My wife is a "Black Norwegian," which is a person descended from some of a Spanish fleet that went aground off Norway a few hundred years ago. A few of them managed to wade ashore and wound up 'incorporated' into the population. Opthamologists can spot these people due to the shape of their eyelids which are somehow 'tighter' than normal. So brunette Norwegians do exist, and I'll bet not all of them (like my wife's family) have immigrated to the US. So don't lose hope.
Is it "copywrited" or "copyrighted"? I really don't think we're talking about writing advertisements here, but you be sure and jump in here and correct me if I'm wrong--just like you did last time without understanding the point.
Class action lawsuits are one of the most mis-used legal tactics in the country. Look at ANY class action lawsuit against ANY company. The 'remedy' afforded to consumers is on the same level as a few bucks in rebates: Most people don't bother with jumping through the hoops (and be sure and include the SKU from the inner flap of the outer box you just threw away and a certified copy of your birth certificate) and the companies know this. They don't amount to anything anyway. It's just an accountng trick. But the lawyers, oh, my goodness. Millions of dollars to the law firms for "all their hard work." What a crock. The kids of Iowa will see nothing tangible./rant
Britannica was in trouble by 1996. That's when it laid off it's entire door-to-door sales force. By 1998 the staff had halved in size. Now, WHEN did Wikipedia become a force?
Okay, we agree that expenses have increased dramatically since their June report, which shows a dramatic increase over the prior year (2005). If their revenue is not keeping up, the solution is not to freak out and say the sky is falling. The solution is to be less ambitious in the scope of projects they have taken on. Spend less; grow more slowly. They've been told to clean up their act (nicely) by the auditors. If they're not paying attention, eh? It's just like a checkbook at home.
That's my point. The statements you point to cover through June, 2006. I read their statements before I posted. They show a tremendous increase in net assets in 2006 over 2005. Indeed, with over half a million in cash, that means they are NOT broke. And that was BEFORE the December pledge drive that netted them well over a million dollars. From an accounting perspective they are doing rather well. If they want more money for expansion, that's an entirely different matter. But letr's not have them claim they will be broke by sundown if the don't get more money.
These guys just finished a pledge drive that ran through December and some of January which gained them well over $1 million, which they billed as very successful. Now suddenly they are broke? What happened to the million?
It's possible it won't be. During the last ice age the water used to form the ice drew down the sea level enough to allow migration of plants, animals, and Siberians across the Bering Strait into Alaska and down into North America, one of the major (but not the only) ways North America was populated originally. It's a fallacy to think a given ice age covers the poles like Sherman-Williams paint. The glaciers advance, but in lots of fingers rather than one big sheet. I don't know that it can be predicted where these northerly ice-free regions would be in the case of another ice age, but hte possibility exists and a northern area isn't a bad spot. So build more than one.
Just give them a Darwin Award (posthumously, of course; they all are) and move on. I figure they are doing the rest of the species a favor by taking themselves out of the gene pool. Hopefully they've been too distracted to reproduce already.
Libraries in their race to become relevant - are becoming meaningless
No, libraries are responding to their customers. The customer is always right because the customer knows what he or she wants. And the customers of public libraries (who pay the taxes) want nearly everything.
During the VHS/betamax wars, the customers pressured libraries to provide this medium. The libraries responded. When books on tape became popular with a certain segment of the population, they asked the library to provide them. Libraries responded. When DVDs and CDs came along, customers asked libraries to provide them. Libraries responded. When the Internet became popular, customers asked libraries to provide free access. Libraries responded again. In many cases, the ONLY free access available is at your local public library.
Libraries responded to these new types of information pretty well, I think, while still providing a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction books, children's books, storytimes, programming, reference service, interlibrary loans, holds, local history collections, genealogy departments, classes, and all the traditional things libraries have historically done.
This particular service we've been discussing is new. There are only a couple of offerings. Yup, they are only windows. That's because, dear readers, the vast majority of people are not at all interested in Linux, slashdot, or whatever arcane OS is popular with geeks. It is simply not relevant. When someone comes up with a service that caters to all at once, libraries will get it. Many libraries are well aware of the MP3, iPod issues on some of these new services. But they are not going to wait until they've satisfied 100% of potential users until they implement, particularly on a trial basis, these new services. When LIBRARIES tell vendors their offerings are not good enough, the vendors will change. It happens every time. Libraries also generally have a vast array of "internet accessible" information you are not going to find with Google. This includes almost all periodicals and indexes, both popular and academic. Just go to your local library's web site and look at the list of "online resources." It's incredible. From JSTOR to Information Access, Proquest to Morningstar, Business Reference to Academic Index. That's a vast amount of information available.
If you don't use your local library, that's okay. They are quite busy enough already. I don't physically visit my library either; I do it all on-line. But criticizing libraries because they respond to their customers is crazy. If they didn't, they would already be gone. Lots of the criticism here is of organization that do NOT respond to their customers (e.g. Nvidia). You can't have it both ways.
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." -Mark Twain
"Wikipedia is the best source of what the masses believe is true at any given time."
Paraphrase. I don't know who said it first, and perhaps a little better than I remember it. But the point is that Wikipedia has an IQ of 100. To claim that blatant mistakes in Wikipedia will eventually be corrected is, I think, statistically unlikely.
Where Wikipdia is especially good is in straight factual information with no need for "interpretation." For example, where is Barcelona, Spain? It gives you latitude and longitude; you can check it with Google Earth and correct if necessary. Sometimes Wikipedia will give a coordinate in the middle of the ocean, It's not always accurate, but it is easily verifiable. It's also good where it has 'incorporated' text from other sources. For example, much of the historical information on Roman civilization is from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, still considered one of the best efforts ever produced. It is in the public domain. Wikipedia copied it. An interesting point when 'studies' show Wikipedia's error rate better or worse than Britannica.
Where Wikipedia is especially poor and unreliable is in political issues and debates. Tenacity and anger count far more than accuracy. Extremists tend to win these battles because they are so adamant and, for them, so much is at stake for them to ensure Wikipedia "gets it right." Antagonists accuse their opposite of "changing history," because, of course, God's on their side. Anyone who uses Wikipedia to learn accurate information on political issues is, as Cowboy Neal says of using Slashdot polls, insane.
a helicopter flies by and takes a picture of all the houses in my neighborhood. Then the company prints them up to look really nice. A rep knocks on the door, and tries to sell you a bird's eye picture of your house. I might even have done it last time they showed up, but they rtook their picture when the house was just built before any landscaping, which kind of sucked--didn't lok very good.
Wow. I really should have asked you first. It was my mistake to use the word "abandon" at all; it wasn't in the original post. I should have said something like "leaves." If a police officer "leaves" his police car in your driveway, does that mean you now own it? Answer (same answer as last time) "No." I'm terribly sorry I didn't use a legal dictionary. I don't have one.
Actually, insurance companies are starting to do this. It is still experimental, but the deal is this: If you put this black box on your car, we'll lower your rates. Don't be a bad boy, or we'll be raising them back up.
And state governments want to do this to get their share of gas taxes when you drive on "their" roads. You're billed per mile driven. Oregon wanted to do this some time back. I don't know how far they got with it the first time around.
I don't think using a GPS to track someone is a privacy invasion, as long as it's done in public places. Try this as a mental exercise: substitute GPS with human witness. Is it OK for the police to ask people on the street if they saw which way a suspect went? When you are in a public place, you must accept the fact that your privacy is not guaranteed. You may be watched, be it by someone who just happened to be there or by any sort of mechanical device.
That appears to be one of the arguments they are using. The example is when the government inserts an under cover agent to monitor gang activity. That is not illegal search and seizure. In this particular case, here's what happened.
Guy gets out of prison, immediately gets back into meth, brags he can brew it in front of the police station without them knowing, gives meth to a couple. Wife calls the cops. Cops find the car and tag it (it's a borrowed car) by sticking a portable device underneath the bumper. Guy drives around, visits a vacant tract of land, possible meth lab spot. Cops receive permission for land owner to search the land, find lots of evidence. While they are there, guy drives up. They arrest him, search the car, find even more evidence. Conviction. Cops argue they didn't search anything, they didn't seize anything, they just followed the guy around. They did it with a GPS instead of gumshoes, but it's the same thing. You don't have to get a warrant to follow a guy around. That's not what the 4th amendment says. Sustained.
I believe I have summarized this accurately. I think this is the basic argument that the government used.
Here's the link to the actual court finding, not a report of a blog somewhere. There HAVE been other cases and the Supreme Court HAS ruled on similar issues. Interesting reading. You can even get an mp3 of the oral arguments here.
This was not "some judge" who "was an idiot" in some Traffic Court meeting in a double-wide out behind the courthouse of Whoville, TN. This is the Federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. (I mean, this makes it worse!) The only appeal from these guys is the Supreme Court. Further, it is precedent setting and can be used in further cases. The best way to get it to the Supreme Court would be to get another circuit court (like the ninth) to rule the opposite way. That way the Supreme Court would be more compelled to get into it.
Right. The last car I bought had one of those gizmos pre-installed. They wanted to charge me a few hundred bucks for it. I told them I didn't want it, so they had to go out to the car and physically remove it. It was hidden under the car somewhere; I just saw it in the guy's hand. They said it would aid in the recovery if the vehicle were stolen. The crazy thing is, it has On*Star. It was a redundant device, though hidden.
No, it doesn't, any more than if a policeman abandoned a police car in your driveway. the car doesn't suddenly become yours. You probably have the right to have it towed away, though.
The previous sign in system at BofA had you enter your social security number. Now, at least, there's nothing really identifiable to you unless you decide to do it. Further (I don't think this has been brought up) it's not just a picture. You get to name the picture. You could name a picture of a parachute "mydoghasfleas." This combination is what is shown to you before you enter a password. Signing up for this thing is not trivial. There's a ton of stuff to do before you get it working. It is just incredulous to me that after going through the hassle people would ignore the system. It is even more incredulous that they found 30 people, took them somewhere else, handed them a computer, and told them to log into their bank accounts. No wonder the Nigerian scam is still going. THEN 28 out of 30 people, under these very suspicious circumstances, ignored the system? WHERE did they find these people?
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, look at this. As Everynicklstaken says:
"ZDNet did not take a look at this. You took a look at this, and posted it to your ZDNet blog.
Full disclosure = A good thing."
Everynickelstaken's post is a little lost down there. I think it should get more play.
Click on: "ZDNet take a look at this and you get: http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=93
and you get "Steve O'Hear," ZDNet blogger extraordinaire.
Click on "mrspin" and get this: http://www.insearchofthevalley.com/
and you get "Steve O'Hear" again!
Kind of recursive. "I've got this theory and I've got proof. Click here for the proof. I wrote that, too."
Kill the torrents. Shutdown Micro$oft Updates. End of problem.
My wife is a "Black Norwegian," which is a person descended from some of a Spanish fleet that went aground off Norway a few hundred years ago. A few of them managed to wade ashore and wound up 'incorporated' into the population. Opthamologists can spot these people due to the shape of their eyelids which are somehow 'tighter' than normal. So brunette Norwegians do exist, and I'll bet not all of them (like my wife's family) have immigrated to the US. So don't lose hope.
Hey there travelsonic, you missed it big time.
Is it "copywrited" or "copyrighted"? I really don't think we're talking about writing advertisements here, but you be sure and jump in here and correct me if I'm wrong--just like you did last time without understanding the point.
or copyrighted ones, either.
Class action lawsuits are one of the most mis-used legal tactics in the country. Look at ANY class action lawsuit against ANY company. The 'remedy' afforded to consumers is on the same level as a few bucks in rebates: Most people don't bother with jumping through the hoops (and be sure and include the SKU from the inner flap of the outer box you just threw away and a certified copy of your birth certificate) and the companies know this. They don't amount to anything anyway. It's just an accountng trick. But the lawyers, oh, my goodness. Millions of dollars to the law firms for "all their hard work." What a crock. The kids of Iowa will see nothing tangible. /rant
Britannica was in trouble by 1996. That's when it laid off it's entire door-to-door sales force. By 1998 the staff had halved in size. Now, WHEN did Wikipedia become a force?
Okay, we agree that expenses have increased dramatically since their June report, which shows a dramatic increase over the prior year (2005). If their revenue is not keeping up, the solution is not to freak out and say the sky is falling. The solution is to be less ambitious in the scope of projects they have taken on. Spend less; grow more slowly. They've been told to clean up their act (nicely) by the auditors. If they're not paying attention, eh? It's just like a checkbook at home.
Here's a link showing some data that suggests Wikipedia is not in any real trouble at all: http://dan100.blogspot.com/2007/02/wikipedia-short -of-money-no.html/
That's my point. The statements you point to cover through June, 2006. I read their statements before I posted. They show a tremendous increase in net assets in 2006 over 2005. Indeed, with over half a million in cash, that means they are NOT broke. And that was BEFORE the December pledge drive that netted them well over a million dollars. From an accounting perspective they are doing rather well. If they want more money for expansion, that's an entirely different matter. But letr's not have them claim they will be broke by sundown if the don't get more money.
These guys just finished a pledge drive that ran through December and some of January which gained them well over $1 million, which they billed as very successful. Now suddenly they are broke? What happened to the million?
It's possible it won't be. During the last ice age the water used to form the ice drew down the sea level enough to allow migration of plants, animals, and Siberians across the Bering Strait into Alaska and down into North America, one of the major (but not the only) ways North America was populated originally. It's a fallacy to think a given ice age covers the poles like Sherman-Williams paint. The glaciers advance, but in lots of fingers rather than one big sheet. I don't know that it can be predicted where these northerly ice-free regions would be in the case of another ice age, but hte possibility exists and a northern area isn't a bad spot. So build more than one.
Just give them a Darwin Award (posthumously, of course; they all are) and move on. I figure they are doing the rest of the species a favor by taking themselves out of the gene pool. Hopefully they've been too distracted to reproduce already.
Libraries in their race to become relevant - are becoming meaningless
No, libraries are responding to their customers. The customer is always right because the customer knows what he or she wants. And the customers of public libraries (who pay the taxes) want nearly everything.
During the VHS/betamax wars, the customers pressured libraries to provide this medium. The libraries responded. When books on tape became popular with a certain segment of the population, they asked the library to provide them. Libraries responded. When DVDs and CDs came along, customers asked libraries to provide them. Libraries responded. When the Internet became popular, customers asked libraries to provide free access. Libraries responded again. In many cases, the ONLY free access available is at your local public library.
Libraries responded to these new types of information pretty well, I think, while still providing a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction books, children's books, storytimes, programming, reference service, interlibrary loans, holds, local history collections, genealogy departments, classes, and all the traditional things libraries have historically done.
This particular service we've been discussing is new. There are only a couple of offerings. Yup, they are only windows. That's because, dear readers, the vast majority of people are not at all interested in Linux, slashdot, or whatever arcane OS is popular with geeks. It is simply not relevant. When someone comes up with a service that caters to all at once, libraries will get it. Many libraries are well aware of the MP3, iPod issues on some of these new services. But they are not going to wait until they've satisfied 100% of potential users until they implement, particularly on a trial basis, these new services. When LIBRARIES tell vendors their offerings are not good enough, the vendors will change. It happens every time. Libraries also generally have a vast array of "internet accessible" information you are not going to find with Google. This includes almost all periodicals and indexes, both popular and academic. Just go to your local library's web site and look at the list of "online resources." It's incredible. From JSTOR to Information Access, Proquest to Morningstar, Business Reference to Academic Index. That's a vast amount of information available.
If you don't use your local library, that's okay. They are quite busy enough already. I don't physically visit my library either; I do it all on-line. But criticizing libraries because they respond to their customers is crazy. If they didn't, they would already be gone. Lots of the criticism here is of organization that do NOT respond to their customers (e.g. Nvidia). You can't have it both ways.
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." -Mark Twain
"Wikipedia is the best source of what the masses believe is true at any given time."
Paraphrase. I don't know who said it first, and perhaps a little better than I remember it. But the point is that Wikipedia has an IQ of 100. To claim that blatant mistakes in Wikipedia will eventually be corrected is, I think, statistically unlikely.
Where Wikipdia is especially good is in straight factual information with no need for "interpretation." For example, where is Barcelona, Spain? It gives you latitude and longitude; you can check it with Google Earth and correct if necessary. Sometimes Wikipedia will give a coordinate in the middle of the ocean, It's not always accurate, but it is easily verifiable. It's also good where it has 'incorporated' text from other sources. For example, much of the historical information on Roman civilization is from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, still considered one of the best efforts ever produced. It is in the public domain. Wikipedia copied it. An interesting point when 'studies' show Wikipedia's error rate better or worse than Britannica.
Where Wikipedia is especially poor and unreliable is in political issues and debates. Tenacity and anger count far more than accuracy. Extremists tend to win these battles because they are so adamant and, for them, so much is at stake for them to ensure Wikipedia "gets it right." Antagonists accuse their opposite of "changing history," because, of course, God's on their side. Anyone who uses Wikipedia to learn accurate information on political issues is, as Cowboy Neal says of using Slashdot polls, insane.
a helicopter flies by and takes a picture of all the houses in my neighborhood. Then the company prints them up to look really nice. A rep knocks on the door, and tries to sell you a bird's eye picture of your house. I might even have done it last time they showed up, but they rtook their picture when the house was just built before any landscaping, which kind of sucked--didn't lok very good.
Wow. I really should have asked you first. It was my mistake to use the word "abandon" at all; it wasn't in the original post. I should have said something like "leaves." If a police officer "leaves" his police car in your driveway, does that mean you now own it? Answer (same answer as last time) "No." I'm terribly sorry I didn't use a legal dictionary. I don't have one.
Actually, insurance companies are starting to do this. It is still experimental, but the deal is this: If you put this black box on your car, we'll lower your rates. Don't be a bad boy, or we'll be raising them back up.
And state governments want to do this to get their share of gas taxes when you drive on "their" roads. You're billed per mile driven. Oregon wanted to do this some time back. I don't know how far they got with it the first time around.
Both will be back.
I don't think using a GPS to track someone is a privacy invasion, as long as it's done in public places. Try this as a mental exercise: substitute GPS with human witness. Is it OK for the police to ask people on the street if they saw which way a suspect went? When you are in a public place, you must accept the fact that your privacy is not guaranteed. You may be watched, be it by someone who just happened to be there or by any sort of mechanical device.
That appears to be one of the arguments they are using. The example is when the government inserts an under cover agent to monitor gang activity. That is not illegal search and seizure. In this particular case, here's what happened.
Guy gets out of prison, immediately gets back into meth, brags he can brew it in front of the police station without them knowing, gives meth to a couple. Wife calls the cops. Cops find the car and tag it (it's a borrowed car) by sticking a portable device underneath the bumper. Guy drives around, visits a vacant tract of land, possible meth lab spot. Cops receive permission for land owner to search the land, find lots of evidence. While they are there, guy drives up. They arrest him, search the car, find even more evidence. Conviction. Cops argue they didn't search anything, they didn't seize anything, they just followed the guy around. They did it with a GPS instead of gumshoes, but it's the same thing. You don't have to get a warrant to follow a guy around. That's not what the 4th amendment says. Sustained.
I believe I have summarized this accurately. I think this is the basic argument that the government used.
Sorry, I screwed up the link. Let's see if this works
= 06-2741&submit=showdkt
http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/fdocs/docs.fwx?caseno
Preview says it does.
Here's the link to the actual court finding, not a report of a blog somewhere. There HAVE been other cases and the Supreme Court HAS ruled on similar issues. Interesting reading. You can even get an mp3 of the oral arguments here.
This was not "some judge" who "was an idiot" in some Traffic Court meeting in a double-wide out behind the courthouse of Whoville, TN. This is the Federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. (I mean, this makes it worse!) The only appeal from these guys is the Supreme Court. Further, it is precedent setting and can be used in further cases. The best way to get it to the Supreme Court would be to get another circuit court (like the ninth) to rule the opposite way. That way the Supreme Court would be more compelled to get into it.
Right. The last car I bought had one of those gizmos pre-installed. They wanted to charge me a few hundred bucks for it. I told them I didn't want it, so they had to go out to the car and physically remove it. It was hidden under the car somewhere; I just saw it in the guy's hand. They said it would aid in the recovery if the vehicle were stolen. The crazy thing is, it has On*Star. It was a redundant device, though hidden.
No, it doesn't, any more than if a policeman abandoned a police car in your driveway. the car doesn't suddenly become yours. You probably have the right to have it towed away, though.
The previous sign in system at BofA had you enter your social security number. Now, at least, there's nothing really identifiable to you unless you decide to do it. Further (I don't think this has been brought up) it's not just a picture. You get to name the picture. You could name a picture of a parachute "mydoghasfleas." This combination is what is shown to you before you enter a password. Signing up for this thing is not trivial. There's a ton of stuff to do before you get it working. It is just incredulous to me that after going through the hassle people would ignore the system. It is even more incredulous that they found 30 people, took them somewhere else, handed them a computer, and told them to log into their bank accounts. No wonder the Nigerian scam is still going. THEN 28 out of 30 people, under these very suspicious circumstances, ignored the system? WHERE did they find these people?