Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.
Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.
We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.
Ken actually had an offer from an off-shore surgeon to do the work pro-bono. Sadly, Ken's passport has expired, and the amount of time to get a new passport is prohibitive. We have 2-3 weeks at most to scrounge up the money for the surgery, after which the cancer will have spread too far to be operable.:(
Amazon already has a system in place to allow customers to redownload my book if I make a future revision. I've used it once to send out an update after a few minor mistakes made it through to the final release. I did a new revision and had Amazon notify all of my customers of the new version. Worked wonderfully.
And no DRM.
DRM is defective by design. It doesn't stop piracy. It only causes problems. As a rule, I don't enable DRM, ever.
I think it would likely be easier to find a ruggedized case for a popular cell phone than an eReader, and then you could load the eReader app of all the popular sites onto it. (Amazon, B&N, and Kobo all have Smartphone apps that work with their services)
I'm actually quite fond of reading on my cell phone. I carry it with me everywhere anyway, so any time I have a few seconds to read, I've got it out with a book open.
I don't enable DRM on my books. Why? Because DRM doesn't stop piracy. I don't *want* people to pirate my book, but I don't honestly believe there is a damn thing I could do about it if my book *did* get pirated.
The hope is that the exposure I gain from any kind of piracy will offset the piracy itself. Right?:)
I saw this coming when the site started circulating the facebook groups I'm involved in. In each case I explained how the site worked, and defended LendInk.com for what they were doing.
The knee-jerking that resulted in this sites shut down is a perfect exampled of what happens when a bunch of frustrated indie authors don't take the time to read or research a site before crying foul.
Copyright laws center around the right to create and *distribute* copyrighted works.
The idea behind the first-sale doctrine was that you could purchase a copy of a copyrighted work, and then do with it as you pleased as long as you did not make additional copies of it. I buy a book, I can now lend it, trade it, sell it, or even give it away. Without the first-sale doctrine, only the copyright holder can determine if that work can be distributed, even after its been sold.
Now, an interesting way around this decision would be this: Purchase the watch, and then in some way *remove* the logo from it. There would no longer be a copyright issue, and the watch could be freely sold.
Actually, this is not normally an issue. Once you train yourself to type in a certain way, your muscles remember how to do it, even if you, consciously, do not.
At the other end of this, is the fact that because of muscle memory, switching to dvorak to fix a querty typing issue often does not solve the problem. (I'm speaking from experience here, because this is what I did.) Most people don't actively think about how they are typing, they type from muscle memory.
Instead, I found the best way to train myself out of bad habits was actually thinking about where my fingers are going and making a conscious effort to stem the bad habits. Re-train your muscles to type properly. It took me a few months of actively working at it, but I have had a fair amount of success with it, and now type properly with all fingers, and look at the screen when I type instead of the keyboard, or constantly shifting from the keyboard to the screen. It has helped a lot with my headaches, as constantly refocusing my eyes was leading to a lot of eye strain.
The $x,xxx per song that the RIAA has been winning are not punitive damages. They are Statutory damages.
Here's the difference:
Punitive damages are awarded when actual damages are not enough to punish the defendant for the act. A punitive damage award is *in addition to* actual damages, and serves as that punishment. Jail time is not an option in civil cases, and thus, punitive damages are used instead to deter future offenses.
Statutory damages are awarded when actual damages are difficult or impossible to calculate. They are awarded *instead of* actual damages. And there are times when punitive damages may be awarded *in addition to* statutory damages. Statutory damages are not meant as a deterrent for future offenses, which is one of the biggest issues people have with the massive damage awards the RIAA is getting in the Lindor and Tennenbaum cases. It's like they are using statutory damages as a punitive damage award because the law does not allow for a punitive damage award in those cases.
<sarcasm> Oh yeah, we see news every day about Kodak suing the pants off everyone over a bunch of crap patents. </sarcasm>
Seriously...
Kodak makes:
Digital Cameras (imagine that!) Memory cards of all types Printers Video Cameras Digital Picture Frames Disposable Cameras Batteries, Bags, Cables, Tripods, Docks, Lenses, Flashes, and many many more accessories.
The first thing I see amongst comments here is a bunch of stuff about invalid patents.
What the/. community needs to understand, is that not *every* patent is invalid just because its being used to sue.
Kodak is not a patent troll. They do real work, good work, and file patents on it to protect their inventions.
If there was ever a patent to assume is valid and in good standing, it would be a digital imaging patent, filed by a company that specializes in Imaging (and these days, Digital imaging).
Kodak is not evil. If these companies think they can implement functionality in their devices just because everyone else does, they need to think again. Everyone else is licensing the technology. If they are not, then they are infringing, and deserve to be sued.
I remember when......dialing a phone meant putting your finger in a hole and spinning the dialer....25MHz was fast for a computer....a dollar could actually get you a chocolate bar, and leave you with change to spare....downloading a song from the internet took 25-30 minutes, or more....I could bring my pocket knife on a plane....I could say merry christmas to somebody without offending them....cell phones were the size of masonry bricks, and were actually used to make phone calls....all personal computers were beige....a personal computer cost $2000 or more....playing a 4-color adventure game was cool....everyone knew how to use a command line interface....I had to rewind movies after watching them....I had to turn the cassette tape over in the player to listen to the other half of the album....camera's used film....polaroid camera's were the only way to get an instant photograph....a printer, a scanner, a copier, and a fax machine were 4 separate devices....the only way to make a phone call away from your home was to put quarters in a payphone.
Okay... I'll stop now. I could likely do this all day.:)
The interesting part of your whole argument is that you completely ignore the fact that both Wolfire and ID Software do more than just rant about it.
They develop games that support OpenGL. What they want, is *other* big developers to stop supporting the inferior libraries and open their eyes.
Plan and simple: There is nothing bad about Open standards.
- If they are broken, you can fix them. - if they lack features, you can add them. - If the performance is poor, you can improve it.
Can you say this about Direct3D? The only entity that can fix, add to, or improve Direct3D is Microsoft. Period.
- If its broken, you have to wait for a patch. - If it lacks features, you have to wait for the next version, and pray that it supports your operating system. - If the performance sucks, you have to deal with it.
Whats good about that? And thats talking a strictly Windows audience.
From a cross platform point of view, there really is just one choice. And its not Direct3D.
I think the sentiment here is that if M$ brings this sort of technology on the market, they will likely "innovate" themselves right out of the market.
Not only does this act to descriminate against users, it also singles them out and takes away one of the reasons people play these games to begin with (to escape reality). There are also heaps of privacy concerns in this, as it would almost certainly require user consent to glean data from medical records.
I can't see this actually coming to fruition and making them any kind of money.
Nintendo's approach was much better. Introduce the tools that people can use to get fit (physically and mentally), but don't force them to use it, and don't single them out if they don't want to.
My suspician is that this is yet another vapourware patent that we'll never see any actual implementation of.
I love how you managed to quote a single/. article about a single persons opinion (albiet an influencial opinion) about the Linux Kernel and have used it as evidence in a sarcastic reply to an even more sarcastic post.
Windows *is* bloated. I believe the Windows 7 footprint when I installed it was in the range of 2-3gig, and that was *just* the OS.
Ubuntu footprint from my latest install on a laptop: 2gig, and that was *WITH* all sorts of games, apps, web browser, etc all installed with it.
If you stripped Linux down to what M$ gives you out of the box, the footprint would be significantly smaller.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure you couldn't get Windows 7 to fit on a 1.44" floppy and still have it boot.
This type of news is disgusting to me as a Canadian.
Throughout the summer, Canada held an enormous copyright consultation in which large corporations expressed an interest in these types of changes, and artists, creators and citizens expressed an interest in the exact opposite direction to this.
Michael Geist usually carries all the latest news about this topic.
At the same time, I think we have nothing to worry about. In a country that shows a 30% voter turnout (at best), that makes 6.9 million voters. Historically, over 500000 canadians joined the protest against the last attempt to bring laws like this. Thats a 7% swing in the vote towards the party that will stand up against this type of law making. Thats enough to win an election in Canada.
With all this hype over copyright and trademark law, I expect it to be a hot topic in the next election, and with us running under a minority gov't, we could end up with an election at any time.
Geeky/Nerdy paraphernalia is unappealing to women...
Am I the only one who got this from that article?
I don't think its geeks that are driving women out of CS. I think men and women think and see things in different ways. Our brains function very differently. The very idea that they could draw the conclusion that they did based solely on womens reactions to varrying degrees of geekery... it's quite a stretch.
Slashdot Mirror
Done. I've already set up my books to give the eBook away for free when you buy the paperback.
So that means y'all should rush out and grab my paperbacks to get the free eBook, right? ;)
(P.S.: Just in case you're ready to take me up on that, http://amazon.com/author/thomasaknight is where they're at.)
From his blog at http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-where-we-are.html
I have a blog post up here as well:
http://thomasaknight.com/blog.php?id=71
and there is an indieGoGO campaign going on here:
http://indiegogo.com/helios
Ken actually had an offer from an off-shore surgeon to do the work pro-bono. Sadly, Ken's passport has expired, and the amount of time to get a new passport is prohibitive. We have 2-3 weeks at most to scrounge up the money for the surgery, after which the cancer will have spread too far to be operable. :(
Amazon already has a system in place to allow customers to redownload my book if I make a future revision. I've used it once to send out an update after a few minor mistakes made it through to the final release. I did a new revision and had Amazon notify all of my customers of the new version. Worked wonderfully.
And no DRM.
DRM is defective by design. It doesn't stop piracy. It only causes problems. As a rule, I don't enable DRM, ever.
I think it would likely be easier to find a ruggedized case for a popular cell phone than an eReader, and then you could load the eReader app of all the popular sites onto it. (Amazon, B&N, and Kobo all have Smartphone apps that work with their services)
I'm actually quite fond of reading on my cell phone. I carry it with me everywhere anyway, so any time I have a few seconds to read, I've got it out with a book open.
Book piracy is very much like Music Piracy.
You can't stop it, no matter how hard you try.
I don't enable DRM on my books. Why? Because DRM doesn't stop piracy. I don't *want* people to pirate my book, but I don't honestly believe there is a damn thing I could do about it if my book *did* get pirated.
The hope is that the exposure I gain from any kind of piracy will offset the piracy itself. Right? :)
This really disappoints me. :(
I saw this coming when the site started circulating the facebook groups I'm involved in. In each case I explained how the site worked, and defended LendInk.com for what they were doing.
The knee-jerking that resulted in this sites shut down is a perfect exampled of what happens when a bunch of frustrated indie authors don't take the time to read or research a site before crying foul.
Is this even legal?
I mean, since when can a credit corporation tell you what you can and can't spend your money on?
Where exactly do they draw the line? Who makes the decision as to what is ok and what is not okay?
I see this as a very slippery slope. Mastercard should be very careful with these heavy-handed decisions.
The short answer to that is: Yes.
Copyright laws center around the right to create and *distribute* copyrighted works.
The idea behind the first-sale doctrine was that you could purchase a copy of a copyrighted work, and then do with it as you pleased as long as you did not make additional copies of it. I buy a book, I can now lend it, trade it, sell it, or even give it away. Without the first-sale doctrine, only the copyright holder can determine if that work can be distributed, even after its been sold.
Now, an interesting way around this decision would be this: Purchase the watch, and then in some way *remove* the logo from it. There would no longer be a copyright issue, and the watch could be freely sold.
Actually, this is not normally an issue. Once you train yourself to type in a certain way, your muscles remember how to do it, even if you, consciously, do not.
At the other end of this, is the fact that because of muscle memory, switching to dvorak to fix a querty typing issue often does not solve the problem. (I'm speaking from experience here, because this is what I did.) Most people don't actively think about how they are typing, they type from muscle memory.
Instead, I found the best way to train myself out of bad habits was actually thinking about where my fingers are going and making a conscious effort to stem the bad habits. Re-train your muscles to type properly. It took me a few months of actively working at it, but I have had a fair amount of success with it, and now type properly with all fingers, and look at the screen when I type instead of the keyboard, or constantly shifting from the keyboard to the screen. It has helped a lot with my headaches, as constantly refocusing my eyes was leading to a lot of eye strain.
Hey... I didn't say it was right. :)
The $x,xxx per song that the RIAA has been winning are not punitive damages. They are Statutory damages.
Here's the difference:
Punitive damages are awarded when actual damages are not enough to punish the defendant for the act. A punitive damage award is *in addition to* actual damages, and serves as that punishment. Jail time is not an option in civil cases, and thus, punitive damages are used instead to deter future offenses.
Statutory damages are awarded when actual damages are difficult or impossible to calculate. They are awarded *instead of* actual damages. And there are times when punitive damages may be awarded *in addition to* statutory damages. Statutory damages are not meant as a deterrent for future offenses, which is one of the biggest issues people have with the massive damage awards the RIAA is getting in the Lindor and Tennenbaum cases. It's like they are using statutory damages as a punitive damage award because the law does not allow for a punitive damage award in those cases.
And I'm willing to bet money that such a device was developed by Kodak. :)
<sarcasm>
Oh yeah, we see news every day about Kodak suing the pants off everyone over a bunch of crap patents.
</sarcasm>
Seriously...
Kodak makes:
Digital Cameras (imagine that!)
Memory cards of all types
Printers
Video Cameras
Digital Picture Frames
Disposable Cameras
Batteries, Bags, Cables, Tripods, Docks, Lenses, Flashes, and many many more accessories.
Oh yeah... nothing but a patent troll here.
Gimme a break.
Kodak is not a company that is widely known for frivolous lawsuits. If I had to guess, I would say their lawyers likely know what they're doing.
Keep in mind:
Digital Cameras (including smartphones/cellphones) != Film Cameras.
Thus, no prior art.
Oh, and I love your example... a Polaroid camera... which just happens to be a Kodak product.
An out of court settlement with both companies.
The first thing I see amongst comments here is a bunch of stuff about invalid patents.
What the /. community needs to understand, is that not *every* patent is invalid just because its being used to sue.
Kodak is not a patent troll. They do real work, good work, and file patents on it to protect their inventions.
If there was ever a patent to assume is valid and in good standing, it would be a digital imaging patent, filed by a company that specializes in Imaging (and these days, Digital imaging).
Kodak is not evil. If these companies think they can implement functionality in their devices just because everyone else does, they need to think again. Everyone else is licensing the technology. If they are not, then they are infringing, and deserve to be sued.
I remember when... ...dialing a phone meant putting your finger in a hole and spinning the dialer. ...25MHz was fast for a computer. ...a dollar could actually get you a chocolate bar, and leave you with change to spare. ...downloading a song from the internet took 25-30 minutes, or more. ...I could bring my pocket knife on a plane. ...I could say merry christmas to somebody without offending them. ...cell phones were the size of masonry bricks, and were actually used to make phone calls. ...all personal computers were beige. ...a personal computer cost $2000 or more. ...playing a 4-color adventure game was cool. ...everyone knew how to use a command line interface. ...I had to rewind movies after watching them. ...I had to turn the cassette tape over in the player to listen to the other half of the album. ...camera's used film. ...polaroid camera's were the only way to get an instant photograph. ...a printer, a scanner, a copier, and a fax machine were 4 separate devices. ...the only way to make a phone call away from your home was to put quarters in a payphone.
Okay... I'll stop now. I could likely do this all day. :)
The interesting part of your whole argument is that you completely ignore the fact that both Wolfire and ID Software do more than just rant about it.
They develop games that support OpenGL. What they want, is *other* big developers to stop supporting the inferior libraries and open their eyes.
Plan and simple: There is nothing bad about Open standards.
- If they are broken, you can fix them.
- if they lack features, you can add them.
- If the performance is poor, you can improve it.
Can you say this about Direct3D? The only entity that can fix, add to, or improve Direct3D is Microsoft. Period.
- If its broken, you have to wait for a patch.
- If it lacks features, you have to wait for the next version, and pray that it supports your operating system.
- If the performance sucks, you have to deal with it.
Whats good about that? And thats talking a strictly Windows audience.
From a cross platform point of view, there really is just one choice. And its not Direct3D.
Wake me up when it's shipped with Linux pre-installed.
Windows 7 will have it running like a 286 in no time.
You don't *HAVE* to buy the game...
I think the sentiment here is that if M$ brings this sort of technology on the market, they will likely "innovate" themselves right out of the market.
Not only does this act to descriminate against users, it also singles them out and takes away one of the reasons people play these games to begin with (to escape reality). There are also heaps of privacy concerns in this, as it would almost certainly require user consent to glean data from medical records.
I can't see this actually coming to fruition and making them any kind of money.
Nintendo's approach was much better. Introduce the tools that people can use to get fit (physically and mentally), but don't force them to use it, and don't single them out if they don't want to.
My suspician is that this is yet another vapourware patent that we'll never see any actual implementation of.
I love how you managed to quote a single /. article about a single persons opinion (albiet an influencial opinion) about the Linux Kernel and have used it as evidence in a sarcastic reply to an even more sarcastic post.
Windows *is* bloated. I believe the Windows 7 footprint when I installed it was in the range of 2-3gig, and that was *just* the OS.
Ubuntu footprint from my latest install on a laptop: 2gig, and that was *WITH* all sorts of games, apps, web browser, etc all installed with it.
If you stripped Linux down to what M$ gives you out of the box, the footprint would be significantly smaller.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure you couldn't get Windows 7 to fit on a 1.44" floppy and still have it boot.
This type of news is disgusting to me as a Canadian.
Throughout the summer, Canada held an enormous copyright consultation in which large corporations expressed an interest in these types of changes, and artists, creators and citizens expressed an interest in the exact opposite direction to this.
Michael Geist usually carries all the latest news about this topic.
At the same time, I think we have nothing to worry about. In a country that shows a 30% voter turnout (at best), that makes 6.9 million voters. Historically, over 500000 canadians joined the protest against the last attempt to bring laws like this. Thats a 7% swing in the vote towards the party that will stand up against this type of law making. Thats enough to win an election in Canada.
With all this hype over copyright and trademark law, I expect it to be a hot topic in the next election, and with us running under a minority gov't, we could end up with an election at any time.
incorrect.
This "Linux isn't mainstream" myth needs to go.
I would expect that kind of line to come from a Windows fan, but not a self-proclaimed Linux fangirl like yourself.
I disagree.
Bought a Dell Linux Netbook for my wife. Took careful note of the specs and the OS on each version of the netbook.
The windows version of her netbook was $100 more expensive.
The netbook came loaded with Ubuntu. Not dodgy, no headaches.
And there were at least 3-4 other models available with Linux pre-loaded.
Perhaps your just looking in the wrong place if what you say has been your experience. Because I seriously doubt that its the norm.
Geeky/Nerdy paraphernalia is unappealing to women...
Am I the only one who got this from that article?
I don't think its geeks that are driving women out of CS. I think men and women think and see things in different ways. Our brains function very differently. The very idea that they could draw the conclusion that they did based solely on womens reactions to varrying degrees of geekery... it's quite a stretch.
Just my two cents though...