I've heard that Asimov used to sit at a desk surrounded by three typewriters. He would begin typing one story on one, Swivel to the second and work on a second item, and then shift to the third and work on a third item. (This was obviously pre-computers and definitely before computers could easily multitask three documents.) By quickly going between the three typewriters, he could work on three projects at once.
To be fair, copyright originally was for 14 years (plus a one time 14 year extension). So if you took 28 year old A and added 29 year old B plus 14 year old (and not renewed) C, you could come up with something new. It might have been a delay, but it wasn't a horrendous one. Now, though, you'd need to wait for A, B, and C to be 120 years old before you could use them. (When Asimov wrote this article, copyright terms were 28 years with a one-time 67 year extension. Arguably, still too long.)
Never underestimate the powers of a manager who comes in and decides that the numbers should show X and that any numbers that don't need to be skewed until they do.
Some of their past tactics (such as the one taken against Futurama of moving the timeslot and then preempting the program until viewership numbers dropped) won't work in the new order of on-demand video, but they could take other actions. They could just not promote the show/new episodes. They could also delay releasing the new episodes until people lose interest.
I don't mind analytics in general, but don't assume that they will help rescue your favorite show by proving that there is a big following. Managers will just slice and dice the analytics until it "proves" that the show doesn't have a big enough viewership to continue.
One problem might be that enabling third party apps seems to be an all or nothing affair. Your average Android device comes enabled to load apps from the Google Play store, but suppose you want to take advantage of the Amazon App Store also. (They have free apps of the day some of which might be interesting to use.) So you enable third party apps to load the Amazon App Store. However, now you are opened up to ANY third party app. It would be better if you could white-list the Amazon App Store but not RANDOM_WEBSITE_APP_STORE.
I'd argue that we should find something that helps people, but isn't "sexy" enough for politicians to use it for political gain. Something like libraries. Make all crime-punishment-fines go directly to library coffers. However, said money shouldn't be budgeted at all to prevent politicians from saying "We're expecting $X in fines so we can reduce the library's budget by $X and move that money to CAUSE Y."
Third explanation: People are speeding just as much as before but are now slamming on their brakes when the light turns yellow potentially causing more rear-end collisions. There are a lot of explanation that don't involve "red light cameras worked as intended" so we shouldn't jump to that as the first and only explanation.
Where I live they are considering installing red light cameras. They specifically have said that the company will control how long the yellow light gets shown.
Of course, this could just be elected officials spreading misinformation so that they can get the red light cameras installed but deflect any criticism away from themselves.
While I disagree with the "you should never go through a yellow light" statement, I've got to question your example. Every section of road I've ever seen that has stop lights also has speed limits much less than 60 mph. Usually 40 mph max. If you're going 60 mph down a stretch of road with a 40mph speed limit, then your problem isn't the yellow light.
I think the lesson with BlackBerry isn't one of older companies vanishing from sight, but one of constant innovation being required to stay in the market. BlackBerry took a leading cell phone position (before the term "smartphone" was common) and was the top of the line. Then devices like the iPhone came out and BlackBerry scoffed at them. They were on the top of the heap, why should they react to something from Apple? Apple made computers, not phones! But customers liked the new features* and flocked to the new devices, leaving BlackBerry with a tiny market share. By the time BlackBerry decided they needed to try to compete, it was too late. Now they're regulated to a niche and don't have a path back to the mainstream**.
* I say this as an Android phone user who personally can't see ever getting an iPhone. ** Being a niche product isn't bad, per se, but it means being an overall smaller company and not being seen as one of the major players in the industry at large. BlackBerry would like to be back at the top of the heap like it was in its heyday, but the chances of this happening are slim to none.
Yes, but there is legal recourse for the creator when this happens. If you toss out copyright, then anyone can do this with impunity. And if you think this will hurt the big companies, think again. Who do you think will do this more than anyone if copyright is tossed out the window? If you make an indie film, you'll find it suddenly "re-released" by a dozen movie companies all hoping to make a buck off of it without giving anything back to you.
At the time, there was a very good reason for Copyright. I'd argue that the same reason still exists. If we didn't have copyright, what would stop someone from taking some big content item (be it a movie, book, song, etc), repackaging it (ripping the song and burning it to DVD, scanning the book and reprinting it, etc) and selling it without giving the creator any money? Creators could find that their hard work yields someone else getting rich while their copies don't sell.
The big problem with copyright isn't that it exists, but the length. When copyright was 14 years plus a one-time, optional 14 year renewal, it was fine. Under that system, an item released in 2014 would enter Public Domain in 2042 (assuming renewal took place). Under the current system, that same item would enter Public Domain in 2134 (assuming the author doesn't die before 2039 and that copyright terms aren't lengthened more). The former system means that I could enjoy something and live to see it enter Public Domain. The latter system ensures I won't live to see this happen. This effectively kills Public Domain and destroys the balance that we had with copyright: Limited monopoly granted over the work in return for giving it back to the Public Domain when the copyright expired.
If we put copyrights back to a 14 year + 14 year one-time renewal system, many of the problems with Copyright would go away.
Is it really so terrible that Google itself should be outright asked to prefer search results that are "better for society"?
Who gets to decide what is "better for society"? Also, do these decisions happen on a country-by-country basis without affecting other countries? Because I'm sure China would love to censor search results world-wide for "the good of society." I'm also sure that the RIAA would love to make sure that their member organizations get more Google ranking than Indie labels for "the better of society."
What if China decided that if Google wanted a Chinese presence they had to filter all results for all users globally?
China really wants to be able to do this. Whenever you see UN statements about taking control of the Internet away from the US and putting it in the hands of a UN committee, what they really mean is "We want China, North Korea, Syria, Iran, etc to be able to say 'This website violates our laws so it must be removed from The Internet even though it is located outside our borders."
This isn't to say that US control is a great thing, but when you get into a "lesser of two evils" choice of US or UN (i.e. China/Iran/etc) control, I'll pick US control every time.
Co-host Craig Carton also implied that Daniel should have just left his wife and newborn son after 24 hours and "get your ass back to your team and you play baseball." Because, apparently, that's all these sportscasters think dads are good for: Earning money for their families. Actually helping out in other ways is not a dad's job in their minds. (I'm sure my wife is glad that I disagree with them and took as much time as I could.)
I'd add that, as a man, I'd like to see paternity time increased. When my first child was born, I was lucky enough to be able to take a week off of work to help. My wife had just given birth and while I can't ever completely know how hard that is, I knew enough to know that she would be exhausted so I took care of our new baby as much as I could - giving her time to rest up. Had I been able to take longer than a week, I would have.
When our second child was born, I took a couple of days off, but wasn't able to take the week-long stretch that I took the first time.
Many new fathers are looked down upon if they try to take time off to look after the new baby. There was one baseball player who was recently castigated by a sports announcer for daring to miss the first game of the season because his wife gave birth. He decided that helping his wife and new baby were more important than a baseball game. The sports announcer literally thought that the ball player's first priority should be to the game and not his family.
Better paternity leave will also help women in the workplace because then the burden on taking care of the baby post-birth can be split evenly instead of just being tossed on the woman. (And then having people say "If we hire women they might leave to take care of their babies.")
I'd be very interested in what sites offer 1TB (or more) of space for $50 - $60 per year. I just priced it out again in case the prices or storage changed since the last time I looked. Both DropBox and Google Drive are $9.99 a month for 1TB, Amazon Cloud Drive is $500 a year.
Carbonite is $60 a year, but that's per computer. Right now, we back up both of our laptops to an external hard drive (and then copy that to a second external hard drive). If I wanted external hard drive backups, I'd need to spend $100 per year per computer.
While doing searching, I also found Backblaze which claims unlimited backups for $5 a month and CrashPlan which offers unlimited backups for as low as $3.96 a month. I don't know too much about the reliability of these services, though, and whether they would back up an external hard drive connected to a computer via the network. (I have my USB hard drive plugged into my router and shared across my network.)
Virus mutations aren't my specialty but from what I've read Ebola mutating to become airborne isn't a high probability. "Airborne Ebola" stories seem to crop up on conspiracy theory sites (e.g. "The CDC is lying to us and Ebola really spreads via air... WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!") and media outlets that want to scare their viewers/readers ("Next up: Celebrity Doctor X tells us how Ebola becoming airborne will make it THE WORST PLAGUE MANKIND HAS EVER SEEN!!!").
Caution is certainly warranted. If you are a health care worker and someone who recently was in Liberia comes in with a fever, contain them ASAP. Assume they have Ebola and take appropriate precautions. If they turn out not to have Ebola, fine. If they do, your quick actions could save your life as the lives of everyone around the infected person. However, if you are Random Joe Citizen walking down the street, don't panic that the person who just bumped into you has given you the Ebola.
What is your chance of catching Ebola versus your chance of catching the flu? As it stands now, unless you were in that Texas hospital around the same time as the Ebola patient was, you have a much higher chance of catching the flu tomorrow than you have of catching Ebola. Media scare reports aside, I don't think Ebola is at the panic level yet. Cautiously aware, yes, but not panic.
So far we have a small handful of US infections - mostly related to one guy who brought it in the country and the healthcare workers who didn't follow appropriate protocols while working with him. (Some of that blame might lie on the CDC and the hospital's management - not all of it on the nurses.)
Contrast this with the 5% - 20% of people in the US who get the flu every year and the 200,000 who are hospitalized with flu-related complications. (Source) If you are panicked about Ebola then you should be running down the street screaming about the flu. (Hopefully running down the street to get your flu shot.)
This isn't to say that Ebola isn't serious. Anyone who has traveled to the countries affected and gets a fever should be treated with extreme care. Anyone who was around someone like this should be suspected of having contracted Ebola and should watch for the symptoms. Be wary if you are in these situations, but otherwise it isn't panic-time despite the continuous "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE"-style reporting the media is giving Ebola.
I have two hard drives that I keep synced up. Right now I'm pushing my space constraints on the 1TB hard drives and need to invest in some 3TB drives. Were I doing this via the cloud, I'd be paying $120 a year for the space I need. Instead, I'll pay a one time ~$120 cost (if not less) for each hard drive and use them for years.
I find that local backups are better than cloud backups. I have a 1TB external hard drive that's nearly filled up. This drive cost me around $100 a few years ago. To get 1TB of backup from Google, for example, I would need to pay $9.99 a month. So I can either pay $120 yearly for 1TB of storage space or I can buy a new hard drive every year with increasing disk space. (Currently, $120 will get me a 3TB external hard drive.) With two of the drives, I can have one located somewhere "off-site" in case something happens to the location of my primary hard drive (fire, theft, etc).
Don't get me wrong, cloud backups can be useful. I can have my phone auto-backup photos and videos to the cloud which is helpful in case something happens to my phone. It also means I don't need to worry about backing up my phone as often. Still, for the most part, I've found local backups to be easier to manage and less expensive than cloud backups.
So could a book. Are we going to ban all books on airplanes because the plane has a tiny chance of crashing and there is a tiny chance within that tiny chance of a crash that the book could become a projectile and injure someone?
The captain getting on the intercom to say "Brace for impact" is even more rare. How many commercial airplanes crash every year? I just searched and found a list of 13 crashes in 2013. And that's internationally. How many planes take off and land safely across the entire world every year? Why should we ban use of devices because of a minuscule chance that the airplane will experience difficulty?
On a side note: If you ban devices so that people pay attention to the safety instructions, will you ban books and magazines also? People could just as easily open one of those and tune out the flight attendants.
I did some ancestry work on my wife's family awhile back. The family story was that they came from Russia. I was surprised to find that one of her direct ancestors was listed as coming from Germany in one census and then Russia in another census. Now, it could have been a mistake (census takers were never perfect) or it could have been a German ancestor lying and saying he was Russian to escape anti-German sentiment. It would have been right around this time as well.
The history of the US is filled with great moments, but also with horrible moments. There's also the Japanese internment during WW2 and the Ludlow Massacre where striking workers and their families were killed by company militia and National Guard troops.
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I've heard that Asimov used to sit at a desk surrounded by three typewriters. He would begin typing one story on one, Swivel to the second and work on a second item, and then shift to the third and work on a third item. (This was obviously pre-computers and definitely before computers could easily multitask three documents.) By quickly going between the three typewriters, he could work on three projects at once.
It's no wonder he was so prolific.
To be fair, copyright originally was for 14 years (plus a one time 14 year extension). So if you took 28 year old A and added 29 year old B plus 14 year old (and not renewed) C, you could come up with something new. It might have been a delay, but it wasn't a horrendous one. Now, though, you'd need to wait for A, B, and C to be 120 years old before you could use them. (When Asimov wrote this article, copyright terms were 28 years with a one-time 67 year extension. Arguably, still too long.)
Never underestimate the powers of a manager who comes in and decides that the numbers should show X and that any numbers that don't need to be skewed until they do.
Some of their past tactics (such as the one taken against Futurama of moving the timeslot and then preempting the program until viewership numbers dropped) won't work in the new order of on-demand video, but they could take other actions. They could just not promote the show/new episodes. They could also delay releasing the new episodes until people lose interest.
I don't mind analytics in general, but don't assume that they will help rescue your favorite show by proving that there is a big following. Managers will just slice and dice the analytics until it "proves" that the show doesn't have a big enough viewership to continue.
One problem might be that enabling third party apps seems to be an all or nothing affair. Your average Android device comes enabled to load apps from the Google Play store, but suppose you want to take advantage of the Amazon App Store also. (They have free apps of the day some of which might be interesting to use.) So you enable third party apps to load the Amazon App Store. However, now you are opened up to ANY third party app. It would be better if you could white-list the Amazon App Store but not RANDOM_WEBSITE_APP_STORE.
I'd argue that we should find something that helps people, but isn't "sexy" enough for politicians to use it for political gain. Something like libraries. Make all crime-punishment-fines go directly to library coffers. However, said money shouldn't be budgeted at all to prevent politicians from saying "We're expecting $X in fines so we can reduce the library's budget by $X and move that money to CAUSE Y."
Third explanation: People are speeding just as much as before but are now slamming on their brakes when the light turns yellow potentially causing more rear-end collisions. There are a lot of explanation that don't involve "red light cameras worked as intended" so we shouldn't jump to that as the first and only explanation.
Where I live they are considering installing red light cameras. They specifically have said that the company will control how long the yellow light gets shown.
Of course, this could just be elected officials spreading misinformation so that they can get the red light cameras installed but deflect any criticism away from themselves.
While I disagree with the "you should never go through a yellow light" statement, I've got to question your example. Every section of road I've ever seen that has stop lights also has speed limits much less than 60 mph. Usually 40 mph max. If you're going 60 mph down a stretch of road with a 40mph speed limit, then your problem isn't the yellow light.
I think the lesson with BlackBerry isn't one of older companies vanishing from sight, but one of constant innovation being required to stay in the market. BlackBerry took a leading cell phone position (before the term "smartphone" was common) and was the top of the line. Then devices like the iPhone came out and BlackBerry scoffed at them. They were on the top of the heap, why should they react to something from Apple? Apple made computers, not phones! But customers liked the new features* and flocked to the new devices, leaving BlackBerry with a tiny market share. By the time BlackBerry decided they needed to try to compete, it was too late. Now they're regulated to a niche and don't have a path back to the mainstream**.
* I say this as an Android phone user who personally can't see ever getting an iPhone.
** Being a niche product isn't bad, per se, but it means being an overall smaller company and not being seen as one of the major players in the industry at large. BlackBerry would like to be back at the top of the heap like it was in its heyday, but the chances of this happening are slim to none.
Yes, but there is legal recourse for the creator when this happens. If you toss out copyright, then anyone can do this with impunity. And if you think this will hurt the big companies, think again. Who do you think will do this more than anyone if copyright is tossed out the window? If you make an indie film, you'll find it suddenly "re-released" by a dozen movie companies all hoping to make a buck off of it without giving anything back to you.
At the time, there was a very good reason for Copyright. I'd argue that the same reason still exists. If we didn't have copyright, what would stop someone from taking some big content item (be it a movie, book, song, etc), repackaging it (ripping the song and burning it to DVD, scanning the book and reprinting it, etc) and selling it without giving the creator any money? Creators could find that their hard work yields someone else getting rich while their copies don't sell.
The big problem with copyright isn't that it exists, but the length. When copyright was 14 years plus a one-time, optional 14 year renewal, it was fine. Under that system, an item released in 2014 would enter Public Domain in 2042 (assuming renewal took place). Under the current system, that same item would enter Public Domain in 2134 (assuming the author doesn't die before 2039 and that copyright terms aren't lengthened more). The former system means that I could enjoy something and live to see it enter Public Domain. The latter system ensures I won't live to see this happen. This effectively kills Public Domain and destroys the balance that we had with copyright: Limited monopoly granted over the work in return for giving it back to the Public Domain when the copyright expired.
If we put copyrights back to a 14 year + 14 year one-time renewal system, many of the problems with Copyright would go away.
Who gets to decide what is "better for society"? Also, do these decisions happen on a country-by-country basis without affecting other countries? Because I'm sure China would love to censor search results world-wide for "the good of society." I'm also sure that the RIAA would love to make sure that their member organizations get more Google ranking than Indie labels for "the better of society."
China really wants to be able to do this. Whenever you see UN statements about taking control of the Internet away from the US and putting it in the hands of a UN committee, what they really mean is "We want China, North Korea, Syria, Iran, etc to be able to say 'This website violates our laws so it must be removed from The Internet even though it is located outside our borders."
This isn't to say that US control is a great thing, but when you get into a "lesser of two evils" choice of US or UN (i.e. China/Iran/etc) control, I'll pick US control every time.
Boomer Esiason. The player was Daniel Murphy and Boomer suggested that Daniel should have had his wife get a C-Section before opening day so that he wouldn't miss any games. Because having your wife have invasive surgery is a valid response to missing a game or two. http://www.today.com/parents/radio-host-rips-mlb-player-paternity-leave-suggests-c-section-2D79476676
Co-host Craig Carton also implied that Daniel should have just left his wife and newborn son after 24 hours and "get your ass back to your team and you play baseball." Because, apparently, that's all these sportscasters think dads are good for: Earning money for their families. Actually helping out in other ways is not a dad's job in their minds. (I'm sure my wife is glad that I disagree with them and took as much time as I could.)
I'd add that, as a man, I'd like to see paternity time increased. When my first child was born, I was lucky enough to be able to take a week off of work to help. My wife had just given birth and while I can't ever completely know how hard that is, I knew enough to know that she would be exhausted so I took care of our new baby as much as I could - giving her time to rest up. Had I been able to take longer than a week, I would have.
When our second child was born, I took a couple of days off, but wasn't able to take the week-long stretch that I took the first time.
Many new fathers are looked down upon if they try to take time off to look after the new baby. There was one baseball player who was recently castigated by a sports announcer for daring to miss the first game of the season because his wife gave birth. He decided that helping his wife and new baby were more important than a baseball game. The sports announcer literally thought that the ball player's first priority should be to the game and not his family.
Better paternity leave will also help women in the workplace because then the burden on taking care of the baby post-birth can be split evenly instead of just being tossed on the woman. (And then having people say "If we hire women they might leave to take care of their babies.")
I'd be very interested in what sites offer 1TB (or more) of space for $50 - $60 per year. I just priced it out again in case the prices or storage changed since the last time I looked. Both DropBox and Google Drive are $9.99 a month for 1TB, Amazon Cloud Drive is $500 a year.
Carbonite is $60 a year, but that's per computer. Right now, we back up both of our laptops to an external hard drive (and then copy that to a second external hard drive). If I wanted external hard drive backups, I'd need to spend $100 per year per computer.
While doing searching, I also found Backblaze which claims unlimited backups for $5 a month and CrashPlan which offers unlimited backups for as low as $3.96 a month. I don't know too much about the reliability of these services, though, and whether they would back up an external hard drive connected to a computer via the network. (I have my USB hard drive plugged into my router and shared across my network.)
Virus mutations aren't my specialty but from what I've read Ebola mutating to become airborne isn't a high probability. "Airborne Ebola" stories seem to crop up on conspiracy theory sites (e.g. "The CDC is lying to us and Ebola really spreads via air... WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!") and media outlets that want to scare their viewers/readers ("Next up: Celebrity Doctor X tells us how Ebola becoming airborne will make it THE WORST PLAGUE MANKIND HAS EVER SEEN!!!").
Caution is certainly warranted. If you are a health care worker and someone who recently was in Liberia comes in with a fever, contain them ASAP. Assume they have Ebola and take appropriate precautions. If they turn out not to have Ebola, fine. If they do, your quick actions could save your life as the lives of everyone around the infected person. However, if you are Random Joe Citizen walking down the street, don't panic that the person who just bumped into you has given you the Ebola.
What is your chance of catching Ebola versus your chance of catching the flu? As it stands now, unless you were in that Texas hospital around the same time as the Ebola patient was, you have a much higher chance of catching the flu tomorrow than you have of catching Ebola. Media scare reports aside, I don't think Ebola is at the panic level yet. Cautiously aware, yes, but not panic.
So far we have a small handful of US infections - mostly related to one guy who brought it in the country and the healthcare workers who didn't follow appropriate protocols while working with him. (Some of that blame might lie on the CDC and the hospital's management - not all of it on the nurses.)
Contrast this with the 5% - 20% of people in the US who get the flu every year and the 200,000 who are hospitalized with flu-related complications. (Source) If you are panicked about Ebola then you should be running down the street screaming about the flu. (Hopefully running down the street to get your flu shot.)
This isn't to say that Ebola isn't serious. Anyone who has traveled to the countries affected and gets a fever should be treated with extreme care. Anyone who was around someone like this should be suspected of having contracted Ebola and should watch for the symptoms. Be wary if you are in these situations, but otherwise it isn't panic-time despite the continuous "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE"-style reporting the media is giving Ebola.
I have two hard drives that I keep synced up. Right now I'm pushing my space constraints on the 1TB hard drives and need to invest in some 3TB drives. Were I doing this via the cloud, I'd be paying $120 a year for the space I need. Instead, I'll pay a one time ~$120 cost (if not less) for each hard drive and use them for years.
I find that local backups are better than cloud backups. I have a 1TB external hard drive that's nearly filled up. This drive cost me around $100 a few years ago. To get 1TB of backup from Google, for example, I would need to pay $9.99 a month. So I can either pay $120 yearly for 1TB of storage space or I can buy a new hard drive every year with increasing disk space. (Currently, $120 will get me a 3TB external hard drive.) With two of the drives, I can have one located somewhere "off-site" in case something happens to the location of my primary hard drive (fire, theft, etc).
Don't get me wrong, cloud backups can be useful. I can have my phone auto-backup photos and videos to the cloud which is helpful in case something happens to my phone. It also means I don't need to worry about backing up my phone as often. Still, for the most part, I've found local backups to be easier to manage and less expensive than cloud backups.
So could a book. Are we going to ban all books on airplanes because the plane has a tiny chance of crashing and there is a tiny chance within that tiny chance of a crash that the book could become a projectile and injure someone?
The captain getting on the intercom to say "Brace for impact" is even more rare. How many commercial airplanes crash every year? I just searched and found a list of 13 crashes in 2013. And that's internationally. How many planes take off and land safely across the entire world every year? Why should we ban use of devices because of a minuscule chance that the airplane will experience difficulty?
On a side note: If you ban devices so that people pay attention to the safety instructions, will you ban books and magazines also? People could just as easily open one of those and tune out the flight attendants.
I did some ancestry work on my wife's family awhile back. The family story was that they came from Russia. I was surprised to find that one of her direct ancestors was listed as coming from Germany in one census and then Russia in another census. Now, it could have been a mistake (census takers were never perfect) or it could have been a German ancestor lying and saying he was Russian to escape anti-German sentiment. It would have been right around this time as well.
The history of the US is filled with great moments, but also with horrible moments. There's also the Japanese internment during WW2 and the Ludlow Massacre where striking workers and their families were killed by company militia and National Guard troops.