The libraries are selling the books rather than putting them on the shelves!
You know why? There's no SPACE on the shelves. Many, many public libraries are filled almost to overflowing. To add a new book to the collection, you often have to take an old book out of the collection. If that means sacrificing 'DOS 5.0 for Dummies' or the most dog-eared of the 20 copies of Shakespeare's Hamlet, so be it.
Have your ever noticed that the CDs and videos in the library are never the latest albums and movies?
I have. Would you like to know why that is? 1. Since people tend to BUY the latest CDs and videos themselves, there's less demand for the library to carry them. 2. A library's mission is to store materials that are PERPETUALLY useful, not those which are ephemerally popular. Would anyone check out Britney's latest CD five years from now if they put it in the collection today? It usually takes time before the lasting utility of a publication is fully understandable; thus the decision making process when expanding a library's collection needs to take time. 3. Something else that takes time is the very process of purchasing, cataloging, and making media loan-ready. Order a book from the distributor today, it may not get here until next week, and it'll take another day for library staff to look up the Dewey number, enter the info into the online card catalog, paste a barcode and theft-prevention strip in, and everything else that needs to be done before the book is ready to check out -- and that's only if they don't already have a backlog of other new materials that need to be processed. THIS is why it costs a library $30 to carry a book you can get at Waldenbooks for $9.50.
For example, there are many books I would donate if I knew I could check them out later.
It's very generous of you to volunteer to use the library as overflow for your own limited storage space. But is anyone else in your area going to find your books useful? If not, why should the library waste any of their own storage space on it?
Somehow the people who want to corrupt the system, apparently publishers, have gotten control over the libraries.
Do you realize how psychotic that sounds? Hey, here's a thought, maybe it's not publishers that have infiltrated our libraries -- maybe it's GODLESS COMMUNISTS! Better organize a House committee and go on a witch hunt.
Librarians are some of the most vocal defenders of your intellectual freedoms that you'll ever find, and on behalf of them I'm hurt that you would make such a wild accusation as to suggest they're colluding against us.
(Oh, and as background I worked at my hometown's public library for three years, so I do at least have a basic understanding of how running a library actually works.)
Maybe if we gave the libraries more actual funding they wouldn't need to turn to good old-fashioned capitalism to raise the funds they need to stay current.
What's wrong with good old-fashioned capitalism?
It's not like library patrons are getting screwed here, in any way. The books that are being sold are books that were being removed from the collections anyway, and probably would have ended up in a dumpster.
I don't see why libraries, or schools or corporations or individuals citizens, shouldn't be self-sufficient to whatever extent they're capable, rather than depending solely on government handouts.
A couple of the rebuttals Suehring provides to the points in the article boil down to "The more choice, the better, because in the end the market will decide which choices survive."
Problem is, the people making buying decisions can't wait until "in the end" to make their purchases. They need solutions NOW, and there's too much risk in choosing from upteen different Linux distributions if (umpteen-2) of them are likely to be defunct in a few years.
The users gave their consent by coming in to work that day. The company owns the computers. The company is paying you to use the computers for work-related activities. While it could be considered a poor choice of ethics to monitor employee's IM conversations without their explicit consent, it's entirely legal.
If you don't agree with the practice, you're welcome to pursue employment elsewhere.
IM, it seems to me, just doesn't have the permanency and longevity that email does.
This is a Good Thing -- I'd reckon that 95% or more of business correspondence (including email, memos, IM, voicemail, etc.) is ephemeral and has no informative value after it's been received.
Cable television was supposed to be ad free, that's why the consumer would pay.
And the infrastructure magically pays for itself! After all, since most websites don't charge you for accessing their content, your ISP shouldn't be able to demand money either.
The additional cost of HBO and similar services illustrates that the dream of commercial free television is attainable.
Sure, if you're willing to pay $10-20 a month out of your own pocket for it. (And you don't mind that a good majority of the programming is repeats of theatrical movies you already saw, when they last aired it three hours ago.)
Myself, for the moment I'll gladly accept five commercial breaks an hour if it means I can get eighty or so channels for the price of five or six premium channels.
Stallmans point is important about how we shouldn't teach our kids not to share.
Stallman's point is that everyone should be COMPELLED to share whether they want to or not.
When was the last time someone forced you to share your toys with the other kids? Kindergarten? Do you want to be treated like you're still in Kindergarten?
(To avoid the inevitable "Troll" mod-down, I will say that the GPL model is indeed often an effective and useful system -- I just don't feel that such a model is optimal for all, or even most, circumstances. Certainly not something that should be prosetylized to schoolchildren.)
Attempts to boost employee productivity by restricting what they're allowed to do at work are shortsighted and prone to backfire.
The most productive worker is always a contented worker -- if you keep a Big Brother eye on your workers at all times, they're going to resent it. Not to mention you end up paying your management to spy on employees instead of actually managing their work.
So let them spend a half hour a day browsing Slashdot -- they'll probably end up being more productive in the other 7 1/2 when all is accounted for.
their public "education" indoctrination camps would rather teach them to be touchy feely and learn the arts instead of learning to read and understand the rebellious document that was supposd to keep my rights protected
Clearly, the solution to this problem is to eliminate funding for the arts... (rolls eyes)
Zuh? I can read Spanish and German text and comprehend the contents quite well, but I wouldn't count on myself being able to construct a grammatically correct sentence on my own without reference materials. Being able to read a language and being able to write or speak a language are fairly distinct skill sets.
It's kind of like saying that if you don't know how to play guitar, you don't have any reason to listen to a Jimi Hendrix album.
It's not as if America is the only country with different accents from region to region.
I mean, they say "aboot" in Toronto, but "aboat" in Vancouver (Vancoaver?). Regional dialects exist everywhere.
And this is why it's so important that if you have a business that relies on spoken communication, you hire people that are at least conversant in the dialects your customers use.
Are the host countries going to go after one of there own and help out a Chase bank, I think not.
And why not? Chase Bank is giving their economy an enormous boost. It would not be in the nation's best interest if Chase decides they can't do business there and withdraw, costing thousands of jobs in the process.
What's to say that company could resell (or at least reuse) some of that code when they do the same coding for my competitor when they want in on the next big thang too?
The IP laws of the country the code shop is located in, hopefully. Think the CTOs and CFOs that make these decisions to outsource overseas put much effort into learning the subtleties of international contract law?
Yes, she was stupid to butt indignantly into your calculus conversation, but the purple crayon and wooden sandal remarks were uncalled for.
But hey, since you're so into stereotypes, I guess it makes sense that you would uphold the stereotype of engineers being incapable of talking to girls.
First, ergonomics: some people just prefer to have a big keyboard and a big monitor and being able to move the two independently of each other.
Is this really a big issue? I have yet to see a laptop computer that you can't attach an external display and keyboard to.
Sure, you have to buy those devices in addition to the computer itself, but that's what, $200-300 more? You bought a laptop, so you can obviously afford to pay above rock bottom for your computer components.
Does anyone care to guess how many violations or abuses that have been uncovered where a private citizens rights have been violated?
Did anyone guess Zero? Because thats exactly how many violations there have been.
I don't think very highly of the ill-informed knee-jerk reactionaries and scaremongers that tend to populate every YRO story here, but I don't find this rebuttal to their rhetoric any more convincing.
We can't know whether the Patriot Act powers have ever been abused or not. All we can know is that zero abuses of the Patriot Act HAVE BEEN UNCOVERED.
No matter how many eyes it has on it, Open source software can still contain bugs. Open government is no different.
I still think they're both generally better than the alternatives.
McBride is not speaking unilaterally when he makes his business proclamations. He represents his entire company, and SCO as a corporation is condoning his behavior.
If the SCO board of directors thought he had gone loony and was becoming a potential liability to the company, he would have been removed months ago. No, if Darl McBride is behaving the way he is due to psychosis, then every other executive at SCO shares that same affliction.
They must accept the rules in order to be successful at that or any other college.
Who said they were obligated to attend that particular college? Or any college for that matter?
If you don't agree to the school's network AUP, drop out. There's your choice.
But hey, anyone who would prioritize their right to probably-unlawfully download content via a university-owned network over the opportunity to get a post-secondary degree is probably too stupid to belong at university in the first place...
Slashdot Mirror
YOU'RE missing the point.
The libraries are selling the books rather than putting them on the shelves!
You know why? There's no SPACE on the shelves. Many, many public libraries are filled almost to overflowing. To add a new book to the collection, you often have to take an old book out of the collection. If that means sacrificing 'DOS 5.0 for Dummies' or the most dog-eared of the 20 copies of Shakespeare's Hamlet, so be it.
Have your ever noticed that the CDs and videos in the library are never the latest albums and movies?
I have. Would you like to know why that is?
1. Since people tend to BUY the latest CDs and videos themselves, there's less demand for the library to carry them.
2. A library's mission is to store materials that are PERPETUALLY useful, not those which are ephemerally popular. Would anyone check out Britney's latest CD five years from now if they put it in the collection today? It usually takes time before the lasting utility of a publication is fully understandable; thus the decision making process when expanding a library's collection needs to take time.
3. Something else that takes time is the very process of purchasing, cataloging, and making media loan-ready. Order a book from the distributor today, it may not get here until next week, and it'll take another day for library staff to look up the Dewey number, enter the info into the online card catalog, paste a barcode and theft-prevention strip in, and everything else that needs to be done before the book is ready to check out -- and that's only if they don't already have a backlog of other new materials that need to be processed. THIS is why it costs a library $30 to carry a book you can get at Waldenbooks for $9.50.
For example, there are many books I would donate if I knew I could check them out later.
It's very generous of you to volunteer to use the library as overflow for your own limited storage space. But is anyone else in your area going to find your books useful? If not, why should the library waste any of their own storage space on it?
Somehow the people who want to corrupt the system, apparently publishers, have gotten control over the libraries.
Do you realize how psychotic that sounds? Hey, here's a thought, maybe it's not publishers that have infiltrated our libraries -- maybe it's GODLESS COMMUNISTS! Better organize a House committee and go on a witch hunt.
Librarians are some of the most vocal defenders of your intellectual freedoms that you'll ever find, and on behalf of them I'm hurt that you would make such a wild accusation as to suggest they're colluding against us.
(Oh, and as background I worked at my hometown's public library for three years, so I do at least have a basic understanding of how running a library actually works.)
Maybe if we gave the libraries more actual funding they wouldn't need to turn to good old-fashioned capitalism to raise the funds they need to stay current.
What's wrong with good old-fashioned capitalism?
It's not like library patrons are getting screwed here, in any way. The books that are being sold are books that were being removed from the collections anyway, and probably would have ended up in a dumpster.
I don't see why libraries, or schools or corporations or individuals citizens, shouldn't be self-sufficient to whatever extent they're capable, rather than depending solely on government handouts.
You could allways use a digital to analogue converter on the old TVs, at least if you have cable, satilite, or an external antennae.
But I've been using this same television set for 20 years and it works just fine! Why do I need to buy a converter thingy to make it keep working?
Would the Linux people, then, be able to assert that their C code is merely programmable facts
The English alphabet is factual. Does that mean that anything written using the alphabet cannot be copyrighted?
Imagine if GM claimed to sell you a car that would 'start more often'.
Or imagine if GM claimed to sell you a car on which the brake pads lasted twice as many miles before they needed to be replaced!
Neither analogy is great, but mine is at least a little closer to the user's perceived experience.
The secret to Windows 98 stability is to install it and not install a bunch of crappy drivers.
That's great, if I want to run in 640x480 16color mode and never use any of my peripherals.
(And yes, I've learned my lesson, and the next video card I buy will NOT be an ATI.)
A couple of the rebuttals Suehring provides to the points in the article boil down to "The more choice, the better, because in the end the market will decide which choices survive."
Problem is, the people making buying decisions can't wait until "in the end" to make their purchases. They need solutions NOW, and there's too much risk in choosing from upteen different Linux distributions if (umpteen-2) of them are likely to be defunct in a few years.
and the open source people are "immature and insecure"?
I think your dismissive attitude towards the business acumen of those individuals due to isolated data points about their behavior speaks volumes.
So what if Steve Ballmer bounces around stage chanting "Developers"? Does that prove that Open Source software is superior in any way?
The users gave their consent by coming in to work that day. The company owns the computers. The company is paying you to use the computers for work-related activities. While it could be considered a poor choice of ethics to monitor employee's IM conversations without their explicit consent, it's entirely legal.
If you don't agree with the practice, you're welcome to pursue employment elsewhere.
IM, it seems to me, just doesn't have the permanency and longevity that email does.
This is a Good Thing -- I'd reckon that 95% or more of business correspondence (including email, memos, IM, voicemail, etc.) is ephemeral and has no informative value after it's been received.
More data != more information != more knowledge.
Cable television was supposed to be ad free, that's why the consumer would pay.
And the infrastructure magically pays for itself! After all, since most websites don't charge you for accessing their content, your ISP shouldn't be able to demand money either.
The additional cost of HBO and similar services illustrates that the dream of commercial free television is attainable.
Sure, if you're willing to pay $10-20 a month out of your own pocket for it. (And you don't mind that a good majority of the programming is repeats of theatrical movies you already saw, when they last aired it three hours ago.)
Myself, for the moment I'll gladly accept five commercial breaks an hour if it means I can get eighty or so channels for the price of five or six premium channels.
Stallmans point is important about how we shouldn't teach our kids not to share.
Stallman's point is that everyone should be COMPELLED to share whether they want to or not.
When was the last time someone forced you to share your toys with the other kids? Kindergarten? Do you want to be treated like you're still in Kindergarten?
(To avoid the inevitable "Troll" mod-down, I will say that the GPL model is indeed often an effective and useful system -- I just don't feel that such a model is optimal for all, or even most, circumstances. Certainly not something that should be prosetylized to schoolchildren.)
Pfeh.
Attempts to boost employee productivity by restricting what they're allowed to do at work are shortsighted and prone to backfire.
The most productive worker is always a contented worker -- if you keep a Big Brother eye on your workers at all times, they're going to resent it. Not to mention you end up paying your management to spy on employees instead of actually managing their work.
So let them spend a half hour a day browsing Slashdot -- they'll probably end up being more productive in the other 7 1/2 when all is accounted for.
their public "education" indoctrination camps would rather teach them to be touchy feely and learn the arts instead of learning to read and understand the rebellious document that was supposd to keep my rights protected
Clearly, the solution to this problem is to eliminate funding for the arts... (rolls eyes)
That's a beautiful idea. You'd get my vote.
Zuh? I can read Spanish and German text and comprehend the contents quite well, but I wouldn't count on myself being able to construct a grammatically correct sentence on my own without reference materials. Being able to read a language and being able to write or speak a language are fairly distinct skill sets.
It's kind of like saying that if you don't know how to play guitar, you don't have any reason to listen to a Jimi Hendrix album.
Customer: Will you replace the system?
Support: Oh, i replace the system.
Sounds like a typical hotline to me....
Except for the part where they agree to replace the system.
It's not as if America is the only country with different accents from region to region.
I mean, they say "aboot" in Toronto, but "aboat" in Vancouver (Vancoaver?). Regional dialects exist everywhere.
And this is why it's so important that if you have a business that relies on spoken communication, you hire people that are at least conversant in the dialects your customers use.
Are the host countries going to go after one of there own and help out a Chase bank, I think not.
And why not? Chase Bank is giving their economy an enormous boost. It would not be in the nation's best interest if Chase decides they can't do business there and withdraw, costing thousands of jobs in the process.
What's to say that company could resell (or at least reuse) some of that code when they do the same coding for my competitor when they want in on the next big thang too?
The IP laws of the country the code shop is located in, hopefully. Think the CTOs and CFOs that make these decisions to outsource overseas put much effort into learning the subtleties of international contract law?
Way to condescend to a non-engineer, asshole.
Yes, she was stupid to butt indignantly into your calculus conversation, but the purple crayon and wooden sandal remarks were uncalled for.
But hey, since you're so into stereotypes, I guess it makes sense that you would uphold the stereotype of engineers being incapable of talking to girls.
First, ergonomics: some people just prefer to have a big keyboard and a big monitor and being able to move the two independently of each other.
Is this really a big issue? I have yet to see a laptop computer that you can't attach an external display and keyboard to.
Sure, you have to buy those devices in addition to the computer itself, but that's what, $200-300 more? You bought a laptop, so you can obviously afford to pay above rock bottom for your computer components.
Does anyone care to guess how many violations or abuses that have been uncovered where a private citizens rights have been violated?
Did anyone guess Zero? Because thats exactly how many violations there have been.
I don't think very highly of the ill-informed knee-jerk reactionaries and scaremongers that tend to populate every YRO story here, but I don't find this rebuttal to their rhetoric any more convincing.
We can't know whether the Patriot Act powers have ever been abused or not. All we can know is that zero abuses of the Patriot Act HAVE BEEN UNCOVERED.
No matter how many eyes it has on it, Open source software can still contain bugs. Open government is no different.
I still think they're both generally better than the alternatives.
McBride is not speaking unilaterally when he makes his business proclamations. He represents his entire company, and SCO as a corporation is condoning his behavior.
If the SCO board of directors thought he had gone loony and was becoming a potential liability to the company, he would have been removed months ago. No, if Darl McBride is behaving the way he is due to psychosis, then every other executive at SCO shares that same affliction.
They must accept the rules in order to be successful at that or any other college.
Who said they were obligated to attend that particular college? Or any college for that matter?
If you don't agree to the school's network AUP, drop out. There's your choice.
But hey, anyone who would prioritize their right to probably-unlawfully download content via a university-owned network over the opportunity to get a post-secondary degree is probably too stupid to belong at university in the first place...