Bush is getting a WAY bad rap on this whole thing.
You're right -- helicopters are 100 times more expensive, which is why the feds are not usually in charge of disaster recovery. The country is too damn big to have disaster plans for every region, which is why it's the responsibility of local and state governments to have plans. Why the hell didn't the mayor of New Orleans have a plan to get HIS OWN CITIZENS out?? The guy is being a total a-hole blaiming the feds for his own failure, as well as the failure of the governor of Louisiana.
Did you know that it was BUSH who personally called the mayor to order a mandatory evacuation? From this...
"Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding."
In other words, Bush saved thousand, if not tens of thousands of lives. The deaths can be put squarely on the government of Louisiana and New Orleans.
Not that things couldn't have been done faster -- they could have. But Bush is getting way too much of the blame here. The feds are not designed to move fast, combined with the fact that it was an incredible mess, and it doesn't help when people are shooting at the rescuers.
You'll notice the use of the phrase "via a contract". That contract is the Work for Hire contract, and is the mechanism by which the employee signs over their copyright to the employer.
Nope, that's wrong. The question is where the default rights go. For a programmer, they are considered "work for hire". If there is no employment contract, the rights will go to the employer. For a photographer (and many other fields considered 'art'), they rights default to the artist.
The photographer owns the rights to every picture they take unless they sell the rights to someone else (e.g. you). In the same way, a programmer owns the rights to every line of code they right, unless they sell the rights to someone else (e.g. to an employer via a contract). A musician owns the rights to songs they write, again unless they sell them to a music label. There's no special rule for photographers.
You are totally wrong about how this works. It all comes down whether your work is classified as "work for hire". A programmer doesn't own jack while he's on an employer's time by default, because they're considered work for hire. You are flat wrong if you think you own any code that you write for someone else, unless that's specifically negotiated in the contract.
The rules for photographers and other artists were changed in 1976 (I believe). Google for "work for hire" and "copyright" if you want to learn more about this.
Unless they negotiated a contract with you in advance, that's bullshit.
Nope, that's the (US) law. Copyright law specifically gives the rights to the photographers, and you are forbidden from making copies without their permission. You have to negotiate these things in advance, and a lot of photographers flat-out refuse to give you any rights. You have to go to them for prints. This is why it's often hard to copy a photo at, say, Kinkos. They're under pressure from the Photographer unions and fear being sued for copyright infringement.
It sucks, but there you go.
I had a debate about this once from a professional photographer (a horse photographer, in fact), and she went on and on about how prints are the only way she makes any money, cameras are expensive, etc, etc. Boo freakin' hoo. The rights still shouldn't belong to her if it's MY money paying the tab.
And, of course - creator control of intellectual property, because creators deserve to own their own work.
The person who pays for the work deserves to own the work. This is the same idiotic logic where we have photographers owning the rights to YOUR wedding pics, even though you paid for them. If the creator wants to own the rights, then the creator should PAY for them.
Artists should have the same rights as any other tradesman. Does the carpenter own the rights to your kitchen just because he builds the cabinets?
That was my exact first thought. This is so obviously useful to survival that there has to be a big downside. I suspect that this dramatically increases cancer risk. Yeah, it works most of the time, but when it doesn't work... say hello to things growing out of your body at random.
Let's say the pool is open for 12 hours. People also need lunch breaks, bathroom breaks, etc. Combine that with the fact that people get tired, have bad days and are generally unreliable. Now think about the "sensory noise" of a busy pool...
Hmm, that was the response I was going to make, but thinking about it, you have the same general issues with life guards above the pool. It makes you wonder if adding video feeds to the life guard tower would be a good idea.
Still, all that said, life guards are normally only on duty for limited time. Presumably this sytem could run all the time, and in enough quantity, the price could probably be brought down. As someone else said, it shouldn't replace life guards, but it's a valuable addition.
Maybe you're not up on the latest medical discoveries, but only recently have we discovered that several minutes without air is a Bad Thing.
I'm sure the GM in question consulted with numerous authorities to verify this obscure, yet true, fact.
With the pace of knowledge these days, it's not surprising that you may not have been aware of this. I heard the discoverer of this startling fact is up for the Nobel Prize. Clearly it took Einstienian genius to uncover this truth.
...the practice of using the algorithm as the basis of software construction Switching to a signal-based, synchronous software model...
Unless I'm not understanding what you mean, that doesn't make much sense. How is a line of code, a subroutine, or a method different from "synchronous signalling"?
All data processing eventually boils down to dataset manipulation over time, which is another way of describing an "algorithm".
Not to say that we don't need a different way to construct software -- we do. But I'm reminded of the famous axiom, "there are no silver bullets". Software is damn hard, because there are too many details than can be managed by humans. The ultimate solution will probably be software constructed by intelligent software, i.e., real AI. Unfortunately, there is no current science of AI, and nothing is really on the horizon.
Insightful? That's the part of the quote I immediately rolled my eyes at -- it's incredibly stupid and ignorant. How does he think products get developed in the real world? Got news for him -- big companies with lots of resources produce most of computer innovation. I'm still waiting for something innovative to come out of Open Source. Most, if not all, of it is copying proprietary software.
Not to say that Open Source isn't useful, I use it every day. But innovation is not (currently) what Open Source is all about.
Are men on the average physically stronger than women? Of course, no (sane) person would argue that this is sexist to say. Can men have babies? No. Clearly there are physical difference between the sexes. So why should it surprise anyone that our brains are wired differently as well?
That said, 'intelligence' is extremely tricky to define, composed of dozens of different dimensions. It's possible that women do better at certain areas than men, and vice versa.
This also is an average. It doesn't mean that every woman is inferior to every man, as some people will assume this means.
People who are petitioning the government: Learn to use your computer and block out connections to.xxx (as well as the numerous other porn sites and link listing services such as sublimedirectory, elephantlist, and thehun) [snip]
ICANN, you fuck up enough, ignore these pointless requests from the Nation of the "Free" and go about your business properly.
Out of curiosity, does your view on the government staying out of running the Internet also extend to staying out of passing laws against spam?
Copying copyright music does not "deprive the owner of its possession", and therefore it is not theft. Do your homoework next time.
Um, yes it does. If you're in possession of the music, then by law you have to pay for it. You have deprived the copyright holder of the payment.
Put it this way. If you work for someone, and they don't pay you, have they stolen from you? They haven't taken any possessions from you. Don't know about you, but I'd say 'yes', even though it's technically a contract violation.
You haven't done your math lately. At the going rate, it will be cheaper in less than a decade.
Despite your silly tin-foil rant, You're right (Except for the timeframe, probably more like 50 years). So what are you complaining about? The problem will take care of itself. When oil gets too expensive, we'll convert to something else. Simple economics.
We don't just "convert to it now" because it's not economical to do so, and it just doesn't matter that much, despite the chicken littles.
Relax. Everything will work out, because it always does. The year 2000 bug was a disaster -- and yet it wasn't, because when the shit hits the fan and people HAVE to figure things out, things get figured out. Necessity really is the mother of invention. A cliche, but a true one. The world simply ain't gonna end if oil gets expensive.
But that's a different problem. If you want to argue that it's better to create more pollution than create more landfills, I'll listen to that argument.
Never do any research and find out that the #1 pollution from paper is from bleaching the pulp, which you have to do far less of with recycled.
Prove it -- and not from information on an eco advocacy site. I find it extremely difficult to believe that virgin wood pulp is harder to bleach than garbage loaded with ink, wax, plastic, etc. Sorry, but I just don't believe that something already clean and sterile is harder to process than something loaded with contaminants.
Seriously, think this through. We have two sources of paper pulp. Dirty garbage, loaded with ink, wax, etc, and then we have a pure harvested tree from a tree farm. Do you really think it uses less energy to clean the garbage, sterilize it, bleach it, and turn it in quality paper? Do you really think it's harder to use a virgin wood pulp, and turn that directly into paper?
Of course not. The problem is that those stats don't take into account the whole process of turning garbage into paper. It's extremely selective.
...that we can't get our President to even mention the word conservation...
Of course, others of us are thankful we don't have a President who manipulates the populace with "feel good" solution such as "conservation" that actually do nothing about the real problems. Unfortunately, there are too many people who just want leaders to "say the right things" to make them think they "care until they bleed." *cough*Clinton*cough*
You seem to think that if only a leader would wave his magic arm, alternative energy sources would magically appear, solving all our oil problems. It will NEVER work that way. If some EcoBleeder wants alternative energy to work, then EcoBleeder should invent something that's cheaper than oil. Presto! Alternative energy is in.
Let's not even get into how wasteful recycling is from an energy standpoint. Hey, as long as you feel good about putting newspaper into the recycle bin, who cares that it produces more pollution to turn it back into quality paper than it would to plant a tree and harvest it? It's all about feeling good, isn't it?
You know what annoys me more? Geeks like you who dissect every good thing, every litte progress just so you can feel better about the fact that you won't be able to enjoy it, even if it was to "actual" space.
Who says I couldn't do it? It'd be a stretch, but I could do it. But if I'm going to shell out money for space travel, I want SPACE TRAVEL. Not four or five minutes of free fall, but docking with a hotel in space.
It's a good first step. But did you read the marketing crapola on the Virgin Galactic web site? Don't you think they're overselling this just a tad?
This is not space travel. I don't care that a bunch of geeks in a room defined "space" as 100KM, space travel means CONTROLLED space travel. This is just shooting people really high and letting them fall to earth, at which point it's normal air travel.
We could fly before the Wright Brothers, but what made their accomplishment noteworthy was that it was controlled, powered flight. This is uncontrolled powered space travel. It's a stunt.
Space travel means an orbital insertion. Controlled powered space travel.
Granted, this is a necessary step. I'm glad they're doing it. But I hate all the hype they're putting into this. I'm afraid that people, once they figure out it's a very expensive stunt that isn't really space travel, are going to poison the well for this sort of thing.
Be honest: Would you really be impressed with someone who rode this thing, other than the fact that they were able to shell out 200 grand? Would you look at them as Astronauts? I wouldn't.
Jesus, Dude, don't f*** around with your vision. If you're having symptoms like that, go see an opthalmologist. It may be something minor, or it could be like the other poster said -- a detached retina. Or maybe it's a tumor pressing on your vision centers in your brain. Not trying to scare you, maybe it's something simple, but vision anomolies should always be checked out, even if it "goes away by itself".
Whatever it is, you don't want to wait until it comes back and doesn't go away again.
In other news, Apple (and its fans) continue to insist there is no money in computer software, and the big $$$ are made in the computer hardware market.
(note that all of Apple's recent growth has been in consumer electronics, not computers, before jerking knee).
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You're right -- helicopters are 100 times more expensive, which is why the feds are not usually in charge of disaster recovery. The country is too damn big to have disaster plans for every region, which is why it's the responsibility of local and state governments to have plans. Why the hell didn't the mayor of New Orleans have a plan to get HIS OWN CITIZENS out?? The guy is being a total a-hole blaiming the feds for his own failure, as well as the failure of the governor of Louisiana.
Did you know that it was BUSH who personally called the mayor to order a mandatory evacuation? From this...
"Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding."
In other words, Bush saved thousand, if not tens of thousands of lives. The deaths can be put squarely on the government of Louisiana and New Orleans.
Not that things couldn't have been done faster -- they could have. But Bush is getting way too much of the blame here. The feds are not designed to move fast, combined with the fact that it was an incredible mess, and it doesn't help when people are shooting at the rescuers.
They almost never win, and I generally hate their products.
Nope, that's wrong. The question is where the default rights go. For a programmer, they are considered "work for hire". If there is no employment contract, the rights will go to the employer. For a photographer (and many other fields considered 'art'), they rights default to the artist.
You are totally wrong about how this works. It all comes down whether your work is classified as "work for hire". A programmer doesn't own jack while he's on an employer's time by default, because they're considered work for hire. You are flat wrong if you think you own any code that you write for someone else, unless that's specifically negotiated in the contract.
The rules for photographers and other artists were changed in 1976 (I believe). Google for "work for hire" and "copyright" if you want to learn more about this.
Nope, that's the (US) law. Copyright law specifically gives the rights to the photographers, and you are forbidden from making copies without their permission. You have to negotiate these things in advance, and a lot of photographers flat-out refuse to give you any rights. You have to go to them for prints. This is why it's often hard to copy a photo at, say, Kinkos. They're under pressure from the Photographer unions and fear being sued for copyright infringement.
It sucks, but there you go.
I had a debate about this once from a professional photographer (a horse photographer, in fact), and she went on and on about how prints are the only way she makes any money, cameras are expensive, etc, etc. Boo freakin' hoo. The rights still shouldn't belong to her if it's MY money paying the tab.
The person who pays for the work deserves to own the work. This is the same idiotic logic where we have photographers owning the rights to YOUR wedding pics, even though you paid for them. If the creator wants to own the rights, then the creator should PAY for them.
Artists should have the same rights as any other tradesman. Does the carpenter own the rights to your kitchen just because he builds the cabinets?
That was my exact first thought. This is so obviously useful to survival that there has to be a big downside. I suspect that this dramatically increases cancer risk. Yeah, it works most of the time, but when it doesn't work... say hello to things growing out of your body at random.
Hmm, that was the response I was going to make, but thinking about it, you have the same general issues with life guards above the pool. It makes you wonder if adding video feeds to the life guard tower would be a good idea.
Still, all that said, life guards are normally only on duty for limited time. Presumably this sytem could run all the time, and in enough quantity, the price could probably be brought down. As someone else said, it shouldn't replace life guards, but it's a valuable addition.
I'm sure the GM in question consulted with numerous authorities to verify this obscure, yet true, fact.
With the pace of knowledge these days, it's not surprising that you may not have been aware of this. I heard the discoverer of this startling fact is up for the Nobel Prize. Clearly it took Einstienian genius to uncover this truth.
Unless I'm not understanding what you mean, that doesn't make much sense. How is a line of code, a subroutine, or a method different from "synchronous signalling"?
All data processing eventually boils down to dataset manipulation over time, which is another way of describing an "algorithm".
Not to say that we don't need a different way to construct software -- we do. But I'm reminded of the famous axiom, "there are no silver bullets". Software is damn hard, because there are too many details than can be managed by humans. The ultimate solution will probably be software constructed by intelligent software, i.e., real AI. Unfortunately, there is no current science of AI, and nothing is really on the horizon.
Not to say that Open Source isn't useful, I use it every day. But innovation is not (currently) what Open Source is all about.
That said, 'intelligence' is extremely tricky to define, composed of dozens of different dimensions. It's possible that women do better at certain areas than men, and vice versa.
This also is an average. It doesn't mean that every woman is inferior to every man, as some people will assume this means.
Out of curiosity, does your view on the government staying out of running the Internet also extend to staying out of passing laws against spam?
Um, yes it does. If you're in possession of the music, then by law you have to pay for it. You have deprived the copyright holder of the payment.
Put it this way. If you work for someone, and they don't pay you, have they stolen from you? They haven't taken any possessions from you. Don't know about you, but I'd say 'yes', even though it's technically a contract violation.
Despite your silly tin-foil rant, You're right (Except for the timeframe, probably more like 50 years). So what are you complaining about? The problem will take care of itself. When oil gets too expensive, we'll convert to something else. Simple economics.
We don't just "convert to it now" because it's not economical to do so, and it just doesn't matter that much, despite the chicken littles.
Relax. Everything will work out, because it always does. The year 2000 bug was a disaster -- and yet it wasn't, because when the shit hits the fan and people HAVE to figure things out, things get figured out. Necessity really is the mother of invention. A cliche, but a true one. The world simply ain't gonna end if oil gets expensive.
Anyway, landfills are a temporary problem. Thermal Depolymerization is the long-term solution.
Prove it -- and not from information on an eco advocacy site. I find it extremely difficult to believe that virgin wood pulp is harder to bleach than garbage loaded with ink, wax, plastic, etc. Sorry, but I just don't believe that something already clean and sterile is harder to process than something loaded with contaminants.
Seriously, think this through. We have two sources of paper pulp. Dirty garbage, loaded with ink, wax, etc, and then we have a pure harvested tree from a tree farm. Do you really think it uses less energy to clean the garbage, sterilize it, bleach it, and turn it in quality paper? Do you really think it's harder to use a virgin wood pulp, and turn that directly into paper?
Of course not. The problem is that those stats don't take into account the whole process of turning garbage into paper. It's extremely selective.
Of course, others of us are thankful we don't have a President who manipulates the populace with "feel good" solution such as "conservation" that actually do nothing about the real problems. Unfortunately, there are too many people who just want leaders to "say the right things" to make them think they "care until they bleed." *cough*Clinton*cough*
You seem to think that if only a leader would wave his magic arm, alternative energy sources would magically appear, solving all our oil problems. It will NEVER work that way. If some EcoBleeder wants alternative energy to work, then EcoBleeder should invent something that's cheaper than oil. Presto! Alternative energy is in.
Let's not even get into how wasteful recycling is from an energy standpoint. Hey, as long as you feel good about putting newspaper into the recycle bin, who cares that it produces more pollution to turn it back into quality paper than it would to plant a tree and harvest it? It's all about feeling good, isn't it?
Bah.
I didn't say it wasn't hard, I said it wasn't space travel.
Who says I couldn't do it? It'd be a stretch, but I could do it. But if I'm going to shell out money for space travel, I want SPACE TRAVEL. Not four or five minutes of free fall, but docking with a hotel in space.
It's a good first step. But did you read the marketing crapola on the Virgin Galactic web site? Don't you think they're overselling this just a tad?
This is not space travel. I don't care that a bunch of geeks in a room defined "space" as 100KM, space travel means CONTROLLED space travel. This is just shooting people really high and letting them fall to earth, at which point it's normal air travel.
We could fly before the Wright Brothers, but what made their accomplishment noteworthy was that it was controlled, powered flight. This is uncontrolled powered space travel. It's a stunt.
Space travel means an orbital insertion. Controlled powered space travel.
Granted, this is a necessary step. I'm glad they're doing it. But I hate all the hype they're putting into this. I'm afraid that people, once they figure out it's a very expensive stunt that isn't really space travel, are going to poison the well for this sort of thing.
Be honest: Would you really be impressed with someone who rode this thing, other than the fact that they were able to shell out 200 grand? Would you look at them as Astronauts? I wouldn't.
Bah.
Whatever it is, you don't want to wait until it comes back and doesn't go away again.
(note that all of Apple's recent growth has been in consumer electronics, not computers, before jerking knee).
(Not that Crichton's are that much better, but they are better)