Circumvention should be permitted for purposes of fair use.
This will never fly, of course, since one example of fair use is making backup copies, which is functional indistinguishable from making "backup copies."
How to communicate science to a national audience 1. Show the evidence. . . . That's pretty much it.
How NOT to commmunicate science to a national audience 1. Tell the theory. 2. If people think "theory" = "guess", call them stupid. 3. Force children to learn that their parents' beliefs are wrong. (The last step is essential if your goal is to NOT communicate science.)
"So how exactly does the exception prove the rule? It's a very odd phrase."
In this case, "prove" means "test," like the army's proving grounds, where new ordnance and equipment is tested, or a young hero going off to prove (ie test) himself. Thus the saying means "The exception tests the rule." The notion is that you create a rule that applies to a large number of cases, and when an exception comes along, you to test to see if it still holds.
In other words, don't ignore exceptions; test your rules, instead.
For thirty years after the fall of the czar, we let the Russian people suffer under the iron heel of communism. When the Nazis invaded, we sent the Russians tanks and trucks, even though they'd helped start the war in Europe by partitioning Poland with the Nazis. During the years after WWII when the USA had nukes and the USSR didn't, the USA didn't drop any nukes on the USSR.
"Would you have trusted the US as the only country with nuclear weapons?"
For several years, the United States WAS the only country with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. The United States under had the means to directly dominate the entire world. It refrained from doing so.
"No man has true freedom unless his passive income exceeds his living expenses"
Thus were born the "liberal arts" - the arts studied by a man who had no need to produce income from his knowledge. Contrast - in contrast to the "practical arts."
Mathematics is a liberal art. Engineering is a practical art.
The property owner has told many other people that they can walk across the field for free.
It is common for people to let others walk across their property.
The property owner sees you walking across her field every day for a year but never tells you "HEY! GET OFF MY LAND!"
You're not walking, you're driving, and the car manufacturer provides a navigation system that says it's OK to drive across this field. (Buy a new laptop from Dell. It will automatically connect to any unsecured wireless network in range.)
"Umm, sorry, ignorance is not an acceptable excuse for breaking the law."
Um, yes, it is. Not legally, perhaps, but morally, it is, because we're dealing with secret laws here. A law was passed, but not even law enforcement was aware of it. Neither the offender, the accuser, nor the arresting officer knew that a law was being broken. How is this situation any different from arresting someone for breaking a secret law?
Claiming that the law is part of the public record is irrelevant; a classified ad placed in the local newspaper of Podunk, Idaho is part of the public record. Claiming that the law is known now is irrelevant; this man isn't being arrested now. We are well on our way to letting the police make it up as they go along.
"While at AT&T (T) in the early 1990s, I sponsored two separate ideation sessions around a potential new market, bringing in 50 experts each time to brainstorm for applications. Both groups generated ideas with real commercial value.
Both groups, however, generated more than 95% of the same ideas in common. They were "obvious" in the fullest sense of the word and would have been commercialized with or without the incentive of a patent. But the Patent Office found them "novel," and issued AT&T claims by the basketful."
This, in a nutshell, is everything that is wrong with the patent office. Most patents granted are NOT non-obvious. I would suggest that what the patent office needs is a peer-review process.
"Management views IS as a facilities function; computers are a tool, and only a tool." And they are correct. If it doesn't provably add to the bottom line, they don't care. How do you view motors, electrical outlets, and HVAC systems? How do you view pens and paper? Computers are analogous. Your management's view is at least the most popular view. If you don't like it, you will be unhappy working as an IS manager in most environments.
1a. Pragmatically, the main job of IS is to do whatever company management thinks IS should do. You are part of a relatively small enterprise; it is your job to help out that enterprise any way you can with whatever resources you have. If that means you draft, proofread, and type a memo about employee parking, you do it. And you don't complain. The 'leet crowd will disagree, I'm sure, but unless you are abslutely irreplaceable (and no one is), you don't make yourself appear to be a prima donna whose willingness to work is limited.
1b. The main job of IS is to make sure that everyone can use their computers. Connectivity is included in that, but so is installing software, reconnecting keyboards, writing login scripts, patching servers, and (insert your least favorite computer-related task here). IS is the department with the people that make working with computers seem as easy as breathing. It is their job to make it easier for everyone else to deal with computers.
Corollary to 1b: This includes the secretary who is incapable of rebooting her own computer, can't use the Start Menu, and tries to scan documents by running the optical mouse over them. ("At my last job, we had a business card scanner had a light on the bottom, so I thought...") And you do it with a smile and reassure her that everyone has this trouble.
2a. IS involvement in other divisions is the purpose of IS. What, you're only providing connectivity and computer services to your own division? Or perhaps you're pushing cookie cutter solutions onto a company that doesn't need them? ("Hey, 'IS Manager' magazine says ALL the cool manufacturing IS managers are doing it!") If you're not talking to other division managers and finding ways that you can help them, you will find yourself replaced by someone who will.
2b. IS involvement in everything that affects IS is essential. Otherwise, some bright, eager, manager is going to put lots of time and effort project that will consequently be impossible for you to kill, and will ruin your whole year. Standardizing the product design department on Macs, perhaps? Or converting all the legal department's documents to WordPerfect format? This is a political struggle. You want to be present at the meetings where bad ideas are born so that you can strangle them. If you limit your involvement to saying "No, that's not a good idea" just when someone else is ready to hand their project over to IT, you will be disliked and frequently over-ruled.
3. What you've proposed is tripling the payroll costs of IT for no appreciable benefit to the company. In the eyes of company management, things are running fine. If you are really falling apart, you need to find yourself another offer of employment. With that in hand, find out if your company is amenable to improving your situation. If not, walk. I doubt that you are going to succeed in setting yourself up as a CIO, which is what your situation really needs. You have no management authority, and getting some is the only way to really fix the situation.
I've been in your position and held your mindset before, and it's not easy. I cannot emphasize enough that you must both understand management's mindset AND be prepared to leave. Otherwise, you will be unable to negotiate a satisfactory resolution to your issues. At the very least, I would agree that you need a tech to work with you; a ratio of 1:100 is ridiculous.
This (entwined economies) was the reason why the major world powers in the 1910s thought that war was impossible. Didn't work then, didn't work now. Economic arguments assume rational decision makers, and no human being is entirely rational all the time.
The fact that out-of-print books have copyright protection is further proof that Congress is more interested in hewing to the corporate line than adhering to Constitutional principles. How does preventing any further publication of a work for nearly 100 years promote the useful arts and sciences?
I would make copyright dependent upon making the copyrighted material available for the duration of the copyright. If it falls out of publication for a year and a day, then the copyright lapses. Making the material available online would be a cheap and easy way to maintain your copyright. Those that don't like that notion are free to publish and warehouse physical copies. In order to close an obvious loophole, I would further require that the copyrighted material be available at no more than the original cost, adjusted each year for inflation.
PRECISELY. You know that old "rule" about sentences not ending in propositions? It was made up by an English-speaking grammarian because in Latin, sentences CAN'T end in prepositions. This despite the fact that native speakers of the English language had been ending sentences with prepositions for hundreds of years. (Read Chaucer sometime.)
Many of the "rules" of English grammar are actually rules of Latin grammar, incorrectly imposed. This is something up with which I shall not put!
Are your ethical reasons are so strong that you are incapable of expressing them in mere words, or do you simply believe that people will be more likely to believe you if you don't state your ethical reasons?
This is just the stupidest thing I've ever been accused of. You align yourself politically with the anti-Bushies, you take a position held by those generally incapable of understanding the ethical dilemma, you fail to clarify your ethical position, and other people are stupid for drawing the reasonable conclusion about you from the admittedly few facts that they have about you?
I have a mind So do other people. Don't expect them NOT to use it. Don't expect them NOT to reason from limited facts. We have a vanishingly small subset of facts available to us; waiting for the whole set of facts to become available is a losing proposition.
Who cares how much money you make if you're so swamped you can't enjoy it?
You should. Hypothetically, you could stay single and work your tail off to achieve modest financial independence within 10 years. If you're not on track to do this, then forget about it nd find a job you don't hate and that permits you to have a life outside of work.
We have here the 21st-century version of an old-school newspaper scoop. (Note to hard-core slashdotizens: a scoop is the news reporters' version of "FR15T P05T!".) The company whose public databases are most rapidly updated to reflect reality can scoop its competition, drawing to itself customers who seek the latest information. (Note to non-native speakers of English: in that sentence, "latest" means "newest." Stupid, I know.) Were I a vice-president at google, I'd create a division that hired aerial photographers after any natural disaster, military attack, industrial accident, etc. solely to ensure that Google Maps stays current. (Note to readers from google.com: reply to this post if you want to hire me to implement this great idea.)
One of my memories of the Great Flood of '93 is that cemeteries situated in the flood plain were inundated for weeks. Airtight coffins, lighter than the mud around them, floated to the surface and were washed away. Entire cemeteries were lost.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah! Those 6-digit..um...newbs...um...
I confirm that this story is true. I read about it in the parent comment.
Since my /. ID is even lower than the parent commentor's, this is an even stronger verification of the story's accuracy.
(P.S. This is how actual journalism works.)
Circumvention should be permitted for purposes of fair use.
This will never fly, of course, since one example of fair use is making backup copies, which is functional indistinguishable from making "backup copies."
"...not all engineering students can be above average intelligence"
Um...yes, they can. They totally can. Just expel every engineering student who scores below 130 on an IQ test.
How to communicate science to a national audience
1. Show the evidence.
. . . That's pretty much it.
How NOT to commmunicate science to a national audience
1. Tell the theory.
2. If people think "theory" = "guess", call them stupid.
3. Force children to learn that their parents' beliefs are wrong.
(The last step is essential if your goal is to NOT communicate science.)
"So how exactly does the exception prove the rule? It's a very odd phrase."
In this case, "prove" means "test," like the army's proving grounds, where new ordnance and equipment is tested, or a young hero going off to prove (ie test) himself. Thus the saying means "The exception tests the rule." The notion is that you create a rule that applies to a large number of cases, and when an exception comes along, you to test to see if it still holds.
In other words, don't ignore exceptions; test your rules, instead.
www.scene.org
Lots of good music there.
For thirty years after the fall of the czar, we let the Russian people suffer under the iron heel of communism. When the Nazis invaded, we sent the Russians tanks and trucks, even though they'd helped start the war in Europe by partitioning Poland with the Nazis. During the years after WWII when the USA had nukes and the USSR didn't, the USA didn't drop any nukes on the USSR.
Not rocket scientists - I'm pretty sure the USA bagged all of them before the USSR could.
"Would you have trusted the US as the only country with nuclear weapons?"
For several years, the United States WAS the only country with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. The United States under had the means to directly dominate the entire world. It refrained from doing so.
"No man has true freedom unless his passive income exceeds his living expenses"
Thus were born the "liberal arts" - the arts studied by a man who had no need to produce income from his knowledge. Contrast - in contrast to the "practical arts."
Mathematics is a liberal art. Engineering is a practical art.
To extend your analogy...
There's a well-trodden path through the field.
Fences are available for free.
The neighbor's field is fenced off.
The property owner has told many other people that they can walk across the field for free.
It is common for people to let others walk across their property.
The property owner sees you walking across her field every day for a year but never tells you "HEY! GET OFF MY LAND!"
You're not walking, you're driving, and the car manufacturer provides a navigation system that says it's OK to drive across this field. (Buy a new laptop from Dell. It will automatically connect to any unsecured wireless network in range.)
"Umm, sorry, ignorance is not an acceptable excuse for breaking the law."
Um, yes, it is. Not legally, perhaps, but morally, it is, because we're dealing with secret laws here. A law was passed, but not even law enforcement was aware of it. Neither the offender, the accuser, nor the arresting officer knew that a law was being broken. How is this situation any different from arresting someone for breaking a secret law?
Claiming that the law is part of the public record is irrelevant; a classified ad placed in the local newspaper of Podunk, Idaho is part of the public record. Claiming that the law is known now is irrelevant; this man isn't being arrested now. We are well on our way to letting the police make it up as they go along.
I mourn for the Republic.
Attorneys General also often routinely settle for "$5 off the next $200 purchase" as a remedy.
This, in a nutshell, is everything that is wrong with the patent office. Most patents granted are NOT non-obvious. I would suggest that what the patent office needs is a peer-review process.
"Management views IS as a facilities function; computers are a tool, and only a tool."
And they are correct. If it doesn't provably add to the bottom line, they don't care. How do you view motors, electrical outlets, and HVAC systems? How do you view pens and paper? Computers are analogous. Your management's view is at least the most popular view. If you don't like it, you will be unhappy working as an IS manager in most environments.
1a. Pragmatically, the main job of IS is to do whatever company management thinks IS should do. You are part of a relatively small enterprise; it is your job to help out that enterprise any way you can with whatever resources you have. If that means you draft, proofread, and type a memo about employee parking, you do it. And you don't complain. The 'leet crowd will disagree, I'm sure, but unless you are abslutely irreplaceable (and no one is), you don't make yourself appear to be a prima donna whose willingness to work is limited.
1b. The main job of IS is to make sure that everyone can use their computers. Connectivity is included in that, but so is installing software, reconnecting keyboards, writing login scripts, patching servers, and (insert your least favorite computer-related task here). IS is the department with the people that make working with computers seem as easy as breathing. It is their job to make it easier for everyone else to deal with computers.
Corollary to 1b: This includes the secretary who is incapable of rebooting her own computer, can't use the Start Menu, and tries to scan documents by running the optical mouse over them. ("At my last job, we had a business card scanner had a light on the bottom, so I thought...") And you do it with a smile and reassure her that everyone has this trouble.
2a. IS involvement in other divisions is the purpose of IS. What, you're only providing connectivity and computer services to your own division? Or perhaps you're pushing cookie cutter solutions onto a company that doesn't need them? ("Hey, 'IS Manager' magazine says ALL the cool manufacturing IS managers are doing it!") If you're not talking to other division managers and finding ways that you can help them, you will find yourself replaced by someone who will.
2b. IS involvement in everything that affects IS is essential. Otherwise, some bright, eager, manager is going to put lots of time and effort project that will consequently be impossible for you to kill, and will ruin your whole year. Standardizing the product design department on Macs, perhaps? Or converting all the legal department's documents to WordPerfect format? This is a political struggle. You want to be present at the meetings where bad ideas are born so that you can strangle them. If you limit your involvement to saying "No, that's not a good idea" just when someone else is ready to hand their project over to IT, you will be disliked and frequently over-ruled.
3. What you've proposed is tripling the payroll costs of IT for no appreciable benefit to the company. In the eyes of company management, things are running fine. If you are really falling apart, you need to find yourself another offer of employment. With that in hand, find out if your company is amenable to improving your situation. If not, walk. I doubt that you are going to succeed in setting yourself up as a CIO, which is what your situation really needs. You have no management authority, and getting some is the only way to really fix the situation.
I've been in your position and held your mindset before, and it's not easy. I cannot emphasize enough that you must both understand management's mindset AND be prepared to leave. Otherwise, you will be unable to negotiate a satisfactory resolution to your issues. At the very least, I would agree that you need a tech to work with you; a ratio of 1:100 is ridiculous.
Good luck; you'll need it.
This (entwined economies) was the reason why the major world powers in the 1910s thought that war was impossible. Didn't work then, didn't work now. Economic arguments assume rational decision makers, and no human being is entirely rational all the time.
The fact that out-of-print books have copyright protection is further proof that Congress is more interested in hewing to the corporate line than adhering to Constitutional principles. How does preventing any further publication of a work for nearly 100 years promote the useful arts and sciences?
I would make copyright dependent upon making the copyrighted material available for the duration of the copyright. If it falls out of publication for a year and a day, then the copyright lapses. Making the material available online would be a cheap and easy way to maintain your copyright. Those that don't like that notion are free to publish and warehouse physical copies. In order to close an obvious loophole, I would further require that the copyrighted material be available at no more than the original cost, adjusted each year for inflation.
I was going to say more, but, yeah, the subject is pretty much it.
PRECISELY. You know that old "rule" about sentences not ending in propositions? It was made up by an English-speaking grammarian because in Latin, sentences CAN'T end in prepositions. This despite the fact that native speakers of the English language had been ending sentences with prepositions for hundreds of years. (Read Chaucer sometime.)
Many of the "rules" of English grammar are actually rules of Latin grammar, incorrectly imposed. This is something up with which I shall not put!
*for ethical reasons*.
Are your ethical reasons are so strong that you are incapable of expressing them in mere words, or do you simply believe that people will be more likely to believe you if you don't state your ethical reasons?
This is just the stupidest thing I've ever been accused of.
You align yourself politically with the anti-Bushies, you take a position held by those generally incapable of understanding the ethical dilemma, you fail to clarify your ethical position, and other people are stupid for drawing the reasonable conclusion about you from the admittedly few facts that they have about you?
I have a mind
So do other people. Don't expect them NOT to use it. Don't expect them NOT to reason from limited facts. We have a vanishingly small subset of facts available to us; waiting for the whole set of facts to become available is a losing proposition.
Who cares how much money you make if you're so swamped you can't enjoy it?
You should. Hypothetically, you could stay single and work your tail off to achieve modest financial independence within 10 years. If you're not on track to do this, then forget about it nd find a job you don't hate and that permits you to have a life outside of work.
But will you proactively internalize it into your core competencies?
We have here the 21st-century version of an old-school newspaper scoop. (Note to hard-core slashdotizens: a scoop is the news reporters' version of "FR15T P05T!".) The company whose public databases are most rapidly updated to reflect reality can scoop its competition, drawing to itself customers who seek the latest information. (Note to non-native speakers of English: in that sentence, "latest" means "newest." Stupid, I know.) Were I a vice-president at google, I'd create a division that hired aerial photographers after any natural disaster, military attack, industrial accident, etc. solely to ensure that Google Maps stays current. (Note to readers from google.com: reply to this post if you want to hire me to implement this great idea.)
One of my memories of the Great Flood of '93 is that cemeteries situated in the flood plain were inundated for weeks. Airtight coffins, lighter than the mud around them, floated to the surface and were washed away. Entire cemeteries were lost.