First question... are there only cyber-cafes there?
I have relatives in Mumbai. Though it's been a while since I visited, the first thing to note is that most (or at least many) people don't have telephones in their home. It's much more common for 1 person in a building to have a phone, and for everyone else to borrow it. Thus, for people who have computers, dial-up isn't common, and broadband quite rare.
This is particularly true in College Hostels. Unlike dorms here (or at least where I went to school) there aren't phones in every room. Plus, if your family has a computer, it's probably for the entire family -- not just you. Cybercafes are a much more major source of internet access.
An illustrative example. I have about 7-8 email addresses that I use, plus another 5-6 that simply forward, plus two domains in which I can create an infinite number of addresses. This is just me. My mom (who lives here) has 4 email addresses, my brother has several and even my technophobe father have his own. My grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins in India all share 1 hotmail account. (And they actually have "home" access through my uncle's office.)
Summary: There aren't only cybercafe's in Mumbai, but there are a lot more people who have no other alternative.
you have up to 12 months after the ceremony to send thank you cards.
WRONG! You have two weeks to send thank yous for all the items you received. The only exception is you get the two weeks from when
the item arrives.
I've heard the 12-month rule myself (from sources such as Ann Landers and Miss Manners) but according to The Knot's complete guide to Thank You notes, you have up to 2 weeks after the gift arrives for gift sent BEFORE the wedding, and 1 month after you come back from your honeymoon (assuming you go on one right away) for gifts sent on or before your wedding day.
Either way, thanking your friends and family as soon as possible, and getting notes written beforehand is a really, really good idea.
Also getting married (though not quite so soon!) In anticipation of ensuing planning nightmare (mixing two cultures -- and learning lots about the art of negotiation and bargaining) I've been checking out wedding websites for 8 months.
I've found that theknot.com has the most complete information and advice, as well as the most online tools -- including an online gift registry.
Not many geek toys on the registry (though they have a "high-tech" section) but they have sections to cover all you non-geek needs -- china, flatware, furniture, linens, kitchen goods, small appliances, decorative items, etc. You have to sign up, but if you specify no spam, they send you no spam.
Your guests wanting a more brick-and-mortar approach can get all the brand names and model numbers from the registry, and work with that. They simply need to go to the knot, and search for your registry by your name. You can than pass the word around that you're registered on theknot.com without having to send everyone the exact URL -- slightly more tactful.
Other people on here recommend weddingchannel.com. I've explored there, and it's pretty good, but I find the knot has a lot more information.
Bruce Eckel, author of both Thinking in C++ and Thinking in Java (and probably a few more) has done something vaguely like this.
While writing them, he periodically posts his work-in-progress online. Anyone may download them for free. He originally posted in html and PDF, but now he posts in Word and html -- some volunteers create PDFs for him. The work is copyrighted.
However, users are encouraged to test his source code, or submit comments, corrections, ideas, etc. He incorporates these into his book. As the author, he maintains overall control of the book.
After publication, the book are available for free download (Word, html and PDF), and dead-tree versions are available for sale. You may freely distribute unmodified downloaded versions.
IMO, the books are pretty good, which makes me believe that this may be a workable model for textbook publishing. I don't know how well it will work for non-tech books, though.
On a cynical note, Bruce Eckel probably (disclaimer: this is totally unsubstantiated) makes his money from his seminars, and if more people have his book, more people will take his seminar, so distributing it for free makes for a good business move.
The last one is a new law, and a very good law.
I strongly advise all Canadians, plus those interested in privacy to read it. Essentially, it now means that the individual legally has complete control over his or her own personal information and over what organizations may do with that information.
I've tried to get a story posted about this, but to no avail. There are so many good things about this law that I haven't been able to shut up about it for weeks.
And having public/universal healthcare doesn't address the privacy issues. Seems like governmental medicine would fall under freedom of information acts. That would suck.
Actually no.
Medical information in Canada is protected under doctor-patient privledge. I don't know what our equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act is, but under the Privacy Act (which controls government use of personal information) no information about an individual can be disclosed to others without the consent of that individual. (There are some exceptions for medical emergencies, law enforcement, etc.)
Moreover, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA -- controls the private use of personal information) explicitly states that medical practitioners must protect personal information. This is a new act, and it will be phased starting Jan 01, 2001.
Under PIPEDA, the information about this woman's genetic disease could not be released to her employer without her explicit consent. Although she went to HR to have them contact the drug company, that information would be considered private and could not be released to her boss.
Hmmm.... Privacy and health care. Not bad.
If I recall the ICANN domain dispute policy...
on
Fandom vs. Fandom.com
·
· Score: 3
The complainant (fandom.com) must demonstrate that 1) the alleged infringer has a name that is confusingly similar, 2) the alleged infringer has no rights to the name, and 3) the alleged infringer registered in "Bad Faith"
Fandom.tv is confusingly similar, but seems to arguably have rights to the name -- Fandom may be considered too generic a name to be a trademark. (Of course, this all depends on how well the lawyers argue it.)
As for Bad Faith, Fandom.com probably will (in this case) try to prove that Fandom.tv registered the name in order to benefit from the people confusing the too -- that is, their nabbing fandom.com's readers. But that seems a little silly, since who would automatically the.tv instead of the.com?
From the article, there doesn't seem to be a bad faith intent here. So while this does not appear to be cybersquatting, its fuzzy as to what can be proved.
I'm a geek who went marketing. I started off in QA, went into development and program design, and then jumped ship to product management.
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take a course from Pragmatic Marketing, who are a group of consultants who teach product management in the high-tech field. I'll very quickly summarize some of their concepts, but I'd advise anyone in tech marketing and senior developers who work with marketing to take this course.
The primary thing to understand is that there is no magic equation that will accurately predict time. Steve Johnson, one of the consultants at Pragmatic, said that in his experience, it's best to let development control the schedule. In return, marketing controls the features.
See, generally speaking, most marketing people pick development schedules out of the air. All the marketing folk want to put new products out for a major industry tradeshow, regardless of when they start. This doesn't work, since when you start has a major impact on when development will finish.
In the Pragmatic scheme of things, the marketing person comes in as the expert on the market. (Note: Pragmatic has a bunch of tactics to teach marketing people how to do this.) The development person comes in as the expert on technology.
The marketing person then brings up a set of prospect problems. That is, they the talk to people they want to sell to, and find out what their problems are. The development person takes these problems and works out some ideas for technical solutions, and then comes back and says that if I have X developers and Y months, I could build something that solves all these problems.
Then they bargain over what problems they could solve in how much time. As the expert on the market, marketing should know which problems are the most important. As the technology expert, development should know which solutions are easy to build. Between the two, they work something out, write it up on paper, and stick with that. Should something come up which changes the schedule, they renegotiate.
Marketing, therefore, should not pretend to know anything about the technology or the time to implement it -- they aren't the experts. Development should not make assumptions on what the market wants or what the product needs -- they aren't the experts either.
It's hard to work things out based on a spec, since specs often gets so voluminious and complicated that you lose sight of what you're actually trying to do. It's easier to work things out based on problems, since they are concise and easy for both sides to understand.
There is a LOT more to it than this. Pragmatic actually has an entire course called Working with Development -- it's worth every penny.
You forgot about: Women who get turned on by sexist jokes.
Although they are a minority, I'd like to remind you that there are women who read this site, and as of now, none of them will sleep with you. Neither will their friends.
Many of these women are very sexy. Some of these women are into crazy wild monkey-love that you only see in p0rn. Most of these women are intelligent. Most understand what you mean when you geek out in conversation, and could geek out with you.
None of them will sleep with you.
And you will never know who these women are, because when you post sexist crap like that, many female./'ers decide that they don't want to reveal their gender because they know it could mean that they next time they post a strong opinion that you disagree with, you're going to argue intelligently about their post, but will instead dismiss them as being dumb girls with PMS who should get back in the kitchen after they get some much-needed lovin' from you to be all right again.
But that will never happen, because none of them will want to sleep with you.
You can usually find fairly good used computers if you look in the classifieds or on the *.forsale newsgroups. If you format and re-install the software you want, you're usually okay.
For example, I bought my P90 ThinkPad last year from a PennySaver ad. $600 CDN, runs fine and in a year or so I'll probably sell it.
Also, if you're near a University or College, check the for sale bulletin boards. Students are often selling off systems in order to buy cooler ones. (Or in order to pay tuition.)
As a Canadian user who has to actually use these sites, I find them inaccessable. Almost invariable, I can't find what I'm looking for.
Granted, this has improved somewhat over the last few years, but it still needs work. Take a look at the American Government sites -- to me, they seem remarkably complete. It's easy to find the info I need, and then I can print off all the appropriate forms from there.
I recall once I went to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation site with some questions. I couldn't find the answer on the site. There was a submit question form, so I submitted. Several days later they CALLED me with the answer -- as opposed to emailing me.
I could not care less if a government site looked nice. I go to the government site to find information about rules, regulations, procedures, etc. I go to the site because I don't want to waste my time calling, getting put on hold, and then finding out that I called the wrong department. But it seems that I end up wasting my time anyway.
I just want the info. Get all that up there, organized, indexed, cross-referenced and searchable and I'll be happy with almost any look and feel.
Here in Houston many of the Black ghettos
are next to barrios, and many of the young Latinos speak English with a Black English Vernacular (aka Ebonics) accent.
Just to clarify, Black English Vernacular is not an accent; it is a complete and separate *dialect* of English. Most Linguistic associations have classified it as sucg, just like Parisian French, Quebec-French, American-English, Cockney-English, Standard-English (aka King's English) etc.
Black English has a similar but different phonology (acceptable sounds), morphology (acceptable word-formations) and syntax (acceptable sentence structure) than Standard English. It has some grammatical cases (such as the habitual case) which do not exist in other English dialects, but do exist in West African languages.
I do not recall what (if anything) the official linguistic stance is on Spanglish, but I do know that it has been investigated, and that some linguists consider it a dialect.
As both Spanglish and Black English evolve, they may both acquire enough independance from Standard English to be considered separate languages.
For you Francophones out there, if I seem misinformed, please excuse the ignorance of an Anglo from Ontario.
And don't get me wrong, if I was going to move to Canada, I'd probably brush up on my french to the point of some fluency in it.
Considering that most Canadians don't have much fluency in it, I wouldn't worry too much about it unless you intended to settle in Quebec.
This seems particularly true as you go west. My friend from Alberta only had to do 1 year of French (only in grade 9), whereas in Ontario it seems to vary from 6 - 7 years (grade 3 or 4 to grade 9).
In Quebec however, you can only go to an English primary school if 1 of your parents went to an English school. Otherwise, you must go to a French school. This, plus legal protections, is among the reasons why French remains so strong in Quebec. Yet many francophones come into Ontario to learn English -- there of a lot of French girls who take on nanny jobs.
On the other hand, if you go East, the language devolves into some incomprehensible Martime dialect. Noo doot aboot it.;)
A funny article, as usual. Berry writes well but this article doesn't have much content.
You see, Dave Barry is what they call in the publishing world a "humourist." (Or what's known as a humorist in the States.) A humourist's job is to write articles that are funny. Being funny does not necessarily require any actual content -- in fact, many humourists find that things like content and truth get in the way. (Though, given the US election situation, that's not always true.)
If you want quotes, statistics, news stories, etc., you'll have to find what's called a "journalist".
Banner Ads don't make you profitable. I moved on to the marketing side of the IT world a little while back, and it's clearly known that funding a company through banner ads doesn't work. In your case, you may recoup some of your costs, but probably not enough to cover the site.
Your best option, in my opinion, is strategic partnerships. Now this doesn't mean that your auction site has to be owned by some big evil empire; it simply means that you offer to promote/link to companies who target the same market as you, but offer different services.
An example of this is the escrow and appraisal services associated with eBay. These services represent particular companies, who make money off these services.
It may take some research to figure out what your target user is like, what companies offer services that target this user, and (biggest problem) how to attract these companies. But ultimately it may prove more valuable -- find a company that offers your users a related service, and exchange promotion for money, resources, etc.
A gothic horror novel is probably not the fairest analogy to use when examining the evils and ethics of technology. This is a novel designed to horrify and play with emotions -- and Shelley did not necessarily intend to make social commentary on technology.
That said, if someone is going to speculate what Dr. Frankenstein would do now, one has to wonder what would happen to Dr. Frankenstein after the novel completes. (Disclaimer: it's been 10 years since I last read Frankenstein.)
Would Dr. Frankenstein swear off science for life? Would he take his knowledge about infusing dead flesh with life and use it to cure gangrene? Would he continue his research, and if so, would the neighbouring families leave him alone or stone him to death?
See, the tricky part about science is that it's difficult to throw ethics onto something when you don't know what you can do. Once you know it can be done, then it's easier to see applications of this, which helps to determine the ethics of the situation.
Is this ideal? No, probably not. But is it any more ideal to stop all scientific investigation until we can guess all the possible moral ramifications, and then determine if we should proceed with research, only to determine that we can't do it at all, or that we can only do the things we don't want to do, or that we have to do the things we don't want to do for years before we can research the thing we DO want to do? (Excuse my run-on sentence.)
I put forth the classic example of splitting the atom, which has many possible applications, some of which help people, and some of which kill people.
Incidentally, if JonKatz postulates the theory that a modern Dr. Frankenstein would hook up with a VC and create any harmful thing he wanted to, then I'd like to mention that a modern VC would also cut funding and support when the neighbours family sued Dr. Frankenstein for 1.2 billion in punitive damages.
My fiance and I are both slashdotters. I see him frequently. I keep telling him that we should start a lovers quarrel on/., but he claims he doesn't have the karma to spare.
I suppose this presents a major flaw in the moderation system -- how do you mod people you know? It's the slight danger in getting to know readers in your area; you can potentially push forth a petty vendetta.
Speaking as a Canadian who was born after we went metric, my experience with metric is similar but evolving.
I have rotten depth and spatial perception, so I can't judge distance at all. But when I see highway signs for 500 meters, I know I don't have any time to get over (unless I pull out the crazy driving skills). I judge distance by time; since I think speed in km/h, I can convert to kms fairly easily.
I know my height in feet and inches. I used to only know my weight in pounds, but then I took up martial arts. Since all the tournement weight classes are in kgs, I can now convert between the two easily. Friends of mine from Eastern Europe know their height in both inches and meters.
The thing that messes me up is cooking. I know what a cup and and tablespoon are, but mLs don't do much for me -- I have to pull out the calculator and convert. (Fortunately, it's an easy conversion -- 1 cup = 250 mLs, 1 teaspoon = 5 mLs, and 1 tablespoon = 15 mLs) Weirdly, I think of milk and water by the litre, and it drives me nuts when recipes ask for butter in lbs. It also bugs me when they ask for flour in grams.
If you're wondering what kind of bizarre recipes I have that use cups, mLs, lbs and/or grams, this is what happens when you ask people of different ages for different recipes from different countries.
First of all, considering that you are 2 people, you don't need very much by way of business structure. You shouldn't need a boss between 2 of you. (If you do, you guys have some serious relationship issues.) If you grow, you may need some kind of a structure, but I would not bother until you need to set up specific roles and accountabilities for people.
If you must have something formal, you can split it so that one of you gets all the deals and the other codes, or split it that you're both responsible for both things. You two may be great coders, but to get things off the ground 1 or both of you needs to be really good at marketing and selling. If neither of you have this, join with someone who does.
Getting some legal and financial advice is a good idea, and if neither of you are good with books, you probably want a payroll/admin person. You can hire a general purpose accountant to manage your invoices, taxes, etc., on a contract basis -- i.e., have someone in once a week. If you feel you can't afford that but want someone anyway, hire an accounting student from your local reputatable university.
On a anecdotal note, the company I work at was started by 2 guys (both coders) 10 years ago. For the first year, 1 of them wrote all the code (at the time, GUI widgets), and the other handled sales, marketing, finance, legal, payroll, admin, office management, etc.
I used to work for a company that had free beer on site. They (correctly) assumed that all 150 of us were adults and that we'd be responsible about it.
So what happens when your team puts in a really rough day of coding? The whole team can sit around and enjoy a mug of beer together. Gives everyone some time to relax and chat. And it's easier to get people together for this at work then to get people to go out to do this.
And when something good happens to the team? Same thing -- have a beer. Need to have a hard talk with someone? Do it over a brew. Seldom did anyone get stupid about it; it was usually just one shared mug before going home.
Heck, half the company would gather together Wednesday nights when they refilled the beer fridge to hang out. Camraderie? Heck yes. And brainstorming when you're relaxed and happy is WAY easier.
We need a leader who will personally beat the crap out of anyone he doesn't like. Not like the US with their sex-crazed leaders, we have a leader who isn't afraid to throw the punches when they are necessary;).
I'm voting Chretien too, but you know, the ultimate PM ever was Canada's very own sex-crazed leader, Trudeau.
Compare, if you will, Trudeau and Clinton. (Most of my Trudeau info paraphrased from the documentaries on TV after he died.)
Sex Clinton: Married, cheats on his wife with interns, and then denies it by claiming it wasn't really cheating. Trudeau: Goes into office as a bachlor -- smart move, considering all the tail that's available to him as a PM. When asked before elected who will be the hostess at Sussex Drive, he asks if he can have multiple hostesses. Gets married, has 3 kids, gets divorced, then has a child out of wedlock with a different women. Reputed to have quite the libido.
Drugs: Clinton:I didn't inhale. Trudeau:When I was in Turkey, I smoked a hookah -- I don't know what was in it, but it was probably hash. In India I smoked ganja with the workers. In China, opium. Heck, everywhere I went I smoked whatever they had.
It's already been stated several times that the gag law is important for a country who passes through 5 timezones, and has major logistical problems for getting results up in the sparsely populated North.
Someone has repeatedly suggested closing the polls at the same, arbitrary time after a 24 hour interval, but I don't think that's financially feasible for a country who requires some huge number of polling stations to cover the geographic area, but less than 30 million people. I don't have the stats, but I have a hunch that the per-capita numbers of doing this works out to be more money than enforcing the 3.5 hour gag order.
The federal election is complicated in Canada due to the current 5 party system. Compare to the US: Let's say I lived in California and was for Nader. The East Coast results come before I vote, and I discover that Nader has no hope in hell, and so I change my vote to the lesser of the two evils. But frankly, in the US, it'll be one of the two evils anyway -- 3rd party candidates seldom have a chance.
But in Canada we have 5 federal parties. So vote changing can have a dramatic effect on the election results -- like going Canadian Alliance because the Tories aren't getting seats. <shiver of revulsion>
So why doesn't the Elections Canada defer releasing all the results? My guess is this: up here, we don't vote for the Prime Minister directly: we vote for our local federal representative, and the leader whichever party gets the most seats becomes the PM. It's not the same as the States, where (to my knowledge) you're locally represented in the Federal Government by 2 elected officials (Senator and Rep), and you chose your president separately. Here you vote federally once, and your local rep affects who your PM will be.
So while most of us here seem to agree that it's unfair to let the East Coast results affect the West Coast votes, I also think it's unfair to force the East Coast to wait for the West Coast to finish voting before they can find out who their local federal representative is.
The gag order is a compromise between the local need to know as sooner, and the federal need to know as later.
I work in the Marketing Department. Most used MS-Office App around here is PowerPoint. Between internal presentations, partner/big sales demos, and trade-show talks PowerPoint is *heavily* used.
The other one is Outlook. We recently switched over because 1) the task and meeting scheduling features make everyone's life easier (Marketing folk are always in meetings) and 2) any new hires are used to using Outlook.
Excel and Word are used pretty heavily, but the PowerPoint presentations are generally more important.
I'm currently taking an undergrad course entitled Computers and The Law of Information Technology. It's a CS course, taught by 2 lawyers, and it's VERY interesting.
According to the lawyers, several students of this class have gone on to become lawyers. There is a huge demand for lawyers who understand IT in both public and private law.
The only caveat is that most of the stuff that's relevant to IT (the stuff we're being introduced to right now) doesn't really surface until your last year of law school.
But if Law interests you, I would persue it. At worst, you decide not to be a coder or a lawyer and get a fantastic job elsewhere because you've specialized in two fields that most people know very little about, even though it affects them all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
First question... are there only cyber-cafes there?
I have relatives in Mumbai. Though it's been a while since I visited, the first thing to note is that most (or at least many) people don't have telephones in their home. It's much more common for 1 person in a building to have a phone, and for everyone else to borrow it. Thus, for people who have computers, dial-up isn't common, and broadband quite rare.
This is particularly true in College Hostels. Unlike dorms here (or at least where I went to school) there aren't phones in every room. Plus, if your family has a computer, it's probably for the entire family -- not just you. Cybercafes are a much more major source of internet access.
An illustrative example. I have about 7-8 email addresses that I use, plus another 5-6 that simply forward, plus two domains in which I can create an infinite number of addresses. This is just me. My mom (who lives here) has 4 email addresses, my brother has several and even my technophobe father have his own. My grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins in India all share 1 hotmail account. (And they actually have "home" access through my uncle's office.)
Summary: There aren't only cybercafe's in Mumbai, but there are a lot more people who have no other alternative.
you have up to 12 months after the ceremony to send thank you cards.
WRONG! You have two weeks to send thank yous for all the items you received. The only exception is you get the two weeks from when the item arrives.
I've heard the 12-month rule myself (from sources such as Ann Landers and Miss Manners) but according to The Knot's complete guide to Thank You notes, you have up to 2 weeks after the gift arrives for gift sent BEFORE the wedding, and 1 month after you come back from your honeymoon (assuming you go on one right away) for gifts sent on or before your wedding day.
Either way, thanking your friends and family as soon as possible, and getting notes written beforehand is a really, really good idea.
Also getting married (though not quite so soon!) In anticipation of ensuing planning nightmare (mixing two cultures -- and learning lots about the art of negotiation and bargaining) I've been checking out wedding websites for 8 months.
I've found that theknot.com has the most complete information and advice, as well as the most online tools -- including an online gift registry.
Not many geek toys on the registry (though they have a "high-tech" section) but they have sections to cover all you non-geek needs -- china, flatware, furniture, linens, kitchen goods, small appliances, decorative items, etc. You have to sign up, but if you specify no spam, they send you no spam.
Your guests wanting a more brick-and-mortar approach can get all the brand names and model numbers from the registry, and work with that. They simply need to go to the knot, and search for your registry by your name. You can than pass the word around that you're registered on theknot.com without having to send everyone the exact URL -- slightly more tactful.
Other people on here recommend weddingchannel.com. I've explored there, and it's pretty good, but I find the knot has a lot more information.
Bruce Eckel, author of both Thinking in C++ and Thinking in Java (and probably a few more) has done something vaguely like this.
While writing them, he periodically posts his work-in-progress online. Anyone may download them for free. He originally posted in html and PDF, but now he posts in Word and html -- some volunteers create PDFs for him. The work is copyrighted.
However, users are encouraged to test his source code, or submit comments, corrections, ideas, etc. He incorporates these into his book. As the author, he maintains overall control of the book.
After publication, the book are available for free download (Word, html and PDF), and dead-tree versions are available for sale. You may freely distribute unmodified downloaded versions.
IMO, the books are pretty good, which makes me believe that this may be a workable model for textbook publishing. I don't know how well it will work for non-tech books, though.
On a cynical note, Bruce Eckel probably (disclaimer: this is totally unsubstantiated) makes his money from his seminars, and if more people have his book, more people will take his seminar, so distributing it for free makes for a good business move.
A full explanation of Canadian Copyright law can be found here (PDF).
Other interesting Canadian laws relating to intellectual property and online privacy are:
The last one is a new law, and a very good law. I strongly advise all Canadians, plus those interested in privacy to read it. Essentially, it now means that the individual legally has complete control over his or her own personal information and over what organizations may do with that information.
I've tried to get a story posted about this, but to no avail. There are so many good things about this law that I haven't been able to shut up about it for weeks.
I'll hop off my soapbox now.
And having public/universal healthcare doesn't address the privacy issues. Seems like governmental medicine would fall under freedom of information acts. That would suck.
Actually no.
Medical information in Canada is protected under doctor-patient privledge. I don't know what our equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act is, but under the Privacy Act (which controls government use of personal information) no information about an individual can be disclosed to others without the consent of that individual. (There are some exceptions for medical emergencies, law enforcement, etc.)
Moreover, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA -- controls the private use of personal information) explicitly states that medical practitioners must protect personal information. This is a new act, and it will be phased starting Jan 01, 2001.
Under PIPEDA, the information about this woman's genetic disease could not be released to her employer without her explicit consent. Although she went to HR to have them contact the drug company, that information would be considered private and could not be released to her boss.
Hmmm.... Privacy and health care. Not bad.
The complainant (fandom.com) must demonstrate that 1) the alleged infringer has a name that is confusingly similar, 2) the alleged infringer has no rights to the name, and 3) the alleged infringer registered in "Bad Faith"
Fandom.tv is confusingly similar, but seems to arguably have rights to the name -- Fandom may be considered too generic a name to be a trademark. (Of course, this all depends on how well the lawyers argue it.)
As for Bad Faith, Fandom.com probably will (in this case) try to prove that Fandom.tv registered the name in order to benefit from the people confusing the too -- that is, their nabbing fandom.com's readers. But that seems a little silly, since who would automatically the .tv instead of the .com?
From the article, there doesn't seem to be a bad faith intent here. So while this does not appear to be cybersquatting, its fuzzy as to what can be proved.
I'm a geek who went marketing. I started off in QA, went into development and program design, and then jumped ship to product management.
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take a course from Pragmatic Marketing, who are a group of consultants who teach product management in the high-tech field. I'll very quickly summarize some of their concepts, but I'd advise anyone in tech marketing and senior developers who work with marketing to take this course.
The primary thing to understand is that there is no magic equation that will accurately predict time. Steve Johnson, one of the consultants at Pragmatic, said that in his experience, it's best to let development control the schedule. In return, marketing controls the features.
See, generally speaking, most marketing people pick development schedules out of the air. All the marketing folk want to put new products out for a major industry tradeshow, regardless of when they start. This doesn't work, since when you start has a major impact on when development will finish.
In the Pragmatic scheme of things, the marketing person comes in as the expert on the market. (Note: Pragmatic has a bunch of tactics to teach marketing people how to do this.) The development person comes in as the expert on technology.
The marketing person then brings up a set of prospect problems. That is, they the talk to people they want to sell to, and find out what their problems are. The development person takes these problems and works out some ideas for technical solutions, and then comes back and says that if I have X developers and Y months, I could build something that solves all these problems.
Then they bargain over what problems they could solve in how much time. As the expert on the market, marketing should know which problems are the most important. As the technology expert, development should know which solutions are easy to build. Between the two, they work something out, write it up on paper, and stick with that. Should something come up which changes the schedule, they renegotiate.
Marketing, therefore, should not pretend to know anything about the technology or the time to implement it -- they aren't the experts. Development should not make assumptions on what the market wants or what the product needs -- they aren't the experts either.
It's hard to work things out based on a spec, since specs often gets so voluminious and complicated that you lose sight of what you're actually trying to do. It's easier to work things out based on problems, since they are concise and easy for both sides to understand.
There is a LOT more to it than this. Pragmatic actually has an entire course called Working with Development -- it's worth every penny.
You forgot about: Women who get turned on by sexist jokes.
Although they are a minority, I'd like to remind you that there are women who read this site, and as of now, none of them will sleep with you. Neither will their friends.
Many of these women are very sexy. Some of these women are into crazy wild monkey-love that you only see in p0rn. Most of these women are intelligent. Most understand what you mean when you geek out in conversation, and could geek out with you.
None of them will sleep with you.
And you will never know who these women are, because when you post sexist crap like that, many female ./'ers decide that they don't want to reveal their gender because they know it could mean that they next time they post a strong opinion that you disagree with, you're going to argue intelligently about their post, but will instead dismiss them as being dumb girls with PMS who should get back in the kitchen after they get some much-needed lovin' from you to be all right again.
But that will never happen, because none of them will want to sleep with you.
You can usually find fairly good used computers if you look in the classifieds or on the *.forsale newsgroups. If you format and re-install the software you want, you're usually okay.
For example, I bought my P90 ThinkPad last year from a PennySaver ad. $600 CDN, runs fine and in a year or so I'll probably sell it.
Also, if you're near a University or College, check the for sale bulletin boards. Students are often selling off systems in order to buy cooler ones. (Or in order to pay tuition.)
As a Canadian user who has to actually use these sites, I find them inaccessable. Almost invariable, I can't find what I'm looking for.
Granted, this has improved somewhat over the last few years, but it still needs work. Take a look at the American Government sites -- to me, they seem remarkably complete. It's easy to find the info I need, and then I can print off all the appropriate forms from there.
I recall once I went to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation site with some questions. I couldn't find the answer on the site. There was a submit question form, so I submitted. Several days later they CALLED me with the answer -- as opposed to emailing me.
I could not care less if a government site looked nice. I go to the government site to find information about rules, regulations, procedures, etc. I go to the site because I don't want to waste my time calling, getting put on hold, and then finding out that I called the wrong department. But it seems that I end up wasting my time anyway.
I just want the info. Get all that up there, organized, indexed, cross-referenced and searchable and I'll be happy with almost any look and feel.
Here in Houston many of the Black ghettos are next to barrios, and many of the young Latinos speak English with a Black English Vernacular (aka Ebonics) accent.
Just to clarify, Black English Vernacular is not an accent; it is a complete and separate *dialect* of English. Most Linguistic associations have classified it as sucg, just like Parisian French, Quebec-French, American-English, Cockney-English, Standard-English (aka King's English) etc.
Black English has a similar but different phonology (acceptable sounds), morphology (acceptable word-formations) and syntax (acceptable sentence structure) than Standard English. It has some grammatical cases (such as the habitual case) which do not exist in other English dialects, but do exist in West African languages.
I do not recall what (if anything) the official linguistic stance is on Spanglish, but I do know that it has been investigated, and that some linguists consider it a dialect.
As both Spanglish and Black English evolve, they may both acquire enough independance from Standard English to be considered separate languages.
For you Francophones out there, if I seem misinformed, please excuse the ignorance of an Anglo from Ontario.
And don't get me wrong, if I was going to move to Canada, I'd probably brush up on my french to the point of some fluency in it.
Considering that most Canadians don't have much fluency in it, I wouldn't worry too much about it unless you intended to settle in Quebec.
This seems particularly true as you go west. My friend from Alberta only had to do 1 year of French (only in grade 9), whereas in Ontario it seems to vary from 6 - 7 years (grade 3 or 4 to grade 9).
In Quebec however, you can only go to an English primary school if 1 of your parents went to an English school. Otherwise, you must go to a French school. This, plus legal protections, is among the reasons why French remains so strong in Quebec. Yet many francophones come into Ontario to learn English -- there of a lot of French girls who take on nanny jobs.
On the other hand, if you go East, the language devolves into some incomprehensible Martime dialect. Noo doot aboot it. ;)
IANAL: is this legal?
Given the anti-circumvention provisions in the DMCA, does that mean that Copy and Paste is illegal in the USA?
A funny article, as usual. Berry writes well but this article doesn't have much content.
You see, Dave Barry is what they call in the publishing world a "humourist." (Or what's known as a humorist in the States.) A humourist's job is to write articles that are funny. Being funny does not necessarily require any actual content -- in fact, many humourists find that things like content and truth get in the way. (Though, given the US election situation, that's not always true.)
If you want quotes, statistics, news stories, etc., you'll have to find what's called a "journalist".
Banner Ads don't make you profitable. I moved on to the marketing side of the IT world a little while back, and it's clearly known that funding a company through banner ads doesn't work. In your case, you may recoup some of your costs, but probably not enough to cover the site.
Your best option, in my opinion, is strategic partnerships. Now this doesn't mean that your auction site has to be owned by some big evil empire; it simply means that you offer to promote/link to companies who target the same market as you, but offer different services.
An example of this is the escrow and appraisal services associated with eBay. These services represent particular companies, who make money off these services.
It may take some research to figure out what your target user is like, what companies offer services that target this user, and (biggest problem) how to attract these companies. But ultimately it may prove more valuable -- find a company that offers your users a related service, and exchange promotion for money, resources, etc.
Good luck.
A gothic horror novel is probably not the fairest analogy to use when examining the evils and ethics of technology. This is a novel designed to horrify and play with emotions -- and Shelley did not necessarily intend to make social commentary on technology.
That said, if someone is going to speculate what Dr. Frankenstein would do now, one has to wonder what would happen to Dr. Frankenstein after the novel completes. (Disclaimer: it's been 10 years since I last read Frankenstein.)
Would Dr. Frankenstein swear off science for life? Would he take his knowledge about infusing dead flesh with life and use it to cure gangrene? Would he continue his research, and if so, would the neighbouring families leave him alone or stone him to death?
See, the tricky part about science is that it's difficult to throw ethics onto something when you don't know what you can do. Once you know it can be done, then it's easier to see applications of this, which helps to determine the ethics of the situation.
Is this ideal? No, probably not. But is it any more ideal to stop all scientific investigation until we can guess all the possible moral ramifications, and then determine if we should proceed with research, only to determine that we can't do it at all, or that we can only do the things we don't want to do, or that we have to do the things we don't want to do for years before we can research the thing we DO want to do? (Excuse my run-on sentence.)
I put forth the classic example of splitting the atom, which has many possible applications, some of which help people, and some of which kill people.
Incidentally, if JonKatz postulates the theory that a modern Dr. Frankenstein would hook up with a VC and create any harmful thing he wanted to, then I'd like to mention that a modern VC would also cut funding and support when the neighbours family sued Dr. Frankenstein for 1.2 billion in punitive damages.
My fiance and I are both slashdotters. I see him frequently. I keep telling him that we should start a lovers quarrel on /., but he claims he doesn't have the karma to spare.
I suppose this presents a major flaw in the moderation system -- how do you mod people you know? It's the slight danger in getting to know readers in your area; you can potentially push forth a petty vendetta.
Then again, it's only karma.
Speaking as a Canadian who was born after we went metric, my experience with metric is similar but evolving.
I have rotten depth and spatial perception, so I can't judge distance at all. But when I see highway signs for 500 meters, I know I don't have any time to get over (unless I pull out the crazy driving skills). I judge distance by time; since I think speed in km/h, I can convert to kms fairly easily.
I know my height in feet and inches. I used to only know my weight in pounds, but then I took up martial arts. Since all the tournement weight classes are in kgs, I can now convert between the two easily. Friends of mine from Eastern Europe know their height in both inches and meters.
The thing that messes me up is cooking. I know what a cup and and tablespoon are, but mLs don't do much for me -- I have to pull out the calculator and convert. (Fortunately, it's an easy conversion -- 1 cup = 250 mLs, 1 teaspoon = 5 mLs, and 1 tablespoon = 15 mLs) Weirdly, I think of milk and water by the litre, and it drives me nuts when recipes ask for butter in lbs. It also bugs me when they ask for flour in grams.
If you're wondering what kind of bizarre recipes I have that use cups, mLs, lbs and/or grams, this is what happens when you ask people of different ages for different recipes from different countries.
First of all, considering that you are 2 people, you don't need very much by way of business structure. You shouldn't need a boss between 2 of you. (If you do, you guys have some serious relationship issues.) If you grow, you may need some kind of a structure, but I would not bother until you need to set up specific roles and accountabilities for people.
If you must have something formal, you can split it so that one of you gets all the deals and the other codes, or split it that you're both responsible for both things. You two may be great coders, but to get things off the ground 1 or both of you needs to be really good at marketing and selling. If neither of you have this, join with someone who does.
Getting some legal and financial advice is a good idea, and if neither of you are good with books, you probably want a payroll/admin person. You can hire a general purpose accountant to manage your invoices, taxes, etc., on a contract basis -- i.e., have someone in once a week. If you feel you can't afford that but want someone anyway, hire an accounting student from your local reputatable university.
On a anecdotal note, the company I work at was started by 2 guys (both coders) 10 years ago. For the first year, 1 of them wrote all the code (at the time, GUI widgets), and the other handled sales, marketing, finance, legal, payroll, admin, office management, etc.
I used to work for a company that had free beer on site. They (correctly) assumed that all 150 of us were adults and that we'd be responsible about it.
So what happens when your team puts in a really rough day of coding? The whole team can sit around and enjoy a mug of beer together. Gives everyone some time to relax and chat. And it's easier to get people together for this at work then to get people to go out to do this.
And when something good happens to the team? Same thing -- have a beer. Need to have a hard talk with someone? Do it over a brew. Seldom did anyone get stupid about it; it was usually just one shared mug before going home.
Heck, half the company would gather together Wednesday nights when they refilled the beer fridge to hang out. Camraderie? Heck yes. And brainstorming when you're relaxed and happy is WAY easier.
We need a leader who will personally beat the crap out of anyone he doesn't like. Not like the US with their sex-crazed leaders, we have a leader who isn't afraid to throw the punches when they are necessary ;).
I'm voting Chretien too, but you know, the ultimate PM ever was Canada's very own sex-crazed leader, Trudeau.
Compare, if you will, Trudeau and Clinton. (Most of my Trudeau info paraphrased from the documentaries on TV after he died.)
Sex
Clinton: Married, cheats on his wife with interns, and then denies it by claiming it wasn't really cheating.
Trudeau: Goes into office as a bachlor -- smart move, considering all the tail that's available to him as a PM. When asked before elected who will be the hostess at Sussex Drive, he asks if he can have multiple hostesses. Gets married, has 3 kids, gets divorced, then has a child out of wedlock with a different women. Reputed to have quite the libido.
Drugs:
Clinton:I didn't inhale.
Trudeau:When I was in Turkey, I smoked a hookah -- I don't know what was in it, but it was probably hash. In India I smoked ganja with the workers. In China, opium. Heck, everywhere I went I smoked whatever they had.
You've got to love his moxie.
It's already been stated several times that the gag law is important for a country who passes through 5 timezones, and has major logistical problems for getting results up in the sparsely populated North.
Someone has repeatedly suggested closing the polls at the same, arbitrary time after a 24 hour interval, but I don't think that's financially feasible for a country who requires some huge number of polling stations to cover the geographic area, but less than 30 million people. I don't have the stats, but I have a hunch that the per-capita numbers of doing this works out to be more money than enforcing the 3.5 hour gag order.
The federal election is complicated in Canada due to the current 5 party system. Compare to the US: Let's say I lived in California and was for Nader. The East Coast results come before I vote, and I discover that Nader has no hope in hell, and so I change my vote to the lesser of the two evils. But frankly, in the US, it'll be one of the two evils anyway -- 3rd party candidates seldom have a chance.
But in Canada we have 5 federal parties. So vote changing can have a dramatic effect on the election results -- like going Canadian Alliance because the Tories aren't getting seats. <shiver of revulsion>
So why doesn't the Elections Canada defer releasing all the results? My guess is this: up here, we don't vote for the Prime Minister directly: we vote for our local federal representative, and the leader whichever party gets the most seats becomes the PM. It's not the same as the States, where (to my knowledge) you're locally represented in the Federal Government by 2 elected officials (Senator and Rep), and you chose your president separately. Here you vote federally once, and your local rep affects who your PM will be.
So while most of us here seem to agree that it's unfair to let the East Coast results affect the West Coast votes, I also think it's unfair to force the East Coast to wait for the West Coast to finish voting before they can find out who their local federal representative is.
The gag order is a compromise between the local need to know as sooner, and the federal need to know as later.
I work in the Marketing Department. Most used MS-Office App around here is PowerPoint. Between internal presentations, partner/big sales demos, and trade-show talks PowerPoint is *heavily* used.
The other one is Outlook. We recently switched over because 1) the task and meeting scheduling features make everyone's life easier (Marketing folk are always in meetings) and 2) any new hires are used to using Outlook.
Excel and Word are used pretty heavily, but the PowerPoint presentations are generally more important.
I'm currently taking an undergrad course entitled Computers and The Law of Information Technology. It's a CS course, taught by 2 lawyers, and it's VERY interesting.
According to the lawyers, several students of this class have gone on to become lawyers. There is a huge demand for lawyers who understand IT in both public and private law.
The only caveat is that most of the stuff that's relevant to IT (the stuff we're being introduced to right now) doesn't really surface until your last year of law school.
But if Law interests you, I would persue it. At worst, you decide not to be a coder or a lawyer and get a fantastic job elsewhere because you've specialized in two fields that most people know very little about, even though it affects them all the time.