It's double strange considering that it's summer time, usually quite warm, and daylight savings means all the trick-or-treating happens before it gets dark.
Just like Christmas in the sweltering midsummer heat with fake snow, tinsel covered pine trees, snow sleighs, and the poor bastards who end up with heat stroke while dressing up as Santa - all while Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer are piped through the shopping centre music systems.
I thought hitting the beach to the sounds of "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" was an essential part of the Australian experience.... (maybe the singer really meant white sand?)
Amen. Other people would have done other things, and doubtless computing would have advanced, but Ritchie made C, a language which has been a companion for most of my life. Its not always beautiful, though it often is, but its always worked, and, I should perhaps add, it was well explained. Not everyone likes C, but we all know it. UNIX and C: the things engineers love to hate.
Are they? The government has fairly detailed rules about the disposal of equipment to prevent federal employees from profiting by declaring something "Trash" (a very common practice in previous centuries for people in charge of managing government funds.) If he didn't follow the correct procedures, then legally speaking, the item was stolen, end of story. NASA is attempting to prevent a former government employee from profiting by stealing from the federal government property. And lets bear in mind that items which have actually been on the moon are NOT cheap items when they show up in auction. In some cases there's also a cultural heritage of the nation argument at stake when it comes to the space program, but really, just "preventing people from profiting by stealing from us" is probably enough on principle. The specifics of the case are largely irrelevant, from that perspective. In terms of the statute of limitations, its applicability to stolen property has always been highly dubious as noted above in the thread. The statute of limitations DOES prevent the individual from being criminally prosecuted. This is not the same thing as being allowed to keep stolen property.
I have to admit I always found it amusing that while Nevada as a whole doesn't want Yucca Mountain in most polls, most polls DID indicate that those areas closest to the facility DID support it (if only for the economic benefits)
Okay, I have to know, what WERE you trying to say with "Poisson the sole"?? The closest I can think of is Poison the well, but I'm not sure how you'd manage to screw that up even with MLT.
I imagine it would just be part of the average payment collection service most small to medium companies already use. The big problem is that for smaller companies, very small amounts could be involved. A typical shop doesn't have this problem because they aggregate over many purchases, all with taxes owed the same way. An internet shop could have 1 customer in every tax region in the country with all the associated difficulties. And for each of these localities one not only has to pay the taxes, one has to file them. Granted that most of this is taken care of by the payment processing firm (just like payroll taxes are usually handled), its still a royal pain.
I haven't paid as much attention to Del Rey's e-books, but Baen's e-books have always been of excellent quality. (aside from the ARCs which they admit ahead of time have not gone through final copyedit). I admit the back-list for a lot of publishers ARE OCRed crap, but that's beginning to stop too. Also, I note that the function of an editor is not primarily a pure copyedit.
I don't disagree that 65% is high. (Is it actually that high? I thought it was a lot lower unless you did weird things with the pricing model)
I think, however, that to be fair, essentially zero cost is low. Granted the per book cost isn't THAT high, but for each book sold Amazon pays:
Some small bit of high availability distribution network
whispersync (going down as more and more kindles are wi-fi based)
credit card processing fees (My guess is this is the largest line-item)
tech support for both consumers and providers
reviews storage, etc.
Granted this doesn't (I hope, as an amazon stockholder) come anywhere NEAR 65 cents on a dollar, but its very likely as much as 10 cents on the dollar, it wouldn't utterly stun me if it was more like 20 cents on the dollar (given that most books probably have very low volume), and 10-20% is by no means "essentially zero"
Not only that, novels are ballooning into multi hundred page monstrosities. Who has the time to read them all? Bring back the better written 100-200 page novels. Word processors have allowed more writing, but very little of that is good writing.
Judging by a variety of measures, my estimate is that the average reader prefers longer books... because, you know, that's what's been selling. Certainly _I_ prefer longer books. Don't get me wrong, there's some really well-written short novels, especially in the mystery genre, but, honestly, a bit of length is nice. I expect books to take long enough to read so I don't have to watch TV.
I feel obliged to point out that actually, the primary reason I don't go to amusement parks (or even movies, much) is that the enjoyment hours per dollar is way too low compared to books. Although this CAN be ameliorated by reading while in line for a roller coaster....
Possibly. But that's leaving out the retail fee (Amazon gets their cut), Cover Design, Editing . . . which all comes out before the author gets their cut. So then if the author is extremely lucky they might get half? $4500 say... which is pretty low, really. Certainly well below minimum wage.
The problem with these is a lot of them skip the Editor's desk, and it shows.
Yes we should go to a system where the editor is listed on the cover, so that people could track famous editors as a judgement of quality! Then, for instance, Lester Del Rey, or Jim Baen could have their names on the books they oversee the editing for . . . So as not to overdo it, we could make the names smaller, perhaps in a symbol or imprint...
So . . .
here's the thing. As I see features like this, I can't help but think, as a defense contractor "damn that's going to make my life a pain in the ass". Why? Because I live in a world where comms are weak, machines are almost always isolated from the internet, but people still do stupid things...
So here's my challenge to the community: I can explain easily why "activation" is a horrible idea (and, I note, the military has been one of the prime drivers for versions of windows which don't require it) but what I'd like to be able to better draw the line about is not "how is xyz technical issue bad for the military" which I regularly do, but "how does abc legislation encourage manufacturers to use xyz technical solution which is bad for the military." If we can get a good answer to that, its the sort of thing that would go great in a letter to, say, republican legislators...
A lot of the open source community is not a fan of the military-industrial complex. I understand why that's so, and, despite my job, even agree. But I would argue that on the issue of DRM, in many ways the military industrial complex could be a serious ally. I can speak of countless situations where DRM related issues have cost the government time, money and opportunity, and while probably many of you will argue that they don't care, in fact a lot do, and it makes a much better and concrete argument relating to the national interest why these things may be bad.... so even if it doesn
We were talking about what constitutes probable cause for a search warrant, not what should constitute sufficient evidence for an arrest warrant or an indictment.
Nobody should be arrested just on the basis of an IP address, or, for that matter, sued. But I think a search may be reasonable. What we need, however, is better definitions of what a 'search' is in the case of a computer. When someone is searching my physical property, they can only search for specific things, and when they find it they have to leave (excepting plain sight), we need an equivalent for data.
This would be a valid argument except that there are very very few jobs in production industries where minimum wage is, in the US, a competitive wage. The reality is that by the standards of most countries in the world, EVEN IN RECESSION, US unemployment is pretty low. During the boom years of the late 90s, our unemployment rates were actually below the previously predicted minimums for a stable labor market (mostly offset by pretty much opening the floodgates on legal immigration towards the end, there). Which isn't to say that unemployment isn't too high today, but for the most part wages in the US are set by market rates right now, not the minimum wage. (This might change if efforts to raise minimum wage were successful, but it hasn't gone up all that much in quite some time.) Only agriculture is a production business seriously impacted by minimum wage, and its highly protected in every developed country in the world.
Mmm.. That's part of it, but a lot of the hotspots will be based on logistical reasons, like high-value-targets for crimes of opportunity that are also near major transportation hubs.
It's about trying to reduce traffic queues by making it more expensive to drive at peak times.
Cobblers. Look at why there's a lot of traffic on the roads at peak times:
1. People getting to/from work.
2. People getting the kids to/from school.
This accounts for a huge amount of peak-time traffic - and neither employers nor schools care if it costs a bit more to be on the road at 08:30 instead of 10:00, that's the driver's problem. This is revenue raising, pure and simple.
While I mostly agree, I feel obliged to point out that increasing numbers of employers offer flexible hours etc. For example, where I work, many people come in an hour early to get good parking, and I come in half an hour 'late' because I'm not excited enough about getting home in the evening to get up early for a parking space and I want to skip the traffic at the security gate. Tax policies like this might make employers even more willing to make adjustments like that.
"Whether on company time or not" only applies if you use company equipment during the "or not" part.
Most employment contracts I sign make no such distinction. If it's work-related the company owns it, no matter what. The theory is that you could only make it because of the special knowledge you have as an employee, and you're not allowed to profit on that type of special knowledge beyond what they pay you.
And if Google did do that there would be people who would cry and complain for entirely different reasons. Google knows that they can't please all the people all of the time but most of them will use the product anyhow, and I'm pretty sure they are ok with that.
Gotta move the content first. The government should offer porn sites a gratis transition/upgrade if they'll go IPV6 only;)
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Its also how Netscape started. I HATED Netscape back when it first started competing with Mosaic for exactly this behavior... I always thought they got just what they deserved when IE torpedoed them. (okay, I admit, I made a bad call saying nobody would go with the ridiculous non-standard netscape extensions that just used up bandwidth, and it cost me a job, this isn't a love-fest for MS by any means... I jumped to ff shortly after it came out.)
This might work for government agencies, but when every shopping site jumps on the bandwagon the net as we know it will be headed the same way as usenet.
There isn't that much of the government's business that should require proof of identity in a democracy anyway.
So, I can't imagine very many people who are going to want to get their porn in a.secure domain.... and that's STILL an awful large piece of the 'net...plus various other things, I dunno that a.secure would necessarily see the end of the normal 'net as we know it today.
If you're young, and lucky, you have a private insurance card which has its own unique number, which, no less, changes every year when your company changes insurance providers;) It has TWO numbers, one for your plan and one for you.
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It's double strange considering that it's summer time, usually quite warm, and daylight savings means all the trick-or-treating happens before it gets dark.
Just like Christmas in the sweltering midsummer heat with fake snow, tinsel covered pine trees, snow sleighs, and the poor bastards who end up with heat stroke while dressing up as Santa - all while Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer are piped through the shopping centre music systems.
I thought hitting the beach to the sounds of "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" was an essential part of the Australian experience.... (maybe the singer really meant white sand?)
Amen. Other people would have done other things, and doubtless computing would have advanced, but Ritchie made C, a language which has been a companion for most of my life. Its not always beautiful, though it often is, but its always worked, and, I should perhaps add, it was well explained. Not everyone likes C, but we all know it. UNIX and C: the things engineers love to hate.
They're being tools.
Are they? The government has fairly detailed rules about the disposal of equipment to prevent federal employees from profiting by declaring something "Trash" (a very common practice in previous centuries for people in charge of managing government funds.) If he didn't follow the correct procedures, then legally speaking, the item was stolen, end of story. NASA is attempting to prevent a former government employee from profiting by stealing from the federal government property. And lets bear in mind that items which have actually been on the moon are NOT cheap items when they show up in auction. In some cases there's also a cultural heritage of the nation argument at stake when it comes to the space program, but really, just "preventing people from profiting by stealing from us" is probably enough on principle. The specifics of the case are largely irrelevant, from that perspective. In terms of the statute of limitations, its applicability to stolen property has always been highly dubious as noted above in the thread. The statute of limitations DOES prevent the individual from being criminally prosecuted. This is not the same thing as being allowed to keep stolen property.
I have to admit I always found it amusing that while Nevada as a whole doesn't want Yucca Mountain in most polls, most polls DID indicate that those areas closest to the facility DID support it (if only for the economic benefits)
Okay, I have to know, what WERE you trying to say with "Poisson the sole"?? The closest I can think of is Poison the well, but I'm not sure how you'd manage to screw that up even with MLT.
I imagine it would just be part of the average payment collection service most small to medium companies already use. The big problem is that for smaller companies, very small amounts could be involved. A typical shop doesn't have this problem because they aggregate over many purchases, all with taxes owed the same way. An internet shop could have 1 customer in every tax region in the country with all the associated difficulties. And for each of these localities one not only has to pay the taxes, one has to file them. Granted that most of this is taken care of by the payment processing firm (just like payroll taxes are usually handled), its still a royal pain.
I haven't paid as much attention to Del Rey's e-books, but Baen's e-books have always been of excellent quality. (aside from the ARCs which they admit ahead of time have not gone through final copyedit). I admit the back-list for a lot of publishers ARE OCRed crap, but that's beginning to stop too. Also, I note that the function of an editor is not primarily a pure copyedit.
I think, however, that to be fair, essentially zero cost is low. Granted the per book cost isn't THAT high, but for each book sold Amazon pays: Some small bit of high availability distribution network whispersync (going down as more and more kindles are wi-fi based) credit card processing fees (My guess is this is the largest line-item) tech support for both consumers and providers reviews storage, etc. Granted this doesn't (I hope, as an amazon stockholder) come anywhere NEAR 65 cents on a dollar, but its very likely as much as 10 cents on the dollar, it wouldn't utterly stun me if it was more like 20 cents on the dollar (given that most books probably have very low volume), and 10-20% is by no means "essentially zero"
Not only that, novels are ballooning into multi hundred page monstrosities. Who has the time to read them all? Bring back the better written 100-200 page novels. Word processors have allowed more writing, but very little of that is good writing.
Judging by a variety of measures, my estimate is that the average reader prefers longer books... because, you know, that's what's been selling. Certainly _I_ prefer longer books. Don't get me wrong, there's some really well-written short novels, especially in the mystery genre, but, honestly, a bit of length is nice. I expect books to take long enough to read so I don't have to watch TV.
Tolkein had a day job.
I feel obliged to point out that actually, the primary reason I don't go to amusement parks (or even movies, much) is that the enjoyment hours per dollar is way too low compared to books. Although this CAN be ameliorated by reading while in line for a roller coaster....
Possibly. But that's leaving out the retail fee (Amazon gets their cut), Cover Design, Editing . . . which all comes out before the author gets their cut. So then if the author is extremely lucky they might get half? $4500 say... which is pretty low, really. Certainly well below minimum wage.
The problem with these is a lot of them skip the Editor's desk, and it shows.
Yes we should go to a system where the editor is listed on the cover, so that people could track famous editors as a judgement of quality! Then, for instance, Lester Del Rey, or Jim Baen could have their names on the books they oversee the editing for . . . So as not to overdo it, we could make the names smaller, perhaps in a symbol or imprint...
So here's my challenge to the community: I can explain easily why "activation" is a horrible idea (and, I note, the military has been one of the prime drivers for versions of windows which don't require it) but what I'd like to be able to better draw the line about is not "how is xyz technical issue bad for the military" which I regularly do, but "how does abc legislation encourage manufacturers to use xyz technical solution which is bad for the military." If we can get a good answer to that, its the sort of thing that would go great in a letter to, say, republican legislators...
A lot of the open source community is not a fan of the military-industrial complex. I understand why that's so, and, despite my job, even agree. But I would argue that on the issue of DRM, in many ways the military industrial complex could be a serious ally. I can speak of countless situations where DRM related issues have cost the government time, money and opportunity, and while probably many of you will argue that they don't care, in fact a lot do, and it makes a much better and concrete argument relating to the national interest why these things may be bad.... so even if it doesn
Nobody should be arrested just on the basis of an IP address, or, for that matter, sued. But I think a search may be reasonable. What we need, however, is better definitions of what a 'search' is in the case of a computer. When someone is searching my physical property, they can only search for specific things, and when they find it they have to leave (excepting plain sight), we need an equivalent for data.
This would be a valid argument except that there are very very few jobs in production industries where minimum wage is, in the US, a competitive wage. The reality is that by the standards of most countries in the world, EVEN IN RECESSION, US unemployment is pretty low. During the boom years of the late 90s, our unemployment rates were actually below the previously predicted minimums for a stable labor market (mostly offset by pretty much opening the floodgates on legal immigration towards the end, there). Which isn't to say that unemployment isn't too high today, but for the most part wages in the US are set by market rates right now, not the minimum wage. (This might change if efforts to raise minimum wage were successful, but it hasn't gone up all that much in quite some time.) Only agriculture is a production business seriously impacted by minimum wage, and its highly protected in every developed country in the world.
Mmm.. That's part of it, but a lot of the hotspots will be based on logistical reasons, like high-value-targets for crimes of opportunity that are also near major transportation hubs.
It's about trying to reduce traffic queues by making it more expensive to drive at peak times.
Cobblers. Look at why there's a lot of traffic on the roads at peak times:
1. People getting to/from work. 2. People getting the kids to/from school.
This accounts for a huge amount of peak-time traffic - and neither employers nor schools care if it costs a bit more to be on the road at 08:30 instead of 10:00, that's the driver's problem. This is revenue raising, pure and simple.
While I mostly agree, I feel obliged to point out that increasing numbers of employers offer flexible hours etc. For example, where I work, many people come in an hour early to get good parking, and I come in half an hour 'late' because I'm not excited enough about getting home in the evening to get up early for a parking space and I want to skip the traffic at the security gate. Tax policies like this might make employers even more willing to make adjustments like that.
"Whether on company time or not" only applies if you use company equipment during the "or not" part.
Most employment contracts I sign make no such distinction. If it's work-related the company owns it, no matter what. The theory is that you could only make it because of the special knowledge you have as an employee, and you're not allowed to profit on that type of special knowledge beyond what they pay you.
And if Google did do that there would be people who would cry and complain for entirely different reasons. Google knows that they can't please all the people all of the time but most of them will use the product anyhow, and I'm pretty sure they are ok with that.
FTFY
Gotta move the content first. The government should offer porn sites a gratis transition/upgrade if they'll go IPV6 only ;)
Its also how Netscape started. I HATED Netscape back when it first started competing with Mosaic for exactly this behavior... I always thought they got just what they deserved when IE torpedoed them. (okay, I admit, I made a bad call saying nobody would go with the ridiculous non-standard netscape extensions that just used up bandwidth, and it cost me a job, this isn't a love-fest for MS by any means... I jumped to ff shortly after it came out.)
The greasy wheel gets the kick!
This might work for government agencies, but when every shopping site jumps on the bandwagon the net as we know it will be headed the same way as usenet.
There isn't that much of the government's business that should require proof of identity in a democracy anyway.
So, I can't imagine very many people who are going to want to get their porn in a .secure domain.... and that's STILL an awful large piece of the 'net...plus various other things, I dunno that a .secure would necessarily see the end of the normal 'net as we know it today.
If you're young, and lucky, you have a private insurance card which has its own unique number, which, no less, changes every year when your company changes insurance providers ;) It has TWO numbers, one for your plan and one for you.