So if I write say, an FTP client with build in ads, and people use it to pirate music, then I am profiting from copyright violations?
We've gotten so caught up in this whole thing, that we have forgotten the original arguments. Napster is no different from FTP or HTTP or any other method of copying files. They just happened to provide a nice indexing and search service, and restrict the file extensions to.mp3.
Nothing is created or destroyed, at least I don't think we have found anything basic that is yet (matter, energy, etc). So far the universe has been pretty zero sum.
Of course, if I bake a cake, I created the cake. If simulate a natural environment, and a cake forms, I have a pretty good arugment that cakes can form spontaneously in nature.
In the thrift store, I found a book, it's about a 6th grade level science book. It's called science for christians, it's from the 70s or so I think.
I think it may be worth something some day, most of the arguments it gives have already been invalidated by modern science.
Of course, it's all relative, the legitimate science text books printed today contain tons of inaccuracies and gross misstatements. I should have never tried to learn science as a kid from those books, I've had to throw away most of the knowledge after I learned the way things REALLY are.
Do we really need to waste time "competing" with religion to "prove" evolution?
Why can't we concentrate on science that matters. If they want to believe some fairy tale about a magical man with a long white beard that had a busy week, let them!
b) You can send them RTFs and they can send you RTFs and everything works fine. Did you really need that little animated GIF embedded in your document?
d will even bounce e-mail sent with an Office format.
Dirty GNU hippie! Just kidding, I do the same thing sometimes.
Anyway, at work we have to deal with an EBCDIC system. ASCII may seem standard now, but who knows in 10 or 20 years. HTML is even more risky, but at least easily stripped back to ASCII.
It's incredibly hard to look forward more than 5 years in anything computer related.
I'm not sure what "6'2 m" is.... If you mean 6 feet or two meters...
The ones we use are about that big. They go onto a big sheeter that cuts them into sheets that the press uses. You move them around with a forklift with a special attachment that looks like huge calipers.
Right now that is good, but you are locking yourself into years of migration. You can't just box up those burned CDs and pull them out in 50 years.
If the documents are really important, you will have to constantly migrate them to the format du jour, and also fight media age as long as we use media with fairly short lives. (CDR maybe 10 years if stored well)
There are some advantages to paper, space isn't one of them, but longevity sure is.
You're probably one of those assholes that make people feel stupid abut their taste in movies, operating systems, and religion.
Hey shutup! You are describing me too well! At least one side of me.
I think in general, there are two types of geeks.
The first type is the generalist. The true elite.
They generally can learn anything we need to, they do their own taxes, they know all the relevant tax laws, and while they aren't an expert in anything but computers or electronics, I'd say they rarely on average pay people to do something they can learn themselves in a reasonable amount of time.
They are the people that resent it when they have to pay for "professional installation" of a satellite or cable modem. They are generally do-it-yourselfers in nearly every possible area.
They learn quickly, they adapt, and they don't generally depend on others when it isn't necessary.
There are a lot of us that aren't like that, but would pretend to be. This is the type II geek, the specialist. They have the depth, but not the width. They may know how to program like crazy in their selected language, but they couldn't explain an IRQ or quickly figure out what the bandwidth of a 33Mhz/32bit bus is.
These are the people that often comment that fiber optics are faster because light travels so much faster than electricity, or who worry about using magnetic screwdrivers on their motherboard. They may know a certain level or aspect of computers, but are not the generalist type.
I think the latter type is more likely to take the elitist tack, but it can come out in the truely elite generalist too. It comes out in me sometimes too, but I try to fight it.
Anyway, the point is, the attitude in the former is at least slightly justified, since that type, put in the position of the user, would learn the necessary things to use a computer effectively, even if it wasn't their job. The latter has no justification for the attitude.
If everyone was a Type I, then we could realize the dream of a paperless office. I think that most people are specialists though, and don't have the skill or ability to be a generalist,. and still excel in their field. A lot of the resentment you see I think is generalists who aren't being very understanding of the limited abilities of specialists.
I hope you don't get modded flamebait, your post was very insightful, and I think the insightful aspect far outweighs any possible flames.
As someone who works for a large consumer of roll paper, a label printing company, I'd say there are some other reasons.
A major consumption of paper is labelling, like food cans and the like. There is a move toward different kinds of labelling, labelling printed directly on shrink plastic, or directly on the bottle.
Pressure sensitive labelling seems more popular than ever, I don't know if these are in your roll paper stats or not, as they come in rolls, but it's not just rolls of paper, they come rolled already on their backing with adhesive and all.
So, as long as your stats were office use only, then they are probably relevant, if they include industrial consumers of roll paper, then maybe not.
Disclaimer: I don't speak for my employer, and all of the above is publicly available facts or opinions of my own.
1) compatible r/w file formats with what everyone else is using
If everyone else was jumping off a bridge and putting their eye out with rubber bands and paper clips while doing drugs, listening to loud music and getting strange hair cuts, would you do it too?
Wait, something it messed up there.
Anyway, my point is. Just because everyone else is using a non-standard proprietary format doesn't make it right.
There should be some kind of regulation. I'm not sure that the regulation of e-mail should be, or needs to be, different than the regulation of any other form of communication.
They use false positives to check for this. They send the client a deliberate false positive, that way since a cheater is going to be sending back all negatives, they can find the cheaters.
You know, it's funny. I ran RC5-64 in 1997 on my pentium 200 for over a year. I recently, about 40 days ago started doing RC5-64 again, but this time with my cluster of seven Duron 900s. I surpassed my old account in about 15 days. Amazing how much faster the computers are now.
What you need is people to pay you for vanity press services. Your web page makes it sound like you are publishing a for-profit periodical that is seeking material for which there is a market demand.
I'll try to change it to reflect more closely it is what we do. Really. I hate scam artists, and I really take it personally if someone thinks I am one.
1. What percentage of submitted poems make it to the "finals"? Feel free to estimate if you don't have an exact number.
I have absolutely no clue. My job boils down to opening the entries, filtering out non-conforming entries that did not follow the contest rules, or entries that are obviously pranks, and forwarding the rest to Cader. They make all the content decisions.
2. What percentage of the poems are published at the author's expense?
I don't know that exactly, but I can estimate. The anthology has a Part I which contains the contest winners, and a Part 2, containing people who did not win, but who were published because the decided to purchase a copy of the anthology.
I'd say theres about twice as many pages in Part 2 as there is in Part 1. It varies.
3. By whom is your Verses magazine "highly aclaimed"?
Ugh, I think that part is out of date. I will have to update the page accordingly. I'm not sure if Cader still published Verses, I will have to check with them.
4. Was your web page designed with the intent of making people believe that your business was something other than a vanity press?
It is something other than a vanity press. It is a real free poetry contest that people can enter without any obligation to buy anything. When I entered the contest myself, I never felt misled into thinking I had to buy anything to enter the contest, I just returned the entry form, and indicated that I didn't want to buy anything, just like the form said.
It's very much like publisher's clearinghouse sweepsstakes in that regard. As far as I know, the decision to buy something or not has no effect on your chance of being judged as a winner. Judging is based solely on merit.
The only way you can run a free poetry contest is to pay for it somewhere else, and the vanity press aspect is what allows Cader to offer the free contest.
5. What are the circulation figures for Verses magazine (newstand, subscription, and complimentary copies)? What does a subscription cost?
No clue, you would have to ask Cader. Like I said, I will have to ask Cader myself, I don't know if they still do verses. The main thing published is the Anthologies.
I'll email cader today and ask if they still do Verses, and if not, I will update my page.
Can we take this to email? It's not that I mind discussing this in public, but I think the longer this thread gets, the more likely an editor bitchslap, we are pretty far offtopic.
Calling a vanity press operation a "poetry contest" is a scam. Telling people that their poetry qualifies them as a finalist in a contest when no judgement of the work has taken place is a scam.
It is a real contest, with no purchase necessary. If you want to know how I got involved, I entered the contest myself. Back then Cader was offering an affiliate program (back in 1995 before they were popular), and over the next year I developed the web page. They had suggested using print ads to get entries for their program, that's how far back we are talking about.
There is some judgement before people get "qualified for the final round". It may not be as stringent as some would like, but some entries are filtered out before that point.
I would welcome the opportunity to defend my characterization of the "poetry contest" in a court of law.
I'm a Libertarian, that's what started this whole thing. I wouldn't sue you unless it was a serious transgression, involving lies and malice on your part. I actually appreciate it when people like you question my poetry contest. I have nothing to fear from open debate.
The reason I threw that in there is because someone is threatning to sue me for talking about thier company, much the same way you are talking about mine. Just be careful out there.
If you want to take that route, just get your records in order. I'll subpeona your records relating to the number of "winners", the amount of prize money awarded, the judging process, the number of poems published for which no fee was paid, etc. This could be fun.
You would have to do that to Cader Publishing, as I don't touch the entries after they are forwarded to them, I just advertise for them. Most of that information is available on www.cader.com, and I'm sure with a little digging you could contact the previous winners.
Like I said, I have nothing to hide from open discussion.
Just how hard do you work, Jason? Running a scam "poetry contest" (see this link for more info) is not my definition of "hard work." Given the nature of the "poetry contest" you run, you have a lot of gall accusing the government of stealing because they tax your ill-gotten gains. In this case, perhaps they could be considered partners in crime.
The poetry contest is not my job, it is only a hobby. I work 40 hours a week at a real job. The poetry contest I take entries for is not a scam. It could be called a vanity press, but they do not defraud people. If people want to pay to see their poetry in a book, we give them that opportunity. If someone sends me a question about the contest, I answer honestly.
The accusations that windpub.org makes that this sort of contest cares little about literature is a weak argument. Is MTV a scam because it cares little about music? Is McDonalds a scam because it cares little about nutrition?
Just so you know, the front page contest is not something I plan to always be the central feature of my page. I plan to eventually expand into a writer's resource, to help writers get published.
I want you to know that calling the contest a scam is potentially libellous. Cader Publishing, and myself have had a business relationship since 1996, and I rarely hear from people who think they were scammed in any way. The people I get that sort of thing from are the people that sent their poetry in, and subsequently found the alarmist windpub.org.
At that point I tell them that nothing is final until they return a signed entry form (which we send them after we get their poetry) and I assure them that no purchase is required to enter the contest, and that is not a lie. I tell them to email me if they have any other questions or concerns.
So you tell me, where is the fraud? Where does Cader take people's money and not deliver a satisfactory product?
Note that I can't speak directly for Cader, as I am not their employee, nor does any of this apply to any other site, such as www.poetry.com, of which I have seen some horrible anecdotes from people that paid for their "conferences".
I don't think it has to be an issue of wrong and right. I mean it just depends on the target audience, and the differences are so trivial, that either side can figure out the other's spelling anyway.
so there has to be some reward other than simply keeping the job.
Power, kickbacks and bribes. That's also the motivating factor of the "last-term" legislator.
So people who can't afford home heating oil will pay the cost of a program to give them money to buy home heating oil?
No, they will get a job and contribute something useful to society like everyone else has to do.
If they can't, then it is up to their community and family to support them. It doesn't justify stealing my money, and leaving me no recourse.
I may well end up in such a situation at some point in my life. If that happens, I wouldn't expect big brother government to steal hard working people's money to support me. That's just irrational.
Yeah, and half the time you try to move an icon, you wind up launching it instead. No one seems to remember that Win95 originally shipped with active desktop on, and had the whole single click thing. Everyone hated it and turned it off, and MS stopped making it the default later on.
Slashdot Mirror
So if I write say, an FTP client with build in ads, and people use it to pirate music, then I am profiting from copyright violations?
.mp3.
We've gotten so caught up in this whole thing, that we have forgotten the original arguments. Napster is no different from FTP or HTTP or any other method of copying files. They just happened to provide a nice indexing and search service, and restrict the file extensions to
Oh, crap, I always get those two mixed up!
"God is my favorite fictional character!" --Homer Simpson
created?
Nothing is created or destroyed, at least I don't think we have found anything basic that is yet (matter, energy, etc). So far the universe has been pretty zero sum.
Of course, if I bake a cake, I created the cake. If simulate a natural environment, and a cake forms, I have a pretty good arugment that cakes can form spontaneously in nature.
In the thrift store, I found a book, it's about a 6th grade level science book. It's called science for christians, it's from the 70s or so I think.
I think it may be worth something some day, most of the arguments it gives have already been invalidated by modern science.
Of course, it's all relative, the legitimate science text books printed today contain tons of inaccuracies and gross misstatements. I should have never tried to learn science as a kid from those books, I've had to throw away most of the knowledge after I learned the way things REALLY are.
Do we really need to waste time "competing" with religion to "prove" evolution?
Why can't we concentrate on science that matters. If they want to believe some fairy tale about a magical man with a long white beard that had a busy week, let them!
a) It was supposed to be a stupid analogy.
b) You can send them RTFs and they can send you RTFs and everything works fine. Did you really need that little animated GIF embedded in your document?
d will even bounce e-mail sent with an Office format.
Dirty GNU hippie! Just kidding, I do the same thing sometimes.
Anyway, at work we have to deal with an EBCDIC system. ASCII may seem standard now, but who knows in 10 or 20 years. HTML is even more risky, but at least easily stripped back to ASCII.
It's incredibly hard to look forward more than 5 years in anything computer related.
I'm not sure what "6'2 m" is.... If you mean 6 feet or two meters...
The ones we use are about that big. They go onto a big sheeter that cuts them into sheets that the press uses. You move them around with a forklift with a special attachment that looks like huge calipers.
Diction Nazi speaking:
Indefinitely means for an undetermined amount of time, not forever. That's "infinitely".
Right now that is good, but you are locking yourself into years of migration. You can't just box up those burned CDs and pull them out in 50 years.
If the documents are really important, you will have to constantly migrate them to the format du jour, and also fight media age as long as we use media with fairly short lives. (CDR maybe 10 years if stored well)
There are some advantages to paper, space isn't one of them, but longevity sure is.
You're probably one of those assholes that make people feel stupid abut their taste in movies, operating systems, and religion.
Hey shutup! You are describing me too well! At least one side of me.
I think in general, there are two types of geeks.
The first type is the generalist. The true elite.
They generally can learn anything we need to, they do their own taxes, they know all the relevant tax laws, and while they aren't an expert in anything but computers or electronics, I'd say they rarely on average pay people to do something they can learn themselves in a reasonable amount of time.
They are the people that resent it when they have to pay for "professional installation" of a satellite or cable modem. They are generally do-it-yourselfers in nearly every possible area.
They learn quickly, they adapt, and they don't generally depend on others when it isn't necessary.
There are a lot of us that aren't like that, but would pretend to be. This is the type II geek, the specialist. They have the depth, but not the width. They may know how to program like crazy in their selected language, but they couldn't explain an IRQ or quickly figure out what the bandwidth of a 33Mhz/32bit bus is.
These are the people that often comment that fiber optics are faster because light travels so much faster than electricity, or who worry about using magnetic screwdrivers on their motherboard. They may know a certain level or aspect of computers, but are not the generalist type.
I think the latter type is more likely to take the elitist tack, but it can come out in the truely elite generalist too. It comes out in me sometimes too, but I try to fight it.
Anyway, the point is, the attitude in the former is at least slightly justified, since that type, put in the position of the user, would learn the necessary things to use a computer effectively, even if it wasn't their job. The latter has no justification for the attitude.
If everyone was a Type I, then we could realize the dream of a paperless office. I think that most people are specialists though, and don't have the skill or ability to be a generalist,. and still excel in their field. A lot of the resentment you see I think is generalists who aren't being very understanding of the limited abilities of specialists.
I hope you don't get modded flamebait, your post was very insightful, and I think the insightful aspect far outweighs any possible flames.
As someone who works for a large consumer of roll paper, a label printing company, I'd say there are some other reasons.
A major consumption of paper is labelling, like food cans and the like. There is a move toward different kinds of labelling, labelling printed directly on shrink plastic, or directly on the bottle.
Pressure sensitive labelling seems more popular than ever, I don't know if these are in your roll paper stats or not, as they come in rolls, but it's not just rolls of paper, they come rolled already on their backing with adhesive and all.
So, as long as your stats were office use only, then they are probably relevant, if they include industrial consumers of roll paper, then maybe not.
Disclaimer: I don't speak for my employer, and all of the above is publicly available facts or opinions of my own.
1) compatible r/w file formats with what everyone else is using
If everyone else was jumping off a bridge and putting their eye out with rubber bands and paper clips while doing drugs, listening to loud music and getting strange hair cuts, would you do it too?
Wait, something it messed up there.
Anyway, my point is. Just because everyone else is using a non-standard proprietary format doesn't make it right.
defecato
Is that like singing in "shit tone"?
There should be some kind of regulation. I'm not sure that the regulation of e-mail should be, or needs to be, different than the regulation of any other form of communication.
This is a pro-spam argument.
What you say is correct, someone else would have done it if he had not.
That doesn't change the fact that the guy is still a sleezy spammer that is just "waiting for the right chance" to spam again.
So, you're not sending unsolicited e-mail anymore?
I haven't been, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't at some time.
Do you think spam plays a useful role in today's Internet?
To some extent, we probably welcome advertising.
What a fucking dick.
They use false positives to check for this. They send the client a deliberate false positive, that way since a cheater is going to be sending back all negatives, they can find the cheaters.
You know, it's funny. I ran RC5-64 in 1997 on my pentium 200 for over a year. I recently, about 40 days ago started doing RC5-64 again, but this time with my cluster of seven Duron 900s. I surpassed my old account in about 15 days. Amazing how much faster the computers are now.
What you need is people to pay you for vanity press services. Your web page makes it sound like you are publishing a for-profit periodical that is seeking material for which there is a market demand.
I'll try to change it to reflect more closely it is what we do. Really. I hate scam artists, and I really take it personally if someone thinks I am one.
1. What percentage of submitted poems make it to the "finals"? Feel free to estimate if you don't have an exact number.
I have absolutely no clue. My job boils down to opening the entries, filtering out non-conforming entries that did not follow the contest rules, or entries that are obviously pranks, and forwarding the rest to Cader. They make all the content decisions.
2. What percentage of the poems are published at the author's expense?
I don't know that exactly, but I can estimate. The anthology has a Part I which contains the contest winners, and a Part 2, containing people who did not win, but who were published because the decided to purchase a copy of the anthology.
I'd say theres about twice as many pages in Part 2 as there is in Part 1. It varies.
3. By whom is your Verses magazine "highly aclaimed"?
Ugh, I think that part is out of date. I will have to update the page accordingly. I'm not sure if Cader still published Verses, I will have to check with them.
4. Was your web page designed with the intent of making people believe that your business was something other than a vanity press?
It is something other than a vanity press. It is a real free poetry contest that people can enter without any obligation to buy anything. When I entered the contest myself, I never felt misled into thinking I had to buy anything to enter the contest, I just returned the entry form, and indicated that I didn't want to buy anything, just like the form said.
It's very much like publisher's clearinghouse sweepsstakes in that regard. As far as I know, the decision to buy something or not has no effect on your chance of being judged as a winner. Judging is based solely on merit.
The only way you can run a free poetry contest is to pay for it somewhere else, and the vanity press aspect is what allows Cader to offer the free contest.
5. What are the circulation figures for Verses magazine (newstand, subscription, and complimentary copies)? What does a subscription cost?
No clue, you would have to ask Cader. Like I said, I will have to ask Cader myself, I don't know if they still do verses. The main thing published is the Anthologies.
I'll email cader today and ask if they still do Verses, and if not, I will update my page.
Can we take this to email? It's not that I mind discussing this in public, but I think the longer this thread gets, the more likely an editor bitchslap, we are pretty far offtopic.
info@poetrycontestonline.com to email me.
I'm glad you responded!
Calling a vanity press operation a "poetry contest" is a scam. Telling people that their poetry qualifies them as a finalist in a contest when no judgement of the work has taken place is a scam.
It is a real contest, with no purchase necessary. If you want to know how I got involved, I entered the contest myself. Back then Cader was offering an affiliate program (back in 1995 before they were popular), and over the next year I developed the web page. They had suggested using print ads to get entries for their program, that's how far back we are talking about.
There is some judgement before people get "qualified for the final round". It may not be as stringent as some would like, but some entries are filtered out before that point.
I would welcome the opportunity to defend my characterization of the "poetry contest" in a court of law.
I'm a Libertarian, that's what started this whole thing. I wouldn't sue you unless it was a serious transgression, involving lies and malice on your part. I actually appreciate it when people like you question my poetry contest. I have nothing to fear from open debate.
The reason I threw that in there is because someone is threatning to sue me for talking about thier company, much the same way you are talking about mine. Just be careful out there.
If you want to take that route, just get your records in order. I'll subpeona your records relating to the number of "winners", the amount of prize money awarded, the judging process, the number of poems published for which no fee was paid, etc. This could be fun.
You would have to do that to Cader Publishing, as I don't touch the entries after they are forwarded to them, I just advertise for them. Most of that information is available on www.cader.com, and I'm sure with a little digging you could contact the previous winners.
Like I said, I have nothing to hide from open discussion.
Just how hard do you work, Jason? Running a scam "poetry contest" (see this link for more info) is not my definition of "hard work." Given the nature of the "poetry contest" you run, you have a lot of gall accusing the government of stealing because they tax your ill-gotten gains. In this case, perhaps they could be considered partners in crime.
The poetry contest is not my job, it is only a hobby. I work 40 hours a week at a real job. The poetry contest I take entries for is not a scam. It could be called a vanity press, but they do not defraud people. If people want to pay to see their poetry in a book, we give them that opportunity. If someone sends me a question about the contest, I answer honestly.
The accusations that windpub.org makes that this sort of contest cares little about literature is a weak argument. Is MTV a scam because it cares little about music? Is McDonalds a scam because it cares little about nutrition?
Just so you know, the front page contest is not something I plan to always be the central feature of my page. I plan to eventually expand into a writer's resource, to help writers get published.
I want you to know that calling the contest a scam is potentially libellous. Cader Publishing, and myself have had a business relationship since 1996, and I rarely hear from people who think they were scammed in any way. The people I get that sort of thing from are the people that sent their poetry in, and subsequently found the alarmist windpub.org.
At that point I tell them that nothing is final until they return a signed entry form (which we send them after we get their poetry) and I assure them that no purchase is required to enter the contest, and that is not a lie. I tell them to email me if they have any other questions or concerns.
So you tell me, where is the fraud? Where does Cader take people's money and not deliver a satisfactory product?
Note that I can't speak directly for Cader, as I am not their employee, nor does any of this apply to any other site, such as www.poetry.com, of which I have seen some horrible anecdotes from people that paid for their "conferences".
I don't think it has to be an issue of wrong and right. I mean it just depends on the target audience, and the differences are so trivial, that either side can figure out the other's spelling anyway.
Maybe it was only enabled by default in the betas. I know that I have installed it, and had active desktop as the default before.
so there has to be some reward other than simply keeping the job.
Power, kickbacks and bribes.
That's also the motivating factor of the "last-term" legislator.
So people who can't afford home heating oil will pay the cost of a program to give them money to buy home heating oil?
No, they will get a job and contribute something useful to society like everyone else has to do.
If they can't, then it is up to their community and family to support them. It doesn't justify stealing my money, and leaving me no recourse.
I may well end up in such a situation at some point in my life. If that happens, I wouldn't expect big brother government to steal hard working people's money to support me. That's just irrational.
Yeah, and half the time you try to move an icon, you wind up launching it instead. No one seems to remember that Win95 originally shipped with active desktop on, and had the whole single click thing. Everyone hated it and turned it off, and MS stopped making it the default later on.