we can hope is that sane heads will prevail when faced with wheelbarrows full of cash. Im pretty cynical in this regard but it could happen, look at RedHat and Ubuntu. The result, a few very good OSS companies will disappear (probably to be replaced by better alternatives), MS will spend a crapload of money and Linux will just keep on chugging along like always. This seems to be shaping up to be an "unstoppable force(linux) against an immovable object(MS)" type of scenario.