That depends. Taking data is not the same as stealing it.
A lot depends upon the intellectual property clauses in the contract (often restrictive), but sometimes the IP is shared by the company and the individual. What if you work in research and the project was funded by a federal grant? That could very well be public information. What's better: letting your x-staff have a few minutes with a thumb drive and intimate knowledge of the directory information or dealing with the headache of freedom of information requests (which will have to go through your legal department and billed internally, etc...) when the guy sets up as a professor at some university and wants to publish the results or write the next grant (with research data paid for by the public).
What if the data is entirely private? The x-staff member may still have a legal and vested interest in taking and or protecting it. For example: to ensure a patent is filed on the IP (which would be owned by the company more than likely) to make sure he gets his fair share of the royalty checks down the road (again depends on contract). (Or to be able to prove that the x-employee was involved with the project if the company later decides to patent without passing on royalties. Although taking data for such reasons will also have a lot to do with the IP clauses in the contract.
Revoke privileges instantly and you may find yourself with a freedom of information act or a subpoena real quick. A company shouldn't play hard ball unless it's willing to have it hit back. There should be respect all around; for the person who gave a certain portion of his life for the company and for the company who provided for a persons livelihood.
"For its part, the TSA says that body scanning is perfectly constitutional: 'The program is designed to respect individual sensibilities regarding privacy, modesty and personal autonomy to the maximum extent possible, while still performing its crucial function of protecting all members of the public from potentially catastrophic events.'"
Since when did the Fourth Amendment provide exemptions for "the end justifies the means" situations? (Which is a separate argument altogether).
To claim that an effective strip search without probable cause, hot pursuit, or arrest is in any way not a violation of the Fourth Amendment is a bold and likely incorrect point of view. The issue of consent is probably a critical issue here. Perhaps one doesn't have to travel by air; but when the issue may be to lose one's job for refusing to complete a business trip, perhaps then defaulting on a mortgage, & etc, or to "consent" to a millimeter wave search... That sounds more like extortion.
Not to say that the Constitution has never been violated before, but let us not deceive ourselves as to what we are doing.
Don't get me wrong - I've been reading books on screen since the black and white palm devices could manage it and I completely understand your love for the format; but there's one thing holding me back from jumping on the band wagon: DRM.
How many books do you plan on giving away in the next 15 years? Is it worth the risk of fines and court fees to you if you break the DRM first? How many libraries will be able to accept donations after you've finished reading something? Or put them on a $0.25 fund-raising book sale where kids in the community come and are able to afford the gems they may discover? There's a lot more to defeating the social cost of current DRM than applying a magic crack to an algorithm.
And, with this shift, we will see the resurgence of the mom and pop bookstore that sells new and used books in a loving environment which was previously squeezed out by the mega chains. And I'm fine with that.
Sadly, we'll also see the resurgence of those bookstores with five cats wandering around the store making the place smell like stale cat urine. I'm less fine with that...
Right, for that soon to be expanding used ebook market...
Although - you do bring up the bright side of licensing instead of buying all of our books - no cat piss. I confess that I have never considered that advantage before.
What about the "traditional" points of view but at other wavelengths? If your house is transparent to spectrum X - should you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in say your bedroom?
Some photography laws allow for pictures of private locations from the street, but not using telephoto optics - does that apply to satellites and airplanes use? Perhaps you could make the jurisdiction argument, but if your "camera" is located outside of the jurisdiction, but the person pulling the shutter is within the jurisdiction (e.g. programmed flight, camera, and receives images) does that muddy the waters?
The original production cost is however definitely non-zero and there may very well be a minimum per copy royalty split between the publisher and author which applies to each transaction.
Copies sold to "book clubs" and such are often contracted at lower royalty rates, however, I highly doubt that Amazon or Apple should count as anything other than retail.
As for the OP, I vehemently disagree with those who suggest languages like Java and C#. Not because they're bad, but because they're so completely different from what he already knows.
To go from FORTRAN to C# is like going from AutoCAD to Photoshop. Just so very very different.
If he wants to ease into what's popular today, perhaps start with Object Oriented COBOL. That would be a handful in itself, as it turns the whole concept upside down from what's "old school", but it would still not be as suicidal as jumping directly into any of the "new skool" languages.
And if he wants to learn (pseudo)scripting languages, Python is probably the way to go. Not because it's a wonderful language, but because it is about as unforgiving as COBOL, yet small enough that you can keep it in your head and focus on the actual problem without going OO (although you can certainly do that in Python too -- you just don't have to).
Delphi - OO and very Pascal like.
Although it's not on the list of other languages. I'm just an engineer working in a small research lab and it was quick for me to pick up and useful to make a custom instrument do what I needed it to. I don't know Delphi's commercial viability.
But you may avoid learning C because of the syntax.
For example, I'm an engineer working in a small research lab. I needed some software written to control and monitor stuff I built in the lab and I definitely didn't have time to mess with the C syntax and it wasn't even worth asking management if I could cut a PO for one of those hire a coder for my project sites online (what about security, how do we really know how much time they put in, that's not the way we write contracts, we'll need legal to look over it, etc...?).
Delphi was easy to get started with after a few tutorials and my 15 year old familiarity with AppleSoft Basic (on the//e). Easy stuff went in first and within 3 weeks of time (spread over 2 months) I had a working real time graphical output, hardware communication, feedback control, data collecting, exactly-the-way-I-want it piece of software. I tried to pick up theory as I went, so I also made the thing multi-threaded (it didn't need it, but that's good programming form which all modern programmers do right?).
I'd love to pick up more skill and theory and I probably will over the years when I get some free time, but the syntax of C would have gotten in the way of both with my constraints and I didn't see much that C could do that Delphi didn't.
Delphi was a great language for quickly picking up and developing something, but I could tell that it's well went very deep too.
If congress doesn't weigh in on this soon they're going to pass the point where massive head breaking won't be necessary (not that Comcast doesn't have a big head in need of some slapping). And when it comes to head breaking, I'd rater see a TR progressively taking on Standard Oil than FDR reactive style acts against those who tanked the economy. (There's more corollaries here to the current US banking system than are immediately obvious).
Information and transit of information are the commodities of the day.
Slashdot Mirror
No - this is perfectly in line with the logic behind dehydrated water.
That depends. Taking data is not the same as stealing it.
A lot depends upon the intellectual property clauses in the contract (often restrictive), but sometimes the IP is shared by the company and the individual. What if you work in research and the project was funded by a federal grant? That could very well be public information. What's better: letting your x-staff have a few minutes with a thumb drive and intimate knowledge of the directory information or dealing with the headache of freedom of information requests (which will have to go through your legal department and billed internally, etc...) when the guy sets up as a professor at some university and wants to publish the results or write the next grant (with research data paid for by the public).
What if the data is entirely private? The x-staff member may still have a legal and vested interest in taking and or protecting it. For example: to ensure a patent is filed on the IP (which would be owned by the company more than likely) to make sure he gets his fair share of the royalty checks down the road (again depends on contract). (Or to be able to prove that the x-employee was involved with the project if the company later decides to patent without passing on royalties. Although taking data for such reasons will also have a lot to do with the IP clauses in the contract.
Revoke privileges instantly and you may find yourself with a freedom of information act or a subpoena real quick. A company shouldn't play hard ball unless it's willing to have it hit back. There should be respect all around; for the person who gave a certain portion of his life for the company and for the company who provided for a persons livelihood.
You may be on to something - this may actually work.
From the article:
"For its part, the TSA says that body scanning is perfectly constitutional: 'The program is designed to respect individual sensibilities regarding privacy, modesty and personal autonomy to the maximum extent possible, while still performing its crucial function of protecting all members of the public from potentially catastrophic events.'"
Since when did the Fourth Amendment provide exemptions for "the end justifies the means" situations? (Which is a separate argument altogether).
To claim that an effective strip search without probable cause, hot pursuit, or arrest is in any way not a violation of the Fourth Amendment is a bold and likely incorrect point of view. The issue of consent is probably a critical issue here. Perhaps one doesn't have to travel by air; but when the issue may be to lose one's job for refusing to complete a business trip, perhaps then defaulting on a mortgage, & etc, or to "consent" to a millimeter wave search... That sounds more like extortion.
Not to say that the Constitution has never been violated before, but let us not deceive ourselves as to what we are doing.
Don't get me wrong - I've been reading books on screen since the black and white palm devices could manage it and I completely understand your love for the format; but there's one thing holding me back from jumping on the band wagon: DRM.
How many books do you plan on giving away in the next 15 years? Is it worth the risk of fines and court fees to you if you break the DRM first? How many libraries will be able to accept donations after you've finished reading something? Or put them on a $0.25 fund-raising book sale where kids in the community come and are able to afford the gems they may discover? There's a lot more to defeating the social cost of current DRM than applying a magic crack to an algorithm.
And, with this shift, we will see the resurgence of the mom and pop bookstore that sells new and used books in a loving environment which was previously squeezed out by the mega chains. And I'm fine with that. Sadly, we'll also see the resurgence of those bookstores with five cats wandering around the store making the place smell like stale cat urine. I'm less fine with that...
Right, for that soon to be expanding used ebook market...
Although - you do bring up the bright side of licensing instead of buying all of our books - no cat piss. I confess that I have never considered that advantage before.
...which also is like robbery, considering that you can find most information on the internet.
It's not the information that's worth $29.95 but the editing.
Right to repair our own electronics though? (Or build interface devices)?
Do you have it in a fenced in back yard?
What about the "traditional" points of view but at other wavelengths? If your house is transparent to spectrum X - should you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in say your bedroom?
Some photography laws allow for pictures of private locations from the street, but not using telephoto optics - does that apply to satellites and airplanes use? Perhaps you could make the jurisdiction argument, but if your "camera" is located outside of the jurisdiction, but the person pulling the shutter is within the jurisdiction (e.g. programmed flight, camera, and receives images) does that muddy the waters?
I don't think this excellent reference even addresses the issue at hand.
The original production cost is however definitely non-zero and there may very well be a minimum per copy royalty split between the publisher and author which applies to each transaction.
Copies sold to "book clubs" and such are often contracted at lower royalty rates, however, I highly doubt that Amazon or Apple should count as anything other than retail.
As for the OP, I vehemently disagree with those who suggest languages like Java and C#. Not because they're bad, but because they're so completely different from what he already knows. To go from FORTRAN to C# is like going from AutoCAD to Photoshop. Just so very very different.
If he wants to ease into what's popular today, perhaps start with Object Oriented COBOL. That would be a handful in itself, as it turns the whole concept upside down from what's "old school", but it would still not be as suicidal as jumping directly into any of the "new skool" languages.
And if he wants to learn (pseudo)scripting languages, Python is probably the way to go. Not because it's a wonderful language, but because it is about as unforgiving as COBOL, yet small enough that you can keep it in your head and focus on the actual problem without going OO (although you can certainly do that in Python too -- you just don't have to).
Delphi - OO and very Pascal like.
Although it's not on the list of other languages. I'm just an engineer working in a small research lab and it was quick for me to pick up and useful to make a custom instrument do what I needed it to. I don't know Delphi's commercial viability.
... and perhaps some beer.
... and lots of beer.
There, fixed that for you. This is Australia we're talking about after all.
But you may avoid learning C because of the syntax. For example, I'm an engineer working in a small research lab. I needed some software written to control and monitor stuff I built in the lab and I definitely didn't have time to mess with the C syntax and it wasn't even worth asking management if I could cut a PO for one of those hire a coder for my project sites online (what about security, how do we really know how much time they put in, that's not the way we write contracts, we'll need legal to look over it, etc...?). Delphi was easy to get started with after a few tutorials and my 15 year old familiarity with AppleSoft Basic (on the //e). Easy stuff went in first and within 3 weeks of time (spread over 2 months) I had a working real time graphical output, hardware communication, feedback control, data collecting, exactly-the-way-I-want it piece of software. I tried to pick up theory as I went, so I also made the thing multi-threaded (it didn't need it, but that's good programming form which all modern programmers do right?).
I'd love to pick up more skill and theory and I probably will over the years when I get some free time, but the syntax of C would have gotten in the way of both with my constraints and I didn't see much that C could do that Delphi didn't.
Delphi was a great language for quickly picking up and developing something, but I could tell that it's well went very deep too.
Nah... like they said - there's security weaknesses. You only get taxed if you aren't smart enough. Hold on a sec, I hear someone outsi
The researchers had a real gas..
...there is no spoon
If congress doesn't weigh in on this soon they're going to pass the point where massive head breaking won't be necessary (not that Comcast doesn't have a big head in need of some slapping). And when it comes to head breaking, I'd rater see a TR progressively taking on Standard Oil than FDR reactive style acts against those who tanked the economy. (There's more corollaries here to the current US banking system than are immediately obvious). Information and transit of information are the commodities of the day.