As a method of projecting power, there's a lot to be said for the patent system, as opposed to billy clubs, but beyond that it usually seems really lame.
The free copies aren't boosting sales for my books.
With all due respect, there's no way you can possibly know this. Even if you spent a great deal of money trying to find out whether or not this was so, you'd be unlikely to get a reasonably solid answer.
In general, people grabbing such unauthorized copies fall into two classes: (1) wouldn't have bought it anyway, and (2) will buy it as a result of having first seen the "free" copy. You lose no money either way.
A much bigger problem is that when I do that Google search, I'm directed to much newer compression textbooks, and a search on Amazon barely rates. That's what's killing you.
I'm not a serious gamer (anymore--still nursing an old Quake injury:-), but lately I've been picking up a few titles. One of the ones I was considering was a Final Fantasy game. I might have bought it soon. Now I never will. I'm aware that Square Enix simply doesn't care about people like me, but it's still $10 or whatever straight out of their bottom line, and I get to feel good about acting congruently with respect to my principles.
There are a lot of problems with capitalism, but one of the really great things is that frequently you get to choose where to spend your dollars, and when you withhold them, that's coming straight out of the company's hide. You don't get that kind of control with voting.
Will they include a dialog box so that we know Windows didn't just crash again?
Actually, this reminds me of an entry from SKB's classic Devil's DP Dictionary:
blank cardn. Also calledspacer card. An unpunched card placed in an input deck at 10,000-card intervals. Since electromechanical devices enjoy a consistent 1e10^4 error rate, the blank-card trick minimizes the impact of card-reader malfunctions.
Clearly you know about large roaming fees. Yet you don't seem to be willing to sidestep the issue by leaving the phone at home. That just means that you are a troll.
My CDMA phone had a very important quality that a GSM phone does not: If I forget to leave it at home, flip some switch, do a little happy dance, or whatever it is I'm supposed to do, it won't ruin my life.
Ever heard of risk management? If a house had a big, red button one had to press once a day to keep it from exploding, I could "sidestep the issue" by just remembering to press the button, but there's no way in hell I'm going to buy such a house. I have more than enough things in my life that require my vigilance--I don't need another.
Thank you for the rest of your informative post. I already go completely pre-paid, partly for the reasons above, and partly because I want to be able to switch carriers rapidly when they (inevitably) screw things up. So far I hadn't found anything authoritative that says that a pre-paid SIM even works in an Android phone. (Well, I guess I still haven't, but at least it's another data point.)
The first phone company that comes out with a simple deal that says "this is what you get, this is what it costs, cancel anytime" is going to wipe the floor with the rest of the competition.
I would love to have and develop for one of these, but the various service plans required to use them seem murky, incomprehensible, and extremely risky.
Murky and Incomprehensible: Can anyone surf one of the Android sites and figure out WTF plans you actually need to run these phones and what it will cost per year? It's worse than buying a house. I'd rather try to figure out the federal deficit.
Risky: I keep reading these stories about people who traveled and came home to discover a phone bill larger than my annual salary. Sorry, but I am not going to risk my financial well-being to own a whizzy phone.
Until they can fix these problems, I'm sitting on the sidelines.
One difference is that you can in principle avoid biting your nails, at least for a while. I imagine that even the most compulsive can cease for five minutes.
If you're having a restless leg attack, then you're having it, and there's not much you can do in the short run to stop it, short of suicide.
It's certainly possible that RLS is fallout from all of the wonderful fast food, drugs, lethargy, etc., that comes with a wealthy economy.
Try to find incidents of Restless Leg Syndrome (by that name or any other) prior to the advertising campaign. See for yourself how difficult that is. Then you will see that it's not some malady that has plagued mankind over the years for which we finally have a treatment.
Having slept with someone who was tormented by this for months, I can assure you that it is quite real, whatever it is. It's possible that it was much rarer (or nonexistent) prior to 1900, but that's hardly proof that it doesn't exist now.
Your argument was going okay until you introduced this howler...
I'm not sure it gets much worse than this. I guess the local nuke plant could install a "whack-a-rod" live webcam game and secure it with DMCA technology...
You probably have been working on projects that did not employ post-project evaluations
That's true, or at least, if any were done I was not privy to that knowledge. My impression is perhaps somewhat skewed in that I found these situations unpleasant enough that I didn't stick around to see the inevitable disasters play out.
I'm familiar with the concept--I just moved out of a similiar district in another large city.
Vouchers, for better or for worse, have been completely tainted by religious conservatives, who see them as a way to use taxpayer dollars to further their agenda.
Private schools are somewhat tainted by this thinking, and are also harmed by the Ayn Rand types who do not understand why (for example) private fire protection is unworkable.
As you say, it's a tragedy that the kids are held hostage to these political agendas. Unfortunately it won't end until we agree that a quality, public, secular education for every child is a fundamental right and a serious priority.
Good teachers deserve our support. Not the bad ones. Being a teacher doesn't give you an aura of nobility simply because.
I don't quite agree. I think if someone goes into teaching with the desire to do good, accepting that they'll never get rich doing it, and it turns out after training up that they're just not very good at it, or don't like doing it, or maybe after 15 years are just plain tired of it, I think they still deserve our support. In this case support might mean radical counseling or retraining to either make them good again in the classroom or find them another niche where they can be productive.
I think we have to accept that not everyone's going to be able to stand 20+ years of dealing with some of the little shits and their insufferable parents, bureaucratic bullshit, false abuse charges (I have relatives who are teachers), etc. We should plan for this.
And yes, of all the professions, I think teaching is one of the most noble. It's just in a completely different class than going into, say, marketing.
Lots of places: several startups, industry and govt, one superlarge corp, etc. I have seen a lot of people fired for basic HR violations--running a business out of one's cube, not showing up to work, etc. But nothing regarding skill.
I'm not suggesting "throwing" money at education--obviously we'd like it spent wisely. Looking at districts across the US, it's clear that there's a correlation between quality of education and dollars spent.
One significant benefit of increasing education funding is that it allows a larger set of people to consider teaching as a career, as opposed to their next best alternative.
For example, I have some desire to teach, a graduate degree, and an excellent knowledge of science and technology. I'd have to cut my salary in half, though, and since I have a family, I'm not willing to do this. (In my case, I believe I'd do poorly in the classroom, so this is not much of a loss, but there are a lot of people like me who'd make excellent teachers.)
I'd be curious to hear more. Why were they considered to be incompetent? Over what period of time was this measured? Do you think it's a correct assessment?
Most of the companies were small (20-30 total), but some large/huge. A few were very stringent about who got in in the first place, but the rest I guess you'd have to say were "non-demanding" by definition.
I agree that finding excellent programmers is tough. Finding such a person who can also fit into the current organization, each having its own strange quirks, if more difficult still. I don't imagine that I have any skill at it.
I don't have much faith in "bell curves and 360 reports". The latter is mostly a measure of likability and charisma: nice attributes to be sure, but obvious and not in any sense sufficient. The former implies that quality programmer output is something that can be easily scored. In my experience, people who can really crank out the SLOCs are mostly just making messes for others to clean up later.
I've worked as a computer programmer for over 20 years, and I have never seen or heard of any programmer being fired for incompetence, no matter the magnitude.
As far as I'm concerned, teachers deserve our support, and I think all of the bitching is just a smokescreen to support cutting education funding, and a mind-trick to turn people against unions.
Sorry, but in this case this is crap. Do you really think Elsevier would accept your implied description (i.e., We will publish any garbage anyone pays us to, because that's our job.)? I seriously doubt it, because they (and everyone else) knows they have an solemn ethical duty not to do this sort of thing.
This really puts the lie to Elsevier's claim that open access scientific publication is somehow not as good (ugh) as commercial, restricted-access scientific journals.
You have to think precisely about these issues, or you will easily fall under the influence of any "weasel" that comes along. I encourage you to read up and test what I am saying yourself.
But only is true if your code never touched my code. The second your GPL code touches my codebase, if I want to redistribute the codebase, I *must* do so under the GPL.
This is a very backhanded way of putting this, considering that you are the one deriving your code from my GPL'ed code in this example. Yes, if you really are deriving from someone's code (as opposed to mere aggregation), then yes, you must obey its license. (Probably a lot of commercial licenses don't even allow "mere aggregation", but the GPL does, as far as I know.)
Remember you are fighting a war of ideas, and not everybody agrees with your ideas.
I'm not sure I'm much of a soldier in the war. Rather, if I spend my weekends writing code for the public good, why shouldn't I license it as I see fit? Sometimes I use Open Source licenses and sometimes the GPL. Even the FSF uses non-GPL licenses when they perceive the need.
But the second you want to distribute it, anything that the GPL considers a derivative work becomes GPL. And *that* is why some people, like myself, prefer to avoid GPL.
The only way that something you write can "become GPL" is for you to choose to license it under the GPL. There is no other way under heaven or earth for this to happen. If you've heard otherwise, you've been misinformed.
Using the GPL takes away the *option* of ever being able to distribute our work without making it GPL.
You seem to be saying that if I choose the GPL as the license for my software, I've removing your ability to redistribute software that you derive from mine under a non-GPL license. If so, yes, that is correct. That is the price I'm charging for allowing you to derive from my work. (If you ask me with a good reason, I might allow something else, but that's the default.)
If I start using the GPL in my code, my option to distribute my codebase under a license of my choosing goes out the window
No. You can distribute your code under the GPL and then switch to another license at any time for future versions. What you cannot do is redistribute my GPL'ed code under the license of your choice.
Slashdot Mirror
FROM ACROSS THE ROOM!!!!!!!!
As a method of projecting power, there's a lot to be said for the patent system, as opposed to billy clubs, but beyond that it usually seems really lame.
now that Wolfram has claimed to have invented the Internet (everything that counts, anyway)...
This is way better than my idea, which was to throw the book into a wood chipper, scan the results, and then algorithmically reassemble them...
The free copies aren't boosting sales for my books.
With all due respect, there's no way you can possibly know this. Even if you spent a great deal of money trying to find out whether or not this was so, you'd be unlikely to get a reasonably solid answer.
In general, people grabbing such unauthorized copies fall into two classes: (1) wouldn't have bought it anyway, and (2) will buy it as a result of having first seen the "free" copy. You lose no money either way.
A much bigger problem is that when I do that Google search, I'm directed to much newer compression textbooks, and a search on Amazon barely rates. That's what's killing you.
I'm not a serious gamer (anymore--still nursing an old Quake injury :-), but lately I've been picking up a few titles. One of the ones I was considering was a Final Fantasy game. I might have bought it soon. Now I never will. I'm aware that Square Enix simply doesn't care about people like me, but it's still $10 or whatever straight out of their bottom line, and I get to feel good about acting congruently with respect to my principles.
There are a lot of problems with capitalism, but one of the really great things is that frequently you get to choose where to spend your dollars, and when you withhold them, that's coming straight out of the company's hide. You don't get that kind of control with voting.
Will they include a dialog box so that we know Windows didn't just crash again?
Actually, this reminds me of an entry from SKB's classic Devil's DP Dictionary:
An oldie, but a goodie!
weigh as much as a grand piano back on Earth
I'm not a physics expert, but if it weighs as much in orbit as a grand piano does on Earth, wouldn't that give it the mass of, say, the Titanic?
Clearly you know about large roaming fees. Yet you don't seem to be willing to sidestep the issue by leaving the phone at home. That just means that you are a troll.
My CDMA phone had a very important quality that a GSM phone does not: If I forget to leave it at home, flip some switch, do a little happy dance, or whatever it is I'm supposed to do, it won't ruin my life.
Ever heard of risk management? If a house had a big, red button one had to press once a day to keep it from exploding, I could "sidestep the issue" by just remembering to press the button, but there's no way in hell I'm going to buy such a house. I have more than enough things in my life that require my vigilance--I don't need another.
Thank you for the rest of your informative post. I already go completely pre-paid, partly for the reasons above, and partly because I want to be able to switch carriers rapidly when they (inevitably) screw things up. So far I hadn't found anything authoritative that says that a pre-paid SIM even works in an Android phone. (Well, I guess I still haven't, but at least it's another data point.)
The first phone company that comes out with a simple deal that says "this is what you get, this is what it costs, cancel anytime" is going to wipe the floor with the rest of the competition.
I would love to have and develop for one of these, but the various service plans required to use them seem murky, incomprehensible, and extremely risky.
Until they can fix these problems, I'm sitting on the sidelines.
One difference is that you can in principle avoid biting your nails, at least for a while. I imagine that even the most compulsive can cease for five minutes.
If you're having a restless leg attack, then you're having it, and there's not much you can do in the short run to stop it, short of suicide.
It's certainly possible that RLS is fallout from all of the wonderful fast food, drugs, lethargy, etc., that comes with a wealthy economy.
Try to find incidents of Restless Leg Syndrome (by that name or any other) prior to the advertising campaign. See for yourself how difficult that is. Then you will see that it's not some malady that has plagued mankind over the years for which we finally have a treatment.
Having slept with someone who was tormented by this for months, I can assure you that it is quite real, whatever it is. It's possible that it was much rarer (or nonexistent) prior to 1900, but that's hardly proof that it doesn't exist now.
Your argument was going okay until you introduced this howler...
I'm not sure it gets much worse than this. I guess the local nuke plant could install a "whack-a-rod" live webcam game and secure it with DMCA technology...
...and that's a violation our patented "XP experience"! (turn head sideways)
You probably have been working on projects that did not employ post-project evaluations
That's true, or at least, if any were done I was not privy to that knowledge. My impression is perhaps somewhat skewed in that I found these situations unpleasant enough that I didn't stick around to see the inevitable disasters play out.
I'm familiar with the concept--I just moved out of a similiar district in another large city.
Vouchers, for better or for worse, have been completely tainted by religious conservatives, who see them as a way to use taxpayer dollars to further their agenda.
Private schools are somewhat tainted by this thinking, and are also harmed by the Ayn Rand types who do not understand why (for example) private fire protection is unworkable.
As you say, it's a tragedy that the kids are held hostage to these political agendas. Unfortunately it won't end until we agree that a quality, public, secular education for every child is a fundamental right and a serious priority.
And our experiences cannot be different?
Good teachers deserve our support. Not the bad ones. Being a teacher doesn't give you an aura of nobility simply because.
I don't quite agree. I think if someone goes into teaching with the desire to do good, accepting that they'll never get rich doing it, and it turns out after training up that they're just not very good at it, or don't like doing it, or maybe after 15 years are just plain tired of it, I think they still deserve our support. In this case support might mean radical counseling or retraining to either make them good again in the classroom or find them another niche where they can be productive.
I think we have to accept that not everyone's going to be able to stand 20+ years of dealing with some of the little shits and their insufferable parents, bureaucratic bullshit, false abuse charges (I have relatives who are teachers), etc. We should plan for this.
And yes, of all the professions, I think teaching is one of the most noble. It's just in a completely different class than going into, say, marketing.
Lots of places: several startups, industry and govt, one superlarge corp, etc. I have seen a lot of people fired for basic HR violations--running a business out of one's cube, not showing up to work, etc. But nothing regarding skill.
I'm not suggesting "throwing" money at education--obviously we'd like it spent wisely. Looking at districts across the US, it's clear that there's a correlation between quality of education and dollars spent.
One significant benefit of increasing education funding is that it allows a larger set of people to consider teaching as a career, as opposed to their next best alternative.
For example, I have some desire to teach, a graduate degree, and an excellent knowledge of science and technology. I'd have to cut my salary in half, though, and since I have a family, I'm not willing to do this. (In my case, I believe I'd do poorly in the classroom, so this is not much of a loss, but there are a lot of people like me who'd make excellent teachers.)
I'd be curious to hear more. Why were they considered to be incompetent? Over what period of time was this measured? Do you think it's a correct assessment?
Most of the companies were small (20-30 total), but some large/huge. A few were very stringent about who got in in the first place, but the rest I guess you'd have to say were "non-demanding" by definition.
I agree that finding excellent programmers is tough. Finding such a person who can also fit into the current organization, each having its own strange quirks, if more difficult still. I don't imagine that I have any skill at it.
I don't have much faith in "bell curves and 360 reports". The latter is mostly a measure of likability and charisma: nice attributes to be sure, but obvious and not in any sense sufficient. The former implies that quality programmer output is something that can be easily scored. In my experience, people who can really crank out the SLOCs are mostly just making messes for others to clean up later.
I've worked as a computer programmer for over 20 years, and I have never seen or heard of any programmer being fired for incompetence, no matter the magnitude.
As far as I'm concerned, teachers deserve our support, and I think all of the bitching is just a smokescreen to support cutting education funding, and a mind-trick to turn people against unions.
They took money to do their fucking job.
Sorry, but in this case this is crap. Do you really think Elsevier would accept your implied description (i.e., We will publish any garbage anyone pays us to, because that's our job.)? I seriously doubt it, because they (and everyone else) knows they have an solemn ethical duty not to do this sort of thing.
This really puts the lie to Elsevier's claim that open access scientific publication is somehow not as good (ugh) as commercial, restricted-access scientific journals.
Damn you guys use weasel words.
You have to think precisely about these issues, or you will easily fall under the influence of any "weasel" that comes along. I encourage you to read up and test what I am saying yourself.
But only is true if your code never touched my code. The second your GPL code touches my codebase, if I want to redistribute the codebase, I *must* do so under the GPL.
This is a very backhanded way of putting this, considering that you are the one deriving your code from my GPL'ed code in this example. Yes, if you really are deriving from someone's code (as opposed to mere aggregation), then yes, you must obey its license. (Probably a lot of commercial licenses don't even allow "mere aggregation", but the GPL does, as far as I know.)
Remember you are fighting a war of ideas, and not everybody agrees with your ideas.
I'm not sure I'm much of a soldier in the war. Rather, if I spend my weekends writing code for the public good, why shouldn't I license it as I see fit? Sometimes I use Open Source licenses and sometimes the GPL. Even the FSF uses non-GPL licenses when they perceive the need.
But the second you want to distribute it, anything that the GPL considers a derivative work becomes GPL. And *that* is why some people, like myself, prefer to avoid GPL.
The only way that something you write can "become GPL" is for you to choose to license it under the GPL. There is no other way under heaven or earth for this to happen. If you've heard otherwise, you've been misinformed.
Using the GPL takes away the *option* of ever being able to distribute our work without making it GPL.
You seem to be saying that if I choose the GPL as the license for my software, I've removing your ability to redistribute software that you derive from mine under a non-GPL license. If so, yes, that is correct. That is the price I'm charging for allowing you to derive from my work. (If you ask me with a good reason, I might allow something else, but that's the default.)
If I start using the GPL in my code, my option to distribute my codebase under a license of my choosing goes out the window
No. You can distribute your code under the GPL and then switch to another license at any time for future versions. What you cannot do is redistribute my GPL'ed code under the license of your choice.