Yes, I'm aware of the word 'illusive' and its spelling, and in this context, it is misused.
For one thing, the sentence is poorly constructed. Despite that fact, the word 'illusive' as written, operates on the verb phrase 'becoming profitable', not the noun 'prospect.' It should therefore be 'elusive'
However, given that major broadcast news programs cannot properly discern the correct usages of "there," "their" and "they're," it is more likely that it is just misspelled.
If we are required a deposit, say $20.00 to open an account, how many accounts would you open???
..and how is this different from a subscription?
I think another possibility is to just price reasonably. I really can't imagine that people would complain about a $20 subscription to something, unless it's for only a couple of issues or something.
Start small, stay small, build an audience, price reasonably, provide value for the price. Sounds simple, but it remains ELUSIVE (nrgh!) for a lot of businesses.
Many congratulations. Sounds like there's a lot of potential here. Might even start reading a few comics here and there.:)
What is this, the third largest metro newspaper?? sigh... (goes off to weep)
Re:Anime enjoyed due to great storytelling
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NY Times on Anime
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· Score: 1
Well, I'll grant that after Eugeal and Mimet (sp?) things did seem rushed, but it happens, even to the best authors. Difference is, you can always add chapters to a book.:)
you don't even see the final battle for Pharoah 90.
True, but I think the entire involvement of Pharoah 90 was symbolic, like many other elements of the story. This is one of the things that puts Sailor Moon in a category above just about anything in our McCulture: they actually introduce symbolism in a "show for kids." Brilliant.
Having the battle be resolved as it was (no spoilers) was far more impressive than a 10-minute gee-whiz special effects display. Besides, the second "catching of the hat" was absolutely priceless. I don't think a better coda could have been written.
But Cox really needs to look at who puts food on the table... I know if I had a nifty little job where I could do what I enjoy... I'd work to keep it... with or without slashdot's approval.
ALAN COX puts food on the table... what, is there a bread line at Red Hat's offices?
and throwing out these kinds of attitudes can definantelly cause you to loose your job even if there is no merger.
Yep. That's right. Can't have an opinion. No thinking on your own. Don't say anything. Stay in your cubicle. Don't speak up at meetings. Wouldn't want to disagree with anyone, now... You're an EMPLOYEE! Always agreeable. Always friendly. Big Smile! BIIIIIIIG SMILE!!!!!
Any manager that would let Alan Cox go is incompetent, period. The man knows his work. He's intelligent. He's entitled to speak his mind.
Re:Anime enjoyed due to great storytelling
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NY Times on Anime
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· Score: 1
Look, I'm a huge anime fan, but that's seriously stretching it. An average Sailor moon episode consists of a group of sailor scouts shopping in town, and walking into a store owned by an evil monster, who attacks. The sailor scouts counterattack and win.
You very neatly sidestepped the concept of a story arc. The Sailor Moon anime, and especially season three, is a very skillfully constructed episodic story cycle. The writers (Naoko Takeuchi in particular) manage to introduce four new characters (to an existing cast of eight), an entire cast of villains, a brilliantly complex plot and accompanying plethora of subplots, and they do so in a highly structured format without leaving any of the characters out or failing to resolve any of the subplots. (Note: This is VERY difficult to do well)
Granted, some of the other seasons aren't quite as complex, apparently, but season three appears quite different. It is a remarkable feat of storytelling reminiscent of certain genres of opera and the Greek storytelling tradition as well.
The other point is the 'subpar animation' of Japanese anime. Not true. While Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z are shamefully bad, not all series are.
Interesting that you mention the now-famous Toonami one-two punch, the shockwaves of which are still being heard across cable (and network) television. These two shows practically built Toonami, and put Cartoon Network near the top in afternoon ratings.
Anime took its inspiration from Disney films, but in true Japanese fashion, has improved upon the original to a great degree.
If you ran Kinko's, I suppose you would decide that it was better to allow your workers to make copies of copyrighted material, thereby opening you up to a bevy of lawsuits (which happened to Kinko's previously, and in a big way) and running the whole operation into the ground, than it would be to follow the law and deny requests to make copies illegally.
Each lawsuit would be summarily thrown out upon filing of a MOTION TO DISMISS on the grounds that the copies were made for purposes delineated under the FAIR USE PROVISIONS of the copyright law which have THE EXACT SAME LEGAL WEIGHT as the copyrights themselves.
People seem to forget those tiny little provisions in the rush to declare all copying illegal. The copy-place attendants have no reason to believe their customers are lying, and so they have no liability.
It is one thing to infringe copyright. But making a copy of one page of a book, or one picture, or whatever it is, for purposes such as these is not infringement, period. Making a copy of anything for a school report is educational fair use.
What I saw was in no way similar to the coursework book case.
Uh, no, copying copyrighted works and getting their pants sued off is what would put them out of business.
You missed the point. If this "no copying" policy is accurate, they cannot copy any document according to their policy. IIRC the 1976 Copyright Legislation made all works automatically copyrighted.
Besides, it would be a paper-thin (pun intended) infringement claim for one copy of an inkjet print of a color picture, and it would hardly put anyone out of business.
You must enjoy harassing employees who are asked to make correct judgements based on copyright law upon penalty of termination. The fine line between fair use and copyright is something the legal system has a tough time deciding, and yet you expect an underpaid, overworked person to bend over backwards because you think of yourself as an intellectual property expert.
It was their interpretation of copyright and their own policy, not mine. What I objected to was using them to make things difficult for this mother who's intent was clearly not copyright infringement. If treating customers this way is their policy, then it needs to be changed, and basing it on some distorted view of copyright law is dubious at best.
Even if the picture were copyrighted, it is BLACK LETTER FAIR USE for the mother, the daughter AND the business. If the copyright owner filed an infringement suit, it would almost assuredly be thrown out, likely with prejudice, moments after the Motion to Dismiss was filed. It doesn't take an intellectual property expert to see that.
Why do people assume that someone getting paid barely over minimum wage is going to risk their job just because a customer wants a color photo for their school report? These aren't law school graduates and you shouldn't expect them to be, they are doing their jobs.
I'm not a law school graduate either, but I can read. My guess is that whoever wrote this policy isn't a law school graduate, and if they are, I'd say they need a refresher course or two.
They realize of course, that this policy puts them completely out of business, right? Technically, they can't copy anything because legally, every document is copyrighted the moment it is produced, even a grocery list.
I still think it's overboard to categorically refuse to make a copy of something for a school report. They have no reason to believe the woman is lying, and therefore they have a near-ironclad Fair Use defense in the event of an infringement claim. It won't cost them much to file a "Motion to Dismiss" either.
I was in a well-known copying establishment a couple of days ago, watching a small, polite, quiet woman at the counter talking to the attendant:
Woman: "I'd like a copy of this please" (holds out inkjet print of a picture)
Attendant: "I'm sorry, but that picture is copyrighted. I can't copy it."
I was floored. I got really, REALLY angry for a moment, then started thinking: do these people have a neural link to the Library of Congress? How do they know it's copyrighted? What if it's public domain?
The woman was crestfallen. So I said:
"She might be planning to make Fair Use of that picture."
Attendant: "Still can't copy it. It's our policy. It's only Fair Use if it's educational."
To which I replied:
"or journalistic, or non-commercial and limited in other ways, or for criticism, or properly attributed. There are four criteria for Fair Use."
So I asked the lady, "what's it for, school report or something?" and she says yes, that her daughter was going to use it for school. So I turned to the attendant and said
"There you go, black-letter Fair Use."
He just shakes his head, still refusing.
Is this what we're looking forward to? Copyright police behind the counter at copy places? Taking an I.P. attorney's pager number along as well? I really felt bad for this lady. It was late and she looked very tired and the report was probably due the next day. I'm sure whoever made that picture would have filed an immediate Federal injunction to bar this woman's daughter from turning in her report before requesting a licensing fee schedule.
(uh huh). I actually considered going back to the office and making something similar in Bryce for her to use with a signed letter placing my picture in the public domain.
I kind of wished she had brought her daughter along. Imagine the media frenzy/public relations disaster possibilities of a copy place attendant, arms folded, refusing to copy a picture for a crying 5th grader's school report. heh heh heh.
It's sad, and it has absolutely *nothing* to do with the original purpose of copyright law. This needs to be fixed, and soon.
There's a Vice President for Government Relations at Disney?? o.O
Important words and phrases noted:
"control"
"undetectable yet traceable" (eh?)
I especially liked the delineation between "consumers" and "users" I think the term "consumer" is demeaning and borders on insulting.
Consumers don't make choices or think, they simply consume. bleh.
This debate must have the purpose of restoring balance to public policy regarding copyrights. One guy in the article had the answer, but no time was taken to explain it further: having a good site with the features people want, etc. will be popular. Agreed. Where is it? Until those services are available, the "content companies" should be working on them, not complaining about some grainy DivX somewhere, or some 20-year out-of-date disco mp3s.
All the games are published for Windows, and even if they make it to other OSes, they make it to Windows first.
Gee, I don't know. Our Mac version was first out of the gate popularity-wise (and is still in high demand), and our Linux version was the first one that worked correctly. We've gotten far more compliments for supporting Linux than Windows.
The difference is that we didn't start with a Windows version and then port to other platforms. We started with a platform-independent version, and released simultaneously. It never even occurred to us to release only for Windows, and I think a lot of games companies think this way.
..and it would seem to be a solid alternative to the office/printer problem on Linux. Color printing on Linux remains a problem for some printer models (although this is improving). Any office suite is limited in use without the ability to print *correctly* from Linux. The need for the Windows printer driver is very inconvenient.
However, once one learns LyX, it would seem, one can author documents at least (with color graphics, no less) on Linux in a format that can be exported to either PDF or HTML, and viewed or printed on any platform with a PDF viewer, including eBooks, Linux, Mac and Windows. This makes things far more convenient.
Just make sure that there is an ironclad *required* boot disk step in the process so when system.map is inevitably overwritten, and LILO brings up screens of 8s or #s, Aunt Tillie can log back in.
Having two or three LILO prompts of backup kernels that can't be passively overwritten would also be a good idea.
This is nothing new. It has been apparent for years that many companies could care less about their employees. People who are quite good at their jobs (and well qualified) are casually fired as a matter of routine in the average workplace, while the hiring process has become the grandest production since Cecil B. DeMille.
Now, if only we employees could walk away from our mortgages and car payments the same way employers walk away from their employees. That would make things fair.
There are (reportedly) over 20 million of these devices in Japan alone. The handheld/cellphone/PDA game market will be great for small and independent developers, and the economics are favorable as well (market size vs. cost of entry).
Now, what kinds of games to play on small devices is the next question...
Before everyone dismisses the New and Improved(tm) Napster:
Free web content is only free if your time is worth nothing.
Translation: Sure, you can go get all the free bits you want, but the service here is:
1. Quality
2. Access to what you want, when you want
If those can be provided, then perhaps it is worth a small subscription price. There is an incentive (keeping your subscription current) for Napster to provide value. There is no incentive for some random URL to provide value, because without a purchase there is no value by definition.
However, this only holds true if the value difference remains. If Napster starts providing a substandard service, then it won't be worth the money to subscribe.
But I do think they deserve a chance, espeically if they will be offering smaller or new artists an opportunity to distribute their music as well.
Re:Soon to be seen in a grocery-store parking lot.
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The Ultimate S.U.V.
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They are more valuable than you. That's why they're paid more.
If you're just a programmer, you are just a replaceable part.
The standpoint of thousands of managers who can't seem to understand why their projects never ship, even though the Gantt chart says today is the due date.
There are some programmers who are *not* replaceable parts. Believe it or not, there are actually programmers who know what they are doing, and don't need to be told in excruciating detail how to do something. If managers are there to describe the goal, that's fine, but they fail by then drifting into insisting that a particular technical approach be taken, even if they are incompetent to make such a recommendation.
This happens far too often, and it is one of the primary reasons IT projects, by and large, fail.
who think the engineering priority is the only priority.
I said nothing about priorities. I said that there are certain areas of expertise. Engineers are qualified in areas that managers are not. Managers disagree, believing that being a manager somehow qualifies them to make technical judgements, and they are wrong. I can ask any 10 managers a series of technical questions that they will not be able to answer accurately.
You might have bad managers, but I would bet that you simply have no understanding of marketing and business decisisions, and are frustrated because you are unwilling and/or unable to see the bigger picture.
I see the bigger picture. What I see are managers who will not simply explain what they want built. I have not once, EVER, been told "this is what we want built" and been allowed to go build it. Myself, and numerous others who are far more qualified than I, have always been forced to justify decisions we were HIRED TO MAKE to managers who don't understand a word we are saying. This process often takes weeks and sometimes months, delays the project unnecessarily, and usually causes it to fail, followed by layoffs of all the engineers while the manager moves on to another project, picking up a bonus check along the way.
Sorry, I don't buy the "management is more important" argument. Perhaps engineers would be "team players" more often if managers weren't quite so concerned with their own importance.
How is getting married an economic decision...?
You're kidding, right?
Kids, house, cars, insurance, taxes, investments, weddings, honeymoons, rings, receptions... I could continue for several paragraphs. Getting married is by far the most profound economic decision a person ever makes.
And given the state of business these days, where companies casually fire people whenever they feel like it, while making the hiring process into the grandest production since Cecil B. DeMille, where is the wisdom in starting a family? How can someone sign a 30-year mortgage knowing their current project is only going to last three months? Does that make sense? It doesn't to me.
Quite frankly: Grow up. No one owes you a damn thing.
You know what? Maybe they do. Maybe there should be just a little consideration above and beyond the heavily-taxed paycheck. If these companies REALLY want "permanent employees" then maybe they should act like it. But they don't. They'll fire anyone they feel like firing for no reason at all anytime they want, and they do.
Now I owe a lot, just like everyone else. I owe rent. I owe insurance. I owe for the kids braces. I owe for the car payment. But no matter how good I am at my job, no matter how many years I've put in, and no matter how qualified I am, my employer owes me nothing except this hours' salary. It would be fine if I could just walk away from my mortgage like employers can walk away from their employees, but I can't. That's the inequity.
People live with instability every day, yes, even these mythical people you see who you think "do nothing".
They aren't concerned for their jobs on a constant basis.
Based on the above statement, it sounds like you live in the Bay Area or some other engineer-saturated area. If you want better stability, then stop whining and move or change industries. But stop blaming everyone else and take control of your own life.
I don't live anywhere near the Bay Area, and I'm not whining. See, instead of facing the problem, all these engineers are just whining. The fact that companies are spending hundreds of millions to churn their staff every six months doesn't matter, right?
The best advice I can give managers (because I have managed projects before too) is to let your people do their job. Give them a goal, and then GO AWAY!!! Your job as manager is to remove obstacles, not create them. A lot of managers take great delight in obstructing their engineers, and that's why their projects never ship.
Finally: I guarantee that if you get a better attitude, you will find that you have much better job security.
Better attitude == "Team Player" In other words, agree with everyone, even when they are wrong.
How about being better qualified? How about knowing the material? How about a job history of successful projects? Why doesn't THAT accrue to "job security?"
Re:Soon to be seen in a grocery-store parking lot.
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The Ultimate S.U.V.
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Sheesh, typical jealousy and envy of successful, happy people. Yeah, they should be ashamed of themselves for having a good life.
Much as I probably shouldn't, I'm going to reply anyway.
I'm not jealous at all. I don't mind working hard and trying to achieve better things, but I am constrained to point out that many of these people are totally and utterly incompetent to do *anything* worthy of the rock-solid, uninterrupted salaries they are given. They almost never appear to have earned their "good life" either, because they never seem to know much of anything except how to set up the Monday donut list and call meetings.
They then presume to dictate to people who have spent *years* learning to program computers properly the precise wrong way to do something, then start figuring out ways to "downsize" your salary when you don't say "oh, yes, Mr. Expensive Desk, you're obviously right" while wondering what the #%&#*(% they need you for, since it obviously isn't for your knowledge.
I've walked past these "soccer-mom-desks" after being condescendingly told that I'm back in the job market by the guy at the expensive desk, and I'm always amazed that these people are so serene and calm in the face of layoffs. They are that way because they've BEEN THERE FOR FIFTEEN YEARS, EARNING A STEADY PAYCHECK WHICH IS WHY THEY CAN AFFORD A $40,000 CAR WHILE THE PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY BUILD THE THINGS THEY SELL ARE BACK LOOKING FOR WORK, AGAIN.
You might want to consider that this is why you have a miserable life.
I don't have a miserable life. I can say that life would be far more miserable if all I did all day was sit in meetings with "Bob."
I take it you are not married, with no real prospects. Well, your ugly personality is why.
No. I'm not married because I can't afford it. I can't afford it because programmers are the first out the door when managers decide it's time to "reevaluate the strategic direction of the corporate restructuring initiatives." I put in seven years learning how to be a good programmer only to find that management isn't interested in good programmers. They just want someone to agree with them when they are wrong, and nod in meetings.
Note the managers are all married (because they are never laid off) and the soccer-mom-stuffed-animal-coffee-mug
-and-picture-frame-desk people are all married, because they've likely been employed for decades and know factually they will never be laid off.
See, these people can plan for the future because they know they can rely on their jobs. Those of us who actually build things for a living can't rely on any stability at all from the average company from one day to the next, much less years down the line. I would never subject my family to the kind of instability I've seen in the past few years, ever.
Of course, nobody will see this comment, so I suppose it's academic.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I'm aware of the word 'illusive' and its spelling, and in this context, it is misused.
For one thing, the sentence is poorly constructed. Despite that fact, the word 'illusive' as written, operates on the verb phrase 'becoming profitable', not the noun 'prospect.' It should therefore be 'elusive'
However, given that major broadcast news programs cannot properly discern the correct usages of "there," "their" and "they're," it is more likely that it is just misspelled.
I think you all know how this is gonna work out...the second somebody downloads it, its gonna be out on morpheus in about 3 seconds.
Yeah, gotta make sure the author gets warezed out of his $1.
sigh...
If we are required a deposit, say $20.00 to open an account, how many accounts would you open???
..and how is this different from a subscription?
I think another possibility is to just price reasonably. I really can't imagine that people would complain about a $20 subscription to something, unless it's for only a couple of issues or something.
Start small, stay small, build an audience, price reasonably, provide value for the price. Sounds simple, but it remains ELUSIVE (nrgh!) for a lot of businesses.
:)
Many congratulations. Sounds like there's a lot of potential here. Might even start reading a few comics here and there.
E-lusive E!! E!!!!!!
ELUSIVE!!!!
The word is ELUSIVE!!!
What is this, the third largest metro newspaper?? sigh... (goes off to weep)
Well, I'll grant that after Eugeal and Mimet (sp?) things did seem rushed, but it happens, even to the best authors. Difference is, you can always add chapters to a book. :)
you don't even see the final battle for Pharoah 90.
True, but I think the entire involvement of Pharoah 90 was symbolic, like many other elements of the story. This is one of the things that puts Sailor Moon in a category above just about anything in our McCulture: they actually introduce symbolism in a "show for kids." Brilliant.
Having the battle be resolved as it was (no spoilers) was far more impressive than a 10-minute gee-whiz special effects display. Besides, the second "catching of the hat" was absolutely priceless. I don't think a better coda could have been written.
But Cox really needs to look at who puts food on the table ... I know if I had a nifty little job where I could do what I enjoy ... I'd work to keep it ... with or without slashdot's approval.
ALAN COX puts food on the table... what, is there a bread line at Red Hat's offices?
sigh...
and throwing out these kinds of attitudes can definantelly cause you to loose your job even if there is no merger.
Yep. That's right. Can't have an opinion. No thinking on your own. Don't say anything. Stay in your cubicle. Don't speak up at meetings. Wouldn't want to disagree with anyone, now... You're an EMPLOYEE! Always agreeable. Always friendly. Big Smile! BIIIIIIIG SMILE!!!!!
Any manager that would let Alan Cox go is incompetent, period. The man knows his work. He's intelligent. He's entitled to speak his mind.
Look, I'm a huge anime fan, but that's seriously stretching it. An average Sailor moon episode consists of a group of sailor scouts shopping in town, and walking into a store owned by an evil monster, who attacks. The sailor scouts counterattack and win.
You very neatly sidestepped the concept of a story arc. The Sailor Moon anime, and especially season three, is a very skillfully constructed episodic story cycle. The writers (Naoko Takeuchi in particular) manage to introduce four new characters (to an existing cast of eight), an entire cast of villains, a brilliantly complex plot and accompanying plethora of subplots, and they do so in a highly structured format without leaving any of the characters out or failing to resolve any of the subplots. (Note: This is VERY difficult to do well)
Granted, some of the other seasons aren't quite as complex, apparently, but season three appears quite different. It is a remarkable feat of storytelling reminiscent of certain genres of opera and the Greek storytelling tradition as well.
The other point is the 'subpar animation' of Japanese anime. Not true. While Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z are shamefully bad, not all series are.
Interesting that you mention the now-famous Toonami one-two punch, the shockwaves of which are still being heard across cable (and network) television. These two shows practically built Toonami, and put Cartoon Network near the top in afternoon ratings.
Anime took its inspiration from Disney films, but in true Japanese fashion, has improved upon the original to a great degree.
Agreed. 100%
If you ran Kinko's, I suppose you would decide that it was better to allow your workers to make copies of copyrighted material, thereby opening you up to a bevy of lawsuits (which happened to Kinko's previously, and in a big way) and running the whole operation into the ground, than it would be to follow the law and deny requests to make copies illegally.
Each lawsuit would be summarily thrown out upon filing of a MOTION TO DISMISS on the grounds that the copies were made for purposes delineated under the FAIR USE PROVISIONS of the copyright law which have THE EXACT SAME LEGAL WEIGHT as the copyrights themselves.
People seem to forget those tiny little provisions in the rush to declare all copying illegal. The copy-place attendants have no reason to believe their customers are lying, and so they have no liability.
It is one thing to infringe copyright. But making a copy of one page of a book, or one picture, or whatever it is, for purposes such as these is not infringement, period. Making a copy of anything for a school report is educational fair use.
What I saw was in no way similar to the coursework book case.
Uh, no, copying copyrighted works and getting their pants sued off is what would put them out of business.
You missed the point. If this "no copying" policy is accurate, they cannot copy any document according to their policy. IIRC the 1976 Copyright Legislation made all works automatically copyrighted.
Besides, it would be a paper-thin (pun intended) infringement claim for one copy of an inkjet print of a color picture, and it would hardly put anyone out of business.
You must enjoy harassing employees who are asked to make correct judgements based on copyright law upon penalty of termination. The fine line between fair use and copyright is something the legal system has a tough time deciding, and yet you expect an underpaid, overworked person to bend over backwards because you think of yourself as an intellectual property expert.
It was their interpretation of copyright and their own policy, not mine. What I objected to was using them to make things difficult for this mother who's intent was clearly not copyright infringement. If treating customers this way is their policy, then it needs to be changed, and basing it on some distorted view of copyright law is dubious at best.
Even if the picture were copyrighted, it is BLACK LETTER FAIR USE for the mother, the daughter AND the business. If the copyright owner filed an infringement suit, it would almost assuredly be thrown out, likely with prejudice, moments after the Motion to Dismiss was filed. It doesn't take an intellectual property expert to see that.
Why do people assume that someone getting paid barely over minimum wage is going to risk their job just because a customer wants a color photo for their school report? These aren't law school graduates and you shouldn't expect them to be, they are doing their jobs.
I'm not a law school graduate either, but I can read. My guess is that whoever wrote this policy isn't a law school graduate, and if they are, I'd say they need a refresher course or two.
Brilliant. To bad I already commented. +1 Insightful.
They realize of course, that this policy puts them completely out of business, right? Technically, they can't copy anything because legally, every document is copyrighted the moment it is produced, even a grocery list.
I still think it's overboard to categorically refuse to make a copy of something for a school report. They have no reason to believe the woman is lying, and therefore they have a near-ironclad Fair Use defense in the event of an infringement claim. It won't cost them much to file a "Motion to Dismiss" either.
I was in a well-known copying establishment a couple of days ago, watching a small, polite, quiet woman at the counter talking to the attendant:
Woman: "I'd like a copy of this please" (holds out inkjet print of a picture)
Attendant: "I'm sorry, but that picture is copyrighted. I can't copy it."
I was floored. I got really, REALLY angry for a moment, then started thinking: do these people have a neural link to the Library of Congress? How do they know it's copyrighted? What if it's public domain?
The woman was crestfallen. So I said:
"She might be planning to make Fair Use of that picture."
Attendant: "Still can't copy it. It's our policy. It's only Fair Use if it's educational."
To which I replied:
"or journalistic, or non-commercial and limited in other ways, or for criticism, or properly attributed. There are four criteria for Fair Use."
So I asked the lady, "what's it for, school report or something?" and she says yes, that her daughter was going to use it for school. So I turned to the attendant and said
"There you go, black-letter Fair Use."
He just shakes his head, still refusing.
Is this what we're looking forward to? Copyright police behind the counter at copy places? Taking an I.P. attorney's pager number along as well? I really felt bad for this lady. It was late and she looked very tired and the report was probably due the next day. I'm sure whoever made that picture would have filed an immediate Federal injunction to bar this woman's daughter from turning in her report before requesting a licensing fee schedule.
(uh huh). I actually considered going back to the office and making something similar in Bryce for her to use with a signed letter placing my picture in the public domain.
I kind of wished she had brought her daughter along. Imagine the media frenzy/public relations disaster possibilities of a copy place attendant, arms folded, refusing to copy a picture for a crying 5th grader's school report. heh heh heh.
It's sad, and it has absolutely *nothing* to do with the original purpose of copyright law. This needs to be fixed, and soon.
There's a Vice President for Government Relations at Disney?? o.O
Important words and phrases noted:
"control"
"undetectable yet traceable" (eh?)
I especially liked the delineation between "consumers" and "users" I think the term "consumer" is demeaning and borders on insulting.
Consumers don't make choices or think, they simply consume. bleh.
This debate must have the purpose of restoring balance to public policy regarding copyrights. One guy in the article had the answer, but no time was taken to explain it further: having a good site with the features people want, etc. will be popular. Agreed. Where is it? Until those services are available, the "content companies" should be working on them, not complaining about some grainy DivX somewhere, or some 20-year out-of-date disco mp3s.
All the games are published for Windows, and even if they make it to other OSes, they make it to Windows first.
Gee, I don't know. Our Mac version was first out of the gate popularity-wise (and is still in high demand), and our Linux version was the first one that worked correctly. We've gotten far more compliments for supporting Linux than Windows.
The difference is that we didn't start with a Windows version and then port to other platforms. We started with a platform-independent version, and released simultaneously. It never even occurred to us to release only for Windows, and I think a lot of games companies think this way.
..and it would seem to be a solid alternative to the office/printer problem on Linux. Color printing on Linux remains a problem for some printer models (although this is improving). Any office suite is limited in use without the ability to print *correctly* from Linux. The need for the Windows printer driver is very inconvenient.
However, once one learns LyX, it would seem, one can author documents at least (with color graphics, no less) on Linux in a format that can be exported to either PDF or HTML, and viewed or printed on any platform with a PDF viewer, including eBooks, Linux, Mac and Windows. This makes things far more convenient.
Wasn't this one decided once already? Time shifting is legal, right? Hello? McFly?
Just make sure that there is an ironclad *required* boot disk step in the process so when system.map is inevitably overwritten, and LILO brings up screens of 8s or #s, Aunt Tillie can log back in.
Having two or three LILO prompts of backup kernels that can't be passively overwritten would also be a good idea.
This is nothing new. It has been apparent for years that many companies could care less about their employees. People who are quite good at their jobs (and well qualified) are casually fired as a matter of routine in the average workplace, while the hiring process has become the grandest production since Cecil B. DeMille.
Now, if only we employees could walk away from our mortgages and car payments the same way employers walk away from their employees. That would make things fair.
Yes! Excellent article. Almost worth the subscription by itself. :)
HUGE.
There are (reportedly) over 20 million of these devices in Japan alone. The handheld/cellphone/PDA game market will be great for small and independent developers, and the economics are favorable as well (market size vs. cost of entry).
Now, what kinds of games to play on small devices is the next question...
Before everyone dismisses the New and Improved(tm) Napster:
Free web content is only free if your time is worth nothing.
Translation: Sure, you can go get all the free bits you want, but the service here is:
1. Quality
2. Access to what you want, when you want
If those can be provided, then perhaps it is worth a small subscription price. There is an incentive (keeping your subscription current) for Napster to provide value. There is no incentive for some random URL to provide value, because without a purchase there is no value by definition.
However, this only holds true if the value difference remains. If Napster starts providing a substandard service, then it won't be worth the money to subscribe.
But I do think they deserve a chance, espeically if they will be offering smaller or new artists an opportunity to distribute their music as well.
They are more valuable than you. That's why they're paid more.
If you're just a programmer, you are just a replaceable part.
The standpoint of thousands of managers who can't seem to understand why their projects never ship, even though the Gantt chart says today is the due date.
There are some programmers who are *not* replaceable parts. Believe it or not, there are actually programmers who know what they are doing, and don't need to be told in excruciating detail how to do something. If managers are there to describe the goal, that's fine, but they fail by then drifting into insisting that a particular technical approach be taken, even if they are incompetent to make such a recommendation.
This happens far too often, and it is one of the primary reasons IT projects, by and large, fail.
who think the engineering priority is the only priority.
I said nothing about priorities. I said that there are certain areas of expertise. Engineers are qualified in areas that managers are not. Managers disagree, believing that being a manager somehow qualifies them to make technical judgements, and they are wrong. I can ask any 10 managers a series of technical questions that they will not be able to answer accurately.
You might have bad managers, but I would bet that you simply have no understanding of marketing and business decisisions, and are frustrated because you are unwilling and/or unable to see the bigger picture.
I see the bigger picture. What I see are managers who will not simply explain what they want built. I have not once, EVER, been told "this is what we want built" and been allowed to go build it. Myself, and numerous others who are far more qualified than I, have always been forced to justify decisions we were HIRED TO MAKE to managers who don't understand a word we are saying. This process often takes weeks and sometimes months, delays the project unnecessarily, and usually causes it to fail, followed by layoffs of all the engineers while the manager moves on to another project, picking up a bonus check along the way.
Sorry, I don't buy the "management is more important" argument. Perhaps engineers would be "team players" more often if managers weren't quite so concerned with their own importance.
How is getting married an economic decision...?
You're kidding, right?
Kids, house, cars, insurance, taxes, investments, weddings, honeymoons, rings, receptions... I could continue for several paragraphs. Getting married is by far the most profound economic decision a person ever makes.
And given the state of business these days, where companies casually fire people whenever they feel like it, while making the hiring process into the grandest production since Cecil B. DeMille, where is the wisdom in starting a family? How can someone sign a 30-year mortgage knowing their current project is only going to last three months? Does that make sense? It doesn't to me.
Quite frankly: Grow up. No one owes you a damn thing.
You know what? Maybe they do. Maybe there should be just a little consideration above and beyond the heavily-taxed paycheck. If these companies REALLY want "permanent employees" then maybe they should act like it. But they don't. They'll fire anyone they feel like firing for no reason at all anytime they want, and they do.
Now I owe a lot, just like everyone else. I owe rent. I owe insurance. I owe for the kids braces. I owe for the car payment. But no matter how good I am at my job, no matter how many years I've put in, and no matter how qualified I am, my employer owes me nothing except this hours' salary. It would be fine if I could just walk away from my mortgage like employers can walk away from their employees, but I can't. That's the inequity.
People live with instability every day, yes, even these mythical people you see who you think "do nothing".
They aren't concerned for their jobs on a constant basis.
Based on the above statement, it sounds like you live in the Bay Area or some other engineer-saturated area. If you want better stability, then stop whining and move or change industries. But stop blaming everyone else and take control of your own life.
I don't live anywhere near the Bay Area, and I'm not whining. See, instead of facing the problem, all these engineers are just whining. The fact that companies are spending hundreds of millions to churn their staff every six months doesn't matter, right?
The best advice I can give managers (because I have managed projects before too) is to let your people do their job. Give them a goal, and then GO AWAY!!! Your job as manager is to remove obstacles, not create them. A lot of managers take great delight in obstructing their engineers, and that's why their projects never ship.
Finally: I guarantee that if you get a better attitude, you will find that you have much better job security.
Better attitude == "Team Player" In other words, agree with everyone, even when they are wrong.
How about being better qualified? How about knowing the material? How about a job history of successful projects? Why doesn't THAT accrue to "job security?"
Sheesh, typical jealousy and envy of successful, happy people. Yeah, they should be ashamed of themselves for having a good life.
Much as I probably shouldn't, I'm going to reply anyway.
I'm not jealous at all. I don't mind working hard and trying to achieve better things, but I am constrained to point out that many of these people are totally and utterly incompetent to do *anything* worthy of the rock-solid, uninterrupted salaries they are given. They almost never appear to have earned their "good life" either, because they never seem to know much of anything except how to set up the Monday donut list and call meetings.
They then presume to dictate to people who have spent *years* learning to program computers properly the precise wrong way to do something, then start figuring out ways to "downsize" your salary when you don't say "oh, yes, Mr. Expensive Desk, you're obviously right" while wondering what the #%&#*(% they need you for, since it obviously isn't for your knowledge.
I've walked past these "soccer-mom-desks" after being condescendingly told that I'm back in the job market by the guy at the expensive desk, and I'm always amazed that these people are so serene and calm in the face of layoffs. They are that way because they've BEEN THERE FOR FIFTEEN YEARS, EARNING A STEADY PAYCHECK WHICH IS WHY THEY CAN AFFORD A $40,000 CAR WHILE THE PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY BUILD THE THINGS THEY SELL ARE BACK LOOKING FOR WORK, AGAIN.
You might want to consider that this is why you have a miserable life.
I don't have a miserable life. I can say that life would be far more miserable if all I did all day was sit in meetings with "Bob."
I take it you are not married, with no real prospects. Well, your ugly personality is why.
No. I'm not married because I can't afford it. I can't afford it because programmers are the first out the door when managers decide it's time to "reevaluate the strategic direction of the corporate restructuring initiatives." I put in seven years learning how to be a good programmer only to find that management isn't interested in good programmers. They just want someone to agree with them when they are wrong, and nod in meetings.
Note the managers are all married (because they are never laid off) and the soccer-mom-stuffed-animal-coffee-mug
-and-picture-frame-desk people are all married, because they've likely been employed for decades and know factually they will never be laid off.
See, these people can plan for the future because they know they can rely on their jobs. Those of us who actually build things for a living can't rely on any stability at all from the average company from one day to the next, much less years down the line. I would never subject my family to the kind of instability I've seen in the past few years, ever.
Of course, nobody will see this comment, so I suppose it's academic.